by Tegan Maher
“Have you asked her if she’s been into Gladys’s room since her death?” I asked.
“Well, she has a habit of forgetting where she’s been,” she said. “It’s possible, of course, but if she’s ever seen the music box, she’s unlikely to remember. I’ll check with her, though. We might get lucky.”
She ambled over to another witch, who sat in front of the TV with her nose practically pressed to the screen. She wore a bright green dressing gown and her wild grey hair spilled out from its bun.
“Hannah,” Frankie said. “Hannah? There’s someone here to talk to you.”
The witch spun around to face me. “Oh, wonderful. I wondered when you’d be back to visit.”
“This is Maura,” said Frankie. “You haven’t met.”
“Haven’t we?”
“No, we haven’t,” I said firmly. “I just wanted to know if you’ve seen Gladys’s music box, that’s all.”
“I don’t know, I’ll ask her.” She rose to her feet decisively.
Frankie cleared her throat from behind her. “She’s dead, Hannah, don’t you remember?”
“Oh.” Hannah sat back down, her expression turning mournful. “That’s sad. I liked her. She threw me out of her room a few times, but she always played that nice music.”
“What music?” I probably didn’t want to know, but might she be referring to the box?
Frankie lowered her voice and beckoned me aside. “She gets confused, like I said. Pay her no mind.”
“She mentioned music, though…” I turned back to Hannah. “Did she play the music from a box?”
“A box?” she echoed. “Yes, a box.”
I did my best to keep my expression neutral. “Have you seen the box lately?”
“Yes.” She scuttled over to the other side of the room, while Frankie made a noise halfway between a groan and a sigh.
“I wouldn’t,” she began, but Hannah had already whipped out a plastic box and held it up for me to see.
I peered under the lid and recoiled. The box was full of cockroaches, each one the size of my fist. “That’s not quite what I meant.”
“They’re my friends,” she said. “Gladys didn’t like them.”
You don’t say. I didn’t have a particular fear of cockroaches, but I couldn’t imagine keeping them as pets. They were too creepy. I know that sounded weird, coming from someone who regularly spent time with ghosts, but still.
Luckily, Frankie came to my rescue. “Hannah, do you want to sit down? You’re missing your TV programme. Come on.”
She ushered the elderly witch away, while I took the opportunity to move as far from the cockroaches as humanly possible.
“I’m sorry,” Frankie said, returning to my side. “She gets more forgetful by the day, but she’s harmless. So are the cockroaches.”
“Might she have been telling the truth when she mentioned Gladys was playing music?” I asked. “I’m not sure if she understood what I was talking about.”
“I doubt she did,” she said. “As for the music box, I think there’d have been complaints from the other residents if there’d been music playing nonstop every night.”
Fair point. As I turned away, Hannah held up a giant cockroach, its legs waving around. “Want to come and say hello?”
“Um, no thanks.” I hastened away from Hannah and nearly tripped over a tiny witch with a wizened face and a tabby cat which I assumed must be her familiar. The cat meowed at me and then grabbed my wand out of my pocket.
“Hey!” I tried to grab it back, but the cat sprang out of the way, holding my wand in its paws as though it had no intention whatsoever of giving it back.
“Sorry,” said the witch. “I’m afraid he likes to collect magical objects.”
“But that’s my wand.” A few sparks shot from the end of the wand, making the cat hiss. Most wands didn’t take kindly to being picked up by strangers.
“Stop that!” said Frankie, walking over to us. “Nova, give that wand back to Maura.”
I reached out and grabbed the end of the wand, but Nova’s familiar tugged back equally hard. Several of the nursing home’s residents snickered with laughter in the background, and a flush rose to my cheeks. I didn’t particularly want to call on my Reaper powers in a public setting like this, but I hadn’t planned on losing a tug-of-war with a cat in front of an audience.
I snatched my hand away before I got clawed, addressing the cat’s owner. “Why does he like wands?”
“Crinkle likes all magical objects,” she responded. “We aren’t allowed to use our wands inside the nursing home after an unfortunate incident a while ago, so it’s only natural that he’d take an interest in yours.”
“How about we trade?” I reached into my pocket, hoping I’d put something in there that the familiar might want, and found an enchanted bottle cap from the bar which glowed with neon pink light. as I waved it in front of the cat, Crinkle’s eyes lit up. As his paws reached for the bottle cap,I dropped it in front of his nose, taking advantage of his distraction to snatch my wand back. While he batted the bottle cap around with a paw, I kept my wand firmly in my grip as I made for the door. This time, I managed to avoid Hannah and her cockroaches on the way out.
That was a close one.
If Nova’s familiar was in the habit of snatching magical objects, might he have taken the music box, too? If he had, then with any luck, Frankie or one of the others would find it before her granddaughter showed up and I wouldn’t need to get involved. That would be the best outcome. After all, I hadn’t known Gladys, and magical music boxes weren’t my area of expertise either.
She said it was cursed, though.
I shoved the thought aside. I’d come to no obvious conclusions, and whatever the ghost might think, it was much better to leave the search to the experts.
