Sit a Spell

by Stacey Alabaster

  “And where do I send it to?” I asked him, feeling my nerves rise.

  “Wherever you feel is easiest. Somewhere familiar works best. It’s not such a strain on the imagination.”

  I nodded. “Okay. I can do this.”

  I decided on one of the empty paddocks on my property. At least that way, no people or animals would get hurt. Indy might be a bit bemused when she saw a door falling from the sky, but I would just have to deal with her teasing and her questions when I got home. I whispered the words. Seconds later, to my great surprise, the door faded from sight.

  I couldn’t believe it actually worked. Seriously. I stared at the black void leading into the closet for several moments, shaken. Then a large shape stumbled towards me.

  “Vicky!” I shouted.

  She was coughing and blinking frantically as her eyes adjusted to the light. She was shaken, but as I checked her over for any injuries or broken bones, she seemed surprisingly okay.

  “How did you get locked in here?” I asked her as I guided her into the hallway. I stared into the closet that had been her home for the past three days.

  “Oh, it was my own silly fault.” Vicky was staring back at the place where the door had once been.

  “What do you mean, your own fault?” I asked her, still keeping her steady so that she didn’t fall over.

  “I must have been looking for something in there and just slipped and hit my head. Then I guess the janitor locked me in for the weekend.”

  I frowned. “But what were you doing down here in the hall in the first place?”

  She blinked a few times and looked confused. “I must have been looking for the band members, I guess. This is where they had been rehearsing before the tour.”

  I looked at Bruce, who was politely giving us some distance while we reunited. He looked skeptical about what Vicky was saying and so was I, but I wasn’t ready to push her on the details until I had her checked out at the hospital, and she had some liquids into her.

  “I was able to survive on the snacks and water that I had in my purse with me—luckily—so I really don’t think I need to go to the hospital . . . I just want to go home, if that’s okay.”

  “Okay. If you insist.”

  I told her I’d drive her, and Bruce said that he would be able to find his way back to Mayfield. I raised my eyebrows. I was sure he would. He gave me a kiss on the cheek before he left. “Remember, Ruby, I am always here if you need me.”

  “Who was that?” Vicky asked on the drive back to her house. “He was cute.”

  “Just a guy who runs a coffee shop over in Mayfield” I said, brushing it off. I certainly didn’t want to tell Vicky that I had been hanging around with a warlock all day. At least, not until she’d had a good night’s sleep and a cup of tea.

  Her housemate Shu didn’t seem all that fussed or amazed when Vicky walked in the door. She just looked her up and down and went back to watching a reality show on the TV.

  “Nice to be home,” Vicky said, exhausted as she slumped down onto a seat at the kitchen counter.

  I passed her the cup of tea. “Vicky, tell me, did you really accidentally get locked in the closet?”

  “To be honest, Ruby,” she said, looking frightened. “I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything at all.”

  “So, did you have anything to do with that door falling out of the sky?” Indy asked me the following morning. I had been in full concentration mode, trying to conjure up a cup of coffee to drink. It looked brown enough. Indy had given me the spell, though, and she wasn’t exactly a coffee expert. She preferred hers on the milky side.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” I said all innocently as I lifted up the coffee cup. I took a sip, expecting it to taste like mud, but it tasted like real coffee. Huh. Kind of a strange aftertaste though. I wasn’t sure I could get used to it.

  I pulled a face. I really had to have my triple shot latte.

  Indy was loyal to me, or at least, she said she was. Part of me suspected that she fed information back to the rest of the coven. But she was the only one I could talk to about the strange things that had been going on with the two people I was the closest to.

  “I can’t believe it’s a coincidence that both of them have experienced memory loss,” I said to Indy as I rubbed my eyes. Bad night’s sleep thinking about Vicky being trapped for days. Boy, could I use a real coffee right then, one from an actual espresso machine. I wanted to drive over to Mayfield to the Turtle and Hare, but Bruce might think I was using it as an excuse to see him.

  “But Vicky remembered who you were, right?” Indy purred a little bit.

  I nodded. Yes. She didn’t seem to have the same level of amnesia as Akiro did. He couldn’t remember anything at all. Vicky’s memory loss was far more situational. Selective.

  “But I was thinking, that could be because she is a witch, right? The spell might not have affected her so strongly, like it did with Akiro.”

  Indy stopped moving around and purring. “Hmm, you might actually be right there.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  There was a banging sound coming from the front of the house. I thought was a knock on the door, but Indy told me to ignore it. Told me that I was hearing things.

  “That was a knock,” I insisted.

  “You need to get your hearing checked.”

  There it was again.

  “That sounded like a knock. That was a knock.” I poured my fake coffee down the sink and stomped down the hall to check on who it was. My heart raced when I saw.

  Akiro was staring at me, waving, and he knew who I was.

  “I didn’t know where else to come,” he said.

  8

  “I’ll drive,” said Akiro. “Your car is on the way out.”

  I was surprised—but pleased—that he remembered that, and so, I followed him to his car quite happily. He seemed to keep me at arm’s length on the car ride down, though. It was like he remembered who I was, my name at least, but he still wasn’t quite sure what our relationship to each other was. Like he didn’t quite believe that we were friends.

