My heart broke as I took it all in, but I couldn’t allow that to get the better of me now. We needed to move fast.
“Why?” Riley asked, obviously stunned. “Why would she—”
“There’s no time,” I shot back. “We have to get out of here.” Spinning, I rushed to the door. As I reached out for the handle, though, it disappeared. My eyes widened because I knew it was already too late. Magic was at play here. Luckily for me, I had some magic of my own to throw into the occasion. “Stand back,” I said, looking back at Riley. I raised my hands, readying myself to make the whole door disappear along with the handle. As I did, though, something went wrong. A blue spark shot out of the door and hit me. I went flying backward and slid across the floor. I saw stars as I slid to a stop.
“Are you okay?” Riley asked, rushing to me, kneeling, and grabbing my face.
“You shouldn’t have come back here, Izzy Lockheart.” I heard the same words that had haunted me since almost the moment I set foot back in Spell Creek Mountain. It was different now, though. It was no longer monstrous or filled with supernatural foreboding. This voice belonged to my very best friend, and it was filled with more hate than I would have ever imagined could come from her.
I looked back and saw Emily floating toward me, buzzing with energy and a fireball floating over her open palm. She looked so enraged, so upset, that it took all I could do to even recognize her.
“Is she a witch, too?” Riley asked, tightening his grip on me. “She isn’t listed as one in the Order’s files.”
“She’s not a witch,” I said, scrambling to my feet and looking at my best friend. “I would have known it if she were a witch.”
“Like I knew when you were?” Emily shot back, the fireball floating over her palm flaring up as she spoke. “No. I’m not a witch! I’m not anything close to a witch. I’m just a plain old human being.” Her eyes moved over to Riley. “Though, trust me, the Order’s files aren’t the most complete collection in the world. I can tell you that from personal experience.”
My heart jumped as the pieces fell into place. “You’re the third operative, aren’t you?” I asked. “The power you have now, it’s the power the Order gave you when they hired you.”
“It is,” Emily hissed. “They wanted me to use it to protect myself and their secrets, but I had a better idea. I’d use it to settle the score, to make sure no one else was ever wronged by witches the way I was wronged by you!”
“What are you talking about?” I balked, scouring my brain for something, anything, that Emily might be mad with me about. I couldn’t produce a single idea. We had been best friends forever. We’d had fights the way all friends do, but we had always made up. And even if we hadn’t, we’d never had a disagreement that would have risen to the ranks of ‘murder-worthy’.
“You know what my life was like, Izzy!” she said, her fireball flaring up again. “You know what happened when my father got sick, when I had to take over the restaurant so that we could keep a roof over our heads and pay his medical bills.” She shook her head hard. “You knew I didn’t want that life for myself. I thought it was just bad luck when it happened. I settled in for a lackluster life here, feeding idiots whom I honestly never wanted to see again. I watched as you went off and had a fabulous life. I watched as Riley went out to chase his dreams. I watched as nearly everyone in town built lives that they loved. All the while, I just sat here, getting older, getting sadder.”
“Emily, I—”
“Shut up, Izzy!” she roared. I thought the fireball was going to explode in her hand as she screamed. It didn’t, though, and she continued. “You’ve talked enough! It’s my turn to talk now.”
I felt Riley’s hand tighten on my back as she continued.
“I thought it was just the way life worked. I thought there was nothing anyone could do about it,” she said, tears filling her eyes. “But then Mr. Rickman came to me. He told me the truth about the world. He told me the truth about you. Then I saw everything for what it was.” She shook her head hard. “You could have fixed everything! One wave of your magic wand, and my father would have been cured. I could have had my life, but you didn’t want that. My life wasn’t important to you. So, you just let me sit here and rot.”
My stomach lurched at the pain in her voice, at the hurt. “Emily, that’s not how it works,” I said. “I couldn’t have healed your father, sweetie. Magic won’t change that.”
“Liar!” she screamed. “None of your family ever got sick. Explain that!”
“My mother is dead, Emily,” I answered. “If I could change that with magic, don’t you think I would have?”
