Back Room Bookstore Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1 - 12

by Susan Harper

  “No,” he said flatly, already stationing himself at the center of the backgrounds they had setup for the pictures.

  Before Monica could say she was just going to set it down nearby for him, hoping he’d change his mind, someone took it out of her hands. “I’ll take a swig,” Bolt said, and she had no time to stop him. “Thanks,” he said.

  Monica frowned. “Oh no,” she said as he gulped it all down, leaving none for Krulin.

  Holly quickly grabbed Bolt by the arm, and she and Monica began walking him out of the room. Isaac, Gale, and Ida followed close behind. “Something wrong?” Gale asked as they made their way down the hall and toward the main lobby where the rest of the Wysteria Werewolves had gathered.

  “Bolt just drank a truth potion,” Monica said, and the team looked highly alarmed.

  “Oh, this should be good,” Trixie said.

  “A truth potion!” Bolt yelped.

  “Is this really bad?” Isaac asked softly.

  “It’s not exactly good,” Holly responded.

  Bolt, upon hearing what he had just taken, threw both hands over his mouth. Deimus frowned. “Let’s get him out of here and back to the ship,” he suggested as they merged with the rest of the team.

  The floodgates opened rather quickly. “I’ve had a crush on Gale for years,” Bolt began. “I think she’s really hot, and I’m not usually into other werewolves, if I’m honest, but I’m super conflicted about it because every time I see Clowdia I get really dizzy in the head, but I’m pretty sure that’s just her infatuation charm…”

  “Oh my gosh, stop now,” Gale pleaded as they ushered him through the lobby.

  “I’m super intimidated by Trixie, but she’s so small, so I feel like an idiot for it,” Bolt continued, and Trixie snorted in amusement. “Honestly, I’d rather get into a fight with Urrgah than her because I’ve seen her bite a guy’s kneecaps before in a barfight, and it freaked me out. I’ve been having nightmares about it for weeks.”

  “Bolt, you really need to stop talking,” Coach Joanne-Jo said.

  “I’ve always questioned why Coach was coaching, honestly, because until the conference the other day, I didn’t even realize there was a fairy league that she could have played in, and now it makes so much sense, and I feel like an idiot,” Bolt said.

  “Bolt, stop,” Monica said.

  “I’m really freaking out right now,” Bolt admitted. “I’m afraid I’m going to tell everyone that I’ve got five kids I’ve never met.”

  “Damn it, Bolt, shut up!” Deimus said, smacking him in the back of the head.

  “Five kids! Bolt!” Gale yelped.

  “Some witch chick used a love potion on me when I was a teenager, and apparently, she got pregnant with a freaking litter,” Bolt said.

  “Okay, we are definitely going to need to hear that story,” Ida teased, and Clowdia smacked her in the arm.

  “That’s not funny, Ida,” Clowdia said. “He didn’t want to tell us that. Monica, why would you leave a truth potion sitting around? This is none of our business!”

  They were now rushing down the grassy field between the hotel and the ship; it was bad enough all of them were listening to Bolt spill his guts, it would be worse if someone from the press caught wind of it. “He took it out of my hand and swigged it!” Monica exclaimed. “It was for Krulin.”

  “Monica, make me stop!” Bolt yelped.

  “It has to wear off,” Monica said. “It was a really strong potion I had made for my aunt to use on one of her ex-husbands.”

  “Great,” Ida muttered.

  “Did you guys all know that Holly is really an Ibeji?” Bolt said, and the group seemed to all stop in their tracks. Bolt threw his hands over his mouth.

  “A what?” Coach Joanne-Jo asked, spinning in midair to stare at Holly. “You are a what?”

  “Um…” Holly said under her breath.

  “I saw her use magic without a wand or anything,” Bolt continued. “It was crazy. Udali was being a prick, so Holly blasted her and had her own wand change into a snake and wrapped around her. It was nuts. Never seen anything like it in my life.”

  “You’re an Ibeji?” Clowdia asked, taking a nervous step back. “But those are supposed to be extinct.”

