by Zoe Arden
"Do you really think she was following you?" Eleanor asked.
"I know she was following me," I corrected.
"For what reason?" Sheriff Knoxx asked. I was glad to see he seemed to be taking this more seriously than when I'd told him about Whisper Crossing. Speaking of which... I looked at a clock.
"Oh, my roses," I muttered.
"What?" Eleanor asked.
"Huh?" I looked at her. "Oh, nothing. I just didn't realize how late it was getting."
I'd never make it to Whisper Crossing by noon now. I wondered if Snowball was already there. I hoped my little friend was keeping safe. I didn't like the idea of her being alone out there. Though I had to admit that when it came to magic, Snowball was even better at certain things than I was.
"Maybe I'll pay Anastasia a visit," Sheriff Knoxx said. "Just see what she's got to say."
"Be careful," Eleanor told him. Her hand reached out and lightly rubbed the small of his back. She quickly pulled it away when she realized Trixie and I were watching her.
Sheriff Knoxx blushed slightly and cleared his throat. "I'm always careful," he replied. He turned back to me. "I don't think Anastasia means any harm. Personally, I think she's gone a little funny in the head since Polly went off to Wormwood. A thing like that—having a family member taken away—it can mess with a person."
I tried not to stare at the sheriff as I pictured what his own family must have been like growing up. Did his father look like a goblin? What about his grandfather?
"Not that I condone what Polly or her mom did," Sheriff Knoxx continued. "But Anastasia answered to the Council already. She paid her dues. Now she's got to move past it all before it sticks to her forever." He seemed to be taking this thing with Anastasia personally. He suddenly realized that he was rambling and cleared his throat again.
"Well, uh, I'll let you know what happens," he said and moved toward the door.
"Wait!" I cried, pulling my phone from my pocket. "Can I see that photo again?"
He held it out for me.
"Just hold it up. Just like that," I told him as he held the photo vertically in the air. He looked confused but did as I asked.
I snapped a picture of it with my phone. Front and back.
"You never know," I told them. "I might need a copy of this later.”
Sheriff Knoxx scratched his head then kissed Eleanor's cheek—much to her surprise—before leaving the bakery.
Eleanor blushed so furiously I was certain every ounce of blood in her had gone to her face. When the bells chimed behind Sheriff Knoxx, I rounded on my aunts.
"I have to go, too," I told them.
"Where?" Eleanor asked.
"I'm meeting—" I caught myself before I said Snowball, uncertain how strange that might sound. "Damon."
"Oh, good," Trixie said. "I'm glad you two made up."
"Yeah," I mumbled. "Me, too." Damon hadn't texted or called me since the day we searched the park. Even though I'd texted him at least five times.
"It's nice that you've found someone, even though he is different from us," Eleanor said. Her face was still burning.
"Aunt Eleanor," I ventured, "can I ask you something about Sheriff Knoxx?"
Her mouth opened and I thought she was going to say no, but then she nodded. I could tell she was uncomfortable, though.
"It's just that I'm not sure I understand how a goblin and a witch could... I mean, I've seen pictures of goblins. They're... strange looking. Not just their looks either. From what I've read, goblins aren't necessarily the most even-tempered people."
"They're not people at all," Trixie said. "They're goblins."
"Right," I agreed. "I guess I'm just wondering how Sheriff Knoxx's great-great grandparents were able to look past all the differences."
Eleanor heaved a sigh. Her chest rose and fell and she slowly walked around to the back of the shelves, reached in, and pulled out a calming cookie. She nibbled on it as she spoke.
"It wasn't Zane's great-great grandparents. It goes back further than that. You see, centuries ago, witches and warlocks wanted different things. Georgianna Raven—Zane's great-great-great-great-grandmother, or something like that—was a beautiful witch."
"But she wasn't just beautiful," Trixie said.
Eleanor shot her a look that said: This is my story. Let me tell it.
