When the girl had a point, she had a point. Before we could move again, and as our eyes were still pinned to the door, it opened up. There, with hair just as red as the door, stood Lucas Mangrove. Men were less than prevalent in most covens. The same genes that made us witches also made us more likely to give birth to daughters. Still, a few Y chromosomes managed to squirm their way into the family tree. We had Jake and Austin, who were still too young to have shown much in the way of magical ability, and they had Lucas.
As I looked at him, all I could think about was my cousin Savannah’s appraisal of him. While he was way too young (and way too Mangrove) for my taste, I had to admit that he was a handsome kid. With a squared jaw and hair that at once looked like he had just rolled out of bed and he’d spent hours working on it, he looked like one of those kids you saw on nighttime soap operas, bright eyes, a big smile, and all that.
“Is your car on my grandmother’s rose garden?” he asked, tilting his head as he took in the scene.
“You got a problem with that, kid?” Charlotte asked, her face stern and her hands defiantly planted on her hips.
“Not at all,” Lucas said, smiling wide, his eyes full of something like danger as he spoke. “I’m more of a violet guy anyway.” He leaned back into the doorway, still staring at Charlotte and me. “Hey, Grandma, Savannah’s sisters are here!”
“I have a name, you know,” Charlotte said.
“You?” I complained, “I’m not even her sister.”
Lucas winked at us as he took a few steps back into the doorway. “Good luck, ladies. I hope you fare better than the roses.”
With that, the redheaded young warlock disappeared from the doorway, leaving it open and empty. A ball of stress rose in my throat as I stared, waiting for Eloise Mangrove to fill the space.
But Eloise never filled the space. In fact, after about fifteen seconds of absolutely nothing happening, I began to fidget a little.
“You think the old bat heard him?” Charlotte asked, nudging me with her elbow. “I don’t want to stand out here all night waiting for someone who’s not coming.”
As soon as the words left Charlotte’s mouth, the sound of ringing bells filled the air. It was loud, melodic, and completely out of place. There was no reason for this kind of music out here. Even if I had no idea what it actually meant. That question, as it turned out, would be answered pretty quickly.
Though the doorway was still devoid of any people, a red oblong cylinder appeared in the space. It jutted forward, and as it came near, I saw that it was unfurling. Pretty soon, it became clear that what was rushing toward Charlotte and me was a huge piece of carpet. For whatever reason, the Mangroves were literally rolling out the red carpet for us.
“I don’t like this,” Charlotte said, grabbing my hand.
“Me either,” I muttered. “But that’s what you get for dropping a car on their rose bushes. That’s a step away from dropping a house on someone’s sister, and that’s not the kind of witches we are.”
“Are you actually referencing The Wizard of Oz to me right now?” Charlotte asked as the carpet kept rolling toward us.
“Eh. It seemed like the right time,” I answered.
The carpet rolled to a stop at our feet, and written across the end in flowery, cursive writing were the words Dinner is served.
“Oh, it was the dinner bell,” I muttered, thinking about the sounds filling the area earlier.
“Is this for real?” Charlotte asked, looking over at me with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow. “Are they really inviting us for dinner?”
As she asked that, a new word and punctuation mark appeared on the end of the red carpet. It now read Dinner is served…Now!
“Yeah,” I answered, looking down at the message sprawled out before us. “I definitely think that’s what they’re doing.” Looking up at Charlotte, I asked, “So, are you hungry?”
14
“Remember what I said about this being one of the worst ideas you’ve ever had?” Charlotte asked me as we stood at the threshold of the Mangrove house, staring at the command that had magically appeared on the end of an extremely unnecessary red carpet. “It’s now officially the worst idea ever, and not just from you. This is, like, the worst idea anyone has ever had.”
“Worse than New Coke?” I asked, biting my lower lip and holding steady.
“So much worse,” Charlotte answered. “I’m sure there was one person in the world who enjoyed New Coke. This idea of yours, it has exactly zero fans.”
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “It looked like Lucas was enjoying himself.”
“You’re not helping your cause,” Charlotte muttered. The loud sound, which I now knew to be dinner bells, sounded through the air again, as if to tell us that the time for idle chit-chat was over. If we were coming in, and I didn’t see any way around it, we were going to have to do it right now.
I extended my hand for Charlotte to take, which she did quickly. Looking over at me, Charlotte’s face grew steady and solemn. I braced myself, waiting for her to say something deep and important, something that would change the way I looked at her and our situation altogether. She nodded her head, parted her lips, and said, “I hope they’re not having Mexican.”
“What?” I asked, crinkling my brow at her.
“I had Mexican this morning. I don’t want to have to force-feed it to myself again tonight just to be polite,” Charlotte said.
“You bypassed their gate and plowed a car into their garden,” I reminded her. “I think polite went out the window. Besides, don’t you hate them?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, smiling a little and squeezing my palm. “I had forgotten about that. Well, good. Now I won’t feel so bad about saying no to their nasty tacos.”
“You don’t even know that they’re having tacos,” I replied. “Much less that they’re nasty.”
