by Vreni Fox
Finally I could hear something other than water echoing, but I couldn’t quite make out what. I grit my teeth and turned off my flashlight, leaving myself in the pitch black.
I would just have to feel my way along the cave walls until I could see what was going on. I moved painfully slowly, reaching along and cringing when I accidentally put my hand through a spider’s web. A shiver ran through my body as I tried wiping it off on the skirt of my dress. I knew that I had to be very careful with where I placed my feet, because some of these paths through the caverns led to steep cliffs and drop offs. If I fell down one of these ravines, they’d probably never find my body.
My eyes darted around the cave. I couldn’t tell if they were playing tricks on me, or if the faintest bit of light was starting to see through. Once I was sure that I was able to barely make out the forms in the cave, though, I noticed that the temperature had gradually become much, much warmer.
Then I heard them. Voices. I knew that I was in the right spot. I crept along until I could see a break in the path where it opened up into another huge cavern, this one illuminated by an otherworldly blue glow.
I knew that I had been there before. It was the cavern I had visited so long ago on my astral projection. The exact same one!
And there she was.
Sabine Natter stood on a ledge overlooking a vast, glowing blue hot spring. I could see the steam rising off of the pool and Sabine standing in front of it with her arms crossed over her body.
Did this woman even own an article of clothing that was not a Chanel suit? Even in the middle of this cavern, where she had dragged my cat, she was still wearing a pencil skirt and comically high heels.
I could see her lips moving but I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying yet, thanks to the reverberations of her voice in the cavern.
Why hadn’t Horst just arrested her yet? Was she managing to talk her way out of this?
I hoped not, and I tried to get a better glance around the cave. I couldn’t see Horst or Pudding from where I was standing.
I crouched down on the ground and hid myself behind a big rock so that I could see almost the entire room. There was Sabine’s familiar, a slender cinnamon colored Abyssinian cat. There was a cardboard cat carrier, like you would use to take your pet cat to the vet, which I assumed held Pudding. It was getting soggy and wet on the bottom and I wondered if he would be able to break out of it if he tried.
Then I saw it. A little Jack Russell terrier, and the witch he belonged to… Detlef Mauer? I hadn’t expected to see him here, only Sabine. Good thing that I came with Horst.
Horst! So that was why he hadn’t arrested Sabine. Detlef was holding him hostage at gunpoint.
Oh, this was bad. I didn’t have a gun. Even if I did have one, I didn’t know how to use one. I tried to figure out what I was going to do and listened in on what was being discussed.
“She’s not here,” Horst was saying to Sabine.
“Liar,” Sabine responded. “We both know that she would never just let the police do their jobs. Look, Officer, I don’t think you understand what you’ve gotten yourself into. We can’t leave here without her.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Frau Natter. We’re all going to leave here, and you’re going to give Brunhilde her cat back. I have no idea what you’re doing in the middle of the night inside this cave with everyone’s house pets, but we’re done here. We’re all leaving, and forgetting that any of this ever happened.”
Horst made a move toward the cardboard cat carrier and Detlef shoved the nose of his gun into Horst’s back.
“Don’t move,” he barked, his voice shaking.
“Now Detlef, calm down,” Horst raised his hands again.
Then I saw my chance. I rushed out from behind my rock and gave Detlef a push.
I was hoping that it would be the opportunity that Horst needed to gain an upper hand on the situation, but that wasn’t exactly how things panned out. Horst looked just as surprised as Detlef, who stumbled, scrambled to grab the handgun he had dropped, and fell into the hot spring.
“Ugh,” Horst glanced over the ledge. “Hildi, don’t look.”
“I hadn’t meant to…” I cried, looking at the empty ledge that Detlef just went over. His poor little familiar, the Jack Russell, barked like mad, racing back and forth at the edge of the water as though anything could be done.
“You fool!” Sabine shouted. “You’ve killed him!”
“I didn’t mean to! It was an accident!”
“Shut that dog up!” Sabine cried. “It’s terrible!”
It was terrible, seeing the poor thing grieve his master.
“I can’t listen to this,” Sabine marched over in her high heels and kicked the dog into the spring after his master.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Frau Natter, what are you doing?” Horst demanded, the shock visible on his face.
It was one of the most terrible things that I had ever seen. And I was the one who found Mandy Unterwegs’ body.
“Sabine, don’t move,” I stared her down. “We know what you did.”
“You should be thanking me,” Sabine hissed. “Everyone in this damn town owes me a thanks. That nasty little piece of work had it coming. She was a liar, a thief, and worst of all, she had terrible taste.”
Sabine stepped closer to the cardboard box and my hackles raised. She had already killed one familiar. If she got any closer to Pudding, I’d have to act.
“She would have destroyed the entire village of Drachenfels with her cheap fad food and trashy little fan base. It would have been a teeny bopper invasion. Everything I ever worked for in my entire life would have been destroyed. I would have had to move on, find another job somewhere else. I didn’t want to leave Drachenfels. But I’m not going to adapt to people like Mandy Unterwegs. Not if it means adding pink food coloring to every dish I ever prepare for the rest of my life.”
