The waiting was the hardest part. I texted Felicity. Even though I didn’t have the key, I did have the box, and just in case she had been lying, it would draw her here. If she hadn’t been lying, well, I’d given my word, and if the person with the key did show up, then maybe Felicity could get her whiff of portal air and have her health restored.
Pandora and I sat on the purple sofa, staring at the box.
The door was unlocked, but the sign said closed. We’d turned off all the lights so no customers would come and so that it would be inviting for the person who had the key to break in. Hopefully, the unlocked door would ensure that nothing actually got broken. Though if the person was magical, they could probably get in anyway.
“Maybe the door being unlocked will make them suspicious,” I said.
Pandora glanced over. “Maybe. We should see if we can get Robert to appear. We don’t want to have to waste time trying to summon him if our adversary comes with the key. There may not be a second to waste.”
I nodded. “If someone puts that key in the lock, it could be lights out for all of us.”
I glanced at the box again. It looked so innocent just sitting there. It hadn’t done anything to indicate that it was a portal to the underworld. No jerky movements, glowing lights, or eerie noises.
“Maybe Robert can verify that this actually is the right box.”
We went to the poetry section, and I slid an old leather-bound compilation of Robert Frost poems out of its slot and started leafing through the pages. “Gosh, I hope I don’t tear any of these old, brittle pages. I would hate to ruin one of Robert Frost’s poems,” I said to the ether.
Within seconds, Robert’s ghostly apparition swirled in front of me. Franklin followed right behind him.
“Willa! What are you doing? Be careful with that book!” Robert looked dismayed. “Why is that out on the regular shelf? Shouldn’t it be under lock and key with other precious books?”
“Oh, don’t be such an old fussbudget, Bobby,” Franklin said.
“Maybe it should,” I said truthfully. I didn’t actually have a place to lock up precious books. The book was pretty old, but the pages weren’t as brittle as I had been making out.
“Robert, while you’re here, we want to show you something.” Pandora jerked her head to the front of the store and trotted in that direction. Robert looked at me, and I pointed toward her, indicating for him to follow. He swirled over to the front. His face lit up in pleasure when he saw the box. “It’s my poem box!”
“Yay,” Pandora said in a flat tone. I couldn’t tell if she was excited or worried.
“See, Franklin, I really did have a box.” Robert reached out to touch it, and unlike most other objects, his hand didn’t pass right through it. This was a good sign. He could actually touch the box! He picked it up and turned it over. Then he turned to me. “Where is the key? I must open it.”
“That’s the problem. We don’t have it.”
Franklin and Robert both looked confused. “Yes, you do. It was here earlier. Fell out of that big old recipe book.”
“Someone stole it.”
“Stole it? Why? Do they think I left some poems in here?” Robert looked thoughtful. “Did I leave something here? It’s hard to remember.”
“I think they want it for another reason,” Pandora said.
“What other possible reason would they…” Robert’s sentence trailed off, and he squinted toward the window. “Oh, who is that?”
I turned around just in time to see Felicity Bates enter the store, Fluff at her side.
Felicity’s eyes drifted to the box and widened. She pointed her bony, gnarled finger toward the box. “That’s the portal, isn’t it?”
Robert scoffed. “Portal? What is she talking about?”
Felicity didn’t answer. Apparently, she could neither see nor hear the ghosts.
Pandora took the opportunity to explain to Robert. “This is where we need your help. Apparently, your box has magical powers. Remember all the times you said other people opened it and had bad luck?”
“Yes.” Robert nodded.
“Well, there was a reason for it. Magic. We think you can open it without ill effects, and we’re going to need you to do that for us.” Pandora and Felicity both had the same hopeful look on their faces.
“Is your cat talking to someone? A ghost perhaps?” Felicity asked.
I explained about Robert Frost’s ghost and how the box had belonged to him. Felicity took it in stride. “We think he’s a buffer and can open the box so you and Pandora can get a whiff of portal air without releasing anything evil.”
She nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes. We need him to help us. Open the box.” She took a step forward and collapsed on the floor.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Look out, it’s a trick!” Pandora yelled as Willa rushed to pick Felicity up off the ground.
Too late. Willa was already there, helping Felicity to her feet and getting her situated on the couch. Pandora braced herself for some sort of a hex to hurt Willa, but nothing came.
“Thank you.” Felicity’s eyes fluttered. She touched Willa’s arm, and Pandora got ready to spring and claw her eyes out if anything bad happened to her human. But all she saw was actual gratitude in Felicity’s eyes.
“I’m grateful to your human.” Fluff shot a glance at Pandora then jumped up on the couch and sniffed at Felicity, nudging his head under her hand. She started petting him, a small smile flitting across her lips.
“Watch out, Willa. They could be up to something,” Pandora said, but she wasn’t actually sure that they were up to anything. If they had wanted to do something, they could’ve done it by now surely. They wouldn’t need these theatrics.
“Can I get you some water or anything?” Willa had distanced herself a bit from Felicity on the couch but was still being her helpful self.
Felicity waved away Willa’s offer. “No, I’m fine. Do you know who has the key?”
“No idea,” Willa said.
Felicity glanced at the box again. “Where did you get this box?”
“Sarah Delaney.”
Felicity gasped. “Sarah? But she’s not to be trusted.”
Neither are you, Pandora thought.
“I believe that box is the portal. Why would she give it to you, and where did she get it?” Felicity asked.
“I don’t know where she got it, but I do know why she gave it to me. She hoped it would flush out the person who has the key,” Willa said.
“Oh no.” Felicity sat up straighter, glancing around the room. “It could be a trick.”
“Why would Sarah want to play a trick? She had the box, so if she also had the key, why wouldn’t she just open the box with it?”
“Maybe she needed your ghost to protect herself from the effects of the portal.”
Willa glanced around uneasily. “Maybe you have a point.”
Now Pandora wasn’t sure who the bad guy was. And it didn’t bode well that Sarah Delaney had said she knew Robert and Franklin. She denied being here in the bookstore, but it did seem weird that Robert and Franklin would go to a witches’ bake-off in the woods. Then again, they had been arguing about recipes named after them.
“This is not good. This is really not good.” Fluff glanced nervously at the door. “Sarah Delaney scares me, and if she comes here, I hope she doesn’t bring that little dog.”
“That’s one thing we agree on,” Pandora said.
Felicity grabbed Willa’s arm, her ragged nails digging into Willa’s flesh. “Willa, we must find the key.”
Fluff jumped down from the sofa to stand in front of Pandora. “We will be forever in your debt if you help us.” Fluff sounded desperate.
Pandora admired his dedication to his human. It was unthinkable, but perhaps they weren’t pulling a fast one. Could it be that Felicity truly needed a whiff from the box as much as Pandora did? She could relate to that sort of desperation. But the thought that they were suddenly allies was d
isturbing.
“Please find the key,” Fluff begged.
“Do you mean this key?” The voice came from the doorway. They all whirled around to see Josie Martin holding up a glowing blue skeleton key.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I stared at the door in disbelief. Josie Martin had stolen the key? Not Felicity. Not Sarah. Josie. But then it all started to make sense.
“How did you get in here without the bells over the door chiming?” I asked.
“Bell sleep charm,” Josie and Felicity said at the same time.
“Wait, are you in on this together?” I stared at Felicity in disbelief. Had I fallen for her ruse?
She shook her head violently. “No. But I know about the spell. I used it to come in one day myself.”
The day I had been talking to Pandora in the back room and she had appeared on the sofa. “So that explains how you got in that day I was out back with Pandora.”
“Yeah, it’s easy on inanimate objects. Not so much on people though,” Felicity croaked out. Her voice was barely above a whisper now, and she was slumped over on the couch. She was getting worse before my eyes. At her feet, Fluff let out a panic-stricken meow. I didn’t know what he said, but Felicity reached down and patted his fur as if to reassure him.
