A Spell for Trouble

by Esme Addison

  Her father had been the most practical man she’d ever met. His job as a police detective required a dedication to facts. He didn’t make assumptions, he didn’t rush to judgment, and he didn’t believe in magic. “There’s no such thing,” he would tell her when she asked. The Tooth Fairy hadn’t come to her house, and neither had Santa or the Easter Bunny. When her dad had said there were no fairies or witches and that Halloween was only for fun, she’d believed him. The thing was, her father had known for a fact that magic existed in the world.

  All of her life, he’d been lying to her.

  She pushed back from the breakfast bar and stood on uncertain feet. This was all so very confusing, and there was only one way she knew to sort out a cluttered mind.

  “I’m going to go for a run, if you don’t mind,” she said quietly. “I need to do some thinking, and I’d like to get out before the rain starts.” She snapped her fingers at Athena, who instantly jumped to her feet.

  “You can just push the raindrops away from you,” Minka said. “I do it all the time. If you go for a walk, I’ll join you.”

  “Thank you,” Alex said. “But I need to be alone. With Athena, of course,” she added. The dog cocked her head at the sound of her name.

  “I understand.” Minka gave her a big hug.

  Now Lidia stood and walked over to the refrigerator. “Take as long as you need, love. It’s a lot to process. And when you come back, I’ll have a hot bowl of soup waiting.”

  “Thank you,” Alex said.

  “I know it’s overwhelming, but it must feel good, right?” Minka said. “I mean, to finally know who you are?”

  Alex nodded, but she’d already thought she knew who she was. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  Chapter Ten

  It was Alex’s father who’d taught her to run. “Running is life support,” he’d explained. “When you feel good, you run. When you feel bad, you run. Confused, sad, stressed—you take it out on the road and you leave it there.” He’d been an avid runner himself, often leaving before dawn to get his miles in. This was how he dealt with his grief after her mother died and the many pressures at work.

  Alex had never appreciated the example he’d set until she reached high school and felt the pressure to achieve. Suddenly everything in her life was about getting into college and what looked good on a transcript or an application. To deal with that stress, some of her friends had turned to alcohol. Alex, the daughter of a police detective, didn’t think she’d have a prayer if her father caught her drinking underage.

  As a law enforcer, her father had learned to use mediation to alleviate the symptoms of stress. He’d tried to get her to practice stilling her mind, as he called it, and she’d grudgingly tried it once. She must’ve done it wrong, because it hadn’t worked. She’d fallen asleep and woken up more anxious than ever about her test that day.

  But she did enjoy the physicality of exercising. So she’d taken her father’s advice and become a runner. Amazingly, it worked.

  Running had gotten Alex through high school, college, business school, and a professional career in risk management. Now she left the house on Cypress Lane with Athena at her side, away from stories of mermaids and witches and toward the ocean, eager to leave her confusion on the road. The air was cold and damp, the gray clouds overhead threatening to burst any moment, and Alex pushed herself until her legs began to burn.

  She jumped off the uneven cement sidewalk and onto the asphalt, her breath heavy in her ears. Away from the house, she could almost pretend the conversation had never happened at all. She could almost outrun it. Then a thought would creep in—the cut on her finger vanishing, the vivid image of her mother released by the perfume, the tap water leaping in an arc into a drinking glass—and Alex would pick up speed. She hit the boardwalk at a sprint, desperate to return to a comfortable place in her mind again.

  How could this be?

  Alex sprinted until her legs felt like lead. She came to a rest near a wooden bench that looked out over an empty beach, and Athena paused, wagging her tail and waiting expectantly. The waves crashed against the shore, and for a moment, Alex stood still just to watch them. She’d always loved the water.

  Water witch.

  The words came to her as if on a breeze. Could she actually move water? Alex glanced around, but the boardwalk was empty. She decided she would try to move the ocean water in an arc, just the way Lidia had moved the water from the faucet. Lidia had made it seem so easy.

