by Linnea West
A slight smile spread on Esmeralda’s face as Maggie saw a peek at the evil genius at work. She knew that it made more sense for her to bring Ned to the police station, but it meant that Maggie would be left in charge. Even worse, she would have to be the one to deal with Mariah.
Immediately, she started to feel her breathing speed up. Her mind started to race a million miles a second. What if Mariah got out of line? What if the killer was still here and tried to murder her? Thought after thought pounded down on her.
A feeling of slight pressure on her shoulder pulled her back down to earth. Looking over, her mother’s familiar hand was resting on Maggie’s shoulder. It was grounding her, as it had so many times before. Her eyes followed the arm back to her mother until Maggie was looking at Esmeralda’s face.
The mischievous look from before was replaced with her mother’s calm, peaceful face. Maggie didn’t have to say anything about how she was feeling because her mother already knew, no matter how well Maggie tried to hide it. Esmeralda took deep breaths, staring right into Maggie’s eyes until Maggie felt her own breath slow down to match her mother’s.
“You can do this,” Esmeralda said to her. She spoke softly, but with conviction. “I believe in you. I know you’ll hate me for this, but think of it as a trial by fire.”
“A trial by fire is not at all comforting,” Maggie said, managing to let out a small giggle.
“There’s my girl,” Esmeralda said, her placid face breaking into a smile. “Now, I’ll take Millie and Ned. I’ve excused everyone else. You just have to deal with Abby, Mariah, and Ann.”
Maggie didn’t dare look at Mariah. Instead, she watched Ned and her mother escort Millie out into the fog. As the door shut behind them, a voice came from behind her.
“Great, so the actual investigator left? Now we have to deal with the nitwit baby investigator.”
Chapter Eight
Maggie took three deep breaths before she dared turn around. Normally, deep breaths would help calm someone down but for Maggie, she needed them to hype herself up. If it was up to her, she would have simply strode out the front door behind her mother, never looking back at the supermodel-like banshee, her wishy-washy vampire friend or the young, brooding vampire employee of the store.
Turning around, she looked first at Abby. She wanted to get her out of there first and hopefully maintain a little bit of dignity with the vampire. Maggie didn’t know Abby well because the vampire was a bit younger than her and they didn’t really run in the same circles, not that Maggie really had any sort of circle to run with besides her mother.
Abby was sitting with her legs crossed on top of her stool as she filed her nails. Her two sharp fangs were just visible against her dark, blood-colored lipstick. She was an intimidating figure to be sure, but when it came down to Abby or Mariah, Maggie wanted to deal with Abby first.
As Maggie walked up, Abby glanced at her without stopping her nail care. She continued to file as she spoke, glancing up once or twice as she did.
“What do you need from me so that I can finally leave this dump?” Abby asked.
“Dump?” Maggie asked. “Don’t you like working here? I mean, not to speak ill of the dead, but I know you didn’t get along with Linda. I thought you’d have a more positive view of the store now that you are the sole employee.”
Abby rolled her eyes and set her file down on the table. She uncrossed her legs, crossing them the other way now. She leaned over the table toward Maggie, dropping her voice to speak conspiratorially with Maggie.
“I work at this store because I needed a job and they happened to be hiring,” Abby said. “I hate cauldrons and I never use them. I’m just here to make enough money to live. To think, I was actually excited about this stupid class. I thought maybe my working here would have some good come from it for once.”
“I figured you were here because you had to be,” Maggie said. “You didn’t seem to be particularly thrilled to be here even if the class had been your idea.”
Abby didn’t seem to be the sort for magic and she had scowled through the entire class, so Maggie had assumed her job required her to stay and help out by taking the class. But Maggie’s comment made Abby smirk a bit.
“You’re right, I’m never thrilled to be at the store,” Abby said. “But my life hasn’t been going great lately and I was wanting to ask for a raise. I figured I could make this good luck potion and maybe that would give me a leg up when I asked the hag for more money. Besides, it seemed like a little extra fun.”
