by Leanne Leeds
Emma gestured toward the patio doors. “Alice can make an official complaint.”
“But against who?” Ami asked.
“No one. Just that there’s been a general threat against her life.”
“But there hasn’t been,” I told her. “Not from anyone.”
“Of course there has. Didn’t you and Ami just say that there was a threat against her life?” Emma set her water glass down and turned again toward the both of us. “We’ll open up a case based on some nebulous potential threat that we don’t specify. That’ll allow us to get resources if we need them.”
Ami’s brow wrinkled with concern. “Can you do that?”
“Honey, I can do anything I want. Your sister and I just closed seventy-five old cases.” Emma smirked. “For the moment, we’re the ‘it girls’ in a department whose last ‘it girl’ was a miniskirted twenty-year-old intern in the evidence archives. Bless her heart, I don’t think she ever did realize why all the officers wanted their evidence stored on the top shelf. The reasons had nothing to do with efficiency.” She fixed my sister with an amused look. “If you get my drift.”
Ami frowned.
“Do you know if there was ever any investigation done on the accident that killed Alice’s parents?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
“No, I didn’t check that, but as soon as you mentioned Alice Windrow, a name did pop into my mind immediately. Paul Wakefield.” She looked back and forth. “You must not know he’s been indicted over in Orlando for embezzlement. Seems a strange coincidence coming up right now, doesn’t it?” Emma looked back and forth again, her eyebrows knitted together. “Really? Neither one of you have ever heard of him?”
We both shook our heads no.
“Paul Wakefield is the CEO of Punktex.” A raised eyebrow. “Ringing any bells?”
“Punktex?” Ami’s eyes widened. “Oh no, that’s awful.”
I looked back and forth, waiting for one of them to enlighten me. Still, apparently, my sister and the detective expected me to be previously enlightened. “What does a grocery chain have to do with Alice Windrow?”
Ami glanced at Emma. “Punktex is the grocery chain started by Alice’s uncle. The one she didn’t know?” Emma nodded. “I read about him in the newspaper occasionally before he died, but the chain is all over Florida.”
“And several other states,” Emma said. “It’s huge.”
I blew out a frustrated sigh. “So Alice runs this grocery chain?”
“No. Alice’s money comes from this grocery chain,” Emma told me. “But Alice doesn’t run it. Well, technically, it may look like that, but…okay, see, it’s privately owned. She’s the chairman of the board of directors, but as far as I’m aware, that’s the extent of her involvement.” Emma leaned against a post. “I talked to the prosecutor in Orlando on the way over here, and they are pretty frustrated, actually. Alice is just completely unaware of what’s going on with Paul. She, according to the prosecutor, doesn’t want to admit he could be ripping her off, so the board isn’t particularly cooperative with the investigation.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Who’s on the board of directors of Punktex?”
“Now you’re getting it,” Emma told me with a nod. “Alice Windrow and Paul Wakefield.”
I blinked. “Just the two of them? No one else?”
“Yep. Just the two of them. It’s private. They’re not required to have more than that. She’s got tons of money she inherited separate from Punktex, but the vast majority of her wealth is tied up in that grocery chain.”
“The grocery chain this Paul Wakefield is being accused of embezzling from.”
“Yep.”
“Poor Alice,” Ami murmured.
“Not poor,” Emma disagreed. “She takes quite a bit of profit out of it. In fact, Punktex is technically the sponsor of this marathon, not Alice herself.”
“So what happens if Alice Windrow dies before removing Paul Wakefield from the board?” I asked. “I mean, I’m assuming. I don’t know much about corporate law, but since she’s the owner, I’m guessing she can.”
“It’s a good guess. With just the two of them on the Board of Directors, Alice, as the owner, has ultimate control of Punktex. Unless—”
“Unless she dies,” Ami whispered.
