by Tess Lake
Damn, I thought I got away with it. I found myself suddenly very interested in the last dregs of my cocoa.
“Okay… I’m tired. I need to go to bed,” I said, trying out an old favorite.
I stood up and took our cups to the sink. It was a trick I’d learned from Sheriff Hardy. Stand up if you want the meeting to be over.
Mom looked like she was about to say something else, but then Luce and Molly came home, red-cheeked and smelling of coffee. They were arguing about turning Traveler into a coffee shop yet again but quickly put a stop to it when they saw Mom sitting on the sofa. Anything they said would be transmitted back to their respective mothers and there’s no way they were going to allow that. Mom said hello and goodbye all in the same sentence and then left, closing the front door behind her.
Molly and Luce paused their argument so Molly could look me up and down.
“You look terrible, what happened?”
“You smell like a cup of coffee,” I retorted.
“Correction, I smell like a cup of expensive coffee people love and are apparently driving halfway across the state for,” Molly said.
Luce collapsed on the sofa and put her head back and closed her eyes. She had a healing cut above her eyebrow.
“We had a lot of double-decker buses today,” Luce sighed.
“But we made a lot of money,” Molly said. “And we should use said money to renovate Traveler to turn it into a proper coffee shop. We should also hunt down another one of those coffee machines, because they are the most amazing things to have ever been invented.”
“The most amazing thing?” I said with my eyebrows raised.
“Yes. It goes, that coffee machine, penicillin, the modern sewage system, the chemical process that allowed the creation of nitrate fertilizer (thank you, Fritz Haber), and then, I dunno, crème brûlée.”
“Crème brûlée is pretty good. And I do enjoy penicillin,” I said.
“So anyway, why do you look so exhausted?” Molly asked. Having just told the entire story to Mom, I gave Molly and Luce a summarized version of going out to Truer Island and finding the possible murder site. I skipped over my training with Hattie Stern. I didn’t really want to get into it right now, and for as much as my cousins were supportive they could freak out as easily as anyone else in this family. Besides, I was exhausted.
“That’s pretty brave for a little girl to go out on that island by herself,” Luce said with a worried frown. This was typical Luce. Even though Holly was a ghost, and as far as we knew invulnerable to anything, she was still worried about her.
“I hope I can help her. It’s too sad otherwise.”
“I think Aunt Cass is really kind sometimes,” Molly said and then suddenly frowned. We both turned to her with puzzled expressions on our faces.
“Why did you say that?” I asked.
“I said it because” – Molly appeared to struggle for a moment – “Aunt Cass is really lovely and I think people need to know that. She’s also kind to animals.”
Molly’s face was a mask of horror as her mouth said things that she obviously didn’t believe.
“Oh no, it’s a curse,” Luce whispered from the sofa.
“Do you think we have it?” I asked.
“Aunt Cass donates money to charities because she is so kind at heart,” Molly said and then clapped her hands over her mouth.
“Quick, Molly, try to say something bad about Aunt Cass.”
Molly shook her head.
I turned to Luce. “Can you say anything bad about her?”
“I would never say anything bad about Aunt Cass,” Luce said, looking around as though the room was bugged.
“You’re a chicken. I think Aunt Cass is” – I paused for a moment, seeing whether I felt any magical pressure to say anything else, but nothing happened – “sometimes not very nice to people.”
“Your funeral,” Luce said.
Molly mumbled something through her hands.
“What did you say?” I asked her.
Molly struggled before finally flinging her hands away and shouting out, “Aunt Cass is wonderful and I want to grow up to be like her!”
“This is revenge for that vow of silence thing you said to her yesterday. Maybe you should apologize,” I said.
“No, I’m not going to apologize to her. I didn’t say anything wrong,” Molly said. She waited for a moment to see whether another compliment would escape from her lips. When none came she gave a sigh of relief.
“Do you think that was it? A curse for a few minutes?” she asked.
