by Tess Lake
Chapter 2
Two women on horseback galloped by in the distance. They looked like they were having the time of their lives.
I looked down at my galoshes, up to my ankles in mud, and wished for a moment that I was anywhere else other than here. Why couldn’t I be riding horses or having a cup of coffee or just sitting and staring at a television in a warm room?
“… and the brand-new pizza oven should be here on Friday. I’m so excited! Okay, I’m going to go this way now, be careful,” Aunt Freya said and slogged off through the mud around the side of the giant crater. She started humming happily to herself as she searched for Aunt Cass.
Since she’d picked me up at the warehouse, Aunt Freya had been in a great mood, talking nonstop about their imminent reopening of Big Pie Bakery. A couple of months ago, the moms had found a new location a street away from where the original Big Pie Bakery had stood before it was burnt to the ground. We’d hardly seen them in the last two weeks as they’d been working so hard to get the new location ready so they could reopen, hoping that they’d be able to make enough money to eventually rebuild the original Big Pie.
I looked down at my feet again and gave them an experimental squelch in the mud before closing my eyes and taking a few deep breaths. The magic in this area was calm, serene, even, but here and there, like rocks in a stream, there were broken bits of old magic. They were hard but smooth, like old pieces of glass worn down by time and tide. Whatever it was that Aunt Cass was doing out here had broken something, and the remnants of that old spell had scattered around the crater.
Hattie Stern would hate this, but I reached out with my hands as well as my senses and felt one of the hard pieces in magic buried in the mud. I touched it for a moment before it broke into pieces and shimmered away. It felt old and strange. I opened my eyes again and looked out over the crater. It was dark and deep, and also wet and muddy, and eventually led down to the opening of a cave system that had been revealed by the explosion.
Sheriff Hardy had already had to stop spelunkers from going down there because it’s definitely not safe. I slogged my way closer to the edge and looked down. Over the last few months, we’d limited our searching to the perimeter of the giant hole. But what if Aunt Cass was actually down there? For all we knew, she could be inside the cave itself. But that would take a team of us with ropes and trees to hook them to, and the explosion had knocked out every tree for a hundred feet around the giant hole. Maybe we could tie ourselves to a stump?
I started walking with my hands out, trying to feel the magic while at the same time sliding my feet along, hoping that they’d bump into something that would turn out to be Aunt Cass. At first, we’d been somewhat methodical about it, trying to use a grid approach, but between three witch mothers and three witch daughters, and the sheer size of the area we were covering, that system had soon broken down.
I kept slogging through the mud, noticing that some new shoots of grass had already begun to grow. Although I was trying to keep myself focused on finding Aunt Cass, Eve Navarro and her grandmother Hilda soon took over my thoughts. I didn’t have much time after she’d left before Aunt Freya had come to pick me up, but in that small gap, I’d managed to discover who owned Sunny Days Manor. It was none other than Sylvester Coldwell, property developer, possible criminal, and general all-around bad guy.
Coldwell had been tangled up with Hendrick Gresso, another property developer, who’d been using his brother to burn down properties around town so he could buy them for cheap. Somehow, despite all the investigations, nothing had stuck to Coldwell. Unofficially he’d done things like bought houses next to people and then moved in rowdy tenants, dumped garbage in their yards to attract rats, and played music at all hours until he could force people to move out of their homes so they would sell them to him at a reduced price. Most of this was hearsay, though. In general, the people who were forced out of their homes had left Harlot Bay and had no desire to remember the horrible things he’d done to them. Discovering that he was the owner of the nursing home had immediately made me suspect he had something to do with whatever was going on with Eve’s grandmother, Hilda. I realized that was certainly a leap of logic, but I couldn’t shake the feeling he was involved.
Still, it gave me somewhere to start, apart from going to meet Eve and Hilda. Given Coldwell’s past in trying to evict tenants and get people out of their homes for profit, I could already feel a small hypothesis forming: he was somehow involved in getting the residents of Sunny Days out of there, perhaps so he could resell their units to try to make even more profit.
