Holly threw her arms around my brother’s neck. “Oh, Reign, it was so scary!” she cried, turning on the tears, she buried her head in his shoulder. “Thank goodness you came when you did! I owe you my life!”
Reign faked a smile and patted Holly lightly on the back. “That was all Phyllis,” he said tightly. I knew how much it pained him to give any praise to our grandmother. “We can talk about all of this back at the restaurant. We need to get out of here before that spell wears off.”
My mother ushered us towards the door. “I agree with Reign, and I also think it would be safer for you girls to stay at the b&b tonight than in your dorm rooms.”
Alba nodded. “I agree. We need to give Stone some time to cool off. She’s not going to be too happy with us when she comes out of that freezing spell and finds us gone.”
“But I need my clothes for Mr. Bailey’s funeral tomorrow,” said Sweets.
“We all do,” I agreed. “Let us grab our things from our rooms and then we’ll all meet you at the b&b, okay?”
Mom put her hand on my cheeks and pulled me in, nose to nose. She stared into my eyes. “And then you and the girls are going to tell us everything that’s been going on. No more secrets. Understand?”
I blinked to break her stare. “We’ll do our best,” I said uncomfortably. Mom let go of my face, and I looked up at my grandmother grudgingly. “Thanks for helping us, Gran.”
“Yeah, thanks,” agreed the girls.
“Anything for my granddaughter and her friends,” she said with a bit of a smile. “Now let’s go.”
31
“Everything is just so messed up right now,” lamented Jax, pulling the hood of her black cat onesie pajamas up over her head tightly. With the little ears that poked up off the hood, she looked like a snuggly reincarnation of Catwoman.
“I know, right,” said Holly as she fluffed up a pillow at the head of the bed and curled up in front of it. Her long blonde hair was styled to perfection as usual and flowed over her shoulders in sexy beach waves. The pink tank-top and matching pink boy shorts she wore were barely doing their jobs of covering up her parts. I knew she was only waiting for an excuse to go downstairs in that get-up, just to show my brother how cute she looked in her pj’s.
I rolled my eyes at her, but I knew I didn’t need to point out the obvious. We all knew what she was doing without having to say it. Her usual sleep attire was baggy sweatpants and her favorite soft t-shirt from Pink, after all, it was an all-girls dorm. There was no chance she’d run into anyone of the opposite sex there.
Jax’s eyes widened as she wrung her hands. “No, you don’t understand. My mother is going to kill me. Like literally. I’ll be dead. In the ground. Without a heartbeat.” She sucked in her breath. “And I won’t have my powers yet, so you won’t even be able to bring my spirit back to life! I’ll be dead forever.”
Alba groaned. “Your old lady ain’t gonna kill ya, Shorty. She’s upset, yeah, we’ll give her that much, but she’ll cool off. She always does.”
Jax shook her head so hard that her hood fell off. “Nope. Not this time. I specifically disobeyed a major order. I let you into her house.”
“It’s your house too for cryin’ out loud.”
Jax sucked in some air to disagree with Alba, but I cut her off. “I know you’re worried Jax, but your mom isn’t going to kill you. Now listen girls. We’ve got more pressing things to deal with – the funeral is tomorrow. We still don’t know who the murderer is and Mr. Bailey is still like that.” I pointed at the Chihuahua lying in the corner of the room napping with his head resting on his front paws.
Sweets stood up. She was in her pajamas and had a bathrobe swaddled around her. “And I still have cooking to do for the reception.”
Jax stood up too. “You want us to come help you?”
Sweets gave her a sad, but thankful smile. “No Jax. You four have a lot to do. You need to figure out if there’s anything you can do to reverse the resurrection spell and you need to go through that spellbook that Augusta Stone checked out and see if there are any clues that can help us solve the murder case. If you get done with all of that and still want to help, then I’ll gladly accept.” She slipped on a pair of slippers by the door. “Bye girls.”
“Bye Sweets,” we all called out as she shut the door behind her.
