Mis-Spelled

by Stacey Alabaster

  “I think you should take a few days off work,” I said to Vicky. “And I don’t mean that you should just do paperwork—I mean a proper break. Maybe even go up to your dad’s farm and get away for a bit.”

  Her mouth dropped open in protest, but we all knew that it was for the best. She hung her head. Right then, it started to pour rain. We ran back toward my car. Well, Mum and I did. Vicky stayed behind.

  Whether for the best or the worst, Eamon Barnes had not been raised from the dead. Vicky didn’t have those sorts of powers. Not many witches did. But her spell still had consequences. Something was off that day. It was a Saturday, but on the news bulletin on the radio during the ride home, the announcer said it was Thursday, then quickly corrected her mistake. There was uncertainty in her voice, like she wasn’t so sure.

  Something else was troubling me. I had gone very quiet during the car ride home, even though Mum was trying to make conversation. I’d always had a rule that we didn’t use witchcraft to solve cases. Yes, we had stretched the rule a couple of times, but always with both of us knowing. In on it together. In agreement. But this time, Vicky had done all this behind my back. Taken matters into her own hands. Made this dangerous decision without even consulting with me.

  She was my best friend. The witch I had always been the closest to. So close that I had asked her to come and work for me—but could I really trust her now?

  5

  If I ever saw another serving of calamari again, I thought I might gag. Or another glass of white wine. Or another notification on the Activate app.

  It was my eighth first date in a week. Wow. Maybe Teddy’s logic was right. By the time you’d had six, a few more didn’t make much of a difference. I was starting to grow numb to the whole thing by that stage. Besides, I already had a suspect. Teddy himself was number one on my list. I was pretty sure he had lied about when he’d downloaded Activate.

  I had done a little digging earlier that morning and confirmed the fact that Teddy and Eamon had both been members of the same basketball team, the Swift Valley Rangers. I knew nothing about basketball or sports in general, but I was going to have to find out some stats, and maybe even go and catch a game. Meanwhile, I had set Roberta to the task of researching the recent history of the team to find out things like line-up changes and win-loss records—anything that might give me a clue to the tension between the two of them. Roberta was a little disappointed, because she wanted to get more hands-on experience actually solving cases, but I told her that would come in time.

  So, all my common sense and intuition told me not to go on this date. To just cancel it. But I pressed ahead anyway, considering that I was already all dressed up and standing in front of the coffee house. Akiro shot me what seemed like a small scowl when I entered, but I shrugged it off. Maybe he’d had a tough day, and it had nothing to do with me.

  In walked my date, a guy called Bryan with large muscles and an earring in his right ear. He pulled a face when he came over to my table. “Ruby?” I nodded. “Oh. You don’t look like you do in your photos.”

  Wow. Wasn’t that kind of a rude thing to just come out and say to somebody? Maybe it was the kind of thing you secretly thought, but to say it was unnecessary, unless you were purposely trying to offend. And anyway, I thought I did look like my photos. Unless there had been some sort of glitch with the app, and it had reverted back to my brunette photos.

  He sat down with a disappointed look on his face and muttered a complaint about the location I had picked, and things only got worse from there. He complained about the service, didn’t thank Akiro when he brought water to the table, and kept scowling at me every time I spoke or tried to make polite conversation.

  Hey, it wasn’t as though he looked exactly like his photos, either. He was bulkier in real life, and his photos were clearly out of date by a year or two, considering that his hair had receded a lot since they had been taken.

  But he still had some sort of chip on his shoulder toward me.

  “So, what do you do for work?” he asked me gruffly, even though it was obvious that he wasn’t really interested in what the answer was or anything about me, for that matter.

  I was always a little vague about this question, seeing as I didn’t want any of these dates to know that I was a detective—that would defeat the whole purpose of undercover dating. Usually, I said I was “freelance” and then changed the subject quickly, but he was staring at me, so I panicked and came up with a different answer. I said that I was a third grade teacher at Swift Valley Primary School, even though I had not actually taught there for over eight months.

  That was a mistake.

  “My nephew goes to that school. I pick him up all the time . . . and he is in third grade this year.”

  Great.

  Now I felt like he was the detective, and he was grilling me for holes in my story.

  “You know what, this isn’t worth my time,” he said, pushing his chair back from the table as he stood up. “You are a liar, and you look nothing like your pics. Be honest next time, and you might actually get someone to like you.”

  After he was gone, I quietly paid my half of the bill and slipped out the side door for a breather before the next one. I leaned my head backwards as I fought back tears, annoyed at myself for letting that guy and his stupid comments get to me.

  I didn’t realize that I had been followed outside.

  Akiro reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder, a little awkwardly. “Don’t let it get to you, Ruby . . .”

  “I told you, this is all for work!” I said a little too snappishly as I moved away from him.

  “Then why are you getting so upset?”

  I supposed I was no different than Vicky. I wasn’t immune to taking things personally. “It still hurts to get rejected and spoken to so rudely, regardless of whether or not it was a ‘real’ date,” I said and pouted a little.