“Come on, Izzy,” Charlotte complained. “Look around. If the Mangroves make tacos, you can bet they’ll be nasty.”
For the third time, dinner bells sounded throughout the area. This time, they were louder than ever before. I shuddered to think what sort of message would be added for us on that carpet.
“Come on,” I said, stepping onto the red carpet and pulling Charlotte along with me. As soon as I did, I regretted it. The carpet started moving itself, like a supercharged treadmill. It thrust Charlotte and me forward so quickly and forcefully that we literally left the ground. With one good whip, the red carpet tossed my cousin and me through the open doorway of the Mangrove house and into what looked to be a hugely expansive foyer.
“That’s not much of a welcome,” Charlotte muttered, rubbing her head as she stumbled to her feet. “I mean, it’s still better than I thought we’d get, but it’s not exactly what you imagine when someone invites you to dinner.”
“The word invite would imply that we knew you were coming as opposed to your breaking into the place, which is what happened,” a voice said from above us as I stood upright and gathered myself again. As I took a look around, I saw that the place was huge, much bigger than it had any right to be, given the outside parameters. “It’s bigger inside,” the voice said.
Looking up a curving set of spiral steps, I found Crystal’s sister Gayle looking down at us, her lips painted green, like her nails and dress, a glass of something bubbly in her hand, and her mouth pursed distastefully.
“We’ve seen bigger,” Charlotte answered, scoffing up at the woman. “Besides, we’re not the ones who started this whole ‘breaking in’ thing. You can blame your grandmother for that. We just figured one good turn deserves another.”
“Does that mean we get to kidnap one of your people too?” Gayle asked, still looking down at us from her perch.
Looking behind her, I saw brooms moving by themselves, sweeping up the dust into pans which also moved magically behind the woman.
“I didn’t take anyone,” I said, my jaw tense. “Which is more than you’ll be able to say for your grandm
other if she doesn’t reverse the spell she cast before the last petal falls off that flower.”
A wide smile spread across Gayle’s face. “That was a pretty impressive spell.”
“It was a cheap shot,” Charlotte said. “And it won’t happen again. You might be looking down on us at this moment, Gayle, but you need to remember that we’re always looking down on you. That’s the way of peaks and valleys, I guess.”
Gayle practically hissed at Charlotte. She clutched the stem of her glass so tightly that it shattered in her hand.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, coming here and demanding to be seen, all the while putting down my family.” She shook her head. “And after everything you’ve done.”
“I haven’t done anything!” I repeated. “I’m not responsible for Crystal’s disappearance, and I can prove it.”
“Can you, now?” another voice said from beside us. I looked over to find Eloise, also dressed in green with similarly painted lips, staring at us with arms folded over her chest. “And how can you do that?”
“Ms. Mangrove,” I said, taking a deep breath and stepping toward the older woman. As I did, a huge chandelier that I absolutely hadn’t seen before this very moment came crashing down at my feet, scaring the heck out of me and causing me to yelp and jump back.
“That’s close enough,” Gayle said, leering at me from the steps.
“Why don’t you come a little closer?” Charlotte said, her hands balling into fists at her sides. “I’ll show you what real magic is.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Eloise said, shooting her granddaughter a withering glance. “Gayle was just trying to protect me, albeit in an overly dramatic fashion. She must have lost her senses what with all the excitement. Otherwise, she’d know that her grandmother doesn’t need protection from baby witches such as yourselves, even baby Lockheart witches.”
“We’re older than you’d think,” Charlotte answered quickly, taking her place next to me.
“Ms. Mangrove,” I said, placing a hand on Charlotte’s arm to slow her roll. “I know you’ve been through a lot, and I can’t imagine what you must be going through, but I really need you to listen to me.” I took a deep breath, getting ready to take my shot. “I spoke to Crystal. She called me on the phone.”
Eloise narrowed her eyes at me. Snapping her fingers, her cane flew toward her. It slapped against her palm and she placed the end against the floor, leaning on its weight.
“And if my granddaughter, who has been a loyal member of this family since her birth, had the opportunity to use her phone, why would she call you instead of one of us?” Eloise asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I honestly can’t answer that question, but she did.”
“A likely story,” Gayle sounded from upstairs. “I’ll tell you what I think, Grandma.”
Charlotte sighed, rolled her eyes, and twiddled her fingers as Gayle continued.
“I think that orange, purple, green, green, brown, black, white,” Gayle said. As the words spilled out of her mouth, her eyes went wide and her hand shot up to her lips.
“Purple, green!” she shouted into her palm. “Purple, purple, red, green!”
“What?” Eloise asked, looking up at her granddaughter with worry and confusion.
“What did you do?” I gasped, my eyes flying in Charlotte’s direction.
My cousin was in stitches as I turned to her. “She can only speak in colors,” she said, slapping her thigh. “It’s hilarious.”
“You take that spell off her right now!” I said. “We are guests in their home.”
“Oh, does being in someone else’s home mean you have to refrain from horrible spells that adversely affect the people living inside it? Because we have a cursed flower on our front porch that says otherwise.”
