His eyes drifted back to Connie, who was looking paler by the minute, practically a husk of her former self. The spell had clearly taken a toll, a fact that Patrick definitely noted, judging by his pained expression. The guilt of his involvement was eating him up.
“I…didn’t realize the lengths the Organization would go to,” he went on, his voice tight with barely repressed anger. “I didn’t know they would employ the magical items in their possession already, in the way they supposedly despised most. Using someone like a puppet…it’s unforgivable.”
Swallowing hard, I turned back to Connie. “Why didn’t they just imprison you, then? Or kill you?”
“Her presence in the town was necessary,” Patrick said. “They needed her to reunite you with your magical items. They know the witches are here in Rocky Knoll, but they don’t know what the items are until they’re in the hands of their true owner.”
“That explains why Zoe was able to take the cauldron from your shop,” I observed, looking over at my cousin. “Connie only flipped her switch and started chasing us after you already had it.”
“Well, what about the cauldron?” Zoe piped up. “I spent all day trying to get it to work, but the only successful potion I made wasn’t a potion at all. It was a plate of cinnamon rolls. What’s the deal with that?”
“Potions aren’t a straightforward craft,” Connie explained, looking relieved when the words flowed freely. “Recipes, to some extent, are unique to the person brewing them. It’s about intention, and using the ingredients that feel right,” she continued. “Continue to develop your skills while you search for the final item.”
“Welp,” Mee-maw said, putting her hands on her hips, “we’d better find this third witch, first, or the item is useless to us anyway. How do we know the Organization hasn’t already gotten their hands on it, or her?”
Sharp as a tack, and yet the most obvious things still found a way of going over her head sometimes. I looked from my grandmother to Connie’s confused expression.
Here we go…
“In order to protect the coven as a whole,” Connie said, “I kept two of the items in my possession. The third is still h--” But she choked on the last word, another fit of wheezing taking her over as I moved to pat her on the back.
“Gotcha. Okay. So, sort of like Voldemort with the horcruxes in Harry Potter,” Zoe chimed in with a sage nod. “You had to keep them separated.”
“As far as the identity of the third witch, though…” Slowly, Connie turned to look at Mee-maw with a pointed stare.
Mee-maw looked from Connie, to Zoe, to me, and back to Connie, her eyes suddenly widening.
“Oh. Oh! Well, slap my bottom and call me Sally. It’s me, isn’t it?”
Chapter 9
I squeezed my eyes closed and swallowed a groan as chaos ensued. It wasn’t like I'd expected to keep the news under wraps forever, but I'd hoped for at least another day to think about how to approach sharing the big news.
First and most importantly, Mee-maw had endured more than eight decades on this earth, and every single one of them had taken a toll on her body. Granted, she was more spry than a lot of people her age but if the past couple weeks had proven anything, it was that she wasn't as strong as she used to be. We'd brought her into the loop out of necessity, knowing that if the doo-doo hit the fan, we could sideline her, like when Zoe and I had gone to Connie's shop and gotten hunted down. Now that she knew she was a witch?
Not even a Sherman tank would stop her.
"Wow...that's...huge," Zoe murmured, shaking her head as she glanced my way, eyes wide with panic.
"Whoo hoo! I mean, I guess it makes sense, but who'da thunk it?" Mee-maw demanded, eyes glittering with excitement as she regarded Connie with a wide grin. "So, lay it on me! What are my special powers? I can't wait to hear it."
Connie touched a finger to her lips and shook her head.
"Can't say, right?" Mee-maw confirmed with a sage nod. "Roger that. Well, that's okay. Me and my coven, here, we'll figure it out ourselves. Thanks for telling us. Who knows when we'd have figured it out without you! Right, girls?"
I stole a guilty glance at Patrick but he was studying his fingernails intently as Zoe and Mee-maw turned toward me with a frown.
"Um, yeah. So about that..." I swallowed hard and opened my mouth to fess up. "Patrick knew for a while now."
It hadn't been exactly what I'd planned to say, but given the scowl Mee-maw was aiming at Patrick, I couldn't bring myself to walk it back, either.
