by Bella Falls
“Pixie poop,” Charli exclaimed. “She was faking it.”
The professor tapped the side of her head. “It’s like a steel trap in here. I’ve been a historian all my life, and you don’t think I’ve come across all kinds of sources and writings that haven’t hinted at there being a world within the world? I’ve been waiting for the right moment when I could confirm my hypothesis.”
A quiet tension stretched between all of us. There were very specific protocols to follow in a situation like this. One of us should spellcast her to sleep and then notify the local magical authorities to have them transport her to have her memories altered. In Auggie’s case, it would be simple enough to make sure she forgot the conversation about how to take care of her. But if we handed her over to the wardens, we’d lose a very valuable asset. While Charli might eventually be able to track down what we were seeking, the professor could start us all on the right path to speed up the process.
Making a very risky choice, I broke the tension in the room. “Raise your hand if you’re a witch.” Mine rose in the air, and I waited for the others to follow.
One by one, other hands joined mine, including Rissa’s. Her mentor’s expression softened. “Really, Ris?”
“Does it bother or scare you?” our friend asked in a lower voice.
Auggie patted her former student’s leg. “Actually, it clarifies a few things I’ve observed while watching you over the years and makes me respect you even more, if that was even possible. You had magic you could have used to get ahead in your career, but I know for certain that you never overstepped any boundaries. You worked hard to get where you are, and I couldn’t be prouder. And no, I’m more intrigued, and there’s nothing about you that could ever scare me.”
Rissa swallowed hard, her hand pressing against her cheek heating a bright pink. “Let me go get you that iced tea you wanted.”
Even I had to wipe a little moisture out of my eye. “I should probably contact Ebonee. I’m gonna get into so much trouble, but I guess I’m kind of used to that.”
“Wait a minute, not everybody raised their hands,” Auggie observed, narrowing her gaze on Odie. “If you’re not a witch, big guy, then what are you?”
He shared a questioning glance with Crystal first, who tilted her head and winked at him to let him know it was his choice. Odie chuffed out a breath and replied in his deep baritone, “Bear shifter.”
“Not exactly sure what a shifter is, but I can make an educated guess from the context of your size that it might be something akin to a werewolf.” Auggie leaned forward on the edge of the couch with a smug smile plastered on her face. “And what about you, hot pants? Are you some two hundred-year-old vampire stuck at the age you were turned? I heard what you said about your medical degree.”
Luke tensed beside me. For a man who liked to keep secrets about his life, he was standing front and center with a big spotlight of attention focused on him. Reaching for his hand, I squeezed it to let him know he had my support whatever he chose to reveal.
“No,” he stated with firm resolve.
Auggie’s face dropped in disappointment. “Oh. I must have misunderstood.”
“I’m way older than two hundred years,” Luke added, flashing her a shy grin.
The professor pumped her fist in the air. “Yes!” she cried out. “But I have an even bigger, more important question for you. Do you sparkle?”
The rest of us girls giggled while Luke answered no in confusion.
Auggie ogled my boyfriend without apology. “Contact whomever you need to call. If I get a vote, I want to be taken care of in the house that comes with witches, vampires, and ghosts.”
Chapter Eight
The downstairs of the big house morphed into a mini research library with books and papers stacked on every table and shelf. Boxes of the items taken from the professor’s cabin filled the living room. The map was spread out on the dining room table, and Auggie took the chair right in the middle, shooing away the eager heads that leaned over too far and blocked her light.
“I’m still not sure this is a wise decision,” Ebonee admitted after seeing Dr. Tomasi out to her car. “But under the circumstances, I agree that it’s the best option.” She bent down and picked up one of the coins from the stash and stared at it, her face switching back and forth from wonder to worry.
“Dad and I have already discussed the dangers of having any of Ann’s possessions in the house and the curse,” I said, acknowledging her unspoken concern.
The coven leader placed the item back in its box. “And?”
“If we do things right, it’ll be a temporary solution.” I ticked off all of the reasons we’d come up with on my fingers. “Plus, there’s a considerable amount of magical protection going on here, which you know. And my gut tells me that Daniel Jewell is somehow involved in all of this, so maybe that adds an extra layer of defense.”
Ebonee’s phone rang and she answered it, snapping off quick responses and hanging up. “A big part of me would like to stay, but it seems like you’ve got things in hand. Your friend with the tracking talents doesn’t seem as confident as I would like, but I’m sure she’ll come in handy once you figure out where to start. Keep me posted on your progress.” Without waiting for me to reply, she left the house in a rush. I watched her talk to my father outside through the living room window before driving away.
“It’s a good thing she didn’t make those comments about me around Mason,” Charli said as she joined me. “She’ll never know how lucky she was that he’s out helping your uncle clean things up with the other guys.”
“I don’t know if you’ve got anyone like her in Honeysuckle Hollow, but she can be a bit…”
“Rough in her delivery?” my friend finished. “Yeah, we have more than a few of those types. But if she’s in charge of an entire regional coven, then she has to make big choices. And she’s not entirely wrong. My confidence in my abilities these days is much lower than when you and I first met.”