Maggie nodded. Abby might not be the most pleasant person, but her story seemed to make sense. She seemed to be a textbook case of not judging a book by it’s cover although no matter what, she did seem to be a bit unfriendly.
“Have you asked Linda for a raise before?” Maggie asked.
She wasn’t exactly sure why she had asked that question because it had just popped into her head out of thin air. But the moment it left her mouth, Abby’s head snapped up to look at her. There was a touch of fire in her thickly-rimmed black eyes. Obviously, she had struck a nerve.
“Maybe I have,” Abby said. “What’s it to you? We already know that Ned was the one who did it. What does it matter if Linda wouldn’t give me a raise? She needed every penny she could spare to pay the rent. We couldn’t move the merchandise she chose for nothing. Pink cauldrons? Lilac-scented ones? Nobody wanted that crap. She could barely afford my meager paycheck as it was. When I asked for a raise, I figured she would say no and she did. That was why I needed that good luck potion. Although now I’m just going to pour it down the drain along with all of the other potions everyone left behind.”
Maggie looked around the room. Besides Lance, who had carefully bottled up his good luck potion to bring home while he thought about whether he was going to drink it, everyone else had left their potion behind. Every table was full of bottles of shimmery yellow potion that had all been hastily abandoned.
“I’m sorry to hear that you don’t enjoy your job,” Maggie said. “I think everyone should enjoy what they do for a living.”
While that may be a thought she shared with people, Maggie did not find that it particularly applied to her life. In fact, she had never hit on one thing that she thought she could spend her life enjoying. Now Maggie had kind of been shoehorned into being some sort of protection agent witch and it didn’t matter whether or not she enjoyed it because someone had to protect Grimwood Valley and that someone had to be her. It did seem odd that this small town in Minnesota was so worthy of protection that an entire witch family and lineage had been dedicated to it, but Maggie had many questions about her ancestry and magic to ask her mother. There was never a right time.
“Sure, in a perfect world maybe everyone enjoys what they do for work,” Abby said with a snort. “But we live in the real world. Sometimes it is all about making enough to pay the bills. That’s what my grandparents did. That’s what my parents did. Now that’s what I do.”
Maggie had to smirk a little when Abby mentioned the real world because looking around, this magical store was nothing like what she considered the real world. She wished she could remember one of the fogs that she hadn’t been aware of. It would probably seem like a fever dream now.
“I’m sorry, we seem to have gone off on a long tangent,” Maggie said. “I hope I didn’t offend you with my idealistic thoughts about the world. Unless you have anything else to add, I think we can be done for the night.”
“I don’t have a thing to add,” Abby said.
She stood up off of her chair and hustled back into the storage room, appearing almost immediately with a long black cloak that she slung over her shoulders and a black satchel that she put over her head and across her chest. Abby walked to the front door and started to push the door open. She hesitated and turned back toward Maggie.
“I guess I do have one more thing to say. I didn’t hate her. I mean, Linda and I weren’t friends or even acquaintances. But I wouldn’t say I hated her.”
“I can’t believe you made us wait through that silly little show.”
Maggie turned around to look at Mariah and Ann. She couldn’t believe that Mariah hadn’t made a scene before that moment. She assumed that the banshee was just as interested in what Abby had to say as she was. Maggie took one more deep inhale before she walked back to the table where she had made her own potion. Pulling over a stool, she took a seat.
“Do either of you have anything to add to the investigation?” Maggie asked.
“I have nothing to add, but I would like to lodge a formal complaint,” Mariah said. “Who is your manager or boss or whatever? There is no reason I should be treated like this. I have nothing to add to this silly thing and I should have been the first one released because of that.”
Maggie wasn’t sure she had a manager besides her own mother and even if she did, she couldn't have told Mariah about them. She realized she should have been a bit more specific with her question. Open-ended things let Mariah prattle on about whatever she wanted, usually talking about herself.
