Torrent Witches Box Set #1 Books 1-3 (Butter Witch, Treasure Witch, Hidden Witch)

by Tess Lake

  So much had changed in just six weeks. The night before the Grand Finale, a drugged Zero Bend had graffitied his name in giant letters on Traveler’s front window. My cousins hadn’t found it until the next day when they returned to work. A few weeks later, he’d sent them an apology for the vandalism and a check for three thousand dollars for “cleaning costs.” They’d managed to hold on to it for all of ten seconds before Aunt Cass claimed it for the coffee machine debt.

  Aunt Cass had then invested that money into renovating Torrent Mansion, helping start the transformation into a bed-and-breakfast. Workmen were already at the mansion, clearing out old rooms, shoring up the floor, working from the middle outward. Grandma was downstairs with a permanent concealing spell cast on her.

  My cousins were dating!

  It was all very hush-hush because they didn’t want to ever admit the mothers’ meddling had been incredibly successful, but both of them were finding it hard to contain their joy.

  I shuffled through the photos one more time. The expression on my face matched Grandma’s. Whatever she was doing while she was frozen, she was happy about it. I packed them away and then went outside.

  The day was warm, summer six weeks closer now. I drove to my office. My very dusty office.

  There was a pile of twenty-dollar bills sitting on the desk, and John Smith was waiting for me on the sofa. He must have kept coming in, bringing money each time and not realizing I wasn’t around.

  “How are you doing?” he said.

  I blew dust off my coffee mug and then sneezed. My website would surely have a layer of digital dust on it too.

  “I’m good, John. Ready for therapy?”

  Just then, I heard a loud banging from the ground floor and some men talking. Something heavy crashed.

  I went to the door and looked down the stairwell. At the bottom was a young man trying to maneuver a very large desk in through the very narrow front door. He had shaggy black hair and when he looked up at me, he looked familiar.

  “Hey,” he shouted up. “I’m your new neighbor. Nice to meet you!”

  “Hey,” I called out and waved. The young man backed up and finally got the desk in. The man holding the other end of it stepped through the doorway and looked up at me with those eyes that bordered on blue and green.

  “Hi, Harlow,” Jack said.

  Treasure Witch

  Chapter 1

  We were gonna die.

  Marika Henderstrom, CEO of Gold Mud International, midsixties, and as far as I could tell, absolutely insane, heaved on the wheel of the golf cart and sent us sliding Tokyo Drift-style around a muddy bend. Every time Carter Wilkins squealed from the backseat, she laughed like a lunatic.

  I was scared, but at least if I was going to die in a golf cart rollover out on Truer Island, Carter was coming with me.

  “That’s the Death Tunnel!” she yelled, pointing across the fields as we slid towards a ditch.

  We hit a patch of dry earth, the cart shuddered and our doom was averted for the moment. I looked across at the big pit full of dirty water. Large plastic tubes ran down into it and out again. The Gold Mud competitors would crawl down them, through a dark confined space up to their necks in water, and out the other side.

  “Wow,” I managed to say. My entire body was tensed up. My knuckles were white where I was holding on to the cart.

  Marika took us onto a straight dirt road and put the pedal to the metal. I glanced down at the speed – it only went up to twenty miles an hour. We were definitely going faster than that. The needle was straining against the red line that had WARNING – TOO FAST printed in orange letters above it.

  “Could you tell me who designs the obstacles?” I called out.

  “I do!” Marika yelled. She slowed us down (going from splatter-across-the-landscape to merely break-every-bone-in-our-bodies) and leaned back in the seat like she was taking a leisurely Sunday-afternoon drive. From the top down she looked like standard issue Grandma #5: gray hair in a bun, twinkling blue eyes and lots of wrinkles, slightly tattered purple cardigan. Then you hit the army camouflage pants and black combat boots. When I’d met her ten minutes ago she’d patted me on the hand, called me “love” and I swear was almost going to serve me a piece of apple pie.

  Mmm… apple pie.

