by Tess Lake
“Whoa, who said anything about getting married?” I protested.
Molly has had it in for Alba since they were both fourteen years old and a boy that Molly kinda liked ended up liking Alba more than her. Nothing happened, of course – they were all fourteen – but Molly has the memory of an elephant and is going for the world championship in holding a grudge.
I did sort of agree with Molly. Alba was incredibly annoying. She wore long fake nails and had a bad habit of tapping them on any surface she could find. Conversations were accompanied by a clicking drumbeat in the background. It was a very bad habit that Alba had picked up from another classmate of ours who had left Harlot Bay at the age of sixteen to head for Hollywood and had had some success. Obviously, Molly’s mind was traveling on the same path.
“Oh my Goddess, you remember how her and Susan Smith, aka Bella Bing, used to wear those stupid nails and tap them all the time?” Molly said.
“I saw Bella Bing broke up with her boyfriend. The action movie guy,” Luce said.
“Bella Bing broke boyfriend,” I said, seeing if it worked as a tongue twister.
“Why are you keeping track of what Bella – no, I’m not calling her that, Susan is doing anyway?” Molly said.
“She’s one of the most famous people to come from Harlot Bay. We went to school with her. I dunno, I was reading a magazine and I was bored.”
“Can we circle back to how I’m apparently marrying Jack and Alba is marrying Jonas?” I asked.
“So you are going to marry Jack?” Luce asked.
“That’s not what I meant!”
Molly and Luce started laughing.
“Ha ha, got you,” Luce said.
“You should see your face,” Molly said.
I couldn’t help but smile back at them. The truth was that since their coffee shop/tourist trap had taken off, I hadn’t really spent much time with them just doing nothing. I missed this.
“Want to go see a movie or something before we schlep our way out to Truer Island so we can throw ourselves in the mud tomorrow for no good reason?” Molly asked.
“There is a movie about six firefighters. I hear they don’t spend very much time wearing shirts,” Luce said.
“That sounds great, but…. how about we investigate a creepy house instead?”
Okay, so I didn’t make that sound very appealing at all. Molly and Luce looked at me, deadpan.
“Let me guess, this has something to do with those two skeletons you found on Truer Island. Is this house like a murder house or something?” Molly asked.
“I don’t want to go to any creepy murder house!” Luce said.
“It’s not a murder house! Well, I don’t think it is. Okay, maybe it is.”
I told Molly and Luce about what my new Slip power had revealed and how I’d gone to the house but had been too scared to go in by myself. I also told them about visiting Franklin Cordella and how I had a very strong feeling that he wasn’t actually the one who had murdered Holly and her father.
“So let me get this straight… instead of a big bucket of popcorn, some kind of soda, and possibly an ice cream that involves chocolate you want us to go to some creepy murder house and do what, exactly? Break in?” Molly asked.
“I thought we would wing it. I figured two of us would knock on the door while one of you took Holly out back to look around. If there was no one home, maybe we go inside. If there was someone home we could have a quick talk with them while the other two around the back see if they can find anything. I’d like to see what Holly says too.”
“I’d much rather be watching firefighters with no shirts,” Luce said.
“Me too, but…” I struggled to get it out. “I have to help Holly. I saw her going into that house in the past. I’m sure I can find something that can help her. This Slip witch power is getting worse and I don’t know how much longer it’s safe for me to stay in Harlot Bay. So it’s kinda now or never. Come on, we can watch the firefighters with their shirts off when we get back.”
Molly and Luce looked at each other and then Molly shrugged. “Okay, sure, let’s perform some breaking and entering. It’s not like we have anything else better to do.”
“But we do have something better to do!” Luce protested, but her heart wasn’t in it.
“Awesome, we’ll take my car,” I said.
Molly and Luce filed out ahead of me down the stairs. I stopped in the office to call out to Holly, to see if she was around.
“Holly, we’re going now, are you here?”
Holly appeared a few seconds later, popping into existence on the sofa. As she appeared I saw the fabric crease as though she weighed as much as a real girl.
“Cool, it worked,” Holly said.
“What worked?”
“I sort of set an alarm in my mind so if you called me I would come back here. John told me how to do it. I was right across the other side of town and suddenly I got pulled back. It was amazing!”
She jumped off the sofa and ran out the door and down the stairs, thudding as she went.
A ghostly alarm? I had no idea what she was talking about. I’d have to remember to ask John about it sometime.
I locked the office and went outside to find Molly and Luce standing by the car, very awkwardly looking at Holly as she looked at them.
“Um, Harlow, we can see Holly,” Molly whispered to me.
“I think it’s the Slip power. I’m not sure if it’s just near me, or maybe there is some area of effect. But we need to hurry before it gets worse,” I whispered back.
I saw Holly looking at me, unsure of what to do.
“Molly and Luce, this is Holly. Holly, these are my cousins Molly and Luce.”
“Hi,” Holly said shyly.
“Okay, everyone in the car. Let’s go,” I said.
