by Kate Krake
I slid my hand into my jacket pocket and retrieved the little pod I had lifted from Kenny’s bedroom.
“Does this mean anything to you?”
Lila took the seed, rolling it around in her hand. “No. What is it?”
“The murder weapon, or part of it at least.”
“The what now?”
“I might have found it in Kenny Langdel’s bedroom last night,” I said in a tiny, barely audible voice.
“You what?” Lila shouted. She shoved the pod back into my hand as if it were about to bite her. “That’s so totally illegal!”
I decided to skip the part about my strange encounter with the sheriff and stick to the highlights reel.
“I’m investigating a murder. It’s probable cause.”
“Even cops need a warrant.”
“Even for a dead man’s house?”
“I don’t know. But you’re not a cop, remember?”
“Okay,” I said. “So, let’s forget those insignificant details for a second and focus on the facts.”
“That you broke into a house is a fact,” Lila said. “I’m not going to jail with you. But I’ll still visit you, like once a week or something. I’ll still bring you coffee and chocolates.” She fished the box from her bag and handed it to me.
“That’s lovely of you,” I said, not hesitating to slip off the gold ribbon. “You know, you can visit Sean without having to buy candy every day.”
It was Lila’s turn to blush. “Can we get back to the important topic now?”
I absently bit into the chocolate, still looking at the seed pod in my hand. “This doesn’t look like the sort of thing you’d just find growing in someone’s garden, does it?” I said. “You think it could have come from the woods?”
Lila shrugged and folded her arms firmly across her chest. “Who do we know who’s involved in dark magic right now, with access to pretty much every plant in the world?”
* * *
My Mini rumbled along the unsealed road leading to Edie Jacques’s nursery.
Since I always closed the shop early on Mondays, I had asked Lila to come with me. Partly because I wanted the company on the drive, but I also didn’t really like the idea of meeting with a potential murderer alone. Again.
“Tell me about the vet,” Lila said out of nowhere as we drove.
“Conri?” I said, stalling. This was the last conversation I wanted to have.
“You’re on a first-name basis now?”
“I know what you’re trying to do, Lila. Don’t be silly. He’s into me, I think, but getting involved with him is the last thing I need.”
“Yeah, rugged, good-looking professional men, obviously into you. There’s an abundance of them in Blackthorn Springs, isn’t there?”
She forgot to add dark, dangerous, mysterious, and with a side of anger management issues. It was a good thing there was only one of him.
“You and Sean seem to be getting close,” I said, changing the subject.
“I buy chocolates from his shop to keep you from going insane! That’s all.”
“It keeps me from fitting into my old jeans is what it does,” I said. “You do realize one of you is going to have to suck it up and ask the other one out, properly.”
I didn’t need to look at the fairy to know her whole face was burning with embarrassment.
“This is the place,” Lila said, pointing to the side of the road, putting a blessed end to any more conversation about my love life.
Edie Jacques’s driveway was marked by an old sign on a crooked post. The only words still legible after an age of weathering were “wholesale nursery, rare plants.”
The driveway was deeply cut from years of water runoff, overgrown on the edges and in the strip along the middle. I expected my car to get bogged down at any minute, but the stout little vehicle that had served me so well for most of my adult life thankfully didn’t choose this moment to let me down.
I pulled the car into a clearing near the house. It was nothing like the few city nurseries I had ever visited, filled with orderly racks of plants in neat little pots, divided into growing type. Edie’s place was a maelstrom of flora. There were pots and containers of all sizes. She even had things growing in random containers: used milk cartons, rusty tin cans, and old hubcaps. Everything from lemon trees to berry bushes, roses, gladioli, and, somewhat curiously, some palm trees, pineapples and a small thicket of flowering gums. Wondering how such things were able to grow up in these wintery mountains led me one step closer to the increasingly obvious conclusion Edie Jacques was a witch.
There was a hut with a sign that read Office. Another sign on the door showed it to be closed.
We followed a rickety footbridge through the mismatched jungle toward an old house as crooked and worn out as the rest of the place. Lila rang the doorbell.
There was silence. Edie’s old army-green Jeep was parked out back, the hood peeking around the edge of a boisterous bush. She was definitely home. Lila knocked.
Heavy footsteps echoed from the heart of the house.
Edie Jacques opened the door. Her wrinkled face looked as if it had aged a few more decades since I had last seen her. She was pale and had dark circles under her eyes.
“Yes?” she said, casting a quick glance between Lila and me and then behind us, as if she was looking to see if we had anyone else with us. “Shop’s closed today.”
“Hi, Edie, how are you?” I said. I had meant it to sound friendly, neighborly, but it came out nervous and scared. Lila gave me a warning look telling me I hadn’t imagined it.
“Hi, Edie,” Lila said, taking over the talking. “We thought you might be able to lend us a hand. We’re in a bit of a horticultural pickle, and we just couldn’t think of anyone else in town clever enough to help us out.”
Edie was still looking at her feet, but her face brightened just enough to show she might have been interested, even flattered by Lila’s words, but still wasn’t happy about us being there.
“I don’t ever let no one in my house,” she said. “We can talk in the office.”