  Then we got into the golf cart, twitchy-eyebrow Wilkins climbing in the back, and I very quickly understood the kindly old grandmother thing was an act.

  The golf cart had been modified at some point and I’m sure could have placed well in any racing event it entered. There was a switch next to the wheel with NITRO printed above it.

  I was praying to all the magical forces that existed in the world that it was a joke Marika liked to play on people.

  We reached the end of the straight road and started looping around virtually hairpin turns as we climbed a hill. Thankfully, Marika slowed down, although the cart was still shuddering as we jolted along. Behind me, Carter’s squeals had become a series of high-pitched hiccupping noises.

  He’d been oddly stiff and awkward when we’d met Marika at the ferry terminal and discovered both of us were coming along to report on Gold Mud’s latest obstacle: the Terror Tower. I’d been late to the ferry and somehow we had missed each other on the tiny craft that travels across to Truer Island multiple times a day.

  My assumption was that Carter was awkward because he thought I was going to yell at him for what he wrote about me and Zero Bend, ice-carving artist extraordinaire. But I hadn’t read it. Molly and Luce, my cousins, had summarized it as “typical Carter sour lemon snark” and told me not to read what he had said. Normally that warning would have definitely made me get into it, but since I’d been frozen in time for six weeks I was practicing not rushing into things. You know, for a change.

  Still, I glanced at Carter (pale, face like a plate of mashed banana) with a look that said I know what you did and I have a long memory. No point letting him think he could get away with lies, whatever they were.

  I had bigger things to worry about.

  Three weeks ago I’d woken up from six weeks frozen in place thanks to fighting a supernatural creature called a Morchint. To me, the Butter Festival, murder and kidnapping was fresh in my mind. To everyone else it was nine weeks ago.

  Six weeks doesn’t sound that long but when I woke up, everything had changed.

  Molly and Luce had boyfriends!

  Torrent Mansion was being renovated to become a bed and breakfast!

  My website, the Harlot Bay Reader, had almost died of neglect!

  Oh, and Jack Bishop, the incredibly hot tourist who I’d stood up on a date (I was frozen, but hey, he didn’t know that) had apparently washed up in Harlot Bay with his half-brother Jonas and according to my sources was possibly staying in town!

  My sources being Molly and Luce and our subnetwork of women around town who went on high alert whenever any eligible men showed up.

  I had to rely on my sources because the moment Jack had walked in the front door of my office building I’d… um… fled. Yup. Out the back, down the fire escape with my laptop and I haven’t been back since.

  I’m not proud of it on any level, believe me. I know generations of strong women (and witches) who face life with guts and determination are shaking their heads at me.

  It’s just… too much change! We’re eating our meals in the main dining room with sawdust on the table. My cousins have added men to the repertoire! I only have so much mental energy to deal with everything, so right now the problem of Jack Bishop has been shoved to the back.

  I focused on the scenery and pushed Jack Bishop out of my mind. I had a motto: Beer then wine, you’ll be fine. Wait, that’s wasn’t it. What will be, will be. It was part of my new don’t-rush-into-things approach.

  We continued up the road, driving by a bunch of campsites. There was a little blonde girl standing on the side of the road. I waved to her and she solemnly waved back.

  It wasn’t long before a giant yellow backhoe
appeared in the distance surrounded by construction workers wearing bright orange safety vests.

  Marika slid the golf cart to a stop (Carter let out one final squeal) and then jumped out.

  “The Terror Tower!” she exclaimed, presenting the half-built tower to us.

  It was a spire of wood and steel. The bottom half was clad in wood; the top was skeletal, bony fingers reaching up to the sky.

  “The contestants will climb up the inside until they reach the platform at the top. Then they must plunge into the cold water below.”

  One of the workers called out to Marika. She excused herself and left Carter and me alone. We promptly ignored each other.

  I took some photos of the tower and ditch and Carter did the same. Normally he had a photographer (Annie) to do this but she’d quit a few weeks ago and moved away. In my meanest moments I felt just the tiniest bit of glee about that.

