This Spells Doom

by Stacey Alabaster

  I didn’t like being looked at like that. It made me want to front up to him. Show him that I wasn’t weak and helpless. I was onto him, and I was going to win this war.

  “You told me that you didn’t know what case Mikhalia was working on.”

  He threw his head back and laughed.

  “Of course I know what cases all of my detectives are working on, Ruby.” He licked his teeth and came closer to me. So close that I could smell his pine aftershave.

  “Right. So, you lied to me. That makes for a great business relationship, doesn’t it?” I wanted to turn and leave, but there was something about the way Damon was staring at me that wouldn’t quite let me. It was magnetic. I needed to hear him out, at least. Even if he was about to come in for the kill. I wasn’t scared.

  “But this is very interesting,” he said.

  “What is?” I asked with a gulp.

  “I can’t imagine a better detective.” He stepped back, looked me up and down, and shook his head, but this time his look was one of admiration.

  Jeez, buddy, make your mind up already. Did he pity me or admire me?

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Someone who is both a detective and a witch.” He was still shaking his head in a dreamlike manner. “Can you imagine how valuable that would be?”

  It was more of a rhetorical question. Because yes, I supposed I didn’t know how valuable that could be. I was both those things, but not at the same time. “I don’t use magic to solve cases.”

  He shook his head in disappointment. “Well, then you are wasting your talents, Ruby.”

  “I’m not wasting anything.” I turned my back to leave. I didn’t need his case or his money or his detective agency. And I certainly didn’t need him to tell me how to be a detective.

  “You are exactly what The Agency needs, Ruby.” He walked over and poured boiling hot water into his tall black cup. “You will be our most valuable asset yet. Better than any spy equipment that money can buy. No one can buy what you have.”

  I stopped. Hang on, was this guy offering me a job? Actually, it sounded more like he wanted to add me to the equipment closet.

  “I work for myself, Damon. I don’t work for you.”

  He took a step closer to me. “You will, Ruby. If you don’t want your secret getting out, you will become an official employee here, starting Monday morning.” He nodded at me and took a few steps backwards. But his stare told me I had no choice in the matter. “I will have the paperwork ready when you arrive.”

  The Secret Garden was growing. Just a few weeks earlier, a freak storm had ravaged it, but herbs and plants that belonged to witches grew faster—especially when there was magical soil involved.

  This time, Geri had actually let me inside the gate. I kept my distance from the hedge maze and helped her to water some sage.

  Geri had her watering can out. “I am thinking about relaxing the rules. Perhaps there is power in numbers, after all. Especially now that you have decided to join our side for good.”

  I watched carefully while Geri moved from herb patch to herb patch. I still didn’t completely trust the place. I had been trapped inside its walls twice before. And the sides of the maze seemed to be moving in toward me, even on that day with Geri right beside me. They were like jaws that could open up and bite down on me.

  But at the same time, the garden seemed to sense whatever the person inside it was thinking and feeling—like a dog who knew when a person was scared and then changed its behavior to reflect that. So, I brightened up and grabbed another watering can. If I watered the garden, it couldn’t turn on me again, right?

  Geri told me that I had nothing to be frightened of as I stepped forward and sprinkled water onto the herbs. That it was a welcoming place. “Just with different rules than the human world.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, of course.” With Geri there, I did feel a little more confident that I wouldn’t get lost again. She talked to the plants, and they seemed to obey her command, bending to her will.

  “See?” she said, straightening up. “Nothing to fear.”

  Except maybe the person standing right before me.

  Geri was still one of my top suspects. But I had a new theory now—one that was troubling. But it was bubbling like the ingredients in a cauldron, and I didn’t know how to turn off the heat. I couldn’t ignore it.

  I was starting to wonder if this had been Damon’s plan all along. To lure me to come and work for him at The Agency.

  For his plan to work, he would need to somehow hire me for a job—get me to work for The Agency temporarily. And the perfect way to do that would be to create a mystery for me to solve. One that none of his existing detectives would be able to touch.

  See? Kill Mikhalia so that I came to work for him, and then he had a witch on his team. What he had wanted all along. The stupid thing was that I had played right into his little trap. I hadn’t realized what he was up to until it was too late.

  I stared at Geri as she moved deeper into the garden. It wasn’t as though I didn’t think she was capable of it. I thought she was capable of far more than she let on, in spite of her insistence that she was a good witch and only associated with those that did white magic. From the very first time I had met her, I’d gotten the feeling that something wasn’t completely right. It was what stopped me from trusting her completely, even though she’d never given me any real reason not to.

  But she had slipped to second on my suspect list. I was still keeping an eye on her. Now, there was someone else on my radar: Damon.

  But this was something I could only share with Vicky.

  I spotted the hedge maze growing and moving toward me. Time to get out.

  “Do you remember what you said to me, right before we were in danger of going out of business?” I said to Vicky as I climbed the ladder up into the loft, trying to find where Warren had hidden himself that morning. I was running a little late, as I was supposed to be at “work” at The Agency. It was Monday morning. The time that Damon had told me my official employment would start. If I was late, was he going to go running to the local newspaper to tell them everything he knew about me?

