by Amy Boyles
“No.” The rodent struggled in my arms. “I’m free now. I’ve told you everything I know.”
“Rodent,” Axel growled.
The possum’s fur bristled.
Fury flashed in Axel’s eyes. “You give Pepper a hard time, and I’ll stuff you back under that house and curse you there for all eternity.”
“Okay,” Flower whimpered. “I’ll help.”
Axel’s shoulders relaxed. “Good. Pepper, get back to the house. Do you want to take the truck?”
I shook my head. “Can you transport us there?”
Axel nodded. “Hold still.”
I clasped Flower to my chest, and in one swift motion the house slipped away and we were heading back to Betty’s in Magnolia Cove.
“We have a magic eater on the loose.”
I was back at home with Flower tucked under one arm. Amelia and Cordelia had found Betty, and we stood in the living room in front of the hearth fire.
“Snow is dead. Axel said her body looked like the work of a magic eater, and Flower here confirmed it.”
Betty stared at the three of us. A wind blew from an unseen vortex and whipped Betty’s wig off. My eyelids widened. A lightning bolt struck out, causing the house to tremble.
When Betty spoke, I swear another being had taken over her body. Her eyes turned liquid black, and pure anger wafted off my grandmother in sheets.
The wind slapped my hair against my face. My clothes ruffled against the force.
Betty’s mouth opened. “Why the heck did y’all release a magic eater?”
“We were tricked,” I yelled above the wind. “Snow slipped a spell into my pocket. It was supposed to be the same spell that Mint and Licky used, but when Cordelia read it, it wasn’t.”
Betty took a menacing step toward us. My cousins and I huddled together as the wind started knocking objects over. A bud vase toppled to the floor, and books cascaded from shelves.
“I told you I didn’t like Snow. Isn’t that enough not to trust her?”
My face stung as hair whipped my cheeks. “Betty, stop it! Snow is dead. Someone else slipped me the wrong spell, counting on the fact that I would perform the incantation. The magic eater feasted on her. So as strange as it may seem,” I yelled, “Snow is innocent in all this. I’m pretty certain.”
Ever so slowly the breeze faded. After a moment Betty picked up her wig and slid it on, back side facing front.
“Um…” Cordelia shyly pointed toward it. “Your wig is…um…”
Betty wagged her finger at my cousin. “I don’t want to hear one word out of you. Not one word. You’re the cause of all this.”
“Betty,” I said gently, “the magic eater may be after more people. Since it targeted Snow, I don’t know if there are other targets or if the creature will work at random. But Axel suggested it would feast on our town. No matter what, it needs to be contained and quickly. My first question is, why would a magic eater go after Snow?”
Betty exhaled a deep breath and slumped into a chair. “There were six of them.”
I shot my cousins a questioning glance. Cordelia and Amelia shrugged. They didn’t know this story any more than I did.
Time to listen up.
“Three witches and three wizards. Snow was one. Twenty years ago they summoned a great evil—something dark, inky black.”
As she spoke, Betty’s eyes became glassy. Whatever she was seeing in her mind, it was far, far away.
“They thought it was controllable, but the witches and wizards quickly realized they couldn’t contain the evil they had brought into Magnolia Cove.”
“Was it another magic eater?” Cordelia said.
Betty shook her head. “Worse. It was a blight on the town. It caused the crops to die, the water to go bad. The magic they unleashed was pure evil. Since six had worked together to harness it, those same six were the ones who had to send it back to the depths of hell.”
A shiver ran up my spine. This was definitely not bedtime-story material. “Where did they send it?”
Betty shook her head, that vacant look still on her face. “I don’t know, but they ended its curse on the town. If the blight ever returned to Magnolia Cove, they would have to be the ones to stop it.”
She rubbed her chin, stopping to finger a hair. She pinched it between two fingers and ripped it from its socket. “And now one of them is dead.” Betty inhaled sharply and shuddered. “That means that either one of the other five called the magic eater, or everyone who is left is on the list, too. Either way, that’s where we start.”
