by Amy Boyles
Rick smiled back at Reid. He said something, and she covered her mouth as she giggled. She gave him a bashful smile and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Oh my goodness. They were flirting! Reid was flirting! Rick was flirting!
Where was my camera? Sera would die. I knew she'd love to see this.
Jenny sidled up beside me. "What do you think?"
So that's who Reid had been texting the past few days. I cleared my throat. "I suppose you think this is your doing?"
She narrowed her eyes. "Dylan, if you can't accept the truth, then you're more hopeless than I ever thought." Jenny threw up her hands in frustration. "Of course she's talking to him because of me—because of the confidence I inspired in her. I don't like to toot my own horn—"
"Of course not."
"But Reid has grown leaps and bounds in the past few days. There she is, talking to the boy of her dreams, laughing, smiling, getting somewhere with him. Which is more than I can say for you."
I whirled on her. "Excuse me? My love life is fine, thank you very much. I don't need Jenny Butts's Love 101 in order to catch a man." She gave me a pathetic smile. Her gaze drifted from my feet to my crown and back down to my feet. I shuddered with anger. "Jenny, thanks for stopping by. It was great seeing you. Really. Always a pleasure, and don't worry, I won't be crashing a class of yours anytime soon. I'll be sure to congratulate Reid on her conquest of the neighbor boy, but for now I have a thousand things to do, so I'd appreciate it if you left me to them."
"Okay, Dylan. But if you need me to help you out with any boys, like that yummy detective friend of yours, you let me know. Toodle-oo."
"Toodle-oo," I said without even a glimmer of enthusiasm. "Don't let the door hit you on the way out," I muttered.
Jenny scooted out the door, giving me a dainty wave when she reached the sidewalk. How dare she bring up Roman and how double dare she suggest he was yummy—that perhaps if things didn't work out with me and him, she could snatch him up.
As if.
I inspected the rack of clothing for the fashion show, doing my best to put Jenny, Reid and Rick out of my head. The bell tinkled. Good grief. If it was Jenny Butts again, I intended to let her have it.
"Welcome to Perfect Fit," I said.
"What kind of clothing do you have here?" came a gruff voice.
"Grandma Milly, always a pleasure," I said.
Wearing a frown deep enough to reach the vast hollows of the Grand Canyon, Milly caned into the center of the store. "So this is what you've got in here. A bunch of frills and lace."
I puckered my lips. "Is that a problem?"
"No. Of course not. But it's no wonder you can't do magic worth a squat." She ruffled the arm of a dress. "Your head is full of all this fluffy stuff."
I pinched the bridge of my nose and concentrated on rainbows and kittens. "Milly, my head is not full of fluffy stuff."
"We'll see about that." She paused, trailing a finger over the neckline of a coral beaded dress.
"Want to try it on?" I suggested.
"Heck's bells, no." She dropped the dress like it was a burning pancake. "I'm here for another reason."
"And that is?"
"You need to work on your magic. You need to get that shield spell down pat."
I gave the rack of dresses one last glance. Everything looked ready to go. "Why?"
"Because it's an important spell to master. I came so you could work on it."
"Here?"
"Yes, here. Where else?"
I waved my hands as if to stop a plane from landing. "No. Not here. Every time I work magic here or at Sinless Confections, something bad happens. Not here."
She shrugged. "Okay. We'll do it at my house. That's even better. If something starts to get out of control, I can easily stop it. Come on, toots. I'll drive."
I put the BE RIGHT BACK sign on my door and followed Milly to her sedan.
Ten minutes later we stood in her living room. I'd just polished off a tall glass of sweet tea. Polly had watched me the whole time while I drank it. Yes, thank you for asking, it did give me the creeps to have wooden eyes staring at me for, like, five minutes flat.
"Do you think at some point you could unmagic that bird?"
Milly settled the cane between skirted squat legs. She wore nude-colored support hose yanked to the knee. "Who, Polly? Why would I do that?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. To minimize the creep factor, maybe."
