This Spells Doom

by Stacey Alabaster

  Vicky slumped down onto the floor and buried her face in her hands.

  “It’s not that I haven’t bonded with Warren—I love the little guy,” she said. “It’s just that he is not getting it.”

  “Well, turtles are infamously slow at doing things.”

  Vicky nodded and bit her lip. I knew she was starting to lose faith that Warren would ever be the perfect familiar. Or any sort of familiar at all.

  Warren tucked his head back inside his shell. He’d had enough for today.

  I hated the fact that I was using Damon’s equipment. But at least I was still in my own car, in spite of the fact that it sounded like a dying giraffe, and thus not the most inconspicuous vehicle for tailing a suspect.

  I waited until Justine exited for the evening. I’d finished work half an hour before her and told Justine that I was leaving early for a doctor’s appointment. And that I’d see her tomorrow, bright and early. She accepted this, just as if I were a regular employee. For all I knew, she could have stayed back late and left me sitting in my car for hours.

  But she finished right on time. Because most of her work was administrative and research-based, she did tend to have a more regular schedule than the other people who worked for The Agency.

  As the dark clouds hovered above the sign on top of the building, it suddenly occurred to me how creepy that name could sound, depending on the context. I mean, who were these people, really?

  Maybe I just wanted to believe they were some ominous force that had turned up to wreak havoc on the town—because that meant once they were defeated, they would go away. When the truth was more likely that they were just a bunch of highly skilled detectives who had come into town and taken all of my business.

  I started my car and pulled out after Justine, who was driving really slowly. The clouds up ahead were rumbling from the change to cool weather after the end of the short summer heat wave. I personally couldn’t wait for the cooler months to hit. The cool weather made stints doing stakeouts in cars easier to handle, and you could also wear long dark clothing to cloak yourself in.

  Justine’s dark green car, along with the speed it was traveling, reminded me of Warren. I really felt for the poor turtle, and for Vicky. I couldn’t see any good solution, though, especially if we weren’t allowed to use witchcraft to just gift Warren with magical powers.

  Hmm. We were headed up toward the milk plant, which was on a flat plane on the outskirts of town. I hadn’t been expecting Justine to head in this direction. What was she doing, going up there after hours? I’d assumed she went to the gym as soon as work finished.

  You could smell the milk through the car windows. I wished I had my familiar, my cat Indy, with me, but I knew she would appear if I really needed her.

  I saw Justine’s car parked, strangely, a fair distance from the entrance to the plant.. All the milk from all the dairy farms in the district was pasteurized and bottled in this plant. It was the main economy of the town.

  But why was she parked so far away?

  Justine got out of her car and started to creep around the side of the building. I climbed out of my car and followed her, racing up the slight incline to get to the side of the building. She had squirreled her way down a narrow space between the main building and the building where the vats were. She was talking into a recording device and walking slowly.

  She spotted me and ran.

  I was getting sick of having to chase people through darkness, and also sick of tripping over. But I supposed that was what I signed up for when I became a PI, right?

  But teaching primary school had been a lot easier than this. I mean, there had still been a lot of running and trying to catch people, and a fair bit of tripping over, but at least they never threatened me when I caught them. And it had never been in the middle of the night. School got out at three p.m.

  I reached Justine and grabbed her so that she couldn’t run. I was kinda proud of myself as I pulled her back and toward me, so that she was held in place. I was getting stronger and tougher.

  But Justine wasn’t pleased with me. She was furious.

  “I am working on a case, Ruby, and you could have just ruined everything!” She pointed toward the milk factory and spluttered, “Damon is not going to be happy when he finds out that my stakeout was interrupted by you and whatever ridiculous scheme you are up to!”

  I let go of her and put my hands up. Whoops.

  “Okay, okay. I don’t see why we have to tell Damon about this.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, that’s right.” She brushed herself off. “You’re all about impressing Damon. It’s pathetic.”

  I felt my face blush. Whoa. What happened to her stance about women supporting other women?

  I had to be the bigger person.

  “I’m sorry that I may have put your case in jeopardy, Justine. But I am working on a case as well. And I know that you are hiding something from me. Something that could actually help me find Mikhalia’s killer.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I glared at her.

  “What did you really know about Mikhalia?” I asked.

  She was still breathing heavily from the chase. I guessed that she didn’t run that often. She really was mostly chained to her desk.

  She just stared at me. “Well, clearly, you already know.”

  I shook my head. “You wanted to tell me the other day in the office, but you held back. Why?”

  “Because it’s not the type of thing you just talk about, is it?” she whispered to me. “People might be listening to us right now. Spying.” She shook her head and looked at me with a sort of pity in her eyes, like she felt sorry for me, but she also knew something about me that I didn’t know.

  Then her face switched back to normal.

  Justine glanced back over toward the milk factory. “Mikhalia was investigating a case right before she died . . . An interesting one, if a little strange. In fact, it was what drew her to Swift Valley in the first place.”

  “What case?” I asked as a light flickered on inside one of the factory windows.

