by Amy Boyles
“No one else goes in except you and me. If there are dark spells on the house—spells that only a wizard can break—I can’t be distracted by anyone else.”
“Fine. My cousins will keep watch. Along with Betty.”
“Betty? Great. If anything happens in there to you, I’ll be castrated by a short woman who smokes a pipe. Just what I always wanted.”
I laughed. “Let’s pray it doesn’t come to that. Hurry.”
“Why?”
“We’re already here.” I hung up to him protesting about the fact that we were outside the house. Oh well, it couldn’t be helped.
As much as Amelia and Cordelia protested, I knew they were glad to be on the outside of the home and not inside. Who wanted to hang out inside a house where someone had just been violently murdered?
I guess I needed to raise my hand to that one.
Axel arrived a few minutes later. He didn’t exactly look happy but he wasn’t scowling either, so I figured the situation was a win for me.
“Do an alarm spell if anyone approaches,” Axel instructed Amelia and Cordelia. “Focus it on Pepper. It’ll be easier to contact her since she’s your blood relative.”
Confusion cut across Amelia’s face. “Have we ever done an alarm spell before?”
“Good grief, of course we have,” Cordelia said. “It’s simple. Sometimes it’s called an alert spell.”
“Oh, okay,” Amelia said. “Just checking.”
Cordelia rolled her eyes. “Y’all go on. We’ll warn you if someone’s approaching.”
Axel and I headed around back. He held the doorknob with one hand and pressed the other flat against the door itself.
“Let’s see if this baby will open up.”
Click.
I smiled. “Looks like you’ve got it.”
“That was the easy part.” His gaze swept to the top of the door. “The hard part is knowing if he has a witch security system.”
I grimaced. “I hope not.”
He pulled a pouch from his pocket and sprinkled some powder across the threshold. Axel slowly opened the door, dropping more powder as he went.
“There.” He pointed to a small glowing symbol. It was a six-pointed star inside a circle. It sat directly where someone’s unsuspecting foot might step.
“Avoid that,” Axel said. “For someone who claims to be so innocent, it sure does seem like he’s hiding something.”
I stepped inside. Axel swept a hand across his chest, and the door closed.
“Oh, I love it when you work magic.”
He hitched a brow. “I’ll have to do it more often.”
The house was dark and still. So still. Eerily still. Axel opened his palm, and an orb of light burned in the center. Shadows flickered on the walls.
I shivered. The whole house was creepy. Strange, right? It had been bright and cheery only a few nights ago, but now I was so creeped out it felt like slime coated my skin.
“Where should we go?” I whispered.
“The basement.”
“Seriously? You sure Cookie wasn’t working magic in her bedroom?”
Axel chuckled. “The best magic is always worked in a basement.”
“Figures.”
A slight tinkling sound came from the hallway. A moment later, Arsenal bounded up to us. He jumped on Axel’s legs.
“Hey there, boy.” Axel gave his ears a good scratch.
The dog finished greeting him and then sniffed my hand. “Hey, little guy. How’s mean old Ellis treating you?”
No answer.
I frowned.
“Still doesn’t talk?” Axel said.
“Nope. Not one word.” I tapped my foot as I considered the dog’s plight. “Is that normal? I mean, really? Is it normal that an animal doesn’t talk?”
“Maybe he’s mute. Or possibly deaf.”
“He’s not deaf. He heard us enter.”
Axel pressed both hands against a door that probably led to the dungeon—I mean, basement. “Yes, you can speak to animals. But remember one of the first ones you met here, the cat Sprinkles? She didn’t talk.”
“She was traumatized.” Arsenal’s cold, wet nose pressed against my palm, encouraging me to pet him. “This guy isn’t traumatized. He simply doesn’t talk.”
Axel tilted his ear toward the door. “Like I said, maybe he’s mute. Or maybe he doesn’t have anything interesting to say.” He paused and then murmured, “Now what sort of spell is on this?”
“Hopefully one you can’t break.”
“Very funny. I’m going to remind you that you’re the one who wanted to come. We need to search for clues on the weather spell we’re under. Cookie Mobley has all the answers.”
I rolled my eyes. “I never said she had all the answers.”
“You pretty much did.”
I scratched Arsenal behind the ears. “I bet this little guy has plenty of interesting things to say. Do you know who killed Cookie?”
The dog looked at me, and I swear in his eyes there was something—the truth of what had happened to Cookie lay deep in those dark irises. If only it would come out.
Axel turned the knob, and the door cracked open. “We have access.”
“Great. To a creepy, scary basement that might eat me.”
Axel smiled smugly. “Don’t worry. I’m a powerful wizard and I’ll protect you.”
I giggled and swatted him playfully. “Come on. Let’s go down there and save Christmas.”
“Yes, Mrs. Claus.”
The basement, it turned out, was like every other basement I’d ever been in—even those that weren’t magical. It was full of junk and power tools.
“Why would the Mobley’s need a saw?” I lifted it and studied the jagged teeth. “They’re a witch and wizard. They don’t need this kind of stuff.”
Axel shrugged. “Could be nostalgic.”
“Nostalgic? Of what? Better days?”
