by Willow Mason
I kicked at the door, hitting it squarely just below the lock. Although it juddered, a shock that ran up my leg to my hips, the door held. As I raised my leg for another kick, I saw the key lying nearby on the floor. New fear flooded into my belly as I realised Patsy would never leave it out here.
With a quick twist of the handle, I stepped inside before my eyes properly registered what they were seeing. Every book in the room was in shreds. The spines were torn and twisted, trailing threads from old-fashioned bindings.
The minor damage that had brought the treasured volumes into this room for repair had been obliterated in a new wave of destruction.
A level of destruction matching to the books in my house.
“Patsy!” I ran around the back of the tall shelf but couldn’t spot her anywhere. There was no way the woman I’d met this morning would tolerate this damage while there was breath left in her body to fight it.
With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone. “Lucas?” As he answered I put my finger to a dark spot on the splintered door frame. Blood. “I think Patsy has been kidnapped from the library.” My throat was so tight I couldn't swallow. “Kidnapped or worse.”
Chapter Ten
I called Rosie and Posey after the police arrived. Lucas had taken a bare minimum of details before heading inside, although I’d waylaid Syd to explain the invisible creature prowling the library earlier.
“I guess it’s no use keeping an eye out,” he said, tipping me a wink before ploughing in after his partner.
His enforced cheer made me feel slightly better about the situation, but I was glad when the twins waved at me from along the street.
“Tell us all about it?” Rosie exclaimed, pulling me into a bear hug. “What happened? When? To whom?”
Posey stood back, frowning at the door to the library. “Patsy is a strong woman more than capable of taking someone on.”
“She could just be off on a little jaunt,” Rosie said, testing out a bright smile. “With no assistant, it’s hard to know what to do when you’re called away from your post.”
“Patsy would never leave the library open.” Posey rubbed her forehead and scanned the road, which was almost empty. “The number of times we’ve turned up to investigate some legal principle only to find a ‘back in five minutes’ sign.” She shook her head.
“Perhaps she was in a rush.”
I glanced from one to the other, feeling something was off-kilter. “Where are your wings?”
“Eh?” Rosie stroked her back and narrowed her eyes at me. “They’re here, same as always. If you’re playing a prank, this is hardly the time.”
Posey leant forward, her face keen with interest. “Can you really not see them?”
“Not at all.” I poked a finger where they should be and felt only the gentlest hint of something there, like touching the world’s softest cotton wool. “And I can’t get any pixie dust off my head right now. I tried inside the library and came up empty.”
“Oh.” Posey tilted her head and peered at me with an intensity that made my cheeks feel hot. “Your hair is looking… hm. A little flat?”
Just as she said the words, a lock of hair fell over my eye and I tucked it behind my ear. The gesture, once a daily staple, hadn’t occurred in so long my muscles cried with nostalgia. “What’s happening to me?”
Muffin mewed loudly from inside my jacket, and my mouth fell open in alarm. “Now I can’t hear you properly, either!”
“You seem to be depixiefying at an alarming rate.” Posey patted me on the shoulder. “But I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”
The assurance did nothing to quell the panic clambering up my body. “What happens if I revert completely? Do I lose my powers forever?”
I glanced at Muffin, seeking an answer, but she could only shake her head. Any words of wisdom were lost, along with my pixieness.
“Your mother said she was pregnant, didn’t she?” Posey tapped the back of my hand to get my attention. “Any chance you know what flavour of baby she’s having?”
I could barely swallow as the ramifications hit me. My hands were trembling so much I shoved them into my jeans pockets while staring at the ground. “She hasn’t said, so I guess she doesn’t know yet.”
“Don’t worry.” Rosie drew me into another tight hug. “Even if you’re no longer the youngest daughter, you’ll always have a place in our community.”
The words had me fighting back tears, but they also rang hollow. What good was community support if I couldn’t understand my best friend? Would I never hear Muffin’s voice again?
Lucas waved from the entrance of the library before joining us on the footpath. “We’ve done a thorough sweep of the building and can’t find any trace of Patsy. A forensic team is coming in from up north to do a closer scene examination than we can manage, and we’ve put out an alert to all stations.”
“Do you have any idea what happened?” Rosie asked, tapping her foot. “A woman can’t just up and vanish.”
Syd beckoned me over and I excused myself. “Most of the books targeted by whatever it was are old spell books and essays on magic practices. I’m worried something is trying to get hold of knowledge they shouldn’t have and became frustrated when they couldn’t.”
“That doesn’t sound like good news for Patsy.”
“I’ve called in the local coven supreme to do a sweep of the library in case she can come up with any further relevant clues.” He scratched his eyebrow, which was twitching. “Other than that…” Syd shrugged. “I don’t suppose you can use some pixie magic to give us a helping hand.”
The piece of fringe I’d tucked behind my ear fell over my face again. “I’m not capable at the moment,” I admitted. “But if Brody’s at home, he can use some of the dust inheritance left by Great Aunt Esmerelda to help.”
“It could be important. Can you call him at work?”
