Witches in Wonderland

by J. D. Winters

  I looked at Shane. He nodded.

  “Those are two of the guardian stones,” Gran Ana said. “There are five of them.”

  It was all coming clear to me now. The whole stupendous effort, the whole campaign that must be waged. As Oliver served us lemonade and cookies, I mulled it over. “Are any of the others broken?”

  “No. Only the one on my property. The one you climbed and tied a cord to.”

  I stared at her. Why couldn’t she have told me all this from the start?

  “Tell me,” I said, making it sound like a command. “I need to know. Give me the whole story.”

  To my surprise, she didn’t take offense at my tone. She seemed to accept it. At any rate, she began to tell me what I’d asked.

  “If a guardian stone is damaged, that means a trespass has taken place. That weakens the whole system. It must be repaired and renewed. The damaged stone must be restored to health and all must be bound together again. This must be done, or we will have no peace in this haven.”

  “You are saying that right now we are basically unprotected?”

  “That is what I’m saying. And that is why it is so dangerous to have intruders like these Hollywood people showing depictions of our supernatural elements to the world. It must be stopped and the stones must be restored to health.”

  I shivered with the wonder of it. There was so much here to unpack. But one thing stood out. I was the one chosen to take care of the stones. “And only I can bind this wound? Why me?”

  She exchanged glances with Shane and didn’t answer my question. I was about to demand she tell me more when Oliver came to the table with a worried look.

  “Sorry to intrude, Madame,” he said. “But there’s been an infringement of the perimeter. A trespasser has been caught inside the property.”

  Chapter 16

  A sudden breeze swept through, sending napkins flying and chilling the atmosphere, setting my emotions on edge again.

  Gran Ana stood up. “Where?” she said, her hand to her throat. “Who is it?”

  Oliver made a gesture that I was sure was meant to calm her and he said, “It’s a small animal, Madame. I thought you might want to come to the barrier and see the creature before we…”

  Gran Ana grimaced. “Bring it here. I don’t have the energy to make that trek. Bring it over. Let’s take a look at this thing. What is it?”

  Oliver hesitated. “Well, it’s a small fox, but actually…”

  “A red fox?” I said, suddenly alert.

  Oliver nodded. “Yes, but…”

  A man in a workman’s uniform was carrying in a cage with the fox inside. I stood up, breathless.

  “Oh be careful,” I cried. “I know this fox. She’s been seen in town. Don’t hurt her.”

  By the time the workman set the cage down, the fox had shifted, as I somehow knew she would. Where there had been a small red fox, now sat pint-sized Mandy, cross-legged on the floor of the cage, smiling at me sheepishly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything. I was just cruising around, making sure you were okay. And I usually don’t get caught—but I lost focus for a moment and they surprised me.” She shrugged. “Sorry.”

  I shook my head, relieved and gratified.

  “Mandy Vega, will you get out of that cage and come over here and have some lemonade?”

  I had her out in no time, then looked at my grandmother. She was looking stern, but at least she wasn’t forbidding me to bring Mandy to sit with us. Somehow, as fox turned to girl, she’d instantaneously acquired a stretchy, rust-colored tunic and black leggings and she looked perfectly comfortable among us. My grandmother didn’t raise an eyebrow. After all, her beloved Oliver was a shifter. She understood, even if she didn’t want to let on.

  I was laughing. I’d known from the beginning that Mandy and I had a natural bond and I’d suspected she and the red fox had something in common. Nice to know my instincts were right on. And so delightfully funny. I introduced her to my grandmother, who nodded stiffly, and Mandy and I chatted for a few moments while she settled in.

  My mind was racing. I wanted to know so much more about my family and about our responsibilities as far as the haven was concerned, but I knew that conversation had been side-lined for now. The guardian stones were something between me and my grandmother-plus Shane of course—but not for outsiders.

