Third Time is a Charm

by Cate Martin

  But it was as if it were inviting me in.

  I paused in the doorway and fumbled for the light switch. Everything was just as it had been the last time I had been in this office. When the ghost of Miss Zenobia Weekes had spoken to the three of us. When I had learned that I was a witch.

  Wait, I had been in here once since then. The day Brianna and Sophie had tried to trigger my magic by attacking me.

  Well, in that case, someone had done an epic level of cleaning up. But then, with how Mr. Trevor revered Miss Zenobia's memory, that was perhaps to be expected. Still, we had done some heavy damage. Some things were missing, but most were back as they had been. I was impressed.

  I walked around the room, hands clasped behind my back. Something had called me here, but I also remembered Mr. Trevor's warning about not touching things. And I had seen what chaos some of these objects could unleash just by brushing up against one or lifting the lid of another. Better safe than sorry.

  I found myself sitting down in Miss Zenobia’s velvet-cushioned chair, running my hands over the lovingly maintained surface of the ancient desk. For a moment I could almost sense her there, the smell of her like lavender. The gruffness of her voice.

  Then I opened the pencil drawer over my knees and saw that it contained a single key that glowed golden in the light. It was a modern-looking key, but featureless. Like the blanks they have in hardware stores that you can use to make copies of your own keys.

  I had never seen a skeleton key before. I didn't know if this was that or not. But I picked it up, stuck it in my pocket, and went back downstairs to get my coat.

  I didn't want to think too much about what might be guiding me. I rather wished it was part of my own power, like the feelings I sometimes got that meant I just had to do something or not do something else.

  But this didn't feel quite like that, and I was a little afraid that somehow Juno might be involved. Manipulating me. But it didn't feel like her either.

  There was still so much about magic that I didn't yet understand.

  The key got me into the lobby of the building. Then it got me past that cold metal door into the empty apartment.

  The design was similar to Nick's grandfather's apartment, with white walls and dark wood floors and trim, but the overhead light wouldn't come on when I flipped the switch. The only illumination was from the light outside set over the condo's parking lot, and that mostly lit up the ceiling. I could see dust everywhere, cobwebs so long and dust-coated they looked fake.

  I walked past the kitchen area, down the hallway past the main bathroom and two small bedrooms. Everything was empty.

  Then I got to the end of the hallway, to the master bedroom. The far wall was one long, narrow window. It looked like it was designed to frame the panorama of its river view and eliminate everything above and below that. It seemed a bit restrictive to me, and it wasn't allowing in much light.

  But the room was lit well enough for me to see that it wasn't quite empty. Against the wall to my right was a very distinctly unmodern wardrobe. It was hard to tell when everything was covered in a blanket of dust, but I got the sense that it might be a genuine antique. It looked like the sort of thing they would've had in Versailles back in the day.

  I walked over to it, clutching the key tightly in my hand as if it were some sort of talisman and could keep me safe.

  I reached out a hand slowly, muscles tensed in case I needed to pull it away in a hurry, like someone trying to see if an iron is on and ready by risking a touch to its surface.

  I brushed a fingertip over the door's knob. Nothing happened. I used two fingers to gently tug it open, then stepped back as the door swung wide.

  I had a brief glimpse of a perfectly ordinary, perfectly empty wardrobe.

  Then I was on my knees again. Something hit my chest that felt like being kicked by a cow, and there was a burning sensation spreading through my chest.

  Then I was hit again and again. I fell to the floor, trying to wrap myself up into a tight ball, but all that did was change the point of impact from my chest to the area over my kidneys.

  Then, just like that, it was over. The pain was gone.

  Well, the stabbing pain was gone. I was gathering quite the collection of aches from all of the falling to the floor I was doing this evening.

  I pushed myself up to a sitting position and brushed the hair back out of my eyes.

  And saw the body in the wardrobe.