  “All right,” she whispered, and pointed a finger at the ocean. “Move.”

  She waited for a change, but the ocean waves continued to crash against the shore just as they had before. Maybe it took more fingers? She directed all ten of her fingers at the water, forming two big claws.

  “Come on, move,” she whispered.

  Nada.

  “Well, shoot.”

  It was a silly thought, anyway. Why in the world would she think any of what Lidia had said was true? Mermaids? Alex chuckled to herself. She’d gotten swept up in an interesting story, but it was more legend than anything else. Rumors and gossip, nothing more. Obviously she couldn’t move water. The idea was absurd.

  That was when Alex noticed a little red plastic bucket that a child had forgotten. It was poking out of some of the sea grass growing in thick bunches beside the boardwalk, and it looked like it had been there for some time. Alex jogged to retrieve it, lifting the bucket by the yellow plastic handle. The lip was chipped, but otherwise it was intact.

  Maybe moving the ocean was a little ambitious for a newbie, she reasoned. Maybe she needed to practice on something much smaller. She found a path to the water and scurried down, her heart picking up pace as she grew more excited. What if …? She couldn’t finish the thought. The possibilities were exciting enough.

  Alex stepped into the edge of the water without stopping to kick off her running shoes. A wave crashed around her ankles, soaking her legs. It didn’t matter. She crouched to snatch some water in the red bucket and hurried back up to the boardwalk, her shoes squirting water with each step. Nearby, Athena dug a hole in the sand.

  “Okay, let’s try this again,” she whispered as she set the bucket on the seat of the bench. What had Lidia done? Pointed a finger? Alex shut her eyes and tried to recall the image. No, she hadn’t pointed or moved her hands. All she’d done was look at the faucet and the water had moved.

  Alex gathered a breath and stared at the little puddle of water in the child’s red bucket. There was a clump of sand on the bottom. “Okay, water. Swirl.”

  She narrowed her gaze, imagining lasers shooting from her eyeballs, because that was what it would look like on television. The water was perfectly glasslike, the sand still clumped solidly at the edge.

  “Move, water,” she urged, and then, with a hint of desperation, “Come on, please?”

  Nothing.

  “I give up.”

  But then it happened. A tiny vortex began at the bottom of the bucket. It picked up the sand and pulled it around and around, twirling faster and faster until every drop of water was consumed by the vortex and the sand had turned the water brown. Alex’s eyes widened.

  She’d moved water. It was true; she was magical. “I can make smoothies with my mind,” she gasped. Athena barked and bounded toward her, leaping up on her hind legs. “I did it, Athena.” The dog rolled around happily on her back.

  Alex heard footsteps pounding on the boardwalk. The bucket overturned itself, spilling its contents on the ground. Another runner was approaching. It was Jack. He looked like he was running from something, too, but his serious face relaxed when their eyes met. “I’m beginning to think you’re following me, Alex,” he said breathlessly as he slowed to a stop.

  She smiled. “I was here first.”

  “Then I guess I’m following you.”

  He was wearing an old gray sweat shirt that said N.Y.P.D. in navy print and black shorts. She admired his lean, muscular legs as he bent to greet Athena. “Apparently we
’re the only people who think they can beat the rain,” he said, and pointed back to the empty boardwalk. He took a moment to slow his breathing. “Though it’s probably not a good idea for anyone to see us talking here. Twice in one day.”

  Alex shrugged. “We’re just two runners, out for a run.”

  “Still.” His gaze fell to her shoes. “Your feet are wet.”

  She glanced down at the puddle her shoes had left around her. “Yeah, I was going to try to run on the sand, but a wave grabbed me.”

  He looked out over the water. “Look, I’ve been thinking about what you said, about your concerns with your aunt. I want you to know that I take them seriously.”

  She waited for him to say something more. “But …?”

