“That sounds like a story I’d love to hear over all the drinks I’m going to buy you for this amazing advice,” I said. “That is, if you’re willing to stay for a little while longer.”
“That’s very sweet of you. I’ll ask the others, but I’m sure they’ll be happy. I assume Ellie has found someone who likes baking as much as she does, and Leanne seems happy to explain the concept of radiators to Sara,” she said, and I looked over to where Leanne was pointing at the pipe at the bottom of the radiator in the corner while Sara put her hands up close to it to feel the heat.
I laughed. “I guess they’re not a thing in the paranormal world?”
“Nope, basically all heating is done by magic.”
“That’s insane. I can’t imagine. I thought finding out I was a witch and moving north two states was about as crazy as things could get.”
“You have no idea,” Tina said with a laugh, then quickly covered her mouth as if realizing what she had said. “Sorry. I don’t want to make you feel bad about the fact that you can’t go there.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, shaking my head. “Kaillie would love to travel to the paranormal world more than anything, but frankly, right now, I think this has been enough of a life change on its own. I’m not sure I could handle an entire new world on top of that, and I’m in awe of you for managing to not only discover you were a witch, but also get used to being one in a whole magical land.”
Tina smiled. “Thanks. It wasn’t easy, I will say that.”
“What are your plans for the rest of the afternoon?” I asked.
“We’re pretty open. We didn’t know what you’d want to do, if you wanted to practice some magic with us, if you wanted to just chat somewhere, if you wanted us to go away and leave you alone. We’re fine with whatever. Amy, one of our other friends, is back in Western Woods holding down the fort, which basically means making sure the familiars don’t burn the house down if we’re not back in time for dinner.”
I laughed. “Boy does that sound, well, familiar. Mine is a cat named Cleopawtra, and boy oh boy does she ever live up to her queenly name.”
“Mine is a cat named Mr. Meowgi who thinks he’s a martial arts expert. Which reminds me, I would like to stop somewhere that sells DVDs and pick up a few things for him to watch.”
“Sure, Kaillie and Leanne will know where to go for that.”
The conversation moved on, and before I knew it, the two customers in the shop had left, and closing time had come and gone. Aunt Debbie came out from her office and looked at us in surprise. “Haven’t the two of you started cleaning up yet?” she asked Leanne and me.
Whoops. We had gotten so caught up in getting to know the witches from Western Woods that I’d completely forgotten about closing up.
“Hey, Aunt Debbie, these are witches from the paranormal world,” Leanne said. “Kyran asked them to come by, since Tina only found out she was a witch a couple years ago.”
“Oh, how lovely,” Aunt Debbie said, looking approvingly at Tina and the others. “What coven do you belong to?”
“Jupiter,” Tina answered proudly. “We’re from the coven of Jupiter.”
“Ah, a lightning coven,” Aunt Debbie said. “Good for you. Well, I’m sure you don’t want to spend your time speaking with an oldie like me. Leanne, if you all want to leave and spend some extra time getting to know each other, I can handle closing here.”
“Thanks, Aunt Debbie,” Leanne said. “That would be awesome. Let me just go grab Kaillie and Ellie and tell them we’re ready to go.”
Chapter 11
Fifteen minutes later the six of us were piled into a booth at Otterly Delicious, having placed our orders.
“I haven’t been to the human world since we came with Tina to grab her stuff when she first moved to the paranormal world,” Ellie said, looking around. “It’s so quaint. Look at the skills that human has, balancing that huge tray of food instead of just using a wand to move it around.”
“You probably shouldn’t be calling them ‘humans’ out here so loudly,” Sara warned. “People will think you’re a psychopath. They’re called ‘people’, right?”
“That’s right,” I said, doing my best to hide my amusement.
“So apart from teaching Eliza here how to be a witch, what do you guys do out here?” Sara asked.
“Well, right now we’re trying to solve an attempted murder,” Leanne replied. “Although I’m not sure that falls under the category of normal fun things we do.”
To my surprise, Ellie clapped her hands together. “Oh good, let us help! It’s been ages since we’ve gotten to help solve a good murder.”
“Seriously?” Kaillie asked, her mouth dropping open.
“We’re not Enforcers or anything like that. We’re not even private investigators,” Tina said quickly. “But after I arrived in Western Woods there were a string of crimes committed, and for various reasons we ended up thinking we were the best people to solve them.”
“We were right basically every time, too,” Ellie said, crossing her arms.
“Yeah, when we didn’t almost die,” Sara replied.
“Oh please. We never did die, and that’s just the cost of justice,” Ellie said, waving away Sara’s concerns. “Anyway, spill. Who almost got murdered, and what have you got so far?”
Leanne immediately began telling the whole story, giving the Western Woods witches the entire low-down on what had happened, what we knew, and who we suspected. As soon as she finished, the waitress arrived with our food, and we spent a few minutes digging in while the other witches digested the information.
I’d ordered the chicken carbonara, and the creamy pasta did not disappoint.
“So,” Ellie said when we’d all enjoyed a few bites and taken the edge off our hunger. “You’ve got three suspects. I assume Kyle is still in Seattle with Karen?”
