This Spells Doom

by Stacey Alabaster

  I frowned. “Is there a place we can talk privately?” I asked.

  “In here.”

  Vicky pulled me into her room, which she always claimed was soundproofed so that she could do home music recordings in there.

  “What was it that you said Shu did with her dog?” I asked, not quite remembering what Vicky had told me. At the time, it hadn’t seemed that important. Suddenly, I was starting to wonder if there was more to the story there.

  Vicky shrugged. “She just didn’t want me spending so much time with him. Kinda weird, I guess, but not that unusual. She might be moving out soon and didn’t want us getting too attached.”

  I wasn’t so sure. That didn’t add up to me.

  “Do you think she realized what you were doing?” I asked her, quickly cutting in. “That she suspected that you were using Red as a de facto familiar and that, you know, you’re a witch?”

  Vicky briefly considered this possibility, but then she vigorously shook her head.

  “She has not been very welcoming of Warren,” I reminded her. “Banishing him from the house and all the rest.”

  Vicky looked worried. The possibility that I was right flashed across her face. “Nah. No way,” she answered quickly. “Shu has never suspected anything. I’ve always been careful.”

  “But that’s just the thing, Vicky. We haven’t been careful lately.”

  I looked around her room, the room that was soundproofed and a safe place to chat. But not if it was bugged by super high-tech spy equipment! Which it may or may not have been. I scanned around the room for bugs.

  “I know you wish you had all my Dolly Parton posters, but try not to be too envious,” Vicky said teasingly.

  Hmm. Behind a country music poster would be the perfect place to hide something.

  If The Agency had come to Swift Valley under some sort of covert government operation, then they had access to the best surveillance equipment there was.

  I knew Mikhalia did.

  But I couldn’t go getting too paranoid.

  Except then I went and said something that sounded pretty paranoid.

  “Shu could be a secret agent, Vicky. Living with you so that she gains your trust, and then feeding info back to The Agency.”

  Vicky plonked herself down on her bed

  “Nah, Shu and I have lived together for three years. Way longer than The Agency have been in town.”

  I gently peeled back one corner of a very pink Dolly Parton poster and had a quick peek. Couldn’t see anything strange. I eyed the turntable on Vicky’s dresser and wondered if we dusted for fingerprints, whether we would find Shu’s prints all over Vicky’s stuff.

  Shu wasn’t even what I had come to talk to Vicky about, but now that I had seen her, my attention had been pulled in that direction. I had to wonder if she had been the one to betray us. I mean, it was pretty dangerous of Vicky to live with a human who didn’t know about witches. I wasn’t one to talk, but at least the human I lived with knew my secret and seemed okay with it.

  “What did you come to talk to me about?” Vicky asked, wanting to get off the topic of Shu. I suppose I didn’t blame her. It would be pretty unnerving to think that you might be living with a spy who was tracking your every move and feeding information back to people who were trying to hunt you.

  I took a deep breath.

  It was a grave matter. “I came to talk to you about Mikhalia’s death.”

  Vicky shot me a look that said, Oh yeah, so what’s new. “What about it?”

  I gulped. “What if I wasn’t the first witch to figure out what Mikhalia was up to?”

  Vicky leaned forward and whispered to me. “You think someone else in the coven figured it out?”

  I nodded. “Makes sense, right? They find out that Mikhalia was investigating us . . . and kill her.”

  Vicky looked shocked, but the shock was quickly replaced with the dawning realization that I could be right. If this had become an “us versus them” thing, then any of the witches could have acted to protect the rest of the coven from being discovered. We just had to find out which of the witches also knew about Mikhalia. And which one was the most over-protective.

  “What are you going to do?” Vicky asked me. “You can’t go around asking each member of the coven if they are a killer.”

  She was right. That would definitely make me pretty unpopular. And the problem with witches was, if I tried to use my psychic powers on them and read their minds, they would know it. They would view it as an intrusion and possibly cast me out of the coven altogether.

  All this time, I had just been acting as a regular old detective. But I was going to have to take a leaf out of Mikhalia’s books and become much more covert.

  Now I was going to have to become a double agent.

  I entered the lobby of The Agency, relieved when the cool from the air conditioner hit my face. But I was still so distracted by my plan that I didn’t even notice Justine saying good morning to me. She might have thought I was ignoring her and being rude. Not like we parted on the greatest of terms last time, either.

  “Having second thoughts?” she asked as we got into the elevator together.

  “About what?” I asked, looking up at her sharply. She knew about my plan?

  “About investigating this case.” She shot a look at the security camera which was watching our every move as we glided our way up to the top floor.

  That wasn’t what was distracting me. I was running through my plan in my head. But I couldn’t let her know what I was really up to.

  I shot her a look as we exited the elevator and arrived at the entrance to The Agency. “So, what were you actually doing at the milk factory? What case does Damon have you investigating?”

  She gave me a wry look. Her hair looked extra spiky that day. Too much gel. Too much bleach. With her pale skin, she looked almost like a ghost. “That’s on a need-to-know basis.”

  But I wasn’t going to let her enter the front doors that easily without any sort of explanation. “Did someone from the milk factory hire us—I mean you—to investigate?” Jeez. I really had to remember who I actually worked for.

