by Leanne Leeds
Just then, Emma’s cell phone rang.
She ignored it as if she wasn’t a detective, and that call had no chance of being about anything important. Like a murder.
It rang again.
She ignored it again.
When Emma showed no signs of interrupting her pixie fandom squealing session with Alice, I raced over to the table and checked the caller ID. “Crap. It’s the station.” I tapped the screen. “This is Astra Arden on Detective Emma Sullivan’s phone. How can I help you?”
“Astra?” It was Chief Harmon. “What are you doing with Emma’s phone?”
“Hiya, Chief. Emma’s in a…meeting with Alice Windrow about the marathon coming up in a few days,” I said on the fly without thinking. A lie is always easier to remember if there was a grain of truth. “Alice just wanted an outside opinion about the security challenges.”
“She’s talking to Emma about this?” Chief Harmon asked. “Why would Ms. Windrow talk to Emma about security for her marathon? Isn’t Punktex taking care of all that?”
“Yeah, probably, but she knew that Emma had been in Afghanistan and…well, come on, Chief, you know how two women get when they run into each other and want an excuse to sit and gab.” My mother gave me a sharp look from across the room, and I held up my hands silently in frustration. Yes, what I just said was a female stereotype and not a very accurate one, but it was the best I could do in the moment. “I’m sure they’re just talking about hairstyles or something.”
“Right, that makes sense,” he answered, satisfied.
I rolled my eyes. The reason stereotypes are so effective is that people swallow them hook, line, and sinker without questioning. Not necessarily a good thing, but it helped me out this very moment.
“The reason I’m calling is that we’ve had a report of some vandalism at a construction site on the southern edge of town.”
“Why does vandalism need a detective?” I asked. “Wouldn’t that be more appropriate for a patrolman?”
“You know you’re not even really a police officer, right, Ms. Arden?” the chief shot back, bristling at my question. “How about you leave the actual law enforcement to me?”
Well, because had I done that, all your cold cases would still be open.
I cleared my throat.
“Right, sorry, chief,” I told him apologetically.
“Can you two check it out? I need her to work on this pronto.”
“Do you need me to get her out of the meeting?” I asked, praying to whatever deity could hear me he answered no. I could cover for Emma pretty easily, but if she got on the phone with the chief acting the way she was? He wouldn’t think she was possessed or enchanted. He would think she was on drugs and would probably suspend her.
“No, that’s not necessary. I’ll send the location and information to the app. I just wanted to touch base with her to let her know this case might be slightly related to a case she was asking about going on in Orlando.” It sounded like the chief was shuffling papers on his desk. “One of the major investors in this property is Paul Wakefield, and he—”
“He was arrested for embezzling from Punktex, wasn’t he?” I asked, glancing at Alice.
“Arrested, but not indicted yet,” the chief responded. “Since we don’t know whether he actually did it or whether he’s actually going to prison for it, I’d like Emma to handle this with kid gloves. Paul’s still a citizen in our town, and if they don’t throw him in prison, we’re going to have to live with him for a long time.” The chief cleared his throat. “Now, I’m not telling Emma to give him any special treatment, but let’s handle this…carefully.”
It always amused me when politicians made political statements they tried to ensure wouldn’t be seen as political statements. The directive to handle a vandalism case by the force’s top detective and to do it carefully? That was the chief telling Emma to give him special treatment.
“I will pass it all on to her, Chief.”
I hit the screen to hang up and stared at my partner. “Well, it seems I’ve got a problem,” I told my mother.
If there’s one thing a coven of witches is good at, it’s figuring out how to cover all angles of a problem. That goes double for a coven of witches all related.
“Aunt Gwennie and I will hit the books and see if we can find some historical precedent for pixies doing whatever this is to people,” Mom told me. “Althea and Ayla can help keep an eye on the two of them to make sure nothing happens.” Mom looked around. “But before I do that, I’m going to find Archie and see if I can find out what’s going on with him and his dislike of Pistachio.”
“And why he’s not telling me,” I added.
“Well, he may not tell me anything, but I am Athena’s high priestess. Hopefully, that confers some sort of top-secret clearance as far as the owl is concerned.”
“But I’m the star…Um, the star thing.” I still had no idea what to call myself. “I should get to know whatever the owl knows.”
“Yes, dear, you are the star thing,” Mom agreed, her solemn forehead smoothing into a lack of expression. “No one is telling you you’re not the star thing.”
“Minnie, stop teasing her,” Aunt Gwennie chided.
My mother half-grinned. “She makes it so easy, Gwennie.” Mom winked at me. “Look, the owl didn’t arrive in this house with a handbook. He’s not your familiar, exactly, so we don’t really know what the rules are regarding him. Is there something he knows that he technically can’t tell you because of some guidelines Athena set out for what you need to do on your own? Is he throwing a hissy fit to try and get it across without breaking the rules that he has to follow?” Mom shrugged. “We don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”
“What he can’t tell you, he may be able to tell your mother because of her position,” Aunt Gwennie said.
“I swear, I feel like I’m back in the military.”
“What do you mean?” Ami asked.
