by Zoe Arden
"I didn't do anything," I told Sheriff Knoxx. He grunted and I could have sworn blue smoke erupted from his nostrils. What was he? Part dragon?
"Until we know precisely how Campbell Price died tonight, I am checking all wands. Starting with yours."
His hand hovered in the air. I felt Lucy stiffen beside me. I waited for her to say something. To give me up and tell everyone I had her wand, not my own. But she kept quiet. I had no idea how much trouble I could get into for using a wand that wasn't mine. I didn't think it was illegal, but I had the feeling it wasn't considered proper.
Lucy was the only friend I'd made in Sweetland Cove. The only one who didn't seem convinced that I was a murderer. I couldn't give the sheriff her wand. What if it got her into trouble?
"Sheriff," I said, clearing my throat. "I, um, don't think... I can." It sounded lame, but I really didn't know what else to say.
"Ava!" Aunt Eleanor cried running toward me. Trixie nipped at her heels. They were waving frantically at me. I wasn't sure whether they were telling me to make a run for it or eat more lemon peppy bars. Where had they disappeared to, anyway?
Eleanor arrived at my side, breathless. "Sheriff Knoxx," she breathed. "Ava has nothing to hide. Do you?" she asked, turning to me.
"No," I said. Eleanor nodded, as if that settled everything.
"If that's true, then the girl should have no problem handing over her wand for inspection," Knoxx said. "But so far, she's resisting."
I hated the way he'd referred to me as 'the girl' like I wasn't even standing here.
"Oh, just give it to him," Trixie said. I gaped at her, shaking my head. I realized Lucy was no longer at my side. She was watching from the sidelines, with the rest of the party.
"I can't," I told Trixie.
"Why not?" Trixie asked.
"Because." I could feel every eye in the room on me. I was positive they were all whispering Bakery Reaper over and over again.
"You can give it to me here," Sheriff Knoxx said, his voice had dropped an octave. His growl was so deep it almost hurt my ears. "Or I can take you down to the station, throw you in a jail cell, and take it from you."
My heart was racing. In the corner, Damon was still as a statue, his face ashen. I'd forgotten all about him. Campbell had been his friend. That made two of Damon's friends who'd died since my arrival on the island.
"What about the humans?" I whispered. "I can't pull out my wand in front of them, can I?" I asked, thinking for a second that I'd beaten the sheriff at his own game.
Sheriff Knoxx looked around, then snapped his fingers in the air. "Perplexio unami," he said. I saw Damon's eyes glaze over.
"A confusion charm," Knoxx told me. "The humans won't know what's going on now. You're out of excuses."
I could see Lucy lingering by the patio door, watching me.
"Just give him your wand, Ava," Eleanor said.
"Come on," Trixie chimed in. "You don't want to be arrested."
I bit my lip and pulled Lucy's wand from my purse. Sheriff Knoxx grabbed it from me.
"Was that so hard?" he asked.
Lucy's face turned red. She stormed from the room. I had the horrible feeling I'd just lost the only friend I had in Sweetland Cove.
* * *
1 2
* * *
My aunts had lost their minds. It was the only explanation. Instead of letting me sit home and hide, I was in the back room at the bakery, sitting on a stool, pouring through Magical Herbs and Plants: Volume 1.
"I'll never be able to memorize all this," I complained to Tootsie, who had curled up in my lap with no intention of moving. Rocky lay nuzzled at my feet.
"Tootsie knows Ava is like her mama. Tootsie likes Ava. She is a powerful witch." Tootsie laid his scruffy orange head back in my lap as if that settled everything. I scratched behind his ears as he purred happily. Rocky rolled over, exposing his furry white belly.
"Rocky agrees," he said and closed his eyes. I reached carefully down, so as not to ruffle Tootsie, and gave his belly a rub.
Eleanor came through the back door. She was dressed in a long, black dress made of silky fabric that flowed around her like it was light as air. If she'd had a pointed black hat, she would have looked like the embodiment of Halloween witch costumes I'd grown up with.
"How are things going?" she asked.
"Fine, I guess. How many volumes are there?"
