Mis-Spelled

by Stacey Alabaster

  “The trip to Peru took a lot out of me, okay?” she said, reaching up and ruffling her already messy hair. “I also might have taken some strange plant supplements that messed with my . . .”

  I frowned. “You should go and talk to Geri about that. Have you seen her since you’ve gotten back?”

  Mum shook her head, reached for her glass of wine and took a large gulp. If substances were affecting her witchcraft that badly, then maybe she should skip the wine and stick to water, I thought.

  Stacey glared at me, and I only caught it because I saw her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. She didn’t realize I had seen it, as she turned and walked back toward the kitchen when the bell was rung. Time to strike.

  “Mum, wait here,” I said and pushed my chair back from the table.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m just using the bathroom,” I said, trying to reassure her, though I could see from the look on her face that she didn’t believe me.

  I stomped right over to the kitchen and pushed my way through the swinging doors like I was a member of the wait staff. All the cooks in their white uniforms glanced up at me in unison.

  I confronted a shocked Stacey, who had just picked up a plate full of steak that she was about to take out to a table.

  “Why was there no one in the front at all on the night that Eamon was killed?” I said and crossed my arms, standing in front of the door so that Stacey couldn’t get past me.

  “Get out of here and mind your own business,” she said in a low growl as she came toward me.

  But I stood my ground. “I’m a detective, and I will get to the bottom of this. With or without your cooperation.”

  Her eyes were glimmering, and she looked like she would do whatever she needed to do in that moment to protect the secret she was keeping. I knew I was in danger. My mother must have known it as well. I was glad for the backup as I felt Stacey closing in on me.

  Mum walked in just as Stacey picked up a steak knife and threatened me with it. At that moment, maybe I should have been frightened for my life, but my entire focus switched toward my mother, who was standing there doing nothing.

  I just stared at her, my eyes full of questions. Why wasn’t she using a freezing spell or a levitation spell on the knife or anything to protect her daughter when her life was in danger?

  Mum looked at me helplessly, her eyes full of apologies, and then ran out.

  I chased after her and ran into the street, trying to find where Mum had gone. But there was no one there. I called out, but she was gone.

  I put all guards down so that I could pick up my mum’s thoughts.

  Where was my mother?

  The milk factory? No, that couldn’t be right. There was no way that my mother would go anywhere near there. I closed my eyes and tried again. This time, I saw a vision of a large body of sparkling water.

  Bingo. Mum always loved the lake, especially at this time of the month when the moon was full. And there was a special spit that she always went to. It was a lookout for watching birds, but I knew she always went there to look at the moon.

  I knew she was there. I could pick up her vibes.

  But it was funny. Even though she was a witch, I was getting no sense that she was picking up on me at all. All communication seemed to be going one-way, so I couldn’t let her know to stay put because I was on my way. So I ran over to my car and drove as quickly as I could before she changed her location. She could be pretty flighty these days.

  She was still there when I arrived, though.

  “I used to love to come out here and look at the night sky,” she commented in a wistful tone as she sat with her legs stretched out over the deck of the lookout. Her voice was starting to crack like, she was getting teary. “It made me feel more real, like it wasn’t all such a lie. It’s funny, isn’t it?” she said with a bittersweet laugh. “I always felt so connected to nature, to the moon, that I thought I must actually be a witch deep down. But there was only so long I could keep up the pretense.”

  I was completely silent. I had no idea what she was talking about. None of this made any sense to me. She hadn’t even turned her head to look at me once—it was still turned up toward the moon.

  And then she dropped it.

  “Mum? What are you talking about?”

  She dropped her head even lower, and her voice became very soft.

  “I’ve been faking my witchcraft to the other coven members since the time you were three years old.” She bit her lip to try to stop it from trembling. “When I saw your powers developing, I knew that you were different. And you don’t know how much that scared me, Ruby.” She looked up at me. “Because if you realized that we were different, you would realize that you weren’t biologically related to me. Ruby—I should have told you this a long time ago. You are adopted.”

  There was a ringing in my ears. I didn’t know which part to process first. “Is this why you never told me I was a witch?” I asked, feeling a tightness in my chest as the ground suddenly felt wobbly below me.

  Her whole face was screwed up as she nodded and began to sob. “I knew that if you found out the truth—that you were a witch—you would realize that you were not really related to me. So I had to keep it from you. I thought that if I could just develop my own powers somehow, if I could learn how to fake them somehow, then I could finally tell you the truth. About your being a witch.”

  “But not about being adopted,” I said in a low voice.

  I felt like the very ground had been taken from underneath my feet—like I couldn’t get solid footing. My head was spinning.

  “So, you didn’t just lie to me about being a witch—you lied to me about everything. Every part of my life. For my whole life.” I started to back away from her as quickly as I could. She called out for me to come back, pleading with me that she could explain and that we needed to talk about this, but I was done for the night. I needed space.

  I knocked on the door, and Akiro let me in.

  Now I had two mysteries to solve.

