by Linnea West
Maggie looked back at Abby. The vampire’s eyes were wide, but instead of looking angry, she looked scared. She seemed like she was trying to cover up her fear by standing stoically. Maggie was trying to hurriedly put the pieces together before Abby could do something drastic. She still didn’t quite understand what had happened to Linda.
“Abby, I’m getting the sense that whatever happened, you didn’t mean to hurt Linda,” Esmeralda said.
She put one hand up and moved cautiously toward Abby. The vampire took a small step back before realizing that she was the one in charge. She was the one who was in control of whether the witches and Ned could leave the little tunnel. Abby stepped forward again and puffed out her chest.
“I can’t be locked away for this,” Abby said, ignoring Esmeralda’s question. Her quivering voice gave away the truth in Esmeralda’s statement.
“If you killed her, then you’ll be behind bars,” Ned said. Maggie shot him another look, but he continued on. “Besides, you can’t just let innocent people like me be locked up instead. And Nancy isn’t pleasant, but if she’s innocent, you have to tell the truth.”
A tear rolled down Abby’s pale cheek as her arms relaxed to be down by her sides.
“I poisoned her, but I didn’t mean to kill her,” Abby said. “I know that sounds weird, but it’s the truth.”
Abby started to wail, hiding her face in her hands. Maggie tried to figure out what Abby had meant. How could she poison someone without meaning to kill them?
Esmeralda moved slowly, gracefully toward the vampire. Once she was close enough, she reached out and put her hand on Abby’s shoulder. Abby glanced at her, but let her move closer and wrap her in a hug. Maggie watched her mother and realized once again how many assets Esmeralda had to do the incredibly strange job she had. If Maggie had to take over, she would need to work on her people skills.
“Now dear, I need you to explain what you mean,” Esmeralda said. “Maybe we’d be more comfortable out on the sales floor instead of in this cold and drafty storeroom. I can conjure up those comfortable armchairs for us again.”
“I can’t let that happen,” Abby said. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
Her face darkened and she shoved Esmeralda back a step. Maggie rushed forward and intended to give Abby a piece of her mind, but Esmeralda stopped her. Maggie turned instead to comfort her mother.
“I just want to understand,” Esmeralda said.
“I don’t even know where to start,” Abby said with a scowl. “I need a minute to get my thoughts together. Don’t try to leave.”
The vampire turned and walked out of view. Her footsteps stopped and from what Maggie could see when she peeked around the corner, Abby was taking deep breaths, her eyes closed. She seemed vulnerable and scared, even though she was trying to put on a brave face. Poisoning someone seemed like a premeditated sort of murder, so why did Abby seem like she was thrown for such a loop?
Abby turned and Maggie quickly ducked back into the tunnel before the vampire realized Maggie had been watching her. Maggie did manage to get a glance at Abby’s face that shocked her. Abby looked confused and scared, not at all like a murderer.
Maggie took her mother’s hand and squeezed it. Esmeralda squeezed back and smiled, but the worry lines were still heavy around her eyes. Just as Maggie was about to smile back, Ned somehow managed to wedge himself between them. Leave it to Ned to spoil a mother-daughter moment.
Before Maggie could say anything to him, Abby stepped back into the opening, looking much more confident than she had just a moment ago.
“I’m going to start at the beginning,” Abby said. “But you have to promise me that you won’t interrupt.”
Ned started to open his mouth, but Maggie stomped on his foot before he could say anything. The warlock winced in pain as Maggie nodded at Abby. She would have to apologize to Ned later, but she couldn’t take any chances right now. This was her chance to solve the crime.
“I’ve been very open about my contentious relationship with Linda, but you have to understand that I would never hurt her,” Abby said. “The old bat was bound to retire soon. I was simply waiting in the wings until she decided she was too old to manage the shop. I was going to get my chance soon, so it wasn’t like I had to kill her to get the store or anything.”
Abby was shaking her hands as she talked, over-emphasizing everything she was saying. Maggie tried not to be distracted. It almost seemed like Abby was doing it to distract from the fact that she was not confident at all in what she was doing.
