This Spells Trouble

by Stacey Alabaster

  But it seemed liked a genuine compliment. She told me how much it suited my complexion, and I supposed she was right. The black had washed me out a little bit. Or a lot.

  “I wasn’t sure about it at first, but it’s growing on me now,” I said as I pulled out the teabags from the pantry and asked Geri if she was having a cup as well. I already had the kettle on and even though it had boiled, it didn’t seem hot enough when I poured it. Nothing seemed hot enough, and nothing seemed to warm me. I dunked the teabag in, and the mug felt ice cold.

  “Oh, you should mix your own brew, you know—loose leaf,” Geri said as she put Indy down and started to go through my pantry. She pulled a few items off the shelf—some mint leaves, a few cloves of ginger, and some cinnamon—and then got out a small saucepan where she stirred them into a brew. Then she held up a spoon and got me to inhale it. “See? Like making a spell.”

  I supposed it was. I took a sip and for the first time in days, I started to feel a little warmer. It was actually delicious—far better than the tea from the bags, which Geri told me were filled with bleach and other nasty chemicals. And I could feel my hands at last. Maybe there was no hex at all! Maybe I’d just had a cold all this time. Maybe it was all normal and human! I was just starting to feel relieved when I caught a glimpse of my red hair in the reflection of the kettle. Oh. Nope. No attributing that to anything non-witchy.

  Great.

  The tea was also making me sleepy, so I walked over to the lounge room and put on the record that Vicky had dropped off—The Byrds—and turned the music up to try and give me some extra energy. I picked one of the most upbeat numbers and started to bop to it a bit. I was so glad that Vicky had turned me onto this band who I had only heard bits and pieces of over the years. She had really great taste in music.

  Geri didn’t look as impressed by the music selection, but she was probably so old that she only listened to Beethoven symphonies or things of that nature.

  “So, what are you really here for?” I asked Geri as I set the teacup down before it made me so sleepy that I could no longer talk.

  “Full moon,” she said. “So, this is the best time for you to practice before your exam in a couple of days. Think of it like a test drive.” She shrugged a little bit. “Except that I will be right beside you in the passenger seat. Making sure that you do it correctly.”

  I was shocked. What? I sat up, suddenly wide awake. No… No. She had never said anything about a practice exam. I wasn’t prepared! And I had completely erased my own psychic powers, so there was no way I could just bluff it and pretend that it had worked. Oh gosh, I was going to fail, right there in front of her, and she was going to realize that I wasn’t actually a real witch. Not worthy of being part of the coven, anyway. Now I was very warm. And yet chilled at the same time.

  “I don’t think I have any amethyst around here,” I said, trying to cover for the fact that I had no idea how to do the spell and was completely unprepared. “And you know how long it takes for the cauldron to boil. Maybe you could come back tomorrow night and I could give you a preview then?”

  But Geri was just giving me a cold, hard stare. She was having none of my excuses. “These are the rules, Ruby.”

  Oh gosh, I’d had just about had enough of these rules and rituals and things that I didn’t understand. I was starting to wonder if I even wanted to do the exam at all as I stomped over to the kitchen where I started to fill the cauldron that Geri had left at my doorstep a couple of days earlier, along with the ingredients I needed for the spell. Maybe if she hadn’t been watching over my shoulder, I might have been able to do it—maybe—but her watchful gaze was making me tense up, and I was having difficulty measuring out the ingredients in the precise amounts. The crystals were giving me the most trouble as I had to grind them with a mortar and pestle and then measure out the dust, which was so light that it was tricky not to accidentally over or under do it.

  Okay, here goes nothing, I thought, throwing the first ingredient—a simple bay leaf—into the cauldron and just hoped that I was doing the right thing. Or close enough to the right thing to be able to bluff it to make it look like I had been practicing, and to convince Geri that I knew what I was doing.

