“However, that doesn’t mean there is nothing you can try,” Grandma Cee replied. “Take this spoon, for example,” she said, pointing a finger and making a small wooden spoon appear in her hand. “If I make it invisible, I will be passing my magic to it. That means the spoon will have a faint aura of its own, because some of my magic is influencing it. Turn around.”
I did what Grandma Cee asked, knowing exactly what she was doing. A moment later, she told me to turn back around. As I did so, I noticed that the wooden spoon had disappeared.
“I made the spoon invisible, and it is now somewhere within 50 feet of where I am standing. Find the spoon, and make it visible for me.”
I took a deep breath to center myself. I had a feeling this was going to be a lot harder than it sounded when Grandma Cee was explaining it. I closed my eyes and tried to see if I could feel anything. At first, there was nothing. I felt like an idiot, standing there with my eyes closed, not doing anything. But then, after a moment, I began to feel something. I wasn’t sure how to describe it. It was almost like that tingly feeling you get when there’s a thunderstorm and there’s static in the air. I could feel it coming from a spot about thirty feet away, a little bit to the left.
I began to walk toward it and the feeling got stronger. I could feel the hairs on my arms rising as I made my way toward it.
“She’s a gifted witch, isn’t she?” I heard Sage tell Grandma Cee in the background, but I let the thought pass out of my mind. I made my way to where I could feel the energy was strongest, and I could feel that I was standing in front of it. I opened my eyes, and with every ounce of my being, I willed the spoon to show itself. The energy built up inside of me, and I pointed to the spot on the ground straight in front of me.
All of a sudden, where there had only been grass, the wooden spoon appeared. I let out a cry of triumph. I had done it!
I turned around, and even Grandma Cee was nodding.
“Good,” she said. “But do not get too cocky. Remember, this is a spoon. A human is much, much more difficult to force to reveal.”
“Right,” I said, nodding. I had to admit, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, and Grandma Cee dampened that a little bit. Still, I hadn’t expected to manage to do it right on the first try.
“All the same, Sage is right. You are a gifted witch. That is both a blessing, and a curse. It is a blessing because you are able to learn what is necessary very quickly, but it also means you will be a target of the Others when they come.”
“Do you really have to scare her like that?” Sage asked, her hands on her hips. “We don’t know when the Others are coming. We don’t even know for sure that they are.”
“Just because you choose to ignore the signs doesn’t mean I’m doing the same,” Grandma Cee snapped. “Would you rather Alice be prepared for when she is attacked, or would you have her cower and have her soul taken like that of her mother?”
“I just think maybe you’re taking things a little bit too fast,” Sage replied. “After all, she’s just learning to be a witch.”
Grandma Cee shook her head. “No. It is not too fast. Alice needs to know these things. Now, Alice, we will try another spell.”
I nodded and mentally prepared myself. I didn’t know if Sage was right or if Grandma Cee was right about the Others coming, but to be totally honest, I kind of agreed with Grandma Cee. If there was a group of weird magical creatures out there that wanted to take my soul, I was absolutely wanted to know everything I could about how to get rid of them.
“Good,” Grandma Cee said, making a cat appear out of nowhere. “Now we will see how good you are at finding invisible creatures that move.”
For the next two hours, I continued to hone my skills. While I had originally failed at finding the cat–although I could sense it was nearby, I had trouble tracking it when it moved–I eventually managed to figure it out. By the end of the lesson, I could see Sage and Grandma Cee were both impressed, and I actually felt pretty good about myself.
“Excellent. Now, I want to teach you a defensive spell,” Grandma Cee told me. “This spell will create a shield around you if you need it; nothing, either magical or non-magical, will be able to penetrate the shield so long as it is up.”
“Ok,” I said, nodding curtly. I was feeling confident. I could do this.
“This spell requires you to feel invincible. You need to truly believe that nothing can get at you in order for it to work. Imagine yourself being invincible, imagine yourself surrounded by an impenetrable bubble, and then allow the magic around you to release. Now, try it, and I will attempt to get through your bubble.”
I closed my eyes and, I was going to be honest, I pretty much pretended to be Sailor Moon. You know right at the beginning of her transformation when she draws a circle with her moon wand? I imagined myself doing that as well. As I was doing it, I could feel the magical energy inside of me building up. I could feel myself becoming more powerful, and I knew it was working.
I knew that no matter what, as soon as I released this energy, nothing could come near me. With all the fury I could muster, I opened my eyes and let the magic inside of me loose. It flew from my body, but unlike the other times, when the energy left me and was gone forever, I could still feel the energy nearby, like a strange buzzing feeling.
Grandma Cee smiled and ran toward me, with much more energy than I would have expected from an octogenarian. When she got about two feet away, I wanted to worry that the spell hadn’t worked. But no, it had to. I could feel it, and I knew that I had to feel invincible for it to really work.
I steeled myself, and Grandma Cee hit an invisible wall. For a split second, I actually saw her cheek pressed against it, her face mashed up against my invisible shield before she fell to the ground.
“Mom!” Sage cried, running toward Grandma Cee. I let the magic dissipate, and I felt the shield disappear. I’d done it! I’d actually done it!
