by Mara Webb
Kate and Effie both lost the smiles they were wearing and began to look as though they were listening more intently. I had their attention.
“Ryder took me there and there was a huge flat rock in the center. There was very clearly blood all over the rock,” I said. They both put their food down and sat forward.
“That sounds like a ritual site, all right,” Kate agreed. “Did you find any bones? Or candles? A book that’s bound in black leather with a tiny little gold crescent moon on the front?”
“No,” I answered.
“Oh, well that last thing is just something I lost that ideally wouldn’t get into the wrong hands…” Kate trailed off.
“You need to take us there,” Effie said.
“Now? It’s gonna get dark soon,” I grumbled. I was all for busting a group of people doing creepy stuff, but I’d rather do it when it was less spooky outside.
“Obviously not now,” Kate chuckled. “Because you have to come with me to The Trident and listen to some of these entries for Battle of the Bands!”
“Kate, what if we have a cult on the island that is making human sacrifices to a blood demon?” Effie shrieked.
“Big if!” Kate laughed. “Look, I get that it could be bad, but you are jumping to conclusions. We should make a pact to not travel anywhere alone tonight. That means you have to come to the station too!”
Effie didn’t look thrilled by the idea.
“I don’t think we could see much if we went into the woods in the dark,” I said, trying to reassure Effie that it was okay to wait until morning.
“Fine, but if I hear one song by my ex-boyfriend tonight then I will burn this island to a crisp,” she said. I chuckled but then saw the look on Kate’s face. Eesh. It wasn’t a joke.
“Is this the type of thing that is open to questions from me?” I asked. “Or is this more of a ‘we don’t speak of him’ thing?”
Kate sarcastically rolled her eyes. “She will pretend it’s off limits, then in about ten minutes she will be red in the face from ranting about him.”
“I will not,” Effie replied, joke punching her sister in the arm. At least someone else’s love life complications were a welcome distraction from my own. The sensation when Ryder had touched my skin was still so vivid in my memory. It had made the crystal-clear water of my mind seem murky.
We took the take-out containers to the kitchen and then headed for the door. Greta met us on the sand as we locked up the house.
“Where are you guys going? Did anyone find Jake yet?” Greta asked.
“Jake? Oh that guy is super missing,” Kate said. “Not a solitary clue where he is. But right now we have to listen to a bunch of songs by people that are tone deaf, so we can carry on looking for him tomorrow.”
“You are going to carry on with the Battle of the Bands after what happened at The Guitar Yard?” Greta asked, her brow furrowed in disbelief.
“Of course I am! Until we know anything more about who killed Jake, we should just carry on as normal, right?” Kate said, looking at Effie and I for back up. We both shrugged in a non-comital way. “Thanks for the support you guys!”
“You’re welcome,” Effie grinned.
“I’m surprised you’re going along, Effie,” Greta said. “What if you hear a song from Ma—”
“Don’t say it!” Effie interrupted.
“Come on Greta, you can join us. Why not make it a party of four,” Kate smiled.
“I’m surprised you don’t have other plans tonight, what with two guys chasing after you,” Greta grinned at me. Effie and Kate were walking a few feet ahead as we crossed the beach to get to the high street.
“Well Miller has to find a missing murder victim, and Ryder is convinced Miller is eating people in the woods. They are making it very complicated,” I said.
“Eating people?” she laughed.
“Yeah. There’s a clearing up on the hill with a big flat rock in the middle and—” I began.
“I have to go!” Greta announced. She disappeared in an instant and I wondered what I had said to make her run off like that.
“That woman will do anything to get out of listening to amateur musicians,” Kate laughed. We continued our journey as a group of three. As we walked into The Trident radio station, Kate gave the same enthusiastic greeting to everyone in the office before walking into the studio. She found two extra chairs for Effie and me, then pulled on her headphones to begin the show.
“You’d think we didn’t get enough attention as kids or something,” Effie teased as we watched her sister switch on her performer-mode.
