“Big day photographing a wedding. One drink and I would have fallen asleep.” I laughed—it wasn’t too far from the truth. So what if I left out the bit where I had a pity party because my brother hadn’t called. I’d try calling him later. Knowing him, he had a good reason for missing my birthday, and I would keep reminding myself until I knew for sure.
Frances frothed the milk and poured it into the coffee before sprinkling lots of chocolate on the top—she did extra for me, because it was my favourite part. Then she did some magic with a spoon and made a cute little heart on the top of the froth. “There you go.” She smiled, and I handed her four dollars—coffee habits didn’t come cheap.
“Thanks. You’re a lifesaver. See you later.” I waved. She waved. The usual. I stopped just outside the shop, unpopped the lid and licked the chocolatey goodness off it before taking a sip. Heaven. The simple things were really the best.
I replaced the lid and started down the street, contemplating whether I should return to my apartment, and possibly run into Ma’am, or go for that walk. There was nothing like a stroll on the beach to settle my mind. The rolling surf was calming. During summer, I’d go body surfing, but the water was a bit cool now, and I was the first to admit, I was soft.
Hmm, if I went back now and had to deal with Ms Crazy-pants, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy my coffee properly. That was an easy decision: walk it was!
But since when was life that easy?
I reached the end of the path and the beginning of the sand. Salty sea spray hazed the air, seagulls wheeled overhead, and the sun warmed my face. Surfers bobbed in the water, waiting for the next wave, and a young mother watched her two kids build a sandcastle. Before I could absorb the peace of the scene, I noticed something, or rather someone, that was out of place: a woman in a drab but well-tailored business suit and low heels with her arms crossed in front of her chest and another self-satisfied smile. Seemed like she only had two expressions: pissed off and smug. I breathed in deeply, and when I exhaled, my serenity went with it. Wasn’t it supposed to work the other way around?
“You can run, but you can’t hide.” Great, she was intimidating me with clichés.
“On a scale of one to ten, your creep factor is about an eight. Think you could tone it down?”
She smiled. It could have even been genuine this time. “At least you have some spunk. You’re going to need it, missy.” Her expression morphed into sad then quickly into serious.
I sipped my coffee. I had a feeling I was going to need all the caffeine support I could get before she was done with me.
Angelica nodded. “Unfortunately, you’re right.”
Not again with the mind reading. How was she doing that? “Can you please tell me what you want?”
“Look, we don’t have time to dilly-dally. You appear strong enough, at least, and there’s no way to say this nicely, so I’ll just say it. Your brother, James, is missing. He disappeared seven days ago.”
No amount of coffee could have prepared me for that. My stomach fell as fast as my cup. It hit the ground, still half full, dammit. The lid came off, splashing brown liquid on my runners and shins. A chill sluiced the sun’s warmth from my arms like the reaper’s scythe, leaving goosebumps in its wake. I shivered.
I was transported back to the day my mum’s best friend sat James and me down and explained that our parents weren’t coming home. Ever again. I remembered James gripping my hand and squeezing for dear life. We’d held fast to each other since then, until he’d gone off to the UK. Tears spilled down my cheeks. I wanted to fall to the ground and curl into a ball, but making a scene wasn’t going to help. Was James’s disappearance somehow related to my parents’? Was I next? No, don’t be stupid, Lily. Coincidences exist. That’s all it is.
Ma’am stepped closer and laid a stiff hand on my shoulder. She patted me awkwardly then dropped her hand. I appreciated the gesture: I wasn’t much of a hugger either. My personal space was just as important to me as my right to believe in nothing.
“You look a little pale, dear. I’m sure you have many questions. Let’s return to your apartment and grab your things. We have a plane to catch.”
What? “Where to?”
“Why, London of course. Then we’re driving to Westerham. You’re going to help us find your brother. Hopefully he’s still alive.”