"You knew?" Mee-maw demanded, cocking a hand on one hip. "Why the Moses didn't you tell me?"
Patrick hesitated long enough to shoot me a glare, and then raked a hand through his dark hair.
"I didn't know. I just suspected. And honestly, it doesn't even matter. We don't know what your item is and, until you have it, any powers will remain dormant just as they have for the past forty years or so when you could’ve come into your power."
Connie nodded in agreement. “A crone’s coven is--” She snapped her mouth shut, her eyes going wide. "They're returning! I need to go. Most importantly, a warning. Do not try to contact me going forward. For all intents and purposes, I am enemy number one."
She wheeled around and hightailed it back toward the cellar door like the hounds of hell were hot on her heels.
I followed her down the stairs, calling after her, but by the time I got there, she was gone, as if she'd never even been there.
"Crap."
I rushed to the open window and caught sight of her flowing caftan as she rounded the corner.
"She would've stayed and helped more if she could've," Patrick observed softly from behind me.
I turned, surprised to see him standing at the bottom of the stairs. For such a sizable hunk of man, he was awfully stealthy.
"Yeah, I know. I just hoped I could ask her a couple more questions, is all. I guess we have to assume by 'they're returning' she means the Organization's little pep rally is over and they're on their way back to Rocky Knoll to continue their attempted murder spree?"
He inclined his dark head, a ghost of a smile tugging at his firm lips. "That's a safe enough assumption, I'd say. As I've mentioned, they have ways of detecting a coven in a general location, so we knew we only had a little bit of a head start to get back here and settle in somewhere. I'd hoped for more time, but it is what it is. At least we have advanced warning of their arrival."
"I guess," I said, sparing one last glance at the window before closing it.
"We can talk more about it before we turn in for the night. I'm going to board this window first."
"Sounds good. And hey, sorry about the whole Mee-maw thing and throwing you under the bus." I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I tried to think of a good explanation, but he saved me the trouble.
"Oh, yeah, no worries. She's terrifying. I'd have done the same."
That got a tiny grin out of me and some of my unrest melted away.
We'd made good progress. Zoe had managed to make a real potion of sorts with her cinnamon buns-—albeit not on command when she was actually trying to make one, but still. I didn't have to worry about hiding anything from Mee-maw and Zoe, and we'd learned some helpful, if incomplete, information from Connie.
Best of all, though, I was reconnected with Maude again. Not bad for a day's work.
"Uh, Houston?" Zoe's voice echoed down the stairway. "We've got a problem."
My stomach sank and I squeezed my eyes closed with a sigh.
When would I learn to stop looking for silver linings? All it seemed to do was make it pour again.
"Coming up in a sec," I called back.
I scrounged around for a hammer and nails and Patrick made quick work of boarding the window with an oversized scrap of plywood. Then, we headed upstairs, with me praying under my breath that whatever had gone wrong this time wasn’t a critical blow to our progress.
"What's up?" Patrick asked as we stepped back into the kitchen.
&nbs
p; Mee-maw jerked a thumb at a clearly upset Zoe. "Gina Lollobrigida over here is losing her beauty boost. And I gotta admit, my sciatica is starting to throb a little again."
Zoe nodded mournfully, gesturing to her face. "My age spot is coming back. It's light right now, but I think we can see where this is headed."
The cinnamon bun magic was temporary, which meant…
"Maude!”
I rushed to the table and dropped into the chair in front of the typewriter, a burst of adrenaline mixed with fear coursing through my veins. "Someone, get me another one of those buns, stat!"
I sucked in a steadying breath and let my fingers hover over the keys again. Then, I waited for the tingle to start or the hot flash to wash over me.
"Come on, come on!" I glanced at Zoe and noted that her hair hadn't changed back yet, and a quick perusal of Mee-maw confirmed that her skin was still rosy and pink with vigor. Surely, I could get one more prediction out of Maude before the magic wore off.