  But never mind. We had a ready-made topic that needed to be addressed. After all, we were in the midst of a murder investigation, weren’t we? And that had to be dealt with. I glanced at my grandmother and said softly. “You know about the murder in the Haunted House, don’t you?” Then I watched her reactions as closely as I could, but she didn’t show a sign of unease.

  “Yes, of course. Such a tragedy.”

  “It’s all anyone can talk about right now,” Mandy murmured, flashing a look at me.

  “So what’s your theory?” I asked her. “Who did it?”

  “I don’t have one,” she claimed. “I hardly know anyone involved, so I’m just waiting on events.”

  “How about you, Gran Ana?” I asked. “Are you the same?”

  “Oh no,” she said primly. “I have a theory alright. But it’s mine and I’m not ready to share it. Not yet.”

  I studied her face as she spoke. Did she have something to do with it herself? Was I being cruel to wonder that? Cold? Heartless? Ungrateful?

  But I wasn’t the only one. There was my Aunt Tina. She’d been pretty adamant about the issue.

  I wished I could dismiss it out of hand. I wished I’d never seen her walking into the Haunted House last night. I hadn’t brought myself to asking her about that yet. I was going to have to at some point.

  But for now, we were having a nice lemonade and luxuriating in the sunshine.

  I told Mandy about Gran Ana’s party with her croquet buddies.

  “Oh, it’s been years since I’ve played croquet,” she said.

  “Well there’s a set right behind you,” Gran Ana told her pleasantly. “Why not have a game?”

  Suddenly she was playing the gracious hostess. So many roles in her average day—I couldn’t keep up. But I would take advantage of a better mood while we had one. We rose from our seats and divided the stakes and wooden balls, then each took a mallet in hand.

  “Oh for a few hedgehogs,” I teased. “And those flamingoes! Can’t you just imagine using one as your mallet?”

  “What happened to the ones you saw?” Mandy asked before she thought, then she flushed and gave my grandmother a quick look.

  “Why nothing happened to them,” Gran Ana told her with a smile. “Look to the pond. There they are.”

  We all turned and sure enough, there they were, strutting out of the water in a group of about five or six, making a turn, then back, all in unison, looking for all the world like a brilliantly colored set of Seventeenth Century gentry at a Baroque social dance. You could almost hear the harpsichord in the wind.

  Mandy laughed with delight, started toward them, then paused and looked back. “Do they bite?” she asked after taking a gander at those big beaks.

  “Anything with a mouth bites,” Gran Ana told us all.

  Mandy’s eyes widened. “Good point,” she said, and hung back a bit. “Maybe I’ll get closer later on,” she murmured.

  I sidled next to her. There was one thing I thought might need clarifying. “Uh..don’t foxes eat rodents?” I whispered when Shrimp wasn’t close.

  She gave me a cocky smile. “I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Right.” I laughed.

  She and Shane started a game, laughing and hitting into each other’s wooden balls. I stayed behind with my grandmother. I had a few things I still wanted to talk to her about. I steeled myself and then I began.

  “Gran Ana, I need to ask you a question. Did my mother have a sister named Tina?”

  “Tina?” She frowned, thinking. Or at least, pretending to. “I never knew much about your mother’s family. But there
was a Christina as I remember. Yes, I remember her. They might have called her Tina.”

  “Was she…?”

  She frowned and interrupted. “What she was--was a boring little twit, always tugging your mother away, telling her not to trust me. She had it in for me for some reason. I never did understand why, nor did I much care.”

  But I cared. Never mind. There was still one more family relationship issue I needed to clear up. I took a deep breath. “Is Kenny Sand’s ex-wife, Phyllis, really your Godchild?”

  She blinked for a moment, looking like she was suppressing a smile. Or was it a look of sarcasm? “Oh yes. Why would you doubt it?”

  “But you’re a…you’re a…”

  “A sorceress. Of course I am. And I’m also a very devout woman.” She looked at me triumphantly. “I can be whatever I need to be at the moment. Surely you know that by now.”