  It definitely hadn't been there a moment before. I was sure of that. I had seen the empty wardrobe. I had seen every pattern to the wood that was its bottom. There hadn't been anything in it.

  But now there was a man curled up in there, knees drawn up tight as if he too had been fending off blows to his chest.

  And he was bleeding. Even in the dim light, I could see the dark patches all over his clothes, across his chest, and on his back over his kidneys. As I watched, it formed an ever-expanding pool on the bottom of the wardrobe then started dripping down to the floor itself.

  I reached in to touch him. If he was still bleeding, he might be still breathing.

  But he was not. Glassy eyes gazed up at me, and I felt no pulse, no heartbeat.

  But he was still warm.

  I hadn't moved him much - he was a big man and rather heavy - but I had jostled him enough to dislodge his hat. It fell out of the wardrobe and rolled across the floor. I bent to pick it up, then held it up in the brightest bit of light from the window.

  I had seen hats like this before. Lots of them.

  In 1927.

  It could a coincidence. The man in the wardrobe could be a hipster, or just like old hats.

  But the more I looked at him, even in the scant light that penetrated the wardrobe, I saw that all of his clothes were old-fashioned.

  I might have still been able to tell myself it was all a coincidence. Sophie had said the time bridge was undisturbed; it had to be a coincidence.

  Except I knew for a fact that before I had felt myself stabbed, that wardrobe had been empty.

  I set the hat back on his head then stepped back from the wardrobe. What was I going to do now?

  "Hello?" a voice called from the door of the apartment.

  The door I had left standing open.

  I looked around and briefly considered hiding in the walk-in closet. But I knew it wouldn't do any good.

  Because that voice was Nick's. He was going to investigate. He was going to find me. And he was going to be mad.

  But maybe, just maybe, he would be ever so slightly less mad if I didn't look like I was guiltily hiding myself.

  Maybe.

  Chapter 6

  Unlike me, Nick had planned ahead. Nick had a flashlight.

  I resisted the urge to put my hands up when he shone it on me.

  "Amanda? Was that you I heard a minute ago?"

  Oh, so I was yelling out loud when I was in pain. Good to know.

  "I think so," I said.

  "What are you doing in here anyway?" he asked.

  "I went home, but I felt another sudden attack of pain like I had in the hallway just outside this door. I thought they might be connected. I came over to be sure," I said.

  "This is a magic thing?" he asked. Or whispered, really.

  "It's definitely a magic thing," I said.

  Then he finally saw the body in the wardrobe.

  "Amanda!" he cried, looking from the body to me with eyes wide.

  "He was dead before… I saw him," I finished lamely. I could scarcely claim he was dead before I opened the wardrobe. I was pretty sure that wasn't true.

  "Who is he?" Nick asked, shining his light on the man's face.

  "I'm not sure," I said. "I don't really know what's going on here. Not yet, anyway."

  "Not yet? What are you planning to do here?" he demanded.

  "Nothing!" I insisted. "I didn't know there was a dead man in here when I came inside the apartment. I just knew there was a thing which turned out to be this wardrobe."

/>   "A magic thing?"

  "I guess. I don't know. I'm still working on it," I said.

  "You can't be in here," Nick said, catching hold of my arm and steering me back towards the apartment door. "It's a crime scene."

  "It's not a crime the police are going to solve," I said.

  "Not another one!" he said.

  "I'm not making it happen," I said.

  "Aren't you?" he asked. "I mean, I know not deliberately. But you sure seem to attract trouble. And dead bodies."

  "Only since I moved here," I said.

  "If you didn't know there was a dead body in here, why did you break in?" Nick asked.

  "I wanted to take a look at the wardrobe," I said.

  "So you knew about the wardrobe?"

  "I knew there was something that turned out to be a wardrobe, yes," I said. I tried to summon a grin, but he wasn't having it.

  "We've talked about this before. Probable cause. You didn't have it. You just committed a crime. Maybe not murder, but breaking and entering."

