Frosting Disaster

by Zoe Arden

  Then again, his mom didn't have a whole lot of choices. She couldn't stay at a hotel. So unless she wanted to return to the mainland, she'd have no choice but to patch things up with Damon and remain at his place. Chances were Damon would have far better luck finding the wand than I would, especially if Renee had hidden it somewhere in his apartment. He was staring at the ground and shuffling his feet.

  "I don't suppose you've heard anything about Betsey?" he asked, his voice tinged with hope.

  "No. Nothing."

  I told him that I went to talk to Betsey's mother and what she'd said but it didn't seem to squelch his fears or concerns.

  "Does Betsey have a special place she likes to go to relax?" I asked. "Her mom said something about fairies seeking solitude at times. I thought maybe she had a special spot that she went to mediate or..." What was the phrase her mom had used? "…wind sail."

  Damon drew his brow together. "She liked the beach. But I've been down there a thousand times already and haven't seen her."

  "The beach isn't exactly the best place for some alone time, either." I drew in a breath. "She must have someplace she goes when she wants to think."

  "She's mentioned Beggars Forest a few times," Damon said. "I've never been there with her but I'm pretty sure she goes there once in a while at least."

  My head shot up. "Beggars Forest is the perfect place to be alone." Beggars Forest was a dense forest that began on the outskirts of Sweetland Cove. The forest itself was enchanted. Goblins lived in those woods and they took precautions to ward off not just humans but witches and wizards as well. They preferred solitude, much like the fairies.

  "Come on," I said and hurried to my car.

  "You really think she might be there?"

  I shrugged. "No idea. But even if she's not there now, that doesn't mean she hasn't been there since the mayor's ball. In fact, that seems like just the sort of place I might storm off to after a big fight with my boyfriend. What if she started out at Beggars Forest then got into some trouble?"

  "You're right. I can't believe I didn't think of that."

  Forty minutes later, I parked my car at the edge of the forest. The air was warm; the sky was still light outside. We stepped up to the edge of the trees and peeked in amongst the thick trunks and bushes. It was nearly impossible to see anything. Damon stepped into the thicket and almost disappeared. I held my breath and stepped in after him, not wanting to lose him.

  We'd walked several yards when I was overcome with the sudden sensation that I'd forgotten to shut the ovens off at the bakery. I shook my head, trying to clear it. The desire was almost overpowering. I thought of New York City and snickerdoodles and baseball. Anything to take my mind off of the burning sensation in the pit of my stomach that I had to leave this forest now.

  "Oh, my roses," Damon shouted suddenly, turning back around. "My ham. I haven't bought my Christmas ham yet."

  "Damon, it's nowhere near Christmas."

  "We have to hurry if we want to beat the rush."

  "Stop!" I said, shouting after him. He'd already turned around and was heading back to the car. "You don't need a Christmas ham. It's the goblin's enchantment making you feel that way. It's not real." I had to commend the goblins for such a brilliant spell. The enchantment they'd cast over the forest to keep people out simply made you feel as though you had other, much more pressing matters somewhere else. Whether it was leaving the oven on or buying Christmas ham, it didn't matter. All that mattered was that whatever you thought of became the most important thing in your mind.

  "You have to fight it," I told him. "Think of Betsey."

  He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. When he opened them again, his ham fever had calmed, though he still seemed a bit twitchy.

  "I can get it later," he muttered to himself and followed me back into the forest. I had no intention of running into the goblins today. They had a nasty habit of shooting at me with bows and arrows. Sheriff Knoxx was the only one they completely trusted since he was part goblin himself. I steered us clear of the main entrance to the goblin's village and walked in the opposite direction.

  We kept our eyes peeled for anything that seemed out of place. Anything that might lead us to Betsey but there was nothing.

  "Maybe she was never here," Damon said.

  "Beggars Forest is huge. Maybe we just haven't found the right spot yet." I bit my bottom lip. "Think for a minute. Did she ever mention a specific place in the forest? A tree or a brook or anything like that?"

