A Trick for a Treat

by A. A. Albright

  I inwardly cursed. My train of thought was, once again, derailed by the bird.

  ‘That was going to be Holly’s next release,’ she said. ‘We wrote it together. Did I tell you I co-wrote some of her most successful songs?’

  Dizzy landed on my shoulder and rolled his eyes. ‘Only a hundred times. Tell us something important, please. Like why he had this fishing hut.’

  Molly turned her beak into the air. ‘I don’t know if I want to tell you two anything anymore. You’re just plain rude.’

  My head was beginning to thud. I didn’t need this. Having the familiars of dead witches come and help me solve murders seemed like an amazing talent at first. Now, it was doing nothing but getting in the way. ‘Molly, you need to tell us anything that could lead to discovering Holly’s murderer. Otherwise you’ll never join her in the afterlife.’

  Dizzy snorted (yes, the Lesser-Known Mango Bat can snort). ‘Maybe she doesn’t want to join Holly. Maybe she wants to steal all Holly’s fans and start a career of her own.’

  Molly came screeching through the air, pecking at Dizzy (and seeing as he was sitting on my shoulder, also pecking at me). ‘You take that back, you flying rodent! Take it back right now. I loved Holly.’

  Okay, I had officially had enough. I extended a finger, said, ‘Conáil,’ and watched as the parrot froze mid-air.

  ‘Sorry, Molly, but it had to be done. It’s a very gentle freezing spell. It’ll last less than two minutes. And you can still talk, as long as you’re calm. Now tell me about Jasper and this hut.’

  Molly glared at me. ‘Fine. But just so you know, I do not think you’re a very nice person. Jasper bought this hut very recently. He told Holly that if she wanted a future with him, she would have to join him here every day, gutting the fish he caught and cooking them for his dinner.’

  I waved my hand and set the parrot free. ‘I don’t suppose his sudden fondness for fishing came on after Holly issued him with an ultimatum?’

  The parrot sniffed. ‘So what if it did? Holly told him she wasn’t the sort of girl who played second fiddle. She told him he could marry her, or the relationship was over. So he said yes, he would marry her. As long as she came here every day and gutted fish.’

  ‘Oh.’ Dizzy suppressed a snigger. ‘She wasn’t getting the message, so he hoped this would finally send her running. He was giving her the old dumperoo.’

  ‘What?’ The parrot flapped. ‘No he wasn’t. He loved her. He wanted her to share in his dream.’

  I patted the parrot on the head. ‘Sure he did, Molly. Sure he did.’

  ‘And what happened next, then, huh?’ Dizzy pressed.

  Once again, the parrot’s beak rose into the air. ‘Holly came here with Jasper many times. She gutted many fish, and cooked many fish dinners. And then ... and then Jasper decided that he ... well, he’d gone off fishing and he didn’t want to keep seeing Holly after all.’ The parrot sniffed. ‘He was the first person to ever break up with her. But I’m sure he would have come to his senses once he heard her latest song.’

  I closed the door on the hut. ‘I officially declare this fishing hut a red herring. Come on, let’s keep searching.’ I snapped my fingers, and travelled back to the clifftop. When Dizzy joined me a couple of minutes later, he pulled my hair up and whispered into my ear. ‘I guess we know what it takes to become a chart topping pop star now,’ he said. ‘Total and utter delusion, that’s what.’

  ≈

  At about five in the morning, I finally heeded my mother’s texts and went home for a rest. A dozen or so Wayfairs were clustered in the kitchen, eating pastries and slugging coffee. By the looks on their faces I could tell that their searches had been just as fruitless as mine.

  ‘Finn’s gone back to work,’ my mother told me as she placed a steaming cup of coffee in my hands. ‘We thought he’d be better off there. He can keep an eye on what the Peacemakers are up to.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ I said, walking to the fruit bowl and grabbing a mango to slice for Dizzy. I quickly made up a plate for him, then filled a bowl of seed for the parrot before finally sitting down.

  ‘And Melissa’s in the Wyrd Court too,’ said Christine. ‘On the surface of it, she’s helping the Minister write a public statement. But she’ll try and find out anything she can while she’s there.’ She ruffled my hair. ‘I’m headed back out now. Go and get some sleep. You’ve got an exam tomorrow, remember.’