“That’s not the same, and you know it,” she snarled.
“You’re right, because your father survived,” I said. “He got better. If you’re here now, it’s because it’s where you want to be.”
“It’s because I have no choice!” she screamed. “You allowed this to happen. You allowed all the money for my college education to be spent on hospital bills. You allowed us to refinance this restaurant. You allowed the time to slip away. The piece of my life when I could have made something of myself is long gone!”
“Only if you want it to be,” I answered. “And what does any of this have to do with Fallon, Mr. Rickman, or anybody else?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with any of them,” she said. “This is about you and me. This is about me making your life unlivable, the same as you allowed mine to become.” She laughed bitterly. “You killed the Order’s operatives.”
“I did no such thing.”
“That’s not what I told them,” she answered. “I told them you systematically took down every last one of us.” Her eyes moved to Riley. “You even set Riley on fire in my own restaurant. I tried to stop you, of course, and I finally did. It took all the magic I had, and it burned my restaurant to the ground, but I finally took you out. Of course, that doesn’t mean the threat is gone. You see, Riley told you the truth about who he was, about what the Order is. It made you angry. It made your whole family feel unsafe. So the Lockheart clan hatched a plan to destroy the Order. It’s why you came back here in the first place.”
“You’re a liar!” I yelled.
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “But you won’t be around to see it. You also won’t be around to see the Order take your entire family apart piece by piece, but I want you to know it’s happening. I want you to know I’m the reason your entire family is going to die.” She laughed again. “Right after you do.”
She reared her hand back and tossed the fireball. It flew toward us. I leapt out of the way, feeling Riley behind me. The fireball struck the wall, though, and spread around it like the flames were dancing to a jaunty tune as they speedily ran across the wood and wallpaper.
Before I could even react, the entire place had gone up in flames. There was nowhere to run, even if the door hadn’t been spelled shut.
“You’re going to kill yourself too!” I said.
“Do you really think I’m that stupid?” she asked, sneering at me. She floated through the flames, moving around them unharmed. “I made sure I would be safe. Face it, Izzy. It’s over. I’ve won. You’re going to die today, labeled a murderer, and your entire family is going to follow suit.” She smiled menacingly at me. “But hey, at least you’ll get to see your mother again. I wonder if she’ll be as disappointed in you as I am.”
My heart sank, but as I usually did when talk turned to my mother, I instinctively reached for the locket she left me. Only, it wasn’t there. Looking around, I saw that it had fallen off me when the blast sent me flying. Flames were about to eat it up. I wasn’t going to have that. I might die today, but if I did, I’d meet my mother wearing her locket. Emily Morningside wasn’t going to take that away from me.
Throwing caution to the wind, I lunged toward the locket. Scooping it up and pulling myself to my feet before the flames overtook me, I looked it over. To my surprise, the rusted thing I could never get to open had fina
lly given way. I had often wondered what was inside it and it seemed that the last thing I would ever know on this earth would be an answer to that question.
Warmth licked at my feet as I pulled the locket open, revealing a single scrap of paper. Unfolding it, I read the message, written in my mother’s handwriting.
To my daughter, on the day she needs it the most.
I love you. I am with you always, even now, even when you think it’s over. Trust me, my love. It’s not.
Close your eyes, think of me, and say the words, ‘Let it Be.’
Always,
Your Mother.
Tears filled my eyes as I took the words in. In another few seconds, it would be over. The fire would have taken us, and like my Salem sisters before me, I’d have been just another burned witch. I was never one to disobey my mom though. So, pushing the thoughts of being burned alive out of my mind, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, thought of my favorite memory with my mother, and uttered the phrase she told me to.
“Let it be,” I murmured.
I felt a rush of energy move through me, and as I opened my eyes, I saw why.
It was raining. Bright blue, glorious rain fell in buckets. It drowned the fire, leaving us free. More than that, as it struck Emily, doing something the flames couldn’t do and actually hitting her, it knocked her to the ground. By the time the rain stopped inside The Roundabout, Emily was on the floor, looking up at me and raging.