“Yeah, as far as I know,” I replied. “And to be honest, I think we should probably do as much as we can without having to talk to him. Life is probably pretty traumatic for him right now if he’s not the murderer.”
“That’s a good point,” Sara said. “Although personally, I really like him for the murder.”
“You do?” Kaillie asked. Sara nodded.
“Yeah. We have some of the same problems in the paranormal world, where witches are expected to do a lot more of the work. Of course, it’s slightly different. Dishes and the like can be cleaned with a wave of the wand. But little witchlings and wizardlings still need to be taken care of, and that often falls on the witch, even when she also has a job.”
“You and Kyran are going to have to figure out how that’s going to work out with the two of you,” Ellie said to Tina, giving her a light nudge in the ribs. “After all, Kyran is what, hundreds of years old? Maybe thousands? He’s probably pretty set in his ways.”
“Please,” Tina scoffed. “Have you seen his place? Kyran is neater than I am. Besides, you know he’s not a typical elf. We’ll be fine.”
“I know, I’m just teasing you,” Ellie said. “The two of you are going to live a fantastic life together. Although I am going to miss having you around the house.”
“Hey, it’s not like I’m going to be far,” Tina said. “I’ll still come and visit. Besides, with all of my studies to become an Animal Healer, I’m going to need a lot of help from Amy. And I’ll still help out at The Witching Flour when you need a hand.”
“Good,” Ellie said. “Now, about solving this murder. Six heads are better than three, and frankly, I miss these sorts of things. Besides, this is just a human world murder. How hard could it be to solve?”
“Truly spoken like a witch who has never spent much time here,” Tina said, smiling. “But I agree; while we’re here, we might as well help.”
“It’s a good thing Amy didn’t come after all,” Sara said with a laugh. “She’d love to tell us all about how this is a terrible idea, and that butting our noses into things in Western Woods was bad enough, but doin
g it in the human world is worse.”
“She sounds like she’d get along really well with Kaillie,” Leanne joked, earning herself a scowl from her cousin.
“Why don’t the two of us go and check out Karen’s place?” I suggested to Tina. “We can continue our chat while committing felonies.”
“My favorite late Sunday activity,” she replied with a wink.
“Good plan,” Leanne said. “I’ll take Sara and we can go speak with Gary Vanderchuck. He’s at the gym every Sunday night, so we’ll be able to “accidentally” run into him there.”
“That leaves Kaillie and me to go see Andrew,” Ellie said.
“That works for me. Only one rule though: no magic.”
“Well that’s no fun,” Ellie replied.
“You’re not the one whose family was banished from the paranormal world. I don’t want to do anything that could get us more on the bad side of those in charge than we already are.”
“Fine,” Ellie finally conceded. “We won’t use any magic. It’ll be like an adventure, pretending to be a human investigator for a day.”
I laughed at the excitement Ellie seemed to feel about it. What must it have been like growing up in the paranormal world, where not using magic was some sort of strange exotic life she couldn’t even imagine?
“Hey, some of us don’t have any choice,” Leanne said.
“We’ll meet back at the house when we’re all done,” Kaillie added. “We can compare notes and maybe we’ll have a better idea as to who the killer might be.”
“Sounds good,” I replied with a nod. “Let’s do it.”
The six of us finished off our meals, then headed off in pairs to investigate the murder.
“So where is Karen’s house?” Tina asked.
“I got the address off Ellie earlier, it’s down this way,” I said. “It should only be a ten minute walk, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure. I got really used to walking around Western Woods, since I’m not the most comfortable witch on a broom, and there are no cars there.”
“I feel you there,” I replied. “I actually found out I was a witch when I grabbed a broom for the first time and it dragged me all the way around a mall. I couldn’t control it at all, and I had no idea what was happening.”
Tina laughed gently. “My first time on a broom was equally traumatizing. Someone paid a dragon to scare me off, to try and get me to leave town by making me fall off my broom when I was about a hundred feet in the air. Luckily, Sara managed to save me. That’s how we got the swimming pool.”
I gasped. “An actual, honest-to-goodness dragon?”
“Oh yes,” Tina said, nodding. “They exist in the paranormal world. Although, they’re shifters. They can easily take a human form as well. And to be fair to this dragon, he eventually apologized to me, and we’re on good terms now. He’s actually quite nice.”
“Dragons,” I muttered to myself, shaking my head. “I’m not sure I’d be able to handle dragons.”
“Well, hopefully one day you will,” Tina said. “I know your family is banished from the paranormal world right now, but you never know. A long time has passed since then, maybe Kaillie will be able to make an application to be let back in, or something. I don’t really know how any of this stuff works, myself.”
“Hopefully. That’s the number one thing she wants in the world, to be able to go to the paranormal world and meet the rest of our coven. She loves her family, that’s obvious, but she really wants to belong to that bigger group.”
“I can understand that, I think,” Tina said slowly. “It must be very frustrating to be denied access to a group you want to be a part of because of something someone else did.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Honestly, if there was something I could do to help her get there, I would do it. Kaillie has been so helpful. She’s taught me most of the spells I know.”