  7

  When I’d been living alone, just me and Indy—my witch’s familiar—all the way at the top of a lone mountain, any noise in the middle of the night got my attention. A creak of the floorboards would make me sit bolt upright in alarm. A crow tapping on my bedroom window would make me freeze in a cold sweat. But that was the good thing about living with housemates—with so many people packed inside the house, I could relax a little. I felt more secure and didn’t jump at every little thing that went bump in the night. Because when you are a witch and a detective, those bumps in the night can be pretty scary.

  So that was why I didn’t think anything of the sound that was coming from outside my window. It sort of sounded like footsteps. Heavy ones that belonged to big feet. Way bigger than a cat. Probably bigger than my mum’s, as well. But I turned over and started to doze back to sleep, thinking that Taylor might have just gotten up in the middle of the night to check on the chooks or something. There were foxes around.

  But when the sound didn’t stop, my eyes popped open again. The footsteps seemed to be getting closer to my window. That was when I had to get up to check, first of all to see if everyone was safe in their beds. Uh-oh. Taylor was in his room when I pushed the door open a crack. I snuck down the hallway, using only the light from my cell phone to guide me as I crept toward the spare room. I pushed the door open just far enough to make out the shapes. Vicky was sleeping in the double bed, and I could see Mum’s thin body on the floor. She had insisted, after Vicky came back, on taking the floorboards. Even when I had tried to give her my bed. She claimed it was good for her posture.

  A shiver ran down my back. So what was that noise outside?

  Then I smacked my palm against my forehead. Of course. Indy could shape-shift if she wanted to, I was sure of it. She was always downplaying her abilities, but I think that was because she was a bit lazy at heart and enjoyed being waited on hand and foot as though she was just a regular
house cat who couldn’t take care of herself.

  “Indy!” I called out, trying to find my erstwhile cat as I searched through the house. If it was her making all the noise and scaring me on purpose, then I was going to have to give her a stern talking to, and maybe even send her to spend some time out in the barn to have a think about what she had done.

  I stopped. She was curled up in her basket just outside the laundry, sound asleep.

  Uh-oh. There really was someone—or something—outside.

  And I could hear them growling.

  I stepped through the side door—a risky move in that town at that time—and took a step into the dark. The growling started to sound more like someone clearing their throat, and I heard what sounded like a sneaker skid to a halt.

  “Who’s there?” I called out, shining the torch from my phone around. I was willing to use witchcraft if necessary to catch the intruder. The squeak of the rubber shoe against the concrete was louder this time, and I caught a frightened look as an arm covered up a face, and then ran off.

  Was that . . . Teddy?

  The intruder had scurried off into the night, but I hadn’t been able to get much sleep wondering why on earth Teddy would have been in my backyard. How did he even know where I lived? What was he searching for out in the yard?

  I tossed and turned and maybe got one or two hours’ sleep before the chooks started to crow, and I had to get up for the morning. Taylor asked me why I was spending so much time outside helping with the animals that morning when that was his job and the way that he paid for his room and board. Well, the real reason was that I was trying to avoid the other people in the house, but I just smiled at him and told him that I needed a bit of sunshine while it was actually out. He frowned and looked concerned as he glanced up at the sky. “The seasons do seem to have changed quite quickly, don’t they?”

  That night, as soon as I got home from work, I made plans to attend the local basketball game with Vicky so that I could figure out what Teddy’s, well, game was. What were you supposed to wear to a basketball game? I knew that the Rangers’ colors were purple and white, and so I pulled a purple coat on over a button-up white shirt. Then I put jeans on so that the whole outfit looked more casual and sportier.

  “Come on, Vicky, let’s go,” I called, racing out the door so that we could drive straight back into town. But Mum called to me just as I was rushing out the door and told me that I needed to stop making excuses not to have important conversations with her. She was drinking a green juice and standing barefoot on the kitchen floor. If I’d even still known her at all, I definitely didn’t recognize her by that point.

  “We’ve had all the important conversations we need to have,” I replied quickly. “There isn’t any more that needs to be said.” And I went off to the basketball game.

  Basketball was definitely not my thing, and the lack of sleep didn’t help this. I struggled to stay awake all through the first quarter.

  “I can barely keep my eyes open,” I said as we finally reached the second quarter of the game, and the Swift Valley Rangers were down by four goals. My eyes were seriously drooping. Even though there was so much noise from the home ground fans that it would be actually impossible to fall asleep. Maybe. There was also a giant glare from the stage lights that were directly across from me on the other side of the bleachers. Those would also make sleep difficult. But I just could not follow the game whatsoever.

  There was a squeak of rubber on the floor. A very familiar squeak, and I stopped slouching in my seat and sat bolt upright. Teddy stopped in the middle of the game and stared straight up at me, even though I thought we were sitting in an inconspicuous spot, invisible, especially with the bright lights making it difficult to pick out individual crowd members. I’d been hoping that he wouldn’t notice I was there at all.

  But his eyes were trained right in on us.