“Maybe. Could have been a warning shot,” I said. “Anyway, I’m exhausted. I’m going to have a shower and go to bed because I need all of the sleep in the world.”
“Me next,” Luce said.
“Aunt Cass once rescued a pony,” Molly said and then groaned, putting her head in her hands.
Chapter 11
The next morning when I stumbled groggily out of my bedroom, I found Luce and Molly in the kitchen forming a strategy to deal with Aunt Cass’ curse, which was evidently still running. Luce was doing all the talking and Molly was pointing to YES/NO/DON’T KNOW that they had written on a piece of paper. It was a very strange version of twenty questions.
“Hey, cousins, what’s up? Still cursed?”
Molly shot me a dirty look but didn’t say anything.
“If Molly is awake, she compliments Aunt Cass every five to ten minutes. If someone talks to her, she compliments. If she doesn’t talk and no one talks to her directly, then she doesn’t say anything until that five–ten minute mark,” Luce explained. She turned back to Molly.
“Okay, I need you to understand that the coffee machine is deadly and could kill you. I have trained myself, whereas you did not allow me to train you properly. So you need to be very sure that you want to run the coffee machine today and put me on front counter. What does it matter that you tell a couple of tourists how much you love your dear Aunt Cass?”
Molly frowned at Luce. Oh, she had been asked a direct question. She struggled, but not for very long, before speaking.
“It doesn’t matter. I tell people how much I love my Aunt Cass because Aunt Cass is lovely and wonderful, and who wouldn’t want to be like her and who wouldn’t want to hear about her?” Molly said. She jabbed her finger at the NO square on the piece of paper multiple times, frowning at Luce.
“You’re going to work front counter?”
“It looks like it.”
“Aunt Cass has wonderful, healthy teeth,” Molly said.
“She does. What else do you like about her?”
“She gives great hugs,” Molly said. She stood up and made a throat-cutting gesture at me, but I was having too much fun to stop.
“Is anything better than her hugs?”
Molly realized what I was doing, because she started to rush for the door but the curse compelled her to speak.
“She has spectacular hearing!” Molly called out before slamming the door behind her. She ran to sit in her car outside.
Luce grinned at me before the worried look returned to her face.
“I was seriously considering taking Molly to Aunt Cass to make her apologize but Molly won’t do it. She’s too stubborn. But that coffee machine is no joke. Push the wrong lever or the wrong button at the wrong time and there goes her eyebrows, or worse.”
“Well, I have a lot of work to do, but depending on how it goes I might be able to come in and do front counter duties for you. No promises, because I have to look into something else today, but maybe.”
Minds can be weird and wonderful. Since I’d learned Franklin Cordella had a room at the Hardy Arms I’d been thinking about going there for a little… snooping. I still wasn’t sure why but I could feel the desire growing stronger.
“That would be great, but don’t worry if you can’t. Molly has to work out how to get along with Aunt Cass. What she said about the vow of silence was funny but it was pretty insulting. Anyway, see you later.�
�
Luce left and soon she and Molly were driving down the hill to start work. I was still fairly groggy from the previous day, so it took a while for me to get going between having a shower and a slow breakfast. As I was eating I remembered what Mom said yesterday about Aunt Cass feeling upset about the young apprentice quitting. I decided I would go talk to her, maybe about that but also possibly about this new power that I’d experienced yesterday. Aunt Cass was a Slip witch too and she might be able to help me.
As spiky as she was it really broke my heart to think of her moping around, sitting in her chair watching television and feeling sad the apprentice had quit because she’d been too hard on him. I hoped she wasn’t wallowing in misery.
My fears about Aunt Cass’ state of mind were quickly wiped away when I stepped outside and saw a delivery truck down at the main house. Aunt Cass saw me and waved at the delivery men to move the boxes into the house faster. There were far too many for them to finish before I got there.
The boxes were quite large and printed with Chinese characters with exclamation marks and warning symbols all over them. Aunt Cass fixed me with her best innocent face as though this was some standard delivery and she wasn’t doing anything suspicious.
