A Cold Spell

by Stacey Alabaster

  “An alternative spell will be chosen,” she said simply. “And that is all I have to say on the matter. Anyone who performs the spell will be expelled, not just suspended, and that is the final word.”

  I pulled Prudence aside as I left Geri’s house. She had been lingering in the garden and winced as a rose thorn hit her arm. “You’re not supposed to be seen talking to me,” she said. It was true. Until her fate was decided, she was not supposed to have contact with anyone from the coven and vice versa.

  “Can you help me with my cat?” I asked her. “Geri seems to have all but given up on it. She says that if it’s a spell from another coven, then there is nothing that we can do about it.”

  Prudence glanced around fearfully.

  “So, you think this Beth person is a witch?”

  I nodded. “Yes. Geri basically confirmed it. And it makes sense.”

  I gasped a little, because something else suddenly made sense. It hadn’t just been Beth that was a witch.

  I was starting to wonder if Teresa had been as well.

  Maybe that was what she meant by Teresa ‘being a special person.’ Not just a ‘person’ at all but a witch. That definitely made her special.

  No wonder she felt like she couldn’t tell me any more than that.

  Prudence glanced around. “I can’t risk it,” she said, sounding genuinely sorry. “If I even have a slight chance of staying in the coven, I need to stick to Geri’s word like it’s the law.” She paused. “The best thing I can suggest is that you confront Beth and demand that she reverse the spell and tell you the truth. It’s a code of witches to help another witch when they ask, even if they are not in the same coven.”

  I nodded. “I’ve already arranged to meet her outside of the library in half an hour. Sure you can’t come?”

  She nodded. “You’ll be great, Ruby. You can handle it. I have faith in you.”

  I had Indy in the back of my car when I pulled into the parking lot of the library. When I pulled her out, she just looked like a stuffed cat, though I did attract a few strange stares from people walking out of the library wondering why I was carrying around a stuffed cat. But hey, the library did attract quite a few weirdos, so I didn’t stand out too much.

  Beth was just finishing up her shift. I had planned to keep my cool and approach her about the matter with a reasonable attitude, but that all went out the window the second I saw her. I stepped forward into her path. “You unfreeze her, right now!”

  “I can’t,” Beth said, looking terrified. She shushed me. “Not in public. Not after what happened to Teresa.”

  “Not after WHAT happened to Teresa?” I asked her as she pulled me aside.

  She was holding something back.

  “Beth. You’d better start telling me the truth. Right now.”

  She glanced down at the frozen cat in my hands.

  “I got out of there after everything that happened,” she said. “It’s too risky for a witch to be inside those walls.” She looked up at me. “Ruby, I never knew that you were one. Well, not till the night I met your talking cat.” She glanced down. “She was just out here on her own. She asked me how to get back to your place. But…” She looked ashamed. “You had just insulted my acting skills, so I wanted to punish you.” She started to cry a little. “I should have just been honest with you from the start.”

  I was actually feeling sorry for her in spite of everything that she had done.

  “Well, I suppose these aren’t things we tell everyone, are they?”

  She shook her head. “No. It is super hard.”

  “But now you can be honest with me. What happened to Teresa inside the park?”

  Beth looked up at me. She was shaking as she spoke. “They saw her performing witchcraft.”

  “Who did?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I thought I had the park all to myself, as it was after hours, so I was practicing the freezing spell. I was trying to do it on Teresa, but I couldn’t get it right. Teresa thought it would be funny to reverse it and to unfreeze one of the statues… I never even saw who she picked. I just ran out of there. But the next day, one of the statues was missing. And there were all these rumors flying around the park that we were witches. The following day, Teresa was killed.”

  I thought about how careless Vicky and I had been around certain people.

  “So, there is someone in the park who really is from the year eighteen-seventy-eight?” I asked.

  Beth shrugged. “Well, there is someone who works there who used to be a statue. I know that much. But the rest, I don’t know. I don’t know who killed Theresa.”

  “Beth…” A thought was coming to me. “I don’t think it was the person who saw you guys performing magic who killed Teresa. I think it was whoever you unfroze.”

  Beth looked stunned. Too stunned to speak.

  My mind was racing about who it could have been. Marvin. It had to be. “Oh my gosh. Marvin. Is that why he is so strict on the rules?”

  Beth shook her head. “It’s not Marvin. He was manager there while I was working there, so it can’t be him.”

  It must be someone who had no history in town—my mind was still racing, trying to figure it out. If not Marvin, then it must have been someone else who had an obsession with the past, and with authenticity.

  “Beth, can you think of anyone who suddenly appeared that following day? Someone that you hadn’t noticed before?”

  “No one that stands out. I mean, the coffee cart girl started the next day, but that was about it, and anyway, she doesn’t actually work in the park…”

  Oh my gosh. Abby.

  I remembered what she had said that night during the date when she’d looked me up and down. Said that she didn’t recognize me.

  And Akiro had said he’d never seen a baby photo of her.

  “Oh my gosh. Beth. Abby is the killer.”