"Only ten. You'll be finished in no time."
Only ten? Ugh.
I watched Eleanor check a peppermint-intelligence pound cake she'd put in the oven earlier. I'd been dying to know where she and Trixie had disappeared to at the party. It seemed strange to me that they'd vanished right after Campbell's collapse. Maybe they had their own ideas who was behind some the strange deaths that had been occurring and they'd gone to investigate. If they knew something, I wanted to know.
"So," I asked, hoping I sounded casual. "Where did you and Aunt Trixie run off to last night?" I tried to keep my eyes on the book. I didn't want her knowing how badly I wanted to know.
Eleanor's eyes shifted to the floor. "What do you mean?" she asked, a little too lightly.
"Right after Campbell's death, you and Trixie disappeared. I couldn't find you anywhere."
Eleanor's cheeks turned bright pink.
"Oh, that," she said, checking the pound cake again. The sweet smell of peppermint wafted through the air, waking me up.
I could tell Eleanor was stalling but couldn't figure out why. If she and Trixie were onto something, why wouldn't they tell me? Unless... they had somehow been responsible for Campbell's death. But that was ridiculous. Wasn't it?
Trixie came through the door just then, her face red. "Sheriff Knoxx is out front," she said, looking frazzled. "He wants to talk to Ava." She was dressed all in pink and it only made her face look that much redder.
Eleanor's fists curled at her side. The silver bangles she wore clinked together. "Will that man ever leave us alone? Sometimes his goblin really comes out. In the most unpleasant ways."
I blinked. "Did you just say Sheriff Knoxx is a goblin?"
"Only part goblin," Trixie corrected. "I think an eighth or so." She looked to Eleanor for confirmation.
"Yes, his mother was a true witch, but his father's side... they have a questionable lineage. Not that goblins are all bad, you understand. They're very intelligent. They just happen to have very bad manners."
Trixie looked through the porthole-style window in the door. "He's snooping around out there," she said. "And he's drooling over our peanut butter dream bars like he hasn't eaten in a week. We'd better get out there."
I reluctantly rose from the table. Tootsie jumped onto the floor and went to find a corner to curl up in. Rocky stayed where he was.
I stuck a bookmark in Magical Herbs and Plants to save my spot, and something caught my eye. The page I was on had a vivid illustration of a plant with fuzzy purple stems and white pearl-looking things hanging from it. Boxie Quills. It was the same plant I'd seen Brendan twirling in his hand last night at the party. It was also the same plant Eleanor had grabbed from me and locked in a box my first morning at the bakery.
At the top of the page, just above the illustration, the word DANGER was printed in giant red letters. Just beneath it in italics was a warning: Poisonous. Keep out of reach of children, humans, and dim-witches.
A million questions exploded in my brain at once. What was Brendan doing with a poisonous plant? What were Trixie and Eleanor doing with it here at the bakery? Before I could read just how and why it was so dangerous, Trixie grabbed my arm and yanked me away from the book.
"Come on," she said, dragging me out front.
Sheriff Knoxx greeted me coldly, as usual.
"Ava, I have some follow-up questions for you."
He held up Lucy's wand.
"I suspect you know what I'm going to ask you."
I bit my lip and tried to keep a steady gaze. I'd tried going by Coffee Cove early this morning to apo
logize to Lucy, but once I'd gotten there, I'd chickened out. What if she wouldn't accept my apology?
Sheriff Knoxx was staring at me hard.
"Er..." I squeaked.
"You know that wands have to be registered, don't you?" Sheriff Knoxx asked. "And that the magic worked with them leaves an imprint? In the human world, it's equivalent to guns and ballistics reports. There's no way you can hide this."
"Ava, what's he talking about?" Eleanor asked, looking at me. Her eyes had narrowed and a deep line ran across the bridge of her nose.
"Um," I said, bouncing on my feet like Trixie. I had no idea that the sheriff would find out the wand I'd given him wasn't mine so quickly.
"Ava, you don't want to get your Aunt Eleanor in trouble, do you? The wand is registered in her name?" The look in Sheriff Knoxx's eyes implored me to confess.
