Sit a Spell

by Stacey Alabaster

  Geri’s living room held the dozen witches who made up the Swift Valley coven. When I entered, there was a hush, and everyone was suddenly thin- and tight-lipped. They even stopped sipping their tea. I was still the newbie, the witch who hadn’t earned her full witch license yet, and who might never earn it. They always seemed to be whispering secrets they didn’t want me to know about.

  Geri went around the room and asked us if there was anything any of us wanted to discuss. Any news, any problems, any threats to the coven. Now I was the one who was tight-lipped.

  Vicky nudged me. “Ruby has something she would like to share with the rest of the coven,” she called out and then whispered to me, “This is for your own good.”

  I glared at her. Great. Now I was going to have to come up with something.

  The last thing I wanted to tell them was the truth.

  “Oh, it’s no big deal,” I started to say, laughing in a dismissive way. “It’s just that a friend of mine is suffering from a lack of caffeination, that’s all.”

  I received a lot of frowns. No one laughed, and no one was buying what I was saying. So I added, “See, really nothing worth telling you or wasting your time over—”

  “Ruby’s mortal friend Akiro is under a spell,” Vicky said simply, interrupting me.

  There was a gasp among the coven. They all looked at each other and started to whisper, and then looked back at me for answers. I groaned, knowing now that I was going to have to explain the entire thing. How Akiro had been acting very strange and nothing like his usual self with no recollection of who I was or of things that had taken place in the days beforehand.

  “—but I still think there’s a chance that he was just sleepy,” I added at the end, and realized how unconvincing I sounded.

  And no one was buying it.

  Geri looked at me sternly and took a step forward. There was no doubt in her voice when she spoke. “There are supernatural forces at work.” She took a moment to ponder. “In fact, from what you are telling me, this whole murder mystery is tied back to the supernatural.”

  That was going way too far.

  I shook my head. “No. Maybe with this spell on Akiro, but the case I am solving has nothing to do with that.”

  Vicky gave me a bit of a side-eye, as though she was not buying this at all. Geri wasn’t either. But I thought that was jumping to a massive conclusion. There was no reason to link the Coffee Killer case with the spell that had been placed on Akiro. These witches wanted everything to be about magic. But some things weren’t.

  Some things just couldn’t be.

  “I think you need to back off on this case,” Geri said to me, and I could hardly believe what I was hearing. “At least until we figure out what forces might be at work. You are not equipped to handle this on your own, not while you are still on probation. You are not even a full witch yet, Ruby.”

  “I am going to continue to investigate the case,” I said stubbornly. “It is just a grudge between coffee shop owners. Nothing to do with anything supernatural.”

  Afterwards, outside the front of Geri’s house, Vicky saw how fired up I still was and tried to reason with me. “Why are you so intent on proving that this case has nothing to do with magic?”

  I sat down on the steps and leaned forward glumly. “Because I need to keep my two lives separate . . . at least a little. Otherwise, bad things are going to happen.”

  “It isn’t your fault that this happened to Akiro,” Vicky said gently as she put her hand on my shoulder.

  “But if it is witchcraft, Vicky, how can I believe that? I am the one who keeps bringing it into his life. He was fine before and now . . . now he could be losing everything. His business. His employees. Even his mind and his memory.”

  “Do you want me to stay?” Vicky asked. “Not go on tour, I mean. It’s not like the band don’t have a bunch of other options. There are plenty of musicians who will step up to take my place.” It was a genuine offer. She was actually willing to say no to the opportunity to tour with Ribeye Bandits if I needed her.

  “No. No way, Vicks,” I told her. “This is a huge opportunity for you, and you have to follow your dreams.”

  She told me she needed to go home and pack. “I haven’t even started,” she said, and told me that she had only gotten as far as finding her luggage. She had then become so exhausted just from that task alone that she had fallen asleep. I laughed, as that wasn’t surprising at all.

  It was a good thing she sent Red, her dog, to stay on her father’s farm a few days ago. My housemate, Taylor, was there helping her father and had promised to look after Red.

  I gave her a hug and promised to text her constantly while she was on tour.

  “And you’ll be okay without me, Ruby?” she checked one last time.

  “I promise, I will be fine.”

  There were shadows moving inside as I put the key in the lock and turned it. You know, the normal, regular way to enter a house? I thought what I was seeing was Indy waiting for me to come home and serve her a three-course meal.

  But it wasn’t just a cat waiting for me when I got home.

  There was a human shape waiting for me in the hallway, half hidden by the shadows as the late evening sun came in through the blinds.

  Make that a witch shape.

  “Hello, Ruby. Thought I’d check and make sure that you got home soundly.”

  I jumped. Why were witches and familiars always doing this to me lately? One of Geri’s strongest powers was that she could easily enter locked doors and even walk through walls.

  But I had left her house while she was still inside it, and I had taken the most direct route home. Though with my car acting up the way it was, “quickest” was a relative term.

  “How did you get here so quickly?” I asked her.

  “Broomstick, my dear. One day, you will also be able to travel the superior way. Well, that is, if you make it that far, of course.” It seemed like I was always being reminded that I wasn’t a full witch yet, and I might never get to be.

