This Spells Trouble

by Stacey Alabaster

  “What?! You told me you had!”

  “No, I said I knew it,” she said with a sigh of relief. “But this was the first time I got it right.”

  “And just in time too,” I said with a grin. I laughed in relief.

  But we still had a problem. Mark Sheridan might no longer be an animal, but he was still dangerous.

  I was furious at him, though. “So, this is what you do, is it?” I said to Mark. “You run out and leave home any time there’s any hint of trouble—” And then I stopped. I remembered what Vicky had said about this being a curse. “Oh, my goodness. Did May do this to you?”

  He shook his head. “May doesn’t know.”

  Vicky and I looked at each other. Oh no way, neither of us was buying that little story, buddy. May was a witch. A dark witch. She could easily turn her husband into a panther.

  Vicky shrugged. “Well, maybe she only suspected, and that’s why she came to you.”

  Mark overheard and shivered. “May came to you?” He sounded surprised. A little touched. He was staring at the ground. “I hide this-this terrible affliction from her. Every month when it flares up, I head to the woods so she doesn’t have to know about it.” He looked up at me. “Only one person in the whole town knows.”

  “Kylie Leonard.”

  He nodded.

  “So, you’re not having an affair with Kylie Leonard?”

  He shook his head. “No. I just use her for her…well, supplies.”

  I supposed that a giant cat needed an awful lot of milk.

  “Why don’t you just come clean with May about all this?” I asked him. He was looking less dazed and more and more ashamed of himself.

  He just stared at me. “Because I have been living like this for a hundred years. And it’s just easier on the people I love if they don’t have to be burdened with it. May is a good woman. She deserves to be kept safe. So, disappearing is the best way to keep her safe.”

  But I still wasn’t willing to give May any sort of benefit of the doubt, and I was surprised that Vicky was after what she had told me about May. Something wasn’t adding up. Who was that person I had seen her arguing with that night in her apartment?

  I was remembering what Geri had said about Clover’s death. About how she had been found with marks on her that looked like claws.

  “I don’t think any human killed Clover, Vicky. I think Mark did. And I think that’s why May came into my office that day.”

  Mark had promised to go back home so that May could at least have her mind set at ease. None of us knew how long Vicky’s spell would last, so I told him he’d better make it quick.

  “I guess that’s one problem solved,” I said to Vicky. “But what about the fact that everyone in Swift Valley has a giant headache from being able to read minds?”

  Vicky, being in her own world, didn’t really see how bad it could be, for some reason. “Doesn’t this just mean that people have to be more honest with each other?”

  Nah uh. Trust me.

  “That’s now how it works. I know from experience just how terrible it can be,” I said to Vicky as we sat on the fallen tree in my yard and watched over the town. “People are often thinking things that can be pretty hurtful. If that’s ‘honest,’ then most of the time, I think I would rather hear a nice lie.” I laughed a little. Most of the time.

  Vicky looked really appalled at that. “But I never think hurtful things! I am loyal to all of my friends! Even in my thoughts.”

  I nodded. I believed that. Vicky was a good egg.

  “It’s why I had to give up teaching,” I said, opening up a little. I hadn’t told too many people the truth about my career change. “Dealing with sooo many people really put a strain on me. One I couldn’t handle in the end. Just so many thoughts to hear, constantly, with no relief. Not just the students, of which there were hundreds in the school, but the parents, the other teachers, the principals.”

  “So, detective work is better?”

  I nodded. “Well, it’s a far more solitary profession,” I explained. “You still have to deal with people, but it’s one on one, and there’s a lot of downtime. Alone time…” I felt a little sad to think about it because I loved being around people, but this was what I had to do in order to keep myself sane.

  That said… Now that I could no longer hear thoughts, maybe my change of career had all been for nothing. But being a detective had always been a secret dream of mine. “If only I hadn’t screwed up my first case.”

  Vicky shook her head. “You DID find out where May’s husband has been. Even if she never pays you for it, you did your job perfectly.” She smiled at me. “And I am proud of you, witch sister.”

  I glanced over at Vicky. I supposed I WOULD need some help on cases. And the company might be nice in the office. And she wasn’t two-faced—so her thoughts would match her words, if my powers ever returned.

  “So?” Vicky asked. “Shall we?”

  I nodded. It was time.

  “Why does this smell so bad?” I asked, coughing over the brew.

  Vicky looked pleased about the smell, though. “The worse it smells, the better it works. Potions are not supposed to smell or taste good.”

  I sighed. Yeah, the last time, it had smelled as sweet as bubblegum, and look how badly that had turned out. So maybe we were on the right track at last. But it all seemed like a huge mess to unravel and I still thought, secretly, that we should come clean to Geri about all of it so that she could help us out.

  “I just hope this works,” I said. The aim was to reverse the town-wide spell. With her confidence boosted from having reversed the spell on Mark, Vicky was stirring with abandon, sure that she would be able to take away the curse that had befallen Swift Valley.

  But if this took away everyone’s psychic powers, what did this mean for me? Did it mean that I would NEVER get mine back? It was a chance I was willing to take.

