Mis-Spelled

by Stacey Alabaster

  “Technically, I’m not sure I ever did,” she said with a meek little shrug. “I found you.”

  “Found me?” I asked, startled. “Found me where?” I pulled away from the fire as my whole body flushed. “What, you’re not going to tell me you found me abandoned on the doorstep, are you?” I asked with a scoff of disbelief.

  Mum shrugged a little again. “Well, no, not the doorstep . . . I found you inside the house.”

  Now I was completely stumped for words. I remained quiet and let her talk while I just listened.

  “It was late one night . . . I remember it was a full moon—I could never forget that,” Mum said, a faraway look coming into her eyes. “There was so much noise that night. That’s what I remember. I could hear a howling—maybe even a growling—coming from somewhere deep in the mountains. I got up to take a look. I was living all by myself in that old shack that your grandparents left me. I tried not to let the noises get to me, but that night, they really were. I knew something was up. Someone or something was trying to draw me out of bed.”

  “What happened next?” I asked in a low whisper that almost got caught in my throat.

  Mum was still staring as though she was looking at something in the deep distance. “I was trying to look out the window to see what creature could be making that noise out there. But as I grew closer to the kitchen, I realized that there was a noise—a piercing noise—coming from inside the house. Coming from the living room.” She stopped and fixed her gaze on me. “That was when I found you. Not even in a bed, not even tucked up inside a blanket. Just fully in the nude, laying on the sofa, screaming blue murder at that time of the night.”

  “You just found me on the sofa? In the middle of the night? I’d say that wasn’t a legal adoption,” I said, my mouth gaping open. What she was telling me sounded like something out of a fairytale.

  Mum shook her head. “I don’t know how to describe this, Ruby. I never had any logical explanation for it, but I just knew that I had been put there because you were in danger, and I needed to protect you. So, I could never tell anyone what had happened. I just told everyone that you were mine. You know, back in those days, I lived pretty far up in the hills and didn’t see anyone in town that much. There may have been a few questions, but I think I covered them all pretty well.”

  I couldn’t even believe what I was hearing. Left inside her house. How? “So, someone broke in that night and just left me behind?”

  Mum shook her head as though she didn’t know. “Maybe if it hadn’t been a witch, it would have been on the doorstep. But I don’t think witches let bricks and mortar stop them from entering.” She swallowed. “Ruby, it was tough. I was twenty-two and not ready or prepared to raise a child. But I did it. Because I knew I needed to, and that it was the right thing to do.”

  I’d sunk back into my chair. I supposed I had been fooling myself all along, hadn’t I? I had assumed that my mum had at least wanted a child. Been desperate for one, maybe. I’d imagined that biology had prevented her from her dreams, and so she’d gone out and hand-selected me. Picked me out. But by the sounds of it, she’d actually been forced to raise me. Against her will.

  “I’m sorry that you were burdened with me, then,” I said angrily and stood up to leave. I could hear Vicky rustling around in the kitchen, and I knew she would want to debrief from her date. Right now, I just wanted to get away from the fire.

  “I was not burdened at all,” Mum said as she stood up and tried to follow me into the kitchen. “Of course, it was nothing that I was ever planning, but that did not mean I didn’t love you from the moment I saw you.”

  I stopped and stared at her. “So this means you know nothing about me, then?” I asked her. “Not the name of my birth mother, not even my actual date of birth? I mean, am I even a Libra?” I asked, incredulous.

  “I have only ever been trying to protect you all these years, Ruby,” she said, pleading with me to listen. “I think you’re lucky to have been left with me. And I was lucky as well.”

  I spun around. “What are you keeping from me, Mum? Because this story of yours just doesn’t add up. Do you not want me to know who my birth mother is, is that it?”

  “Ruby,” she said in a low, hurt voice. “I promise that I am telling you everything I know. If I knew who your birth mother was, I would tell you right here and now. But I’ve always had this feeling that it was something you weren’t supposed to know. Call it mother’s intuition. I may not be a real witch, or even your biological mother, but I still know when I need to protect my baby girl.”

  I didn’t know what to believe any longer.

  “I think the whole coven needs to know the truth about you!” I said.

  She took a step back and stared down at the ground. “If that’s what you need to do, sweetheart, then that is what you need to do. I am not going to try and stop you or tell you what to do . . .”

  “Isn’t that what parents are supposed to do?” Maybe she wasn’t even a parent at all. Just some stranger who’d felt forced into doing the admirable thing.

  “My friend needs me,” I said, stomping away to find Vicky, letting Mum know she didn’t need to come after me.

  But it wasn’t Vicky in the kitchen—it was Taylor. “Oh,” I said, stopping short in my tracks, and then I realized that Vicky had never come home from her date.

  “Everything okay?” Mum asked, barging into the kitchen even though I had asked her not to.

  My phone was ringing.

  A frantic phone call from Vicky, no doubt, from The Dark Horse. Assuming that she was calling from the bathroom looking for an out, I was all set to call back with my emergency so that she could make a friendly escape.

  “Ruby . . . it’s happened again.” Vicky’s voice was trembling. “My date has been attacked.”

