Except…
Old Joe had set everything up. He’d been meticulous about the steps that Clarissa would have to go through. He’d dangled the carrot of The Six Stone and Miranda had gobbled that one up. Then, with Mrs Crouch’s help, he’d made certain that The Five Stone came into Clarissa’s possession. The only thing missing, the only thing preventing them from trapping Miranda Dervish, was The Four Stone.
Old Joe would not have encouraged Winifred to take The Four Stone on her travels to some obscure part of the planet reachable only by drone.
He would have ensured it remained accessible.
Clarissa hummed and hawed, ignoring the chatter of her companions, her eyes hardly taking in her surroundings, focusing and unfocusing…
And focusing...
… on the photo on the wall. The elaborate frame of twisted silver had been decorated with shining glass beads in all the colours of the rainbow. Beautiful in and of itself. The frame surrounded the image of Winifred Breazeazy that Clarissa had noticed on her first visit to Honeystick Farm. Winifred with her cascade of unruly curly hair, the grey streak sprouting from her temple, the eye patch… and wearing a heavy necklace with a large green leaf-shaped pendant.
Clarissa leaned forward, her toast slipping from her plate. Toby snuck in front of her and quickly hoovered up her dropped offerings.
Clarissa, mute, pointed at the photo. Catesby and Dom continued their discussion of obscure places they’d like to visit one day. Clarissa, her mouth opening and closing like a fish, pushed herself to her feet, the plate slipping to the floor.
Toby scarpered behind the sofa, but Dom and Catesby finally stopped talking and glanced warily at Clarissa. “What’s up?” Dom asked, staring at her outstretched hand.
“That’s it! There!”
“What’s it?” Catesby asked.
“The necklace! The necklace!” Clarissa swivelled abruptly. “Dom? Where is that necklace? Do you have it? Is it here?”
“The necklace?” Dom peered about the room as though he might spot it lurking in a corner somewhere.
“It’s The Four Stone! Don’t you see?” Clarissa yanked the photo frame from the wall and flashed it at Dom. “The main stone on her necklace. It’s a green leaf. That’s the stone. I’m certain of it. Either she or Old Joe had it hung as a pendant on a necklace.”
Dom pulled a face. “Ah yes. Wonderful.”
“All we have to do is locate that necklace among Winifred’s things. Have you seen it?” Clarissa asked, waving the frame at him.
He shrugged, in a kind of non-committal, I-might-have-I-can’t-quite-remember way.
“Think, Dom, think!” Clarissa urged him.
Catesby reached out a hand to soothe Clarissa’s mounting ire. “If nothing else, at least we’ll know what we’re looking for when we start turning out all those boxes.”
Dom fidgeted, pulling at his beard.
Clarissa regarded him through narrow eyes. “What aren’t you telling us? You haven’t gone and sold it or given it to someone else, have you? I’ve got hardly any petrol left in my car and I can’t afford to go hoofing around the country in search of it.”
Dom laughed without humour. “I… er… yes. I know the necklace of which you speak.”
“And?” demanded Clarissa.
Dom coughed. “I er… I dismantled it. It was glass. Pretty-coloured glass, that’s all.”
The oxygen in Clarissa’s lungs seemed to vaporise. Her knees became suddenly wobbly. “Oh, my life. Please tell me you haven’t smashed it to smithereens or something?”
“Good heavens, no.” Dom looked most affronted at the idea. “It was so pretty. I incorporated it into my beach ball installation.”
Catesby snorted. “Beach ball installation?”
Clarissa, however, didn’t find it amusing. She glowered at Dom. “You mean that bouncing ball thing in your workshop?”
“That’s advanced chaos magick you’re casting aspersions on, I’ll have you know,” Dom harrumphed. He stood hurriedly and led them out of the living room back through the kitchen and into his personal laboratory. “The luscious green of the stone was perfect for the colour I was looking to achieve.” They gathered around the installation, Catesby’s eyes widening in surprise as the pool of light changed colour. Orange, green, blue and pink. “It brings out the stripes on the beach balls, I think.”
“I likes it,” Toby nodded.
“Thank you, my friend,” Dom said. “At least someone has an appreciation of the finer things in life.”
