Whole Latte Magic

by Samantha Silver

  Whole Latte Magic

  Enchanted Enclave Mystery #2

  Samantha Silver

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Also by Samantha Silver

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  I was fairly certain I was going to die.

  “I can’t do this,” I groaned to my cousin Leanne next to me. Every muscle in my body felt like it was about to shut down. There was nothing I wanted more than to curl up into a little ball on the ground and weep until everything stopped hurting.

  “You can, you’re almost there,” Leanne said to me with a wink. Even though she was in the same position as I was, there was nothing similar about the two of us. Leanne was lithe and flexible, looking like she wasn’t doing anything more difficult than sitting on the ground reading a book.

  Meanwhile I looked like a sweaty bagel.

  “And from here we’re going to go back into downward dog,” Janice said in her relaxing voice from the front of the room.”

  “Oh, thank God,” I muttered to myself. I never in a million years thought I was going to say that; just half an hour earlier I had gone into downward dog and thought I was never going to get out of it.

  “See? You made it,” Leanne whispered to me.

  That might have been true, but at what cost? My left arm was now trembling uncontrollably, sweat fell from my forehead onto the mat below, and I didn’t know my quads could hurt this much. I probably would have welcomed amputation if it was offered to me right about now.

  “Now, move your knees to the mat, and we’re going to go deep into child’s pose,” Janice said, her voice soft but powerful, echoing through the space of the yoga studio. I looked up and copied Janice, moving my butt back onto my ankles and laying my forehead down on the mat, arms outstretched.

  Now this was the sort of thing I thought yoga was going to be. Lying on a mat, stretched out, not working every muscle in my body to death.

  I could lie here like this all day. In fact, I figured there was a good chance I was going to have to. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I was going to be able to get up from this position.

  “Keep breathing everyone. Big, deep breaths. As you exhale, let the stress from the day flow out of you with your breath. Relax your muscles. Relax your body.”

  I was so relaxed right now I was ready to bite somebody. I wasn’t sure my body was physically capable of relaxing anymore.

  “And we’ll finish off with an ‘ohm’,” Janice said. The whole room was filled with the low sound of people doing an ‘ohm’ sound together, the volume slowly rising before fading away once more.

  Personally, my sound was more like an “arrrrgghghhhhhhhh” but hey, baby steps.

  Then, it was over. The other women – and two men – in the room began curling up their yoga mats, drinking water, and happily going on their merry way, looking like models right out of a fitness ad.

  I, on the other hand, keeled over onto my side, panting and groaning like a hippo that had just given birth.

  “See? You survived. Wasn’t it fun?” Leanne asked next to me.

  “If masochism is something you’re into, sure,” I replied. “Please just leave me here. I don’t think I can make it to the car.”

  Leanne laughed, bent down with surprising ease and handed me her water bottle.

  “Come on. Drink some water, you’ll feel better.”

  “Is there morphine in it?” I asked, taking the bottle and helping myself to a large swig.

  “There isn’t. Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a little bit?”

  “No. How was this so easy for you?”

  “Because it’s not apparently the first time in my entire life that I’ve exercised.”

  I glared at my cousin. “Hey, I had to do P.E. when I was in school.”

  “Right. I bet you were the girl who pretended to get her period so she didn’t have to.”

  I had no comeback to that; it was completely true.

  “That’s because if this is how exercise feels, I want none of it.”

  “Trust me, it gets easier.”

  “I’m going to have to trust you; I have no intention of finding out on my own.”

  “Wrong,” Leanne said. “After seeing you struggle, you are absolutely joining me for the afternoon easy relaxation session in a few days.”

  “There was nothing easy or relaxing about the last hour. Did you accidentally take me to the advanced, murder-your-muscles session instead?”

  “I most definitely did not,” Leanne replied. “But we can work our way up to that. You don’t have any muscles right now.”

  “The searing pain every inch of my body is feeling disagrees.”

  “Alright, well, you’re going to have to struggle through it and get up, otherwise the people coming in for the next class are going to see you lying here like a beached whale.”

  I shot Leanne a look. “A sexy beached whale,” she added quickly.

  “Fine, help me up,” I begged, and Leanne grabbed my hands and dragged me up to my feet.

  I picked my mat up off the ground and rolled it up as Janice made her way over, smiling.

  “What did you think of your first session?”

  “It was great,” I lied. Janice was a very nice person and absolutely loved the practice of yoga. I didn’t want to break her heart by letting her know I’d rather stab myself than to attend a second class.

  “Fantastic,” Janet said, beaming at me, putting her hands together, and bowing. “I hope to see you again. Namaste.”

  “I’m going to nama-stay away from this place in the future,” I muttered as she left, and Leanne laughed.

  “Oh don’t be such a baby. Take a few days to recover, and then we’ll come back here again Friday after work.”

