by Morgana Best
Chapter 16
I had been furious when I had returned home the previous night, after my forced visit to the beauty therapist, because when I looked in the mirror, I saw that my face was beet red. I looked like a goblin.
No wonder Thyme had removed the light globe from the bathroom and had elbowed Camino every time she had tried to comment on my face. I had called Belinda, but she had said it was normal and would wear off sooner or later and that my skin would look wonderful when it did. I wasn’t convinced.
I had intended to look through the Book of Shadows for any sort of healing spell to make my skin look good again, but I didn’t have time. Today was the day of the big Halloween Fair. My friends had informed me that Bayberry Creek held a Halloween Fair on the Saturday closest to Halloween every year. Aunt Angelica had always had a stall, and I of course intended to carry on the tradition.
And so, the evening before, Thyme and I had worked until late, Thyme baking dozens and dozens of cupcakes, and I assisting her with the frosting.
My cupcake store was shut for the day, but I didn’t think I would lose any customers as they would simply go to the Halloween Fair. I wondered what would happen, given that the happiness spell still hung like a happy cloud over everyone in town.
The council had provided the tents for the stall, which was a plus, and Thyme showed me to ours. On the way, I saw people setting up an apple bobbing contest and children in costumes roaming everywhere.
I was somewhat annoyed when I saw a woman dressed as a witch, all in black with warts stuck to her green face and a huge wart on the end of her nose. “Hollywood sure has a lot to answer for!” I hissed to Thyme.
“Yes, it’s given us a bad rap,” she said sadly.
Thyme and I were setting up the stall when Camino arrived. To my relief, she wasn’t dressed in the pumpkin onesie I had expected, but instead appeared to be wearing a giant sheet. Actually, it was a huge white onesie, but couldn’t see its relevance to Halloween. I wondered if I should ask her tactfully or whether I would just have to stay in suspense.
“I’m the invisible ghost,” she announced proudly.
I was none the wiser. “The invisible ghost?” I asked her. “Casper?”
“No, I’ve come in a Halloween theme. I’m the invisible ghost, just like the man in that movie.”
Thyme and I looked at each other. “Camino, do you mean The Invisible Man?” Thyme asked her. “Or Casper?”
It was Camino’s turn to look confused. “The invisible man? No, it was the invisible ghost. Not Casper, of course. You have to pretend you can’t see me.”
I was confused. “How will you serve customers if they have to pretend that they can’t see you?” I asked her.
“Great, yes, I’m the invisible ghost!” Camino said gleefully, not answering my question. “I must get to work. I’m going to serve caramel hot chocolates and pumpkin spiced lattes.”
I smiled. What else could I do?
I was pleased to see Selena approach. I had called her the night before and all but insisted that she come. “I’m so glad you made it,” I said.
“I didn’t want to, but you were so persistent,” Selena said with a smile.
“You can’t stay in your motel room feeling sad and looking at the four walls,” I said. “I know Halloween probably isn’t your thing, but it’s a fun day for everyone.”
“I don’t mind Halloween at all,” she said. “I used to own a witch supply store. Still, I must say that I’m shocked at how fast your spell worked.”
I sighed. “I just hope I wasn’t responsible for Nick’s murder.”
Selena looked shocked. “How do you figure that? Of course it wasn’t your fault.”
“Well, if I hadn’t done the spell, he wouldn’t have met you for lunch.”
“But the police said his antacid medication was poisoned, so he was going to have lunch somewhere. He would’ve died anyway, no matter where he ate lunch.”
“Oh yes, of course. How silly of me,” I said. “I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had five minutes to myself to get my thoughts together. Of course. Thanks for that, you put my mind at rest.” I noticed she had turned white. “What’s wrong, Selena? I’m sorry I brought up Nick again. You must be so sad.”
“No, it’s not that,” she said. “It’s just that I walked here from the motel, which was a silly thing to do, because my knee’s hurting.” She bent down and rubbed it.
I pulled out a chair. “Sit here.”