“Figuring out how to bend the rules in the military without breaking them? It’s kind of a hobby,” I explained. “Everybody does it. The military has some of the most ridiculous rules. Many of them prevent you from doing your job easily. We spend a lot of time figuring out which rules are important and which rules are just stupid and then finding ways to twist the stupid ones into pretzels. Hence, we find a way do what we need to do without breaking them.”
“Oh, yeah, we do that, too,” Ami said with a nod.
My mother stared at her
Ami smiled in response. “So what do you want me to do, Mom?”
“You’ll go with Astra to investigate the vandalism,” Mom said.
“I’m sorry, you want me to take my younger sister on a police investigation?” Before she could answer, I shook my head no. “There’s no way. I can’t do that.”
“You can’t take Emma with you. She’s in absolutely no condition to conduct an investigation, even one as simple as vandalism. You also have no idea if there are other effects on her judgment.”
“Well, I’ll go alone, then,” I shrugged.
“You will not. We don’t know if whatever is happening to them could affect witches, and you’ve already placed yourself in the middle of this pixie thing.” Mom pointed toward Emma’s phone. “That property you have to investigate is right near the pixie territory.”
“You don’t know that.” I frowned and unlocked the phone.
“I do.”
Tapping the police software, I read the encrypted message from the chief. Mom was right. The vandalized property the chief called about was right next to the swamp we were in earlier today. The swamp Pistachio Waterflash reigns over like a seven-inch red-headed Don Juan. “How did you know that?” I asked, looking up. “How did you know where the property was?”
“I am the high priestess of this coven. I know you don’t think much of that role sometimes, but it does confer on me certain unexpected moments of epiphany.” She smiled with smug delight as she straightened her shoulders, and the
n her face fell. “All moments of grandstanding aside, Astra—the pixies can be dangerous foes if they’ve been corrupted or angered in some way. I don’t want you going out alone.”
“You do realize when I was in the military, I would chase murderous pixies across continents all by myself?” I appreciated her consideration for my safety, but it was Ami’s safety I was concerned with. She couldn’t even drink legally. I found it hard to believe that she would know how to handle five pixies hell-bent on attacking. “I have plenty of tools from the Ministry in my Jeep. I’ll be fine.”
“My Jeep,” Aunt Gwennie corrected. “And if you want to take my Jeep to the property, I agree with your mother. You need to take Ami with you.”
“I can just take Emma’s Malibu,” I shrugged.
“Why are you so stubborn?” my mother asked with exasperation.
“Because Ami doesn’t know how to fight. What can she do if confronted by a rabid pixie? Fling the death card at them and hope for a really vicious paper cut?”
I glanced at Ami, hoping I didn’t offend her too much, but she didn’t look offended. She looked like she agreed with me.
“I know how to fight,” Althea murmured. “I can fling any number of potions at someone, and I guarantee the effects are far more than a paper cut.” She turned toward my mother. “Astra’s right. Ami might be older, but if you don’t want her to go alone, I’m probably the best prepared to defend myself or to defend her.”
“Look, I don’t need defending,” I told my younger sister.
“I didn’t say you needed defending. I just said I was capable of it if the situation called for it.” Althea stared at my mother, her face inscrutable. “The sun is setting. Make your determination quickly. I need a few moments to gather what I need if I am to go.” Althea waited with a straight face, her hands clasped in front of her.
Ami nodded. “Mom, she’s right. I’d like to sit here and brag that I’m all tough and could handle myself in a fight, but that’s not true. I’m soft and squishy. Althea’s like a walking, talking female version of Professor Snape from Harry Potter,” Ami joked. “She’s unflappable.”
“Don’t sell yourself short; you were pretty good at Parrot Paradise,” I told Ami.
“I was not.”
“Of course you were. You didn’t run.”
“But I didn’t fight,” she responded. “I think that’s the point.”
“You didn’t need to.”
“And if I had needed to, I wouldn’t have.” Ami looked at Althea. “Thea would’ve slammed bottles of burning acid in their faces before they got within three feet of her.”
Althea half-smiled. “Maybe not acid.”
Althea’s satchel of warlike potions clinked at her feet each time the Jeep hit a bump. The fourth time it shifted with a chime-like jingle, I asked, “Are you sure they won’t break? The Jeep’s a rough ride—and if we have to go over dirt, it’s not going to get any smoother.”
“They won’t break,” Althea assured me. “The bottles are enchanted to be extra strong. I came up with the spell after Ayla broke one too many of my really valuable potions.” She sighed. “I wasn’t able to re-create a few of them, either.”
I nodded. “Good deal. Well, not that Ayla dropped your potion.”
“Potions. Plural.” Althea shifted in the seat. “She’s nosy, that one.”
“But how are they going to break when you throw them at someone if they’re enchanted not to break? I mean, I assume they’re meant to be thrown at someone.”
“Or on the ground, yes. They’re each enchanted—the bottles—to disintegrate when flung at a certain velocity toward their target,” she responded evenly. “The ones meant for offense or defense toward beings will disintegrate when hitting flesh. Obfuscation potions, area of effect potions? Those break when hitting the ground at a certain angle.”
“So they don’t break when dropped,” I guessed.
“You got it.”
