Chocolate Truffles and Trouble

by Samantha Silver

  The second shot was from later on at the party, a picture of Kelly holding one arm high up and sticking out her tongue like she was some kind of rock star.

  That was the only thing on her feed, so I went into her phone’s storage to see if she had any other photos or videos of the night. There was one video, which I quickly realized must have been triggered by accident. The video was completely dark and blurry, like the phone was inside a pocket or a handbag or something. The audio was slightly muffled as well, but after listening to it a few times and having the volume turned up to high, I started to get a pretty good idea as to what was going on. It was a conversation between Olivia and Ryan, her boyfriend.

  “Hey, babe. What’s going on?” Ryan could be heard asking Olivia in the video.

  “I’m worried,” Olivia replied. She was slurring her words slightly, but she didn’t seem too out of it.

  “Worried about what?”

  “About this shit. I think we should run away. Will you run away with me, Ry?”

  “Of course, babe. I’d go anywhere with you. But why do you want to run? What are you worried about?”

  “It’s that guy from Las Brujas, Alan. They want more from me. They always want more from me. And I don’t know if I can deliver.”

  “Then stop. You don’t need to run. Just tell them you can’t do it anymore.”

  “I can’t,” Olivia said, and her voice turned into a sob. “Don’t you get it? If I do, they’ll turn me in. I’ll be kicked out of Spellford, my reputation ruined. I only ever wanted to sell the potions to my friends, as a favor. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I can’t do this anymore, Ry. I need to run. I need to get away.”

  “Ok, then we’ll go away,” Ryan cooed. He was so quiet it took me five attempts at listening to the audio before I understood what he said. “We’ll go somewhere else. We’ll pretend to be from different covens, we’ll come up with a backstory, and we’ll move far away from here. How about Europe? There are so many paranormal towns in England. If we go to one of the big ones, we’ll be able to blend in without arousing suspicion. If you think that’s what you need to get away from these guys, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  “I love you so much, do you know that?” Olivia was saying through tears now.

  “I love you too, babe,” Ryan replied. “It’s going to be okay. I promise you, no matter what, it’s going to be okay.”

  By the time I had finally finished transcribing the conversation, my heart broke for Olivia. She knew she was in trouble, and she was trying to get away from it all, but it hadn’t been enough.

  It sounded like she was being blackmailed by Las Brujas about the potions she was selling. She probably never expected someone would tell the officials at Spellford that she was making illegal potions and selling them to her friends. And she certainly wouldn’t have expected that the gang would then force her to sell for them as well.

  But at least now I had a name. Alan. It wasn’t much to go on, and I didn’t even know if this was the blond man who had been in the kitchen when the potions were most likely poisoned, but at least it was something. It was a name that almost certainly belonged to a member of the gang, and I was going to track down who it was.

  “Find anything?” Andrea asked, and I nodded, giving her a quick rundown of the conversation between Olivia and Ryan.

  “So she wanted to run away,” Andrea said, raising her eyebrows. “Interesting. She almost managed it, too.”

  “How about you? Anything interesting yet?”

  “I’m not sure,” Andrea replied. “I think so. Inside one of these textbooks I found a couple of loose sheets of paper. They have a bunch of numbers on them that might be phone numbers, but I’m not sure. They might also be something else. But they look like they were hidden on purpose, so I think we should take them.”

  “Good call,” I nodded. Hopefully they would help us track down this Alan character.

  “Anyway, I think our time here is finished,” Andrea said, looking out Olivia’s bedroom window.

  “Why’s that?” I asked, and as I made my way next to my sister to have a look as well, my face went pale. It was Alex, walking up to the front door of the house. “What is he doing here?” I hissed. “I thought he was at the hospital.”

  “I guess he finished with everything,” Andrea said. “Come on, let’s get out of here before he catches us investigating this murder some more.”

  Unfortunately for us, by the time we managed to put everything back more or less in its place, we could already hear footsteps coming up the stairs. Apparently, Alex was wasting no time talking to Kelly first and wanted to have a look at Olivia’s room before he did anything else. That was definitely not ideal for us.

  “Window,” I hissed at Andrea. It was our only option. If we got caught again by an IPIU Enforcer, especially an hour after that same Enforcer had told us to stay out of this, we were absolutely done for. The two of us rushed back to the window and pried it open. To my immense relief, it didn’t squeak or anything, and Andrea and I quickly slipped out and onto the roof. It was very lucky that Olivia’s window was one of those Gothic ones that opened onto the roof so we didn’t have any drop or anything to deal with. As soon as Andrea and I were both out, we shut the window and headed to the right. We had to get as far away from the window as possible in case Alex looked outside.

  Chapter 13

  The roof was in decent condition, but a couple of the tiles were a little bit loose, and they threatened to come free as Andrea and I stepped over them. It wasn’t surprising; this was a very old house, after all. At one point, I looked down at the ground and immediately began to feel dizzy. We were a solid twenty, maybe even thirty feet off the ground right now, and if either one of us fell off this roof, serious injury was probably the best we could hope for.

  “Try not to fall off,” Andrea muttered from behind me. Apparently she had just had the same thought.

