Witch School Dropout: A Witch Squad Cozy Mystery #7

by M. Z. Andrews

  “Besides, we thought it was going to be the same thing. The spell called for the fruit of a tamarillo tree. The Internet said they only grow in South America and that they are referred to as a tree tomato. We figured a cherry tomato would pretty much be the same thing!” said Alba.

  “The pictures looked like they were basically the same thing,” I said, backing up Alba. I felt like the two of us trying to justify our actions only made us look equally idiotic and we weren’t helping our case. We both should have known better, but we’d gotten into a hurry and now Mr. Bailey was a dog.

  Mr. Bailey looked down at himself. “Look at me! Obviously, it wasn’t the same thing. I’m a dog!”

  “Yeah, we are so, so sorry about that,” I said slowly. I felt terrible. We’d really messed up, and I, for one, had no clue how to rectify our mistake.

  “What’s my Char going to say?!” he demanded.

  “Yeah,” Alba strung out the single word into a sentence. “She’s probably going to have a problem with this.”

  “She’s going to have more than a problem with it!” he said as he paced across our laps in the backseat of the car, though we barely noticed the weight of him as he touched each of our legs.

  Alba twisted herself around so she was facing him. “We’ll have to do some research, Mr. Bailey. There’s gotta be a way that we can fix this. We’ll do whatever we can. I swear!”

  “Well, at the very least, can you please take these ridiculous clothes off of me? I always felt bad for the silly outfits my wife put on her poor dog, but it was her dog and I didn’t want to interfere. But now I’m the dog and I look absurd!”

  “You don’t like the hat?” asked Jax with long eyes and a look of incredulity.

  Mr. Bailey shook his head resolutely. “Chihuahuas don’t fish. The hat and the fishing vest have got to go!”

  Jax winced as she eyed him. Then she held a hand aside her mouth and whispered to him, “But, Mr. Bailey, then you’ll be naked!”

  16

  Despite his protests, the girls and I had stashed Regis in my room while we went to class the next morning and Sweets went into town to run her menu ideas for the reception past Char. Even though we’d screwed up royally the day before, we’d all decided we needed to maintain appearances and make it look as if we hadn’t just completely botched up a very important spell.

  I finished my second-period class and rushed back to my dorm room, juggling my books in my arms along the way as I sought out the key to my room. The minute I unlocked the door, I could hear Mr. Bailey’s voice calling me out.

  “What took you so long?” he asked anxiously. His chicken like legs rattled beneath him as if he’d suddenly developed a tremor while I was gone. “Your phone has been ringing non-stop since you left! It’s Detective Whitman!”

  I patted my back pocket as I glanced out across the room. Sure enough, in the distraction of getting Mr. Bailey settled for the morning, I’d forgotten to grab my phone.

  “I tried to answer it by swiping the screen with my nose, but that wouldn’t work, and, well – you know, no opposable thumbs,” said Mr. Bailey, holding up a paw at a time and looking at them sadly.

  I smiled at him, at least he had started to regain his sense of humor. “Funny, Mr. Bailey.” I grabbed my phone from the desk and looked down at it. He hadn’t been joking. Dog slime and long, narrow, nose prints coated the glass screen. I lifted one side of my lips and crinkled my nose. Gross. Against my better judgement, I forced myself to touch the round home button at the bottom of the screen with the tip of my finger and saw that I had eight missed calls from the Aspen Falls Police Station. My heart twisted around my windpipe. Had Detective Whitman somehow found out that we’d snuck into the Aspen Falls Morgue the day before?

  “Oh wow, eight missed calls,” I breathed uncomfortably. I didn’t want to do it, but I knew he’d only keep calling if I didn’t. It was probably better just to get it over with. I swiped the missed call, and my phone redialed his number.

  “Aspen Falls Police Station,” said a voice I recognized immediately.

  “Hi Officer Vargas,” I said. My usual bouncy tone with him was gone. I was too afraid of the chewing out I was about to receive from Detective Whitman. “This is Mercy Habernackle. I have a bunch of missed calls from the station. Is Detective Whitman looking for – ”

  “I’ll put you through to his office,” he said before I could even finish my sentence.

