“Fine. I’m just fine. Nothing to worry about. Just hold down the fort for me.” Chief Frost said and then disconnected.
Ben waited a few moment for Alex to call back, but he didn’t. Ben tried to call him because surely, that wasn’t the end of their conversation, but Alex’s phone went straight to voicemail.
Rather than putting his mind at ease, the short conversation made Ben even more concerned. The idea of sitting down now seemed almost impossible, so decided to walk over to the salon and check on Belladonna.
Ben got to the salon just as Bella and Francine were locking up for the day. His fiancée looked like she was seconds away from crying. It was still chilly outside, so they all went into Big Buns Bakery for a coffee and a walnut brownie.
“You turned her hair into snakes?” Ben’s shocked expression cut through Belladonna’s anxiety and actually made her chuckle.
“I didn’t mean to. It’s not like I did it on purpose.” Belladonna said before taking a huge bite of the gooey brownie.
“I know you didn’t do it on purpose. I just can’t believe that happened.”
“What happened?” Jessie said and sat down in the empty chair at the table.
“Belladonna turned a client’s hair into snakes today,” Ben said still in shock.
“Whoa, this I’ve got to hear,” Jessie said and leaned across the table.
“Don’t you have to, like, run the bakery?” Belladonna teased.
Jessie was the first person to be impressed with the snake incident, and her lighthearted attitude wasn’t lost on Bella.
“Oh, don’t worry. Zoe’s here.” Jessie said and pointed to a young woman behind the counter. “She works here in the afternoons, remember? Anyway, she’s the best. Zoe’s going to end up running this place if she keeps doing such an excellent job.” Jessie said and gave the teenage girl a thumb’s up.
“The snakes aren’t even the best part,” Francine interjected. “When she tried to fix the snakes, she turned poor Sharleen’s hair into pasta.”
They all laughed for a moment before the conversation turned serious again. Ben could see that Belladonna was putting on a brave face, but that deep down, she was anxious.
Bella told Ben her and Francine’s plans to go party shopping. He said he was going to go over to her house and walk Olwen while he tried to figure out what to do next. He needed to know whose library slip he’d found in the forest, but Ben didn’t want to add anymore worry to Bella’s day. He didn’t tell her that he wasn’t able to find Murielle at the library. There was no point in getting her worried if the only issue was Muri’s cell phone being dead.
Francine and Belladonna took Ben’s car over to New Salem and walked the aisles of the party story for a while. They found some disco balls and a bucket of glitter that Francine insisted they buy. Bella agreed, but her heart wasn’t in it.
She told Francine that she was sorry for being such miserable company, but thanked her for trying to be a good friend. Bella drove Francie home, and she was about to go back herself when another vision hit her.
What she saw disturbed her so much that she had been inclined to turn the car around immediately. Instead, she drove home and got Sterling. Ben wasn’t there, so she was going to have to go alone. Well, at least she had her dragon with her. Belladonna hoped that would be enough.
Ten
When Belladonna pulled up in front of Chief Frost's house, she was relieved to find that it wasn’t on fire and there weren’t bodies hanging from the trees. Even if it wasn’t the state of things currently, Belladonna still believed the vision meant something.
“We’re going in, Sterling. Ben said Alex was missing. What I saw in my mind’s eye must have been a warning. So, be ready to shift. Okay?”
“Meow.”
Belladonna petted her familiar’s head and got out of the car. She was relieved to find the front door unlocked. If she’d had to use magic to get in, Bella wasn’t sure what the consequences would have been.
She pushed the door open and immediately noticed the stifling heat inside the house. Belladonna thought it was strange that Alex would have the heat turned up so high if he wasn’t home.
“Alex? Chief Frost, are you in here? Is anybody in here?” Belladonna called out from the doorway.
The silence hung in the air like a blanket. Sterling meowed at her and twisted around her feet nervously as if she were asking Belladonna a question.
“Not just yet. Save your strength. Let’s have a look around first.” Belladonna said.
She’d been in the house before. The last time was when Alex’s wife was arrested. Bella knew she was going to end up in the basement, but she figured she’d give the rest of the house a once over before going down.
It was silly. Belladonna knew that bad things always happened in the basement, but she wanted to delay going down there as much as possible. Normally she wouldn’t be afraid of even the darkest, evilest looking basements, but after the church incident, Belladonna wasn’t as sure of herself anymore.
She had no magic to rely on, and the only weapon she’d brought was a cat that shifted into a dragon. Still, a dragon was a pretty good defense when it came down to a battle with a physical entity. She was more worried about the non-living, though.
The kitchen was a mess. There was toast sticking out of the toaster, a glass of juice spilled on the table, and the stove was covered in grease and crumbs.
Alex either had some sort of food explosion before he left, or he wasn’t doing so well with his wife gone. Belladonna felt a little sorry for not checking on him more often. The community hadn’t exactly rallied around him after his wife was arrested.
The door to the basement creaked, and Belladonna nearly jumped out of her skin. She saw a flash of gray tail disappear down the stairs and knew that Sterling had decided to move things along with this investigation.