Emma nodded. “If she dies, he becomes the sole board member. If that happens, he’s in full operational control of the company. Ultimately, it wouldn’t matter who legally wound up owning it. The working papers say full control goes to him upon her death. That’s it. The end. No contingency.”
My jaw dropped. “Who would sign papers like that?”
Emma’s eyes drifted toward the glass doors. “Her parents had just died. She just inherited Scrooge McDuck-level money and control of a company she only knew because that’s where she grabbed her milk on the way home from aerobics.” Emma turned back. “My guess? She signed whatever was put in front of her.”
The three of us moved back inside to interrogate Alice Windrow, heiress and pixie follower. I felt vaguely unsettled by the case “assigned” to me by “Athena.”
When I was in the paranormal military, I would’ve (no doubt) been assigned to defend the powerful Paul Wakefield had the situation been similar. I could have been tasked to find and arrest someone like Alice to get her out of the way. It wasn’t unheard of. A CEO would have always trumped a twenty-something philanthropist with a pixie complex.
That’s just how it was in my world.
Well. My previous world.
Well, the previous world, really. The Witches’ Council was gone.
But it was hard not to recall how masterful my ultimate bosses were at exploiting people in their weakest moments for their own gain. I remembered their excitement when Charlotte Astley took over the Magical Midway—and how gleeful they were at the opening for attack, thanks to her uncle’s demise. I watched them use Gunther Makepeace’s sadness for the death of his mother against him.
So, sure. Considering the things I’d seen in my life?
I wasn’t surprised someone was probably trying to exploit Alice Windrow. Something about Alice’s personality made her seem defenseless, like a fluffy kitten that just wanted to chase a ball of yarn around until it was time for a nap. Because of that, though, this whole thing really annoyed me.
Only evil people exploit the defenseless.
And yet…it made me vaguely uncomfortable remembering some of the gentle, cuddly characters I’d thrown into paranormal prison because I was just following orders.
“Are you okay?” Ami asked, her quiet voice cutting into my thoughts. “Your face looks like you sucked on a lemon.”
“I’m fine. I just get disgusted occasionally with humanity, and this is definitely one of those moments.” My mother, Aunt Gwennie, and Archie sat around the kitchen table facing Alice. The owl leaned back and forth like a snake watching her, and the heiress laughed at his quick, flexible movements. “None of this should be happening to her.”
“You can’t say bad things shouldn’t happen to anyone, Astra,” Ami said, her voice low. “Life is all about balance. If we didn’t know what the dark was, how could we appreciate the light? That’s our purpose, you know.”
I took a deep breath and turned, ready to rant at my naive sister and her unsophisticated way of looking at the world. My mother’s lessons—holiday after holiday of the high priestess’s countless spiritual justifications—echoed through Ami’s words. It set my teeth on edge.
When something terrible happened to anyone, my mother would light a candle and pray softly to her goddess. Kneeling for hours, she would chant and beseech some powerful unseen deity to intercede, to change things. It wasn’t quite “sitting in a room and cursing the darkness,” but…well, to be frank, it wasn’t chasing down a bad guy and slamming a lightning bolt up his butt, either.
Religion was nothing more than a soothing balm for people that needed a reason for suffering—and that was one reason I despised it.
&nbs
p; I found my way of dealing with things practical.
I found my mother’s way useless.
But…Ami wasn’t my mother.
I exhaled slowly to deflate my offense before I put my sister on blast. “I know that’s how you see things, Ami,” I told her, keeping the judgment from my tone. “I just…don’t.”
“You don’t what?” my mother asked.
“It’s nothing, Mother,” Ami answered for me, her voice suddenly subdued. “Astra and I were talking about something, that’s all. It wasn’t about Alice.”
That subservience Ami displayed as soon as my mother opened her mouth? That natural stance of utter subjugation? It set my teeth on edge yet again. “Right. I think Emma has some questions for Alice, and we need to make a game plan for how we’re going to handle this.”
Before we could start, a bell rang from the store.
