Down on the Charm

by E L Wilder

  The high ceilings were lost in shadow, but she knew the room well enough. It was often open during the day, and she had snuck in here many times to poke and prod the bookshelves, looking for additional secret passages that Gammy had failed to tell her about—or maybe hadn’t known about herself. The furniture was covered in white sheets, giving the place a haunted-house vibe. Like the dining room, she’d never been in here at night, and she was seriously regretting her decision to attempt a cold call on the heels of the witching hour. She thought about turning back and hightailing it to her room, without anyone being none the wiser. Couldn’t she wait until after breakfast when everyone went about their business and crept in then? No, she scolded. This isn’t about you. This is about Juniper. Grow up and get moving. Time is wasting.

  She crossed the library to a tall object in the far corner and yanked off the white cloth that covered it, revealing the phone booth. It was a thing of wood and ornately frosted glass that looked more like a church confessional than a place to make a call.

  In a lot of ways, that was an appropriate comparison.

  Entering that booth and placing this call would be like cracking herself open and spilling her deepest secrets. She had spent so long convincing herself that it was not her destiny to follow the path of all marked Bennett women, that to be here, sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to try to make this phone call, would be making an admission she wasn’t sure she was ready to make.

  Her Gammy’s words came back to her again—a long-ago conversation that surfaced now.

  “There are no such things as magic items and magic wands,” Gammy said. “Only focuses.”

  “What’s a focus, Gammy?” Hazel asked.

  “It’s a concentration.”

  “Like thinking?”

  Gammy smiled, tucking her white curls behind her ear. “Maybe.”

  “Like frozen orange juice in a can?”

  Gammy’s smile grew, revealing her pleasantly misaligned teeth. “Now you’re talking, honey. But have you ever tried to drink concentrate?”

  Hazel stuck out her tongue, and Gammy did the same.

  “Exactly, my dear. Concentrate is far too strong on its own.”

  “You need to add water!” Hazel offered.

  Gammy nodded, solemn now. “And if a magic item is concentrate, what’s the water?”

  “The witch,” Hazel said now as she grabbed the handle to the phonebooth door. She hadn’t really understood what her grandmother had meant then, and she wasn’t certain she did now, not really, but she found comfort in the memory. And at least it pointed a way.

  “Just a can of orange juice,” she whispered as she pulled the door open.

  The door was a single solid piece that swung out on hinges—a real door, not one of those bifold things that most phone booths had. She shut herself inside and sat down on the little wooden stool fixed to the floor. The phone itself hung in the corner, a wooden box with brass detailing—one of those models with the bells fixed on the front like bulging alien eyes, and right below it a glimmering proboscis of a mouthpiece and a vaguely horn-shaped receiver hanging off the side. No dialing mechanism, not even a rotary.

  She dug into her pajama pocket and pulled out the four obols she had swiped from Gammy’s room. She lined them up on the wooden shelf in front of the phone. Because it was important to have hygiene standards, she also pulled out a pocket-sized bottle of Purell and lathered her hands with a thorough dosing. Deadman’s taxi fare, she thought, shuddering.

  Now, how do I work this thing?

  Her mother had said she’d tried it and failed. Why would Hazel have any more luck? You know why, she told herself.

  She picked up the receiver and held her breath as she pressed it to her ear.

  Silence.

  “Hello?” she said into the phone, trying not to feel sheepish. This was easy. It was just prop work. Acting 101 material. She shifted her posture, leaned on the shelf and pretended to take a drag off an imaginary cigarette, channeling her best 1950s sitcom housewife. “Yeah, Marge, can I get Gammy on the line?”

  Silence.

  “Not picking up? How about Mr. Moore? No, Eric Moore.”

  More silence.

  She exhaled in simultaneous disappointment and relief. Of course she was met with only silence. The phone was more than a hundred years old and hadn’t been connected to an active line in at least half that time. She might as well have stopped in the kitchen and tried to place the call on one of the bananas browning in the fruit basket.

