by Amy Boyles
“I knew it was safe,” he said.
“I’m not sure if I should be happy or angry at you.”
“Darlin’, I’m not going to knowingly put you in danger.”
My words flew from my mouth with bite. “I realize that. This case is beginning to give me the willies.”
His gaze bored into me, making me suck in my breath. “I had the creeps about this case as soon as you mentioned it to me.”
“But Flynn’s not even a Maleficium, or whatever. Your hunch about that was wrong.”
“No, he’s just a by-rote kind of guy strangled under the thumb of his domineering mother. This thing has Oedipus complex written all over it.”
“Hmm. Okay. What about the battery?”
“First thing we get back, I’m going to call James. Have him run the number.” His gaze flickered to the floorboard, where I’d stuffed the broken parts under my feet. “See who bought it. Next, we’re talking to Milly.”
“Why?”
He steered into a left turn. “Because I want to know what secrets Polly Parrot is hiding. Someone broke into Lucinda’s, stole Polly and then booby-trapped the place.”
“Like an amateur.”
“Right. Still doesn’t change the fact that it happened.”
We reached Milly’s a few minutes later. Milly and Grandma Hazel were in the house, hands woven together and elbows resting on a table.
“I’ve got this, you old biddy,” Milly said.
“You couldn’t win an arm wrestling contest against a crocodile,” Grandma said.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. It was the only way to lower my blood pressure. We’d almost been killed and these two were trying to arm wrestle.
What was wrong with this picture? How about everything.
“Are y’all really arm wrestling?” I said.
“Hazel said I don’t have the stuff anymore, so I called her bluff.”
Grandma’s words were strained. Obviously trying to beat Milly wasn’t as easy as she’d thought it was going to be. “And I’m going to prove once and for all that I’m the champion arm wrestler.”
I patted the air. “Okay, first of all, I’m pretty sure you’re not a champion arm wrestler. That title probably belongs to some crazy Russian or something. Not that I have anything against Russians, I just imagine they’re very strong. And Milly, you’ve got the stuff. You’re never going to lose the stuff, so don’t listen to Grandma. Does that settle it?”
Grandma’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “Don’t worry. We’ll finish this later.”
Milly thumbed her nose. “I can wait.”
They relaxed, releasing their hands. I noticed both women massaged their palms when the other wasn’t looking.
Roman grabbed a chair and sat. “Moving on to more important business—Dylan and I met a bad battery bomb today.”
Milly’s eyes flared. “Tell us everything.”
Grandma dashed to the couch, arms flailing above her head. “For goodness’ sake. I haven’t heard of a battery bomb since the Witch Mountain Skirmish of ‘56.”
I frowned. “Skirmish?”
She smoothed her scarf. “For your information, that skirmish is what led to the Great Witch War. Now. What happened with this battery?”
Roman relayed the story. By the time he had finished, Milly and Grandma were looking each other over as if they were having a telepathic conversation.
“I haven’t heard of a battery bomb being detonated in years,” Milly said.
“Me neither,” Roman said. “And this one didn’t detonate.”
Grandma stroked her chin. “You’re sure that was intentional?”
“No, I’m not,” he said. “But it makes the most sense.”
“And you say that this person probably stole Polly Parrot?”
“Yes,” I answered.
Grandma rubbed her hands together as if she was warming up. “What if the person was only teasing you?”
Roman wedged back in the chair. Its braces creaked under his muscled weight. “Teasing us?”
Milly rapped her knuckles on the table. “That’s just like that time when The Weasel was loose.”
I quirked a brow. “The Weasel?”
Grandma cleared her throat. It was story time, and I didn’t know if I wanted to listen or run for cover.
“The Weasel was before your time,” she announced. “This wizard loved playing practical jokes. Everywhere he went, he’d make balloons filled with whipped cream explode in people’s faces, or he’d do things like make people think the sun had disappeared.”
“Sounds like a terrible super villain in a children’s cartoon.”
