Thorn to Die

by Lacy Andersen

  “Take it easy on me, okay? My visions are usually pretty blurry. Don’t go all Rambo on my butt.”

  I sighed and raised my hands in surrender. No problems here. We just needed to know who the killer was.

  Blythe shifted in her seat and ran her hands over her linen skirt, smoothing out the wrinkles. “It looked like I was in a basement. It was dank and musty. Boxes stacked to the ceiling. The moon was shining in one of the little windows. I remember an old work table in the middle of the room, the legs scarred and rough.”

  My head nearly bobbed off my neck. “And…?”

  “And Angie Pine was there.” She shook her head. “She was looking at something. A letter. It was really hard to see. But I know, without a doubt, that I saw Allen White’s signature at the bottom. I recognized it from that last summer when he hired me to stage the Battle of the Roses here in town. Remember? His roses won and he rubbed it in everyone’s noses? It was definitely from him.”

  Raven leaned in closer, her dark hair falling in front of her face. “Did you see what it was about?”

  “No, it was too dark. But I could see Angie’s face. She was angry. More than angry, she was livid. After she read the note, she took a lighter to the edge of it and watched it burn to a crisp. It had to be her.” Blythe fixed her big blue eyes on me. “She has to be the murderer, right? Why else would I have had that vision?”

  Raven shrugged at me. It did seem awfully suspicious, but didn’t exactly give us clear motive.

  “You only see the future, right?” I asked. It wouldn’t help us if that letter had already been destroyed. Blythe nodded. “Then, that letter is the evidence we need to prove Grammy Jo’s innocence. You heard those old ladies, everyone knows Angie Pine did it. If there’s proof of a motive in there, you can bet the cops will forget about Grammy.”

  “Okay, if that’s true, how do we get it?” Raven stood up straight, towering over me. “It’s not like we can just walk up to Angie and ask if she’s got it on her.”

  “It’s in a box,” Blythe squeaked. “I remember now, she pulled it out of a little white box. It’s in the basement, wherever that is.”

  Thoughts swirled through my head. Angie Pine lived in a new apartment just two blocks from her shop. If I remembered right, the laundry room took up the basement in that building. That meant, that if she was storing it in a basement, it had to be somewhere else.

  “It’s in the basement of her floral shop,” Raven said, beating me to it. “It’s got to be. There’s no place like that in the Birchwood Apartments.”

  “But there’s no way we’ll be able to get in there.” Blythe stuck out her lower lip. She’d never been the adventurous type. Happier to play with dolls than to climb trees and hunt for treasure when we were kids. “Not with her working upstairs.”

  “Then we go after she closes at three,” I said, tapping my ballet flat on the marbled tile floor. “As soon as we can. In your vision, she doesn’t burn it until the moon comes up. If we find it before it gets dark, she won’t have time to burn it.”

  “But that’s breaking and entering.” Tears glistened at the corners of Blythe’s eyes. “What if we’re caught? Nobody will hire a Special Event Organizer with a felony.”

  Raven and I both groaned.

  “Listen, blondie,” Raven said in a flat tone. “You’re the only one who knows exactly what we’re looking for. You have to come with. Buck up and get tough. Do it for Grammy Jo.”

  Go, Raven! My dark cousin hardly ever stood up for anything. As an introvert, she tended to let things go. A spark of pride lit inside me from watching her get riled up. That’s what family was for.

  “But…” Blythe wiped at her eyes and sniffed.

  “Are you a Half-Moon Witch or what?” Raven snapped.

  Blythe pulled back as if she’d been slapped. I hadn’t heard one of us use that dare since we were kids. Because of our unique birthmarks, we thought we were some kind of super women. Destined to save the world. We had to live up to the birthright. If any of us tried to chicken out of a dare, all we had to do was invoke the Half-Moon Witch name. The last thing any of us wanted to be was a coward.

  “Fine, for Grammy Jo. But we better not get caught, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “We won’t,” I promised. “We wait until she closes. Then, we pounce.”

