Valleys, Vittles, and Vanishings

by Samantha Eden

  “Right,”’ I said. “And if they are in there—”

  “Then Queen Rubix will have violated at least a dozen laws and started a conflict with witches that I can assure you she will regret,” Grandma Winnie said. “But I can’t let you go on your own. I’ll come with you.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that,” I said quickly.

  “You didn’t,” she said. “I told you I was going, and if you’re going to start talking about things you can’t do, I’d say that you can’t tell your own grandmother what she is and isn’t going to do. Understood?”

  “Understood,” I said, nodding at the old woman. “I’ll run out and get the other earring from Riley’s squad car. I’ll need it to transport us into Queen Rubix’s house without her noticing. One will act as an anchor to the other.”

  “I understand how magic works, girl,” Grandma Winnie said. “What I don’t understand is what your earring is doing in Riley Davis’s car.”

  I blushed a little, shaking my head. “It’s not what you think. I took it off.”

  “That’s exactly what I thought,” Grandma Winnie said. “What worries me is wondering what else you took off.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Grandma!” I shouted, desperately hoping Riley wasn’t in hearing distance. “Riley and I are just friends. I took it off because I didn’t want to go walking around with a single earring like some weirdo.”

  “I’ve seen bolder fashion statements,” a familiar voice sounded from so close to me that it caused me to literally jump off the ground. “Oh, calm down,” the voice said.

  Looking at the place where the voice seemed to be coming from, I saw the air shimmer. When it stopped, Charlotte was standing there, looking at her fingernails with a bored look on her face.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, sighing loudly. “You nearly scared me to death.”

  “I’m trying out that invisibility spell grandma was rocking back in the other room,” Charlotte said. “And don’t be so dramatic. You’re fine.”

  “Whatever,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m going to get the other earring. Then, we can get this over with.”

  I headed toward the door. Pulling it open, I saw the single-petaled flower that still sat on my porch. As my eyes fell upon it, though, something horrible happened. As if the weight of my stare was too much for it to take, the petal fell off the flower, falling to the porch below.

  My heart skidded to a stop as I looked at it. The horrible end I had been hoping and praying I could outrun for so long had finally come. I hadn’t beaten it at all. In fact, I’d failed spectacularly.

  “No!” I yelled, grabbing my hair as the petal fell off and the spell was enacted. A wave of energy ran through me, sending chills up and down my spine.

  “What is it?” Charlotte asked, rushing into the living room and standing in the doorway with Savannah behind her.

  “It’s the flower,” I said, my voice shaking. “The last petal fell. It’s already happened. It—”

  Riley came rushing into the room, breathing heavily with wide-open eyes.

  “But I’m still here,” Charlotte said. “I’m here. Savannah’s here. Even Riley’s here. Savannah, call Dallas and the boys up in Dollywood and make sure they’re okay. But honestly, I think it was a dud. I think the spell was a fake, after all.” A smile broke out on Charlotte’s face as Savannah gave her a thumbs-up. She was on the phone and had just gotten the news that Dallas and the boys were fine.

  A sense of relief pooled inside me. Could Charlotte have been right? Was all my worry for nothing? Had Eloise Mangrove’s spell really been a fake, an exploding cigar that didn’t actually ever go off?

  Charlotte turned toward the hallway. “Did you hear that, Grandma? Eloise’s spell didn’t work. The flower is depleted, and no one has vanished. It’s a—” She stopped short, blinking hard. “Grandma?” she asked. “Grandma, where are you?” She looked back at me. “She was just right there. She was standing right here behind me, and now she’s . . .”

  Charlotte’s face went pale and her eyes widened as we both realized what had just happened. The spell wasn’t a dud. It was the complete opposite of a dud. It had taken its toll. It had claimed the person I cared about most in this world, and who that person was wasn’t a mystery to anyone anymore.

  “She’s gone,” I said, finishing Charlotte’s sentence with tears in my eyes. “Grandma Winnie is gone.”

