“Yes and no. The black cat is mine. The white cat I’m babysitting for a friend,” I explained, feeling a little bit exposed. I usually tried to keep my cat conversations private. Even when it was another magical person watching, it felt weird, like I was talking to myself in public.
“Can I pat them?” Tabatha piped up, looking excited. I glanced over at Luna, who was giving me the most chilling death glare I could have ever imagined. I figured that was a hard no.
“Uh, well, Luna is a little iffy about strangers, but-”
Lucy leaped off the counter and raced over to my guests, meowing and rubbing against their legs. Tabatha let out a squeal of joy.
“Oh, she’s so friendly!” she gushed. The two of them bent down to pet her.
Off to my right, I could practically feel Luna seething with rage.
“What a little attention seeker,” she muttered, and I hid a smile. It wasn’t like Luna didn’t know how to get pats herself.
“Hey, so we’re planning to hit this club downtown and we were wondering if maybe you’d like to tag along?” Blake asked.
I blinked a few times, confused. I was half-tempted to look back behind me to make sure there wasn’t some cooler, younger person standing behind me that he could be addressing.
“Oh. You mean me? Go with you? To a club?”
Tabatha and Blake chuckled, standing back up.
“Yeah, you! I mean, no offense, but when was the last time you did something fun?” Tabatha asked.
“Well, the other day I baked a cheesecake and ate half of it by myself, if that counts,” I replied, a blush creeping up my face. God, when had I become so old?
My guests looked at each other and laughed, as though I’d made the funniest joke they’d ever heard. I hoped they thought I was joking.
“Exactly,” Blake said. “So, come with us. It’ll be fun!”
“Oh, I don’t know. I need to do some cleaning up,” I lied, having already magically tidied up the whole kitchen earlier.
“Come on!” Tabatha urged me. “We’re heading out in a few minutes. Put on your favorite little black dress and we’ll hit the club. You’re young, you’re pretty, and you should be out having fun with people your own age. Human people,” she added, glancing at Luna and Lucy.
I wondered how old they thought I was. I was certainly older than these two, but I didn’t bring that up. They stared at me, waiting for an answer. To my dismay, I could not think of a single good reason why not.
“Okay! Let me go change,” I finally said.
“Yay!” Tabatha squealed.
Putting my bowl in the sink, I hurried upstairs, my heart pounding as I slipped on a black, velvety vintage dress, black heels, and a long black cardigan. It was a little racier than what I normally wore, but I had a feeling I would still look pretty frumpy next to the other clubbers.
“Oh well. This is as good as it’s going to get,” I sighed, looking at my reflection.
Rushing back downstairs, I joined my guests at the front door. Both of them had changed clothes as well, and while I couldn’t quite place exactly why we looked different, I definitely knew they looked better. I just chalked it up to my being older and out of touch with kids these days. Their effortless coolness was something I could never pull off, and I hoped at the very least I just didn’t look flat-out embarrassing. But they seemed pleased enough at my ensemble and excited to hang out with me, although I could not for the life of me figure out why.
The three of us hopped onto our brooms and sped off toward the coolest - and only - club in town, using warming spells to protect ourselves from the cold
I definitely felt out of place, being out and about this late at night, despite the fact that I had lived in this town my whole life. Even as a rebellious teenager, I had never been much into the partying scene, and now that I was essentially a premature spinster, the idea of going to a club was, quite frankly, terrifying. I tried to reassure myself that it would at least make a fun story to share with Luna when I returned home, but the realization that I was more excited to talk to my cat about going to the club than I was to actually go to the club just made me feel worse.
When we arrived outside the venue, it dawned on me that it was located right down the street from where the big robbery had occurred days earlier. I was itching to go snoop around a little, but my very excitable new friends all but shoved me through the front doors of the club before I could make a run for it.
My eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness inside the club, which was both huge and pulsing with sound. It was like walking into a mix between a cave person’s lair and an alien discotheque. Candles with color-changing flames floated through the air just above the heads of the dancing crowd. Bioluminescent spiderwebs stretched across the vaulted ceiling, glowing with glittering white light. The club was split into three different cavernous rooms, each with a different theme. The main area, in the middle, was designed with the candles, spiderwebs, and generic haunted house aesthetic. A constant stream of fog floated about, which didn’t appear to be coming from any source in particular.
The room off to the left was enchanted to look like it was floating on thin air, far up in the stratosphere. The floor felt and looked like clouds and tiny stars, the walls a dark, plush black to imitate deep space. The bar drifted above the dance floor, and was accessible via a floating staircase, with each step hovering in the air. It gave me vertigo just looking at it.
The room off to the right was charmed to resemble the deep ocean. The floor was designed to look and feel like the sandy ocean floor. The walls were a rippling dark blue, with three-dimensional sharks, angler fish, jellyfish, and whales swimming past. In a stroke of magical finesse, the shadows of these creatures cast long and impressive across the dance floor. In this room, the bar was located in a rocky-looking grotto, behind a thick layer of seemingly holographic coral. This room intrigued me more than the space-themed side, so I shrugged away from Tabatha and Blake, who were already grooving on the haunted dance floor, and headed toward the grotto bar. I squeezed through the crowds and made my way across the sea floor, phasing through the coral that guarded the entrance of the grotto. I found myself a rarity: an empty bar stool. I sat down and promptly ordered the first cocktail that came to mind: a whiskey sour. I looked down to grab my cash and when I looked back up, the bartender had already pushed my drink in front of me. It was served in a shimmering blue cocktail glass, with a tiny, glittery octopus splashing around in the booze. It was just an illusion, a clever, quirky charm, but I still felt a little awkward drinking from it. The octopus let out a very anatomically impossible squeal of delight as it slid around in the glass.
I wrinkled my nose and set the glass back down.
When I looked up again, I squinted in the darkness, recognizing the face of one of the bartenders. I realized with a jolt that it was Jackson Long! At first, I assumed my eyes had to be playing tricks on me. After all, didn’t he already have a job down at the Academy?
But when he came a little closer, there was no denying it: that was definitely Jackson. I ordered a second drink before even finishing the first one, just to get him to come closer. I could tell that he not only recognized me, but was kind of trying to avoid me. But I wasn’t going to let that happen. My curiosity was too intense. I called him over and he reluctantly came, a sour look on his face. I gave him a sheepish smile.
“Hey, Jackson. We met the other day at the-” I began.
“The Academy. Yeah,” he answered quickly. “Look, do you want to order another drink?”
I was a little taken aback at how curt and rude he sounded. But then, maybe he didn’t really want to think about the shape he’d been in when we’d last spoken.
“Uh. Yeah. Another whiskey sour,” I spluttered, handing him a wad of cash. He looked down at the almost untouched whiskey sour already sitting on the counter and then raised an eyebrow at me.
“You haven’t even touched the first one,” he pointed out.
This was goin
g as well as I’d hoped. I hurriedly picked up the glass and downed it all in a few big gulps, causing the tiny octopus to shriek in terror. I set the glass on the counter with a clink and the octopus disappeared into thin air. Jackson looked almost impressed for a moment before his dour demeanor came back. He turned away for a moment to mix me a second drink, then placed it in front of me, complete with a new tiny octopus who was just as excitable as the last.
“Thanks!” I said loudly, trying to make myself heard over the pulsing bass of the music. “I didn’t know you worked here, too.”
His eyes darted around, like he was looking for an escape. “Yeah. Well, I need money. So I’m working two jobs.”
“Janitor by day, bartender by night. Exciting,” I said lamely. Jackson started to walk away but I leaned over and put my hand on his arm. He looked down at it in surprise, then over at me expectantly.
“So, were you working here the night of that big robbery down the street by any chance?” I asked hurriedly.
He looked shocked at the question, but to my surprise, he answered.
“Yes, I was. What about it?”
I opened and closed my mouth, unable to think of a follow-up.