Milly snapped her fingers. “That’s exactly what he was like, but worse.”
“He did it for the fun of it,” Grandma said. “Just to play jokes. He even went so far as to set up situations that looked deadly but weren’t at all. Why, I remember one time he suspended water in the air and filled it with what looked like man-eating piranhas. The piranhas weren’t real. Neither was the water. It was all an illusion.”
Roman grunted. “I just don’t see it in this case. Polly Parrot was gone.”
“Maybe Flynn set us up,” I said.
“But you wouldn’t have known about Polly if you hadn’t checked. You were wise enough to realize that a battery bomb detonates immediately. Since it didn’t, you knew the explosion wouldn’t have happened. That’s how a prankster would work. They set things up, and then they leave to watch from a safe spot.”
“Hmm,” I said, shooting Roman a skeptical glance. “I don’t know. We can go that route, but there’s something we want to talk to Milly about.”
“What’s that?” she said, slowly twisting her head to face me.
“We need to know what sort of secrets Polly Parrot is keeping.”
Her beady gaze darted to the floor. “Why?”
“So that we know what we’re dealing with. Who we might be up against.”
Milly sat in silence.
“Milly,” Roman growled. “We need to know. It may help.”
Grandma sighed. She waved her hand dismissively. “You might as well tell them. What harm could it do?”
Milly snorted. “What harm could it do? It could do a lot of harm.”
“But how will we know if we don’t know?” I said.
They all stared at me.
“I don’t follow,” Grandma said.
“It was a confusing statement,” Roman added.
I wanted to scream. They all knew what I meant. They were just being difficult for difficult’s sake. “Just tell us!”
“Years ago,” Milly said, sighing, “when I was Queen Witch, I worked with several wizards to create magic that could bend time and space as we know it. See, the world was a much more turbulent place. We assumed an attack was imminent.”
“Why?” I said.
“The country was on the brink of war. We feared witches might end up being dragged in. If the Russians knew about witches, we were afraid they’d use magic in a nonmagical war. We didn’t know. Our intelligence was spotty. So we worked to create a spell that would increase our chances of success—if it ever came down to it.”
I twisted my fingers. I’d had no idea Milly had worked on top-secret projects. That was so cool! It almost made up for her overall nasty demeanor.
Almost.
“We worked tirelessly,” she said. “Day and night. Night and day until the breakthrough we’d been waiting for landed on our doorstep. It was a challenge, to say the least. The spell almost killed me.”
“Is that why you have the cane?” I said.
“No. I had a hip replacement years ago. Thing never worked right since then.”
“Oh. My bad.”
“Anyway, what we discovered was a spell that would allow the witch who wielded it to create a carbon copy of herself. Essentially you could be in two places at once.”
“Weird,” I said.
“Just think of it. We could’ve doubled o
ur numbers. Sent one army of witches to one location and another somewhere else. It was a game changer, as you children say. It was exactly what we needed if war ever landed on our shores.”
“And Polly was there?” I said.
“Through the whole thing,” she said. “He recorded the sessions so we could go back and watch. In case we forgot something. So yes, he watched everything. From the beginning he knew the secret. The spell. All of it.”
Roman shifted in the chair. “What makes you think that’s what someone’s after?”
Milly and Grandma exchanged another look. Grandma cleared her throat. “See, this is where things get a little bit wonky.”
“Aren’t they already?” I blurted out.
“Not like this. We’ve heard things. Someone started a rumor on one of those witch chat forum thingies about the spell.”
“How do you know? You don’t even get on those,” I said.
“We have our ways of knowing,” Milly said. “When you keep important secrets, there is information you’re privy to.”
Grandma rolled up her sleeves. “Yes. Anyway, a rumor had started that the spell had been perfected. See, this is sort of the witch equivalent of aliens landing in Roswell. For years young witches have rumored that the spell had been worked out, but no one really knew. Then someone went on one of those chat rooms and stirred the pot again, started spewing about dinosaurs and doppelgangers.”