  We both automatically stepped into the shadows so we wouldn’t be seen.

  Justine cleared her throat. “Look, I don’t believe it myself, okay? So take this with a grain of salt.”

  “Come on, then,” I said, trying to pry it out of her.

  She still seemed hesitant to explain.

  “It’s fine. I won’t judge,” I said.

  “There are rumors of paranormal activity in this town. A lot of whispers and urban legends.” Justine looked embarrassed, rolling her eyes as she spoke. “Like I said, I don’t believe any of it, but the rumors are persistent. Mikhalia saw it differently than I did. She was more open to it. She believed there was something going on. Something worth investigating, at least.”

  I tried to play it as cool as possible.

  I even managed to choke out a bit of a laugh. “What did she think was going on?” I asked, leaning in a little bit like I was trying to get the gossip on a juicy topic that I wasn’t taking too seriously.

  Justine shrugged. “Okay, this is going to sound really crazy. But Mikhalia believed that there are witches in this town. And she was trying to find them.”

  I backed away slowly from her and didn’t say anything else, my mind spinning too much as I made my way back to my car. But I shot her a look through my car window. A look that said, “Pfft, as if. That Mikhalia woman must have been crazy.”

  Auto-pilot must have kicked in, as my car seemed to be drifting back to the center of town where the shops and offices were, instead of where the mountains were. It was after dark, and all the office lights were out. But my car stopped in front of it anyhow.

  The Agency.

  So Mikhalia had been investigating us. The coven. The witches of Swift Valley.

  And who was her boss? Damon.

  I gripped the steering wheel and shook my head. Damon must have known exactly what Mikhalia was up to. He’d proba
bly given her the case. For all I knew, he was investigating it himself.

  Why did I get the feeling that I had been lured into a trap?

  7

  There was a cackling in the room as everyone waited for our leader to enter. Well, not exactly a room, but an add-on to Geri’s old house that was more like a shed decked out in plush purple curtains that lined all the sides.

  An emergency meeting had been called. At midnight. A bit annoying, as I had been hoping to get a good night’s sleep for once, now that the heat had started to ease.

  There was very little ease amongst the witches that had gathered. Rumors about the witch hunters had already made their way amongst the majority of the coven. Some of these rumors were getting out of hand. I heard a mention of a bow and arrow. I was fairly certain that there was no threat to our lives so far—Mikhalia had just been gathering information. Spying on us.

  But who knew what they were actually going to do with that information? Or who was the one seeking it?

  There was an aura of fear as I entered the hot room, which had not been aired and had no air conditioning, nor fans, inside it. Vicky and I kept to the back while Geri made her way to the front, where there was a small stage. She stood up to address us all like she was the school principal taking the Monday morning assembly.

  Geri’s face was grave. She took her time before she started speaking, eyeing each of us individually before moving onto the next. “Some of us have been sloppy.”

  I gulped and glanced over at Vicky, who was staring at the ground. I kinda knew exactly which of us had been sloppy. Me mostly, and Vicky close behind. When the two of us were together, we got extra sloppy. Geri wasn’t naming any names . . . yet. I straightened up and kept my eyes fixed toward the front, trying not to feel too called out.

  “For three hundred years, I have lived undetected amongst the people of this town. Swift Valley. Though they have come and gone, lived and died, I have always lived here without any real threat from mortals.” She scanned her eyes around the room. They felt like lasers when they hit me. “Until now.”

  Well, maybe she still wasn’t naming names, but she had her eyes fixed right on me. She wasn’t moving onto the next witch. Just me. For what felt like a full minute. I shifted a little and wondered if I was just being paranoid. Nope. She was still staring at me.

  And it didn’t take long for everyone else in the room to follow her lead. Heads turned.

  I could feel the majority of eyes on me, the newcomer. But I tried not to make so much as even a twitch as I stood there perfectly still. Yes, I had been a little bit sloppy with letting people of the general public see me performing magic. And letting them hear me talking about being witch. Then there were all those times when I—and usually Vicky—performed a spell that went horribly wrong and impacted half the town. But this wasn’t on me.

  . . . Was it?

  Geri clapped her hands together loudly, to signal that she wanted everyone’s eyes on her once more. Finally, the scrutiny was off me, if only briefly.

  “We need to close down ranks.” She started to walk from one end of the stage to the other, her voice suddenly booming. “No magic in public, at all, for starters . . .”

  There was a collective gasp from the coven. Not that the other witches were as “sloppy” as me, mind, but every last one of them performed the odd sneaky spell in public, whether that was to make a supermarket queue move faster or to make a man who was ogling one of them trip up on the sidewalk.

  Geri stopped and stared at us all. “And if this doesn’t help matters—if the war between us and our hunters escalates—then I will have to declare that there be no magic performed at all. Not even in your own homes. Not even amongst yourselves.”

  Now it was more of a collective cry than a gasp. No witch wants to be without her magic!

  Was I going to be the one that copped all the blame for this? I was still on probation. And most of them were still giving me the cold shoulder, even without this added problem.

