“I see,” she said in that way she had that made me wonder exactly how much she knew. “I think I have just the solution. Follow me.”
“Follow you where, exactly?” I asked, though I’m not sure why I bothered. She was already halfway to the back stairs that led to the kitchen. “Aunt Gwen, what do you have in mind?”
“I think it’s time I taught you a sleeping spell,” she replied. “It’s so simple, even you… That is, I’m sure you’ll be asleep in no time.”
In the pit of my stomach, a cold, hard lump began to form. If her intent had been to help me relax, her words had exactly the opposite effect. I was pretty sure whatever magic lesson awaited me in the kitchen, I was going to end up regretting it.
Chapter Eleven
Twenty minutes after entering the kitchen, I had managed to scald a pan of milk. I know. It sounded bad to me, too. But believe it or not, it turns out that scalding milk is not the same thing as burning milk. Basically, I just had to stir it until it started to get bubbly and remove it from the heat before it either boiled out of the pot or stuck to the bottom. Aunt Gwen’s nod of approval when I succeeded felt better than winning a gold medal. Perhaps there was hope for me as a kitchen witch after all.
While I stood stirring with my magical wooden spoon, the one that still made me flinch as I set it down on the ceramic spoon rest just in case something belatedly caught fire or went up in a puff of smoke, Aunt Gwen gathered a few small bottles from the spice cupboard.
“Add a heaping teaspoon of each of these to the milk,” she instructed, setting the ingredients down beside me on the countertop.
Their labels were handwritten, and their contents a mystery to me even after I’d managed to decipher the fancy script.
“What is valerian root?” I asked, popping the cork off the bottle. Immediately, a stench similar to opening a laundry bag of old, smelly socks assaulted my nose. “Please don’t tell me you expect me to ingest this.”
“You’ll hardly notice it,” she answered with a chuckle, “once the rest of the ingredients are mixed in.”
I sniffed it again and made a face before dumping a spoonful into the pot and putting the cork back in as quickly as I could. I doubted there was any magic in the world powerful enough to make that stuff taste good, but I was so desperate for sleep that I was willing to hold my nose and hope for the best. The next three bottles, labeled passionflower, magnolia bark, and lemon balm, were far less odiferous, though I still eyed them suspiciously as I measured out their contents and stirred them into the milky brew.
Aunt Gwen handed me a coffee mug and a silver tea strainer. After I’d poured the concoction into the mug, she picked up the plastic honey bottle from beside the stove, the one shaped like a teddy bear, squeezed a few squirts into the mug for good measure, and gave my work a satisfied nod. “That should do it. Just stir it thoroughly and make sure it’s cooled down enough so you don’t burn your tongue.”
“That’s it? No incantations? No adding a vial of magical owl tears?”
“Owl’s tears? Goodness no. That would keep you up all night.”
I blinked, taking the mug from her without response. I’d been trying to make a joke, but I should have guessed magical owl tears were really a thing. I gave the contents a sniff, relieved to discover that it didn’t smell like dirty socks at all. “So, I just drink it now and hope for the best?”
“Take it upstairs, drink it slowly, and maybe do some meditation, if you’d like.”
Meditation? That was still a hard no, right up there with a downward-facing dog pose, on my list of things I never wanted to try doing. As for the rest of her instructions, I headed to my room and did as I was told. When I touched my tongue tentatively to the steaming liquid, I was surprised to find it tasted pleasant, like a sweet hot cocoa but without the chocolaty flavor. However, it was still too hot to drink, so I set it on the nightstand to let it cool. Since meditation was out, I opted for the next best sleep-inducing thing I could think of and grabbed the box of Strong Corp. financial records from my desk. I fluffed the pillows behind my back and snuggled into the covers, then spread several years’ worth of bank statements out across my grandmother’s quilt.