  At three o’clock sharp that afternoon, I bounced from my art shop and skillfully dodged my manager’s notice. My cousins met me outside Raven’s shop, the store already closed up tight. Angie Pine’s Floral Arrangements and Gifts sat two doors down, on the other side of Larry’s Antique and Vintage.

  Giant arrangements of blue and white hydrangeas, with white roses and baby’s breath sporadically placed in-between, overtook the display window. The shop was dark – Angie had probably closed up a little earlier than usual to escape the whispers of the townspeople. A black and white CLOSED sign hung in the entrance.

  We bypassed the front door and took the alleyway around back, Blythe looking over her shoulder every three seconds. A large wooden door with an unloading bay took up the space behind the shop. The upper half of the door had about a dozen small square windows, each made from a different color of glass. Through the lightest colors, I could see floral coolers lining the wall and pruning tools laying on a wooden table.

  While Raven and Blythe stood back, watching for witnesses, I crept up and pulled on the handle. Locked, dang it. It was too much to hope that Angie Pine trusted the good people of this small town. Guess we really would be breaking and entering.

  “It’s locked? Oh, that’s too bad. Maybe we should come back tomorrow.” Blythe made a motion to march off, but Raven grabbed her by the back of her delicate pink cardigan and held her in place.

  “I don’t suppose one of you suddenly developed the magical ability to unlock doors?” I asked, pulling the bottom of my sleeveless blouse up over my elbow. They both shook their heads no. “Then, I guess we have to do this the old fashioned way.” My elbow burst through the bottom right glass pane, shattering it into a million pieces.

  All of us froze, listening for movement. But no one came running, looking for trespassers. Satisfied by the relative quiet of the nearby street, I reached my hand through the broken pane and unlocked the bolt. The door swung open and all three of us darted inside, closing it shut behind.

  “This way,” I hissed.

  The door to the basement was already open. It led to a dark and musty staircase. We scrambled down, blind in the pitch black.

  “Hit the light,” Raven said. “Before I break my neck.”

  I threw my hands out, finding a pull string. “Here it is.”

  Before I could pull it, Blythe let out an ear-piercing scream. I panicked and yanked the string nearly off the ceiling, a light popping on above my head and blinding me.

  “Get them off, get them off!” Blythe screamed. She was dancing around the concrete floor, swiping at her head. “Spiders! They’re in my hair.”

  Another light string hung from the ceiling above her head. It caught in her hair as she flailed about, clearly the source of her imaginary spiders. Raven and I both cracked up, doubling over for breath, until Blythe finally stopped moving and noticed the pull switch. She put her tiny hands on her hips and glared at us. “Not funny guys.”

  A tear ran down my cheek. “I’m sorry. So not funny. You’re right.”

  Back to business. I looked around. Stacks of boxes leaned against every wall, almost all the way up to the ceiling. We were never going to find the letter in all of this. There must’ve been about a hundred boxes in that place.

  “Blythe, look for the box,” I told her, running toward the closest pile. “You’re the only one who knows what to look for. Start looking.”

  We searched high and low, dumping out boxes and throwing the contents haphazardly back into their spaces. Most of the stuff belonged to the floral shop. Foam arrangement cones, floral wire, fertilizer to keep the arrangements fresh. Nothing that looked like the precious
letter.

  “Guys, look.” Raven held her hand up. Something brown wriggled on her palm. I realized as soon as Blythe screeched that it was a rat.

  “What are you doing with that thing?” I spat. Vegan or not, I still didn’t like rats.

  “This little guy’s got a lot of things to spill about Angie Pine,” Raven said, stroking the rat’s head. She leaned in closer as I shuddered. “He says she likes to kill his friends. Leaves poison out for them to eat.”

  Poison? If Angie liked to kill rats with poison, she could’ve used that same poison to kill Allen White. Ian Larson might find that fact interesting.

  “Poor little guy.” Raven put the rat back on the ground and watched him scamper away. “Why would anyone want to hurt him?”

  I could think of a few reasons, but I held my tongue. Now was not the time to get into a debate about the innocence of rodents. We had to find that piece of paper.