I placed Flower on the couch. “Okay. Who are they and where do we start?”
“The first is Sylvia Spirits.”
My jaw dropped. Sylvia Spirits was an upstanding citizen of Magnolia Cove.
“But Sylvia always helped you with the spell that kept Rufus out,” I argued, “when he wasn’t allowed into town. She’s not bad.”
“She was misguided in her youth,” Betty said.
“The second is Charlie James Hix.”
As if it wasn’t possible for my jaw to drop any farther, it did. “CJ Hix? The real estate agent? The guy who says ‘golly gee’ and calls me Miss Dunn? Him?” I fisted a hand to my hip in protest. “Isn’t CJ too young to have helped Snow twenty years ago? What is he, like, thirty?”
My grandmother shook her head. “He was very young when Snow snagged him. Her cousin. Saw the potential. Yes, he was still a child when they summoned the blight. But that was twenty years ago, and there’s no telling what CJ has really grown up into.”
I scowled. “I don’t see CJ as the sort of person to call a magic eater.”
Betty waved my protest away with a flick of her hand. “Let me finish. The next wizard was Saltz Swift.”
Now that I could buy. The headmaster of the Southern School of Magic was someone who generally made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
“And they let him run a school?” Amelia said, surprised. “Are they kidding?”
“Like I said, these witches and wizards have been on the straight and narrow for years. They’ve proven themselves solid members of society. I forgave them. Not Snow, but the others.”
Cordelia tapped her foot. “And the last two?”
“Forbes Henry,” Betty said mysteriously, “one of the richest men in Magnolia Cove and a hermit.”
“He’s not a hermit anymore. He was at the meeting today,” I murmured.
“And the last witch that joined the group—” She stared at us, her gaze dragging from me to my cousins.
I held my breath, waiting to hear who was the final witch to have caused a great evil to land on Magnolia Cove, but Betty hedged.
“Who was it?” Amelia said.
Betty cleared her throat. “It was me.”
SIX
“I told you to ask Betty,” Flower said.
“Who are you?” Betty directed to the possum, but shrieks coming from Amelia stole our attention.
“Are you kidding? You always, and I mean always, get onto us for doing stuff wrong, and you brought a blight on the town? Oh, this is rich.”
Amelia folded her arms and raised her nose. “I’m never listening to you again.”
Betty shot from her chair so fast I wasn’t sure she’d ever been sitting it. Her bosom hit Amelia right in the stomach and nearly knocked my cousin over.
“Hey,” Amelia shouted.
Betty glowered. “Let me tell you something, kid. It’s because of my mistakes that I can tell y’all what to do, and that’s precisely why you should listen to me.”
Amelia whimpered. “You always win.”
“Because I’m old and ornery. Snow tricked us. She said what we were summoning wasn’t anything evil, but it was. Now there’s a magic eater—and it might be coming for me.”
That sobered us up and quieted us down. Betty pinned her attention back on Flower. “How’d you wind up with Snow?”
“She caught me out in the woods and stuck me under the crawl space,
angry at me for eating from her garden. I’ve only now just gotten free.” The possum spoke quickly, her words tumbling over one another like a babbling brook. “I could hear what Snow said from the house, and she said your name a lot.”
Flower's gaze flickered to mine. “That’s how I knew you should ask your grandmother.”
“How’d you know to recognize a magic eater?” I said.
Flower shrugged. “Because I’d seen one once before. Snow had summoned it. I don’t know why—not this one, but another one. She spoke to it and then banished it.”
Betty rubbed her chin. “So Snow was up to her old tricks. No surprise there. But how can you speak to us?”
The possum shook her head. “Snow cursed me. Made it so I could speak and understand language and then locked me in the crawl space.”
“Oh, you poor little guy,” Amelia said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not a guy,” Flower said. “I’m a girl, but Snow gave me a male voice.”
Amelia shot Betty a hopeful look. “Maybe we can help Flower sound like a female.”