“Let me rephrase that,” Maggie said, ignoring everything Mariah had just said. “Did either of you see Ned do anything suspicious?”
“Duh, like he made part of her potion for her,” Mariah said.
“Well, that’s not actually suspicious,” Ann said quietly. She shrank back when Mariah shot a glare her direction, but still managed to clarify for Maggie. “I mean, we didn’t see him do anything suspicious when he was making her potion. I think Mariah just meant to really underscore the fact that he definitely made part of Linda’s potion.”
“We already knew that,” Maggie said. She couldn’t help but sound annoyed and a tad bit scolding. Maggie just wished that she could bring herself to scold Mariah instead. “I was looking for some information that might not have been shared yet. In fact, let me expand that question to ask if you saw anyone in contact with Linda being suspicious.”
Mariah folded her arms across her chest and scowled. Ann started to shake her head no, but one look from Mariah and she stopped.
“What about that gothy vampire girl?” Mariah said. She wrinkled her nose up in disgust. “She looks like a murderer if I ever saw one.”
Maggie was about to jump to Abby’s defense when Ann got there first. Ann seemed like someone who had a pretty even-temper most of the time because she was forced to balance out Mariah. But right now, she was as upset as Maggie had ever seen her. She slapped the table hard with one hand and then pointed directly in Mariah’s face.
“Shame on you Mariah,” Ann said. “Just because she dresses differently doesn’t mean she is a killer. I might stand by while you do a lot of crummy things, but that crosses the line. You can’t accuse anybody you want just because you feel like it. Abby is a perfectly nice girl and you could stand to learn a lot from her.”
Ann slid down off of her stool, grabbing her bag and jacket before she walked by. She left so fast that her stool tipped side to side precariously before finally coming to rest upright on all four legs. Once she got to the front door, she turned back to face them.
“I’m sorry Maggie, I didn’t ask if I could leave,” Ann said. “But I can’t stay any longer. You know where to find me if you have anything else to ask me.”
“Good night Ann,” Maggie said.
It was all she managed to squeak out. As far back as she could remember, Ann had never said anything like that to Mariah. Every once in a while, the sweet vampire would start to contradict Mariah, but a sharp look would snap her back into line. Maggie wasn’t sure what had gotten into Ann, but as she watched the vampire’s back disappear into the fog, she kind of hoped it didn’t leave.
“I don’t know where she thinks she’s going. I mean, she lives with me, but she won’t be able to sleep there after that display.”
Maggie turned to look at Mariah, whose perfect nose was wrinkled up in disgust. She was about to open her mouth and ask why in the world Mariah would treat her best friend in such an awful manner when the door to the cauldron store seemed to blow open.
It was strange because Maggie hadn’t remembered it being a windy night but looking over, she couldn’t see that anyone had come in. She could feel her eyebrows furrow in confusion, but when she looked at Mariah, the other woman seemed like she hadn’t even noticed what had just happened. Mariah was still sulking about Ann’s abrupt departure.
Maggie slid off of her stool and walked toward the front door. Someone had to close it and Mariah was for sure not going to do it. Just as she put her hand out to push the door shut, it slammed shut by itself. Maggie’s eyes popped open in surprise and she scurried back to her stool, trying to not look terrified. Something was going on and she didn’t like it.
“Daddy, you can come out now,” Mariah said, rolling her eyes. “You don’t have to make such a dramatic entrance.”
Lou Brank materialized in front of the girls, an intimidating figure in his suit. His outfit seemed out of sync with the more medieval feel that the paranormal fog usually cast upon everything. It did, however, fit his foreboding personality quite well.
“I’m sorry honey,” he said, throwing his daughter a sly smirk before looking stony-faced at Maggie. “I heard my darling daughter was being held captive simply because she was an innocent bystander while some crone got poisoned.”