  “I’m moving back in with your mom. She never made me do any exercise.”

  “She’s way less fun than Kaillie and I are, though.”

  “I don’t know; if this is what you consider fun, I’m going to have to disagree.”

  “Come on. Kaillie’s going to be waiting for us, and dinner’s going to be cold if we’re late. She said she’s making shepherd’s pie.”

  If anything was going to make me move right now, it was the promise of food.

  The two of us made our way down to Leanne’s car, parked on Main Street here in Enchanted Enclave. I’d recently moved in with Leanne and Kaillie, which I did have to admit was a lot of fun. Kaillie was teaching me all sorts of spells, and I was starting to get used to this idea of having magic in my life.

  Whereas Aunt Debbie, Kaillie’s mom, was all about structured learning and a sort of home-schooling environment, Kaillie and Leanne were much more hands-on. It also helped that Leanne didn’t have any magical powers of her own, and so was essentially living vicariously through my discovery of my own powers.

  “Hey, Eliza, see if you can turn this bread into toast through magic,” Kaillie would tell me in the morning.

  Leanne’s methods were more… hands on.

  “Quick, catch,” Leanne would call out in the
morning, throwing a plate towards me. The first time it happened, I let out a squeal and ducked – have I mentioned that I’m not the most athletic person in the world – and the plate hit the wall behind me and shattered. “Well, I guess you’re just going to have to use magic to fix it.”

  I’d laugh and cast the fixing spell – one of the first ones I’d learned – and move on with life.

  It was a lot of fun, and as I slipped into the passenger seat, I reflected on the fact that I really felt, for the first time in my life, like I had a nice, big, happy family.

  It would have been better with Dad here to enjoy it with me, but for me, this was very much a case of a door closing and a window opening in its stead. Things weren’t better or worse than when Dad was around, they were just different. And I was enjoying every minute of it.

  Leanne was driving back home, where Kaillie was baking up a mean shepherd’s pie, when I spotted something out of the corner of my eye. It was a person, walking down the street. No, stumbling down the street would have been a more accurate description. It was dark out, with no streetlights around, and I barely saw them.

  “Look out,” I said to Leanne motioning in that direction. There were a lot of people here who didn’t seem to understand that dark clothing combined with a lack of lights made them practically invisible. Someone must have had a few too many drinks at the bar that night.

  “Thanks,” Leanne said, slowing down as she moved towards the shape. Suddenly, right as Leanne’s car came close to the person, they jumped directly in front of us.

  “What the-?” Leanne shouted as she swerved hard, tires squealing to avoid the person. The thud on the side of the car told me that no, she hadn’t.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God, I just hit someone,” Leanne said, slamming on the brakes. “What do I do? What do I do?”

  “Stop the car and let’s see if they’re ok,” I said, unclipping my seatbelt and throwing open the passenger door. I rushed out to see the prone figure lying on the ground. They weren’t moving at all.

  “Are you ok?” I called out. “Leanne, call an ambulance!”

  “On it,” my cousin replied, her voice shaking.

  I pulled out my phone and turned the flashlight on the person lying on the ground. They didn’t seem to be responding at all, which was strange. After all, while Leanne had hit them, it would have been a glancing blow at best, and at slow speed. I couldn’t imagine it had done that much damage. But then, what did I know?

  Turning on the flashlight revealed that I was looking at a woman who looked to be in her late thirties. She was barely conscious, and her breathing was shallow and ragged.

  “You might want to tell that ambulance it’s a real emergency,” I called out, taking the woman’s hand. I didn’t know a lot about first aid, but I did know that you weren’t supposed to move somebody who might have a neck or back injury, and given as she’d just been hit by Leanne’s car, I didn’t know what was wrong with her.

  “Save me,” a weak voice whispered, and I squeezed her hand harder.

  “The ambulance is on its way, I promise,” I said. “You’re going to be fine.” I really hoped I wasn’t lying to her. The woman tried to move, but I stopped her. “No, stay still. Help is coming.”

  Leanne came over now, her phone light on as well. As soon as she lit up the scene I gasped.

  The woman’s shirt was covered in blood.

  Chapter 2

  “That… that can’t be from me, can it?” Leanne asked, any color that had been left in her face disappearing completely.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I replied. It had soaked through her shirt; there was obviously a previous injury there.

  “What happened to you?” I asked the woman, but she had passed out, brown curls falling across her face.

  I didn’t let go of her hand, but Leanne carefully took the hem of her shirt and pulled it up. I gasped as a wound about three inches wide was revealed, right through the abdomen.

  “Someone stabbed her,” Leanne called out. “Holy crap, Eliza. Someone stabbed her.”

  Before I had a chance to react, headlights flew into view and an ambulance stopped in front of us a second later. Leanne called out, waving her hands at them.

  “She’s been stabbed. She seriously needs medical attention, now.” The EMTs sprang into action and Leanne and I stepped back as they worked.

