Love Witch

by Tess Lake

  “Don’t let the police hear you say that or you’re going be going to jail,” she said.

  “I don’t mind an interview with the police, it could be quite fun. I hear there are some quite handsome policemen in this town,” Henry G said. I laughed, despite what I was feeling, terribly afraid that a costume would burst into flames or something else odd would happen. I quickly excused myself and went to the kitchen where I grabbed a glass of water and stood there at the sink while I drank it, feeling the cool liquid plume down into my stomach.

  “Please, nothing serious, please, nothing serious,” I murmured to myself, the endless prayer of a Slip witch. There were so many things that being a Slip witch had ruined in my life. There were teenage parties that I’d missed because I’d slipped, and couldn’t attend without being a danger. I had almost missed my graduation when I had slipped and people started hearing a high-pitched whining in their ears whenever I was near them. Aunt Cass had quickly whipped up a potion and dosed me with it. It had left me feeling somewhat ill, but at least I had been able to attend my graduation for a few hours before it wore off. I’d had to leave because people thought there was something wrong with the speaker system. They were just mild examples of how bad being a Slip witch could be. When I was a child I had slipped and if I came too near a tree it would explode into splinters. I’d been forced to stay in the house for a week, my mother telling the school that I’d come down with a particularly nasty flu.

  I quickly rinsed my glass and then walked back out and around behind the stage. Esmeralda had gathered us all to rehearse and then told us that a new director would be coming today but that we’d have to wait to meet him. In the meantime, we’d rehearse the play until he arrived. Unfortunately, that meant a lot of sitting around for certain characters and when teenagers sat around and got bored, they got into mischief. Part of my job, apart from being a general assistant, was starting to feel like being a teenage wrangler. I would have to retrieve them from whatever dark corner they’d crept off to and unfortunately I’d come upon a few too many teenagers with askew clothing and red faces. Again, I remembered what it was like to be a teenager and all the things Molly, Luce and I had done, but at the same time it felt like we’d never been like this. I was wandering around when Esmeralda touched me on the arm to speak with me.

  I heard a sudden burst of applause as though I was surrounded by a crowd who were jubilant about something. There was cheering and whistling and then wine glasses clinking together before finally, the noise of a door closing. It all came and went in a moment.

  “May you please find Amaris for me, we’re about to rehearse the auction,” Esmeralda said and gave me a warm smile.

  “Sure I’ll get her,” I said my mind reeling. Okay, that was two lots of sounds when people had touched me in the last few minutes. First it had been frogs and Shakespearean insults when Henry G touched me, and now applause and wine glasses when it was Esmeralda. So was I hearing sounds connected to who they were or what they did? It wasn’t too hard to put it together. Shakespearean insults and shouting could easily be linked to Henry G and Hans. Henry G had worked for Hans for just a year but had also privately told us that he did not like the man at all but considered that working with him was a good career move for any costumer. Esmeralda’s sounds were applause and wine glasses, which made sense too. The applause because she worked in theater, and the wine glasses because she was frequently attending benefits to raise money for other theater productions across the country. I was a little puzzled as to why I would hear frogs when Henry G touched me but perhaps he owned a frog? Or who knew, it might just be some weird quirk of the slip witch power.

  As I walked off to find Amaris I passed by a teenage boy. I didn’t know his name given there were quite a few of them working on the play, but I lightly touched him on the shoulder as I went by to see if I could trigger the slip witch power again. Nothing happened, however. He just glanced at me and moved to the side as passed.

  Damn, I thought I’d figured it out.

  I walked around out into the theater and down into the rooms that stretched out behind it. Like many of the old buildings in Harlot Bay, this one had plenty of rooms leading off each other and then also little secret areas. There was a trapdoor in one of the rooms that was permanently bolted shut that led to another floor beneath the theater. I had no doubt there were probably other hidden areas as well, left over from when pirates used to roam up and down the coast and come raiding, or for when prohibition was in effect and it seemed the whole of Harlot Bay had been secretly making and hiding alcohol.

