“They have awesome coffee in this little town. And that shop was so busy last night. I think it’s the local hookup spot.”
“You were at the coffee shop that night?” Juno asked.
“Yeah. I was, uh… I was there, but…” he trailed off.
While they were chatting, I was grabbing a jar of enchanted face cream that I’d had since college. It was a glamour that made my eyes smaller and brown, my lips thinner, and everything else generally less attractive so I could be forgettable. Not the sort of thing that most college girls wanted, I know. Aunt Maudrey made it for Dot to help her cope with student life.
I smeared it on, watching my face change. Juno was peeking over and gasped as my reflection morphed. “That should do the trick,” I said.
“Wow.”
“Who’s this June Bug? Another witch-in-training?” Thomas laughed.
“Uh…”
“Yup,” I answered in a voice that sounded foreign to my ears. “Me and June Bug used to work together at Borders.”
“Don’t call me that. I hate that nickname,” she whispered. “And how do you know where I used to work?”
Thomas looked confused and I told her. “Just go with it. Get your shoes on.”
“Where are we going?”
“For help,” I whispered, exasperated. “I can’t wait to get our powers,” I said louder in a fake ditzy voice, mostly to Thomas. “I’ve always wanted to fly.”
“Can you really fly?” she asked.
“Shut. Up.” I grinned at Thomas. “You can tag along. Who knows, maybe you’ll pick up a few tricks.”
“Alright.” He shrugged and followed us into the hallway.
“Gemma?” Zinnia said when we stepped into the lobby.
“I’ll explain later,” I told her, then lead Juno and Thomas toward my hatchback. If he could stand on a floor and not sink through to the lower level, he could ride in a car, right?
Turns out that he could. I didn’t exactly enjoy having a restless spirit that my face could destabilize in my review mirror, but I couldn’t help but keep an eye on him. This glamour cream was getting pretty old, hopefully it would keep up.
“Where are we going?” Juno asked as I turned up a pitted dirt road.
“To see a witch that can help.”
“Who would live here?”
“Someone who doesn’t like to be bothered.”
Chapter 17
The road became rougher and bumpier as it climbed. This is exactly why I got a Subaru. You never knew when you’d need a favor from a backwoods witch. I couldn’t call first, Isla didn’t have a phone. Luna and Soleil had to communicate via an enchanted gramophone and she only answered that if she knew it was important.
Eventually, the road became so thin it turned into a trail, so I stopped the car. The sun was setting and there was a chill in the air as we continued on foot.
“Uh… I don’t know if we should keep going,” Thomas said. “This is getting creepy.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Juno agreed, glancing at me.
“You better make him stay,” I told her firmly.
“Oh, you have to come with me, Tommy,” Juno pleaded, her voice sounding a little unnatural. “I told you. Alicia is related to a more powerful witch than I am.”
“So?” Thomas retorted, his ghostly image flickering.
“So I have a better chance if I… if I drink a potion. Then, um, tomorrow,” she said, keeping up with his timeline, “when they do that ceremony, I’ll have a better chance.”
“Are you sure?” he asked skeptically.
“We’re almost there,” I said. “See? Look.”
I pointed up ahead at Isla’s cabin in the woods, illuminated by a campfire lit up like a beacon. We stumbled into the clearing just in time as a thick layer of clouds crawled in front of the nearly full moon, blocking the light we so desperately needed to avoid tripping on roots and stones. I couldn’t risk using any magical illumination in front of Thomas.
The door to Isla’s cabin hung open and it was dark inside except for a fire roaring on the hearth, but the flames were dark with flickers of green that cast little light. The coveted copper cauldron from the museum hung over it on an iron hook, thick liquid bubbling inside. The spell smelled green, like freshly cut wood and I could tell that whatever was cooking wasn’t close to done.
Hopefully that didn’t mean that Isla was wandering out in the woods wildcrafting. Searching for botanicals alone at night was her favorite pastime. I motioned for Juno to wait as I checked the porch for traps.
“What the…” Thomas murmured from behind us. “I can’t move.”
I spun around as a circle of symbols illuminated the ground below his feet. We’d walked him right through one of Isla’s protection spells.
“Why can’t I move?” he demanded, his toes at the edge of the circle.
Before I could answer, three figures emerged from the tree line surrounding the cabin. I spotted Isla first. Her robe was a patchwork of different colored fabrics and embroidered sigils, her wild red and gray hair trailing down to her knees wiry waves. Cassandra was beside her, clutching an indigo spell book, supposedly bound in ancient scaled leather from a dragon in Iceland. Amethyst looked so young and contemporary between them in jeans and a navy sweater, except for her whited out irises.
“We knew you were coming,” Amy said, her eyes returning to normal. “How nice to meet you, Juno.”
