The Very Killer Caterpillar (A Paranormal Cozy Mystery) (Magical Bookshop Mystery Book 3)

by Samantha Silver

  I ran Cat’s brush through my hair and immediately let out a shriek of horror: the hair that the brush had touched had just turned purple!

  “Oh my God,” I thought to myself. The pastel purple clashed horribly against my naturally red hair. This must have been how Cat kept the purple color of her hair so perfect all the time: a magical brush.

  Um, I need you to come up here and fix something for me, I thought to Cat.

  What happened? came her reply a minute later.

  I used your hairbrush, stupidly thinking it was a normal brush for normal people.

  Whoops, I probably should have warned you about that! Be there in a minute.

  When Cat finally made her way up and saw me she burst into laughter while I scowled.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “It’s pretty funny.”

  “Can you change it back?”

  “Of course I can.” Cat pointed a finger at me and I turned to look in the mirror. The purple streak was gone, thank goodness, and my hair was as smooth and silky as if I’d spent ten minutes brushing it. “You do realize you could have done that yourself, too, don’t you?”

  “Oh,” I said, a blush crawling up my face. It had completely slipped my mind that I was a witch with all the same powers as all the other witches. “I actually didn’t.”

  Cat laughed. “It’s better this way, I get to have the memory of you with a single patch of purple hair.”

  I stuck my tongue out at her. “Well, thank you. Now that I am actually presentable, I’m going to go open the bookstore.”

  “Come back down through the cupcake shop and I’ll make sure there’s a coffee and cupcake ready for you.”

  “Ooooh, make it a chocolate chip cookie dough one, please!” I shouted after her as she left. I’d just tried one for the first time the other day; it was a chocolate cupcake with a cookie dough stuffed center, sugar cookie flavoured icing with small chunks of cookie dough on top.

  I headed back down after her a minute later, picked up my coffee and made my way back to my book shop.

  Ten minutes after opening, Chase walked through the door. My eyebrows rose; I hadn’t expected him to come by. I really hoped there weren’t going to be any questions about the weird fire in front of Cat’s cupcakes. Maybe the street hadn’t been as deserted as I thought.

  “Hey, how’s it going?” he asked me.

  “Good,” I replied, trying to keep my voice normal. “How’s the knee?” I couldn’t help but notice when he walked in that he still had a little bit of a limp, but it was a noticeable improvement compared to when I’d last seen him a few days ago.

  “It’s fine,” he replied. “Seriously. This is definitely not the worst injury I’ve ever had.”

  “Oh? What was?” I asked, and his face clouded over. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be intrusive.”

  “No, it’s fine,” he said, the smile returning to his face. He sat down on one of the chairs in the bookshop, and I took one across from him. “You might have heard from people in town that I was a marine?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “Cat told me that.”

  “Well, four years ago I was on assignment in Iraq. What was supposed to be a simple job turned into a major cluster. They knew we were coming. We were attacked from all sides and surrounded. A friend of mine, Todd Chang, was shot, and he couldn’t keep going. While everyone else got out, I stayed back with him. I held Todd’s hand while he died.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said breathlessly. I couldn’t imagine losing a friend like that.

  “Thanks. I still make the trip out to California to visit his grave outside of San Francisco every year. I was sure I was going to die too. I was eventually shot as they realized that there was only one living American left, but that was when the rest of my team came back and shot them all from the back. They hadn’t expected my team to come back for me. I passed out after getting shot, and woke up in the hospital on base.”

  “Where were you shot?” I asked. I couldn’t help but notice that the entire time Chase was telling the story his eyes were clouded over, like he was trying to avoid thinking directly about what had happened. He took off his shirt in reply.

  I tried not to think about the ripples in his arms and chest that showed just how muscular he was. Halfway down his abdomen, where I could see the faint outline of a six-pack, were four circular scars, healed over reminders of his time in Iraq.

  “Wow,” I said. “You survived that?”

  “Barely,” Chase replied. “I went in for emergency surgery. One bullet went straight through my hepatic vein and I would have bled to death if my team hadn’t come back when they did. Two of them went straight through, and one nicked my liver. I also have one on my thigh. It ripped through the muscle. I was bedridden for weeks, and when I was finally able to walk again, I had to go through eight months of intensive physiotherapy before it was all back to normal. So, when I tell you not to worry about my knee, I mean it. I have definitely been through worse.”

  “Well, I certainly hope I don’t manage to accidentally hurt you as bad as terrorists trying to kill you did,” I replied. “Although with my skiing skills there are no guarantees.”

  Chase laughed. “Just promise me you’ll never bring a gun to the hill.”

  “Deal,” I replied with a grin.

  “Anyway, I didn’t actually come here to tell you that story,” Chase said. “I wanted to update you about Leanne. I asked her if it was ok to tell you about her case, and she said yes.”

  “Oh?” I asked, leaning forward.

  “I’ve arrested her ex-boyfriend for assault and resisting arrest. He’s being held here and is waiting for his lawyer to show up.”

  “Resisting arrest?”

  “Yes, he didn’t take too kindly to being told that what he did was a crime.”

  “They never do,” I said quietly. “Thank you. For taking her seriously.”