I pulled out my phone and checked the messages I’d sent him earlier. Still no acknowledgement they’d been read. I pressed the number for the Tavern Café. “I’ll try but I’m not sure he’s there. If he is, he’s ignoring all my other attempts to get in contact.”
The server who answered confirmed my suspicion. “He hasn’t shown up to work there today,” I said, tucking my phone back into my pocket. “And he was scheduled on the midday shift.”
“Anywhere else he could’ve gone?”
A thousand places. Each as unlikely as the last. “I can’t imagine him skipping work except for an emergency. But if he was called away somewhere unexpectedly, I also can’t think why he’d shut his phone off.”
Lucas drifted over—the concern on his face a mirror image of mine. “This is your flatmate you’re talking about?” When I nodded, he pulled out his pad. “What’s the mobile phone number?”
I recited it and he read it back to me, then glanced to Syd. “We could have Doris over at the court get us the authority to ping it.”
When I raised my eyebrows, he explained. “It’s not like tapping his phone or anything, but it’ll let us know his nearest cell phone tower if he made or received any calls today.”
Syd nodded, then tapped the back of my hand. “Does he have a find-my-phone app?”
“If he does, I don’t know the passwords to access it or anything.” I glanced over my shoulder at Muffin who might be shouting the code out to me for all I knew. “When I get home, I’ll see if there’s anything stored on the laptop.”
Not that Brody used it much. He preferred to use his mobile data plan than risk interrupting Muffin playing a card game.
With my worry now stoked, I wanted to search the streets but that wouldn’t solve anything. Better to let the police handle things and put my energy into fixing things within my control.
“We haven’t heard from him, either,” Rosie said with a worried frown as I rejoined them. “I hope he’s not in any bother.”
It took a huge effort to move my mind onto other matters but standing by the side of the road and sp
eculating would only waste time. I pulled out the receipts from the remodelling and showed them to Posey. “Do you remember this company at all?”
She took the pages off me, her eyes widening as the implications of the information hit home. “I’ll need to check through our records to be sure, but I think we dealt with the closure of Hans Martingale’s business about a decade ago. His son bought it lock, stock, and barrel, and opened under another name.”
Rosie pushed forward to read over her sister’s shoulder. “Oh, yes. He was a lovely old man. Bright pink hair suited him.”
“The builder was a pixie?” I squeaked.
“A halfsie. Half pixie and half witch.”
“But his witch half was so powerful it made up for the drawbacks of being a male pixie,” Posey said, handing the papers back. “If he’d been a bad man, the world would have trembled before him, but the universe knows what it’s doing. He was a gentle giant.”
“A gentle, pink giant,” Rosie added with a longing expression on her face.
We walked towards their law office, Muffin tagging a lift on my shoulder. Every time she gave a mew, I felt my heart break a little more at the loss of her wise and kind words. Even if she mostly chastised me about the lack of appropriate food items and my disgraceful baking skills, it was a pleasure to hear her voice.
“These are our oldest files,” Posey said when we reached the office, pulling open the bottom drawer in the filing cabinet. “When we took over the business from the last lawyer, we found out Zach enjoyed keeping paper records rather than storing things on the computer. We haven’t transferred them all over.”
I sat on the waiting room couch while the twins poured over the documents, setting aside those of interest. Muffin played on the floor in front of me, pouncing on a feather duster as though it had called her a rude name.
“These are all the relevant things I can find,” Posey said, spreading the files out on the table. “Most of this is just related to his closing the business, but there were a few… um… supernatural things we took care of, too.”
My blank expression prompted further information out of her.
“When a witch has a surfeit of powers, they can pass them on, just like the pixies pass their inheritance down through the female line. Unlike pixies, the recipient doesn’t need to share familial ties.”
“So, someone in Oakleaf Glade now has his powers?”
Posey nodded. “They went to Darla, goodness knows why. She doesn’t put them to any use.”
I rubbed my forehead, flicking back my hair as it fell lower with every passing minute. “What can they be used for?”
“My sister is being obnoxious,” Rosie said, pulling a file away from Posey with a frown. “Darla’s never needed to use these powers because their primary purpose is to fight rogue supernaturals. If the community can’t get them under control, she summons extra strength to deal with them appropriately.”
“They would’ve been handy against a certain vampire,” Posey said with a snort. “It’s not like she hasn’t had the opportunity.”
“One opportunity. One.” Rosie raised her forefinger in case we’d misunderstood. “And he was thwarted before she had time to intervene.” She got to her feet, brushing the front of her skirt. “In fact, that very case might be why she was so willing to help with the monster hunter’s potion.”
“You think she reverse engineered the potion to apologise for not getting rid of Ivan for me?” I rolled my eyes. “Of course, that makes perfect sense.”
“Usually, she’d turn down any request like that. Darla’s a very busy witch with a lot on her plate.” Muffin mewed and Rosie snorted with laughter. “Yes, that’s a good point. Nobody should underestimate the draw of a cute kitten familiar when asking favours from the community.”
“If Hans Martingale was involved, does that mean the skeleton upstairs was a rogue supernatural?” I asked.
Rosie immediately agreed while Posey took her time to think through the answer. “He did also just build things but with the secret compartment as part of the blueprints, I’d say it was more likely than not.”