“Great talking to you,” he said unconvincingly. Turning away, he walked down to the other end of the bar, leaving me to nurse my second drink, deep in thought. It seemed like a huge coincidence that he would just happen to be in the area on the night of the robbery. How likely was that? And why was he working two jobs? I knew my sister made sure to pay all her employees very well, including the cleaning staff. Unless he was just terrible with money, I couldn’t think of why he would need a second job here at the club.
Could he have been the robber?
And if so, had Arianna found out about it? Maybe that was what they had argued about on the phone the night before she was killed. Maybe she had been pushing him to turn himself in, scolding him for breaking the law. Maybe that’s why he had been so angry with her.
My heart skipped a beat. It seemed too cruel to be true, but what if Jackson Long had killed his own sister to keep her from telling the police that he was the robber?
Chapter 15
As the realization dawned on me, I suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to get to work. Perhaps it was simply the fact that I had just downed two fairly strong whiskey sours in the span of about six minutes, but I was totally overcome with curiosity. I needed to get back to sleuthing my way through this increasingly tangled-up mystery. Besides, it wasn’t as if I was going to have a particularly fun night here at the club. I was very much out of my element, distinctly older and less cool than the average clubgoer here tonight. Everyone else was young and hip and here to impress somebody, whereas I had no interest in hanging around any longer than my two guests wanted to keep me here. I hopped down from my bar stool and immediately felt a wave of dizziness come over me as the alcohol really hit me. Reaching out, I grabbed the edge of the bar to steady myself as I wobbled a little in my black heels. The room was spinning, which wasn’t much of a surprise considering how trippy it was to begin with. The blue, ocean-themed walls felt daunting and smothering suddenly, and I needed to swim to shore.
“Excuse me. Pardon me. Coming through,” I murmured as I shoved past the throngs of dancing youths and tourists clinking their champagne flutes together. I wondered vaguely when I had transformed into such an old person that simply being inside a club was too much for me. I supposed that I had spent far too many evenings curled up on my sofa watching television and talking to my cat to be capable of interacting with actual cool people anymore. This just was not my scene, and to be honest, never really had been.
As I made my way out of the deep sea room and crossed over into the haunted house-themed space, I stood on my tiptoes, looking around to see if I could track down Tabatha and Blake. The last thing I needed was for either of them to see me leaving and trying to stop me. Finally, I caught sight of them, and I burst out laughing despite myself. They were both inside a relatively large metal cage which floated a good few meters above the heads of the other dancers. They were both dancing while sipping colorful beverages which almost certainly contained no less than four different types of alcohol. They were so deeply in the zone that I realized they had probably long since forgotten I’d even existed. Satisfied that they were safely and literally stowed away, I began wading through the crowd to get to the front doors. It took me a good five minutes to weave my way through without accidentally spilling someone’s drink or stepping on anyone’s foot, and when I finally reached the front doors, I ducked and bolted.
Finally, I was out of the writhing, pulsating masses of dancing youths. I leaned against the building and drew in a deep breath, resting for a moment while I sucked fresh, cold air into my lungs. My ears were ringing from the loud music, and I could still feel the bass bumping underneath my feet. My stomach twisted and gurgled, reminding me of how stupid it was to chug two whiskey sours so quickly. I wracked my brain, trying to think of whether I knew a spell for nausea or not. But I was coming up empty. Thanks, alcohol.
After a few minutes of deep breathing, I stood up and began my slightly wobbly trek down the street toward the jewelry store. It was a block and a half down, and just around a corner. I shivered in the cold, feeling the snow crunch underneath my heels. Casting a warming spell of myself, I waddled down the sidewalk, cursing myself for not grabbing my broom. Although, when I thought about it a little harder, it occurred to me that it might not be especially safe to attempt broom-riding in my current degree of inebriation. It had really been a long time since I’d drank any amount of alcohol that quickly, and it was definitely affecting me.