  The line clicked, and in less time than it took for my heart to drop another beat, I heard Detective Whitman’s strong voice in my ear. “Mercy.”

  I felt the familiar tightening in my chest again. Something was really wrong. “Detective Whitman. Is everything okay?”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t say that it is. It’s Vic’s autopsy. I got a call from the medical examiner a few hours ago. He doesn’t even know what to think of things. He said he’s never seen anything like what he’s seeing.”

  I pulled my head back. “What does that mean?”

  “Well, for starters, it means that there’s absolutely no way that Vic died of natural causes.”

  My eyes widened. “What?!”

  “What’s he saying?” asked Mr. Bailey, bouncing up and down on the pads of his paws.

  “Shh,” I hissed down at him.

  “The M.E. says it’s nothing he’s ever seen before and considering –,” he cleared his throat then, “– the unique setting in which we live, it’s got to be something of the magical sort.”

  “Mr. Bailey died at the hands of magic?” I asked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  Mr. Bailey stopped bouncing and dropped his pint-sized jaw.

  “Detective Whitman, are you saying that Mr. Bailey was murdered?” I asked, appalled. I wasn’t prepared for any of this. Who in the world would have wanted to harm Mr. Bailey? Everyone loved Mr. Bailey.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. I’ve officially ruled Victor Bailey’s death a homicide investigation.” His voice seemed deeper than usual as if he was hiding behind a false sense of bravado. I wondered if it was because he was trying to keep his emotions in check. This was a personal one for him, and for all of us. I knew he would do everything he could to bring Mr. Bailey’s killer to justice.

  “How can I help?” I asked intently as a deep V formed between my eyebrows.

  “Do you know where Vic’s ghost is?”

  I looked down at Mr. Bailey stuck inside Regis’ body, and suddenly I wanted to throw up. Could things get any worse? I switched the phone to the other ear, careful not to press the germ-laden device up against my skin. “I have a pretty good idea, yes.”

  “Good. I need to talk to Vic. We have to figure out who might have wanted him dead, and I’m going to need your help communicating with him.”

  “What? What’s he saying?” asked Mr. Bailey anxiously.

  I looked down at Mr. Bailey again. How was that going to work? I couldn’t be in the same room with Detective Whitman and Mr. Bailey. Then he’d find out what we’d done. I swallowed hard and looked out the window, even though I couldn’t see anything past my own thoughts. “I’ll do my best, Detective Whitman.”

  “Listen, I’ve got my men down at the bakery right now. They’re treating it as a crime scene. We’ll get to the bottom of it. I’ve already requested the guest list from Sweets. Can we meet at Linda’s in – say an hour?”

  Panicking, I stuttered. “An hour? Oh sorry, I have class the rest of the day.”

  Nothing came out of the other end of the phone for a long moment. “You can’t skip a class or two? This is Vic we’re talking about here. And now there’s a murderer on the loose.”

  “I’m sorry, I – uh – can’t. Sorceress Stone will kill me if I skip any more classes this semester. But, I’ll – uh – call you after I get out of class and we’ll figure out a time and a place to meet. Okay?”

  “Maybe I could give SaraLynn a call for you. You know, work things out. She can be understanding, especially when it comes to some
thing like this. She considers it practical experience, I really think she’d be okay with you coming down to the station now.”

  I just about couldn’t hear his words through the pounding in my ears. My head started to throb too. “No, it’s okay. I’ll be in touch soon,” I said and ended the call without waiting for his response.

  “What was that all about?” demanded Mr. Bailey the second I put the phone on the desk.

  I sat down on the bed and let my face fall into my hands.

  “Mercy. Please tell me,” he begged at my feet.

  I uncovered my face. “You were killed Mr. Bailey,” I whispered. “Someone used magic to kill you.”

  “Who?” he asked, stunned. “Who would want to kill this harmless old man?”

  “There’s only one person that I can think of,” I said honestly.

