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

by Tess Lake

  But all the deliciousness spread in front of us wasn’t enough to get us to ignore Aunt Cass’s new look. Years ago, the three of us had wanted to get nose piercings and somehow the moms had found out. They’d ganged up on us and used everything in their power to try to stop us. At the time, Aunt Cass had backed them up!

  We’d gone ahead anyway, but after only a week or two we’d taken them out. They’d essentially been ruined by our meddling family. And now we were here, with Aunt Cass having a pink streak in her hair and a silver nose piercing herself. None of us were going to let that slide.

  “What’s the phrase I’m thinking of, Aunt Cass?” Molly began sweetly. “It was something to do with piercings and how they look on young girls. Can you help me out?”

  “Silver piercings look amazing?” Aunt Cass said, filling up her plate with green beans.

  “No, that wasn’t it,” Luce said.

  “I feel like it was something negative, something to discourage young witches from getting nose piercings. That was right, wasn’t it, Mom?” I said.

  The moms were obviously still flabbergasted by Aunt Cass’s new look. Aunt Freya was frantically serving herself food and not looking at anyone, Aunt Ro had drunk a glass of wine and was now working on a second, and Mom was sitting there with an empty plate and a stunned look on her face.

  “What? Sorry, what did you say?” Mom stuttered.

  “I said –”

  “So what’s the big announcement?” Aunt Cass said, cutting me off.

  “Oh, yes, well, we have a lot of exciting news,” Mom began, grabbing that distraction.

  Molly leapt up from the table, banging her legs against it and making the silverware jump. Kira looked at me with a panicked expression on her face. Under the devilish influence of wine, I gave her a devilish wink.

  Molly brought her finger down from the sky above like she was pointing out a murderer and pointed it right at Aunt Cass.

  “You said we couldn’t get nose piercings because they looked terrible and they weren’t suitable for young witches!”

  She swung her accusing finger around to her mom, Aunt Ro.

  “You said even worse things! You said we’d end up joining some kind of heavy metal death cult!”

  Luce leapt up from her chair and pointed her finger at her mom, Aunt Freya.

  “You forbade me to get a nose piercing. Forbade me!”

  Not one to miss out on all the fun, I jumped out of my chair. Thanks to the wine, I bashed my legs quite hard against the table.

  “Ow!” I said, pointing my finger at Mom.

  The moms were about to retort when a napkin next to the salad bowl burst into flames.

  “Sorry!” Kira yelped.

  Aunt Cass put her hand on top of Kira’s.

  “Remember what I told you. Take a deep breath, center yourself,” she said.

  Another napkin burst into flames, but no one reached out to put it out. The same thing had happened to me when I was a teenager and I got stressed.

  Kira took two quick, shuddering breaths and then managed to control herself. She took one long, slow breath, held it for a moment and then let it out steadily. She stretched out her hand towards the burning napkins, fingers splayed, and then closed them into a fist. The fire was extinguished instantly.

  Then she grinned and looked at the six of us.

  “I did it!”

  We all erupted in cheers, the nose-piercing, pink-hair-dying incident forgotten for the time being. Luce grabbed Kira and hugged her, the teenage girl wearing a goofy smile. Everyone sat down and resumed dinner, digging into the delicious food. After a few minutes of witches eating and drinking and moaning at how delicious the food was, Aunt Cass repeated her question.

  “What are these big announcements?” she asked, pointing her fork at Mom.

  Mom likes to make a show of things. She dinged her wineglass like we were at a wedding, even though we were all sitting there paying attention.

  “Well, firstly, we would like to announce that the renovations of Torrent Mansion are complete for the time being.”

  “Woo-hoo!” Molly said and raised a glass. We all said cheers to that, Kira tapping her glass of mineral water against our wineglasses.

  “We have six fully furnished bedrooms now. We’ll rent them out again now that the website is upgraded. It was having a problem where it wouldn’t let people book on weekdays,” Aunt Ro said.

