Sit a Spell

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Sit a Spell Page 8

by Stacey Alabaster


  I fed the memories that I had of Vicky to her to kickstart the remembrance process. The time we met when she almost fell into the lake, and the trip we had taken to Yinnara with the church with the yellow door and the pink frogs. Then I stared at the back of her head and fed her the memory of auditioning for Ribeye Bandits and being in that hall. I just hoped that would be enough to get her memories on the right track.

  I cleared my throat and walked back in, all casually, and gave her a big grin. “How are you feeling now, Vicks?”

  She looked up at me strangely. “You’ve only been gone for two minutes. No great big change here.” She picked up a magazine and started flicking through it.

  “So, you’re not feeling any different?”

  But suddenly she dropped her magazine and yelped out in pain, pressing her eyes shut tightly like she had a pressure headache.

  “Vicky, what’s the matter?” I raced over to the side of the bed. “Are you feeling unwell?”

  “Ugh, I feel like my brain is about to explode,” she said.

  Uh-oh. That couldn’t be good. Not exactly what I was going for. I wanted her to remember how she’d gotten locked in the closet, not kill her.

  “Vicky, do you need to go to the hospital . . .” I began to ask.

  She started recalling all these things that had happened when she was a toddler, really mundane things like what she’d had for breakfast twenty-five years ago. Once she had started, she couldn’t stop. She was like a record that was spinning too fast.

  “Vicky, whoa! Slow down,” I said with a laugh. I was mostly relieved that the spell had worked. And it wasn’t going to kill her. A few extra memories had sprung up as a little bonus. But that was okay. It was good, in fact. Eventually, we would get to the day that she was held captive, and everything would be fixed.

  “Vicky,” I said, grabbing her by the shoulders and trying to hold her still while she muttered and spat out memories. I attempted to get her to focus. “The day that you got locked in the closet. What happened?”

  She was quiet, but she was shaking—her eyes darting back and forth like she was trying to read a page that didn’t make any sense to her.

  Or a page that was blank.

  “There’s nothing, Ruby. Nothing at all. I can’t remember anything that happened that day!”

  9

  We all woke to the sound of mooing the following morning.

  Vicky was still resting after her traumatic incident in the storage room, and I was feeling guilty about casting a spell on her. So, I told Shu she should take a break, and I could have Vicky at the farmhouse with me for a day or two.

  Shu actually seemed pleased to have the house to herself, and she gratefully accepted the offer.

  Vicky had an affinity for cows—they were her first loyal audience members when she was growing up. As a kid, she’d perform for them whilst standing on hay bales in the paddocks, and so I asked her to come help me feed them before we had breakfast, hoping that the crisp morning air might give her a bit of clarity. She was telling me, as we walked along, about every single cow that she’d had on her farm growing up. She was able to recall in crystal clear detail every time that she had fed them as well.

  “I’m sorry to bore you with all this,” Vicky said as she tossed some hay into the paddock. “It’s like I can’t stop telling you all this stuff. It’s just pouring out of me.”

  “It’s okay,” I reassured her. “Don’t worry, I’m not bored.” But I could see that her headache was still there as she kept furrowing her brow like she was in pain. It got worse when she tried to keep quiet, like bottling up the memories was physically hurting her, so telling them relived some of the pressure on her skull.

  “I don’t know why this is happening,” Vicky said, gulping a little.

  “Er, neither do I,” I said and quickly closed the gate to the paddock.

  We both spun around when we heard a truck coming up the hill. Mine was the only house on the hill, so if there was ever any traffic, there was only one destination—my place. I didn’t recognize the car.

  “Uh oh,” Vicky said with a grin. “Probably trying to get you to buy more solar panels.” Which I already owned. And yet they kept trying to get me to buy replacements.

  “Er, maybe we should go indoors,” I said and grabbed the bucket I had been carrying, sprinting back to the farmhouse. Vicky, now feeling better, giggled and followed me. Both of us were happy to hide away from the unsolicited salesperson.