  Akiro smiled at me gently, and there was a real look of affection in his eyes. “Well, I think that guy is an idiot.”

  I gave him a small smile back. “Thanks.”

  “Any guy would be lucky to date you,” he said softly. “And whether it’s for work or not, I admire you for putting yourself out there, Ruby. I know you can handle it if you go back in there.”

  But I was done. With the dating, with the apps. Almost with the entire case. It was nothing but a waste of time taking any more of them, and I felt like I was just spinning my wheels—and unlike other cases, I was putting myself on the line for personal rejection. Again and again.

  We were going to have to find a different angle.

  “So, how are things going with your mum?” Akiro asked as I picked up my purse and decided to call it a night. He cleared the table and waited for my answer.

  I shrugged. “She’s out at yoga at the moment. And we are getting along okay. But it’s not like we’ve talked about . . .” And then I stopped short and even let out a little gasp as I realized what I had almost let slip out. Akiro knew nothing about the real cause of tension between Mum and I. Akiro had no idea I was a witch. He didn’t even know that witches existed. He was not the sort to believe in anything supernatural—he didn’t even like to talk about it.

  “Well, I suppose it is like any mother-daughter relationship,” I said, giving him a little laugh, glad that I had caught myself in time. “There are good times and not-so-good times. And no one wants to live with their mother at the age of twenty-seven, right?”

  Akiro laughed, and I wished him a good night, promising him that he would no longer have to witness me on any awkward first dates.

  “I’m glad.”

  I pulled up in front of my house and frowned as I turned off the car engine and climbed out. There was a light on in the spare bedroom, and someone moving around inside there.

  That was strange. What was Mum doing back so early? She’d told me that she was going to a moonlight yoga class, and those always ran till almost eleven-thirty p.m. It was only nine-twenty. But the light w
as on in her room, and I could see her long-haired silhouette moving around as I got closer. Definitely wasn’t Vicky, who had already left to go and visit her dad up in the mountains

  I peered in to see what she was up to.

  She had a book sitting in the center of the floor which she was concentrating on, her arm outstretched to make it rise up from the ground. Levitation. Which was a very simple spell. One that was so easy that even I, a total amateur witch, could perform it. I mean, sure, it had taken me a few goes to master, but in the end, I figured out how to do it without making the object shoot off into outer space and without giving myself a severe headache.

  But Mum could not get the book to budge. I could see from the look on her face that she was growing more and more frustrated. Eventually, she stomped on over to the book, picked it up, and threw it onto the ground.

  Why couldn’t my mother—who came a long family line of witches—perform even the very simplest of spells?

  6

  It had only been a day, and yet the prodigal daughter was back on my doorstep with her suitcase in tow.

  “I am going to make this up to you,” she said. “I am going to make all of this right.” Vicky placed her bag down and pulled out her phone. She started tapping things on the screen, and then she started swiping. It looked like she was mostly swiping right. “I am back on the case, and I am going to take over all the dating duties. After the experience you had, it’s only right that you have a break from the whole thing.” I’d filled her in on the Bryan situation over a text conversation. This was apparently the reason she had rushed back to town.

  I appreciated her offer, but I wasn’t sure that Vicky was cut out for it, either. After all, her date had been even worse than mine had. At least no one had died on my date. Except for maybe my ego.

  But since she had returned, she may as well get back on the case.

  “Jeez, I just got ten messages in the last minute,” she said, holding the phone back in alarm.

  “Be careful,” I warned her. “Dates can be very dangerous things these days.”

  “This is my first real case,” Roberta said with excitement as we approached the door of the restaurant that was tentatively re-opening that day. The Dark Horse was back in business just a week after Eamon Barnes had died. Roberta was practically trembling with anticipation. She was a good apprentice—eager, had genuine passion for the job, and she took every word I said as gospel. Unlike Vicky, who argued and liked to perform witchcraft behind my back sometimes.

  I smiled over at Roberta. A good old-fashioned human detective, who just wanted to learn how to solve mysteries the good old-fashioned way. That was the kind of addition we needed to our team. Sure, it might be a little tricky trying to constantly hide the fact that we were witches from her, but I actually thought that having Roberta around might be really good for us. Help to keep us in line.

  “So,” she said. “What do we do now?”

  “Follow my lead,” I said and pushed through the door. The owner, a woman in her late forties with bleached blonde hair and sharp eyebrows, looked up at us and said that they were still setting up, and we’d have to come back in an hour if we wanted to eat. I thought it was kinda rich of them to be turning away customers at any time of the day, considering what had happened just a week ago. Surely they needed all the customers they could get.

  “We are just here to ask a few questions . . .” I glanced at her name tag, which said “Stacey” on it.

  “You’re not the police. I don’t have to talk to you.” She waved her hand toward the door as if to say “Get out” while she went back to her paperwork.

  “No, you don’t have to, but we are trying to figure out what happened to Eamon Barnes. And that benefits you as much as anyone else. As soon as this mess is cleared up, you’ll be back in business and turning a profit again.” This tactic usually worked, but Stacey just stared at me blank-faced.

