“Yes, yes, very impressive. But try to imagine that you hadn’t heard anything I just told you. If you saw someone sitting in a chair without a drink, then an instant later, they had a drink, what would you think?”
“I guess I’d think I just didn’t see the drink the first time I looked,” Tess said, light beginning to dawn. “My mind would just make up an excuse for pretty much anything, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, unless something undeniably magical happened, something you couldn’t ignore or forget about.”
“Okay, so people have some sort of built in mental protection that makes us explain away magic,” Tess said. “But what’s stopping someone like you or… or me from telling people? There are more like us, aren’t there?”
“Yes, but we aren’t super common,” Loretta said. “There are a few bloodlines where it will pop up. It’s passed down through the females, and only one woman in each generation will get it. I was the lucky one.”
It took Tess a moment to figure out what she meant. “You mean, you got magic and my mom didn’t?”
The older woman nodded.
“That’s terrible,” Tess said. “I mean, my poor mom. Does she know?” She couldn’t imagine how frustrating it would be to know that magic existed, but be told she would never be able to use it. She thought it would be enough to drive a person crazy.
“No,” Loretta said. “The powers don’t come until a witch’s thirtieth birthday, so it was easy enough to hide from her.”
“Does it always go to the younger sister?”
“It’s random. Which can make it difficult if someone has a lot of daughters. In your case, since you’re an only child, it was easy. When the powers didn’t show up on time, I began to wonder if your mother had a secret daughter somewhere that I didn’t know about.”
“This is all too much,” Tess said. “I wouldn’t believe you if I hadn’t seen it myself. What all can we do?”
“With practice, anything that we want,” her aunt said with a smile.
Chapter Eight
* * *
That practice proved to be a lot harder than Tess expected. After watching her aunt light a match with a snap of her fingers and unlock a door with a whisper, she had been eager to try a few tricks out herself. The problem was, she couldn’t seem to make anything happen on purpose. When something did happen, it was always when she didn’t mean it to.
“What am I doing wrong?” she groaned at the end of half an hour’s worth of trying to make a pencil float. She was still reeling from her aunt’s big revelation, and was itching to perform some magic of her own.
“You don’t believe,” her aunt said. “I know it sounds hokey, but you need to believe with every fiber of your being that you are a witch before this sort of stuff will come easily. Right now, you’re just staring at that pencil, squeezing your eyes shut, and imagining it floating. You need to know it’s floating before you open your eyes. That’s the trick.”
“It’s not as easy as you make it sound,” she grumbled. She had made the pencil wiggle, once. It might have impressed her the day before, but after spending all of Sunday and most of Monday trying to do her first spell, she was hungry for something substantial to happen. “I didn’t even know magic was real until two days ago. It’s kind of a life-changing revelation. I’m still trying to get used to it.”
“I don’t have all year,” her aunt said, but Tess could tell she wasn’t really annoyed. Loretta was like a different person now that her biggest secret was out in the open.
“How long can you stay?” Tess asked.
“As long as need be. An untrained witch is a dangerous witch. Your power will fluctuate for a bit, while it’s new. You’ll be a ticking bomb if you don’t learn how to control it.”
Okay, not very reassuring, Tess thought. “Well, I’m trying. Is there something else I could do? Something that doesn’t involve pencils, or floating. I think I’m developing a mental block.”
“I’ll think of something for tonight,” the older woman said. “This is enough for now. Don’t you have some sort of thing to do tonight? Driving food around?”
“Oh, right, the Meals on the Move delivery.” She had completely forgotten about it. The discovery of magic had wiped all thoughts of her normal life out of her mind. It seemed unreal that she would walk into work tomorrow morning and act as though nothing had happened.
“You’d better get started,” her aunt said. “What’s on the menu?”
“Um, let me pull up the schedule. I think Linda said she was going to send out a new one this weekend.”
She grabbed her laptop and set it up on the table, scrolling through her neglected inbox on the email server. She hadn’t logged on once all weekend—she had barely even touched her cellphone, something she was normally attached to; the discovery of magic made all of that seem unimportant—but luckily it didn’t look like she had missed anything important. There was no sign of an updated schedule from Linda, or anyone else at Meals on the Move. Had they forgotten her again, or had they just not gotten the schedules out? She sighed and glanced at the clock. She didn’t have long to figure this out if she wanted to get the meals out on time. She had made a commitment and knew she had to stick to it; being a witch didn’t give her the freedom to be a bad person.
Excusing herself from the table, she grabbed her phone and went into the hall to call Linda. She dialed back the same number that had called her the other day, but there was no answer. She hung up, then decided to call back and leave a message.
“This is Tess. I’m just wondering if there’s a new schedule for deliveries yet. If I don’t hear back from you in time, I’ll just stick with the old schedule. Thanks, I hope to hear from you soon. Bye.”
