Swallowing hard, I turned back to Charlotte. “You need to go!” I said quickly. “You need to leave now.”
“What?” Charlotte asked, her eyes narrowing, confused. “And leave you alone with the ‘pervert board’?”
“It’s not a ‘pervert board’,” I answered, shaking my head at my cousin.
“Really?” Charlotte asked. “Because from where I’m standing, I wouldn’t be surprised if that weirdo raided our underwear drawers when we weren’t around.” She shook her head. “And here I thought he was a hot piece of police officer. Turns out he’s just a creep.”
“That’s not what this is about,” I answered, literally shuddering at the idea of Riley fishing through our delicates like some common sleazeball. “This isn’t an adoration board. He’s not watching us for that.”
I walked into the living room. The mirror was still shimmering just a little, letting me know that the spell I’d cast was still in effect.
“Then what is he watching us for?” Charlotte asked, her voice free of its usual lightness. I couldn’t blame her either. She had narrowly escaped being mauled by a dog only to find that her face was plastered all over Riley’s bedroom. This wasn’t exactly a joking matter.
“I’m not sure, but these aren’t the sort of pictures people take when they’re sweet on someone. These pictures are utilitarian. They’re clinical. He’s keeping tabs on us.”
“And why, in all the realms, would Riley Davis want to keep tabs on our whole family?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out,” I said, turning back to the still-glowing mirror.
“You’re not serious?” Charlotte said, looking from me to the mirror and figuring out my plan. “You’re actually going back to The Roundabout? You’re going back to your date with that lunatic?”
“It’s not a date!” I reminded her. “And yes, I’m going back. I went to The Roundabout to get answers from Riley, and I’m going to get answers. They just won’t be to the questions I had in mind.”
“Then I’m going with you,” Charlotte said, crossing her arms over her chest and cementing her stance.
“No, you’re not,” I responded.
“Yes, I am,” she stated. “I’m not leaving you alone with someone who’s been taking pictures of you for who knows how long. He could be dangerous.”
“How is that going to look, Charlotte? If I go into the bathroom alone and I come out of the bathroom with my cousin in tow?” I asked. “I’ll never be able to make any headway with Riley that way.”
Charlotte looked at me for a long moment. Blinking hard, she finally relented. “Fine,” she muttered. “You win, but only if you take this.” Digging into her pocket, she pulled a little doll, about the size of her thumb, out and handed it to me. Looking at its long dark hair and blank, featureless face, I knew instantly what it was.
“Tawny?” I asked, gasping. “Tawny the Truth Teller? Where did you find her?”
I hadn’t seen this doll in years. It had been a gift from my mother, but given the power it had, it turned out to be too volatile and she took it back. I thought it had been lost forever when she died. Apparently, I was wrong.
“In the attic,” Charlotte answered. “In a box of your mother’s things. I’ve been meaning to give it to you, but it’s just so much fun.”
I knew what she meant. Tawny had an incredibly special ability. You set it next to someone, and regardless of what question you ask them, they must tell the truth.
See what I mean about volatile?
“If you’re going to try to get information out of Riley Davis, you might as well make sure it’s the truth,” Charlotte said.
“Thanks, Charlotte,” I said, hugging my cousin tightly. “It’s more than just the doll. I feel like I have a piece of my mother back. I don’t know how to repay you.”
“Just get to the bottom of this,” she answered. “That’s payment enough for me.” She shrugged. “Though, on second thought, I wouldn’t say no to some fried chicken. All this sleuthing can make a girl hungry.”
16
I moved back through the mirror and into the newly switched-up ladies’ room in The Roundabout. As I slid off the sink, straightening my hair and the sundress Charlotte had convinced me to wear, I heard banging on the door.
“What? Did you fall in or something?” a woman’s voice that I was pretty sure I recognized as Mrs. Abernathy, my seventh-grade science teacher, asked, pounding on the door.
“Just a second,” I said in a far too sweet voice, realizing I must have had the restroom tied up for ages now. I shuddered to think what Riley must have been thinking out at the table or whether there was any food left whatsoever.
Not that things like fried chicken and ribs, even if they were the best in the Smokies, were at the top of my list of concerns right now. Riley had been lying to me. He had been watching my family and who knows what else for probably a long time now. I needed to get to the bottom of this, and I needed to do it right now. Slipping Tawny into my purse, I pulled the door open to find half the female population of Spell Creek Mountain standing in front of me with their arms folded and glares on their faces.
“Took you long enough!” The woman who I now knew for sure to be Mrs. Abernathy pushed past me, grunting and closing the door behind her.
I looked at the ladies surrounding me, all shooting darts at me with their eyes.
“Hope everyone’s having a good day!” I chirped, plastering on a huge, fake smile and heading back out into the dining room. I found Riley halfway through his second rib when I walked up. He dropped it as he saw me coming, wiping BBQ sauce from his mouth and standing to meet me again, like he was one of those proper upstairs guys from Downton Abbey or something.
It was a fine trick, and if I didn’t know what I did, then maybe it might have even worked to convince me he wasn’t all that bad of a guy. But I knew the truth, and because of that, it was going to take a lot more than a fake gesture of forced will to get on my good side.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said, clutching my purse and the enchanted object inside.
