by Tess Lake
“That’s it! We’re going,” she shouted.
“Molly…” Ollie said softly but she was too angry to hear him.
“Don’t get so wound up,” Aunt Ro said, frowning at her daughter.
“Oh, don’t get upset? Where are your husbands right now? Where are our fathers? That’s right, they’re gone, they left because there was too much magic and they couldn’t handle being married to witches and so they left. They left you and they left us. I don’t want the same thing to happen to me!” she finished with a shout and then stood there, panting. We were all somewhat shocked into silence, which was quite a strange thing to see considering Torrent witches usually got straight into it.
It was then that Ollie stepped forward. He grabbed Molly by the hand and spun her around to face him.
“You think I’m going to leave because you’re a witch?” he said.
A tear trickled down Molly’s cheek. “Our fathers did,” she said in a quiet voice.
You could have cut the tension in the room with a knife. Ollie gave us a quick glance and then pulled Molly from the room, taking her out the front door to stand in the driveway.
He started talking to her, never letting go of her hand.
Of course every witch in the room tried to see what was going on without being conspicuous about it.
“What is he saying?” Aunt Ro said.
“I’m trying to read lips… you’re my fish? No. You’re my witch?” Aunt Cass said, peering out the window.
Ollie was fumbling for something in his pocket and as he did he knelt down on one knee.
I swear the collective intake of air nearly broke every window in the house.
“Is he proposing?” Kira asked wide-eyed. The silence was only broken by Adams’ soft snoring as we watched Molly say something to him and then nod. Ollie slipped a ring on her finger and then stood up, his knees covered in gravel dust from the road. They hugged and then that was it. I found myself with the rest of my family rushing out the front door in a mob. We were all going far too fast because instead of hugging Molly and Ollie, we crash tackled them to the ground.
“We’re gonna get married,” Molly said from somewhere underneath a pile of witches.
It took a few minutes for us to all get up. Everyone was covered in gravel dust, Ollie’s hair was sticking up in spikes on his head, and his face was bright red.
Everyone was talking at a hundred miles an hour, all of us hugging and kissing Molly and Ollie in turn, and admiring the ring that Molly had on her finger.
It was finally Aunt Cass who took charge and commanded all of us go back inside before we got sunburned to death. We ended up back in the lounge room where a very grumpy Adams woke up and glared at all of us.
“Cat can’t get any sleep around here you know,” he said.
“Harlow look at the map,” Aunt Cass said.
In the rush of everything it seemed that we’d all forgotten that the map had burst into light the moment I’d touched it. There on its dark brown surface were the lines showing the rudimentary map of Harlot Bay. There was now a new mark faintly glittering on the corner of two of the streets.
I held the map out as everyone gathered around to view this new development. As we looked at the map there was a twitch in the magic and a word shimmered into existence: Compass. A small arrow appeared, pointing at a new dot.
Aunt Cass gently took the map from me and the new glowing dot turned brown.
“I have a feeling we need to find this compass,” she said.
“And the compass will surely help us find the monster or the man behind it,” Luce said. Normally when she went right off the deep end everyone ignored her but this time it sounded as though her voice had the ring of prophecy in it.
Chapter Twenty
Monday morning found me inching my way through the traffic on the main street of Harlot Bay with Red.
She was tapping away on her phone and my mind was a million miles away. Or to be more precise about half a mile away down the street at the Harlot Bay Museum. Yesterday after the magic map, the wedding proposal, and everything else, all of us witches scattered to the four winds. The moms very tiredly went back to their end of the mansion. Aunt Cass hitched a ride with Molly and Ollie, taking the map with her. Kira went with Will and Luce. And as for me? I was left alone with only a sleeping cat for company.
After the revelation of the map it felt very much as though I’d been sprinting at full speed and then come to a dead stop.
