by Tess Lake
“You have no idea,” I said and took a gulp of mine. We stood there in silence for a minute, my heart rate slowly descending from panic at seeing the green tendril growing through the ceiling. With Luce safely away from the house, hopefully it would stop growing.
I glanced over at the house and saw that my cousins had paired up with their respective boys and were chatting and drinking wine quite calmly, like we hadn’t just escaped a growing green menace inside.
“So tonight was a big setup, wasn’t it?” Jack said.
“Our mothers are very determined to see us married so we can give them lots of grandchildren.”
“My mother is the same. Thankfully, my sister just had some babies, so that takes the pressure off for the time being.”
“Babies?”
“Twins. Boy and girl, nonidentical. They’re pretty adorable.”
He likes babies and works with his hands and says he used to be a cop and those eyes and that face and . . . okay, change the topic, Harlow.
“How did they find you, anyway?”
“I went into the bakery for lunch. Your Aunt Freya asked me while I was buying a sandwich.”
They’re just asking random men now? Wow.
My heart rate was almost back to normal by that point. Maybe this wasn’t such a disaster? Then I felt a sudden push of magic, like cold wind blowing over me. Jack suddenly yawned into the back of his hand.
“Wow, it’s getting late. I’d better be going. Thanks for the delicious dinner.”
I looked over at my cousins and saw that Will, Ollie and Sheriff Hardy had obviously all done the same thing. They were all yawning and saying their goodbyes and thank-yous. In a minute flat they were all driving down the hill.
“Who did that?” Molly demanded, hands on her hips.
“Will and I were having a good talk!” Luce complained. I saw her lipstick was the slightest bit smudged.
“It was me. Look inside,” Aunt Cass said.
We turned toward the mansion as one just as a green tendril wormed its way under the front door. Mom rushed forward and pulled the door open to reveal a new jungle where our dining room had been. The tendril had obviously kept growing. It had split into new plants and was still currently expanding. It had filled the entire dining room wall to wall and was growing out to the lounge room on one side and the rooms on the other.
She stepped back as the green tendrils came spilling down the steps.
“Anyone have any spells they need going? No? Okay. We need to cast a counter.”
“Make sure you center it on the plants only,” Aunt Cass said.
I knew she was worried if we made the counter too big, it might hit her underground laboratory and ruin the soul sucker balm that she was currently brewing. For all I knew, there might be other spells in operation right now.
Mom frowned at her suspiciously but let it go. We quickly gathered in a half circle and joined hands. We focused our energy on the growing room of plants and let the magic that naturally swirled around us start to flow.
Aunt Cass was at one end of our semicircle and Aunt Freya the other. We let the energy flow in both directions down the line of witches. Both of them whispered counter at the same time.
Yes, magic really is that simple sometimes. Intention, power and a word. Other times it’s crazy complex with precise timings, and if you get it wrong, you could die.
We could feel the growth spell sitting in the dining room. At some point it had clearly become detached from where I’d cast it to grow Luce’s eyebrows back, perhaps finding a plant to bind itself to. It was like pushing on a soap bubble, except imagine that the bubble had a skin as hard as a basketball.
We pushed. For a moment we were in stasis, our counter pushing in, the growth spell trying to expand.
Then the bubble popped. The counter broke through and swamped the growth spell, snuffing it out like a candle. The expanding mass of green immediately ceased growing.
We all collectively breathed a sigh of relief. Adams came walking out of our newly formed jungle and sat down on the steps to start washing himself. I just looked at it and silently swore yet again that I would find better ways to use my magic.