I admit at this point I was daydreaming, so what happened next shouldn’t be a surprise. I took a step and the ground wasn’t there, and suddenly I was falling, landing with a wet splat as I slid down the edge of the crater. I heard Aunt Freya yell from somewhere in the distance. I landed on my face in the wet mud and rolled over, trying to grab onto anything I could so I wouldn’t slide further down. I’d had the breath knocked out of me, and my ears were ringing from the impact.
“Harlow! What are you doing!” Aunt Freya called out from the edge of the crater. “You should watch where you’re going!”
Typical mom behavior. You’ve just fallen and hurt yourself, and the first thing they want to do is tell you off for not paying attention.
“It was an accident!” I called out, slowly feeling my breathing get back to normal.
“There are some tree roots over here—can you climb up them?”
I looked over the side of the crater, where some straggly tree roots were sticking out. The tree itself had been obliterated but the root system was still there, holding part of the edge together. I got onto my hands and knees and carefully made my way across the muddy slope, feeling like I was going to slip and slide at any moment. I didn’t dare look behind me, but I knew at one point it was just a straight shot sliding down into the pit and then into the cave system. I’d probably hit the rock at a hundred miles an hour.
I got over in line with the tree roots and was about to start climbing when my hand hit something invisible. For a moment I thought it was another piece of the spell that had been broken into pieces, but then it didn’t dissolve under my touch. I felt sideways and quickly realized that I was touching a leg and then a knee.
“Aunt Freya! I think I found Aunt…” I started to yell and then suddenly there she was, Aunt Cass, lying on her back on the slope, a grin on her face, her hands out in front of her like she’d been casting a spell. Despite the fact that she was lying in the mud, none of it was sticking to her.
“Oh my goddess!” Aunt Freya said.
“Is there any rope in the car?” I called out.
“We don’t have any,” Aunt Freya said, fretting. She started pacing back and forth on the edge of the crater, biting her lip just like Luce did sometimes. Although I had one hand on Aunt Cass and the other dug into the mud, my position was somewhat precarious. I could feel myself beginning to slip, inch by inch, and knew that if I went, Aunt Cass would probably slide down after me. I guessed she’d probably be okay, but I certainly didn’t look forward to sliding down into a muddy pit and then falling into a cave.
Aunt Freya came to the edge of the crater and planted her feet as though she was preparing to take part in a tug-of-war competition. In an instant I knew what she was going to do and that it was a really bad idea.
“No, you can’t, we weigh too much!” I called out.
“Shush, Harlow,” Aunt Freya said. She moved her hands and I felt a tremendous lurch in the magic as she plucked me and Aunt Cass up from the mud and out of the crater. I’d say she levitated us, but that sounds nice and calm, as though we gently floated up and then drifted down to the ground. This was more like being shot out of a cannon. I lost both my galoshes and I landed about ten feet behind Aunt Freya in another giant splat of mud, Aunt Cass squelching with a thud beside me.
I rolled over and sat up in time to see Aunt Freya collapse, falling backward with her arms out and landing
directly in the mud. I struggled my way out of the slop and ran over there as fast as I could, feeling like I was back doing the Gold Mud Run, tired and cold and weighed down by wet clothes. When I got to Aunt Freya, I found that she was alive, thank goddess, but her breathing was shallow and erratic. Her eyes were twitching under her eyelids as though she was dreaming, and she felt cold to the touch.
I stood up and looked around, racking my brain for a solution, but I was very short on ideas. I guessed I could grab Aunt Freya and try and haul her all the way back to the car, but that was out across the mud, down the hill, and then through the forest to the gate that we’d unlocked, then I’d have to come all the way back to get Aunt Cass. I checked my phone in my pocket and saw, as usual, there was no signal. No help there.