  9

  Stacey was doing damage control, talking to the cops out the front about what had happened. Luckily, this time there was no fatality, but Vicky’s date was not in good shape.

  I scoured The Dark Horse with Roberta, looking for clues. This could not possibly have been a coincidence. Maybe Vicky had been right all along about the Activate app being dangerous. Certainly seemed that way.

  Vicky’s date Matt had almost suffered the same fate as Eamon. The attack had been identical and followed the same pattern as the first attack. A blow to the back of the head while he was leaving out the side door. Poor guy. He’d just wanted a nice lunch date, and now this. He was already in the hospital and recovering well, apparently, but Vicky, as well as the rest of the customers and the staff, were still scattered around and being quizzed as witnesses by the cops. The problem was that they hadn’t actually witnessed anything. Nobody had.

  Stacey was being as cooperative as she could be. She still had a stony look on her face, though, as she surveyed the empty restaurant and the worried faces of the ex-customers who were now spilling out and saying they would never return. I didn’t get it. You would think that one murder and one attempted murder, both inside her restaurant, both within the space of two weeks, would give her more cause for concern.

  At least this time she walked over to me, acknowledging me briefly, although she completely ignored Roberta.

  “So, I’m assuming you’re about to claim that you didn’t see anything this time either,” I said as I took out my notebook and pen in vain, know that she wasn’t about to give me much to write down.

  Stacey once again refused to answer any questions from either me or my little apprentice. She did tell me that they would not be closing for business any time soon, so I didn’t need to worry about solving the case on her behalf. Almost like she didn’t want me investigating at all. Which could be very convenient for her.

  Still, I thought her plan sounded terrible, regardless. “It might be a good idea if you took a little break, even if just for appearances’ sake. At the moment, it seems like you don’t care about the well-being of your customers at all.”

  I was only trying to give her
sound business advice, but she shot me a snide eye-roll. Then she moved back to the cash register and started counting the day’s takings coolly, as though it was any other weekday.

  I sighed and realized I was going to have to look for clues and evidence myself. The owner of the place where the crime happened was going to be no help. Vicky was far too shaken to assist at the moment, and so Roberta and I took a look around the restaurant to see if anything was notably amiss.

  Roberta really looked like she was enjoying herself as she picked up items off the tables and poked around, trying to find any security cameras that Stacey might have hidden. I let her do her thing, but she caught the attention of Constable Blue as she was about to dust for fingerprints near the back door. He cleared his throat, and she jumped and apologized. Luckily, because I knew he was about to tell her to pull her head in.

  I gently pulled her aside and whispered to her. If we wanted to get info, then we had to play the game and not step on their toes at all by doing the jobs that they had already claimed as “theirs.”

  “So, it was the exact same situation as last time?” I asked Vicky as we finally got out the door and into the fresh cold air. I wondered if she needed to go to the hospital to be treated for shock.

  She nodded her head and bit her bottom lip. “Matt was so lovely to me. Told me that I was gorgeous and that he was lucky to be on a date with such a pretty girl. He has a huge beard. And I thought he was cute as well, don’t get me wrong . . . I went to use the bathroom, but this time, I didn’t call you or anything! I couldn’t wait to get back to the table and continue our conversation. And yet when I got back to the table, he was gone. I heard a scream and jumped up and ran to where the noise was coming from. He had been attacked near the side staff entrance, the same as last time. Exactly the same.” Her bottom lip began to tremble.

  I placed a hand on her shoulder. “Vicky, this is not your fault. You know that, right?”

  Vicky just shrugged, unconvinced. She looked defeated. “I must have some sort of curse attached to me,” she said as we were all being ushered out and asked to leave the crime scene. Roberta seemed disappointed—she had been enjoying herself at her first real crime scene. Taking to it like a real natural. Well, there would be plenty more, I assured her and asked if she could go back to the office and type up the notes while I stayed behind and kept Vicky company.

  “You got it, boss! This is the best week of work experience ever!”

  Maybe Vicky wasn’t cursed, but something was a little off that night as we took a walk around town to soothe her nerves—she didn’t feel like being enclosed in a car right then. Even though it was still only the second week of fall, there was a crisp frost in the air, like we were in the middle of winter. Even my teeth were chattering as we walked along. I just hoped that Mother Nature would settle her debt soon.

  Meanwhile, I had something I needed to admit to Vicky. With Matt in hospital, the pattern was starting to become clear.

  I gritted my teeth because I hated to admit that I was wrong. “I have to admit, Vicky, I thought that your dating app theory was a little dodgy, but now, I am starting to buy it . . . I mean, you did meet Matt on Activate, didn’t you? Just to clarify?”

  She nodded and looked at me gravely. “When lightning strikes twice in the same place, that is not a coincidence.”

  I shook my head. “No, it isn’t.”

  Indy, my cat, was swinging her tail around on the front porch. She glanced up at me with sleepy green eyes. “I haven’t seen you around much lately,” she said, sounding a little hurt.