  "Maybe not murder?" I repeated incredulously.

  "You know what I mean!" he snapped, then took a calming breath. "Look, you can't keep turning up at crime scenes."

  "I'm not trying to," I said.

  "How did you even get in here?" he asked.

  I opened my hand and showed him the golden key resting on my palm.

  "A skeleton key wouldn't work on this kind of lock," he said dully.

  "No, I suppose not," I said and put the key into my pocket.

  "Rules just don't apply to you, do they?" he sighed.

  "I obey the rules, most of the time," I said. "Look, three times I felt like someone was attacking me. Cracking my skull, slitting my throat, stabbing me all over my body. If you felt something like that, you'd want to get to the bottom of it too."

  "That man was stabbed, but his head and his throat are fine. What does that mean?" he asked.

  "I don't know," I said. "I really don't. I'm still investigating."

  "Snooping," he said. "You really can't be here."

  "That man's body doesn't belong here," I told him.

  "In this apartment?"

  "In 2018," I said.

  He actually flinched.

  "If you look at his clothes…"

  "Stop," he said, his tone very carefully controlled. "Just stop."

  "The police are not going to know what to do with this," I said.

  "And yet that's their job," he said. "And I'm going to have to call them. Again. I certainly hope no one is tracking all the open cases with my name attached. I'll graduate from police academy with too much suspicious stuff in my background to be hireable."

  "You don't have to call them," I said. "I can do it. I'll take the heat."

  "Forget it," he said. "It's right next door to me. There's no way I'm not getting swept up in this."

  "I can point them another way…"

  "Just forget it," he said, more firmly. "I've got this. Just take that key, whatever it is, and get out of here. I guess I'll say I heard someone cry out in pain and came over to investigate. That much of it has the advantage of actually being true."

  "Nick," I said.

  But he just turned away from me, already pulling out his cell phone.

  "I'm sorry," I whispered. I don't know if he heard me. He immediately started talking to the dispatcher.

  I slipped out of the apartment, back into the darkness and the wind.

  When I came in the front door of Miss Zenobia's house, I saw the light was on in the kitchen. I wasn't remotely hungry - that tuna casserole was sticking with me - but I rather hoped I'd run into Mr. Trevor tottering about back there. I could really use a friendly face, someone that was happy to see me.

  But it was Sophie and Brianna both eating a late supper. Brianna had a plate piled with buttered toast and Sophie was eating some leftover chicken from the roast we had had the night before.

  "You were out again?" Sophie asked.

  "Yes," I said, unwinding my scarf once more. When I went to stuff my gloves into my pockets, my fingers brushed against cold metal. I took out the key and set it on the table, where Brianna promptly picked it up to examine it.

  "Where'd you find this?" she asked.

  "Miss Zenobia's office," I said. "Although I think it would be more accurate to say it found me."

  "What have you been doing?" Sophie asked.

  "I had to figure out what was going on. I keep feeling like I'm being attacked. Bludgeoned over the head, cut across the throat, stabbed a dozen times. It's not pleasant."

  "What's been happening now?" Brianna asked, looking up from the key.

  "I've been attacked. I told you before," I said.

  "That's not what you said before," Brianna said. "You said 'episode.' Then you said you didn't actually sense any danger."

  "Well, I thought it might just have been some strange sort of headache only it happened again and again," I said. "You were busy, so I went over myself to investigate."

  "And?" Sophie prompted.

  "And I found a dead body," I said.

  "Again?" Sophie groaned.

  "And Nick found me inside the apartment that was supposed to be locked with the dead body," I said. "Also, it had only been dead for less than a minute, so."

  "So now we're going to have to dance around another police investigation?" Sophie said.

  "No," I said quickly. "Nick is handling it."

  "We can't keep dealing with this level of attention," Sophie said. "If people get suspicious, if they start watching us closely, it's going to be very hard for us to maintain the bridge."

