by Tess Lake
“Chili sauce problems?” I asked.
Aunt Cass turned towards me with a frown on her face.
“Do you ever think that maybe our entire family is cursed? So many things go wrong or fail. Surely it can’t all be a coincidence.”
“I don’t know. Isn’t it the magic in this area that causes problems sometimes?”
Aunt Cass made a grunting noise and started flexing her fingers as though warming them up for a piano recital.
“What leads do you have on discovering what Matterhorn is tied to?” she asked.
I’d told her about the thief a few days ago, but she’d been busy and seemingly not very much interested at the time.
“It’s still pretty much the same – I’m going to follow the guy who stole the shirts, who apparently drives that blue car, and see if he stole anything else from Mattias’s trailer. Mattias said he read the script a lot of times, and being that he was an actor, I’m guessing maybe he’s tied to that? But I don’t know, maybe he’s tied to his favorite pair of underwear or something.”
“If he wasn’t a ghost, I’d squeeze his fat neck until his head popped right off,” Aunt Cass said, flexing her fingers.
I’d seen Aunt Cass angry before, and of course I’d seen her crotchety. But usually she was far more lighthearted in her sarcasm. There was no humor in what she was saying now. She sounded like she really wanted to murder Mattias Matterhorn, and if anyone could figure out a way to murder a ghost, it would be Aunt Cass. I wondered what had happened. But what was I going to do? Tell her not to come with me? I didn’t have much hope of that plan succeeding.
“Don’t do anything crazy. I don’t need the stress,” I said. Aunt Cass pointed up to the sky, where storm clouds were slowly moving above Harlot Bay. Like me, she could feel the magic was disturbed and traced the cause of it down to me.
“I’ve been thinking that you need to get more stressed, whip up the greatest storm we’ve ever seen, and then maybe that’ll break it,” she said.
“Sounds dangerous. What if someone is killed in the storm?”
“I can control it.”
We sat there in silence for a few minutes while I mused over this new idea. So far my approach to dealing with my slip witch powers was generally try to stay calm and then try to exhaust my magic in other ways, such as boiling ponds out behind the mansion and floating heavy rocks around. The problem was, these approaches weren’t working and whatever this slip witch power was, it was getting stronger by the day. Thus far, the only thing really helping was seeing Jack every night and while I loved that solution, it still wasn’t enough.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, my eyes on a blond man dressed in black who’d appeared on the edge of the parking lot. I’d only caught a brief glimpse of the man who’d opened Mattias’s closet, and in my shocked state, trying to maintain my concealment spell, I wasn’t sure I would remember his face. But as soon as I saw him on the edge of the parking lot, I knew it was him. He came walking over to his car carrying a small box under his arm, which he carefully placed inside before getting in and starting the engine.
“That’s the rat,” Aunt Cass said, pointing her finger at him.
“I know,” I whispered back for no good reason.
He drove out of the parking lot and we followed. It was fall and we were heading towards winter, so the number of tourists out on the streets was decreasing by the day. There were still enough, however, to slow down traffic as we drove into town and out the other side. We eventually ended up in what I would probably call middle Harlot Bay. Not rich, not poor – just the middle. Nice houses with a few apartments sprinkled amongst them.
“I still have some of that truth serum if you want to use it on him,” Aunt Cass said, pulling a small bottle from a pocket somewhere.
“How exactly are we supposed to get him to drink it?”
“We tie him to a chair, open his mouth and make him drink it. Then we ask him questions, duh,” Aunt Cass said.
It had been some time since Kira, the teenage queen of sarcasm, had been living with us, but from time to time Aunt Cass still channeled her.
“Oh, good, I was worried it was going to be something illegal,” I said. We followed the blue car around the corner until it turned into a driveway and parked. We stopped down the street and watched the man get out of the car and carry the box inside a house.
“Do they rent a whole house for that guy?” Aunt Cass said.
“Movie people have more money than sense,” I said.
It was a good thing they had more money than sense, because all the cash flowing into the Harlot Bay economy was sorely needed. The movie producers had rented many houses throughout town. In most cases there was only one crew member living in them.
I was sitting there looking at the house and working my way through a plan when a sleek black Mercedes drove onto the street and pulled up into the same driveway. The door opened and a pair of impossibly long legs emerged.
“Is that Mattias’s wife?” Aunt Cass asked.
“Liberty? I think so,” I said. The woman who got out of the car was tall and had on a short dress that left very little to the imagination. She was wearing high heels that you would break your neck if you fell off, and even from a distance I could see the shimmer of jewelry around her wrists and neck. She closed the car door and tottered up to the house. The man we’d been following opened it and she walked inside, embracing him before the door shut.
“They must’ve done it. He murdered Matterhorn and she put him up to it. Then they robbed his trailer for everything he had to get his money,” Aunt Cass said.
“But she was already wealthy. He was worth more than a hundred million dollars. How much could a stolen shirt get, anyway?”
“There’s only one way to find out. Let’s go,” Aunt Cass said and jumped out of the car before I could answer. She was off down the street by the time I got out of the car, so I had to race after her.