  “The other big news is that next weekend, we’re all participating in the pirate parade. We’re going to be building a float together. Isn’t that exciting!” Aunt Freya said.

  She must’ve seen the sudden glassy smiles facing her from the other side of the table.

  The pirate parade is a yearly tradition in Harlot Bay, celebrating the bloodthirsty murderous pirates that sailed up and down this part of the Atlantic. We honor these criminals in the best way possible: a giant parade of floats, all kinds of food and fun and games for the little children.

  Of course everyone knows the biggest and baddest pirate in this area was Blackbeard, so many adults and kids dress up as that crazy pirate.

  We’ve attended many times in the past, but never really participated. The pirate parade is in the summer, so it’s usually a hot, sweaty affair under the sweltering sun.

  “We have plans,” Molly said quickly.

  “No, you don’t,” Aunt Ro said.

  “We do. We’re going… spelunking,” Luce said.

  Spelunking?

  “No, you’re all coming to the pirate parade and that’s final,” Aunt Freya snapped.

  Molly and Luce turned to me, but I didn’t have anything to add. My mind went blank.

  “Okay, fine…” I said, defeated.

  “Excellent. We’ll arrange the costumes. During the week you can help work on the float,” Mom said.

  We continued on with dinner, the conversation switching back to the Torrent Mansion renovations ending and the new website. The moms were full of excitement about making it a success. The business seminar they’d been to over the weekend had fired them up and they were ready to go.

  “Kira, you need to go to work. Do you want to work with Harlow to the paper, at Big Pie Bakery, or down at Traveler?” Mom asked.

  Kira flashed a deer-in-the-headlights look.

  “Do I have to decide now?”

  “Yes, you need to have a job. I promised your grandmother.”

  “Okay… well, can I try the paper first?”

  Mom turned to me and raised her eyebrows.

  “Yeah, that’s okay,” I said.

  What else could I really do? Yes, the Harlot Bay Reader was absolutely failing and was barely a job, but I didn’t really want to get into that at the family dinner. I decide to change the topic to the matter of Grandma April and the two real estate developers.

  I told the moms about Dominic Gresso coming to the house over the weekend and wanting to buy the mansion and how he had investigators and had made some comments about Grandma not being seen for a long time. Then I told them about how Sylvester Coldwell had been in my office today, basically saying the same thing. By the time I was finished, the moms were looking a little worried, but not much. I had thought it would cause a full-blown panic.

  “Well, you can distill a glamour again, can’t you?” Aunt Ro said to Aunt Cass.

  “Done and done,” Aunt Cass said, taking another sip of wine.

  “You guys have done this before?” Molly asked.

  “Mom has been frozen for twenty years, so we’ve had to do a few things so no one got suspicious,” Aunt Ro said.

  “You’re not interested in selling Torrent Mansion?” I asked.

  “Goddess, no,” Mom said. “Generations of Torrents of lived here and we’re not going to be the ones who sell it. All those witches would probably return from the dead to haunt us if we ever did.”

  The rest the dinner rolled on with everyone in fairly good spirits. I could see that Molly and Luce still wanted to say something to Aunt Cass about
the pink hair dye and the nose piercing, but they held back because they didn’t want Kira to get stressed again. Soon we finished dinner and then dessert, and it wasn’t long before the four of us were back at our end of the mansion. Kira flopped down on the sofa and Adams jumped into her lap and started kneading at her and purring.

  “Your family is so different from mine,” Kira said. “You can barely sneeze at my house without getting in trouble.”

  “That’s what it’s like here. I got in trouble once because I ate a piece of cheese,” Adams said, starting to dribble now.

  “You were in trouble for eating cheese when you opened the refrigerator, took the cheese out of the package and then ate most of it,” I said.

  “There is no justice for cats,” Adams murmured. He was entering into his Zen mode where he’d be purring and dribbling all over whomever he was sitting on.

  “You smell like lavender,” Kira said.