  I wasn’t creeping exactly and I certainly didn’t have any intention to catch teenagers doing something they shouldn’t, but I must’ve been thinking and not realizing that I was sneaking in the process. I heard Amaris speak from the other side of an open door.

  “You want to date me? Then prove your love for me,” she said.

  Amaris was playing Bianca, the younger daughter who could not marry until her older sister Katherine, the “shrew”, was married. For a moment I thought Amaris was rehearsing, perhaps saying a line from the play but then I glanced into the room and saw she was standing there with three of the boys in front of her. Their names were Fox, Cormac, and Stone. I wasn’t entirely sure which one was Cormac and which one was Stone because they looked quite similar, and I hadn’t quite got a grip on all the teenagers’ names.

  “How do we prove our love?” Fox asked.

  “Steal something for me,” Amaris said. She turned and with a perfect hair flip flounced out of there, the three boys watching her go, desperate looks on their faces.

  I shrank back into a hiding place and a moment later Amaris walked by me, heading back to the main part of the stage. I didn’t hear the boys talk but it wasn’t long before they came wandering out as well. One of them, I’m not sure if it was Stone or Cormac, had red eyes like he’d been crying.

  “I’m the one she loves,” he muttered to himself as he went by, low enough that the other two boys didn’t hear.

  I waited a good thirty seconds, shaking my head to myself at what I’d just seen. Apart from wrangling teenagers, I’d also been wrangling teenage drama. It seemed that all of their emotions were turned up to ten or twenty, or possibly a million. Small failures were tragedies, small successes were awesome and amazing and the best thing ever! They were so happy when they got their lines right and so devastated when they got it wrong. I wasn’t keeping a careful track of which relationships were going on, but I’m pretty sure that there had already been at least five or six break ups and new couples formed over the course of the rehearsal. But this? Amaris telling them to steal something to prove their love for her? This was new. I felt like I was watching the news and they say something crazy like “Teenagers robbing stores to prove their love. We reveal the shocking story” and it’s so far outside of your comprehension you just don’t know what to think. It sounds true but at the same time, it sounds crazy.

  I remembered a time when Molly and I had crept around following a boy that Molly had been interested in, effectively stalking him around the town for a couple of hours and even using concealment spells so he wouldn’t see us.

  Yeah, teenagers can be crazy.

  I made my way back to the main part of the stage and found Amaris who was now talking with Vienna. I told her to get ready to rehearse her scene, deciding I would think a little more on what I had witnessed before I would take any action, if at all. I know to the teenagers their dramas seemed real and vibrant and important, but I could also feel some distance from them and a little bit of me didn’t want to get involved that much. I certainly had enough on my plate as it was. I didn’t want any of the boys to get arrested for stealing stuff though, at least even from the position that it would make putting on the play quite difficult.

  Esmeralda called all the actors in and was getting ready to run the scene when the doors to the theater boomed open. In strolled a well-dressed round man with slicked back hair and a beaming smile
. Everyone stopped to watch him as he walked down the aisle, looking around him, as though he couldn’t be happier to be here.

  “My name is Emilion Rain. That is a mouthful so just call me director!” He waved his arms as he spoke as if punctuating his sentences with his hands.

  “Oh look at all you beautiful people. Have I walked into a theater of actors or fish who stare with their mouths open?” he boomed. If Hans had said such a thing, it would have easily been a grievous insult, born from a place of meanness but Emilion, or the Director as he told us to call him, was beaming, glowing with an inner joy that you could feel. I had a sudden feeling in my stomach of relaxation and happiness and realized that I had been a bit tense since I discovered a new director would be coming. Perhaps I’d been traumatized so much by Hans and his abuse that I expected all directors to be like that.

  He came and embraced Esmeralda, kissing her on both cheeks, before taking a copy of the play and calling the teenagers to “Begin! Begin my darlings!” He stood and watched as the teenagers hesitantly began the scene. They were only a few lines into it before he waved his arms for them to stop.