He frowned. “Okay, you got me there. I’m going to agree with you. Why would the Mobleys, who come from a powerful witch family that is so well connected Mr. Mobley can have prison wraiths drag his wife’s killer to the caverns, use power tools?”
“Very strange.” I dropped the saw on the table. “Have you found anything?”
“Only this.”
I crossed to where Axel stood by a ring of candles. “What’s this?”
“A ring of candles.”
“I see that. But there isn’t anything in it. No chalk markings or anything. Like you know when you see witchcraft performed on TV, there’s always drawings in chalk ringed by candles.”
Axel dropped to his knees and pressed his fingers against the floor. “There were markings here.”
My eyes flared. “There were?”
“Let’s see what it was.” He positioned a hand over the poured concrete floor and muttered words I didn’t recognize. The air shifted and hummed as if the room were alive. It took a few seconds, but white markings pushed up from the floor like flowers desperate for sunshine.
A series of lines and circles came into view.
“Hmmm. Interesting.”
“What?” I peered over his shoulder trying to figure out what was so neat, but for the life of me couldn’t decipher it.
“These lines here,” he said, pointing to a crop of markings, “are protection spells. These other ones are spells meant to shield something.”
I stared at the drawing. “I don’t understand. We’re looking for weather spells. Is that what this is?”
“Not at all.” Axel rose. “But it looks like whoever created it needed protection, and the fact that it was placed in this home meant they wanted to be safe here.”
I tucked a loose strand of hair behind an ear. “You’re saying…what? I’m not following.”
His blue eyes were almost black in the dim light. A dark flash of concern marred Axel’s beautiful face. “I’m saying that whoever built this spell did so because they were possibly worried about a threat stemming from insid
e the house.”
I squinted at the writing again. “You mean Cookie could’ve been worried about Ellis.”
“Possibly.” He swept his fingers over a line. “This mark means protection. The one over there means ‘close by’ or ‘near,’ suggesting the home. That’s the nearest structure.”
“But that still doesn’t help with the weather. We have a real issue with the cold.”
He squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t worry. It’s not as if we’re freezing solid from simply being outside yet. Come on. Looks like we have time to check her bedroom.”
“Okay.”
Axel snapped his fingers. The markings disappeared, and I followed him back up the stairs. We found Cookie’s bedroom easily enough.
“Holy smokes.”
“Holy smokes is about right,” Axel murmured.
Cookie’s dressing room was amazing. It looked like a witch shop had exploded inside it.
Talismans hung from pegs, corked bottles lined shelves. Different sized mortars and pestles lined a work table.
I whistled. “Wow. She really worked some magic.”
“That she did. There isn’t a protection spell against the room. Come on in.”
I peered at the vials full of different colored liquids. “What exactly are we looking for? This is like searching for a needle in a cotton field.”
“We’re looking for a stone.”
“That narrows it down.”
Axel picked through the shelves. “Sorry I can’t be more specific, but this stone will be charged with magic.”
“Care to explain?”
He spoke while he searched. “In order to forge magic on the scale that affects the weather, the spell must be tied to an object, most likely something natural. A stone is the most obvious choice.”
I closed a wooden box filled with nail clippings. Gross. “Why?”
“Because a stone is an earth element. The weather is air. They’re opposites.”
“I thought water would be the opposite of earth.”
“No. It seems natural, but it isn’t.” He moved objects and slid bottles out of the way as he explained it. “For a weather shifting spell, the caster would need to ground the energy of the magic somehow. Fire is too unstable to use as a grounding—that’s another option. But fire is what you would use to ground if you were working a water spell—fire and water, earth and air. That’s the matching. So a stone or another earth element is what would tie or bind the spell. That’s what we’re looking for—the tie.”
I sifted through a bottle of dried bat’s wings, another of frog’s eyes, and some misty-looking concoction I had no interest in uncorking and sniffing. Probably frog’s farts or something hideous like that.
“What’s it look like?” I said.
“You’ll know it because the magic should be strong in it. It might hum or buzz. It could simply appear magically strong.”
“You’ve really narrowed it down.”
A scowl flashed across his face. “Sorry. If magic was an exact science, things would be different. But it isn’t. It’s part improvisation, personal philosophy and some science.” He grinned mischievously. “But magic often brings a wild-card element to things.”
“So let’s look then. If I find something I wonder about, I’ll show it to you.”
We worked in silence for what felt like hours, scouring through Cookie’s magic room. Arsenal lay by the door, thumping his tail in happiness every time I glanced over.
“I haven’t found anything,” I said.
“Me neither. I don’t know that we’ve got anything here.”
“But the weather.” Worry bubbled in my chest.
“Maybe it has nothing to do with Cookie,” Axel said.
“But Betty’s powers are also broken. Don’t you think it’s weird that her powers messed up at the same time as the weather?”
“I do.” He hesitated. “I just think we need to keep looking.”
My gaze flickered around the room. “Let’s go to the spot where she died.”
He tipped his head. His dark shoulder-length hair fell into his face. “The spot she died? Want to work some necromancy?”
