by Willow Mason
There was a tightness in his voice, but I chalked it up to the disturbing situation. “How d’you like your tea?”
“Could I be a pain and ask for coffee instead?” I put my hand up to my face, rubbing at a twitch in my left eyebrow. “Just black. I need waking up.”
“Sure. How about your partner?”
I swung open the door and signalled to Patrick, who held up two fingers, then shrugged and made it three. “Milk and three sugars.” At Jac’s grimace, I smiled. “Just make sure you can’t taste the tea at all, and she’ll be right.”
He grabbed a box of teabags from the cabinet above the sink and I stared over his shoulder, trying to catalogue the contents.
“If you want to wait outside, I’ll bring these through in a minute.”
The tightness was back in Jac’s voice and this time I twigged. He wanted me gone. Fair enough. I wouldn’t mind a few minutes alone either.
“Any readings of interest?” I asked Patrick, joining them. Wes had both arms folded around his shoulders, hugging himself.
He showed me the display, with a needle edging into the green. Safe. I leant over and tapped the dial.
“Not very sensitive, is it? I’m sure I didn’t wake up this particular shade of miserable.”
“Can’t you do some witchy thing to find out what this is and what did it?” Patrick pulled me aside and whispered, “And quickly before they think to call the police and shut us out of this case, too.”
It hardly seemed likely, but I stared at the words, trying to think of something useful from my high school classes. Nothing sprang to mind. I held my hand up, letting the power throb into my fingertips. Seemingly of its own accord, the sparkles jumped forward, coating the green in a shower of dazzling pink lights.
“Oh, no!” I called the magic back, but it was too late. Half the message had disappeared, leaving a cleaner wall, and partially destroying our only clue.
I pulled out my phone, ringing through to Aunt Florentine. “Hey,” I said, pulling away from Patrick and Wes so they wouldn’t know how useless I was. “Do you have a spell for finding out who wrote graffiti?”
She snorted with amusement. “That’s a bit specific. Have you tried a plain old identity spell?”
“Which would go how?”
My aunt chanted three phrases that didn’t sound like words at all. “Now apply some magic, and Bob’s your uncle.”
This time when I sent the magic out, the sparkles crawled over the surface instead of eating it away. I waited, rolling onto the balls of my feet as the seconds ticked by. “When does it work?”
“Almost immediately. You should see an image form in smoke.”
Low on patience, I counted to sixty in my head, then checked the wall clock. Forty seconds had passed.
“It’s been a minute. Is that the kind of immediately you meant?”
She ticked her tongue. “Can you show me?”
Holding the camera in front of the wall, I watched with concern as the sparkles disappeared. Job not done.
“Something’s blocking the identification or it’s not something that can be formed with smoke.”
“Like a ghost?”
“That would certainly fit the bill. Just a moment.” I heard her move away from the phone and later, the drumming of fingers on a desk. “This won’t give you much more, but I’m sending it through.”
Before I could thank her, she’d rung off, and my phone dinged as a text message came through.
“To find hidden meaning,” I read out, before reciting the words beneath it. Once again, I sent a puff of magic towards the wall, biting my nails as the sparkles flowed.
“What’s that doing?” Wes was hugging himself so hard now, his shirt pulled at the seams. “Do you need a hand with something?”
“How good are you at identity magic?”
He held his right hand out and squeezed his thumb and forefinger together. “About this good. If it’s not household fixtures and furnishings, I don’t want to know.”
Smoke puffed out of the sparkles, this time forming an image. Three figures holding hands as they surrounded a gravestone. It dispersed and reformed. Three hands resting on a Ouija board.
Wes’s face turned pale. “That’s not allowed. Not around here.”
“It’s not encouraged anywhere,” Patrick said, pulling his phone out. The moment before he snapped a photograph, the smoke dissipated, leaving him with just an image of the wall.
“Why don’t you pretend that I didn’t grow up in a coven community or have an extensive interest in the supernatural and explain what that means? Isn’t it just a child’s game?”
“Sure. If you’re human and have no trace of magic ability.” Wes shook his head, clasping his hands behind his neck and squeezing his elbows together. “If you’re a witch, that’s a sanctionable activity.”
I clicked on an app that linked me to the coven database, grateful that Genevieve had granted me access. “Let’s see the last time someone was sanctioned for it.”
Instead of finding useful information, I found that a searchable database was only as good as the search terms fed into it and the references assigned to the documents. Ouija returned nothing. Sanctions returned nothing. Summoning returned a long screed of case files, most of them involving teenagers trying to sell their souls to be attractive or smart—or both.
“There’ll only be something listed if they were caught,” Patrick said as my enthusiasm for scrolling through disappointing results faded. “The fact that someone or something is trying to communicate through the walls seems like they might have got away with it.”
“Got away with it from our side.” I tucked the phone back into my jeans pocket and sighed. “Not from theirs.”
Patrick stepped forward and touched his finger to the small traces of goop left on the wall. He gave it a light lick, wrinkling his nose. “Lime jelly.”
“Whatever our greebly is, they have a fondness for desserts.”