  Maybe it was my fault. When I’d had to feed his memories back to him, I hadn’t quite known how to describe what our relationship was. I must have left it too ambiguous.

  When we stopped the car out in front of the Onyx, Akiro climbed out first, and then opened my door for me while I was still trying to get my purse together. Hmm. He’d never done anything like that before. Far too formal. And old-fashioned.

  Something was off.

  I had assumed that we were there to investigate. The case. Candace. The Coffee Killer. But I was in for a surprise as Akiro stomped away from me and over to the front of the coffee house.

  He ripped the Closed sign straight from the door.

  “You could have just turned that over, right?” I asked, looking at the frayed string that was still in his hands.

  “I’m not going to live in fear any longer,” he said, forcefully staring in through the windows. “We are not closing another day. I want that made clear.”

  “You’ve made it clear,” I said, stepping in through the doors. I was impressed in a way. The town of Swift Valley had been living in fear for too long. If Bruce was right, there was no serial killer on the loose. So why shouldn’t we all have our coffee again?

  Akiro gave me an uneasy smile. I tried to give him a warm one back.

  Yes, there were a few teething problems. But all in all, my spell seemed to have worked. Maybe it took a few days to settle in and for him to contact me, but Akiro knew who I was, who he was, and he knew that he ran the Onyx Coffee House. Those were really the only things he needed to know.

  “You know what you’re doing, right?” Akiro asked me as he nodded towards the coffee machine.

  “Know what I’m doing where?” I asked chipperly. “Well yes, I just join the line here, and then I put my order in when I get to the head of the queue. So yes, I suppose you could say I am a b
it of a pro here.”

  He frowned at me like he wasn’t getting the joke. “I mean, you know how the coffee machine works and all of the equipment. You know where the cups are kept and the system that we use.”

  Oh dear, he really had gotten things mixed up. When I’d told him we had worked together for a while, he must have assumed that I worked for him at the coffee house.

  Should I tell him the truth?

  I wasn’t sure how much more truth he could handle right then.

  “I—uh . . .”

  “I really appreciate this, Ruby. I have been feeling so confused, and . . . well, so unlike myself, I guess. It’s really hard to explain,” he said, looking embarrassed. Like he had already said too much. “I’ve got a lot of stuff to sort out, but I want to get this place up and running again. Get things back to normal.”

  “You don’t need to mention it,” I said. “Of course I can help.” I was thinking, how hard can this be, right? Akiro will be here making the coffee, and I will follow his lead. Run coffees to the table. Maybe take a few orders.

  Akiro tossed me an apron

  “I will be back in an hour.”

  “An hour?”

  It didn’t take long for word to spread the Swift Valley’s best coffee shop was back in business again. It was like a virus, and the customers multiplied in the front. Cars were almost crashing into each other trying to get a parking spot, and there were people pushing each other over to get in the door first.

  The coffee machine growled at me.

  I stared at the thing. Again, how hard could it be? You didn’t need a degree to run a coffee machine. You didn’t even need to take a course, I thought smugly.

  Though it definitely would have helped. Reading a book about how to do it would have helped, too.

  My first try at frothing the milk was a disaster. There was actual steam coming out of that nozzle! And straight onto my hand!

  “Argh!” I screamed and dashed for the sink to run cold water over the burn. With my other hand, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. Now it was me who needed the help.

  “How quickly can you get here?” I whispered into the phone.

  “You know me, Rubes. I can get there instantly.”

  “Hey there! Need a hand?” Bruce grinned at me and took the milk jug from me as we both stood behind the counter.

  I jumped and looked around to make sure no one else had seen him appear out of thin air. I was still getting used to the fact that mortals seemed so willfully ignorant of anything paranormal.

  “I still don’t know how you make this look so easy,” I said, talking about the teleportation, but he thought I was talking about his barista skills.

  Bruce was already wrapping the apron around his waist and filling the jug with fresh milk. “It’s easy when you get the hang of it,” he reassured me, showing me how froth the milk so that it was silky and creamy. It all looked like witchcraft to me

  “So, to get here, you used the same process you used to move the garbage?” I asked him.

  “The very same. Well, except I moved myself instead of the dumpster. Or the lock. It’s both simpler and harder at the same time,” he said, concentrating on making foam now. There was a customer less than half a meter away from us, but she wasn’t even paying attention to the conversation.

  “You’re going to have to teach me,” I said as he passed the latte to the waiting woman who didn’t even stick around for her change. Sick of being elbowed by the customers behind her, I supposed.

  He flashed me a grin. “Isn’t that going against the instructions of your coven? Don’t you have a strict set curriculum that you have to follow?”

  “Don’t remind me. I am so far off that curriculum right now that I don’t see how I’ll ever get back onto it.” I passed a customer her flat white coffee and then untied my apron. I needed a breather. This coffee-making business was a lot harder than it looked from the outside. It wasn’t just the steam in the face and limbs, it was the customers who were all coffee experts and who would take one sip and then immediately pass the cup back if it wasn’t exactly how they wanted it. And then threaten you with a bad review unless you made it again while they stood there staring you down.