  “If there’s something you know that you’re not telling me, I have to know what it is. I know you were in Botanika when the victim was there. You saw what happened. If there’s some factual basis for you believing Lidia didn’t hurt him, I want you to come down to the station to make a statement.”

  That was a terrible idea. After all, she’d seen her aunt lift Randy Bennett into the air, hold him against the wall, drop him, and then retrieve the tea that had allegedly poisoned him from the back room. She’d only be confirming the witness statements that had led to Lidia’s arrest in the first place. “I don’t have any additional information. I just know my aunt, that’s all. She would never kill anyone. She’s made her living healing people.”

  With magic. Magic that Alex had, too.

  Alex tried to look weighed down; she really did. But at that moment she was so elated at the thought that she’d just moved water that she was struggling. Unfortunately, that only seemed to encouraged Jack’s suspicions.

  “I’ve been a police detective for years now. I’ve interrogated a lot of witnesses, and I’ve gotten pretty good at reading people. I can tell when someone’s hiding something.”

  Alex had heard all of this before. “Let me guess… you can always tell when someone is lying?” She affected a bored expression. “It’s in their eyes, their mannerisms, their gestures?”

  His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “How did you—”

  “My dad was a police detective, remember. He reminded me a million times a day how he could tell when I was lying.” She smirked. “He was actually pretty good. I never got away with feeding my vegetables to the dog.”

  Jack frowned. “Okay, I guess that line won’t work on you, then.”

  “Sorry to disappoint.”

  She was trying to shrug off his critical gaze, but Jack apparently wasn’t in the mood for levity. “There’s something going on, Alex,” Jack finally said. “I don’t know what it is, but I know that something is off.”

  I am a water witch, Alex thought gleefully while attempting to look nonchalant. Judging by Jack’s frown, she was failing to deceive this man whose only job was to detect lies. “I told you, I don’t have any additional information.” A raindrop fell on her cheek. “I should wrap up my run. Besides, you’re right. It would look bad if people caught us talking twice in one day.”

  She clicked her tongue at Athena, and they both turned and began running back to Lidia’s house, leaving Jack standing alone on the boardwalk.

  * * *

  “I did it!” Alex announced when she opened the front door. The rain had picked up on the run home, and she was drenched, but she didn’t care. “I did it. I moved water.”

  Minka entered the foyer and clapped her hands. “Congratulations. Oh, wet dog. One sec.” She fled the room but returned quickly, carrying a bath towel. Athena panted while Minka dried her off. “I’m so excited to have someone else to practice magic with. Kam wants nothing to do with any of it.”

  “It was incredible,” Alex gushed. “I found a bucket, filled it with water, and swirled it around. All I did was focus on it. Is it really that simple?”

  “It’s as natural as breathing.” She laughed while Athena shook herself off and trotted away.

  “Though the bucket did fall over. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  “There is a technique you can use to maintain control. Don’t worry, I can help you.” Minka gripped Alex’s shoulders. “This is so great. You know, we have a Mermaid Festival here in town every summer, and now that you know the truth, you can come to the private parties and network with the other Magicals in the area.” Her eyes shone with excitement. “Magical parties are to die for.”

  Alex smiled. “It’s all true. I can barely believe it, but it’s true.” She looked down at the floor and noticed a puddle collecting at her feet. “I don’t want to ruin the floor. I’ll go get showered.”

  “Mom’s getting dinner ready. It’ll be about fifteen minutes.”

  “Great.”

  Alex bounded upstairs and into her room. Her head was still buzzing as she grabbed a pair of jogging pants and a sweat shirt to change into. She headed into the bathroom and turned the hot water on. As she undressed, she reflected on the interaction with Jack. Man, how feelings could change on a dime. Alex couldn’t get him to crack a smile, let alone enchant him. A sadness whirled in her chest at the unfairness of it. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

  She treated herself to an indulgent shower. She was chilled from the downpour, and the hot water turned her skin bright pink. She dressed and was towel-drying her hair in her bedroom when her cell phone chirped. Alex touched the screen and saw that she had a voice mail.

