by Nic Saint
I sighed. “Let’s just face it, we’re not exactly getting any better at this.”
“Gran was right,” said Estrella. “We shouldn’t try magic outside of the house. It always backfires.”
“But then why did Tavish tell us to do it anyway?” I asked.
We stared at one another. Tavish giving us a direct message from our parents to practice magic in public and attract warlocks from all over the city seemed to contradict our own experience that each time we performed magic something went horribly wrong. But before we could develop this theme, Sam interrupted us. “Hey, I asked you a question. How did you do it? How did you move Falcone Tower from Manhattan to Washington DC?”
“We already told you,” Ernestine said. “We’re witches. We can do magic.”
He shook his head. “No no no no no no. That’s not possible.”
“Well, it is possible. You heard it from that woman on your radio,” Estrella pointed out. “Falcone Tower showed up again, only not exactly where we thought it would.”
“Actually we had no idea where it would show up,” I said.
“That’s true,” said Estrella. “I never even thought about that.”
“Neither did I,” confessed Ernestine.
“No, we just cast spells and never think about the consequences,” I said.
“Look, you can’t be witches!” interrupted Sam, holding up his hand. “Witches don’t exist, all right?! So what are you? And how did you do it?”
“You can’t keep asking the same question and expect a different answer, Sam,” I said. “We’re witches, and if you don’t believe it, that’s your problem.”
“And yours,” he said. “When you’ll be locked up in a high-security facility for the rest of your lives for trying to kill the president by landing an entire building on his head! This is serious,” he said, leaning in until his nose touched the partition. “You’re going to be considered terrorists after this. Accused of staging a coup. Witches or not, you almost killed Jack Gnash and demolished the White House. That’s an act of terrorism in my book.”
No, it was safe to say things didn’t look very good for us, all of a sudden.
If only Gran were here, I thought, and so did Estrella and Ernestine, for I could practically read their minds just by looking at their terrified faces.
Where was Gran? And where was Tavish, when we needed him most?
Chapter 18
Rick Dawson was having a field day. First he’d interviewed those three political activists who called themselves The Three Witches, then his father was magically transported to Washington, and consequently arrested and accused of an act of terrorism! This day couldn’t possibly get any better, he thought as he waltzed into his office at the New York Chronicle, ready to write his best article ever. Or, rather, series of articles.
Even though he felt for his dad, the man had it coming, after launching his crazy bid for the presidency. Rick might not have liked the last couple of presidents, but that didn’t mean he wanted Chazz to become one. He’d simply wreck the country and use the office for his own personal gain. There was very little, if any, patriotism behind Chazz’s presidential ambitions.
And even as he opened his laptop and connected it to the office network, his editor Suggs Potter came waltzing in.
“Ricky!” the man cried, his bushy brows waggling expectantly. Suggs was a burly and boisterous man in his late fifties, and one of Rick’s best friends in the business. “I heard you were back. What are you doing here? Not that I’m upset you decided to grace us with your presence. I just figured you’d become one of those lobbyists you always hear about, working for your dad.”
“My dad fired me,” he briefly explained.
“Before or after he tried to kill the president?” asked Suggs, taking a seat on the edge of Rick’s desk.
“Before,” he said with a grin. “And before I got the scoop of a lifetime.” He quickly took out his phone and started up the video of the Flummox sisters, and the disappearance of Falcone Tower.
Suggs sucked in a startled breath. “That’s some incredible stuff, Ricky. I think you’re the only one who’s got footage of the tower actually disappearing.” He clapped him on the back. “This is great! Put it up on the site straightaway.”
“That’s what I figured,” said Rick, still grinning from ear to ear. Filial affection had momentarily taken a backseat to his journalistic ambitions.
But then Suggs said, “What’s gonna happen to your pop?”
He shrugged. “Last I heard they arrested him and charged him with attempted murder of Jack Gnash.”
“And that doesn’t worry you?” asked Suggs, ever the family man.
“Sure it does,” he said, though it didn’t, really. “Look, Suggs, I know my dad. He’ll find some way to get out of this. He always does. But before that happens I want him to suffer a bit. It will teach him a valuable lesson.”
“What’s that?”
“That you can’t kick out your own son and replace him with a Brooklyn baker,” he said cheerfully. Suggs laughed a booming laugh and left him to work on his piece. He just knew this story was going to land him a Pulitzer.
One hour later, the piece was ready, and he’d placed it on the New York Chronicle website, along with the video of Falcone Tower vanishing into thin air. If this didn’t break the internet, he didn’t know what would.
Suggs had told him he’d get the front page, and even though it wasn’t his first front page, he was particularly proud of this one. He’d frame it and put it up on the wall of his home office back in Happy Bays.
And as he sat back and luxuriated in his new position as the reporter who’d snagged the first and only interview with these newfangled witch activists, his phone rang, and he saw that it was his fiancée Felicity Bell.
“Hey, honey,” he said. He swiveled his chair away from the screen where the number of comments on his article was quickly rising into the hundreds, and the number of hits into the thousands. “What’s up?”