This is precisely why being a Slip witch is so dangerous. I had both Exhibit A and Exhibit B directly in front of me. Exhibit A was the small black cat giving himself a bath, quite unconcerned that he had been surrounded by a rapidly expanding jungle. No one really knows the full story—my own vague memory was of myself at four years old beside the road down the hill, sobbing my heart out with Adams in my arms. He’d been covered in blood and I think he had been hit by a car. Between one sob and the next, my very dead kitten had suddenly become very alive. It wasn’t long after that he’d said his first words. Within a few weeks, Aunt Cass had found him sleeping on the bottom shelf of the oven, which at that time had been roasting chicken. No one was really quite sure how I’d done it, but Adams was seemingly indestructible and long-lived, and I’d given him the power of speech. He also seemed to be able to escape from any locked room and would often turn up in places where he was least expected. I would leave for work and he would be sleeping on the end of my bed. An hour or two later, my mother would call me and tell me to get that cat out of the bakery. Yet we never saw him walking down the hill.
Exhibit B was the now-living jungle sitting in the bottom floor of our house.
“Well, that was a nice dinner!” Aunt Ro said, smiling at all of us.
“What were the donuts you made me bring home for?” I asked.
“The donuts? We’re trialing an organic preservative so we can sell them far and wide. Why, what did you think we were going to do with them?” Mom said.
“Nothing,” I said hastily. “Do you need help with this?” I asked, pointing at the green tendrils.
“You girls can go to bed, we’ll handle it,” Mom said.
We didn’t argue. I know Aunt Cass’s spell had been targeted at the four men, but even for a witch as precise as she was, it was possible it brushed us. It was barely eight o’clock and we were all tired. We walked back to our end of the house in silence. When we got inside I went to the kitchen to prepare hot drinks for us.
“That was a great night, all things considered,” Luce said. She was smiling as much as Ro had been.
“Ollie asked me to come to an antiques show this weekend. Then we might go to dinner!” Molly said, clapping her hands and smiling.
“I’m going on a picnic with Will on Sunday!” Luce said. They squealed and hugged each other, literally jumping for joy in front of me.
When they were done celebrating they turned to me.
“So anything with you and Jack?”
“Um, no, nothing. We’ll see.”
I didn’t want to tell them about the date I’d agreed to go on in two weeks. For all I knew, in the next few days I might find out that Jack was a drug dealer or involved in something bad. If that was the case, I would prefer the whole thing went away. Then it would be on my mother and aunts’ heads that they’d invited a not-so-good man to dinner. Was he really a former policeman?
“Oh, that’s okay. Maybe he’s more of a slow starter,” Luce said kindly.
I made us hot cocoa and we sat around chatting. Most of the discussion was about Will and Ollie and how excited my cousins were. Although neither of them would admit it, it seemed that the mothers’ meddling had been a huge success. Barring, of course, the magical jungle that had suddenly grown from a single tendril in the ceiling. By the time I finished my drink, my eyes were drooping, so I took myself to bed. As I lay there drifting off to sleep, I could feel little pushes of magic coming from the main part of the house. Our mothers were clearing out the jungle.
Chapter 22
In the morning I woke up refreshed and energetic. Obviously I’d needed an early night. Today there was only one thing on my mind: talking to Zero Bend. Molly and Luce were up fairly early also, still riding the wave of excitement that comes when you have a date with someone cute
coming up. They were happily chatting away and even seemed to think that their insanely complex coffee machine would be fine if they only learned how to use it.
I said my goodbyes and drove to the office. My stories were still going well, and the number of people visiting had drastically increased. As they say in the news business, if it bleeds it leads. After making myself a cup of coffee, I quickly got busy finishing up all my puff pieces and local general news. I managed to churn out articles about the new boardwalk and the possible lighthouse rejuvenation.
Although Harlot Bay is a dying seaside town, we aren’t going down without a fight. The city was working on rejuvenating parts of the town that had fallen into disrepair. Currently, there was a discussion about demolishing the old ice-skating rink and building a new one. The owner had even applied for a demolition permit. No matter how crazy the mayor seemed, he actually had a fairly solid vision for Harlot Bay.
Soon it was midmorning, and I knew the Butter Festival carve for the day would be underway. It was down to four people, and only two would go on to compete in the Grand Finale the next day. I was sure one of them would be Zero Bend.