  Vicky frowned and shrugged. “You mean about me quitting?”

  “You made a joke before that.” I took another step up the rungs and craned my neck. Warren wasn’t in his tank, and he wasn’t in his usual hiding place behind the plank. “About how if we wanted to stay in business, then we needed to create a mystery.”

  “Yeah, but that’s just what it was—a joke.” She looked confused.

  I glanced down over my shoulder at her.

  “What if someone had the same plan, but not as a joke? Vicky, I think Damon killed Mikhalia so that I would come and work for him.”

  She burst out laughing, which I did not understand at all.

  “What?” I demanded. I had no idea what was so funny about that. It made perfect sense. It was the perfect plan, and I had the feeling that Damon was maniacal enough to pull it off.

  Vicky shrugged. “I just think you have a bit of a big head to think that Damon wants your services so badly, he would kill just so that you would work for him.”

  I jumped down off the ladder, pouting a little, even though she had said it in a teasing tone. There was still no sign of Warren. I didn’t know how he could have gotten from the loft to the ground floor of the barn, but he must have done it somehow. Maybe his familiar powers had fully kicked in, and he could transport himself now. But somehow, I doubted it.

  “I am being serious, Vicky. This is what I wanted to tell you today. Damon wants me, not only because I am a great detective, but because I am a witch. He thinks that I can be the greatest detective in the world, if only I would embrace both sides of myself.”

  I saw her face turn grave as what I was saying kicked in. “Are you really going to work for him?”

  I sighed and rubbed my temple. “I’m starting to wonder if I have much of a choice at this point.”

 
But we had something else to worry about. After both of us searching high and low in every corner and nook and cranny of the barn for another ten minutes, there was still no sign of Vicky’s beloved turtle.

  Warren was missing.

  11

  Damon was sighing in the heat and making things as difficult as possible. “Don’t you think this is a waste of resources?”

  I handed him another stack of fliers and told him we could save a lot of time if we took different streets. But Damon didn’t want to leave the argument before he had made his point.

  I had a point to make, too. Yes, the primary reason I was putting up the posters was because I wanted to find Warren. But I also wanted to put Damon off hiring me—to make him see that I wasn’t some magical dream detective, but just a regular one who took on regular mundane jobs.

  “This is the kind of work I do, mostly,” I said with a shrug as I put up another flier. “I find lost pets.”

  I hadn’t told hm that the lost pet belonged to my best friend, and that I wasn’t getting paid for this. And that it wasn’t technically a job. “So, if you want to hire me, go ahead, but this is what I mostly do—the type of clients I will be bringing to your company will not be that high-paying or glamorous.”

  He stepped in front of me and ripped the entire stack of fliers out of my hand. “This is BS!” he said. “This isn’t what you do.” And he was about to toss them all into the street before I yelled “Hey!” and grabbed them back off him.

  “That turtle really is lost, you know. And besides, aren’t you aware that it is illegal to litter?”

  He placed his hands on his hips and shook his head at me. “I know you are trying to weasel your way out of this, playing mind games with me. But Ruby, unless you want your secret exposed to the whole world, you will come to work for me.”

  I stopped and stared up at him. This was an idle threat, surely. “Why does it matter if the whole world knows? You guys are the ones hunting us.”

  He looked genuinely surprised. Maybe even a teeny bit hurt? “Is that what you think?”

  “I don’t know what to believe.” I stared at the ground, and Damon sighed heavily. Then he reached out to place a hand on my arm. I flinched and pulled back. I tried to go back to stapling up fliers.

  “You aren’t safe, Ruby—believe it or not, this is my way of protecting you. Employing you will keep you safe. You won’t be out there on your own.” He kept yammering on about what a favor he was doing for me. I wasn’t buying a word of it.

  “Look,” he said. “As much as I was in the dark about Mikhalia’s mission, I still had my suspicions that Mikhalia was working way outside our jurisdiction. That she was working for someone else. Someone who could be really dangerous.”

  I’d had enough of this, and I had turtle posters to hang. “Yeah, right, Damon. Tell it to someone less naïve. You might have better luck.” I stomped off. I had a lot of Swift Valley still to cover, and a best friend who was getting more and more hysterical every minute that Warren was missing.

  But Damon chased after me.

  “You don’t have any reason to run away from me, Ruby. You don’t need to fear me.”

  Unless he was a killer, that was.

  “Let me help,” he said and took half the fliers off me. “If I can find this turtle for you, will you at least consider my offer?”

  I crossed my arms. Anything for Warren.

  “Fine.”

  Justine was holding out the phone for me. “Something about a turtle?”

  I snapped my notebook closed and snatched it off her. Quickly, I said, “Hello? Yes, this is she. Yes, I am missing a turtle, that’s correct.” Damon’s ears pricked up.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “What is it?” Damon asked as I listened to the call.

  “Someone saw one of our fliers, and they spotted Warren. Not in the wild, though. The pet shop has him back inside there.”

  I hung up the phone and grabbed my bag, with Damon chasing after me as though he was somehow a part of this.

