by Tess Lake
“Maybe the thieves are lazy and keep all their stuff in the same place, and when we find Stefano we’ll find their coffee machine too,” I said.
“And maybe their coffee machine will disappear into a deep dark hole, sent there by persons unknown,” Molly said lightly.
“So you’re not going to return the coffee machine to them if we find it?” I asked.
“I don’t know! Stop asking me. I liked making lots of money, and while we had nothing to do with their coffee machine going missing, it’s not up to me to help our competitors,” Molly said.
“Everybody’s gone crazy,” Luce murmured. We reached the next splotch, which looked a bit more birdlike, and spent a few minutes looking around until we spotted another far in the distance. We took off toward it, the morning sun now at our backs, gently warming us.
“Speaking of crazy, Adams says Hattie Stern was in my office the other morning,” I said.
“Probably casting some crazy spell!” Luce said, jumping off into the deep end like I knew she would.
“I don’t think Hattie ever really casts spells. She prefers to keep her magic all bottled up inside her, where it can turn sour and bitter like those lemons,” Molly said.
I’d kept the fact Hattie had given Ollie a magical and most likely fake journal to myself. The debate had gone like this:
Tell Molly about it and have her go six kinds of crazy.
Don’t tell her about it. Maybe Ollie retracts his article about Juliet Stern running a house of pleasure, and Molly doesn’t go crazy.
Although lying came as second nature to a Torrent witch, I certainly wasn’t feeling comfortable with my decision not to tell her. If someone tried to cast a spell on Jack, I’d want to know. But for right now, I needed my cousins focused, and while it was one thing to be plotting revenge against Aunt Cass or sneaking around places, it was quite another to go up against Hattie Stern, who I suspected was far more powerful than any of us knew.
We spent the next hour crossing fields, following white bird-shaped splotches and discussing everything under the sun, from why Hattie had been in my office to when we might have to tell our boyfriends the big SECRET, until we came to a large, empty, open grassy area. The bird on the final tree had a large X carved underneath it, which we took to mean this was the end. Checking the leather map against the modern map showed that we were probably in the right spot. But there was nothing here—just grass and sunshine and a few butterflies. It was quite lovely, but hardly the result we wanted after following a secret map out to an island.
We started walking around, looking for anything that might be out of place, and then, Luce vanished.
There one moment, gone the next.
“Luce! Where did you go!” I yelled out, feeling a sudden shock of cold ripple over me as my adrenaline went into overdrive.
“Ah, I’m right here, and so is this crazy big house,” Luce said.
“You vanished. Can you come back?” Molly called out.
Luce appeared a moment later, her foot stepping backwards out of nothing, as though she was walking through some kind of invisible curtain.
“You guys need to come here right now,” Luce said. Her face was markedly pale.
We rushed over to Luce and she grabbed us by the hands and pulled us through the invisible curtain. I know that from the perspective of anyone watching, the three of us would have simply disappeared. But from our perspective, a gigantic mansion suddenly appeared in front of us.
“Tell me that is not almost an exact replica of the Torrent Mansion,” Luce said.
“It absolutely is,” Molly said.
“Looks like it’s in much better condition, though,” I said.
At first glance you would have thought you were standing out in front of the Torrent Mansion, but the longer we looked, the more the small differences appeared. The windows were smaller and there were fewer of them. Some of the edges of the roof appeared sharper and wider, and in general some of the dimensions were slightly off, giving the mansion a somewhat more stretched-out feeling.
“Can you imagine how much power it would take to keep a concealment spell like this going?” I asked, looking down the mansion to the same location where our so-called east wing would be back at home.
“It would need some scarily powerful witch,” Luce said.
I’d taken a few steps toward the mansion before I realized it, and it was only when Molly and Luce both grabbed me on the shoulders that I snapped out of the slight daze that had come over me.
“Are you crazy! This is exactly the kind of thing our mothers said for us not to be doing!” Luce said.
“I didn’t go underneath the mansion and have you nearly fall through a hole and have a diary disintegrate in my hands just so I could come out here and turn around and go home. Besides, for all we know, if we leave we might never find this place again,” I said.
Both Luce and I turned to Molly as though she was the judge and had to decide the case of “should we enter the mansion or should we run away home?”
She bit her lip and looked at the mansion again, a slight frown creasing her brow.
“It doesn’t feel dangerous to me,” Molly said.
“Yes! In we go!” I said in triumph.
“Okay, but don’t blame me if we fall into some kind of creepy underground lair where all of the witch’s victims are frozen in some kind of icky amber, just living out the rest of their lives,” Luce said, throwing up her hands.
With that, we headed toward the front door and I opened it. All three of us were on high alert for any magic, but I don’t think any of us expected the feeling when we opened the door.
It was like… home. Not home where you live and sleep, make food and have showers, but the emotional feeling of it. The place where you’re safe, the place where you’re loved, the place where you can take off the armor that surrounds you out in the world and leave your troubles at the door.
All three of us sighed in relief and we stepped over the threshold.