“What is in the boxes?” I asked.
“Knitting supplies,” Aunt Cass said, her face as still as a pond.
“Knitting supplies from China that come with warnings written on the boxes in six different languages and oh, look here, there’s a picture of a man with his hand being blown off.”
“Knitting can be very dangerous, and kudos to the Chinese from recognizing and attempting to warn people of that fact.”
The delivery men carried the last of the boxes inside. Aunt Cass scribbled her signature and soon they were gone.
“What are you doing with these knitting supplies?”
“Making booties for little children. Is there anything else you wish to know?” she said, a dangerous tone in her voice.
“No, I think that’s all. I do hope these knitting supplies don’t blow up another cottage on a quiet night. I already had a nice chat with Sheriff Hardy about our impromptu fireworks display.”
Aunt Cass’ glare was like a laser beam, so I decided to pull back and change the subject. We went inside. There was no sign of the multiple boxes the delivery men had brought in. I don’t know where they’d taken them. Perhaps to her underground laboratory, if that still existed, or maybe she’d simply cast a concealment spell over them.
I followed Aunt Cass to the kitchen, where she started rummaging around in the cupboards for a bowl. Then she pulled out some flour and cocoa powder from the cupboard and eggs from the fridge. Aunt Cass rarely cooked, instead relying on the moms to do all her cooking for her. She certainly never made anything more complicated than toast.
“What are you making?” I asked her as she sifted a cup of flour into the bowl.
“I’m making a cake. Are you doing a Cassandra Torrent television special, or did you just come up here to annoy me with multiple questions?”
“Who is the cake for?”
“Nunya.”
“Nunya?”
“Nunya business!” Aunt Cass said, sifting in cocoa powder.
“Okay, well…”
I told her about Holly stepping on leaves and breaking branches yesterday and then how John Smith had appeared more solid. When I told her about the tree image appearing in the clearing and the turtle, she turned her full attention to me.
“I need you to think very carefully. Did you sense that they were ghosts or something else?”
I thought back to the previous day and seeing the tree appear and realized that she was right. It hadn’t felt like a ghost. Ghosts had a certain sense to them. The tree was more like a photograph. It was the same with the turtle and the bird picking through invisible leaf litter.
“They weren’t ghosts,” I said.
“Same thing happened to April. Ghosts became solid like real people and she started seeing a lot of echoes of the past. It got so she couldn’t even go anywhere because trees covered everything. She couldn’t tell the difference between what was real and what was in the past. Imagine seeing everything that is here and then add a layer of trees and birds and anything that could have possibly been in that spot for who knows how many thousands of years. We had to go to Truer Island and camp in a cave for an entire week until it went away. You should dig out the camping equipment.”
“I need to stay in a cave on Truer Island for a week?”
“Well, it sounds like the same thing and you do not want semisolid ghosts walking around town.”
“I don’t like being a Slip witch,” I said quietly.
Aunt Cass nodded to me before returning to stir her chocolate cake. It was a sentiment I’d expressed many times in my life. When I was a teenager, I’d screamed it and the word wasn’t dislike but hate. I thought back then that being a Slip witch was going to ruin my life.
Now I was convinced it would.
“So much for trying to run a business or having a love life,” I muttered.
“If you keep busy, it’s not as bad. You might not have to stay out there. Keep working, going to see Hattie, and it’ll pass like it always does. Now get out of here, because I need to concentrate on this cake.”
Without even bothering to hide it she reached into a pocket and pulled out a small bottle of swirling purple potion. She poured it into the mixture and then stirred it in.
“I’m going to be going now, but please don’t poison anyone.”
“I would never poison anyone… who didn’t deserve it. Perhaps you should ask your cousin with the mouth how good a person I am,” she said.