  “I can do this on my own. Fat lot of use you were, finding Warren for me . . .”

  “How do you know it wasn’t one of my fliers that did the job?” he asked as we reached the elevator and started to go down.

  “The fliers were my idea. I made them and printed them.” I pressed the ground floor button and hoped the door would shut before Damon could get in, but he managed to squeeze in without getting his leg lopped off.

  He was still chasing after me by the time we got to my car. “You want this turtle back, Ruby? Trust me. You are going to need my help.”

  But I didn’t trust him. Not at all.

  And so I sped off, leaving him there in the dust.

  “We are going to have to steal him back.” Vicky was staring at the pet shop with the determination of a mother who was trying to get her lost child back. I was glad that the place no longer stocked puppies or kittens, because she looked just about ready to tear the place down.

  But I was confused about how Mr. DeWinter could have stolen Warren back. “I don’t understand why the protection spell didn’t work . . .”

  “Neither do I,” said Vicky, still pacing as she chewed on her nails. “It doesn’t make any sense.” She tugged on the closed door again with such force that I wondered if she might pop the hinge. It was after hours, eight p.m. No one else around.

  I sat down on a bench. “Is it possible that you got the spell wrong, Vicky?”

  “NO!”

  I bit my tongue and didn’t say anything back in argument. But I couldn’t see any other way that someone other than Vicky or me could have gotten their hands on Warren, if the spell had been performed correctly.

  “We can’t use any more witchcraft to get him back,” I said, putting my foot down as I stood up. “It is too dangerous, especially with Damon breathing right down my tail. We are going to have to break in the old-fashioned way.”

  Vicky let out a little laugh of amusement. “Crazy to think that breaking and entering the old-fashioned way is—to us—the non-dangerous option.”

  True. But everything had gone topsy-turvy ever since I had discovered that I was a witch. Part of me wished that I had never known, that I could just go back to my old human life of lattes and dating and farm work and even teaching.

  But deep down, part of me had always know that I was different. And going back to ignorance wouldn’t change that fact.

  “So, what is the bright idea?” Vicky asked, staring at the pet shop.

  I nodded toward the glass window. “Brick through the window, grab the turtle, and run?” I’d been half-joking, but suddenly, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea, if witchcraft was totally out. “Hey, we are only stealing back what was taken from us, remember?”

  Vicky nodded, but a strange expression settled on her face. She paused and pressed her face against the glass of the window.

  “You know, if Warren actually was a familiar, he wouldn’t need us to break him out,” she said in a soft tone that was full of sadness and resignation as she came to this realization. It was true—I almost never had to bail Indy out of trouble (except for one time when she was under a freezing spell), because familiars were even better than witches at getting themselves out of tight spots.

  I patted her on the shoulder. “Maybe he’s not a familiar. But he is still important to you. He is a good pet. And we are going to get him back.”

  She nodded. “Thanks, Ruby.”

  There was no need to thank me. I felt like a protective aunt—I was acting on instinct as well, as I picked up the loose brick and used it to smash the smallest window, one that was away from any animals in the store and mostly away from any stock. Vicky ducked out of the way of the shards and entered.

  “Warren!” she said, racing over to him as I kept watch by the door. I couldn’t believe that we hadn’t triggered a siren or anything. In fact, it was suspiciously still and quiet out in front of the store. I walked down the pavement an
d checked. That night, Swift Valley was like a ghost town.

  Vicky was running back into the street with Warren, holding him out in front of her like he was a hot potato.

  “Come on!” she called to me. “We’ve made it! We are in the clear!”

  I was more than eager to get out of there, too. In fact, I couldn’t believe that we had pulled off the plan without anything going wrong at all. We were really getting away with it. And we hadn’t needed to use magic. It all seemed too good to be true.

  “Oh, I’m so pleased to have you back, Warren,” she said, pulling him in for a hug as we started to hurry down the street, but then she pulled him away again and looked at me, a very worried expression on her face. She reached out and brought me to a complete stop.

  “What? What is it?” I was still trying to jog on.

  “Ruby. We have to go back into the pet shop. Warren is telling me something.”

  I thought this was a ridiculous idea. “But we’re in the clear, Vicky. What are you talking about?” And just then, I started to hear sirens gaining on us, getting nearer. “Oh gosh, an alarm was triggered, Vicky. We need to get out of here right now!” I was even considering using witchcraft. I mean, this looked really, really bad, and I needed to do whatever was necessary to protect us.

  But Vicky pulled on my arm again and said, “No.”

  “Oh, this is stupid!”

  I couldn’t believe that Warren had said anything to Vicky. The sirens were still getting closer and closer. “He’s not even magical, Vicky! He’s not even a real familiar!” I cried out, not meaning to hurt her feelings but just wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible.

  She looked up at me with shining eyes. “Have a little faith, Ruby.”

  I closed my eyes and looked upwards. I was going to need all the faith I could muster right then. “Fine.”

  We walked back into the pet shop, our feet crunching on the broken glass on the linoleum floor, and I was grateful I was wearing thick boots.