  I walked up to the safety line and watched the huge machine at work, the article series already taking shape in my mind. I’d do a piece on the Gold Mud obstacles, another on the international success of the operation, a bio of Marika and weave it all together with the legends of lost pirate treasure out on Truer Island. I couldn’t wait to get started.

  The backhoe operator dug into the mud and scooped it out with practiced ease. I was standing there enjoying the sun and the rhythmic nature of his work when I suddenly breathed in freezing air.

  Oh no. Was I about to Slip?

  The backhoe shuddered to a halt. The operator started shouting, pointing down into the trench.

  “Stop!” the foreman yelled out.

  I looked down to see white bones, stark against the rich black mud. Two skeletons. An adult and a child, maybe half the adult’s size.

  The adult was wearing a gold watch around a bony wrist.

  The day was hot but when I breathed in again, the air was ice. A coldness settled in my lungs and spread out to numb my body. Beside me I heard Carter Wilkins clicking his camera button frantically. It sounded like it was miles away.

  Marika came to stand beside me. She stared at the bones, her face flat.

  “What do we do?” she asked distantly.

  “Call Sheriff Hardy,” I replied.

  Chapter 2

  It took Sheriff Hardy and his men an hour to arrive. I managed to shake myself out of the burst of shock that had hit me and so did Marika. She ordered the workers off the site. They were now gathered under some temporary shade, where they sat drinking water and cups of coffee.

  One of the workers had offered to cover up the bones with a tarp but Marika had warned him away. She didn’t want to disturb any evidence. Carter had spent some time wandering around shouting instructions to someone through his phone and then getting frustrated when the connection cut out. Telecommunications are spotty at best in Harlot Bay due to the magical confluence in the air. That and the lack of investment in infrastructure out on Truer Island made it so there was virtually no hope of getting through to anyone. Eventually he’d given up and gone to sulk in the shade of some trees nearby.

  When Sheriff Hardy and his men arrived, they cordoned off the area and instructed the workers to move the heavy machinery out of the way. They couldn’t get down to the bones yet – the trench hadn’t been stabilized in any way and was at risk of collapsing. I stood in the tree line with Marika, watching the police work. That mostly involved a lot of wandering around and talking to each other.

  “Do you think they’re murder victims?” Marika asked me.

  “There are bones and skeletons all over this island… but the fact that one is wearing a gold watch doesn’t look good.”

  Truer Island had a long and violent past. It was a favorite hangout of the pirates who used to rampage up and down this part of the coast and there have been many murders, betrayals and even outright massacres. One hundred and fifty years ago, half of Truer Island’s forty inhabitants were killed in a single bloody night by persons unknown.

  “One of the historical consultants told me we might dig up some bones but I was expecting skeletons from the seventeen hundreds,” Marika said.

  “I’m sure it will be fine. You probably have to move the Terror Tower. This kind of thing is likely to attract more people rather than scare them away.”

  She glanced at me sharply. “I don’t care about the Gold Mud Run. If it’s shut down, then so be it.”

  She looked away at the police officers, frowning.

  Eeep, had I offended her?

  “I’m not saying you only care about the mud run. Sorry it came out like that.”

  Marika sighed and gave me an apologetic smile.

  “No, I’m sorry. Decades ago one of my cousins disappeared. She was only six at the time. They never found her, so… don’t worry about it. Having some bad memories.”

  Sheriff Hardy came walking over before I could say anything more to her. Was it my imagination or had he lost a little weight? He wasn’t fat by any means, just generally large in the way that policemen can be. He looked slightly slimmer in the face. Geez, you’re frozen for six weeks and everything changes.

  “Harlow. I believe you’re Marika Henderstrom? I’m Sheriff Hardy. Could you run me through how you discovered the remains?”

  “Well, it’s quite simple,” Marika said. “We’re currently constructing an obstacle for the Gold Mud Run and while we were digging we uncovered bones. Trevor, the operator, saw them first and stopped work. Earl, the foreman, called for a halt across the entire site and we removed all of our people. They’re currently waiting on over there in the shade.”