After publishing eight—yes, eight!—articles, I quickly packed up my bag and drove over to the Butter Festival. I didn’t go in, but I looked in through the door to see that Zero Bend was still carving. I couldn’t tell exactly what he was doing, but it looked like a giant human heart. I wouldn’t put it past him for it to be anatomically correct. I ducked out of there, went back to my car, and quickly drove over to Barnes Boulevard. I found a spot just down from Zero Bend’s vacation rental where I could watch the house and sit in the shade. With any luck, Zero Bend would finish carving soon and then come home so I could speak to him before Fusion Swan got to him.
I sat in the car with the window open, enjoying a gentle, warm breeze. The sky was blue with a few puffs of cloud, and it was a lovely, sunny day. We were heading toward summer and every day was getting warmer. Soon we would have another burst of tourists arriving as those from cold states came to visit our wonderful beaches. As I sat there in my car in the warm sun, I felt myself relaxing.
Harlot Bay has its problems, just like any small seaside town. There’s not much for teenagers to do here, not many jobs, and it has various other small-town problems, but it is beautiful. The weather is lovely, if sometimes a little unsettled and out of season due to the magic in the area. Truer Island is wild, and there is a lookout you can stand on where you can see the horses running around. The mayor is doing his best to bring us back from the brink, so we always have plenty of festivals and farmers’ markets and charity walks on the beach. When the tourists are here, it’s busy and thriving. Everyone is happy because they’re making money. When they’re gone, it’s peaceful and quiet and you can walk on the beach and feel like you’re the only person in existence. It’s wonderful and calm, and being a Slip witch, that’s something I definitely need.
I was sitting there thinking about my mother and aunts’ plan to renovate Torrent Mansion and turn it into a bed-and-breakfast when a sleek, shiny car pulled into Zero Bend’s driveway. A slender blonde girl got out and went up to the house and let herself in. Even from a distance, I could see she was wearing designer clothes, and I would have happily bet she was a model.
I got my camera out, zoomed in on the front door and waited. About five minutes later, she came out of the house and I snapped a series of photos as she walked back to her car. She got in and drove away. It took about ten minutes this time for my camera to finally deliver the photographs because I’d taken six of them. The girl was surrounded by a glowing orange aura that had dark, jagged green spikes stuck all through it. It looked like Zero Bend’s aura. Did that girl work for Fusion Swan? Was she Zero Bend’s girlfriend? It seemed the evidence was mounting that Fusion Swan was possibly a soul sucker.
I spent the next ten minutes flicking through the photographs and looking at auras. I went back into the photos I’d taken yesterday at the Butter Festival. All of them had been unusable for my website, given they were stained with people’s auras. I was looking at one of the photos, a carving of a baby wearing a bowler hat, and my eyes shifted focus. Jack had been standing on the other side of the glass enclosure. He was looking right at me with a slight smile on his lips. His aura was a deep green, almost emerald, and there were streaks of brown in it, dark like wood or maybe chocolate. The edge of his aura was clearly defined—almost a straight line with very little fuzzing. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. He was closed off? Or maybe it meant he was just very well-defined? As I was looking at the photo, vaguely thinking about the color of his eyes, another car pulled into Zero Bend’s driveway and the man himself got out. He was alone. He went inside.
I locked my car and walked up to the house to knock on the door.
“Mr. Bend? Harlow Torrent from the Harlot Bay Reader. May I speak with you?”
“Piss off!” I heard him snarl from inside. It was the first time I’d heard him speak. It was very much angry New Yorker.
“I’m the one who found Holt Everand! I need to talk to you!”
I heard footsteps inside and then Zero Bend opened the door. He was dressed in his full punk gear: black tattooed lines up his neck, multiple piercings, and giant black sunglasses with diamonds glittering on the rims.
“You’re the one who found him?”
“My name is Harlow. I went to the warehouse to take photographs that morning. I need to talk to you about some of the deaths that have been happening on the carving circuit.”
