Work Like a Charm

by Cate Martin

  "Good idea," Sophie said, rising up to her feet like some giant pulled up on an invisible thread on the top of her head.

  "Wait," Brianna said, not looking up at us as she scribbled more notes in her book. We waited. "What about Cora?" she asked as she put the book away.

  "What about her?" I asked as we walked together back to the porch.

  "We can't just let her get away with it," Brianna said.

  "As far as I can tell, all she did was take her daughter's hat pin then return it later," I said. "I'm not convinced she even knew why. She was just doing what that crystal ball told her to do."

  "That ball had power in the past," Sophie said. "But when Brianna and I looked at it here: nothing."

  "That is weird," I said. Then Brianna exclaimed aloud, slapping her own forehead.

  "What?" Sophie asked.

  "It was never from the ball," Brianna said. "I ran so many tests, but I just wasn't thinking."

  "What are you talking about, Bree?" Sophie asked again.

  "Um, I tried to trigger the ball again," Brianna said. "Yesterday, while you both were sleeping. But it wouldn't do anything. I thought maybe it was just me; it didn't care about me. But it hated you, Amanda. And yet it never attacked you at Mina's house, did it? That was all Mina."

  "I thought Mina was the ball," Sophie said.

  "Yes, but all she can do is whisper," Brianna said. "She creeped Cora out, and she bonded in a really creepy way with her own self, but what about Margery?"

  "She scared Margery," I said.

  "Margery, who knew her mother was a fraud, but who also knew in a deep down to the bone way that magic was nevertheless real."

  "You mean all that back in the house was Margery?" I asked.

  "Margery was terrified," Sophie said.

  "Yes, she was," Brianna said. "She had no training. She didn't know what she was doing. I don't think she even knew she was doing it."

  We all fell silent. Then we went into the house to the waiting pot of coffee.

  "Do we need to do something about that?" I wondered.

  "I don't think so," Brianna said. "Cora fears that ball. After what happened, she's going to find a better way to hide that thing, to keep it quiet and secure. I mean, we sort of know she did, don't we?"

  "If anything had happened like what we saw another time, there'd be stories," I agreed.

  "But what about Cora?" Sophie asked. "Do we just let that go? Maybe she didn't know what she was doing moving that hat pin around, but maybe she did. Maybe she knew she was an accomplice to murder, even framing her own daughter for it."

  "Maybe she didn't," Brianna said.

  "Why put the pin back though?" I pondered. "Was the ball commanding Mina and Cora just to frame Margery?"

  "No," Sophie said. "It knew we would find it. It was using the pin to lure us there."

  "Why?" Brianna asked.

  "Because the ball was just whispers, and Mina as a human had no power, but Margery did," I said.

  "Mina and the ball couldn't destroy us, but Margery very nearly did," Sophie said. "But she didn't mean to. I definitely never sensed an ill intent."

  "No, she can't control what she does," I agree. "And we know from what Mina told us about her childhood that Margery never used that power. I think the best thing we can do is not meddle and let Margery take care of herself."

  "If only there were a witches' council," Brianna said glumly. "Advice would be so fantastic right now."

  "But there's still the matter of Cora. Maybe she didn't mean to set her own daughter up to take the rap for a murder, or to bring us to her with the intent of her murdering us all. But what's not a maybe is that Cora was using people's personal information to rip them off," Sophie said. "Are we going to do anything about that?"

  "It's really more of a legal matter than a witch one," Brianna said. "Maybe we should meddle."

  "No, we should totally meddle," I said.

  "Not confrontationally," Sophie quickly added, although if there was a girl always ready for a confrontation, it was Sophie. "In fact, I have the perfect idea."

  Chapter 25

  I was fussing with my dress again, I admit it, but Sophie didn't have to slap my hand so hard.

  "Hey," I said, cradling my stinging hand.

  "Leave it alone," she said in a very motherly tone. "Honestly, you look great."