  Adams didn’t respond but just kept purring. The four of us talked a bit before the various glasses of wine caught up with us and we all took ourselves off to bed. We left Kira sitting on the sofa with Adams, watching TV.

  Chapter 8

  My beard was thick and itchy and I wanted to pull it off as soon as I put it on.

  “Stop fiddling with it. It’s going to fall off,” Mom said, swiping my hand away.

  “This costume is ridiculously hot,” I complained.

  The week had zipped by with uncommon haste. I’d gone to work a few times with Kira and gotten her to write a few little things for me before letting her go (she took herself off to the beach most days). There were no more fires and no more developments on that side of things. I hadn’t heard from Detective Moreland and was starting to nurture a little hope that perhaps I was no longer a suspect. We had a few more family dinners, which generally went along as well as they normally did. Aunt Ro was especially touchy for some reason, but no one really knew why.

  Now it was Sunday morning on a day that promised to be blistering, and I was dressed as Captain Blackbeard, wearing thick boots, heavy pants and an ornate brocade coat. I had a cutlass at my waist and fake pistols, a giant hat and a massive itchy beard.

  We were gathered in the kitchen of Big Pie Bakery, getting ready. The moms were pretty much dressed in versions of my costume as well, with thick, heavy beards and cutlasses. Molly and Luce hadn’t arrived yet, and their costumes was sitting on the countertop waiting for them.

  “I hope she remembered to get enough fuel for the float,” Aunt Ro worried. It was Molly’s job to buy fuel. We’d hired one of the local teenagers to drive it after Kira had declined to participate in any way. The moms had still guilted her into turning up on the sidelines, though.

  Oh, and in the last week I had written a letter to Jack, pretending I was an Incan princess ruling a dying empire. He’d written back to me pretending to be an astronaut heading to outer space. He’d also written that he expected to be back soon, but he wasn’t quite sure when.

  I finally managed to get my beard into a position where it wouldn’t make me itchy. It was about ten in the morning and the parade was due to start soon. The route would take us all the way down the main street, left past the library and a bunch of other shops, left again past more shops and pretty much in a circle back to where we’d started before continuing down to Scarness Park, where it would become a free-for-all party. There would be tables selling food, people face painting, and an inflatable pirate ship, and we were expecting practically every tourist in the town plus everyone who lived here to be there. The mayor would open it with a speech (bets were being taken on the color of his hair).

  With only fifteen minutes before the parade was due to start, Molly and Luce finally turned up.

  “No way, if I have to wear this, you have to wear this,” I said, pointing my cutlass at both of them.

  They were pirates, technically. But they’d gone the sexy pirate route. Short skirts, thin shirts that could breathe and soft pirate hats.

  “This is what female pirates wear,” Molly said.

  “Especially in this climate,” Luce added.

  I pointed my cutlass at the costumes sitting on top of the counter.

  “Both of you put those on immediately or you’re getting chopped,” I said.

  Luce and Molly were both wearing cutlasses as well. They pulled them out and we started sword fighting in the kitchen. I got a few good whacks in before the moms put a stop to it.

  “It’s too late now, let’s go,” Aunt Ro said, giving Molly a significant look.

  We rushed out of the bakery and into the street. Not only was it sunny, but the humidity was quite high. I could feel my clothes sticking to me.

  The streets were full of tourists and also people dressed up as pirates. There were at least fifty Blackbeards within sight. There were children wearing pirate hats and waving toy cutlasses running everywhere. We rushed down to where the parade floats were stored and found ours. The family had been working on it over the past week. Like many people, we’d gone the pirate ship route and had built the front half of a pirate ship with a giant mast on the top. There was a small car hidden beneath it. Our teenage driver, Michael, smiled with relief when we arrived.

  “I thought you wouldn’t be here,” he said, his voice cracking a little.

  I really feel sorry for teenagers sometimes. There you are, living your life, and then your entire body turns against you, giving you acne and making your voice break.

  “We’re here now and I am so glad to see you,” Molly cooed to him.