“I’m fine, I’m fine, get off me. It’s not like I didn’t know what was coming,” Grandma Cee muttered as Sage helped her up off the ground. I had to admit, for an old lady, Grandma Cee was incredibly spry.
“That was a good shield,” Grandma Cee told me, nodding. “However, I want you to practice it on your own. You need to be able to conjure it faster. There may come a time when you will only have a split second to be able to activate it.”
“Ok,” I nodded.
“I think that is quite enough training for one day,” Sage said. “For both your sakes,” she continued, as Grandma Cee opened her mouth to protest.
I was feeling pretty tired already, and now run-down would be more accurate. I needed a rest, so I said goodbye to Grandma Cee and Sage, thanked them for the training, then headed back up to Sapphire Village, fed Muffin and fell asleep with him purring in a little ball at my feet.
Fifteen
I woke up the next morning, made my way to Cat’s Cupcakes to get a breakfast cupcake (hey, as a grown woman, I had long since realized I could eat cupcakes for breakfast if I wanted to) and a coffee, then opened the bookshop for business.
About two hours into the day, after selling the entire Harry Potter leather-bound series to an excited woman who said it was her college-age daughter’s favorite book series, I was sitting on one of the chairs, thinking about how to figure out and prove who had murdered Brian Armitage, when Archibald suddenly appeared.
“Oh hello,” I said to him. “It’s nice to see you back. Did your plan to reveal Byron as a fraud and have his legacy erased from humankind go well?”
The ghost looked a little bit dishevelled, if it was even possible. He definitely didn’t look happy, that was for sure.
“No, it did not go well,” Archibald replied. “I had been counting on an old friend of mine in England to be of use, but he didn’t want to hear of it.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.”
“That isn’t even the worst part. I hadn’t been back to England since my death, and do you know what the country looks like n
ow?”
“Cleaner, with less cholera?”
“They have completely destroyed the soul of London! Everything is glass and steel now. Back in my day, the city had character. There weren’t all these men walking around at a fast pace, speaking on those strange new telephones you hold in your hand. People greeted each other on the street. Now the city is a farce.”
“I’m sorry you don’t like the change, Archibald,” I told him. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was in his situation if I would think the same thing. I wondered what Miami would look like a few hundred years from now. Would I even recognize the city?
“And then I made my way to my country estate. Do you know what is left, there?”
“No,” I replied, my heart dropping. I imagined it wouldn’t be good.
“A Tesco! They built one of these supermarket places as they call them on my old land. And not even a good supermarket. This one advertised its discount prices everywhere. It is a travesty! I am ashamed to call myself an Englishman! I will never again return to my homeland.”
“I’m sorry, Archibald,” I told him. And I meant it. It must have been hard for him to go back to the land he hadn’t seen in two hundred years and to see how much it had changed.
“And so, when I was shut down by a former colleague, I decided that I had gone back to England for another reason,” he declared pompously.
“Oh yeah? What was that reason?”
“I went to find the ghost of Miss Christie, who is, if I may say so, perhaps the greatest author to ever be born in England, and the world.”
“Ah,” I replied, hiding a smile, as Archibald continued.
“My plan was to find her, and to convince her that together we could create a bigger, better series. We could continue the adventures of Hercule Poirot! It would be a glory unlike any other!”
“And did it work?”
“Alas, I encountered an old friend of hers who had not yet passed into the other world. He told me that dear Miss Christie was very much at peace when she passed, and that she has been in the netherworld ever since.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I told him.
“Not nearly as sorry as the rest of the world should be. She could have written for eternity!”
“And so you’ve come back here.”
“Alas, what is there left to do in the world except to watch as the standards of the English language continue to crumple?”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, if you want I can get audiobook versions of other books. Again, I’m not going to play them for you when the store is open, but if you’d like at night you can listen to Sherlock Holmes or whatever.”
“Perhaps. Although I doubt that perfection such as that created by Miss Christie will ever be matched by another.”
“You also thought that about literally anything written after your own death, remember?”
“I know that you are mocking me, and yet I have fallen too far into melancholia to care,” Archibald replied sadly.
“Ok, well, let me know if one day you decide you want to listen to something else. Surely it must be more interesting than hovering around here at night when nothing happens.”
“That is true, yes. Although time becomes much more irrelevant when one has an infinite amount of it to deal with.”
“Was that really the first time you’ve been back to England since you died?” I asked. Hundreds of years seemed like such a long time.
“Yes, well, perhaps I allowed myself to reminisce on the world the way it used to be when I read the books of Miss Christie, and I wanted to see how it had changed. She made England sound so quaint and perfect, just the way I remembered it. I wanted to see if it remained that way.”
“A lot of things have changed in the last fifty, one hundred years,” I replied.
“I have noticed.”
“And you see how you left the bookstore and nothing bad happened? You could go traveling! I assume it doesn’t really take any energy for you to go places.”
“That is true. Perhaps I should make an effort to discover the places in the world I have yet to see.”
“After all, you made it to America, this far, in the 19th century! You had to have the heart of an adventurer.”
