This Spells Doom
Private Eye Witch Cozy Mystery, Book 6
Stacey Alabaster
Fairfield Publishing
Copyright © 2020 Stacey Alabaster
All Rights Reserved
Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All people, places, names, and events are products of the author’s imagination and / or used fictitiously. Any similarities to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.
Cover Design by Tina Adams
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
Thank You!
1
I wasn’t sure which was worse. A lack of sleep thanks to the sweltering weather, or being caught in a traffic jam in a town of under five thousand people. All I could think about was coffee, but there was a hold-up in front of the one building in little Swift Valley that could be called tall—at three levels, and with a tower on top.
Someone was moving in.
They should have just pulled the entire building down and opened up the view of the town again so that the mountains could be seen from the center of the main street.
But I noticed the For Lease sign had been taken down. Huh, I thought, pressing down on my brakes to get a better look while people tooted their horns behind me. I didn’t know there was any company in Swift Valley that would be large enough or profitable enough to lease a building that huge. That building had been empty for years.
A mystery. And it wasn’t even nine o’clock.
I hadn’t even had my morning coffee yet.
“Maybe the milk factory is expanding its offices,” Akiro said as he frothed just that. Milk, I mean.
I furrowed my brow and looked out the window across the street. “But they already have an office,” I said, pointing it out to him.
The door jingled, and my best friend Vicky walked in. Ukulele in one hand and something small and hard in the other. Her long hair was swinging back and forth in front of her face, sticking to her forehead a little in the humidity.
“What is that?” I asked her, thinking Vicky was just carrying around a rock—and not a nice, clean one. I stared down at it. It seemed to have algae growing on it—a bit furry. And it wasn’t perfectly round nor symmetrical, either. Funny choice for a prize rock.
“This is Warren!”
Oh gosh, she was naming her pet rocks now. “Vicky, it looks like a health hazard . . .” I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea to have all that moss and algae around food and drinks. Akiro was also eyeing the rock suspiciously, but he didn’t say anything. Too busy serving customers.
Suddenly, a tiny green head popped out from the front of the rock, and I squealed. It’s a wonder I didn’t drop my latte to the floor. Akiro looked up at what all the commotion was about.
A turtle.
“This is my new familiar,” Vicky said proudly as she held Warren up for me to get a good look. But his head had already gone right back into his shell. His four legs as well. “I got him from the pet shop this afternoon. He’s perfect, isn’t he? The second I saw him, I just got this vibe. That he was special.”
“What happened to your old familiar?” I asked, peering into the rock to see if Warren might make a return appearance. If there were eyes buried in there, they were deep. I couldn’t see anything.
Vicky pulled Warren back close to her chest. The cafe was reasonably quiet, but she was still talking a little too loudly considering the subject matter.
“Well, I never had a proper one. Just the dog, Red, but he is not even mine, and Shu was getting all territorial with him. A little suspicious about how much time I spent talking to him and taking him places. And so, Geri told me it was time I got myself a proper protective animal to have around me, and to help out with my magic.”
I glanced down at the very still rock she was holding. And this was what she had chosen? “Vicky, if you are ever in danger, then Warren will just stick his head inside his shell and pretend that it’s not happening.”
She pouted. “Aww, he’s just a little shy.” She held him up and tried to coax him out again, but he wasn’t having a bar of it.
“Okay, you have fun playing with your pet rock,” I said, finishing off my latte and tossing the cup in the trash. “I’ve got work to do.” I shot her a look. “And so do you, remember?”
She groaned a little and pulled a face. We were due to have the offices repainted in a week or so, and I wanted us to tidy up before that. Not just physically, either. We needed to get all of our paperwork in line, including taxes. Vicky had no interest in this. She referred to it as “the most absolute boring thing I could ever imagine doing.”
A bunch of guys in sleek dark suits came past us as we exited the door of the coffeehouse. None of them acknowledged us. All four of them were single-minded, on a mission.
“Whoa, who are they?” Vicky said in a low, breathless voice. “They look like they are from the Secret Service or something,” she whispered as they all marched up to the counter to order, in formation. “Or some sort of top-secret government agency.”
“We don’t have anything like that in this town,” I said to her. “And I doubt the president of the United States is visiting Swift Valley.”
If he was, then we would know about it. We were the only detectives in town. Private investigators, as well as witches.
“I think we should follow them,” Vicky said, lifting up the rock and putting it to her ear. “Warren is telling me that they could be big trouble. He says that we need to leave right away. See what they are up to.”
I just stared at her, not sure whether to be amused or annoyed by this request. This was not on the schedule. We had a long day of administrative activities to do. “Vicky. Is Warren actually telling you something, or are you just trying to get out of cleaning and doing our taxes?”