  This was absurd. She would help her sister like she would help anyone in legal turmoil—by paying for the best lawyer money could buy.

  She hung the receiver back up, pushed the door open, and stalked across the library. She’d almost made it back through the bookcase before the phone started ringing.

  Her breath stuttered and then caught in her throat.

  For a moment she considered just bolting and hoping she didn’t get caught up in the clockwork as she made a mad dash back through the passage, vaulted back upstairs, bypassed her room, did not collect two-hundred dollars, and went directly to her mother’s bed. Her niece and nephew would be fine alone until morning.

  But then she thought of Juniper, alone for the night and in dire need of help. Juniper had never been the one to scamper out of bed and sneak in with somebody else. That had been Hazel’s specialty, and she had practiced like she was aiming to achieve the title of master craftsman: Juniper’s bed, mom’s bed, Gammy’s bed. Hazel rotated her nightly sanctuaries so much so it was a wonder she ever slept in her own bed.

  No, she told herself. She would march her sorry butt back there, park it in that booth, and start making calls until she got somebody on the line.

  She could be brave right now like Juni—for Juni.

  She drew her shoulders back and willed her extremities to stop trembling, and then started back toward the phone, pushing down a new fear: that the phone might stop ringing before she could get to it. She would miss her chance to talk to Gammy and get some answers, some direction. She broke into a run, banging her shin on a devilish ottoman along the way, and yanked the booth open. She answered the phone, pressing the receiver to her ear before she’d even sat down.

  A low crackle and hiss of static, punctuated with intermittent pops, churned out of the earpiece. Overhead, a lightbulb encased in stained-glass flickered to life, washing the booth in a pale green light. Hazel leaned forward and spoke into a metal mouthpiece jutting from the phone.

  “Hello? Gammy?”

  The white noise surged and faded, but nobody spoke. The longer she listened, the more she started to discern more than mere static. There were other noises, a faint whining lurking beneath the white noise, like a fluttering moth beating against a window screen.

  She peered through the frosted glass into the darkened library but saw only her pale green reflection looking back at her. But she was not alone. The air around her looked peculiar. It warped and rippled like parking-lot air on a hot summer day. She forced her eyes back to the phone and started to fiddle with the quarters she had lined up.

  But she found no comfort there either. The first quarter in the line was changing even as she looked at it, tarnishing to a shade of black, which crept across its surface like a time-lapse of a lunar eclipse. She rubbed the quarter with her thumb. But the coin remained black, and she found it freezing to the touch. She watched with fascination and horror as the black eclipsed the entire first quarter and then started in on the next in the line. Not a line of quarters, she thought, a fuse.

  “Every call has a price,” her grandmother said, flipping her a coin, almost entirely blackened but for a crescent of silver. “Make sure you never pay full price.”

  Hazel gulped. She didn’t want to find out what happened if she ran out of funds.

  “Hello?” said Hazel into the receiver. “Gammy, are you there?”

  She banged the receiver against her palm and then pressed it to her ear again. The ph
one hissed more static. The second quarter was nearly black. Why hadn’t she brought more quarters? She needed more time to figure this out.

  She burrowed her fingers into her hair, damaging the careful nest her mother had made and catching on something. Suddenly the static in the phone parted and something broke through for a moment, a blip of sound that might have been a voice. A tune—fast drums and crisp old-fashioned guitar—drifted through the receiver. A voice carrying a fast and sweet melody.

  Put your glad rags on and join me, hon . . .

  She pushed the receiver tight against her ear and plugged the other. Had she picked up on some radio signal? Was that even possible?

  We’ll have some fun when the clock strikes one . . .

  A lilting voice drifted through the line. “Through your garden slither.”

  “Hello?” she called into the mouthpiece, her voice now quavering. “Gammy, is that you?”

  But the phone only screeched in her ear, crashing over and drowning out the music and the voice.