  "If you say so," I said, but I wasn't being entirely fair. Sophie had planted me in front of a mirror after she had finished dressing me and doing my hair, and even I had to admit I had never looked so good. She had the same magic touch with my hair that she had with her own little patch of curls that always perfectly framed her face.

  Okay, maybe that wasn't strictly speaking magic. But it was certainly a thing I knew I could never be taught. She had gotten my cowlick to cooperate without even beating it into submission first, sweeping my hair back and holding it in place with a band that had a peacock feather that curled just so around my ear.

  Clearly, if I didn't leave everything just the way she'd done it, I'd ruin everything. I clasped my hands together and promised I'd be good.

  "So this is the last of them?" Brianna asked as she peered into milk crates filled with packages all wrapped, sealed, and addressed.

  "It's the last of them," Sophie said. "That's why we're celebrating. It's taken days for Margery and me to compile this all together."

  "And a small fortune in gin to keep Cora out of Margery's hair," Otto said as he came into the room. We were in his lair under the former beer hall. I didn't know what he and Sophie had planned for our little impromptu celebration, but I really hoped it wasn't going to be happening upstairs. That seemed like a rough crowd in the middle of the day; I'd hate to see what they got up to after dark.

  "And the crystal ball stopped whispering to her?" I asked after Otto had picked up an armful of packages and gone back out of the cellar.

  "Yes," Sophie said.

  "I told you when I put it in the safe box under ward, it lost its power in every point of time," Brianna said.

  I held up a hand. "Please don't try to explain that to me again. I just get confused."

  "You only have to remember that since we did the spell we're considered the prime timeline-" Brianna started to say but gave up as both Sophie and I roared our protests over her.

  "Please," I said, laughing. "It's not going to make more sense on the hundredth try. Margery is safe; that's all I need to know."

  "And you look good," Sophie said. "Tell her that too."

  "You look great, Brianna," I said, and she flushed in maximum introvert discomfort. Sophie had insisted on dressing her up too, in a shade of emerald green that made her hair look like the brightest red-gold imaginable. And she did a much better job than I did with not fussing with the frippery.

  "Last batch?" Edward as he walked up to the table and picked up the last of the milk crates.

  "Last batch," Sophie confirmed after a quick look around.

  "Great. Otto is going to have Benny bring the car around, but he's got something to get the party started here first." Then he winked at me and headed back up the stairs.

  "He likes you," Brianna said in her usual just stating facts voice.

  "Nonsense," I said. "He's looking to marry Coco's sister Ivy."

  "He's looking to marry up," Sophie said wryly. "He's not given it anything like the correct amount of thought, including the fact that's he's already on his way up on his own if he'd just look around and appreciate it. Plus. You are most definitely up. And he does like you."

  "I think the ninety years between us are going to be a problem," I said, then looked around for anything at all to change the subject. "Is this really going to work?"

  "My master plan?" Sophie asked. "You're questioning my master plan?"

  "Well," I said.

  "It won't work with everyone," Brianna said. "Even with every scrap of evidence returned to them, every purloined and copied letter, every overheard scrap of gossip reported to them, so
me still won't believe that Cora really intended ill."

  "Being a medium is terribly hard work, you know," Sophie said saracastically. "Sometimes the spirits need assistance. Hints. Just to get them started. It doesn't mean that it isn't all true."

  "Some will never change their minds," Brianna said. "But enough will. Maybe enough for her to have to pack up and head further west. Poor Margery."

  "Not just Margery," I said. "I see a lot of household servants about to get sacked."

  "It's a dying profession anyway," Sophie said, but I could tell that was the only part of the plan that wasn't sitting entirely comfortably with her. Just as I had, she found a way to change the subject. "What are we going to do about Miss Zenobia and her sister?"

  "I've searched and searched, but if Miss Zenobia kept anything like a diary, there's no sign of it," Brianna said.

  "It would be nice to talk to her again," I said.

  "Not possible," Brianna said.

  "I know, you said," I sighed. "It would just make everything so much easier if we could just ask."