“I’ll go see who it is,” Aunt Gwennie said, jumping up. “You all stay here. This is much more important, and I know your mother is very interested in how you girls work through these situations. Aren’t you, Minnie?”
My mother glanced toward Ayla, still lying on the couch, utterly ignoring the latest drama, and nodded quietly. “If you all wouldn’t mind.”
It wasn’t a question.
She wore a pleasant expression as she glanced around the table as if we were her royal subjects, with her fierce eyes daring each of us to refuse her. I pulled up a chair and thought about all the times I had seen this show play out in my youth. Why bother saying no? What Mother wants, Mother gets. Her words could be polite, but her energy demanded compliance.
The thing is, though—this wasn’t about my mother. Or me. Or the Ardens, really.
This was about Alice.
“It’s really up to Alice how many people she wants to have as an audience to her interview, Mom,” I answered without refusing. Ami froze as if she sensed the struggle for control between my mother and me before we’d even thrown down gauntlets. “If she only wants to talk to Emma privately, I think we should let her have that. This stuff is really personal, and maybe she doesn’t want the entire Arden household knowing her business.”
My mother stared at me, her face impassive.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” Alice answered in a chipper tone. “Astra, I’ve known your mom for years. Your whole family, really. And the pixies told me that I can trust her.” She smiled at Mom. My mother turned, her expression filled suddenly with a disbelief writ large and loud across her face.
Mom and the pixies did not—and I mean did not—get along.
“But they hate her,” Archie said without thinking.
My mother glared at the owl.
“I’m sure they don’t hate her,” I told Archie.
“Am I missing something?” Emma asked, her detective antenna sensing an untruth being set out on the table unexamined.
“You’re fine. Let’s just get started,” I told her. She nodded.
Three hours later, Detective Emma Sullivan scratched more thoughts in her case notepad as Alice went upstairs to nap. The questioning had been grueling and more than a little upsetting.
“Are you sure she can stay here?” Emma asked my mother, glancing up and then returning her gaze to the pad. “It would help, of course, but I don’t want to put you guys out.”
“Of course, though I don’t know she’ll be comfortable here. But it’s either that or Astra goes and stays with her in her condo.” My mother’s usually confident face looked uncertain. “There was so much information shared. I don’t know that I understand much more than I did when we started.”
“Well, I understand a lot more than when we started, and that’s all that matters, Mrs. A, since I’m the detective.” Emma looked up briefly to smile reassuringly at her. “I know you all think this kind of stuff is predetermined, and you can look in a crystal ball and see what’s going to happen—”
“Detective Sullivan,” my mother said sharply, “if we thought we could do that, don’t you think we would have done that already? Instead of sitting here for three hours while you pelted the poor girl with the most intimate of questions about her personal life?”
Emma didn’t so much as flinch. “I meant no offense, Mrs. A.”
“I am not married. I’ve never been married,” Mom responded haughtily. “I’m not a Mrs. anyone, thank you.”
Emma blinked that time. “Sorry, I just thought…” Her voice trailed off as she looked at me, then Ami. Finally, she glanced toward Ayla. Althea was off in the herb room buried in her potions, or Emma would have laid eyes on her, too. “I mean, you have four daughters that all look pretty similar to one another, so I just assumed you were divorced. Or a widow.”
Minnie Arden, the high priestess of the goddess Athena and ruler of the Arden family coven, looked down her nose at Emma. The condescending look was so sharp, so unmistakable, and so well delivered, my mother practically looked British. “We don’t marry in the Arden family.”
“Right.” Emma nodded. “Got it.” She turned her body so my mother couldn’t see her face and gave me a look that said she was apologetic for riling Mom but amused by my mother’s arrogance. “Mom Arden is right, though, Astra. We can’t let Alice go home alone. Not if we have no idea who’s coming after her.”
“You didn’t narrow down anything from the interview?”
