by Sarra Cannon
She laughed and put her arm around me. It was such a foreign feeling, I almost pulled away, but it was actually nice. Her instant trust was comforting.
“It’s a play on our mascot, you know,” she said. “The Newcastle Knights. Get it?”
“I mean, I get it, but it’s weird, right? It’s a knight, riding a coffee bean. Beans don’t even have legs. Where could he possibly be going? What’s he fighting for?”
“He fights for coffee beans everywhere!” Brandy said, putting her hand up like a sword.
I laughed so fully, I hardly recognized my own voice. It was such a foreign feeling, and even though it was pleasant, it was also slightly terrifying.
What if I actually liked being a normal person? What would I do with my life?
It was a sobering thought, but I was determined not to bring down the vibe of the afternoon.
“Well, let’s see if the coffee’s any good,” I said.
“It’s amazing,” Peyton said. “But the coffee’s got nothing on the cupcakes. They’re to die for. Trust me. I’ve tried every single flavor they have. Twice.”
“Ah, everything makes so much sense to me now. You’re high on sugar,” I said.
Peyton laughed and bumped my arm, the same way she’d done with Brandy earlier. Why did that make me feel like I belonged? It was such a simple gesture, but it carried so much meaning for me.
“Nailed it,” Brandy said. “Did you know she actually carries a giant pencil case full of candy in her bag? It’s an addiction.”
Peyton herded us toward a small table in the back. “It’s busy today,” she said. “But I guess that’s really no surprise, since it is the first day back to school. Everyone has to gossip about what happened over the summer and make cool videos for TikTok.”
“What’s TikTok?” I asked.
Brandy and Peyton both looked at me like I’d grown five heads, and I tried to think of a way to play it off like I’d just been joking. But no, I had no idea what TikTok was, which apparently was some kind of sin.
Before they could start grilling me about my lack of knowledge, though, a girl with her brown hair in a high ponytail and a Sir Bean apron on came pushing through the crowd, waving madly at us.
“You made it,” she said, sitting down to catch her breath. “I can’t let the manager see me taking a break on such a busy day, but I’ve been keeping an eye out for you. What took you so long? All the tables were almost gone.”
“Olive, this is Lenny,” Peyton said. “She’s our new friend. Lenny, this is Olive, our cupcake goddess. We’ve all been friends since we were kids.”
“Cupcake goddess? That sounds promising,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Olive.”
Olive’s cheeks reddened slightly, and she looked down, obviously embarrassed. “You guys are too sweet. I don’t make them myself, anyway. My mom is really the mastermind behind the amazing cupcake flavors, and she hardly ever lets me into the kitchen when she’s baking,” she said. “Speaking of which, we have some new ones in the cafe today, if anyone wants to try something. I should take your order, anyway, before Melvin gets angry.”
“Ooh, what’s new?” Peyton asked. “Something I’ve never tried before? Because I was looking forward to the s’mores cupcakes again today, but you know me. I can’t resist new flavors.”
“Neapolitan, chocolate peanut butter pretzel, and maple bacon are the new ones today, but the bacon ones are almost sold out.”
Peyton jumped on the chance to try the last of the bacon cupcakes, but I couldn’t resist ordering the chocolate peanut butter ones.
What can I say? I have a thing for that flavor combination.
“Get me a caramel latte, pretty please,” Brandy said.
“No cupcake for you?” I asked.
“She refuses to eat gluten. It’s a tragedy,” Peyton said. She fished two twenty-dollar bills from her backpack and stuffed them in Olive’s hand. “Get us all caramel lattes. And keep the change.”
“You don’t have to pay for mine,” I said. “I have a few bucks in my bag.”
“Peyton’s parents are loaded,” Brandy said with a wink. “Abuse it.”
I laughed. I was pretty sure Uncle Martin was loaded, too, but we’d never really talked about money before. A lot of the things we purchased in our family used a different kind of currency.
“Thanks. I’ll get it next time.”
A strange thrill went through my body. I was already assuming there would be a next time. It was such a strange feeling, and I was scared to actually trust it.
Maybe I’d stepped out of Martin’s house and into some kind of alternate reality.
Olive turned and froze, gasping as she placed a hand to her mouth.
In fact, most of the people in the cafe grew quiet for a moment and looked toward a guy with shoulder-length blond hair who’d just walked in.
The silence was brief as everyone tried to pretend they hadn’t noticed the guy, but there had definitely been a shift in the energy of the place.
“What just happened?” I whispered. “Who is that?”
Peyton leaned in, and we all huddled close together.
“That’s Troy Valentine. His sister, Marcia, went missing about three weeks ago. She’s the most recent girl to disappear,” Peyton said in a hushed voice.
“You mentioned something about that earlier today,” I said, a chill going through me. “How many girls have gone missing? And what happened to them?”
“No one knows,” Olive said, sitting back down and leaning in. “One day, they were going about their normal lives, and the next, they were gone without a trace. Four girls total so far in the past six months. All of them students at Newcastle High. All of them are still missing.”
Holy what?