  But a broomstick was sounding more and more like a preferable way to get around.

  Geri sighed deeply and walked towards the cauldron I had in the kitchen. Her face wore a grave look as she circled around it like she was circling prey.

  She ran a long fingernail over the rim of it and stared down into the empty depths. Even though the cauldron was only about half a meter deep, it was so black on the inside that it looked bottomless.

  “I was very troubled by what you told us this evening at the meeting, Ruby. This doesn’t seem like something you should be dealing with on you own. You don’t have enough experience.”

  “I can sort it out,” I said, smiling at her with confidence. “Just like I said at the meeting. I’ve almost cracked the case—the very non-witch case—and this will all be over in a day or two.” And it would be. I just needed a little time with her and everyone else off my back. Some breathing room.

  But Geri shook her head. She stopped circling and stared at me.

  “There has been too much overlap, Ruby. This point comes for every witch. A time in their life when they have to choose which of two paths they are going to go down.”

  I just stared at her. “Are you seriously telling me that I need to decide between being a witch and being a detective?”

  She nodded.

  “So which path are you going to choose? The witch path? Or the normal path? Because, my dear, you cannot have both.”

  5

  I was woken by fierce sunlight on my eyelids, and I opened my eyes painfully, unused to such bright light first thing in the morning. Usually, I was up at the crack of dawn to feed the chickens and cows and to pick plums to give to the neighbors. I blinked a few times, disoriented, wondering why the sun was up so early. Then I groaned when I saw that it was already nine thirty. It wasn’t that the sun was early. It was that I was late.

  I’d slept through my alarm and my head was pounding. All I could think about was coffe
e.

  I rubbed my eyes and checked through my phone as I remembered I had a voice mail message left for me the day before that I had never listened to. I sat up and pressed the phone to my ear.

  It was Bruce from the Turtle and Hare. My number one suspect. I’d never given him my number.

  And yet he had left a long message for me to listen to.

  So he’d gotten it from somewhere.

  I pressed play and tried to concentrate, even though my head was foggy and hearing someone’s voice in my ear before I’d had my morning coffee was jarring and difficult.

  He sort of rambled on at the start, talking about the long day he had at work and how he only thought to ring me on a whim, like he was unsure whether he should have even rung me at all. But then he suddenly got to the point at the end of the message, just as I was about to end it. “I know something about Candace Morgan. If we could meet tomorrow to discuss it, I would really appreciate it.”

  Tomorrow? That meant that he wanted to meet today.

  Hmm.

  I pressed end on the message when it started to play again and put my phone down. I wondered if I was being lured into a trap.

  Indy jumped up onto my bed and scared me again.

  She looked bemused.

  “You sure are jumpy lately, missy. And I thought that cutting coffee out of your diet would cause the opposite reaction.”

  “Sorry. I was lost in my thoughts.” I didn’t want to explain any more than that, but she wasn’t going to just let it be. So I explained to her what Bruce had said and that I intended to go back to the Turtle and Hare to hear him out.

  “And I suppose the fact that they serve coffee has nothing to do with the fact that you want to go over there?” she asked me with a knowing smile. “Nor the fact that he was cute.”

  I felt myself blushing a little. “It’s neither of those things, Indy,” I told her firmly. “All I care about is solving the case. Now, get off my bedspread so that I can get up and go to Mayfield.”

  “Sounds good. I could do with a chai latte,” she said with a grin.

  I laughed.

  “This time, I am going on my own. You just stay here and be a regular house cat for the day, all right?”

  I’d called Bruce before I left to let him know that I was coming and arrange a time to meet. I just hoped that my car was going to make the journey okay. I didn’t have anything to worry about, however. This time, the car ran perfectly smoothly—no rattle, no gurgle, no anything.

  I pulled into Mayfield and drove down the street that would lead to the Turtle and Hare, where I had said I would meet Bruce.

  But even though I had told him I would meet him at eleven, I got there at ten thirty and parked my car one block over. Then I went into full PI mode. Not quite undercover but definitely incognito. Dark clothes. I even had the dark shades and a cap to cover up my distinctive bright red hair that always gave me away. Whoever had put the hex on me sure knew what they were doing and the best way to get me into trouble. Bright red hair was just about the worst shade for a detective to have.

  Yet no matter how many times I tried to dye it, it didn’t change. I’d tried to cover it with dark black and even though it looked like the dye had taken at first, over the course of a couple of hours, it just faded away, leaving me with the bright red.

  I kept on one side of the street, across from the Turtle and Hare, but not directly across from it. I was half behind a pillar so that I couldn’t be spotted, but the pillar wasn’t quite thick enough to hide all of me. The tip of my baseball cap kept sticking out when I peered out to try and see what Bruce was up to inside the coffee shop.

  I was getting a few strange looks. The strange lady in the baseball cap hiding behind a pillar. But that was okay. I could handle it. At least I didn’t have binoculars. Most people just shot me a weird look and then kept walking. I tried to keep my psychic guard up so I couldn’t hear what they were truly thinking about me. Because I knew from past experience that it wouldn’t always be pleasant.