“Wait! I can’t do a concealment spell anymore,” I called out to her in a hiss, trying not to attract any attention.
Aunt Cass whirled on the spot and I nearly ran into her.
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“I didn’t know it was relevant.”
“So that’s why the diarrhea spell was so powerful, huh?” she said.
“I don’t know why it was so powerful. Do you know why?”
Aunt Cass looked back over her shoulder at the house and then turned back to me.
“I’ll tell you some other time, but for now, let me handle the magic,” she said.
With that she took off again, heading to the house, me trailing along behind her unwillingly.
Once Aunt Cass reached the cars, she ducked down and I followed suit. We crept up beside the cars, shielding ourselves from view, and then she zipped across to the house underneath a side window. I followed as fast as I could, my heart seeming to thud louder in my chest and my breath rasping in my ears.
“If I’d known we were going to be breaking and entering, I would’ve worn better shoes today,” I whispered to Aunt Cass.
“Always be prepared,” Aunt Cass said and pointed down at her own feet. I noticed she was wearing a pair of black sneakers.
“Do you seriously go around being prepared for crime?” I whispered.
Aunt Cass shrugged and then reached into the waistband of her pants and pulled out a small crowbar. As I tried to digest this scene, she slipped it into the window and levered it up until there was enough room for her to get her fingers under it.
I could hear voices coming from the other side of the house, but it was pure madness that we were breaking in here when people were so close. All it would take would be for them to walk around the corner and they’d spot us!
This didn’t stop Aunt Cass, though. She slipped the small crowbar back into her waistband and then she was in through the window like a silvery fish slipping through the water. I seriously debated sneaking away and going back to my car at that poin
t, telling myself that Aunt Cass could certainly handle whatever happened in there. But then, after her tie him to a chair and make him answer our questions bit, I wasn’t sure that Mattias’s widow and the thief could handle whatever Aunt Cass might want to do to them. So I followed. I pulled myself in through the window and managed to get inside without making too much noise. Aunt Cass was already standing against the wall across the room, listening intently. We were in a living room furnished with a dark brown sofa, a bookshelf, a lamp, a television, and some other bits and pieces. I crept across to join her. As soon as I stepped closer to Aunt Cass, I almost started aloud when the sound of voices magnified. She had cast a spell so she could hear them better.
“Babe, it’s fine. I’m doing the bidding under fake names so I can push the price up. It’s absolutely going to be worth it,” the man said.
“I really need it to be done soon, Tyson. I don’t want to be next,” Liberty said.
So his first name was Tyson, I’d have to remember that.
“The market’s going crazy since he died. I think I can clear us at least fifty thousand,” Tyson said.
I heard Liberty sigh and then the abnormally loud sound of her heels clacking across a wood floor.
“Okay, I trust you,” she said.
“You do?”
Tyson’s voice turned playful.
“You trust me? What if I did this?” he said. Liberty giggled and then squealed.
“Stop it! Stop it!” Liberty said, clearly meaning the exact opposite. There was a sudden clatter as she ran from wherever she was down a corridor and he followed, both of them laughing. A bedroom door slammed at the other end of the house and then there was the unmistakable sound of two people falling onto a bed. The laughing turned to a whisper and then Liberty let out a small moan.
“That’s enough, don’t you think?” I whispered to Aunt Cass.
“I want to hear what moves he has,” Aunt Cass said before shrugging and wiping the spell away.
“While they’re busy, let’s see if we can find the script or anything else Mattias owned,” I said.
Even with the sound amplification spell gone, we could still hear Tyson and Liberty in the bedroom as we searched the house. Let’s say they were having a very good and noisy time. We made our way to the other side of the house and found a large kitchen. The box Tyson had been carrying was sitting on the kitchen table. I opened it and found some more of the props from the film set stored in there. There was a toupee, another shirt, and at the bottom, a pair of brown shoes that Mattias had worn on set.
“Let’s take it with us,” Aunt Cass instructed. We went as quickly and quietly as we could through the house but didn’t find anything until we went into the second bedroom, which was alarmingly close to the master bedroom. In there it was like we’d hit the Mattias Matterhorn jackpot. His copy of the script was sitting in plain view on top of a small single bed. Practically every bit of clothing he owned must’ve been hanging up in the closet there along with shoes, a watch, pairs of socks, a few more toupees, even mundane items like his toothbrush. Many of the items were sealed in plastic bags, and someone had affixed a white sticker to them and written some kind of reference number on them. I opened the top of the small box, and Aunt Cass dropped in the script and then started grabbing everything she could that would fit. We managed to jam a fair bit into the box when we both became aware that the sounds from the master bedroom had stopped.
“We have to get out of here,” I whispered to Aunt Cass, my voice sounding unnaturally loud in the small room.
“Okay, fine,” Aunt Cass said. But it was too late. We heard footsteps in the main bedroom and we were standing right there in plain view. Aunt Cass pushed me up against the wall and cast a concealment spell as Tyson came rushing out of the bedroom and walked into where we were hiding.
He looked around in disbelief at the mess we’d made.
“Babe! Someone robbed us!” he called out.