  Vicky didn’t seem to notice anything much. Not Teddy staring at her. Not the game, the lights, the sound of the crowd, any of it. She’d come along for moral support, but she still believed that her Activate theory was the right one, and that the murder of Eamon Barnes had nothing to do with the politics of who did and didn’t get to play in local basketball competitions. And she wasn’t convinced that I had seen Teddy in my backyard the previous night. She claimed that it may have just been an apparition. “Witches are especially prone to having those when they are under stress.” I tried to explain to her that I wasn’t under any more stress than usual, but maybe that wasn’t exactly true. I mean, I had just received news that had shaken my whole world to its very core. I slouched down into the seat again and wondered if she was right. Maybe I had just imagined the whole thing.

  Teddy picked up the ball again and went back to his position on the court, which I could only gather was the “center” position. With my limited knowledge of the sport, I watched carefully. Teddy was a decent player, but he was nowhere near as skilled as the other guys on the court, especially the guys on the opposing team. Another attempt at a three-point shot bounced off the rim of the basket.

  Vicky cleared her throat and giggled a little bit, and I thought she was laughing at Teddy’s missed attempt to score, but the game was still holding no interest for her either. The smartphone that she was holding in her hand must have been a lot more interesting.

  She was still swiping through the Activate app. Now that she was using it solely—or so she said—to work on the case, she was being less picky and pretty much swiping right on everyone. I could hear the notification ding every time she got a new match, which was fairly constant. It was pretty easy for women in general to get matches on those things. But Vicky especially had no problem. She was photogenic, and her soft face and features looked warm and inviting in her profile pictures. Her bio was witty and clever and gave a glimpse of her personality, and her flair for vintage clothes and country and western music made her stand out as well. She’d told me that most of the opening comments she got were from guys commenting on the pictures of her playing guitar and asking her if she could teach them. She’d rolled her eyes and said, “Well, yeah, if they are gonna pay me. Otherwise, they can go to one of the local guitar teachers that have actual studios.”

  I rubbed my eyes and tried to concentrate on the game as it got deeper and deeper into the third quarter, and we fell more and more behind. This was a home game for the Swift Valley Rangers, and it had started off with great enthusiasm. But the vibe in the small stadium was subdued now because of how far behind we were, in spite of the fact that we had the home ground advantage. Teddy, who took the majority of shots at the goal, kept shooting and missing. Every time, there was a groan from the crowd, and they got flatter and flatter. But as the game neared completion, people stopped even groaning because we were so far behind, there was no chance of the Rangers ever taking the lead again. Vicky wasn’t the only one staring at her phone by that stage. A few of the rows had cleared out once the fans had realized there was no chance of witnessing a victory.

  Yet we were still there.

  Even if there was no chance of me witnessing any new clues, I didn’t want to go home. I was willing to sit there all night until the final player had showered and left, the cleaners had been in and emptied every rubbish can, and the janitor finally kicked me out.

  “Everything okay?” Vicky asked me. “You’ve been super quiet all evening.” I could tell that she was itching to go and would have followed me out the door if I hadn’t been rooted in position.

  “Just trying to concentrate on this . . . enthralling game,” I replied, looking up at the clock and feeling both relieved and anxious that we were almost at the end. I still hadn’t decided whether I was going to confront Teddy about snooping outside my house or not. Because what if Vicky was right, and it had all been in my head? It was going to sound like a pretty crazy accusation if it had been. “Seriously, Vicks, I am fine. Just a little tired.”

  But she knew something was up.

  She put her phone insi
de her purse and asked if I wanted to talk. I just gripped the bottom of the chair, tenser than ever, and shook my head again.

  I hadn’t breathed a word to her about the conversation with my mum down by the lake, and no matter how many times she asked me what was up, it was like I became more and more resistant to talk about it. Buried it down deeper and deeper until there was just this lump in the middle of my chest. It was as though, if I didn’t talk about it, it didn’t happen. None of it. It wasn’t real, and nothing had changed.

  The final score: sixty-five to thirty-one. A total blowout for the Swift Valley Rangers.

  We were two of the last people in the stands, and everyone was being asked to leave, so we spilled onto the court where there were still a few players toweling off and licking their wounds.

  Teddy spotted us and came over just as Vicky was excusing herself to go outside and take a call.

  “Wow, I’m so pleased that you came to watch me play,” he said, wiping sweat from his brow with a towel that was hanging around his neck. “Very flattered, actually.” He stopped and grinned at me. “You must really like me.”

  Erm, this guy had definitely gotten the wrong idea. I looked him up and down. “You look a bit tired,” I commented, still trying to figure out whether I had really seen him the night before or not. “Rough night’s sleep last night?”

  He didn’t miss a beat before shrugging and saying that he hadn’t slept any worse than any other night. Hmm, maybe he made a habit of hanging around the backs of the houses of women he’d been on one date with, then.

  He was still grinning at me like the cat who had gotten the cream. “We just seem to keep bumping into each other, Ruby . . . like some sort of magnetic pull.”

  What did he mean by that? Had he seen me the night before? If so, that was a pretty off thing to say. The more he stood there grinning at me, the more and more annoyed I got. I wished I had proof that he had been snooping in my yard. In the morning, when I’d tried to check for footprints, the early-morning wind and rain had already wiped them away. If they had even been there in the first place, that is.