If you’ve never had the experience of sorting through piles of financial records at midnight, I’ll spare you the trouble by saying right off, yes, it’s exactly as boring as it sounds. I know that, as an accountant, I probably should’ve found it fascinating, but here’s a little secret. I never wanted to be an accountant. That was my father’s idea, one hundred percent.
My father was as practical as my mother was a dreamer. How they ever ended up together long enough for me to come along, I’ll never comprehend. With my red hair, pale skin, and bright blue eyes, I looked exactly like my mother, so if my father had ever questioned whether I was really his, I wouldn’t have blamed him. Sometimes I wondered myself, but he always seemed satisfied on that account, so I didn’t ask too many questions. When I was sent to live with him, after my mother…well, after she was gone, I think I reminded him of her a little too much. From day one, as soon as I’d been enrolled in the same preparatory school my father had attended as a boy, I was told I was going to be an accountant just like him.
Though it might not have been my first choice in careers, I turned out to be surprisingly good at it—not counting being fired, which really wasn’t my fault. I had a talent for seeing patterns, and for catching on quickly when things weren’t adding up. I was halfway through my sleepy-time potion and about the same way through a box of records when it hit me. Those Strong Corp. bank statements? They weren’t adding up. Not at all. I couldn’t put my finger on how or where, but money was missing. A lot of it.
I pushed the records aside and rose from my bed, downing the last of the tepid contents of my mug in one big gulp. Outside my bedroom window, the full moon shone almost as brightly as the sun, reflecting off the black, rippling water of Pinecroft Cove. In the distance, the roofline of Cliffside Manor was dark and imposing. There was a flash of light from the lighthouse, and the image of Douglas Strong standing on the lawn, dripping with rain, was so vivid in my memory that, for a moment, I thought I saw him peeking out at me from the trees.
While that might have been an illusion, the fat black crow that landed on the lawn was not. Was it the same one I’d seen at Cliffside Manor before the funeral? There was no way to be sure, but I was jarred by its appearance. I shivered and stepped away from the window, pulling the curtains shut, but even though I could no longer see his house, his company’s paperwork covered my bed. There was no escaping the man, almost as if he were haunting me.
I began to pace back and forth across my bedroom floor. This was my favorite activity when working through something puzzling. What I’d found in the Strong Corp. records was quite the brainteaser. By any measurement, Douglas Strong was a wealthy and successful man. But even though he’d hidden his tracks cleverly, there was no doubt in my mind that he had been skimming money from his own business, going back at least a year. Why? And could the reason have anything to do with his death?
I rifled through the rest of the documents in the box, hoping for something that would shed more light on my discovery. I came across an envelope near the bottom whose flap had been torn open, leaving a ragged edge. The return address on the front would make even the most innocent person’s heart beat faster. The Internal Revenue Service. Inside was a notice that the Strong Corp. accounts were being audited. If I’d caught onto the accounting discrepancies, a trained auditor surely would have, too. According to those who knew him, Douglas Strong had been in good spirits and in sound mental health, but would the threat of getting caught embezzling money from his company have been a powerful enough reason for him to have crashed his plane into the bay?
My pacing slowed as my limbs and eyelids grew heavy, and I scooped the documents back into their box so I could stretch myself out on the bed. But even with the papers out of sight, I couldn’t get the implications of their contents out of
my head. Which was more likely that Larry Sloane had sabotaged the plane out of revenge or that Douglas Strong had crashed on purpose out of fear of the scandal that was about to unravel around him. Or maybe both theories were wrong, and the whole thing had been an accident after all.
I switched off my bedside light and drifted into a fitful sleep, filled with disjointed dreams of airplanes and rain. I woke some hours later, disoriented, to the sound of scratching at my bedroom door. I stood in the dark and shuffled to the door. When I opened it, Gus came bounding in, meowing at me incessantly as he jumped onto the bed and spun himself in circles.
“Seriously?” I muttered as he settled into the nest he’d created and curled into a ball with his bushy tail tucked beneath his nose. “You woke me up in the middle of the night so you could steal my bed?” He didn’t bother so much as to open an eye in response. Why my aunt kept him around, I couldn’t imagine.