We followed the old woman back along the rustic path, and I performed the Ostendo spell as we went. Edie glowed with an electric blue aura. She had definitely been doing magic recently, and quite a lot of it. She was a wiry stick of an old woman, and though it would probably take a lot to really slow her down, she didn’t look like she had what it would take to summon the energy needed for a death curse. Still, people were surprising—she’d designed the ghost maze after all—and the aura told me she was up to a whole lot more.
Edie unlocked the office with a huge skeleton key and ushered us inside. The room was as chaotic as the rest of the property. A pair of hole-ridden gardening gloves sat atop the closest stack of paperwork on the desk. A teetering tower of dirt-crusted plastic pots rose in one corner of the room, a filing cabinet overflowing with invoices, newspapers and who knew what else in the other. On top of the cabinet sat an old radio and a gas station calendar from 1998. Edie sat behind a desk buried in papers smudged with grime. An ancient computer was shoved to one side, boxy and yellowed plastic, probably as old as the calendar. A dial-up modem sat on top of it.
“So, what’s this thing you gotta ask me?” she said, not making eye contact with either of us. I held out the pod. Edie looked at it with barely a passing glance. “It’s an ivory glasswood seed. What of it?” she said.
“Ivory glasswood? Are they common?” I asked.
Edie shook her head. “I suppose every plant is common to someplace, but if you mean are they common here, then no. I can order ’em in for you, though. They’re hard to find, so it could take some time. There’s another type—the common green glasswood. They look a lot the same, but the green is much easier to get.”
“No, that’s fine. I just wanted to identify it,” I said.
“That it? You’re not going to buy anything?”
“Well, Edie, there is one other thing I have to ask you about, and it’s rath
er important. Critical, actually,” I said, doing my best to sound gentle.
Edie flashed a terrified deer-in-the-headlights look again. It was like she was waiting to get into trouble. Her guilt was all over her so loudly I didn’t need to be a mind-reading fairy to feel it.
“You’re really here about the maze, aren’t you?” Edie said, her gaze centered firmly on her hands in front of her.
I started to speak, but before I could get a word out, Edie erupted with a wail of tears. Her head collapsed onto her folded arms on the desk.
“I know, I know, it’s a terrible, terrible mistake,” she said, her shoulders wracked with sobs. “I know it’s the wrong bush, I know it.”
“A mistake?” I asked.
“I’m old and stupid, and I didn’t even think to double-check when they were delivered out there. I didn’t even see them, I promise. The shrubs went straight to the field and were planted before I saw anything. When I went to check them a couple of weeks ago, see if the accelerated growth spell I ordered for them was working, I was shocked to see they weren’t boxwoods. It’s those damned online form things they make me use these days. I can’t understand them, and it was just a mix-up. Norton is too stupid to know the difference, but I knew a lot of people would know, and it was only a matter of time. It shouldn’t matter, should it? I mean, it’s still a beautiful hedge, and yew’s only poisonous if you eat it. People have been gardening with yews for centuries. I don’t see any reason why—”
“So there was a growth spell?” I said.
Edie stopped. She turned her tear-stained face back and forth between the pair of us. “I… er… did I say a spell?”
“It’s okay, Edie. Belinda’s a witch,” Lila said.
“Lila!” I hissed.
“What? I didn’t think it was a secret anymore. It’s fine. We’re all supernaturals here, two witches and a fairy.”
“Is that true?” Edie said, sniffing and wiping her nose along her grey sleeve.
I sighed. So much for a life in private. “Yes, it’s true. I’m a witch. Sort of. Not really. But that’s not important. As soon as I saw the maze, I knew it was dangerous. Why, Edie? Why plant a ghost maze of silver blood yew of all things? Why would you want to harm people like that?”
“What are you talking about, harm people? Ghost maze? I got the wrong plants. If I’d gone out myself to try the growth spell, I would’ve caught it before they were planted. I got little faith in my witchcraft these days, but I sure as heck didn’t do anything to harm anyone.”
“Then why that particular maze?” I said.
“It’s just a pattern. I looked up designs at the library. I just liked the way it went around with that tear shape in the center and thought it would look good from the hilltop.”
“Edie, that’s a ghost maze,” I said. “It’s a powerful talisman, and you’ve gone and had it planted with silver blood yew trees, a conduit plant synonymous with the dead. As soon as anyone goes through that maze and reaches the center, they’re gone, trapped there to haunt it forever.”
If Edie’s face was white before, it was nothing compared to how much it paled on hearing this news. No one could fake a reaction like that, not even a witch. I knew then that Edie Jacques was innocent.
“Were you looking up hexes online too?” I said.
“I’m an old witch. My powers aren’t what they used to be, and let’s face it, they were never very strong. I was just looking for something that might help me, you know, feel a bit younger. I’m a dithery thing, and I just don’t like it. That’s how this whole mess started. It’s not the first time I’ve messed up the orders. Ever since they stopped using paper, I just can’t get my brain around this computer nonsense. It’s not my fault.”
I glanced at the antique computer. If that was the technology Edie Jacques was using to fill her online orders, it was little wonder she had screwed it up and ordered the wrong plants.