She shoved the cellphone into her jeans pocket and bit her lip. She would have to start cooking right about now to get the meals out on time, so she would just have to wing it. According to the schedule she had, she was delivering to the same people as she had the week before. This time the meal was barbecue chicken, mashed potatoes, and a green vegetable of her choice. It shouldn’t be too hard to cook, though it might be embarrassing if she showed up to the wrong houses with the food.
With the snow on the ground and more falling from the sky, there was no question of using the old grill outside to make real barbecued chicken, so Tess pulled up a recipe for making it in the oven. She thought about everything she had discovered in the past few days, and wondered how she could be doing something so mundane as baking chicken drumsticks and boiling potatoes when she knew that magic existed. She supposed the knowledge itself didn’t actually change anything. Now if she could just figure out how to be good at it, that might be a different story. Oh, how she would love to be able to just snap her fingers and have all of the ingredients assemble themselves. Belatedly, she realized that was probably how her aunt had managed to get the kitchen so clean with seemingly so little effort. Would she ever get to that level of skill herself? It seemed hard to imagine when she couldn’t even do something simple like make a pencil float yet.
Once the meal was done, she double-checked her phone to ensure that she hadn’t missed a call from Linda, then packed everything up in her car and began her delivery. Her aunt offered to join her, but Tess declined. She wanted the time to herself to think about everything. She hadn’t had much of a chance to really let it sink in yet, and the dark car ride alone would be a good time to do that.
Her two deliveries went off without a hitch. Tess was relieved. She had been worried that she had been overlooked again by Meals on the Move, and would end up delivering the dinner to the wrong people, but it looked like Linda just hadn’t changed the schedule yet.
When she got to her last delivery’s house, she left her car running in the driveway. This was the same house where she had met Luke the week before, and she wondered if he was still here. If he was living with his father now, they really should notify Meals on the Move. As Tess understood it, they really were quite strict about only deliver
ing meals to people who truly needed them.
She knocked on the door and waited, the insulated bag with the food in it draped over one arm. It was cold out. She wished that the man, Frederick, would hurry up and answer the door. Next time she needed to remember to bring a scarf.
Growing impatient, she knocked again. When another minute or two passed with nothing happening, Tess started to get concerned. An old man living alone… there was no telling what could have happened. He might just be sleeping, or might have fallen and could be unable to get up. She would feel terrible if he needed help and she drove away without even trying to figure out what was wrong.
Hesitating only a second, Tess bit her lip and stepped off the porch to look through the living room window. The room was dark, but she could see through to the hallway where the light was on. Cupping her hands around her eyes to block out the glare of the street lamp, she pressed her face to the window. At first, she couldn’t make out much, but gradually her eyes adjusted. What she saw made her stomach drop. There was a body on the floor, and she couldn’t tell if it was breathing.
Chapter Nine
* * *
Tess jumped back onto the porch and pounded on the door.
“Mr. Colt?” she called. “Are you all right?”
She knew that was a stupid question. He obviously wasn’t all right. He might not even be able to answer her. He might be knocked out, or… she didn’t want to think about the alternative. Whatever had happened, it was obvious that he needed help.
Tess tried the doorknob. It was locked. She jiggled the handle and weighed her options. The man needed help now. She could break a window, maybe, but didn’t know if she would be able to climb through without cutting herself.
Tess let the bag of food drop to the ground and pulled out her phone. She dialed the three digits that everyone knew and when the dispatcher answered she gave a breathless summary of what had happened.
“Is he breathing?” the woman asked in an infuriatingly calm voice.
“I don’t know! I can’t get inside. The door is locked.”
“An ambulance is on its way. Can you stay where you are until they arrive?”
“Yes, but shouldn’t I go inside to see if I can help him? I could break a window or something.”
“Please just wait where you are, ma’am. The ambulance will be there shortly.”
Frustrated, Tess hung up and glared at the doorknob. Her aunt could unlock a door with her powers. Could she figure out how to do the same?
She bent down so she was at eye level with the deadbolt. Feeling a little bit foolish, she whispered, “Open.”
Nothing happened.
“Open sesame?”
The door remained stubbornly locked. Tess gritted her teeth in frustration. What had her aunt said about making her powers work? She had to really believe what she was doing. She couldn’t just imagine something happening, she had to know it had happened, and then it would be so.
She closed her eyes and tried to focus. She tried to envision the deadbolt turning, listening all the while for the sound of the lock snicking. Come on, she thought. I’m going about this wrong. I just need to convince myself that the door is unlocked. I’m going to reach for the handle and turn it and push the door open. It’s going to work.
She grabbed the handle and turned, but the door didn’t budge.
“Just open already, will you?” she snapped. To her surprise, she heard the deadbolt sliding open.
“Really?” she said. For a moment, she thought that maybe someone on the other side of the door had unlocked it, but when she pushed it open, no one was there. A tingling sensation spread through her. She had done magic, real magic, all on her own. She couldn’t help but grin. This was like a dream come true, or like a fairytale come to life. But in this fairytale, the witch was the star of the show.
