Unbaked Croakies: A Magical Cozy Mystery with Talking Animals (Enchanting Inquiries Book 1)

by Sam Cheever

  We chewed on that while Alice risked another bite of lemon-flavored diamond.

  “What kind of spell was that?” Sebille asked.

  Lea glanced at the sprite. “He used a doppelganger spell. I could see the fractured aura, but I wasn’t sure, at first, what it was. I’ve never seen one firsthand before.”

  Sebille frowned. “Are you sure it wasn’t a four-dimensional glamour?”

  Shaking her head, Lea said, “No, a glamour doesn’t noticeably change the aura. It sits on top of a person’s form like a full-body mask.” She held her hands up, curving her fingers and sliding them together. “A doppelganger spell inserts jagged edges into the person’s aura, fitting them together like parts of a puzzle. It’s almost impossible to see unless you recognize the aura change.”

  Alice dunked her scone, the durable snack clinking against the edge of the mug like metal. “I woke up in the trunk of my car, disoriented and feeling weak.” She lifted a haunted gaze to us. “Fortunately, I’ve been there before…don’t ask…and was able to escape from the trunk and drive back here.” She shook her head. “I don’t think this guy is going to stop until he gets what he wants.”

  I agreed, and the thought made me shudder with dread.

  “I don’t mind telling you it’s taken a bit of the stuffing out of me.” Alice added. “I’m knackered.”

  Lea patted her shoulder. “We’ll get out of here and let you rest.”

  “Don’t worry,” I told Alice. “I’ll take care of things downstairs.”

  Alice nodded, but she seemed to already have forgotten us. She’d set her tea, scone still resting in the cooling liquid, on her bedside table and laid back down. She was already snoring as we pulled the door to her apartment gently closed.

  We didn’t speak until we were back in the bookstore.

  Sprawled along the wide window sill at the front of the store, Fenwald turned his head to us as we came into the store, giving us a soft meow as if asking how Alice was.

  “She’s resting,” I told the big feline.

  He made a soft little whirring sound and then commenced to cleaning his paws, his ratty form mirrored in the glass of the big front window as he bathed.

  I looked at my friends. “Tea?”

  Lea shook her head. “I need to get home. But thanks.”

  I nodded.

  Still, nobody moved. Like Alice, we were all tired and more than a little concerned about what had happened. Clearly, someone meant us harm, and we were moving blindly through a shifting landscape with a deadly artifact at its center.

  “I’m worried about that suitcase,” I told my friends.

  Sebille nodded. “Me too. Though I don’t know where it would be safer than the toxic magic vault in the back.”

  “That’s only safe if Alice doesn’t take it out again,” Lea said softly. We were all silent for a moment, each of us no doubt trying to decide how we felt about Lea’s observation and the unspoken message behind it.

  There were so many questions and so few answers.

  Why had Alice suddenly decided to take the suitcase out of Croakies?

  Had it just been a giant coincidence that the creature who’d imitated Alice at Gnomish had been waiting for her to leave the store with it?

  What had that creature been doing, imitating Alice?

  Had he known we would show up at Gnomish?

  And, if so, why hadn’t he taken steps to stop us?

  I rubbed my temple, getting a headache from the never-ending questions.

  “I’ll keep an eye on the vault tonight,” I told them. “My hidey-hole is between it and Alice.”

  Lea nodded, squeezed my shoulder, and turned toward the door. “Let’s talk in the morning. Maybe after a good night’s sleep, we’ll have a better idea of what to do next.”

  “See you in the morning,” I said, watching her leave.

  Sebille stood in front of me, thoughtfully pursing her lips.

  “What?” I asked her.

  It took her a beat to swing her startling gaze to mine. She held my stare for a moment and then quietly said, “Alice can’t do this job anymore. She’s compromised.”

  My pulse picked up, adrenaline flooding my system. “What do you mean? You think she was involved in that mess at Gnomish?”

  “Involved? Probably not,” Sebille responded. “But she’s grown careless. A Keeper of the Artifacts can’t be careless, Naida. This job’s too dangerous. I’m worried about the situation here.”