  But by that stage, she wasn’t fully concentrating on me. She had a habit of getting distracted and was peering at my bookcase. “Where did you get this book?” Geraldine asked, pulling the book off the shelf so violently that it threatened to topple the whole thing over.

  “Vicky leant it to me.”

  She spun around, the book heavy in her hands. “Ruby. It’s against the rules to accept spellbooks from another witch. These are private items! It’s also considered cheating in a way, because—”

  Another lecture!

  I cut her off. “I’ve had enough of your rules, Geraldine!” I said, throwing my hands up in the air right over the top of the cauldron, and with that, I accidentally added a little too much of the amethyst powder. Well, not a ‘little’ too much. Rather a lot too much. Like, a hundred times what the spell had asked for, I was sure.

  I just stared at it as it whirled around, making a purple cloud in the water as the steam came up and hit me in the face. There was no pulling it out of the hot water. Unless…I looked down at my numb hands and just about went for it, except Geri gasped and pulled my hands back at the last second. “What are you doing, child?” she asked in horror, then dropped my hands when she realized how icy they were. “And what is wrong with your hands?”

  I didn’t answer. Geri stared down into the purple brew with wide eyes as she watched the crystals dissolve and disappear entirely, becoming one with the broth.

  Uh oh. I’d already seen what could happen when a spell went wrong.

  “What’s going to happen now?” I asked her in a quiet voice. “Do I still get to take my exam?”

  Geri was very quiet for a few moments. All I could hear was the sound of the bubbles and my defeat. “I think that is the least of your problems right now.”

  I gulped. “What are the most of my problems right now then?”

  She looked me up and down. Half in bewilderment, half in disappointment, that I couldn’t figure it out myself. “You just put in at least one hundred times the required amount of the active ingredient. How do you think that is going to affect things?”

  It was going to make me a hundred times more psychic than I had been? Only I couldn’t see how that could be possible. I mean, you’re either psychic or you’re not, right? Wasn’t that how it worked?

  And besides, I couldn’t hear any thoughts. Not even Geri’s. Though I could guess what they were.

  “The spell has an exponential effect,” she explained to me. She walked over to the window and nodded down to the town below the hill, where chaos was currently breaking out. I just didn’t know exactly what it was until Geri turned and explained that the spell had spread, like an infection, and affected everyone in town.

  And now everyone in Swift Valley could read every other person’s thoughts.

  This was not going to be pretty.

  9

  I cleared my throat, and tried desperately to clear my mind, before I stepped through the doors of the Onyx Coffeehouse. It had already been a very, er, let’s say “interesting” trip down the hill in the car. But that was what happened when an entire town turned psychic. At the intersection, there had almost been a huge pileup when one car had honked at another car and then the person in THAT car must have heard what the honker REALLY thought of them. Suddenly an engine had revved and if the lights hadn’t changed to green, then one car would have rear-ended the other.

  I’d managed to escape, barely, and hoped that I could keep from running into danger after that. But even in the short walk from my car to the coffeehouse, I’d had to dodge people on the sidewalk who were shooting daggers at each other and shouting, ‘Hey, that’s offensive!’ when they heard what they were thinking. “What would your mother say if she heard you talking like that!” But they weren’t speakin
g those things, that was the problem. I stayed tense and tried to keep my mind blank. But trying to keep your mind blank was like trying NOT to think about a pink elephant. Once you were aware of it, it was impossible.

  Akiro barely looked up at me as I entered the coffeehouse. I thought he would already be starting on my triple-shot latte, but he was rubbing his temples and squeezing his eyes shut like he was in pain. He looked kinda cute in his apron that day and— Oh no, Ruby! DON’T go having any thoughts like that.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, walking quickly over to the counter in case I could be of some help. Was it a migraine? I started to search through my purse for some ibuprofen, even though I knew the best treatment was to lie down in a dark room and wait it out. He tried to smile and act like he was all good.