  “No, no, no,” begged Hazel. “Come back! Please come back! I have no idea what to do. Gammy, I need your help! Juniper needs your help! I’m sorry—I’m sorry I ran away. That I wasn’t here when you . . . when you . . . I never listened, really listened, while you were here! But I’m listening now! Please, I’m listening now!”

  Her hair was hanging loose in her face and she futilely brushed it behind her ear. Her fingers bumped something—and again the static faded. It took a moment for her whirring mind to recognize what she had touched. Gammy’s hairpin.

  “What’s a focus?” Hazel murmured to herself. “It’s a concentration.”

  She pulled the pin loose, sending her hair tumbling down her back. As soon as she had the pin gripped firmly, her panic subsided and the static followed, reduced to a mere stage whisper.

  We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight

  We’re rock, rock, rock till the broad daylight

  “Hazel.” Gammy’s voice drifted clearly from the receiver, though it sounded like it was bouncing out of a darkened culvert. Hazel pulled herself closer to the phone, gripping the pin tightly in her hand, holding it out like torch.

  “Gammy,” she said, tears now running hot down her cheeks. It had been ten years, and she’d thought she’d never hear it again, but there was no mistaking that voice, smoky and tough with a laugh that made Hazel think of a shovel stirring cement. The sort of voice that only a granddaughter could love.

  “Hazel . . . Roi . . . shin . . . Bennett,” Gammy said, her voice floating in and out of as it played counterpoint with the static. “Stop saying my damn name . . . and get to the point . . .” Hazel laugh-blubbered, trying to sop at the mess on her face with her pajama sleeve. Next time, more quarters and a packet of tissues.

  Quarters. She glanced down and saw that the second quarter was black and the third already creeping.

  “Gammy,” she said, then winced. “Sorry. It’s Juniper. She’s in trouble.”

  A volley of static exploded in the earpiece followed by a growling drawl, some other voice now breaking through the line. “Blooms do wither.”

  The thought chilled her. Who or what else might be listening? She glanced at the frosted glass again. The vapors that had shimmered there before had begun to coalesce, like a swirling raincloud forming around her. She saw what looked like faces emerging from and sinking into the vapor. She forced her eyes back to the phone.

  “Gammy?” she said louder, trying to drown out the interruption. “There’s been a murder on the farm and everyone thinks Juniper has done it. No. Not everyone. I don’t think she did. But I don’t know how to help her. You would know what to do, Gammy. Tell me what to do to help Juniper.”

  She watched the third quarter blacken as the static warbled in the receiver.

  “Don’t . . . need me . . .” Gammy said.

  “Yes,” she pleaded. “Yes, I do. I should have listened more when you were alive.” She stuttered, trying to think of what she could ask with but a single quarter’s time. She knew why she had come down here, and why she needed to talk to Gammy specifically. It was not to reminisce, though every fiber in her being wanted to do just that.

  “The Bennett family book,” she pleaded. “Where is the book, Gammy?”

  For a moment, Hazel thought that her legs had started quivering uncontrollably—a sure sign she was about to lose her cool entirely—but as the tremble intensified, she realized it wasn’t her, but the booth itself. Within a few moments, the whole thing was vibrating so intensely that the doors and windows rattled.

  Somehow, she heard Gammy’s voice over the racket. “You’ve . . . always . . . had the knack . . . for this sort of thing.”

  Hazel looked down and saw that the fourth quarter had nearly been eclipsed. Only a hairline remained untarnished. Never pay full price. And before she could think what she was doing, she slammed the receiver back into place. The phone tolled a final dainty ding of its bells, and instantly the booth was still, its lights extinguished.

  She sat in the darkness of the booth, Gammy’s words echoing in her head. You’ve always had the knack for this sort of thing.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Run this by me again,” said Charlie, sliding another tray of farmer’s rolls onto the cooling rack. “You want to whatnow?”

  Hazel hadn’t slept a wink the night before. After leaving the library, she’d checked on Harper and Link, then gone to Gammy’s room with a notepad and pen, sat at the little writing desk by the window, and scrawled furiously until dawn. By then, she had a fully formed plan. She’d gotten dressed and come to find Charlie, who she knew would already be at work prepping for the day. Baker’s hours and all that.