  Myself.

  Justine glared at me. “Not your case. Not your business. Don’t stalk me in the middle of the night again.”

  “Fair enough.”

  I hung back a moment and pondered. So secretive. And she’d been so annoyed when I’d sprung her there in the middle of the night. I wondered if what she was investigating had anything to do with the Gippsland Panther. A mythical—or rather, not so mythical, seeing as I had encountered it up close and personal—giant cat that stalked the mountains of Swift Valley. It was also known to hang out at the back of the milk factory, especially around the time of the full moon, when its powers were at their strongest and it needed the most sustenance. Milk. If that was what Justine had been searching for, then Damon really did know more about the paranormal activity in Swift Valley than he was letting on. No one outside of Swift Valley knew about the existence of the Gippsland Panther. And if they did, they just laughed it off as an urban legend.

  I shivered. Maybe that air conditioning was turned up a little too much.

  I needed some space, and so I made a beeline for my desk. Sorry, Mikhalia’s desk. But when I arrived there, I saw that I had left my sticky notes and pens and even a pair of reading glasses behind. Like I had been subconsciously marking my territory.

  Lying to the entire coven wasn’t going to be easy. Witches were a pretty perceptive lot. I scribbled a few notes. I’d have to pretend to the coven that I was working for them, at the same time pretending to The Agency that I was working for them.

  Did that make me a triple agent? My head was spinning. I realized that all I had scribbled was a circle that went around and around, like the spiral in the movie Vertigo.

  All I knew was that I was in a unique position to solve this case, and I needed to use every angle that I had to find out who killed Mikhalia . . . and who was after us.


  Damon had spotted me, even though I’d been trying to ignore him and keeping my head down. Even when he approached, I pretended to be so engaged in my doodling that I didn’t notice him. But he cleared his throat and peered over my shoulder. I turned the sheet of paper over so that I could maintain the impression that it was something highly important.

  “Haven’t seen you around here much in the last few days,” he said, looking unimpressed. “We do have a murder to solve, you know.”

  “I’ve been working on it. I told you that I don’t need you babysitting me.”

  He wanted to know what my update was.

  My piece of paper was still overturned. I pulled it a little closer to myself. “I have a few leads, but I can’t reveal them,” I said, staring up at him in a serious manner so that he knew not to challenge me on that point. “You don’t want my sources to lose trust in me, do you?” I stood and put the scrunched-up piece of paper in my pocket.

  “What sources?” he asked me, following me to the coffee machine. There was really no getting away from him.

  “Damon, you need to trust me if I am going to solve this case for you!”

  “But that’s just it—you’re not solving this case for me. Or at least, I’ve got no proof that you are.” He stepped in front of the coffee machine so that I couldn’t quite access the milk frother without reaching around him and essentially giving him a hug, which I was certainly not about to do.

  Jeez. It was all about “proof” with these detectives, wasn’t it? I elbowed past him and turned my back.

  “Ruby. This covert act does not impress me. I demand full transparency from my detectives. Whether they are those who work for me at the agency, or those that I have hired as an outside source.”

  I swung around. “Mikhalia was working on a case before she died, Damon. And she received a threat. A threat telling her to back off, or she was going to get hurt.”

  Damon’s face turned to stone.

  “What was the case, Damon?”

  He shrugged, trying not to give too much away. “I don’t know about any threat that she received.”

  He was still keeping something from me on purpose.

  “Whatever she was doing, it was dangerous, clearly.” I stared up at him. “And now you’ve essentially put me in the same position, asking me to investigate her death.”

  “Look,” he said quietly, his face ashamed as he stared down into his empty coffee mug. “I don’t know what the case was, okay?”

  That made me roll my eyes. “Oh, come on! Damon, you seriously expect me to believe that? You are her boss and—I assume—the one who dishes out the cases to the detectives working under you. How could you not know what case she was working on?”

  “Because . . .” He cleared his throat and straightened his tie, gripping his coffee cup tightly in his other hand. “I think it was a case that she had started working on before she ever came to work here. I don’t think that she ever fully severed ties. I was starting to get the impression that she was only using me.” He kept his voice low as Justine was trying to listen in again, even though she was pretending to be listening to something on her earphones. If I had to bet, I would put money on the guess that if I went over and pulled them out of her ears, there would be no sound playing.

  I felt uneasy as I realized what he was saying. That dizzy feeling returned, vertigo, like there was nothing underneath my feet.

  Mikhalia could have still been working for the spy agency.

  Damon tapped the side of his cup. The sound echoed around the silent office, and he lowered his voice even further. “Whatever she was doing . . . I was in the dark about it, okay?” He looked at me with pleading eyes. “And if you have figured something out, then you need to tell me, so that we can work together. Ruby? Are you listening to me?”

  I nodded.

  But could I trust him?

  One coffee wasn’t enough that day. Even two wasn’t enough. And by the time I had drunk three, I knew I needed a fourth, and so I went into The Onyx after work to order a late afternoon latte.

  “Haven’t seen you around much lately,” Akiro said as he passed me the mug.

