Pumpkins and Potions

by Tegan Maher

  “Not the rest of them. They were rich and well travelled. I was a scholarship student at the boarding school and always felt behind. But perhaps it was a blessing, because who wants to peak in high school? I got older and followed my interests, and eventually—and I hope it isn’t too presumptuous to say—I became interesting. Like my orchid. My job has taken me all over the world.”

  I should have asked about the other class members, one of whom would die and another who would kill, but instead, I dug a bit more into his life story. “What do you do?”

  “I’m a tastemaker. I can spot potential and turn it in the right direction. A serious actor that is wasting away in dramas when they have genius comic timing. The shopkeeper that has the heart of an inventor. When a door closes, I am there to point to the open window. Others see failure as a dead end, but I point them to a new beginning.”

  He had been talking in a teasing tone, but he sobered for a moment. “You are a really special person. I can tell. Great things are ahead of you, but tonight is not the time to talk. You need to know the gossip about my peers.”

  He gave me a wink, and a shudder ran over me, as I knew that somewhere in his lighthearted gossip could be the motive for someone’s murder.

  4

  I stuffed down my dread and tried to slam a congenial and easygoing smile on my face. “Your classmates?”

  “I heard that you met Karen the Carnation already. The dullest and cheapest of the flowers, in my opinion, and they don’t preserve well. They might be pretty enough at the best of times, but later, they just shrivel up into nothing. That is her now: bossy, annoying, and purely unlikable. Though I am probably being too harsh on her. She was married to Robert the Rose before, her old high school sweetheart, not without his own drama. But I will get to him in a minute.”

  He searched the crowd until he spotted his target. “I might as well point out her rival, Sara with the golden sunflower. She is over there in the full ball gown.”

  It didn’t take me long to find her, her pale hair so light that I debated whether it was the lightest of blondes or pure white with a nice rinse on it. Her face looked young but not too artificial. Surely, she’d had work done but not in a way so obvious that she looked pulled back. Her face seemed to glow as she smiled at the person she was talking to. “She’s lovely.”

  “Sweet as well, but when God was handing out brains, I think He skipped her over. Luckily, brains aren’t nearly as important as you would imagine being out of school. She’s lovely in both appearance and personality. Finds just everything you say, no matter how boring and pedantic, just enthralling. I imagine it is because she can’t hold a single thought in her head for more than a minute, so everything really is new to her. Like a goldfish, God bless her.”

  Robert the Rose came up to her elbow, touching it gently and kissing her on the cheek. She turned to face him, her already beautiful face transforming into full adoration. Together, they were a gorgeous pair.

  Orin the Orchid tsked. “I think her ignorance is a blessing. Robert is hardly faithful, and as near as I have heard, she doesn’t know. He runs off and cheats but always comes back in the end and showers her with gifts and attention. Perhaps ignorance is bliss, but I am far too old and set in my ways to find out.”

  “And Robert?” I asked.

  “Fine, I suppose he deserves his moment, though heaven knows he gets enough attention as it is. Handsome and respected but frankly quite overrated. Married to Sara the Sunflower, but as I said, he doesn’t really respect the bonds of matrimony, but Sara should have known. Robert is an identical twin, though his brother, Ryan, died after graduation. They both dated Sara in high school.”

  I gasped. “Dating twins?” I looked her up and down. It didn’t seem to fit with the image of a sweet lady.

  “It was a small school with limited options. Robert was dating her then cheated—quell your surprise—and dumped her. Then the brother, ‘God rest his soul,’ I will say only out of habit, swept her off her feet. I thought they were going to get married, then he passed away. He was a cruel boy, at least to me. Robert married Karen maybe twenty years later, dumped her in a spectacular fashion, and married Sarah about ten years after that. Robert just—” He bit off his statement with a little disgusted noise.

  “Not a fan of either brother, it sounds like?” I asked.