Her admission surprised me. “Why?”
She told me about how she’d lost her talents for a while but that her friends and family had been helping her recover them after the big traumatic period without them. “Mason thinks they’re exactly like they were before, but I can tell the difference. This whole treasure hunt will really put me to the test. I just hope I don’t fail it or you in the end.”
I caught her up in a big hug. “You know what you need right now to make you feel invincible?”
“What?”
Letting her go, I winked. “One of my cousin’s honey buns and a tall glass of sweet tea. All that sugar rushing around in your veins will chase away any doubts.”
Raised voices from the dining room interrupted our discussion, and I excused myself to go scold them. “Hey, if you can’t play nice, then some of you are going to have to leave.”
“Fine by me,” croaked Auggie. “Too many cooks in this dang kitchen anyway. Better to leave this to the professionals.” She jerked her thumb at herself and pointed to Rissa.
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
Crystal held up a notebook with some words written on it. “We can’t agree what all these verses mean.” She read it out loud:
“Be careful of the path you take
For riches and power your life may break
To seek that which I have chosen to hide
Be wary of the daily tide
First, you have to find the key
To use where’er the close may be
A stronghold is the finest guard
Once through the gate and cross the yard
Stay on the path and use your charm
To not come into any harm
Three clear notes in perfect chime
Will keep you from a hole in time
For all you seek, I wish you well
To find your way out of a shell
From the depths of the great wide sea
Where fortunes inside you must free.”
/> “It’s nice that she followed the rules of all treasure map making and made the directions rhyme,” snarked the professor. “I guess a whole lot of movies got it right all along.”
Granny Jo floated into the room. “Perhaps another of the missing pieces from the map will actually have a big ol’ X over the spot where it’s all buried, too.”
The two unlikely allies exchanged more sarcastic banter with each other, ignoring the others. Auggie hadn’t flinched at all when she came into my family home. Instead, she demanded to meet a ghost, and my great-granny obliged in an attempt to shoo the professor away and protest her presence. It took all of five minutes before the two stubborn women reveled in their similar personalities and became friends.
Rissa brought her fingers to her lips and blew out a shrill whistle. “We are all focusing on the big picture too much and it’s overwhelming us,” she declared. “Everything needs to be broken down into manageable pieces. Want to find the treasure? We’ll need to do it bit by bit, starting with this clue. Can’t figure out what it all means? Let’s look at it line by line.”
Her mentor frowned before sighing in resolution. “You’re right. I think I might be a little too close to it all. Plus, I’ve been through a lot myself.”
“And that’s the closest to an apology we’re going to get,” Rissa stated, bobbing her head in acceptance.
“I’ll be in the kitchen. Anytime y’all get hungry, come let me know.” Granny Jo faded out of view.
Dani tried to insert herself between Crystal and Cate so she could read the words again. “I wish we had more space to spread out in. This whole place is getting a bit crowded.”
Rumbling vibrations shook the floor under us, and I grabbed onto the wooden molding around the doorway. The whole room vibrated, and we all did our best to hang on. A glass of tea tipped over on the table, and Rissa shrieked as she yanked the map off the surface. My head swam a bit, and I closed my eyes, trying to stay steady on my feet. The startled cries of my friends and family filled my ears.
Everything stilled as suddenly as it had begun, and I ventured to open one eye. “Everyone okay?”
“Was that an earthquake?” Auggie asked, clutching her chest.
Cate heaved out a nervous breath. “I think I would have sensed if it were as connected to the ground as I am.”
“Earth witch,” I mouthed at the curious professor, who raised her eyebrows at the new information but managed to keep her cool with ease.
Granny Jo reappeared, her spectral figure wavering with worry. “Are y’all okay? There’s a huge stirring of the spirits going on with lots of them livelier than a kicked hornet’s nest. That hasn’t happened in ages, and certainly never when a mortal was visiting.”
“What was it exactly?” I asked, still leaning against the wall for support.
My ghostly great-grandmother placed a sassy hand on her hip. “Take a closer at this room. See anything different?”
Dani scrambled out of her chair with a gasp. “Oh my goodness, where did that door come from?”
“Where do any of the extra rooms in this house come from? Who knows what spells and hexes are runnin’ all over this place,” Granny Jo blurted out. “You ain’t gonna know spit until one of you puts on your big girl panties and opens the door.”
“Go ahead, Dani Jo,” I urged. “It should probably at least be one of us Jewell’s.”
My cousin nodded and stepped forward until she stood in front of the wooden entry. Swallowing hard, she gripped the nob and twisted it.
With a drawn-out creaking, the door swung open. Dani gawked at the interior, blocking the entrance. “Where did this come from?”
“Well, if you would move your behind out of the way, I might be able to tell you,” Granny Jo took a shortcut, her spectral form passing through the middle of the table. “Huh. I guess it makes sense that this is the room the house would add with all of the activity going on.”