  I was worried too. About Alice’s competence. And about her apparent disinterest in training me to do the job. “I’ll pick her brain. Step up my training.” I took a deep breath. “I’ll work harder and faster to fill in the gaps.”

  Sebille’s expression was filled with something that looked like pity. She nodded and turned away, leaving Croakies without another word.

  I locked the physical deadbolt and engaged the magical lock using the spell Alice had taught me the very first day. Then I turned off the lights and went to stand in front of the window, my fingers digging into Fenwald’s fur as I watched Sebille hurry across the street and into the dark alley next to the vapery. I assumed there was a staircase leading to the upper levels and her apartment.

  Or else she just popped into a bug and buzzed up to an open window.

  I sighed, so tired.

  Beneath my gently probing fingers, Fenwald’s long body vibrated under a throaty purr. He watched Sebille too, his gaze still locked on the spot where she’d disappeared into the shadows as I yawned widely and said goodnight.

  To my surprise, the big cat didn’t head for the dividing door with me. He apparently planned to spend the night in the bookstore.

  No doubt dubbing himself the night watchman for the store.

  Goddess knew we needed one.

  Yawning widely enough to crack my jaw, I headed for the dividing door. I didn’t quite make it. The bookstore phone rang as I was reaching for the handle. Groaning aloud, I glanced at the wild-eyed black cat clock on the wall above the sales counter.

  Ten o’clock. Technically, I didn’t have to answer the phone. The store had been closed for hours. But I felt as if letting it go to voicemail would be like shirking my duties. So I trudged over and answered, hoping whoever it was didn’t want anything that required a lot of brainpower. “Croakies Bookstore.”

  “Hello…” There was a short pause, during which I contemplated whether the caller wanted me to return the greeting. I’d opened my mouth to do that when she said, “Is this the Keeper?”

  My mouth slammed shut. I didn’t quite know what to say to that. Only the magic-using community knew that title and where to find the KoA. But it seemed imprudent of me to just blurt out verification of it over the phone. “Who’s calling, please?”

  A sigh wafted through the line. “This is Maude Quilleran. I want to hire the Keeper to help me find an artifact. I know it’s late, but I’m kind of desperate.”

  My thoughts tumbled over one another. It was clear the young woman…she sounded like she might be in her teens…knew of the Keeper and had a genuine need. I should turn her over to Alice. But Alice was resting and probably wouldn’t want to speak to the teen. I could, of course, tell her that Alice would call her the next day. But then I thought of my conversation with Sebille. I’d promised I’d step up my efforts to learn, in case Alice fell short of expectations again. So I screwed up my courage. “Tell me what you need help with, Maude.”

  She made a happy little sound, and I couldn’t help smiling. “Oh, thank you, thank you! I’ve been freaking out!”

  Definitely a teen. If the youthful voice hadn’t given her away, her tendency to speak in exclamation points definitely would have.

  “What’s going on?” I nudged.

  “It’s my hairbrush. It’s spelled, of course.”

  Of course, I thought, smiling. Wasn’t everyone’s brush spelled?

  “And Margo Collinsworth took it because she’s mean as a snake! I need to get it back because Marg
o’s a muggle…” she giggled. “Sorry. I know that’s not a real thing, but I just love that word, don’t you?”

  “Um…”

  “Anyway, Margo the muggle took my hairbrush because she’s jealous of my hair, and I don’t want her to use it!”

  I frowned, feeling underwhelmed by the opportunity she was offering me. On the plus side, it sounded as if it was well within my limited means to accomplish. “That doesn’t sound too dire,” I started to say.

  “Did you miss the part where I said it was spelled?!”

  Shoving away irritation at her slightly snippy tone, I decided I needed to net the problem out. “What is it spelled to do, Maude?”

  “Give me lustrous, perfect hair, of course!”

  Of course. “Okay, well, aside from losing the brush, that doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “Did you miss the part where I said she was a muggle?!”