"What creep factor?"
I dismissed the conversation with a wave of the hand. "Never mind. Let's get started."
"Got the opal?" she asked.
I patted the pocket of my capri jeans. "You got it."
"Good. Close your eyes and concentrate on forming a bubble of steel around you."
"A bubble of steel?"
"Just do it."
I pinched my eyes shut and thought about a ball of steel—yes, steel—enveloping me. I palmed the opal, fusing my magic with its focusing ability, and pushed the power in my core to do my bidding. I felt the gurgle of a bubble start in my middle. It bobbed outward, washing down my arms and legs until it reached my fingers and toes. It moved past my skin, the tingle of power evaporating with it.
"Open your eyes," Milly said.
I peeked out. An iridescent orb floated in front of my eyes. It curved away from me, distorting the way I saw the world beyond it. Everything looked like it was underwater, shimmery and wavy.
Milly smiled. "Touch it."
I lifted two fingers and pressed them into the bubble. It bent. I pushed harder. The bubble tightened under my fingertips but didn't shudder or buckle.
"Steel," Milly whispered. "Though you made the ball strong like steel, it will give to your touch, so that you can move. Walk around the room."
I did as she said. At first I was afraid the thing would topple over the furniture. But as I approached a table, the bubble opened up to it, allowed the table in with me.
"That is so cool."
"Come over to me," Milly said.
I teetered to her, and she extended a hand. Her palm nudged the bubble. I watched her press, and I also watched as the bubble absorbed the impact. It didn't bend; it didn't give. It stayed perfectly stone hard.
"Steel," Milly said. "You can bring something in with you, but nothing from outside can force its way in. That's how the bubble works."
"That. Is. So. Cool."
She smiled. "Better to do this one-on-one than risk Gladiolas showing up again. I don't need my girls in trouble over something like trying to learn how to work a little magic."
"Milly," I said sweetly. "That might be the nicest thing you've ever told me."
She scoffed. "Don't get used to it."
I tightened my high ponytail. "Don't worry. I won't tell anyone. It'll be our little secret." I gave her a warm smile, to which she nearly smiled back. I considered it a small victory. "Okay. Tell me how to get rid of this thing."
Ten bubble-free minutes later, I had a second glass of tea in my hand. "I need to finish this and get back to work. Thanks for showing me that trick."
"You’re welcome."
From the other side of the room, my phone buzzed in my purse. I crossed the antique gold rug and fished the phone from the depths of lip glosses and old receipts that filled my shoulder bag.
"Oh wow," I said, reading the text from Sera.
"What is it?"
I dragged my gaze from the screen and glanced at Milly. "Jean Noir's been released."
"Why?" she said.
I tugged on the tip of my ponytail. "Because Stormy confessed. She murdered Loretta and Margaret."
TWENTY-FIVE
I found Roman at the station. He raised his eyebrows when I knocked on the steel-framed windows that made up one wall of his office. He finished sorting through a stack of papers, tapped them into place with the butt of his hand and dropped them on top of a paper bin.
His slicing gaze felt like a shard of ice to the heart. I shivered. "It cold in here to you?"
He shook his head. "Not at all. Anything I can help you with, Dylan? Perhaps you'd like to get another false confession from someone."
"So you're mad at me."
"Sit down."
I rocked back on my heels. "Answer the question first. I don't like feeling like I've been called to the principal's office."
He scrubbed a hand over his chin. "First of all, you came to me. I didn't call you here."
"Details," I mumbled.
"Secondly, no, I'm not pleased with you. I've asked you a thousand times to stay out of trouble."
"You didn't ask me last time."
He shot me a glance so scalding it nearly flayed the skin off my bones. "That doesn't matter."
I sighed. "What can I say?" I sank into the chair across from his desk. "I didn't think you'd consider putting on a glamour as 'getting into trouble.' Besides, I only did it to prove that Jean had slipped the bottle of trollop flower into Stormy's purse, which she confessed to."
