by E L Wilder
“Stop the truck,” she said.
“If I had to confess my inner demons, the least you could do is tell me about your transformation into a card-carrying sleuth. Does this mean you’re going to start smoking a corncob pipe and carrying a magnifying glass? Or are you going for more of a Magnum PI vibe? Maybe some short shorts and a thick mustache? I think you’d still look great with a mustache.”
“Stop the truck, Tyler!” She grabbed her satchel and tucked it under her arm.
“Geez, I’m just joking around with you,” he said. “I thought you wanted me to jettison the Gloomy Gus act.”
She opened the door, even though the truck was still in motion. He finally reacted, slamming on the breaks. She hit the ground running, stumbling only a moment as she sprinted across the field like a meadowlark skimming the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Only once Hazel had reached the barn did she stop long enough to catch her breath and take in the scene. The entire structure was in ruins with only the shattered fingers of barn beams sticking skyward. The windmill beside the barn had collapsed under its own weight and crashed onto the wreckage.
She frantically searched the faces of the people gathered but neither Ronnie nor Alex were present. Could they be inside, trapped—injured or worse?
She spotted David inspecting the ruins. To say he looked haggard would have been an understatement. His hipster beard and high fade were unkempt, his clothes rumpled and stained, his tattoo sleeves smeared with dirt and grime. Had he slept at all? Or even showered? She could only imagine the toll the last few days had taken on him. But she couldn’t add another project to her list at the moment. Her first priority remained Juni, then the kids. For now, David would have to take care of himself. When this was all done, she would send Juniper and David on a well-deserved and long-overdue vacation.
“Where’s Ronnie’s truck, Dave?” she demanded of her brother-in-law. “Where’s Ronnie?”
“What are you talking about, Hazel?” he said. “Ronnie’s not here.”
“Alex said he was meeting Ronnie here to do some work at the barn.”
“Did a bang-up job,” muttered Tyler, who had just caught up.
“Alex?” said David. “Alex hasn’t shown up to work in a few days—I’d written him off as another cut-and-run. We have them every year. It’s hard to retain good help.”
“But I just saw him,” said Hazel. “He was coming here to help Ronnie with something at the sheep barn.”
David looked perplexed. “Well, he’s not here now. The barn is done for though. There’s not much we can do with the wood. It looks like it’s rotted through. Not sure how we missed that. At least the sheep were out to pasture when it happened.”
She stepped away from David, even though he was still going on about alternate sleeping arrangements for the sheep. Tyler followed her.
“Rotted through,” Hazel said to herself in hushed tones.
Tyler kept pace with her. “What’s going on?” he said. “Why do I get the feeling you know more than you’re saying?”
“Because women always know more than they’re saying.”
“Care to share?”
She grabbed the edge of a beam and the wood crumbled in her hand. Something didn’t make sense here. It was a wonder they’d been able to hold up the barn at all in recent years, and after a hundred years, rot like that didn’t just set in overnight.
Something started buzzing in her brain.
“Look at the grass,” she said. An entire arc of the ground around the barn was browned, the grass that had been growing there now dead.
“Maybe the sheep did this,” he suggested.
She stooped down and picked at the blades of grass. They were dead and brittle and crumbled between her fingers. “This is more than a case of sheep nibbling and trampling the greenery.”
She hurried around the edge of the barn, Tyler keeping pace. The field dipped here, exposing the barn’s basement wall of fieldstone and mortar. A doorway was set in the stone. Hazel peered inside and saw that the timbers had collapsed in such a way as to form a tunnel leading into the heart of the barn. She took a tentative step inside.
“Hazel!” Tyler called after her. “You’re going to get yourself killed!”
Hazel grinned as she started gathering her hair and coiling it into a bun. “It’s okay. I did my own stunt work. You should probably wait here though.” She reached into her satchel, and grabbed Gammy’s hairpin, and deftly skewered the bun in place. Then she ducked inside, leaving Tyler standing there.
