by Maher Tegan
Sure enough, the trunk was empty. I glanced around, noting that all the inventory I’d cleared the night before was gone, too.
“Willow!” I called, pushing through the swinging door that led to the gallery.
“She’s not here,” Kylie called from where she was perched on a stool reading a celebrity rag behind the counter. She was interning as a freshman history major from the local college. “She said something about not feeling well and had to go home.”
“When was that?” Eli asked.
“When was what?” Jake asked as he entered the gallery through the same door we had. “And why’s the trunk empty?”
“Willow apparently went home sick,” I told him. “And we don’t know why the trunk’s empty. That’s just what we were trying to find out.”
Kylie set the magazine aside and pushed off the stool, her expression concerned. “That would be me. I came in early this morning. When I went to make coffee, I saw the trunk and couldn’t resist checking it out. Willow told me you found it on a dive yesterday, and when I saw a mirror underneath all the other stuff, I just had to see it. Since I had to move several pieces to get to it, I figured I’d get a jump start on it for you. Everything should be right on your table.”
I mashed my jaw shut to keep from saying something rude. She was a good egg and a fast learner. It wasn’t her fault she was a little overeager, and it wasn’t like she didn’t help us unpack shipments all the time. It was part of her job description. There was no logical reason why what she did was wrong.
“Okay, that was nice of you,” Eli said with a smile that passed for genuine. “But it’s not on the table now. Do you have any idea what might have happened to it?”
I held up my hand. “Before we get to that—Kylie, did you touch anything with your bare hands?”
She shook her head, causing her blond ponytail to shake. “Absolutely not. I know what a stickler you are, so I used your gloves.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I had a special set of gloves that I’d spelled with several different protection enchantments. I’d pounded it into her head that she wasn’t to touch anything in the back without wearing them. It may have made me sound like an anal weirdo, but that was better than the alternative when so many of the arcane pieces that we dealt with had bad juju. So the upside was that at least she wasn’t going to die. Probably.
“Okay, that’s good. That was exactly what you should have done. Thank you,” I said, fighting the freak-out bubbling just under my skin. I could tell Eli was doing the same thing, and if I lost it, so would he.
Jake was always the cooler head, so I was glad he took the wheel. “So if you put them on the table, and they’re not there now, do you have any idea what might have happened to them?”
Kylie lifted a shoulder. “The only other person who’s been there is Willow. Well, and the guys Ms. Dilley sent.”
Jake, Eli, and I glanced at each other, and my heart raced. “What do you mean, the guys Ms. Dilley sent? Why would she send guys?”
Ms. Dilley was the head of the ladies’ auxiliary and was a busybody who liked to have a finger in every pie.
“For the charity auction,” Kylie replied. “Willow told me to give her the boxes sitting by your bench when she came.” She bit her lip. “Did I do something wrong?”
Kylie followed us to the backroom, and she looked ready to cry. “I just did what Willow told me, but I can’t help but feel that I made a major mistake.”
I pulled in a calming breath and tried to get a grip as a whole string of worst-case scenarios sped through my mind. Kylie didn’t know anything about the magical side of our business, or about anything magical, for that matter, and she’d only been trying to help.
“No, sweetie,” Eli said before I could push back the panic welling in my chest. “You did exactly what you were supposed to do. There’s just a mix-up between Willow and us is all. You go ahead on back out front and don’t worry about it another minute.”
I added what I hoped was a reassuring smile to his words.
She looked unsure. “Okay, but if I screwed something up, I’m really sorry.”
“You didn’t,” I replied. “Like Eli said, it’s just a mix-up with Willow. I’m sure we’ll get it straightened out in no time.”
Her face brightened. “If it helps, I’ve made a few sales this afternoon. That diadem that Willow put out this morning sold right off the bat, and so did the pocket watch. Also—”
I whipped my head around. There hadn’t been a diadem in the inventory I’d cleansed, so it had to have come from the trunk. “Wait, what? She put a diadem in the gallery?”
Kylie nodded. “Right before she left. That and a few other things. Well, a lot of other things, but those two were the ones I really noticed. The diadem was so unique, and my grandfather collects pocket watches, so I always keep an eye out. I was sorta bummed when it sold before I had a chance to think about it.”
The bell above the front door tinkled, indicating customers had arrived before I had a chance to process the implications.
“You go on out and take care of them,” Jake said. “Everything’s just fine.”
As soon as the door swung shut behind her, I twirled my hand and cast a muffling spell so that we wouldn’t be overheard. I had a feeling we weren’t going to be able to maintain a whisper.
“This is not good,” I said, raking my hand through my hair. “I specifically told Willow that everything on the shelves was ready to go out. I didn’t say jack about the stuff on the table. She knows that’s where I put stuff that I’m still working on.”
I whipped my phone out and dialed her number. She answered after the first ring. I didn’t bother with niceties before I cut straight to the chase.
“You’re on speaker with me, Jake, and Eli. What did you do with the stuff that was on my table? I told you the items on the shelves were ready, but I didn’t say anything about the pieces on the table.”