“I’m really glad you’ve got some nice people helping you,” Tina said. “I’d give it a shot, but the spells I’ve learned are all from the coven of Jupiter.”
“So if I tried them they wouldn’t work?” I asked.
“They might work, but it would be more difficult, and they wouldn’t act nearly as well as if you cast the same spell, but with the incantation that belongs to your coven.”
“How many covens are there in the paranormal world?”
“Oh, goodness, dozens. At least. To be honest, I don’t even know. Maybe even hundreds.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s so many more than I expected.”
“There are a lot out there,” Tina said. “More than I had expected at first, too. The paranormal world seems pretty small initially, compared to this one. But then, you get to realizing that it’s a lot bigger than you think.”
“Interesting,” I replied, before stopping. “Ok, that should be it there. Ellie said it’s a little red bungalow with a black roof.” I pointed to a house about thirty feet back from the street, surrounded by woods.
Tina looked around. “It’s fairly isolated, but this looks like the kind of place where if a nosy neighbor catches us sneaking around they’re going to come at us with a shotgun.”
“Yeah, I don’t have great experiences with guns on this island,” I replied. “Any chance you know a spell that can turn us invisible?”
Tina grinned. “That was one of the first ones I learned.” She whipped out her wand and pointed it at me, and I gasped as I disappeared.
“You didn’t say a spell,” I said.
“You can say them in your head,” Tina replied.
“Can you really? I was always told you have to say the spells.”
“Most witches do. I should have thought of that and said the words, but I’ve taken to casting my spells silently and forgot; I just did that one out of habit.”
“So how do you do it? Cast the spell without saying the words, I mean.”
“Well, you need to still think the words. But if you think the words, and your intention and power as a witch is strong enough, the spell will still cast. It turned out I had some pretty powerful magical genes, so I manage it. Don’t feel bad if you can’t do it, though. Most witches can’t. The only ones I know who can are myself and Amy.”
“Ok,” I said. “Well, you’re up.”
Tina pointed the wand at herself and a second later she disappeared as well. “Good. Now we can break and enter in peace.”
“Hopefully with the help of magic it’s just going to be ‘enter’ without the ‘break’,” I replied.
“I should be able to manage that,” Tina said. The two of us made our way to the front door. This time, when Tina cast the spell, she muttered some words first, and I heard the deadbolt of the lock click open. We slipped into the house, closing the door quickly behind us. We were in.
Chapter 12
The inside of the bungalow looked like, well, what I imagined any house with a family of five, of which three were boys under six would look like. The entrance was littered with shoes, socks and jackets. To the right was a large living room, with toys scattered all around the carpet. To the left was a laundry room, with multiple baskets overflowing with clothes, some folded up nicely in the basket obviously ready to be taken back to the bedrooms, while others were evidently waiting to be washed and dried.
I moved deeper into the house to the kitchen, where plastic dishes and cutlery in all colors outnumbered the regular adult ones.
Down the hallway were three bedrooms. One of them was the master, Karen and Kyle’s room, and the other for the boys, with the third being used as another playroom. I made my way into the master bedroom, calling out to Tina that was what I was doing.
“Cool, I’ll take the living room,” she replied.
The master bedroom was decently-sized, and in one corner was a small desk that held what appeared to be all of the family’s important papers. I figured this was the place to be, and sat down, trying not to feel icky about the fact that I was about to rummage through someone else’s person
al information. After all, I was trying to find a killer. This was important.
The first folder I found contained all of the family’s bank statements, and I looked through them carefully. After all, financial stress could cause a lot of strain on a relationship, and on a person. And while money was definitely tight for the family – they often only had around twenty or thirty dollars left in their bank account the day before Karen was paid – they did seem to be getting by. There were a couple of credit card statements, but none of them had more than a couple hundred dollars on the balance, and there were no statements for any large loans or anything of the sort. There hadn’t been a car in the driveway, but I also didn’t see any paperwork from a dealership, or any automatic payments coming out from their monthly accounts, so I assumed they owned their car free and clear.
Nothing in the financials seemed the least bit dodgy, so I looked around further. There was a laptop on the desk, and I opened it up. I groaned when I saw the password protection.
“Hey, Tina,” I shouted towards the living room.
“Yeah?”
“How easy is it for a witch to unlock a computer’s password?”
“Easy peasy,” Tina replied. “Give me one second and I’ll be right there.”
I heard her footsteps coming down the hall, and a moment later she spoke.
“Jupiter, god of thunder, reveal the password of which we wonder.”
I gasped as floating letters appeared above the laptop. Kikikiki8686. “Thanks,” I grinned, typing the letters into the password field. The desktop burst to life, and I was in.
“No problem,” Tina replied. “I haven’t really found anything in the living room or the kitchen that might help us.”
“Why don’t you stay here and look through the laptop with me?” I suggested. “There might be a few more passwords we need to enter.”
“Sure,” Tina said, nodding. “Let me just go grab a chair from the kitchen.”
A Cauldron of Hot Coffee: Enchanted Enclave Mysteries Books 1-3 Page 22