He cupped his face in his hands. "What am I going to do with you?"
"Why'd you let Jean go?"
"I'm not discussing this case with you, Dylan."
"But she told me she poisoned Loretta."
He dropped his hands to the desk as if resigned to divulge what was going on. "There wasn't enough trollop flower in the potion to kill anyone. That's what the lab report stated."
"Oh. Jean said she'd only used enough to give Loretta a stomachache."
"That's true," Roman said. "So she's been released."
I picked at a hangnail, totally ignoring the fact that it was neither cute nor ladylike. "I'm just not buying this whole Stormy thing. Why did she confess?"
"Because she did it. According to her, she had her own bit of poison and snuck it into Loretta's dessert. She also admitted to killing Margaret."
"So you're saying two people placed poison in Loretta's dessert? Stormy and Jean?"
"That's what I'm saying."
"That doesn't make sense," I squawked.
He opened his palms in defeat. "That's what she said, and right now it's what I have to go on until I know anything different." He gave me good, hard stare. "Are you satisfied?"
I sighed. "Not really."
He exhaled a quick shot of breath.
"What? That just seems way too coincidental, and besides, it doesn't explain the box in Stormy's room."
He opened a folder and shuffled through the papers inside. "Stormy said it was her box, her heart. She'd worked some magic for practice and was afraid someone would find it, so she took it out of her room."
"That makes no sense! Then she placed it outside your suite for you to discover?"
He shrugged. "I'm still putting it all together. But it's over, Dylan. I've got a full confession from Stormy for both murders. I've got a few things to wrap up here, but you can relax. This thing is done."
"So why'd she do it? What did she say?"
Roman folded his hands on the table. "For the same reasons that have been pointed out before—Loretta and Margaret ruined her life with their newspaper."
"So did Sumi."
He drummed his fingers atop the lacquered wood. "She was getting to that. From what Stormy said, she simply hadn't had the opportunity to kill her yet."
"And what made her confess?"
He held my gaze. I shrugged. He shook his head. "She's overcome with grief. Thought killing would be easy and discovered it wasn't. I could have told her that much."
Goose bumps puckered my skin. At one time the witch police had used Roman to hunt down rogue witches. He'd had to kill at least one that I knew of, when he'd had no choice.
"So what happened with Gladiolas?" I asked.
He narrowed his eyes. "I met with her."
"Well? She said that whoever did it is here, with us. Do you know who it was?"
"Yes."
I leaned forward. "Well? Are you going to tell me?"
"No."
Come on, he was killing me. "Is the person going to be arrested?"
He dropped the flat of his hands to the desk. "That's all I'm telling you, Dylan. That's it. For the next few hours, can you lie low?"
"We're having a fashion show tonight on Main. I have to be there."
"Fine. But nothing else."
I rolled my eyes. "Yes, sir."
"Good."
"So does that mean the witches are free to go?" I hoped not. I wanted to make money from the fashion show.
"They'll still be here."
I rose. "Great! That's what I needed to know."
"Dylan," he growled.
I bunched my shoulders up around my neck. "Yes?"
"Don't do anything."
I flashed Roman my most innocent doe-eyed expression. "Don't do anything, what? I'm not planning on doing anything to jeopardize what you've already accomplished."
"Right," he said. "Just stay out of trouble."
"Of course. I wouldn't dream of messing anything up." I crossed my fingers as a promise and left.
***
Downtown bustled with activity. The police had blocked traffic from using Main for the evening, which I personally thought to be pretty cool, especially with how annoyed Roman had been at me. I didn't know why he couldn't see that I was merely trying to help, improve the situation, get full-blown confessions from guilty folks.
Course, now he had a confession.
Which I suppose should change things. Note: should, not would.
Folks meandered about the street. The events committee had set up folding chairs along each side of the road, with the center left open for the runway. It looked almost professional.