  Chase looked at me with a queer expression I couldn’t quite make out. “It’s my job. I take assault as seriously as I take any other crime.”

  “I know,” I replied. “I wish all cops were as good as you. Is he going to go to jail?”

  Chase shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’ve called the county DA and he’ll be coming up shortly. I’m going to push for him to only agree to a deal that includes jail time though. They need to make an example out of domestic abusers. It’s becoming far too common these days.”

  I nodded mutely. I was torn. I had never planned on telling anyone what had happened to me. Leanne had been the first person I’d ever told, and it was different: she was in the same situation. I’d told her to help her.

  “Thanks for telling me,” I told Chase. “Let me know if he makes a deal. Do you know if Leanne has somewhere safe to stay?”

  “She does,” he nodded. “She has a sister who lives in Sandy, only about a thirty-minute drive from here. She’s going to go stay with her for a while until she gets back on her own two feet. I drove her there myself after taking her statement.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I smiled. Chase got up to leave.

  “It was really good of you to convince her to come in,” he said. “She told me she was about to leave when you showed up, and that you were the reason she went through with it.”

  “I just did what anyone else would have,” I shrugged, and Chase shook his head.

  “No, and that’s one thing I like about you. You don’t realize that what you did was exceptional. And it was good.”

  He was about to leave when I blurted out the truth.

  “It’s because my ex abused me,” I said so quietly I wasn’t sure Chase would even hear, but he stopped, his hand on the door handle.

  “I know,” he replied quietly, turning around. “I wasn’t going to say anything, because it was up to you to decide to share that information with me, but Leanne told me everything you told her yesterday. I think she thought you’d already told me.”

  I nodded. “You’re the second person I’ve ever tol
d. No one else knows.”

  “No one else will find out from me. I promise you that.”

  “I know. Thank you.”

  “What you said about not all cops listening…” he trailed off, the unasked question obvious in his voice. I nodded.

  “I went to the cops too. I got brushed off. I eventually just ran away. I grabbed all my stuff one day while he was out, I never went back to where I worked, and since he’d made me cut myself off from my friends and family so much he didn’t know where they lived either.”

  “I’m sorry,” Chase said, a look of sympathy on his face.

  “I’ve sworn off men since then. I don’t want to risk… going through that again.”

  “I can understand that, for sure. Just so you know, not all police officers are like that.”

  “Thanks,” I smiled. “I know. Some are better than others.”

  “If you ever want to talk about it, let me know. I’m happy to listen. And don’t worry, I respect your choice to be single. I won’t pressure you into anything you’re not comfortable with. But if you ever happen to change your mind, let me know,” he added with a wink.

  “Thanks,” I laughed. To be honest, he was the first person to ever make me reconsider my choices.

  “And if you ever need help with anything, or anyone, come to me. I promise you, I take the law very seriously.”

  “I know. Thanks,” I replied. “Before you go, how is the investigation into Professor Gordon’s death going?”

  Chase ran a hand through his hair and hid a smile. “You know I can’t talk about an open investigation. But things are moving along fine.”

  “Do you think you’ll be able to arrest someone soon?” I asked, and Chase gave me a look. “I promise not to sell whatever you tell me to the local paper.”

  Chase laughed. “I’m pretty sure the local paper’s budget for paying for stories is somewhere in the neighbourhood of zero dollars. They get everything they need from the gossip mill.”

  “Fine, well, I promise not to add to the gossip mill in town,” I said. “I won’t even tell Cat.”

  “Ok, then between the two of us, I have some suspects, but I’m not ready to make any arrests yet.”

  “Do you know about the cheating ring?” I hadn’t been sure I was going to tell Chase about it, but really, I had no reason not to. After all, he was the police and we had learned something pertinent to his investigation. It wasn’t as though this was a contest to find out who got to the murderer first.

  Chase’s eyebrows rose. “Cheating ring?”

  I nodded. “There’s an Instagram account that puts up pictures of the answers to all the tests in their story. That way they only stay up for twenty-four hours. It’s five hundred a month to join. Apparently, Professor Gordon had found out about it.”

  “Do you know the account’s username?”

  I nodded, and showed the account to Chase.

  “Ok, thanks for this. I’ll get a subpoena to find out who owns the account.”

  “Um, just out of curiosity, how long would that take?” I asked, and Chase’s eyes narrowed.

  “You’re not getting involved in this, are you?”

  “Of course not,” I lied, feeling a little bit bad about the fib. “Cat and I only found out about it because some students were talking about it at the table next to us in the cupcake shop the other day.”

  “Probably twenty-four hours,” he replied. “It’ll depend on how much Instagram wants to fight it.”

  “Cool,” I replied. Cat and I were going to find Adam York that night. That information I decided to keep to myself; I wanted us to be able to question York before Chase got to him. Besides, it wasn’t really lying to the cops, we didn’t know for sure that Adam York was the owner of the account.

  “I’m going to head off and get that subpoena. Talk to you later.”

  “For sure,” I replied as Chase headed out.

  Chapter 15

  About ten minutes before Cat and I had planned on going out to see Adam York, Archibald made his re-appearance.