Clarissa reached out to grab one of the balls and Dom shrieked. “Easy!”
“You need to dismantle it,” Clarissa told him, her tone brooking no argument. “And you need to do it now.”
“Alright, alright. Just don’t interrupt the flow. It’s bad karma.”
“Do it now,” Clarissa repeated through clenched teeth, “or I’ll make sure that bad karma is the least of your worries.”
Clarissa and Catesby sat side-by-side in the car, Toby in the back seat peered over their shoulders. They’d said their goodbyes to Dom a few minutes earlier, and Clarissa had been hell-bent on reaching home, but she’d started shaking so hard as she manoeuvred her little Nissan through the lanes, she’d had to pull over on a muddy verge near a crossroads.
“It’s alright,” soothed Catesby and stroked Clarissa’s knee. “You have it now.”
“I do, I do,” Clarissa laughed in amazement, shaking her head to relieve the light buzzing pressure that had built there. “I think I was beginning to doubt we’d ever find it.”
“It’s a shame about Dom’s beach ball installation,” Toby interjected. Clarissa turned her head to give him ‘a look’. “Well it is! I thought it was clever.”
“It was clever, you’re right,” Catesby agreed. “But I think our needs outweigh Dom’s. Don’t you?”
“Certainly,” Toby acquiesced.
“I guess any green stone would do for his installation. We could buy him a replacement,” Clarissa offered.
Toby returned her look with a scathing one of his own. “Only if it was the most perfect shade of green.”
Clarissa blew her cheeks out. “Right.”
“I think I might have a go at creating something like that with my collection of tennis borlies,” Toby said.
Clarissa rolled her eyes. “Great. I’ll look forward to that.” Taking a deep breath, she reached forward and twisted the keys in the ignition, catching Toby’s eye in the rear-view mirror. “We’d better get going. Buckle up, Einstein.”
Catesby touched her hand lightly. “Have you considered how Miranda Dervish is going to hear the news about The Four Stone?”
Clarissa hadn’t. She groaned. “No. I kind of assumed that she would just know about it.”
“I don’t think we should take anything for granted. She needs to be there for the final showdown, doesn’t she?”
“Yes!” Clarissa panicked. “There’s no point in me installing the stones into Jebediah’s tree unless she’s there with The Six Stone.”
“Then we somehow have to let her know,” Catesby said.
“But how?” Clarissa asked.
“I think Einstein here might have an idea,” Toby reported, sounding a mite smug to Clarissa’s ears.
Clarissa turned the ignition off again. “Let’s hear it.”
Merrybutton was waiting for them in her usual place on the front step of Scavenger Cottage.
“Well met,” Toby greeted her and Merrybutton nodded her head, a grand and gracious gesture that spoke volumes about how she perceived her own status.
Clarissa was relieved to see that the elderly cat hadn’t been harmed. “Mabel?” she asked, and Merrybutton regarded her through diamond-shaped irises.
“Is perfectly well. She thanks you for the warning you sent yesterday.” Merrybutton lifted her right front paw and daintily licked at it. “It gave us enough time to set a few… interesting… encounters for our mutual friend.”
“Such as?�
�� Toby asked, curious as to what they might be.
“Things to divert and entertain,” Merrybutton replied. “A sudden movement that might lead to a wild goose chase, if you catch my drift.” Merrybutton unsheathed her claws and admired them for a second. “A hare in a hedge, a fox on the cliff edge, a small murmuration of starlings to bamboozle and bewilder… until eventually…” Merrybutton shrugged, “when she couldn’t track us down, she gave up.”
“Is Mabel still in hiding?” Anxiety prickled at Clarissa’s insides.
“She is. She will remain so until all danger has passed.”
Clarissa fought the urge to dash down the cliff path to make certain of this.
Merrybutton noted Clarissa’s glance along the path and laughed with delight. A full-throated purr that made her sound young again. “No use scurrying down there, young witch friend. You won’t find our Mabel in her hedge today.”
“Then where?” Clarissa asked.
Merrybutton glanced towards the copse of trees and tangled bushes that grew near the entrance to the overgrown garden. Clarissa, Catesby and Toby had passed through that jungle on the way in, swatting at the ever-present cloud of gnats. “Mabel is one with nature and nature is one with Mabel.”