  24

  “I can’t believe this happened,” Charlotte said, her head in her hands and her eyes wide. “I can’t believe she’s actually gone.” She looked up at me with a defeated expression on her face. “What are we supposed to do now?”

  “We’re supposed to make it right,” I said, looking from Charlotte to Savannah, and then to Riley.

  “And how are we supposed to do that?’ Charlotte asked. “She’s gone. It’s already too late.”

  “We’re witches,” I said matter-of-factly. “We make the impossible possible every day. It’s our job. That means it’s never too late. Grandma Winnie might be gone now, but she’d not dead. She can come back. All we have to do is get Eloise Mangrove and get her to reverse the spell.”

  “And how are we supposed to do that?” Savannah asked.

  “By doing the same thing we were going to do before she vanished, Savannah,” I answered. “I’m going to break into Queen Rubix’s house and find Eloise and Crystal. I know they’re there. I just know it.”

  “You’re not going by yourself,” Riley said. “I’m coming with you. I was in the house before, and I used that time to memorize the layout. Besides,” he said, patting the gun that, as an officer of the law, he almost always carried on his hip. “Vampires might be scary, but they’re not scarier than bullets.”

  “Not true,” Charlotte said. “Vampires are infinitely scarier than bullets. I mean, they have fangs. Let’s be serious, here.” She shook her head. “But I adore your confidence. I totally think you’ll add to our mission.”

  “Our mission?” I asked. “You’re coming too?”

  “Who else is going to make you invisible?” Charlotte asked. “You can’t just go hopping around a vampire’s house without some magical shielding.”

  “I’m perfectly capable of constructing an invisibility spell,” I answered.

  “Then why have I never seen you do it?” Charlotte asked, challenging me.

  “Shut up, Charlotte!” I muttered, shuffling a little. So I had gotten out of the habit of invisibility spells. I had another plan, one I thought was going to work even better. “Besides, I need you here.”

  “For what? To babysit Savannah and Lucas and make sure they don’t play tonsil hockey while you’re gone?”

  “You are the worst person in the world,” Savannah muttered to her sister.

  “I honestly couldn’t care less who plays tonsil hockey with whom,” I said truthfully. “I want you here because while all of this is going on, Gayle still has an enormous amount of power and a bone to pick with our family. With Grandma Winnie gone and Dallas on her way back from Pigeon Forge, you’re the strongest person we have. You need to stay here and protect Savannah and the homestead.”

  “And who is going to protect you?” Charlotte asked, blinking hard as all the pretense left her voice. “These are vampires. They’re dangerous. They’re sexy as all get-out, but they’re extremely dangerous. Common sense would dictate that the queen of the vampires would be the most dangerous of them all.”

  “I know that,” I responded. “And don’t think I’m taking any of it lightly, but I’m a big girl. I can handle myself. Besides, I won’t be alone.” I looked over at Riley. “I have a friend.”

  “Right,” Charlotte grumped. “A friend with a super-scary gun.”

  “If you had ever seen me use this gun, Charlotte,” Riley said, patting the weapon on his hip, “then you wouldn’t have to make jokes about how scary it is. You would absolutely know.”

  Charlotte looked Riley up and down. Then, leaning closer to me, she
whispered, “Maybe vampires aren’t the only sexy things around these parts.”

  “I know, right?” I muttered instinctively. Then, realizing what I’d just done, I added, “Shut up, Charlotte.”

  “Fine,” Charlotte said, raising her hands as a sign of surrender. “I’ll stay here in case the big, bad Mangrove woman comes back. Meanwhile, the two of you can get busy at reversing all of this.” She looked from me to Riley and back again. “There’s a lot at stake here,” she said. “Don’t mess it up.”