Maybe, he had a point. Maybe she could have done this outside, but she wanted to be as close to the epicenter as possible. And she didn’t want to risk somebody—Tyler included—witnessing her handiwork.
The tunnel quickly narrowed and Hazel had to squeeze through a narrow gap to continue. She entered a corner of the barn where a few sheep pens and some strong timbers had kept the ceiling from collapsing entirely.
She reached into her satchel and pulled out a container.
“Is that baby powder?”
She looked up and saw Tyler squeezing through the narrow opening.
“Tyler,” she said as she shook a pile of the powder into her hand. “You should have stayed outside.”
“Don’t sweat it,” he said, eyeing the ceiling warily. “I do my own stunt work too.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “I just don’t have time to explain this now. Ronnie could be in danger.”
“Explain what?”
She squeezed a palmful of baby powder from the container. “Wait for me outside.”
He shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
She only responded with a single word. “Appare,” and set to humming. The baby powder in her hand began to glow, illuminating the darkened cubby of space with a pale light. She blew across her open palm, turning in a circle as she did so. The room filled with a glowing cloud. Tyler coughed and sputtered.
When the cloud faded, only a familiar sickly purple glow remained, coating most everything in the room, except for her and Tyler.
“What the actual hell?” Tyler said.
“Oh my god . . .” she whispered. A slideshow of images from the last few days played through her head. She realized now how naïve her investigation had been. And how much danger Ronnie was now in—wherever he was.
“How did you do that?” said Tyler in hushed awe. “And what exactly did you do?”
“I can explain later,” she said. “I need to borrow Yota.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“You’re not coming with me,” she said, and ducked back through the narrow opening. She wasn’t going to put her friends in harm’s way again. She was hardly prepared to do battle with a warlock—if it came down to that. If she was unprepared, then what chance did her friends have?
“Like hell I’m not,” he said, sprinting after her, and struggling to keep pace.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Hazel took the steps up to the Doughn’t Even Bakery two at a time and practically ripped the screen off its hinges. The inside was sweltering, a combination of the June heat and the searing ovens inside. She found Charlie putting the finishing touches on a tray of cinnamon buns made to look like honeybees.
“Oh look,” said Charlie. “It’s the one-woman army.”
“Charlie, we need to go right now.”
“Sorry, honey,” she said, not diverting her attention from the cinnamon buns. “But these honeybees aren’t going to finish themselves in time for delivery. You and your boy toy can buzz off for now.”
“You said you still had my six—once I figured things out.”
“I do,” she said. “But Bretta has me until six, and I already used my lunch to attend your walk-to-remember.”
“Charlie,” Hazel said, leaning in close. “I have figured things out. I know who did it.”
Charlie stopped frosting and lowered her piping bag.
“I know who murdered E
ric Moore.”
Charlie traded glances between Hazel and Tyler. “You know about this now, Ty?”
Tyler just looked at her blankly. “Honestly, I have no idea what’s happening right now.”
“Damn you, girl,” said Charlie. “If you screw up this apprenticeship for me, I’m taking you to court for Charlie’s support.”
She put the piping bag down and shouted, “Bretta! Don’t hate me but I have to go! Take it out of my paycheck! I’ll be back in time to finish these buns!”
Before Bretta could reply, they were out the door and stomping down the stairs.
Hazel jumped into the driver’s seat. She started Yota, threw the car into gear, and nearly took off before Charlie and Tyler could even jump into the cab.
“Can we slow down just a second?” asked Charlie.
“No!” barked Hazel.
She hit the gas a little too hard and peeled out, sending a cloud of dust pluming behind Yota as she careened out of the courtyard archway and whipped toward the South Way.
“This is cool!” Charlie squealed. “The old trio back together! The Three Musketeers! Are you going to be one of Hazel’s minions now too?”
“I’m still not clear about what’s going on . . . or why Hazel’s driving so fast,” said Tyler.
Charlie patted him on the leg. “You’re going to fit right in.”