  So, I just kept my eyes on the prize. That prize was Bruce.

  Hmm, was Indy right? Was he kinda cute? I could see what she was getting at. He was cute if you went for that grumpy type. Which I supposed I did. For some reason, I did find the grumpy ones kind of adorable.

  I wasn’t even sure what I was waiting to see. I just had a hunch that Bruce would do something, slip up while he thought that no one was watching.

  But the longer I stood there, the less action there was. The queue out in front of the coffee shop moved slowly but steadily. Just like the Turtle in the fable it was named after. It looked just like a regular morning at a regular café.

  I checked my watch. It was getting close to our allotted meeting time, and my chance to catch him doing anything suspicious would be gone.

  Oops. I ducked back behind the pillar when Bruce exited the side of the shop.

  Another trip to the dumpster out the side of the café. Nothing too unusual there. I was sure he was doing multiple trips per day because of all the garbage they would be amassing with the increase in customers.

  The dumpster was piled high with garbage bags as well as loose items, and when Bruce added even more garbage bags to the top, one of them tumbled into the street and burst open, leaving litter everywhere. There were strict laws, and a business could be fined up to five thousand dollars for littering if anyone spotted them in the act and turned them in.

  I peered out, wondering what he was going to do about the spillage. Was he just going to leave it there and hope that no one saw? For a moment, I thought he was, and I was a little outraged.

  Bruce glanced around to make sure that no one was watching. But little did he know—I was.

  I thought he was going to just back away and pretend that nothing had happened.

  But oh no. What he was about to do was far stranger than that.

  He closed his eyes and was concentrating hard on something. He didn’t move his feet at all, just bent his head forward towards the dumpster and the garbage laying on the ground. I could see his lips moving like he was saying a chant.

  I leaned forwards.

  No way.

  It was all so familiar to me. It was something I had done myself many times.

  Something I had seen Vicky do. And Geri. And all the members of the coven.

  I knew what he was doing. He was casting a spell.

  I could feel myself falling forwards as I tried to get a better look, and I stumbled a little bit out into the open. I couldn’t believe no one else noticed that there was a man out here casting an actual magic spell in the middle of the day. But I supposed they didn’t know the signs to look for. Didn’t know that anything he was doing was notable.

  But I knew.

  Then again, nothing seemed to be working. I wondered if he was like me. Not fully in control of his powers yet.

  And then suddenly, all of the garbage disappeared.

  I mean all of it. Not just the garbage that had tumbled onto the curb, but all of the bags in the dumpster. And then the dumpster vanished as well. Into thin air.

  My jaw fell open.

  Okay, I can admit when I am wrong. I just didn’t think that I was wrong about everything yet. Or at least, I wasn’t willing to back down yet. Just because I had seen Bruce perform magic and just because he was the prime suspect in the murder case I was investigating and just because he knew something about Candace Morgan didn’t mean that the case had anything to do with magic.

  I stumbled and this time, I did fall forward. Several steps. I pretty much fell right into the road, and a car honked its horn, causing people to notice me.

  My baseball cap tumbled to the ground, and Bruce looked up.

  “Oh, Ruby, right on time,” he said, straightening up. Then he asked me to follow him into his office where we could talk in private.

  Was it such a good idea to go somewhere private with this man?

  I hurried in after him and tried to temporarily put aside what I h
ad just seen, even though part of me wanted to ask him everything.

  “I looked you up—saw that you are a PI,” Bruce said as he opened the door to his office and offered me a seat. He looked a tiny bit nervous but like he was trying to hide it.

  I felt nervous as well, especially when he shut the door.

  “You said that you had information for me about Candace Morgan?” I said, trying not to let my uneasiness show.

  “She used to work for me,” Bruce said as he straightened up some paperwork in front of him. I was trying to peer around his office, looking for any other sign that Bruce was a witch. I mean, there was a boom leaning up against the back wall, but I figured that was probably used more for cleaning and less as a mode of transportation.

  But you never knew for sure.

  No cauldron, though. And no obvious spellbooks laying around. But then, he would probably be careful to hide them. Not that he’d been careful about performing magic in the middle of the street.

  “How long ago?” I asked, focusing back on Candace again.

  “Up until six weeks ago.”

  “Oh,” I said, surprised. “So, did she leave the Turtle and Hare to go and work at the Onyx Coffee House?”

  Bruce shook his head. “No. Well, sort of, but there was another reason. She moved to Swift Valley from Mayfield. I thought she would still commute here when she moved, but she told me that she wanted somewhere closer to home.”

  I was taking notes.

  “Was she a good employee?”

  “One of the best I had ever had. It’s been tough without her. Especially with all these new customers we’ve been having. She was great. She practically ran the place with me. None of the other staff are really capable of taking on the same level of responsibility.”

  I nodded a little bit. It added up, so I had no reason to think that Bruce was lying to me. Akiro had thought she was trustworthy enough to give her the keys after three weeks, so he must have found her to be a wonderful employee as well.

  But that didn’t mean that everything was adding up. In fact, I was very confused.