by Tess Lake
“Everyone and anyone,” Sheriff Hardy said, the ultimate non-answer. He said his goodbyes and then he was gone. As soon as he was, I made sure to move one of Aunt Cass’s least dangerous-looking boxes to sit on top of Mattias’s belongings in case someone came in and started snooping. Then I picked up my list and went over to the window to look out into the street. I watched Sheriff Hardy drive away and then waved to John as he waved to me from the roof of the buildings across from my office. He then threw himself off the roof to land face-first on the sidewalk, suffering no harm, of course, because he was a ghost and was already dead. I had a look at my list and realized the part about figuring out who was sabotaging the film and killing people was going to resolve itself fairly soon. Jack was going to put up spy cameras, and also Sheriff Hardy was on the case.
I still had no idea how to get Mattias to move on and no idea about how to end this slip witch storm power except perhaps to take Aunt Cass’s advice and try to cause a gigantic storm that would hopefully get me out the other side. I looked at the second item on the list: Help Molly’s love life. Hey, it was meddling, but meddling is what the Torrent witches do best. I decided I’d go to the library and talk to Ollie and see what was happening. Yes, it was largely Molly’s fault that she’d been going crazy after the coffee machine had been stolen and, yes, she had been taking it out on her lovely boyfriend, but perhaps with a bit of precise meddling I could help her out, possibly fix her love life, and maybe she’d start talking to me again.
I looked at the final item on my list: BE HAPPY. Well, that one was definitely a work in progress.
Today I was not going to be a leaf on the wind! I was going to be a… tiger! With a chainsaw! I checked the time and realized the library wouldn’t be open for at least another hour. I would have to be a tiger with a chainsaw who was going to sit around and do some journalism work for the time being.
Chapter 20
The Harlot Bay library is a gigantic building near the center of town. It has three stories up and about two or three floors underground that were built during that whole pirates coming and looting and attacking everything phase. It has about a hundred years’ worth of books in it as far as I know, and the place was built back in that time when they took care in craftsmanship. Think ornate moldings, some flaking gilt edgings, and a ceiling that’s been painted like the Sistine Chapel but not quite as heavy on the religious tones. There’s something very calming about walking inside the Harlot Bay library. Maybe it’s something about all those books, all those sentences, all those ideas calmly printed on paper, waiting for someone to pick them up. One of the librarians at the front counter, Ruth Osterman, the daughter of elderly Mrs. Osterman who we’d often see walking around town with her terrier, Rum Tum, directed me to the basement when I asked where Ollie was. I descended a very dark flight of stairs and opened a heavy metal door that looked like it had probably been installed during the whole Prohibition phase of the town. Many of the places in Harlot Bay have renovated the floors that had been built underneath them. They’d made parking garages or extra rooms or furnished basements. Unfortunately, the library obviously hadn’t had the funds to do that. I opened the door to discover a gigantic poorly lit room piled up with boxes that were obviously old, papers everywhere, shelves of aging books around the corners of the room, and in the midst of it Ollie covered in so much dust and dirt he looked like a chimney sweep. His hair was sticking up like crazy.
“Hey, Harlow, how you doing?” he asked and then immediately let out a tremendous sneeze.
I glanced around, seeing that there was some order starting to form. It appeared that he had separated different boxes into areas and made small corridors between them.
“What you doing, Ollie?” I asked.
He stood up and attempted to dust off his hands on his equally dusty pants.
“I’m working on getting this all sorted, cataloged and eventually digitized. Over there we’ve got birth and death records, in the back are all the police files, over there we have some land transfers and other types of sales, in the middle I’ve got marriages, and that giant pile over there is the kind of miscellaneous stuff that I haven’t quite figured out what to do with. Oh, and there’s some newspaper articles in that other corner and out in that other room.”
I made my way carefully over to where he was standing. Amongst the boxes, there were teetering piles of aging papers that were now going from yellow to brown. I picked up the top piece of paper on a pile and looked at it.