Tyler shook his head dumbly. “One second she’s powdering her hands, the next thing I know, everything is glowing like a dancefloor at a rave.”
“Ohhh,” said Charlie. “He knows?”
Hazel took the corner into the Tanglewood hard, kicking up a hailstorm of pebbles and narrowly missing a mammoth oak tree.
“Easy there, champ,” said Tyler. “Yota is rugged but he’s not indestructible. Same goes for me. I bruise like a peach.”
“We’ve established,” Hazel said, flatly as she upshifted and gunned it, “that I’m good for the repairs.”
“Might want to use this,” Tyler muttered, pulling the seatbelt over his lap and handing it to Charlie. “Before Bo Duke over there tries to jump the frog pond.”
Charlie dutifully complied and maneuvered so she could get the buckle in place, belting them both in. “Cozy,” she said, shifting in her seat and trying to find a comfortable spot. “Where exactly are we going, Hazel?”
“Ronnie’s place.”
“This would be a great time to fill us in on whatever you’re talking about.”
“Have you seen Ronnie’s new assistant, Alex?”
“You mean Mister Tall-Dark-and-Handsome?” asked Charlie. “Not really my type, but I’ve been noticin’.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s our killer,” said Hazel. “The pieces have been there all along. Do you remember that rhyme I told you?”
“Refresh, please.”
“Man or means-less or mean, there a withered soul has been.”
“If Alex is doing hoodoo, he would check all three boxes—man, means-less, and mean enough to murder.”
“Exactly. But it’s the second part of the rhyme. There a withered soul has bean. I always just thought it was being poetic, but there’s more to it than that. Good magic—clean magic—does no harm. But Clancy told me that black magic feeds, usually on the best quality organic matter around.”
“So at least we know why our killer is targeting a farm,” murmured Charlie.
“Who’s Clancy?” asked Tyler.
“Yeah, who’s Clancy?” seconded Charlie.
“More on that later,” said Hazel. “The day that I came home, I saw Alex digging up the rose bushes in front of the caretaker’s cottage. Ronnie said they had died of blight, but if the cottage has been Alex’s de facto headquarters then it would explain why the bushes suddenly up and died.”
Tyler just sat dumbly in the passenger’s seat, face screwed up tight, clearly struggling to process what he was hearing.
Charlie turned to Tyler. “Honey, just try to keep up. I promise you it gets easier. Lemme give you the previously-on-Bennett-Farms version. Magic is real, Hazel is a witch, and Santa Claus is probably actually responsible for all the coal in your stocking.” She turned back to Hazel. “Proceed, el capitán.”
Hazel nodded. “Then when we went to question Ruby, her casks had rotted through. But she’d just moved them in there a month ago. Even if Eric Moore screwed the pooch on the climate-control system, it still makes no sense.”
“And let’s not forget he probably screwed the pooch on purpose,” said Charlie.
“And you pointed out yourself that the tractor garage shared a dividing wall with Ruby’s cask room. Right?”
“Right.”
“If Alex is our warlock and he cast a spell on the tractor right on the other side of the wall, is it possible the spell drew its energy from the wooden casks? And then I saw him at the sheep barn right before it collapsed . . . because of an inexplicably rotten frame.”
“And what happened when I cast the spell at the sheep barn, Tyler?”
He sputtered a little. “Spell?”
“What. Happened.”
“The barn . . . it glowed purple, almost black.”
“Huh,” said Charlie. But what’s his motive?”
“I have no idea,” Hazel replied. “That’s why we overlooked him to start with. We know nothing about him. Maybe Ronnie was on to him. He’s lived here all his life. He was best friends with my Gammy. I don’t know how extensive his knowledge is on magic, but there’s no way he spent that much time with my Gammy and didn’t witness magic at work on more than one occasion. Heck, Gammy use to light her cigarettes with a spell.”
“So now what?” asked Charlie.
“We find Ronnie and make sure he’s safe,” Hazel said.
