Curses & Cupcakes (A Stella Storm Cozy Witch Mystery Book 1)

by Amy Casey

  “You’re going to let go of me!”

  A sudden shift.

  The energy pressing me down receded.

  Silence.

  I wasn’t sure what happened. Not for a second. It took me a moment to really re-adjust to my surroundings.

  But when I had, I looked up and saw Janice looking back down at me.

  She didn’t have that look of victory on her face anymore. She didn’t have that look of malice.

  She actually had a look of something different entirely.

  Fear.

  “You’ll—you’ll never defeat me,” Janice said.

  I stood up. I pushed all my focus onto resisting Janice’s power. And the more I resisted it, the more powerful I felt myself getting. As if the power was being drained from Janice somehow, the more she tried to use it, and into me.

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” I said.

  I lifted my hands and Janice fell back against the ground.

  And as she fell, as she tried to use her power more and more, I could feel this whole dark void crumbling apart. I could feel this illusion slipping away. A bright light getting brighter, threatening to bring this whole place down.

  “The square must be closed!” Janice screeched. But she didn’t even sound human anymore. She sounded like an insect, trapped, void of all its strength, all its power.

  “The square must be closed!”

  I listened to the echoing cries and I put all my focus on restraining her as the void crumbled around us. And as Mary lay there, eyes still closed, I wanted to believe that one way or another, we were getting out of this hell. That no matter how much Janice tried to resist, this was it. This was the end of the case. But that it wasn’t the end of us.

  “The square must be—”

  A blast.

  A sudden, deafening blast of light.

  I heard Janice scream.

  I saw Mary open her eyes.

  And after that, I saw nothing.

  Chapter 46

  I’m going to disappoint you when I tell you that when I opened my eyes again, I didn’t feel any kind of power in my body. I felt weak, in fact. Weaker than I’d felt in a long time.

  I also think I might’ve farted too, and felt like I got even weaker when I did. If that was how the power of hard magic drifted from a witch’s body then hell, it was a dramatic way for it to go.

  I’d lost sense of where I was, of what’d happened. In all truth, I felt like I was just waking up from a long dream, although a vivid dream that I could remember far more clearly than was comfortable.

  It was light above me. Which was weird, because I was pretty sure it’d been dark when I’d passed out. Shit. It came flooding back to me in a mad rush. I had passed out. I’d been in that dark void, taking on Janice, locking my magical horns with her, so to speak.

  For a moment, as I lay there, frozen, I wasn’t sure who had won. I started to doubt whether I’d been the victor in that battle. Maybe this was heaven. Perhaps I’d lost, and wherever I was now was what came after.

  But then I heard footsteps to my left.

  I swung around, eager to see who it was more than anything. I just had to hope damned sure that it was someone I knew. That it was someone I could trust.

  When I saw who it was, I had to admit it wasn’t entirely who I’d been expecting.

  It was Detective Inspector Steve Burke.

  I swallowed a lump in my throat. I realised I was lying in… shit. I was in a cell. I was in a cell at the police station. That’s what had happened. I might’ve discovered the truth, but I’d been framed for the murders, somehow. I’d been framed, and all the blame was going to lie on my shoulders.

  I twisted around, tried to sit up.

  “I wouldn’t rush it if I were you,” Steve said. “You’ve been out for quite some time.”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat, blinked a few times. And then I realised that… wait. This wasn’t a prison at all. I was in a bed, but not the miserable kind you see in cells. It was another kind of bed. A hospital bed.

  Damn. This was hospital.

  “What…” I started. My throat was sore. It felt like I hadn’t spoken in weeks. Perhaps I hadn’t.

  “The first thing you should know is that I’m sorry,” Steve said. He didn’t look me directly in the eye when he said these words. And I wasn’t sure what exactly he was apologising for, not right away.

  But then his eyes did eventually meet mine, and I saw genuine sincerity there.

  “I made a mistake in the case. Peter Pake should never have been arrested. That was my bad. If we hadn’t arrested him… perhaps we could’ve prevented Sarah’s death. I don’t know.”

  The more he spoke, the more I started to grow concerned. He was apologising for this, but what if he was apologising for something else, too?

  What if Mary had fallen?

  If Rocky had fallen?

  If Annabelle had fallen?

  “What… How—”

  “We arrested Janice Ingridson for the murder of Krissy Palmer several hours ago. And for the murders of Pedro Pinto and Sarah Seeks, too. We missed key evidence that pointed right towards her. And… and while I won’t pretend to understand what on earth went on for that innocent old lady to murder a girl like that—then to kill a whole string of other people in an attempt to cover her actions up—evidence is evidence.”

  I frowned. She’d been arrested? She’d actually been arrested? “But I fought… I fought her.”

  Steve looked at me like I was delirious. Perhaps I was. “We found the blade inside Janice’s house. The blade she used to stab her victims with. It has her DNA on it, and only hers. We also discovered a large batch of plants in her cellar, including the fatal Hemlock, which she used to drug her victims. I know. There are gaps to me, too. There are things that don’t add up. Things that don’t make sense. I mean, for one, we searched that junkyard. We searched it so hard and we didn’t find a trace of that murder weapon. And for it to show up like that, just when Janice comes to us and tells us she’s the killer… I don’t understand either.”