  “Do you know who she is?” I asked Leanne, and she nodded.

  “Yeah. She’s a customer at the coffee shop. Her name is Karen. She works as a teacher at the school, little kids. Maybe grade two or three?”

  “Why would anyone want to stab a teacher?” I asked, and Leanne shrugged.

  “Beats me. Do you think she’s going to be ok?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied as they loaded her up onto the stretcher. “It definitely didn’t look good.”

  “I hope I didn’t make it worse,” Leanne said.

  “Hey, don’t beat yourself up. For one thing, there was nothing you could have done. She literally jumped in front of your car. You can’t expect pedestrians to do that, and as soon as you saw you swerved and slammed on the brakes. Secondly, if you hadn’t hit her, we probably wouldn’t have stopped and she’d be out here bleeding to death on the street.”

  “Yeah, that is a good point,” Leanne conceded. “Still, I wish I’d noticed without hitting her. What if I made it worse? What if I broke her leg, or something?”

  “You didn’t do any worse than the person who stabbed her in the first place,” I said firmly.

  “I guess. But still… I hit her with my car. I can’t have made things better.”

  “Come on,” I said. “Here comes a police officer. We just have to tell them what happened, and then we’ll head home.”

  My heart skipped a beat when I saw who had been sent from the police station – Detective Ross Andrews, the detective with the friendly smile and dimples, eyes that twinkled, and the face of an Adonis. Leanne and I watched as he spoke with one of the EMTs for about ten seconds as the man jumped into the back of the ambulance with the stretcher and drove off, sirens wailing.

  “Are you two alright?” Detective Andrews asked. Thankfully, he had left the lights of his car on, so we could still see. Concern was written all over his face, and I nodded.

  “Yeah. Just a little shaken up. We weren’t expecting what had happened.”

  “Can you walk me through it?”

  “She was stabbed!” Leanne said. “Someone stabbed her.”

  “Stabbed who? Do you know who it was?”

  “Karen. I don’t know her last name. The one who teaches at the elementary school. It was definitely her. She ran out at the car, and I tried to avoid her, but it didn’t work and I hit her. Oh God, I hit her!”

  “Alright, let’s take some deep breaths together, ok?” Detective Andrews said.

  “Yeah, do one of those ‘ohm’ things Janice made us do at yoga,” I suggested. “She says it’s supposed to calm you down and make you feel centered.”

  “Yeah, well, Janice probably hasn’t hit anyone with her car recently,” Leanne shot back. “I’m pretty sure breathing isn’t going to help Karen.”

  “Neither is freaking out about it here,” I replied. “Come on. Do what Detective Andrews said. Deep breath in, then deep breath out.”

  After a couple of minutes Leanne was obviously feeling a lot better, and Detective Andrews turned to me. “Do you want to fill me in on what happened next?”

  I nodded, trying to forget the image of Karen lying in the middle of the road. “I thought she was drunk. She was stumbling around along the edge of the road, and then all of a sudden she just ran out in front of Leanne’s car. In retrospect, I think she might have been trying to get us to help her. Leanne swerved, but still glanced her. We stopped and I ran out, and she was lying on the road, not moving. I didn’t want to move her, in case she’d been injured, but she woke up and told me to save her. I said she was going to be fine. Then Leanne came over and we saw the blood
. Leanne pulled up her shirt; she’d definitely been stabbed.”

  Detective Andrews’ face didn’t betray any emotions. “You say she was stabbed?”

  “Well, I’m not an expert, but that’s what it looked like, anyway. She had a gash in her side about this big, and blood all over her shirt,” I said, showing the size of the wound by holding up two fingers.

  “Did she say anything else? Did she mention who had stabbed her, or how it had happened?”

  I shook my head. “She just asked me to help her, and then I think she passed out. She was barely conscious when we got to her to begin with.”

  “Did you see anybody else around as you drove?”

  “I didn’t,” I said, turning to Leanne, but she shook her head as well.

  “No, me neither. Seven o’clock isn’t exactly rush hour here.”

  “Ok. I think that’s all I need for now. Leanne, I wouldn’t worry too much about facing any charges for having hit her. It sounds like there was nothing you could do, and if it really was just a glancing blow, well, it’s unlikely charges will be filed.”

  “Did the EMT say if she’s going to make it?” I asked in a quiet voice.

  “He didn’t look hopeful, let’s put it that way,” Detective Andrews replied, his face somber. The sound of helicopter blades came from above us.

  “That’s going to be her,” Leanne said flatly. Because Enchanted Enclave was an island, and the hospital here didn’t have full-scale emergency services available, anyone who needed emergency care was airlifted to Seattle. There was a helicopter on standby at all times just in case.

  I really hoped that in this case, she got there in time.

  “Look on the bright side, it means she can’t have died yet,” I said.