  She sat on the edge of the bed finger-combing her hair while she waited for the voice mail to connect. Finally the message came through. “Hey Alex. This is Carter Hawthorne.”

  Her heart skipped. Carter Hawthorne was one of her former clients. The CEO of Barber Industries, he was aristocratically handsome and from an old-money family. Known to be a jet-setter and a partier, he was also an astute businessman. He must’ve heard she’d left the firm.

  Why in the world would he be calling her now? She swallowed and picked up her phone as the message continued. “I heard that you left Johnson, Lovitz, Ream & Cannon, and I was sorry to hear that. All of us were. You’ve been our senior consultant for years now.” Alex smiled at the compliment and breathed easier. “So here’s the thing,” Carter continued. “We have an opening at Barber for a director of operational risk management. You’d be in charge of—pretty much everything. There’d be some international travel, but you’d work right here in Manhattan. Right down the hall from me. I—well, you’ve been here a million times. You know where we are.” He chuckled. “Anyway, think about it. Whatever your salary was, we’ll pay you more. Full benefits, of course. Give me a call when you have a chance. Talk to you later.”

  Alex’s cheeks blazed as she saved the voice mail. Well. She’d landed a job with her favorite client on the same day she’d learned she was descended from mermaids. She set the phone down on the bed, too overwhelmed to know how to proceed with the generous offer. This day would be difficult to top.

  She danced down the stairs humming happily and twirled into the kitchen with a flourish. She froze when she saw the looks on Lidia’s, Minka’s, and Kamila’s faces. “What happened?”

  Minka slid her phone across the breakfast bar with a scowl. “It’s Pepper. She’s on a roll.”

  Alex picked up the screen and read the headline of the article. Water Witches Live Among Us. Her jaw tightened. “All right,” she said. “So tell me, how exactly do we stop this?”

  Chapter Eleven

  The next morning, Alex left Botanika wearing jeans, purple boots and carrying an umbrella. She’d planned to visit Pepper after lunch, but once again the shop was empty. There was no reason to delay.

  Yesterday, Pepper Bellamy had written a brief teaser in her blog:

  You guys, I have proof positive that water witches—descended from mermaids—live among us.

  Bellamy Bay was the setting for a tale of seduction, murder, and witchcraft. This complicated story may sound incredible, but I have proof that it happened. I intend to show you that magic surrounds u
s, and that it presents a clear danger. It may be time to consider how to protect ourselves. Stay tuned …

  * * *

  “What is this proof?” Lidia had asked the night before, her cheeks drained of color. “Did either of you use your magic in public?”

  Minka wrinkled her nose. “No, of course not.”

  “Mom, no way,” Kamila said. “You know how I feel about magic.”

  But Lidia’s brow creased with worry. “She’s always made these threats before, but if she has proof?” Her eyes grew dark. “That may mean she’s going to mention names. I don’t know what we’ll do. She’s going to attract witch hunters. She can get someone killed.”

  “Killed?” Alex echoed, suddenly sobered. She had never before thought about what witch hunters might do, or considered that she or her family members could be targets.

  “There are at least two kinds. Those motivated to eradicate our kind from the earth—those are the ones you commonly hear about in history, with witch hunts and witch trials. The Puritanicals, religious zealots who believe we all practice black magic.” She rolled her eyes. “And then there are those you’ve probably never heard about, those who believe they can profit from our abilities. The Traders. They literally hunt us down for body parts or our blood and sell them to the highest bidder.”

  Bile rose up and down Alex’s throat, and she bowed her head until the queasiness left her. She’d heard enough. Pepper had to be stopped from publishing more on her blog.

  And so Alex had become the Sobieski assigned to reining in Pepper Bellamy before someone was hurt, or worse. “I’m an unknown,” she’d reasoned. “Pepper won’t expect me, and she won’t know how to deal with me.”