  Holly was fidgeting. Monica stepped in. “You all know Holly,” she said quickly. “She’s perfectly safe, so stop acting like she just got diagnosed with some contagious disease. Yes, she’s an Ibeji, and the first time she chose to use her powers in front of any of you was to defend Bolt. So everyone shut up, and let’s get him back to the ship before he starts blabbing any secrets he has of all of you!”

  “Oh, I’ve got secrets with everybody!” Bolt exclaimed, and everyone quickly sprang into action, pushing him toward the ship. “One time, I walked in on Urrgah wearing a wig and a dress!”

  “Oh…” Urrgah grumbled, and Monica shot him a rather confused look. Urrgah covered his face in embarrassment.

  “Deimus told me that Mona was the first girl he ever kissed, which seemed so weird to me because, like, he’s practically thirty, and they’ve only been dating for, like, a year…and he seems like way cooler than that, don’t you guys think? Trixie, remember that time you and I went to Caldor City for Christmas together and you met that warlock at the tavern who said he had a fetish for—”

  Bolt didn’t get to finish his thought. Trixie had jumped up, pulled him down to her level by the collar of his shirt, and hit him on the temple, knocking him out on the grass. “Trixie!” Isaac exclaimed.

  “I was not about to let him finish that sentence,” Trixie said. “Besides, I just knocked him out. He’ll be fine.”

  Deimus’s face was bloodred, as was anyone else on the team whom he had managed to spill secrets about during their walk. It was quiet for a moment as Urrgah threw Bolt over his shoulder to carry him back. “Urrgah was…in play,” Urrgah said. “Ugly Woman.”

  “You don’t got to explain yourself, big guy,” Ida said, patting his arm.

  Monica smiled at Deimus, who was avoiding eye contact with everyone. “I think it’s sweet, Deimus,” she told him, and he shook her off slightly.

  Deimus turned to Holly. “Holly, your secret is safe with us,” he promised her. “Right, guys?”

  “Yeah,” the team said together.

  When they arrived back at the ship at last, they locked Bolt away in one of the rooms to make sure if he woke up before the potion wore off that he wouldn’t be blabbing any more secrets where there were ears to hear. Monica, Holly, and Isaac gathered in the sitting area in front of the fireplace, deciding to take a break from attempting to interview members of the Norbury Nymphs for the time being. Instead, they opened the files on the house explosion to see if there was anything in there that might give them some sort of explanation behind his disappearance.

  The team gathered around as well, with the exception of Bolt. They all wanted to help. They needed to find their missing teammate as quickly as possible, and they were going to do it together.

  10

  The following day, Monica awoke to someone poking her cheek. She blinked her eyes open, realizing she had fallen asleep in front of the ship’s fireplace in the sitting room. Abigail was smiling down at her, a platter of breakfast foods in her arms. “I brought you some food from the hotel’s complimentary breakfast,” Abigail said, snickering. “I snuck in, and then I told them I was staying there. They let me make as much food as I wanted to take with me.”

  “Abs, you shouldn’t have done that,” Monica said, sitting upright and rubbing her eyes. She saw Mona standing with her, smirking slightly in Abigail’s direction. She looked incredibly amused.

  “Her Auntie Mona took her to break the rules,” Mona said, smirking back. “Sorry, but it does beat the food they have here on the ship. Deimus told me what happened yesterday with Holly. So, everyone knows now? That she’s an Ibeji?”

  “Pretty much,” Monica said, happily taking some of the thieved food from Abigail and thanking her for he
r kind gesture. Glancing over, she could see that Holly and Isaac were both enjoying their breakfast as well.

  “Holly’s family just got in, and so did Aunt Wilma and Uncle Drac,” Mona said. “They’re all at the hotel right now having breakfast.”

  “Are they taking advantage of the complimentary breakfast as well?” Monica teased.

  “Well, unlike us, they’re actually staying at the hotel,” Mona said. “You need me to watch Abigail again today? She and I had a bit of fun bonding yesterday.”

  “Well, I am planning on still looking into things,” Monica said. “Unless you came with cheery news to tell me that Brian was found while I was sleeping?”

  “Afraid not,” Mona said with a sigh. “Abigail, want to spend some time with me again today?”