“I was forced into this trip; it was a political thing. Byron used his influence to have me put on a boat so that I would no longer accuse him of plagiarism. I had no desire to come to this God-forsaken continent.”
“Oh. Well, now that you’re here, it isn’t that bad, is it?”
“It certainly isn’t what London has turned into, that is true.”
“Well, just consider it. There’s a big, wide world out there. You could see a lot of it if you wanted to.”
Just then an older woman, who looked to be in her seventies, walked into the store.
“Hi there,” I welcomed her. “How can I help you today?”
“Oh hello, dear. I was just wondering if you happened to carry a copy of The Canterbury Tales in here. I was told by a friend of mine that you carry all the good literature of old.”
“I like this woman! Chaucer was one of the greatest Englishmen that ever put pen to a page!” Archibald announced.
I smiled at the woman and led her over to the shelf where I knew that Francine had kept four leather-bound copies of the book. One copy dated from the 18th century.
“I do, they’re just over here,” I told her, motioning to the books. “I have four copies, each from a slightly different time period.” I took them off the shelf, mentally thinking to myself that I should buy some small tables for situations like this; it would be easier than trying to hold the books and hand them to the woman all at once.
“Oh, thank you so much, dear,” the woman told me. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just have a look and decide which I prefer.”
“Of course,” I told her. “Take your time. I’ll be behind the counter if you need anything.”
Twenty minutes and a nice conversation later, the woman bought two of the copies of the book–one for a friend of hers who was in a home, and one for herself–and made her way out the door. I had a smile on my face as soon as the woman left; she was so nice and polite, and such a big fan of the works.
“You should have invited the woman back,” Archibald told me.
“I have a feeling Elizabeth will be back at some point,” I told him, using the woman’s name. She had introduced herself at the counter and promised she would return, and I absolutely believed her.
Sixteen
Feeling pretty pleased with how the day had been going, I decided to step out for ten minutes and grab a sandwich for lunch from one of the nearby cafés that was a pretty popular spot with the locals. One bite of their delicious lunch sandwiches and it was pretty easy to understand why.
I loved the BELT with avocado that they did, but today definitely felt like the Hawaiian chicken sandwich. With grilled chicken on ciabatta with house-made teriyaki sauce and a slice of grilled pineapple on top, it was a perfect, light lunch.
I placed my order and then went to sit in one of the small booths they had by the window. My stomach grumbled; I hadn’t realized it was now almost one thirty, and I had completely missed lunch. Since it was so late the café was pretty empty, so I didn’t feel bad taking up a whole booth while waiting for my takeaway order.
Leaning back against the seat I looked out the window, not really thinking about anything, when behind me I heard a familiar voice. It was Denise Williams. She was a pretty well-known figure in town, in fact, she had famously accused Cat of killing Edith Chalmers a few weeks earlier.
She was speaking with another woman whose voice I didn’t recognize.
“I just don’t know what’s taking Chief Griffin so long,” I heard Denise say.
“Oh, I agree,” the other woman replied. “I mean, it had to be Isabella. She may be a sweetheart, but I always say, there’s only so much a woman can take before she snaps.”
“Exactly. The sooner he arrests her, the better.”
>
“Although, I don’t trust those Calliope girls, either. Weren’t they the ones who found Edith’s body as well? And now they were on the train for this one too. That city girl, the new one, she’s trouble, mark my words.”
“Alice,” Denise replied acidly. “Yes, I agree with you, Belinda. They are trouble, and I can’t say I’d be surprised if they were involved in this somehow.”
“I know her mother was born and raised here, but she’s just not a part of this community, you know? She just spends her time in that bookshop Francine used to own. It’s not right. There’s something strange about her.”
Tears threatened to well up in my eyes, but I forced them back. I wasn’t going to let two cantankerous old women with nothing better to do than to gossip about people they didn’t even know make me feel bad.
“Yes, all this stuff has happened since she came to town. I’m not totally sure I trust her account of what happened with the old mayor, either.”
“And you know the other day, I just happened to look out my window early in the morning, and I saw those two, Cat and Alice, walking toward Alexis Juneau’s office just after three in the morning. It was the night she was robbed,” Belinda added in a conspiratorial voice. So this was the woman that Chase said had reported Cat and me. Of course, I couldn’t exactly take the high road here–Cat and I had in fact gone and broken into Alexis’ office–but no one apart from Cat, Peaches and I knew that.
“She’s simply not part of this community. She’s an outsider,” Denise said, and I had it. The lady at the counter chose that exact moment to call me.
“Alice, your sandwich is ready.”
I could have snuck out of there and avoided the two ladies. I could have just looked at them and made things awkward. But instead, I decided I wasn’t going to let myself get bullied by two senior citizens. I stood up, and casually stopped by their table.
“If sitting in cafés gossiping about people you don’t even know is what you consider being part of the community, then no, I’m not part of it. I’m not part of what you consider community, anyway. I’m too busy living my own life to disparage other peoples’,” I replied, before walking off and grabbing my sandwich.
Murder on the Oregon Express Page 9