“That’s okay,” he said, an oil slick of a smile spreading across his face. “My father always told me that if a lady—”
“Sit down, Riley,” I cut him off, plopping myself down in my chair and placing the purse near my still-empty dinner plate. This should be close enough for Tawny to take effect, and once she did, it was on.
“You okay?” Riley asked, blinking at me and slowly sitting down. “You seem a little on edge.”
“I have a headache,” I said flatly. “Had one all day.”
“Really?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “You didn’t act like you were in pain when I saw you at the B&B earlier. In fact, you’re not really acting like you have a headache right now either.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said in a monotone voice. Moving my hand up to my temple, I said, “Ow. My head.” Lowering my hand, I stared unblinking at him. “Is that better?”
He leaned back in his chair, obviously not buying what I was selling, and with good reason. I was lying my witch hat off. Thankfully, when Mom enchanted Tawny, she did so with the caveat that Lockheart witches weren’t affected by her ability. That meant that although the doll was about to make Riley spill his guts like an open book, I was going to be able to say whatever I wanted.
“I’d ask you to try some food, but I’m guessing you’re going to tell me you’re just in too much pain to eat,” Riley muttered.
“Good guess,” I said, leaning forward.
“Why did you invite me here?” Riley asked, arching his eyebrows at me. “I thought it might have been to patch things up. We were so close before. I figured you might have wanted to have that back.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. Hearing Riley talk about that stuff, about how our relationship had been, pulled at me hard.
“Obviously, that’s not the case though,” he continued, shaking his head. “You’re certainly not interested in recapturing anything we
had . . . or almost had. So why am I here, Izzy?”
A piece of the sentence he’d just uttered struck me as strange. There was hurt in his words, and if I didn’t know better, I’d have given in to the urge to comfort him, to tell him that, of course, I wanted to be close to him again. I’d thought about that very thing nearly every day I spent in Chicago, including the ones when I was engaged.
I did know better, though. He wasn’t being honest with me. Riley was lying, but all of that was about to end. I pushed the purse, Tawny included, closer to Riley (just to be sure) and answered him.
“I’m here because I wanted to ask you a question,” I said, setting my jaw. “Why are you here?”
“I’m here because you asked me to be,” he answered, as though it was the simplest thing in the world. I couldn’t tell from that answer whether Tawny was doing what Tawny usually did. As far as I knew, Riley did come here because I asked him to. It made sense. No. I was going to have to dig deeper.
“Is that the only reason you’re here?” I asked, leaning so far across the table that I was pretty sure I got BBQ sauce on my shirt.
“Of course not,” he said. “I came here to see you too.” Riley blinked hard, as though confused about something. I had used Tawny enough in the past to know what was going on right now. She was working. He was telling the truth, and he had no idea why.
“Why?” I asked flatly.
“Because I like you, stupid. I like you a lot,” he said, shaking his head. His eyes went wide. “Wait. That’s not what I meant.” His eyes went wide again. “Yes it is. It’s exactly what I meant. I like you a lot, Izzy Lockheart. I’ve spent a long time trying to pretend that I didn’t like you, but it doesn’t seem to be working out for me, and I was hoping that if I came here tonight, I might be able to—”
Riley slapped a hand across his mouth to shut himself up. He took a deep breath, steadying himself. Slowly, pulling his hand from his mouth, he spoke to me through a tensed jaw.
“You have the doll, don’t you?”
Now it was my eyes that went wide. How did he know about Tawny? How deep did his investigation into us go?
“You should know better than to use that thing,” he said, his jaw still tight. “It’s unethical.”
“Not as unethical as lying to someone for years!” I said in a hushed yell. “You’ve been spying on my family, Riley! How long?”
“Since you left,” he answered. “Since right before you left, actually. They asked me to start after your mother—”
Riley’s hand went to his mouth again. This time, though, he stood quickly.
“Who, Riley?” I asked, unzipping my purse and pulling out the ugly, glorious, and magical doll. “Who asked you to do that?”
His eyes narrowed and I could tell he was really trying to stop himself from talking. “My bosses!” he finally spat out, much louder than anyone who might be looking at us would think he had any reason to. “You’re not the only one in this town with a family legacy, Izzy Lockheart.”
“Is . . . is everything okay?” Emily asked, steeping toward us sheepishly. Looking around, I saw that everyone in The Roundabout was looking at us, and who could blame them? We were kind of causing a scene, and in a town as small as Spell Creek Mountain, scenes were the kind of thing everyone stopped to look at. I mean, you have to have something to talk about at the salon tomorrow, right?
“I’m leaving,” Riley said, his eyes intense. “Don’t follow me.”
He turned and rushed toward the door. My body jerked.
“Like H-E-Double Hockey Sticks, I won’t!” I yelled, running toward the door to catch him and cursing myself for letting Charlotte’s reaction to Grandma Winnie’s swear jar have such an effect on me.