“You’d better come in, then,” he said.
I followed him inside and closed the door behind me. The house was spectacular. There was a winding wooden staircase that went up to the second floor, lots of marble, a plush rug, and dark wood furniture. There was a bookcase set against the far wall that I’m fairly sure cost more than everything I owned put together.
“This way,” Zero said. I followed him past the stairs and out into a spectacular kitchen. There was a kettle heating on the stovetop.
He turned to me. “Time for some truth, I believe.”
He took off his glasses. His eyes were a startling green. Then he reached a finger in and removed two contact lenses, revealing brown eyes beneath. He slipped them into a protective case, which he stuffed in his coat pocket.
“Hi, I’m Hamish Reynard. Would you like some tea?” he asked in a flawless British accent.
I shook his offered hand and tried to work up a sentence that didn’t sound completely stupid. Contenders included:
You’re British?
So, British, huh?
You drink tea; you must be British?
He must have seen the look on my face, because he gave me a gentle smile and patted me on the back of the hand before going over to the kettle. It was starting to whistle.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get over it in a moment,” he said.
I took a deep breath and let the world move into a new position. Zero Bend, crazed American punk artist, was Hamish Reynard, quiet British . . . tea-maker. Or something.
“You’re British?”
Oh, well done, Harlow. Cutting-edge investigator skills there.
Hamish took the whistling kettle off the heat and poured it into two cups.
“It’s important to warm the cups first,” he replied.
“You’re not American.”
“The water needs to boil when it hits the leaves. Very important for flavor. Some argue that there are actually three teas in every brew: the initial burst, the two-minute tea, and the long soak. I prefer the simple method: boiling water, loose tea in a tea-ball, dunked a few times and then removed before too much bitterness can form. Milk?”
I managed to nod.
“I really don’t understand. You’re not American?”
Hamish handed me a cup of tea and then placed a bowl of sugar cubes on the table.
“I think sugar ruins the taste, but tea is a very democratic drink. Have it any way you like. I prefer black
, no milk, no sugar,” he said, sipping his.
I dropped in two cubes, stirred it and then took a sip. Oh . . . that was good. The tea burst inside me in a wave of warmth and I relaxed.
“Do you want to start again?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
He still had his crazy dyed hair and punk outfit, but without his contacts he’d changed. Zero Bend was gone. Hamish Reynard was sitting in front of me. The tea calmed my shock and I rallied.
“So . . . you’re British?”
Well done, Harlow.
“It’s all an act, a game, a . . . fantasy. No one cares about Hamish Reynard, quiet sculptor. No one buys his work or experiences it. No one installs it in the lobbies of their buildings.”
“So you invented Zero Bend.”
Hamish smiled and sipped his tea.
“In a way. He’s a mixture of two people I knew at university. Remember, a good artist copies, but a great artist steals. I stole bits of their personalities, whipped them up together, and went out into the carving circuit under my dangerous pseudonym. Voilà—suddenly I’m in demand, my work is being shown and I’m constantly working.”
“All of it is an act? The fights, the breakups, the girl you apparently threw out a window?”
At this question, Hamish looked down into his drink and gave a slight frown before sighing.
“It’s not all an act. Somewhere along the line, the drugs, drinking, sex and rock ‘n’ roll stopped being an act and became the way I was living. A few of the fights were staged, like the one with Holt in Tokyo. Other ones . . . it’s really hard to stay calm with people sticking cameras in your face all the time. I threw Issa out the window because I was convinced she was keeping me drugged. Total insane paranoia at the time, but once she was gone and I sobered up a bit, it turned out not to be far from the truth. I certainly didn’t kill Holt—we were actually friends.”
All the stories I’d read online were conflicting with the quiet man in front of me. He seemed so . . . gentle. Impossible that he’d murdered anyone. I wondered if he knew his agent was possibly buying drugs. Did he know some model had been in his house recently? I didn’t want to sound like I’d been spying on him.