Hopefully? Nausea clutched my throat and squeezed. There was nothing I could do. Nothing. And who was “us”? Common sense wormed its way into my head, or was that avoidance? This wasn’t really happening, was it? I shook my head slowly and tried to clutch onto something normal, safe. “I have work to do, photos to edit. I can’t just leave.” Not that I didn’t want to find my brother, but this was beyond crazy. Was he really missing or was this some farce to kidnap me? Although I wasn’t really kidnap material—there was no one rich who would pay ransom to get me back. Although, my parents hadn’t been kidnap-worthy either, and they’d disappeared, and my brother? Deep breaths, Lily.
I bent and gathered the cup and lid. No matter how loopy things got, I wasn’t a litterbug.
“You can edit the photos on your laptop on the plane or when we get to England. I could even have your desktop delivered, if you’d like. I know this is hard to believe. Just bear with me, and I’ll explain everything while you’re packing. Come on.” She started walking towards my apartment block.
I shuffled along next to her, my legs heavy as if they were weighed down with lead boots. My gut told me she was telling the truth, so I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. I bit my lip to keep from crying again. Now wasn’t the time to fall apart. My brother needed me.
And I never let down those I loved.
Never.
Chapter 3
As soon as the door shut back at my unit, I turned to Ma’am. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? Anything could happen to me overseas. Are you for real?”
“Fair questions, I suppose. Why don’t we call your sister-in-law? Give me your phone, so you know I’m not getting an imposter to talk to you.”
I unlocked my phone and handed it to her. “Good luck. That thing hasn’t been working properly. I tried calling her this morning, but I couldn’t get through.”
She grinned.
“What’s so funny?”
“Have you had any other electricals stop working since yesterday?”
“Actually, yeah. My coffee machine died.” The offending appliance sat uselessly in my kitchen, taking up valuable counter space and reminding me I’d only had half a cup of coffee today.
“It’s to be expected—your power will intermittently interfere with things of that nature. You just turned twenty-four, the age when a witch’s power comes in. Occasionally there are early bloomers, but it appears as if you’re a normal witch. Your brother’s power came in when he was twenty-two. He was more than ready, as he’s very mature for his age. But from now on, you’ll have to learn to contain your witchy energy.”
I tried not to laugh. Okaaay. Among the other crazy things she’d said, she mentioned witch and normal in the same breath. Either she was totally loco, or she had the best poker-joke face ever. And was she insinuating I was immature? “Um, yep, that would be it. I was wondering when my powers would come in. It’s about time, really.” All jokes aside, James was more mature than me: that tended to happen when you took over looking after your sister when you were eighteen. He’d said no to a lot of parties and fun because of me. What if I never saw him again? Sadness wrapped familiar arms around me and squeezed.
“There’s no need for sarcasm, my dear. I know this is a lot to take in, but you have to start sometime, and the sooner, the better. Your brother needs you.” She pulled up my phone contacts, found Millicent, and pressed dial. “Millicent, dear, hello. Yes, it’s Angelica. Yes, I’m here, but I need you to talk to her. I’m just going to put you on speaker. If Lily touches the phone, we’ll lose the connection.” She pressed a button.
Millicent’s relieved voice
poured from my phone. “Lily, it’s me. Are you okay?”
“I think so. But is it true… about James?” My voice hitched. I couldn’t lose my brother too.
“Yes. He was walking the dogs last Sunday, and he never came back. Pepper and Patty came home, their leads trailing behind them.” Her voice quieted to almost a whisper, and I leaned forward to better hear what she was saying. “There was blood on their fur. Tests confirmed some was James’s.”
My heart raced. This couldn’t be happening. “How much blood?”
“Enough that we knew it wasn’t a scratch, but not enough that we could assume he’d bled out.”
I swallowed and clutched my stomach. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry, Mill. You must be beside yourself. Why didn’t you call me earlier in the week? You should have called.”
“I was hoping he would’ve come back by now. I didn’t want to scare you unnecessarily. Sorry we missed your birthday, but, well...”
Sheesh, she was going through hell, yet she was apologizing. I wanted to leap through the phone and give her a hug, even with my affection-aversion. “Oh my God, Mill. That’s nothing. Forget about it. I’m here for you. In fact, soon I’ll be there for you. Apparently, Ma’am has us on a flight out of Sydney today.”