  “I’ll do my best,” I replied. The two of us made our way to the other side of the house, standing on a section of the roof that had no windows opening onto it, so we were completely invisible to anybody inside. I stopped, deciding we were finally safe enough to try and get our bearings and come up with a plan that would allow us to get away without being seen. Turning to my sister, I couldn’t help but notice all the blood had left her face.

  “That’s funny, usually whenever we run into Alex, you’re desperately trying to get us together,” I said, sticking my tongue out at Andrea.

  “Usually when we run into Alex, he’s not threatening us for investigating a murder we’re not supposed to be looking into,” Andrea replied, shaking her head. “As far as I’m concerned, until this is finished, I’m happy to stay as far away from him as possible. Then, when we solve the case before him, you can blackmail him by promising not to tell anybody that he lost to two amateurs if he’ll take you out on a date.”

  “Blackmail, an essential building block to every solid relationship,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “I’m starting to understand why you’re still single.”

  “Please. I’m still single because I’m just too amazing for any wizard to handle.”

  “That must be it. Now come on, help me figure out how we’re going to get off this roof without being seen before we end up both single and in trouble.”

  Andrea frowned. “Ashley knows a spell that makes you light as a feather so you can jump off of things without plummeting to the ground, as long as you hold your arms out. Do you know that one?”

  I bit my lip. “Sort of? I think I know the words to that spell, but frankly, I don’t think this is the kind of situation where I want to test it out. If I mess it up, one of us will be having a very, very bad day.”

  “Fair enough,” Andrea said with a laugh. “Looks like we have to transform ourselves into birds.”

  I groaned inwardly. It always felt so strange being turned into an animal. And I wasn’t sure I was going to immediately understand how to fly. I had never transformed into
a bird before. Still, Andrea was right. This was definitely one of the best ways for us to get out of here. Plus, there was no way Alex was going to worry about two birds flying around. Even if he looked outside, he’d have no idea he was looking at us as we flew off to safety.

  “Mars, ruler of ours, make this witch into a bird and make it last ten minutes,” I said, pointing my wand at myself. Straight away, my entire body began to feel a bit queasy, like it was turning over on itself. The feeling was strange, but it only lasted a couple of seconds, and the next thing I knew, my feet that had been solidly planted on the roof shingles were now much more clawlike, and my arms were now black feather-covered wings.

  “Haha, your magic is so boring it turned you into a crow,” Andrea said. I tried to roll my eyes at her, but I wasn’t entirely sure it worked. After all, if I was a crow, my entire eye would be black, wouldn’t it? She wouldn’t have noticed a thing. Bummer.

  Instead, I tried to yell at her, but it only came out as a squawk. Great. At least I had ten minutes to come up with a good comeback before we turned back into humans.

  Andrea cast the same spell on herself and immediately turned into a blurry mass for a couple of seconds before she reappeared in a form that even I hadn’t expected. She was a penguin.

  “Are you joking?” I said, but my voice only came out as a squawk. A penguin was the least useful animal for what we were about to try. Not only was it incredibly conspicuous—a crow flying through the air wouldn’t stick out at all, but a penguin absolutely would—but there was also the minor detail that penguins were incapable of flying. Which was an issue, considering we had turned into birds specifically so that we could fly away.

  We had only cast the spell for ten minutes, which meant our time was running out quickly. On the bright side, Andrea was a fairy penguin, a type that lives in Australia and New Zealand and is barely bigger than a crow. If we were lucky, I would be able to put her on my back and still manage to fly off without both of us plummeting to the ground. After all, she was too round and fat as a pigeon to hold onto in my talons.

  I spread out my arms—I mean, wings—and turned my back to Andrea, hoping she would understand what I was trying to get her to do. She looked a little bit apprehensive, I thought as I looked back, but after a couple of seconds she probably realized, same as I had, that this was our best chance of getting out of here. After all, if we didn’t take it, we would have to wait ten minutes for the spell to reverse and then come up with another idea, and the longer we stayed on this roof, the better the chances that we were going to get caught by Alex.

  Andrea jumped up onto my back and wrapped her flippers around my neck. I looked down at the ground below us and suddenly began to wonder if this had been such a good idea after all. The ground seemed especially far away now that we were planning on jumping off it. Still, there was only one way to find out.

  I leapt off the roof, spreading my wings wide and flapping them as hard as I possibly could as the roof below disappeared. I squeezed my eyes shut. If this was my impending death, I didn’t want to see it coming. After a couple of seconds in which it didn’t feel like we were plunging to our deaths, I dared to open my eyes. Andrea and I were now above the grass, and no matter how hard I flapped my wings, I was having trouble staying afloat. Andrea was a pretty heavy penguin, apparently.

  On the far side of the property was a patch of trees that I headed toward. They would be perfect to hide in, and we could wait out the ten minutes there before we became human again, at which point we could cast invisibility spells to get away without Alex noticing us. The problem was, the ground was coming up toward us a lot faster than the trees.

  Andrea let out a strange sort of squeak—I realized I didn’t know until that moment what kind of noise penguins made—as the two of us half floated, half fell toward the ground, eventually hitting the grass with a heavy thud about ten feet short of the trees.