“Noooo,” she said, using what we liked to call her school-teacher voice. She often employed it when she thought one of us was being irrational. “You said you’d gone through everything and it was all ready to tag.”
“Everything on the shelves!” I snapped. “Not my worktable!”
“You didn’t specify, Sage. I have the voice mail. The shelves were stuffed full, so I assumed you’d used your worktable as overflow. You know, since you said you’d gone through everything and it was all ready for me to tag.”
“Didn’t something go off in your head when you saw how dirty everything was?” Jake asked.
Willow paused. “What do you mean? Nothing was dirty. As a matter of fact, it was all in excellent shape. It’s a shame that the only things worth much were the diadem, the pocket watch, and the necklace.”
Jake, Eli, and I looked at each other trying to figure out how that could be. It had all been at the bottom of the sea for who-knew-how-long, but thinking back, they had been shiny when we’d opened the box.
Despite the million questions racing through my brain, I reached deep for the last wisps of patience. I should have known to specify because Willow didn’t pause once she was in Go mode. If I’d accidentally said that I’d gone through everything and it was ready and hadn’t specified the shelves, it was my own fault. Giving Willow free rein to organize was something I usually did with caution because it didn’t matter if it was a closet or a room filled with a hundred antiques—she’d make short work of it. It was just how she was wired. Plus, it was just an unfortunate twist of fate.
“Okay, so you did an inventory, right?” I asked. Willow always did an inventory of everything. If it had gone through Parker’s, we had a record of it.
“Of course I did,” she replied, her tone indignant. “I did it according to type like I always do. I didn’t think I needed to spell out what shelf you’d put it on. It’s in the inventory book in my office.”
“Okay,” Jake said, holding his hand up and shooting me a warning look when I opened my mouth to give her bac
k a little of the snark she’d just given me. “We’ll sort it out.”
“I did put the book that was with it all on your shelf, though,” she said. “I couldn’t recognize the language it was written in, so I figured that was best left to you. That and the actual trunk. Since you didn’t get back to me, I didn’t know how much to put on it, so I left it.” She took a deep breath. “I’m really not feeling well, guys. What’s the big deal with this stuff, anyway?”
“The big deal with it is that we found it on our dive yesterday and it has some nasty magic on it. We’d set it aside until today so we could all be here, but Kylie took it upon herself to take everything out of the trunk for us,” I said.
Eli’s brow furrowed. “Sweetie, what’s wrong with you, exactly? Is it a cold or a headache, or what? Did you touch any of the stuff on the table?”
“If you’re wondering if I’m cursed, I think I’m good. I just have a headache. But I am going to go lie down,” she said. “Call me if you need anything else.”
Worry washed over me as I disconnected. I had a bad feeling about her made even worse because we had no idea what we were up against.
Chapter 8
A s soon as I ended the call, Jake pulled an unfamiliar leatherbound book from my shelf and laid it on the table. Runes decorated the cover, and he ran his fingers over them.
“Don’t,” Eli said, his tone sharp as he pushed Jake’s hand off the cover.
My twin snatched his hand back, never for a second getting irritated at Eli’s tone. He was never harsh without good reason. Well, at least as long as there wasn’t a hot guy, a luscious dessert, or the last cold beer in the equation.
“What?” I asked, stepping aside so he could get a better look. Ancient languages were his thing.
He put a hand on either side of the book and braced himself on the table while he studied the cover. Like the trunk, it didn’t seem to have any water damage at all, which was strange in and of itself. Along with what Willow had said about the artifacts themselves being in pristine shape, none of it was passing the smell test.
“It’s the Honorian alphabet,” he said, his brow furrowed as he flipped through the pages. “Or at least it sort of is. There are a few letters that are Avestan. My guess is that whoever wrote this didn’t mean for just anybody to be able to interpret it. The only reason I recognize it is because I spent a lot of time studying ancient grimoires with Mom.”
His mom was a European history professor at the local university, but as a witch, magical texts had always fascinated her. Eli got his passion honestly.
“So you can interpret it?” Jake asked.
Eli nodded. “I can, but it’s going to take me a minute. I haven’t read it in ages.”
He pulled a notebook from the shelf and plucked a purple pen from the caddy by my work light, then pulled out my chair and took a seat.
“Okay, I can interpret the title on the outside easily enough. It just says Catalogue of Curses, then at the bottom it has a date: 1689. ”
I cast him a skeptical look and moved closer to him so that I could see the cover better. “That’s all it says? There are a lot of scribbles for three words.”
The more I looked, though, the more I recognized some of the carvings because they were similar to the runes on my armlet. Jake had scooted closer, too.
“Those are protection runes,” he said right as I’d figured it out. Although Jake’s official area of expertise was fine gems—an area he and Willow shared—one of his hobbies was runes and ancient symbols. Most of us had a “witchy” specialization on top of our university-provided ones.
“Oh, I see the date now,” I said, squinting to pick out the smaller, super-scripty numbers from among the runes. “That’s odd, though. Most town history has Marauders Bay as being founded in 1716.”
Eli slid the book over a bit and flicked on my table light so Jake could see it better. He pointed to three symbols. “Yeah, but nobody really knows for sure. Those are all different types of protection. But these”—he singled out four others—”are sort of binding runes.”