Seated on the edge of the bed in my own ‘pajamas’, a ratty old grey t-shirt that I’d spilled paint on my freshman year of high-school and red sweatpants, I swiveled at the waist. Two spellbooks sat in the center of the bed. One was the reversal spellbook, and the other was the spellbook that Annabelle Abrahams had written. “Where do we start?”
Alba looked down at the books. Her eyes darted back and forth between the two books, debating in her mind. Finally, she looked up. “We have to start with the reversal spell. Mr. Bailey’s body is getting buried tomorrow. Our time is limited in getting him back to where he belongs.”
I made a face. It hardly seemed like we were going to be able to put him back where he belonged. “Alba. You can’t seriously think we’re ever going to put him back inside his body, do you?”
“We can try!”
“Alba! He’s been embalmed! He’s been cut open, and his organs have been fudged around inside his body. His body isn’t ever coming back to life. It won’t function right! We’ve got his spirit though. Maybe we can extract the spirit and put it in another body. Like a different man’s body or something.”
Jax walked over to the floor and sat down next to Mr. Bailey. She scooped him up on her lap. “Aww poor little guy,” she cooed, hugging him close to her. “He’s so tired. Maybe he doesn’t want to go into a different man’s body.”
Mr. Bailey hardly moved as Jax held him. He rested his head on her shoulder. I could tell that he was falling into a deeper depression. We had to do something.
I reached across the bed and pulled the heavy reversal spellbook onto my lap. “Let’s just take a look.”
Alba sat down next to me.
I thumbed through the pages until I came to a spell that simply said Resurrection Reversal. “Here it is.”
She scanned the page. “It’s just a chant.”
“We have to have reversing candles. Hopefully mom has some of those,” I pointed out. “And we have to have a casting circle.”
She shrugged. “That’s not a big deal. We can do it downstairs. The restaurant is closed. No one’s gonna care.”
“No one’s gonna care if we draw a circle on the wood floor?” I asked, lifting one lip.
“It’s not like we aren’t gonna clean it up, Red. Jeesh. You’re makin’ this harder than it needs to be.”
“Fine. There’s no full moon either. Clara said there has to be a full moon.”
“You’re killin’ me here, Red. I’m a witch, but I can’t control the moon. Whaddaya want from me?”
Jax swung her head low. “This isn’t going to work, is it?”
“Probably not, but we’re running out of options, and if Mr. Bailey goes back to Char tomorrow, that’s going to complicate things even more,” I said.
“Fine. Let’s go downstairs.” Alba took the reversal spellbook from me and I grabbed Annabelle Abrahams book and stood up.
Before we left the room, Alba looked back at Holly. “Ya gonna go downstairs in your underwear, Cosmo?”
Holly looked down at her minuscule pajamas. She stared at Alba blankly. “They’re my pajamas.”
“Sure they are. You don’t wear that in our dorm room.”
Holly fanned her pinkened cheeks. “It’s hot here.”
“Put on some clothes, will ya?” asked Alba. “You’re embarrassing us.”
Jax switched Mr. Bailey to her other arm and smiled broadly. “I brought my other one-piece pajama, Holly. It’s a unicorn one. It’s got a horn on the hood and everything. You’ll love it. It’s pink!”
I lifted my eyebrows and deadpanned. “She’s right, Holl. You’ll love it. It sparkles. I’ve seen it.” I had seen it. Jax had worn it once,
and it had left a trail of sparkles all across my dorm room floor that the vacuum cleaner at the end of the hall wasn’t strong enough to suck up. I’d found glitter on my clothes for weeks after that.
“It’s too hot for a onesie. There’s nothing wrong with what I’m wearing. We’re all women,” she said furrowing her eyebrows at us. “Nothing you haven’t seen before.”
Alba blew out a puff of air. “Yeah, just women, except for Reign.”
Holly’s eyes opened wider. “Oh, Reign’s here? I hadn’t thought of him,” she said mustering up as straight of a face as she could.
“Of course Reign’s here. He owns the place, hot shot. Just put on a robe.”
Holly shook her head. She was standing her ground. “Nothing wrong with what I’m wearing. There’s more fabric here than a one-piece swimming suit.”