  Panic began to take hold in my chest. What if Angie had the letter with her at home? What if Blythe’s vision had been wrong? I didn’t know how this magical medium stuff really worked. Could our witchy powers ever be wrong? Doubt clouded my mind.

  “Guys, over here.” Blythe waved at us from near the large metal furnace. She had a flat white box in her hand. “I think this is it. I know it is.”

  She slid open the box, dumping out a pile of papers. We spread it on the wooden table like a deck of cards. There was writing on all of them. It looked like Angie had saved every letter she’d ever received. There were some dating back to the eighties, yellow and deteriorating from age. I scanned through about a dozen, coming up with zilch.

  “Aha!” Raven held up a single sheet of paper with narrow scrawl across the page. “This is from Allen White. This has to be it.”

  I crumbled the piece of paper I had in my hand and dropped it, my heart beating faster.

  Blythe looked over her shoulder at the letter. “Yeah, that’s the one from my vision. Read it! What does it say?”

  Raven squinted at the page. “It’s hard to make out. Something about flowers and…”

  A noise from above made us all freeze. My muscles tensed, ready to spring into action. Another noise, and then the creak of a door being pushed open. The wooden floorboards groaned with the weight of footsteps. One, two, three. It was then that we heard Angie’s voice.

  “Yeah, this is Angie Pine. I’ve got a break-in at my shop on Main. Probably some hooligans looking for my cash register. They broke the back door this time.”

  All three of us shot toward the light switch and Raven managed to get her hand on it first. With a quick tug, the basement went dark. We huddled there, listening to the sound of our own breaths.

  This was it, we were done for. No amount of excuses would work. I could already feel the cold hard prison bunkbed under my back. I would never survive in jail. My back was too fragile to sleep on metal.

  “The window,” Blythe whispered, pointing to the nearest little basement window.

  It’d already been cracked open the tiniest bit. We ran toward it and Raven grabbed a wooden chair to set underneath. Blythe was the first one up. She had no trouble forcing the window open and shimmying through the tiny rectangle, with us boosting her from below.

  Next, was me. The fit was tight, but Blythe pulled on my hands from the outside while Raven pushed from behind. I scraped my knee on the asphalt, but it was worth it once I felt the warm summer air on my skin. Freedom.

  “Who’s down there?” Angie’s voice came from the top of the basement stairs. “You better not be messing with my fertilizer. Stupid druggies.”

  Raven looked up at us through the window. Her eyes widened in terror, the letter held tight in her fist. I reached for her arms, pulling her halfway through the window. Blythe joined in the tug-o-war, but Raven’s hips got stuck. She squirmed and kicked, but couldn’t free herself.

  “Take the letter.” She shoved it into my hands. “Go! They’ll only catch me.”

  Raven had never been in trouble with the law. She didn’t have life-altering secrets that could’ve ruined her future if anyone in the magical law enforcement world found out. Still, I couldn’t leave her behind. Not when this had been my idea in the first place.

  “You’re. Coming. With. Us.” I pulled harder on her hand.

  “We’re not leaving you,” Blythe added. “I’ve got this. Hang on.”

  Blythe suddenly disappeared from my side. I blinked hard, sure that I was going crazy. In the next instant, she reappeared next to the window, using an iron rod to loosen the window frame. Satisfied with the results, she dropped the rod and ran back to my side, grabbing Raven’s other hand. “On the count of three!”

  We pulled with all our might and the wooden frame cracked. Raven’s hips slid through the opening, her jeans ripping open on her thighs. There was no time to assess the damage. We sprinted off down the street, to the sound of sirens wailing in the distance.

  Chapter 10

  Adrenaline pumped through my veins. We were still coursing through the town like jackrabbits and my shop had just come into view. I hadn’t felt this alive since the first time magic coursed through my body and out through the paintbrush. Maniacal laughter burst from my mouth as I opened the door to Hazel’s Paintings and let the three of us in. Kat grunted a lazy greeting from his little cushion.

  “We nearly got caught there.” My words came out in little huffs, my lungs straining for more air. “She nearly got us.”

  Raven looked down at her ripped jeans and groaned. “No kidding. These were my favorite pair. I’m pretty sure I left a strip of my flesh on that window sill.”