  “I know you all terribly shocked that the previous director has suffered great ill, but don’t worry. Together we will get to the end and we will succeed. Now go again with passion, with love, with joy, you can do it. I believe in you,” he said. The teenagers began again and this time it seemed as though the director had infused them with great confidence. I swear some of them became better actors on the spot, delivering their lines the way they were meant to be. As Molly would say, stepping it up several notches to the point of needing a new belt.

  The rehearsal was underway and we smoothly went through that scene and then to another, jumping around the play. Normally when Hans was in charge people would attempt to disappear if they weren’t in a particular scene, so that he couldn’t turn his wrath upon them. But everything was completely different now with Emilion in charge. Practically everyone was gathered around watching the scenes, seeing just how wonderful it could be when everything came together. One of the girls, Frankie, who had been dropping lines all over the place was delivering them with confidence, as though that inner glow had transferred from the director to her.

  Time quickly zipped by. I met Emilion briefly and when he shook my hand I didn’t hear anything. There was no magic burst.

  We’d been rehearsing for a few hours, the director changing some of the blocking, which was the movements around on stage when Sheriff Hardy and some of his men entered the theater. We’d been told that the police would be becoming today to do some brief interviews about Hans. Sheriff Hardy caught my eye and nodded. Although he was now official and on-the-job and had to interview me as part of that, the nod also carried a familiarity, being that he was dating Aunt Ro and in fact would be coming to the big family dinner tonight.

  “Who is that handsome man?” Henry G murmured to me as Sheriff Hardy walked down the aisle.

  “That is Sheriff Hardy and he’s dating my aunt so sorry, he’s taken,” I said.

  “Oh well, there’s plenty more fish in the sea,” he said.

  Everyone milled around as Sheriff Hardy talked with Emilion. I had no sudden intuition that something was about to go terribly wrong. There was no slip witch power that told it to me, but I must’ve heard something, perhaps a creaking because I felt a sudden burst of anxiety.

  A bare moment later there was a snap from high above us.

  Christopher, the teenager who was coincidentally playing Christopher Sly, the drunken Tinker who is duped into believing he is a Lord, went from standing to flat on the ground, out cold, a heavy sandbag thudding him down. One of the girls screamed a piercing sound that echoed across the theater.

  “Everyone off the stage!” Sheriff Hardy yelled out. We all scattered, teenagers leaping off the stage and not a moment too soon. There was another creak and a heavy sandbag thudded to the stage. I grabbed Christopher’s arm and with Sheriff Hardy’s help, hauled him off the stage. There was one final creak from above and then another thud as a heavy sandbag dropped and crashed on the boards.

  “Everyone outside now. No one goes anywhere,” Sheriff Hardy said. He checked Christopher, who was stirring. It looked like the bag had only caught him a glancing blow, knocking him out rather than seriously injuring him.

  The teenagers certainly didn’t have to be told twice, the mass of them rushing up to the front door, everyone talking all at once.

  I’d only ever seen Esmeralda happy, even through Hans yelling, even through teenage drama, forgetting their lines and rushing off the stage in tears, and so it was a shock to see her start crying.

  “We’re cursed. We need to shut down,” she moaned from behind her hands.

  Sheriff Hardy looked at her and then at me.

  “You’re not cursed, someone’s doing this deliberately,” he said. “We’re going to find out who it is and stop them,” he said.

  Some of his men helped an unsteady Christopher outside, so they could wait for an ambulance to take him to the hospital to get him checked out. It felt for an odd moment that when Sheriff Hardy said “We’re going to stop them” that he included me in that. I followed the Emilion outside but before the doors closed I heard another sandbag thunk to the stage.

  “The show must go on,” Emilion said to me and then raised his voice so the assembled teenagers and actors could hear.

  “The show must go on. Now let us continue to rehearse,” he said. Despite the terror of the moment, most of the teenagers began smiling back at him. There was a kind of energy as though something horrific had occurred but now if we banded together we could all get through it.