She put on this entirely innocent face that I almost bought for a second, except for the fact that it was a bit too exaggerated.
I rolled my eyes and laughed. “Fine. Let’s get in the car. But if it’s nothing, then we go straight back to the office. And you can do the mopping.”
Vicky pulled a face. That was her least favorite task.
We waited until they were back inside their dark car, and then pulled out after them.
“We are going to lose them,” she said worriedly after we’d turned a corner too slowly, and they were almost out of sight down the end of the road, but I assured her that I knew how to tail a car. We had to keep our distance a little so that they didn’t suspect they were being followed.
“It would be so much easier if we were allowed to use witchcraft to solve cases,” she said, pouting as she petted the back of Warren’s shell. “Then we could just freeze them for bit. Or teleport exactly to where they are.” She sighed very loudly. “Sometimes it does get really frustrating, Ruby.”
Okay.
I never knew this was such a big deal to her. “Vicky, we can’t just go performing witchcraft in public, you know. Especially when we are running a business. A mortal business.” I tried to explain it to her. “We are public figures, and we interact with large parts of the population. So we have to be careful. Otherwise, we are at risk of exposing the entire coven.”
“I guess,” she said with another pout. “I wish we could just solve witch mysteries.”
“Well there
are only a dozen or so witches in this town . . . and 4,888 mortals. So that would be pretty bad for business, wouldn’t it?”
I was pleased with myself that I had gotten us caught up to the car as they made another turn and headed toward a parking lot, and using the old-fashioned way as well.
Vicky remained quiet as I put the brakes on.
And I was having déjà vu. This is where I had been less than thirty minutes earlier, doing the same thing.
We were in front of the tallest building in Swift Valley. So now I knew why the For Lease sign had been taken down. Because the place had been leased.
By these guys. I watched them climb out of their car, still strangely in formation, as they marched to the revolving doors at the front level.
Vicky was staring up at the building. She actually looked a little frightened now that we were in front of it and wasn’t making any moves to get out of the car. “I still reckon they could be a top-secret government agency. Here to keep tabs on us poor unsuspecting citizens. And turtles.”
“Well, why don’t we go and find out?” I said, snapping off my seat belt. “I mean, Warren did tell us to investigate, didn’t he?”
Vicky was considering letting me call her bluff on that, I could tell. But she was stubborn, and so she got out of the car. With Warren in tow. “Well, I can’t just leave him in the car, can I?”
“I suppose not.”
We entered the front lobby and walked over to the elevators, as apparently Warren did not like to take the stairs, which really just meant that Vicky didn’t like taking the stairs. I wondered how many other things Warren was going to be used as a convenient excuse for. I pressed the elevator button and waited for it to arrive at ground level again. There was no security to stop us and no one manning the empty front desk. The building was mostly unused, and whoever these guys in suits were, they had only just moved in.
I knew they weren’t local. It wasn’t just the fact that I didn’t recognize any of them by face. It was also the way they dressed, and even moved. They were from a city.
Or maybe it was just my psychic senses telling me that. As much as I tried to turn them off, sometimes stuff still slipped through the cracks.
I pressed the button for the third floor, the top level of the building, and as I said, as high as any buildings got in Swift Valley. It was just a guess that they would lease the top level for whatever their organization was, and it was a correct guess.
When we stepped out, we were greeted by another lobby, all decked out in dark matte colors. On the lobby wall, there was a sign with a black backdrop and a white text in a simple bold font.
“The Agency.”
And underneath that:
“Private Investigators.”
A man who hadn’t been a part of the four-person posse from earlier strode over to us. He had a smug look on his face and golden-brown hair that would have been curly if it had been any longer. He looked like he ran triathlons during the week and modeled on the weekend.
“Damon Teal,” he said, extending a very large hand toward me. He had this look on his face like we were peasants there to meet the king. He thought we needed his services. “What can I help you with today?”
“We are not here as clients,” I said to him as he briefly shook my hand, and then dropped it like a hot poker. “My name is Ruby Sparrow. You may have heard of me.” I stopped talking and waited for his reaction. Surely, he would have done his research and found out the name of the one and only private investigator in the town. AKA his sole competitor.
But his face remained blank. “Sorry, not ringing any bells. Who are you again? Are you here to deliver the stones for the new water fountain?” He looked down at the rock that Vicky was still holding in her hands and grimaced, as though that particular rock was definitely not up to his standards. “I hope they don’t all look like that.”
“I am Ruby Sparrow. Private Investigator.”
“Oh.” Damon took a step backwards and looked me up and down. “You don’t look like a detective.”
