by Mara Webb
“It’s nice to meet you, I apologize for the circumstances. I am actually trying to get to the bottom of what happened to you, and to Nancy.”
After a short pause Joanne spoke, “What happened to Nancy?”
“She was murdered. Probably by the same person that murdered you. There is clearly a connection here and I think you could really provide some insight.” Ryan might have a better chance of getting something out of her than I would have, there was no way she would open up to me.
“Why don’t you tell Ryan about what you could smell outside the house?” Edith prodded. The silence that followed was obviously Joanne sizing Ryan up to see whether or not he was trustworthy enough to talk to.
“A chemical sort of smell, like acetone or something,” Joanne said. “It wasn’t really strong, but I could just about smell it in the air. I didn’t see anyone; I can’t give you a name or anything. I just know that I had to be here, I was pulled to this house for some reason. Edith explained that I might have been cursed, I wouldn’t have believed any of it but as ghosts obviously exist, I may as well be open to other ideas too.”
They exchanged small talk for another minute or two and then Ryan excused himself and we climbed up into the attic together. With a wave of his hand he managed to make the whiteboard appear again, as well as my laptop and a cup of coffee for each of us. He pulled a marker out of thin air and wrote down ‘could smell acetone’ underneath Joanne’s name.
“Open up your laptop, let’s get searching shall we!” he said. I took a sip of my coffee and placed it down onto a small table that stood between two armchairs, sat down and opened up my computer.
“Where should I start?” I asked, opening a web browser and clicking into the search box on google.
“May as well start with Nancy, full name and then ‘Sucré’ should do it,” he replied.
I watched the screen populate with results, some referencing her death, and clicked on the top link which took us to her Facebook page. There we could see photographs of her with her friends and, thankfully, she was one of those people that had fleshed out the ‘about me’ section so that we could gather plenty of information.
She had gone to the same high school as Brent, she was his first girlfriend, so I assumed that was where they met, she had gone on to attend a state University pretty far from here. Was that why they split up? She had gone there to study business and then returned to Sucré for some reason, and worked her way up to top level management at an insurance company.
I read out the relevant bits to Ryan and he wrote them on the board while I scrolled through photos of her trip to Australia last Christmas.
I did the same thing with Cassandra, turns out she worked in the town center florists, Joanne had been a dental nurse, but it seems that she announced her engagement to Brent and then didn’t post again. Her social media accounts all seemed to suggest that she and Brent were still in a relationship.
I felt a pang of jealousy as I stared at her profile picture, Brent with his arms wrapped around her as she thrusted her left hand towards the camera to show off her new jewelry.
He was kissing her on the cheek. The feeling was irrational, they were dating before I had known him, years before I moved to Sucré. Well, I didn’t actually know how long ago it had been. I looked at the date in the corner of the photo, it was only about twelve months before we started dating.
How could he not have mentioned this before?
I searched for Gemma Wilson and saw a cat with her in every photo. She seemed to be embracing the single life. She worked in a bank, nothing else really stood out in the search other than her very non-symmetrical eyebrows which she had made more prominent with bold make-up.
Someone really needed to nudge her in the direction of a more natural look, if only for the sake of her finances, getting through that much foundation must be expensive.
The last woman on the list, Penny Benson, caught our attention. According to her Facebook page she worked as a beauty therapist and nail technician at a salon on the high street. This didn’t stand out to Ryan at first, but after I explained what sort of stuff that job might involve, it became obvious.
She would use, and therefore smell like, acetone.
Bingo.
14
We both sat in the attic armchairs and looked at the available pictures of Penny. She had a short blonde bob that was elegantly styled, sleek and intentional with every strand of hair. Her make-up was immaculate in her profile picture, smiling widely to show off her Hollywood teeth.
Any time I had been to a beauty salon it was an intimidating experience as the staff there paraded around with their flawless aesthetic, looking ready for a photoshoot for a fancy magazine while I hobbled in with my scuffed up boots and a frizzy birds nest on my head.
She was beautiful and I found myself thinking ‘she can’t be a killer, right?’
I remember once taking an intro class to psychology before I settled on a biological science major. In the class the teacher had shown a collage of photos projected onto a large screen, each photo had the face of someone smiling in it.
His task was simple, identify the serial killers. This was obviously before the mainstream fascination with true crime, there wasn’t a streaming service playing a documentary about every murderer on demand. I didn’t have podcasts to indulge in, or famous teen-heart throbs acting in a big budget movie about a violent killer.
So, I had to guess. There were probably twelve faces on the screen, and I selected five or six of them, assuming he had thrown in a few regular, law-abiding people. I was wrong.
That psychology teacher had shown us a screen where every smiling face had killed someone. Every single one of them was dangerous and had been convicted of violent crimes. It was impossible to know if from their smiles alone, which is obviously how people get away with these things for so long, they look unassuming.