  Okay. Got it. A muggle…erm…non-magic teen would probably notice a brush that gave her perfect hair. “And it would be obvious to her that it’s spelled if she used it?”

  “Duh! Margo’s hair looks like the backside of a porcupine. When that brush touches it, she’s suddenly going to have long, thick, shiny hair. The only way Margo could have hair that nice is if she wore a wig!”

  Grinning at the “backside of a porcupine” reference, I said, “Got it. You want me to find the hairbrush?”

  “Yes! Thank you! I’ll see you there tomorrow at six in the morning!”

  “Wait!” I yelled, realizing as I did that she’d infected me with exclamation points. “You’ll see me where?”

  “Oh…” More giggling. “At Enchanted High School.”

  Holy halibut halitosis! I was going back to high school.

  19

  Baggy Underwear, Mean Girls, And Mortal Embarrassment

  To say my days in Enchanted High were difficult would be to seriously underplay the situation. As a supernormal with no discernible magic but a tendency to create unintentional havoc wherever I went because of my latent energies, I was a serious liability to myself.

  I didn’t really belong in the human world. And not belonging is about as mortal a sin in high school as one can commit.

  But I also didn’t belong in the magic world. Or, as I was informed by my non-magic grandma, I wasn’t part of that world and it wasn’t part of me.

  So it should seem clear that I carried around a lot of emotional baggage in the form of self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy.

  Looking back, I now realize that it made me pretty much a typical teen. But at the time, I’d thought I was queen gnish in a prickly and uncomfortable crowd of one.

  Unlike teen-me, the young woman who strode quickly in my direction as I did a turtle walk toward the building was delicately pretty, confident, and sure of her place in the world.

  Maude Quilleran smiled and waved, tossing a thick ribbon of wavy blonde locks over her shoulder as she fixed a wide blue gaze on me. “Hi! I’m Maude. You’re the Keeper?”

  I hunched into myself at her overloud proclamation. I was feeling like a fraud at the same time I was concerned over the young woman all but screaming my magical designation to the world at large. “In training, actually,” I told her, taking her outstretched hand. “I’m Naida. The Keeper is under the weather.” I assumed I was telling the young witch the truth, though I hadn’t clapped eyes on Alice before I left Croakies at the buttcrack of dawn.

  I assumed she was still blissfully asleep, cradled in the muscular arms of Morpheus. Whereas I’d been wrenched from an uneasy sleep by the strident shriek of an alarm clock and yanked into my worst nightmare by the icy fingers of fate.

  Okay, drama much? Obviously, I was back in high school.

  Maude nodded as if she didn’t really care. She seemed to have an “any Keeper in a storm” attitude. The teen pointed toward the hated front doors of the large stone and brick building. “We need to hurry. Kids will start getting here soon.”

  Whether she realized it or not, her words were perfectly designed to turn me from the turtle to the hare. I launched from my spot on the rust-stained sidewalk like a rocket that was powered up to visit Mars. “Tell me about this brush,” I asked as we hurried toward the large front doors. I had no idea what good that knowledge would do me, but I thought it would give me more gravitas as a Keeper if I pretended the process was deeply thought out and complex.

  She shrugged, giving my question the weight it deserved. “Oh, you know, just a hairbrush.”

  So much for gravitas.

  I tried again. “What color is it?”

  She frowned, grabbing the front door and yanking it open. “Color? I guess I never noticed. It’s kind of tree-colored, you know?”

  Tree colored. Probably wood then. “Okay. Can you give me any more details?”

  She ushered me through ahead of her and closed the door behind us, waving a hand over the wide, metal panic bars. She grinned when she saw me looking. “Just to slow them down a bit.”

  I panicked a tad when I realized she’d locked us into the building together. What if Maude was another persona created by the mage who’d done a doppelganger spell to look like Alice?

  I decided I needed to do some kind of test to figure out if she was legit before I got in any deeper. Squinting my eyes, I tried to read her aura. I’d found, however, that if I tried to see auras I rarely could. Apparently, viewing auras is a natural phenomenon that resisted being nudged. At least for me.