  “It’s good to see you back,” I said. “How did you like the second Harry Potter book?”

  “I did not think it was possible for a book to be more unrealistic than the first one. However, Ms. Rowling–I have heard she’s a single woman, and in her forties no less!–has managed to do so once more. No wonder no man is willing to marry her; those stories are so far from realistic it is a miracle any publisher was willing to print them.”

  “You were a contemporary of Coleridge, weren’t you?” I asked.

  “Well yes, of course. Although he was my elder, and a great man.”

  “Well Kubla Khan was a poem written about an opium-fueled drug dream Coleridge had. How is that different than Harry Potter?”

  Archibald sputtered with rage as he apparently tried to think of a response. “They are not remotely comparable. For one thing, Rowling was presumably sober when she wrote those stories, although I don’t see how one could be. And besides, poetry is different. Stories are supposed to tell the lives of people in the real world. The reader is supposed to be able to insert themselves in the story. It is supposed to be realistic.

  “You’re going to love reading The Lord of the Rings, then,” I muttered to myself.

  “What?” Archibald asked.

  “Nothing. So, you don’t like the premise of magic?”

  “No. Of course I do not.”

  “I have magical powers though. So, doesn’t that make Harry Potter realistic after all?”

  “You are the exception, however. Most of us humans are not magical, and therefore the story is a farce. And on top of that, the derision of my species continues in this book.”

  “Oh yes?” I said, biting my lip to hide a smile. For someone who hated these books so much, Archibald had now listened to two of them.

  “Yes! For one thing, having a deathday party is a completely ridiculous concept. When Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington–which is quite frankly a ridiculous name, although less ridiculous than the insulting nickname of Nearly Headless Nick–celebrates his deathday, that scene alone takes human-ghost relations back at least five hundred years.”

  “But they held a party for him, and everything!” I said, trying to remember the details. In all honesty, it had been quite a few years since I’d read Harry Potter.

  “They held a party for him which entailed eating disgusting foods! Fermented fish! Our kind cannot eat at all, and I guarantee you if I was still able to partake in such earthly pleasures, I would not waste it on anything so disgusting. At the very least I would try one of those miniature cakes your cousin creates.”

  “I’ll let Cat know you’d rather one of her cupcake than rotting meat,” I told him.

  “Thank you,” he replied, not understanding the sarcasm. “Now, would you please put the third book on the iPad for me?”

  “All right,” I replied. “But only if you’re sure you want to keep reading this horribly ghost-ish book that’s completely unrealistic.”

  “I shall suffer through reading the transgressions so I can pass my knowledge on to other ghosts so we can do something about it,” Archibald replied.

  “Ah,” I said. “So that’s where you’ve been the last few days.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What do you plan on ‘doing about it’ since you can’t touch any objects or communicate with anyone non-magical?”

  Archibald sniffed. “It is too early to release the details of our plan.”

  “Ok,” I replied, going into the store-room and bringing out the iPad. Since it was night time now and the store was closed, I could leave the ghost in the main room with the audiobook. “Cat and I are going out. We’ll be back later.”

  Cat had found out during the day that there was a huge house party happening at a property outside of town that some kids had rented from AirBNB for the night. Apparently, anyone who was anyone at the Sapphire Village campus was invited, and we figured it was our best shot at finding A
dam York. As we drove to the house, about ten minutes outside of town, I told Cat about the conversation I’d had with Archibald and she burst out laughing.

  “That ghost is crazy. I’m sure he stays in this world out of spite alone.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t imagine getting that upset about everything. Especially since I’m sure he’s just complaining for the sake of it, and he actually really enjoys the books. He’ll throw a fit if I refuse to let him read The Goblet of Fire in a few days.”

  “Definitely,” Cat agreed.

  As we pulled up to an unpaved road and reached the house where the party was being held, my jaw dropped open. To describe it as a ‘house’ was an understatement; the log cabin easily qualified as a mansion. It had to have at least eight bedrooms, and there were already at least fifty students just outside. Some were coming and going from the main entrance, but a large handful were hanging out around a large campfire set up in the middle of the lawn.

  “Man, we never had parties this good when I was in college,” Cat complained.

  “I feel like this is the opening scene of the next 21 Jump Street movie,” I replied.

  “I get to be Channing Tatum.”

  We got out of the car and made our way to the fire, lingering for a few minutes. With the connection between us still active–we decided it would be best to keep it for the foreseeable future, until the Others were well and truly destroyed–it made it easy for the two of us to split up and try to find Adam York while still keeping in touch.

  Cat slipped away from the fire and made her way into the house while I casually looked at all the faces. Red solo cups abounded; a few discarded ones already decorated the grass near the fire. A few people were already noticeably drunk, but as I scanned the faces none of them looked familiar. Adam York wasn’t here.

  Got him, I heard Cat’s voice say in my head. He’s in the kitchen. His phone’s in his back pocket. I’ll keep him talking, you come by and use magic to get the phone out without him noticing.

  Easier said than done, I thought in reply.

  You got this, Superwitch, came Cat’s reply, and I grimaced slightly. There was nothing really that special about me, was there?