  "They won't understand what we're doing," Brianna said. "There will be rumors. Probably pretty horrifying ones. People like to tell all manner of evil stories about the supposed doings of witches. It's not going to matter that none of it is true."

  "But we can't ignore this stuff either," I said. "It's magic. The police can't handle it."

  "Are you sure this isn't something going on with you medically? Or maybe induced by your own magic?" Sophie asked.

  "Interesting," Brianna said. "Your attempt at the illusion spell appeared to be blocked. Blocking that flow of energy, where would it have gone? It's possible… I need my books," Brianna said, shoving toast into her mouth even as she got up from the table.

  "It was magic, and it wasn't me," I said, catching her arm before she could dash away. "The body in the wardrobe, it wasn't there when I opened the door. Then suddenly he was there. He just popped into existence before my very eyes. And I can't say for sure, but he was dressed like he belonged in 1927."

  Sophie and Brianna exchanged a quick look. Then Sophie pushed back from the table and went through the solarium and out the back door with a bang.

  "My detectors should have gone off," Brianna said with a frown.

  "I'm not sure this involved the time bridge," I said. "I went into the world of webs, and I looked at everything. The wardrobe seemed magical, but not like the crystal ball."

  "Not evil?" Brianna asked.

  "Yes, but also not as powerful. The glow wasn't as strong. Still, this body appeared out of nowhere, inside a magical object. What does that mean?"

  Brianna frowned. "I'm not sure," she admitted at last. "I need to do more research."

  "I did everything I could think of to do," I said. "I didn't see a connection with the bridge, and I didn't sense the presence of Juno."

  "No," Brianna agreed. "There is more magic in the world than you might think. It's not all connected with us. You might just have gotten caught up in something."

  "Someone else's story," I said.

  The back door banged against the side of the house, and I suspected the wind had torn it out of Sophie's grasp. It was that sort of night.

  She came back into the kitchen, hair standing on end in all directions, her cheeks and the tips of her ears bright red.

  "You should've taken a hat," I said.

  "There is nothing wrong with the time bridge," sh
e said.

  "No, I would have detected it," Brianna said.

  "I wanted to be sure," Sophie said. "Nothing has changed. Our wards stand as sure as ever."

  "So what does this mean?" I asked.

  "It means this is none of our business," Sophie all but snapped. "If Nick is taking the heat for you, let him."

  "But the police can't solve this," I said.

  "Then they don't solve it," Sophie said. "If you're right and this happened ninety years ago, then it's either already been solved, or it's been a cold case so long it's reached, like, absolute zero."

  Brianna opened her mouth. I suspected she had something to add about absolute zero, but from the look that Sophie shot her she snapped her mouth back shut and turned her attention back to her toast.

  "What if I get attacked again?" I asked.

  "I told you before, just stay out of the building next door," Sophie said. "We all had to give up things for magic. I guess that's yours."

  My throat was too thick to squeeze out words, so I just nodded and headed up the back stairs to my room.

  But just staying away from Nick's apartment wasn't going to help. I had been attacked here, in my own room. Perhaps being in his apartment, walking past that door, was what had started all of this, but now that it had started I seemed powerless to stop it.

  I could have said that to her. It was all true, after all.

  But I didn't. Not because I didn't think she'd listen to me. I knew she would.

  But it didn't matter. Because it was suddenly clear to me that as much as she had been putting a good face on it, she was hurting.

  She had left someone behind in New Orleans, and she was missing him more than she would ever let Brianna or I know. She was missing him terribly. And me, spending time with Nick, whether that was a date or some not-a-date gray zone thing, whatever, it was hurting her.

  She had teased me and encouraged me by turns. She had even taken me shopping largely with an eye to what I could wear when I was out with Nick. I was putting together a lot of random comments now, and it was all perfectly clear.

  She was hurting, and I couldn't fix it. I could only do what I could not to make it worse. If that meant less time with Nick, or just less time openly being seen coming and going from places with Nick, so be it.