Hobgoblins and Homework

by Amanda A. Allen

  Scarlett paused from cleaning and brushed her hair back. Her bun was coming out and given how she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had time to brush her hair, she let her hair down, smoothed it into a high knot and then bound it back into place. While she was bent over from smoothing her hair into the bun, she stretched out her back and told herself to calm down. This day had entered a shade of surreal disbelief that Scarlett couldn’t believe it was happening.

  What had happened to her bakery? She’d only been gone a few minutes and Lex had been here for most of it. She might have been mad at him, but he wouldn’t have let anything happen to Sweeter Things while he was here. What was she going to do about her Dad? If it were just her, maybe she could deal with it…but it wasn’t just Scarlett. It was Ella and Luna who would love him the second Scarlett explained he was her dad, and Scarlett couldn’t have him hurting her girls like he’d once hurt her.

  “What happened?” Belinda asked as Scarlett stood up again.

  She shook her head in reply. She had no idea. So much. Too much. Oh goodness, she thought. Goodness. Scarlett took in a long slow breath and let it whoosh slowly out, thinking of clouds and quiet streams and the smell of rain. She'd seen her dad for the first time in years, some sort of jinx had been played on the bakery, and Lex had a daughter.

  Belinda had gotten the dining room and the espresso machine working again by the time Scarlett’s mom, Maye, returned alone.

  “What the…” Scarlett cut off all the things that she wanted to say and asked her mom, “Are you ok?”

  Maye glanced around the kitchen which was starting to look a little bit less like it had been lit on fire. Maye crossed to the kitchen sink and started scrubbing the pans that had been in the enflamed oven.

  “Do you know any hobgoblins?” Maye asked.

  Scarlett paused long enough to let her mom know that it was obvious she was sidestepping the question.

  “I don’t think so.” Scarlett had a steel wool pad and was scrubbing down outside of her oven.

  “Did you make anyone really angry lately? Maybe you got hexed.”

  Well…there had been that brat whose spell Scarlett had pulled apart on Halloween…but Scarlett doubted the kid’s mom had stopped watching her every move. After all, the family house had been destroyed.

  Scarlett’s phone rang as she flipped the switch on the oven and grabbed her oven thermometer. She needed to make sure that the temperatures weren’t off and that was why it had burned so bad. But…the oven power light didn’t turn on.

  “Hello,” she said as she frowned at the oven and tried flipping the switch on and off.

  “It’s me,” Lex said.

  “It’s not a good time,” Scarlett told him. Her voice reflected nothing which in itself was pretty telling. She wasn’t a wooden-toned person.

  “I need help,” he said, his tone nearly as flat as hers. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need it.”

  She paused as she peeked behind her ovens to make sure they were plugged in, even though she knew they were.

  “I’m going to flip the breaker. Turn off the espresso machine,” Scarlett called to Belinda, ignoring Maye to walk to the electrical panel. “Lex…”

  “Please, Scarlett. There’s a body. I can’t leave Amelie with just anyone.”

  “Lex,” Scarlett said. “Someone played some sort of terrible prank on my bakery. I am trying to put things back together. It’s a mess. And my ovens aren’t starting. I just…I don't have time for a little girl who apparently got dumped here by her mom. I can’t give her the attention she needs. That’s your job. Even with a body.”

  “What happened to Sweeter Things?” Lex cleared his throat and there was something in his tone.

  Scarlett considered and then carefully asked, “Is there any chance that Amelie is a hobgoblin?”

  Lex’s curse was her answer.

  “Great,” Scarlett said. “I…”

  “I have a dampener,” Lex said desperately. “She didn’t have it when she left her mom, but I keep one on me. It won’t happen again.”

  “Lex, a chandelier fell, unbreakable dishes are shattered, my ovens aren’t working. This is a bakery, and how I support my daughters. I can’t…even without everything…else…I can’t.”

  Maye’s gaze was heavy on Scarlett as she stepped back from the electrical panel and tried to turn the ovens on again. Scarlett felt a flash of fury at her mom’s gaze, prompting what came next, “You know who’s great at taking care of little girls with deadbeat Dads? My mom. She’s here. I bet you could convince her to watch Amelie given that there’s a body and everything.”