  “I think my mind has become a radio transmitter,” he said, laughing nervously.

  I nodded. “Looks like there is a bit of that going around.”

  He looked a little frightened, but like he was trying to hide it. I knew he didn’t like any of this ‘woo woo’ supernatural stuff, as he called it. But when it was going on inside his own head, there was little denying it.

  “It’s like having this terrible tension headache at the front of my forehead but like nothing I have ever experienced before. There’s all this static and ringing…”

  I felt like saying, “Yeah, well, welcome to my day to-to-day life. And also, try being halfway to dead while you are at it.” My hands were so icy that I was wearing mittens. But this wasn’t about me. And also, it was so unusual for Akiro to complain about any kind of pain or ailment that I knew it must have been really severe and frightening for him to even mention it.

  He glanced over at my head. “Two hair changes in a week.”

  I felt a little weird—flattered, I guess—that he had noticed. “Trying out a few new looks. Red is quite vixen-like, isn’t it?”

  Akiro nodded. “Do you know what’s going on?” he asked quietly. “I feel like I am going out of my mind. I mean, this must be some kind of bad dream, right?”

  Again, I knew the feeling.

  But it wasn’t a bad dream. It was just plain bad. A town-wide affliction. People always wished for this kind of thing. “Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful to read minds!” Like how they wished to be able to fly, or become invisible, or be able to stop time. It all sounded fun, but there were always consequences and most of the time, they weren’t pretty.

  I kept looking at Akiro and thinking how much I understood what he was going through. Yet I, for some reason, was the only one who hadn’t been affected by the spell. And I couldn’t figure out why. Highly inconvenient, seeing as I’d still been hoping to convince Geri that I’d figure out how to perform the spell by bluffing.

  I tried to order my latte and hoped that would take Akiro’s mind off things. We made small talk, but it was like Akiro was distracted as he stared at me while I spoke. Like he wasn’t actually listening to the words I was saying but was instead trying to get to some secret meaning behind them.

  And there were a lot of secrets that I was keeping from him. Talking cats, witches, murders. And was there something else? Involving an apron?

  Geez, how long does it take to make a coffee these days, I thought, growing impatient as I tapped my foot and waited for the coffee machine to hurry up. It was drip-drip-dripping and no actual pouring.

  “You’re hiding something from me, Ruby,” he said.

  “No, I’m not!” I replied quickly as I grabbed my cup from him. I’d removed my mittens to grab some coins and my hand brushed against his. He looked shocked.

  I was so used to trying to block other people’s thoughts from entering my head that I had had very little practice in doing it the other way around—trying to hide my thoughts from other people.

  “Why are you so cold?” he asked.

  “You can tell that…just from what I am thinking?” I asked with a gulp.

  He started to smile. “Well, yeah… That and the fact that your hand is like ice. Also, you are shaking and sort of jiggling up and down like you are trying to keep warm. Either that or you really need to use the bathroom.”

  I was a little embarrassed. “Um, just spent all morning out on the farm picking plums. Must have gotten a little frostbite.”

  Oh gosh. I couldn’t keep up the lies.

  I wondered if there were other things I was hiding from Akiro—things I hadn’t even admitted to myself. He held my gaze a little too long and I felt this overwhelming feeling that things were about to burst out of me like a volcano.

  “Oops! Look at that time! Better go!”

  I’d been intending to go straight to the office, even though I had no actual appointments or anything. My beginner’s luck had run out. But I had a plan to try and drum up business by starting some social media accounts. I’d take my advertising into my own hands, and I was going to cancel my deal with the radio station. Those midnight slot ads had clearly done nothing for me at all. Since May had stormed out of my office, my phone had gone completely dry. Not one single call or email inquiry about my services since.

  So, I was hurrying, already thinking about how I wanted my Instagram account to look and how I could add a touch of humor to my business posts, but I almost barged right into someone just as I was checking my cell phone, trying to post a meme.