When I found myself standing in front of the jewelry shop, I frowned. It looked different from how I remembered it, but I told myself it was just because it was dark now. The building was rather rundown and in need of a touch-up. There was rust around the hinges of the door, and dust collecting thickly on the inside of the glass windows. The bedraggled and discoloured curtains, which used to be brightly colored and kept drawn to let in the light and allowed passersby to window shop, had fallen down across the windows, obscuring everything from view.
“Ugh,” I moaned. The sad state of the jewelry shop had reminded me that my own business was in need of a touch-up, as well. The renovations I had been putting off, the ones my mother was intent on micromanaging even though she was supposed to be retired, weighed on me like a stack of bricks. I sighed and crossed my arms over my chest.
“What in the name of the moon am I doing right now?” I asked myself out loud. It was a legitimate question. I had so much of my own work to deal with, and the last thing I needed was a late night out that could potentially throw off my already precarious sleeping schedule.
I made a mental note to take a closer look at what exactly needed to be done tomorrow. Or the next day. Whenever I got a break from work and from this mystery eating away at me. How in the world had I ended up in this position – again - juggling my real job alongside my moonlighting gig as an unpaid detective? With a jolt, I wondered what Xander would think of me right now. Standing in the cold and dark outside a crime scene with no clear idea of what I was even trying to accomplish. Then I wondered what he would think of the outfit I was wearing.
“Come on, Arti. Snap out of it. Now is definitely not the time,” I muttered to myself. “You walked all the way over here. Now what?”
Against my better judgment, I stepped forward and, looking around a little nervously, reached out and tried the door handle. As I expected, the door was locked. I winced, hoping that I hadn’t just set off an alarm or lock enchantment somewhere. But to be honest, the whole area looked more or less derelict. This row of shops was right around the corner from the club, which was definitely still hopping with energy, but just a block and a half away, it was another world entirely. It was dark and quiet over here, with only one sad, flickering street light remaining. I had a feeling there probably wasn’t a very good surveillance system over he
re. After all, the police still hadn’t caught the jewelry store thief. If there had been a video of the break-in, surely there would have been an arrest by now. Of course, it was not unheard of here to just forego the installation of surveillance cameras or enchantments. This was Moonlight Cove, and break-ins weren’t exactly commonplace. So it made sense that even the owner of a jewelry shop would shrug off the necessity for surveillance equipment. Even the highly valuable products sold within this place weren’t enough to warrant such precautions. Not in a town where everyone knew each other.
“No one would have expected it,” I murmured, looking up at the building. I decided to have a quick look around. Walking over to the side of the building, I headed around to the back, which opened up onto a long, narrow alleyway. The pathway was cast in shadow. I shivered just looking at it. This place was freaking creepy, though I was sure that in the cheery light of day, it probably didn’t look half so ominous. I squinted down the alley at the small square of light shining toward the end. It took me a moment to realize that the light was coming from the back door of the club.
“The back door opens right up onto this alleyway,” I said to myself. “And obviously most people don’t use this path. Which means that if someone were to sneak out the back door of the club, they could easily creep down along this pathway unseen.”
I turned and looked behind me. “And they would end up right at the back entrance of the jewelry store,” I noted. I quietly walked over to the rear entrance. It was a dark-colored, unassuming door. Again, I tried the handle, and it was locked. But the doorknob looked brand new. As though it had just been installed.
“I wonder,” I mumbled to myself. “Did they just install this new one because the old knob was broken? Maybe even the lock was broken?”
I heard the rattle of something metal, like a can, down the alleyway, and I got spooked. The hair stood up on my arms, and I turned and ran as fast as I could in my heels back to the safety of the at least somewhat lit street. Racing down the sidewalk, back to the front entrance of the club, I hurriedly wiggled back in, weaving through the crowd. To my relief, Tabatha and Blake were still dancing in their weird metal cage, though they did look a lot more exhausted now. Hopefully that meant they would soon want to head home. I was more than ready to go.
Thank my Lucky Spells: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery (Moonlight Cove Mystery Book 3) Page 10
