by Tess Lake
I wondered if Hattie Stern had seen Ollie’s article yet.
It also occurred to me that Juliet Stern must have been a witch. Witches are matrilineal—we do not take our husband’s last names, and that meant Juliet Stern was somehow related to Hattie.
I got up out of my chair and walked over to the window, thinking with excitement of how happy this news would make Aunt Cass and also my cousins. We all considered Hattie Stern to be a stuck-up prude who couldn’t help looking down her nose at you. As I was standing at the window pondering whether I should call Aunt Cass to let her know right away, I noticed the witch in question herself, walking down the other side of the street accompanied by none other than Kira Stern, the teenage queen of sarcasm.
Oh no, this was what she’d meant when she’d said she would get someone else.
Kira Stern was Hattie’s granddaughter. She had come to stay with us some time ago because Kira was a slip witch, like Aunt Cass and me. There had been a series of fires around town and the fear had been that Kira was the one who was starting them with out-of-control magic. It had turned out it had actually been one of Kira’s friends who had returned to town who Kira was helping out. There had also been an arsonist at large, too.
Kira was definitely a sarcastic teenager who could get on your nerves in about five seconds flat, but at the same time she was also brave, warm and funny. And now Aunt Cass had pulled her into whatever investigation she was involved in. I stood there watching them, fighting an internal battle with myself. Not my business, not my business, not my business… Argh, okay, fine. It is my business. I rushed out of my office and into the street in time to see them go around the corner. I hurried up to the corner and then peered around it. Aunt Cass and Kira went into Mr. McGregor’s herbology shop.
Okay, so this wasn’t good. They were definitely planning on casting some kind of spell, or possibly creating a potion. I waited at the corner, peering around it until Aunt Cass and Kira emerged. They were both holding bags that were packed to the brim with whatever it was they had bought. Aunt Cass said something to Kira and then they high-fived and went their separate ways.
It took me all of half a second to decide that I would follow Kira rather than Aunt Cass. Aunt Cass was an adept liar. I had no doubt that even if I did catch up with her, she would simply divert my questions about what exactly she was doing with the herbs and whatever else she had bought. So I followed Kira, who walked away from the main part of town and out into the streets nearby.
I paused on a corner to cast a concealment spell. Unlike in the past, where this had nearly driven me into unconsciousness, this time it was incredibly simple—as easy as snapping my fingers. There were some benefits to being a slip witch. Your powers went up and down, and sometimes even the most difficult things were incredibly easy. If Kira turned around, there was no way she would see me, nor would anyone else. I could feel the concealment spell pulling on me, but it was trivial, nothing almost.
I followed Kira a couple of streets away from the main part of Harlot Bay and down a street until she turned and went into what was clearly an abandoned house. There are plenty of them around the town. Sometimes they are owned by elderly people who pass away and then their children can’t sell them. Sometimes people move out after discovering their house is worth less than the mortgage. I crept up to the house, still being careful not to make too much noise as that would make the concealment spell have to work a lot harder, and found the front door was open. I held my breath and pushed it open, but thankfully it didn’t squeak. I’d just gotten inside the front door when Kira stepped out of nowhere and grabbed me on the arm.
“Got you!” she yelled.
“Ahhh!” I yelled out and practically jumped in shock.
“Well, if it isn’t intrepid reporter, Harlow Torrent, sneaking around following a teenager,” Kira said, smirking at me.
I let the concealment spell go and then Kira let go of my arm.
“Breaking and entering again, I see?” I said to her.
Kira shrugged and then indicated the bag she held in her hand.
“I need somewhere to cast spells. I sure can’t do it at home,” she said. She walked off to a very dusty kitchen that had clearly been abandoned some time ago and put the bag on the counter. I followed behind her, wondering how I should play this. Ask her directly and then possibly have her shut down as teenagers do? Or start talking and hope that she would eventually tell me?
Thankfully I didn’t have to decide because Kira started pulling things out of the bag and then turned to me.