Lacking any other alternatives, I took a look around to make sure no one was watching and then cast a small fireball on the twisted and wrecked remnants of a fallen tree. The fireball hit and a small cloud of steam rose up as it dried the wood off, but nothing caught. The pull of energy from doing it the first time made me feel like I’d just lifted a fifty-pound bag of concrete, then dropped it again. I pulled another fireball out of the air and threw it at the wood again. This time it caught fire, and soon it was starting to crackle away.
That fireball nearly knocked me out just like Aunt Freya. I felt a weakness through my limbs as though I hadn’t eaten all day. Despite that, and the cold, I managed to drag her across the mud and close to the fire. I was fairly sure that Aunt Cass was okay where she was, and she seemed to be protected by some sort of spell, but I dragged her closer to the fire anyway just in case. Then I sat down and held out my frozen fingers to the fire, letting the gentle warmth flow through me.
The time after casting a spell that exhausts you is always odd. Sometimes it seems like only minutes have passed when in fact it’s been hours; other times it seems the reverse. By the time up Aunt Freya began to stir and then finally sat up, the sun had moved a fair distance across the sky.
“Oh, you started a fire, good,” Aunt Freya said mostly to herself as she tried to wipe the mud off her hands. I snapped out of watching the fire and looked her over. She was still muddy from head to toe, but she certainly looked a lot better than she had before. There was some color back in her cheeks.
Aunt Freya looked up at the sky and at the clouds that were beginning to amass on the horizon, heading in our direction. Although the day was still somewhat clear, the clouds were bruised purple and threatened to rain a storm down upon us.
“Okay, well, it’s time to grab Aunt Cass and go,” Aunt Freya said and stood up as though she hadn’t just been unconscious for the last few hours.
I stood up, feeling pins and needles rushing down my legs as the blood flow returned. I felt sorer than I really should have been, which was actually a bit annoying considering I was still doing personal training with Kaylee Osterman and dragging Molly and Luce along. How long do you need to run up and down the beach before your legs actually get the idea that you’re fit now?
“You take her feet and I’ll take her shoulders,” Aunt Freya said.
“Okay,” I said, too tired to say anything else. Before I did that, I picked up some handfuls of dirt near the fire that had somewhat dried and threw them on the fire to put it out. Although all the ground around us was wet and muddy, I had no desire to start a gigantic fire out on Truer Island by leaving ours burning. I tried to wipe off my hands, but there was no point. I was covered in mud from head to foot. Aunt Freya grabbed Aunt Cass underneath the arms, and I took her feet and lifted her off the ground. Aunt Cass is fairly spry and skinny, but at that moment she felt like she weighed far more than she should.
“Is she carrying rocks in her pocket?” I groaned as we started to make our way down the hill.
“Probably deliberately heavy,” Aunt Freya muttered.
I laughed at that for some reason, and then we were silent all the way down the hill back through the forest until we reached Aunt Freya’s car. We had no choice but to put Aunt Cass in the trunk. Luckily Aunt Freya had some blankets in the back, which we managed to lay out over the seats to protect them from the mud that we were covered in. We drove out through the temporary gate the police had erected, locking it behind us, and then back to the ferry, too exhausted to talk.
We certainly got a few strange looks from tourists on the ferry when they saw the state we were in, but we were too exhausted to really care about that. By the time we reached the mainland, my phone started working again, so I messaged the moms and my cousins. There was a flurry of messages back and forth, and by the time we were driving up the hill to the Torrent Mansion, Molly and Luce were coming up behind us, and following them were Mom and Aunt Ro.
It was a good thing there were no guests staying at the Torrent Mansion Bed and Breakfast today because what happened next must have looked very strange had anyone seen it. Two muddy witches open the trunk of a car to reveal an eightyish-year-old woman grinning like a mad person, her hair streaming out behind her like she was in a gale. The other women start celebrating and cheering, and then they lift her out of the trunk like she’s a living statue, and then carry her inside the mansion.
Soon we were in the basement underneath the kitchen, and Aunt Cass was standing beside Grandma, who was still in the same pose she always was, her hands out in front of her as though she was holding an invisible ball, and a slight smile on her face. Beside her, Aunt Cass looked like a crazy person. She was grinning in glee, extremely happy to be doing whatever it was she was doing.
