by Mara Webb
“I looked up a spell to make myself invisible, and it worked first time. I snuck into my professor’s office and waited for him, hoping to catch him putting drugs in little bags or one of the other things a drug dealer might do, I dunno, weigh it out? I don’t know what I thought I was going to witness, but when the girl showed up, he beckoned her in and asked her to shut the door.
“I was then trapped because I couldn’t just go over and open the door and I hadn’t done much transportation magic yet. I was in that room watching the two of them furiously make out for twenty-five minutes. It wasn’t just making out, but I don’t want to tell you what I saw that day. Anyway, now you know, and I haven’t risked the spell since. But I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
Ryan grabbed a long, woolen black coat and began dressing himself for going outdoors. He had hung his belongings on a hat stand that was placed against a wall in the entryway of my home, I had never seen it before, so I wondered if the house had provided it for Ryan or he has summoned one for himself.
Either way, he was now wrapped up with a scarf and gloves, whereas I was left in the clothes I had worn when I drank from the fountain.
“Any chance I can put on an extra layer? Or will it spook the police if you are getting followed down the driveway by a levitating hat?” I asked.
“Clearly we didn’t think this all the way through. Look, as soon as we get into my car, I will turn the heaters on as high as they go and you will be warm in no time, there is just a short walk to my car from the door.”
He pulled open the front door and looked back into the house as if he was scanning over the property for something he had forgotten. While he did this little skit for the police, I slipped out of the open door and down the stairs.
I cleared my throat as I walked past him to let him know I was out, then he pulled the door closed and locked up. I walked along my driveway, careful to avoid nudging the police tape that still decorated my yard and headed towards Ryan’s car.
There was one police vehicle left outside the house after Quin’s little phone call, and as I walked along the side of it, I could see the two officers in the front talking to each other through the open window. “She’ll slip up eventually, or this pretty boy will. He’s probably taking something to her, there’s no way he has ‘no idea’ where she is. Call it in, I think we should follow him.”
They were planning to follow the car.
That would mess up our plan of heading off Penny at Cassandra’s place, if she saw a police vehicle there then she might change her plans or something.
Ryan was approaching their car and I was still stood in place listening to them talk about us. He stopped as he got to the window and they began to speak to one another, I used the opportunity to place my hand on the little door over the gas cap and whispered “Evacuao!” in my softest voice.
They couldn’t hear me over their own conversation anyway, but I couldn’t risk drawing attention to Ryan and his departure.
“I’ll probably be back in twenty minutes or something, just grabbing some dinner officers. She has a lot of cats too so I might swing by the big store to grab cat food. Do you guys want me to get you anything?” Ryan offered.
They exchanged glances before declining.
“Ok, suit yourselves,” he said, walking towards his own car. I rushed to beat him to his door so that when he opened it, I could quickly climb in and scurry over to the passenger seat. Once we were both inside and he closed the door, he began to speak, looking ever forward as if he was muttering to himself. “They can’t follow us, right?”
“Nope!” I replied with delight. He must have known what they were planning and that I would prevent them from following through. I watched as he twisted some dials on the central console of his Mercury Cyclone.
Despite the car’s age he had modernized the interior, quite a few of the gadgets inside where a complete mystery to me. Once he seemed satisfied with the number of turns, he had given to each dial, he put the keys in the ignition and turned on the car.
The headlights cut through the dark night ahead of us and the stereo started to hiss and crackle. “Are we listening to a mix tape? Is this going to be filled with cringey 90’s R&B? I will get out of this car right now; I don’t care who notices.”
As Ryan rolled the car forward, I heard the crackling fade away and then suddenly heard the voice of one of the police officers coming in over the stereo.
“Dispatch this is Officer Garcia, we are still stationed outside the Wildes residence, seeking to pursue the lawyer. We believe he knows where the suspect is hiding.”
“Garcia do what you need to do dude. You don’t need to radio in for permission to breathe, control your own destiny.”
“I…I am just doing what we are supposed to do Steve, don’t get upset.”
I heard the sound of the police car behind us try to start, but after I had removed all of the gasoline from the vehicle it would be impossible for them to do anything. “Urgh, Steve can you do me a favor? Or get someone else from dispatch to sort it out? We are out of gas, not a drop in the tank. Can you send someone else after this guy if I give you his license plate number?”
As we drove away the voices on the police scanner discussed what Ryan’s car looked like, it was fairly distinctive, and I doubted many other people in this town had a classic car that could be mistaken for this one.
Ryan navigated the streets with confidence, he knew where we needed to be. “Can you try not to leave anything incriminating at this house? If Penny has beaten us to it and you start smearing your fingerprints all over the place, then I might leave you to defend yourself in court.”
“You think you’re so smart with your law degree and your fancy coat. It’s not my fault that the shoddy craftsmen ship of my thrift store denim didn’t survive the—”
“I think that’s her car,” Ryan interrupted. He pulled up behind the vehicle he had pointed at and gestured towards the bumper sticker which read ‘I’m a nail technician, what’s your superpower?’.