Clarissa studied the bushes, imagining for a second she saw a shadow flicker there. “Stay safe,” she told it in a low voice. “We’ll come to you when the battle’s done.”
She turned back to Merrybutton. “We need a favour, pretty please.”
“Anything,” Merrybutton nodded.
Clarissa motioned towards Toby. It had been his idea, after all.
He sat neatly in front of the cat and addressed her respectfully. “Mistress Merrybutton, we’d like you to get on the Catvine and send a message to Juniper.”
“That’s easy enough,” replied Merrybutton.
“But we want you to make sure it goes viral.”
“Viral?” Merrybutton blinked rapidly.
“I mean,” said Toby, “ostensibly you’re sending a semi-private message to Juniper, but it needs to go wrong. We want every cat within Sun Valley to hear the news… but especially a cat named Jewel whose Mama is Lady Jacqueline Naseby.”
“Very well,” Merrybutton said, although she clearly didn’t understand.
“We think Lady Jacqueline will pass the message on to our mutual friend,” Toby explained.
“And that’s what we want to happen,” Catesby clarified. “We want her to hear it.”
Clarissa crossed her fingers. “In fact, we’re counting on it.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to wait with the car?” Clarissa asked, slinging the strap of her saggy old handbag over her head.
Catesby shook her head, her face pale, grey bags under her eyes. The past few weeks locked away in an underground mausoleum had more than taken it out of her, and Clarissa worried for her health. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” she said. “And besides, it’s nice to be out in the open air.”
Clarissa had driven them up, up, up through several villages to Bucklebeare Wood in the Blackdown Hills. The views here—when you could see through the trees—were breath-taking, but the forested land was hilly and wild.
“It’s a long walk through some rough terrain, that’s all,” Clarissa told her.
Catesby waved her concern away. “Honestly, I’ll be fine. We have plenty of time before nightfall.”
A few hours. Clarissa frowned up at the sky. She couldn’t help but worry. Tonight would be a full moon, but clouds had begun to mass once more. Were they in for another storm? If the clouds covered the moon, what hope had she of doing the deed and saving Jebediah’s tree from Miranda Dervish?
Across from the narrow road, three squirrels waited for them patiently. They flanked Toby—on his best behaviour on pain of death, of course—and keenly observed Clarissa and Catesby through shining black eyes. Eventually, when the women crossed the roughly tarmacked lane and joined them, the larger of the squirrels hailed them.
“Who goes there?” he asked, communicating in a complicated range of chirrups, squeaks and clicks. The squirrels understood English, but Clarissa didn’t speak squirrel. She had to rely on Toby, who had become adept at translating from Squirrelese to English.
“It’s me, Clarissa,” Clarissa said. She indicated Catesby. “And this is Catesby, my friend and mentor.” She turned to Catesby. “This forgetful chap is Nibbles.”
“I hadn’t forgotten,” Nibbles retorted. “Merely doing my job.” He saluted Catesby. “Greetings, witchy one.”
Clarissa pointed at the smaller squirrels. “These guys are twins. Fidgetchin and Bundlecote, but I’m not sure which is which.”
The younger squirrels snapped smartly to attention. “Greetings humans,” Bundlecote said.
Although it might have been Fidgetchin.
“Let’s go,” Nibbles ordered, and they fell in behind him.
On her previous visit, Clarissa had been forced to run to keep up with the squirrels. This time, perhaps in deference to Catesby, who was evidently struggling, they moved more slowly, positively ambling along the path as if out for a country stroll. From time to time Clarissa caught sight of other squirrels bouncing through the undergrowth or jumping from tree to tree, but whenever she tried to catch their eye, they bounded away out of sight beneath a bush, or shimmied up a tree trunk and disappeared on the opposite side.
The Blackdown Hills Squirrel Community was truly a force to be reckoned with.
In numbers at least.
After twenty minutes or so, Catesby indicated she needed to take a seat. Clarissa helped navigate to a fallen tree trunk, where they both took a perch.
“What is the problem with the human?” Nibbles asked. “Is she defective?”
“She’s undernourished and weak,” Clarissa told them.