  There was a little ‘poof’ when Vicky added the final bit of amethyst.

  “So how do we know if it worked?” I asked.

  “I guess we’ll just have to go into town and find out.”

  There was a lull over the valley. No one screaming at each other in the street, no cars honking at each other at the intersections, and as we climbed out of my car and started to walk down the sidewalk, people were actually smiling at me. Peacefully.

  “I guess it worked,” I said to Vicky.

  “So why don’t you look happy?” she asked.

  Well, it was because my mind was still blank.

  “I guess I was sort of hoping that maybe I would be affected in the opposite way to everyone else.”

  Vicky raised an eyebrow in amusement. “So, you were hoping that you were special and different?” she asked me, teasing a little.

  I shrugged. “Yes, I suppose that is what I was hoping for.” She’d called me out.

  Vicky looked confused. “But I don’t understand why you want your powers back, seeing as they caused you so much trouble?”

  I shook my head lightly. I had to smile a little. “I don’t understand it either,” I said, kinda feeling silly. “It’s just that it was always a part of me, and I feel like I have lost something…something I never even knew I wanted.” Wasn’t that always the way, though?

  Vicky looked determined. “Then we need to do something to fix it. You need to learn the original spell that Geri sent you and give yourself your own powers back!”

  I wasn’t sure if it was just because I had no confidence that I’d be able to get that spell right, but it just didn’t seem possible. “Nope. My powers have gone. And that’s okay. Maybe I’m just not supposed to be a witch.”

  14

  The enemy of the coven was standing behind the glass door. I wondered if I should lock the doors. Or maybe figure out a spell to keep May Sheridan from coming near me ever again.

  “Am I still welcome in here?” she asked as she pushed the door open and for the first time, she didn’t look quite so intimidating.


  “I’m not sure you were that welcome the last time we saw each other,” I said, but I did let her come inside. It wasn’t as though I had any other clients to attend to. It was like I’d gone from being the most popular detective in town to persona non grata within the space of a few days.

  “You’re glaring at me,” she said, sounding surprised. “I came by to thank you. I don’t know how you did it, but you found Mark.” She started to dig into her purse. “How much do I owe you?”

  “You put a hex on me,” I said simply, shooing away her cash. I hadn’t completed the case for her approval or her money. I’d just wanted to find out what happened. May just stared at me. Part of me wanted to throw her out, but another part of me wanted answers. Maybe revenge. At least some kind of explanation or admission of guilt.

  She blinked a few times. “I did no such thing.”

  I just gawked at her. Why was she even bothering to deny it? “You don’t look like there’s a hex on you,” she said, frowning as she looked me up and down.

  She was kinda right. Even though I still had the red hair, my temperature had returned to normal after the IV fluids in the hospital. But there was no way I was going to admit that I’d actually had a human virus all along. I crossed my arms.

  “You told me that I would be sorry for dropping your case.”

  She just raised an eyebrow. “And were you?”

  “Well…er, yes, I suppose I was.” I narrowed my eyes at her. “Business totally dried up after that. Did you have something to do with that?”

  She shrugged and smiled in a satisfied way. “I have a lot of power in this town. I have the ability to get anyone blacklisted if they do me wrong.”

  It all sounded so mortal and normal. I mean, still quite spiteful and mean, but in the normal human way.

  I blinked a few times. “But Vicky told me that you are a witch.”

  “Hmm. Did she just?”

  I couldn’t deal with all this coyness. “Please just tell me the truth, May.”

  She took a long time to walk over to the chair across from my desk, sit down, and settle into it. “I no longer practice, as a matter of fact. I certainly don’t go putting hexes on people!” Her voice was raised, which wasn’t usual for her.

  I didn’t believe her.

  “Well. someone almost killed me.”

  She frowned. “What were the symptoms?”

  “What ARE the symptoms,” I corrected her. I was still suffering, it was just that the symptoms weren’t so bad. And for a while, they seemed to have plateaued a little bit.

  “I’ve been freezing cold. And my hair went red,” I said.

  May scoffed a little, and she actually had the audacity to laugh. “Those don’t sound like they are related at all.”

  I started to walk toward the door as a way of showing her out. “Okay, thanks for coming in. If you are just going to laugh at me, then you may as well go. Hang out with your husband.”

  She got up and started to walk toward the door. “There’s one more reason I came in to see you today, Ruby. I need to know where Mark has been all this time.”

  But I wasn’t ready to give her any information regarding that. Not just yet anyway. “Why were you digging that grave?” I asked. If she was going to demand answers from me, then I was going to need them from her first.

  She shook her head. “You really think I killed that witch, Clover?”

  I waited for a moment, just to make her feel uneasy, before shaking my head a little bit, waiting for her to give something away. She was a cool customer, but I had learned interrogation techniques during my PI course. “No. I think that your husband killed her, and you were helping to cover it up.” I still didn’t know for certain whether May knew the truth about Mark, but I was going to try and call her bluff.

  “By digging a grave in the park even though she already has a grave?” May asked with that same amused, smug expression.

  Well, she had me there.

  “Okay, fine, then what was it for?!”