Was this the case with Penny? It also occurred to me that there was probably not that many beauty parlors in Sucré, if I had gotten my nails done once since I moved here then I probably would have met her. I looked at my stubby, bare fingernails and wondered if I would get an opportunity to visit this place once all the drama had blown over.
Maybe her co-workers were safe to be around.
“If I had to make a guess, I would say she is going after his ex’s in some sort of order,” Ryan said. “Obviously Joanne was a fiancé at some point, so she is a big target. I think it is safe to say she will go after all of you though, so we may as well make it over to Cassandra’s place and see if she is still alive. Penny will be waiting for an opportunity to take out another one.”
“But why?” I asked. I couldn’t understand what was motivating her to do this, why were all of the women in Brent’s life a threat?
“She dated someone, it ended badly, and her life has been going downhill ever since, that’s how the curse works. It starts to eat away at you until you seek a drastic solution. If she thinks that getting back together with Brent will fix her problems then she might be willing to do anything to make that happen, no matter the fallout. That makes her dangerous because she feels like she has nothing to lose.”
“How can you get me out of the house and over to Cassandra’s place though?” I asked. He raised an eyebrow as if he was about to suggest something awful. “I am coming with you, right?”
“Yeah…I was thinking of a spell I used once back in law school. I won’t go into the back story, but basically, I think I should make you invisible. Don’t panic, I’m confident it will work.”
“I didn’t have any doubts until you just insisted on asserting your confidence, now I am not so sure. What do we have to do? Can you reverse it afterwards? Obviously, you can, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to see you at all would I, you would have been invisible for like a decade at this point.”
“It is a two-parter. We have to summon, or create, a little wishing well. That will take me the longest to do, then it’s just a case of measuring out s
ome ingredients and then throwing them into the well at the exact same time. I saw a guy do this once and he threw the ingredients in at random, it made all of his wrinkles, stubble and freckles disappear. You would think that was a good thing, but he looked like a weird, smooth, tall baby.”
“Can’t wait,” I snarked, giving him a sarcastic thumbs-up with both of my hands.
Ryan stood up from his chair and began to walk around the attic looking for the appropriate books to help him. I didn’t know how long he would need so I did the thing I always did with time on my hands, I checked my emails.
I have checked my emails approximately every forty-five minutes since I first owned a smart phone. Not once has this resulted in me catching something important that needed an immediate reply, but it has become a habit anyway.
I scrolled through the multiple spam messages in my inbox and found that I had received the audio files for the runes textbook that I had ordered from Joan, the audiobook witch. I had totally forgotten about it.
Ryan was still spinning around trying to gather all the items he needed for the first part of his spell, so I attempted to summon my headphones from wherever they were in the house.
This was one of my favorite uses of magic as I can never remember where I have left them, sometimes they are in a bag, sometimes in my car, sometimes in a coat pocket or one time Quin had dragged them off to play with under the stairs.
The last magic I had attempted had failed and I hoped that was simply because of the basement walls or something, if it happened again then it could indicate that something bigger was beginning. “Devoco!” I said, holding out my right hand to collect my prize if the spell worked. I let out a huge sigh of relief as the two little ear buds landed on my palm. I still had my powers.
I placed the little white shapes into my ears, connected them to the laptop through Bluetooth and pressed play on the file. I picked up the physical textbook that Joan was beginning to read to me and looked at the complex shapes of the language I needed to understand.
“If you are a skeptic, drop this book and walk away. First of all, you make me sick, secondly the runes don’t want to be understood by you. If you are still reading, then it is to be assumed that you are preparing to learn all that you can about rune reading.
“It is one of the most popular methods of Divination and you must be warned, if you are trying to find a short cut through this book to make a quirky YouTube video then I will personally put a curse upon your house.”
I saw that the last part of that sentence wasn’t written in the textbook, Joan was once again adding her own artistic flair. Her voice continued.
“There are only four pages of text written here in this book, if you turn those over you will see that the remainder of the book has been glued together and a square cut out in the paper contains your own set of runes from which to learn. Collect the runes and turn back to this page, I’ll wait.”
I turned the pages and picked out the small velvet pouch containing the stones.
“There are different kinds of rune stones depending on which alphabet you use; this book will outline the Theban alphabet and the Elder Futhark just to keep the hipsters interested.”
I listened to Joan read through the few pages of writing and followed along as best as I could, holding out the stones from the pouch and turning them over in my hand. As she began to discuss the Elder Futhark alphabet, the symbols on the stones changed to match. Ryan was sitting on the ground now waving his hands in small circles creating whirlpools of light.
I watched as a stone fountain grew out of the rug in the center of the attic, it was the size of a small bird bath which was great because if it had been as big as I had imagined it then the floorboards might have collapsed under the weight. That definitely would have given the police just cause to enter.
Joan was now reading through the ‘references and acknowledgements’ section so I paused the recording and pulled the earbuds out to speak to Ryan. “What’s next, should we call in a few mice to swim around in that tiny little thing? It would be cute! Or have some ants come and paddle in it,” I joked.