My mouth went dry, and I dug my nails into the palm of my hand. Four girls missing without a trace? In a town that had almost no history of crime or violence.
Why hadn’t Martin mentioned this to me? Was this why he’d been so strange this morning?
What were the chances four missing girls was some kind of coincidence?
I wasn’t an expert Slayer or anything like my parents, and I certainly wasn’t trained as a Keeper like Martin, but I didn’t need to be to answer that question.
There was no way this was a coincidence.
And if I had to guess, I’d say there was some kind of supernatural being behind their disappearance. Kidnapping four girls wasn’t usually something humans did, even if that’s what the news had to say.
Nine times out of ten, if there was a serial killer or mass murderer out there, he or she was far from human, no matter what they looked like on the outside.
Just then, as if on cue, Kai stepped out to take over at the cash register. It was the first time I’d seen him since that morning, but the moment my eyes landed on him, he turned his head toward me.
Just like earlier, our eyes locked across the crowd. It was as if he could feel my presence, the same way I could feel his. And just like before, his gaze nearly knocked the breath from my lungs.
I wiped my sweaty palms against my jeans.
“I have to get back to work. I’ll be back with your orders in a sec,” Olive said, disappearing into the crowded cafe.
I pulled my gaze from Kai’s and leaned toward the other girls. “Hey, so just out of curiosity, when did you say Kai started school here?”
“Sometime toward the end of the school year last year, I think,” Peyton said. “Just before summer, maybe?”
“No, it was earlier than that,” Brandy said. “He started just after the new year. I remember, because it snowed that first week back, and he stopped to help me get my car back on the road after I slid on some ice. I think that still might be the only time he’s actually talked to me, but that was definitely last winter. January or February at the latest. Why?”
“Just curious,” I said.
I’d already started counting backwards, though, and the results made me feel sick to my stomach.
Four missing
girls in the past six months, and a handsome new guy who just happened to come to town about six months ago.
And who just happened to be something other than human?
I didn’t like the way that was adding up.
Something my parents always taught me is that there are no coincidences. Everything happens for a reason, and if you see a pattern start to emerge, pay attention to it. It might save your life.
In this case, maybe it could save four lives.
I knew what Uncle Martin and the Council would say. Stay out of it. If this was really a matter for us to be concerned with, the Council would have already sent someone to deal with it.
Or maybe they already had sent someone. It was none of my business as a young witch.
But like my parents, I’d never really been good at following the rules.
I needed to find out just who Kai Richards was, and I needed to do it fast.
As the others at my table talked, I watched.
If anyone was paying attention, they would just think I was your average awkward teen with a major crush, staring at the object of her desire. At worst, they would think I was a stalker.
I could live with that, as long as no one suspected what I was really up to.
Basically, I needed his DNA, which sounded a lot more disgusting than it was.
Since I’d never even spoken to him before, and since he was obviously keeping an eye on me, I needed to be sneaky about it.
So, I watched his every move from the corner of my eye.
I did my best to be discreet about it, but I nearly jumped out of my seat the minute I saw him step into a back room and take a sip of a drink with a white straw.
“You okay?” Brandy asked.
“I have to run to the bathroom,” I said. “Be right back.”
I started toward the front of the cafe, and Peyton called out after me. “The bathroom’s the other way.”
“I’ll find it,” I called back, waving my hand over my head.
With any luck, they’d go back to their discussion about Peyton’s epic birthday party plans coming up, and they’d forget all about me for a minute.
Thanks to my spell from this morning, most people took no notice of me at all. I was just a blur in the crowd. Kai, of course, seemed to notice me just fine, but he was back on the registers now, and the cafe was swamped.
In fact, there were so many people inside, it was probably some kind of fire code violation. Wall-to-wall teenagers hopped up on sugar and first-day-of-school nerves.
Slowly, I inched my way closer to the door marked “employees only” and watched the patterns of anyone who came in and out of that door.
From what I could tell, there wasn’t an actual kitchen in this cafe. There was just a back store room where employees could go to take a break or grab things to restock the main room, like straws, napkins, flavorings for the coffee, and stuff like that.
Besides the manager, who Olive had called Melvin, there were four other employees working. Olive and one other girl were making coffees and packaging cupcake orders. They were also managing orders coming from the tables. Kai was obviously on the register for now, and there was a younger guy bussing tables and restocking the napkin stations.
The manager and the young guy were the two who went into the back room the most, so I kept an eye on both of them from my hiding spot at the end of the bakery counter. I waited for a moment when the kid had just started to empty the trash and the manager was dealing with a couple of very obviously upset girls complaining about the quality of their iced coffees.
I bent down as if I needed to tie my shoes and whispered, “Tacitus.”
Casting a spell on my boots was likely overkill, but hey, I’d been denied the use of my magic for the past three months. Now that I had my key back, I was going to use it.
The simple spell made my boots silent, so between that and the spell I’d cast on myself this morning, I was able to very quickly and easily slip through the employees-only door, grab a napkin, and lift Kai’s straw from his drink. With what I’d like to think of as ninja-like skills, I slid the wrapped straw into my bag and got the heck out of there.