  Brutal.

  Now I knew why the baristas were always so grumpy.

  Bruce was handling everything like a pro. Even though this was a competitor’s business.

  I knew he was only doing it as a favor to me. To get into my good books.

  “Thank you, Bruce. You have no idea how much I appreciate this . . .” I trailed off, because I didn’t know how to explain to him all the mess. I’d told him about Vicky but not about Akiro. If anyone would understand, it was probably him. Still. A long story. Even for a warlock.

  Oh no. Akiro was coming back. He was hurrying towards the door with a fresh bag of change in his hands. Must have come right from the bank.

  “He can’t see you here,” I said to Bruce, who nodded because he understood.

  He ducked down behind the counter—meaning that I was forced to confront my old nemesis, the steam pipe, again as I frothed milk for a cappuccino.

  “Everyone okay in here?” Akiro asked.

  “No casualties,” I quipped back. “Why don’t you take it easy in the back? I’m sure you’ve got a lot of bookwork to catch up on. I’ve got it all under control out here . . .”

  “Hmm. Well, I do need to do some paperwork. Good work, Ruby. I knew there was a reason I’d hired you and trusted you with the keys so early.”

  Oh gosh. He thought I was Candace. Or at least, he had conflated the two of us.

  I exhaled when he was out of sight. He hadn’t seen Bruce. And I had kinda gotten away with it all.

  Bruce stuck his head back up. He was holding something. “What’s this?” he asked, frowning. I wasn’t sure it was safe for him to surface yet, so I told him to duck back down. But he passed me the paper.

  It looked like some sort of employee form.

  Candace’s name was at the top.

  “I don’t see why you are acting so suspicious about this,” I said to Bruce. “It’s just the new employee form, the one that everyone fills out when they start work here. Or anywhere.”

  “The dates are weird,” Bruce called backup to me from the void below the coffee machine. “Candace stopped working for me five—almost six weeks ago—but according to that form, she only started here three weeks back. But I know that she had a job already lined up as soon as she quit at the Turtle and Hare. She didn’t have weeks of unemployment. Or she would have still been commuting over to Mayfield.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said, reading over the form to double-check the dates. I thought Bruce might have some answers, and so I ducked down to ask him to clarify.

  But Bruce was gone.

  There were probably all sorts of rules and regulations against casting a spell on another witch in the same coven.

  And maybe if I’d been thinking it through better, I wouldn’t have done it.

  But the truth was, I’d gotten too confident after the spell had worked with Akiro. Or at least, it had worked well enough. Got him mobilized again. Yes, he had confused me with a dead employee he had only known for three weeks. But close enough.

  And so, I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I could handle it.

  That evening, after finishing up at the Onyx, I went over to Vicky’s to see how she was doing.

  “You’re looking a lot better, Vick,” I said as I popped my head inside her room and wandered in. I told her I was there to fill her in on the case so she would still feel that she was a part of the business. Now that her dreams of touring with Ribeye Bandits had been shattered, I wanted to distract her. As well as let her know that she was still really needed.

  Of course, there was another reason I was there entirely. But she didn’t know that.

  “Yeah, Shu had been making me soup and bringing me cups of tea whenever I need them.”

  “She’s a good ho
usemate,” I said slowly, still suspicious about that text she had received.

  “Where was your phone while you were locked in the closet?” I asked Vicky as I glanced around her room. “Was it in your purse with your snacks?”

  She frowned. “Actually, I don’t know where my phone is, now that I come to think about it.”

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to think too hard about it,” I reassured her when I saw that trying to recall the information was making her distressed. “I’m sure it will turn up.”

  “This has all been a disaster,” Vicky said as she pouted a little bit. Her spirits were still up, but I could see that she was disappointed about missing the tour, and she was blaming herself for getting locked in that storage closet when I really didn’t think it was her fault.

  “I’m sorry you’re not going on tour,” I said as I sat down on the chair beside her bed. “I know how much it meant to you.”

  Vicky grinned up at me. “I thought maybe you were the one who locked me in the cupboard . . . so that I wouldn’t leave.”

  “Vicky!” I knew she was only joking, but my tone turned serious anyhow. “I would never do that . . .”

  “I know, I know.”

  However, I would come into her bedroom under the guise of bringing her records back, when really, I was there to cast a spell on her. So maybe I shouldn’t climb right up onto my high horse about what I would and wouldn’t do just yet.

  I needed to wait until Vicky was a bit drowsy, or at least a little distracted. She had to be in my sights, but not focused on me. Seeing the back of her head would be the best way to do it. But it didn’t look like she would be getting up and moving around too much, so after about ten minutes, I excused myself to use the bathroom. I loudly walked away before doubling back quietly so I could linger outside the door and then peer inside.

  I took a deep breath and reassured myself that this was the right thing to do.

  Once I knew who had locked her in that closet, we would know who sent that text, and hopefully, that would lead me to the Coffee Killer. The entire town would be safe and caffeinated once again.