“Was it really?” I asked, and Scarlett looked over at me.
“Did you not enjoy yourself? I thought it was a lot of fun.”
I shrugged. “Ok, fine, I guess I have to admit it felt great, and I did enjoy it while I was doing it. I didn’t have the impression I was working out at all, and yet now that it’s over I feel like I ran a marathon.”
“Fair enough. I saw you speaking with Breanna. Good chat?”
“Sure,” I said, nodding. “She told me all about how the coven of Venus is based on love, and it makes sense that someone like my mom, who only loves herself, would have felt out of place here.”
Scarlett threw me a sympathetic look. “I didn’t realize. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “It took a long time before I came to grips with it, thanks to a lot of professional help.”
“I’m glad you got help eventually. For what it’s worth, the rest of the family is really nice, and we’re not a thing like how you’ve described your mother.”
“It sure seems that way,” I said with a smile. “Now, what are we doing next?” I wasn’t used to standing around doing nothing, and now that we’d checked out Mercutio Blane — and he didn’t seem to have a reason to kill Thomas — I wanted to move on to the next suspect.
“We need to check things out at the hospital. It sounds like there was a lot of drama happening there, and I think Yamordir should be one of our top suspects.”
“But how are we going to get in there? It’s not like we’re cops…I mean, Enforcers. We can’t just walk in and ask questions. We need a reason to be there.”
“That’s where the magic comes in,” Scarlett said with a grin. “I’m guessing you don’t want to be the guinea pig, right?”
I thought about her words. “Will whatever is done to me hurt?”
“No,” Scarlett replied. “It’ll feel strange, but it won’t hurt. We just need to pretend to have messed up a spell and make something weird happen so we have a reason to visit the hospital and have one of us admitted. It doesn’t mean someone needs to lose a leg, or anything like that.”
“Well, it would make more sense to do it to me, then,” I replied cautiously. “After all, if I’m in a hospital bed it would give you more freedom to go around looking for information, and you can use magic to get it. Whereas I, on the other hand, still don’t know how to even cast a basic spell.”
“You’re right,” Scarlett replied. “Still, I understand if you don’t want to do it.”
I shook my head. “It’s fine. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared, but if this is what we’ve got to do to find a killer, I’m willing to do it.”
“Wow, you really do want to get out of here and back to New York,” Scarlett laughed.
“I do,” I said. “Not that I don’t like it here. It’s pretty nice, actually. Nicer than I thought it would be. But I have a life there that I worked hard to cultivate, and I can’t let years of hard work go to waste because I happened to be in the wrong coffee shop at the wrong time.”
“I know what you mean,” Scarlett said. “I can’t imagine what it would be like being away from here. All my family and friends are here, and the people I love…I hope you can get back to that.”
“Thanks,” I said with a smile, not mentioning the fact that it was really all about my job. I pushed back the thought that instantly popped into my head, that maybe here I would be able to have a loving relationship with people who genuinely cared for me. That would mean giving up everything I had worked for, and I couldn’t do that. I loved my job. I lived for my job.
And I ignored the nagging of my brain that told me that over the last hour I hadn’t thought about my job once, for the first time in, well, forever.
“So, you’re sure you want to do this? I do promise it won’t hurt.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Will it be embarrassing?”
“Don’t worry, I won’t take any pictures,” Scarlett replied with a grin. Great. That was definitely a yes.
“So what’s the plan?”
“We’re going to stick with something realistic. I was teaching you how to cast a spell, it went awry, and I couldn’t manage to reverse it properly and only made things worse.”
“Ok.” I steeled myself. This was going to be fine. Scarlett said it wouldn’t hurt, after all.
“Ready? We’re only a couple blocks away from the hospital, so we won’t have far to go to get help.”
I nodded, not entirely trusting my voice.
“Do you know what a Charmander is?” Scarlett asked.
“A what?”
“Well, he’s a fire-type Pokémon, with a…you know what, never mind. You’ll understand in a second.”
The uneasy feeling in my stomach grew deeper.
Scarlett pulled out a wand and pointed it at me. “Venus, goddess of love, give Mina a Charmander tail with your powers above.”
I winced, expecting a surge of pain, but instead I only felt a bit of pressure at the very small of my back. There was a tear in my pants; the leggings Scarlett had given me were obviously ruined, and when I turned around to look at what had happened, I gasped.
I had a tail! And if that wasn’t bad enough, the end of the bright orange tail was on fire.
“What did you do?” I asked, my mouth dropping open. “Will this burn the tail and set me on fire?”
“No, no,” Scarlett said, coming over and showing me her phone. It was a picture of a Pokémon, who looked a bit like a cute little dinosaur, with the exact same orange tail with flames on the end that I currently sported. “I gave you a Charmander tail. Isn’t it cute?”
“On the cartoon, sure. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about mine.”
“It looks cute on you, too,” Scarlett told me with a wink. “Now come on, let’s get you to the hospital and hopefully get the lowdown on Yamordir.”
I found myself constantly glancing backward at my new tail as we walked. There was something unsettling about it, and I hoped no one else would see me.