In a mad scramble, all of us tried to get through the new door at once, and it took some pushing and shoving to achieve entrance. Once through, I marveled at the arrangement of furniture. Floor to ceiling bookshelves ran along two walls with comfortable chairs under lights sitting in front of them. One long simple wooden table took up the most space in the middle of the room with a few matching chairs pushed underneath it. A roll-top desk sat against another wall, but it looked occupied with someone’s belongings. A chalkboard on wheels sat next to the desk with the remnants of words still present on the cloudy surface.
“The house created a new room for us to use,” I exhaled, running my fingers over the edge of a shelf to check if it was real.
Granny Jo explored the insides. “No, if this were new, you’d have to pick out the furniture for it. This is the space generated for your dearly departed several-times-removed cousin Campbell. He liked to support the family business by doing all the research for objects that were purchased. This was long before the invention of those infernal devices you carry around now.” She hung her head a little. “He’s one of the few who moved on completely.”
“Why?” Dani asked.
My great-grandmother floated over to the desk. “Campy was a self-taught man with no educational degree, but he was smart as a whip. He told me once he wouldn’t stay because he thought there’d be a lot more to learn about once he passed away. His curious mind always pushed him to new things.”
As big as our family tree was with all of its roots and branches, it was no wonder I didn’t know every single member. “So, this room existed during his time and then disappeared later on only to come back to give us space to organize all the stuff we need to sort through.”
“Today keeps getting better and better,” Auggie chuckled. “Come on, stop being amazed and help clean things up so we can spread out.”
After a good wipe down, the map took up a place of honor in the middle of the long table. Rissa rolled the chalkboard to the head of the work area. “Let’s go through the clue again.”
As Cate read the verses with slow deliberation, Rissa repeated specific words as she wrote them down one at a time. “Path. Riches. Power. Tide. Key. Close. Stronghold. Guard—”
“Ooh, ooh, I think I have something.” Crystal leaned over the map and tapped on one spot. “It’s those last two words. Stronghold and Guard. The original colonists who came to the area settled on this strip of land and built themselves a small settlement. They named it Fort Bell after the captain of the ship that brought them. At low tides, you can walk through the shallow water out to the place where the settlement used to be, but when the tide comes back in, the channel fills up and you need a boat to get out to it. There’s a herd of wild horses that live on it because nobody wants to live there.”
“Those colonists disappeared under mysterious circumstances,” Rissa added. “Nobody goes out there because it’s supposed to be haunted. Although we’ve recovered some interesting artifacts and have displayed them at the museum.”
“What a load of bilge water. It was a bad location to start with, so they probably moved to a better one. Without the use of newfangled social media, nobody was kept up to date as to where they went. But I have to compliment the water witch. Good catch.” Auggie smacked my friend’s behind with approval, causing Crystal to giggle with pride and run to the opposite side of the table.
“I’ll bet this last part gives directions on how to find whatever it is we’re looking for,” Cate said. “It talks about a gate and a yard.”
Charli stopped hanging back on the perimeter of things. “If you’ve got a starting point, then I think I might be able to help. That might allow us to get going instead of waiting here longer.”
In all the uproar of the new room, I’d forgotten about my friend’s tracking abilities. “That’s a good point. Crystal, do you think Odie would let you take the boat? We’ll get there way faster by water.”
“I don’t need his permission. It’s my boat.” She hopped up and exited the room. “Let’s go, girls.”
&nbs
p; Chapter Nine
“What do you mean I can’t go?” The pout on Odie’s face almost broke my resolve.
Crystal, Charli, and I stood outside the barn in solidarity after a long debate up at the house narrowing down which of us girls would go on the first attempt to use the clue. All we had to do before heading out was break the big guy’s heart and hope to hexes it wouldn’t trigger his bear. The size of her boat dictated how many of us would fit, and if Odie came along, it meant more of us would have to stay back.
Charli grabbed Mason to explain things to him, but I risked my own life to back up Crystal when she told her pirate nut of a husband that he had to stay behind.
“Honey bear,” she cooed, rubbing his arm. “Rissa needs to go because she’s the historical expert. I have to drive the boat. Charli’s the one with the special talents that we’re going to try out. And Cate’s earth magic might come in very handy if we have to dig.”
Odie cast me an irritated glance. “She doesn’t have to go.”
“Hey,” I complained. “I’m absolutely essential.”
The big guy squared up to his full height and crossed his arms over his barrel of a chest. “Why?”
Not willing to back down, even if I would be just a tiny little snack in his big ol’ maw if he shifted on us, I stood my ground. “First of all, the coven hired my family to find the treasure. So, it’s my job. Second of all, I do have a bit of an edge when it comes to finding magical objects. That’s also my job.”
“I guess those are pretty good reasons,” Odie admitted once he took a second to ponder them. “Although maybe we could also use the little skiff you have tied up off the pier down by your cottage?”
That tiny thing barely had room for two of us Jewell’s to use to get us out to our secret vault located on a sea island that had a habit of moving around. No way would the small boat with the wimpy motor make it all the way up to Bellfort, and if the bear shifter attempted to get in it, I’m pretty sure his heft would sink the poor thing all together.