“It might be difficult for you, Felicity, but it’s easy for me to put the spell on people.” Josie walked toward them, her dark eyes glowing maliciously. She still had the skeleton key held up in front of her, the color of its glow changing as she walked closer to the box. White. Blue. Purple.
Robert swirled and clapped his hands in glee. “My key!”
“How did you get the key?” I asked Josie. At least she had stopped at the edge of the couch. I had to figure out a way to prevent her from putting that key in the lock. Behind the box, Robert swirled happily, unaware of the danger just in front of him. Beside me, Felicity tensed. I figured she was thinking about stopping Josie too.
But in her weakened state, Felicity wasn’t going to be much help in a physical confrontation. Even if I tackled Josie to the ground, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep her there. And apparently Josie was magic, so it wouldn’t be a fair fight.
“I came in and stole it, of course,” Josie said. “Once I discovered it was no longer in the book that Mary bought from you, I knew it had to be somewhere in the shop. Just a simple locator spell with some saffron dust and a sleep spell on you and your cat allowed me to locate the key and grab it without you even knowing.”
I stared at her in horror, remembering how sleepy Pandora and I had both been after she came to take pictures for the article. She had taken pictures everywhere, even behind the counter where the box was.
I guess that explains why the article wasn’t in the paper. “So, your article on my shop was a fake?” I asked.
Josie shrugged. “I do whatever I have to do to get the job done.”
“You did a sleep spell on Willa?” Felicity gave a low whistle. “That’s some good magic.”
Josie turned to Felicity with a gloating expression on her face. “You should be familiar with it. I did it on you too.”
Felicity looked confused. “You did? When?”
“Down at the Cut & Curl. When you and Sarah were arguing about recipes, I cast a sleep spell. I figured I might need to leave some evidence around pointing to someone else should I have to resort to drastic measures to get the key.”
“What kind of evidence?” I asked.
“Fingernails.” Josie laughed. “Yes, it’s kind of gross, but they make great evidence to leave at crime scenes. Then I figured if I was going to steal the key from you, I would leave something that pointed in someone else’s direction. It actually ended up working pretty good because it sent you over to Sarah, and Sarah gave you the box.”
“How do you know Sarah gave it to me?” I asked.
“I was watching, of course. I knew Sarah had the box in her shop. My plan was to pretend I was doing an article on her and cast a sleep spell so I could steal it. But she wouldn’t grant me an interview, and she has wards on her locks that I couldn’t get around, so I couldn’t get in magically after hours,” Josie said. “I left a fingernail at Mary’s crime scene, too, so the police will focus on her and not me. Maybe that will take care of Sarah Delaney for good. That would probably make all three of us happy, wouldn’t it?”
Maybe I would’ve said yes a few days ago, but now I felt a little bit of a bond with Sarah. She’d given me the box so that we could flush out the evil perpetrator. Though it would have been nice if she came to help us out like she’d said she would.
“And now what do you intend to do?” I asked.
“Open the box and see what happens, of course. Soon your idyllic town will be turned into something much less agreeable, and I will be in the center of it all!” Josie bent toward the box, aiming the key for the keyhole.
Robert swirled over the box. “You’re probably hoping to see some of my poems in there. I think you might be disappointed.”
Josie couldn’t hear him, of course. The key turned dark in her hand, and she hesitated for just a second, frowning down at the malevolent-looking key.
It was now or never. I had to do something to stop her. I had to push her away from the box.
“No!” Felicity and I shouted at the same time. We both leapt toward Josie, except Felicity was so weak that she ended up on the floor. I tripped over her, and Josie smiled down at us and laughed as she shoved the key toward the lock.
“Meroooo!” Fluff screeched and launched himself onto Josie’s back.
“Ouch!” Josie straightened. The key clattered to the floor as she reached behind her to try to dislodge the cat who was digging his claws into her flesh.
