Beezley and the Witch series Box Set

by Willow Mason

“He is, hands down, the person least interested in getting to know me I’ve ever met. Absolutely ignored me.”

  “Sounds like a total pillock.”

  “Yeah.” I let Porangi down as he attempted to gnaw my wrist as though it was a bone. “It’s probably where I get it from.”

  Harriet giggled, then giggled harder as she put hands over her mouth to stop the sound. “Probably,” she managed to sputter after a minute spent laughing at my expense. “You are a right pillock sometimes, too.”

  Porangi ran to the door and jumped up, yapping with excitement. “I think that’s my cue to leave. How did a night with your new houseguests treat you?”

  “Marlon and Binky left this morning on a bus to Christchurch,” Harriet said. “Between them falling asleep the moment they arrived at my house to their abrupt departure, we exchanged all of three sentences.”

  “He’s a man who’s had a very rough time,” I said, gathering Porangi up before heading out the door. He squirmed and wriggled so much, I guessed it might be time to follow the admonition and put him on a leash. Then he could tug my arm off instead of trying to nip it to death. “I hope he finds comfort wherever he’s going.”

  “Given how adoringly he stared into Binky’s eyes, I think as long as his tortoise is beside him, he’ll cope.”

  I wished I felt that way about Porangi. My chest ached with a deeper grief, suggesting it was another relationship causing the most problems, but I didn’t want to go there. Not yet. Not when my nerves were shattered from a million other things.

  Beezley was still absent when I got home and I searched through the garage, thinking I could fashion a makeshift lead for Porangi until I could get one at the store. In a small catch-22, I wasn’t ready to take him into a pet store without a lead, but I couldn’t buy one without going inside. A rope would have to do.

  A strange pattering sound greeted my ears as I let myself back into the house through the connecting door. It sounded like rain. One step into the lounge showed me how right I’d been.

  A sprinkler sat in the centre of the room. Drops cascaded in a fan pattern, watering the lush carpet from one side to the other.

  Water dripped down the walls, soaking into the already sodden carpet. The computer sat in a puddle on the desk. The television looked like it had just stepped out of the shower.

  Everything was ruined. Porangi stuck his head in through the doggie door, tongue hanging out as he admired his handiwork.

  I pounded after him, stopping just long enough to turn off the garden tap. Porangi barked in joy and ran away, occasionally stopping to check I was still following. His tail wagged. The silly mutt was enjoying himself.

  My mind blanked out in anger, backed up by fear. I needed to catch the dog, tie him up, and clean the mess in the house before Beezley got home.

  The long muscles in my thighs twitched, and a stitch dug into my side, but I ignored them. My anger fuelled me past the pain threshold, catapulting me out the other side.

  “Get back here,” I yelled, startling pedestrians as I sprinted past them. A lady pushed a shopping trolley into my path, and I jumped over it like an Olympian hurdler. “If you keep running away from me, you’ll just be in more trouble!”

  A shopkeeper, drawn by the ruckus, stepped neatly into Porangi’s path and scooped him up mid-stride. Tears of exhaustion streamed down my face as I came to a grateful halt, taking the chihuahua out of his arms.

  “He seems a nice dog,” the man said, patting Porangi on the head and earning himself a trio of barks. “I hope you’re not going to do anything stupid.”

  The warning penetrated. My anger waned. He was a loyal familiar with a head injury. Whatever ‘bad things’ he did, the blame couldn’t be laid at his door. No matter how much I wanted to.

  “You’ve got me into so much trouble,” I whispered, giving the chihuahua a pat. He cuddled into the curve of my neck and I closed my eyes for a second, letting the warmth of his body cool down the heat of my rage.

  I thanked the shopkeeper and set off home, the weight of everything I’d need to do to clean up slowing my feet. The yellow pages were about to get a battering. Even if I could soak up the worst of the damp with towels on the floor, there was still a thousand other things to do.

  “Beezley better have insurance,” I muttered as Porangi tried to launch himself out of my grasp. I readjusted my grip, not about to let him cause more havoc. With a short interlude at a bus stop, I realised my improvised lead wouldn’t work. Online shopping it would have to be, while Porangi stayed confined in my room.

