In an instant, the horrible figure was on her, stick fingers gripping Nann’s blouse. “What of it?”
It was hard to look at the twisted, sagging face, the eyes practically aglow with ravenous insanity. “I followed the summoning spell. But I changed your diet. Now, instead of drawing rats, you draw monkeys. Except there are no monkeys to draw. You’re done, Gert. It’s over. You can either disappear back to where you came from, or stay here and die.”
Mad eyes flicked back and forth as the words sank in. Nann didn’t know how to banish the Piper. Instead, she had re-summoned the creature, and given it an impossible task.
“I am still owed. The contract plainly states that if I am not paid, I will take the children. But right now, I’m happy enough to take you, witch.”
Cold fire exploded and hid the Piper from view. Music rose, an irresistible rhythm, increasing in volume. Nann rose in the senses-searing illumination. Her feet moved of their own accord. She was dancing to the music.
Lost in the flicker, unable to stop herself, she did a little hand roll, a little funky chicken. Shadows appeared, and Nann found herself dancing closer. Drum and tambourine drove her. A little cabbage patch, an awkward moon walk. The shadows revealed themselves to be the missing boys. One knelt, head bent in exhaustion, but still nodding to the beat. The other moved around the kneeling boy, but with shambling steps.
They were still trapped here, even if the Pied Piper could no longer feed on their energy. Nann now danced with them. All three were trapped in the Piper’s bright, colorful, noisy realm. Nann knew that all three of them would soon dance to their deaths.
“NANN!”
How long had she been dancing? She heard the call over the music. Looking for the source of the voice was like trying to look out from the center of a bonfire. She had moved close enough to the boys to hear their ragged, panting breath. Funny, her own breathing sounded the same.
“Nann!”
Through the haze of light, she saw three forms. One was very tall, one very short, one stood on four legs. It took her mind a moment to scare up their identities. Tink, Zinnia and Pokey.
“Stay back!” Nann tried to shout. She didn’t have the volume to out-shout the constant music. She Hustled, Mash Potatoed, Twisted. Rapidly running out of dance moves, she wondered what might happen when she was out of steps. One glance at the drained boys answered the question: Nothing. She would continue until her body gave out.
Although it took all her strength, Nann Watusi’d to the edge of the leaping lights. “Stay away!” she called to the women and pig. “Keep back, or you’ll get sucked in!”
Pokey ran back and forth at the periphery of the illumination. Nann reached out, but her feet Loco-Motioned her back to the center of the aurora.
Where had she gone wrong? The Piper should have fled days ago, when Nann first altered the summoning ceremony. Had she forgotten something? Vogue-ing, she tried to recall the incantation.
Find ye some seclusion, a high, abandoned space
ask this boon when the mistress moon has turned away her fair face
When the moon turned away; Nann seized on the idea. The ceremony obviously referred to the new moon. The new moon was tonight. But when did it rise? Nann couldn’t remember. If it wasn’t soon, she had no doubt Pokey, Zinnia and Tink would try to drag her out of the Piper’s light. Especially if she succumbed to exhaustion. She didn’t have the energy of a ten-year-old. The Piper, being unable to feed on their energy, had no reason to prolong their lives.
Nann, unable to think of anything else, pointed to the eastern horizon. Pokey still ran back and forth in a panic. Zinnia and Tink seemed to understand. They pointed and nodded themselves.
A few Macarena steps later, Nann understood why. The VHS stumbled up the hill wielding crosses and stakes. No, no, not more people! The sludge-waste summit was already too crowded. Nann held up her palms to stop them, which turned into Walking Like an Egyptian. Before her eyes, Zinnia, turning to grasp Branden’s hand, was drawn into the light. Her blonde hair shook back and forth as the lights and rhythm took her over. She dragged Branden with her. He held her close, box-stepping, dipping.
Tink and Jim fell in, and Tom, who turned out to know some pretty cool jazz dance moves. Rascal and Bob the Whiner stumbled in as well, doing a typical white guy thing, shuffling their feet and moving their fists. Soon, the entire VHS bobbed around, trapped by the music, hypnotized by the lights. How long would it be before this dance turned macabre?
Given that she had started to stumble, her arms drooping and shaking, not long. The boys weren’t faring much better. The VHS ran out of steam pretty quick. Branden and Zinnia resembled the last couple in a dance marathon. In fact, only Tink seemed to be holding her own.
Nann’s knees sagged. What had happened to her? She could do this forever when she was in college. But she realized that it was more than just the regular exertion of dancing that weighed them down. The Piper was trying its best to drain their lifeforce, even if her efforts were in vain.