"As Trixie was saying, Georgianna wasn't just beautiful. She was powerful. So powerful that men were scared of her."
"Human men?" I asked.
"All men. Human and wizard alike. She wanted a husband and children, but no man would marry her. So one day, she went out into Beggar's Forest, and when she came back, she had a husband."
"A gorgeous husband," Trixie interrupted. "He looked like Prince Charming."
Eleanor rolled her eyes.
"There's a portrait of them in Zane's—Sheriff Knoxx's—attic. He doesn't like to display it, though.”
"I don't understand," I said. "Are you saying that Georgianna somehow created her husband?"
Eleanor and Trixie nodded. "No one knows for sure how she did it," Eleanor said.
"But they knew when they saw him that something wasn't right," Trixie added.
"You can take the goblin out of the forest, but you can't take the goblin out of the man," Eleanor said with an emphatic nod of her head.
"Wait... are you saying... you're saying that... that Georgianna turned a goblin into a human?!"
"Only on the outside," Eleanor said. "On the inside, he was pure goblin. No one's ever been certain how she was able to tame him."
"Tame him?"
"Goblins are..."
"Dangerous," Trixie interjected.
"Easily disturbed," Eleanor said. "They have a tendency to be irritated by little things. So sometimes, when you see Zane... struggling to control himself. Just remember, it's his inner goblin struggling to get out."
Inner goblin?
Note to self: find out more about goblins.
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CHAPTER
TEN
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"Snowball?" I called loudly as I trekked to the top of the hill. "Snowball?"
There was a swish of noise and then a white blur appeared in front of me.
"Snowball is here, Mama."
I bent at the waist and scratched her head.
"I'm so sorry I'm late," I told her.
"Snowball is not mad. Snowball found many things to play with here. Snowball likes Whisper Crossing." I watched as she chased a field mouse that scampered behind a tombstone. She had it in her sights for a minute before the tricky little creature finally got away.
Snowball paused and looked around, searching the ground. I picked up a broken flower bulb and threw it for her. Snowball happily pounced after it. I followed her.
It was strange that I should be playing with my cat in a cemetery. But the graveyard at Whisper Crossing wasn't like normal graveyards. There was history here. I looked at the white marble angel that belonged to Sara Sweetland. I was always drawn to it, no matter how many times I saw it. The only thing I didn't like about the cemetery was knowing that Jon Pratt was buried here, too.
It was months ago now since I'd first seen Sara's ghost. She'd moved through the graveyard one night when I was here looking for my father. Things had been so different then. Detective Colt Hudson had been up here chasing my dad, who'd broken out of jail to find me. I'd seen Sarah's blonde figure move across the lawn, and at first I'd thought it was my mother. It was only later I'd learned the truth.
Too bad there weren't cameras twelve hundred years ago when Sara was alive. I'd have liked to have seen a picture of her. Something more than the ethereal figure I'd come to be familiar with. I'd only seen her ghost the one time, but I'd replayed that time over and over again in my mind. I couldn't' shake the feeling that I knew her.
I glanced around and realized that Snowball had disappeared.
An awful stench had taken her place.
"Snowball?" I called, wrinkling my nose. Where was that smell coming from?
I sighed and shook my head. "What am I doing here?" I muttered to myself. I'd "borrowed" Aunt Eleanor's car while she was at the bakery, cast a speed spell, and gotten here in forty-five minutes flat. At least speed spells were one thing I was good at casting.
"Okay, let's think." I stood with my hands on my hips, trying to ignore the stench that was now so strong I could taste it on my tongue.
"Anastasia said there were answers up here. But what sort of answers? To what questions?" I had the feeling Anastasia had been talking about more than just Lucy's disappearance when she said I was looking in the wrong place.
"Snowy? Where are you?"
There was a crunching sound in some distant trees and I veered toward it.
"Snowy? Come on, Mama needs some help."
Snowball appeared, carrying something in her mouth. She set it at my feet.