  My heart turned to ice when I turned into the street and saw Beezley’s car parked in the driveway. I hadn’t made it halfway up the path before the door slammed open and his enraged face peered outside.

  “Do you see how much damage you’ve caused?” he yelled, making me cringe backwards.

  “I’ll clean it all up, I promise.”

  “No, you won’t. I’m not letting you or that dog into my house ever again. Contract or no contract, this is no longer where you live.”

  He slammed the door in my face as a locksmith’s van came to a halt behind me.

  His first call hadn’t been to the insurance company or a cleaning firm. It had been to a service who’d make sure I was locked out.

  Porangi seized his moment, jumping to the ground while I stood frozen. My heart broke with grief that my strongest relationship had ended so abruptly.

  Instead of remaining calm and picking the chihuahua up again, my blood boiled. “Do you see what you’ve done?” I screamed into the startled dog’s face. “Get out of here. I never want to see you again!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I’m so popular lately, it will go to my head,” Harriet declared when I turned back up to the library a few hours after leaving it. “You’re welcome to the spare room for a few nights until you sort things out with Beezley.”

  A few days sounded years short of the required time to ‘sort it out’ but I was grateful for the offer. “Do you need any help here? I’ve got tonnes of free time to kill.”

  “How about you go find your dog?”

  I’d told Harriet a brief and slightly self-serving version of what had happened with Porangi but guessed now she’d seen straight through me. “Okay, I’ll try, but that little blighter can run a lot faster for a lot longer than me. He’s probably halfway to Christchurch by now.”

  “So long as that’s where he’s headed, it’s okay. If he’s gone back to The Briary though…” She shivered.

  “Why would—?” I broke off, rubbing at my forehead where globs of sweat appeared by magic. “I doubt he’d go back there.”

  “Until you know for sure…” Harriet waved me out the door.

  I asked at the nearest corner to Beezley’s house, getting a few noncommittal grunts in answer to my question. From there, I tried the main road, getting a positive reaction to Porangi’s description from the road south. Good. At least Harriet’s prediction could be put to bed, though I was no closer to finding him.

  When I walked past the police station, DI Jonson knocked on the window and beckoned me inside. With a shrug, I gave up the dog hunt and gladly entered the cool airconditioned office. “Did you need me for something?”

  “Adam Beezley paid me a visit this morning,” the DI said with a pained grimace. “I thought you were in regular touch with him via email.”

  The small ruse had been enough to earn us a few investigative jobs and I nodded. “He’s back in town, although his memory seems spotty.”

  The DI snorted. “You can say that again. I think he tried his best to cover it, but the man’s got a gap from when he last walked out of this office until this morning when he walked back in. It’s like he time-jumped or something.”

  “I’d fall on the side of ‘or something’ in that scenario.” I gave a shrug as nonchalant as I could make it. “Maybe he had a bad shock or hit his head. Total amnesia is rare but there are lots of cases of partial wandering about.”

 
Jonson pursed his lips in a display of scepticism. “I’ve given him an appointment with our station doctor, Jamieson, to see what light he can throw on the situation.”

  Although I knew he wouldn’t discover anything untoward, I still felt uneasy. “If you don’t need anything else…?”

  “I do. Some of my junior officers are working a case involving Archie Belham. I believe you’re the one who discovered his body.”

  My stomach protested, and I put a steadying hand on my abdomen. “That’s right.”

  The DI tapped on his keyboard and read the screen. “It says here, you took ownership of his dog, a chihuahua?”

  “Yes. Although he’s gone walkabout.” An understatement. “That’s why I was outside. I’ve been searching for him all over town.”

  “Oh, pity.” He jabbed at his keyboard again a few times, then turned back to me. “They were hoping he could lead them to some of Archie’s possessions.” Jonson tilted his head to one side, narrowing his eyes. “Did you know Archie was actually the town Santa?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that on the grapevine.”