Each of my sisters’ personalities was coming into focus for me. Ami was quiet, knowledgeable, and insightful—the picture of an empathic seer whose purpose in life was to bring emotional balance to people. Ayla, at just thirteen, was a rambunctious kid whose mouth often bit off more than she could chew. But even that made sense with her powers—translocation and the ability to speak to the dead.
Mom claimed Althea, though, was a healer. I glanced over toward my fifteen-year-old sister, bottles of battle between her feet, and wondered if Mom was right in her assessment of Thea’s nature. There was a sense of quiet menace in her that didn’t fit the idea in my head of a healer. A steely determination that didn’t fit. She caught me glancing at her.
“What?”
“The bottles.” I jerked my chin toward her stash. “I’m just confused. I thought Mom said you were a healer?”
“I am a healer,” she answered simply.
“Okay, why does a healer have a bunch of offensive potions, then?”
She was silent for a moment staring out the window. Then she nodded slightly and looked back at me. “I know mother calls me a healer, but what I really am is a potion master. Potions are my special talent. Healing potions, offensive potions, cursing potions. I have an instinctive understanding of how to put herbs and magics together in a bottle to create something…unique.” Althea smiled at me. “And usually amazing, if I do say so myself.”
“Useful talent to have.”
“It is. But that talent includes healing potions, it includes poisons, and it also includes explosives. You can make almost anything into a potion if you know what you’re doing,” Althea explained. “The poisons and explosives Mom’s not too impressed with. I’m fifteen years old, so mom calls me a healer because that’s what she wants to see me do with my talent. That’s the path she wants me to take. Heal people.”
“That’s not what you want to do?”
Althea paused a moment, thinking about it, and shrugged. “Not sure. I do want to heal people, but it’s not the only thing I want to do. What I know is I can do many things. I’m not one thing. So I don’t want to just be one thing. Mom disagrees, I guess.”
“Understandable.” I saw nowhere to go with that, so I let it pass without the comments I wanted to make to her. I struggled more and more to walk the fine line between my sisters and my mother’s authority. I didn’t want to challenge Mom’s parental right to raise Ami, Althea, and Ayla in whatever way she wanted.
But I didn’t want my sisters to become so frustrated with the limitations she forced onto them they would wind up like me—out the door and out of Mom’s life.
Althea and I were quiet rolling through the sun-dappled streets of Forkbridge, both of us lost in thought about the future.
Chapter Nine
The construction site was framed on one side by a major road that led in a straight shot to the highway but on three others? Pistachio Waterflash’s swamp.
Pixie territory.
I parked the Jeep along the main road and looked toward the scraped and cleared patch of earth that would bring civilization to this previously natural area. Forkbridge, small though it was, needed to expand with the more significant population. The only place to go was out into the undeveloped area. In Florida, those areas belonged to the abundant wildlife.
Until they didn’t.
The construction site was quiet, huge earth-moving machines still, but a few workers here and there stood talking. I checked my watch and wondered why they were still there. It was well past work hours.
“Hey, who is that?” Althea asked.
I looked up to find my sister pointing toward a woman standing tall at the center of the scraped earth patch. With a scowl, she stared around, intently examining all aspects of the construction site, while a man stood beside her. He was dressed like he could be the foreman. “She’s too dressed up to work at a construction site.”
Suddenly, she turned toward me, and I caught her entire face.
“Oh, it can’t be,” I breathed, recognizing her in
stantly. “I’m pretty sure that’s Meryl Hawkins. What on earth is she doing here?”
“The reporter?” Althea craned her neck.
“Just met her this morning when she interviewed Emma and me.”
“How’d that go?”
“Let’s just say not as I’d planned and leave it at that.”
Althea turned and raised an eyebrow.
“She wanted me to do psychic parlor tricks, handed me a pen to read. Well, I read it all right. Unfortunately, someone she had an affair with gave it to her.” My sister rolled her eyes and chuckled softly. “I know, right? They never learn.”
Althea glanced around the quiet site again. “I don’t see any vandalism. Do you?”
“Much to my eternal disappointment, we have to get out of the car to investigate. But no, offhand, I don’t see anything spray-painted or lit on fire or destroyed.” I scanned the area looking for anything that didn’t belong, but other than Meryl Hawkins? Nothing jumped out at me.
The lights had come on as night approached, but their brightness only partially dispelled the gloom of this isolated area. Blinding illumination and dark shadow alternated, exposing and hiding the damage done in the name of progress (and the mechanical tools used to do it).
I know. I sound like a crazy tree hugger, right?
I’m not a fervent environmentalist, mind you—though, to some extent, all witches are born that way. We connect to nature, have a profound affinity for it. Paranormals, in general, always had a solid bond to the natural world. It’s built into who we are in a way it doesn’t seem to be in humans. At least not in a way you guys seem aware of.
Well, okay, some of you are.
Anyway, I’m getting off track.
Even though I’m not a tree hugger, it’s still difficult for me to see what was once natural, beautiful, and the home to so much flora and fauna scraped flat for a Punktex grocery store. Which, since Paul Wakefield was involved, is what I assumed this location would be.
“What do you want me to do?” Althea asked me.