“Wow, it feels really nice in here,” Molly said.
“I love it,” Luce added.
“Yeah, it’s…” I started before some small voice flared up in the back of my mind.
It’s a spell! Don’t get tricked it’s a spell! I heard the small voice whisper, and for a moment a small flicker of fear gripped my heart, but then an instant later it was gone. I was just here at this lovely mansion to have a look around to see what I could find.
“Obviously the same architect as Torrent Mansion,” Molly said in a sort of dreamy voice.
We walked in through the entrance way. Again, the resemblance to Torrent Mansion was striking. I was almost sure if I closed my eyes I’d be able to navigate this secret mansion without any problem. Although the building was quite similar, the furnishings definitely weren’t. For starters, there were hardly any of them. Just a table here and there and a few handmade chairs. All those little cute touches that you can buy in the big box stores were missing. No doilies, no little vases, no picture frames. No one had been living in this house for more than a hundred years. We made our way through the entrance into a large dining room, where we found plates and cups set out ready to serve dinner for three.
“That’s a little creepy,” Luce commented and then clapped her hand over her mouth as though she couldn’t believe she’d said such a thing.
We moved on around past the dining table, and over near the door that led, I presumed, to the kitchen was a large bright red cotton bag bulging with food. I knelt down and opened the top. Inside there were what appeared to be sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, some apples, and two bottles of what looked like homemade white wine.
“This is super creepy,” Molly said and then she frowned as if she’d only just heard the words coming out of her own mouth. I left the food where it was and stood up. I had a slight feeling of unease in my stomach, and the longer I stood there, the more it grew. But rather than run out, I wanted to see what else was in the mansion.
> “Let’s keep looking,” I said and pushed through the kitchen doors. It was here that the difference between the mansions was the most extreme. The kitchen we entered was much larger than ours and obviously didn’t have any modern appliances. We made our way through and out the other side, which opened up into a large hallway with a set of stairs going up and a set of stairs going down. There was a definite feeling of age, but everything was still preserved despite the fact that such a place should have been practically rotting to the ground if it had been left empty for all these years.
“Maybe we should go down the stairs,” Luce murmured, taking two steps in that direction. I looked at her and for an instant saw streaks of red light around her head as though she was wearing a crown made of rubies. I blinked and then looked at Molly and saw the same thing. That small flicker of fear, that tiny voice, roared like a lion.
“We’re under a spell! We have to get out of here!” I yelled.
I grabbed Molly and Luce and hauled them with me, running away from the stairs that descended into the black. They protested behind me that they wanted to go down there, and even as I ran I felt like stopping. After all, what was the worst that could happen? This place felt amazing.
Honestly, I don’t know what would have happened if we’d even gone another step closer to those stairs. The yelling inside me had propelled me like a rocket, and I dragged my two cousins with me back out through the kitchen, through the dining room with the creepy bag of food and the meal set out for three, into the entranceway and out the door.
Crossing the entrance was like pushing through a soap bubble that didn’t want to give way. I felt a final pull from behind me and then I was outside, dragging Molly and Luce out with me. The three of us stumbled and went down on the ground, but we were quickly to our feet.
“We have to get out of here right now!” Molly said, her face white.
“I told you! I told you it was some kind of creepy murder trap thing!” Luce said, pointing a finger at me.
“Okay, okay, you were right!” I said.
We rushed away from the mansion, and it wasn’t long before we were standing in the empty field, the sun shining down and birds twittering above us, looking back at nothing and feeling absolutely terrified.
“I don’t want to have to say this ever again, and if you tell them I’m going to curse both of you, but the moms were right,” Molly said, gasping with her hands on her knees.
I pulled the map out of my pocket and glared at it as though it had tricked me. It still looked the same as before, with the inscription to find the tree of love and then follow the birds.
“So what is this? Some kind of creepy witch death thing like a trap a spider would set?” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. We’re way out of our depth, and I hate to say this, but we need to tell the moms and Aunt Cass,” Luce said, looking fearfully back at nothing.
I agreed with the general sentiment, but at the same time I had a nagging feeling that something odd was happening. Well, odder than what had already just happened. I stuffed the map back in my pocket and walked back toward where the invisible curtain separated the world from the strange duplicate of our mansion.
“What are you doing, Harlow Torrent?” Molly wailed.
“Give me a second,” I said and waved my hand at her. I walked forward with my arm out, waiting to see it disappear from view, but as I suspected, it didn’t happen. Soon I was definitely past where the barrier should have been. I was standing in the midst of the sunny green field, listening to the distant sounds of the birds above.
“Okay, so the super creepy murder house has some kind of extra super creepy spell on it that now you can’t find it. Let’s get out of here,” Luce said and marched away.
I jogged back across the field to join my cousins so we could follow the splotches of white birds on the trunks back to the ferry. Before the giant empty field was out of sight, I glanced back over my shoulder, and I swear for a moment I saw a ripple across the sky as though there was an invisible curtain separating this reality from that one. Despite the warmth of the day, I shivered.