  13

  “Ruby, what are you doing here?” Akiro was balancing a tray in his hands, filled with tall cups of latte and all sorts of creams and sugars. Beside him was a long table completely filled with about thirty people wearing suits. I hadn’t even realized that there were no other tables free because all the smaller tables had been pushed together to make this mega table.

  “Can’t I come in to my favorite coffeehouse to visit my favorite barista and order my favorite coffee?” I asked. I mean, that wasn’t the real reason I was there. I had conveniently left off “to tell you that your girlfriend is a killer and also from the past” off the list, but that was a more delicate topic. In fact, I didn’t know how I was going to tell Akiro that his girlfriend was an imposter from the past at all. Kind of hard for anyone to get their heads around, let alone someone like Akiro who had no interest or belief in the paranormal.

  But the killer part I was going to have to break to him.

  He nodded down at his full tray, where a hot chocolate was teetering and in danger of falling over the edge. “We have a private function,” he said quietly, nodding toward the table next to us. Everyone was looking toward me and wondering what the interruption to their meeting was. I noticed they almost all had laptops and tablets in front of them. It was members of the local council, apparently, and they were now all peering at Akiro, wondering when they were going to be served their refreshments, I could only presume. Or wondering when he was going to kick me out.

  “Where is Abby?” I asked him as he handed one cross-looking woman her affogato.

  He spun around. “Why are you asking about Abby?”

  “She’s done something,” I said flatly. “Something incredibly illegal.”

  He kept his voice low, but he was starting to look as cross with me as the woman with her affogato and her half-melted ice cream. He told me we would have a word about this when he was done, and he met me in the kitchen five minutes later. “I knew that you had a problem with her,” he said, taking his apron off.

  “Wow,” I said. “Where is this coming from?”

 
“You kept asking me questions about her the other day.” He was going to say something else, I just knew it, but he closed his moth and bottled up. He looked at the ground. “Like you suspected something was up.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about, Akiro.”

  He looked up at me. “I should have told you this earlier, Ruby. Abby and I are dating. I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t even know how he expected me to respond to that. Firstly, why would that be a big deal to me? Secondly, why did he think that was something he needed to tell me? Or keep from me for that matter. Like it was something that would hurt my feelings. When obviously it didn’t…right?

  “You don’t need to tell me anything,” I said. “In fact, I need to tell you something about Abby. Something you are not going to like. She is a killer, Akiro. She is the one who killer Teresa Orchard.”

  He took a step back. “You are sounding a little…off kilter right now, Ruby.”

  At least, he had chosen his words carefully. He hadn’t said crazy.

  “I— I need to get back to work. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave. This is a private function.”

  But I pulled him aside and stared into his eyes.

  “Do you trust me, Akiro?”

  Prudence climbed out of her car and marched up to the gates of Old Swift Town to where the coffee cart was standing.

  “What is she doing here?” Vicky asked, almost dropping her banjo case.

  “She might be able to help.”

  In reality, Prudence was the one who had the least to lose in case this all went pear-shaped, but I wasn’t telling Vicky that in case it frightened her.

  Akiro was following along just behind me, still in a bit of a daze. Maybe nothing had actually fully set in for him, but he was at least trying to help. And he was putting a lot of trust in me as both as friend and a detective. He must have known that if it turned out I was wrong, things were going to be pretty awkward between us. Especially if I ran into him and Abby on a date.

  “Did Abby ever say anything unusual?” I asked him as we slowly approached the coffee cart. I hadn’t called the police yet. This was a witch matter, and we were going to have to solve it like witches.

  He shrugged. “I mean, she is a strange girl. But I never thought she was a killer.”

  I blinked at him. “You never wondered where she had been the past few years? Or where she came from before that?”

  He stared down at me. “Of course I did. But I’m a private person as well, so I got it. I never pushed for her to tell me anything she didn’t want to.”

  “What about her obsession with the past? Didn’t you find that weird?”

  He shrugged. “I mean, she liked to dress up and stuff, but loads of young people do that these days. It’s hip or whatever.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I suppose it can be difficult to tell with things these days…the past and the present all seem to blur into one…”

  “You know there is a theory about time that it moves in a circular direction. I was listening to a really interesting podcast episode on the subject the other day…”

  I looked up at him. “Not the time.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Not the ‘time.’ Ha, get it?”

  Also, not the time for jokes. We had a serious matter to contend with.

  I glanced at Abby standing behind the counter. I don’t know why I had never noticed this about her before—I supposed I never paid enough attention to her. She was wearing a corset… Just like she would have worn in 1878. Just like she would have worn when she was frozen.

  I glanced down at where my own corset would have been sitting and where my ribs were still bruised. I had to look down my nose to see my chest. This was what Indy had meant about the answer being right under my nose the entire time.

  “Vicky, you need to get Akiro out of here,” I said, turning around to grab her. “Take him inside of the park. He can’t know any of the stuff that is about to come out.”

  “But how do I get him to come with me and leave you?”

  “Just be creative! Please. Vicky. Trust me.”