When the wave of magic finally came, it was weak this time. A flush of heat, and little sizzle down my wrist blooming at my fingertips. A moment later, I was typing…until I wasn't anymore, an all-too brief moment later.
"Dang it," I muttered, staring down at the five words on the page in front of me. “There’s got to be more.”
Time is ticking. The final
Mee-maw ambled up to the table and shoved a chunk of cinnamon bun into my mouth. Then another, and another, as I chewed furiously. Twenty excruciating minutes and three cinnamon buns later, all I had to show for it was an aching belly and a broken heart. It was confirmed.
Consumed or not, the magic imbued into Zoe's baked goods was temporary.
Which meant Maude and I were separated, with only a silvery thread between us, yet again. Losing it had been terrible. Getting it back and having it taken away again was almost unbearable.
"I don't know if I can do this," I whispered miserably, a fat tear plopping onto the nearly-blank page in front of me. "It's too hard."
I hated being a sad-sack, but I’d reached the bottom of the well. Terror, the sleepless nights, the grief for this inanimate object that somehow felt like a piece of me. I couldn’t take it anymore.
I turned to face the others and shrugged helplessly.
"Seriously, someone tell me…What are we doing this all for, anyway? What if we just let them have what they want? Leave the items behind and go hide in Peru or somewhere far away where they can't find us, until they stop looking."
"What about Greg and the kids? What about Phil and my bakery?" Zoe asked gently.
“I don’t even habla español,” Mee-maw added with a shake of her head. “Plus, I haven’t gotten to try out my magic yet.”
"More importantly, if we could leave and take our families along, our items are useless to the Organization without the three of us, and yours would only follow you like it always has,” Zoe said, ignoring Mee-maw and pressing on. “You think they're ever going to stop trying to find us until they get what they want?"
She was right and I knew it, but dang it, this was feeling more and more like a losing battle. One that was going to end the same way, no matter what we did.
With me swinging from a rope and my sister-cousin and my grandmother not far behind.
“I wish I knew what the hell I was doing,” I said, slumping over Maude and pressing my cheek to her keys. “I’m so sick of being in the dark.”
A silence fell over the room for a long moment.
"So let's focus on what we do know, all right?" Zoe urged, pulling up a chair beside mine as Mee-maw and Patrick followed suit. "The Organization’s goal, as I understand it to this point, is to reunite each of us with our item, allow us time to charge them with magic, then capture us so they can separate us from our items and kill us. But they can't do it all at once. Which means they are going to be looking to do several things. Number one," she brandished a finger, "recapture Cricket, kill her, and take Maude. Number two," she flicked up a second finger, "ensure that I don't get killed in the process, because they need me to continue building the power of the cauldron. And number three," she chunked up the trifecta, "keep Mee-maw’s item from her until they have dealt with Cricket and I. That sort of makes our path pretty clear now, doesn't it?"
Nothing seemed clear to me in that moment, but I lifted my head up and tried to follow what she was saying as Patrick and Mee-maw nodded.
“If they’re all hot and bothered about us having them at the same time, that means they’re afraid. They know that, together, as a coven, we can bring down the whole danged Organization. It’s a race,” Mee-maw said with a chuckle. “A race for Cricket to reconnect with Maude for good, Zoe to get a handle on her powers, and me to find my item before they can nab Cricket again. Sound about right, Patrick?”
Patrick tipped his head. “Sounds right to me.”
I ran a gentle hand over Maude’s keys and swiped the single tear from the sheet of paper.
“Where do we even start?”
“Let’s get to know our enemy a little more,” Zoe suggested, turning to Patrick. “Patrick can help with that.”
“I am happy to tell you everything I know, but understand that it’s far less than you might imagine. I had no idea what they were capable of or their true intentions.”
“Facts only, then,” Zoe said with a shrug. “Stuff you’ve seen with your own eyes.”
My mind drifted back to that terrible night and I swallowed past the sudden tightness in my throat. “When I was imprisoned, the man they had guarding me was wearing a necklace.”
I hadn’t been able to bring myself to even think on it for too long, never mind discuss it with the others, but it was important, so I had to muscle through.