  “Ryan used to pick on me in that way kids do where they pretend they are just having fun, but really, they mean it. Of course, I just had to get even and tell him that in his future, I saw heartache and failure. Then he really hated me and made my life miserable until he died. And it didn’t help that I said Robert was doomed from a wonderful life. I guess I was wrong on both counts, but that happens when I get my emotions too wrapped up in my predictions. I can’t see clearly.”

  He sighed and looked around. “Not that I like the rest any better. You know what they say: ‘familiarity breeds contempt,’ and we are all very familiar. Not me, not in that way. I was always on the outside looking in during school, and every decade, I come to these get-togethers thinking that this time will be different. Insane I am! I swear that I will never come again because I am bored to death, but curiosity always wins out.”

  “Not many of your classmates left? How many did you start with?” I leaned over the bar and around Orin to refill a lady’s glass. I noticed that few people really paid Orin much attention or seemed to see me as anything more than a fixture that could supply more wine.

  “There used to be an even dozen of us, but Robert’s twin, Ryan, wasn’t the only one we lost. The youngest, but the first of many. You know that the mage life is rough. ‘You win or you die.’ I heard that on television, and it is awfully true. No one believed that I would be one of the winners, but here I am. Frankly, I am surprised that David wasn’t killed.”

  “Who?” I realized then that one of his classmates was still left to be described. I spotted a man, dark haired and with eyes that constantly shifted around the room, even as he spoke to Sara. Like her, he had yellow flowers, but his were much smaller. “Are those dandelions?”

  “Yes, David the Dandelion. The fact that he is pushing one hundred years old is a miracle. His family has always been on the wrong side of the law, and I thought it would have caught up with him by now, but despite a few near-misses with angry clients and even a few countries’ bounties on his head, he still walks among us. See, I’m not always right. Mostly right, but my gift is not as keen as a seer’s prediction, but I also don’t have to wait for a vision or magic to take me over. I can search and see and profit off my ideas.”

  A mention of the seer’s prediction sent a chill down my spine. I was gathering good intel and doing my job, but I couldn’t fight the urge that I should be doing more. Five classmates, one a murderer, one a victim, and I was tasked with watching it all go down and cleaning up the mess afterwards. Surely I could prevent it? If I was even going to try, I needed more info.

  “Tell me about David the Dandelion.” I topped off his glass before remembering what I had learned about filling a wineglass then blushed slightly at my goof.

  Orin, perhaps connecting the dots himself, carefully lifted the glass to his mouth and sipped the wine. “Blessed is the bartender with a heavy hand. Thank you, my dear. And why don’t we test you. What can you guess about David the Dandelion? Tell me what you think the dandelion means.”

  I put the bottle back on the shelf and focused fully on the verbal challenge set before me, starting carefully with the most obvious things. “Dandelions are often considered weeds and seem to thrive easily everywhere.”

  “Good start! Maybe I should train you to work with me, but I suppose you already have a job?”

  “Yes, in Rambler.” I smiled.

  “Next time I’m in town, we will have to get into some trouble, because you are absolutely correct about David the Dandelion. His family was rich but not exactly on the up-and-up. They gained and lost fortunes several times over when he was in school, and I believe that con
tinues to this day. Always a scam, but he takes pride in that. In being the outcast and living by his own rules. And speaking of rules, my dear, I do believe it is time for our first event, the toasts.” He lifted his glass to me then walked away.

  5

  Beatrice rolled in a cart of spiced pumpkin punch and tiny desserts that could be piled onto plates. “Ella, if you could top off the glasses, they are going to start the toasts,” she called out before moving in closer and lowering her voice so only I could hear the follow-up question. “Have you been able to mingle at all?”

  “Not yet, but Orin gave me a rundown on everyone that I think might be helpful. Unless he lied?” I hoped against hope that she would say he was brilliant and honest.

  She pursed up her lips a bit before giving me a quick answer. “He can exaggerate a bit for impact—that is for sure. He was bullied terribly in school, and I don’t think he ever really overcame it, and that colors his view on people, not that I can blame him. Poor little lamb.”

