“I’m sure that’s a real selling point on the brochure. Break into schools more easily,” I puffed, trying to swing my leg over onto the roof while I clutched a pipe attached to the outside wall. Eventually, Leanne was able to grab my leg and pulled it over, and I rolled the rest of my body onto the top of the building. I felt like a seal trying to get onto a rock from the water.
Scratch that. I’d seen seals do that; they were far more elegant than I’d just been.
“Alright,” Leanne said, jumping to her feet and making her way to the center of the roof while I got to my feet. She was standing in front of a large skylight that led down into what appeared to be a school hallway. “This is it? Ready?”
I nodded and pulled my wand out from my pocket. I pointed it at the skylight, focused all of my energy on my wand, and thought as hard as I could about the skylight unlocking.
“Saturn, god of freedom, unlock this skylight so that we are welcome.”
I grinned as there was an audible click, and a second later Leanne was prying it open. I peered down into the hole. “Well, that looks high.”
“It’s only like, ten feet or so. Just absorb the landing.”
“Easy for you to say,” I muttered. “You go first.”
“No, you go first. If I go first, you still have the option of wimping out. You could also cast a spell to make a mattress or something down there. Even if things go wrong, we can always text Kaillie to come and fix it.”
I strongly considered it. After all, I had learned a basic conjuring spell, and I was fairly certain if I dropped into that hole I was going to break both my legs. On the other hand, if things went horribly wrong here and I somehow summoned some demon from the underworld or something, there was no other witch nearby to fix my mistake. It would all be on me.
I thought about what Tina had said, about only doing magic when I was comfortable. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was comfortable with this. I had some apprehensions, sure. But I also did know how to cast this spell, there was no risk of any non-magical people seeing it – well, apart from Leanne, but she was allowed to know about magic – and frankly, if I waited until I was perfectly comfortable to cast every spell, I’d probably never cast another one in my life.
“Alright,” I said, taking a deep breath and stepping forward, staring into the hole. “Here goes nothing. Saturn, god of renewal, generate a mattress, that would be super cool.”
My wand was pointing down into the hole, and a moment later a queen-size mattress appeared, complete with plain white sheets.
“Those are a nice touch, you don’t know where the weird magic mattress has been,” Leanne said with a grin. “Alright, you’re still going first.”
I sighed. “Fine. If I die, please give all my stuff to Kaillie.”
“Hey,” Leanne argued. I grinned at her, held my breath and carefully began lowering myself down the skylight. Eventually I was hanging by my fingertips, I closed my eyes and I let go, squealing the whole way. A second later I landed on the mattress with a soft thud, and rolled off it. I moved all my limbs, and sure enough, there was no pain anywhere.
“All good, your turn,” I called up to Leanne, who did the same as I had. She dropped to the mattress and rolled off elegantly, popping back up to her feet.
“Awesome,” she said. “We’re in.”
I pointed my wand at the mattress. “Saturn, we’re done with this mattress, please return.”
The conjured item immediately disappeared, and I smiled. Magic was still a novelty, and I enjoyed it every time I managed to cast a spell, no matter how simple.
“Alright, let’s go,” I said, and Leanne led me down the hall toward the principal’s office. I had a sneaking suspicion she had been here a few times in her day.
The door was locked, but a quick spell was all that was needed to take care of that, and Leanne and I quickly found ourselves in a room that looked like every other school administrator’s office. Cabinets along the wall, a plain desk with a computer, a simple office chair. I imagined there were thousands of offices exactly like this one around the country.
“I’ll take the computer, you start looking through the files,” Leanne said. “We’re looking for anything that might prove he stabbed her, especially letters from Karen telling him she was going to go above his head, or something like that. After all, their dispute was professional.”
“Right,” I said, nodding. I immediately opened the top part of the file cabinet and began looking through everything Gary had. Most of it was pretty boring, and completely irrelevant to my search, but that was to be expected. After all, as a school principal, he would have had a lot more on his plate than just a dispute with one teacher.