Molly got in the front seat with me and Luce and Holly sitting in the back. I could tell my cousins were a little freaked out about the ghost girl suddenly appearing to them, but they got over it fairly quickly and started talking to her like she was any other little girl. That meant a lot of questions that got very few answers and trying to make her laugh.
It wasn’t long before Holly was giggling with Luce.
On the way to the so-called “creepy murder house” my car started to act up. The engine started making a strange noise and began to lose power. I turned off the air conditioner and it seemed to improve things, but I could tell my car wasn’t long for this world. Unfortunately I still had no money, so I simply had to pray it wouldn’t die on me.
“We can loan you some money to get your car serviced,” Molly offered.
“Hey, I need that money for shoes and things. Or for expanding the business,” Luce said from the back.
“Thanks for the offer, but my car is strong like iron,” I said in my best Russian accent.
Thankfully, the law of comedy didn’t strike me down at that moment. The engine went back to normal and not long after that we were parked down the road from the house.
I turned around to talk to Holly.
“Do you remember the street at all? Anything familiar?”
Holly looked around and then shook her head.
We all got out of the car and gathered to make a quick plan.
“I’ll knock on the front door and one of you stays with me while the other one sneaks around the back of the house to see if you can find anything unusual. Who wants to stay with me and who wants to do the sneaking?”
“How about we all stay together at the front door? Actually, we should all stay in the car and go to Truer Island instead. Doesn’t that sound like a good idea?” Luce asked, rubbing her hands nervously.
“I’ll go sneaking around the back. Me and Holly will bust this case wide open,” Molly said. Holly giggled at this and they took off together, leaving me with the increasingly worried Luce. As soon as they were around the corner, we’d be good to go.
“I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things. Last time I came with
you I ended up jumping off the top of the burning lighthouse holding a broom and ended up in the ocean.”
“True, but think how good you’ll feel if we can help Holly move on.”
“I’m sure Sheriff Hardy will arrest whoever it is and then Holly will move on, with or without our help.”
“Well, this is your last chance to get out, because I have to knock on the front door now.”
Luce looked at the car and then back at the house.
“Okay, fine,” she said. “Let’s visit the creepy murder death house.”
I hadn’t planned what I would say when I knocked on the door but as we approached the house, an idea began to form. What better way to discover if someone knew Holly and her dad than by knocking on the door and asking for them? If I saw shock and surprise, I’d know I was on the right track.
I didn’t tell Luce this. If I had, I’m sure she would have turned around and gone straight back to the car.
We reached the low front gate. Nothing had changed since I’d been here. The front garden was full of dried weeds and over to the side was a broken birdbath. The paint was still peeling on the gate and on the house.
“Yep, we’re gonna get murdered,” Luce said.
I swear sometimes that girl forgets she’s a witch and can actually do more than merely run away. (She’s actually really good at magically hurling clods of earth.)
The gate screeched like a harpy when I opened it, which was definitely not a good omen. We walked up the cracked path and to the front door. It was peeling and looked like someone had kicked it hard a long time ago.
I knocked on the door with my very professional “I’m a journalist” style knock and then stepped back. There was no answer but I was sure I heard someone talking in a low tone inside.
I knocked on the door again. After another thirty seconds of waiting, the door finally creaked open and a woman peered through the gap.
It was Schapelle Greenway. The photo on the Internet had been somewhat blurry but I recognized her sharp features. She didn’t look very happy to see us.
“What do you want?” she said, barely holding the door open.
Okay, here goes.
“I’ve come to visit Holly and her dad. Are they home?”
A flash of something crossed her face. Guilt? Fear? I couldn’t be sure. What I did know, however, was that she had responded to the name.
“Who are you?” Schapelle asked.
“Harlow Torrent, writer, editor and publisher of the Harlot Bay Reader. This is my cousin Luce. Holly and her dad were friends of mine. I was wondering if they were home.”
“No one called Holly lives here. Are you sure you have the right address?”
“I think so. They lived here a few years ago. Do you know when they moved out?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve lived here for years.”
I was about to ask another question to give Molly and Holly more time to look around when Holly suddenly appeared beside me.
“Go back to the car!” Holly said and pushed at me before vanishing.
I actually felt her hands touch me. She looked scared, so I didn’t waste another second standing there with Schapelle Greenway in front of me.
“Sorry, wrong address,” I said.
I grabbed Luce by the arm and hustled out of there. Holly appeared next to the car when we reached it.
“Quick, quick start the car,” she urged.
“Where’s Molly?” I asked as I started the car. Luce and Holly got in the back.
There was a sudden thud against the side of the car. Molly pulled the passenger-side door open and jumped in, panting.
“Drive, drive, drive!” she commanded.
I put the car in gear and hit the accelerator, and this was the moment the law of comedic timing struck hard. The engine roared but we barely moved. I changed gears and back again but we were only moving at a snail’s pace.
In the rearview mirror, I saw a man dressed in all black come out the front gate and look up the road towards us.
“Get going right now,” Molly said, looking back at him.
I turned the car off completely, whispered a prayer to the goddesses and tried again. This time the engine caught properly and we took off.