Betty grabbed her handbag and hooked it on her arm. “First things first—we’ve got to warn the others. Assuming one of the six is the person who sent the magic eater after us, then they must be told.”
“But why would one of them do this?” I mused. “Why now? After all this time?”
Betty tugged her wig. “Why, I’ve got this on backward.” After righting the hairpiece, she glanced at me. “I don’t know. Maybe one of them wants revenge. Maybe they’re mad at us for all being a part of it. If I had to guess who was to blame, I’d say Forbes. He was always so smarmy. Thinking he was in charge and could tell us all what to do. Well, maybe this is his last laugh. He’s an old man. Who knows? But I do know we need to question them—all of them, right now.”
She had just turned the knob when a scream sliced through the quiet.
“That sounded like Sylvia.” Betty slung the door open. “Come on, girls! Let’s help my friend!”
We raced down the street until we reached Charming Conical Caps. Betty barged inside and found Sylvia curled up on a divan. Her red hair swam around her face. Her eyes were wide and shining, and she trembled from head to foot.
Betty fisted her hands to her hips. “Let me guess-it’s been here.”
Sylvia’s red lips moved, but no words came out. She flung herself at Betty, nearly falling to the floor before my grandmother took hold of the much taller woman.
“I never thought that in my entire life I’d see such a creature,” Sylvia cried. “It came for me. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I never would’ve been able to stop it.”
She pulled away and glanced at her shaking hands. “I don’t know how I fought it off and won. Next time I may not be so lucky.”
“Let’s hope there isn’t a next time,” Betty murmured. “Sylvia, I hate to tell you this, but one of the six called the magic eater here. Snow is dead.”
Tears poured down Sylvia’s eyes. “No! It can’t be.”
“It is.” Betty clasped her hands. “We have to tell the others and form a meeting.”
Sylvia inhaled sharply. She smoothed her dress, dragged her fingers under her lashes to fix any makeup smudges and clapped her hands.
The scores of hats pegged around the room melted away, and I found myself in a room with black walls.
“Whoa, that was cool,” I said.
“And I thought Snow had power,” Flower said. “That was amazing.”
Six mirrors hung on the walls. They were about the same size—three feet long and two feet across, and each was framed in gold but the design was different. The first was a basic square frame, nothing ornate. They seemed to become more ornate as the frames continued, with the last one having lots of curling scrollwork.
“Snow is dead,” Sylvia announced.
A black drape appeared and covered the farthest mirror. Light flared within the other mirrors like they were illuminating from the inside out.
“Cool,” Amelia whispered.
Cordelia shot her a dark look, and Amelia replied with her own scowl.
“Don’t look at me like that. You’re the entire reason we’re in this mess. All because you couldn’t let Garrick see a little mess. Now Garrick’s got a murder to deal with.”
Cordelia’s eyes narrowed to slits, but she said nothing.
“Trouble in paradise,” Flower whispered.
If the possum had been a person, I would’ve elbowed her in the ribs. But as it was, she was a slightly smelly possum tucked under my arm.
“We call the three,” Sylvia and Betty said in unison. “Call the three to meet.”
The mirrors glowed, and suddenly three faces appeared in front of us. CJ Hix’s blue eyes were troubled.
Saltz Swift appeared in another mirror. The headmaster’s dark hair was slicked back with oil, and a deep frown was set in his mouth.
The last mirror filled with the man I’d seen at the meeting—Forbes Henry. Forbes Henry had salt-and-pepper hair with a trimmed mustache. His face was gaunt, and the hollows of his cheeks looked like someone had scooped them clear with an ice cream dipper.
“What’s the meaning of this meeting?” Forbes said angrily. “Why’ve you called us here?”
“Yes,” Saltz said tersely. “I have a night class to teach, so this had better be important.”
“Someone has murdered Snow,” Betty said. “They’ve set a magic eater on the loose. It just attacked Sylvia, but she was able to thwart it.”
CJ frowned. “Golly, why would someone do that?”