Sabine ran her hands through her hair and I glanced over at Horst, wondering why he still hadn’t arrested her. Then I got it; he was letting her talk. She was digging her own grave, though not a literal one thank the Gods.
“We could have all just moved on with our lives if you hadn’t had to stick your nose in everyone’s business. Brunhilde, you truly are the stupidest person that I have ever met in my entire life. They never could have convicted you with the amount of evidence they had. If you had just been patient and let the police do their jobs, we would have all been able to forget this foolishness in a year’s time.”
I may have been the stupidest witch Sabine had ever met, but I wasn’t feeling like the weakest anymore. Something about that cave was giving me not only confidence in my abilities, but also strength that I hadn’t had previously.
“Sabine, you murdered a young woman just because she liked to take pictures of her food and then you tried to frame me. No one owes you a thanks, least of all Chantal Nussbaum and Detlef Mauer.”
“Detlef was only too eager to help me get rid of her. I could never have gotten her body from the Hotel into your garden alone. He needed her gone more than we did; after he paid her off, she demanded a second payment. It never would have ended for him. Besides, we didn’t mean to implicate you. We thought that the pig would take care of things for us.”
Again with the pig.
“Well, you thought wrong, and now it’s over. You’re going to prison.”
“I’m not going anywhere. You two are the only ones going somewhere… directly into that spring, along with that poor idiot Detlef!”
Sabine tried to cast a bind on us… but it didn’t work. I countered with my own and was shocked when it did. Sabine Natter couldn’t move and her magic was powerless against us.
Horst was able to handcuff her and I freed Pudding from his soggy cardboard prison. He gave me a grateful look and the four of us left the cave, Natter’s familiar disappearing deep into the caverns alone.
It took an ungodly amount of time for us to get back out of the cave with Sabin
e in her high heels hobbling along while handcuffed. Horst wasn’t willing to take any chances though.
He stuck her in the back of his patrol car and radioed everything in to his commanding officer in Munich. They requested that we wait at the scene and I knew that we’d be there for quite a while.
“Hildi,” Horst said, pulling me toward him in an unexpected embrace, “you were supposed to wait in the van.”
I didn’t answer him. I just took the moment to wind down and enjoy being in his arms. I wasn’t sure what we were doing, but I liked it. It had been a long time since anyone had held me like that, and it had been a long time that I had been daydreaming about Officer Horst holding me like that.
“You could have been killed. Mauer had a gun. Plus, we’re going to have to somehow explain what happened when Munich got here. I can tell them that it was self defense but…”
“I know,” I groaned back. I felt terrible about what had happened to Detlef. He was a dangerous guy, and who knew what he was really capable of, but the way that his little familiar had cried at his death was heartbreaking. And then that psychopath Natter kicked the poor thing into a hot spring. I was probably going to have nightmares about that for a long, long time.
“You can’t keep doing stuff like this,” Horst continued, still not letting me go.
He held me in his arms until we could hear the sirens from Munich approaching. We broke our embrace and instantly I felt cold and scared.
Someone from Munich helpfully offered me a foil blanket that made me look and feel like a jacket potato. I leaned against my van holding my cat while Horst explained the entire situation to the officers from Munich.
“Okay,” he said in a low voice after the other cops had entered the cave. “I told them that Natter stole your cat to lure you out to the hot spring and then Mauer attacked you when inside. That’s how it went down. He came running at you, you pushed him, he tripped and fell into the spring. And they know about the gun and Natter’s confession.”
“Thanks, Horst.”
“We’re going to have to hang around for a while as they check everything out, but I’m pretty sure that we’ll both be sleeping at home in our own beds tonight. Nothing in there looks suspicious. How is your cat? Is he okay?”
I held up Pudding so that Horst could see him. “I don’t think he’s too happy right now, but I think that he’s going to be alright.”
“That’s good to hear. Did he always look like that?”
“Yes, that’s just his face. He lost his eye in a fight a long time ago.”
“Okay, good. Glad to hear he’s fine.”
What happened in there? Pudding asked as soon as Horst returned to his police colleagues to discuss the events of the evening.
“I think I accidentally killed Detlef Mauer and solved a murder case,” I replied softly, trying not to look like a crazy person talking to my cat in front of the police.
That’s not what I meant.
“With Horst? I don’t know. I’m trying to figure that out right now. Are we a couple? That wasn’t a friend hug, right?”
No, not with Horst. I meant with Sabine Natter. You were able to overpower her. Since when are you a stronger witch than Natter?
“Ah,” I knew what Pudding was talking about. I actually had no idea how I had pulled that off. Sabine was definitely a far more powerful witch than I was. “I don’t know. Maybe I work well under pressure?”
That’s what I was assuming, at least. I was able to pull from my reserves when it was a matter of life or death.
I don’t know, Pudding disagreed. Something weird happened.
“Well, whatever it was saved our butts.”
“Hildi,” Horst approached with an older man in plain clothes who I assumed was a detective from Munich. “This is Detective Weber. He just wants to ask you to describe what happened in the cave. With Detlef.”