Detective Drew Gardener came over to see me at the inn that evening, which raised my mood after my experience at the nursing home. The local chief of police might not be able to see ghosts himself, but he’d adapted surprisingly well to my odd habits.
Mart fooled around in the background as the detective and I chatted over dinner, and I started to tell him about my day’s adventures.
“I met a ghost…” I began.
“Why am I not surprised?” he said. “Who was this one?”
“An old lady from the nursing home,” I said. “Something of hers went missing and she wanted it found before her granddaughter shows up to claim her inheritance.”
He arched a brow. “What went missing, exactly?”
“An enchanted music box,” I said. “One which never stops playing when it’s opened. Anyway, my search got slightly out of hand.”
“I could never have guessed,” he said lightly. “Did you find it?”
My shoulders slumped. “No. What I did find was a witch with a grudge against the woman who died, another who keeps a box full of cockroaches and is a few twigs short of a broomstick, and then another with a familiar who stole my wand.”
“So, not much excitement, then?”
“Not in the slightest,” I said dryly. “Gladys’s ghost won’t be thrilled at me for giving up on the search, but it’s not like I know all the potential hiding places for an enchanted box.”
“Want me to go over and help the staff search for it, then?” he said. “If this missing music box is important to Gladys, then it might end up being an issue if her granddaughter shows up and it still hasn’t been found. Besides, magical objects like that can end up having side effects if they end up in the wrong hands. Trust me, you don’t want to know the kind of oddities which we’ve had to hold at the station whenever there’s been an issue involving a witch or wizard’s will.”
“I can guess,” I said, thinking of the incident the week I’d moved to town in which an old house had ended up collapsing before it could end up in the hands of its inheritor. Granted, it’d also been haunted by the ghost of its former owner… and I’d been the one it’d collapsed on.
Hmm. Maybe Drew had a point when he remarked that I seemed to wander into these situations without even trying.
“I bet you can,” said Drew, amusement flickering in his eyes. “I’d say a music box that doesn’t stop playing wouldn’t be that dangerous, but there was a situation with a magical jack-in-the-box a few years ago… you probably don’t want to know the details on that one.”
“She also mentioned it was cursed,” I added. “Not sure how.”
His brows shot up. “Was it cursed from the start, or did she put a curse on it in case someone stole it?”
“Good question.” I looked around, but of course there was no sign of the ghost. “If she shows up again, I’ll ask her.”
“Like I said, I’d be happy to help.”
“It’s not worth involving the police,” I insisted.
“Except for the part where it’s allegedly cursed?” he said. “That’s usually a matter for the local coven to handle, but… well.”
“Yeah,” I said, filling in the blanks. “That.”
Our local coven leader, Mina Devlin, hadn’t exactly been active when it came to policing the magical community, but now she’d left town, nobody else had stepped into her shoes to deal with the magical issues which would usually have been her responsibility. There was only so much the police could do to handle cases involving dark magic, since they were mostly staffed by werewolves and other shifters who weren’t up to date on which curses were currently in vogue. Finding a missing object was simple enough, but a curse was another matter entirely. Still, that didn’t make it any more of my business than anyone else’s.
“Let me know if you want me to help, anyway,” added the detective. “Ah… there’s Carey.”
Carey bounded over to our table. “Hey, Detective. Hey, Maura. Where’d you disappear to earlier? Did you help that ghost?”
“The ghost wanted me to look for a missing possession of hers,” I explained. “Didn’t find it, but it’s not my job to pick up after every spirit in town.”
Cursed or not cursed, the music box would show up eventually, right?
3
I’d barely begun to drift off to sleep when I felt the sensation of a cold breeze stirring my hair. I figured it was Mart and ignored him, but he kept blowing on the side of my face until I opened my eyes a crack. “Don’t you have someone else to annoy?”
“You already know the answer,” he said. “I will haunt you to the day I die. Or should that be the day you die?”
“Mart.” I dragged a pillow over my head. “Cut it out.”
“I’m only messing with you,” he said. “But there’s something you should know. The music box is playing in the nursing home.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the ghosts over there are all complaining,” he commented. “Loudly.”
I groaned. “I’m not sneaking into the nursing home at night. Forget it.”
“I didn’t ask you to.” He continued to drift around my bed, his ghostly form glowing in the dark room. “There’s something weird going on over there. It’s giving me the creeps.”
“Weird aside from a box that won’t stop playing music?” I said. “Also, you’re a ghost. What can creep you out?”
“I can’t explain it. She—”
He jumped violently when Gladys’s ghost stepped through the wall on the other side of the room. I resigned myself to not getting back to sleep anytime soon and threw the pillow aside. “What is it?”
“Oh, you’re awake,” said the ghost.
“I am now,” I said, annoyed. “Let me guess… you want me to stop the music from playing?”
“You don’t have to do anything at all,” she said. “Let it keep tormenting everyone in the nursing home for a bit. If they can’t see my ghost, they can listen to my soundtrack instead.”
I sat up in bed. “How bad is it?”
“Well, the residents are up and about, and the staff are going out of their minds,” she said, sounding considerably proud of herself. “I think they called the police, too.”
