“And that ridiculous gramophone she uses to talk to her sister started screaming at us about a chunk of rope,” Soleil continued.
“Isla was totally frantic, and the bell of the gramophone go so hot that it started to melt,” Luna laughed. “So Mom doused it with a diluted potion that she keeps on the table next to it.”
“Because apparently that happens a lot when she’s upset,” they said together, giggling in perfect harmony.
“And then my phone started ringing from an unknown number,” Soleil picked up the story. “It was Amethyst, with Isla and Cassandra shrieking in the background that we—”
“That we had to get over here right away,” Luna continued, “because Wesley was going to set a rope on fire and they needed it for the spell.”
“What spell?” I asked.
“The spell,” they answered. “You didn’t burn it did you?” They each raised their arm in unison and pointed at Wesley like they were possessed by aliens in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, minus that creepy scream.
“I was only going to burn it because you pulled up in the car and I thought you were the police!” he said defensively. “Although, I probably would have wanted to get rid of it tonight…”
“When it comes to fortunes and foresight, the chicken or the egg question has been hotly debated for centuries,” I said, reaching for the rope.
“Don’t touch it!” all three of them yelled at me in unison. Now Wesley was getting sucked into the synchronicity?
“Why?”
“Fingerprints,” my brother said.
“You can’t leave your fingerprints on a rope,” I shot back. “Can you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you can leave your energy signature behind,” Luna explained.
“And this thing is tainted enough as it is.” Soleil held up a pair of thongs and clicked them together twice as she approached the evidence, then carefully picked up the chunk of rope as if it were a uranium rod and dropped it into a mason jar. “There we go.”
“I can’t believe we have to drive out to Aunt Isla’s cabin in the dark,” Luna groaned. “Can we borrow your Subaru?”
“Actually I left it there,” I told them. “They teleported me here. By force.”
“Been there,” the twins replied with a laugh.
“Maybe we should teleport ourselves,” Luna suggested to her sister.
“I don’t have the energy for that,” Soleil groaned.
“Well, if she changes her mind, which she will,” Luna teased her, “do you want us to drive your car back for you?”
“That’s a subtle way of Luna admitting that she knows we won’t have enough energy to teleport back.” Soleil stuck her tongue out at her twin. “And she certainly doesn’t want to spend the night with three psychics in that shack.”
“No you can’t drive it back because I left the keys with Juno.” I was suddenly overcome with guilt. “Oh my Goddess, poor Juno.”
“Who the heck is Juno?” Wesley asked.
“She’s fine,” Luna said.
“Amethyst knew you’d be worried about her.” Soleil held up her phone for me to see. “So she sent me this picture of her being taught how not to see ghosts.”
The picture was of Juno wearing a forced smile, giving a thumbs up to the camera with an overwhelmed and slightly disgusted look on her face. “That’s not exactly comforting,” I grumbled.
“I know, right?” Luna laughed.
“Who is Juno?” Wesley repeated.
“Thomas’s friend. She’s being haunted by his ghost, who is about one freak out away from becoming a poltergeist. And I’m pretty sure she’s our fourth cousin.”
“Great…” he said, shaking his head.
“Well, we’re off,” Soleil announced.
“Don’t get arrested,” Luna said, giving me a quick peck on the cheek.
“You two are the ones carrying around a piece of the murder weapon now,” I reminded them. “So same to you.”
The twins’ smiles fell away as they looked back at us. “Let’s just drive,” they said to each other.
“So…” I turned to my brother. “Are you up for a visit to Woodshade tomorrow?”
“What for?”
“To get some evidence of our own on Not-So-Secret Agent Man.”
“If you try telling the police that he came here to frame you, they’re not going to believe it. He’s one of their own and we don’t have any proof. Besides,” Wesley yawned and stretched his arms over his head. “We got rid of that rope. Better to just keep your head down.”
Easy for him to say. “I’m not going to the police. Not yet, anyway. I need a motive first, at least.”
“A motive for what?”
“Murder,” I replied
“Whose?”
“Thomas’s!”
“But…”
“Don’t you get it?” I picked up a stray dried up corn stalk and whacked him across the chest. “Gavin is the killer.”
“You think Not-So-Secret Agent Man did it?”
“Well, yeah. Why else would he try to frame me?”
“Huh.” My brother mused on my revelation for a moment. “Maybe, I guess.”
“Maybe? It’s the only explanation!”
Wesley was clearly skeptical. “Well, probably not the only explanation, but—”
“It’s plausible,” I rephrased. Wesley cringed a little, obviously still having doubts. “Oh, come on. You have to at least admit it’s plausible.”
“I don’t have to admit anything,” he retorted. I raised the cornstalk, faked right, and smacked him again when he dodged. “Quit it!”