“Nice to meet me?” Juno scoffed. “Did you lead us into a trap?” She turned to me.
“No, I—”
“Gemma had no intentions to do that because she did not know,” Isla said. Her voice was kind and lyrical, a stark contrast to her weathered, mountain woman appearance. “And it wasn’t a trap for you.”
Thomas’s phone rang out in the nighttime silence. “Hey, girl...”
“He is much safer in there,” Cassandra told Juno, her back hunched as she slowly walked toward her. “And there is much we can do for you, my dear.”
“But you.” Amethyst seemed to float on air as she came toward me. “You can’t be here.”
“She has to leave,” Isla declared, sniffing the air as she circled the ring that contained Thomas. “At least for now. She’ll set him off, that’s for sure.”
“Why?” Juno asked.
“The first face he saw after he died. The first voice he heard.”
“Setting him off isn’t the only reason,” Amethyst said. “You need to go home. There’s something you should see. And then you need to give it to us.”
“Give you what?” I asked.
Amethyst’s eyes twinkled as she grinned at me. “You said no spoilers.”
Cassandra drifted closer to me and cracked open the powerful tome and a wind that moved nothing else started flipping the pages. “You need to be somewhere else.”
“But I…” I brought Juno here. I couldn’t just leave her in the middle of a scene from a horror movie.
“Right now,” Isla insisted, suddenly appearing behind me.
They’d surrounded me in the blink of an eye! I wasn’t exactly surprised when I heard them chanting in Latin, or when I saw bundles of herbs and glowing stones being thrown at my feet.
With my hands on my hips, my rolling eyes stopped and locked with Juno’s. “Sorry.” I tossed her my car keys just in time, so she’d have a smoother ride back than I would.
The world was spinning and I was coughing out smoke when I felt my feet on solid soil. My soil. The specific trickle of our river and the sweet smell of hyacinth mixed with honeysuckle and tilled earth immediately told me I was home.
The clouds had cleared and I stood in the pale blue light of the moon, looking down at clumps of earth from a dug up hole. I didn’t have the luxury of writing it off as one of Bliss’s mole rescue missions. That was the hole I’d dug as a decoy hiding place for the cards before I’d left. And it was empty.
A crash rang out in the night, drawing my attention to the old Dutch barn toward the rear of t
he property. There were flashes of light visible through the gap between the doors left ajar and the knot holes in the exterior boards. We didn’t use the barn all that much, as we kept most of the smaller tools and fertilizers we needed frequently in a garden shed closer to our cottages. And we certainly didn’t use it after sundown.
My heart was pounding as I crept up to the barn. I heard a man’s voice cursing as he bumped into something solid and metallic. Now was not the time to be in the dark, so I pulled my favorite light stone from my pocket and breathed across it to turn it on before yanking one of the doors completely open.
“What are you doing in here?” I asked boldly.
Not-So-Secret Agent Man froze for a moment before turning around. He’d had the decoy rock wrapped up in cloth that I’d buried in his left hand and a scrap piece of rope in his right. We kept a lot of odds and ends in the corner where he was standing, including extra rope of various lengths and thicknesses, but why anyone would have held on to that chunk was a mystery. It wasn’t long enough to tie a simple knot.
“Aren’t you going to answer me?”
The surprise on his face faded away. “What’s in your hand, there?” Gavin asked.
“You are trespassing in my barn,” I replied. “Grabbing a flashlight to investigate isn’t a crime.”
“When did you get home? I didn’t hear anyone pull up.”
“Trespassing.” I said the word slowly, emphasizing every syllable. “What are you doing here?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he laughed. “I’m clearly searching your barn. While trespassing.”
“Well, you need to leave before I call the Sheriff’s department. You know, the cops that actually have authority here. Unlike you.”
“I have—”
“No you don’t,” I interrupted him.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“It doesn’t really matter, because I know you don’t have a warrant.”
“Maybe I have probable cause,” Gavin said.
“It wouldn’t matter if you had probable cause. Because you’re an officer from Woodshade, and we aren’t a part of Woodshade. So when you watched me bury that rock—”
“Who said that I watched you?”
“You watched me.” I felt my eyes narrow at him. “And you were out of your jurisdiction. Trespassing.”
“I know you’re not a lawyer, Gemma,” he chuckled.
“Maybe I called one. Do you have an illegal tap on my phone, too?”
“You can’t call a lawyer. Eliza wouldn’t let you and an attorney can’t help someone living under an arbitrary ancient family code.” He flashed me a wicked grin. “Because it isn’t legal.”
“This isn’t what you think,” I sighed. “I didn’t sacrifice that boy to some Pagan Goddess to save my brother.”