“Find anything?” I asked Leanne after a couple of minutes.
“Not yet. I’m just looking through the email now. Maybe there’s something there.”
After a couple of minutes, Leanne let out an exclamation. “Here we go!”
I dropped the files I was looking at right back where they belonged – I didn’t want Gary to suspect we had been here when he next came in, after all – and headed over to the computer, peering over Leanne’s shoulder. She had opened an email from Karen to Gary, dated the morning she was stabbed.
My eyes skimmed over the contents.
Gary,
I’m afraid you’re leaving me with no choice but to go to the superintendent in this situation. I respect that our opinions differ, but because this will directly affect the future performance of our students not necessarily on exams but in life, I feel I need to go over your head on this. I can’t have my students falling this far behind this early in their education. It’s not fair to them, and it’s not fair to prevent me from telling their parents the exact nature of the situation. I think we both know the superintendent will be on my side on this, so I urge you to reconsider before I’m forced to take this action. I don’t want to take this step, but I strongly believe it is in the best interest of the children I teach, who are my priority.
Regards,
Karen Johnson
“Well, that’s a motive if I’ve ever heard one,” I replied.
“There’s more, he replied to this,” Leanne said, scrolling down. Sure enough, there was a reply from Gary, sent a couple of minutes later.
Karen,
I’m very disappointed to hear you’re taking this next step. Could we have a conversation about it? I’m in Seattle for the conference all day, but I can meet you at six, if you’d be willing to come back to the school around then.
Gary
“There’s another reply from Karen a few minutes later confirming the appointment,” Leanne added. “So they had a meeting scheduled for about an hour before she was stabbed.”
“That’s crazy!” I said. “Were the emails just sitting there in the account?”
“No,” Leanne said, shaking her head. “Gary had deleted all of them. Only, I think he forgot the first rule of the internet: nothing is ever permanently gone. I had to do a bit of tech wizardry, but I got them back.”
“I knew you were good with computers, I didn’t know you were this good.”
Leanne smiled at me. “Kaillie grew up getting to do real magic, so I had to find my own magic to do. I pretty quickly realized grown-ups had no idea how computers worked, so I focused a lot of my efforts there. I’m not some Lisbeth Salander-like super hacker, but I know my way around a computer better than most.”
“That’s cool,” I replied, in awe of my cousin. She might have been sensitive about the fact that she had no magical powers, but as far as I was concerned, being able to manipulate computers and find deleted emails like that was just as magical as being able to conjure up a mattress out of nowhere.
“Ok, let me print out these emails, and then we can get out of here and show them to Detective Andrews,” Leanne said. The printer whirred to life a moment later, but when I turned to grab them, I gasped.
Standing there in the doorway, his expression on
e of clouded fury, was Gary Vanderchuk.
Chapter 25
“You,” I gasped, causing Leanne to turn around as well. “What are you doing here?”
“Do you know how much vandalism has happened to this school because of that skylight? I wanted it sealed up permanently, but the school board refused to pay for that. So when the lock was installed, I also secretly added an alarm. Anytime anyone opened it up I’d get a notification to my phone. So imagine my surprise when I get one such notification tonight.
I sighed. So much for our secret entrance into the school.
“I thought only the other doors were alarmed,” Leanne said.
“That’s what I wanted everyone to think,” Gary replied. “But no, the skylight was as well. It’s on a different system, though, because again, the school board wouldn’t pay for it. So only I get notified. But in this case, I think that’s a good thing. I don’t want the cops called in on this.”
“Why, because we just found proof that you’re the one who tried to kill Karen? And you tried to kill us, too, didn’t you? You’re the one who broke into the coffee shop and sabotaged all of the wires.”