“The day of the potion making class, Linda and I had a big blow-up fight while we were getting the store ready to open,” Abby said. “She was still upset that we were having the potion making class. Honestly, I think she was mad that she wasn’t leading it. I tried to point out that Ned was the expert, but Linda wouldn’t even listen to that. She just kept going on and on about how she couldn’t believe what an inconsiderate jerk I was. I didn’t even want to stay for the stupid class after that, but I knew that Mariah had signed up and she would mention to her father if I skipped out on it. I didn’t want Mr. Brank to think I didn’t care.”
The vampire was pacing back and forth at the entrance to the tunnel. It wasn’t very wide, so she only went a few steps in one direction before turning and going back the other way. Maggie thought Abby looked like a caged animal, even though the witches and Ned were the ones who were trapped.
“Anyway, the class started and it was a huge success,” Abby said. A small smile appeared on her face. “I was actually having a lot of fun and it seemed like everyone else was having fun too. I thought that I had finally hit on a winning idea. Linda was actually having some fun, although I think that was more because she could pretend that she knew what she was doing with the potion. But whatever it was, I knew I could make the store some money if we did more of those classes. I felt like I had my foot in the door to run the store.”
Abby smiled as she stared off into the distance like she was remembering how happy she had been just before Linda died. But as Maggie started to think they had turned a corner, Abby’s smile faded and her eyes seemed to cloud over. Her fangs still glinted in the overhead light. Maggie didn’t like the look of those sharp teeth, not one bit.
“Then Nancy spilled the bottle of bramblewood elixir and everything went downhill,” Abby said. “All of a sudden, Ned told me I had to go get her more from the storeroom. I was going to do it, but then Nancy told me that I had to go get it and I had to get her special one from the back. I think she wanted to show off that she had the ingredients, but I told her to bug off. She told me that if I didn’t go get it, she would make sure I was fired. Linda said she would tell Lou that the class was all her idea and that I had been against it the entire time. I wanted to say something, but I knew I couldn’t, not in front of the entire class.”
Abby was staring toward Maggie, Esmeralda, and Ned, but she was looking right through them. Her eyes were glazed over a bit as she replayed the memory in her head as she told it to them out loud. Maggie realized that she was so anxious to hear where the story was going that her own breath was coming out in ragged inhales and exhales. She couldn’t steady it, not until she heard what happened.
“I came back here to this stupid hidden tunnel to get her bramblewood elixir,” Abby said. “I’m still not sure why she wanted to get her own. Linda probably wanted to use it and somehow make, like, a superior potion with it so she could rub it in Ned’s face.”
Ned harrumphed from his place between the witches and was swiftly given an elbow to the ribs from each side.
“I was so tempted to grab something different,” Abby said. “You both saw that bottle of poison that Linda kept back here for some reason. I thought about grabbing it and somehow switching the labels. Even though they were totally different colors, I figured Linda would never know the difference because she was terrible with potions.”
“So you did poison her,” Maggie said.
It came out like a whisper, like
Maggie couldn’t keep it in. Abby was confessing to the murder right in front of them. There had to be some sort of catch.
“I already told you that I poisoned her, but I didn’t kill her,” Abby said.
Her eyes flared with anger. The fact that Maggie couldn’t grasp whatever it was that Abby was trying to convey was making the vampire fill with rage.
“I said I thought about poisoning her,” Abby said. “But I didn’t, not exactly. I grabbed the bottle of bramblewood elixir and I opened it up. I thought long and hard about whether I could add a drop of poison to it and whether it would actually do anything or not. But then my thoughts were cut short because I could hear Linda stomping her way in here. She came in yelling that I was taking too long. And then it happened.”
“What happened?” Esmeralda asked.
Maggie reached around Ned’s back and put her hand on her mother’s shoulder. A small bit of her hoped that Ned didn’t think Maggie was trying to hug him. Maggie tried to push that thought away. Her anxiety always popped up at the worst of times. She needed to focus.