The grin dropped away and that surprised expression returned. “Who’s illegally eavesdropping on who?”
“I…” Crud. I definitely shouldn’t have said that. “That’s what everybody in Woodshade thinks about us. It isn’t true.”
Gavin took a step toward me, but I held my ground. “You’re out of practice, Gemma. It’s been a while since you had to pretend that magic didn’t exist, hasn’t it? Not since, I’d wager, college?”
“I don’t have to pretend in front of you.” I held up the light stone flat in my palm so he could see it clearly and willed it to grow brighter. “You already know. You have to pretend, too. Because, I’d wager, that everyone you tell thinks you’re crazy.”
His jaw hardened as he watched the light die down again. “What else can you do?”
“Things you can’t even imagine.” That was pushing it a bit. “But that doesn’t make me a killer any more than it makes you crazy.”
Gavin’s next breath was sad beat of laughter as he looked down and shook his head. “I don’t think you had it in you to kill him. But I’m sure by now you’re definitely capable of looking the other way.”
“You’re grasping at straws, Gavin.” I said his name confidently and he raised an eyebrow. “The only reason you’re looking at me is because I found the body and that’s all you have to go on.”
I paused and waited for him to trip up and tell me that he really knew that my brother was the oldest living male resident and that’s why he’d fixated on me. But Not-So-Secret Agent Man had a better poker face than mine and he didn’t break.
“You heard about what happened and it brought up your…” Our eyes locked as he waited for me to reveal that I knew about his past. “Issues with magic,” I said instead, shuddering. “But I’ve been walking down that road at that time for almost five years. I had every reason to be there and I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It does seem that you’ve been rewarded for something.”
“Rewarded?”
“The cards.”
I sighed. Only time would tell if those were a blessing or a curse. “Get out of my barn,” I demanded. “And my life.”
He nodded, slowly walking toward the door. I had to step to the side to let him out and he stood tall in front of me. “Hetty seems to be angry at everyone except for you,” Gavin said. “So you did something right, from her perspective.” He bent forward, bringing his pale green eyes level with mine. “But what’s right to her could be something very wrong to the rest of the world.”
He smirked and looked me up and down before turning away. There was a folded up plastic bag with red and white writing sticking out of the back pocket of his black jeans. His hands were empty and I glanced at the bench in the corner where he’d been standing to see the rock I’d buried. And the rope. We wouldn’t have kept a piece that small.
Squinting, I did my best to read whatever was in his pocket as he walked away. All I could make out were the letters EVI. Evil?
Evidence. That would make a lot more sense written on a plastic bag.
My slamming heart dropped into the pit of my stomach as my throat tightened. I rushed over to the bench where he’d been standing, but couldn’t bring myself to touch that useless chunk of rope.
“Who was that?” my brother’s voice said from behind me.
“What? Nothing. No one,” I replied automatically like we were children and he’d caught me doing something I shouldn’t.
“Gemma, if you want to hook up with somebody, you don’t have to use the barn,” Wesley laughed. “Rolling in the hay is meant to be a metaphor in the 21st century.”
“I wasn’t…” I spun around and glared at him. “I do not hook up!”
“Might not be so uptight if you did,” he teased, strolling into the barn.
“That was Not-So-Secret Agent Man,” I informed him, folding my arms across my chest. “Framing me for murder.”
My brother’s mocking expression was replaced with one of dread. “How so, exactly?”
“That rope.” I pointed at the bench. “Why would we have saved a useless six inch chunk of rope?”
“We wouldn’t have,” he whispered.
We both looked toward the sound of a crackling gravel as the barn filled with shafts of bright light from an approaching car.
“He had an evidence bag in his back pocket.”
“Crap.” My brother didn’t actually say crap. He used a fouler four letter word, as usual. His cheeks puffed as he blew out air and his eyes darted around like he was forming a last minute plan. “Okay. You run out the back. I’ll, uh, distract the police. Perhaps by setting that evidence on fire.” Wes pulled out a lighter.
“The police?” I balked.
“Who else would be coming by this late?”
“Crap!” I didn’t actually say crap, either.
“What are you waiting for? Go!”
“Don’t burn the barn down,” I requested as I fumbled with the lock on the rear door.
“Hello?” a familiar voice cried out. “Gemma?”
“Don’t set anything on fire, Wesley!”
“The twins?” I asked my equally perplexed brother
.
I paused my escape attempt as Wesley pressed his eye against a hole in the wooden barn wall. “It’s them,” he said.
I sighed in relief as Luna and Soleil appeared at the door, looking just as confused as we were. “What are you doing here?”
“We were sitting in the living room getting lectured by Mom about the importance of carrying on the family line,” Luna started. They both rolled their eyes.
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