  “He mentioned the bullying a bit,” I added.

  “Yes, Ryan was by far the worst, but he was a bit like that to everyone. When Robert’s car was wrecked, there was a terrible moment when I thought that Ryan might have sabotaged it, but I was just being silly and felt just awful when I found out it was Ryan that died. They’re all so young and still figuring out their way in the world, and of course his death affected all of them. Orin should have let go of his feelings a long time ago. Eighty years is a long time to carry such hatred.”

  She turned her attention back to the crowd that was rapidly approaching the dessert cart and bar. I continued pushing the wine and loudly insisted that they needed more wine for the toast because it was good luck.

  Luckily, mages were just superstitious enough that they wouldn’t risk the bad luck even if they had never heard the rule before. In fact, I doubled down and added that white wine was slightly luckier, since I was already running low on red wine.

  Once everyone was served and back at their tables with plates of desserts, I grabbed a glass of white wine myself and a plate of the desserts then sat on a stool next to Beatrice. We were just far enough away that we could speak lowly without being overheard but not so far away that I would miss anything being said.

  “Beatrice, have you heard anything useful? Or seen anything?” I meant both physically and with her seer abilities.

  “There is unease here, more than in any decade previously, but I suppose that is to be expected given that a murder is going to happen. The tensions have been there always, but tonight, they will be let loose.”

  “Any idea what set it off?”

  She shrugged and turned her attention back to the tables as Sara the Sunflower rose from her seat and delicately tapped a knife on her wineglass to gather everyone’s attention. When she spoke, her voice was higher than I had expected.

  “I suppose I should start. Thank you to Beatrice for the lovely food. I can’t imagine a lovelier evening.”

  The wind whipped at the window, kicking up a wave of snow onto the glass. Someone in the group gave a snort of derision.

  Sara lost her smile for a split second, and I sensed a spike of frustration, her moment ruined. Then she turned her smile up to a thousand watts.

  “I have always had a special bond with my classmates.” She paused briefly to find each one in the group and give them an individual smile. “And to be with you tonight reminds me that while time marches on, the greatest gift we can have is the friends we make along the way.”

  She raised her glass, signaling the end of the sentimental speech that would have made every beauty pageant contestant in America roll their eyes at its saccharine sweetness. I wasn’t the only one that must have felt that. There was another snort from earlier, repeated at twice the volume in such a way that it was clear its perpetrator wanted to be called out for it.

  I located the snorter, Dave the Dandelion. Before anyone could drink to Sara’s toast, he commanded attention, standing up and raising his glass. “If we are all going to live in a fairytale, then I shall at least tell the truth. Old wounds that are never cleared out shall fester until they break the surface and the poison courses in our veins. Death is the only sweet release. To death. To freedom.”

  He drank the full glass of wine then crushed the glass in his hand, holding it aloft as blood slowly rolled down his forearm.

  A few people mumbled, “To freedom,” and drank, though most stared on in horror and shock.

  He threw the broken glass onto a table and left the room, heading out a door that led to the front, and a moment later, Sara chased after him.

  Robert the Rose coolly watched before rising. “These events are always full of surprises, but we must carry on. Who knows how much longer we have.” He waited for laughter, but no one laughed.

  Instead, an unsteady figure shot up: Karen the Carnation, her flowers listing as much as she did as she gripped the table to steady herself. “Ryan should have had more time. You took it from him. He was a saint, and you should be dead in his place.” She sobbed, and a woman next to her tried to quiet her.

  Beatrice leaned over. “Ryan also dated Karen, though I didn’t realize that she still felt so strongly about him after all these years.”

  Robert shouted back, “Shut up, you batty old souse. You’re drunk.”

  “You are only half the man he was. You goaded him into taking your car that night. Always badgering him and bullying him. You knew he had no experience with a hot rod like that, and it killed him. Killed him!”