  “Good thinking with the crow bar, Blythe. That time freezing skill really does come in handy.”

  Blythe smiled shyly and sat at my chair. “It’s too bad I can’t do it more than a few seconds. Imagine what I could’ve done with a whole hour.”

  If Blythe could’ve frozen time for an hour, we wouldn’t have had to go in that basement. It really was too bad that she couldn’t hold it longer.

  “Where have you been?” Butch sprung through my door, a metal clipboard clutched in his bony grasp. At this distance, I could see the giant red pimple that had freshly sprouted on the tip of his pointed nose. “This is the second day in a row you’ve left your post before the park closed.” He sniffed and raised his chin. “It’s simply unacceptable.”

  Nothing would’ve pleased me more than to tell Butch Hall where he could stuff that metal clipboard, but I held myself back. I was already walking a fine line between gainfully employed and just another parasite living off of Grammy Jo’s generosity.

  “I’m sorry, Butch. Family business.”

  He sniffed again and glanced over at Raven and Blythe. I couldn’t help but notice the way his face went slack when he took in Blythe’s little skirt and sweater. She tended to have that effect on men.

  “Don’t let it happen again, Brunick,” Butch said, turning toward the door. “The park is priority number one. Remember your employee handbook.”

  He left and I was finally free to roll my eyes. This kid must’ve forgotten he was nearly six years younger than me. I wasn’t sure why he thought he could boss me around. Someday, I’d love to bring him down a notch or two. Remind him what’s what.

  “What’s the letter say?” Raven bounced in her five inch black heels. I wasn’t sure how she’d sprinted all this way in them, but somehow she’d managed to keep up with the rest of us. Must’ve been her massively long legs. “Tell me it’s something good.”

  I had forgotten the balled up piece of paper in my fist. Smoothing it out on the table, I squinted at the writing. “It’s definitely addressed to Angie.”

  The letter started out with Dear Ms. Pine and got measurably messy from there. Allen White sure didn’t have the best handwriting. As an artist, I’d prided myself on my flowing and delicate script. Handwriting was just another expression of creation. And judging by Allen’s opinion of my career path, he hadn’t cared much about art.
>
  Holding the letter up closer to my electric kerosene lamp, I read it aloud, “I regret to inform you that your attempt at extortion means nothing to me. Your idle threats would not hold up water in a court of law. You may think that you have the upper hand, but I assure you, I will fight you until death.”

  I looked at my cousins. The shock I saw in their faces mirrored my own. Until death? This was serious.

  “You have no stake in my Hartford Bella Roses. I realized that long ago, when you mistakenly thought you were assisting in the grafting and perfecting of the species, you decided that you had a claim in the final product. I assure you, you do not now nor ever will have a claim to my plants. You and every other piece of riffraff from off the streets can threaten me all you’d like. My flowers are the only family I have left and that will never change. Signed, Allen P. White.”

  Raven and Blythe sat in silence while I read the letter over again. None of it made sense to me. They were fighting over flowers? Why would anyone fight over flowers? Why would someone kill for them? It seemed so petty.

  I looked up at my cousins and shook my head. “I’d heard of Mr. White’s prized roses, but until now I didn’t know how serious he was about them.”

  Raven nodded, pressing her dark lips into thin lines. “Last year, he won some competition to present his roses to the Queen of England. I’m pretty sure it was a big deal.”

  “Yeah, I remember that,” Blythe added. “Momma said he won something like a hundred grand, too. That’s a lot of money for a flower.”

  If Angie thought she’d had a hand in the creation of Allen’s roses, maybe she thought part of that prize was hers. People had killed for less. And Angie wasn’t exactly a patient woman, or a rich one. She could’ve needed the money. Allen White was one of the richest men in town, living in his great beast of a house. He didn’t need anything. He could’ve easily handed over the money.

  I paced the room, the letter still in my hand. “This looks really bad for Angie, but I’m not sure it’s enough.” My feet stopped moving and I looked up at Raven and Blythe. “I’m not sure it’ll be enough to take the heat off of Grammy Jo.”