Pushing my way out onto the sidewalk, I found Riley was halfway toward Pine Street. He must have been practically running away from me. Well, it wouldn’t do him any good. I hadn’t used one in a month of Sundays, but I’d pull out a broom to catch him if I needed to.
As it turned out, sliding off my heels, holding them in my right hand, and scurrying toward him was enough to do the trick.
“Don’t you walk away from me!” I said, holding Tawny out in front of me with my free hand like it was a weapon or something.
‘Get rid of that thing and I won’t have to,” he said, though he didn’t turn around or even break stride.
“Only liars are afraid of the truth, Riley!” I yelled.
That was enough to get him to stop.
As he spun toward me, the look on his face was angrier than I’d ever seen on him.
“You’re going to talk to me about liars?” he asked, throwing his hands into the air. “That’s rich, Izzy. It really is.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I balked.
“It means we were best friends for years,” he said. “I cared about you so much that sometimes, I thought I was going to explode from the intensity of it.” He shook his head. “But I didn’t know you at all. You and your entire family lied to me for years. In fact, you’ve never stopped lying to me. You want to know why I didn’t show up for prom, Izzy? It wasn’t because I didn’t want to go with you. It took months for me to get up enough courage to even ask you, and once I did, I bought you a corsage of lilacs and roses because I knew they were your favorite. I worked extra shifts at the Bargain Barn on Fifth Street just to get enough cash to get us a limo. I even let my mother give me dance lessons because I didn’t want to step on your feet, and you know how hard that was for me.”
I blinked hard at him, feeling moisture pool in my eyes. “So why, Riley?” I asked, swallowing hard. “Why didn’t you come?”
“Because that was the night,” he said, stepping toward me and nodding. “That was the night I found out the truth about you, the truth about all of you.”
“What?” I gasped, my hand moving to my throat in shock. “How on earth did you find out?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Riley said, still walking toward me. “I freaked out at first, but honestly, I don’t even think it was the fact that you’re a witch. I think I’d have come to terms with that. It was the fact that, not even once in all the years we knew each other, did you think enough of me to even consider telling me the truth. Do you know how much that hurts, Izzy?”
He stepped so close to me that Tawny was pressed against his chest, giving no doubt that she was affecting him and what he was about to say next was the truth. “It hurts a lot,” he said. “It hurts more than anything I’ve ever felt.”
I pulled the doll away, dropping it on the sidewalk. “It wasn’t like that,” I answered. “Of course, I considered telling you, Riley. I considered it every day. I wanted you to know who I was, but I didn’t know how you’d react and I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my best friend. More than that, it’s not just my secret. I have an entire family to think about. I—”
Before I could finish the rest of my sentence, a loud clap of thunder cut through the night sky. But that didn’t make any sense. The night was clear, not a cloud in the sky.
Then, a whisper moved through the air.
“You shouldn’t have come back here, Izzy Lockheart,” it sang.
“Did you hear that?” I asked, my heart jumping.
Riley’s brows crinkled. “Of course, I heard that. It’s the same thing that Fallon said before—”
As he was speaking, another clap of thunder cut through the sky, but it wasn’t alone this time. A bolt of lightning reached down, striking Riley where he stood, knocking him down and seemingly striking him dead on the sidewalk.
17
“Help!” I yelled, pushing open the door of the B&B at Lockheart Estate and screaming into the lobby with tears in my eyes and Riley in my arms like he was a baby.
You might be asking yourself how a waif of a woman like me might be able to hoist a full-grown, unconscious man up into my arms and carry him, not only to my car from outside The Roundabout, but then again from my car to the lobby, where I stood now. To you shrewd
people, I say, ‘magic, duh!’
“Help!” I repeated, twitching my finger as much as I could with Riley filling my arms. It was enough to send the papers, pictures, and even the computer flying to the ground though. With the counter cleared, I moved toward it as Charlotte rushed into the room, a headful of curlers in her tresses and a green face mask smeared across her cheeks.
“What happened?” she shrieked. “How are you even carrying him?”
Okay. So, I expect it from you guys, but not from my own family. Charlotte was a witch in her own right. I shouldn’t have to spell this out for her (pun intended).
“I made him light as a feather.” I dropped one hand and held the man up with the might of a single finger. “See? Now get Grandma Winnie. We need help!”
“Grandma Winnie!” Charlotte screamed as loud as I had ever heard another human being talk, and since she didn’t take even a step in the direction of our grandmother’s room, she did it right in my ear.
“Seriously?” I balked, pulling away as I placed Riley on the counter and looked him over. “I could have done that.”
“Well, then you should have,” Charlotte answered smugly, also looking over the man. “What happened?” she asked, biting her lower lip and shaking her head at me. “You got into a fight, didn’t you? I told you not to go back there by yourself, but you just wouldn’t listen to me. You’re so hard-headed. I mean, I love you, but you’ve got a head like a mountain range.” She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “And now a man is dead because of it. You fought with him, and you killed him. Now, you’re a murderer, my own cousin. You wouldn’t listen to me and now you’re a murderer.” She shook her head again. “Just goes to show you who knows best, I guess.” She clapped her hands together. “Well, do you need help getting rid of the body?”
Mountains, Mystery, and Magic Page 8