“Yes, that was me,” Gary said with a humorless smile. “I’m disappointed that my strategy failed, but I knew I would get away with it. Everyone trusts a high school principal. Meanwhile, Karen’s husband was addicted to gambling, and placing bets with Andrew Lloyd, the idiot. He thinks everyone in town is going to keep his secret. Frankly, it’s a miracle that he hasn’t been turned in by anyone yet. He was the least subtle bookie I have ever met in my life.”
“Well, you’re not going to get away with it now,” Leanne said smugly. “We found the email you sent to Karen and her reply confirming the appointment to meet with you here on the island one hour before she was stabbed.”
“Yes, but no one else is going to see it,” Gary replied, pulling a gun out from the back of his pants and pointing it at Leanne.
“Oh come on,” Leanne said, her voice slightly higher despite the fact that she was trying to act strong. “If you shoot us here, it’s going to leave a ton of blood, and no one is going to have any trouble figuring out who killed us.”
“That’s a good point,” Gary said. “Come on, we’re going to the supply closet. There’s a tarp in there. I’ll be able to throw it into the ocean with some rocks and they’ll never find your bodies.”
Great. This definitely wasn’t ideal.
“So you did stab her,” Leanne said as Gary motioned for us to move. We both headed to the door. The wand in my pocket felt like an enormous weight. Did I know any spells that I could use against him? Could I even get any spells to work before he noticed and shot me?
Blood pounded through my head. I was panicking. Gary had a gun trained on us and obviously intended to use it. But Leanne was insisting on keeping him talking.
“I did,” Gary admitted. “She was going to go to the superintendent. The superintendent here is a loonie leftie hippie type who would have eaten up everything Karen told her. She’s hated my guts for years, and I know she’s looking for any excuse to have me fired. This is exactly the sort of thing she would have used as ammunition against me. I couldn’t let Karen go to her.”
“Did you intend to stab her the whole time?” Leanne asked.
“No. I just wanted to talk to her. I wanted to give her one last chance to change her mind, to tell me that she wasn’t going to go to the superintendent after all, and that I was right. And I was right. After all, the kids who are behind by the time they get to second grade are going to be losers their whole lives. Who cares if they get pushed through a bit, especially if it makes them feel better? They’re going to end up being losers anyway, so why bother spending extra time and effort on them when Karen could have concentrated on the kids actually worth teaching.”
“Wow, you definitely deserved to be fired,” I said, my mouth saying the words before my brain had the time to process what a bad idea it was to say them to a guy with a gun in his hand leading us to our deaths.
“You shut your mouth!” Gary practically screamed at me, waving the gun in my face. “You have no idea what it’s like dealing with these little jerks every second of every day, while their parents basically just want someone to babysit their kids. Plus, the teachers are just as bad as the students. Don’t you dare question me!”
I wisely shut my mouth, fear threatening to overtake me as we walked down the hall. It was kind of eerie, seeing pictures on the walls drawn by obviously-happy young children, full of sunshine and hope while I was being led to my death.
I had to do something. I was the one with magical powers, and if there was any time when it was appropriate to use them, it had to be now. After all, I couldn’t get in trouble for using magic to save my life, could I? Or Leanne’s. Either way, it was a risk I was willing to take.
We had to get out of this.
Eventually, Gary stopped in front of a supply closet. He pulled out a large ring of keys and started looking for the right one, and I knew this was the one chance I was going to have to save my life.
I pulled out the wand and cast one of the first spells I had ever learned, which I muttered under my breath as quietly as I could while I focused as strongly as possible on the gun. “Saturn, father of Jupiter, take this gun and make it smaller.”
The gun in Gary’s hand began to shrink, and I continued to focus all of my energy towards it, wanting to make it microscopic. Leanne, having noticed what I’d done, rammed into Gary from behind. He shouted, dropping the gun, and I continued to shrink it until it was the size of a quarter.