“Memorandum of Understanding between the Harlot Bay Council and Johan Robard,” I read. That was all there was to it. The back of the paper was blank and the next piece of paper in the pile appeared to be a sales document of some kind.
“Johan was a pirate who settled down but then eventually went back to being a pirate,” Ollie said, his eyes alive with excitement. “Can you put it over there in the awesome pirate pile?” he asked.
I took the piece of paper over to the pirate pile, which was getting to be about as tall as I was, and put it down, then I returned to Ollie.
“So you could pretty much die happy down here, couldn’t you?” I asked with a smile.
“I would live here if I could,” Ollie said, making a sweeping gesture to indicate the entire room. “There’s another two entire floors below this, all of them filled with boxes of paper and even more books. The bottom floor got flooded at some point, so about half of that is rotting away, but at least these two floors are being preserved. There’s so much history here!”
I smiled at Ollie’s enthusiasm, but then felt a little tinge of sadness. Unfortunately, the way Molly had been acting recently hadn’t been very good, and most the times I’d seen Ollie and her together, he hadn’t been his happy self. He’d mostly been tiptoeing around her as though she was some kind of wild animal that might snap at any moment.
I had no way to really segue from dread pirates and historical documents into Ollie’s love life, so I reminded myself that I was being a tiger today – a tiger with a chainsaw! – and dived right in.
“Molly’s been pretty crazy recently, hasn’t she?” I said.
The excited enthusiasm left Ollie’s face, and he looked down at the floor before nodding slightly.
“The theft of the coffee machine has hit her pretty bad, and I think she’s way more upset about it than she’s letting anyone know. I wish I could help her, but it doesn’t seem to matter what I do,” he said.
He looked so sad that I wanted to grab him in a gigantic hug. Then I remembered I was getting things done today, so I did that and grabbed him and pulled him against me. He smelled like dust and old books. He smiled back up at me when I let him go. Now was the time for some world-class Torrent meddling.
“Okay, Ollie, here’s what you’re gonna do. Do you know that place, Over Easy?” I asked.
Over Easy is a kind of ’50s-style diner over on the edge of town. The waitresses all wear the skirts and bobby socks and have ponytails. The décor is from the ’50s, the music is from the ’50s, and the food is all that delicious artery-clogging goodness from that time as well. Burgers and fries and milkshakes.
“I know it. I’ve never been there, though,” Ollie said.
“Tonight, you’re going to take Molly there. You’re going to order her the Cheese Heaven beef burger, the large fries, and the triple malt chocolate shake. You can order whatever you want for yourself. During this amazing meal, Molly is going to tell you about how she wishes sometimes she could live in the past, and you’re going to have that conversation with her. Then, when you’re done and stuffed to the gills with food, you’re going to drive up to Make-Out Point. This afternoon, you’re going to have to get yourself a small silver flask that you’re going to hide in a pocket, and you’re going to fill with some kind of hard liquor. Doesn’t really matter what it is, make sure it’s strong and doesn’t taste very good. Then at Make-Out Point, you’re going to sneak this out of your pocket and offer Molly some. After you’ve both had a drink of t
his disgusting stuff, you’re going to kiss each other like crazy and then you’re going to drive her back to your house. Understand?”
I could see from the expression on Ollie’s face that he clearly didn’t understand.
“Why… why that specific series of events, exactly?” he asked.
I didn’t have the time to really go into the nuances of my cousin’s psychology, so I summarized it.
“The burger and the fries and the chocolate shake are comforting and lovely. Then Make-Out Point is kind of dangerous and a little sexy. The hard liquor that you’re not going to drink very much of adds a little bit of spice. And then you’re gonna take her home so she realizes that you—”
“Love her,” Ollie said.
I didn’t want to ask if he’d told Molly that, so I clapped him on the shoulder, raising up a cloud of book dust that caused Ollie to start sneezing again, told him to definitely take Molly on that date, and then got out of there before he could throw up any objections. It’s simply the best way to meddle: get in, get out, get it done.