“I can’t believe you found her,” Molly said.
“Why doesn’t she have any mud on her?” Luce asked.
“It’s a protection spell, I’ve seen it before,” Mom said. Adams appeared out of nowhere and then rubbed himself against Aunt Cass’s legs, tiny crackles of static electricity snapping back and forth between them.
“Well, that’s weird,” I said. Mom turned to us and waved a hand as though she was trying to shush us, although none of us were really talking.
“We’re going to have to cast a spell to try to break her out. We’re going to need time to collect ingredients and to prepare, so we’re going to make a list, and then we’ll get going. It may take a few weeks, but if I’m right we should be able to break Aunt Cass out of this,” Mom said.
“A list of jobs?” Luce said suspiciously.
“We want to help her, but we do have actual jobs, you know,” Molly added.
“She’s your great aunt, and if you were frozen she would try to help you,” Aunt Ro snapped.
There was a tense moment as six witches tried to be better than they actually were. We all love Aunt Cass, we truly do, but on the other hand, there had kind of been a nice peace and quiet over the last two months. The moms would never admit it, not ever, not even for a minute, but I knew that with restarting up the Big Pie Bakery, they’d certainly appreciated Aunt Cass not meddling in it.
“Okay, fine, we’ll do jobs, then,” Luce said, finally breaking the slightly awkward silence. Everyone filed out of the basement until it was just Mom and I left there. She was touching Aunt Cass’s clothes, testing to see whether they would bend or not (they didn’t).
“If there’s a spell to wake up Aunt Cass, then why haven’t we ever cast it on Grandma?” I asked. Mom turned to me, and for a moment I saw a look of worry on her face. Then she smiled, trying to cover it with some fake cheer.
“We did, actually. We tried a few times with the same spell and some others, but they all failed.”
“What makes you think it’s going to work this time, then?” I said, unable to help myself.
“We just have to hope it will,” Mom said distantly, and then reached out to gently stroke Aunt Cass’s cheek.
Chapter 3
You wouldn’t think much could happen in the five or so minutes between when my cousins left the basement and when I arrived at our end of the mansion, but apparently it had.
I walked in, still covered head to toe i
n drying mud, to find Luce pale, like she’d seen a ghost. She had her phone in her hand, which was shaking. Molly was in the kitchen area, doing some sort of elaborate dance with a lot of twirls.
“Um… what happened? Are you okay?” I asked Luce.
“Look! Look what he did!” Luce said and thrust her phone at me.
On the screen was a message from Will.
Hey, what’s your ring size?
“They’re gonna get maaaaarrrrriiiieeeeed,” Molly called out. She did another twirl. “This is their wedding dance,” she added.
“What kind of… of… madman sends that message to a girl?” Luce demanded.
I was tired, I was muddy, I was a little sore, but there was no way I could pass up an opportunity like this.
“So, a summer wedding, then?”
“Of course a summer wedding. I’m seeing a beach,” Molly said.
“Everyone in bare feet, you’re wearing a sundress, Will has a white shirt, top button undone,” I said.
“This is not happening, this is not happening!”
“Should it be at dusk or at night so we can see the stars?” I asked Molly.
“Dusk for the wedding, and then we put up string lights so we can dance into the night,” she declared. She gave another twirl across the living room.
Luce sat down and put her head between her legs. She started taking deep breaths.
“Or maybe it’ll be one of those long engagements. Not have the wedding until winter,” I said, grinning.
“I can see that. Fireplaces, a light dusting of snow outside. We’ll rent a lodge somewhere close by and drink hot toddies.”
“What are hot toddies?” Luce said from somewhere near the floor.
“Whiskey, honey, tea, and spices. Ollie made me one at Christmas and it was delicious,” Molly said.
“Should we wear matching dresses?” I asked Molly.
Luce leaped up and pointed her finger as though she was calling doom down upon us.