“So you wanna know what me and C-Money are up to, right?” she asked me. She pulled a bunch of small crystals out of the bag along with some bundles of dried herbs and some feathers.
“Aunt Cass is investigating the death of that old man she says was scared to death?” I asked.
“One hundred points to the small-town reporter!” Kira said.
“And you’re helping her because…?”
“I need to learn magic, and the type of magic my grandma wants to teach me is not the type of magic I want to learn,” Kira said.
That was easy to believe. I had trained with Hattie Stern when I’d uncovered the power to draw the heat or cold out of objects. It was an incredibly addictive magic, and I’d had to go to Hattie’s every week for a fairly long time to learn how to control it. It had been the least favorite part of my week by far, especially when she’d cracked me across the knuckles for moving my hand while I cast a spell. I really couldn’t imagine living with her.
“So what is it that Aunt Cass wants you to do?” I asked.
Kira had been bundling up a small crystal with a feather and then making another small bundle of herbs. She touched the herbs against the crystal and whispered to herself, and I felt the magic ripple near me, but so subtle it would have been easy to miss it. The crystal glimmered gold for a moment and then returned to its original clear white color.
“I’m making tracking crystals so we can find out who killed the old man. Do you want one?” Kira said and pushed the crystal across to me.
I picked it up and marveled at how good Kira was at making these. I knew how to do it, of course, but I guess my longtime desire not to be what I was, which was a slip witch, had prevented me from ever really practicing the art. In that way, Kira and I were almost completely opposite. I did everything I could to get away from my slip witch nature, but she embraced it.
“I don’t know if I want this… I’m kinda on a holiday from getting involved in crazy things,” I said and pushed the crystal back toward Kira.
“Suit yourself. It’ll be more magical adventures for C-Money and me,” Kira said with a shrug.
“You’re getting really good at making those crystals,” I said.
“Yeah, I know. I’ve been practicing and I can track almost anything,” Kira said. She was so enthusiastic, but I decided not to push it by asking her more questions. She was still a teenager and likely to turn in an instant.
“How did you know I was following you? I was using a concealment spell,” I asked.
“I felt you casting the spell, and after that it was a matter of time to wait until the front door opened. You Torrent witches need to get better at sneaking,” Kira said.
By now, she’d bundled up a couple more crystals with feathers and cast a spell on them. I picked up the one that Kira had offered me and considered it. Maybe I should take one. After all, if something magical happened, then maybe I could help…
I felt that particular trail of thoughts pulling at me and knew where it would lead: me probably hiding in some abandoned house while some rampaging magical monster ran through it looking for me, or something equally crazy. Despite my curiosity, which I would probably rate at about nine Adams out of ten, I put the crystal down and folded my arms over my chest.
“Don’t let her pull you into anything crazy,” I told Kira. Kira rolled her eyes at this, but then saluted at me and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, well, I
’m going to go now. If you need any help, make sure you call me,” I said.
“I thought you didn’t want to get involved. That’s what your aunt says.”
“When you’ve been involved in as many witchy magical adventures as I have, sometimes you want a holiday.” Kira held up a hand, and I gave her a high five before taking myself out of the abandoned house, leaving the teenage slip witch behind me to cast spells on the crystals.
I walked all the way back to my office and pondered whether I should go home. I decided to write some more articles for the Harlot Bay Reader. Keeping myself busy was better than sitting at home with nothing to do, which I thought would inevitably lead me to getting involved in whatever Aunt Cass was plotting. I settled down at my laptop and got to work.
Chapter 6
Being that it was winter, the sun set early, and before I realized it I was sitting in my darkened office lit only by the flow of my laptop screen, writing like a madwoman. Although the Harlot Bay Reader was definitely dying, I still loved writing for it.