  "Who's to say if we could that she wouldn't just lie?" Sophie asked. "She wasn't entirely truthful before, it seems."

  "Maybe I can find things written about her by other people. Get a picture of things that way," Brianna said.

  "We can always talk to Juno, for what that's worth," I said. "Although I think she lied more than Miss Zenobia did."

  "Without any sense of what's true, we have no way of knowing," Sophie said.

  "Are we pawns? Like Cora said?" Brianna asked.

  Sophie groaned aloud. "Cora was messing with us to put us off our game and elevate her own position. Nothing she said meant anything."

  But I shared Brianna's worry. If we were pawns in a battle that Miss Zenobia had started with her sister, and she had left us behind to keep her sister bound for all time… what was the correct thing to do?

  "I don't know if we can tell who's right and who's wrong between the two of them," I said. "I suspect there was right and wrong on both sides."

  "Probably not in equal measure," Sophie pointed out.

  "No, likely not," I agreed. "Still, I think we can agree on one thing."

  "What's that?" Brianna asked.

  "If we can't rely on the generation who came before us, we can only rely on ourselves. Ourselves, and each other," I said.

  "I'll drink to that," Sophie said, looking around for something to drink.

  As if summoned by her words, Edward and Otto came through the doorway together, Otto with a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice in his arms and Edward with fluted glasses laced between his fingers.

  "You know, I really should move to some nicer digs, don't you think?" Otto said, looking up at the cobwebs hanging from the beer-stained rafters.

  "Something above ground, maybe?" Sophie suggested.

  "Now, let's not get crazy here," Otto said, pulling the champagne out of the bucket and popping the cork.

  "Just a little taste to get the evening started," Otto said as he filled the glasses. "Then we're crossing the river. There's a terrific new band playing at the Wabasha Street Speakeasy. You're going to love it."

  I took a sip of champagne, which promptly went straight up my nose. But I didn't even mind. I was wearing a gorgeous dress, my hair looked good just for once, and I was going out to hear real Jazz Age jazz with a - let's face it - bootlegging gangster and a cute boy who wasn't looking for anything serious from me. It was the recipe for just one perfect night. That's all that I needed.

  The epic battles of not-quite-good versus maybe-not-so-evil could wait until another day.

  Coming Soon!

  The Witches Three will return in Third Time is a Charm, out on March 12, 2019 and available for preorder now!

  Amanda Clarke possesses the rarest, most powerful form of magic: the ability to see and manipulate time itself.

  If only she knew how to use it. All she gets are vague impressions, little intuitions that compel her to act.

  When she pays a visit to her friend Nick's apartment, one of her witchy feelings is warning her about the apartment across the hall. The empty apartment. The apartment no one has gone in or out of in years.

  She promises Nick to follow the rules this time. But the feeling won't be ignored. She gathers the Witches Three and they magic their way inside.

  And find a body dressed for 1928 but still warm and only recently dead in 2018. Yet another case beyond the local police department, but perfect for the Witches Three.

  "Third Time is a Charm", Book 3 in the Witches Three Cozy Mystery series. If you're a fan of Amanda M. Lee, N.M. Howell, or Amy Boyles, this mélange of magic and murder mystery is sure to charm you.

  Third Time is a Charm, Book 3 in the Witches Three Cozy Mystery Series!

  Free eBook!

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  About the Author

  Cate Martin is a mystery writer who lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

  Also by Cate Martin

  The Witches Three Cozy Mystery Series

  Charm School

  Work Like a Charm

  Third Time’s a Charm (coming March 12, 2019)

  Old World Charm (coming May 2019)

  Charm his Pants Off (coming July 2019)

  Charm Offensive (coming September 2019)

  Copyright © 2018 by Cate Martin

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design by Shezaad Sudar.

  Cover images by Aarows, Yevheniia Bondarets and Stevloduv via Dreamstime.com.

  Ratatoskr Press logo by Aidan Vincent.

  ISBN 978-1-946552-87-7

  Created with Vellum