  He cocked his head to the side. "Jack's Tree," he said.

  Jack's Tree, so named after the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk, was a huge tree that climbed higher than any other tree in the forest. From a distance, you could easily see the top of it peeking up from amongst the other trees. There was nothing else like it. We moved in its direction, Damon following me as if I knew precisely where we were going. I had a good idea where the tree was but I was far from being certain. When we finally found it, I sighed with relief.

  "Okay, now look around," I told him. It didn't take long.

  I heard Damon's breath hitch in his chest. "What's that?" he asked, pointing toward a large bush that looked like an overgrown fern. I saw something red peeking out from behind all the green leaves. We walked over to it.

  "It's Betsey's!" Damon said, holding up a muddied red sneaker.

  "She wasn't wearing those at the ball," I said.

  "No, she must've changed forest before coming down here."

  Damon pulled his hand away from the shoe. His face had gone suddenly white. I looked at the shoe again and realized why. What I had at first mistaken for mud wasn't mud at all. It was blood.

  * * *

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

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  I woke up the next morning, glad yesterday was over. My head ached and my feet were sore. It had been a long, long day. The resulting chaos from finding Betsey's bloody shoe had kept me awake until three in the morning. Even now, forcing my eyelids open seemed impossible. I wanted nothing more than to lay here in bed all day long, my head resting on pillows almost as soft as Snowball's fur.

  Everyone in town seemed to know about the shoe we'd found within an hour of us telling Sheriff Knoxx. I'd made the phone call from my Witchmobile as soon as I was able to get a signal. It had been difficult to explain to the sheriff what had happened while also trying to keep Damon from completely freaking out.

  "She's dead! I know she's dead!" he yelled over and over again.

  "Damon, shush, I can't hear the sheriff."

  "Who did it? I'll kill them?"

  "Damon, for witch's sake, hush up!"

  The sheriff met us at the forest entrance with Elwin and I led him back to where we'd found the shoe—I'd made Damon put it back where we'd found it because people always said you weren't supposed to touch stuff at a crime scene. We just hadn't realized it was a crime scene until we'd already picked up the shoe.

  Damon stayed with the cars. Sheriff Knoxx had frowned deeply when he'd seen the shoe and told Elwin to go back and set up a perimeter of tape. Then I'd heard him call Otis Winken's office and tell him the news. Apparently, Otis had asked for regular updates on both Randall's and Betsey's cases. I imagined that Megan must have been responsible for spreading the shoe gossip. She might never admit it but I was beginning to think that she was a worse gossip than Natalie Vargas.

  I called Colt and spoke to him only briefly. He was stuck at COMHA headquarters and couldn't get back until the next day. He asked if I was all right and I almost told him right then about the kiss between me and Damon but I had made Damon promise not to say anything, which meant I couldn't say anything either. Besides, I didn't want to lose him. If I told him what had happened, I was pretty sure he might never speak to me again. And it hadn't even been my fault.

  Sheriff Knoxx called Lincoln Maxwell, Mistmoor's sheriff, after spea
king to Otis and asked if he could help him search the forest due to its size. The more people out there looking, the better, he'd said. Lincoln had obliged. He'd come out himself and brought several of his deputies. Together, the two sheriffs and their respective teams had searched the forest from top to bottom but neither team had found anything useful. They'd searched until dark and Sheriff Knoxx had even approached the goblins asking if they'd seen anything. They hadn't.

  Then the calls had started.

  Calls to me, to the sheriff, to Otis and Lincoln and Damon. Calls from reporters and gossip hounds.

  Natalie called me wanting to know what had happened in explicit detail. Lottie called wanting to know if I'd had any luck getting her picture back. Trixie wanted to know about her wand. Everyone wanted to know about the shoe. People were calling, texting, and even knocking on the door to our house well after midnight. It was ridiculous. Eleanor finally had to put a special charm around our house to stop people from coming up to our door at all hours. If she hadn't, I was pretty sure none of us would have gotten any sleep whatsoever.