I had some material on the ice-skating rink renovation and restoration that was underway, wrote another article on a new planned fine dining restaurant that was going to be opening on the edge of town, and then wrote a short article directing people to Ollie’s website. By the time I finished up, the sun was long gone and my stomach was starting to grumble because I’d missed dinner. I took the grumbling as a good sign that perhaps the exercise sessions with Kaylee were starting to use up some of those calories I had sent in the direction of my thighs.
I packed up my office and rushed outside, feeling the first drops of rain hit me before I got into my car. I was driving out of Harlot Bay when I felt a tingle of magic and saw something glow from the passenger seat. It was one of the crystal trackers that Kira had been making. She must have snuck one into my car somehow, either directly or by magical means.
“Clever little witch,” I murmured to myself with a smile. I picked up the crystal, which was glowing a bright yellow. As soon as I had it in my hand, I could feel it was pulling me in a certain direction, and so, ignoring all the promises I had made to Mom, I decided to follow it. It led me back into Harlot Bay and into what I guess you could call our suburbs. It was only a couple of streets away from where Jack’s renovation house was. The closer I got, the stronger the pull of the crystal. Eventually it flashed again, turning a bright gold color and then going dead in my hand.
I pulled over to the side of the street immediately and looked at the house across the road. That was where the crystal had been pulling. I turned my car off, turned the lights off, and sat there in the darkness, watching the house. It was only about seven in the evening, but all the lights were off. I couldn’t see well in the dark, and this was one of those houses that sat between two streetlights in the distance in either direction. I had nothing really to base this on, but I got the feeling the house wasn’t abandoned and empty. I could see a little bit of the garden, and it looked like someone had mowed the lawn in at least the last month.
I was sitting there watching the house when I saw the figure of a man moving in the garden. I saw him take a few steps and then I realized it wasn’t a man but probably a teenager. It was something about the shape of his body. A moment later, I saw another shape join the first one. I was watching them, pondering whether I should call Sheriff Hardy, when some serious supernatural stuff went down.
One of the boys waved his arm, and through the gloom I saw a black hole open in front of him. He had to crouch down to step through it, but once he and his friend had gone through, it closed up behind them and vanished. From where I was sitting, I could feel the slight ripple of magic, but it felt like no magic that a witch would cast.
A witch’s magic had a tone, sometimes even a flavor. You could detect vanilla or spice, maybe even hear sounds or feel a certain warmth when they cast a spell. This magic was jagged and sharp, like a broken glass bottle had been used to cut a hole in the reality of the world.
I jumped out of the car and cast a concealment spell over myself. Again it was so trivially simple that I barely felt it. I rushed over to the house, cast an unlock spell to get through the front door, and then crept inside. As soon as I stepped inside, I got the sense that the owner of this house was fairly wealthy. There were small lights embedded around the baseboards that lit up the house so you could navigate it at nighttime without turning on the large lights above. I saw gilt-edged mirrors, a bookcase full of books, and some vases and paintings, as well as a rich red sofa in the next room that looked like it was pure leather. I also heard footsteps coming from the direction of the room with the sofa, and low teenage voices. I crept closer, listening intently.
“Get anything gold? He wants gold,” I heard one voice whisper.
“Yeah, I know that,” said the other voice in typical teenage sarcasm fashion. I heard some clinking from the next room and the sound of drawers being opened.
“Score!” Before I could creep into the room, I felt the push of that sharp jagged magic again. It flashed and then was gone, and so were the two teenage voices. I crept into the room and found it was empty, and then I heard a noise from up on the second floor, the sound of someone knocking something and then awkwardly catching it.
It was at that moment that a tiny bit of sanity reasserted itself. What had I promised Mom? What had I promised myself? I was supposed to be taking a holiday! Not tracking down supernatural teenagers who were somehow using magic to break into people’s homes.
Even as I told myself this, I knew I had to follow it through to the end now. They were clearly stealing things, and that meant they might have been the ones who had stolen the coffee machines and possibly even the catapult. And what had one of them said that had sent chills down my spine? “He wants gold”? Who was “he”? Given the feeling of that magic, I was willing to bet that “he” was actually an “it”, and “it” was probably something dark and dangerous.