With a sigh, I started down the stairs. My throat was dry, and while I didn’t relish the thought of making any more sleeping potions, a glass of cold water was tempting. As I reached the second-floor landing, I paused. The house should have been silent, but the faint sound of music coming from the direction of the living room tickled my ear. I turned away from the back stairs and crept down the main staircase instead. The music grew louder, a classic jazz song, and I detected a tinny quality to the sound like it was a very old recording playing over a static-filled radio station. I frowned, wondering if one of the guests had been unable to sleep and had come downstairs and turned on the old stereo.
I had no idea what time it was, except that it had to be early in the morning because a soft, gray light was filtering through the windows, making it possible for me to see the entirety of the living room as soon as my foot hit the bottom step.
The first thing I noticed was the absence of people, but this detail didn’t matter much once I realized the room also looked nothing like the living room I’d expected to see. It was the same room, yes, but all the walls were covered in a floral paper I’d seen once before in a dream. This time, I was certain I was awake. I know, because I pinched myself so hard it made my eyes water. I blinked rapidly, and as I did, the walls returned to white, but my pulse continued to race. The music was still going strong.
The cherry cabinet, which I knew from memory was stamped with the brand name “Victrola” but had always held a modern stereo inside it for as long as I could recall, stood in its usual place near one of the windows. I could see it clearly. The music was definitely coming from it, but as I walked closer, I realized the stereo I was expecting to see was gone. The lid was open, and a turntable sat inside, twirling rapidly while its heavy needle scratched its way across the black disc that spun on its surface.
I watched the spinning disc, mesmerized and breathless, until the song ended and the room filled with the sound of static. The needle reached the end of the record, and the arm raised itself and traveled back across the turntable until it came to rest on the other side. I was about to turn and leave when the large handle on its side began to crank all by itself. Then the needle lifted up from the cradle and started to play at the beginning of the record again. I gasped as something like an electrical current coursed through every nerve. I might not have known much about antique record players, but I knew enough to know they weren’t supposed to do any of that. Not without help. Never mind that I had no idea where this one had come from, or why it was playing in an empty room before dawn. To be honest, I had no desire to find out.
I turned on my heel and raced upstairs. My empty mug sat on my nightstand, and I eyed it suspiciously. Whatever had just happened downstairs, I was almost certainly looking at the culprit. I should have known better than to drink a sleeping potion, no matter how harmless Aunt Gwen had promised it to be. She and I would be having a long talk about this once the sun was fully up.
I looked longingly at my bed, wanting nothing more than to sleep off whatever ill effects remained of the potion so I could wake up clearheaded in the morning, but Gus was sound asleep in the middle of it. I checked the time. It was just after five, and a cool breeze fluttered through my open bedroom window. With a sigh, I pulled on a pair of yoga pants and a lightweight sweater and slipped my bare feet into some old sneakers. If I couldn’t sleep, perhaps a walk around the cove would be the next best option.
As I descended the main stairs for the second time that morning, the first thing I did was sneak a glimpse at the walls. I won’t pretend I wasn’t filled with relief to see the plain white-painted surfaces. The relief, however, was short-lived. I had only taken one step into the room when I froze in place. Every piece of furniture had been removed from its spot and piled, ever so carefully, one item on top of another to form a perfect pyramid in the middle of my grandmother’s prized Persian rug. I didn’t bother to inspect it closer or try to figure out the why or how of the situation. I simply unbolted the front door and ran.
My heart beat against the inside of my chest with such force I thought it might burst through. My breath came in short puffs that burned my lungs as my feet pounded against the crushed seashells that lined the driveway. The sun had just begun to turn the sky a pale shade of pink, but the air was still chilly from the night and instantly cooled the sweat that covered my body in a thin layer, whether from the exertion of running or from fear, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was I was cold to my core.