“I heard that your father just got arrested?” She sounded concerned.
“Yeah, but nothing to worry about,” he said lightly. “I’m sure he’s got an army of lawyers already negotiating his release. Pretty soon it will turn out he didn’t actually want to crush the president rather than save his life. Knowing my dad he’ll come out of this thing a national hero, honey, I’m sure.”
“I’m not really worried about your dad.”
“You’re not?”
“No, I’m more worried about those three young women.”
“Oh, you mean those so-called witches? But, honey, they’re political activists. I’m sure they’ll be very happy now that their political statement went global. Suggs just sent me a message that my article is being read around the world, the Chronicle site receiving massive amounts of traffic.”
“You have to take it down,” she said, her voice sounding strained.
“Could you repeat that?” he asked. “It sounded as if you said I should take down the article.”
“And take down the video, if you can. Stop this thing in its tracks.”
“But why? I mean, even if I could, and obviously I can’t, as the story is all over the internet by now, why would you want me to take down the best scoop I’ve had since I interviewed the future king of England and he told me about his secret ambition to bring all of the colonies back under his rule?”
She sighed. “Flummox. Doesn’t the name ring a bell, Ricky?”
“No, it sure doesn’t. Why? Should it?”
“My mother’s name is Flummox,” she said. “Her maiden name, I mean. Bianca Flummox, and so is my Aunt Bettina. Bianca and Bettina Flummox.”
“So? There are probably thousands of people with that name.”
“Only two are the sisters of Merrill Flummox.”
“And Merrill Flummox is…”
“The father of Edelie, Estrella and Ernestine Flummox,” she said, and let that sink in.
And then he go
t it. “You mean to say these three girls… are your…”
“Cousins, yes. I didn’t even know it myself, but the police just paid us a visit, and Mom practically had a heart attack.”
“The police?”
“They wanted to know what the family’s involvement was. They practically accused Mom and Aunt Bettina of terrorism, can you believe it?”
“But—but how come you didn’t know?” he asked, darting a quick look at his laptop, watching the number of views rise in real time. They were up to a million now. This thing was like an avalanche, simply raging on and on.
“Mom and Bettina had a falling-out with their late brother years ago.”
“Did you just say late brother?”
“That’s right. Merrill Flummox died twenty years ago while he was out breaking into some place with his wife Abra Enticott. He was a known thief, and so was Abra, the girls’ mother and my aunt, apparently. I never knew either of them, obviously, and neither did I know I had three cousins who like to go around whisking Falcone Tower from Midtown Manhattan and planting it on top of the White House. Mom and Bettina hadn’t spoken to their brother in years, because of his criminal record, and when he and his wife died in a tragic accident while burgling some house somewhere, they decided not to mention the black sheep of the family to anyone.”
Rick had thunked his brow with his free hand. “Oh, Christ,” he groaned. “Sooner or later the media hounds will figure out the connection and then they’ll come after you! Us!” For convenience’s sake he’d momentarily forgotten he was the leader of that particular pack of hounds.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said soberly. “This has all the hallmarks of a full-blown media circus, Ricky, and I don’t want the international press to gather on Bell’s Bakery’s doorstep turning our place into a madhouse.”
“They’ll think I did it just to gain notoriety,” he muttered. “They’ll think I’m behind the whole thing. Me and Dad. The moment they discover I’m the Flummox sisters’ future cousin by marriage…” God, this was a nightmare!
“I just thought you should know,” she said. “So can you stop this thing. Or do you think it’s too late? I saw what you posted on the website.”
“Yeah, that ship has sailed.” He said this as he watched the counter go haywire and now point at ten million views and rising faster and faster. “It’s like global warming, honey. Too late to do anything about it now. Those oceans will rise ten feet and New Yorkers will have to stock up on galoshes.”
“You always were a pessimist,” she said warmly. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out, Ricky. Just make this whole thing go away, will you? Oh, and I’ve baked you your favorite pie. Pecan. So get home soon, all right?”
“All right,” he said dolefully, the prospect of pecan pie not doing much to cheer him up.
The moment he disconnected he buried his face in his hands. There was no way to stop this story, and he thunked his brow again for good measure. Oh, God, not only had he thrown his father under the bus, he’d added Felicity and her family along with it. All to further his own ambitions. He knew what this would look like. Rick Dawson wasn’t afraid to use his own family to boost his career. The next moment he was on the phone with his sister Charlene. The time had come to do some serious damage control.
Chapter 19
Sam Barkley, after having delivered Edelie, Ernestine and Estrella to NYPD headquarters, returned to his desk. He was a homicide detective, and picking up the Flummox sisters hadn’t been his call, but the dispatcher knew he knew them personally, so she’d given him the option to go out there and arrest them before some other, eager-beaver trigger-happy colleague did.
Now, however, like he’d told Edelie, the matter was out of his hands. They’d officially been transferred to the custody of the NYPD’s counter-terrorism unit, who would subject them to their grueling methods of interrogation, which could last hours and hours, until they cracked under the strain and finally revealed their motives and the extent of their organization.