“I’m so glad I’ll, finally meet you in person. Skype calls are good and all, but I need to give you a proper hug. Plus, you need to be here when we find James, because we are going to find him.” Her deep intake of breath was clear down the phone line. “And I know the things Angelica has to say sound impossible, and even crazy, but you can trust her. I’m sorry about the timing, but I should let you know that I’m a witch too. Sorry to drop that on you and run, but I have to go. Love you, and I’ll see you soon. Have a safe flight.”
The line dropped out, and Angelica handed me the phone, not that it was much use in my witchy hands, apparently. Yeah, right. And Millicent was a witch too? This could not be happening. I didn’t know if I was capable of believing this all—it was just too farfetched. I was a need-to-see-proof kind of person, hence my agnostic tendencies. I knew I couldn’t prove anything about God or an afterlife one way or the other, so I stood in the middle, waiting for some kind of proof. Maybe it would never come, and I’d die and stop existing, never really knowing. Life really sucked. “Prove it.”
“Prove that I’m a witch?”
“Yes, please. As if I’m going to fly halfway around the world with a stranger on just their word. Maybe you’ve threatened my sister-in-law too and made her say that stuff. Or maybe it’s someone who sounds a lot like her.”
“With her phone?”
“Well, you could have thugs at her place right now.”
Angelica rolled her eyes. “If we must do this, fine.”
Yes, we must.
She looked around the open-plan living area until her gaze stopped at my dining-room table, which was setup as my workstation. My desktop with two screens sat there surrounded by a pile of proofs, accounting paperwork, and mail in different stages of openness. Oh, and there was the half-finished bottle of Coke No Sugar I’d been looking for yesterday morning. Angelica looked at me and tsked.
“What? Being messy isn’t a crime. I’m creative.” I shrugged.
She blew out a loud breath and turned back towards my table. Her arms spread wide, and she chanted. “So many things in a jumbled mess. Make it clean enough to impress.” Everything except for my computer disappeared then reappeared in an organised state. My mail was in a neat pile in a shoebox-size organiser, the proofs were in a folder, and my accounting paperwork was neatly stacked to the right of the monitors. My mouth dropped open. Wow.
“There’s no excuse to be messy.”
“Not when you can do cool stuff like that, no, but I don’t have time to be tidy. I can’t just wave my arms around and spout poetry to make it happen.” Just wow.
She raised a brow and tilted her head up. “Need any more proof?”
“No, I’m good. I don’t think my brain can take any more hits to reality.” Or what I’d thought was reality. If witches existed, did that mean vampires and werewolves did too? What, was I in a TV show now? Maybe it was Candid Camera. I looked around for hidden equipment.
“Good.” She folded her arms, satisfaction oozing from every pore. She’d proven me wrong a couple of times already, and it wasn’t even 10:00 a.m. People who always had to be right were kind of annoying. She smirked. “We need to get going, so we don’t miss our flight. You’d best pack. I’ll wait for you out here.” She looked down at my sofa and brushed her palm against the cushion to move any potential debris out of the way before she sat. Rude much?
“Yeah, okay, but how much do I owe you for the flight?” I knew return flights were around eighteen hundred from Sydney to London; God knew I’d looked them up enough times. I’d been desperate to see my brother, but there never seemed to be a convenient time. Either I was short of cash, or he or I were too busy to spend the time we wanted if I made the effort to go all the way over there. That thousand-dollar tip from Mr Papadakis couldn’t have come at a better time.
“You don’t owe me anything. It’s all taken care of.”
“But, you can’t pay for it. It’s expensive.”
“I’m not paying. The Paranormal Investigation Bureau is taking care of it.”
“The what?”
“It’s where I work. They’re the ones investigating your brother’s disappearance. They sent me here to fetch you. Now hurry along. We don’t have much time.”
Yep, things were getting stranger and stranger. When I went into my room, my suitcase was already splayed open on the bed. And stranger. I looked around. Had Angelica broken into my apartment while I was getting coffee earlier?