  “This will be our last meeting for the foreseeable future. From now on, keep your distance from each other in the town. No meeting up at all in Swift Valley, not even in pairs. Is that understood? At least until this whole dreadful business blows over.”

  Now Vicky looked at me with alarm.

  “What about Vicky and I?” I asked, chasing after Geri as she hurried to leave the shed to go back to her actual house. “We work together.”

  Geri spun around. “So, you think special conditions apply to you? When you are the one who has put this coven in jeopardy?”

  She did think this was all my fault! Maybe that was obvious, but until she actually said it, it didn’t sink in.

  “I . . .” Well, yes, I did think that special conditions needed to apply to me. It wasn’t like I had asked to be dragged into this witch lifestyle, was it? I was more like an accidental witch. One who was still being trained. An apprentice who hadn’t gone full-time yet. I still had a business to run in the human world.

  Geri hung her head. “It’s my fault,” she said quietly.

  Vicky and I looked at each other.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  She lifted her eyes up toward us. They were pale blue and filled with an odd regret. “I enabled your behavior. This sloppiness. I even helped the two of you perform witchcraft in public just a few days ago.” Her voice almost sounded like it was going to crack.

  “Geri, you don’t need to feel bad about that,” I told her. “I am grateful for you for helping us out.”

  But she just shot me a sad look, and then turned her back without another word. I was left standing there like I had disappointed a parent.

  Vicky and I were the last two to linger out in front of Geri’s house after the rest of the coven had left, mostly via broomstick—while that was still allowed.

  “So, is this the last time we are going to see each other for a while?” I asked, half-laughing because I didn’t think that Vicky would actually agree to such a ridiculous stipulation. But she looked sullen.

  “What if The Agency came to town for the sole purpose of hunting witches?” She took a step backwards and looked frightened. “And now they’ve got you exactly where they want you, Ruby. Right in their clutches.”

  There was a slicing sound as I closed the blades of the clippers, and the plum twig fell to the ground. As magical as my plums were, they still required a lot of manual gardening to keep them ripe and juicy and earning me cash on the side. As I clipped away, I wondered what I had gotten myself into. I was living in a modern world. But suddenly, I felt like I was back in the 1600s. Is that what this was? A literal witch hunt?

  Is that what The Agency had come to town to do?

  Taylor waved at me from a paddock away. He was dragging a wheelbarrow full of parts to fix the broken gate with. The way he earned his keep—his rent and food—was by taking care of the farm work, especially the bits that required heavy manual labor. It helped me out a lot, because it freed up my time to focus on my detective business.

  But I didn’t let him come near the plums. The plums trees were my special domain.

  Taylor was keeping one eye on me, even while he pulled out his tool box and starting sawing off some timber for the broken part of the gate. I climbed down off my ladder.

  I did trust the kid.

  But had I made a mistake asking him to live on the farm with me? For all I knew, he was the one who had “tattled” on us. I watched as his shoulder-length blonde hair stuck to his forehead in the heat as he hammered away. He was young. Twenty-two. He could have used the cash. Was he the one who had drawn attention to us?

  Taylor was staring back at me now, and our eyes locked. To make it less awkward, I waved vigorously and asked if he wanted to join me for my special shepherd’s pie and side salad that night. He just shrugged and called back, “Sure,” before he returned to hammering.

  But that night, he never came in for dinner. I had no idea where he went.

  The
second serving of shepherd’s pie was growing cold. I wrapped it up and put it in the fridge while Indy stared at me, not saying anything, just staring at the pie as though it held some sort of meaning. Maybe she was just hungry.

  As much as Taylor had claimed to be on my side, he was a mere human. Not one of us. Not a part of the coven. Just a plain old human that I had trusted to keep my secret. It was an accident that he had ever discovered the truth. He’d overheard me very sloppily having a conversation with Vicky about witchcraft. I’d thought he was asleep at the time. Gee, maybe Geri had a point. Maybe all the witches in the coven were right. These problems had only started when I had joined them.

  I had been too trusting.

  I knew I had to keep my secrets closer to my chest from that point onwards.

  8

  I knocked on the door and stepped back, wondering if would be allowed in. I was breaking rules. But overnight, something had dawned on me. I needed to share it—not just with my best friend, but with my co-worker.

  Vicky pulled the door open a crack, and I saw one large pale blue eye staring out at me. “We are not supposed to be communicating with each other!” she said in a little hiss, “Anyone could be watching us right now.”

  “I made sure that I wasn’t followed,” I said. I gently pushed the door open, stepped into her house, and threw a look toward Shu, who was knitting in the living room. She cast me a very suspicious look back, and I got this jolt down my spine that always told me when something was wrong. I could feel the hairs on my neck standing up. Vicky always claimed that Shu had no idea she was a witch, but really. How did she live with a witch and not notice the giant cauldrons? The strange herbs in the pantry? The fact that Vicky occasionally froze her when they got in an argument about who had used the last of the coconut water, and Vicky needed a few moments to cool off?