Betty pointed at the men in the mirror. “We were all at the meeting today. Someone slipped my granddaughter an incantation to call the creature. Which one of you was it?”
Forbes scoffed. “You think I would want to kill the old bat after all these years? If I’d wanted her dead, I would have done so ages ago.”
Saltz sniffed. “The same. What we did is in the past. Perhaps Snow called the creature herself as a final way to get back at all of us.”
“Is it coming after us?” CJ said, his voice fluttering with panic.
“I believe so,” Betty said grimly. “We need to find a way to send it back.”
Forbes scowled. Deep lines etched into both sides of his mouth. “If Snow called it and she’s dead, there’s no way of getting rid of it until the magic eater has done its job.”
“They might have had a contract,” Saltz said. “A contract that bound the magic eater to do Snow’s bidding. If that’s the case, then Forbes is right.”
“We have to try.” Sylvia pounded a fist into her hand. “We must find a way to contain it. What if it starts feeding on the rest of the town?”
“That’s gonna be bad,” CJ said.
Seriously. I couldn’t believe that somehow golden boy CJ Hix had ended up working with much older witches and wizards to call down a blight on the town. He simply seemed way too goofy and nice to do anything so terrible.
“We have to stop it,” Betty said.
Saltz gazed around the room. “I see your granddaughter, Pepper. Send her to the school to go through the spell books. There may be a way to cease a magic eater from completing its contract.”
Betty nodded. “What else?”
“Y’all are full of phooey.” Forbes swatted the air. “If someone else dies, call me. Otherwise, I’m staying out of this.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Sylvia said.
“I don’t think so,” Forbes griped.
With that, he vanished and his mirror went dark.
“I’ll help however I can,” CJ said.
“You work with the police,” Betty commanded. “You may be able to help out some way. Keep your defenses up. You’ll need them.”
CJ peered out to me and my cousins. “Good to see you, Miss Dunn.”
I waved. “You too, CJ.”
Betty shot me an incredulous look, and I dropped my hand. CJ disappeared, leaving Saltz Swift.
“Miss Dunn,
I’ll expect you at the school.”
“Yes, sir,” I said before Saltz disappeared.
Betty gazed at us. “Cordelia and Amelia, I want you to help the police however you can. Tell them the spell you used to call the creature.” Her gaze darted to me. “And you’re going to the school. Take the possum with you. Saltz may be able to use her knowledge to help figure out a good counter spell.”
My grandmother sighed. Her shoulder’s sagged, and for a moment she looked defeated. I clasped a hand on her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. We can fight this.”
Betty looked up at me. Her eyes were filled with sadness. “I hope so. This is a bad situation we’re in. Let’s see if we can get out of it.”
I dropped my hand, and Sylvia coiled her arm around Betty. “We will all fight this together. As best we can.”
“But we first have to figure out who called it. Was it one of them?” Betty scratched her chin. “Did Forbes do it?”
“He barely spoke,” I said.
“I’d say he’s suspicious,” Amelia seconded.
“He didn’t act like he cared at all,” Cordelia added.
Betty pulled her corncob pipe from a pocket and slid it between her teeth. She lit the bowl and sucked hard on the tobacco.
“Looks like we’ll have to pay Forbes a visit.” Betty exhaled and a perfect smoke ring flittered to the ceiling. “But first, y’all have your assignments. We’ve got to figure out a way to at least slow the creature down, if not stop it.”
I shouldered my purse and tightened my hold on Flower. “Leave it to us. We’ll help figure out a way to stop this magic eater. It’s not going to kill anyone else—not on my watch.”
SEVEN
The streets of Magnolia Cove were quiet as we walked back.
“News has spread,” Betty said quietly. “The people know and they’re in their homes, hoping that the magic eater doesn’t come for them.”
I grimaced. The weight of this pushed down on my shoulders. But all I could do was work to right the situation.
“Betty, you can’t be alone,” I said. “Not with that creature out lurking.”