“Terrible desserts.” Patrick printed out the full reading from his machine. “This is weird. The whole store has a surfeit of energy inside it but this spot, near the letters, is close to blank.”
“Which means?”
He sighed and turned in a full circle. “I don’t know. There’s also a temperature spike near this wall but spirits prefer the cold.”
Wes sniffed. “Tell you that, did they?”
“Fine. If you prefer to be pedantic, the temperature is often colder where they are, whether they like it or not.”
I inhaled deeply to hide my irritation, then realised the weight of sadness had gone. “What’s the reading like now?”
Patrick stared at the monitor for a few seconds. “More energy and less heat.” He moved a few steps backwards, then retreated farther still. “And over here, it’s the opposite. The whole place is stabilising.”
“A sad feeling that likes heat and lime jello and repels energy.” The short summation made me feel more in control, though we were still just as far from an answer. “It’s a pity Evelyn shut us out of the investigation into Violet’s disappearance. If we had comparable readings, it might tell us more.”
Wes frowned at us. “Violet Baker?”
I nodded. “You know her?”
“We were at school together, though I was two years younger. Jac knew her better. Evelyn Gibbs, too. They used to be thick as thieves, getting into all sorts of trouble.”
“Huh.” Paisley’s repeated praise had never mentioned anything along those lines. “Would he know if Evelyn had some beef with the coven?”
“Not that I know of. She doesn’t attend all the meetings but who among us does?”
Speak for yourself. I personally had attended every coven meeting since my return to Briarton. Or one of them, to put it more succinctly.
“Do you think Jac could put in a word on our behalf?” I jerked my head at the closed kitchenette door. “If they’re still on good terms.”
“Sure.” Wes walked over to the small r
oom. “And I’ll see what’s been keeping our tea. I’m parched.”
“I’ll make a note to question Gareth and Wendy about the temperature as well,” Patrick said. “Even if they didn’t consciously register it at the time, they might have noticed something different. Often when people say a chill ran down their spine, they don’t realise it’s because a spirit made the temperature plummet.”
I opened my mouth to ask how someone could tell him something they hadn’t consciously noticed, when I heard Wes shout out, “Jac? Are you in there?” A frantic bout of knocking followed, then the creak of a door opening. “Jac?”
Exchanging a glance with Patrick, I hurried over to the adjoining door. Wes stood at the side exit, staring into an empty alleyway. “He’s gone. Where’d he go?”
“Gone?” I pushed past him and looked down the narrow strip behind the shop. A large padlock affixed a gate at one end, while the other was blocked by a dumpster. “How?”
I twisted to look above me. The store was one storey but there wasn’t an outside fire escape or even a handy drainpipe to scale. The fence posts and beams were on the side facing away from the alley. I couldn’t imagine Jac being fit enough to pull himself up the smooth-sided planks, even if he’d desperately wanted to get away.
“He’s not in the bathroom,” Patrick said, coming outside. “I can’t see another way out of the shop, except through the main store.”
“There isn’t. This is the only…” Wes waved at the door, spinning on his heel again as a dog barked from a nearby street. “The key for the gate is hanging right there.” He pointed to a hook inside.
A sense of déjà vu swept over me.
Bad witch on the walls and Jac had disappeared, just like Violet.
I pointed a finger at Wes. “Shut the shop, go home, and wait until we talk to you again. We don’t want anybody else coming into danger.” Patrick nodded in agreement and I dialled Jared’s number. “Feel like being our muscle for the second time today? We need to talk to Evelyn Gibbs.”
Chapter Fourteen
Evelyn shouted, “Tell it to the police. I’m not interested.”
The door slammed shut in my face and Jared growled, the corner of his lip drawing back to show his enlarged eye teeth. He reached over to tap on the door again with his knuckle.
Evelyn pulled back the net curtain to check it was still us, then gestured rudely for us to go.
“Well, that was a giant success,” I muttered, planting my hands on my hips. “What we need is for Genevieve to issue us with large official-looking badges. If she’s so keen on police, then that should do the trick.”
“That and a Bushmaster rifle in the boot would do wonders, I’m sure, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.” Patrick took a step back and stared up at the second storey windows. “Can you hear a baby crying?”
I tilted my head to one side and concentrated. “Nope.”
Jared, too, shook his head. Given it was near his time-of-the-month, his hearing would be far superior to mine.
“So where’s Sara?”
I rolled my eyes. “Asleep? Babies aren’t turned up to full volume, twenty-four-seven, you know.”
“Or they’ve gone out for the day. They’re not on house arrest.” Jared sniffed along the side of the door until Evelyn yelled at him to get back. “The house smells of baby. Just a whiff, but it’s there.”
“We should be allowed to talk to them. Even if the police are also on the case, the coven needs to investigate the supernatural aspects of Violet’s disappearance.” He wiped a sleeve over his forehead, soaking up a thin sheen of sweat. “This is an outrage to my profession.”
I glanced back at the car, where Annalisa’s head hung out of the window.
“You shouldn’t be fighting familiars on our account.” I bit on the corner of my lip, feeling the brief spurt of energy from our drive across town fading away. “What would that get us, anyway?”