  “His neighbours insist he worked on presents for the children all year, but the house is completely empty.”

  I gaped at him, feeling another knot tighten in my soul. “Somebody stole the presents?”

  “Not at all. His house was the workshop, but it appears he may’ve stored the gifts off site. The officers were hoping the dog could lead them to a storage facility or lockup somewhere in town. His records don’t indicate he rented anywhere, but we’re hoping all his efforts didn’t go to waste.”

  “If I find him, I’ll give the station a call to let them know. Anything that gets him out of the house for a bit will be a blessing.”

  Jonson gave me a strange stare but flicked his hand to dismiss me. I had my hand on the door when an idea occurred to me. “We did have a surprise party planned for Beezley,” I said, the lie grating on my ears. “If you see him tomorrow, would you be able to send him out to meet us?”

  I felt sure Jonson would say no but his eyes gleamed. “A surprise, eh?”

  “Nothing fancy. Just a barbeque out in the woods. We’re meeting by the stone circle.”

  The inspector shouldn’t know where that was but if he told Beezley, I hoped he might find his way there, navigating through his subconscious. If not, I could wait by the edge of the woods with Harriet and kidnap him.

  “I’ll tell him.” The DI sat back in his chair, forming a temple with his fingers. “In fact, I’ll make it an order.”

  “That would be much appreciated.”

  “If it means I get my best detective sergeant back with his memories where they should be, I’m game to try anything.” Jonson arched an eyebrow at me. “I trust you’ve got his best interests at heart.”

  I did but goodness knows what was running through Glynda’s mind when she made the order. There’d been times in the past when my idea of what she had planned didn’t tally neatly with the reality, but I didn’t have any option.

  With no magic and no psychology degree, I couldn’t help Beezley on my own. “Of course.”

  I headed out of the station in a better mood than I’d entered. Porangi remained at large but I figured the chihuahua could take care of himself even if I failed to find him. He’d managed up to now.

  Still, rather than crawling back to Harriet’s, licking my wounds, I grabbed my car and cruised the streets with my eyes peeled. Fernwood Gully was so small, I must have trawled each road four or five times before I gave up and headed back. If Porangi didn’t want to be found, there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  “Glynda’s getting twitchy,” Harriet warned me once I stumbled through her door. “There’re too many witches telling too many stories for her to keep everyone in line. If she doesn’t wrestle control at the coven meeting tomorrow, the entire community could shatter.”

  “So much for a merry Christmas,” I whispered. “No Santa. No mermaid. No coven goodwill for the coming year. I think it’s time we called our losses and just look to start fresh at New Year’s.”

  “You’re meant to be a PI, aren’t you? Why don’t you run a trace on where our Christmas spirit’s gone?”

  I was lying flat on my back and couldn’t be bothered sitting up, so just poked her with my big toe. “I can tell you where it’s gone. Brianna and Lucinda ate it all up in return for a new pair of sexy legs.”

  Harriet popped her legs out straight. “As sexy as mine?”

  “No one’s legs are as sexy as a library witch. That’s a grade-a one hundred percent proven fact.”

  “I wish we were going to a barbeque tomorrow rather than a coven meeting. What we need is a good party to jolt everybody into having a great time. Not another examination of everything that’s gone wrong.”

  With a groan, I levered myself onto my elbows. “If Glynda can restore Beezley’s memory, it’ll be worth it. It took me so long to find a boss who I got along with, it’ll be a shame to lose him like this.”

  “Got along with, eh?” Harriet turned an impish smile towards me. “Is that what you call constant bickering and perpetual disagreements?”

  I flopped down again, pouting. “Being snarky and disagreeable is how I show affection.”

  To prove my point, I showered Harriet with sarcasm and biting wit until the sky was dark outside, and it was time to go to bed.

  Alone in her spare bedroom, I stared blankly at the ceiling. To save my friend, I’d traded away my precious magic, leaving my soul bereft. If Glynda couldn’t restore his memory, Beezley would stay lost to me, too.