"Snowball has found a clue," she said proudly.
For a second, I thought she was bringing me the body of a dead field mouse. Gratefully, I realized it wasn't a mouse at all. It was lipstick. I picked it up, examining it with interest. Was this the clue Anastasia had sent me here to find? Was this Lucy's lipstick?
I turned the lipstick container over until I could read the color. Powder pink. Lucy almost always went red, when she wore it at all. Her lips were naturally colored, and she often went without a lot of makeup.
"I don't think this is Lucy's," I told Snowball, who was waiting expectantly at my feet. I rubbed the tips of her ears between my fingers, and she began to hop around like a rabbit. Kittens had so much energy. I reminded myself that she wasn't such a kitten anymore, but something told me I would always think of her like that.
"Then again, that doesn’t mean it's not important." I stuck the lipstick in my bag and made a mental note to ask Megan about it later. She might know for sure whether or not it belonged to Lucy.
"Good job, Snowy."
She wrapped herself around my ankles, purring. Suddenly, the purring stopped. Snowball hissed so loudly that for a second I thought there was some sort of geyser nearby that had suddenly exploded.
"Snowball?" I asked, alarmed. "What is it? What's the matter?"
Snowball's tail had fluffed up to three times its size and the hair on her back was standing on end. Her back was arched, and she stood ready to pounce. The awful stench grew stronger, as if it was actually a part of the air itself. I looked frantically around me, suddenly scared.
"What do you see?" I asked Snowball. All I could see were trees. I blinked, trying to focus, and caught a flash of blonde hair. "Sara?" I asked. For a second, my heart lightened. "Snowy, it's okay. It's just a ghost. I just saw her."
"Not see," Snowball said. "Smell." For some reason, my spine tingled. It occurred to me that the last time I'd seen Sara's ghost, there had been no smell.
"I smell it, too. What is it?"
Snowball hissed again. "Intruder," she said and darted across the cemetery.
"NO! Snowball!" I ran after her, not at all comfortable with her chasing after something I couldn't even see. I had no idea what we were dealing with here.
"Snowball! Come back! Mama wants you to come back!"
But Snowball either didn't hear me or was too absorbed with the chase to stop. She was a huntress, after all. All cats were. I ran past tombstone after tombstone, finally realizing that I'd never fully understood how big this place was before.
"Snowball!" I called.
Faintly, in the distance, I heard a hiss followed by a soft mewing voice. "Snowball will get the answer!"
I ran toward it and tripped. Mud covered my hands and clothes. It reminded me of when I'd walked off a pier and fallen into the ocean the day I arrived at Heavenly Haven.
When I pushed myself up and wiped the mud from my eyes, I saw something unsettling. Footprints. Large ones. Whoever had made them had been heavy. I stared at them a moment, thinking that they looked familiar somehow. But that made no sense. How could these footprints look familiar? I'd never seen them before.
There was a trail of them leading away from the cemetery. I followed them, snapping pictures with my phone as I went. My brain searched for whatever memory was percolating back there.
I stopped and took a closer look. Four toes, not five. Long nails. Or were they claws? And something was embedded in the mud, just over the print. I picked at it and a mud-covered rose petal peeled away from the Earth. I tried to wipe it off without breaking it and thought I saw a hint of red.
"Oh, my roses," I said, finally realizing why the prints looked familiar. I'd seen them this morning at the library.
"Goblins," I muttered. "Here at Whisper Crossing."
* * *
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
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"Back already?" Trixie asked, looking up. Her eyes bugged out of her head when she saw me. "What happened to you?"
Eleanor peered over the counter at me but said nothing.
There were several customers staring at the shelves of goodies, deciding on their selections. A few of them cast looks in my direction. I waited for them to leave before turning the sign on the door to Closed. I didn't want any interruptions.
"What are you doing?" Eleanor asked. "And why do you look like you've been playing in mud all day?"
I waved her questions off. "I tripped and a pile of mud softened my blow. That's not important, though. Look what I found! Anastasia was right."
