by Tess Lake
I hastily said goodbye and left. I didn’t want the poor guy to freak out more over the magical slip power that was currently afflicting me. When I walked outside, although I knew intellectually it was blisteringly hot, it felt like a pleasant day, so it wasn’t all bad.
I checked the time and saw that I still had a few hours before I had to return to Red. Now I had a clue to follow up on–TJ McKenna and Jenna Cheng researching the mysterious symbols. With a renewed fire in my belly I headed back into town to find a copy of the Writerpalooza itinerary so I could track the two of them down.
Chapter Thirteen
Damn, he was good.
By the time I found TJ and Jenna, Sheriff Hardy was already there interviewing them. They were doing back-to-back sessions with a small fifteen-minute break in between them. I waited around the corner, trying to look like I was in line for the next session to start. I kept peeking around at TJ and Jenna talking to Sheriff Hardy. Eventually the Sheriff nodded at them and left. The moment he was gone I went walking over.
“So the Sheriff’s questioned you as well?” I said by way of greeting.
“Hey, Harlow,” TJ said and put his hand up for a high-five. Without thinking, I slapped his palm. He immediately pulled his hand away.
“Why are your hands so cold?” he said.
“Amazing air-conditioning in the car,” I said.
“You’d better be careful with that, you’ll get frostbite,” TJ said, shaking his head.
“What did you mean by we got questioned too?” Jenna said, looking at me with a slightly suspicious expression.
Okay, time for another lie.
“Ollie the librarian is my cousin’s boyfriend. I work with him casually at the library sometimes. I was over there talking with him when the Sheriff arrived to question him about all those weird symbols that have appeared all over the town. I happened to be there when he mentioned that you two had been at the library asking about it as well,” I said.
“Oh right, well I guess a giant like this guy would be pretty obvious to spot wouldn’t he,” Jenna said, looking at TJ.
“You think he tracked us down because of me? You’re the suspicious one,” he said back and poked her in the side. Jenna laughed and swatted his hand away.
I got the sudden feeling this was a little more than innocent flirting.
“What did the Sheriff say anyway?” I said, trying not to sound too concerned about it.
“Not much. I think he was trying to find out if we were running our own investigation. He didn’t seriously believe that we had anything to do with the symbols around town,” TJ said.
“If you were running your own investigation who do you think was behind the symbols?”
“My guess is it’s the Mysterious Mysteries. Red told us they’ve already been in trouble for vandalism and now they’re here, and all these symbols appear in a single night? I bet they’re doing it to promote their show,” Jenna said.
“I still think it has something to do with that guy who was attacked, Carl what’s-his-name. I think Markus Hornby is somehow involved… or maybe there’s just a lot of weird things that go on in this town,” TJ said.
I suddenly saw an opportunity to put the writers on to a false trail.
“I think you’re right, Jenna. I bet you that it’s the Mysterious Mysteries. Last night, one of my cousins saw them skulking around down a side street. We didn’t see if they were doing any of the graffiti but I bet you they were involved. Someone should find out where they’re staying. I bet ten bucks that they’d find spray paint there. Or maybe even some kind of monster costume,” I said.
For a moment I thought I’d overdone it, trying too hard to lead them in a false direction but then both the authors nodded and Jenna grinned at TJ.
“Yeah, let’s find where they’re staying and sneak in,” she said.
Before they could say anything else, one of the Writerpalooza organizers came out and told them their next session was due to begin. I said goodbye to TJ and Jenna and rushed out of there, feeling quite pleased with myself. If I could keep the writers away from investigating mysterious supernatural things, then perhaps they’d be safe.
I still had a little time before I had to return to Red so I had to solve the problem of everything I touched being frozen. I’d have to talk to Aunt Cass for a more permanent solution but in the meantime I’d have to buy a pair of driving gloves and find an excuse to wear them.
I dodged my way through all the hot and sweaty tourists until I found a small clothing store that I knew sold leather driving gloves. Wincing a little at the price, I paid for them and then slipped them on before walking out of the store.
The rest of the day was a blur again of helping Red. She didn’t ask about the gloves until much later. I told her I had an allergic reaction to something and needed to keep my hands covered for the next couple of days. She seemed to accept this lie without question. I got a message from Kira saying she was skipping the ride home with us; she’d find her own way back.
It wasn’t long after that that Red was driving me back up the hill to the mansion.
Now it was time to put her off the trail as well.
“I talked with TJ and Jenna today. They think Rufus and Dawn are behind all the symbols around the town,” I said.
“Oh, they already told me. Jenna is putting together a plan to find out where they’re staying so we can break in.”
I had a sudden moment of doubt. Yes, I wanted to put them off the trail but what if they broke in and then something bad happened?
“Maybe they should find where they’re staying and then tell the Sheriff?” I said.
“It’s strange you say that… because they pretty much said it was your idea,” Red said, looking sideways at me.
Uh-oh. I’d been successfully telling lies all day but it looked like I might have accidentally tripped myself up. Never mind, I always had another fresh lie ready to go.
“Yes… I kinda did. But then I thought about it a bit more. If these people have been spray painting around town and with all that stuff you told me about them setting up a trap, maybe they did attack that guy that we found. I wouldn’t want anyone to get injured,” I said.