  “We are doing just fine,” she said coolly. “Booked out every night this week. So, unless you want to make a booking, please leave so that my staff and I can continue setting up for a busy day.” A waiter walked past us with a tray full of silver cutlery, placed a knife down, and then stared at me.

  I slunk out and tried to save face a little. Not the best impression to make on Roberta. I’d been totally shut down.

  “Doesn’t usually go like that,” I said, and then shrugged it off and tried to find the bright side of the situation. “But of course, you deal with all types of witnesses and suspects in this game. Some of them will be downright hostile. You’ve got to know when to regroup and come back with a new plan of attack.”

  Roberta was nodding along while she scribbled notes on everything I was saying. “So, what is the new plan of attack?”

  Er, good question.

  I stared back in through the windows of The Dark Horse. I just couldn’t believe that they were booked out for dinner every night that week, after a murder had taken place there only a week earlier. I knew Stacey was lying. But I needed to find a way to prove it. Hmm. Too bad I couldn’t use my psychic skills. That would be kind of hypocritical, considering the hard time I had given Vicky.

  But then again, listening to someone else’s thoughts was nowhere near as extreme as trying to turn back the hands of time and raise a person from the dead, was it? It was just a teeny tiny use of witchcraft. I could attribute it to accident or even plain coincidence if I was really pressed on the matter.

  I briefly let my psychic guard down and stared back in through the window, focusing on Stacey’s bleached blonde head. She was looking down at a book, and after a few seconds, I could read her thoughts. She was bemoaning the fact that it was empty, but she was also thinking, “Thank goodness I got rid of them. Now they will stop asking me questions about what happened on that night.”

  There was a reason Stacey didn’t want us anywhere near that restaurant.

  “Roberta. We have our top suspect.”

  “This is where you really wanted to come the other night, right? I felt bad that we had to miss out, and so I thought that I would bring you here tonight.”

  Mum cast me a skeptical gaze as she stepped out of the car that I had parked in front of The Dark Horse. She even looked a little worried. “Ruby, this is where someone was murdered just eight nights ago.”

  I shrugged. “It still has the best chicken schnitzels in town,” I said. “I think it’s the parmesan in the crust that makes them so popular.”

  “So, there’s no other reason you brought me here tonight?” she asked me.

  “None at all.”

  Mum sighed and pushed through the doors. We were greeted with an empty restaurant except for two couples in the center near the bar, in a similar spot to where Vicky and Eamon had been sitting. I glanced around and noticed that there were no reserved signs on any of the tables. So, my psychic abilities still held up, then.

  The door between the kitchen and dining room swung open, and Stacey strolled in, stopping in her tracks when she saw that it was me.

  “Table for two?” I asked, all casually and innocently. “That is, if you have any room, of course.”

  If she was feeling caught out and sprung, she managed to hide it reasonably well.

  “We have had a few cancellations,” she said smoothly, adjusting the glasses on her nose. I suppose that was her explanation for the fact that there were ten empty tables. I would have loved to have gotten a closer look at the bookings diary, though, to see if there had actually been ten bookings that had been written down and then crossed out. Not that I needed to look. I’d already read her thoughts, and I was picking up on even more right then. She wanted me to get out of her restaurant, but she had no good reason to ask me to leave. She was looking for one, though.

  I wasn’t going to give her one. Not just then, at least. I smiled sweetly and said that my mother liked to sit close to the windows. “She needs the fresh air with her jet lag,” I said, even though her jet lag should have passed by then. But I was
still hoping that jet lag might be the explanation for why Mum hadn’t been able to perform the levitation spell the night before. I wasn’t sure how to bring up the topic. But I was definitely concerned.

  Stacey showed us to our table and took our drink orders.

  Mum frowned and leaned forward. She looked worried. “How is this change of career treating you?” she asked in a concerned maternal voice. “I was always so pleased that you were a teacher. This new line of work just seems so . . . dangerous.”

  My work wasn’t the thing that she should be most concerned about. Especially when it came to what did and didn’t put me in danger. What about the fact that I was a witch, and she had kept that from me for my entire life?

  I kept one eye on Stacey as I cut into my chicken schnitzel. I’d ordered the pepper sauce on the side. I dipped a chunk of crumbed chicken and took a spicy mouthful.

  Stacey was doing her best to pretend that I wasn’t there, tending to tables—well, the two others that were full—with an intensity that rivaled an Olympic athlete, like she was being run off her feet dealing with their requests. Going backward and forward between their tables, the bar, and the kitchen without even tending to our table at all.

  Mum asked what I was being so distracted by, and I turned my attention back to her.

  “I saw you the other day,” I said quietly, placing my knife and fork down on the white tablecloth. “Mum, why couldn’t you perform that levitation spell? With the book?”

  She turned pale. “Why were you watching me, Ruby?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” I said. “But I don’t understand. I mean, you’re a witch. Is there something wrong with your powers?”