  Maye’s brows rose, but she didn’t object. She certainly caught Scarlett’s reference to herself. And Mom certainly caught Scarlett’s anger. How could she have just shown up at the bakery with Scarlett’s dad? No warning? Nothing? What the…by the stars, Scarlett expected more from her mom.

  “Maye’s here,” Scarlett told him, facing her mom. “Call when you get here because I don’t want to lose another chandelier.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll pay for getting things fixed.”

  Scarlett had so much to say, but she didn’t have words for any of it, so she just said, “Yeah,” and hung up.

  “What’s going on?” Maye asked.

  “Oh, mom…” Scarlett answered and instead of telling her she asked, “How could you come here with Dad…without warning…without anything? What if the girls had been here?”

  The anger rose up again but mostly the betrayal. Tears were actually burning behind Scarlett’s eyes, and she would not be crying in the bakery, in front of Belinda, when Lex could walk it. She was not giving in.

  “I made sure they weren’t,” Maye said, lowering Scarlett’s fury level just a little, but the crack in her mom’s voice made Scarlett want to cry all the more.

  “What about me?”

  “It’s complicated,” Maye said. She avoided Scarlett’s gaze and left Scarlett feeling helpless.

  “I don’t see how whatever hold he still has on you somehow overrides him leaving us. Never calling. Never…anything…Mom…”

  Maye’s phone rang, and Scarlett could see Lex’s name on the screen. Her mom glanced at Scarlett and then answered. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “I…it’s complicated.”

  Scarlett was sure her expression showed just what she thought of that non-reply, but Maye hugged Scarlett and left, something Scarlett thought was probably for the best.

  Chapter 3

  “Who died?” Harper asked when Scarlett went into Harper’s shop at the end of the day.

  “I don’t know,” Scarlett said, realizing she hadn't even asked Lex about the body. She hadn’t even cared. Which wasn’t like her at all. “But my ovens did.”

  “What?” Harper said and then added, rising, “Wait? What? Someone died?”

  “I thought you knew. Why’d you ask?” Scarlett asked, glancing over and then taking one of Harper’s boxes of high-end chocolate, opening it, and shoving one into her mouth. “Bill me.”

  “I meant why are you upset? What’s wrong with your ovens? Someone died?”

  Scarlett shoved another chocolate into her mouth, glanced at her girls, but they were playing dress up in the dressing room at the back of the shop.

  “Lex’s daughter is a hobgoblin. Her magic went askew in the bakery. The ovens won’t work until tomorrow and that’s with Phil having the parts overnighted and working on it as soon as they arrive.”

  Harper blinked and then said, “And someone’s dead?”

  “Yeah. Lex tried to leave Amelie with me because there was a body. Mom took her because…probably because I threw her under the bus, and I’m so very, very angry with her. Have you talked to Mom?”

  Harper shook her head. Around several more chocolates, Scarlett told her sister about her dad showing up.

  “Shut up,” Harper said when Scarlett finished with how their mom wouldn’t explain them just showing up.

  “I know
,” Scarlett said, tossing the box of chocolates to the side and then admitting, “I have no idea what to do about him.”

  “Do you want to see him?”

  Scarlett started to answer and then admitted, “Yes. But only if I were twelve. Or maybe if he'd started by apologizing. If he'd had a story that made it less...terrible. He left when I was nine. I used to dream about him coming back. I cried…goodness…I don’t even know. So often. Every night.”

  Scarlett sniffed, rose, and then flopped back down.

  "Hey," Harper said. “Breathe.”

  “I don’t know to even process him being here. I want this to just go away. How could he leave me? And never come back? I don’t understand. I literally do not understand. Especially now that I have the girls.”

  Harper’s brows rose. She didn’t know her birth dad either. Only knew that he’d been a druid to her birth mom’s unknowing warlock. Given that Harper had spent much of her childhood bouncing around foster houses and ending up in juvenile detention—it made Scarlett feel like a jerk for even whining.

  “Stop that,” Harper said.