  Did I ever. That was the same thing Bentley had said. We turned back to watching the croquet game while I tried to stay calm. Shane called me over to make a judgment call on who was closer to the wicket, and as I walked toward them, I caught a flash of red in the greenery on the far side of my grandmother’s house. I laughed and talked to the two of them, but my full attention was on that patch of red. The harder I looked the more I was sure I knew what that was. The red sports car Phyllis was driving. It was under some sort of spell—probably a cloaking spell—and probably not visible to most eyes. But when a breeze blew through and the sun glinted on that area just right, I caught a flash of what was hidden there. My heart was thumping like a drum.

  I got my hands muddy retrieving a wooden ball from the edge of the duck pond where someone had sent it.

  “I’m going to run in and wash my hands,” I said to nobody in particular, then started toward the house. I could feel Gran Ana’s gaze burning into the center of my back as I went, but I didn’t waver.

  I went right to the door of the wing of the house where the guest bedrooms were and tried the lock. It was open… but I had a hunch. I touched the knob, whispered, “Savum” and filled it with power. Then I turned into the bathroom and rinsed off my hands and dried them. Gran Ana came into the house a moment later, just as I expected she would.

  “Haley, are you all right?” she called through the closed bathroom door.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m just a little dizzy. I want to wash my face and rest for a moment. I’ll be right back out.”

  “All right, dear.”

  I closed my eyes and listened. Sure enough, I heard the lock click on the door to the guest bedrooms. Then she was on her way back outside again.

  Moving fast now, I slipped out as silently as I could and touched the door she’d locked, said, “Restorem” and the lock flipped open. For a moment, I reflected that this was some pretty clever spell work. I thought about the spell like it was in a video game. I’d saved the knob as unlocked, then restored it later.

  It was probably a needlessly complicated way to pick a lock, but I needed to do something that wouldn’t be immediately obvious to Gran Ana.

  I moved quickly down the hall, looking in one bedroom after another. When I reached the fifth one, the door was closed and locked. I knocked. No response. No helping it, I would have to use a lock picking spell the Gran Ana would certainly be able to trace. Oh, well. I drew in a quick breath, then took out my sachet, blew some powder from it into the lock, jiggled it and tried again. It opened smoothly.

  Phyllis was lying flat on the bed. It looked like she was sound asleep. That I hadn’t been expecting.

  “Phyllis,” I said, shaking her shoulder. “Phyllis, wake up.”

  No reaction. Yet she was still breathing and her heart was beating. That told me she was under a sleeping spell. What on earth for?

  “Phyllis,” I tried again. Not a hint of life.

  This was crazy. Everything in this place, from Phyllis to her car to the flamingoes, was under some sort of spell. Maybe I was under one too and just didn’t know it.

  I tried one more time to wake her, then gave up and headed back. I knew Gran Ana would come looking for me if I took any longer. I joined in with the game and tried to have fun, but it wasn’t easy. My mind was in turmoil. My very own grandmother had a woman under a spell in her house and was hiding her car behind the garage.

  Why? What on earth? And what did it have to do with Kenny’s murder?

  Now I was second-guessing everything that happened. As I looked around, I realized the entire area was back to looking like it had when we had first arrived, with beautiful trees displaying huge red roses and sculptured hedges and hedgerows.

  Wonderland.

  Oliver had brought out tea in a beautiful fine china tea service, and he poured for us and handed out lovely cream cakes that melted in your mouth like a spun-sugar cloud. The ladies and gentlemen were back playing croquet with real flamingoes, though they stuck strictly to the background, none coming close enough to talk to, but scattered around in order to create the atmosphere. And it was delightful—but it wasn’t real. Was everything Gran Ana did just window dressing to reality?

  She was treating me kindly, rather like a real grandmother. And I had to admit, it was pleasant —even if it was fake. Even if I had to ignore that picture of Phyllis lying stretched out on that bed that kept trying to get in the way. Still, it gave me a warm feeling inside. Was this what it felt like to have a loving family?