I found Sera scrutinizing the food table. "I really should have made more lemonade," she complained.
"It'll be fine," I said.
"Evening, ladies," came a voice from behind us.
I placed a hand over my chest, calming my racing heart. I turned around and smiled widely at Councilwoman Gladiolas. "Evening, Councilwoman. How are you doing?" What exactly are you doing here? I wanted to ask. But I knew it had something to do with the murder Roman had been convicted of. Did that mean the killer was walking among us?
She waved a paper fan over her face. "Fine. Just fine." Her eyes sparkled with interest as she watched us. "Em told me about the fashion show tonight, and I had to come and see what it was going to be all about. Good thing the killer's been caught, don't you think?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said. "Absolutely. Otherwise I don't think we'd have much of an audience for this."
She glanced around the street. After a few moments her gaze landed on me and Sera. I squirmed under those unsettling eyes of hers. "Have either of you seen Detective Bane?"
"No," Sera said.
"Me neither," I said. "Why? Is there something we should be afraid of?"
"No, dears, of course not. It looks like he has everything squared away here. I only wanted to congratulate him."
I glanced at Sera. She gave me the she-makes-me-uncomfortable-and-I-don't-know-what-to-say look.
I laced my hand through the councilwoman's arm and steered her toward the other side of the street. "We're all so relieved that Stormy confessed to those terrible murders. We're glad it's done with. Besides, this is supposed to be a celebration. So please, find someone to celebrate it with. Oh, look! There's Em. I'm sure she'd love to talk to you."
I guided her toward the Queen Witch and eased my arm out from under hers. As I walked back to Sera, I heard a gaggle of witches whispering.
"She should have been killed, too."
"It's a shame the poison didn't reach Sumi."
"She deserves to be taught a lesson."
A witch whose name I didn't know patted her purse. "I've got something in here that'll teach her. She'll get everything she ever deserved and more."
I glanced into the bag and saw a small black ball made of needles and what looked to be pinecones? I had no idea what it was, but it looked like bad magic. I rushed back over to Sera.
"Hav
e you seen Roman?"
"No," she said, putting more napkins on a table.
"Listen, I overheard some witches say they're going to do something bad to Sumi."
She arched her brows. "What do you mean, bad?"
I shook my head. "I don't know, but it looked terrible. Some sort of magic talisman with needles and crap. If she shows up, we need to help her."
Sera shot me a scathing look. "We need to find Roman and let him do his job."
"Yeah, right. Of course."
I craned my neck, trying to see if I could find Sumi. Forget Roman. He was probably busy with Gladiolas. We could find him later. As I gazed into the crowd, I spied Sumi coming down the walk toward us. To her left, the models were getting ready to start the fashion show while Judy was taking her place at the head of the runway.
Judy tapped the microphone. "Is this thing on?"
"There's Sumi," I said. "I'll get her. You find Roman." Before Sera could argue, I set off.
A mass movement of witches and regular people milled from the store awnings toward the chairs. Bodies cut me off. I wove through the crowd, trying to get to Sumi before the bad witches saw her and sought their revenge.
I lost sight of her as a woman wearing a wide floppy hat stopped in the middle of everything to gape at Judy.
"Excuse me," I said, gently guiding her toward the seats.
"Well, you don't have to be rude," she huffed.
I ignored the remark and surged into the crowd. They moved left; I moved straight, dodging and struggling to reach the head of the street. Keeping my sight zeroed in on the top of Sumi's head, I sidestepped this body and pivoted past that one. Finally I wound past a young woman in a yellow sundress and spilled out onto the other side of the crowd.
She was gone.
I heaved deep, the breath catching in the back of my throat. I had to find her. I must find her. As I crossed toward the barrier that blocked off Main from oncoming traffic, I scanned the area.
Judy spoke in the background. Someone had turned on the Bluetooth speakers, and faint music drifted from the fashion show, where girls had already started their way down the catwalk to a chorus of oohs and ahhs from the crowd.