Maggie started to open her mouth, trying to find the words to explain. Instead, she only managed to stammer out a few nonsense syllables before she clenched her mouth shut again. Lou’s smirk grew bigger and so did the butterflies in Maggie’s stomach. She thought dealing with Mariah would be bad, but dealing with Lou was even worse.
Chapter Nine
“Wait a minute, how did you know that someone had been poisoned?” Maggie asked.
She knew that news traveled fast in a small town, but this was exceptionally fast considering how late it was and the fact that the paranormal fog seemed to make everything wonky.
“A little bird told me,” Lou said, enunciating every word so that Maggie felt exceptionally stupid. He had a way of making everyone feel dumb. “No matter. I am here to get my daughter and make sure you and your mother don’t try to pin this on her.”
Maggie tried to swallow her fear, but there was a lump in her throat that just wouldn’t budge. Lou and Mariah were standing side by side staring at her, a formidable duo that scared the living daylights out of Maggie. First, she wished her mother would come back. Then she wished that as a full-grown adult, she wouldn’t need to wish for her mom. But if Esmeralda were here, she would know how to deal with Lou. Every time they came up against him in both the normal and paranormal world, Esmeralda seemed to be the only person who could match him.
“It was just that hag that runs the place,” Mariah said. “You didn’t even like her, Daddy. Now you don’t have to deal with her and her stupid business decisions any more.”
Lou’s dark eyes flared with a spark that almost looked like a real fire. He grabbed Mariah’s arm and spun her until she was directly facing him. Mariah cowered a bit, shrinking down and away from her father.
“Hush Mariah,” he said. “We never outwardly wish ill on anyone, even if their death does help us financially.”
The wheels in Maggie’s head were turning, although the nerves of dealing with both Mariah and Lou made them feel a little rusty. But as they were cranking around in there, a thought popped up. It was a bit of a stretch, but it might just be the start of an investigative trail.
“That’s right, having Linda gone means you can do more with the store,” Maggie said. “Her being dead is actually a good thing for you.”
Lou turned to face Maggie. Being a ghost meant that his skin always had a
gray sort of pallor in the paranormal world, but it turned even more gray as he became stonily serious. Maggie immediately regretted having said anything to Lou at all.
“Are you actually accusing me of killing that woman?”
Pointing toward where Linda’s body was lying under a sheet, Lou started to float toward Maggie. Even though he had ghostly legs, he wasn’t using them as he moved toward Maggie and that made him seem even more menacing. She took a deep inhale through her nose and kept telling herself in her head that she had the upper hand in the situation because she was a witch and she was the only one with magic.
“At least your mother has enough sense to wait until she has at least one clue before she points her warty finger at anyone,” Lou said, his mouth turned down in an exaggerated frown. “Too bad you’re her only daughter. This town will be in shambles soon enough.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at Maggie. Lou was used to getting his way through intimidation or, if the rumors were true, any number of other methods. He seemed to almost pulsate with power and Maggie could feel it taking a toll on her. But she took another calming breath and a plan popped into her mind, almost as though her mother had whispered it to her.
“I understand if you don’t want to tell us, but it makes you look pretty guilty,” Maggie said. She tried to talk as slowly as she could so that her voice didn’t quiver. “I’ll have to add you to the suspect list for further examination unless you can provide an alibi.”
For a moment, Maggie wondered if time stopped. Lou stared at her, his dark eyes drilling down into her soul. It seemed almost like he was trying to suck her soul directly out of her body. Maggie had no idea if Lou’s paranormal ghostly self could do anything like that, but she certainly hoped it couldn’t.
“You’re just like your mother,” Lou said. “She never seems to know her place in this town.”
Maggie realized she could put a protection spell over herself. Normally, she made giant pink bubbles that formed around herself but that seemed like a bit too much. She had never tried to make an invisible bubble, but for some reason, she felt like this was the time to try it. Without too much fanfare, she started to pace a bit, hoping they wouldn’t notice what she was actually doing. Waving her hand discreetly by her side, she said the magic word under her breath.