Bob Reynolds, probably the oldest among them, fell to the ground. He twitched and writhed. He wasn’t doing the Worm, Nann realized—he was probably dying.
Nann gazed skyward. Rising in the east, just a tiny sliver, the finest line, was the nearly invisible crescent of the new moon. She pointed, shouting. “Look at the moon! Look at the moon!”
Could anyone hear her? With waning strength, she shuffled over to the boys. She did the bump with each of them, pointing to the eastern sky. When they looked, they stopped dancing.
“Tink! Zinnia! The moon!”
Tink boogied away, as only a Fae could, but she caught sight of the rising moon and stopped. Zinnia turned Branden, and the two of them came to a stop. Even if they remained holding each other. Others finally followed pointing fingers, and soon, all the dancers stopped dancing. She limped over to Bob, turning him over. His twitching ceased as he glimpsed the dim crescent.
All at once, the aurora blinked out. The captivating music was overtaken by crickets. Everyone whirled at the sound of a scream. The sound of it quickly diminished, as if the screamer was pulled high into the sky.
“WE FOUND ‘EM! WE FOUND the missing boys!” Bob’s voice wheezed as he pointed.
The VHS rushed forward, lifting Sam Barber’s unconscious body from the ground, propping up a moaning Jacob Learner.
“They’re alive!” Tom said.
Voices rose in response. “Call 911.” “Let’s get ’em to a hospital.” “Call the cops!” “Call the parents!” “Wasn’t there a truck up here?” “Let’s get them down the hill.” “Oh, lord, I think I’m gonna puke.”
“Call Deputy Schwenk,” Nann said. Pokey wandered over and pressed his head against Nann’s legs as she found the deputy’s card.
“Why don’t these guys realize we were just about to dance to death?” Tink wondered aloud.
“No magic in them,” Nann said. “Regular people’s brains are kind of immune to it.”
“Call you later,” Branden said to Zinnia before he ran to help the VHS rescue the boys.
Tink smirked. “That was quite a dance performance, Zinn.”
“He’s quite a dancer,” Zinnia blushed.
Nann left a message for the deputy, as she absently reached down and scratched Pokey behind the ears. “How did you guys find me?”
“I was listening to Coast to Coast AM when George Noori started talking to me,” Tink said. “Except it wasn’t George Noori. It was this pig.”
“Pokey,” Nann said.
“Pokey said you were being eaten by the scary thing in the woods. I drove up to your store, saw the Jimny, and called Zinnia. Zinnia was hanging out with that tall guy from the VHS.”
“It was a business dinner,” Zinnia said.
“Then we saw the lights on top of the sludge-waste hill. Figured that had something to do with you.”
Nann nodded and hugged Pokey closer. “Good boy. Good pig.”
THE FOUR OF THEM SAT around Zinn
ia’s apartment, the women drinking wine, the pig drinking water. “I should’ve known it was Gert all along,” Nann said.
“Who’s Gert?” Zinnia and Tink asked together.
“See? That’s how. The way she talked, I thought Gert had lived here all her life. She knew things, knew my aunt and uncle. But when I made a joke about her, you guys didn’t know who I was talking about. Everybody goes to the hardware store every now and then. But how could you forget someone like Gert?”
“No clue,” Tink said.
Zinnia shook her head. “Nada.”
“The big feet should’ve been the giveaway. Hell, the woman was pied like nobody’s business. Even her Hummer was brightly colored. And who else but a piper could manipulate men like that? Whenever I needed a painter or a lifter, boom, there they were. And convincing someone to kidnap Pokey? I mean, come on, he’s obviously somebody’s pet. He’s a good pig.”
Pokey grunted agreement. Then he opened Zinnia’s fridge with his snout and started rooting around.
“Usually a good pig. Hey! Get out of there, Pokey.”
Zinnia smiled. “He’s fine. The only thing I have in there is salad stuff.”
A disappointed oink followed.
“Okay, whoever this Gert person is, or was, who summoned her?” Tink dumped sugar in her wine. “Do you really think some real estate agent could do it?”
Nann took a long slug of wine. “I’m not sure. My gut says she had a part in it. This whole plan of extending snooty Point Argent to make one big resort town would require a lot of money. Obviously, the people behind it can make tax records disappear, or a pet pig. Those don’t sound like good people to me.”
“Me, neither,” Zinnia said. “But the Piper is gone, right? We don’t have to worry about kids going missing, getting hurt or killed?”
Nann nodded. It was the one thing she was certain of. “The Pied Piper is definitely gone.”
NANN STOOD OUTSIDE the store with Zinnia, Tink and Pokey watching the sign guy finish the gold leaf inside the display window. From one end to the other was a single, huge word: BOOKS.