“It was magic. He was able to use it to bring pain.” A cold sweat broke out on my upper lip and I swiped it away. “Indescribable, unimaginable pain. The type of pain that would break a person.”
“Geez, Crick…” Zoe leaned in, looking heartsick.
Mee-maw scowled and patted my hand awkwardly. “I hope my item is a wand so when I see Finneas I can shove it right up his--”
“You won’t need to do that,” Patrick snarled, his face a mask of fury. “I’ll take care of my father. He’ll pay for what he did to you, Cricket. And for the lies he’s told.”
“Look, you guys,” I said, holding up both hands. “I didn’t tell you about the necklace to make you mad. I brought it up because we know they have already procured other magical items. The one that allowed them to tongue-tie Connie and possess her. There are others, to be sure. If we had an idea of what some of them did, maybe we can protect ourselves against them and prepare a little better.”
“Good point,” Mee-maw said. “Patrick, what others do you know of?”
“I can tell you that I didn’t know about that one,” he said, shaking his head miserably. “I imagine my father knew if I’d been aware of something so evil, I’d have advocated destroying it immediately. But I do know of a few others. There is a hand mirror that reveals the true intentions of the person looking into it.”
Mee-maw let out a low whistle. “That’s a good one. Probably keeps them from getting double-crossed or infiltrated.”
“It’s used sparingly. Keep in mind, without the witch owner to recharge the magic, all the items are slowly drained of power as they’re used. They also have a jewelry box. You put something inside, and close the box. When you open it again, it has been turned into gemstones or precious metal.”
Zoe shook her head slowly. “Nice. Hence their deep pockets. They have endless funds.”
“And then there’s the candlestick.” His expression went dark. “It’s supposed to allow the user to commune with the dead. To my knowledge, that one has never been utilized, despite being in the Organization’s hands for a long time. Organization leaders are too afraid of what they might unleash into the world. Aside from the charged items, there is a vault that houses dozens of items that have been used up, as well as oth
ers that they believe are magic but remain dormant. They keep them in an underground bunker in Milan in the event that they locate the owner’s ancestors and are able to recharge them some day.”
“That’s it? Those are all the active items you can think of?”
Patrick nodded. “And, again, they don’t use them all that often. Both due to waning strength and because it requires lots of red tape and authorization, for obvious reasons. If the item were lost or stolen, it would be able to be used by anyone, unchecked.”
That was good to know and a definite plus for our side. If we could all get our items and connect with them, we were an endless source of power.
Too bad that was a big “if”.
“What else do you know to be true, beyond a shadow of a doubt?” I asked softly.
“Just that Mee-maw is right. They’re scared,” Patrick said, his face solemn. “Terrified at the thought of you getting your powers back and solidifying the coven. There is also no doubt in my mind that the Organization needs to operate under the radar. They don't want the government to catch wind of any of this. Can you imagine what this would mean for national security? If a country figured out how to weaponize some of these items…” He trailed off with a shrug. “Chaos. They work in shadows.”
"So let's not make it easy for them," I said, a crazy idea floating to the forefront of my brain as one of the lines from Maude's recent premonitions came rushing back. "Let's make sure that, when they do come for us, it's an ugly, chaotic, mess."
Turn on the kitchen light and the cockroaches scatter.
I picked up the bakery landline as the others watched me, a mix of curiosity and worry etched on their faces.
I dialed a number and waited. A moment later, a woman picked up.
“Rocky Knoll Sheriff’s office, this is Judy, how can I help you?”
“Hi, Judy,” I said, hearing the trembling in my voice but unable to make it stop. “I need to report a kidnapping and attempted murder.”
Chapter 10
The wait for the cops to arrive was tense. I was sitting in the front room of the bakery, my eyes flitting to the door every other moment, while Zoe leaned against the counter and Mee-maw slouched in a chair, tapping away on one of the burner phones. Patrick was leaning against the far wall, his shoulders hunched and his arms crossed over his chest, looking wound up.
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