“No, me neither,” Red agreed. We arrived at the mansion and Red said goodbye, telling me she’d see me in the morning.
I walked inside to find Aunt Cass sitting on the sofa stroking Adams behind the ears like she was a villain in a movie.
“Word on the street is you’ve slipped,” Aunt Cass said, without preamble. I immediately glanced at Adams but he was purring with his eyes closed.
“Did some little snitch tell you that?” I said.
“It doesn’t matter where I heard it. Is it true? What’s happening?”
Rather than tell her, I took off the leather gloves, stepped forward and picked up a coffee cup that was sitting on the table. Within a few moments it was covered in a thick coat of frost.
“I have a family dinner with Jack’s parents coming up. Do you have any ideas?” I asked.
“I’ll think of something, don’t worry. I’ll get you to that dinner,” Aunt Cass said.
I told her about the writers and attempting to put them off the trail but as I did Aunt Cass started shaking her head.
“No, no, don’t try to put them off the trail. We want them on the trail as much as possible. We need as many people as possible on that trail,” she said.
I went to the refrigerator and opened it, searching for something to eat and found I had to remove the food quickly, lest it freeze over in my hands. Was it my imagination or was the frost faster now?
“But it’s not safe for nonmagical people to be investigating this kind of thing,” I said.
“I think there’s something bigger going on and the more people look into it, the better,” Aunt Cass said with finality.
“This is gonna be impossible,” I complained. I was trying to cut cheese and the knife had frosted over.
“It’ll be okay, I’ll he
lp you, and by the way, we’re going out tomorrow night,” Aunt Cass said. She was out the door before I could protest.
It was looking like tomorrow was going to be a big day. Red had a jam-packed schedule and then at night we were going to go to the Hannibal Blood session. Red believed he’d checked Carl Stern out of the hospital, although we didn’t know why. Then I was going with my family to stay out till all hours walking the town looking for a monster.
“Can I have some cheese?” Adams said from somewhere near my feet.
I looked down at the block of cheese that had the beginnings of frost creeping up over the packaging.
“Sure,” I said and sighed. I gave him some food, put my gloves back on and ate a quick dinner. Then I had a shower, which was an exercise in ridiculousness given I couldn’t wear the gloves. The water kept freezing on my hands and then falling to the ground. It wasn’t long before I was ankle deep in a kind of slushy snow.
By the time I got out of there and dried myself off I was feeling very unhappy indeed. My unhappiness only grew deeper after I checked my phone and found a message from Jack telling me he would be out entertaining his parents and he hoped to see me sometime soon.
They were lovely people and so were the writers, and I was thankful to have a job, but I also couldn’t wait until everyone went home and I could be with Jack again.
Chapter Fourteen
“Hello, earth to Harlow?” Molly said.
“Gah?” I mumbled, waking up to find myself sitting in Molly’s car heading down the hill into Harlot Bay.
“I said, what happened with Hannibal Blood?” Molly repeated.
“Oh, yeah,” I said and yawned, rubbing my eyes. I was stuffed in the backseat, along with Luce and Kira. Aunt Cass was in the front. It was just past eleven at night and I was having trouble staying awake.
“What’s that word for when something doesn’t go well? Is it a debacle?” I asked.
“Fiasco? Luce said.
“No, it’s a screw-up,” Aunt Cass said.
“Disaster, that’s the word you’re looking for, a disaster,” Kira said.
“It could be a blunder,” Molly said.
“Okay, yeah, it was all of those: a debacle, fiasco, screw-up, disaster, blunder.”
After working with Red we went to Hannibal Blood’s reading…
The day had been a crazy blur. Red had packed in so many sessions there was barely enough time to breathe between them. I honestly don’t know where she got the energy because I was feeling exhausted trying to keep up and all I was doing was assisting. We worked the whole day and then the final session had run late. By the time we’d finally gotten away we were so late we were almost going to miss the end of Hannibal Blood’s one and only author appearance.
We’d rushed over there–well ‘rushed’ is a relative term, given that the traffic was still quite clogged–and arrived as Hannibal’s horror audience was getting out. We managed to duck and dodge our way through the horde of people dressed mostly in all black and found our way around to a side exit.
It wasn’t long before we found Hannibal Blood but the moment he saw us he headed off in the other direction. Red called out to him and then he’d bolted. We’d given chase, but by the time we’d gotten outside he was gone. We’d then spent the next half hour stuck in traffic trying to drive around the central part of Harlot Bay hoping to spot him again, but there was no use. He’d vanished. Red had finally driven me home, a long silent car trip which wasn’t a surprise given how tired we both were.
I’d come inside, eaten some food (take-out from the fridge that didn’t require any delicate preparation), fed Adams, had a five-second icy shower, and then crashed into bed.
“And then you guys woke me up and now I’m here and I need some more sleep,” I finished.
“That sounds super suspicious that he ran away. Maybe he’s behind the attack,” Luce said.
As tired as I was, I knew I had to head her off at the pass. She had a way of jumping off the deep end.
“Or maybe he saw two crazy people following him and bolted for it,” I said and yawned again.