“Okay,” I tried to calm my nerves.
“Just tell me, in your own words, what happened,” the detective encouraged me, his voice warm and friendly.
“Well, I was waiting outside of the cave for Horst to get my cat. He was taking too long, so I went in the cave to find them myself, even though Horst had told me not to do that. I followed their footprints and made it to the spring. There I saw Sabine Natter talking about something I couldn’t hear. I looked around and saw Detlef pointing a gun at Horst.”
Here I paused and tried to swallow the lump in my throat. Detective Weber looked suspicious but didn’t say anything. He waited for me to continue.
“Then I called out to Horst. Detlef came at me with the gun and I pushed him. The gun fell out of his hand. He went to go pick it back up and he stumbled and fell into the spring.”
Horst and Detective Weber stared at me and nobody said anything. I was tempted to continue talking, to try to persuade the Detective that I was telling the truth, but I kept my mouth shut for once. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and dig myself into a hole.
“Well, that sounds right,” the Detective finally responded. “Really an unfortunate situation all around. Glad no one else was hurt. Just one thing...”
Both Horst and I looked panicked.
“I’m sorry for upsetting you, but we can’t find a body in the spring. You said that Mauer and the dog went in, right?”
I couldn’t hide the shocked and horrified expression on my face. “They definitely went in. I heard the splashes. It was terrible.”
“Well, there’s nothing there now. Completely gone. Almost like something took them. You have any ideas what might have happened to the bodies?”
“I don’t,” I answered honestly. I didn’t think the spring was hot enough or deep enough to make them completely disappear, but I had no idea. I had never actually seen the bottom of the pool. Maybe it was much deeper than I thought.
“Well the spring is unfortunately too hot for our divers to search. Are you absolutely certain that you saw him go in and not come out?”
“One hundred percent. He went into the hot spring. There’s no way he got back out.”
“Okay, ma’am, I just needed to confirm. Sorry again for upsetting you. I know that you’ve been through a lot.”
I watched Detective Weber re-enter the cave, presumably to continue his search for Detlef.
“What do you think happened?” I asked Horst, once I was sure we were alone.
“I don’t know,” Horst shook his head. “I saw a lot of weird things in that cave. Things I can’t explain. But I’m done with this case. The murder is solved and it’s not my problem anymore. I’m turning things over to Munich and moving on with my life. I suggest you do the same.”
Horst went to join the other police officers and I watched him work for a minute.
“You think he was talking about the spell casting?” I asked Pudding.
Probably. He doesn’t seem too interested in figuring out what he saw though, Pudding reassured me.
“I wish he was from here. You know, Drachenfels.”
He’s not, though. He’ll never understand.
“It could work, though. These types of mixed relationships aren’t completely unheard of.”
True, Pudding agreed. Plus there are no more eligible men in Drachenfels. Especially since you threw Detlef in the hot spring.
I shot Pudding a dirty look. “I did not throw Detlef in the hot spring. He tripped and fell. Besides, he wasn’t really a romantic candidate anyways.”
But Officer Horst is? Just go talk to him. I’m sick of hearing you moon over him and then not do anything.
I watched Horst work and imagined us together. Me, inventing new flavor combinations in my bakery, and him, catching teenagers driving recklessly up and down our mountain. We could have Pudding and maybe get a pet dog and maybe have four kids and…
No. It would never work. Horst and I just weren’t cut from the same cloth. Plus I was unwilling to risk our friendship and make things weird.
I’d just have to continue settling for being h
is secret admirer.
Chapter Thirty
“I wish you had opposable thumbs,” I struggled to reach the zipper at the back of my dress. It was evading my grasp and I really could have used a second set of hands.
And I wish you would just find yourself a man to deal with this sort of nonsense.
Pudding was back to his usual sardonic self, after his harrowing experience being held hostage in a wet cardboard travel carrier.
I just had to put the finishing touches on my makeup and I would be on my way. Despite everything that had happened in Drachenfels in the past month, the Mayor’s wedding was finally happening.
“How does this look?” I asked my cat after applying a cherry red color to my lips. “I think I look pretty good.”
I turned around and admired myself in my bedroom mirror. I’d bought a dress especially for this occasion: it was a form fitting, floral pattern sheath that accentuated my curves. Combined with my control top pantyhose, it made me look more like a bombshell than just a very enthusiastic connoisseur of fine pastries.
I had also curled my long blonde hair and wore it down, which I almost never did. I was wearing a pair of high heels and even some false eyelashes, which I thought gave me a golden era movie star look.
You look like you’re trying to take your date home with you tonight.
“Pudding, was that really necessary?”
You asked.
I had a date! Well, not a real date. A friend date. Officer Horst was accompanying me to the wedding as my plus one. Just as friends though.
I had made the friends part perfectly clear when I asked him and he looked -- dare I say it? -- disappointed. I had to admit, I was pleased. I may have decided that we didn’t have much potential as romantic partners, but that didn’t mean I didn’t still want him.
The doorbell rang.