Selena sat down, while Thyme and I finished the display.
We had made a selection of cupcakes, carefully avoiding anything to do with those hideous storybook witches. There were chocolate cheesecake cupcakes using Oreos as the base, decorated with white chocolate spider webs and chocolate spiders. Praline cupcakes provided a nice contrast in color. Each was decorated with a Frankenstein monster head, consisting of a marshmallow dipped into bright green frosting, with chocolate sprinkles for hair, stitches, and face. There were also pumpkin frosted cupcakes decorated with licorice for the stem and face, and butter cream frosted cupcakes with black fondant cats and bats. My favorites were the strawberry monster cupcakes that Thyme had decorated so scarily. Each cupcake was topped with a huge strawberry sitting in crushed Oreos, and sported a mouth of very sharp teeth, each individually piped with white frosting.
Also decorating our stall were carved jack-o’-lanterns in different colors, white, silver, black, and gold. Pumpkins painted with decorations of crows, black cats, and owls on moss sat under glass cloches. Camino had made bayberry candles in honor of the celebration of our town, and other beautifully fragrant candles with gardenia, lavender, lemongrass, tuberose and lily of the valley, all wrapped in lace. There were planted pots of protection herbs including basil, rue, betony, dill, juniper, mugwort, and rosemary. We had string lights with cat faces, which were sure to be popular. Our stall was decorated with spider webs, hanging bats, and pumpkin lamps.
When we finally finished setting up, I offered to get Selena a drink. I asked Camino for a pumpkin spice latte for Selena, and a caramel hot chocolate for Thyme.
As I handed Selena her pumpkin spiced latte, she asked me, “Have the police been to see you again? They haven’t spoken to me. I stayed in town and was around all week because they said I couldn’t leave. I mean, I was going to stay here anyway, because I didn’t realize the spell you cast would work immediately. I thought it would take a few days. You’ve been so welcoming, but I really don’t want to stay around Bayberry Creek now that Nick’s gone.” She pulled out a tissue and sniffled into it.
“I don’t know if the police are investigating Nick’s death with any degree of competence,” I said. “It’s all my fault for casting the happiness spell.”
“It’s my fault you cast it in the first place,” she said.
Thyme put her hands on her hips. “Can you two stop having a pity party? Can you both try to enjoy yourselves?”
“If it’s any consolation,” I said to Selena, “Thyme and I have been doing a bit of snooping on our own.”
Selena looked horrified. “Amelia, I asked you not to. I’d hate it if anything happened to you. I’m sure the police will investigate when the spell wears off.”
Just then, Chris Blackwell walked past. He was wearing thick black eyeliner and bright black nail polish. He was dressed all in black, as usual. I wasn’t sure whether he was dressed up for Halloween, because that was the way he normally looked.
“I’ll bet it was him,” Selena said. “He’s the murderer.”
Thyme shook her head. “No, I don’t think he is. He has an iron-clad alibi for the day before.”
“Not so iron-clad, if you’ll remember,” I said.
“Do you have anything in the Book of Shadows that can help you find the murderer?” Selena asked me.
I shook my head. “No. It’s mostly in Latin, anyway.”
“I was told that book was missing,” she said.
“It was missing for years,” I said. “I onl
y dug it up recently, by accident.”
Selena nodded and sipped her drink. Her comments made me think. Was it a coincidence that I had dug up the Book of Shadows just as I had, when I was right on the point of coming into my own power as a Dark Witch? Perhaps I should have a closer look at the Book of Shadows. Not all the spells were in Latin—some of them were in English. I should make it my practice to read a little of the book every night. That spell book had been in my family for generations, and I realized just how much of a disservice I was doing myself by ignoring it.
After a long yet enjoyable day at the Halloween Fair, I was relieved when I reached home. I wanted to take a nice long hot bath, and put on a conformable onesie. Wait, was I turning into Camino? I shook my head.