The man took a few steps towards us before giving up and turning around to head back inside. I swear he looked familiar.
Only when we were around the corner and on our way home did Molly finally let out a sigh of relief. Her face was bright red like she’d been sprinting.
“Can anyone tell me what’s going on?” Luce said from the backseat.
“That guy is freaking creepy. He has a shed out the back that is full of crossbows and weapons and all this other military stuff. He had a big glass case of knives, night vision goggles, that camouflage webbing stuff they hide under.”
“That’s why you were running?” I asked, turning a corner and heading out of town and back towards the mansion.
“No, I was running because he came rushing out the back door of the house and into the shed, where he started loading a crossbow. I don’t know what he was going to do, but that’s not good, right?”
“I told you we shouldn’t have gone to the creepy death murder suicide house!” Luce said.
Soon it was going to be the creepy death murder suicide explosion dinosaur-chomping house if she kept escalating.
We arrived home. Molly went straight to the kitchen sink to splash cold water on her face. Luce went straight to the refrigerator to apparently eat everything and Holly flopped back on the sofa next to Adams.
I was barely inside when Sheriff Hardy called.
“Harlow, I need you to stop investigating this. We have it under control.”
I looked around as though he was watching me at that very moment.
“I’m not –”
He cut me off.
“You are, now stop it. I am out on Truer Island at the moment but I will come back to the mainland to arrest you unless you and your cousins and whoever that little girl is you have with you don’t stop what you’re doing.”
Sheriff Hardy had a way of being stern, but so you still knew that he liked you deep down. Right now he was so cold I could practically feel the frozen air curling out of the phone.
“Okay,” I said.
It was only when he hung up that I realized he’d mentioned Holly. Was she visible to everyone now? Did that mean that Schapelle and the man at the house had seen her?
I turned to ask Holly if she knew if she was visible to people or not, but she was gone. It was a good thing too because Molly was on the verge of a major freak-out.
“That was the sheriff? You need to call him to go to that house and arrest that psycho, right now. Now. Today. This minute,” Molly said, water dripping off her nose.
“I think the police are already watching them. Sheriff Hardy told me to stop investigating and he definitely knew we were out there. Whoever was watching us saw Holly, too.”
“They were watching us? I knew this was going to go bad,” Luce said. Her face suddenly turned pale and she pointed out the window, where a car full of very angry witch mothers screeched to a stop outside our door.
“I need a shower!” I announced but Luce stopped me, grabbing my arm.
“If I have to live through this, so do you,” Luce said.
Aunt Ro led the way, flinging the front door open, closely followed by Mom and Aunt Freya.
Aunt Ro walked straight up to Molly and poked her in the chest.
“First you three are on top of a lighthouse that happens to be set on fire and now I find out you’re interfering in a police investigation? What is it you think you doing? Have you all lost your minds?”
Molly protested some more, but my aunts weren’t having any of it. Aunt Freya joined in, lashing all of us, and then finally, Mom. It was like the worst, least fun tag team ever. We kept protesting, but they wouldn’t stop talking over us, until finally Luce shouted, “Harlow was investigati
ng a source! She’s a journalist! It’s her job!”
That silenced them for a second. I took the opportunity to leap in.
“It’s true, we were at the top of the lighthouse because I was supposed to be meeting a source. It looks like it was a setup. Today we were investigating another source. I had my cousins with me for backup and safety.”
“Backup and safety? The only thing safe about –” Mom began to screech but quickly went silent when the entire house suddenly became a forest. Everything went brown. I was clearly standing inside a tree again. I moved sideways until I could see.
My cousins and very shocked mom and aunts were looking at me around trees from the deep past.
“Harlow and those two blabbermouths have to go out to Truer Island now. I’ll take them. We’ll participate in the Gold Mud Run tomorrow and then she’ll stay on the island with me until this wears off,” Aunt Cass said from somewhere in the forest.
Mom walked towards me, flailing arms out in front of her in case she ran into anything. Soon she grabbed my hand and then pulled me in for a tight hug.
“It will go away soon, darling,” Mom whispered in my ear.
She was more right than she knew. A second later the trees had vanished.
Now I know what you’re thinking. The appearance of an ancient forest right in the middle of your home should keep your ranting mothers quiet.
Yeah, right.
We got another twenty minutes or so of the three-witch tag team until finally Aunt Cass waved her arms and told them to shut up. They did so reluctantly, giving each of us hugs before reminding us to take the special wetsuit tops they’d prepared for the run tomorrow. Aunt Freya retrieved a box from the car and left it on the kitchen counter.
Finally they drove back to the main house, leaving us with Aunt Cass.
“Be ready in thirty minutes, take lots of carbs and food for us to cook tonight because we need to go right now. Pick me up down there,” Aunt Cass instructed before walking out.
As soon she was gone, we had our own round of complaining and justifications. We would never admit it to their faces, but the truth is the moms were probably a little correct this time. Me investigating a source was okay, but going out to the creepy murder house? We should have let Sheriff Hardy handle it.