“I shoved the stopper back in the bottle and I held it tight in my hands,” Abby said. “In my head, I put a curse on it. At least, I guess that was what happened. I directed all my anger into the bottle and I thought ‘I hope this makes you leave.’ I jammed the stopper back into the top.”
“And then what?” Maggie asked.
“And then Linda was behind me and I handed the bottle to her,” Abby said. “After that, it all happened so fast. We finished our potions, except for Linda who had Nancy finish hers. Suddenly, Linda took a sip and she was dead.”
Abby stood with her hands limp by her sides. It was like all of the vivaciousness had left her and she was just a pale shell of herself. Maggie wasn’t sure if she should try to hug her or be scared of her. Abby reminded her of that saying about a hurt animal being a vicious animal or something like that. She didn’t have time to remember exactly how it went, but the idea was the same. Don’t trust someone who is down and angry.
“I understand the story so far, but how do you know you put a curse on that bottle?” Esmeralda asked.
Maggie had been wondering the same thing. She was pretty sure that only she and her mother could curse things because they were the only ones with magic in town.
“Right before I put the stopper back in the bottle, I caught a whiff of the elixir,” Abby said. “It smelled like some weird stuff, but I also caught a whiff of licorice. I don’t know a lot about potions, but Linda had said once before that poison smells like licorice.”
“Why did you give her the bottle if you thought it smelled like poison?” Esmeralda asked.
She was trying to be friendly, but firm in her questioning. It seemed that they were right on the edge of the investigation and Esmeralda knew she was walking a thin line to get things to go right.
“Part of me was sure I had smelled wrong,” Abby said with a shrug. “Like maybe I was so upset that I just didn’t really know what I was smelling. But the other part of me wished it was poison. If it was, I would finally get to run the store like I deserved. Lou Brank would finally have no choice but to let me run the store.”
“I’m sorry Abby, but you won’t get to run the store,” Esmeralda said. “You’ll have to come with us down to the police station. We can’t let Nancy go down for Linda’s murder.”
“I’m not going to do that,” Abby said. She started walking toward them with her fangs gleaming. “I’m usually a very tame vampire, but that’s going to have to change now.”
As she got closer, Maggie started to panic. Now would be the time to put up a protection spell, but when Maggie put her hands up, they were shaking so badly that Maggie didn’t think she’d be able to produce anything.
“Salvus,” Esmeralda said.
She spoke clearly and confidently, her hands held out in front of her body. But unfortunately for everyone, nothing was coming out. It was up to Maggie to protect everyone. She took a deep breath and put her hands up in front of her. It was now or never.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Maggie said the magic word and a small bubble came out of her fingers but popped almost immediately. Shaking out her hands, Maggie tried to take in a deep breath, but her anxiety was rising and she could feel it start to overtake her.
Closing her eyes, Maggie thought about the night before when she had performed her most powerful magic spell to date. She had been so powerful that she had been able to see magic performed in that room for decades before that. She needed to tap into that energy to protect Ned, her mother, and herself. She wanted to think that she could do it, but she was having a hard time getting past her fear.
Putting her hands up once more, she tried to dig deep down into her well of magic to pull up the most potent magic she had. Maggie tried not to think about the fact that Abby was slowly advancing toward them or that Esmeralda couldn’t do anything to back her up.
Maggie was about to try and cast her protection spell one more time when there was a loud noise that startled her into opening her eyes. Whatever it was, it had startled Abby also because instead of advancing on the witches and Ned, she had stepped back out into the storeroom, looking in every direction to try and figure out what had caused the noise.
“Did one of you do that?” Abby asked.
She pointed her finger accusingly at the witches, as though they had pretended they couldn’t do magic, but then decided to use it to startle her with loud noises. It sounded like the kind of magic Ned would have done if he could’ve.
“Maybe it was,” Esmeralda said.