The Bachelor was blaring when I reached the house. I turned down the volume as much as I dared. The bachelor himself was having yet another one of his lengthy thinking moments, staring out to sea while shirtless. That made me think of Alder—not that I had ever seen him shirtless. It gave me even firmer resolve to reverse the spell.
I placed the Book of Shadows on the coffee table and sat down on the edge of the couch. I stared at the book reverently, and then traced my finger around the golden pentagram. Willow and Hawthorn hurried into the room, and without so much as a glance at me, jumped up on the couch and stretched out.
“This is a big couch, but now there’s barely any room for me,” I complained.
The cats remained unconcerned. Willow opened one eye as if to give me his permission to remain sitting on the edge. How could two cats take up so much space?
“You know, I feel bad that I haven’t studied the Book of Shadows yet,” I said to the cats.
The TV went off and the book opened by itself. I jumped to my feet. “How did you do that?” I asked the house. “Don’t creep me out. You’ve never done anything like that before.”
I cautiously approached the book. There, in front of me, was a whole page of English writing, not a Latin word in sight. What’s more, it was modern English, not Middle English or anything else similarly indecipherable. The heading read: Formulary for Reversing a Benevolent Spell.
I jumped up and clapped my hands. “At last!”
Chapter 17
“Aaachhoo!” Thyme sneezed loudly. “How long is this going to take?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, throwing another handful of reversing powder over the pavement. “As long as it takes, I guess.”
“You’re just putting off our other job,” Thyme astutely observed. She was right. I had to collect hair from Detectives Greene and Jones, as well as from Sergeant Tinsdell and Constable Dawson. I’d rather stick to throwing powder around the city, as it seemed considerably less dangerous. I had already thrown the powder all over the house.
“You could probably just ask them,” Thyme suggested.
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused. “Just walk up and ask for some of their hair? Do you know how bizarre that sounds?”
“Well, they’re still under the influence of the happiness spell, so there’s a good chance they’ll just give it to you,” Thyme said with a shrug. “I think it’s worth a shot. If not, what’s your plan?”
“Well, I was going to throw this powder about for the next several hours and hope my problems solved themselves in their own time,” I admitted. “Saying it loud, I suppose it isn’t the best idea. I don’t know, Thyme, it just seems unlikely. Just because they’re nice doesn’t mean they’re stupid, and they’re going to ask what I need their hair for. What could I say to that?”
“Say it’s for a shrine,” Thyme suggested.
“That’s insane,” I said flatly, imagining that Thyme might actually have a Dawson shrine ferreted away somewhere.
She pouted. “Well, what’s your idea?”
“I was thinking that one of us could distract them while the other collected their hair somehow. That, or we could try something like pick pocketing.”
“Pick pocketing? You think they’ll have hair samples just sitting in their pocket?” Thyme was bewildered.
“No,” I sighed. “I mean something that works the same way. When pick pocketing, thieves will bump into you so you don’t notice your stuff being stolen. We’d just need a big distraction so they don’t notice us stealing their hair,” I explained, not the least oblivious to how bizarre it all sounded.
“Any ideas on that front?” Thyme asked. It was a fair question, but I couldn’t help but feel a little annoyed by it. Mostly because no, I didn’t have any ideas. At all.
“We could, um.” I thought for a moment. “Throw this powder in their face?”
“Amelia, I’m fairly sure they’ll still arrest us for that, regardless of how happy they are,” Thyme rightly pointed out.
I sighed, wondering what to do. I threw another handful of powder into the wind, trying to come up with a solution. “Maybe we’ll just have to wing it and hope for the best,” I suggested half-heartedly.
“Well, that’s the best plan yet,” Thyme admitted. “There’s some time to think during the walk there, I guess. Let’s hope we have a more concrete plan by the time we arrive at the police station.”
By the time we arrived at the police station, our plan was no more concrete. If anything, we’d both started to lose our nerve. “Come up with anything?” Thyme asked desperately.
I shook my head sadly. “We’re just going to have to talk to them and hope an opportunity appears.” Thyme and I were both armed with a pair of scissors, though smuggling scissors into a police station just made me feel that much more uneasy. I was still hoping that we’d be able to talk them into simply giving us some hair.