The chase was afoot.
16
“What a pickle we find ourselves in. I do think this gal is gonna be lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut and no mistake.” The strange, not-quite-right Southern accent from behind me let me know two things, Quin had decided to join us, and he was still doing that impression.
“What are you doing here?” I said, turning to see him curled up on the narrow back seat of Ryan’s car. I tried to give him a non-verbal signal that he had done a dumb thing by coming to this showdown we were likely about to have with Penny, but I was invisible. Even if he could see me, Quin didn’t pick up on subtly at all.
“Well you two surely couldn’t find your own butts with two hands in your back pockets and…well I didn’t want to miss out,” he replied. The accent slipped a little and I realized that he just wanted to get in on a little action, I had no doubt that he thought it was exciting to have been arrested and have to creep around to avoid being captured by the police.
Even when he came to the jail cell with that goat, it was written all over his face that he was enjoying the adventure. As the one that was currently under suspicion of two murders, I found it less fun, but I knew Quin well enough to see his true intentions. He was always just out for a good time.
“It is going to look slightly weird walking around a stranger’s neighborhood by moonlight with a cat, but it won’t be the strangest thing I’ve ever done,” Ryan said.
“You’re going to take him out with you?” I asked with a motherly concern.
“Nora, he wasn’t in the car when we left your place. He has clearly used his magic to get here, any attempt to get him to stay will only delay him by a few seconds and then he will just make himself appear inside Cassandra’s house and potentially blow it, no offence,” Ryan said, turning to Quin.
“You all think I wouldn’t hit a lick at a snake but I…” Quin paused. “I don’t know what I was about to say, but you best believe that I got the…yo
u think I’m as useful as a trapdoor on a canoe and I…it’s,” he stopped. I realized that there was a small light illuminating his face and he was trying to read something.
“Do you have a smart watch?” I quizzed, smiling at the thought of it. He looked up and the southern accent immediately fell away and he was back to his regular voice.
“Things at the café have been going well, I wanted to treat myself. I looked up some Southern expressions after the phone call thing earlier and I just thought it would be fun to really commit to a character for a few days. The other cats thought I was really funny, and you know full well that I like attention. Don’t tell them I had to get my best bits from the internet, they were laughing so much and telling me how great I am…let me have something.” He gave Ryan his best ‘wounded animal’ eyes for extra sympathy.
“My lips are sealed on the condition that you listen to us and don’t do anything silly when we get to the house. Deal?” I suggested.
He nodded in agreement.
“I thought it was wise to not park right outside the house so that we wouldn’t get busted by any police watching Cassandra, my intuition lead me to this street,” Ryan explained. “If this car is Penny’s then she is trying to avoid being seen by police too, she might already have done something bad, so we really need to hurry. Quin just stick by my side and before you use any magic, I am going to need you to take a deep breath, count to three and think ‘would I do this if didn’t have nine lives?’”
“Got it!” Quin replied.
Ryan opened the door and Quin bounced out while I struggled my way over the top of the shift stick and out onto the pavement. Ryan started to lead us along the sidewalk, and we followed obediently, hoping that he knew where he was going.
After a few hundred yards he took a sharp right which lead him to a dirt track between fences that bordered back yards, much like the path we had followed when we ran out of Nancy’s house. I wondered if there was a track like this behind my back yard, I had hardly been out there since I moved in, I have very un-green thumbs, so the yard was currently an unloved dustbowl.
Quin was jogging along by my heel, he must have been able to detect my scent or something.
He was a cat obviously, so it could have been his hearing allowing him to follow my footsteps. Sometimes he would use his senses for useful things like catching mice, but lately he had taken to leaning out of the window while trying to guess what the neighbors were watching on TV.
Quin had lots of ‘helpful’ little games like this.
I realized that he wasn’t next to me and then heard his voice from higher up. I raised my gaze upwards and saw him sat on top of a wooden panel fence.
“This is the house. No one is dead yet, but they are definitely both inside, come on,” he commanded. He leapt into the air and, as he was falling, used his magic to make the fence panel disappear so that Ryan and I could easily walk into the back yard.
Cassandra clearly did have green thumbs because her yard was vibrant and full, I could see how many different colors there were despite the darkness and the air was filled with the scent of flowers and cut grass. Any hope we had of sneaking around the edges of her yard had been dashed, it was too busy.
We would have to run across the center.
There would be no way to know if she had a motion sensor light until it was too late. Quin was small enough that he could crawl underneath the shrubbery and around the water features, we couldn’t.
Ryan pulled his wand out of his coat pocket and primed himself to eliminate anything that alerted Penny to our arrival. Each step was slow and considered. Just as we were passing the door to a potting shed, floodlights blasted down from above us and lit up the entire yard. Ryan’s reflexes allowed him to kill the light as quickly as it had turned on, but there was a chance Penny had seen it.
There was movement inside the house, a scream and then multiple car doors slamming closed on the other side of the street. We ran up to the back door and saw a woman I assumed to be Cassandra hurry past the window heading for the stairs.
