The Witch's Key, Book 1

by Sarra Cannon

  It couldn’t have been easy to go through that over and over again with no results. Eventually, it had to feel hopeless.

  Which is why we all needed to do everything we could to help bring Peyton home.

  Brandy and Olive both stepped aside to make phone calls. I thought about calling Martin, but I hadn’t decided exactly what to do yet. I really hoped the cops weren’t headed to his house to ask if they could talk to me. Martin hated the human police. He wasn’t likely to be super cooperative.

  At the same time, though, maybe hearing about my friend’s disappearance would make him want to get involved.

  Maybe I should have asked him about the missing girls, already. Technically, Uncle Martin was a retired Keeper, but if the Council was planning to get involved in searching for the demon or vampire or whoever took those girls, they would have told Martin.

  The Council wasn’t going to send a Slayer into his town without him knowing about it.

  But it was totally possible Martin would keep me out of the loop.

  Still, I found it hard to believe the Council would have sent me to this town and insisted I go to this school full time if they knew about these girls and had plans to get involved somehow. Maybe this particular situation just hadn’t made it onto their radar yet.

  With the Council, it was all about balance. As long as members of the magical community didn’t go too far and tip the scales too noticeably in a negative direction, the Council mostly left them alone.

  But something like this? Where did they draw the line?

  That was part of the business my parents never really let me get involved in. I would go with them on some of their jobs when things were simple, but they didn’t let me in on any of their behind-the-scenes information like conversations with their Keeper or the research they did on their targets.

  For example, I might know that a demon had crossed the line, and I would be allowed to go with them when they captured him or banished him, but I didn’t always know exactly what he had done to get their attention.

  I had an idea, of course, but sometimes the details were kept private.

  Still, whoever was taking girls in Newcastle had to be crossing a line here. Four missing girls was bad enough, but five in little more than six months?

  That was serial killer mania. If the national news media got wind of this, it would be a PR nightmare for the entire community. Part of the reason the Council existed was to keep a balance between the supernatural community and the human community.

  Too much activity, and humans would know we all exist.

  There were certain divisions inside the Council that dealt with different aspects of trying to keep the magical community secret from humans. Slayers were the most severe. If a Keeper decided a Slayer needed to be called in, it was bad news for whoever had done something wrong.

  At that point, it usually meant banishment, eternal imprisonment, or death. Period.

  I would say five missing girls called for the attention of a Slayer.

  Talking to Martin about it was the smart thing to do, but I wasn’t sure I could handle it if he told me to leave it alone. There was no way I’d be able to sit back and wait for the police to find her. Obviously, they were getting nowhere with the other girls.

  I had to do something, and right now, the only thing I could think of was finding Kai. He knew more than I did about this whole situation.

  The other day, he’d said he wasn’t my enemy. He’d even acted like he wanted to protect me from getting hurt. I didn’t want to believe he had anything to do with those girls going missing, but I was still convinced he knew a lot more about this situation than he was letting on.

  And it couldn’t have just been a coincidence that he showed up in Newcastle right before the first girl went missing.

  I needed to find him, and I needed to confront him.

  Even if he didn’t do this, I was willing to bet money he knew something about the person, or creature, who did.

  Before, I’d looked at this as a tragic event that didn’t really affect me in any way. But now, it was personal. I was going to find Peyton, and I was going to bring her home.

  I dared anyone—even Kai—to try and stop me.

  Found You

  I needed a plan.

  The school wasn’t dismissing anyone without parental permission today, which made sense. The last thing they needed was more missing teenagers in this town.

  I considered calling Martin to get permission, but he’d been acting so overprotective lately, I was afraid he’d lock me away in my room. There was no way he was going to let me skip school to investigate Peyton’s disappearance.

  I didn’t want to break his trust, but I needed to find answers. If he told me one more time to just trust him and not to ask questions, I was going to lose it.

  While I worked through it all in my mind, I listened to the conversations happening around me in homeroom.

  Mostly, it was just a regurgitation of the newspaper articles I’d read, but every once in a while, I caught a snippet of something I hadn’t heard before.

  For example, all of the girls were home alone when they went missing. Some people were also saying that every girl had been a regular at Sir Bean during the weekdays after school. Several people thought the owner, Melvin, might have something to do with it.

  “I heard he has some kind of police record from before he moved to town,” the guy behind me said. “I was going to ask Kai about it, since he works there, but he’s not here today.”

  My ears perked up at that little tidbit.

  Kai was absent today? I wanted to know why.

  When they called Olive’s name over the loudspeaker to go home, I slipped into the hallway with her.

  “Did you get ahold of your uncle?” she asked.

  “No, but I really can’t stay here,” I said. “Do you think your mom could vouch for me?”