“I’m not going to make any headway if you keep acting like this,” I sighed. “Now, I gave you the truth potion. The least you can do is make it so that poor girl can insult us properly without sounding like a box of crayons.”
Charlotte sneered at me. “You’re no fun,” she muttered, but she twiddled her fingers again, returning Gayle to normal.
“You’re going to pay for that, Charlotte!” she yelled, pointing a warning finger at my cousin.
“Did you say that I was going to pay for that, or that I was purple, purple, blue, white?” Charlotte asked.
“Look!” I said loudly. “I don’t know why Crystal wouldn’t have called you, and I don’t know why she left. All she told me is that she couldn’t come back and that she was sorry she couldn’t be what you wanted her to be or whatever.”
Eloise’s eyes went wide, and I knew something I said had pinged inside her.
“That means something, doesn’t it?” I asked, stepping around the shattered glass of the chandelier and hopping toward her. “That’s familiar to you. It’s proof that I talked to Crystal.”
“Did she say anything else?” Eloise asked. “Did she say where she was?”
“Grandma, you’re not seriously listening to anything this woman has to say, are you?” Gayle asked. “She’s obviously lying to all of us. She’s been lying from the start.”
“I’m not!” I said. “I’m not, and you know it.” I scrambled in the old woman’s direction. “Look, I’ll help you find her. I swear I will, but if you don’t take that spell off my family before tomorrow, my grandmother is going to do something everyone will regret.” I shook my head. “If you would just—”
The lights inside the house went out. Heck, even the lights outside must have gone out too, because I found myself in complete darkness. I felt something hit me hard, knocking me to the ground. I yelped hard, but that wasn’t the worst of it. It wasn’t even close to the worst. Because when the lights came back on, Eloise’s cane was lying on the floor beside me, and the old woman was nowhere to be seen.
15
I scrambled to my feet, my heart pounding and my throat nearly closing up with worry. Eloise Mangrove was the matriarch of what was widely considered to be the second-most powerful coven in the Great Smoky Mountains and one of the most powerful covens on the planet. If something had happened to her just now, the implications of that would be so much bigger than any one of us could have ever imagined.
“Grandma?” I heard Gayle’s voice fall from overhead. “Grandma, where are you?”
That was the thing, though. As I stood, looking at the fallen cane as well as the scorch mark on the floor where the woman had stood, I saw that Eloise Mangrove was gone. She, like Crystal before her, had seemingly vanished. And also like Crystal before her, it seemed as though I was going to be made to take the fall for it.
“What did you do?” Gayle screamed. I was about to lift my head to look at the woman, to tell her that I hadn’t done anything to Crystal and I certainly wouldn’t have done anything to her grandmother. Before I could do that, though, a bolt of lightning struck at my feet. It sent me scrambling backward, and as it dissipated, Gayle stood there in its place.
That’s a heck of a way to get around.
“Gayle, calm down,” I said, holding my hands out in front of me and trying to keep my words calm and settling. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but if we work together, we can figure it out.”
“Work together?’ Gayle snorted, shaking her head, her eyes so filled with anger that they actually began to glow red. “Have you lost your mind? Do you really think I’m that stupid? My sister comes to you, trying to do her job, and she ends up missing. You crash-land into our yard, without invitation. My grandmother decides to invite you to dinner, which is more than I would have done for you, and what does she get for her trouble? She disappears in front of our very eyes too!”
“Well, it was technically too dark for it to have happened ‘in front of our very eyes’, but I get what you’re saying. It doesn’t seem incriminating,” I muttered nervously.
“You shut up, Izzy Lockheart!” Gayle said, her voice booming loud. It was laced with power somehow, so much
power that the walls around us began to shake. How was she doing that? How was creating so much power all by herself? “You were always nothing but trouble, the way you always picked on my sister, the way your family always picked on ours!”
“We did no such thing, Gayle,” I said, looking around at the shaking picture frames, the couch so jarred by the shaking that it was practically dancing its way across the living room, and a second chandelier, which looked dangerously close to falling like the first one did.
A second chandelier, really? What were these people trying to prove, anyway?
“I get that there’s been a feud between our families,” I continued, taking a deep breath. “But honestly, none of that’s ever felt like anything more than some childish nastiness until your sister went missing.”
“That’s right!” Gayle said. “You drew the first blood, and you did it when my family was vulnerable. You did it at the one moment we wouldn’t be able to stop you.” She looked down at her hands, which I now saw to be practically vibrating with power as well. “But you didn’t realize that things worked like this, did you? You didn’t know that I’d be the strong one, that I’d be able to finally set right for my family what your family had put so wrong for generations.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Gayle,” I said, trying not to sound affected enough to give her cause for too much action one way or another. “I have no idea why this might be a special time for you, and I certainly would never want to do anything to exploit your family.”
“That’s all you people have ever done is exploit my family!” she yelled. “You, sitting up there on your mountain, always looking down at us in the valley!”
“What is going on out here?” Lucas asked, running into the living room, shaving cream smeared across his face.
“They took Grandma!” Gayle shouted, her eyes wide and red, glowing like a cat’s.
Valleys, Vittles, and Vanishings Page 6