A dark figure loomed behind her, the shadow that had been behind me at Nancy’s house. Penny was here and was coming for Cassandra, we had to stop her before there was another dead body tangled up in this mess. Ryan opened the door and ran inside; I ran in after him with Quin by my feet.
“Who are you? Why are you doing this?” a frightened voice shouted from upstairs.
“I want my life back!” another voice replied. “He is supposed to be with me!”
“He’s always been mine!” the first voice bellowed; I could hear them throwing objects at each other now. Was all this really over Brent? He was good looking, sure, but this was a little excessive. I doubt I would be scrapping with other women over Ryan Gosling, never mind Brent Murphy. The fact that they were under some sort of curse had slipped my mind, but even with that magic over them, I couldn’t understand the logic behind this fight.
“I’ve got two left, then they arrest Nora for all of it and I have a clear shot at getting him back. Stand still so I can murder you.”
That was Penny’s plan? I was being set up as a way of getting to my boyfriend and the police were taking the bait.
Just then the front door exploded open, and police began to storm the house.
“Sorry!” Ryan whispered before disappearing. Quin likewise ‘popped’ out of the room entirely with his magic while I stood still in disbelief watching it all go down. I pressed my back up against the wall of the living room as the officers ran up the stairs and interrupted the attempted murder.
There was a lot of shouting and raised voices which continued as they brought Penny down the stairs in handcuffs. She was escorted down by two officers, one on each side of her, and when they reached the living room more officers joined them to help get her outside.
“She’s here, I can sense it. You can sense it too can’t you!” Penny screeched. She turned to look right at me, and I knew that she was acknowledging my presence, was she a witch too? Or was this part of the curse?
She didn’t look like her Facebook profile picture anymore; her hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, but it was rough and dirty looking. She had blood on her cheek which could be from any number of fights she had gotten into recently, and she wore a long, floor length, black cape-y looking gown thing. I didn’t know what it was, but it had helped her look like a shadow in the darkness.
I lost track of how many people trampled in and out of the house over the following few minutes. I watched through the living room window as Penny was assisted into the back of a police car and driven away.
I was tempted to use my magic to transport myself back out of the house just like Ryan and Quin had, but something inside was telling me to stay. Emma, one of the first police officers I had ever spoken to when I moved to Sucré, walked into the room with Officer Sallow, the one that had come to my house after I called about Joanne lurking in my front yard.
“Should one of us call Brent?” Officer Sallow asked.
“I think he has enough on his plate at the minute,” Emma replied. “He had to take off to deal with a family thing, his uncle died. From what I heard from a friend I have over at the Shevton Police Department, it looks suspicious, homicide is what she said actually.”
Brent’s uncle had been murdered?
Why hadn’t he told me?
Duh. He didn’t know where I was, and he still thought I was a killer.
Should I call him? Was I off the hook completely now if they had caught Penny in the act? How would I go about explaining my jailbreak? Something about this situation with Brent’s uncle was unsettling, and not just because it looked like he might have been killed.
My vision went black and then I could see Brent, he was standing alone in his apartment holding Joanne’s engagement ring. He slid the ring onto a chain and fastened it around his neck, and I saw that his eyes were completely dark. I saw him lift a wand into the air and then disappear from the room.
T
he vision faded and I blinked it away until I could see Cassandra’s living room again. My pulse was racing as I realized that I had seen that vision before, of Brent holding a wand and preparing to use magic. Had his uncle left him his powers in the same way that my aunt Edith had left her powers to me? If he had inherited magic and was under the curse, then what was going to happen next?
The real danger was only just beginning.
17
I closed my eyes and focused on the location that I needed to travel to. Just as it had in the past, my desperation fueled my magic and transported me back to number thirteen Charm Close. Ryan and Quin were waiting for my in the kitchen, but obviously they were unable to see me. “Hey, I’m back,” I said, causing Quin to jump straight up into the air in surprise. “Sorry, I don’t know how to make the invisibility thing end. Any clues Ryan?”
He parted his lips as if to respond but I remembered what I needed to ask him. “Actually, it might be useful to keep it for a little longer. Do you know anything about Brent’s uncle?” I said.
“Brent’s uncle? How would I know anything about Brent’s uncle?” he replied. I was about to explain my visions and the concerns I had about what might happen next, but before I could speak another figure appeared in the kitchen.
It was Amber.
“Guys,” she said between shallow breaths as if she had been running. “We have a problem. Brent Murphy, you know him, right?” We all nodded, but Amber obviously couldn’t see me.
“Yeah, and just so you know, Nora is here but she is invisible,” Quin said.
“Cool, whatever,” Amber rasped. “Okay, well your boyfriend has inherited some magic from a pretty weird wizard and also has the cursed engagement ring, I have been getting some visions that suggest to me that we have a dangerous situation on the horizon. Obviously, this ring is a pretty potent conduit of the Lundeen curse, and it hasn’t been in the hands of a witch or wizard before.