by Willow Mason
“Uh, PC Bronson?” I waved to him from the gate and, when he didn’t turn, realised I was still speaking in a whisper. “Lucas!”
He jumped, startled, and I gestured for him to come back to me. In turn, Lucas waved me away, tightening the grip on the baton.
“Uncle Pete,” I yelled at the top of my lungs, scared an altercation was about to take place that would wind up with both men coming to harm. “This is Elisa. Stop yelling at the house and come around the front if you want to talk to me.”
Lucas made a hushing gesture, but that ship had sailed.
“And behave yourself when you do,” I added. “Because the police are here and they’re capable of tackling you to the ground if you try anything foolish.”
My red-faced uncle poked his head around the corner, giving a sniff when he saw me. “Elisa. I thought you had more brains than to come to this place and take over this disastrous legacy.”
“Nice to see you, too, Uncle Pete.” I folded my arms across my chest as he sauntered closer as though he hadn’t just shouted loud enough for the neighbourhood to hear. “Want to tell me what this is about?”
“I got a call from the police telling me there’s a murder victim stashed in my aunt’s house. Just as I told them it was nothing to do with our side of the family, they informed me it very much was.” He came to a stop two metres distant and scanned me from head to toe with an air of disappointment. “I thought Kayla raised you better.”
“Better than what? Better than someone who tried to cheat me out of my inheritance?”
Uncle Pete gave a derisive laugh. “Inheritance? Is that what you’re calling it? Curse would be a better word.” He tugged at the back of his hair, staring at mine as he did so. “I see you went through with the whole thing.”
Lucas stepped between the two of us, planting his back to Uncle Pete and talking to me in a soft voice. “Are you okay? I can still haul him down to the station.”
“On what charges?” My uncle sneered. “Being concerned for my niece’s welfare?”
“Around here, we call that disturbing the peace,” Lucas said, his gaze never wavering from mine.
“We’re fine.” I scratched my fingers across my scalp just in case, though the resulting trail of glittering pixie dust seemed fainter than usual. “It’s just a family dispute.”
“They’re the ones most likely to end badly.”
“If anything happens, I’ve got the police station number on speed dial.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” Lucas sighed and stepped away. “It’s a rare day when we don’t get a callout on behalf of Miss Elisa Hamilton.”
“Ms, thank you very much.”
“If you lay a finger on her—” Lucas pointed straight between Uncle Pete’s eyes.
My uncle held his hands up. “Nobody will hurt anyone. We’re just going to have a chat.”
“Do it at a lower volume, will you? The neighbour’s curtains are already twitching.”
As I turned to watch Lucas leave, I saw he was right. Across the road, a woman stood close enough to her net curtains for me to recognise her shape and a few houses along, an elderly man was collecting his mail at snail speed.
“Come on inside,” I said with some reluctance. It felt odd to invite him into the home he’d deliberately tried to prevent me inheriting. But my pride wasn’t about to give the neighbours any more of a show than they’d already received. “I could do with a cup of coffee.”
As I stepped inside, it took my mind a while to work out what it was seeing. Scraps of paper floated in the air, some burning. One drifted close to the smoke alarm, setting off its piercing cry.
“Grab a towel,” I shouted at my uncle, covering my ears as the sound made my head ring. How was anybody meant to escape a fire with that terrifying noise scattering their thoughts? When he tossed me a tea towel, I grabbed a chair and waved the cloth near the device.
Blessed silence returned in a few seconds, giving me the space to look around again. The stack of library books I’d dumped on the table earlier was now in tiny pieces. They looked like a pile of sticks after having a run-in with a wood-chipping machine.
“What’s all this?” Uncle Pete asked in dismay just as I was about to accuse him of having broken in and wreaked havoc. “Have the witches got you involved in occult rituals already?”
“What witches?” I shook my hands, flapping away his concerns. “This isn’t down to me. Someone’s obviously…” I trailed off as I heard a faint mewing from the lounge. “Muffin!”