  To be honest, my mind felt fried. Totally fried. They’d found the knife that was used to pierce Krissy’s skin? And Janice had gone to the police station and confessed? What’d happened while I’d been out?

  And then it came to me. A sudden warm flash.

  A memory.

  A memory just before I’d passed out.

  The power I’d felt.

  The power, stronger than I’d ever felt it.

  I saw the memory playing through my mind.

  The way I’d looked down at Janice.

  The way I’d told her to get up.

  To confess.

  And to unearth the murder weapon.

  I’d looked into her eyes with everything I had and I’d thrown that hard magic right at her.

  And it looked like, whatever had happened, it had worked.

  It’d taken it out of me. It’d made me feel weak to the point that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to use magic ever again. I knew the powers of influence were strictly prohibited, very out of bounds.

  But it had bloody worked.

  I closed my eyes. They were hot, tearful, and despite however long I’d been out, I just wanted to sleep.

  “I’ll let you rest,” Steve said. “I mean. I know you’ve already had two days of rest, but—”

  “Two days?” I said. I jumped up. Grabbed at my drip.

  “Um, Stella. You can’t—”

  “Two days? But who’s been running Witchy Delights? The cupcakes. The cupcakes are good but they go stale if they’re left for too long. They…”

  “You don’t have to worry about the cupcakes.”

  When I heard the voice, I turned around right away.

  And when I saw her, my heart felt like it skipped a beat.

  Mary was standing at the edge of my bed. She looked a little pale, but she always looked a little bloody pale, damn her.

  And by her side was Annabelle.r />
  “Girls,” I said, gasping.

  Mary and Annabelle walked towards me. They asked me how I was, how everything was. Mary told me Rocky had been staying with her. Annabelle told me she’d told Mary about what she knew about me—something that we were sure to keep Steve out of the loop on.

  And after a little while of conversation, the pieces of what’d happened began to come together.

  Annabelle told me I’d been there one second, and then the next I was lying unconscious. Whatever had happened between me and Janice had unfolded in the space of a matter of seconds to her.

  She’d rushed me to the hospital. And in the meantime, a broken, worn-down Janice had gone back home, unearthed her murder weapon, and confessed.

  I was still uneasy about her. I’d seen the power she had.

  But I felt confidence in my heart that whatever evil entity had lived within her had died down now, and couldn’t hurt anyone else.

  Hopefully.

  “Anyway,” Steve said, scratching his neck. “I should probably leave.”

  I frowned. “Aren’t you here on, like, police-y matters?”

  He glanced at the floor, cheeks flushing. “No. No, I um… I guess I just came to see how you were doing. But you’re okay. So I’ll go now.”

  I saw his eyes meet mine. And for just a second, I felt a flutter in my chest. I felt warmth.

  And then he walked away, over towards the ward door.

  I saw Mary looking at me. Annabelle beginning to whistle. And I nudged the pair of them, told them to behave.

  “Steve?” I called.

  He looked around, as if he’d been caught off guard. “Yeah?”

  I smiled at him. “Thank you,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “For everything.”

  He nodded. And I wasn’t sure if he understood.

  But I knew deep down, that he’d know damn well that something was amiss in this town. That something had gone on with those murders—forces beyond his control and beyond anyone’s control had been at play.

  But in that nod I saw a willingness in his eyes to accept what’d happened. To accept the differences we’d had. To accept that it was time for a broken town to stop suspecting, to start healing.

  And although things were never going to be the same again, I saw a willingness to adapt to whatever the future had in store.

  He waved then. And he walked off. And as he walked off, I listened to his footsteps go further down the corridor until they merged with the rest of the background noise, until they were nothing more than a memory.

  Then I heard Annabelle whistle.

  “Yeah. That’s it. He definitely wants to bang you,” she said.

  I punched her on the arm.

  “Cow,” I said.

  But I couldn’t help smiling.

  Chapter 47

  I knew you wouldn’t listen,” Dad said. “I knew you’d never bloody listen.”

  The afternoon sun shone brightly through the window in Dad’s lounge. He usually had the blind down no matter what, but I’d figured there was no better day than today to give this place a good clean. I’d dusted the surfaces, which had sparked a nasty tickle in the back of my throat. I’d cleaned up the kitchen. And I’d done everything I could to get air and light beaming through this place.

  Because sometimes, when you went through a sequence of events that changed your life forever, you became more grateful for the things you had. The things you’d spent years taking for granted.

  In my case, that was my dad.

  I looked around at my dad’s lounge. Everything looked a whole lot neater. There weren’t old plates on the floor, cutlery left in weird and wonderful places. There were no old newspapers stacked up beside the telly. Truth be told, I was actually kind of jealous at how neat and tidy this place was. My flat was hardly a tip, but I didn’t think I’d ever taken as much effort to clean it up as I had my dad’s place right now.

  I took a deep breath of the air-freshened air, got a nice lungful of the lavender scent, which calmed me even more. And as I exhaled, I found myself smiling. For the first time in a long time in my dad’s company, I actually found myself proud of our relationship. Proud that, no matter what we’d been through, all the crap that’d gone down between us, there was actually something workable here. Something salvageable.