  “We won’t,” I said, though honestly, I had no way of being able to actually back that up. I would try as hard as I could, as hard as anyone had ever tried at anything, but this was an uphill climb, and all I could do was hope I was up for it. Hope, and lean on the person who had become more important to me than I ever imagined. “Come on, Riley,” I said, grabbing his hand and squeezing it tightly. “Let’s get this done.”

  Taking Riley outside to his squad car and grabbing the other earring, I told Riley my plan and then took a moment to look around.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I said, taking a deep breath and shielding myself with my arms from the chill in the air.

  “What doesn’t make sense?” Riley asked, looking over at me curiously.

  “All of this,” I answered. “This feud, for one. I mean, look around. Does this place look that much different from where I grew up? I mean, sure, I grew up on a peak, and this is a valley, but is there any real reason to believe I wouldn’t have been just as happy here? So long as I had the same family, had the same friends, that would have been all that mattered.”

  “You’re really amazing, Izzy Lockheart. Do you know that?” he asked, smiling at me.

  “Stop it,” I said, blushing and shaking my head at the man.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “There are so many people in this world who can’t get past what they don’t have. There are valley people who want to be on the peaks. There are orphans who yearn for families and people with huge families who only ever want solitude. There are poor people who want money and rich people who want even more.” His smile widened. “And here you are, talking about everything you do have, everything that makes your life wonderful.”

  “My life is wonderful,” I replied, realizing that it had been awhile since I had really said that aloud. “My life is actually spectacular, not that you could tell from the last couple of days. That’s the thing, though. I went to Chicago to outrun something after my mother died. I threw myself into an engagement that I shouldn’t have and allowed myself to become friends with people I knew deep down didn’t deserve me. The whole time, I was just looking for this. I was just looking for home.”

  “Well, you’re home now,” he answered sweetly.

  “And it feels just as good as you might imagine,” I answered. “Now, all I have to do is make sure everything can go back to normal.”

  “We’re going to get your grandmother back,” Riley said. There wasn’t a speck of doubt in his voice, and I loved that. It gave me more comfort than I could have ever put into words.

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “We are,” he repeated, nodding his head firmly. “We’re going to get her back, we’re going to end this stupid feud once and for all, you’re going to open your restaurant, and then we’re going to have the best party this town has ever seen. And we’re going to do it because we can.” He squeezed my hand. “And because you deserve it, Izzy Lockheart. You deserve it more than anyone I know.”

  “Thank you,” I muttered, looking deep into his eyes. Blinking, pulling myself from a moment that could have easily gone too far if I’d have let it—after all, Riley wasn’t exactly hard to look at—I cleared my throat. “So, you know the plan?”

  “I know the plan,” he said. “We’ve got this.”

  “Good,” I said. “Now grab ahold of a piece of this earring and let’s go.”

  Riley nodded at me, placed his hand on the part of the earring where my fingers weren’t resting, and smiled at me again.

  “Hold on tight,” I said nervously.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answered.

  I muttered something under my breath, magically commanding the earring I was holding to find the other one, the one I’d left in Queen Rubix’s house. It quickly did as I asked, enveloping us in a blanket of bright white light. The last thing I saw before the light overtook us was Riley’s face, gorgeous in the white light.

  When it subsided, I found us standing in the center of Queen Rubix’s living room, right in the spot where I’d left the earring. Except the earring wasn’t there anymore.

  “Where is it?” I asked, looking down at the floor. “Where is it?”

  “Is this what you’re looking for?” a cold voice asked from beside us. I turned to find Queen Rubix standing in front of us, her face as beautiful as ever, with one startling difference. Her fangs were protracted and at the ready. Wow. Grandma Winnie was right. This had gone deadly pretty quickly. Queen Rubix intended on making us pay for breaking into her house. Or at the very least, she intended on making us believe she was going to.

  “Now,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I refuse to believe you’re stupid enough to break the accords and break into my home just for a stupid piece of jewelry. So if you want to live, I suggest you think carefully about the way you answer the next question I’m about to ask you. Lie to me, and you’ll die for sure. If you’re honest with me, though, I just might let you live.” She stepped toward us. “So, for your lives, what are you really doing in my house tonight?”