Maggie glanced at her mother, trying to figure out what was going on. She was pretty sure that Esmeralda hadn’t caused that noise. Just as she was about to wonder if the noise had somehow been magical, Esmeralda winked at her. It was fast enough that she almost didn’t catch it, but she could see now that her mother was trying to throw Abby off-balance. No matter what that noise had been, they needed Abby to stop blocking their way out.
Maggie tried once more to cast a protection bubble, but couldn’t. She tried the one thing she felt confident in doing: detecting magic. Ned was still holding the bottle for the bramblewood elixir. As Maggie silently cast the spell, it glowed brightly. Magic had somehow been used on it, even if Maggie and Esmeralda couldn’t quite figure it out. They exchanged a glance.
Another sound came from the storeroom. It was quieter but sounded closer than the first sound had. Whoever or whatever was making those noises was coming toward them. Maggie just hoped that whatever it was, it was coming to help them and not to help Abby.
“Stop doing that,” Abby said.
She narrowed her eyes at the witches, but by the way her eyes were flicking back and forth, Maggie could tell that she was scared. Esmeralda took a step toward the vampire, puffing up her chest and trying to stand as tall as possible, which wasn’t very tall at all.
Maggie followed her mother’s lead and stepped up beside her. She had a bit more height, so she tried to stand as straight as she could. If they could bluff their way through this, perhaps Maggie could find a way to dig down deep into her magic and do something, anything to help them get out of there.
Ned stepped up on the other side of Maggie. He had been forced out of his middle position when the witches took their stand, but he wasn’t going to let them totally exclude him. He puffed himself up, fluffing out his robe to try and look even bigger. He threw a weak smile to Maggie, not filled with anywhere the level of confidence that Esmeralda was. Maggie nodded back at him. They would be stronger together. Perhaps her mother was right about forming the team to help solve the death problem. Maggie decided that she would wait and see how this situation panned out first.
Another quiet noise came from the storeroom, the closest one yet. Abby lowered her hands a bit, no longer threatening them with her long, claw-like fingernails. She still bared her fangs as much as she could, glancing back and forth between the witches and the storeroom.
“St
op using your magic,” Abby yelled.
She backed up out of the tunnel even more, frantically searching the storeroom to figure out what was making the noise. Abby was far enough out of the tunnel entrance that there was a small space that could be their way out. If Abby could stay distracted for just a little bit longer, it might just be long enough for them to duck past her and run.
“Let’s go,” Maggie said.
Esmeralda didn’t need any coaxing. She immediately started to hustle toward the opening. The older witch didn’t have her walking stick, but she did her best to go as fast as she could.
Ned, on the other hand, stood staring at Abby, still dumbstruck by the vampire’s threats. He was pushing his mouth together in a way that made him look like he had duck lips. Maggie wasn’t sure exactly what he was doing, but he was definitely not thinking clearly.
“We need to make a break for it now,” Maggie said.
She grabbed Ned’s arm and pulled him in front of her. Putting her hands on the back of his robe, she gave him a giant shove in the direction that her mother had started to go. Ned made a startled sort of grunt as he was propelled forward, but he took the hint and started to trot after Esmeralda. Maggie just hoped that he wouldn’t stop and start gaping again.
At first, Abby didn’t seem to notice the jailbreak. She was still looking around, her head on a swivel as she tried to pinpoint where the noises had come from. By the time she realized what was happening, Esmeralda was already past her and Ned was close behind.
“Stop right there,” Abby shouted.
Abby reached toward Ned, trying to grab onto the giant bell sleeves of his flowing robe, but he managed to elbow her and throw her off-balance. The vampire careened backward a few steps while Ned hiked up his robe and picked up his speed, his knobbly old-man knees going up so high they almost hit his chin.
Maggie tried to pick up speed too, but just as she thought she was in the clear, she felt a pair of sharp fingernails grab onto the back of her arm, pulling her back. Abby had caught hold of one of her arms and because she had the element of surprise, she was able to pull Maggie off balance. Maggie fell backward toward the vampire, who grabbed her in a bear hug against her chest.