“Except we’re not at the beach,” I pointed out. “Whatever. Let her wear it. Reign’s not going to give her a second glance. Come on.”
Holly glared at me as we left the room Jax, Sweets, and I were sharing for the night. My comment had irritated her, but I really didn’t care. I was feeling uneasy about everything that had happened earlier and all the irons we still had in the fire.
Downstairs I sent Jax and Mr. Bailey in search of reversing candles while Alba, Holly, and I rearranged the tables to make room for a small casting circle.
Jax returned with my mother carrying a small basket of red and black candles just as Alba was getting on her hands and knees to start the chalk outline.
Mom held her hands out. “Wait, wait, wait! What in the world are you doing?”
“A spell mom,” I said. “We need a casting circle.”
“So you’re going to do it on my wood floor?”
“Where else are we supposed to do it?” I asked.
She looked around. “I don’t know. Outside. At the park. You seriously have to do it on my hardwood floors?”
“We’ll clean it up, Mrs. H.”
Her eyebrows knitted together while she shook her head. “Oh, no, no, no. You’re not doing it in here. Take it outside.”
“But mom, it’s a simple spell,” I begged.
She shook her head as if she could care less about the level of difficulty. “Outside girls.” She handed Jax the basket of candles and went back into the kitchen.
“Ugh,” I groaned, grabbing the reversal spellbook from the table where the two spellbooks had been set down. “Come on girls. We’ll do it in the alley.” I led the troops through the kitchen where Sweets was busily making pans of lasagna and pasta salad in her nightgown and robe.
“Where are you going?” she asked as we walked past her single file to the back door.
“Linda said we have to do the spell outside,” I said, flaring my nostrils.
“I can’t help it that Mercy wanted to draw a chalk line on our good woods floors,” retorted my mother, bringing up the rear.
“So you’re all going outside in your pajamas?” asked Sweets. She looked us all up and down and then her eyes landed on Holly.
“I look cute, alright. Leave me alone,” said Holly, pretending to be hurt as she followed me out the back door and into the alley.
The alley between our brick building and the brick buildings on the other side of the block was fairly wide. There were two parking spots back there for the owners. My old beater car, the one that my mother drove, was in its usual parking spot, but Reign’s fancy sports car was missing.
“Where’s your brother?” asked Holly, pretending not to be interested.
I eyed her with annoyance and then turned my back to look at Alba and Jax. “Okay. Who wants to draw the casting circle?”
Alba still held the chalk in her hands. “I will. Stand back.”
“It doesn’t have to be a big one,” said Jax, holding Mr. Bailey up high and looking him in his downtrodden eyes. He had hardly spoken since we’d gotten back to the b&b.
“Yeah, I know,” said Alba, already halfway done drawing the chalk outline.
I flipped open the spellbook to the page I’d bookmarked. It was going to be the easiest spell we’d ever done.
My mom came out of the backdoor then and handed me the basket of candles. “Okay, so now you’re going to tell me what kind of spell you’re doing.”
“Wellll,” I drug the word out. “We can’t exactly tell you that.” I took the candles from her hands.
She smiled at me. “No, no, no. You said at the Stone’s castle you would tell me what that was all about when we got back to the b&b,” she huffed. “We got back, and I asked what was going on, but first you wanted to eat something. And then you wanted to get comfortable in your pj’s. Well, you’ve all eaten, you’re all cozy in your jammies, and now it’s time to spill the beans about this little spell you’re doing.”
I looked down at the ground. “Oh, well, this has nothing to do with that. This is about fixing a mistake we made,” I assured her, swirling my hand above the chalk casting circle Alba had just drawn. “That-” I pointed towards the castle. “Was about trying to solve Mr. Bailey’s murder.”
The expression on her face shifted. “Oh. Okay. So, what did you find out about Mr. Bailey’s murder at the Stone’s castle?”
Alba frowned. “Nothing. We didn’t find squat.”
“Well what were you looking for?” asked my mother calmly.
“We were looking for Augusta Stone,” I admitted.
“Augusta Stone? That’s Merrick’s mother!” she admonished.