  But the way he said, “I knew you wouldn’t listen.”

  Something told me that was more than a reference to the way I’d tidied his house.

  He looked me in the eyes like he knew. Like there was no point in me hiding the truth from him because he already knew what’d gone down with Janice. He already knew I’d thrown myself into the deep end to wind up in hospital in the first place.

  I opened my mouth. Tried to find a way out of this sentence. “Dad, I—”

  “There is no way out of this sentence,” he said. And as he spoke those words, something sparked inside me.

  “You’re reading my mind?”

  “What?”

  “I literally just thought that exact line, then. Are you in my head?”

  “Stella, I’m your father. I’m also a wizard. Sometimes I can’t help but be in your head. Besides, it’s all over your face anyway. The way you feel about what happened. About what you did.”

  I looked down. I knew there was no hiding anything, not anymore. “I solved the case. I managed to stop Janice before she killed anyone else. Before the square was closed.”

  “And you think that’s it?”

  “Well. I’d say it’s pretty close to ‘it,’ wouldn’t you?”

  “Stella. This is why I warned you. Because as much as you think you might understand… there is so much more to unders—”

  “Then let me understand then!”

  My dad backed off a little when I said those words. Truth be told, I hadn’t expected to explode with them myself, either.

  “What?” he said.

  “All my life I’ve had to listen to you telling me to keep my powers under wraps, to try and live a normal life, that I don’t understand this and that. But I managed to solve this crime, Dad. I managed to stop a killer and get to the bottom of it. And if I hadn’t, people very close to me would’ve died. I’m tired of burying my head in the sand. I’m tired of letting my powers simply be background noise in my life rather than something I can put to good use. I’m tired of there being ‘more to understand.’ Because I want to understand it all, Dad. And you can help me.”

  I saw the way my dad looked at the floor and I knew right away that he was reluctant to go any further with this topic of conversation.

  But I knew I needed to press him. I knew I needed to keep on going.

  “Dad,” I said, walking closer to him. “Ever since Mum died, I’ve been trying to get my head around what I’m capable of. I’ve been trying to float alone in a world I don’t truly understand.”

  “I did it for your own good,” he said.

  I narrowed my eyes. “What?”

  “I… I distanced myself because I didn’t want you to ever have this conversation with me. I wanted—I wanted you to see somehow that a life as a witch is inferior to a life as a normal person, and eventually give up your pursuit of your goals. I did it because I knew of forces that live within this world. Forces that don’t like your kind and mine. You’ve looked one of those forces in the eye, and yes, you have defeated them once. But they aren’t the only ones, Stella. And now you’ve opened the box, it won’t be the final time you encounter them, either. You’ve won a battle. But you’re a soldier in the war, now.”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat. All this talk of dark forces was making me queasy, making me uncertain.

  “You still have a choice,” he said. “You can live the life you’ve been living. You can continue your work at Witchy Delicacies—”

  “Witchy Delights,” I corrected.

  “Whatever. You can continue there, as normal. Or you can carry on going down the path that you have begun to stumble down. B
ut believe me, Stella. It isn’t an easy road. The further down it you get, the more difficult you will find the very idea of a normal existence. So what will it be?”

  I thought about my dad’s choice. The normal life. Or the life as a witch—a life I would have to fully embrace.

  But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether it was a choice at all. Because Mary knew I was a witch. Annabelle knew now, too. And a part of me even wondered if Steve suspected there was something not quite right about me.

  I took a deep breath and looked around my dad’s bright, airy lounge.

  Then I smiled at him.

  “I choose both,” I said.

  I walked over to him.

  Wrapped my arms around him.

  Hugged him, tight.

  “Stella, you can’t—”

  “I live my life as I’ve always lived my life. Which, by the way, has never been bloody ‘normal’. And when I need to… when the opportunity arises… I use my abilities to help others. I don’t go overboard. I don’t fall down any dark paths. I just help people. Okay?”

  I could hear my dad sighing. I could hear him trying to form words. I could hear the pain in his gasps, and it sparked me to say one thing. Just one.

  “What happened to Mum won’t happen to me. Don’t worry.”

  And with that, he closed his mouth, wrapped his hands further around me, and he hugged me tightly.

  As we stood there, hugging in his lounge, I felt a lump well up in my throat.

  Despite the smiles, despite the warmth, I thought I heard my dad sob.

  Chapter 48

  Do you think they could be seeing each other, Stella? I mean, really? Big Nose Bill and Chatty Charlie?”

  I heard Annabelle’s voice and I found myself smiling as I stood at the counter of Witchy Delights. The smell of fresh coffee filled the air. Two weeks had passed since the closure of the case, and all was back to normal in Goosridge. Well, not back to normal exactly. Things would never be totally normal again.

  But there was a sense of normalcy. A sense of healing.

  And that was all we needed.

  The sun peeked through the windows, brightening up the tables and chairs to the point that a bloke called Bobby sitting by the glass was squinting away like mad. He always came in with his laptop on a Friday afternoon, and none of us knew what he did on there yet.