  It was Kylie Leonard. I only recognized her from all my googling of her. She was tall, thin, had light blonde hair that went just past her shoulders, and was a little brittle-looking. She wore a white button-up shirt with black trim, and she was holding a thermos full of coffee that she was sipping. Our near-miss made some flow over the top and splash her white shirt.

  “Ugh, watch it!” she said, and she glared at me. She didn’t know who I was at all. But I knew who she was all right.

  But I was surprised to see her just walking there in the middle of the sidewalk. Alive. Alone. Not with Mark Sheridan.

  “Can I help you with something?” she demanded to know after I’d just been gawking at her for a full ten seconds.

  “Do you know Mark Sheridan?” I asked, and I saw her wilt a little. She was unsteady on her feet and even though she answered with a semi-firm “No,” I knew she was lying. I just didn’t know exactly what she was hiding.

  Great. I was the one person in town who actually NEEDED psychic abilities, and I was the one person in town who did not have them. Wasn’t there someone who would be willing to lend me theirs for a day or so? How about an hour?

  “And who are you, exactly?” she asked, then stopped. “Oh, right. I can actually figure that out myself thanks to this ridiculous illness thing that is going around.” She rubbed her temples. Looked like she had the same headache that had being ailing Akiro.

  Uh oh. I really didn’t want her to figure out who I was and what I was thinking on her own. Come on, Ruby! Blank mind! Blank mind. But I had never been too good at meditation. I would have to take it up as a practice if this kept up.

  She squinted at me and gasped a little as I tried and failed to hide something from her. Then she took a step backwards. “You think I killed Mark Sheridan.” She looked stricken. Pale. Shocked.

  “No, that’s not what I think…” I started to say. But I stopped. I’d thought I just suspected her. That I’d just been curious about what was really going on with her and Mark. I didn’t even know if he was alive or dead. But if she ‘read’ my thoughts, then I guessed that was what I thought deep down. That she was a killer. Maybe I had just been hiding it from myself.

  But all I wanted to know was the truth. I had this feeling—intuition—that Kylie, Mark Sheridan, and the death of Clover were all interconnected.

  “I have a client who is very interested in his whereabouts,” I said to Kylie. “That’s all. I am a private investigator. And he has been missing for over a week.”

  What I wouldn’t have given for my old powers back, even if it would be considered ‘cheating.’ Because there was so much that Kylie wanted to say, I could
tell, so much that she was hiding from me, but all she said was, “I don’t know anything.”

  “So, you and Mark weren’t having an affair?” I asked.

  She opened her mouth like she was about to say something but changed her mind. “Mark never strays too far from May,” she said in a strange way before she wandered off, and I was just left there wondering what it all meant.

  You know how sometimes you just have these shocks of realization that hit you like a lightning bolt to the head? Well, I had one right there on the sidewalk, as the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place.

  I walked along slowly, as I remembered the way that May had phrased something when she’d first come into my office that day I’d first opened for business. How she’d hoped that he would just come home like a cat that had strayed too far.

  A cat.

  And wasn’t that the very same day that I had found Indy?

  Oh my goodness. My coffee went cold in my hands.

  I suddenly had it all figured out. I knew exactly why Mark Sheridan was missing. And I knew EXACTLY why May had come to me for help. She had said I was the ‘perfect’ detective for the case! Well, of course I was!

  Well. This was the kind of thing they didn’t prepare you for in PI school.

  And I had no idea how to deal with the fact that my new pet cat was actually Mark Sheridan in cat form.

  No purring. No meowing. She just stared at me in total and utter offense as she stopped lapping up her milk and took in the accusation I had just made.

  I mean, cats always kind of look offended, don’t they? Or at least nonplussed and unimpressed. But this was on another level. It was like I had said the very worst thing that a person could ever say to a cat. Well, except maybe “Sorry we are out of the tuna cat food so you will have to have the chicken liver instead.”