“So, what are you going to name the new store?” Zinnia asked.
“Well, technically, according to the State of New York, it’s still Greenpoint Books. I don’t have enough money left to hire a lawyer and change it.” Nann shrugged. “So I’m not.”
Tink snorted. “It doesn’t matter. People around here name things whatever they want anyway. Cemetery Center, Calamity Corners.”
They walked inside. Although Nann still didn’t know what to do with a bunch of extra tables, chairs, computers and desks, book-stuffed shelves now made a labyrinth in the center of the store.
Zinnia took a long sniff. “It already smells like a bookstore. I love that bookstore smell.”
Nann’s first order arrived yesterday. New books sat on the curved shelves by the check-out counter. Her online stores were taken off vacation hold, and an order mailed out this morning. Nann was back in business.
“I think it looks great. And look how good the fans work,” Tink said.
Zinnia smiled. “I love it. What about you, Nann? Are you satisfied?”
Nann angled her head back and forth. “Eh... You know, I guess this place is kinda growing on me.”
“Oh, you lie!” Zinnia punched Nann in the arm.
“Okay, okay, I admit it. I love it.” Pokey leaned against her legs.
“What do you love the most? I love the ladder,” Zinnia said.
“I love how well those fans work,” Tink said.
“The thing I love most about this place?” Nann took a long look around. She took in the new fixtures, the paint, the hardwood floors. Then she looked at her friends, her familiar. “The thing I love the most about this place is: it feels like home.”
Don't Miss the Next Book in the Calamity Corners Witch Mystery Series:
The Witch is in the Details
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Catalog of Books
Triplet Witch Sisters Mystery Series
Two’s Company, Three’s a Coven
Resting Witch Face
Bewitched and Bewildered
Triple Toil and Trouble
Witch Detective Series
Payback’s a Witch
Come Witch or High Water
Witch Boots on the Ground
The Witch Sisters of Stillwater
Hoodoo and Just Desserts
A Shade of Murder
That Ol’ Black Magic
A Whole Lotta Witchin Goin On
The Beast Cometh
Secrets and Sorcery
THE LUCKY DILL DELI Mystery Series
A Yuletide Wallop
Haunted Homicide
The Leprechaun’s Loot
THE SINISTER CASE SERIES
Mirror, Mirror Murder Them All
A Wicked Enchantment
A Scorching Spell
THE GRUMPY CHICKEN Irish Pub Series
A Frosty Mug of Murder
Treachery on Tap
A Highball and a Low Blow
Cursed With a Twist
A Whiskey Sour Wipeout
OLD SCHOOL DINER COZY Mysteries
Murder at Stake
Murder Well Done
A Side Order of Deception
Murder, Basted and Barbecued
Murder Ala Mode
The Candy Cane Killer
THE CURIOSITY SHOP Cozy Mysteries
The Curious Case of the Cursed Spectacles
The Curious Case of the Cursed Dice
The Curious Case of the Cursed Dagger
The Curious Case of the Cursed Looking Glass
The Curious Case of the Cursed Crucible
WITCHY WOMEN OF COVEN Grove Series
THE WITCHING ON THE Wall
A Witching Well of Magic
Witching the Night Away
Witching There’s Another Way
Witching Your Life Away
Witching You Wouldn’t Go
Witching for a Miracle
TEASEN & PLEASEN HAIR Salon Series
A Hair Raising Blowout
Wash, Rinse, Die
Holiday Hooligans
Color Me Dead
False Nails & Tall Tales
CAESAR’S CREEK SERIES
A FROZEN SCOOP OF MURDER
Death by Chocolate Sundae
Soft Serve Secrets
Ice Cream You Scream
Double Dip Dilemma
Melted Memories
Triple Dip Debacle
Whipped Wedding Woes
A Sprinkle of Tropical Trouble
A Drizzle of Deception
SWEET HOME MYSTERY Series
Creamed at the Coffee Cabana
A Caffeinated Crunch
A Frothy Fiasco
Punked by the Pumpkin
Peppermint Pandemonium
Expresso Messo
A Cuppa Cruise Conundrum
The Brewing Bride
WHISPERING PINES MYSTERY Series
A Sinister Slice of Murder
Sanctum of Shadows
Curse of the Bloodstone Arrow
Fright Night at the Haunted Inn
THE CHRONICLES OF AGNES Astor Smith
The Peculiar Case of Agnes Astor Smith
The Peculiar Case of the Red Tide
The Peculiar Case of the Lost Colony
Storm
Calm Before the Witch Storm Page 10