I decided to head in the opposite direction. “Evelyn, please talk to us. Jac went missing the same way Violet did. Anything and everything you know could be helpful to the case.”
The door flung open, Evelyn’s eyes blazing. “I’ve called the police and told them you’re trespassing and won’t leave. Explain your weird reasons to them. I’m done listening.”
She tried to slam the door and I stuck my foot in the way. Pain shot up my leg as my toes crunched in the wood sandwich. My sneaker wasn’t up to the task of withholding pressure from both sides.
The expectation that Evelyn would open the door to let me free was soon replaced with the horrific pain of reality as she continued to press it closed.
“Help.” I sent a bolt of magic out from my fingertips, unable to control the release any more than a flimsy gate could hold back Black Friday shoppers. The wood crunched and the door rolled up like the world’s largest cigarette paper.
“What are you doing?” If I’d thought Evelyn was in a mood before, I soon stood corrected. Her face turned a mottled crimson, then darkened further until I thought it would explode. “That’s my door!!!”
“Technically, it’s now just a bit of firewood in a jamb,” Patrick said with a grin. “But if you answer our questions and act very, very nicely, I might have Desi put it back together. What’d you say?”
“I say I only started renting here three months ago. My landlord will kill me.”
I nudged a piece of splintered wood with the toe of my sneaker. “Sorry about that but you were crushing my foot.”
“You were trying to get into a house I’d made clear you weren’t welcome in.” Evelyn folded her arms while her lip curled. “I don’t have the power to put this back together. My limited magic gets used up in the daily grind.”
“I’ve got plenty.” I leant forward, locking eyes with her. “Please just help us out here. If this continues, all the witches in Briarton will have disappeared by the end of the year.”
She plucked at the neck of her T-shirt; the loose ribbing showed it was a well-practised habit. “You think this might happen to any witch?”
Patrick wobbled his hand. Maybe-maybe not. “Until we can connect the dots, we don’t know who or what this will strike.” He paused, rubbing the back of his neck. “Or even what this is.”
“That’s why we must dig into the relationship between Jac and Violet. Any scrap of detail might be the key to unlocking why they were targeted.”
“What relationship?”
I spun on my heel at the man’s voice, seeing Carson pushing Sara in a pram. “Didn’t you know each other?”
“You mean the Jac from Jac and Wes?” He frowned and lifted his daughter out of the pushchair as she started to fuss. “I don’t recall her ever mentioning him.”
“They went to high school together and used to hang out.”
Carson balanced Sara in one hand while trying to wrestle a bonnet onto her head with the other. “Doesn’t seem likely. My wife was very studious and quiet while Jac…” He tilted his head to one side to avoid a chubby hand grasping for his face. “Well, he’s flamboyant, isn’t he?”
Evelyn watched the conversation, her eyes darting from one participant to the next. Until Carson gave a strangled yelp, whereupon she jumped forward and helped him pull the pram and his daughter through the remains of the door.
“What happened here? I was only gone for twenty minutes.”
“Bit of an accident,” I said, waving a few sparkles in the air. “I’m new to all of this.”
“Mm-hm.” As Evelyn took the pram through to the living room, Carson turned to glance back at us over his shoulder. “You lot coming in, then?”
I didn’t wait for a second invitation, strolling inside and taking a seat in the lounge when Carson made a vague gesture that way. Annalisa curled up
beside me, crowding the tiny space and sending my temperature rocketing upwards.
“I’d offer you something, but I still haven’t worked out where everything is.” Carson sat on the sofa, bouncing Sara on his knee. Her large blue eyes were defocused, close to sleep.
“No surprise there. I haven’t finished unpacking half of it yet,” Evelyn said, joining them. She perched on the edge of the sofa next to her brother, giving her niece a caress on the head.
“What about you, Evelyn?” Patrick asked. “Did you know much about Violet and Jac hanging out in high school?”
“No.”
After leaving space for her to fill in the answer, I turned back to Carson, who seemed mildly amused.
“Evie and Violet didn’t get on,” he said in a mock whisper. “I’m surprised she’s letting us stay with her.”
“You’re my brother. Where else would you go?”
“To hell, according to the last time we had you over for Sunday brunch.”
Evelyn’s lips twisted and she gave him a soft punch on the thigh. “Yeah, but did you?”
“No, because I’m a man so can’t follow the simplest instruction.” As Sara began to cry, his face softened, then crumpled. “I’ll just put her to bed,” he said, choking back sobs. “Be right back.”
“Are you sure you never saw Violet palling around with Jac?” Jared asked, drawing his lips back. The slight snarl didn’t have any visible effect on the woman, but given she was of equal height and looked a more solid build, I doubted she even registered the subtle threat.
Her efforts also went unnoticed, except by Jared, who gave a light snort.
“I can’t tell you what I don’t remember. Besides, high school was fifteen years ago for me.” She tapped the side of her head. “Unless it had to do with the footy pitch or getting ready for the formal, it hasn’t stuck.”
Patrick tapped a hand on his knee. “Can you share what the police have found out about Violet?”
“No. That’s our business.”