“Binding? I asked. “They bound something in the book?”
He drew his brows together in concentration. “I said sort of. They’re not an exact match to any runes I know, so maybe not. Open it.”
“You sure?” Eli asked, and he nodded.
“The symbols don’t make any sense. They’re not something you’d usually see on something like a book. Wait a minute,” Jake said, then rushed to the trunk. He pulled his phone out and turned on the flashlight, then bent down to study the trunk. “Here,” he said, pointing toward a couple of what I’d thought were scars in the wood. When I looked closer, I could make out more deliberate strokes. “These are binding runes. Whatever was in this box wasn’t supposed to get out.”
“They added the book in for good measure and put the runes on it, too.”
“But those aren’t the same as the ones on the book,” I pointed out.
Eli had done as Jacob had instructed and opened the book. The pages inside were filled with the same sort of text, but it seemed to be arranged into chapters. At the top of each new chapter page, somebody had sketched an item. I picked the book up and flipped through the pages and wasn’t surprised to find that the drawings matched up to the items that had been in the trunk.
“Lemme try something,” Jake said, smiling as he pulled the book from my hands. He muttered a few words that I recognized as a revealing spell, but nothing happened. “Huh,” he said. “I was sure that would work.”
We spent a few moments standing there staring at it, trying to figure out how to make it give up its secrets. My phone rang, and I was surprised to see it was Willow.
“Hey,” I said when I answered. “I thought you were resting.”
“I was,” she said, her voice a little wobby. “And I feel like hammered crap, but I did call Ms. Dilley and told her I’d accidentally sent some items that I hadn’t meant to include. I was too late, though. They’ve all already sold, and no, she didn’t keep track of who bought them.”
“Great,” I said, sighing. “It looks like we’re gonna be doing this blind, then. All we can hope for is that the situation isn’t as bad as we think it is.”
“What?” Eli asked. He and Jake were looking at me, suspended in time awaiting my answer.
“They’re sold,” I said since I hadn’t put Willow on speakerphone. “Ms. Dilley didn’t keep a record.”
“Great,” Jake said, pulling in a deep breath. We need to figure out how to get this book to tell us its secrets, and fast. Maybe we’re getting all atwitter for nothin’, but I’d rather know that for sure.
“You should take it to Sybil Blackburn,” Willow said. “She just got back into town a few weeks ago, and I bet she knows every minute of this town’s history. It might shave some time off your research if you cut straight to the chase.”
“Yeah, because she lived it,” Jake muttered.
Nobody knew for sure how old Sybil was, but she’d been around as long as my dad could remember at seemingly the same age now as she had been when he’d been a kid. She was a strange witch who didn’t come to town much, and when she did, she usually wore a glamour. After all, it would be hard to explain to non-magical people how she’d lived there for generations without aging a day.
She’d disappear for a few months or even years at a time, but she always came back. The only reason we really knew anything about her at all was because she was sort of local lore among the magicals.
I looked at Eli, then Jake. “I don’t think we have much choice, guys. We need answers, and she’s the only one I can think of who might have them. There’s no need chasing down the diadem or watch until we know for sure we need to.”
“Great,” Jake said. “Three tickets to Creepy Town, comin’ right up. You two go ahead and I’ll be right behind you.”
My brother was nothing if not mature and brave. No wonder I’d beaten him to the finish line in the Great Birth Canal Race.
/> Chapter 9
S ybil lived on a large beachfront property a few miles up the coast. Since I’d never been to her house, I almost passed the overgrown entrance.
“The place is creepy even from the road,” Jake grumbled as I hung a right into the drive.
The mailbox was rusted and falling over, and ivy and weeds had grown over the large wrought-iron gate that resembled a ramshackle version of the one in front of our place. I had a feeling Sybil’s kept away marketers and people looking to lead her to religion much better than ours did.
I rolled my window down and hit the call button on the gate, surprised when it just swung open rather than connecting me to somebody up at the house. I shrugged and maneuvered through them when they’d opened far enough, then proceeded up the drive. For probably fifty yards, I cringed a little because it was so overgrown that the weeds brushed against the sides of my car and I bottomed out a little when my driver’s-side tire dipped into a pothole.
“I hope the house isn’t too much farther,” I said, wincing as a grouping of large purple elephant ear leaves loomed in front of me on either side of the lane. There was no way they’d clear the roof of the car, and I dreaded what they and their green brethren were putting my clearcoat through.
“Wow,” Eli said once I’d driven through them.
Wow was right. I tapped the breaks and rolled to a near-stop as I took in our surroundings. Rather than a run-down house and a continuation of overgrowth, the grounds spread out before us were immaculate. Tall bushes shaped into spirals lined the smooth asphalt lane and a large fountain sat as the crown jewel in front of the house, bushes, flowers, and an ornate bench arranged in a semi-circle around it.
The yard was almost like one of those infinity pools—it extended about a hundred yards behind the house and then just seemed to end at a cliff, allowing a clear view of the ocean behind it. Seagulls cried as they soared over the house, and the distant crash of waves soothed me.