  But whoever it was at the door was not going to give up easily. They kept banging and banging. Even with the kettle whistling, I could still hear it.

  “You wait here, and I’ll try to get rid of them,” I said to Vicky as I crept down the hallway. I wanted to peer through the blinds to get a better look at who it was before I answered the door.

  It was Ross from the Red Annex Café in Swift Valley. Yikes. How did he know where I lived?

  He looked furious as I pulled the door open. I didn’t even get a chance to say hello, yet alone ask him how he had gotten my home address.

  “I heard you guys were open yesterday,” he said, like the Onyx was my actual business and that it belonged to me. I supposed because I had turned up at Red Annex with Akiro that day to ask him questions, Ross had also gotten the impression that I worked at the coffee shop.

  “I—

  “There was an informal deal amongst all the coffee shop owners in town that we were not going to operate until there had been an arrest made,” he said, his tone irate. “And everyone else was sticking to it! This is completely unethical. You guys are scabs.”

  “It wasn’t my call,” I said, keeping my voice calm in the hopes that it would calm him down as well. “But I think Akiro made the right call, if I am being frank. I don’t think there is any such thing as a Coffee Killer, Ross. I think someone was targeting Candace Morgan, and this was just a cover for that.”

  Ross’s face dropped, and he looked both dismayed and hopeful at the same time. “So, you think I could open again?” He took a step towards me. “In your professional opinion, do you believe that we are safe from this killer?”

  I must have had a knack for getting grumpy baristas to soften. I was three for three now.

  I nodded. “I do. But it’s your call, Ross.”

  As he was opening the door to his truck, a notebook fell out. I rushed to pick it up as he drove away, but when I called out to him, waving, he didn’t notice. Then Vicky was yelling at me from the spare room, so I rushed in to see what she was screaming for.

  “I know that guy!” she said, pointing down at my phone where there was a picture of Bruce popping up on the screen. He was calling me, and I had saved a pic of him to come up when he rang. I was a little embarrassed, and so I quickly turned it over.

  “Yes, you met him the other day, Vicky, when he and I pulled you out of that locked storage room.”

  Jeez, her memories really were getting all mixed up.

  She shook her head. “No, I remembered where else I have seen him before. Just in the background of someone else’s photo this one time.” She looked in awe as the memory seemed to dance in front of her eyes. “Wow, it is like I have some sort of superhuman memory now. Maybe this is one of my witch powers blossoming late.”

  “Er, yes, that’s probably what it is,” I said, keen to steer her back to what she remembered about Bruce. Did she know that he was a witch? They’d probably crossed paths at some point. Shoot. Maybe he was an enemy of the coven!

  Please don’t tell me he is an enemy of the coven.

  “He is the brother of Austin Garret,” she said.

  “Who is that?” I asked her. The name faintly rang a bell, but I couldn’t have told you who Austin Garret was or picked him out of a lineup.

  “He is the lead guitarist from the band. From Ribeye Bandits. You know, spiky blonde hair.”

  “Er, yeah, kind of. Wait, are you sure he is Bruce’s brother? They don’t look similar.”

  “I’m positive.
I remember everything I’ve ever experienced. And everything about Ribeye Bandits.” Vicky reached up and gently touched her head. And now the most important memory was finally coming back to her.

  “Vicky?” I asked, leaning forward. “What is it?”

  “I was hit on the back of the head that day.”

  That was why she couldn’t remember that day. Now I got it. There hadn’t been any spell cast on her. She’d just been knocked out.

  “I knew we should have taken you to the hospital!” I exclaimed.

  She shook her head and interrupted me.

  “Ruby. Austin Garret was the one who put me in the storage closet that day.”

  Bruce Garret—hey. Brother to the famous—well, sort of famous—Austin Garret.

  Funny that he had never mentioned to me that his brother was in Australia’s most popular country band.