  She sobbed and turned to run but tripped and fell. People rushed to help her and take her out through a new door. The activity was focused on her, but I watched Robert. He glared at her in a way that turned the blood cold in my veins. I could feel the magic gathering around me, and I braced myself to fight him if necessary, but he just held it in check. Waiting and watching.

  Once she was guided from the room out into another dining area, he watched, his glass ahead of him, though it appeared that he had forgotten that his hand was still held aloft mid-toast. “I must check on my wife,” he said to no one in particular.

  The room was mostly empty, and once the door shut after Robert, it felt like everyone at once let out a breath they’d been holding.

  Orin stood and raised his glass to the handful of people still present. “To those that hide secrets, every hand holds a knife, but to those of us with a clear conscience, we see the friends that extend their hands. May the hands you meet be full of laughs and joys in the year ahead.”

  He held his glass aloft, and perhaps it was his warm voice or its genuine cheer, but the room seemed warmer and brighter.

  Everyone remaining held their glasses aloft and, as one, replied with “cheers” and clinked glasses.

  6

  Beatrice leaned over to me. “The rest of the building is a mix of private dining rooms, offices, and obviously the kitchen and pantry. They are all connected by multiple hallways. Take these and poke around a bit.” She handed me a set of keys then gestured to her right.

  There was a door set into the dark wooden wall. I hadn’t noticed it before, as it blended in with the wall around it.

  I unlocked it and went through before I had really given much thought to the fact that while I had a lot of experience investigating crimes, specifically murders, I wasn’t really familiar with skulking around dark hallways and attempting to spy on people. And a dark hallway was exactly what I was in.

  I closed the door behind me and was plunged into what I thought was complete darkness. I paused, debating turning back, when something pressed up against my calf.

  After my heart exited my throat, I leaned down to scratch behind Patagonia’s ears. I should have been used to her presence by that time, but I secretly thought she still surprised me on purpose, and I could have sworn I heard a little hissing laugh.

  My eyes adjusted, and I realized that green-lighted exit signs provided enough light for me to navigate without running directly into a
wall. But what was even more interesting to me was the number of doors with light peeking out from underneath them that lined the hall.

  As I advanced down the corridor, voices on the other sides of the thin doors grew. I may not have snuck around often, but my several years of intense magic training hadn’t been for nothing. I worked a small, subtle spell as I cupped my hands to my ear and leaned against a door.

  The sound was still a bit muffled, and I had to breathe shallowly, but otherwise, the spell worked, and quickly, I was able to discern a crying Karen the Carnation from another woman who must have been a nurse or companion but I was quite sure wasn’t Sara the Sunflower.

  “I just don’t understand why he is so cruel,” Karen sobbed. “I loved him and gave him everything. I was always suspicious he had feelings for her, and when I brought it up, he called me crazy and paranoid. I can’t believe they came tonight. They did it just to embarrass me.”

  My heart squeezed at her confession, and I felt guilty. I had just seen her as a bossy old lady, but it hadn’t occurred to me to think of how difficult it must have been for her to see her ex-husband. He sounded like a real jerk.

  The second woman replied. “There, there. We all can see him for what he is. And if he was that terrible to you, do you really think he is any better with Sara? She’s probably miserable.”

  “I probably deserve it for stealing him away in high school. I was so foolish. Am so foolish.” Karen let out a sob that twisted my heart. A cry of true anguish.

  The other woman tutted. “You were a child, and he pursued you. At least the way you told it.”

  “Yes. I was so young and beautiful, and I believed him when he said that he really loved me. And Sara moved on quickly enough, though. When I heard that Robert’s car was crashed, my heart just broke. I hate to even admit how relieved I was to discover that Ryan was driving that night, but Robert was changed. I didn’t understand as I should have. I thought Robert was lost to me forever. He fell into a deep depression and disappeared. He didn’t even attend our first reunion. When he did come back at the twenty-year reunion, I thought I had a second chance at love.”