  Scarlett picked up the chocolates, handed them to Harper, and asked, “Stop what?”

  “Stop feeling bad because it was worse for me. That doesn’t matter. I’m sorry your dad is here, and you don’t know what to do with it.”

  “What would you do?”

  “Scarlett…you know me…I’d probably set his hotel room on fire and chew him out for leaving me and my mom unaware of what we were. And end with telling him to lose my number.”

  Scarlett could envision that easily. “I’d help you with that.”

  “You’re too upstanding,” Harper said with a scoff.

  “I might be upstanding,” Scarlett said, considered her daughters, and admitted, “Well I’d watch. I can’t go to jail and leave the girls to my idiot ex.”

  Lex walked into the shop as Scarlett leaned back to grab the chocolates again. He looked like he’d been poleaxed and she wanted to kick him in the shins regardless.

  “Would you go for a walk with me?”

  Ok, Scarlett thought, he sounds as broken as he looks. She glanced at Harper who nodded and Scarlett blew her girls a kiss and followed Lex out of the shop. He took a left—and she bet it was blindly given the way he was walking.

  “The guy who drives the bus from Catham to Mystic Cove died,” Lex said.

  She hadn’t expected that. She’d expected him to explain himself about Amelie. So, Scarlett didn’t say anything. Just waited, assuming he’d get that she needed him to explain himself. To explain how he could have been involved with her and her daughters and never—not once—mention in the months since he’d known her that he had a daughter.

  That he'd played soccer with Ella and pushed Luna on a swing and talked Scarlett into making brown sugar cinnamon rolls nearly every day—just so he could have one—and never, ever, ever mention that he had a daughter. She could go on. So much so. And she did not care about the dead bus driver. She just didn’t.

  “It looks shady, Scarlett. The way he died.” He still sounded broken which wasn’t how he’d sounded at all in the three previous murders they’d known each other through. She wanted to slap the back of his head and tell him to focus on what mattered.

  Scarlett held her hand out and let her fingers run over the bark of each tree they passed. She let them feed her their love because she needed it. The east wind swirled around Scarlett’s ankles and then picked up, blowing leaves from the maple trees they were passing down Arbor Avenue and towards Mystic Cove’s Central Park. She noticed all these things and waited for Lex to explain. To move on from the guy who’d probably had a heart attack to how Lex had ignored such a huge fact about himself—something that mattered—while insinuating himself into her life and the hearts of her family.

  “I think…” Lex coughed and then he turned and slammed his fist into the next tree. He finally looked Scarlett in the eyes and those cool blue eyes were ice chips. She couldn’t read his face and when he pulled his fist away—he didn’t even seem to notice that his knuckles were bleeding. “I think it might have been Amelie’s magic run wild.”

  Scarlett had to pause. Everything that had been cycling through her head tripped up and she laughed.

  “This isn’t a joke,” Lex said. His eyes had turned hot with their anger and she laughed again. “Is this like laughing when someone gets hurt because you don’t know what else to do?”

  “Amelie didn’t hurt anyone, you idiot.”

  “You don’t know her, but I’d think you of all people could see it. She destroyed your bakery.”

  “I know you.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. Hobgoblins…when….when they’re young…their magic is like…a bomb.”

  “That sounds like garbage,” Scarlett told him. She took his wrist and said, “I only met your daughter for a second, but Lex…her soul is bright and beautiful. Yeah, I’m sure her magic ran wild in my bakery—and yeah—a lot of stuff got messed up. But…”

  Lex shook his head and shrugged off what Scarlett had said, “I can’t solve this murder. I can’t solve it and find out it was her… I’ll lie. I’ll frame someone else. I’ll destroy evidence. I’ll….I only have this job because of her.”

  “You won’t have to,” she said gently. “You won’t need to. Lex…she could have hurt 100 people when her magic went wild in my bakery and no one got hurt. Not even me. Not even with the fire or the falling chandelier.”

  He didn’t even seem to hear her jumping over her to say, “I won’t let anything happen to her, Scarlett. I’m not a great dad, but I won’t let anything happen to her.”