“It will get the job done,” he smiled. “Right, you can help me with the next part.”
I got up out of my seat, putting my laptop down and reaching for the book that Ryan was thrusting towards me. I read through the ingredients again and we worked through the list in order, summoning what we needed and mentally striking it from the list.
There was a lot of turmeric needed for this spell, was that normal? Or was this actually magic to make me smell like a vegetable curry? We needed seashells, a white feather, a bottle of mouthwash and a silver necklace chain.
The measurements were all in different units, so Ryan summoned a digital kitchen scale to weigh out in grams, ounces and milliliters. The chain had to be trimmed to three inches in length and then we lifted up the items in the small weighing containers to throw in on three.
“One, Two, Three!” Ryan shouted.
We threw everything into the small well of water and listened to the fizzing and bubbling. Hopefully it had been successful, the only way to know was to try and use it. “Cup a little in your hand and then drink it, if my memory serves me correctly it tastes like cranberry juice.”
I was skeptical but I had little choice, we needed to catch Penny before she killed anyone else and as I was currently the person that the police suspected there was no other way to leave this house.
I leaned over the edge of the stone fountain and looked down at the sparkling water. I had half expected to see a gross looking feather soup with other nasty bits floating around in it, but it looked like it was fresh from a spring. It was probably cleaner than the tap water in this house, which was a sad realization. I reached in and cupped my hands to lift up to my mouth. As it touched my skin, I could feel that it was beautifully cool, as I drank, I could feel the cold liquid travelling down my throat and send a chill through the core of my body.
“Is this going to be one of those things where I am invisible, but all my clothes are still there, so I have to be naked? It isn’t warm enough outside for that to feel like a good idea.” I looked down and realized that transparency was radiating out from the center of my torso. Ryan was watching carefully, and I held out my hands towards him, I saw my upper arms disappear, spreading down to my elbows, my wrists and then my hands.
I was invisible.
“Ok, the clothes can stay on. Let’s go!” Ryan said.
15
Physically, I didn’t feel any different. I could still feel my shoes against my feet as I walked and the temperature of the air change when we approached the front door, but otherwise it was surreal.
It felt like I was in a video game wearing a headset that allowed me to view my surrounding through the eyes of my character but with no peripheral vision of my body. I couldn’t see the tip of my nose or my hair, I didn’t see my hands or arms swinging as I moved, I even started to purse my lips like I was about to take a duck-lips selfie to try and see my mouth but I couldn’t.
I was doing some very exaggerated facial expressions to test out the limits of my invisibility and I was glad that no one could see me, it probably looked ridiculous.
On the way down from the attic, Ryan suggested that we talk the entire way down to the front of the house so he could hear where I was. It would stop us bashing into each other and he would know how long he needed to hold doors open to let me through.
We weren’t sure how far into the house the police could see, so we had to keep up the pretense that Ryan was in the house alone with seven cats. No doors or objects could be moving on their own or that would freak them out, I was to touch nothing.
“Are you going to tell me why you needed this little spell the first time round then?” I asked.
At this point I was holding on to the handrail of the staircase and dragging each foot along the step before dropping it to the one below.
Being invisible was harder than I imagined it would be. No
t being able to see my own hands or feet actually made it quite difficult to move around.
Of course, I had some muscle memory of the house and could in fact make my way around at night without being able to see, but this was somehow harder.
Ryan, upon hearing my voice and realizing I was still close to the top of the stairs, stopped where he was and pulled out his cell phone to pretend he was doing something so that it wouldn’t look weird if we were being observed.
Well, if he was being observed, I was invisible.
“It was just me being a try-hard, it’s kind of embarrassing looking back. Do you really want to know that badly? Nora?”
“Oh sorry, I was giving you the look of ‘yeah tell me’, I forgot you can’t see my face.”
He stopped walking and took a seat on the steps as he began to answer.
“Like I said, I was a student at the time. I felt like I was spotting violations of the law left, right and center. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a law textbook but they are heavy, long and often pretty boring.
“I just wanted to get to the action, I’d seen enough TV at that point to think that the young lawyer often went running around with police actively catching criminals and finding the “vital” piece of evidence that locks the whole case down. I had seen one of my professors exchange a note with a girl in my tort class, so I kept my eyes on the situation.
“He did this multiple times and she would sometimes raise her hand to ask a question, but it was like she was speaking in some sort of code, no one else cared as we had enough on our plate,” he said.
I had caught up to him on the stairs and gave a small cough to notify him of my proximity. He stood up and walked the rest of the way down until he was standing on the floor by the front door.
“Anyway, I thought I was onto a drug ring or something. I was so keen to bust someone for something that I was ignoring the more obvious answer. I had studied some intro-law classes alongside my magic tuition, my parents paid for extra tutors to come to the house so in my head I was a hot-shot.