  The Chihuahua’s black eyes opened wide. “Who? Tell me! Who in the world would have wanted me dead? I have nothing anyone would want!” Even though Mr. Bailey was a dog, I could picture the human gestures he would have used had he been in his usual body. His hands would have sprawled out wide, and his eyebrows would have touched his forehead when he said that.

  “You have one thing someone would want.”

  “What is it? Please! Tell me!”

  “The bakery.”

  Mr. Bailey sat back on his hind legs and looked at me. His eyes shone with the tears he had been unable to shed as a ghost. “The bakery? Who would want my bakery?”

  “Louis,” I said plainly.

  “Louis?” He stood up. Then he sat down again. It was almost as if he couldn’t decide how a dog should behave. “But Louis was a dear friend of mine!” he protested. “He’s worked for me for years! Why would Louis ever want to hurt me?”

  “Because suddenly you’re giving Sweets more and more responsibilities? Maybe he got jealous and upset about the attention she’s getting, and he decided he’d had enough of you!”

  “B-but you said I was killed by magical means! Louis doesn’t do magic.”

  I shrugged. “There are plenty of people in Aspen Falls who do magic. I’m sure it wasn’t hard for him to find someone who could help him out in that department.”

  Mr. Bailey had just begun to pace the soft, carpeted floor in front of my desk chair when the door to my dorm room burst open and Jax, Holly, and Alba came in.

  “What’s takin’ ya so long, Red? I thought you were just gonna be a minute.”

  “I was,” I said with a sigh before shutting the door behind Holly. I motioned towards the bed. “You girls might want to have a seat. I just got off the phone with Detective Whitman.”

  “You look paler than you usually do. What’s going on?” asked Holly, hopping up to sit cross-legged on Jax’s desk. With so many more important things swirling around in my head, I didn’t have time to take offense at Holly’s dig about my complexion.

  Alba took a seat on the futon we’d cleared off for Sweets to sleep on the night Mr. Bailey had died, and Jax sat down on my bed.

  “You’re scarin’ me, Red, what’s up?”

  Jax sucked in a lungful of air. “O.M.G., did Detective Whitman find out we snuck into the morgue?” Then another idea plagued her, causing her to suck her breath in even deeper, and she put a hand to her mouth, her longest finger touching the tip of her nose. “Does he know you lied to that poor mother about her little boy being sick?!” And then, an even worse thought occurred to her, and her eyes widened in a sudden terrified panic. “Does he know that we turned Mr. Bailey into a dog?!”

  I shook my head and glanced down at Mr. Bailey, who had stopped pacing and fallen into a prone position on the floor with his head between his paws and his back legs stretched out behind him. I was pretty sure he’d gone into shock over the news.

  “No, it’s none of that,” I began slowly.

  Jax blew out the air she’d been holding in her lungs and slumped back. “You almost gave me a heart attack! I thought for sure we were going to jail for turning Mr. Bailey into a dog.”

  Alba rolled her eyes. “We can’t go to jail for turnin’ Mr. Bailey into a dog because there’s no law that says you can’t turn a person into a dog, Shorty.”

  “There isn’t?” Jax asked incredulously. Then her face sobered up. “Well, there should be!”

  Somedays I had to wonder if my roommate really was as idiotic as she made herself out to be or if in reality, she’d been that girl in high school that purposefully failed her calculus pop quizzes just so it would make the cute boy sitting next to her feel better about his own ineptitude. I ignored the ridiculousness of my friends’ discussion and tried to steer the conversation in the right direction, “Well, back to what you were saying about me almost giving you a heart attack? Well, that was what Detective Whitman was calling about. Mr. Bailey didn’t die of a heart attack.”

  “He didn’t?” Jax gasped.

  “What did he die of?” asked Holly.

  “Was it angina? I had a great-uncle that died of angina,” said Alba, with a knowing shake of her head.

  “It wasn’t angina.”

  “Well, what did he die of?” Holly repeated, sounding annoyed that I hadn’t yet gotten to the point.

  “He was murdered,” I said sadly.

  Holly slapped her knee. “I knew it!”

  I pinched my eyes and glared at her unconvinced. “You did not.”

  “I did too. After Denise died, I said bad things happen in threes. This is number two,” she said, talking animatedly with her hands.