  Given the love she saw pouring off him in waves, she doubted very much that he was as terrible a dad as she’d been thinking. Which did not remove her desire to scream at him and did not mend their friendship?

  “How often do you see her?” Scarlett thought for a moment and then asked, “Every time you go fishing?”

  He nodded, shrugging away the anger on her face. Repetitive lies when it would have been so easy for him to just tell her.

  “Liar,” she muttered. She wanted him to explain. To make the lies ok. To somehow fix things. She guessed she knew why things between them had been an endless circling of each other without him pushing for more. She hadn’t pushed—she hadn’t felt confident enough after her marriage had broken up. She’d needed time, but part of her wondered why he kept at the periphery.

  But he only said, “Yeah.” And then he gave her another one of those infuriating, expressionless shrugs.

  Scarlett took a deep breath to keep from slapping him right across the face. “Lex.”

  She stopped and then started walking again because she saw old Mrs. Lovejoy eyeing them. The wind had picked up and there was trash rushing down the street. She had to get control. The druid in her was too well connected to nature here and she was pretty much putting up a billboard that she was upset given the change in the weather.

  She took in another deep breath, tried to let it whoosh out but saw Gus across the street. He was holding hands with a smallish female with jet black hair, cut at a slant, and she was looking up at Gus with a completely smitten gaze. Scarlett swallowed and tried to glance away, but Gus seemed to feel her gaze. Their eyes met across the street and then he nodded.

  Her heart had frozen, and she didn’t even know what to feel. He’d been her best friend—and that woman was in love with him given the way she was looking up at him, and he hadn’t answered Scarlett’s calls for months, and—here was all the evidence that he’d left to move on. She hadn’t been able to be what he’d needed—at least not on his timetable. And now…he’d found something else—someone else. At that moment, she didn’t have it in her to decide how she felt.

  So, she waved and then said to Lex, “How’d the bus driver die?”

  “If I answer, will you stay out of the investigation?”

  “No,” Scarlett said flatly. Then she waited to see what he’d
do. She didn’t know what they were, but she felt like she couldn’t afford to not stand her ground. Just in case they were eventually able to move past this mess.

  “I can’t answer you then.”

  Scarlett laughed at him and then said, “You do you. Cause you really can’t stop me from looking into things.”

  “You need to stay out of it. If he was murdered by someone other than Amelie…Scarlett, I need you to not be in danger. Please.”

  There was something in what he was saying, and she knew it. But she was not going to respond to that sideways attempt of his to say he cared. He could say it like a man, and after, he’d apologized thoroughly for lying to her for months. Right then…no.

  “Who died?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Do you think Henna doesn’t already know?” Scarlett asked referring to the druid that Scarlett had bought the bakery from and would probably show up tomorrow to ‘help’ bake but mostly catch all the gossip about the death.

  “Leroy Jenkins,” Lex said flatly. “Now stay out of it.”

  “How did he die?”

  Lex’s expression was sour, but Scarlett simply put on her mom expression and waited him out. You’d think a full grown man would be immune to the mom look, but he said, “A series of mishaps. Anywhere else you’d say it was an accident, but here…it was a hex or nasty charm.”

  Scarlett could see why Lex was afraid it had been Amelie’s magic, but Scarlett didn’t buy it. She wondered why for a second and realized it just didn’t add up. The feeling wasn’t so strong as the knowing, but then again…sometimes the knowing was so quiet it was a mere breath of a whisper.

  “Look,” Scarlett said, “I’m mad at you. I’m so mad, I’m having a hard time not shrieking at you. That you lied to me…all this time…Lex. That’s not ok. But, Amelie didn’t kill that guy. Not on purpose. Not accidentally. Not even if he was a scary creeper…which…if I’m picturing the right guy, he was.”

  Lex took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Scarlett examined his face, looking into his eyes, and realized as she did—that she was hurt because she cared. Maybe more than she realized. But that also made it even more unacceptable. She couldn’t do secrets and lies and hidden lives. Not again. Not after her ex and his girlfriend. Not after spending years living with a man who considered her—and their daughters—freaks. She couldn’t have a relationship with an abyss of dishonesty. And she wasn’t sure she could get past this.