  I sat down and sighed as I petted her. I wasn’t sure whether this was a real guilt trip or whether she was just teasing me. She did like to try and wind me up to get a reaction. “Well, you’ve got more than enough people around to feed you right now, so I don’t think I have to worry about you starving to death in my absence.” She was looking a little pudgy around the tummy, actually. And I’d noticed the cans of cat food in the pantry were running a little lower than they should have been. I bet she was getting food from me first, and then playing up to Vicky, and then to Mum that she was starving and hadn’t been fed at all. So, triple the food.

  “Did you know about this?” I asked her as I stared into the nearby paddock. I didn’t even need to say what “this” was. She knew what had been so heavy on my mind.

  Indy twirled her tail around my ankles, and then gave me a nod. “I could tell that your Mum wasn’t a blood witch,” she said. “Familiars are pretty good at picking up on these things.”

  “Oh great, so even my cat is keeping secrets about my parentage from me.” I kicked at the ground and sulked for a moment. I felt like I was doing a lot of that lately, and I was starting to get tired of it.

  Indy sat up and spoke to me in a stern, firm voice. “It wasn’t my place to interfere or say anything.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?” I felt like I kept asking that question to everyone I spoke to, and I wasn’t getting the answer that I wanted from anyone. What was with all these balanced, neutral people who could see both sides of the equation, hey?

  Indy was still staring at me. “So, how will you go about finding your birth mother? I know it’s been on your mind.”

  I shrugged a little. “You don’t have any clues for me, do you?”

  Indy shook her head. “This is a little above my pay grade as a familiar, I’m afraid.”

  I stood up, sighed, and dusted off my hands. “I’m starting to think that I need to do this the old-fashioned human way. Indy, try to stay out of trouble while I’m away. And maybe try to take a couple of laps around the paddocks, hey?”

  Mum had told me the very basic details, and she had the date of the night that she found me on her sofa. But that hadn’t exactly given me much to go off, as far as finding my birth mother went, seeing as there wasn’t any sort of paper trail. So, we were going to have to do this the hard way, digging through archives and databases to find out if there were any medical records at the time that could give us some clue. The office was quiet as Vicky and I set about work. Roberta had class that day, so her makeshift desk was empty. No walk-ins so far that morning, and only one phone call about a missing guinea pig. I directed them to the local council’s webpage for lost and found animals.

  Vicky was perched on the edge of the desk with her legs swinging over the side in a schoolgirl manner. She only barely glanced at me while I spoke as I told her the long process of going through archived medical records. She was entranced by her phone. Probably texting Matt inside the hospital, I thought. She’d told me they had been in constant contact and had been planning a second date as soon as he was feeling better. Funny, though . . . it seemed like she was doing a lot of swiping motions. Oh well, maybe she was still keeping her options open—and who could blame her, right?

  “It’s a witch that we are looking for, isn’t it?” I called out, standing up and rubbing my back. “Surely that narrows it down just a little.”

  Vicky finally looked up and mused on this. “Well, not necessarily. There are strange flukes, and DNA can be a funny thing. And for all we know, the magic could come entirely from your paternal side of the family tree.”

  Darn.

  I hadn’t even thought about that side of it. About who my biological father was. It was too much. Not like my mum would have any answers for me there, anyway. I closed the box that I had been searching through and stared out into the frosty street. It was slightly unsettling that we seemed to have shot forward in time to winter, but also, the gray clouds and the frosted windows were comforting and gave me some peace as I stared at my home town. I wondered if this would have even been my home, if my biological mother hadn’t abandoned me twenty-seven years earlier.

  “But yes,” Vicky concluded, looking up from her phone again, now that she had had a chance to mull it over. “It is most likely that your biological mother is a witch—and that is who we are looking for. And if there’s anything you and I know, it is witches.�
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  Hmm. We could ask Geri for tips on who the culprit might be, as she would have been around Swift Valley at the time. She had lived in the town for three hundred years (but only looked about forty). That was assuming the witch who dropped me off at Mum’s house was local, and we had no way of knowing if that was the case.

  I mean, sure, she may have been a member of the local coven.

  But she could have been flying overhead on a broomstick that night and seen a cottage underneath that looked welcoming, for whatever reason. Maybe she was being chased and had dropped me off quickly, kissed me goodbye, and then flown to the other side of the world, for all we knew. Or gone into hiding. Or performed some sort of protection spell that would prevent me from ever discovering her true identity. It felt like we were looking for an invisible needle in a haystack.

  If a witch doesn’t want to be found, there’s not much anyone else can do about it.

  I got a notification ding on my phone from the Activate app. I had to open my profile to see the app and sighed when my photos with bright red hair greeted me. I didn’t even look like me.

  I stared into my reflection in the window. Maybe I did look like me, for all I knew. Maybe my biological mother had red hair, or my grandparents had. How would I know? I didn’t look like the same person I’d looked like six months earlier. I didn’t even look like my photos at all, according to Bryan, the worst first date of all time. Well, maybe the second worst, if you counted Vicky’s. I gently lifted a strand of hair and examined it. I was a natural brunette, but a light shade of brown. Right before I had started my job as a PI, I had dyed it raven black to suit my new career. To try and look more serious. I’d been a school teacher before that and had wanted to give myself a more dramatic presence.