Chapter 17
“So is your office, like, cursed?” Luce said when I opened the door to Traveler, moving her dog down the board to visit Molly’s iron in jail.
“Who cursed your office?” Kira asked, counting through a stack of money.
“Your grandma was in Harlow’s office the other day when she wasn’t there, and we don’t know why,” Molly said.
“Wow, really? Ha. So did she curse you?” Kira asked, seemingly unperturbed about this piece of information.
“I don’t think my office is cursed,” I said and let the front door to Traveler close behind me, the small bell above it jingling.
It had been with some trepidation that I had gone to my office that morning not sure what I would find or if I would find anything at all. There are spells that can detect other spells, and I know a few of them—well, I know one of them, sort of—but when I cast one outside my office, I hadn’t sensed anything at all. Not that I took that to mean anything. After the experience with the disappearing and reappearing creepy mansion, I was very aware that there was some magic that was far more powerful than I was. So I had gotten to my office, found it was empty, and after a while concluded that either Hattie had cast a spell so powerful I couldn’t detect it or she’d been up there for some other reason. I’d spent the morning writing some articles for the Harlot Bay Reader and doing a bit of research on the names of the three original victims forty years ago, which hadn’t really led anywhere, before deciding to come over to Traveler for lunch. This was where I’d found Molly, Luce and Kira playing Monopoly, quite comfortable in the idea that no customers would be entering to disturb their game.
“Speaking of your grandma, why you think she was in my office?” I asked Kira.
I sat beside Molly, who had now paid her way out of jail and was making her way toward a strip of properties that were loaded up with hotels.
“My grandmother has secrets. I don’t mean like little secrets, but like big secrets. Like, enough secrets to fill a house and every cupboard and every drawer. I can look into it if you want,” Kira said. Molly avoided landing on the hotels and breathed a sigh of relief.
“I’ll see you next time at Hotel Kira,” Kira said to her.
“Okay, but don’t let her know you’re looking into her. Actually, I changed my mind. Don’t worry about it. I don’t want to get you in trouble,” I said.
“Moi? In trouble? Whoever heard of such a thing? After all, it wasn’t I who was caught out at an underage teenage party, but rather the three Torrent witches.”
“Where did you, like, go that night anyway?” Luce asked.
“Can’t tell you, sorry. I was off investigating for me and C-Money,” Kira said.
“You should leave C-Money and come with us. We’re way cooler,” Molly said.
“I guess you have been in prison a couple of times, and you are an iron,” Kira mused.
I couldn’t help but laugh at this. No wonder Luce had been talking with like spread through her sentences like confetti. There was something about Kira that was infectious.
“Oh, that reminds me, well done on stealing the tracking crystals,” Kira said and then gave me a wink.
“I didn’t steal the tracking crystals!”
“Oh no, of course you didn’t,” Kira said and then gave me another gigantic wink.
“I’m serious. I absolutely did not touch your tracking crystals.”
Kira did that my-lips-are-sealed, throwing-away-the-key motion and then tapped the side of her nose.
“Kira, I’m telling the truth. I did not take the tracking crystals, for real,” I said, adding a bit of teenage lingo.
“Seriously? You really didn’t take them?” Kira said with a frown.
“Ah, durr,” I said.
“Huh, weird. I wonder who took them, then?” Kira said.
“Do you have any more?” I asked.
“It crossed my mind, but I’m not sure I’m going to do anything about it,” I said.
After going out to the creepy spiderweb honey trap house or whatever it was, the three of us had decided to keep that particular expedition to ourselves. We weren’t going out there again, and despite the fact we knew it was dangerous, there was no way we were going to reveal to the moms that we’d put ourselves into such danger so soon after they’d spent at least two days yelling at us. We weren’t going to keep that secret forever, but rather hold it back until they calmed down and then find a good moment to bring it up. Although Molly had argued that we should tell them right away, going on the idea that when you’re in trouble you may as well confess everything because you can’t really get in any more trouble, can you?
“So did you find anything out about those kids?” Kira asked, collecting a few hundred from Luce, who had landed on one of her lesser-developed properties.
“Never should have traded that to you,” Luce muttered under her breath.
“Not really. They have all that social media stuff locked down tighter than a drum. I was hoping maybe you could help me investigate them.”
“Or maybe I’m already investigating them,” Kira said mysteriously, or at least attempted to. A wriggling of the eyebrows really ruined the effect.
Before I could get into it more with her, Carter Wilkins came barreling through the front door of Traveler and then stopped short by the side of the table when he saw we were all sitting there with a Monopoly board in front of us. His glare took in me, Molly and Luce.
“There’s going to be a vote on the free rent program and whether it should continue, and here you are playing Monopoly in a free-rent building? Do you know what Coldwell would do with this information?” he said.
“Tell everyone we were playing Monopoly because there’s no business at this time of year, to absolutely no one’s shock whatsoever,” Lucy said to him in a mocking tone.