  “Akiro!” I heard her calling out. “You’ve just GOT to come gold panning with me… I hear that there are nuggets the size of your fist getting turned up!”

  “Huh?” I heard him say as Vicky dragged him through the gates.

  It was just prudence and I versus Abby.

  She looked nervous as we approached her. Like she just knew her time was up. But also, strangely relieved.

  And that was when I really got it—she had never wanted to be unfrozen in the first place. At least, not when Teresa had done it without her permission.

  “What happened, Abby?”

  She was staring at the coffee counter. “One of your kind put this curse on me in 1878.” She looked up at us with such anger in her eyes, and I realized that the wound had never been healed. She had been carrying around this anger for a century and a half. “When I finally got free a few years ago, everything had changed.”

  I was confused. “How did you get unfrozen that time?”

  Abby gave me a withering look. “One of your kind was having her fun then as well. Some blonde, clumsy one.” That sounded like Vicky. Abby kept talking. “And then a few years later, I was frozen again. And I have had enough of it!”

  “Geez!” I gasped. “How reckless are people with this freezing spell?”

  Prudence looked a little sheepish. “Yeah. Good point. Maybe it’s better that it has been taken off the curriculum.”

  I turned back to Abby. “So why kill Teresa if you wanted to be unfrozen? Sounds like she did you a favor, Abby.”

  She threw her head back and laughed. “A favor? She was a witch. Do you know what we did to witches back in the good old days?” She nodded toward Old Swift Town. “This place is the one surviving relic of those good days. I had to keep it pure, from people…like you.” She looked me up and down scornfully. “If you can even call yourself a person.”

  I was firm. “I am a person. And a…” I was about to say, “Proud witch.” But I stopped and glanced around to see who was watching and listening.

  “Just how proud a witch can you be if you can’t even say the words out loud?” Abby asked with a loud scoff.

  Suddenly, I got it. “You are jealous. You WERE jealous all those years ago, and you are still jealous now…of our magic.”

  She scoffed again, but I could see from the look on her face that I had touched a serious nerve. I was right.

  But I had also enraged her. Like, big time. And I knew she had a murderous streak.

  She reached for a knife that she had behind the counter and suddenly lunged at me. I screamed and ran, but she had nothing to lose and chased me.

  There was only one thing to do, otherwise I was going to wind up dead. I said the words that we had been banned from saying, and next thing I knew, Abby was frozen as solid as a block of ice.

  Prudence just shook her head. “I don’t know how we’re going to explain this one to our great leader.”

  “I can’t let you take the blame for this, Prudence.”

  She shook her head and watched as Geri climbed out of her car into the parking lot of Old Swift Town. “I’m out of the coven anyway. What harm can this do?”

  “Prudence, your fate isn’t sealed. And this will DEFINITELY seal it. No, I can’t let you do it.”

  I stepped forward and told Geri the truth. “I cast the spell,” I said. “I didn’t have any other choice. If you need to expel me, I understand.”

  But Vicky stepped forward and opened her mouth. “If you expel Ruby, you are going to have to expel me as well. And the rest of the coven. We are standing together in this.”

  Geri looked over the three of us and saw that we were serious. She just shook her head and sighed a little. She glanced over at a frozen Abby.

  “Well, it looks like one less threat to our coven is taken care of. Who wants a drink to celebrate?”

  “Anything exce
pt a margarita,” I said.

  Epilogue

  A trumpet went off and streamers were flying as Marvin took to the stage to welcome us all to the NEW Old Swift Town.

  It was a relaunch day. The park was still celebrating the history of the town, but also the present day as well acknowledging some of the more colorful and at times problematic history of the town that had been covered up.

  I glanced over to see two people kissing, in full costume, at the side of the stage. It looked as though Dean and Marisa were now an item. Well, if I’d been any help in bringing them together, then I supposed I was happy for them. I just hoped that the two of them would be a little more openminded in the future

  As for Abby, she couldn’t remain a statue forever. But until we decided the best thing to do with her, she was staying at Prudence’s. A double punishment.

  Vicky was jumping up and down. “I’m free! I’m free!” she kept shouting.

  I was confused. “But I thought you loved your part-time job here, playing in the band?”

  She shook her head. “No silly. I am talking about my corset!”

  Ah… I gave her a high-five. “Ah yes, I know how good it feels to be free.”

  Marvin had loosened the reins, and the rules on how staff at the park needed to behave, after Sarah’s schemes had been uncovered and everyone had come together and threatened to quit unless things changed. Now it wasn’t about punishing people, or making sure that they fit a tight mold, but more about choice—even the candy shop was getting some softer sweets in for the kids who had fragile little teeth and the older people with dentures. It was all a step in the right direction.

  And my ban had been lifted.

  I stepped up to the ticket counter and pulled out my wallet. “I’ll buy a season pass please, if that’s okay.” Hey, if Akiro liked hanging out at this place so much, it must be all right.

  “You made a judgement call,” Geri said later in my kitchen as she looked down at Indy. I was still surprised that she had even agreed to come and help me.