I sailed out of the Harlot Bay library feeling strong and confident. I was getting things done! Plus, I was fairly sure that that bit of romantic meddling would go quite well. Was this how the moms felt when they did it? I could see why it was so addictive.
Chapter 21
“Wow, you look amazing,” Luce said, looking me up and down. I was in full costume playing the owner of a fashion shop whom Bella was coming to visit. I only had one line, “It’s fabulous, darling,” and I’d been practicing it since yesterday. Luce had just emerged from costume and makeup herself. She was playing an extra in the background, so she was dressed in fairly nice clothes but nothing too extravagant. I, on the other hand, was wearing a purple gown that glittered with diamantes. My hair was curled up and pretty much sitting in a giant pile on top my head, held in place by some kind of black mesh net that sparkled with hidden jewels. I was wearing so much jewelry on both my arms it was a struggle to get them above my head, and as for my makeup, I was somewhere underneath it, probably about four or five inches down. I really did look incredible, though, kind of freakish but fairly beautiful.
Molly came walking out of costume with a giant smile on her face. I hadn’t seen her since yesterday, when Ollie had turned up at the house unannounced and told her they were going on a date and she had ten minutes to get ready. I hadn’t told him to do this as part of the date, but the man obviously knew what he was doing. Molly forgot all about being upset about the coffee machine and rushed around getting ready before he dragged her out the front door and away for the night. It looked to me like the date had obviously gone fairly well.
Molly walked over and looked me up and down, still smiling.
“You look freakishly beautiful,” she said and reached out to touch one of the gold bangles around my wrist.
“Oh, so you’re talking to me now?” I said, unable to help myself teasing her. Yes, there had been often periods where we would refuse to talk to each other, and you’d think that once you got over it and started talking again, you wouldn’t refer to it, but that’s not the Torrent witch way. First, you had to mercilessly tease your opponent for breaking out of silence.
“Oh, was I not talking to you?” Molly said innocently. She batted her eyelashes, which I noticed had been lengthened by the makeup artist.
“Did you have a good date last night?” I asked and raised an eyebrow.
“Such a good date,” Molly said and pressed her hands against her chest as though feeling her heartbeat.
“Is that Finley Watergate?” Luce blurted out, pointing across the other side of the set.
“That’s definitely him,” Aunt Cass said from behind us, causing me to nearly jump out of my skin.
“Aunt Cass!” I exclaimed. The sky above me rumbled as my shock traveled up and disturbed the weather.
“Stay calm. We don’t want another thunderstorm,” Aunt Cass quipped.
I turned back to look across the set where Finley Watergate, incredibly handsome male actor, was now talking to some random crew member.
“He is absolutely gorgeous,” Luce said, biting her lip.
“How is it possible for a man to even look like that?” Molly added.
“He’s a tall drink of water and I am thirsty,” Aunt Cass said, her eyes fixed on Finley.
“Aunt Cass!” we all exclaimed.
“What? You three all have boyfriends! I don’t, so I am free to look and enjoy,” she said. We all turned back to keep watching Finley. A scurrying assistant walking by him dropped a pencil which Finley bent over and picked up, the movement causing four witches to inhale sharply. Finley then said something to the random crew member, glanced over at us, winked and then walked off somewhere around the other side of the set.
“I’d like to dip him in chocolate and then—” Aunt Cass began.
“Aunt Cass!” the three of us exclaimed again.
We stood around chitchatting for a while as the slow mechanics of a film set moved around us. It wasn’t long before Molly and Luce were in place in the background, having a cup of coffee together, Aunt Cass was walking by, and I got to stand behind the counter and say, “It’s fabulous, darling” with a twinkle in my eye to the Bella stand-in.