“Dinosaurs?” I said.
Grandma shook her head. “You know, that they’re really hiding somewhere and aren’t extinct.”
I frowned. “That’s not a conspiracy theory.”
“Oh, it’s not?” she said, sounding surprised. “I thought dinosaurs were right up there with aliens.”
“No.”
She shrugged. “Well, no matter. The rumors started flying again about the spell. But then, from what we’ve come to understand, someone who claimed the screen name Thundercat said the rumors were true and they were going to prove it.”
I watched Roman. He listened quietly, unmoving, simply soaking in the information, albeit as crazy as it was.
“Who gave you this information?” Roman said.
Grandma shook her head. “We can’t reveal our sources.”
Roman’s eye twitched. “You’re telling me someone may be out there with the ability to create a double and do evil things, but you’re not willing to share the intel?”
“Well,” Grandma mumbled, “when you put it like that, it sounds like a selfish thing not to share.”
“I would agree,” I said. “Milly, you told us Polly had secrets, but you didn’t tell us any more than that. We need to see the witch forum, know what was said.”
Milly tightened her grip on the cane and rose. “We haven’t been to the witch forums. We only know what we were told. We couldn’t get there if we tried. Heck, Hazel would probably end up somewhere else completely if we tried to get her on a chat room.”
I shot Roman a look that said, Why tempt fate?
Grandma sat in her chair, an innocent doe-eyed expression gracing her face. Sometimes I wondered if her whole deal was an act. Did she want us to think she was crazy because secretly she was building a spaceship to take her to Witch World?
Not that Witch World existed, but my grandma was seriously kooky enough to pull off something like that.
“We need access,” Roman said. “We need to get on the forum and read the messages. We might be able to track Thundercat down. Get whoever it is to reveal their plan. Lucinda was murdered. It might’ve been because of this; it might not have been. I don’t know. So who is it? Who’s your contact?”
Grandma glanced at Milly, who nodded. “Our contact,” Milly said, “is none other than Esmerelda Pommelton, Queen Witch of the South.”
I slapped my forehead. Why did I have to ask? Ugh. Esmerelda and I sort of got along. Sort of. When she wasn’t bossing me two ways to Sunday that was.
Roman nodded to my grandmothers. “I need you to send me to Castle Witch. Right now.”
My jaw fell. “Castle Witch? What do you want me to do?”
I really didn’t want to go there. Every time we went to Castle Witch, someone seemed to die—murders happened there. Of course, murders occurred in Silver Springs, too. Well, whatever. I still didn’t want to go.
Roman grabbed my arm. “You’re coming with me.”
SEVENTEEN
Queen Em tapped her toe on the marble floor. “My people haven’t been able to track Thundercat, even though I went into the chat room and called myself Cheetara.”
I busted a gut in laughter. I’d watched old episodes of a 1980s cartoon called Thundercats. In it there was a heroine named Cheetara. If Queen Em was pretending to be a cartoon character, I had to guess the situation was serious.
“Can I have access to the chat room?” Roman said.
Em fluffed her cinnamon curls. “Sure thing. You can have whatever you need. Let me show you the thread.”
She snapped her fingers. A magical screen jumped to life in the middle of the room. It looked like text on glass, but I knew it was more like text on air.
Roman’s gaze scrolled down the messages. “What have your people discovered about Thundercat?”
“Very little,” Em said. “The magic the witch used to get onto the thread is untraceable.”
“Does Thundercat seem to know more about the double spell than simply theory?” Roman said.
“Oh heck yes,” Em said. “That sucker might as well have been in the room at the time. Look here.”
She pointed to one line of text in a sea of the stuff.
“What’s this?” Roman said, inching forward.
“What is it?”
“Thundercat says right here that a previous queen knew about the doubling spell and she still has it.”
I moved closer. “‘She keeps it hidden away in a device. I know what it is.’ Hmm. Sounds more cryptic to me.”