Aunt Eleanor? My breath caught in my chest. I'd lost the wand, not her. Everyone was looking at me. I took a deep breath and exhaled.
"That's not my wand," I confessed.
Eleanor's mouth fell open, and Trixie began cheeping like a baby chicken.
"What do you mean that's not your wand?" Eleanor asked. "I saw you give it to the sheriff last night."
"Yeah..." I said, looking around the room. Tootsie entered from the back and sat watching me with his large gray and green eyes. He raised one paw and motioned for me to go on.
"I found it," I finally told them. I didn't want to get Lucy into trouble. I'd already ruined our friendship, but that didn't mean I couldn't at least cushion her part in all of this.
Sheriff Knoxx took a step toward me. My first instinct was to back away, but I held my ground. For the first time since meeting him, I realized how gray his skin was. Smooth but gray. Like a dull toaster.
"You found it?" he asked with such skepticism I wondered whether or not goblins could read minds.
"That's right," I said, daring him to question me. I hoped I sounded braver than I felt.
"When?"
"The other day," I said, trying to be as vague as possible.
"Wait a second! Wait one cream-whipping second!" Trixie yelled. She raised one hand in the air like a student answering a question. "Ava, if that's not your wand, then whose is it?"
"Lucy Lockwood," the sheriff answered for me.
"Lucy!" Trixie and Eleanor cried together.
"Ava, where's your wand?" Eleanor asked.
My throat went dry as dust. "I-I... I lost it." I'd never had such a hard time getting words out before. I felt like I'd let my aunts down.
"When?" Trixie asked.
"The day I arrived," I said, lowering my eyes so I wouldn't have to see their disappointment. "I'm sorry. I didn't know you could get in trouble for it."
"Oh, Ava. You should have told us," Eleanor said, patting my shoulder. "We could have run a trace charm. But those only work within the first twenty-four hours of losing something. After that, they're useless."
Tears began to well in my eyes.
Sheriff Knoxx stepped close enough to me so that I could smell the garlic heavy on his breath. What had he been eating?
"It's very convenient that you happened to lose your wand when a wand was most likely used to kill both David Buyers and Campbell Price."
"I thought you said David died from cake poisoning," I cried.
Sheriff Knoxx stuttered. "W-well, yes, at the time, that was how it appeared."
"And how does it appear now?" Trixie asked, her voice dripping with acrimony.
"That a very inexperienced witch cast a spell incorrectly... or a very powerful witch cast a spell perfectly."
"Make some sense," Trixie yelled. "One minute you say Ava's miscasting spells. The next you say she's casting them perfectly. Which is it?"
"Dr. Dunne has ruled out cake poisoning. For now. All he's been able to find in Campbell Price's stomach was love potion cake. That alone shouldn't have killed him. There are signs that someone may have used a lunacy spell."
Trixie and Eleanor gasped.
"While that type of spell wouldn't kill a witch or wizard, a human is another matter altogether," Knoxx said.
"So, Ava's cakes aren't killing people!" Eleanor cried, exchanging a relieved look with Trixie that wasn't exactly flattering. They hadn't really thought I was responsible... had they?
"We're not ruling anything out just yet. Dr. Dunne is checking to see if David Buyers also had love potion cake in his system. If so, we may have found a link between their deaths. In the meantime, wandistics has come back telling me that Lucy's wand was definitely not the murder weapon."
"Good, then I can just give this back to Lucy," I said, reaching for the wand.
"I'll give it to Ms. Lockwood," the sheriff said. "I have a few questions for her as well. In the meantime, I intend to locate your own wand. Your real wand. So far, we have two human deaths, and the one who stands to gain the most from it is you."
"Me?" I asked. "I barely knew David and Campbell."
"It doesn't matter. They're human. And you are the only one I know with a clear grudge against humans."
"What are you talking about? What grudge?"
I saw Eleanor and Trixie's eyes widen. Their mouths were moving before I heard their voice. "Sheriff Knoxx," Eleanor said. "Please, we haven't—"
I cut her off, too irritated with Sheriff Knoxx to care. "Why would I have a grudge against humans?" I demanded.