  Christopher clearly didn’t feel the same.

  “No, I’m out, I’m done. I’m not gonna be in this stupid thing where people keep dying,” he said. He staggered off down the street, closely followed by a police officer who was trying to convince him to stay put.

  “We’ll find someone to replace him,” Emilion said. As I watched Christopher staggering off down the street, the police officer close behind, I couldn’t help but feel that all of us should do the same. Someone had poisoned Hans and now it appeared they had sabotaged heavy sandbags in the hope of injuring others. Perhaps Esmeralda was right: maybe the play was cursed.

  Chapter 5

  “So no one else got told to invite someone crazy?” Peta asked us. Everyone shook their heads.

  “Aunt Cass is definitely up to something,” Luce said.

  The eight of us were gathered in our end of Torrent mansion for a pre-dinner planning session for if and when the whole thing went off the rails. It was me, Molly and Luce, our respective three boyfriends Jack, Will and Ollie, and also Peta and Jonas. We’d just been discussing safe topics we could go onto in case things went a little crazy when Peta had revealed that Aunt Cass and told her to invite someone crazy, and then Ollie and Will had revealed they’d been told the same.

  “Did you invite anyone crazy?” I asked Ollie and Will.

  “I was gonna bring my dad but, then I figured maybe Cass was just being… you know,” Will said.

  “Same for me. I decided not to bring anyone,” Ollie said.

  I noticed they both had carefully skipped around outright calling Aunt Cass crazy. At our huge Christmas dinner there had been a magical mishap that had ultimately resulted in Aunt Cass bolting out into the snow and disappearing around the corner of the mansion up into the forest. Given that we hadn’t told Will and Ollie that we were witches and that magical mishaps were something that quite frequently happened to our family, we had to explain it away by saying that Aunt Cass was a little bit crazy, or letting Will and Ollie assume she was. It wasn’t entirely off the mark. After all, they had clear memories of another dinner where Aunt Cass had brought out the Chili Challenge, which had resulted in our guest that night, Bella Bing, Aunt Cass and Molly all passing out after eating a super spicy chili sauce. Both the boys had been at other dinners that had gone off the rails in various other
ways.

  “Did you invite someone crazy?” Jonas asked Peta.

  “Well, sorta. I mean he’s not crazy. It’s just Henry G, from the play, the costume designer. He’s not crazy, he’s just… effervescent.”

  “Effervescent, I love it,” Molly trilled. She was smiling too much for someone who was facing down a Torrent witches dinner.

  “You seem awfully happy,” Luce said.

  “Stop worrying everyone. It’ll be fine. Just drink some wine,” Molly rhymed.

  “Now I think you’re up to something as well as Aunt Cass,” Luce said.

  Our pre-dinner planning had been going reasonably well until we’d also discovered that it had been Aunt Cass who’d been the one to set up this dinner. Well set up is a relative term. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she demanded the dinner and then the moms had been put into service to make it happen. We’d only discovered this because Aunt Freya had complained to Luce about how much cooking they’d to do at short notice.

  “Is your aunt okay?” Ollie asked, a little hesitantly.

  “She’s just Aunt Cass being Aunt Cass again and again,” I said.

  We all knew there was some big announcement tonight but no one had any idea of what it might be. As far as we knew the bakery was going okay and so was Aunt Cass’s Chili Challenge. My cousins still didn’t have many customers but they had a plan in motion, and I certainly didn’t have any big news. So we weren’t quite sure what it was going to be.

  “I wonder why she would want us to invite crazy people?” Will mused.

  I and Luce shared a look. Molly didn’t take part because she was still too happy about whatever it was. Our look said, “Uh oh, better move on because we can’t discuss the fact that we’re witches and something crazy is probably going on.”

  “What we need is a code word for when things go totally off the rails. You can just say it and we’ll change the topic or escape to retrieve another bottle of wine or something like that,” Luce said.