  25

  “This is so insane,” Riley said, looking at Queen Rubix, and slightly closer than the vampire queen, at the mirror images of us that stood speaking to her. “This was such a good plan.”

  “Thanks,” I said, watching the vampire threaten a pair of holograms that I’d spelled to react the way Riley and I might have if it were us who were being chewed out by the queen of the vampires as opposed to fake versions of us. “You see, a simple invisibility spell would have stopped Rubix from being able to see us, but there are other ways to be perceived than just by sight, especially when you’re talking about someone with the heightened senses of a vampire.” I shook my head as Rubix threatened to rip our throats out if we so much as even considered lying to her. “This stops her from being able to see us and hear us. It can’t stop her from being able to smell us.”

  “Smell us?” Riley asked, grabbing the collar of his shirt and sniffing it. “She can smell us?”

  “Not like that,” I answered, stifling a chuckle. “All things have a scent. Vampires are just attuned to what a human being smells like. She can smell that there are two humans in her house. I’m just hoping the holograms are enough to fool her, at least, for long enough for us to find the others.”

  “And you’re sure they’re here?” Riley asked, grabbing my hand and stepping back from the holograms. I couldn’t blame him. Just being this close to a vampire with her fangs out was making me crazy amounts of nervous.

  “The earring certainly seems to think they are,” I said, pointing to the small piece of jewelry in my hand. The heart-shaped earring had started glowing, spinning in my hand like a compass. In fact, that was exactly how it was acting. The point of the heart was acting as the needle, pointing in the direction of magic, pointing in the direction where I was sure we’d be able to find Crystal and Eloise. “It’s this way.”

  Riley grabbed my hand and looked at me pensively. “How long before Queen Rubix sees through your little charade there?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Hopefully, long enough.”

  “Then we’d better be quick,” he said, following me as I went in the direction the earring was taking us. It guided us through a huge living room, a bedroom that looked like it hadn’t been slept in for decades, and then finally down a long hallway that led to a door.

  “They must be down here,” I said, grabbing the handle and grimacing when it turned out to be locked.

  “You
can’t just hocus-pocus your way through the door?” Riley asked, staring at me.

  “That’s not the preferred terminology,” I said. “But it’s more complicated than that. I could, of course, cast a spell to get us through that door, but that would produce more magic and knock the honing mechanism of this earring out of whack.” I shook my head. “It wouldn’t know what it was looking for.”

  “Good thing there’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Riley said, pulling the gun from its holster on his hip. “Any chance this spell of yours will block the sound of a gunshot, too?”

  “As long as you stay close to me,” I answered.

  Riley winked at me. “Well, that just seems like good life advice, now doesn’t it?” With that, he pointed his gun at the locked door and fired. It rang out loudly, causing my head to ring. I knew, without any doubt, that Rubix wouldn’t hear it though. With any luck, she was still threatening the mirror versions of Riley and me, and she would continue to do so until I could find the Mangroves and get out of here.

  The door handle flew off, causing the door to open quickly. The earring in my hand glowed brighter, indicating that we needed to continue down the staircase that lay on the other side of the door, a staircase that went straight down.

  “Do you think they’re down there?” Riley asked.

  As soon as the words left his mouth, a loud scream filled the air, but it wasn’t just any scream. I recognized the voice, and it filled me with a simultaneous sense of relief and dread.

  “That’s her,” I said, swallowing hard and readying myself. “That’s Crystal.”

  I started down the staircase, my body reacting to the sound much quicker than my mind was able to. As I moved, I felt myself pulling to a stop, though. Looking down, I saw Riley’s hand wrapped around my forearm.

  “We need to think this through,” he said, his eyes wide and his gun still raised in the hand that wasn’t in direct contact with me right now. “If Crystal is there, it means you were right about this.”