  “You’re not the only one,” I said to him with a wink. “So, don’t take it too personally. Life of a PI.”

  Life of a witch, too, but I couldn’t exactly mention that part out loud.

  I was in danger of becoming over-caffeinated when I saw Vicky practically running up the sidewalk, Warren in hand. She was clearly looking for me, because her eyes glimmered when she saw me, and she raced for the door.

  “Guess what?” she said, bouncing into the coffeeshop with Warren proudly outstretched.

  Akiro eyed the turtle, put down the canister of milk he had been holding and stepped in. “You can’t have a turtle in here. They carry too much bacteria.”

  “Fine. We’ll take him outside then, grumpy pants,” she said, sticking her tongue out at him.

  Vicky’s house was one thing, but meeting her in public was another altogether. I was surprised she would risk breaking the rules like this. Geri could be doing her banking on the other side of the street, for all we knew. We were in full view.

  “Vicky, did you forget? We don’t know each other—at least for the time being,” I said, glancing around the street. It wasn’t as though any of the other witches were all that social, I supposed. But I just had the feeling lately like there were eyes on us everywhere we went. As strict as Geri’s rule had been, I was starting to think we should trust it. Now that I’d spoken to Damon, I felt like there was another level of danger to this whole thing.

  “I know, but I am just so excited! I had to tell you!” She extended her arms and pushed Warren’s shell up so that he was right in my face. “Warren spoke to me today! He really did! When I was practicing guitar this morning, I tightened one of the strings the wrong way, and just before it snapped and took one of my eyes out, Warren warned me! He said, ‘Put down the guitar!’ I did—I threw it away from me! You did such a good job, didn’t you, Warren?” Right at that moment, he poked his head out and smiled at me proudly.

  “Do you mean he spoke with words? The way Indy speaks to me?”

  Vicky nodded as vigorously as a bobble-head.

  Wow. That was incredible. But I was worried about how loudly she was discussing the subject of talking turtles. I led her round to the side of the coffee house where there was an alleyway with no security cameras. She put Warren down on the milk crate and got him to perform his trick.

  “See?” she cried.

  “I, uh, can’t hear anything,” I said a little unsurely.

  But Vicky was certain that she had heard him say that the crate was a little uncomfortable, and he would like to get down, please. I narrowed my eyes and leaned in closely. Vicky was so excited because according to her, he was still yammering on. But I only heard silence.

  “I knew it!” she exclaimed. “Oh, he just needed a little bit of love and patience . . . Didn’t you, Warren?”

  He was out of his shell, that was for sure—but I wondered if this was just a fluke. Well, actually, I wondered if it was all in Vicky’s head. Maybe she wanted it to happen so badly that she had imagined it and believed that it was real. But I didn’t want to put a damper on Vicky’s excitement.

  A man wearing a trench coat suddenly came barreling toward us. I assumed that he would swerve at the last moment so that he didn’t hit us, but he didn’t slow down at all. Instead, he headed right toward Vicky, and then reached out and grabbed at Warren, clutching hard onto his shell and trying to pull it out of her hands. The shell must have been slippery—and Vicky caught off guard—because he managed to swipe Warren away.

  “Hey, that is my turtle!” she said, snatching him back. The man glared at her and then stomped off. “Whoa. What was all that about?” she wondered, looking shaken.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, trying to reassure her. “Some nut. He’s already gone. You’ll never run into that guy again, probably.”


  But Vicky was shaking her head. “No, that is not the first person who has tried to steal Warren from me,” she said, clutching him to her chest, again like she was in The Wizard of Oz. And she seemed to believe that there really was a danger that her precious pet would be stolen from her at any second.

  “Really? Who else has tried to take him from you?”

  Vicky frowned as she checked that Warren was unharmed. He’d gone completely back into his shell the moment the man had grabbed him, so none of his limbs nor his head had been damaged. “This morning, I got a call from the pet shop who sold him to me. Mr. DeWinter. He said that he wants Warren back. That it was a mistake ever selling him to me.”

  I frowned. “Why on Earth would anyone want that turtle back?” Then I saw the look on her face and realized I had caused a grave offense. “I mean, he is a regular old turtle that you could find anywhere. I know he is very sweet and special, but I just don’t see why . . .”

  “But nothing!” Vicky cried. She was offended and very defensive over her beloved pet. “Clearly, Mr. DeWinter knows that Warren is the most special turtle in the world, and now he is regretting selling him to me for just that reason.”

  But Warren had only shown evidence of being special that afternoon. And actually, he hadn’t even done it then. All I had seen was him stand awkwardly on a crate and not be able to go anywhere, because as a plain old turtle, he couldn’t get himself off the edge of a high crate without injuring himself.

  “Vicky, I think we are all just a bit on edge and on high alert lately,” I said to her gently. “Warren isn’t in any danger.” I was pretty sure he was just a regular turtle, and the guy in the trench coat was just an opportunist.

  But Vicky wasn’t listening to any rational explanations right then.

  “Please,” she said, reaching out to grab my arm. She looked up at me in a pleading way. “Help me hide him. Somewhere no one will think to look for him.”

  I nodded. “Okay. I will help you hide him. But you need to help me with something as well.”