All right, then. On impulse, I fired off a text to Drew asking if he’d been called to the home yet. He replied saying the police would send someone within minutes and that I didn’t need to worry about getting involved.
The ghost’s in my room, I replied.
The ghost in question looked at the phone in my hands. “What are you doing?”
I opened my mouth to say I was messaging Drew, then decided I’d rather not have a conversation with a ghost about how I was dating the local chief of police. It wasn’t like it was a big secret, but I didn’t need to give the local spirits any more gossip. “Getting ready to go back to the nursing home. Go on, both of you get out of my room while I get dressed.”
To my relief, the ghost left without a fuss. Mart, meanwhile, floated away through the wall into the adjacent hotel room which I’d asked Carey and her mother to give to him so he wouldn’t keep waking me up. That was a prime example of wishful thinking if I’d ever had one.
Drew texted me again as I was pulling on my shoes, telling me that the police would soon be on their way to the nursing home and that I shouldn’t bother dragging myself out of bed if I didn’t want to. I suspected he already knew I’d done exactly that, but when I left my room and found Gladys hovering outside the door, I bade farewell to my last hope of having a quiet night.
“You can float through walls,” I said to the ghost. “Surely you can track down the source of the music?”
“You’d be surprised,” she said. “I can’t open doors or look in cupboards, can I?”
I rolled my eyes and locked the door to my room behind me. “Mart, are you coming?”
“No,” came his muffled reply from the room next to mine. “I don’t like it.”
“Don’t like what?”
No reply was forthcoming. His reticence made no sense, but there were quite enough ghosts at the nursing home without adding my wisecracking brother on top of it. The quicker I dealt with this, the better.
As I walked down the stairs, I very nearly tripped over something large and fluffy at the bottom. I hopped on one leg, catching my balance against the wall as the fluffy shape hissed at me. “What—oh, it’s you, Casper.”
The little cat rarely hissed, so it was weird to hear him make that noise, even if his aggression wasn’t directed at any particular target. Maybe I’d given him a scare. He was pretty jumpy for a ghost-hunting witch’s familiar, after all.
“Sorry, Casper,” I said to him. “I’ll be back soon.”
Preferably before anyone realised I was gone. Carey would be disappointed not to be invited, but this wasn’t exactly a traditional ghost-hunting mission and I’d be back within the hour if everything went to plan. The nursing home could only have so many hiding places, right?
After leaving the inn, I crossed the bridge over the rushing water of the river that dominated the town of Hawkwood Hollow. While the houses were numbered at random and the sporadic street signs made it easy to get lost, I had no trouble finding my way to the nursing home due to the commotion drifting from that direction. Lights shone in all the windows, while the residents milled around the front garden as the staff attempted to keep them in line. The police didn’t appear to have shown up yet either. I was already having second thoughts, but Frankie spotted me before I could slip away.
“Maura?” said the goblin. “What are you doing here?”
“Gladys’s ghost came back.” I’d lost sight of her, but the distant sound of a tinkling piano came from beneath the clamour of the residents outside the building. “Also, Drew said the police were coming…”
“They’re on their way, but I’m not sure if they’ll be able to find the music box if it’s magically hidden,” she said.
“Magically hidden?” I said. “How do you know?”
“Because we’ve searched every inch of the place, and the noise still won’t stop,” she said. “It’s like it’s coming from nowhere.”
I fr
owned. “Have you tried putting a silencing spell on the building?”
“It didn’t work,” said one of the witch members of staff, who wore a flowery dressing gown. “Whatever curse is on that thing, it’s relentless. I’m pretty sure it’d be illegal by coven standards these days, too.”
“Should I have a look, then?” Not that I was an expert on cursed objects, but there were few witches and wizards on the staff or on the police force, and if the music box was hidden well enough that nobody had already pinpointed it, then I had an inkling I’d have to ask the resident ghosts for their input.
“Oh, why not,” said Frankie. “Go ahead.”
Overhearing, Tina waylaid me on the way in. “So she gets to go nosing around our rooms?”
“I’m not going into anyone’s rooms unless they’re the one who stole the box,” I informed her. “If anyone wants to make a confession, I’m sure everyone else here will appreciate it.”
“I didn’t steal anything,” she said. “Gladys is the one who wanted to make sure we remembered her. I bet she set that thing on a timer to go off at night and then hid it somewhere nobody could find it.”
“She can’t have hidden it using magic without a wand, right?” Something didn’t add up, but maybe she had set it to automatically switch itself on like some kind of magical alarm clock. It’d explain why the noise had started late at night without anyone laying their hands on the box.
To find out, I’d need to speak to the ghost herself again, who was conspicuously absent at the moment. While Tina sloped off, glaring at me over her shoulder, I entered the nursing home. Despite the lights being on, there was an oddly eerie atmosphere in the empty living room, while the background sound of a faint piano-like instrument drifted from somewhere nearby. I rotated on my heel but couldn’t have pinpointed the direction if I tried.
“Gladys?” I called out.
The ghost stepped out of the wall in front of me. “So you did decide to come here after all?”
I gave her a suspicious stare. “Did you deliberately set the music box to start playing at a certain time of night? Before you died, I mean?”