  ‘Today, actually,’ said my mother, sliding a plate of hot buttered toast my way. ‘So eat that, and then get off to bed.’

  I went to open my mouth to protest.

  Her arm magically extended all the way across the table, and her finger was suddenly covering my lips.

  ‘Not another word,’ she warned. ‘You’re going to eat, and you’re going to go to bed, and you’re not going to go out again until it’s time for your test. We have this covered.’

  I looked around the kitchen, wondering how many of the coven had just seen me put in my place by my mother – judging by the expressions of withheld laughter, every single person.

  I finished my toast in a tired sulk, and went to bed.

  18. Standing on the Precipice

  I was dreaming about eating an enormous apple tart when the screeching began.

  ‘Wanda’s drooling from her mouth

  Her hair’s a mess, her breath’s so foul ...’

  I shot up and glared at the parrot. ‘Did Holly actually like being woken by your singing?’

  I wish I could tell you what a parrot looked like when it was smirking. It’s more in the eye than in the beak. But I was certain: Molly was smirking.

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said smugly. ‘Holly was an early riser. She wasn’t a great big lazy bones like you.’

  I was about to make a scathing comeback when I realised that I could hear voices downstairs. And woofing.

  The parrot’s smirk changed to a grimace. ‘Oh, great. That stupid giant dog is back.’

  I looked around the room. ‘Where’s Dizzy? Has he gone back up to the attic?’ If he had, I couldn’t say I blamed him.

  ‘He went downstairs to fetch you some coffee a moment ago. We both thought you could do with it. Seeing as your final test is in half an hour.’

  I picked up the clock on my bedside table. It was half past three. In the afternoon. In a mad rush, I threw the covers off and scrambled into the clothes I’d been wearing the day before.

  ‘At least brush your teeth! Or put on some deodorant. Anything.’

  I sniffed my armpits. The parrot was right. Much as I wished otherwise, my natural aroma was not rose petals with a hint of jasmine. It was more cheese with a side of onion. I stopped dressing and ran to the bathroom. Three and a half minutes later I was dressed and rushing down the stairs, dragging a brush through my hair.

  The kitchen was filled up with Wayfairs again, but more importantly, it was also filled up with Max and Wolfie. Max and Gabriel were going over a map together, while Wolfie was lapping up a big bowl of water.

  I rushed across the kitchen and enfolded Max into a hug. When I finally pulled away and dragged out the chair next to him, he gave me a sheepish grin. ‘We were getting worried you were never going to wake. Dizzy’s making you a coffee. I was going to bring it up in a minute.’

  My eyes went to the counter, where Dizzy was telling Agatha Oster how much milk to add to my drink. Okay, so making the coffee had been a bit of a stretch. But a bat who could delegate was still pretty great.

  He left Agatha and fluttered to my shoulder, while Wolfie snuggled up against my thighs. As I looked around I realised that, although the kitchen was filled with Wayfairs, my mother, Christine and Melissa were absent.

  Gabriel reached across and grabbed my hand. ‘Your mam said to wish you the best of luck. But Max managed to convince his friend Rover to help us, and your mam and Christine have gone to Dublin to work with him. Melissa’s still at the Wyrd Court.’

  ‘Rover’s helping?’ I smiled. Rover was th
e leader of the unofficial weredog enclave in Madra Lane. I’d met him through Max, and he had an amazing sense of smell.

  ‘Oh, he’s doing more than helping. He’s already found Jasper’s scent,’ Max told me. ‘It’s scattered, and it seems like there might be more than just lavender and peppermint hiding his tracks, but once Rover had a lead, he ran with it.’

  Dizzy laughed. ‘That’s hilarious. Found a lead and ran with it. Hah!’

  Just as Max turned to glare at him, I stood up. ‘As much as I wish I could be there when we finally find Jasper, I have to head off to the school.’

  Max and Gabriel followed me to the door.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Gabriel. ‘For my final travelling test in secondary school, I was sent to the local library. It’s always somewhere like that.’