She crawled out from behind a cushion on the sofa, trembling from head to toe. “Where have you been? The world’s turned upside down.”
I broke off half a muffin top from the fresh batch and tempted her fully out of hiding. “Do you know who did this?”
“Him.” Muffin stared at my uncle with her back arched and her hairs standing on end. “He was shouting out threats when the books began self-destructing. It must have been a curse.”
“Or a complete coincidence.” Uncle Pete rapped his knuckles on the table. “You saw me outside. I just wanted somebody to come to the door to talk.”
“Yeah, I did see you. It’s hardly the display to set my mind at rest.” I plucked a torn page from the air as it floated past and frowned. “But unless you’ve got magic at your disposal…”
“Magic. I wouldn’t touch the evil stuff with a barge pole.” He rubbed his forehead, making the wrinkles appear even deeper. “Neither should you if you know what’s good for you.”
“It’s not evil. The universe won’t let it be used that way.”
He rubbed a finger over his eyebrow, smoothing the hairs. “That’s not my experience.”
I coaxed Muffin into the kitchen with the rest of the treats and patted her as much as she’d allow. “You didn’t see anyone?”
She shook her head and settled back on her hind legs, leaving the bulk of the muffin untouched. “Just the shouting outside and the library books tearing themselves apart.”
“This situation is exactly the kind of thing I wanted to protect you from,” Uncle Pete said, talking over the kitten. “What are these books, anyway?” He picked up some torn pieces and tried to fit them together.
“Nothing to do with you.” I snatched them out of his hand. “They’re just old books from the library that have left me with a lot of explaining to do.”
“You should leave town immediately.” Pete helped himself to a chair and drummed his fingers on the table. “Once you become a target in Oakleaf Glade, it doesn’t stop.” He shuddered. “The things I saw here as a boy, you wouldn’t believe, but they’ve been haunting my nightmares ever since. If you ever want to find peace again, get out while you still can.”
“While I still can? What does that even mean?” I gestured at the front door. “If I want to go back to scraping a living from day to day and never knowing if I’ll ever get another full-time job, I can walk straight out the front door.”
“You don’t understand the hold this place gets on you.” Uncle Pete buried his face into his hands and for a moment I thought he was crying. Then he raised his head again, his eyes dry. “The closer I got to the town welcome sign, the more I could feel it pulling at me.” He thumped his chest with a fist. “Right in here.”
“Nonsense.” Muffin ran up my arm to perch on my shoulder. “There’s nothing holding anyone here except the same things that hold anybody to a community where they feel cherished and loved.”
“If you don’t believe me,” Uncle Pete said, staring straight into my eyes. “Then try it. Do you really want to stay in this place given what the police have just found?” He grasped hold of my hand. “Come and visit with my family for a while. You know all your cousins will love the chance to catch up with you.”
“Mum’s here. I can hardly skip town when she’s come down to see me.”
“Kayla and Ben are welcome to come. There’s enough room now most of the kids have moved out. What do you say?”
His grip on my
hand had grown increasingly tight, and I pulled it free. “I say, the police told me to stay in town in case I need to answer any more questions.”
At that, Uncle Pete rolled his eyes. “They can hardly think you had something to do with a decades-old body hidden upstairs. You have a phone, don’t you?” At my nod, he continued, “Well, then. You’re not fleeing the scene, you’re just finding somewhere more pleasant to stay.”
Putting aside my distrust, I felt a pang of longing for the hours I’d spent at Uncle Pete’s during my childhood. As an only child, my home had always been quiet unless I had friends over. A half-dozen cousins tumbling in and out of the house meant my uncle and aunt’s house had been anything but.
“You’re not going to leave, are you?” Muffin jumped onto the table to place a paw on my hand and stare into my face. “Once we leave town, your pixie powers will diminish. You probably won’t be able to hear me, and you won’t be able to cast a pixie spell.”