“And what do we do about Alex?” asked Charlie. “Confront him with the evidence and get him to confess? Isn’t that how it goes?”
“You mean the guy that killed Eric Moore and then tried to do the same to you and, it appears, to Ronnie?” asked Tyler, finally jumping into the conversation “We just make our case, then we have a good laugh and give him a lift down to the station?”
“What’s our other option? Tell the police?”
“Just speaking as the guy who’s late to the witch’s party,” said Tyler. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. What kind of evidence do you actually have? Last I knew that wasn’t on the list of acceptable forensic evidence.”
Hazel steered Yota round the last bend in the South Way, right before it came out of the woods in front of Ronnie’s cottage. Suddenly the truck lurched hard to the side as if it had just been T-boned. Hazel strained at the wheel but careened toward the trees. Before Hazel even knew what was happening, the car hit the ditch and flipped. They were airborne briefly and then Yota smashed into a tree. The sound of twisting metal and shattering glass filled the air, and then everything was still and silent, except for a dull hissing.
When Hazel opened her eyes, she was hanging upside-down, still buckled in, her head resting on the crumbled roof of the cab. Charlie and Tyler hung from the same seatbelt—both unconscious.
She reached up and struggled with the seatbelt buckle but she couldn’t get it to release. Damn it, Yota. The effort made her head swim and her vision narrow—she knew she was barely clinging to consciousness. She had to pace herself, but with the blood rushing to her head and an assortment of pains suddenly springing to life in her body, she knew she needed to act fast. She just needed a moment to gather her thoughts.
She focused on the spiderwebbed windshield, the fragments of glass clinging to each other. She cursed herself. She had let herself get carried away. She had driven too fast and lost control of Yota. And her friends had paid the price yet again for her reckless charge into battle. But how had she lost control of Yota? She had been driving with no trouble—not a pothole in sight thanks to Ronnie’s flawless maintenance of the roads—and then suddenly it was like something had punched the truck.
Something moved in the road. No, not somethin
g. Someone. A silhouette distorted and made faceless, featureless by the shattered glass.
“Hello!” she called out. “Help!”
The figure stood still and made no attempt to approach.
A chill went down her spine. Alex, she thought.
She held her breath.
The figure raised its hand. No, not a hand—a hammer. Hazel’s stomach twisted in knots. He was coming to finish the job the old-fashioned way.
She reached over and shook Charlie, who moaned in response. There was no time to get everyone out. She turned to her own seatbelt again, ripping at the buckle to no avail.
She looked up again. The figure still stood in the road. He had come no closer to the truck, certainly not close enough to use the hammer as a weapon, yet he raised the bludgeon above his head like he was preparing to strike. If he wasn’t using the hammer as a weapon, what could he possibly be—
Not a weapon, a focus. He was casting a spell.
The air around the figure warped, like a sheet flapping on a clothesline, and coalesced into a solid shape, something vaguely hammerlike. The leaves on the surrounding trees withered and started raining down on him. He raised the hammer higher, poised to bring it down.
Time slowed and her thoughts became viscous, like in the moment when the imp had attacked her. There was no thinking, just doing. Her hands went to her hair and found Gammy’s hairpin. She pulled it and suddenly the familiar tingle in her palm intensified, like an electric shock pulsing down her arm and coursing through her fingers. She drew back her fist and punched in the caster’s direction.
There was a rushing sound, like wind racing through the trees, as the spiderwebbed windshield exploded outward and the truck’s roof supports bent. The windshield missed the figure, but it was enough of a distraction that his own spell went wide, striking the front of the truck with a glancing blow. The truck spun on its roof until it was facing the opposite direction.
Her seatbelt finally gave way, and she crumpled onto the roof, landing hard. Something snapped and for a moment she thought it was a bone. Perhaps it would have been better if it had been. At least a bone could heal. The shattered fragments of Gammy’s hairpin that she now held in her hand would not. Hazel screamed in anguish—she has helpless now.