“What the-?” Gary shouted as he turned, looking for his gun in vain. When he didn’t see it, he took a swing at Leanne, but she was too quick. She darted out of the way and kicked him square between the legs, causing Gary to grab at his groin as he groaned in pain. He recovered quickly though, and made a move to attack Leanne, but I screamed and ran at him wildly, with absolutely no idea what I was doing, throwing him off balance just enough that his punch missed my cousin.
Leanne recovered quickly as Gary shoved me away from him and I fell, a squeaking sound reaching my ears as I slid across the floor. She rushed at Gary again, and he punched her square in the face. Blood began streaming from Leanne’s nose as I got up to my feet. I rushed towards Gary and kicked him as hard as I could in the knee.
He immediately yelped in pain and grabbed at the joint, the fight forgotten as he collapsed to the ground, howling.
“What have you done? You stupid bitch! You broke my knee!”
“You tried to kill two people, the least you deserve is a little bit of pain,” Leanne said, panting, wiping a stray piece of hair from her face.
“What is wrong with you two? How did two small women manage to defeat me?”
Gary continued his rant while Leanne called the authorities, wincing as she kept her nose pinched shut to stop the bleeding. She hung up the phone a minute later and looked at me.
“Detective Andrews should be here in a minute,” she said.
“What do I do about the gun?” I asked in a hushed whisper. “Do we pretend it was never here, or do I make it normal-sized again?”
“If you can return it to a regular size I would do that,” Leanne said. “There will be fewer questions that way, and Gary will just think he lost sight of it in the heat of the moment.”
I nodded and walked away from the two of them, out of Gary’s earshot, and reversed the spell. Gary was now clutching at his knee and crying, his eyes not leaving his leg, so there was no risk he was about to see what would happen. The gun quickly returned to its normal size, and Leanne shot me a thumbs-up sign as she kicked it down the hall, further from the man who was going to kill us with it.
Leanne went to the end of the hall, where a large set of double doors led outside and unlocked them, and about two minutes later Detective Andrews came rushing through them.
“Are you alright?” he asked me immediately, and I nodded.
“I’m fi
ne, yeah.”
Then he looked at Leanne, who had blood on the front of her shirt and on her face from when Gary had punched her. “And you? Do you need an ambulance?”
“No,” she replied. “But I’m pretty sure this whiny idiot does.”
Gary scowled at her while Detective Andrews made the call. When he hung up, he looked at Gary, pulled out a set of handcuffs, and began reading him his rights.
“Gary Vanderchuk, you’re under arrest for the attempted murders of Karen Johnson, Eliza Emory and Leanne Stevens. You have the right to remain silent…”
My thoughts trailed off as Detective Andrews finished reading Gary his rights. I couldn’t help but realize that he had asked about me – the person who looked relatively unscathed – before Leanne, who had blood all over her face and clothes.
Maybe Leanne was right about him having feelings for me.
I pushed those thoughts from my head as Detective Andrews turned back towards us as Gary continued complaining in the background.
“I want these two arrested! They attacked me! I was just defending the school, they broke in! They’re vandals!”
“So, do you two want to tell me exactly what happened here?”
“It depends, are you going to arrest us?” Leanne asked, and Detective Andrews gave her a sly look.
“Do you deserve to be arrested?”
“No. In all honesty, we didn’t expect Gary to be here at all, and had no intention of confronting him. If you check your email, you’ll find a string of emails between Gary and Karen that I forwarded to you from his office. We intended to leave and then have you arrest him for the murder. But it turns out he had a private alarm set up in the skylight, and he confronted us with a gun. He was taking us to the janitor’s closet to get a tarp so he wouldn’t make a mess when he killed us.”
Detective Andrews sighed. “And I’m sure you just accidentally fell into the skylight, and then decided that while you were here you might as well rifle through the principal’s emails.”
“That’s exactly how it happened. It was totally an accident,” I replied.
A Cauldron of Hot Coffee: Enchanted Enclave Mysteries Books 1-3 Page 30