“I don’t have to quit anything,” I taunted him, missing my next strike, “until you admit it’s plausible.”
My brother grabbed the end of the cornstalk before it hit him again, but I held its base firm. Of course, the thing crumbled into pieces, much to Wesley’s delight. My eyes narrowed and I whispered, “Gelu.”
“Hey, no fair!” A shard of ice no larger than a pea flew from my fingertip and hit him on the shoulder. My brother laughed at the innocuous spot of water on his shirt. “I’d remind you what Aunt Clea said about using magic on me, but that was far too pathetic to bother.”
“Oh, really.” I pinched my fingers together and said, “Gelu!”
This time my icy offense was the size of a strawberry, but my texture was off and it was mushy. The little snowball hit him on the jaw in a splat that even I would have to admit was pathetic.
He wiped the water from his face. “Like getting in a snowball fight with a one-eyed, drunk pixie.”
I took a deep breath and focused on an ice capped mountain. The image was so crisp and clear, even though I’d never seen such a sight in real life. “Gelu!”
We were both rather surprised when I cast that spell perfectly and found myself holding a piece of ice a little bigger than a baseball, with jagged sharp edges all over the surface.
“Dang, Gem. Good job.”
“Right?”
“You better not hit me with that,” Wesley said. I brandished the ice at him even though I could never throw it. “Anything is possible. Err, plausible,” he conceded. “Or whatever word you wanted me to agree to.”
“Thank you.” I gripped the ice and pitched it off into the distance, focusing my attention on the sound of trickling water next to us. The ice chunk melted mid-air and fell in big fat rain drops over the river hyacinth just starting to push up from the earth.
Wesley whistled, impressed. “I’m still telling Clea you used magic in a fight.” He grinned at me, shaking his head. “Haven’t said that in a long time,” he chuckled.
“You’re physically stronger, I can cast spells. It evens out if you ask me.”
“Typical,” he scoffed. We stared at each other quietly, me thinking about all the fights and rivalries of our childhood, him probably thinking about his imminent demise and how it would all be just a memory soon. “You thinking what I’m thinking?�
� he asked, startling me.
“Probably not,” I whispered, fidgeting with the hem of my shirt.
“Aw, geez, don’t get all teary eyed. I’m gonna be dead by thirty. No big deal.” Wesley crossed his arms and I noticed how much thinner he was. “But you aren’t. You’ll probably live until a hundred and thirty. And I’ll be damned if… well I guess I already am, but there’s no way I’ll rest in peace if my sister is alive and well, aside from rotting in a cell. So let’s make sure that Not-So-Secret Agent Man didn’t plant anything else in the barn, then go to Woodshade in the morning and see what we find. I know an amazing place to get breakfast.”
I nodded silently. He didn’t see it because he was already inside looking for something suspicious. We didn’t find anything, but my sleep that night was still restless.
Chapter 18
“Up and at ‘em, Gem,” my brother’s voice greeted me. It seemed like I had only been sleeping for fifteen minutes. “Let’s go.”
“I changed my mind,” I grumbled, rolling over and pulling the covers over my head. “We can do the research here.”
“No, you made a rather solid argument last night in the barn that looking into this at home was a bad idea.”
“There’s no way they’re spying on our internet. You just want a pancake sandwich.”
“I do want a pancake sandwich,” Wesley admitted. “And I also thought you were being way too paranoid last night, so I already did some snooping around on our completely un-wire-tapped internet.”
“You did?” I flopped back over and sat up in bed. “What did you find?”
“Not much. Believe it or not, every single past issue of The Woodshade Herald isn’t available online. If we want to see the original articles from more than five years ago, we’ll have to go to the library for the archives,” he said disdainfully with his nose scrunched up. “Like, who does that crap?” You guessed it, he didn’t actually say crap. My brother was a potty mouth. “Get in the now.”
“That’s pretty ironic because nobody says ‘get in the now’ anymore.” I yawned and accepted the fact that I was awake.
“They don’t?” He pulled out his phone and chuckled. “I never thought I’d get old.”
“Could happen to anybody.”
“Anyway,” he said. “I did find something that could help us, massaboosetts.com”
“Massa-boo-setts?”
“Local ghost stories.” He showed me the site on his phone. “There’s a forest preserve outside Woodshade with a ghost of a young police officer tragically killed in front of his partner twelve years ago. The timeline seems right to me and from what I read in the comments, the surviving cop is still on the force even though everyone thinks he’s crazy. Or they think he’s the one that killed his partner.”
“Twelve years? Do you really think Gavin is over thirty?”
“Oh my Goddess, at least. Maybe even pushing forty, although being an obsessed killer probably ages you.” Wes shook his head as I shrugged.
“Pushing forty, though?” I balked.