In his rush out of the bedroom, Tyson hadn’t bothered to get dressed, so we were pressed up against the wall, staring at his very white backside. He also had a tattoo of a Chinese dragon on his left shoulder.
There was another thud of footsteps, and then a very naked Liberty walked into the room also. As a former stripper, she’d had certain cosmetic enhancements done to her body. She didn’t need any undergarments to hold things where they were meant to be.
“It was Peter! I knew we shouldn’t have trusted him,” she said and stamped her foot on the floor.
“But he was with me,” Tyson said, sounding somewhat still shocked.
“Let’s go. I’m going to kill that thief,” Liberty snarled and pulled Tyson from the room. I glanced down at Aunt Cass, who was standing beside me with her eyes closed, softly breathing in and out. I could see the strain of maintaining the concealment spell was wearing on her, but unfortunately I could do little to help. The last test I’d done had almost pushed me into unconsciousness instantly. I certainly didn’t want to collapse on the floor of this house and possibly be discovered by Tyson and Liberty, especially with a box full of stolen possessions. Thankfully they both got dressed with record speed, and soon we heard the front door slam and a car start up. It was only when we heard it squeal away down the street that Aunt Cass finally let the concealment spell go.
She bent over and put her hands against her knees, taking in deep breaths.
“That was too close,” I said, trying to catch my breath also. I think I’d almost been holding it the entire time.
“Did you… did you…” Aunt Cass gasped, trying to get her words out. She stood up and inhaled deeply, finally catching her breath.
“Did you see how perky everything was on that girl? She must be ninety-eight percent silicone,” Aunt Cass finally said.
After a close call like that, I felt like I’d never be calm again, but she caught me by such surprise that I laughed out loud and then couldn’t stop.
Soon both of us were laughing like maniacs, letting out the tension of almost being caught. Once we recovered, Aunt Cass waved her hand at the rest of Mattias’s stuff that Tyson and Liberty had left behind.
“We gotta find another box so we can take all this too,” she said.
Chapter 15
We got about five miles out of town before Mattias appeared in the backseat next to his recovered stolen property.
“Stop this immediately,” he boomed in his finest imperialist voice. I stopped and then turned the car around before parking it on the side of the road.
Aunt Cass turned around in her seat and pointed her finger at Mattias. Today he was again dressed as some kind a military commander.
“We’ve recovered whatever it is you’re tied to, so from now on you’re going to do what we say, capiche?” Aunt Cass said.
Mattias scowled at her, but then rapidly aged backwards until he was that handsome loincloth-clad twenty-something-year-old with a perfect body. He was a ghost, and they are mostly see-through, but he seemed quite solid. I could only faintly see the backseat through him. He looked at Aunt Cass and gave her a wink.
“Why are you so angry, baby?” he said.
“We’re serious,” Aunt Cass said, but I couldn’t help notice that she did look him up and down as well.
“Why don’t you use that magic to make me solid for a night?” Mattias said. Aunt Cass glanced at me and I saw a flash of a guilty look on her face. It was gone in an instant as she recovered.
“You obey or all of this gets tossed in the ocean,” she said.
“Fine.”
Then Mattias looked to me and aged again until he was the military-dressed fifty-year-old.
“Have you found my murderer yet? Was it that thief?” he asked, sounding more like he was making a demand.
“We recovered most of the stuff he stole from you, we think. We’re also, um, following up on other leads,” I said, skating over the fact that his widow was having an affair with the thief who had stolen all of his possessions.
But Mattias obviously realized that I was hiding something.
“What do you know? Tell me!” he said. The temperature in the car dropped a couple of degrees in an instant.
“Calm down, Matterhorn, or there will be consequences,” Aunt Cass said in a level tone.
He looked across at her as she picked up a toothbrush in its plastic bag from the backseat and waved it at him.
He sat back in the seat, and the anger left his face like it had never been there. The temperature in the car came back up immediately.
“What I mean to say is, can you please tell me what you found?” he said in a much more polite tone.
I looked at Aunt Cass, but she didn’t look at me or give me any help whatsoever. Should I tell him that his widow was clearly having a relationship with the thief who stole his things?
“Do you know someone named Tyson?” I asked. Mattias thought for a moment but then shook his head.
“Maybe, I don’t know. Possibly one of my wife’s dogs or something. I think I heard her mention that name once.”
Aunt Cass snorted in laughter and Mattias immediately fixed his gaze on her, that frown firmly back in place.
“Explain yourself,” he said, clearly holding himself back from yelling.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.
“Your wife, Liberty, has a lover named Tyson. He’s the one that stole your stuff,” Aunt Cass said.
“What?”
In an instant Mattias was thirty years old, dressed in his action-adventure outfit that included a ghostly gun sitting on his belt. He pulled it out and checked the chamber had bullets in it, spinning it before clicking it back into place.
“How can you be sure?” he said.
“We were at his house. She was there and then they went into the bedroom and then complications ensued,” Aunt Cass said.
“Are you definitely sure?” Mattias repeated.
“One hundred percent. They were definitely going to the well to get a bucket of water,” Aunt Cass said.