“Is this him?” Kira asked, showing me a picture on her phone.
“That’s the one and man, can he run fast,” I said.
Looking at the photo on Kira’s phone there was something familiar about him again, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Or who knows, maybe I was imagining it given how tired I was.
“Or maybe Hannibal Blood’s a shapeshifter! He’s the monster and also the author writing about monsters and that guy, Carl, was working for him thinking it was some standard publicity stunt and then his boss turned on him and ripped him to shreds!” Luce said dramatically, waving her hands around in the tiny back seat of the car.
I ignored her.
“So now I don’t know what we’re going to do,” I said.
“What we’re going to do is get to that alleyway and see what we can find. Do some real investigating,” Aunt Cass said.
“Or what we could do is stay in our beds and have a sleep and go to work because we all have jobs and not worry about authors and monsters,” Molly said with a liberal dose of snark. She was clearly not happy about being dragged along on this little escapade.
Aunt Cass pretended that she hadn’t heard her. “How is your business going anyway? Did that guitarist work out?” she asked.
Guitarist? How much had I missed when I was asleep?
“His name is Blake and he is amazing,” Luce said, her voice turning dreamy.
“What’s happening? Who’s Blake?” I said thoroughly confused. I lowered my window to let some air blow in. It was still quite warm but it helped to wake me up.
“I haven’t seen him yet but C-Money found a guitarist named Blake and now he’s going to be working at the Cozy Cat Café and Traveler. He’s a tourist though, so maybe it’ll just be for a few months,” Kira said.
“Blake? Even his name sounds scruffy and blue-eyed,” I commented.
Molly looked at me in the rear-view mirror.
“No, seriously, you should see him. He’s exactly like that. It’s ridiculous,” she said.
“I’m looking forward to meeting the boy,” Kira said.
“Oh, and what about your boyfriend Fox?” Luce said and poked Kira in the ribs.
“I can look, I don’t have to touch,” Kira quipped with a devilish smile.
The remainder of the trip into town was taken up discussing Blake and his degree of scruffiness and blue eyes. We still hit some traffic although it was nowhere near as bad as it was during the day. This deep into Writerpalooza, it seemed that many of the tourists who had been out wandering the streets at night had been eventually worn down by the heat and so it seemed slightly quieter in the center of town. We parked near the alleyway and then trooped down it. Making sure no one was watching us, Aunt Cass cast a small ball of light to illuminate the deep scratches that ran up the wall. I was now much more awake and as far as I could tell the magic around us felt quite normal. There was no sign of any kind of magical entity, be it a shapeshifting man or not.
“I think these scratch marks are real. Look at the angle on them here,” Aunt Cass said, sounding like she was narrating one of the Mysterious Mysteries documentaries.
“That’s all well and good but what exactly is the plan?” Molly said, still not letting go of the snark.
She had a point. Here we all were standing in the alleyway. There were scratches but what next? Start walking around?
Aunt Cass turned to Kira “You’re up K-Fresh,” she said and then gave the teenager a high five.
Kira winked at us and then took a deep breath before casting a spell. What kind of spell it was I don’t know. I’d never seen it or felt it before. Not only that but wow, Kira was quiet. When spells are cast, you can normally feel them, sense how they affect the magic. There was a slight tug in the magic surrounding us, but it was almost a whisper. I had no idea that Kira had gotten so good so fast. She was a slip witch, like Aunt Ca
ss and me, and the thing with slip witches is that we can go from incredibly weak to incredibly powerful in random pattern. Perhaps today Kira was incredibly powerful?
Kira let out a breath and then clapped her hands together at the end of the spell. There was a moment of silence as we waited and then tiny pinpricks of pink light began to sparkle up the wall, like a glittery trail of fireflies. They soon brightened, forming a cloudy pink string that went up the wall and over the rooftops.
“I give you a path,” Kira said and then bowed to us all.
“Wow, that’s incredible,” Luce said.
“How did you learn to do that?” Molly asked.
“Sort of figured it out myself plus I’ve been training with C-Money a bit,” Kira said. She and Aunt Cass high-fived again and I have to admit I felt a tiny surge of jealousy. Yes, the moms and Aunt Cass had always had a policy of they would teach us if we’d ask, and of course we hadn’t asked very much and so they hadn’t taught us. But from my recollection, Aunt Cass had never been like this with us.
I had that sudden feeling of what it’s like when parents become grandparents. They might not be very good parents but they become amazing grandparents, allowing the kids to have candy before bed and getting involved in all kinds of reckless things.
I pushed the jealousy away. I should be happy for Aunt Cass and also Kira. They got on well together, almost making some kind of crazy superhero witch team.
A sudden image of them both wearing spandex and masks entered my mind and I giggled to myself, earning a strange look from everyone around me.
“No time to wait, let’s follow it,” Aunt Cass said. Without waiting for response, she found the nearest fire escape ladder and clambered up it as though she were a monkey in the forest rather than an old lady in her eighties. Kira followed and then me. At ground level I heard Molly complaining again to Luce about how they were always getting involved in dangerous situations. Obviously being slightly set on fire under the house had made her extra wary.