Honestly, it also felt like I’d been a little abandoned. Aunt Cass insisted on taking the map by herself. Then I got in contact with Jack, only to find he was somewhere far down the coast with his parents. I know I could have used the time to dig further into the mysteries going on in Harlot Bay. I could have read some of Carter’s articles where he was now blaming interlopers from out-of-state for carving symbols and spray painting them around the town. I could have gone up to my lair to read Juliet’s journal again to see if I could find any mention of Marguerite. But after the week I had, I was exhausted, and so what I actually did was sit on the sofa next to a sleeping cat, put on a movie and do nothing for the rest of the day.
It was only this morning, just before Red came to pick me up for another day of work, that Aunt Cass had messaged me, telling me that the dot on the map was the museum and she was “looking into it”.
Red and I had a lot of work on this morning but after lunch the afternoon was free. Normally Red would drop me off at home but perhaps today I would visit the museum to see if I could spot a compass at all and then hitch a lift with Molly and Luce.
I hadn’t been to the Harlot Bay Museum since I was in high school on one of the forced trips they’d made us go on. It was a large imposing building in Harlot Bay, but one that I completely ignored, as did most of the other locals. It was pretty much only the tourists who went there. The latest attraction getting all the buzz was their Weapons of the World exhibit. After Luce’s catapult had been stolen and then recovered, it had been, against her wishes, given to the museum who had then built an exhibition around it.
“Harlow? Did you hear me?” Red said.
I returned to the here and now to find Red looking at me from the passenger seat.
“Oh, sorry, what was it?” I said.
We inched forward a little further, watching as a man dressed as a vampire and a woman dressed as Red Herringbone crossed in front of us.
“Jay confirmed it, the map is gone. Someone stole it from his room yesterday,” Red said.
Gulp. Okay, now I was feeling like a double agent. It had been Aunt Cass, of course, who had stolen the map. She was the one who had it right now. I had to keep calm.
“Did someone go into his room?” I asked watching another flock of vampires cross the street, slowing down the traffic yet again.
“It was the weirdest thing… he says he was in the room at the time and then suddenly it was gone. He searched everywhere but it’s not there,” Red said.
“That is weird,” I said.
“It’s okay. We took photos of it and we have Henry Martin working on cracking the code,” she said.
The name seemed familiar. The answer came to me a moment later.
“Is he that author who writes those books with cryptography and secrets in them? Where they’re always finding a clue in an old painting and rushing through Paris?” I asked.
“That’s the one. He’s working on it right now. We’ve also discovered where Rufus and Dawn of the Mysterious Mysteries are staying.”
“Oh?” I said, trying to keep it light as I finally pulled off the street and into a reserved car space. We were nearly late again, thanks to the flood of traffic, which seemed to have gotten worse over the last few days.
“We’re thinking of going there given that all of the other leads have disappeared. Harry Sparkle discharged himself and left town. The first guy who was attacked has left town. No one knows where Hannibal Blood is, and Markus Hornby, the author who sets up all those pub
licity stunts, doesn’t have a session until tomorrow,” Red said.
When she mentioned Harry Sparkle and Hannibal Blood I felt myself involuntarily tense but then I relaxed. She didn’t know they were one and the same, that they were actually Harry Stern and that he had left town at my urging. Now that Aunt Cass had the map perhaps it would lead somewhere.
Aunt Cass had the map, not the writers, and although their code cracking expert author might find something, I sincerely doubted it. Given the map had been made by witches I was sure the code was a decoy or unbreakable by normal means.
“He’d better work quick because Writerpalooza is almost over,” I said. My phone rang. It was Jack.
“You take it honey, I can get this stuff inside myself,” Red said. I answered the phone as I popped the trunk, so Red could grab her papers for the session.
“Word on the street is that I have a magical ward around my house,” Jack said in a pleasant tone.
“Oh, you’ve been talking to Ollie?” I said. I had fully intended to tell Jack everything that had happened yesterday as part of my no more secrets policy. Given that he was away with his parents I didn’t want to disturb that and then by the end of the day it had simply slipped my mind. Clearly he’d spoken to Ollie and heard what had happened.