A new fact that I didn’t know quite what to do with.
“If you’re not going to come home with me, then I’ll have to find a place in town,” Uncle Pete said with a sigh. “I don’t suppose you know anywhere cheap.”
“You’re staying?” I pulled my mouth down at the corners. “What happened to this place being hell on earth?”
“Since it’s the place my niece and sister are staying, and they’re both in trouble, I hardly have a choice.” He stood up, then leaned over to pat my shoulder. “But the offer is still open if you change your mind.”
“Not likely,” Muffin said, rearing onto her hind legs.
“Cute kittie,” Uncle Pete said, tickling her under the chin.
“Burn in the fires of hell, demon.”
His smile wavered and a missing puzzle piece slotted into place. I snapped my fingers. “You can hear Muffin.”
Uncle Pete’s face went still. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Before. She said you were cursed, and you denied it, saying the whole thing was coincidental.”
He tilted his head to one side, eyes narrowing. “I was responding to you.” But the game was up, and his face said he knew it. With a huff, he sat back in the chair. “Fine. Yes, I can hear your familiar. I’m as much of a pixie as you, though being male it doesn’t count for very much.”
Chapter Eight
“We used to visit here all the time, growing up,” Uncle Pete said, holding a cold beer in his hand.
I’d pulled one from the fridge in the hope it would loosen his tongue and my ploy worked. Either that, or he desperately wanted to share the memories with someone.
“It must’ve been great as a kid.” The expansive attic rooms and the large back yard seemed custom made for entertaining children, even on rainy days. Not to mention clomping up and down the steep stairs until an adult screamed for them to stop.
“It was fine until I hit puberty and understood more about what goes on in this town. The supernaturals might appear harmless at first, but there’s a reason they’re all gathered here, in one weird and creepy spot.”
“Oakleaf Glade isn’t creepy.” I took a sip from my drink, a sugar-free cola I kept buying to make up for the enormous quantities of sugar I was ingesting daily in the form of Muffin’s favourite food. “Even the memorial gardens are lovely.”
“Wait until it hits the depths of winter. Not so lovely then.”
I stood up to grab another can from the fridge. “Being colder doesn’t make it weird. Seasons are normal, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“They have ghosts here, did you know?”
Maisie, who had just drifted into the lounge to see how her warning turned out, seemed flattered to be mentioned. She winked at me as she floated closer.
“Horrible things,” Uncle Pete said while Maisie recoiled. “They wake you at night to tell you all their problems. I started to see them when I was fourteen. I mean, what could I do?”
“Apparently, if you ask them what they want, they go away,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady as Maisie’s expression exploded in a fit of apoplexy. “The one I’ve met has been charming and helpful.”
Her ego assuaged, Maisie flounced from the room, presumably seeking somewhere safer to lurk.
“The ones who used to visit me would tell me horrible stories. Some were murdered in their beds by people they thought loved them. Others had died in agony in the hospital while everybody close to them stayed well clear.”
“That’s awful.” I grabbed Uncle Pete’s hand and squeezed it. “But people were funnier about death in the old days, weren’t they? All that calling cancer the big C and only speaking about it in hushed voices.”
Uncle Pete ripped his hand away, using it to lift the beer to his mouth for another big gulp. “My childhood is not ‘the old days,’ thank you very much. And not wanting to talk about cancer isn’t the same as folks being murdered.”
“Family violence is always a terrible thing,” I mused, recalling a similar warning from Lucas not too long before. “But how many ghosts are we talking about here?”
“Enough. All it takes is one or two to scar a boy for life.”
Uncle Pete finished the bottle and helped himself to another. Hopefully, I could drop by the superette to replenish the supply before Brody came home and discovered how generous I’d been with his favourite tipple.
“Was it just the ghosts that put you off this place? It seems to have plenty of other charms to make up for it.”