  “First of all, that was Sweets who said that bad things happen in threes, and second of all, you didn’t call it.”

  She shrugged, but I could see on her face that she was trying to recall if it had been her that had said that or Sweets.

  Alba waved a hand in the air, dismissing all of the non-essential talk. “Wait a minute, so now Whitman thinks that Mr. Bailey was murdered? How? By who?”

  “The autopsy came back. All he said was that he died of magical means. Apparently, the coroner had never seen anything like what Mr. Bailey had going on. So now it’s officially a homicide investigation.”

  “Oh my god,” said Jax, sucking her breath and covering her open mouth with her hand. Someone needed to put that girl on Broadway. She had the dramatic acting chops down pat.

  “He wants to talk to Mr. Bailey,” I added.

  “But Mr. Bailey’s a dog now,” objected Holly, her perfectly plucked blonde eyebrows knitting a fraction of an inch closer together.

  “I know!” I agreed. A sudden hot flash hit me as if I had just opened up the oven door to take out a freshly baked pizza. I felt claustrophobic and out of breath all at once, like the walls were closing in on me. My patience with the girls was starting to wear thin. Partially because the combination of personalities could sometimes overwhelm me and partially because I couldn’t think of a solution to our problems and it was stressing me out. And on top of everything else, now we had a murder investigation on our hands. I raised a hand to palm my forehead, shoving the wisps of auburn hair that had pulled loose from my braid aside. “We can’t exactly tell Whitman that we screwed up and put Mr. Bailey’s ghost into Regis. He’ll have to tell Char, and well, she can’t know, she’d never forgive us.”

  Alba pushed herself up from the futon with a sudden burst of energy, stood with her legs shoulder width apart, and put a fist on either hip. She looked like a superhero seemingly ready for action. “Okay then, so we have to fix this. We’ve got to figure out how to get Mr. Bailey’s ghost out of Regis’ body before you have to meet with Whitman.”

  I let out the big breath of air that I didn’t realize had been holding the tension in my shoulders up and smiled at Alba, thankful that she seemed to have the wherewithal to come up with a solution. That was almost all I needed to make the room stop spinning out of control around me. We had to figure out how to undo the spell.

  “How are we supposed to do that?” asked Holly.

  Alba raised both eyebrows. “I think if any
one knows which book that spell would be in, it’s gonna be Clara.”

  Casting a thankful smile Alba’s way, I nodded and walked towards the door. “Let’s go girls.”

  17

  On the third floor of the Great Witch’s Library in Hallowed Hall, I held the weighty Spells for the Spirits spellbook between my hands before giving it to Alba. “Here, your name is on the library card. You return it.”

  Alba took the book without a second thought and looked around. “Clara,” she called out. “I’m here to return the book I borrowed the other day.”

  The lights in the room flickered seconds before Clara appeared before us. Her nearly transparent, ghostly white hair was pulled back in the same strict bun we’d seen her in twice before. “Well hello, dears,” she said kindly. “Done with the book already. How nice.”

  “We messed up the spell,” I admitted, even though she hadn’t asked. The time for formalities had passed, we needed to find a swift resolution to our problem so I could go see Detective Whitman with a clear conscience before the day was over. “We substituted an ingredient and wound up botching things up.”

  “Oh, dear. Has no one taught you about the finickiness of spells? Substitutions in most spells are not recommended.”

  “Now we know for sure,” I said scuffing the toe of my Converse sneaker into the tile floor uncomfortably. “We need something to reverse the spell. Can you recommend a book?”

  “Which spell did you do, dear?”

  “It was the Ritual of Resurrection spell,” said Holly.

  “Yeah, we were trying to put a ghost back into its body,” added Alba.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, a resurrection spell, yes, that’s a strong spell. And it didn’t work? That’s unfortunate. How did it go wrong?”

  Alba winced but didn’t avoid looking Clara in the eye. “Instead of the spirit reinhabiting his old body, he inhabited the owner’s dog.”

  Her face told us she found that fact somewhat amusing, but she bit back the smile and tried to appear sympathetic to our woes. “Oh! That’s really unfortunate.”