Down on the Charm

by E L Wilder

  Hazel picked up the paper and flattened it out. It was a thick parchment, yellowed with age and filled with an elegant calligraphic script. She started reading it aloud, “ ‘For revealing of proximal ensorcellments and practitioners of magicks.’ ” Her breath caught in her throat. “Is this a spell?” She looked at the bottom of the page and saw the initials HRB. H for the first name of every Bennett woman born with the Knack, and RB for Roisin Bennett. “This is from Gammy’s book. Where did you get this?”

  She looked up at Clancy. His eyes glinted. Oh, just laying around in— He crouched low suddenly, ears pressed flat to his head, as he stared down the length of the hall behind her. She whirled around. Something or somebody shifted in the shadows at the end of the hall.

  “Tyler?” she shouted.

  The only reply was a distant shuffle and scrape.

  “What is that?” she asked breathlessly.

  She received no reply. When she turned back, she saw that Clancy had disappeared.

  She wasn’t going back down that hallway alone. She wrestled the latch on a side window and leveraged it open wide enough to worm through. She landed on the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of herself, but she forced herself to her feet and started moving. She threw one last look over her shoulder as she retreated down the path, and she swore she saw somebody watching her from inside the barn.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Hazel stood atop the library ladder, balancing on her tiptoes as she pulled books down one by one, fanned through the pages, and reshelved the volumes—all under a growing cloud of disappointment. Another row of mind-numbingly boring books that could double as cures for insomnia. The Complete History of Vermont’s Sheep Farming Industry, a ten-volume set. An Introduction to Addison County Cheeses.

  Not a single one on the subject of magic.

  She had found the library doors unlocked and thrown wide, no doubt so the kids could access the prodigious collection for their Athlons if needed. Hazel had set up shop at the table in the far corner, eyeing the phonebooth wearily as she’d ironed out the spell parchment on the table surface. But after spending a few hours trying to decipher the text, she found herself no closer to understanding, never mind casting it.

  It didn’t help that she had more than a few things gnawing at her—Tyler’s hasty departure, her tense conversation with Clancy, and her unsettling encounter with the mysterious creeping. And the whole murder thing.

  She had resorted to desperate measures, scouring the entire contents of the library in hopes of finding anything tucked between the books that might help—a magical history, an encyclopedia, heck even a magical dictionary. But so far she’d come up empty-handed.

  She had considered marching into the dining room and demanding access to the occult collection—if such a thing existed—but the dangers of interrupting an Athlon in progress were severe. Her mother, Harper, and Link would be breaking soon for lunch anyway. Then she could slip into the dining room unnoticed and glean what she could from the unguarded volumes.

  “What are you doing?”

  Harper stood in the library door, her cherry-red glasses sitting sassily on the tip of her nose, the matching streaks of Kool-Aid red in her tangle of black curls, hands planted defiantly on her hips. If it were true that Hazel was the spitting image of Gammy, then Hazel had just found her own spiritual doppelganger. Hazel 2.0. Though Hazel had never been as unapologetically brilliant as her niece. The girl could handle Latin, trigonometry, and Shakespeare with ease.

  “Looking for a good book,” said Hazel.

  “I can suggest a few,” said Harper. “Gammy lets me in here whenever I want.”

  Hazel tried not to show her annoyance. She’d always had to creep through secret passages, and Harper had unfettered access. Though, to be fair, Hazel had never been interested in accessing the collection until now.

  Hazel stopped browsing and peered down at her niece. “Gammy?”

  “Gammy Amy,” Harper said.

  “Of course.” Hazel wasn’t sure how she felt about her own mother taking up the coveted title of Gammy.

  “Maybe I can help,” said Harper. “Nobody knows these shelves better than I do.”

  “Shouldn’t you be working on your Athlon?” Hazel asked coyly.

  “I needed a break,” Harper responded. “I told Gammy I was coming to find a book on ley lines.”

  “Attagirl,” Hazel said, climbing down. “How many days do you have left?”

  “Three. No problem. Link, on the other hand, might have to pull an all-nighter to get things done.”

  Hazel chuckled. “Sounds like a certain aunt I know. Athlons were never my strong suit.”

  “But look how you turned out,” said Harper. There was no mistaking the admiration in her voice.

  “I got lucky,” said Hazel. “What I did should not be considered a solid life plan. Doing well in school, that’s a decent strategy. Speaking of—how is life in the Amy Bennett School for Gifted and Beautiful Children?”

  It was a minute before Harper answered, and when she did, her voice stuck in her throat a little. “Gammy tries hard . . . but her curriculum is kind of easy.”

  “You forget that I too suffered under her tutelage. The difference being I didn’t find it nearly as easy as you do.”

  “It’s not so bad,” demurred Harper. “It’s just . . . boring sometimes. There’s only so much Link I can take before I need to find a quiet place. And there are only so many books I can read before I need to have conversations with people my own age.”

  “Now you’re speaking my language.”

  “You went to public school . . .”

  “I did. When I finished my freshman year, I told mom I was done with homeschooling. I wanted to get out of the house.”

  “How did you tell her?”

  “With much fear in my heart and shaking in my knees.”