  I nodded. ‘That’s what I’ve been hearing.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Okay. I think I’ve got this.’ Just as I went to snap my fingers, I paused. ‘Wait. I know what’s been bothering me.’

  Max and Gabriel scrunched their eyebrows. Apart from the fact that Max was taller, they looked almost identical today. Same colour jeans and shirt. Same incredibly messy hair.

  ‘I didn’t know anything was bothering you,’ said Gabriel. ‘You should have said.’

  ‘Oh, for sure,’ said Max. ‘She gets this look like she’s about to sneeze when something is just out of reach. It’s adorable.’

  ‘It’s not adorable,’ I said. ‘And actually, the two of you are making me lose my train of thought again, so thank you very much. Oh. No. I know what it is again. The sweets.’

  They looked none the wiser.

  ‘I want you guys to look into a company called Forever Friends Sweets and Treats. They got the contract to cater for the kids this evening. You know – they’re making the treats for the tricks.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Gabriel. ‘We’ll look into it. Now go and break a leg.’

  ‘I’m not taking part in a play.’

  ‘Still.’ He smiled. ‘You know what I mean.’

  I gave him and Max a big hug, snapped my fingers, and travelled to school.

  ≈

  Despite the fact that I was six minutes early, Mizz Plimpton was pacing the floor and checking her watch when I arrived.

  ‘About time,’ she snarled. ‘Let’s get started. Come here so I can check your pockets.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously.’ She began to pat me down. ‘This will have to go.’ She pulled my mobile phone from my pocket and threw it onto her desk. ‘And this.’ She pulled out a packet of mints. ‘For all I know they could contain a flying potion. And now ...’ Her mouth twitched into an oddly excitable smile. ‘... it’s time to subdue you.’

  My stomach lurched as she pulled out a long, black, barbed pointer. I knew that it was going to happen, but now that it was crunch time, I was terrified.

  ‘Are you quite all right, Miss Wayfair? This is standard practice. The idea is to complete the travel in one attempt. If I don’t restrict you to just enough power, you could snap your fingers as many times as you like. You might well cheat on this test the way you did on all the others. Now stand still. This won’t hurt a bit.’

  Maybe not physically, I thought to myself. But after my experience in the Wizard’s Graveyard, I never wanted to lose an ounce of power again. But what could I do? This was standard practice. No matter how much personal enjoyment the crazy witch was getting from the process, any other teacher would be doing the same.

  As she whirled the barbed pointer, it somehow grew duller. I felt a lurch again, and the pointer began to buzz. A swarm of tiny, shining, insect-like elementals rushed out of it and flew around me, pricking at my skin, sucking me nearly dry, and then heading back into the pointer.

  ‘Aw. You look so washed out, Wanda,’ she said, her eyes glinting. ‘But I suppose you might as well get used to it. Once you’re a fulltime Wayfair, you won’t just be washed out – you’ll be washed up.’

  She flicked her hair and practically skipped towards the blackboard. In painstakingly slow writing, she chalked out the coordinates for the test:

  Five point one one three one seven goats by eight hundred point nine nine nine fish.

  I rubbed my eyes. ‘Say what now?’ That was not a coordinate I knew. It wasn’t a public building in Riddler’s Cove or even Warren Lane.

  She lifted a straw blonde brow. ‘Problem, Miss Wayfair?’

  ‘I just ... no. Never mind. Why is it on the board? You gave me a piece of paper the other times. And ... will someone be waiting when I get there?’

  ‘Are you seriously asking me to explain myself to you? I am the examiner. You are the examinee. I have told you a dozen times that I believe the other teachers have gone easy on you. So I will give you no clues. If you cannot memorize a hitherto unknown destination and travel there, then what good are you as a Wayfair? What good are you as anything?’

  ‘Fine,’ I grumbled, focusing on the coordinates. I repeated them to myself, over and over, as I accessed the inner map. As my mind settled on a bright light and began to race towards it, I snapped my fingers and followed.

  ≈

  ‘Oh, dear blessed Lord of mangoes,’ I said, as I arrived at my destination. I knew where I was immediately, and it was not good. I was standing on the Precipice of Doom.