“Don’t worry about it,” Scarlett said, as if she read my mind. “Everyone in town has been through far more embarrassing at some point in their lives.”
“You know, when I woke up this morning, I never thought having a tail would be on the list of things I’d have to deal with today.”
“That’s the cool thing about the magical world: you never know what a new day will bring,” my cousin replied with a grin. “Now come on, it’s just around the corner over here.”
The Fairy Falls Hospital was located in a small redbrick building, two stories high and about the size of my old high school. It was tiny compared to the huge hospitals I was used to in the human world, but then I supposed Fairy Falls was a fairly small town.
We walked through the entrance, where a fairy sat behind a high counter, typing into the computer. As soon as she saw us coming she smiled politely.
“Hello,” she greeted Scarlett and me, her eyes glancing behind me and landing on my new appendage. “Can I assume your visit is related to the tail that’s on fire?”
“Yes,” Scarlett replied, looking a bit abashed. “I’m afraid my cousin’s first magical lesson didn’t go so well.”
“Oh, so it’s true, there is a brand new witch in town,” the fairy said, giving me an appraising look. Then, realizing she wasn’t being professional, she quickly moved her eyes back to her screen. “Is the flame on the tail hurting you at all?”
“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “I can’t feel it.”
“Good. Head down the hall to bed number six, and a Healer will see to you shortly.”
“Thank you,” I replied, and I followed her instructions.
The hallway in question looked a lot like any human-world hospital, with numbers posted above the beds, all separated by curtains. I stopped at bed number six and sat on the mattress, feeling awkward with my tail being in the way.
“Ok,” I said quietly, not wanting anyone on the other side of the closed curtai
n to overhear me. “I think you can leave me here and see what you can find out.”
Scarlett nodded. “Cool. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. Try not to set anything on fire before I get back.”
She pulled out her wand and muttered a few words, and my hands flew to my mouth as Scarlett disappeared. It was magic, I knew that, but it remained incredibly strange.
“Are you…still alive?” I asked in a hushed whisper and heard a soft laugh in reply.
“Of course I am, silly. It’s just an invisibility spell. I’ll be back soon.”
A second later the curtain moved gently by itself and I found myself sitting alone in a strange hospital, waiting for the doctor to come.
CHAPTER 17
I didn’t have to wait long before the doctor arrived. She pulled open the curtain, and I looked over, biting my lip in embarrassment.
Tall, with long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, she was dressed in a somewhat form-fitting but still appropriate black top and pants, with comfortable shoes. A badge on her shirt in the form of a triangle had a capital H in the center of it. She carried herself with the confidence of a woman who knew what she did, and did it well.
“Hello, Mina. I’m your Healer today. My name is Lauren. I understand you’ve had a bit of a mishap with your first magical experience.”
“Yeah,” I replied, pointing to the tail. “This isn’t usually a part of me.”
I had expected Lauren to laugh at the tail, or at least make some sort of comment, but her manner, which made it seem as though this was the most natural thing in the world, helped me to get rid of some of my tail-related embarrassment.
“Well, we can take care of that for you, no problem. There are two options: I can cast a spell that will get rid of it immediately, but there is a small chance that a scar will develop where the tail meets your body. Or I can make a potion that will make the tail shrink until it eventually disappears, and that’s guaranteed not to leave any indication that it ever existed.”
“Door number two sounds good,” I replied. Even if the risk was low I didn’t want there to ever be a scar reminding me of this moment. Besides, the longer we had to spend here at the hospital, the more time Scarlett would have to look around.
“Good choice,” Healer Lauren said, nodding approvingly. “It’s what I would recommend. The potion will require an hour to make, so if you don’t mind I’ll have you stay here while I go ahead and do that, and I’ll be back as soon as it’s ready.”
“Great, thank you,” I replied. “I really appreciate it.”
“Of course,” Healer Lauren said to me kindly. “I’m more than happy to help.”
She left the room, flashing me a reassuring smile as she did so, and I settled into the bed as comfortably as I could given I had a flaming tail attached to me — it wasn’t the most convenient — and waited for the potion to be prepared and for Scarlett to return.
My cousin came back around half an hour later. I was on my phone, answering a quick email, when she suddenly appeared in front of me, as if out of thin air.
I let out a small yelp and dropped my phone; it rattled against the linoleum flooring. Thank goodness for protective cases. “Holy smokes. You’ve got to warn me before you do things like that,” I said as I leaned over the edge of the bed and reached down to grab the phone once more.
“Sorry,” Scarlett replied sheepishly. “I keep forgetting you’re not as used to being around magic as everyone else.”
“That’s ok,” I said with a laugh. “You just startled me, that’s all. Did you find out anything about Yamordir?”
“I have,” Scarlett said in a low voice, coming closer to avoid being overheard. “I need to get into his office. Everything Jess told us at the gym is true. He’s under investigation for his hiring practices. Thomas put in an official complaint with the hospital management a few weeks ago. In fact, it appears Borbordir tried to suppress the report to begin with, being the hospital’s main administrator, but Thomas went to the board himself and told them about it. They ordered Borbordir to look into it all the same.”