  The only person I had actually wanted to speak to, aside from Lucy and Colt, was Betsey's mom. So when she did call, I took it immediately. She'd asked me if it was true that I'd found Betsey's bloody shoe. I told her it was. She'd burst into sobs and hung up, saying something about gathering the fairies for a search. Maybe they would be more successful. For her sake, I hoped so.

  I opened one eye as Snowball meowed and licked my face. I scratched her head. "Morning, Snowy," I said and gave her a kiss on top of her soft, white furry head.

  "Good afternoon," Snowball corrected me.

  "Afternoon?" I asked, sitting up.

  "Yes, is lunchtime and Snowy is hungry." She sat back and licked her tail, waiting patiently for me to get dressed. I couldn't believe how late it was. I jumped out of bed, wondering why no one had woken me earlier, and threw on whatever clothes were nearest the bed. They happened to be an only slightly dirty pair of jeans and a light pink t-shirt with witch written across it in white scripted letters. I stopped just as I was applying a dash of lipstick and turned to Snowball. "Oh, my roses, I was so tired when I got home yesterday I completely forgot to ask. Did you and Tootsie see anything suspicious with Natalie the other day?"

  Snowy shook her head. "Nothing suspicious. Natalie spends a lot of time with her kids and with food. She likes brownies very much. And cookies. She likes most anything that is sweet, Snowball thinks."

  I sighed and made a mental note to ask her about Randall the next time I saw her. It'd be easier just to be upfront about it. I was getting tired of all this running around behind people's backs. It had gotten me nowhere so far. Maybe it was time for a different approach.

  I found a note from Eleanor stuck to the fridge telling me I didn't have to come into the bakery today since I'd been kept up so late but I didn't feel right about that. I'd flaked on the bakery enough lately as it was, I didn't need to add another day to my ever-growing list. Besides, it would give me something to do. I wanted to get my mind off of things for a while.

  I gave Snowy her tuna and hurried to Mystic. The place was busy as usual during the lunch rush. When I showed up, people practically shoved their way in front of each other trying to get to me and hear firsthand details of what had happened. Eleanor ushered me into the back room as quickly as possible.

  "You shouldn't have come in today," she said. "I thought you'd still be asleep."

  "I can't sleep all day," I told her.

  "Well, anyway, I'm glad you're here. We're running low on romance extract; do you think you could make up a new batch?"

  "Sure." I was glad for the distraction and set to work on making what was a semi-complex extract that could really work wonders for a relationship that had gotten stuck in a rut. It didn't generate romantic feelings for someone if they weren't already there, it just softened your moods and helped you open your eyes. In other words, it made you listen to your heart instead of your head. At least that was how I liked to describe it to people.

  When the lunch rush ended, Eleanor came back to check on me. Sheriff Knoxx was with her.

  "Hi, Ava," he said, puffing out his chest the way he did whenever he had something important to say.

  "Hi, Sheriff."

  "Zane has a few more questions for you," Eleanor said, folding her arms across her chest. "But he knows you answered enough of them last night and promises not to upset you. Don't you?" she asked, looking at him with arched eyebrows.

  "Yes. I only have a few follow-up questions." He pulled out a notebook and flipped open to the first page. I caught a glimpse of his list and didn't think it looked like just "a few" questions. The list was much longer than that. It looked as though it stretched onto the next page.

  "Now then," he said, licking his lips. "Where were you at five o'clock this morning?"

  I blinked and looked at Eleanor, confused. "At home," I said. "Sleeping."

  "Did your Aunt Trixie or your father see you, or were they already here at the bakery?"

  "Um... Snowball saw me."

  Eleanor cut in. "Trixie arrived here this morning shortly after I did. That was at five-thirty, as you should know since you dropped me off." Eleanor looked at me. "We all got a bit of late start today." Sometimes I didn't understand how five in the morning could be considered a "late start" by anyone but then this was a bakery. We opened with the roosters, as my father sometimes said.