  Olive looked nervous. “I don’t know if that’s such a great idea. They’re being really strict about who goes home with who, and if mom checks you out and you disappear, too—”

  “I’m not going to disappear, Olive. I just need to get home, and Martin wasn’t answering the phone. He’s old. He’s probably taking a nap or maybe he has his phone turned off,” I said. “I’ll be fine. I promise I won’t go anywhere else. I’ll walk straight home.”

  She sighed and bit her fingernail. “I’ll ask, but I can’t promise she’ll say yes,” Olive said. “My mom’s been really stressed lately. I don’t know if it’s about the girls going missing or the huge success of the cupcake business, but she’s super high strung. I never know from one day to the next how she’s going to be, but today, she’s probably going to be devastated.”

  We walked together to the office, and Olive’s mom pulled her daughter into a big hug. “I’m so glad you’re safe,” she said. She’d obviously been crying. “This is such a tragedy. I don’t know what we’re going to do. If anything happens to our sweet Peyton, I just…”

  Her voice trailed off, and she held her daughter tighter.

  “Are you ready to go, sweetheart?”

  Ms. Julie held her daughter’s face in her hands, then hugged her again.

  This was getting awkward with me just standing here watching. I cleared my throat.

  Olive seemed to take the hint.

  “Mom, you remember Lenny from yesterday, right?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  She pulled me into a hug, too, and I stiffened. I wasn’t used to this kind of affection. Not even from my own mom. I pulled away as quickly as I could.

  “How are you holding up, Lenny?” she asked. “You couldn’t have known Peyton very long, but she gets into your heart fast, doesn’t she? Plus, I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to start a brand new school, make a new friend, and then have her disappear suddenly. I promise you, Newcastle wasn’t always like this. It’s always been a very safe place to live, until recently.”

  She shook her head, and I though
t she was about to cry again, but she managed to get it under control.

  “I’m not handling it well at all,” I said, laying it on thick. “I don’t see how I can stay here all day and listen to everyone talk about this. Do you think you could sign me out, too? I don’t live far from here, and I just want to go home and lay down for a while.”

  “Oh, honey, I don’t know,” she said. “Have you talked to your parents?”

  I swallowed. I hadn’t realized how often people assumed you had parents to talk to.

  “No, I live with my uncle,” I said, leaving it at that for now. “I couldn’t reach him, but I know he won’t mind if I come home. He’s there now, actually. I just couldn’t get him to answer the phone. I promise, I’ll just walk straight home from here.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “I couldn’t have you walking home by yourself, even if it’s close. I’ll check you out and drive you there myself.”

  My shoulders relaxed in relief. “Thank you.”

  I needed to learn to forge some documents from my uncle to get me out of situations like this in the future, but for now, this would do. Thank goodness for new friends and their overly nice mothers.

  A few minutes later, we all loaded into Ms. Julie’s Ford Explorer. It smelled like cupcakes.

  “Where do you live, Lenny?” she asked.

  I directed her toward the house, and she frowned. “100 Moonlight Drive? But that’s…”

  She didn’t complete her thought, but I already knew what she was going to say.

  That’s the abandoned house. Or that’s the house with the creepy dude.

  “Yeah, I know it looks dark, but my uncle’s just elderly,” I said.

  Martin would probably kill me if he heard me say that.

  The truth was, he was well over a hundred years old, so elderly was in fact an understatement. Slayers and Keepers, once initiated, had expanded life expectancy. We weren’t exactly immortal, but we lived a lot longer than your average human.

  I hadn’t been initiated yet, though. I couldn’t make that move and get my next key until I’d taken the Council’s initiation test at eighteen. I still had eight months to decide if I was going to take it or not.

  “I didn’t realize anyone still lived there,” she said, clearing her throat and glancing at Olive in the passenger seat. They shared a look that sent a wave of warm embarrassment up the back of my neck.

  We didn’t talk the rest of the way to the house, but since Martin lived just a few blocks away from the school, it only took us a few minutes to get there. Ms. Julie parked on the street in front of the house, right where Peyton had stopped the night before.

  “I can’t believe she was just dropping me off right here a few hours ago,” I said. “Whoever took her must have done it late last night. What time did she text you?”

  “What?” Ms. Julie asked. She obviously hadn’t been listening to me.

  “Peyton. What time did she text you about the cupcake last night? What did she think of the new flavor?”

  Ms. Julie nodded, tears in her eyes again.

  “It was about nine when she finally texted me,” she said. “She said it was my best recipe yet. I just can’t believe she’s gone.”

  “Me, either,” I said, glad to at least have an idea of the timeline we were dealing with here. “Thanks again for dropping me off.”

  Olive handed me a slip of paper with her number on it. “Text me if you want to come over later,” she said. “I think we might hang out at Brandy’s for a while this afternoon and wait for news.”

  “Thank you. I’ll message you later if I get a chance.”

  I got out of the car and headed inside as quietly as I could. To be honest, I was relieved there hadn’t been a police car outside the house when we pulled up.

  It was probably only a matter of time before the police found out I was possibly the last person to see Peyton before she disappeared. That meant it was also only a matter of time before I had to talk to Uncle Martin about what was going on.