  I hadn’t meant to get so frustrated, but I was fresh at this. I had to keep remembering that you weren’t supposed to show emotion like this to either suspects or clients. And May Sheridan was both.

  “You said that I was right to suspect you, May.”

  She peered down at her nails. “I thought that he was having an affair with Kylie Leonard.”

  “So, you were going to kill Kylie?” I gasped.

  She glanced up at me and shrugged. “Well, I can’t be held responsible for something I didn’t actually do, can I?”

  I wasn’t sure that should be true… I was pretty sure there were laws against intent to murder, but I would have to look those up later. I was still shocked by what she had admitted to. Maybe she really didn’t know that Mark was the Gippsland Panther.

  I still couldn’t shake the feeling she was playing with me, though, the way she kept smirking. Everything was a game to her, everything was just her toying with the other person. Just like a cat.

  We were interrupted by a guy with a gray suit walking through the door.

  “Oh, not this guy again!” I said with a groan as I got up to close the door and tell him that he needed to get out.

  “I keep telling you that I need your help with the person who has been stealing my mail.”

  “And I keep telling you…” I stopped. “Hang on a second.” I took several steps closer to him. “What kind of mail has been stolen?”

  He glared at me. “All of it. But mostly my catalogues. Some young woman—well, women—steal them, and I have had enough of it!” he bellowed, looking me up and down in suspicion.

  Clover. Clover must have been stealing his mail to get the coupons. And now that she was dead, Vicky was doing it.

  He looked at the floor and spoke in a deep, guttural, eerie voice. “And I thought I’d gotten rid of the person who did this already.”

  I spun around and stared at May.

  It wasn’t May, or Mark, that was guilty.

  It was this guy.

  I immediately called Vicky.

  “You need to stop stealing mail. Or you are going to end up dead.”

  It was the day of my exam, but I had bigger things to worry about. Vicky had stopped by to pick me up at the office, to take me to the park, but I couldn’t go. I had to get proof that Gray Suit Man had killed Clover. Geri’s tone over the phone was foreboding.

  “You have to make a choice, Ruby, and you have to make it now. You can’t have both—a career as a detective AND a witch.”

  Geri was speaking loud enough for her words to be overheard. I looked at Vicky in desperation, but she just shrugged at me.

  “He could kill again,” I said to Geri. “And that is more important than any spell. I’m sorry.” The ‘I’m sorry’ was directed as much to Vicky as it was to Geri. I could see the look of disappointment and the way she dropped her head as I picked up my jacket and raced out of the office with her behind me.

  “Where are you going?” she called out after me.

  I was a little breathless. I was so excited that I had finally cracked my first—my first REAL case. “I’m gonna catch him in the act,” I said, my plan already running through my head. I’d pretended, to his face, that I was finally going to take on his case. His name was Dylan. I got his address, and I’d even gotten a $500 retainer from him. “I am going to steal his mail and then when he comes at me, I am going to…” I stopped. “Well, I am not sure what I am going to do. I am hoping my magic pulls me through, I guess.”

  “Wait,” she said. “I’m coming with you.”

  Vicky was such a good friend to me. As we drove toward Dylan’s house, I apologized again for the choice that I was making. She shook her head. “I should be apologizing to you for taking your mail,” she said. “But I promise you, it was just the junk mail! Catalogues only. No actual important mail. But I promise I won’t do it again.” She looked a little sad. “I just wanted someone who…got me, I guess, to be in the coven.”
r />   “I’m sorry. We can still be friends even if I am not a witch,” I said.

  She nodded, as though she was really hoping that could be the case, but she wasn’t sure it would actually work out in real life. And I knew that Geri probably had ‘rules’ about this sort of thing. If I failed and got expelled, who knew if the rest of the coven were even allowed to associate with me after that.

  “Well, we know that he hates witches who steal mail,” I whispered, kneeling in front of Dylan’s mailbox. “And so, while this is a trap, we can’t be too careful—or we really will be his next victims.” I told Vicky to get ready to call the police while I started to open the letterbox.

  As I opened the rusty lid, I heard a creaking. I reached into it and the curtain of the window shot open with Dylan glaring out at me. But I needed to be sure, really sure.

  “I need my powers back,” I said, staring at him.

  Vicky was already on the phone, and she looked terrified.

  I concentrated harder than I had ever concentrated in my life as I stared at Dylan, and there was this weird, dreamy faraway voice that was saying something like… Are you sure this is what you really want?

  I took a deep breath and nodded and allowed my powers to drift back to me like a white cloud in a perfect clear sky.

  And suddenly, I could hear everything.

  He was thinking, I am going to kill her.

  “Quick, Vicky!” I screamed as he raced out the door and started to chase after us. Thankfully, this time, Vicky had not dropped the ball. There was a cop car and Dylan was caught red-handed trying to chase two innocent girls/witches down the street.

  Proving the rest in court was going to be difficult.

  But we knew who had killed Clover. For me, that was enough for the time being.

  Geri was steadfast that I was not to be allowed entrance to the coven.

  “She used her powers to solve the case!” Vicky said, trying to reason with Geri.