I was wearing what I often wore: dark jeans so I could blend in, and a plain white shirt that kept me cool in the late summer. Sure, it wasn’t a slick designer suit. But he didn’t need to look at me like I was some stray dog from the side of the road.
“Well, I am. A good one. And the only one in town.”
Damon had a smirk on his face. “Not anymore.”
His smugness was irritating me to the point that I was having difficulty keeping my mouth shut. “I’m sure you aren’t going to last long,” I stated, looking over his shoulder. “What is this, your first day as detectives?”
“Hardly.”
“Well, no one in this town knows who you are,” I said, sure that gave me the advantage. “So I’m not sure what you think you’re doing here.”
He shrugged. “We started out as King Fisher Detective Agency a few years back in the city. Managed to nab ourselves quite a few well-paying and notorious clients over the years. The Agency—as we are colloquially known by now—was doing so well in Sydney that I thought it was about time the we expanded our operation. Take it where we are really needed.”
“To Swift Valley?” I said. That didn’t make any sense. “But we are a small town, Damon. We don’t have many cases to solve here.”
“Oh, I have heard that it’s quite the opposite,” he said and looked me up and down again. “I heard that this town is brimming with strange and unusual activities.”
So, he did know who I was. He had to.
“Trust me,” I said, standing up as straight as I could, even though I was five-foot-four, and he was well over five-ten, so no matter how straight I went, he still towered over me. “All the people in this town are loyal to me. They like my style and the way I work. They are not going to come here just because you can afford to rent the fanciest office in town.”
Damon still looked amused, but he was also ready for a fight if I was going to start one.
“No. They are going to come here because we are the better detectives.” He pointed behind him. “My team is made up of seven staff. All highly qualified in different investigative fields. Between the seven of us, we have two hundred combined years of experience. How many do you have?”
I tried not to gulp. At least not visibly. And I really, really didn’t want to answer, “Five months.” I glanced at the team of super detectives behind Damon and suddenly felt even smaller than my five foot four inches.
“Good luck, Ruby Sparrow. Because you and your little joke of an agency are going to need it,” Damon said, fixing his tie before he pointed us to the exit.
“He is swooping in and taking all our work!” I cried as I stomped out the door and back toward my car, still fuming.
“Well, maybe he has a point. Maybe there is enough work to go around,” Vicky said, still juggling Warren as she raced behind me. “We just need to remember what you told Damon in there. Loyalty counts for something.”
But Vicky was wrong—and within two weeks, we were in danger of being served an eviction notice, seeing as we had not had one single client. Everyone wanted to go to the new slick guys with the team of investigators and the high rise—well, high rise by Swift Valley standards. They were offering half-price rates for the first month as well, just to bring in new clients. Prices that we could not match, no matter how much of our budget we slashed.
On Friday afternoon, two weeks after my showdown with Damon, we were sitting in our empty office literally watching the paint dry while Warren slowly poked his head out of his shell in the corner. Vicky still hadn’t introduced Warren to Geri. She told me she was trying to train him and wanted him to be able to perform at least one feat of magic before he was introduced to the head of our coven.
But turtles were slow. In every sense of the word.
“I know what we need to do,” Vicky said with a heavy sigh as she stood up.
“What is that?” I asked her, lifting my head up and away from the wall I had been staring a
t.
She smiled at me a little sadly. “We need to create a mystery, so that we have something to solve. Turn to a life of crime ourselves in order to make a living.” But then she shook her head, and I realized that she was only joking. “No, I know what you really need to do, Ruby. You need to let me go.”
I stood up. “Oh, things aren’t that dire, Vicky . . .”
She interrupted me. “Yes, they are.” She picked up Warren and stared down at him sadly. “I love working here with you, and these past few months have been amazing fun, but we have no work, no clients, and if you keep paying me you won’t be able to stay in business at all. At least without me, you have a chance of succeeding.”
But that wasn’t true. Without Vicky, it wouldn’t feel like any sort of success.
She walked over to her desk, placed Warren on the side, and started to pack her belongings up. “I’m going to make this easy on you, Ruby,” she said. “Don’t try and stop me.”
Just as I was about to pick up her box and walk outside, our door opened for the first time in two weeks.
I straightened up and quickly turned my head toward the door. Even Warren poked his head out of his shell.
It was Damon. Damon Teal. From The Agency.
The wind went out of me as I deflated. “Here to gloat, are you?” I asked as I watched him glancing around our empty office.
He shook his head slowly.
And I noticed that he was a little pale. Uneasy on his feet.
“Ruby. One of my detectives, Ms. Mikhalia Bryce, has been killed.” He stared straight into my eyes. “I need you to be the investigator.”
2
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