Roman glanced at me. “Not when you consider Polly was taken.” He turned to Em. “Thank you.”
She nodded. “Anytime, y’all. Anytime.” She clapped her hands. “Now. Do y’all want to stay for supper?”
I was practically yanking Roman from the castle. “Not today. Thanks, Em. We’ve got work to do.”
Thanks to a little magic from Em, we left Castle Witch and returned to Silver Springs.
Em dropped us outside our front door. The ride had been rough. I pitched to the side, my rear end aiming to hit the porch. Roman’s arm shot out and curled around me. “Are you okay?”
I pressed my fingers to my ears, hoping that the pressure would right my equilibrium. That helped, along with planting my legs wide to steady me.
“Whew. What a ride. Please remind me not to let Em send us back. That was horrible.”
He chuckled. “I’m sure she’s sent us before.”
I groaned. “I’m sure. But she must’ve been smoking something that time.”
The smile dancing in his eyes faded as he eyed the porch. “What’s that?”
A meal-sized box sat squarely in front of the door. Crap. I’d always managed to be home when Sera left dinner.
“Looks like that package I ordered from Amazon.”
“I don’t see a logo.”
“Oh, didn’t you know?” I said, swatting the air. “They’re doing some sort of new advertising campaign, I heard. They don’t want anyone to know a package is from them. Reduces the risk of it being stolen. You know, Christmas isn’t far away.”
“It’s four months away.”
“Four months. Four weeks. Who’s counting?”
“Probably Amazon.”
“Party pooper. Listen, I’m sure it’s my package. Go on inside. I’ll bring it in.”
Roman hefted it in his arms before I could snatch it. “Nope. I’ve got it. No shipping label.”
“That’s new, too,” I said lamely. “I think it disintegrates when you see it, and I saw it.”
“Dylan,” Roman growled.
&
nbsp; “Just give me my package.”
“Not until you tell me what it is.”
Crap. I really didn’t want him to know I was a horrible cook. I’d had enough blows to my ego lately. The best I could come up with on such short notice was, “It’s a present for you. Sheesh. Can’t I have a package delivered to you without you crawling all over me?”
“I wasn’t crawling all over you.” Pain flared in his green eyes. “After what happened with the battery bomb, I was worried, that’s all. I want us both to be around for a very, very long time.”
Well now I felt like a royal a-hole. He was concerned, worried for my safety, and here I was making up horrible stories.
“Okay, sorry.” I wrapped my arms around his waist. “My stupid mouth got ahead of me. I wasn’t thinking.”
He kissed my crown. “It’s okay. That’s why between the two of us we make one completely thinking person.”
I scowled. “I’m going to try not to be insulted by that comment.”
“I’m putting myself in there too. Sometimes I think too much.”
“Okay, good,” I said cheerfully. “But can I have my package?”
He slipped it into my arms. “Let’s go inside.”
We went in. Luckily Roman retreated to the bedroom to shower and change while I slipped into the kitchen to unwrap dinner. I pulled out the cold packs, which there were plenty of, and stored them in the freezer. I yanked out a pan with a roast and potatoes, slid it in the oven and set the temperature to warm it up.
Twenty minutes later when Roman entered, I had on my floral apron, with a carving knife in one hand and bottle of beer for him in the other.
“Supper done already?”
I smiled widely, tucking my secret way down in the depths. “Well, if I can’t use magic for more than sewing, what good is it for?”
We ate an amazing dinner and relaxed outside on our covered deck overlooking the backyard.
Roman glanced at his watch. “It’s too late to call James now. He’s closed. I’ll call him tomorrow, see if he can track down who purchased the battery we found at Lucinda’s.”
“We need to talk to Vera,” I said. “If anyone wanted to get rid of Lucinda, it was her.”
Roman chewed on that for a moment. “She does have the jealousy-over-Flynn part down. But I don’t think that’s what motivated this crime.”