I remembered how the bones had glowed with a faint light until Reggie touched them and they collapsed. “If there was something evil being held there, it escaped this morning.”
The twins turned to each other and clasped hands. “And the same thing might now have Patsy.”
“And Brody,” I added, my concern for his welfare racking up another notch. “We have to find them.”
But Posey shook her head. “I’ll tell Darla what’s going on so she’s prepared but there’s no way we should get further involved. It’s too dangerous, especially since you’ve lost your powers.”
“Knock, knock,” my mother said from the doorway, Ben eagerly poking his head into the room to look around. “We’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for you to show up and take us to dinner. Finally, we took it upon ourselves to hunt you down.”
Dinner? At a time like this!
But Mum and Ben didn’t know what kind of time it was, and the twins were right. Without my powers, I wasn’t any help.
“Sure,” I said, smacking my head as though I’d forgotten. “Let’s get going. We need to pick up Uncle Pete on the way.”
Chapter Eleven
“I couldn’t believe it when you didn’t turn up,” my mother said, wriggling her shoulders against the restaurant chair to make herself more comfortable. “I was telling Ben we’d better get ready right on the dot otherwise you’d be wild, then you didn’t even show.”
“You didn’t need to tell me,” Ben said in a gentle voice, signalling to a passing server for a refill on his light beer. “I’ve known Elisa for over ten years, remember?”
“Of course, you have, love.” My mother leaned over and planted a smooch on his cheek. “And a great time they’ve been, too.”
“What’s up with you two?” Uncle Pete asked, staring morosely at the gingham tablecloth. “Since when have you been into public displays of affection?”
“You haven’t told him?” Ben asked, his eyes widening.
“Needed to let Elisa know first, didn’t I?” She held out her hand, twiddling her fingers so the diamond engagement ring caught the light. “We’re getting married.”
“After all this time? Why bother?” Uncle Pete pointed to his glass as a waitress brought over Ben’s refill. “Another one here too, please.”
“The usual response is congratulations,” my mother said, her smile fading. “And don’t you think you’ve had enough to drink already?”
“If I thought that, I’d stop ordering.”
The siblings glared at each other across the table and Ben caught my eye with a hint of desperation. “Did you look around the town after you left my place?” I asked my uncle, my mind casting out for topics of conversation and only hooking bland.
“Nope. I don’t want to see more of it than I have already.”
“Nice attitude.” Mum screwed up her face. “If you’re not going to be pleasant company, why didn’t you just stay back at the motel?”
“Because I ran out of food and drink.” As soon as the waitress placed a fresh pint on the table, Uncle Pete set to work polishing it off.
Ignoring him, I turned to Ben. “What wedding plan arrangements did you work out with the twins?”
His eyes sparkled. “So many things. We’ve got ideas for bouquets and table settings and about five hundred different dress designs, both for the bride and her bridesmaids.”
“Speaking of which”—Mum turned to me—“would you like to be one?”
“I’ll have to check my calendar,” I said in a vague tone, looking around at the other tables. When I caught her face collapsing from the corner of my eye, I slapped the back of her hand. “Of course, I want to be a bridesmaid. I’d be delighted.”
“Good. That’s one down.”
“Who’re you having as your best man?”
Ben seesawed his hand. “I’ve narrowed it down to thr
ee. Maybe four.”
“Did you remember Aidan’s back in Nelson, come Monday?”
“Maybe five.”
“Do you think we could talk about something more serious than your upcoming nuptials?” Uncle Pete growled.
My irritation at his behaviour suddenly overflowed. “Like what? How you tried to keep my inheritance a secret until I almost lost the chance?”
My mother sat up straight. “What’s this?”
“The letter about my inheritance,” I said, keeping steady eye contact with my uncle. “He received the original notice and kept it secret until after the period it stated I could claim.”
“Is that true, Pete?”
“What does it matter?” He flicked an angry hand at me. “You worked it out, anyway.”
“Only because the lawyers had to wait out six months for probate.” I sat back and folded my arms. “If I hadn’t received the notice at the time I did, the whole thing would have gone to someone else.”
“And what would be wrong with that?” Uncle Pete folded his arms in a mirror image of my body language. “What great things have happened since you came here? Word on the street is you’ve been constantly calling the police.”
“But that’s because—” Mum clapped a hand over her mouth while her cheeks flamed red. “Don’t mind me,” she muttered as we all stared at her.
“Let me guess.” I shifted on my chair and forced my hands to rest in my lap. “The twins have been telling tales outside of school.”
“They hinted you might have a relationship with a certain policeman,” Ben said in an apologetic tone. “But we’re not taking that as gospel. No way.”
Uncle Pete leant forward, jabbing his finger onto the table. “You wouldn’t need to have a policeman by your side if you’d stayed in Nelson.”
“No. I just would’ve made their acquaintance when they evicted me from the flat because I couldn’t afford the rent.”
“Money isn’t everything.” He sat back in his chair, huffing out a breath. “It’s a lot better to be poor and safe than to risk your life every day just for the comfort of living in your own house.”