  Michael immediately turned bright red and then practically bolted away to climb through the small hidden door and into the car underneath the float.

  “Leave the kid alone,” I said to her.

  “What? He’s cute. I think it’s adorable the way he blushes,” Molly said, laughing.

  Aunt Cass and Kira finally arrived. Kira had declined to dress up or participate in any way. She was going to watch from the sidelines and then come to Scarness Park to help out at the Big Pie Bakery table. Aunt Cass, on the other hand, had gone all the way. She was wearing an elaborate pirate costume with gigantic leather boots, flashy red pants and a coat that was covered in gold. She wore a gigantic fake beard, and when she pulled out a cutlass and waved around it looked very sharp and very deadly.

  “Avast, ye landlubbers,” Aunt Cass yelled at us as she walked up to the float.

  “Is that… a real cutlass?” Molly asked.

  “Arrrrr!” Aunt Cass said and slipped it back into its scabbard.

  Inevitably the parade floats got started a little past when they should have because there were so many of them. There were at least five or six different pirate ships, a Truer Island, a gallows and quite a few rowboats. Blackbeard wasn’t the only pirate represented. There were also a few Redbeards and people dressed as the other pirates who used to frequent this part of part of America. Not only that, there were some of the governors and soldiers who would help fight the pirates off. When we reached Scarness Park, the Governor would read out the charges against the pirates and there would be a mock battle.

  Someone at the front of the parade blew a giant horn and the first float took off. It was just then that Will and Ollie came rushing up, dressed as pirates as well. They’d both gone with the bare-chested, wild hair, glinting gold jewelry, swashbuckling style of pirate. Molly and Luce kissed their boyfriends and then helped them up onto the float. The moms jumped up on the float as well and then I followed, helping Aunt Cass up. She stood on the prow, pulled out her shining cutlass and then yelled out “Anchors aweigh!”

  Michael took off with such a jerk that we almost all fell down. We quickly regained our balance and then we were off. Down the main street, tourists lined both sides of the road. There weren’t any barricades to stop them from walking in front of the floats, but thankfully most people had the sense not to step under them, and we were going so slowly that people could crisscross between the floats as we went. I pulled out my cutlass and sc
owled at the people on the sidewalk.

  Aunt Cass was standing on the prow of our fake ship, in her element. I hadn’t felt any magic, but I think she had done something to slightly magnify the sound of her voice, because every time she spoke, she seemed far louder than usual.

  “Avast, ye landlubbers! Fear the wrath of Captain Blackbeard!” she boomed, pointing her cutlass at a group of children who burst into squeals and ran away giggling. We made it all the way down the main street until we hit the corner, where we came to a stop. One of the floats up ahead must’ve had a problem. I jumped off the front of the float and stood there for a little, waving my cutlass around. We got going after a minute or two.

  As we turned the corner I saw there was another float up ahead on the side, waiting to join the parade. It was a giant ship. A gap opened up and the float pulled in ahead of us. Standing on its prow were two tall Blackbeards with shining cutlasses, waving them around.

  They’d really gone all out on this float. They had an actual wooden mast with a long rope coiled around it.

  One of the Blackbeards unwound the rope and leapt off the float. He swung out over the crowd and then landed directly in front of me. He pulled out his shining cutlass and stepped closer.

  “Arrr, it’s me, Captain Blackbeard, back from a long journey,” he said, grinning.

  He had a giant hat on and a thick beard obscuring his face, but those eyes, my gosh, those eyes that verged on blue and green were unmistakable.

  It was Jack.

  There had been letters going back and forth between us, and I’d imagined a hundred times when and how we’d see each other again. In some of my imaginings, he casually appeared at the mansion, standing at my front door with that smile of his. In others, I was walking on the beach and he walked out of the sea, water dripping off his body.

  (C’mon, they’re fantasies!)

  I never would have imagined that he’d swing down dressed as Captain Blackbeard, swashbuckling with all his might.

  “Arrr!” I said and then I wrapped my hands around him and kissed him as hard as I could.