“You need to get out more.”
“Yeah, yeah…”
“How’s this for a current phrase?” Wesley tossed me a towel. “Get in the shower.”
“Feed my dog!” I shot back as he strolled down the hall far more chipper than normal.
My phone rang as I was rinsing my hair. It was a borderline hysterical call from Zinnia informing me that Juno hadn’t come back to the Inn last night and could be dead. I couldn’t believe that she was still up in that shack with those witches willingly, so I called Soleil only to find out that she and Luna were still up there, too. And according to Amethyst, I’d be up there myself tonight.
I so wasn’t looking forward to that.
“Quit playing phone tag and get in the car,” Wesley demanded as if he’d had a shot of Pushy in his coffee. “Wait, what are you wearing?”
Confused, I looked down at my jeans and t-shirt. “What, are you the fashion police now?”
“No, I’m the reality police. You need a coat.”
“I do?”
“It’s still before the frost date in the rest of Massachusetts, Gemma. Get a weather app. We’re about to drive out of the giant bubble of warmth that is Dewdrop.”
“Geez!” I exclaimed, checking the weather. “It’s like 20 degrees colder.” I headed back in to my room to change into a heavier shirt. “With Snow flurries?”
“You live in a bubble, girl. A literal freaking bubble.” Nope, he didn’t actually say freaking.
“What did you put in your coffee this morning and can I have some?” I grumbled.
“Every potion with protective properties that I could wrangle out of Maudrey. There’s a thermos waiting for you in the car.”
********
“Okay, this pancake sandwich is really good,” I mumbled as I took another bite.
“Worth the trip on its own,” Wesley said.
“Oh, we’re still figuring this out. Even if it means going to the library.”
“Are you sure you can summon his ghost?”
“I’m not summoning his ghost,” I clarified. “I’m probably not powerful enough. That takes lots of skill and reagents that I’ve never used before, including something that belonged to him. And if I tried something nonspecific, for the first time in my life no less, I could conjure up anything.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Using this amplification statuette to… well, to amplify spiritual activity.”
“Where did you get that?”
I paused, not wanting to tell him the details. “Maudrey and Clea’s grandmother made it to talk with her father and her son, and it worked so well some other witches on our side of the road would borrow it back in the day. So hopefully it will work best on Hetty descendants and not as well on any other ghosts floating around. No pun intended. Although, technically, this could also conjure up anything.”
“Do you have any contingency plans in case it does?” Wesley asked.
I tossed him a Speed potion. “You were always a good runner.”
“Yeah, like fifteen years ago.”
“You’re wearing seven protection talismans, Wes,” I reminded him. “And you got Hetty’s blessing.”
“Maybe I should have took Belinda up on her tattoo offer…”
“There aren’t any other ghost stories associated with that forest.”
“That we know of,” he grumbled.
I couldn’t afford to worry about something killing my brother. Blessings and talismans or not, it was still very possible. “I could drop you off at the library and go by myself,” I suggested. “I can handle it. I promise.”
“No, I’m just as likely to get killed by an imp pushing over a bookshelf. And now I’m curious.”
I was as nervous as he was, I just refused to let it show. Too bad we couldn’t have brought one of our aunts, but they were still convinced some witch would steal the cards if they left. Considering they had as many visitors yesterday as they got in the entire year before, they had a point.
I wasn’t even thinking about the cards. Honestly, the idea that I’d actually be able to look through them once I helped solve Thomas’s death was so intimidating that a cowardly part of me wanted to abandon the quest altogether.
It was a chilly day, but the sun poked out from the clouds as we were driving away from the restaurant. I really did live in bubble, and not just because of the weather. There was so much traffic in Woodshade. Dewdrop didn’t have a single stop light. I hadn’t been to this part of town for a while. Every once in a while, I’d drive in to visit the exotic grocery store or the sushi restaurant in their historic downtown, which was much like a non-magical Dewdrop.
Why did they need so many chain stores? Did a town this size really need a Sam’s Club and a Costco? We must have passed three McDonalds as we drove the length of town on the main drag. The little grass they had between the roads and the parking lots was green but patchy. There were so few tree
s and they didn’t have leaves yet. Ours were just tiny leaves and buds, sure, but it wasn’t nearly as gray and depressing without all the generic buildings and concrete.
Dewdrop’s weather enchantment didn’t abolish winter entirely. No self-respecting New England pagan community would ever dare twist the seasons to that extent. In fact, we’d gotten more snow in the past two decades than the rest of the area. Many of the winter rituals required snowy days and everyone loved how it looked blanketing the fields and highlighting the branches of the trees. But after Valentine’s Day, we were totally over it and the Earth witches always renewed the original enchantment woven by Hetty and her daughters to ensure an early spring.
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