I left the room and climbed the stairs. When I reached the top landing, I heard the sound of an old man snoring in one of the bedrooms. The door, for some reason, was ajar. As I crept closer I heard the teenagers again. They were in the bedroom with the old man.
“Should we kill him?” one asked. There was a pause as though the second one was seriously considering it. In that pause I wondered if I could throw a fireball faster than they could hurt the old man.
“Nah, let’s go.”
That jagged magic flickered again, and then I was alone in the house with the old snoring man. I pushed the bedroom door open gently and saw him lying there in his bed with his mouth open, his hair a shock of fuzzy white. I took a quick look around, but the room was empty. The teenagers, whoever they were, were gone.
I went back downstairs and into the first room I’d heard the teenagers rummaging through. I was betting that they had put everything back into place, closing drawers and the like, and the chances were that the old man might not even notice that they had stolen things, so I pulled open all the drawers and opened all the cupboards, hoping that in the morning when he awoke, he would see that things had been stolen and then would call the police. Then I got out of there, heading back to my car and feeling that familiar foreboding, that prickle that crept up my spine. Something dark and dangerous was going on in Harlot Bay, and I was pretty sure I was about to get involved.
Chapter 7
“Teenagers, I knew it! Dark, eldritch teenagers with weird supernatural powers, they’re the ones that stole the catapult!” Luce said and then did an impromptu “I told you so” dance in the middle of the kitchen.
The house had been empty when I had gotten home last night, and after what can only be described as a gigantic day full of exercise and almost falling through a floor and sneaking into someone’s house after tailing a teenage witch, I was pretty much exhausted by the time I’d gotten home. I’d had dinner alone (Jack was already starting renovations on his new, old wreck of a house) and then sent myself to bed. In the morning, I told Molly and Lu
ce everything that had happened yesterday.
“Those teenagers sound like one of those we-should-tell-the-moms situations,” Molly mused.
“No way, man! They’ll tell us to go about our business and let the law handle it or something like that, and we will never get my catapult back,” Luce said.
“Don’t you want Stefano, the coffee machine, back more?” Molly asked.
“Of course I do. But the catapult has sentimental value.”
“We fired it like three times and then left it under a tarp for over a decade,” I reminded her.
“If you had built a catapult, you’d understand,” Luce said with a sniff.
“Maybe Luce is right—after all, it seems like Aunt Cass is on the trail of the thieves with the supernatural powers. We’re three witches trying to track down our stolen coffee machine while she tackles the supernatural aspect of it,” Molly said, justifying our involvement.
“We need to infiltrate teenage culture. Get on the inside,” Luce murmured to herself.
It wasn’t such a bad idea. There were a lot of bored teenagers around Harlot Bay, and all the bored teenagers had been pretty much doing the same thing for years: finding secret places for illegal activities like underage drinking.
“If someone is stealing, they’d have money or be talking about it,” I said.
Luce whirled around and pointed her finger at me. “Exactly! Teenagers are idiots like that. And the males? Doubly so.”
“I hope Aunt Cass doesn’t pull Kira into anything dangerous,” Molly said, chewing on a nail and then quickly pulling her finger out of her mouth.
“Ow!” she said and then quickly took a sip of coffee.
“We’ll have to buy some safety gloves for ourselves,” Luce said.
“It’s her business and we are working for her. I don’t see why she can’t supply them,” Molly complained.
The conversation this morning had gone all over the place, ranging from the map of Truer Island we’d found under the house to the supernatural teenagers to Aunt Cass and Kira and what we should do about any of these problems, if anything. I was still very much in a “don’t get involved” frame of mind. I decided that going out to Truer Island to find the spot on the map might be something worthwhile, or it could be nothing. For all we knew, some witch in the past had buried something precious to her and we’d get out there simply to find an old locket or a bracelet or something like that.