  I wept; not sobs in a flood to wash away the sad and miserable baggage from my life but crying that ripped out of me, one drop at a time. Pulling. Bleeding. Causing damage with every tear.

  A text message woke me soon after midnight. Usually, I’d have my phone set to silent but with everything that had happened, I didn’t want to miss a call. The choice seemed unwise as I peered through sleep-laden eyes at the screen. Brianna had texted me a weird message. Need help. Fairy bread.

  Yeah. Cool. Like I was going to leave the comfort of Harriet’s duvet to sprinkle a slice of bread with hundreds and thousands. Perhaps Brianna had me mixed up with some local culinary establishment who’d cater to her every odd whim.

  I was halfway back into a dream featuring spiders and a grim onslaught of cobwebs when I sat bolt upright. The message reformed itself in my brain, undoing the harmful effects of fat fingers or autocorrect. Not fairy bread, but fairy dead.

  Had Delia just died?

  I stumbled into the same clothes I’d worn that day, making a mental note to either go shopping or break into Beezley’s house to rescue my already limited wardrobe. My car was still parked in his garage, so I nicked Harriet’s keys from their hook in the kitchen and put my foot down to reach Brianna’s in record time.

  When she answered the door, I didn’t have to ask about the message. It was written in her defeated expression and the tears cutting a path down her face. “She’s through here,” Brianna sobbed, clasping me in an awkward hug before leading me through into her lounge.

  Delia lay flat on her back, sightless eyes staring at the ceiling. Her skin was dry and wrinkled like she’d mummified in a few hours. When I touched the side of her neck to verify the obvious, my fingers sank into her flesh like it was jelly.

  “Oh, ugh.” I flapped my hand, small flecks of Delia coming off until Brianna handed me a tissue. “What happened?”

  “I thought you’d know. Aren’t you meant to be an investigator?” The woman collapsed into sobs, rocking back and forth on the floor next to her dead friend. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  “I’m all out of magic,” I said in a sour voice that I instantly regretted. Wrangling my emotions towards empathy, I put a hand on her shoulder and went for a softer tone. “When did your friend die?”

  “Last night. This morning. I don’t know.” Brianna’s tears got the better of her for a moment, then she gave a large s
niff. “When I came out for a late-night snack, I tripped over her. We’d watched a movie together in the afternoon, then I went into my room to catch up with some gaming.” The sobs sputtered out of her again like forlorn punctuation. “She. Was. Only. Alone. For a few. Hours.”

  “Was she sick?” I sat back on my heels, fumbling with my phone. “Did she have a regular doctor?”

  Brianna shook her head to each question. “I guess she had a doctor, but she never saw him. Dels was even younger than me!”

  She might have meant the statement as a testament to her youth but in the warm overhead lighting, Brianna appeared near retirement age.

  “She was thirty-ish?” I guessed kindly and Brianna nodded.

  “Thirty-four but hardly the age you’d expect her to drop dead.”

  My mind played back the CCTV footage from the pub when Aloysius blew a handful of magic spell into Brianna’s face. At the time, it had seemed miraculous. Look, Ma! A new set of legs. Given the trouble his memory spell had wrought on Beezley and me, the image discoloured into a jarring shade.

  “Did Aloysius mix something else into the potion he gave you?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from wobbling. A fair trade, he’d said to me, then twisted what should have been a happy event into a tragedy.

  Brianna wiped a handful of tissues across her face and visibly gathered herself. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “The change came at such a high price, I thought for sure it was real. Now…?” She shrugged.

  “Have you taken a good look in the mirror lately?” I kept my eyes on Delia’s motionless feet as I asked, not wanting to witness the concern in Brianna’s eyes. “You should take a quick peek.”

  “I’m ageing,” she said in a flat tone. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed. I have wrinkles everywhere and grey hairs in places I didn’t think they’d change colour.”

  “Delia—” I began, then stopped and waved my hand towards the dead woman’s face. “She looks eighty.”

  “A hundred and eighty, you mean.” Brianna covered her face with her hands for a second, then shuddered. “Do you think Aloysius cursed us at the same time he changed our form?”