“Die!” she yelled, throwing her hands out in front of her as though she had some other magical plan. If she did, it was not to be though. No magic was coming from Emily Morningside now. I had a feeling that by the time it was all said and done, no magic would ever come from her again.
29
“Can you pass me another drumstick?” Charlotte asked, reaching across the sprawling table we had in the backyard and looking at me.
“You’ve had three drumsticks already. Don’t you think that’s enough?” I said, smiling and shaking my head. It had been a couple of days since Emily had been revealed, and in turn, arrested for the murders of Fallon Fulcrum and Mr. Rickman. Thankfully, she had her plan written down on a secret folder on her computer, and that, along with Riley’s testimony, was enough to get her thrown in jail. I had to imagine that she’d stay there for a long time, assuming her constant screams of witchcraft and monsters didn’t get her thrown in the looney bin first.
Either way, my murderous ex-best friend was out of my hair. The days were much better since then. I’d grown more comfortable here, and I even got to spend time with my family that didn’t involve solving murders and chasing ghosts. Case in point, a luscious backyard lunch that all of us seemed to be enjoying more than I’d enjoyed anything in years.
“What are you, the drumstick police?” Charlotte asked, narrowing her eyes at me. “Never mind. I’ll get it myself.” She twinkled her fingers and a drumstick lifted from the table and started floating toward her.
“No magic at the table!” Grandma Winnie scolded, and as soon as the words left her mouth, the drumstick fell, landing in a gravy boat that splashed the brown substance all over poor Austin.
“Are you happy now?” Charlotte sneered. “You got the little one dirty.” She shook her head. “What? Are we trying not to make Izzy’s boyfriend nervous?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said, looking over at Riley, who—yes—was sitting next to me. Still, that didn’t make him my boyfriend. He had helped me get to the bottom of things, and besides, it was nice to finally be able to be myself around him, my actual self.
“I don’t mind,” he answered. “The magic, I mean, not the ‘boyfriend’ part.” He cleared his throat and shuffled nervously. “There was no safe way to say that, was there?”
“None that I can think of,” I admitted. “But you did okay. How’s the Order? Are they super angry that almost all of their operatives were killed by another of their operatives?”
“It’s not an ideal situation,” he admitted. “Still, they’re working their way through it, and I’ve been given a promotion.”
“Really?” I asked. “What sort of promotion?”
“They made him official liaison to the Lockheart coven,” Grandma Winnie said from her place at the head of the table. “I found a mysterious letter in my sock drawer this morning that told me as much. It said that we had done them a great service in rooting out their traitor, and because of that, they hope we can be friendly and help each other out, should an event ever rise that needs both of our attention. It also said we should get used to Riley. I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of him.”
“I know someone who won’t be too upset about that,” Charlotte said, making kissy faces at me.
I twinkled my finger. The drumstick lifted and fell again. The gravy splashed, but this time, it magically moved to cover Charlotte instead.
“Oops,” I muttered. Turning to Riley as Charlotte screeched like a howler monkey across the table, I grinned at him. “You’re going to be around a lot now, are you?”
“It looks that way,” he said, smiling at me. “Too bad you won’t be. When do you leave town again?”
I bit my lower lip. “As it turns out, I don’t.”
“What?” he asked, his eyes lighting up.
“The thing is, I’ve really enjoyed my time here. Supernatural murders notwithstanding, I feel at home here, and that’s because it is my home. My family is here. People I care about are here. Besides, Abe Morningside called me yesterday. He apologized for what his daughter did, and as a way of apologizing, he offered me The Roundabout for a third of what it’s worth. Even with the fire damage, it’s a steal.” I nodded. “I’m taking him up on the offer. I’m opening my own restaurant right here on Spell Creek Mountain.” I shrugged. “So, I guess you’ll be seeing a lot of me too.”
Riley’s grin widened. “You know something, Izzy Lockheart? I am perfectly okay with that.”
The End
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Mountains, Mystery, and Magic Page 13