  The impact with the ground made Andrea fly off me and she began rolling along the grass like a soccer ball, while I had hit the ground basically chest first and had the wind knocked out of me. I didn’t know it was possible for that to happen to birds, too. I struggled to breathe for a minute but eventually got my breath back, and I began running awkwardly on my two little legs toward the trees. Andrea followed a moment later, waddling along and occasionally face-planting as her feet, which were absolutely not designed for use on land, got caught in the ground.

  Eventually, the two of us made it into the patch of trees, and we hid behind a thick trunk for a few minutes until finally that same strange feeling took over me again, and I found myself transformed back into a witch. I looked down at the penguin that I knew to be Andrea, and a second later, she became nothing more than a blurry figure herself before reappearing as my sister once more.

  “You couldn’t have made that landing smoother?” she grumbled.

  “You couldn’t have transformed into a bird that can actually fly?” I replied. “Seriously, you’re not allowed to make fun of the fact that I was a crow anymore. At least my bird actually managed to make it off the roof without plummeting to the ground like a bowling ball.”

  “Only barely. I’m pretty sure I have a concussion.”

  “You’re pretty whiny for somebody I could have just left on the roof.”

  “It’s not like I can help it. The universe decides what kind of bird you get to be when you cast that spell. It’s not my fault I ended up being a penguin.”

  The complete and utter ridiculousness of the whole situation caught up to me just then, and I burst out laughing.

  “Well, at least we’re both safe, and in a few minutes we should be far away from here. Why don’t you cast the invisibility spell, and I’m going to text Kelly that we left because we didn’t want to get caught by Alex.”

  I pulled out my phone and composed the text message, then sent it. A moment later, Andrea had turned us both invisible. We walked out into the open, heading back onto the street, and when we were about four blocks away, we decided we were finally safe enough and reversed the invisibility spell.

  “Should we go home?” I asked. “It’s been a long day, and I have no idea how we’re going to find this Alan figure.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Andrea replied, and the two of us made our way back to the portal.

  Chapter 14

  By the time we got back home, I was completely exhausted. However, sitting on the front stoop of the house when we got there was a little old witch with gray hair who beamed at the two of us as we arrived. I gasped, horrified.

  “Oh, Mars! Grace! I’m so sorry, I completely forgot you were going to teach me today.” Grace was the witch who had taught my mother how to make chocolates, and now me. She was absolutely wonderful, and I owed her so much, and here I was running around investigating murders and completely forgetting that we had planned a lesson for that afternoon.

  “Not to worry,” Grace replied. “It’s a lovely day out. I was happy to just sit and enjoy being outside for a little while as I waited for you.”

  “Oh, but it’s too cold out, come in, come in,” I replied. “I’ll fix you up a hot chocolate straightaway.”

  “Alright,” Grace said with a smile. “Let’s see if you remember how to do it right.”

  As soon as the three of us went into the house, I was immediately bombarded by a small fluffy corgi who insisted that he hadn’t been fed in hours and was starving to death.

  “You forgot to feed me my breakfast this morning,” Sherlock complained. “I’ve been sitting here for hours, waiting for you to get back, starving. I barely have the energy to stand anymore.”

  “I didn’t forget your breakfast,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “In fact, I distinctly remember that you picked up a bunch of your kibble and threw it on the floor, claiming you didn’t like it and that you needed to be fed roast chicken instead, and when I grabbed the broom and told you that if you didn’t like it I would just sweep up the bits you threw everywhere, you inhaled them faster
than the vacuum cleaner would have.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m not hungry now,” Sherlock complained.

  “Maybe, but you still need to wait until dinner time before you get more food. You’re looking a little bit on the chubby side.”

  “You still eat all the chocolate you want even though you’re looking a little chubby yourself,” Sherlock muttered, wandering out of the living room and down the hall, having given up on the idea that he might get some early food.

  I shook my head at my familiar, ignoring the fact that he was probably right about my own waistline. I was definitely going to have to get all of my chocolate eating under control—no more “taste testing” when I filled orders for customers. The chocolate always tasted okay, so there was no real need to taste test it, other than my own gluttony. And I didn’t want all of my initial profits to have to go into buying a new wardrobe because I’d gone up a size.

  Still, there was no reason why I couldn’t enjoy a hot chocolate with Grace. I asked Andrea if she wanted a cup, but she shook her head, telling me she was going to meet up with a friend in town, so I put enough chocolate for two mugs into a cauldron, added a couple of cups of milk, and put it on the stove to heat up, whisking the mixture slowly as the chocolate began to melt and combine with the milk.

  “You must have had quite the interesting day,” Grace replied. I nodded.

  “Have you heard about the girl who died at Spellford?”

  “The Healer student,” Grace nodded. “Yes. Very sad. Did you know her?”

  “I did, but not well,” I replied. “However, I think her death might be linked to the gang Las Brujas, and the more I find out about them, the more I think they might be responsible for framing my parents. I’m trying to figure out how to get in touch with one of the gang members so I can get any information that I need.”