  Or maybe there had been a reason for that.

  “Aww, come on!” I said and banged the steering wheel when the car wouldn’t start. I knew the car had been running on borrowed time—but why did it have to completely die right when I needed it the most? How were we going to chase down the Ribeye Bandits’ tour bus now? It wasn’t like we could just hitch a ride to the middle of the desert. That was how people wound up dead.

  Vicky had a strange look on her face. “Well, there is one other way we can travel.”

  Did she mean the train? They didn’t run that far out into the middle of nowhere. And I certainly wasn’t going to bicycle all the way to Dubbo.

  Then I saw that she was nodding towards the barn. Where there was a handle visibly sticking out the front door.

  “No, no way. I am not doing that. I am not flying on a broomstick over my town in clear daylight.”

  “It will be the quickest way to reach the band.”

  She was right. But I still argued for another five minutes. No way. It was impossible. We couldn’t do that in the middle of the day. It was far too risky for so many reasons.

  Yet here I was. Being offered the end of a broomstick and told to hang on for dear life.

  “Are you sure you are up to this?” I asked Vicky. “I mean with your knock to the head and everything.”

  “I suppose we will find out. Hop on.”

  We were going to the Outback.

  It was breathtaking. The mountains, the lakes, and then the red-orange marble of the terrain below. Or at least it would have been, if I was able to take a breath. I kept holding it tightly as town after town appeared and disappeared below us.

  But Vicky was right. And Geri, unfortunately. It was a quick way to travel. About the same speed as a helicopter. After a while, I wondered why anyone would ever drive anywhere when this was an option. I was going to have to get my broomstick license, pronto.

  Once I had been able to relax into the ride a little bit, I laid out my theory to Vicky.

  “Austin must have seen that his younger brother was struggling big time. Maybe he felt guilty because he is a successful musician—and his brother was getting one-star reviews online for his coffee shop.”

  “While he was getting five-star reviews for his album.”

  Right.

  So, he wrote letters to local businesses warning them to stop serving coffee. And when Akiro didn’t follow those instructions, Austin killer Candace. To show that he was serious.

  Only problem for him was the fact that Vicky had auditioned for the band. And gotten the job.

  “And he must have realized that you were a detective who was linked to the case,” I called out to Vicky. “He could hardly have you on tour with him, could he? That would ruin things.”

  “Too bad for him we figured it out anyway, thanks to my super memory powers. And we have the quickest route of travel available to anyone in this country.”

  Well, there was one quicker mode of transport. The instantaneous kind.

  I thought about Bruce, how he had teleported into the coffee house and out just as quickly. I tried to convince myself that he had nothing to do with any of this. That his brother must have taken matters into his own hands. Austin had seen that his brother’s business was struggling and was just trying to protect him.

  But I had to admit that it wasn’t looking good for Bruce.

  There was too much stacked up against him now. He had a connection to Candace, and he had the motive with his failing business and bad reviews.

  He had the ability to cast spells on other coffee shop owners.

  Maybe he made more than just garbage disappear. Maybe he made Candace’s life disappear as well.

  “You’ve gone awfully quiet back there. You’re not still scared, are you?” Vicky called out, her voice getting a bit muffled from the wind hitting her face.

  Maybe I should have been, considering the way that the wind had picked up, but Vicky was a pro on the broom. I was feeling settled in, so I just told her I was thinking about how we should approach Austin when we finally caught up with the tour bus.

  “I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” Vicky admitted. “But I definitely plan to exact my full wrath on him. I mean, how dare he derail my career just to cover his own tracks.”

  Well, yes, that was a good point as well. But this guy was a killer, and so I thought we’d better be prepared with a spell or two, in case we needed to defend ourselves against an attack. Vicky had gotten off pretty lightly last time, only being shoved in a closet. This time, she might not get so lucky.