  She widened her already wide blue eyes at me. “Are you okay? You look a little…constipated.”

  “Ha!” I said. “Ha, ha.”

  The look on her face told me she was having her own doubts about being locked inside the building with me. “You’re in training, you said?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t elaborate because my elaboration wouldn’t make her feel any better. Telling her I’d been on the job for less than a week was unlikely to comfort.

  She shrugged again and pointed down a long, dark hallway to the right of the main doors. “Lockers are down there. I’m assuming that’s where she put the brush.”

  We headed that way and I forced my mind to clear, taking a deep breath and slowly expelling it in an attempt to calm my nerves.

  In the dim lighting, I could finally see that a soft glow painted the air around the young witch. Her aura was similar to Lea’s, only with a tinge of gray that made me realize she wasn’t an Earth witch like my neighbor. I made a mental note to do some research on witches. I was pretty sure that was something which would make my job easier.

  A sudden feeling of being overwhelmed swamped me and I had to take another breath as my heart started beating against my ribs. There was so much to learn, and I had the distinct feeling I didn’t have much time to learn it.

  Maude stopped in the center of the long hall, lifting her arms. “This is the best place to search.” She cocked her gently illuminated head. “Should I try to find the lights?”

  I shook my head, suddenly wondering what color my aura was. “I don’t think that will be necessary.” There was some safety lighting near the floor, and between that and the glow of her magic, I could see pretty well.

  We stood there for a long moment. Maude shifted from foot to foot, her pretty leather boots an odd color under the greenish-gray illumination she gave off.

  I felt her impatience like ants crawling over my skin.

  My heart tried to beat its way out of my chest. It was the moment of truth.

  I chewed my bottom lip.

  Maude looked at her nails and then realized it was too dark to see them.

  Something heavy slammed against the front doors.

  Maude turned and looked in that direction, her body tensing.

  “Hey! Is somebody in there? Can you unlock this door?”

  I was well and truly out of time.

  “Can you hurry?” Maude asked, tension threading her voice.

  I flapped a hand in the direction of the door. “Head that way. I’ll have the br
ush by the time you get there and you can unlock it.”

  I even shocked myself by the confidence strengthening my voice.

  Maude nodded and turned away, her tall boots click-clacking down the hall.

  I took a deep breath, wrung my hands, and pictured the core where my magic waited. At first, I didn’t feel it churning there and I had a moment of panic that it hadn’t replenished after the nightmare at Gnomish. Nightmares actually…

  Energy began to stir deep within me. The magic felt warm and impatient. It churned and bubbled upward as my mind reached metaphysical fingers to entice it out of its hiding spot. The power oozed upward, threading through my cells and heading toward the surface of my skin. I realized that if I didn’t find a way to focus it, the energy was going to blast away from me in a wall of power that might do more damage than good.

  My pulse pounded and sweat beaded on my forehead as I tried to redirect the magic into a single stream, slowly corralling it until it wound together in a thread that felt almost too frenetic to control.

  I didn’t bother trying to control it. I was running out of time. I let it flow upward, burning a path through the cells of my arm and surging toward my fingertips.

  Another slam on the door made me lose focus. The magic halted and started to retreat.

  No, no, no, no! I gritted my teeth and focused harder, forcing it to stop retreating.

  “Naida?” Maude’s high-pitched voice sounded more strident.

  I couldn’t respond, or I’d lose what I’d built. My body shook, and I realized I’d clenched every muscle in my body trying to hold onto the untrained magic. Still, it hovered, on the verge of retreating back to my core, unused. If I didn’t get it out, I was going to lose it.

  So I took a deep breath and forced everything to relax, and my mind formed a single word that slid from the depths of my consciousness.

  Locate.

  The word served as a focus for the power. It tore from my fingers on a hiss of displaced air, shooting toward the ceiling. Just before the energy smacked into the ceiling, it stopped, throbbing there for a couple of beats and then dissolving into several slender ribbons that dispersed along the hall and into the darker recesses of the big building.