I rolled my eyes. “You have to have a body to work necromancy. No. I’m not trying to raise the dead. Way to be morbid, Axel.”
He took my arm. “Come on. Let’s check it out.”
We reached the spot in the kitchen. Arsenal tagged along, padding quietly beside us.
“Here.” I pointed to a spot in the pantry. “That’s where she was. That’s where the blood was. You mom was holding the knife. And here is a door.”
“That leads to the basement.”
I frowned. “I didn’t notice it that night.”
Axel knelt and placed a hand over the spot. He closed his eyes. “I can still sense the blood. There was a lot of it.” His gaze flickered to me. “What is it you want to find out?”
“I…I don’t know. I just thought that maybe if we could touch the spot, that maybe we’d know more about the spell.”
In one quick motion Axel took my hand and plastered it to the floor. A flash of light crossed my brain, and I was gone.
I wasn’t in the house anymore. I was standing alone on a dark plane.
Cookie Mobley was standing in front of me.
TWENTY
The plane was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The sky was black, the ground the same. The place was temperature-less, void of atmosphere and even air, if I had to guess.
I knew how I’d gotten here. The heart fire. The newness of it and the raw power had brought me to this knuckle or joint in time and space.
There was no here. There was no there.
I was, in fact, everywhere.
Boy, Dr. Seuss didn’t have anything on my rhyming abilities.
“Cookie?” I whispered.
She was a vision. She was herself, obviously, a woman in her fifties, but she seemed to glow from the inside out.
“You want to know about the spell.” She stated the fact.
I crossed slowly to her. After all, Cookie Mobley hadn’t exactly been the nicest person on the planet. I didn’t know what she might do to me here on this plane of existence.
As I grew closer, the shine in her became brighter. It was her soul. I was staring at Cookie Mobley’s soul, and she shone.
What do you know. Maybe Cookie hadn’t been so evil after all.
Maybe.
“Yes,” I said. “The weather outside. It’s dropping. Getting colder. Betty’s powers are broken.”
“Hmm.” She quirked a brow. “And the connection?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you’re not a very good witch.”
That pretty much went without saying. Of course I wasn’t a very good witch. I hadn’t been doing this crap for very long.
Wait. What was I talking about? I’d saved the house from the evil candy ribbon. The burning fire in my chest helped of course. But I’d done it.
I’d also scared a prison wraith back to prison. That was pretty cool.
Now I stood in front of a very dead Cookie Mobley.
Even cooler.
“How do I stop it? How do I stop the cold?”
She smiled widely. It was a gentle, kind smile—shocking. “You have to find the stone.”
I stopped myself from rolling my eyes. “That much I’ve guessed. But where is it?”
“In the easiest place in the world.”
“If it’s so easy, why can’t I find it?”
“You’ve already found it.”
My blood pooled at my feet. “What?”
“You’ve already found it,” she repeated, sounding annoyed.
My mind raced back to the room. “Was it the bottle filled with all the misty stuff?”
“No.”
“Another rock? The black onyx one?”
“No.”
My jaw tightened. “Then I haven’t. I don’t know what it is.”
Cookie’s chest rose as if sh
e’d inhaled deeply. “I always knew that stone would be the death of me. I assumed it. You found the protection spells?”
I nodded.
“They were wiped clean that night. When I wasn’t looking. They were swiped away as if with a cloth. That was the same night he stopped talking. The same night I was murdered. Break the spell.”
My head reeled. “I don’t understand. The night who stopped talking?”
“Find the stone and you’ll know it all.”
I fisted my hand. “Why can’t you just tell me? I’m here. You’re here. You have a chance, Cookie. A moment to tell me who murdered you and how to break this curse—a curse that you cast.”
I sucked air. “You cast this on us. It didn’t start until you were murdered. Oh my God.”
I’d been so stupid. I raked my fingers through my hair in frustration.
She smiled.
“But you didn’t cast these spells to harm us; you did it to help us. You want us to know who murdered you. That’s the key. Connect both of those and we’ll know who did it.”
She still smiled.
“Am I right?”
Cookie didn’t answer. I had to stop myself from shaking her so hard the answer popped out of her mouth.
“The cold wind blows everywhere but your heart.” She spoke slowly, as if she wanted me to remember. I focused very hard. “If you want to break the spell, use your heart.”
She stepped closer to me. “You are strong, Pepper Dunn. So strong. We weren’t friends in life, and I doubt we’ll be friends in death. I’ve helped you as much as I can. Remember—the cold wind blows everywhere but your heart.”
I repeated it but didn’t understand. “Please, can’t you tell me more? Isn’t there more you can say? More that will help me?”
She shook her head. “You’ve already stayed as long as you can. There’s so much more to do. If you remain here too long, you’ll never want to leave. Here there’s no pain, no longing, but also no life. You’re standing in the midst of death.”
She placed a finger over her lips. “Shh. Death listens. Don’t let it hear you. Your power is very tempting to it.”
I reached for her. “Can’t you tell me more?”
She shook her head. Cookie extended a finger. “It’s time for you to wake up, Pepper.”
“Wake up?”
“There’s something you must see.” She glanced up into the inky sky. “The alarm bell is blaring.”