“So the two of them could be in cahoots,” I said slowly. After all, Borbordir had been one of the paranormals who walked past Thomas’s table that morning, and could have easily poisoned the coffee.
“Exactly,” Scarlett nodded. “In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if that turned out to be the case. From what I can tell, those two are thick as thieves.”
“They’re elves, though; they wouldn’t have been able to make the potion themselves.”
“No, but with both of them working in a hospital, and Borbordir being an administrator, either one of them could have easily ordered the poison under the table, paying for it from their own pocket. Either from actual pharmaceutical companies, or paying a talented witch or wizard on the black market.”
“Ok, so the two of them had the opportunity. And you think it’s possible Borbordir would have been in on it?”
“Oh, yeah,” Scarlett said, nodding. “When I left here, I went to the offices upstairs. There was a meeting happening between a couple of other elves, and I may have listened in just a little. I had to be careful; elves are notoriously good at sensing other paranormals, even when invisible, but I just cast another spell to be able to hear them from far away. That was how I learned about Borbordir getting in trouble for hiding Thomas’s complaint.”
“Did they say what they thought would happen?” I asked, and Scarlett nodded.
“That’s the other thing: when Thomas died, his complaint died with him. The hospital can’t continue with the investigation unless someone else complains.”
“Wow, so Yamordir at the very least had motive up the wazoo.”
“And Borbordir probably wasn’t too sad about what happened, either. The elves whose conversation I listened in on said the board wanted to consider removing him from his post as well, considering what had happened.”
“Ok, so they’re at the top of our suspect list.”
“I think that’s about right,” Scarlett said, nodding. “I want to go see if I can find anything in Yamordir’s office. How long have you got until the Healer comes back?”
“About twenty-five minutes,” I replied.
“Why don’t you come with me?” Scarlett offered. “I can cast the invisibility spell on you, and we’ll be back in plenty of time.”
“I don’t know,” I said, hesitating. “What happens if someone sees us?”
“That’s what the invisibility spell is for.”
“And if Healer Lauren comes back a little bit early?”
Scarlett shook her head. “No, potions don’t work that way. If she said it’s going to be an hour, that means it’s going to be an hour. You can’t rush a potion, or you risk disaster.”
“Right,” I said. “Ok. In that case, I guess we might as well.”
After all, the goal was to get back to New York as quickly as possible. I wasn’t going to do that by sitting around and doing nothing.
“Sweet,” Scarlett grinned, pulling out her wand. “Ready?”
I nodded and inhaled sharply, holding my breath. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect as Scarlett muttered the spell once more. Then, without any warning, my body suddenly disappeared.
I held my hands out in front of me, as if trying to get a good look at them, but they weren’t there. It was one of the eeriest feelings of my life. I hadn’t felt a thing. My whole body had disappeared, just like that.
“You good?” Scarlett asked, and I nodded, not realizing for a split second that obviously she wouldn’t be able to see that.
“Yeah,” I added hurriedly. “This is weird.”
“You get used to it.”
“Is this something you normally do? Turn invisible to sneak around?”
“More than you might think,” Scarlett said with an easy, quiet laugh. “Now come on. Grab my hand so you don’t get lost, and let’s go.”
I reached over and found my cousin’s hand, holding onto it tig
htly as she pulled me along with her back out into the hallway. My heart thudded in my chest; I was sure any of the paranormals walking past would be able to hear it. I hadn’t been the sort of kid to ever get into any kind of trouble. I’d been the good girl who kept her head down, and who might not have been the smartest, but who worked really hard to get good grades. I had never been one of the girls who went to the park at midnight on a school night to drink alcohol and smoke weed while making out with boys.
That meant I was so far out of my comfort zone I wasn’t even in the same universe.
Scarlett led me up a set of stairs, and while I did my best to climb as quietly as possible, I could still hear my footsteps reverberating against the wall, and I was certain that if anyone happened to come by right about now they’d catch us.
Luckily, we made it up the stairs without being seen, and a moment later Scarlett stood in front of a door labeled Yamordir. She muttered something and the door flashed a cool, green light.
“What did you just do?” I whispered.
“I had to check for a ward. A lot of places in the paranormal world are protected with them, since standard locks don’t work when there are witches and wizards around. So instead, they set up wards to detect anyone coming through, but there isn’t one here, so I guess Yamordir hasn’t gone home for the night yet. We’ll have to be quick.”
“Great,” I muttered as the door opened, and Scarlett and I snuck through. I closed the door quickly behind me and had a look at the office. The afternoon sun streamed in through the window, landing on a glass-and-steel desk. A large computer, one pen in a holder, a single legal pad, and a small succulent plant were the only things on the desk. There were no family photos, not even a post-it note. In the corner near the desk was a leafy green plant. Everything was so perfectly in place, I had a feeling if we moved any of it Yamordir would instantly realize we’d been here.
Behind the desk was a low wooden cabinet with diagonal legs that gave it a trendy modern retro look.
“I’ll take the computer. I can unlock it with magic,” Scarlett said. “Do you want to go through the paper files?”
Love at First Spell: A Witch Cozy Mystery (Fairy Falls Mystery Book 1) Page 10