I slowed as I reached the end of the driveway. As the initial shock of what I’d seen had started to wear off, I paused at the edge of the road and looked back at the house, trying to figure out exactly what had happened to send me running outside into the early morning light as if my life depended on it. I’d joked about being haunted before, but now I felt in my bones it was real. The giant black bird I spied perched on the ledge outside my bedroom window confirmed it. There was one ghost who I knew for sure had my number. Douglas Strong.
How can this possibly be my life?
I swayed back and forth in place, uncertain whether to return to the house or stay away. Either way, I doubted it would make a difference. My ghost would follow me wherever I went, until I’d figured out the truth of his death. I started to turn back toward the house, but as I did, a small furry beast darted onto the driveway and twined himself between my legs.
“Gus!” I scolded, but it was too late. I was already falling backward, away from the driveway and into the road, where the shining beams of a car’s headlights blinded my eyes as it bore down on me at full speed.
Chapter Twelve
The smell of burning rubber accompanied a piercing screech of tires as the car that had been hurtling toward me came to a stop just inches from my body. My eyes were still open—though why I hadn’t closed them to at least avoid having to watch myself get flattened onto the road I’m not sure. Better yet, why hadn’t I tried to use magic? Sure, I didn’t know any spells for stopping cars in their tracks, and under the circumstances, it wasn’t like I had time to bake a protective cake, if such a thing existed, but I could have improvised. Screamed out “alakazam,” maybe? I don’t know. Some pathetic excuse for a witch I was turning out to be. It was only by dumb luck that I hadn’t ended up squished on the asphalt like a fly on the receiving end of a giant plastic swatter.
The driver scrambled out of the car and hurried toward me. From my vantage point on the ground, all I could tell was he was male and wearing brown loafers.
“Tamsyn? Are you okay?”
I was panting heavily, unable to answer, but even before I shifted my eyes upward toward the source of the voice, I knew it was Noah. Because, of course, it was. If someone was going to almost run me over after I was sideswiped by a cat, it was going to be the handsome doctor who inexplicably reduced my brain to a pile of mush.
Before I’d caught my breath enough to assure him I was fine, Noah kneeled beside me, running his hands along my head and neck. I’m sure it was completely innocent, just a doctor assessing an accident victim for injuries, but that didn’t make it any less d
istracting. I’m not proud to admit it, but I’d had a stressful morning, and his fingers felt so nice against my scalp I may have let out a most indelicate moan.
Noah’s eyes grew wide. “Tell me where it hurts. Right here?”
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, there,” I told him. I mean, I couldn’t come right out and admit I’d made that sound because he was touching my hair, now could I? A girl has to be allowed some pride. I rolled to one side, attempting to get up, and groaned. I didn’t think the damage was serious, but I was sore in places I hadn’t known existed before.
Noah pressed a hand against my shoulder, urging me back down. “Don’t get up until I make sure nothing’s broken.”
“I’m fine,” I argued. “I should go back inside.”
“I’d feel better if you’d come with me to the clinic, just to be safe.”
I opened my mouth to argue some more, but as I raised myself to a sitting position, the edges of my vision grew fuzzy. I nodded, cautiously, so as not to black out by moving my head too quickly. “I suppose. If it will make you feel better.”
Noah helped me up, supporting my weight with one arm as he opened the passenger door with his other. I climbed into the car—which was a Nissan of some sort, as I’d had the chance to discover when my head was a few inches from the logo on the front grill—and sank into the soft leather seat. We were both quiet as he started the ignition and inched along the road at a snail’s pace, as if he was now afraid some other crazy person would launch herself in front of his car from the next driveway.
“What were you doing out so early in the morning?” he asked once he’d made it to the end of the neighborhood without further incident.
“Going for a walk,” I replied, leaving out one or two details, like how I had also been running from the ghost of his dead uncle before being attacked by my aunt’s twenty-pound monster of a cat. “What are you doing up?”
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