No one suspected a thing, and I made my way back to my table with a smile on my face. Inside, though, my heart was racing.
“That must have been some bathroom break,” Brandy said. “You were gone for twenty minutes.”
“No, seriously?” I asked. It hadn’t seemed that long.
“Okay, maybe ten, but still,” she said. “You missed all the good talk about the party. I know you’re new, but trust me when I say that Peyton’s parties are epic.”
I did my best to get into the conversation, but all I could think about was getting home and casting a spell on that straw.
By nightfall, I hoped to know exactly what kind of magical being this Kai Richards was.
I Couldn’t Seem To Help Myself
“Lenny, is that you?” Martin appeared in the grand foyer an instant after I walked through the door.
“No, it’s one of the other people who live here,” I said with a smile. “I brought you a present.”
I presented him with a regal gold and navy box that sported the Sir Bean logo, but it was the cupcake inside that I knew he would love.
“It’s lemon meringue. Your favorite,” I said. “Apparently, one of my new friends is a cupcake goddess. Or at least her mother is. Have you ever tried one?”
“Can’t say that I have,” Martin said. “Come with me to the kitchen, and we can eat dinner and talk about your day. I’ve been dying to hear how things went. Better than anticipated, I presume?”
“Much better.”
I stared longingly at the stairs leading up to my room. I desperately wanted to get up there and cast that spell, but I owed Martin a conversation. Plus, I was starving.
The cupcake at Sir Bean had been delicious, but the sugar content must have been through the roof, because it was making my head feel swimmy.
We made a couple sandwiches and cut up some fresh fruit before sitting down at the ancient walnut table in the kitchen. There was a formal dining room in this house that probably rivaled the Queen’s, but we never used it. It was way too cozy in the kitchen, which is where you could find us most of the time when we were together.
We talked about my day, my use of the mirror, and our plans to order cell phones.
“So, just out of curiosity, have you ever known a normal human who was immune to one of your spells?” I asked.
Uncle Martin shook his head. “Can’t say that I have. Why do you ask?”
I explained about Peyton and the invisibility spell.
“I mean, obviously I didn’t make myself entirely invisible. I just made it so that people wouldn’t notice me unless I was speaking to them,” I said. “But she just walked right up to me and started talking. It didn’t work on her at all.”
“Interesting, indeed,” he said, scratching his chin with an index finger. “Are you quite sure she’s human?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t sense anything different about her. I’m not perfect at identification yet, but I can usually sense when someone isn’t fully human.”
The corners of Martin’s lips twitched a bit, and I leaned toward him, my chin in my hands.
“And what’s that about?” I asked. “You’re trying your hardest not to laugh at me, aren’t you?”
He did a very good job of controlling himself, but I could still tell.
“You’re talented, just like your father was at your age,” he said. “But you still have so much to learn. There are mystical beings you’ve never even heard of in this world. There are those who can cloak their magic so completely you would never know it until the moment they crept up behind you and put a dagger of ice in your heart. I wouldn’t expect there to be a lot of that sort at the local high school, but it’s possible this girl has a touch of magical blood in her lineage that made her immune to that one spell. If she was worth worrying about, I would have heard her na
me before. She’s likely harmless.”
Harmless. Sure, when it came to Peyton, I believed him.
But what about Kai?
And what about the missing girls?
I desperately wanted to ask him about both subjects, but if he told me to leave it alone, I’d have to listen to him. In this case, I figured it was better to do my own investigating and ask for permission later.
“Thank you for dinner. I’d better get upstairs and start on my homework,” I said.
“Homework on the first day?” he asked. “Barbaric. Besides, we haven’t had a chance to split this cupcake yet.”
“Oh, I had one already. That one’s all for you,” I said. “Good night, Uncle.”
“Good night, dear one. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I rushed up to my room faster than anyone who was simply looking forward to homework. I had a much more important project to work on.
I fished the straw out of my bag. It was still wrapped in the napkin, so hopefully any DNA Kai had transferred to the actual straw was still there. This was my first reconnaissance mission, and I didn’t want to screw it up.
I disappeared into my large closet and rifled through some of my father’s books. It took longer than expected to find the book on identifying magical creatures, but I finally found the spell I was looking for.
Over the past few years, my parents had taught me a lot, mostly by showing me what they were working on. I was smart, and I caught on pretty quickly. But Martin was right. There was still so much I didn’t know.
I’d seen my parents use this particular magical spell a few times in the past to verify a creature’s identity, so I was hopeful I would be able to replicate it on my own.
I sat down on the floor in front of my spell cabinet and took a deep, centering breath. When I felt ready, I lifted my finger to the silver key I wore next to my mother’s locket. With clear intention, the spell cabinet doors swung open, revealing all of my tools.
Like any good witch, I’d been collecting magical items since I was about five years old. When he or she is ready, every witch in our coven is gifted with a spell cabinet by the Witch’s Council, and it’s up to her to decide what she wants to fill it with.