Her excitement over doing her first real magic faded quickly when she got a better look at the body. It was Frederick, all right, but there was no question of him being alive. The pool of blood under his head and the wide, staring eyes were something she knew she would never forget.
Nonetheless, she knelt beside him and felt for a pulse. It was almost automatic—something she had seen countless times in movies and felt that she ought to do now. There was nothing, of course.
Tess rocked back on her heels and bit her lip. She felt horrible. A thousand what-ifs ran through her mind. What if she had delivered here first? What if she hadn’t wasted all of that time waiting outside the door for him to answer? She didn’t think he had been dead for long. She wasn’t familiar with death, but whenever she saw something on TV or read about a murder in a book, people always talked about the body being cold. He hadn’t felt very cold to her when she had felt for his pulse, and the blood under his head hadn’t dried yet.
It slowly dawned on Tess that she was looking at the scene of a murder. The man had obviously died due to head trauma, and there was nothing around that he could have fallen on. Someone must have hit him with something heavy and hard. She wondered what in the world could drive someone to kill someone completely defenseless like this. She had only been doing these deliveries for a few weeks, but already had grown attached to the people she was helping. It was just so horrible to imagine a life—any life—being snuffed out due to such mindless violence.
The wailing siren of the ambulance made Tess tear her eyes away from the dead man for the first time since she had gone indoors. She stood up and walked back out to the porch in case the paramedics needed help finding the house.
She was relieved to see a police car trailing after the ambulance. If this was a murder, then it was good they were there. She felt a fierce desire to see whoever had done this to the old man caught and put in prison for a very, very long time.
The ambulance pulled up to the curb and she stepped aside as the paramedics rushed past her. The police vehicle pulled into the driveway behind her own car. It took them a little bit longer, but after a moment she saw the doors open and two officers approached her.
Things deteriorated quickly from there. The first officer, a grizzled man who introduced himself as Detective Vance instructed the other officer, a younger man about her own age who introduced himself as Officer Bykowski, to stay with her while he spoke to the paramedics. It wasn’t until Officer Vance returned with a frown on his face and told her that they would be taking her down to the station to ask her some questions that Tess began to realize that she might be in trouble.
***
“I already told you, I was there on a Meals on the Move delivery,” Tess said.
“You didn’t know him any other way?” Vance asked.
“No. I have a copy of the schedule on my phone. I delivered dinner to him last week, too.”
“According to the recording from the dispatcher, you told her that the door was locked and you were unable to get inside to check on the victim. How is it, then, that you were waiting by an open door when the paramedics arrived?”
This stumped Tess for a moment. She couldn’t very well tell the detective that she had unlocked the door by magic. He wouldn’t believe her, and she didn’t think she would be able to repeat it even if she wanted to. She barely knew how her powers worked, and had a hard time making anything happen even in the best of circumstances.
“I was wrong,” she said at last, knowing it was a lame excuse but unable to think of a better one. “I must not have turned the knob all the way when I first tried the door. I was panicking, not thinking straight.” She could tell he didn’t believe her. His face remained expressionless except for his lips, which tightened slightly.
“After getting the door open, what did you do?”
“I went inside and checked his pulse,” she told him. “Then the paramedics arrived and I went outside in case they needed help finding the correct house.”
“Did you touch anything while you were inside?” he asked.
“No.”
“Are you sure about that?”
&nbs
p; “Yes. I didn’t do anything but kneel beside him.”
He nodded and made another note. He opened his mouth again, but before he could say anything else, a soft knock sounded at the door and the younger officer came in. Bykowski nodded to the detective, who got up and followed him out of the room, telling Tess to sit tight before he shut the door.
The minutes dragged by as Tess waited. She distracted herself for a few seconds by trying to make an empty plastic water cup float, but stopped quickly when she realized that there were cameras in the room. After what felt like an eternity, Detective Vance returned.
“We’ve checked with your alibis and it seems that you were telling the truth about where you were in the hours prior to the body being found,” he said. “You are free to go for now, Ms. Quinn. We may be in contact with you if any more questions arise. Here’s my card. Don’t hesitate to call if you remember anything that might be pertinent to the case.”
With that, Tess was free. She collected her purse and her coat and walked outside before someone changed their mind about letting her leave. She felt Vance’s eyes on her back the entire time. They might not be able to hold her any longer, but she would have bet money that she was still at the very top of his list of suspects.
Chapter Ten
* * *
“What do you mean, you won’t help me figure out who killed him?” Tess asked. She was angry. She had expected her aunt to just snap her fingers and find the killer, but the older woman was being extremely uncooperative.
Mystical Murder: A Whiskers and Witches Cozy Mystery, Book 1 (Whiskers and Witches Cozy Mysteries) Page 4