“Gooooooood evening islanders, this is Kate Knockout coming to you live from The Trident,” Kate crooned. “It’s been a crazy day, but we are here tonight to provide the salve to your stress. It’s another night of listening to the entries for our Battle of the Bands competition!
“I have some very special guests with me in the studio tonight. First off… you know her from The Sand Witch as the woman serving up your lunches. She’s got tattoos and her eyes ain’t blue… it’s Elegiac Effie!”
Kate clapped as she finished talking. Effie was looking up the work ‘elegiac’ on her phone. I peered over her shoulder to see what the word meant.
“It doesn’t even make sense,” Effie whispered. “Describing me as elegiac means I am ‘haunting or lamenting someone who is dead’. It would make more sense if I were a widow and it was all I talked about.”
“She said it’s more about alliterative names than anything else,” I reassured her.
“And our peacekeeper with the most-ess, it’s Sneaky Sadie!” Kate laughed.
“Okay, yeah I don’t like this game,” I mumbled to Effie.
“We are going to get started with our first song of the night, submitted by ‘The Bunny Hoppers’. This one’s called ‘lettuce leaf’,” Kate said, pressing play on a machine that began blasting out a wall of noise. She fumbled around trying to turn down the volume before turning to read our expressions. “What do you think?” she asked.
The desk of switches and buttons in front of her indicated that she had turned the mic off. We sat quietly listening to a male voice whine the words, ‘girl you’re my little lettuce leaf, a tiny bit crunchy and oh so sweet.’
“This is, and I don’t say this lightly, the worst thing that has ever happened to my ears,” Effie said. “If this guy is about to break into a three-minute guitar solo then I will… oh, there it is. The solo.” She rolled her eyes.
“Give it a chance,” Kate protested. “It could get better!”
‘Baby doll you’re also mostly water, rabbit food for my soul.’
Kate switched it off. “It got worse,” she agreed. She flicked the mic back on. “Sorry folks it looks like we lost the feed there, oh well. Our next song comes from ‘Havoc Hound’ with their entry, ‘Liars Love Grocery Lists’. That really is the name, I apologize in advance.”
“Kate, are these all gonna be garbage?” Effie asked.
“I don’t know. I guess these are the entries from people that already had a song recorded. You know what people are like around here, there isn’t all that much to sing about,” Kate shrugged.
“Well it beats being home alone,” I smiled. I felt my phone buzz in my pocket and pulled it out to see a message from Miller.
“Are you at home?” it read.
I replied ‘no, at The Trident’, and watched the three little dots as he typed something back. Then the dots disappeared.
“Is everything okay?” I typed, hitting send.
“I’ll come to you. Someone should escort you home when you’re done,” he replied. I couldn’t help but feel excited at the thought of seeing him. I tucked my hair behind my ears and struggled to hide the smile on my face as I daydreamed about him holding my hand back on Wilmore.
“There is no way you are smiling at the line, put yourself in a garbage bag and sit on the sidewalk with the rest of the trash,” Kate laughed. “Which hottie just sent you a message?”
“I think it’s Sheriff hottie,” Effie smiled.
“Oh I know, I could sense it. I just wanted her to spill the beans,” Kate grinned.
“The song is ending,” I pointed out.
“Oh shoot,” Kate said, spinning her chair round and fiddling with buttons. “Well that was another entry all right, sure was longer than some songs.”
There was a huge pile of tapes on the desk beside Kate and she grabbed one from the top and stuck it into a machine that immediately began playing it. She hit pause quickly and read the handwritten note tucked into the cassette case.
“This song is… I can’t read this very well. I think it says ‘Nobody’, but I could be wrong. Anyway, here you go!” Kate hit play and turned to speak to us again. The impish look in her let me know she was about to say something sassy about Miller coming here so late at night to escort me home. She opened her mouth to speak, but the singer on the tape was singing with the most beautiful voice and it stopped her in her tracks.