Another thing you learn on film sets: most of the time the scenes are filmed in parts, and often actors you think are in the same space have never filmed a scene together. We didn’t get to see Cyro Nash. Instead, it was one of the second unit directors doing all this stuff, and after a few retakes and resets and filming again and again from different angles, we were done. We got out of our costumes, turned down the offer from the makeup team to wipe the makeup off (hey, I kind of wanted to look beautiful for a bit longer!), and then headed over to the catering tent, where there were large dishes of food available. It was just past lunchtime and all of us were starving. Down on one end there were two chefs working grills, cooking up steaks and sausages and omelets and anything else people wanted, made to order. We were standing down there talking about filming and half-teasing each other when Aunt Cass dropped the empty plate she had picked up. She must have cast a spell so quick that I hadn’t caught it, because her voice boomed out when she spoke.
“Tell everyone to get back! The propane tank is going to explode!”
There was sudden panic and chaos in the catering tent as everyone in there bolted. Every single person on the set was fully aware that sabotage had been occurring and that there had been two deaths. Someone shouting out that the propane tank was going to explode? No one took the time to figure out whether that was true or not – they just ran. In the chaos, I saw Aunt Cass thrust her hand towards the grills. I felt the magic surge around us and saw Aunt Cass gritting her teeth. She was pushing the three of us back with her other hand.
“We can help,” Molly said, clapping her hand on Aunt Cass’s shoulder.
I grabbed her arm and then I felt Luce grab my arm as well. We could instantly feel what Aunt Cass was doing. The tank was already in the process of exploding, and she was holding it back, stopping it until people could get clear. It felt like I was underneath the town hall again, trying to hold the giant ball of power and keep it from exploding. But it would take every bit of my energy to do so. We stumbled back out of there, practically the last to go, each of us lending our magical power to Aunt Cass. Then Luce tripped, I went down with her, so did Molly, and Aunt Cass landed on top of the three of us. The spell was broken and there was a gigantic explosion from inside the catering tent as the tank let go. I felt the shock of it hit us, but thankfully we were far enough away that none of us were harmed. We managed to scramble up off the ground and then we had to help Aunt Cass up. She’d practically exhausted herself holding the explosion back. Within a moment, Benton and his safety crew came rushing in with fire extinguishers to put out the grills, which were now ablaze.
We were standing there half in shock when Finley Watergate, handsome actor, appeared in front of us. He took Aunt Cass’s hand
and looked down into her eyes.
“You saved everyone. Are you okay?” he asked. Up close, he was simply mesmerizing. I had the urge to reach out to stroke his face to see if he was real. Aunt Cass looked up at him and I saw a smile cross her face that reminded me of my very sneaky cat.
“I’m a little in shock, perhaps a quick kiss on the cheek would make me feel better,” she said.
“Aunt Cass!”
Chapter 22
“I can’t believe my plan worked,” I said to Jack as we watched Sheriff Hardy and his men arrest one of the random electrical contractors on set. Jack turned to me and lowered his voice.
“I don’t know what plan you’re talking about. Clearly, putting up spy cameras all over a movie set would be highly illegal. It’s very good that someone did that and then anonymously sent the footage of the sabotage to Sheriff Hardy, but that person would be very foolish to reveal that they’d done such a thing because they could be in some serious legal trouble. So I’m going to assume the plan you’re talking about is the one that involves having a delicious dinner, right?” he said and then winked at me.
“Ah, right,” I said as the police marched the contractor away. “But quietly, it’s amazing, right?”
“It was an incredible break of good luck. These are the lucky breaks that cops dream of,” Jack agreed.
Jack had called me before I’d arrived on set for the day to tell me he had anonymously sent the video footage to Sheriff Hardy. One of his pinhole cameras had been set up in exactly the right position to see the electrician go into the catering area, sabotage the propane tanks and then sneak out again. Jack had sent it to Sheriff Hardy from an anonymous email account, and the sheriff had come to the set as soon as he had viewed it to arrest the electrician. I didn’t even know his name and honestly hadn’t even noticed him around the set. The idea that he had been the one to sabotage not only the grills but also the brakes on Kaylee’s car and the scuba gear was simply terrifying.