Edie collapsed again into a sob.
“It’s okay, Edie,” I said. “We can lift the curse. Maybe. I’ll help you. Somehow.”
Lila nudged my foot with the side of her shoe. I gave her a sharp look to ask what she wanted. She nodded ever so slightly to a sheet of paper on top of the rest, a page of handwritten notes. I read it upside down, but it was still clear—white hemlock, belladonna, glasswood, black sage, Siberian tulips. I had never heard of Siberian tulips before, but I knew what the rest of them were. There were hex herbs, and the glasswood sealed the deal. Underneath the list were the names of the customers doing the ordering. Tom Jenkins. Conri O’Farrell.
14
“So you couldn’t get any readings from Edie at all?” I said, driving too fast on the winding road back into town.
“She put out a load of anxious guilt—a blind person with one eye closed could have seen that. But it’s all about the plant mix-up. She hasn’t done anything seriously wrong. What about the other thing? The names? What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I said, navigating the road like a race car driver. “None of it means anything. Not yet, at least.”
There was no more playing around with this. No matter my attraction to Conri, I couldn’t ignore the ominous warning in my gut every time I thought about the vet. Alibi or not, he was a secretive man with a list of suspicions against him getting longer by the day, and here he was ordering curse herbs from a witch.
And where did that leave Tom Jenkins? Wasn’t a suspect list supposed to get smaller rather than longer as you went along?
“I should ask my brother about it,” Lila said. “He’s a lawyer, so he would know about investigations and stuff.”
“Lawyers don’t do much of the actual investigations, do they?” I asked. Lila shrugged.
“Anyway, it’s probably best not to say anything to anyone yet,” I added.
“I won’t tell him anything about you,” she said defensively.
“It’s not me I’m concerned about,” I said. “It’s too soon to start getting legal people involved here.”
“I don’t think it’s too soon, at all.”
I stole a look at her. She was frowning, something I had never seen her really do before, staring out the window into a blank space. “I think we’re already in deep water here, and honestly, I’m worried,” she said.
Lila was right. We were definitely out of our depth, but in deep water, when there’s no going back to the shore, you have to keep on going until you reach the other side, or until something comes along you can grab onto and stay afloat. That, or you drown.
“Don’t fret about it, Lila,” I said. “Let’s just solve the problem with the maze first and then we’ll think about the rest of it. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“It’s sinking down to that bottom that scares me,” Lila said.
Again, I had to agree my friend was right.
* * *
There was no way I would be able to pull off a spell of the size needed to disarm the maze on my own. We were back at the store even though we were still closed for the day.
“It doesn’t matter what spell it is, I can’t do magic like a witch,” Lila said before I had even asked her, demonstrating exactly what kind of magic she could do.
I flicked through Adela’s book again. Obviously, disarming the hedge was the reason the Naarin had given it to me, but even with all the spell books in the world, there was no way I was good enough to do magic like this. There had to be something else.
The book had a spell for a temporarily debilitating yet harmless illness illusion (which I considered using to get me off the maze committee, or maybe putting on Neville Norton himself). There was another for going three days without sleep, something else that might come in handy considering how my nights had been lately. But besides the Dearmo charm, there was nothing else I could throw at the maze.
The front door opened, and I shoved the book out of sight underneath the counter, cursing myself for forgetting to lock the door when we came back inside.
Adela entered. “It’s only me,” she said. “No need to hide anything.”
I sighed, relieved, and retrieved the book, opening it again to the disarming charm.
“Sorry for the intrusion. I know the store is closed, but I saw you as I was passing and came to see how you were getting on with…” She pointed to the book.
“You were right,” I said. I didn’t bother asking how. “This disarming spell is exactly what we need.” I ran my finger across the page. “Too bad I’m not nearly powerful enough. I’d need at least another two witches to brew up enough energy. That maze is massive. Someone else has to do it.”
“A mirroring partner?” Adela said.
I didn’t know what she meant. “Is that a spell?” I asked.
“It’s where a witch uses a receptive partner to channel his or her magic. Like a mirror reflecting a mirror will show endless mirrors, a mirroring partner can increase a spell caster’s potency exponentially. The partner doesn’t need to be a witch, just supernatural.”
“Sounds perfect,” I said. “Lila, you can be the mirror and you Edie can do the spell together.”
Lila held up her hands in protest. “Are you serious? You want to push Edie’s wonky magic through me?”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as Lila.
“No way. It has to be you,” Lila said.
“I can’t,” I said. “I’ve never been in a coven. I’m totally untrained, unprepared and absolutely unable to do it.”
Lila rolled her eyes. “You keep saying you’re not a real witch, but you’re always doing plenty of real spells.”
“They’re not—” I started, but Lila continued, not going to let me interrupt.
“I’ve already told you I’ve noticed your supposedly secret magic. I can sense the little shift in the air whenever you do a spell, like the one you did on Abbi Flannagan’s book—genius, by the way—or how sometimes my tea stays hot longer than it should? Sometimes even after it’s already gone cold?”
“But that’s not real magic. They’re just little tricks I make up,” I insisted. “This is actual witchcraft we’re talking about, serious stuff.”