  “And how did she take it?”

  “She thought I was being frivolous—throwing away a rigorous education and a solid work ethic so I could chase boys and win popularity contests. She was right—I wanted to do both of those things, but as somebody without the Knack, she missed the point. I only wanted to feel normal for at least a brief period in my life. You know, before I started flying around on brooms and shooting lightning out of my fingertips.”

  Harper tittered. “Do you regret it?”

  Hazel shook her head. “Not at all. I met Charlie. I joined the drama club. The rest is history.” Hazel could see where her niece was going with this line of questioning, so she decided to short-track it. “Why are you asking? Thinking of transferring?”

  “I don’t know. It seems stupid to focus on it right now,” Harper said. “But I need something else to think about besides Athlons and . . .”

  Hazel nodded and smiled sympathetically. “You know, I could use some help,” she said. “I need somebody that knows what she’s doing.”

  “Are you still looking for the Book of Bennett?” asked Harper.

  “Yes. No,” Hazel sputtered. “How do you know about it? I just found out it existed this week.”

  “Well,” said Harper. “You have been gone a long time.”

  “Touché.”

  “I learned about it while working on my Athlon last year,” explained Harper. “There are passing mentions here and there in different family records and journals. I was able to piece together enough to get the gist.”

  “You never cease to amaze me, my young niece. You’ll be glorious when your Knack manifests itself.”

  Harper blushed and looked away. “It’s not a guarantee.”

  “You have the mark. I spent a lot of years denying it too, but how I felt about it made no difference.” She paused. “It came anyway.”

  “Will you help me when the time comes?” her niece asked.

  Hazel looked met her gaze and placed her hands on her shoulders. “Yes,” she said. “I promise I’ll be there to help you.” And she meant it. “Whatever meager knowledge I’ve acqui
red by then will be yours. And to answer your question, I am still tracking down the book, but that’s not what I needed help with. I may not have the whole Book of Bennett (though if I ever found this thing, I’m going to sew a GPS tracker into the cover), but I do have a page from it . . .”

  Harper’s eyes lit up like Hazel had just announced they’d won the Powerball. “You’re kidding me!”

  “It’s not exactly a breezy read.” Hazel led her to the table and pointed to the parchment. “What can you make of this?”

  Harper sat down before the page, looking at the jagged edge where it had been torn from the book, the crinkles across its surface from where it had been wadded up. “That somebody has no idea how to treat a book, that’s what,” she said.

  Harper adjusted her glasses and started poring over the text, and, Hazel could have sworn, held her breathe the entire time. Hazel gazed at the all-too-familiar birthmark on the back of her niece’s neck, the flash of crimson shaped so perfectly like a rose it could have been a tattoo. Another Bennett marked for an extraordinary life because of a skin discoloration. But the girl would be fine. Hazel hadn’t just been paying her niece lip service. Whenever Harper’s Knack awoke, she would no doubt be an apt pupil and a capable practitioner.

  After a few minutes, Harper set the paper down and gawked at Hazel. “This is incredible.”

  Hazel nodded. “I was hoping you could help figure out what it is and how it works. It’s like Greek to me.”

  “There are some highfalutin, old-timey words in here with a generous portion of Latin mixed in, but it’s a list of materials, a set of instructions, some suggested gestures and words.” Harper pointed to some writing scrawled in the margins. “These look like they were added after the fact,” she said, a hint of horror creeping into her voice at the thought that somebody would write in a book so valuable. As a girl that held library borrowing policies on par with such sacred agreements as the US Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, she couldn’t have uncovered a more heinous misdeed.

  “That’s Gammy’s handwriting,” Hazel explained. “My Gammy.” She used to write in library books too.”

  “Sacrilege!” Harper huffed. “But this is amazing.”

  “What is it?”

  “In laymen terms?” she said. “It’s a detect magic spell.”

  Hazel leaned in close, hardly able to believe her luck. No, she thought, this wasn’t luck at all. Clancy had brought this to her, and he had done so on purpose. What had he said? That strange things were in the air? As a creature from the magical world, were his senses more finely attuned to the presence of magic? But it still begged the question, how did he get this page? Did he know where the rest of the book was?

  “It looks straightforward enough,” said Harper. “Are we going to try it?”

  “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “Everything you need to know is here,” she said, waving the parchment in Hazel’s face. “It’s practically a script. All you need to do is learn your lines and you’re off and running.”

  A script. Now that was language she could work with. “You make it sounds so easy.”

  “If anyone can do it, it’s you, Auntie Hazel.” There was no doubt in Harper’s eyes, just the sort of pure admiration that only a niece could have for her awesome aunt.

  “There are consequences to practicing magic badly,” said Hazel. That was one lesson on spellcasting to which Hazel had actually paid attention.

  Gammy had always said black magic isn’t a practice, it’s an outcome. A blanket term for magic gone awry. Sure, it included magic used with evil intent, but it also described the Knackless, the hopelessly inept, trying their hand at spellcasting. Especially men. If you ever want to run afoul of magic, put it in the hands of a man. God bless them. They try so hard, but they’re just not women. Could Hazel herself produce black magic if she cast a spell badly? The thought was unnerving. Gammy had never outlined the consequences of such outcomes.