“Things were always moving around. Once, the box we used to fix toys ended up in the back garden with a giant rat inside it.”
I nodded along, waiting for the phrase to make sense. After giving my brain a minute to catch up, it refused to turn out anything approaching coherence, and I had to ask, “Sorry, what box are you talking about?”
“There was a box upstairs in the attic. We’d put any broken toys inside it, leave them for a few hours, then take them out again, good as new.” He ruffled the hair on the back of his neck and gave a soft laugh. “Just as well. We were rough as kids. I remember setting fire to a doll once, just to win a fight with your mother.”
It didn’t even come close to the things I’d done to dolls in my youth. If the poor things ever came to life, they’d spend the rest of their days in heavy counselling.
“Does it still work, do you think?”
He shrugged, chugging the last of his second beer. “I don’t see any reason it shouldn’t.” Uncle Pete caught my eye and jerked his chin at the destroyed books. “Are you trying to avoid the library policeman?”
“It’s the librarian that worries me. Patsy won’t be pleased if I try to explain that ‘nothing’ came inside and tore her treasured books apart. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if you’re innocent. Being the messenger is enough.”
“The box had an inlaid mother-of-pearl design on its top,” he said, linking his hands behind his head. “About a metre across and half that in depth. It looked like the old school trunks they used to have in those old English boarding schoolbooks you liked.”
It had been a good ten years since I’d last read a boarding school adventure book, but I understood at once what he meant. “Are you coming?” I asked when I stood up and he stayed seated.
“To the attic?” Uncle Pete’s face turned pale, and he stood up just long enough to grab another beer. “Not on your life. If you don’t come back in fifteen minutes, I’ll call the police and run away. There’s no way I’m risking my life to repair a few old books.”
“Make sure Muffin’s okay while I’m searching, then.” I thrust the kitten into his lap, surprising them both. “If something life-threatening happens, get her to safety.”
“Don’t be silly.” Muffin struggled until she could jump onto the table. “Number one, there’s nothing dangerous in this house now. Whatever was going on stopped as soon as you came inside. Number two, if there was, better two of us face it than one.”
She marched across the table and leapt down beside me
like a brave soldier. “Come on. Let’s find this repair kit box so I can reward myself with another treat.”
Uncle Pete didn’t show the faintest sign of shame that he was being shown up in the bravery stakes by a kitten. He settled farther back in his chair and waved us off.
“The worst thing that could happen now is Brody returns home and finds us nosing around his room without permission.” Muffin happily jumped into my arms to save her the long trawl upstairs. “Maybe we should send him a text?”
“Good idea.” I composed a quick note while standing outside his door. “I can’t imagine what’s keeping him so long, anyway. Even if he bombed out on his mysterious job interview, he should be home by now.”
“If he bombed out, maybe he went straight to the Tavern Café to pick up an extra shift.”
There was no answer to my text and when I DM’d his social media account, it didn’t show a timestamp for being read.
“Forge ahead?” I raised one eyebrow and looked at Muffin.
“Better to ask forgiveness than permission.”
I tentatively opened the door, shielding my eyes so I couldn’t see anything but the floor in front of me.
“What are you doing?” Muffin stared at me in surprise. “You can hardly search for a magical box with your hand over your face. Be sensible.”
“Instead of searching, I thought I’d send out a little magic spell to do the job for me.”
Muffin trotted forward with a haughty sniff. “Magic is for helping us do the impossible when it needs doing. It’s not a replacement for effort.”
Okay. Fair enough.
To start with, I searched in the corner behind the silk screen where Esmerelda’s clothes trunk was stored. It seemed the most likely place for a magic box to be hiding out, but in a second, I could see it wasn’t there.
“Do you remember the box Uncle Pete was talking about?”
“Vaguely,” Muffin said, matching her tone to the word. “But there’s been a lot of stuff go through this house over the years. Esmerelda was a bit of a hoarder.”