  Maybe, maybe not.

  Whatever, it felt wonderful. It touched something deep inside me, but at the same time, it left me hungry for more. I wanted my own family, people who loved me without reservation, people who were ready to back me up, to hear my side, to—oh what was the use. That wasn’t likely for someone like me, was it? I blinked quickly and tried to brush away the tears that pooled in my eyes as I ached with that lonely longing.

  But it was getting late and it was time to leave. As we gathered our things and prepared to depart, Gran Ana came up to hug me. That in itself was unusual, but then, in the last moment, she took my hand and pressed something into my palm in a way that told me this was just for me and not to be shared with the others. I slipped it into my pocket. She hugged me again and whispered, “Stay away from Clarissa.”

  I swung back, staring at her. “You know Clarissa?”

  “I know of her.”

  My heart was pounding as though this was really important. “Is she…what is she?”

  “She is a very powerful witch. Stay clear of her and you’ll stay safe.”

  “But…”

  My grandmother seemed to fade away, like a photograph in the sun. Moments later, we were in the car, heading back to Moonhaven and I was doing breathing exercises, trying to calm my beating heart. There was so much to go over, so much to think about in what had just happened over the last two hours. It was going to take me days to get it all straightened out my head—and my heart.

  I glanced at Shane. He was looking just as overwhelmed as I was. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but Mandy was in the back, chattering away, so I just sank down further in my seat and tried to control my breathing.

  What a day it had been.

  Chapter 17

  I didn’t get a chance to talk to Shane until he pulled his car up in front of the cafe and Mandy went on into the house, leaving me alone with him. By that time, I was more confused than ever and not sure what I should be telling him and what I should be keeping to myself. I glanced at my phone as a means of avoiding the issue.

  “Four missed calls from Rennie. How could I have missed four calls?”

  He shrugged. “That spell you used to cut me off from detection probably spilled over onto your cell phone. Are we okay now? Back in business?”

  I nodded. “I set it up for a limited time. That’s over now.”

  He gave me a half smile. “Thanks for doing that.”

  “What are you going to tell them at the station when they ask where you’ve been?”

  He touched my cheek and then his fingers were playing with a st
rand of my hair. “I’ll tell them a beautiful woman lured me from my duties.”

  I forced back the smile that crept out at that. “Really? I didn’t know you had such a high regard for my grandmother. She’ll be thrilled.”

  He laughed and leaned forward, kissing me. It was just a soft brushing of his lips over mine, but it set off its own style of enchantment and I felt as though I’d just had a shot of brandy and it was warming its way through my system.

  “There you go,” he said softly. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  I made a face and looked at him sideways. “I guess that works. If you don’t think about it too hard.”

  He turned more serious. “Are you getting a better picture of your role in all this?” he asked, his fingers still tangled in my hair.

  What could I tell him? His attitude seemed to be that I was to trust my grandmother—trust a woman who had someone in a sleeping spell in her house, a woman who might somehow have been involved with Kenny’s murder, a woman who was warning me to stay away from Clarissa. And my natural impulse was to challenge her on all fronts.

  She had given me a little clearer picture of my family, but not enough to really work with. There were so many questions and so few answers.

  But I didn’t want to burden Shane with all that. I would have to work it out for myself.

  “I think so,” I told him. “Although I can’t help but wonder why all these responsibilities get decided for me. Don’t I have any say in these decisions?”

  He dropped his hand from my hair and looked resigned. “If you feel that way, I’m sure you’ll rebel eventually. It’s only natural. After all, rebellion was pretty much your middle name in the old days.” He frowned. “But remember. You wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for things your grandmother did--at great cost--to make it happen.”

  You see, that was what I wanted to know. Why the vaguery, why keep beating around the bush?

  “What did she do exactly?”