  “I can’t afford to get it wrong,” she said. “For your mom’s sake.”

  Harper froze, the smile slowly drained from her face. “Is mom going to be okay?”

  “I will do everything in my power to ensure that she is,” Hazel answered. “It’s what we Bennetts do.”

  * * *

  Hazel sat in the grass in the Cliffside Garden, watching the rest of the afternoon slip away as the sun sank toward the distant Adirondacks. She held her phone and debated whether this was really the best way to do this. Maybe she could just borrow the family car and drive herself. But she knew that going out in public right now was still a horrible idea. Paparazzi were likely scouring Vermont right now in search of her. She shuddered to think about the consequences if they tracked her back to the farm and turned the eye of the world here.

  She sighed.

  A phone call it was.

  She powered the device on, praying that the hand of the universe might deliver her from the dinging, red-dotted death that almost certainly awaited her. And she was right. As soon as her phone found a signal, the barrage began—a hailstorm of social media, email, voice mail, and text notifications.

  A few caught her eye as they zoomed by, particularly the ones from her manager, Marco Moretti.

  Call me! Now!!!!

  All press is good press . . . call now so we can capitalize on this . . .

  Where R U? Gonna put out search parties soon!

  Twitter says you’re dead. But also that you’re starring in a Police Academy reboot. What gives?

  She groaned inwardly and unlocked her phone, ignoring the notifications. The world could live without Helena Rose for a little bit longer. Instead she dialed the number she’d written on a scrap of paper, navigated a complicated phone tree, talked to a few disinterested parties, and then waited on hold for an inordinate amount of time, suffering a Muzak soundtrack. At last, the line clicked and a familiar voice came on.

  “Hazel? Is that you?”

  “Juniper!”

  “It’s good to hear your voice, little sis.” The line crackled with static—something Hazel wasn’t even aware modern phones did anymore. She couldn’t help but think of her cold call in the library, but she tried to shake off the parallel. The booth was for calling people that had . . . gone out of service range. Juniper was not beyond saving.

  “How are you holding up?” Hazel asked.

  “As well as can be expected,” Juniper replied. “Mom has been taking care of me. Bringing me food and regular changes in clothing—none of which they give me, but that hasn’t stopped her.”

  “Has my lawyer got in touch with you?”

  “Yes,” Juniper replied. “You didn’t have to do that. They could have assigned a public defender to my case.”

  “Puh-lease. I’m not leaving my sister’s fate in the hands of a disinterested public defender,” countered Hazel. “And this isn’t farm related, so you can’t say no.”

  Juniper chuckled humorlessly. “She definitely seems to be worth her salt. She says if they don’t file charges soon, they have to release me.”

  A nasal woman’s voice cut through on the line. “You have ten minutes remaining on this call.”

  “What?! We just started!” said Hazel. This was starting to feel more and more like that cold call. “I’m going to keep doing everything I can on my end to get you out of this.”

  “Hazel . . . what exactly are you up to?” Juniper asked, the big-sister edge in her voice unmistakable.

  “Nothing,” Hazel said. “I’m just putting my talents to good use.”

  “Hazel,” said Juniper, more sharply now. “This sounds like meddling. Are you meddling?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Hazel. “I’ve got this under control.” Though she most certainly did not.

  “It’s your casual confidence that worries me most.”

  “Listen,” said Hazel. “I need you to explain everything to me. I need to hear it from your mouth. What happened in the tractor barn?”

  “I—I do
n’t know,” said Juniper, suddenly shedding her tough big-sister attitude. “It’s—what happened, it was impossible. Eric Moore came in looking for a fight, something about project costs running over and that he’d need more money before his team would lift another hammer. Then suddenly the tractor was coming at us. I barely got out of the way in time.”

  “You weren’t even on the tractor?”

  “Nobody was,” said Juniper.

  “So why did both Ruby Northinger and Jess Tully tell the police that they saw you running down Eric?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Could they have pushed it?”

  Juniper laughed. “If so, I would avoid ticking them off. That thing weighs around thirteen tons. Besides, even if it were working, it takes a serious amount of time to warm up before it can move. And it’s slow as death. Pardon the analogy. It’s hardly the ideal murder weapon for a crime of passion.”

  “There’s just so much here that doesn’t make sense,” said Hazel.

  “If you look at it through a mundane perspective . . .”

  “What are you saying, Juni?”

  Hazel didn’t know how this whole prison call system worked, but there must be people monitoring them. She hoped Juniper knew that too. The last thing they needed right now was for one of them to say something magically incriminating over the phone.

  “Things have been running amok on the farm lately,” Juniper slowly. “You said it yourself. What if something or someone came through the Postern and—?”

  The call cut short. “Your allotted time has come to an end,” said the nasal voice.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Hazel was yet again waiting at dusk for Charlie to show at the chapel. But it was Theo that appeared first, drifting through the north wall as Hazel finished updating her crazy wall.

  “Good evening, young Bennet!” exclaimed Theophilus. “Have you had any luck finding the missing book?”

  “It’s complicated. I spent the afternoon studying a stray page from the book with my niece.”