“It was actually another informant,” Jack said.
“Would this informant be small and black and have four paws and a weakness for tuna?”
“I may have obtained this information with tuna,” Jack said, laughing.
Red closed the trunk, gave me a wave and rushed inside, leaving me sitting in the sports car.
“I did discover yesterday there’s a ward around your house and a few other things,” I said. I told Jack about Aunt Cass stealing the map and how it had lit up in my hands, a new dot appearing that we think was at the Harlot Bay Museum, along with an instruction to find a compass.
Jack listened as I spoke, and although he didn’t say a thing I could feel his concern radiating down the phone.
“So there is a man, possibly from the past, possibly the husband of some great-great-grandmother relative, or her friend, and he may also be a monster, and he’s after Torrents and Sterns?” Jack said.
“That’s the working hypothesis,” I said realizing it sounded quite dark when it was said out loud.
I heard Jack blow out air between his teeth. “Is there some reason I shouldn’t dump my parents on Jonas and then you and me stay together until this is all solved?” he asked.
“I do want to see you but honestly I think it’s going to be okay. The monster has only ever attacked at night and at dusk, and given that it’s been up at the mansion and watching over Aunt Cass without attacking, it looks like the wards are working. We’ve put Kira under a curfew and none of us are going to go out into the dark alone,” I said.
I heard Jack sigh again. “That actually didn’t make me feel better. When there’s someone out there stalking you, you don’t just hope it will get better. You need to do counter surveillance. Maybe I can set you guys up with some security cameras,” he said.
“I think it’ll be okay. I don’t –” I stuttered to a stop as the phone died in my hand. It was coated in a layer of frost. I reached for the stone, rubbing it between my fingers and feeling the warmth flood out. The frost crept away from my phone and it eventually came back to life. There was a message waiting from Jack: Cut off, talk to you later, don’t get eaten by a monster!
I smiled at the message and then got out of the sports car, locking it behind me. Jack was right. We had to take action, and as soon as work was over today I was going to that museum to see what I could find.
Happy to have a plan in a direction, I rushed inside to start my work for the day with Red.
Chapter Twenty-One
Red and I were loading her teaching materials into the trunk of the car when Jay Savage appeared, dressed in the costume of… I guess what he thought a tourist would wear? Think impossibly bright floral shirt, gleaming white shorts, an enormous pair of sunglasses, a cowboy hat for some reason, and the rest of his body glistening with sun cream. His face was bright red and he was carrying two large bags of food.
“TJ said Rufus and Dawn have left their rental so I think it’s now or never. Are we going?” he said without preamble.
Red glanced at me, no doubt seeing the look of panic on my face.
“We’re going to break in to see if there’s anything where they’re staying. Are you in?” she said with a slight smile.
Oh Goddess no, what was with these authors? Couldn’t they end up nowhere with the code on the map and then Writerpalooza would finish and they would leave Harlot Bay? That’s what I was hoping was going to happen and now they were proposing breaking and entering!
“You’re going to break into Rufus and Dawn’s?” I said, stalling to give myself time to think.
“The rest of our leads have gone dead so that’s where we’re going,” Jay said. He pulled a wrapped sandwich out the bag and offered it to me. I took it without thinking.
Okay, so I could say no to this, let the writers do whatever it is they were going to do, and go to the museum and see if I could spot a compass, do some reconnaissance. Or I could go with the writers, engage in some crime, and see where that led. I made a sudden decision. “Okay, I’m in,” I said. Red held up her hand for a high five and I slapped her palm. We all got into the sports car and I started it, the amazing air conditioning chilling the interior. Jay climbed into the back seat and was now munching away on a sandwich while talking at a hundred miles an hour. I unwrapped mine (it was chicken salad) and took a huge bite before pulling out into the traffic jam that was now Harlot Bay. Red typed in an address on her phone and then showed me on the map where it was. It was a few streets back from Barnes Boulevard, one of the richest streets in Harlot Bay. That whole area was essentially tourist rentals which I guess explained Jay’s costume.