  As I teetered back from the edge, I spied the house a short distance away from it and smacked my head. I was finally experiencing the Eureka moment I had been waiting for since the murders began. I suppose I could have run naked through the town like Archimedes did when he had his own moment of discovery, but no one wanted to see that, so a smack on the head would have to suffice.

  I knew exactly why Lassie had been set up, and I needed to tell my coven. Now. I patted my pocket, remembered that Mizz Plimpton had removed my phone, and let out a flurry of expletives. So, I had no phone, no broom, and no power. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, the ground beneath me began to crumble.

  Well, of course it had. This was the Precipice of Doom – an area so unstable that even the softest step upon the ground had been known to send people hurtling towards the rocks below. I began to run. I would even go so far as to say I ran fast enough to win an Olympic sprint. But the cliff was falling away far faster than I could escape. Within seconds I was freefalling, scrabbling at the air and wishing that the rocks below didn’t look quite so jagged.

  I thought of all of the Tall Tales I had studied. Other witches, when they had nowhere else to turn, had prayed to the Wayfarer. Seeing as this probably wasn’t the best time to assert my individuality, I took a deep breath, and followed suit.

  ‘Original Wanda, if you’re there, please help me. If you don’t …’ I sucked back some tears. ‘If you don’t, I think that a lot of innocent people are going to die.’

  When she appeared beside me, flying on a broom with her hair streaming behind her, I actually did a double take. I would never fail to be amazed at the resemblance between the two of us. But although her hair was exactly the same shade of brown as mine, and our features were identical, she outdid me in the costume department. Her sword glinted in the afternoon sun, and she wore kick-ass armour and lace-up boots that I coveted very much.

  ‘Hi Wanda,’ she said with a smile. ‘Looks like you need a little help.’

  I was getting dangerously close to dead. ‘Forgive me for saying duh. Maybe you could fit me on the back of that broom of yours? It certainly looks roomy enough for two.’

  ‘No can do.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s not actually in this dimension, so ... The only thing I can do for you right now is give you a soft landing.’

  She pointed her sword at the sea below. The tide began to surge towards the rocks. Mountains and mountains of seaweed heaped upon them, and the sea washed out again.

  ‘Yay. Seaweed. That’s much better than a nice big comfy mattress.’

  She laughed. ‘You’ll survive. And remember what I told you before – magic is
n’t the only way to get things done.’

  With those not-at-all-irritating last words, my namesake disappeared.

  Less than a second later, I landed with a thud onto a pile of stinking seaweed.

  19. Twists and Turns

  Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to enjoy my makeshift bed. Whatever the original Wanda had done with the tide was coming to an end. Water was rushing back in, and I scrambled to my knees and looked for the best way out. Just as I spied the steps to Jasper Jaunt’s house at the other side of the cove, a large wave crashed against them.

  Even if I was a strong swimmer – and I most definitely was not – I didn’t trust myself to win the battle against a tide that strong.

  I looked at the cliffs behind me. There was a narrow crevice a few feet above the ground. It looked like it might lead to a cave. Even if the space inside was miniscule, it was situated high up the cliff. At least I might survive the crashing waves until I thought of a plan. The rock below it was rough enough for me to use as a ladder up, so I made my way in that direction, struggling not to fall off the slippery, seaweed sodden rocks. When I put my first hand onto the wall, it slid right off.

  I tried again, and again. Finally, I got a precarious hold. As I heaved myself up towards the gap, the tide rushed at the rocks below. I crawled inside, fell to the ground, and caught my breath.

  ‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ I panted. ‘But what the stars do I do now?’

  ‘Ahem. Maybe you could use your magic to set us free?’

  I jumped up and looked all around. In a far corner of the cave, two figures were slumped together, entwined with a thick golden rope.

  ‘Lassie! Emily!’

  They both raised their hands as much as they could. ‘Hey Wanda. Fancy meeting you here,’ Lassie quipped.

  Emily didn’t seem to have even that much in her. She hung her head, looking about as miserable as I felt.

  ‘Well?’ prompted Lassie. ‘You came to save us, right? So ... why aren’t you saving us?’