Thyme and I steeled ourselves and walked through the front door, approaching the desk sergeant and trying our best to act casual.
“Hello,” I said stiffly. “We would like to please speak to Detectives Greene and Jones please, thank you.” I spoke so quickly that the desk sergeant appeared to take a few seconds to register what I said. After a moment, he nodded and called them on the intercom. Thyme and I sat down and waited, my heart in my throat. We needed to think of something and quickly.
In the past, Greene and Jones had typically kept us waiting for several minutes, which I thought would be ample time to come up with a plan. However, probably due to the spell, they arrived in almost no time at all. They greeted us both warmly and ushered us into an interrogation room for some privacy.
Detective Greene beamed at us. “How can we help?”
“Well,” I began, unsure of how to proceed.
“We need your hair,” Thyme said flatly.
Greene and Jones looked about as shocked at the revelation as anybody could be expected to. That is to say, very shocked.
“Whatever for?” Jones asked. It was a fair question, to which I had no reasonable answer.
“Um,” I stammered. Thyme looked as lost for words as I was. “For a wig, a wig for children,” I said.
“For children?” Greene didn’t seem to understand.
“Yes. We’re collecting hair for wigs for children who are born bald, who need wigs. You know how most babies are born bald? We need wigs, made from hair. Your hair,” I explained, hoping the spell would influence them to buy the bizarre story.
“For bald babies?” Jones chimed in.
“Oh, yes,” Thyme said, nodding fiercely. “Baby baldness isn’t good, because they’re babies and need hair.” She looked at me desperately.
I nodded. “Yes, that’s right. We only need a bit of your hair. Just a snip. I brought scissors,” I said, as I handed the scissors to Jones.
He shared a confused look with Detective Greene. “Only a bit? But surely that won’t be enough to give to babies,” he said.
“Well, we collect a little from a lot of people,” Thyme explained sheepishly. “That way nobody loses too much hair, and, um, the wigs get made. It’s new technology.”
“This is all very strange,” Greene protested. “But very well. We can’t have babies wa
ndering about all bald. I’ll give you some of my hair.”
Jones shrugged. “Certainly. How can we refuse bald babies?” They both cut off small locks of their hair and handed them to us.
“Thank you so much!” Thyme squealed. I sighed with relief, hardly believing that it worked. “Um, do you know where Sergeant Tinsdell and Constable Dawson could be?” she asked.
They nodded in unison and pointed us to a room down the hallway. I assumed they were both at their respective desks, and the detectives were more than happy to let us wander the station freely. We happened upon Tinsdell’s desk first, and he was furiously working away at an absolute mountain of paperwork. I considered that we could probably just take some hair from him as he was working and he wouldn’t even notice, but decided it was probably too risky.
Thyme whispered that she would press on to find Dawson while I tried to get some hair from Tinsdell.
“Hello.” I smiled warmly as I sat opposite him.
“Ah, Amelia! How can I help?” Tinsdell pushed his paperwork aside and smiled broadly. I considered telling him the same story that worked on the detectives, but dismissed it. They barely bought it, and if something had gone wrong. I wouldn’t have any idea how to explain it away. I had to try something entirely different.
“What do you think about donating hair?” I asked, realizing that my new plan was remarkably similar to my old one.
“I think it’s a worthwhile cause and a strange question,” he said, stroking his chin. “Is this a police matter?”
“Oh, um, yes. Of course,” I lied. “I’m having, um, a hair party!” I blurted it out before I noticed what an awful idea it was.
“Oh,” was all Tinsdell had to say.
“Yes.”
“A hair party?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” He leaned back in his chair, deep in thought. “Amelia?”
“Yes?”
“What is a hair party?”
I didn’t have an answer. I swallowed and thought as quickly as I could. “We put a lot of hair in a bag,” I said. “Someone draws some hair out of the bag and then they have to give a present to the owner of the hair.”