  But there was something I wanted to do first.

  I silenced the soles of my boots again as I entered the house and ran up to my bedroom. At this time of day, Martin was likely to be working in his study on the other side of the house.

  I shut the door of my room and took a second to catch my breath before walking over to the small cauldron I’d left on my desk the other night.

  I quickly gathered all the herbs and components I needed for the location tracking spell, including my father’s magical compass, cleaned out the cauldron, and took a deep breath.

  First, just to try it, I took a note Peyton had given me the first day of school with her phone number on it. There was likely some trace of her DNA still on the paper.

  I mixed everything together and took a deep breath before dropping the paper into the mixture and whispering, “Invenio.”

  As suspected, though, nothing happened.

  Supernatural kidnappings 101. Cloak your target’s location. But I had to at least try it, right?

  Now, I just had to hope Kai hadn’t cloaked his.

  I lifted up the piece of straw I’d used in my spell the other night and shook my head.

  There wasn’t a lot left of the top quarter, and it hadn’t even worked right in the first place, but this was my best shot at getting information today.

  I dropped the tip of the straw into the spell mixture.

  “Invenio,” I said again as I held the compass in my other hand and waited.

  I needed this to work. I needed something to prove that I could do this without my parents here to help. That I could still make a difference in the world.

  I needed this to work so that I could help find Peyton before it was too late.

  “Please,” I whispered, tapping my toes inside my boot.

  I stared at the needle on the compass, silently begging it to move.

  Come on.

  It jerked a couple of times, went still, and then started spinning around in circles so fast, I couldn’t follow it with my eyes.

  My stomach knotted as I watched. Was it supposed to do this? I couldn’t remember.

  I held my breath, waiting and praying.

  Then, finally, the needle stopped with an abrupt click. It was clearly pointing east, and a smile slowly crossed my face.

  “Found you,” I whispered before grabbing my bag and heading back out to begin my official investigation into the disappearance of my first real friend.

  So Many Questions

  Luckily, Martin hadn’t heard me come in, and as far as I could tell, he hadn’t heard me leave, either. I would likely have some major explaining to do if he found out I’d skipped school, but for now, I had my mind on more important things.

  I kept my eye on the compass in my hand as I followed its directions.

  A magical compass guided by a location spell worked much like a modern-day GPS system. It would lead you to where you wanted to go, turn by turn. That way, you didn’t end up trying to swim across a lake to reach your destination.

  What it didn’t tell you was how far away your target was from your current location. I didn’t have a car, or even a bike, so I really hoped Kai was somewhere close and that he hadn’t just used whatever crazy superspeed powers he seemed to have to teleport to school from Mars or something.

  If he was even a couple miles away, it was going to take me forever to get to him.

  Especially in this heat.

  It was still pretty early in the morning by the time I started walking, but it was probably eighty-five degrees already. By noon, it would be over ninety.

  I walked faster, turning west on Broad Street and then making a right turn onto Sanders. About ten minutes later, I was walking down East Hathaway when the needle on the compass started spinning again.

  At first, I worried maybe it had broken from the spell, but then, just like before, it suddenly clicked into place.

  The needle now pointed directly to my left, and when I turned my body in t
hat direction, I realized I was standing right in front of a small blue house with a well-maintained lawn and a bed of pansies out front. Frilly lace curtains framed a bay window in front of the house, and a pink butterfly windcatcher attached to a pole in the yard waved in the breeze.

  There was even a small garden gnome in front wearing a pink dress and yellow hat.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  Kai lived here?

  Maybe he lived with his grandmother or something. This was definitely not what I was expecting.

  I walked up the sidewalk, my heart beating faster with each step. Would he even open the door? He was not going to be happy to see me, and I hadn’t even really thought about what I would do once I actually found him.

  What was my plan?

  Seriously, I’d just walked for twenty minutes and hadn’t thought through a plan? What kind of natural-born Slayer was I?

  I took a deep breath and stepped onto the porch of the blue house, but before I could knock, the white door swung open.

  Kai towered in the doorway, shaking his head.

  “You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you?”

  “Peyton is gone,” I said. “Did you take her?”

  I suddenly realized that deep down, I already knew he didn’t. If I’d really believed he was capable of that, I never would have come here alone. I might be naive, but I wasn’t stupid.

  He studied my face, and I forced myself to meet his eyes without fear.

  “Why did you come here?” he asked. “I thought I was clear about my feelings on this. Besides, you know Peyton isn’t here.”

  “I need your help,” I said. “You can’t really expect me to stay out of it after this, can you? Besides, if you don’t invite me in, I’m just going to stand on your front porch for the rest of the day singing show tunes. That might get some of your neighbors asking questions you don’t want to answer.”

  He barely held back a smile before bowing his head and opening the door in a grand, sweeping gesture. “Mi casa es su casa,” he said. “Come on in.”