  “Jeez, it’s hot up here,” I commented as the large silver rectangle of the tour van came into view below us. Up ahead, we could also see the tent where the main stage of the festival was, and a smaller tent about half a kilometer further down the road. Austin might have done his best to keep Vicky away from the festival. But in the end, she had wound up here anyway.

  “These are the temperatures in the desert,” Vicky explained as she angled the broomstick towards a clearing just out of the way of the festival, where we wouldn’t be spotted when we landed. And even though it seemed impossible, it got even hotter as we got closer to the ground.

  I looked around and took an unsteady step—didn’t quite have my land legs back yet. “Did no one notice us at all?” I asked, incredulous. Even though we were away from the main stage of the festival, there were still plenty of people milling about in shades and sandals and singlets, waiting for the next band to start, and we had just flown over the top of a huge festival on a broomstick, for crying out loud. Yet no one had even looked up.

  “Nope,” Vicky said. “Non-witches never notice anything. It’s kinda cute in a way.”

  We had traveled over eight hundred kilometers in just under two hours. It would have taken Ribeye Bandits three days to travel the same distance, stopping along the way, of course.

  Vicky had been smart enough to grab her VIP pass that she had been given before the guys left on tour, and even though I didn’t have one, just one flash of hers got us into the backstage area where all the band members were hanging out.

  I pointed to the sign that said Ribeye Bandits, and we waltzed over, Vicky still holding her broomstick. The members of the band were all sitting on foldout chairs under the shade of a tarpaulin. Austin, whom I now recognized from the TV coverage, grabbed a beer out of a cooler and wandered off, winking to a couple of scantily clad ladies on his way over to a radio interviewer—your typical rock star sort of behavior.

  “Hey there, Austin!” Vicky called out.

  Austin looked stunned when he saw her. His face went droopy, and he seemed to break out in a sweat that was not due to the sun alone. He dropped the beer he was carrying and looked like he was about to turn and run in the opposite direction.

  “Stop!” Vicky yelled as she stretched her arm out like she was pulling on a piece of string securing Austin in place.

  And then I realized what she was doing.

  She had frozen him.

  He was as still as a statue, his eyes bugging out of his skull. I thought everyone would stop and stare at this strange sight
.

  But no one seemed to have noticed.

  Vicky and I came right up to him before she reversed the spell, and Austin could move again. He jumped and looked around, terrified. Shaking.

  “What . . . what just happened?”

  Vicky squared right up to him. “I know what you did, Austin Garret. I know what your plan was.”

  He was like a trapped animal, squirming to get away. “How did you get here?”

  “Oh, I am sure you would love to know, wouldn’t you?” she said.

  He gulped. “It’s no big deal,” he said, trying to be casual. “We all, er, wondered what happened to you. Why you weren’t on the bus. It’s good to see—” But Vicky cut him off.

  “I remember everything, okay?” Vicky said. “I know you were probably hoping that I wouldn’t when you knocked me out flat and shoved me into that storage closet.”

  “It was just a little harmless prank, all right?”

  “It’s a harmless prank, locking someone in a storage closet?” I asked, stepping in. “She could have died in there.”

  “That wasn’t my intention,” he said, looking worried. “I just wanted her to miss the tour. Not kill her. Look—” He took a step back. Dug something out of his pocket and then tossed a phone at Vicky. “Have it back, okay, if that’s what you’re here for.”

  “We didn’t come here to get a phone, Austin.” I said. “We came to get the truth.”

  “We didn’t need an extra guitarist in the band, all right. I was doing fine on my own.” He nodded down at Vicky. “We didn’t need to go adding some chick guitarist who was going to hog all the airtime.”

  He ran. This time the freezing spell didn’t work as he darted in and out of the crowd, so we had to chase him down the old-fashioned way.

  I grabbed him by the back of the shirt and held him still. “You can’t run, Austin. You’re in big trouble, buddy. You’re going to jail for what you did to Candace Morgan.”

 

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