She whirled around, knocking a chair over, stumbling toward the bookshelves, pulling books off the shelf as she scrambled to get rid of the cat. There was a cacophony of screeches and meows as Fluff held on.
On the ground underneath me, Felicity stirred and grunted. Her hand stretched out for something.
The key! It lay on the floor where Josie had dropped it. I grabbed it and handed it to Robert, who was watching Josie and Fluff with much confusion on his face.
“I say, these humans are an odd lot nowadays, don’t you think, Franklin?” Robert asked.
“Indeed. What sort of dance is that?” Franklin shook his head.
“Never mind that,” I said, shoving the key in Robert’s direction. “Open the box!”
“Oh, gladly.” Robert took the key. I was surprised he was able to hold it since most things passed through his ghostly hands, but that just proved all the more how magical it was. He leaned down toward the box and put the key in the lock. It glowed gold.
Snick!
The box popped open.
I held my breath, waiting for a demon or maybe a gaggle of bats to fly out or a dark cloud to descend on the town, but nothing like that happened. Lavender-tinted mist wafted out of the box, bringing with it the scent of lily of the valley. That couldn’t indicate anything bad, could it?
“Hey, let’s not forget why we’re here,” Pandora reminded me.
I motioned for Robert to put the box in front of her. “Let Pandora get a whiff.”
Robert moved toward Pandora, but she waved him off. “Felicity first.” She jerked her head in Felicity’s direction.
Robert swirled down to the floor and held the box under Felicity’s nose. Felicity took in a deep breath then pushed the box toward Pandora.
Pandora twitched her whiskers, closed her eyes, and sniffed as the lavender mist curled around her nostrils.
“Get off me, you menace!” Josie rammed her back into the tall bookcase, lodging Fluff loose.
Fluff flew through the air. “Meoooouch!”
Thud.
He landed on the ground in front of the counter and remained still.
“Fluff!” Felicity rushed over to him and collapsed on the floor beside him. She was already starting to look better, her hair taking on a
glossy sheen and curling in corkscrews as I watched. Her skin appeared to be getting younger, her complexion more dewy, and her wrinkles were disappearing. She threw herself down beside the white cat.
Josie whirled around, glaring at me. “You are going to be sorry!”
She lunged toward the box, which Robert was still holding, but because she couldn’t see ghosts, it must’ve looked like it was floating in thin air to her.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Robert jerked the box away from her.
“What the heck?” She looked confused, but she quickly lunged after it again, this time managing to grab on to the corner.
I had to do something. Felicity was no use since she was sobbing over Fluff. I readied for battle. Because Josie was magical, I had no idea what she could do to me, but I had to do something.
Thwack!
Just as I was about to leap toward Josie, the heavy volume of The Joy of Cooking that I had been showing to Danielle hit Josie in the back of the head, and she crumpled to the ground.
I turned toward the front of the store to see Sarah Delaney brushing off her hands. She shrugged. “Door was open, so I thought I’d help out, and that book was the only thing handy. Sorry if I ruined it.”
“Thanks. No problem. It was for a good cause.” I looked down at Josie, who was out cold.
Sarah approached Robert. “Now maybe you can close the box carefully and give it to Willa.”
“Hi, Sarah! Sure. It didn’t have any of my poems in it anyway.” Robert snapped the box shut and handed it to me along with the key.
I slipped the key in my pocket and clutched the box to my chest, feeling a huge sense of relief. It was over. We’d saved Pandora, Felicity, and the town.
But my joy was short-lived when a mournful wail came from the other side of the sofa where Felicity was still on the floor, clutching a limp Fluff in her arms, tears streaming from her face. “He’s not breathing!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Pandora approached Fluff cautiously, searching for signs of life. His body was still, his white fur less glossy and full. His whiskers drooped. His chest was not moving. She sniffed at him.
Claw And Order (Mystic Notch Cozy Mystery Series Book 8) Page 11