I nodded. “Yeah. We have reason to believe she’s in town.”
“What reason?”
“We found her name on the library card of a book that was recently checked out from the Great Witch’s Library in Hallowed Hall.”
“What in the world would Augusta Stone be doing in Aspen Falls?”
Alba puffed air out her nose. “That’s what we’d all like to know.”
“We were looking for her, Aunt Linda. We thought maybe she was staying with my family at the castle.”
Mom looked at me. “Well, did you find her?”
All of our heads shook slowly. “Nope,” I said. “We got busted by Sorceress Stone before we could. We looked everywhere though. We didn’t see any signs of her.”
“Well what book had she checked out?” asked Mom.
“We haven’t had time to look at it yet. But there’s a spell in that book that uses pit viper venom, and that’s the main ingredient in the potion that was used to kill Mr. Bailey. We feel like there’s a connection in some way.”
My mother’s face paled. “It does sound like that. I bet your grandmother could help answer some questions. She knew Augusta at one time.”
“She did?” I asked, stunned.
My mother nodded. “They go way back. I tell you what. Why don’t you finish your little spell out here and then come inside? I’ll call your grandmother and see if she can’t pop over for a few minutes. Maybe we can solve this mystery.”
“Get a straight answer out of Gran?” I said with a laugh. “Hardly sounds plausible, but if you think she’ll talk, I’m all for it.”
“Me too,” agreed Alba. “We’ve got all these puzzle pieces, but nothing’s fitting together.”
“Okay mom, we’re in. You call Gran. This won’t take long at all.”
Mom squeezed my arm before leaving. I knew it made her happy when I included her in on my life. With her gone, Jax put Mr. Bailey in the center of the circle and put four candles around the circle aligned with the cardinal directions.
“There,” she said brightly. “Circle’s ready.”
Alba, barefoot and in a pair of men’s boxer shorts and an oversized t-shirt, stepped into the circle first, snapped her fingers and lit the four half-red and half-black candles. I stood across from her and put the book on the ground just in front of me. Holly and Jax filled in the spots on either side of us, and we all linked hands.
A resurrection spell had been cast,
But the time for that has past.
<
br /> Now it’s time to let the spirit rest,
Gone from body is the best.
Return that spell from where it came,
No further power shall remain.
This is our will, so be it.
Quietly I began to chant the spell. I could feel the energy gathering around us as the air began to move, slowly picking up speed. One by one, the girls joined in on the chant. The wind began to spiral around our shoulders. Each new voice brought more speed and velocity to the air movement until finally, our hair whipped around our faces and the candles blew out. Outside of the casting circle, objects in the alley were launched into the air by the wind. Pieces of newspaper. Cardboard boxes beside the kitchen door. Some dead tree branches next to the dumpster. They all swirled around our shoulders in a storm of wind and dust.
Mr. Bailey, who had been lying prone in the center of the circle, finally sat up with interest. I was sure he was hoping the spell was going to work despite the fact that it wasn’t a full moon.
Finally, I spoke the last word of the chant. We all stopped speaking and released our hold on one another. As our hands dropped to our sides, the wind immediately stopped blowing. Items that the air had suspended dropped to the ground.
We looked down at the small dog cowering in the center of all of the action.
“Mr. Bailey?” asked Jax anxiously.
32
We all stared at the small Chihuahua praying he’d bark or howl or scratch at a flea behind his nylon collar – we just wanted him to do something other than speak in an intelligible language. But with a bunched-up spine, he only seemed to rattle about inside his skin. I crossed my fingers behind my back, crossed my arms, and intertwined my thumbs on each hand as if I were a child back in grade school. When nothing happened, I pinched my eyes shut, and silently begged. Please, please, please don’t be Mr. Bailey.
I could hear Alba next to me. “Mr. Bailey? You here?”
Someone blew out a breath. And then finally, we heard his voice. Plain as day. “Yes ladies, I’m here.”
My eyes flew open. I looked down at the dog and up at the girls. Where had the voice come from? No one spoke, but I could tell by the looks on their faces that they had seen where it came from. I looked down at Regis.
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