“No. I’m a witch. I asked it to happen, so it did. I was trying to save you time.”
Goddammit! “Stay out of my head!” A snicker came from my living room. Yeah, super funny. But hang on. “If you were trying to save me some time”—I called out—“then why didn’t you pack my bag too?”
“Because I have no idea what you want to take, and I had no time to look through your things to pick appropriate clothing.”
Hmm, so witches couldn’t do everything that easily.
I changed my tights and sneakers for jeans and flat, black knee-high boots then hurriedly filled the case. Underwear, check. Jeans, check. Jackets, check. Tracksuits, check. Four pairs of shoes for different weather, check. Toiletries, check. I squished my Ugg boots, pyjamas, and dressing gown onto the top and clipped the elastic thingies together to stop it from getting jumbled into a mess. I hauled the suitcase off my bed, and it thudded to the floor. I pulled the lever up and wheeled it out of my room. “How long will we be away?”
Ma’am was still perched on the edge of the sofa, her knees primly together, her back straight. “I don’t think you’ll be back any time soon.”
“Oh.” I hoped I wasn’t gone too long. We needed to get James home as soon as possible, because he wasn’t dead. Nope, not dead. I’d spend a little time with him then come back here. I had a wedding job booked in two weeks, and I really loved my apartment. It wasn’t huge, but it was mine, bought with my share of my parents’ life insurance. I almost felt like they were here with me. Plus, I had my friends, and the beach. Everything I loved, except my brother and his wife, was here.
I made sure my phone, wallet, headache tablets, iPod, iPad—coffee and Apple products were my weaknesses, oh… and camera lenses—laptop and passport were in my rucksack, gathered my camera equipment and struggled out the door. I must have been carting thirty kilos of stuff, which was equivalent to a medium-sized child, or a big dog. It would have been nice if Ma’am had helped. Couldn’t she just magic my bags down the stairs? Come to think of it, I wouldn’t say no to being magicked down the stairs either. Did you hear that, Ma’am?
“You’re young. You can handle it,” she called from the ground floor. I sighed.
The door clicked behind me. I checked it was locked and whis
pered, “Goodbye, home. I’ll be back soon.”
London, here I come.
Chapter 4
Angelica was Miss Super Organised. She’d booked us a cab that got us to the airport just in time for check in. The cab driver hoisted my bag out of the boot. A tingle, kind of like pins and needles, washed over my body. I shook it off then saddled myself with my plethora of bags. I turned to Angelica, who was standing there holding a handbag and small carry-on with wheels. Huh? Where did they come from?
She leant close, speaking quietly. “We’re travelling internationally. A passenger with no luggage would draw unwanted attention.” She had a point. But where did the bags come from? Yeah, I get it was magic, but how? And if I was a witch—yeah, right—was I capable of doing that too? Maybe when they were recruiting witches, they should explain all the fun stuff first.
Angelica seemed relaxed and not like someone who was about to suffer for hours on end. Maybe she’d just magic herself and sleep the whole way? But I was magickless, or at least incompetent when it came to that, so I wasn’t looking forward to cattle class. Economy travel was just another name for torture. With two flights and a stopover totalling around twenty-four hours, I’d have plenty of time to stew in my misery. I’d done the flight once with my family, when I was eleven. We'd visited my dad’s family in Italy, and it was amazing once we got there, but sitting upright and sleepless for so long was not something I’d forget in a hurry. I envied those people who could sleep sitting up. Bastards.
Imagine my joy when we breezed through the non-existent line for business class. My mouth dropped open. No freaking way! I get a bed! Woohoo!
“Don’t stand there gawking, dear. Place your bag onto the scales, please.” Angelica’s bemusement spread across her face in a large grin. Who knew she could actually look not in the least bit scary?
We grabbed our tickets and headed for security. By the time we made it through there, I was hungry and in need of another coffee. It was a wonder I’d made it this far on only half a cup.
Witchnapped in Westerham (Paranormal Investigation Bureau Book 1) Page 2