“Despite Alice’s insistence that the pixies adore her, I can’t rule out that this is paranormal in nature. I mean, the card came up, and that’s paranormal, so…yeah, I mean…” Emma fell silent and gazed at her notes. “Thing is, though, I have no idea how to investigate a pixie. Or pixies.” She sat up and looked at me. “Just go to the forest and ask a tree? I mean, how does this go?”
“I’ll take care of that. The problem is I can’t bring her.”
“Her, who?”
“Alice. They may not be honest with me about what’s going on with her if she’s with me. And she needs to be guarded.”
“I told you, Astra, she can stay here,” my mother insisted again. “The house is warded.”
Emma frowned. “What does that mean? Warded?”
“No one can come in this house with ill intentions toward anyone here,” my mother responded, looking proud. “No weapon can cross, no attack can happen on these sacred grounds. This is a temple, after all.” My mother frowned as Emma looked around like she was trying to spot which part of our house was an actual temple. “It’s not about the decor, detective. It’s about dedication and energy. Trust me, it’s warded to be a sanctuary—”
“That doesn’t extend to rabbits,” Archie mentioned helpfully.
“It will the next full moon,” Ami warned him.
Emma pulled out her service weapon and held it up. “I brought this in just fine. I don’t think your wards work the way you think they do.”
“You didn’t come here to harm us,” I told her.
“Try and shoot one of us,” my mother suggested.
Emma blinked. “Pardon me?”
“Go on,” Mom urged with a sly smile.
Emma appeared to consider the invitation but then shook her head no. “I can’t do that. This is my service weapon. And, well…I could hurt you. Even if you say I won’t, I just can’t do that.”
“I appreciate your ethics, detective, but your statement is more correct than you know. You can’t do that. If you tried to shoot one of us, your gun would not go off. If it did, the bullet would not reach its intended target, I assure you.”
Emma thought for a while, then holstered her gun. “I’m going to have to trust you because I’m not going to shoot you. I’d have to do the paperwork if I did, and man, that would be immense. I’m not in the mood. But it’s good information to have for the future.”
“In case you want to shoot me?” I asked.
Emma glared. “Don’t push me, Arden.”
Chapter Six
The snakes and birds watched silently from the trees as we picked our way carefully into the swampy marshland.
“And what, pray tell, does a pixie tracker look like, human?”
“Don’t be insulting,” Emma mumbled.
“Calling you human is insulting?”
“Well, the way you say it, it didn’t sound like a compliment.” Emma stared at the small blue stone in the palm of my hand. No bigger than a quarter—more like a pebble, really—the smooth, glass-like sides glowed a soft blue. “I was expecting something much more ancient-looking. Maybe with a little steampunk flair.” She squinted. “Though I’m beginning to get the idea you paranormals really like things that glow.”
“You wouldn’t be the first, the last, or the only person to have that opinion. I do need to point out, though, that energy makes light. Light glows. That’s just science.” Emma burst out laughing. “What?”
“You’re holding a rock in your hand that’s glowing blue, and we’re following it into a swamp bog looking for pixies.” She looked up at me. “I don’t think science has anything to do with this, Astra.” She pulled out a clear bottle with some kind of pink liquid in it and took a swig. “Man, it’s hot.”
“It is. Of course science has something to do with it. Magic is just natural stuff that science hasn’t explained yet.”
“You’re the most pragmatic witch I’ve ever met.”
“And how many witches have you met?”
“I would have said six—your family—but considering some of the stories you’ve told me about how many of you there are? Who knows.”
“Watch out,” I told her, pointing.
As Emma stepped around a swampy puddle with ominous air bubbles, her yellow plastic boots made obscene sucking sounds in the mud. “Ugh. This is so gross.” She looked at my sleek black boots. “How are your feet not getting wet?”
“Magic. Now be quiet.” The stone pulsed a deeper hue of blue. “When it starts pulsing like that, it means we’re close.”