“I’ll be fine in a minute,” Catesby smiled. “Just let me get my breath.”
Nibbles turned to Toby. “Has she run out of breath, or have I misconstrued?” he asked, his voice a loud conspiratorial whisper.
“Low sugar levels.” Toby nodded knowingly, pretending an expertise he didn’t have. “This makes the breath catch somewhere in the chest.”
“Can it lead to death?”
Toby’s ears flapped. Oops. What had he started? “Imminently,” he lied.
“Ooh!” Nibbles conferred quickly with his younger siblings. Fidgetchin—or maybe it was Bundlecote—bounced up the path and disappeared into a patch of gorse, before eventually returning at a slower pace, carefully carrying the husk of an acorn, no larger than a thimble and full of a viscous liquid. He presented it to Nibbles, who gestured at Catesby.
The small squirrel made his way over to the woman on the fallen tree trunk and lifted up his offering. Nibbles cleared his throat and drew Catesby’s attention to what was effectively a squirrel goblet. “Would the Catesby care to try our fine amber liquid? Brewed for centuries by the Blackdown Hills Squirrel Community, it is one of our best kept secrets.”
Toby leaned over and sniffed at the tiny container. Nibbles swatted at his nose. “Shoo!”
“Hey!” Toby protested. “It smells nice. Like a beer-flavoured honey drink.”
“What is it?” Clarissa asked the squirrels.
“If we told you that, it wouldn’t be one of our best kept secrets, would it?” replied Nibbles, a might testily.
“He has a point,” Catesby said and reached down to rescue the acorn. “Thank you for your kindness.” She smiled at the squirrels and Fidgetchin, or Bundlecote—one of the two—preened happily. “Bottoms up!” Catesby said and swiftly gulped down the liquid.
Toby and Clarissa stared at her, waiting for a reaction.
“Whew!” Catesby pulled a face. “Incredibly sweet. Not nasty though.”
“Has it raised the sugar levels sufficiently?” Nibbles asked.
Catesby blinked and stretched, the colour flooding back to her face in a rush. “You know what? I think it has!” She wafted at her face.
&nbs
p; “Excellent. Let’s be off then.” Without further ado, Nibbles turned his back and began to march away. Catesby shrugged and winked, jumping to her feet. She and Clarissa followed him, at a faster pace than previously.
Toby stayed behind for a few seconds in order to investigate the now abandoned acorn. He curled his tongue inside the husk and gave it a tentative lick, shuddering at the taste. Overwhelmingly sweet.
But not so bad.
He took another lick and then, abandoning all pretence, chomped the husk in two easy bites.
“Yum,” he said, to nobody in particular—although there might have been a dozen or more squirrels watching him from the branches above—and emitted a gentle belch.
“That might be my new favourite. I wonder what it would taste like in a sammich?”
Grappletwigs, First Lady of the Blackdown Hills Squirrel Community, stood on a tree stump awaiting their arrival in a familiar forest clearing. Clarissa bowed her head in greeting, remembering how she had dismissed the elderly squirrel so easily the last time they had met.
She’d been entirely wrong to do so. Grappletwigs was a supreme magickal being in her own right, and more than a match for a witch as inexperienced as Clarissa.
“I’m sorry it’s taken so long for me to return,” she said, kneeling in front of the squirrel. Toby skipped to her side—buoyed up on the squirrels’ magick mana—ready to translate.
“All things take time. You are here now and that’s all that matters.” Grappletwigs patted Clarissa’s hand with a tiny fist. “Do you have the stones?”
“I do.” Clarissa began to peel the strap of her handbag over her head.
“Not here,” Grappletwigs barked. “Do not expose them until the time is right.”
Clarissa peered up at the sky. “Not long now.”
“We should wait until the moon is at its zenith,” Grappletwigs said, her threadbare tail twitching. “But you are correct in your assertion. It will not be long now.”
Clarissa shifted position and glanced around the clearing. Hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of squirrels watched the proceedings with solemn interest. “Miranda—” she started to ask, but Grappletwigs held up a tiny paw.
Bark Side of the Moon: A Paranormal Animal Cozy Mystery (Spellbound Hound Magic and Mystery Book 3) Page 17