He was pretty sure they’d soon spill the beans and he felt betrayed. The fact that he hadn’t known what they were up to felt like a personal affront. It just went to show that you never really knew a person. He’d thought the three sisters were three wonderful young women, and he’d even developed something of a crush on all three of them, if he was absolutely honest with himself, though for some reason he’d grown closest to Edelie. And now this.
And he was still shaking his head when his partner Pierre Farrier came barging into his office and said, “We’ve got ourselves another one, chief.”
Though he wasn’t Pierre’s chief, the diminutive man always addressed him like this and he’d gotten used to it by now. Pierre was a smallish man with a pepper-and-salt mustache, a soft-spoken and all-around kind officer.
“Another one what?” he asked, though he had a pretty good idea what Pierre was talking about. The Mummifier. That horrible serial killer.
“Another body. This time in Central Park.”
“Christ,” he groaned, getting up and snatching his jacket from his chair. “Who found her?”
“A couple of kids playing,” said Pierre with a meaningful look.
“Oh, God, another bunch of kids who’re going to need therapy,” he said in an undertone. “How bad is it this time?”
“Pretty bad,” said Pierre. “Think Tutankhamen bad, chief.”
He shook his head. This was the third victim in one week, all women, and all completely desiccated, like mummies, their bodies drained of all fluid.
Twenty minutes later they strode into the park, where officers had already sealed off the area with police tape to prevent passersby stumbling upon the crime scene. Another officer was interviewing a couple of kids with their mother, and Sam assumed they were the ones who found the victim.
He stepped into the bushes and parted them as he headed in deeper. Finally he reached the small clearing and saw the body of an old woman, her gray hair tangled and twisted around her head, and when he caught sight of her face, he gasped involuntarily. Even though he’d already seen two other victims like this, the sight never failed to shock him.
Angela Jacobs, the coroner, was already on the scene, studying the victim, and he greeted her cordially. “Hey there, Angela. How are you?”
“Hi, Sam,” she said, rising to her feet and shaking her head. She was a dark-haired woman with a perpetual scowl etched on her round face.
“Same MO?” he asked as they both stared down at the victim’s body.
“I’ll have to get her back to the lab,” said Angela, “but it looks like it. Completely desiccated, as if she’s been lying here for over a thousand years,” she said, sounding just as puzzled as he was.
“But she hasn’t been lying here for over a thousand years, has she?”
“Nope. Impossible.”
“So how long…”
“I have no idea,” she said. “Judging from the state of the body it looks as if she’s been dead since the pyramids were built, completely mummified.” She shook her head again. “It’s a real mystery, Sam. I’ve never seen anything like it. As if she died before our time, only…” She handed Sam a plastic baggie with a wallet, which was found on her body. “Her name is Sofya Craib.” She stared at him. “Twenty-four years old, Sam. Twenty-four.”
He stared from the picture ID to the woman at their feet. The picture showed a fresh-faced smiling young woman with auburn hair and a pair of glasses. She looked nothing like the brown, shriveled up woman at his feet.
“This is going to be a hard one to crack,” said Angela, and she was right.
Pierre approached them. “The witnesses say they found her while they were playing hide and seek.” He took one look at the victim and shivered.
“Poor kids,” Sam muttered. “I don’t think they’ll ever forget this.”
“Well, their mother told them the woman isn’t real,” Pierre said. “She’s decided to tell them it’s just a game. That someon
e decided to play a joke on them and planted this body here, but it’s not a real person, just a fake.”
“Maybe it’s for the best,” he agreed. Though this wasn’t a fake at all, of course. This was a real woman, and she’d died what seemed like a very horrible death, judging from what little they could see of her expression.
Then his phone dinged and he saw he got a message from Terry Hodge, who ran the counter-terrorism unit. He wanted to meet to discuss the Flummox sisters. Christ, he thought as he stared at his phone. He just hoped Terry wouldn’t go too hard on them. They might have done a terrible thing, but that didn’t mean they needed to be treated like terrorists.
The thing that puzzled him most was the absence of Cassie Beadsmore, the girls’ grandmother. He’d tried to reach her, and let her know that her granddaughters had been arrested, but hadn’t been able to locate her. It was almost as if she’d simply vanished without a trace. And the girls sure as heck could use a friendly face now, and someone to organize their legal defense.
He had managed to get in touch with some of their relatives, Bianca and Bettina Bell, née Flummox, who lived on Long Island, and had notified the Happy Bays police to have them brought in for questioning. This thing was out of his hands now, but he still felt responsible, because of his personal connection with the sisters. But then he decided to put the matter out of his mind. He had a baffling case to solve, and he better give it his full attention before whoever was responsible for Sofya Craib’s death took another life…
Chapter 20
“We have to put that tower back,” I said.
“And wipe people’s memory,” added Ernestine, “so they don’t remember what we did.”
“Why would we do a silly thing like that?” asked Estrella. “We just became international stars, you guys! Known all across the globe as witches.”
I groaned inwardly. It was just like Estrella to revel in our newfound fame. Or, rather, infamy. “We’re going to be charged with terrorism, Strel.”