‘Another day of watching you smile at him, you can’t know the pain that I’m swimming in,’ the voice crooned. It was easily better than the others. It was such a good melody too; it had completely pulled me out of the thoughts of Miller and I was immersed in the sound coming from the speakers.
Scott ran up to the glass of the studio door and gave Kate a huge thumbs up, mouthing who is this? To her as she shrugged.
“This isn’t about lettuce or garbage bags. You might have a real contender here!” Effie whispered.
“Any chance this is Ma—?” Kate said.
“No,” Effie snapped. “He couldn’t sing like this. This is someone really special. I bet this guy has a nose ring and tattoo on his chest of a giant stag or something.”
“Is there no name?” I asked.
Kate shook her head. Something about this sounded so familiar, like déjà vu almost. I hadn’t heard much local music since I arrived, and I didn’t know any singers around here. There was no way for me to recognize the voice, but it felt as though I did somehow. My witch intuition was pulling me to this song, I could feel it. Who was the singer?
8
Miller burst through the door and looked at the three of us. “Jeez, I thought an animal was being attacked in here!” he gasped. The good song had ended, and we were now listening to a woman of questionable talent try to hit the highest note possible while singing about her ex-husband. I’d had my hands over my ears since the start, but Kate was tapping her foot along as if she was enjoying it.
“No, the only thing being attacked is my respect for my sister,” Effie teased. “If she likes this, then I have serious doubts about her taste in anything.”
“Don’t yuck my yum!” Kate sassed back.
“Did you wanna stay until the show is over?” Miller asked me.
“This is the last song I’m playing tonight,” Kate said. “I have a segment where I read out letters that people have written to their pets, so that is gonna be the next ninety minutes at least.”
“No wonder you’re on in the middle of the night,” Effie laughed.
“I’ll head home now then,” I said. “If you need my opinion on the record, I’d say that it sounds like that woman still loves the guy and that maybe her singing was the reason he moved out.”
Effie laughed as Miller and I walked out of the studio. Kate and Effie lived together, so they would be travelling back home with each other. They would be fine. When Miller got me back home, I would be alone in the house. I wasn’t sure if I was worried about Ryder’s discovery in the clearing but being by myself still seemed scary.
“I still haven’t found Jake,” Miller said once we were outside the building. He closed the door to the radio station behind him and stepped closer. I couldn’t see him all that well due to the dim light from the main street only just reaching us in the alley. This was a really spooky place to be at this time of night.
“Who would take a dead person?” I asked. I felt his arm reach out behind me, guiding me towards the light. He wasn’t quite touching me, but it was close enough that I felt giddy.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Maybe his wife?”
“Jake was married?”
“Yeah. I haven’t been able to get hold of her today. It’s on my list of jobs for tomorrow, first thing,” he said. “Although people here love to talk, so she might have heard about it through the grape vine already.”
“Miller, we can’t let her hear it from other people,” I said, stopping in my tracks. “You need to make sure she knows and that we are looking into what happened.”
“It’s late…” he said, looking up at the sky. “What if we wake her?”
“You don’t think she’s already awake with worry?” I scoffed.
“Good point,” he nodded. “I just hate this part of the job so much and I was hoping to wait until we had more information. I know that’s dumb, but if I have to tell someone that their husband just died, I don’t want to be unable to answer any questions when I’m asked. We don’t have any leads, we don’t have a murder weapon, we don’t even have a body.”
“That is also a good point,” I smiled. “We still have to tell her.”
“We?”
“Yeah, I’m coming with you! I can’t have you walking around alone at night, there’s a killer on the loose,” I teased. It was a weird topic to be flirting over, but everything was weird around here anyway.
We spun on our heels and turned to head back towards The Guitar Yard. If Jake lived in the apartment above it, then that was probably the best place to look for his wife.