  Sheriff Knoxx blushed. "Well, yes. Okay. Fine." He wrote something in his notebook. "Have you spoken with Damon this morning?"

  "No, why?"

  "Has he texted you?"

  "I don't know. I forgot to plug my phone in last night and the battery died. It's charging now." I looked toward the outlet and the counter where my phone sat.

  "I see," he said and wrote something down. "What about Renee Tellinger? Have you spoken to her in the last twenty-four hours? Damon mentioned you two had an argument yesterday."

  "What does this have to do with Betsey's shoe?" I asked.

  Sheriff Knoxx rounded his shoulders back. Eleanor was looking at him like he was about to be in trouble.

  "I'd like to know that as well," she snapped.

  Sheriff Knoxx cleared his throat. "I suppose you'll hear about it soon enough. The only reason we managed to keep it quiet this long was because it happened in Mistmoor, not Sweetland."

  "What happened in Mistmoor?" Eleanor asked.

  Sheriff Knoxx looked from her to me. "Renee Tellinger was attacked this morning."

  My jaw dropped. I looked at Eleanor and saw her jaw on the floor with mine. "Oh, my roses," Eleanor said. "Is she okay?".

  "She will be. She's in Mistmoor Hospital." He looked at me. "Whoever attacked her was trying to kill her."

  I felt my neck grow hot. "You don't think that I—"

  Sheriff Knoxx shook his head under Eleanor's gaze. "No, but given your history, some people might. And I want to be able to assure them you had nothing to do with this."

  "I didn't."

  "I know. Let's just go over this one more time, though. Where were you at five a.m. this morning?"

  * * *

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

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  I arrived at Mistmoor Hospital shortly after four in the afternoon. I'd told my aunts and father that I was taking the rest of the day off and they'd assumed I was just going home. It wasn't my fault that they'd assumed wrong. Colt had called and left a message asking me to call him back. It was his third one. Part of me was avoiding him because of what had happened between me and Damon. Even though I knew I wasn't at fault, I still felt guilty. I should have pushed Damon away faster. I should never have let him kiss me in the first place. It had just happened so fast I hadn't had time to think.

  I knew that Damon and I had agreed not to tell either Colt or Betsey but I wondered now if that was a mistake. Not telling
him implied guilt, and I didn't want him to think that I was guilty of anything. I was already sweating it enough as it was, wondering how I was going to explain to him the reason I'd been alone with Damon in Beggars Forest. When I'd spoken to him yesterday, he'd been in such a rush that he hadn't had time to ask me a lot of questions. I was pretty sure that when I saw him face to face, though, the questions would flow from him easily enough.

  The reason Damon and I had been in the forest was innocent enough—we were looking for Betsey. But he might not see it that way. He might not see anything but the fact I was alone with Damon.

  When I got to Mistmoor Hospital, I had to circle the lot a few times to find a parking spot. It was pretty packed and I bet that Dr. Wallace had his hands full. I found the nurse's station and they gave me Renee's room number. I paused outside Renee's door just long enough to wonder if I was making a mistake coming here. I mean, Renee and I were on terrible terms. Last I'd seen her and Damon together, they weren't on much better ones. In fact, it had sounded as if Damon wanted to kill her.

  Something itched in the back of my head. It wasn't the kind of itch that you could scratch away though. I wondered if it was possible that Damon... But no. I pushed the thought away. Damon would never hurt his mother. Ever. He'd done nothing but defend her since she'd arrived on the island. Then again, that was before Renee stole Trixie's wand. Before the mayor's ball. Before Betsey's disappearance. Maybe yesterday had been the turning point. Maybe Damon had finally snapped. If I had his mother, I'm sure I'd have snapped long ago.

  The door to Renee's hospital room was shut, which I thought was odd. Most rooms on this floor kept the door open in case the nurses or doctors had to get in quickly. I pushed it open and poked my head in. Damon was there along with Sally, Vivian, and Bebe. They were huddled protectively around her and talking animatedly while Renee lay in her bed, her eyes only half open. No one noticed me.