I left it at that and drove myself to work. It was early in the morning, but my office was already becoming uncomfortably warm. So I had to keep busy? On the agenda for today was getting through my massive backlog of work and possibly a little breaking and entering. I was debating whether I should take a stroll over to the Hardy Arms hotel to see how I felt about climbing in a window when the man representing the law under which I’d be charged called.
“Hi, Sheriff!” I said.
My very chirpy tone must have immediately set off his suspicion meter.
“What are you planning, Harlow?”
“I’m not planning anything. I’m just glad to talk to you. I’m having a good day.”
Sheriff Hardy sort of cleared his throat in a way that indicated he didn’t believe me in the slightest.
“Well, whatever it is you’re doing, make sure you don’t get caught. Anyway, you gave me the tip yesterday. We found what we think are murder weapons in the clearing. We also found some torn clothing buried in a hole that appear to have very aged dried blood on them. There’s a good chance they will match the DNA from the bones.”
I didn’t want to ask if they found a yellow T-shirt with Sunshine! printed on it. I couldn’t take that news right now.
“What are the weapons?” I asked.
“A short heavy club, and we also found a knife.”
“You think there’s any connection between the attack on Franklin and Carter and the human remains?”
“Well, I don’t think so. They were both bludgeoned, but Franklin Cordella is alive and so is Carter. Do you think there is a connection?”
“No, it just crossed my mind,” I said. I knew he would be happy to take a tip, but I wasn’t sure I could simply say it was my intuition that they were connected.
“Mr. Cordella checks out of the hospital today at lunch, I believe. I may interview him again and see if he’ll answer any questions this time.”
Sheriff Hardy obviously thought I’d been feeding him a tip he should follow up. The news that Franklin wasn’t checking out of the hospital until lunch suddenly put a time limit on any breaking and entering I might want to engage in.
“Thanks for letting me know that you found something.”
“Thanks again, Harlow,” the sheriff said.
I tr
ied to focus on my work but my mind kept returning to Franklin Cordella. If I wanted to snoop in his room I would have to do it now.
I paced around my office debating how stupid this idea was. I had no reason to break into Franklin Cordella’s room apart from a niggling feeling that I should.
It was one thing to have an intuition, but it was entirely another to act on that and commit crimes because of some strange feeling. I went back and forth with myself for a good half hour before finally I gave in. I decided I would walk over to the Hardy Arms and make my decision when I got there. (I also did not want my car to be seen anywhere near a possible crime location). I grabbed my bag and camera in case I came across anything.
Harlot Bay isn’t that big but the Hardy Arms was on the opposite side of the city center and there were tourists everywhere, so it took me a half hour to get there. By the time I arrived it was already midmorning and the sun was really starting to blaze down.
I stopped in the shade across the street from the Hardy Arms and had a little two-minute debate with myself.
Point: I feel like I should go. Usually a witch’s intuition is correct.
Counterpoint: It’s a crime.
Point: Since when do witches care about the law?
Counterpoint: It’s a crime, are you listening to me?
That was about the extent of my argument. I was fairly sure I’d be able to get in and find his room without too much trouble.
When we were kids we were friends with Sharon Hardy, the daughter of Aveline, the owner. We’d had many birthday parties at the Hardy Arms. Like many of the buildings in Harlot Bay, there were two levels of basements under it, a few secret tunnels and multiple doors on all sides. Sharon Hardy had once shown us a secret door that went underground and emerged in a park about a half mile down the road into some heavy bushes. I was pretty sure they might have blocked that off by now and I didn’t really want to be crawling through what had been a small tunnel even when we were kids.
Without really making a clear decision to sneak in, I walked around the back of the hotel until I found an open back door and went inside.
I took a deep breath and cast a concealment spell over myself, praying that it would work. One of the upsides to being a Slip witch is sometimes you’re incredibly powerful, but the downside is that sometimes you’re incredibly weak. It felt like today was a weak day. As the concealment spell flickered around me, I suddenly felt incredibly tired, as though I’d been running for hours.