He cocked his head to one side. "Don't you know? Ms. Rose... it was a human who murdered your mother."
* * *
1 3
* * *
I stayed in the back room all the next morning, refusing to come out even when Trixie made a plate of triple-fudge tranquility brownies and left them sitting on the front counter.
Around noon, Eleanor and Trixie both came back there, where I was still going over Magical Herbs and Plants: Volume 1.
"Ava," Eleanor said softly.
I'd been so engrossed in reading up on boxie quills that I hadn't even heard them come in. Apparently, boxie was one of the deadliest plants in existence. The reason they were so coveted was because of the pearls I'd seen growing from the purple stem. Inside each pearl was a tiny seed. When ground up, that seed could supply you with almost limitless power.
But there was a catch.
The type of power it supplied differed for each person. For one witch, it could mean the limitless ability to read people's minds. For another, it could be the ability to breathe underwater. For some unlucky witch or wizard, it could simply mean the ability to sneeze at one hundred miles per hour.
The boxie extract that had to be created from the seeds could only be handled by the most powerful of witches. Only five in existence had ever been known to use boxie quill without any negative side effects.
"Ava," Trixie said again, louder this time.
"Oh!" I jumped in my seat, forgetting for the moment I was mad at them. "What are you two doing back here? It's noon. Isn't the lunch rush on?"
Eleanor and Trixie shook their heads sadly. "Business has been a bit... slow today," Eleanor said.
"How slow?" I asked. They exchanged a look. Clearly, they didn't want to tell me.
"Can't you trust me enough to be honest with me? First, you hide my mother's murder from me, now you won't even tell me how business is. A business that you want me to be a part of."
Eleanor's cheeks reddened. "We've had one customer so far."
I stared dumbfounded. "You mean, like one this lunch hour?"
She shook her head. "No. One customer... today."
My jaw hit the floor. "Oh, my roses. Your customers hate me!"
I slammed the book shut and jumped off the stool.
"They don't hate you. And it's not your fault!" Eleanor cried. "Sweetland Cove is just naturally distrustful of newcomers."
"Yeah. Especially when that newcomer is the harbinger of death."
"You know, trust works both ways," Trixie said.
I stopped pacing the room and looked at her.<
br />
"You didn't trust Eleanor and me enough to tell us you'd lost your wand. Maybe you can trust us enough to believe it when we say the business will be all right."
My face flushed. "I was embarrassed. It was my first day on the island. I didn't know either of you very well yet. I didn't know how you'd react."
"We understand," Eleanor said. "But if you're going to be staying with us... indefinitely... we all need to open up a bit more, I think."
I nodded my agreement. "So, can I ask you something then?"
"Of course," Eleanor said. "Anything."
"Where did you disappear to at the party the other day? After Campbell collapsed. And why do you have boxie quills in your shop when they're so deadly?"
"Boxie quills?" Trixie asked, looking alarmed.
I could tell I'd asked the two questions they had least expected. And least wished for.
Eleanor cleared her throat. "Ava, Trixie and I—"
The bell chimed above the front door.
"A customer!" Trixie cried and grabbed Eleanor's arm. They ran from the room before I could ask anything else.
What are they hiding?
I sighed and opened my book again. A moment later, Trixie poked her head through the door.
"Ava," she said hurriedly. "Margaret Binford is here."
"Who?"
"Margaret Binford. She heads the Sweetland Cove branch of the Witch's Council. She's here with Lottie and Paisley Mudget. They have urgent witch business. Can you watch the counter for us?"
"Sure," I said, gladly setting the book aside.
Out front, a woman in her fifties with snow-white hair and deep violet eyes looked me up and down. "So she's the one people are in such a fuss over," she said as if I wasn't even in the room.
"Ava, this is Margaret Binford."
"Hello," I said. Even though this woman was throwing daggers at me, my father had brought me up to be polite.
Margaret was flanked on either side by two women in matching green dresses. They were both about forty with large bulbous noses and stood no more than five feet three inches high. I had to blink twice before I realized I wasn't seeing double. I was looking at twins. As Margaret moved toward the door, they followed suit.