  Abigail smiled. “Sure! We had fun yesterday. Mona took me to the town, and we went window shopping.”

  “Told her that if it was okay with you, I might just buy her a broomstick while we were out again today,” Mona said. “They have some new models out that haven’t quite reached our side of the world yet.”

  “Sure, if you want to,” Monica said, and she could tell this made Abigail very excited.

  After breakfast, Monica scooped up the rest of the files she had been looking through the night before, and she and Holly and Isaac headed down to the hotel. Holly’s family were all present in the lobby, chatting in a lively way. This included not only her biological side—her father, stepmother, stepsister, Uncle Roczen, Uncle Weston, and Aunt Tora, but also her adopted family, her dad and mom, George and Bonnie. For George and Bonnie, this was their first real experience in the mystical world, and they seemed excited about literally everything. Her dad kept pointing at anything that looked even remotely non-human to him, and her stepmother had to warn him to stop. “George, ghosts really don’t like for you to put your hands through their chests like that,” she said when George received a rather affronted glare from a ghost after sticking his arm straight through the man.

  “Sorry,” George said. “I’m still getting used to all this.”

  “Me too,” Jonathan, her biological father, said. “And I’m half-immortal.”

  “And apparently a million other things, too,” his wife, Norah, reminded him. “Remember what-all that ancestry concoction found? You have centaur, mermaid, dwarf, werewolf…” she went on listing just about every mystic there was in the book while the conversation continued around her.

  Bonnie was in the middle of giving Holly and Isaac a hug when Monica asked, “Have any of you seen my Aunt Wilma and Uncle Drac?”

  “They said they were going to make themselves another plate,” Bonnie told her. “They ran into someone they knew at breakfast.”

  “I’ll be right back, you two,” Monica said to Holly and Isaac, leaving them to play catch up with Holly’s family for a moment to sneak into the continental breakfast area where, sure enough, she spotted her Aunt Wilma and Uncle Drac sitting together along with another familiar face: Madam Imelda of the Sorcerer’s Council.

  Her aunt waved her over, smiling wildly. Monica came over, sitting down with the three of them. “Monica, are you all right?” Wilma asked immediately. “Madam Imelda just finished telling me about Brian going missing! I wish you had written me when it happened!”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” Monica said. “I’ve been busy trying to help find him. Something really fishy is going on around here, and I’m starting to get worried.” She turned to Madam Imelda. “When I spoke with you and you told me you’d get those files to me, I hadn’t expected for you to actually show up.”

  “I was planning on coming to the game anyhow,” Madam Imelda said. “It’s only a day away, you know? The whole council is here just about. Only Beatrice, as far as I know, stayed behind. She’s not very into Romp-A-Roo, I’m afraid.” Beatrice was the mermaid on the council. She represented most aquatic mystics, and she had been rather outspoken about Abigail’s sentence, playing a grand role in having the sentence reduced.

  Monica smiled. “That’s too bad. I would have liked to talk to Beatrice and thank her for her help with Abigail.”

  “How is that going?” Madam Imelda asked. “I’ve been told you adopted her?”

  “I did,” Monica said. “And it’s going really great. She’s definitely excited. It’s different, though. She’s not really the Abigail I once knew. She’s changed.”

  “She’s a little girl again,” Madam Imelda said. “Though she still has all her memories from her life before, during, and after her time as a familiar. I imagine that is going to be a lot for a girl her mental and physical age to deal with, but if anyone is up to the challenge in raising her, it is certainly you, Ms. Montoya.”

  “Thank you, Madam Imelda,” Monica said. “Did you happen to find anything for me regarding my parents’ case?”

  “Yes, I’m eager to hear more myself,” Wilma said. “My brother and his wife’s deaths, I had been told, was an accident, but now I’m hearing that this was some murder investigation? I’m highly alarmed, Imelda, that this is the first we’re hearing of all this.”