I pulled up the pictures I'd snapped of the goblin prints.
"I found them at Whisper Crossing."
Eleanor cleared her throat. "Ava, honey, what exactly do you think we're looking at?"
"Goblin prints." I looked at my pictures again. The four toes were clearly outlined in the mud. The large foot pad stood prominently in the center of the screen. There was no way these had been made by a wizard.
Eleanor wrung her fingers together. "Why are people always persecuting goblins? They don't bother us. We don't bother them. Goblins are some of our best customers, I'll have you know."
She moved back toward the cash register. She was beginning to sound a bit like Pennyweather on the subject of vampires.
"Are they?" I asked, curious. "I've never seen a goblin come in here."
"Oh, they don't actually come inside," Trixie said. "But sometimes we ship our goods into Goblin Territory. Rocky's very good at delivering items outside of Sweetland."
Eleanor's wolfhound came languidly through the door to the backroom just then. "Did Rocky hear his name? Rocky is ready for action." He yawned and flopped down onto the tile, rolling over and exposing his belly.
"Where's Goblin Territory?" I asked. "And why have I never heard of it?"
Trixie laughed and fixed a large silver ornament that had fallen off its string. Once it was hanging from the ceiling again, it looked like a disco ball.
"It's part of Beggars Forest," Eleanor mumbled, still sounding grumpy.
"So, it's not that unusual for goblins to be in Whisper Crossing?" I asked, disappointed.
Trixie's brow scrunched together. "Unusual...? No. Interesting? Yes."
Eleanor huffed. "What's interesting about it?"
"Well, first of all, goblins don't often leave tracks behind. They're experts at hiding where they've been."
"Hmmph. So what?"
"So, that means that the goblin who left these prints behind left in a hurry. They didn't have time to wipe them out."
"What makes you so sure they're even goblin prints?" Eleanor demanded. "There are all kinds of creatures that like to wander around Whisper Crossing. What about... elves? Or... or... fairies? Pixies? Leprechauns?"
"Leprechauns?!" I cried.
"She's joking," Trixie said to me. "Leprechauns never come out before March."
"And then there're wildebee
sts and mountain goats and all sorts of creatures that are more than capable of leaving track marks behind. My roses, even Rocky can leave behind prints that size."
Rocky lifted his head slightly, his ears perking. When no one said his name again, he closed his eyes once more and went back to sleep.
"Eleanor, you're being unreasonable," Trixie said.
"I'm being unreasonable?" Eleanor scoffed.
"No one's saying that goblins abducted Lucy, only that they may have some knowledge of the situation. You're letting your love for Sheriff Knoxx blind you."
Eleanor was holding a carrot comfort cupcake in her hand, rearranging them on the tray. She squeezed her hands into fists without thinking and squished the cupcake. A gooey mess ran between her fingers and she let out a startled cry.
"So what if I love Zane?" she cried. "There's nothing wrong with that! He can't help it that he's part goblin!"
She gasped. Her cheeks colored.
"Not that I love him. I just mean... I just meant... that, well, I care for him as I do anyone I consider a friend. Which is all Zane—Sheriff Knoxx—is. A friend."
"Did I hear my name?" a deep voice asked from the front door. We'd been so absorbed in our conversation we hadn't even heard Sheriff Knoxx enter the shop. Eleanor looked like she was ready to pass out from embarrassment.
Despite the differences the sheriff and I had had when I'd first arrived on the island—he'd basically thought I was a serial killer, which can dampen a relationship—I had really warmed up to him since then. Since starting to date Eleanor, he'd gone out of his way to make sure we got along, often biting his tongue when I asked silly questions like "where can I buy a broom?"
Apparently, every witch on the island knew that brooms were sold at Knobs and Broomsticks. I had yet to go there and pick one out. The idea of flying anywhere on a broom terrified me, especially since I learned that sometimes accidents occurred.