“I also heard that they once got in trouble for damaging an old house by carving scratches into the door so they could film it,” Jay said somewhere between taking enormous bites of his sandwich.
“They have to be the ones doing it around town then,” Red said.
I kept chewing and focusing on navigating the congested road ahead of me. I suddenly remembered that in all the confusion of the last few days I still hadn’t had an opportunity to talk to Aunt Cass to explain why exactly she’d blackmailed Molly and Luce into joining her in spray painting the strange symbol around town. I knew for a fact at that Aunt Cass was behind some of the symbols.
“You think Rufus and Dawn are the ones doing the symbols?” I asked. I came to a stop and a huge crowd of vampires crossed the street ahead of us, then we were finally able to go.
“What I think we have here is two separate and distinct mysteries, with possibly a third. The Mysterious Mysteries people in town faking things, something else is in town attacking people, and mystery number three is that I suspect a publicity stunt had gone wrong and maybe somehow Harry Sparkle got tangled up in it,” Red said.
“It’s like Deep Dish Disaster, isn’t it,” Jay said.
“Deep Dish Disaster?” I asked. Jay nodded, taking another enormous bite of his sandwich and talking through a mouthful of food. “It was a book Jenna wrote years ago. Three separate mysteries all connected, intertwining, and it was sorta like this. They ended up fighting a guy in a monster suit,” he said.
“I realized… is it safe to break in during the day?” I said. We were reaching the edge of Harlot Bay now and the traffic was starting to speed up.
“We’ll look like other tourists hopefully. Besides they’re there at night so we need to go in the day and TJ has had them on surveillance. They almost always leave at this time,” Jay said. We drove up the hill, the traffic now moving faster, talking about Jenna’s old book the Deep Dish Disaster. In it a man had been attacked, apparently by a monster, which in the end had been revealed to be simply a person wearing a monster suit. If only that were the truth
here…
I was feeling nervous and on edge from the prospect of engaging in some light breaking and entering but the more I talked with the writers the calmer I began to feel. Although they were interested in what the map might reveal, it seemed their focus had turned to Rufus and Dawn, that perhaps they were the suspects behind Carl Stern and Harry Sparkle being attacked. As we drove closer to where Rufus and Dawn were staying I began to hope we’d find something because perhaps then the authors would give up this pursuit and us witches could go about our witchy business in peace.
“Up here on the left,” Red murmured, pointing at a tall white house midway down the street. I drove by it and then following her instructions went around the corner into the next block where I parked behind the giant yellow truck that belonged to TJ. He and Jenna were waiting inside and so the three of us clambered into the back for a small criminal conference.
“Harlow, you’re joining us today. This should be fun,” Jenna said with a wicked grin. She seemed almost manic at the idea that we were about to break into someone’s house.
“They’re usually gone for at least an hour and a half, and it’s been thirty minutes already, so we need to get moving,” TJ said.
He pulled a small crowbar out of a bag that sat near his feet. It was the exact same model and style as Aunt Cass’s crowbar, except of course this one didn’t have Cassandra Torrent inscribed on it. I almost started laughing out loud at that moment in the car at the absurdity of this all. Here I was with the writers about to break in somewhere and I was pretty sure that as soon as we located that compass I’d be sneaking in somewhere else to commit a little bit more crime. Witches didn’t care much about the law, but the way the Torrent family had been going recently you’d think we were full-time criminals.
“We need to look natural. We’re going to walk to the front and then go around the back of the house like we own the place,” TJ said.
We piled out of the car and walked around the block. The closer we got to the house the more anxious I began to feel. For starters, there were tourists everywhere, coming and going from their rentals, the streets packed with them. Although Jay was dressed in the same kind of absurd tourist costume, the rest of us weren’t.