  “We’re going to need your workers to shore up the trench before we can go down there. Will that be okay?”

  “Absolutely. They’re at your disposal.”

  “Thank you. Would you mind excusing us for a moment, Mrs. Henderstrom? I need to talk with Harlow.”

  “Call me Marika,” she said and held out her hand to Sheriff Hardy. He shook it and smiled at her. Was that a twinkle I saw in his eye?

  Marika walked away to join her workers under the temporary shade. Sheriff Hardy put his hands on his hips and looked me up and down.

  “Harlow Torrent, what is it with you and dead bodies?”

  His voice was flat and even, but he was still busting out that twinkle.

  “Just my good luck, I guess.”

  “How was your trip to France?”

  Oh boy, I was about to lie to a police officer. That was a crime, wasn’t it? When I was frozen, my cousin Molly had to come up with a quick lie on the spot to explain my six-week absence. She’d gone with a very sudden vacation to France for some reason and now I was stuck lying about it to everyone.

  “It was good. I needed to get away.”

  Sheriff Hardy looked at me with that stone cop look he has. He’d used it on countless perpetrators and I’m sure ninety-nine percent of them had cracked under his harsh gaze. But I was a Torrent and that meant I’d had to deal with my mother, two aunts and great-aunt my entire life. I could lie with the best of them.

  “Did you see the Arc de Triomphe?” he asked.

  “Yes, absolutely. It was the complete cliché tourist tour. Saw the Arc, the Eiffel Tower, the Mona Lisa, the works.”

  What was he playing at? I was now sure he knew that I hadn’t been to France. Was there some database he could check? I didn’t even have a passport! I didn’t want to go to jail for lying to a police officer!

  “I’ve always wanted to go. Would you recommend it?”

  Now he was messing with me.

  “Paris is the city of love. If you have a romantic partner it would be best to take them.”

  It was a throwaway line mostly born out of a rising panic that he would suddenly demand to see ticket stubs or flat out say he knew I hadn’t been overseas. But as soon as I said it, Sheriff Hardy glanced at the ground, looking awkward. Had I touched on something? I’d known him my entire life but realized it was in the way that children know adults – you have no idea of any of the relevant
details of their life. Had he had a wife in the past? Did he have children?

  “Well, anyway,” Sheriff Hardy said, clearing his throat, “do you have any extra information you might be able to tell me?” He nodded towards the trench.

  I did have extra information, but it was magical in nature and Sheriff Hardy and the Torrents were still playing the “we know he knows, he knows we know, but we never talk about it” game. The moment before I’d seen the skeletons, the air had turned cold and settled in my lungs. I wasn’t entirely sure but that seemed like a fairly good indicator of murder and violence to me. Places where violent things happened could become stained and witches are sensitive to such things. It did work both ways, of course – strong happy emotions left their mark too. There was even a corner in Harlot Bay where no matter the weather it was like stepping out into the warm sun. There was a feeling of joy from someone in the deep past. Occasionally I went three streets out of my way just to stand there for a few minutes.

  I couldn’t tell Sheriff Hardy any of this, of course, so I merely shook my head.

  “Sorry, I was only here reporting like Carter Wilkins. It’s a coincidence and I don’t have anything more than what Marika told you.”

  “I understand. I’ll have one of the men take you back to the ferry to return to the mainland. When you report on it, please don’t mention the gold watch. We’ll keep that back to help filter out the cranks who will inevitably start calling.”

  Soon after that I was riding in the back of a police car like I was a suspect, having decided not to argue it out with Carter Wilkins about who took the front seat. We passed by the campgrounds and I saw the same solemn little girl standing on the side of the road. She waved at me again as we drove by and I waved back. A short time later were on the ferry for the quick trip back across to Harlot Bay. The further away I traveled from Truer Island, the better I felt, but I still couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that had settled in my stomach. Call it witches’ intuition, but I knew those bones belonged to murder victims. The sky was clear and sunny, but it felt to me like there was a storm hiding over the horizon.