  “I assure you, I had nothing to do with the coverup,” Madam Imelda said. “Someone on the Sorcerer’s Council, probably a few someones I’m sure, pressured the then-head authority into keeping it quiet. This was before Remembrance started cropping up again, you see. They assumed it was just a random case. Some idiot who was a history buff and had learned about Remembrance and wanted to play out some fantasy. They worried about copycats. Since then, though, Remembrance has experienced an actual resurgence. Now we feel that your parents’ murder was more than just a random act but might have actually been an early warning sign that Remembrance was gaining traction in our area.”

  “I think you might be right,” Wilma said.

  “It is a shame,” Uncle Drac said. “I told you zen, Vilma, zat I felt something vas off about zat investigation. Zat Mueller vas not telling us everything!”

  “I should have listened to you then, Drac,” Wilma said, shaking her head.

  “So, did you find anything or not?” Monica asked.

  “Yes,” Imelda said. “I found that the file you had, the same as the file that Brian had been sent, had a missing page. The page that was missing was a redacted file that, as a member of the Sorcerer’s Council, I was able to obtain. I think you should brace yourselves a bit for this. It is something you are probably going to want to tell your sister about as well.”

  “What is it?” Monica and Wilma asked at once.

  “A witness to the crime,” Imelda said, reaching into her cloak.

  “A witness!” Monica exclaimed. “Why was that redacted? Why didn’t any of us know someone witnessed the crime? Did they see someone coming into the house or something?”

  “Evidently so,” Imelda said. “And it was redacted to protect the witness. The witness was a mere child, you see. A little boy—a wizard. And this is where it gets very interesting. The little boy, he is actually from Norbury, on his mother’s side at least. Parents were divorced. His father was a Wysteria native, and he was in town visiting his father for the summer holiday when he spoke with the Head Authority of Wysteria at the time and gave his statement after he had been taken into custody. It was his last visit with his father as far as we know before he returned to Norbury on a more permanent basis.”

  “Who was the boy?” Monica asked, and Imelda slid the file she had removed from her cloak toward her. Monica opened the file, seeing a picture of the child who had apparently been there the night her parents died. She stared at him for a moment, studying his face—he seemed familiar somehow—and then she saw the boy’s name. “Krulin!” Monica exclaimed. “The Norbury Nymphs player. He was there that night? He was a witness?” She had already suspected Krulin had had something to do with Brian’s disappearance simply because of his attitude towards non-wizards, particularly mortals. What if Krulin somehow found out that Brian had started looking into her parents’ case and was worried about being connecte
d to the crime? Worried Brian would start asking questions?

  “The Romp-A-Roo player?” Wilma asked, taking the file from Monica. “He was there that night?”

  “Vhat did his vitness account say?” Uncle Drac asked.

  “Unfortunately, not much,” Madam Imelda said. “Said that he saw the house blow up. That, and that when asked if he saw who did it, he had said no but had gotten very uncomfortable. The head authority, since he had been told by a member of the council not to investigate it as a murder, had elected not to prod the child any further.”

  “So Krulin might have seen who killed my parents?” Monica asked.

  “He might have,” Madam Imelda said.

  Monica stood upright, the file in her hands. Aunt Wilma stared up at her. “Monica, what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to go find Mona,” she said. “Because I’m pretty sure Krulin’s scared of her. Then I’m going to find Krulin, and we’re going to have a little chat about what he saw that night.”

  “He might not remember,” Uncle Drac said. “It vas a long time ago.”

  “He’ll remember,” Monica said fiercely. “If that creep knows what really happened that night, he is going to tell me. I’ll make sure of it.”

  11

  After Mona returned from her excursion into Norbury with Abigail, who was now sporting a brand-new broom from her adopted aunt, they sent Abigail away with Aunt Wilma and Uncle Drac. Monica told Mona everything she had learned from Madam Imelda’s redacted files, and Mona’s eyes seemed to almost glow red with fury. “Krulin is going to talk to us,” Mona hissed and was already storming through the hotel in search of him.

  The Wysteria Werewolves gradually joined them, seeming to pop up out of nowhere. It was like Mona’s powerful magic was going haywire and summoning them. “What’s going on?” Holly asked as she and Isaac joined them, her face picking up on the anger seething off both Monica and Mona as they stormed up to the top floor of the hotel where most of the Norbury Nymphs were staying.