  “Clear Juniper’s name,” replied Hazel as she watched Charlie pull another tray of rolls from the brick oven. “I can’t just sit by and watch my sister’s name get raked through the mud for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Charlie looked at her, lower lip clenched between her teeth. Hazel knew that look all too well. It was the one that said, “How can you be so sure?” In the past, that look had been Charlie’s reflex to Hazel’s adventurous inclinations—attending dances, crashing parties, trying out for sports teams. It was a necessary prerequisite in getting Charlie to agree to anything. Which meant that Hazel was close. She had to press her advantage.

  “I can do this,” said Hazel.

  And how are you going to do that?” Charlie asked. “Are you going to creep around with a deerstalker hat and magnifying glass, Sherlock?”

  “If I have to.”

  Charlie shot her a withering glare. “And you’re telling me because . . .”

  “I need your help, Charlie.”

  Midway between oven and rack, Charlie stopped so suddenly she nearly sent a couple dozen rolls tumbling to the floor. She swore under her breath and slid the tray into place. “No,” she said firmly. “No way, no how. And while we’re at it, no who, no what, no where, no when, and sometimes no why.”

  “Charlie—”

  “The days of Hazel Bennett talking Charlie Campbell into dangerous, embarrassing, and otherwise compromising situations are long gone,” said Charlie, already fishing the next tray out of the oven.

  “You haven’t even heard me out.”

  “That’s because I don’t want to hear you out,” Charlie retorted. “Because whenever I do hear you out, I end up doing something I regret.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like trying out for the cheer squad?”

  “That was in high school!” Hazel planted a hand on her hip. “Besides, it was fun!”

  “Fun? Fun?! I tore my sweatpants trying to do a split and the entire varsity boys’ basketball team saw my rainbow underwear. I got called camelbow until graduation!”

  Somebody on the other side of the bakery—probably Charlie’s boss, Bretta—guffawed.

  Charlie reddened. “See!” she hissed. “It’s already happening again!”

  “I nee
d you, Charlie.”

  “You don’t,” she said. “I bake things and I watch movies and sometimes I drink too many glasses of wine. Those are the things I do. Solving murders? Not something I do. Let the police do their job,” she said, returning to the oven and grabbing the last tray. “And I’ll do mine.” She held up another tray and grinned.

  “But, Charlie, the police must think this is pretty cut-and-dry. Juniper was on the tractor when everyone showed up.”

  “It doesn’t look good, Hazel . . .”

  “She’s innocent, Charlie.”

  “I mean it could have been an accident, but that would be what, involuntary manslaughter?”

  “I’m doing this with or without you, Charlie.”

  “What about your family?” Charlie asked. “Can’t they help? Your niece is, like, a supergenius. There’s your Sherlock.” There was a despondent edge to her voice now, a pleading in her eyes. Hazel might have felt bad and relented under normal circumstances, but these were not normal circumstances. Juniper needed help, and Hazel couldn’t do this alone.

  “I can’t bring them into this,” Hazel said. “They’re barely holding it together as it is.”

  Hazel saw Bretta lurking near the prep table, punching a wad of dough beyond the limits of reasonable force and glaring at Hazel. She’d better wrap this up.

  “Don’t decide now,” said Hazel.

  “Done,” muttered Charlie.

  “Meet me after you get off work. At the chapel.”

  Charlie whirled around so quickly that this time a few scalding rolls launched from the tray and whizzed past Hazel’s head.

  “Why the chapel?!” asked Charlie, a whining tone edging into her voice now. “I have a perfectly good apartment in town. We’ll crack open a bottle of wine, eat a pan of double-fudge brownies, and come down from this crazy ledge you’re on.”

  “Because every suspect and clue we need is right here on the farm, Charlie.”

  Charlie sighed, her shoulders collapsing like a soufflé.