There was a man on the street that hadn’t been there before and I couldn’t help but stare at him as he began to open up a guitar case, sit on a bar stool that was on the sidewalk for some reason, and started singing.
It was such a weird time of night to be out here playing music for coins. I mentioned that to Miller and he smiled as if he agreed.
“He’s really good though,” I said as we got closer. “Do you have any money we could give him?”
“He doesn’t take money, look,” Miller said, pointing into the empty guitar case. Inside were scraps of paper, old receipts and a napkin.
Miller stopped me in front of the singer, and I got a better look at him. He was a little scruffy, had shaggy red hair and a five o’clock shadow. He was wearing an old band t-shirt and a pair of tan cargo shorts. He stopped playing his guitar and leaned forward from the stool to give Miller an elaborate handshake.
“You must be Sadie,” the man said. “I’m Damon. So psyched to meet you!”
“Hey Damon,” I said, clearly confused by the situation.
“This is the most famous busker in Hallow Haven,” Miller said. “I’m surprised you haven’t bumped into him before.”
“I thrive on staying anonymous,” Damon laughed.
“What’s with the pile of recycling?” I asked, pointing at the paper scraps.
“Oh, I take payment in the form of inspiration. I know how cheesy that sounds, you don’t need to point it out,” Damon said. He lifted up an old, screwed up receipt from his guitar case and handed it to me. “What’s on here?” he asked.
I straightened out the paper and saw that there was a sentence written on the back of it. “It says, ‘he broke my heart, and I can never go back to that taco restaurant,’” I said.
“Hmm, that’s interesting. How about…” Damon mused, then started to play a few chords. He stopped, played another note, then nodded to himself. “I want to run to the door, hide in your arms, pacing the floor as you work your charms…” he sang. He laughed and then stopped playing his guitar and took the receipt from me.
“That was amazing, you sing like an angel!” I gasped.
“Thank you. I really can’t think of a way to include the word ‘taco’ into a love song but hey, I’ve got plenty of time,” Damon grinned.
“Are you entering the Battle of the Bands contest?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t think I
could hack it,” he answered. “I just play for fun. I don’t think I’d have a shot at something like that.”
“Damon, I have been listening to some of the entries and I can assure you, you would win by a landslide. There has been one good song so far and they didn’t even include their name with the cassette!” I explained.
“I’ve been telling him for months that he should be putting himself out there,” Miller said.
“Well, like I said, I thrive on anonymity. Hey, did you guys figure out what happened to Jake?”
“No, but we are working on it,” Miller said.
“Yeah, you probably shouldn’t be out here alone,” I pointed out.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” Damon winked. He packed his guitar back into his case and then as he clicked it closed, he disappeared. Smoke swirled in the space that he had just been crouching and the stool wobbled a few times before also disappearing with a ‘poof.’
“Wait! He’s a…” I gawped.
“Yep, one of you,” Miller said. “By that I mean he has magic. I don’t actually know what he is. Maybe a wizard, or a witch, or a really well-trained magician.”
“This place never ceases to amaze me,” I sighed. “We should get up to The Guitar Yard. The more time we spend wandering around the street being ambushed by talented wizards the longer Jake’s wife is kept in the dark.”
“Okay, but just remember that we don’t really have any remedy to her being in the dark. We have no light to shed on this yet. We don’t know where her husband is, he wasn’t looked at by a doctor, that means he hasn’t officially been recorded as dead… there’s a lot to process,” Miller explained.
“Good point. Oh jeez, this is a mess. Let’s find her first,” I said.
We carried on up the street and I could see the yellow crime scene tape around The Guitar Yard, it was flapping in the breeze that rolled up the sidewalk from the ocean.
Despite the hour, there was still a gentle hum of activity. We walked past a restaurant that had quite a crowd enjoying a late dinner, a bar with a bunch of young-looking patrons toasting some accomplishment and a perfume store had a neon light flashing the word ‘open’.