“Sterling wait,” Bella called out as she hurried across the kitchen.
Belladonna took the stairs two at a time and found herself standing in the area where they’d arrested Jacqueline Frost. She looked around for a moment and saw Sterling pawing at a shelving unit propped up against the back wall of the room.
Bella could feel a cold draft coming from under the shelves despite the fact that the basement was as hot as the rest of the house. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know what was behind the shelf, so she stopped and took a deep breath.
That was when she noticed the heavy smell of tropical flowers. Something about the scent was off. There was a hint of death and decay mingled with the floral perfume. The odor became cloyingly sweet and turned her stomach. It was as if someone had been trying to cover the smell of death with artificial flower deodorizer.
Belladonna had a bad feeling about the shelf, but Sterling was pacing back and forth in front of it. She looked agitated and apparently wanted Bella to come look.
The shelf itself was unremarkable other than the fact that it looked like it was partially propped up against the wall. Bella stooped down to see if she could figure out where the draft was coming from. She pulled out her cell phone and switched on the flashlight app. That’s when Bella saw the hairline gap between the wall and the floor.
She stood up and pushed on the shelf, but nothing happened. So, she pulled on it, and that’s when she heard a slight clicking sound. The shelving unit was a door, but she had to figure out how to unlock it.
Belladonna pushed all of the items on the shelves around until one of them made a popping sound. She pulled on the unit again, and this time it opened up.
On the other side of the wall was a long concrete hallway. As soon as Bella opened the door, Sterling started to walk down the hall. She thought about chastising her familiar for being hasty but instead decided to follow her.
There were old wooden doors on either side of the hallway once you were a few hundred feet in. Each door had a small window cut into it, but the opening was covered with iron bars.
“It’s an old dungeon,” Belladonna w
hispered to Sterling.
The cat turned around and meowed at her again but then continued walking. Eventually, they got to a turn, and Belladonna had to get her phone back out to use the flashlight app. It appeared that the turn took them deeper into the dungeon and the light from the basement disappeared.
Belladonna held her phone up to the openings in the doors, but the rooms were empty. Each of them had a concrete slab that most likely served as a bed, and some of them had an old bucket in them. The thought of what the bucket was used for made Bella shudder.
“I wonder why they needed a dungeon in Winterfield?” Belladonna bemused.
Sterling just swished her tail in the air and kept walking. Eventually, they got to a set of doors that didn’t look like the others. These doors were heavier, and they didn’t have locks on the outside. Belladonna wasn’t sure that she wanted to look inside of the rooms, but she’d come all of this way.
The creepy basement dungeon was disturbing enough on its own, but there was something even darker about these doors. Belladonna could feel tentacles of gloom reaching out from under and around the doors trying to pull her in.
Despite the feeling of dread coming from inside of the room, Bella felt an overwhelming compulsion to go inside the chamber. She was almost mad with frustration when she pulled the handle and found it locked.
Two other doors looked virtually identical to this one, so she moved down to the next one and tried it. This door opened easily. She walked inside and didn’t notice that Sterling wouldn’t cross the threshold.
Belladonna took in her surroundings. The room was an office. Instinctively, she felt for a light switch on the wall. She found one and flipped the switch without thinking. It took her a moment to process what she’d done when the lights came on.
The office didn’t look quite as old in the light. The bookshelves lined with leather bound books looked ancient, but the desk and chair were probably much more modern. What concerned Bella most was that nothing was covered in dust.
If the lights worked and there was no dust, that could only mean one thing. Somebody had been using this office regularly. Belladonna had to fight the urge to run away. She’d come this far, and it would be a shame to stop investigating before she got answers.
She walked gingerly around the desk and opened the drawers. In the middle drawer where people usually kept their office supplies, Bella found a laptop computer. She put her hand on it palm down and was relieved to find that it was cold. It had been a while since anyone had used it.
Bella opened the computer, and it came to life. There was still twenty percent battery life left so she wouldn’t need to hunt for a cord. Even better was that it didn’t require a password. The desktop opened up immediately.
“I guess you wouldn’t expect to need a password when you keep your laptop in a hidden underground dungeon, huh Sterling?”
Belladonna immediately noticed an icon that looked like a camera and clicked on it. A viewer screen popped up on the desktop, and Bella realized she was watching a camera feed from one of the other rooms. She could see the door, so Belladonna knew it was one of the other two rooms like this office and not one of the cells.
In the center of the room was a very tall, narrow coffee table covered with what was probably a black tablecloth. It was tough to see because the only light in the room was the little bit coming from underneath the door, and even that was dim because it was nothing more than the light from the office spilling out into the hallway.
Belladonna squinted her eyes and tried to focus on the room and its contents. She realized quickly there was no way to figure out what was in the room without actually going into it, so she closed the camera viewer and looked at the other icons on the computer’s desktop.
One of them looked like an old lock, so Bella clicked on that one. She heard a clicking sound come from the hallway and jumped up. Belladonna hoped that the sound was the other two doors unlocking. She walked out of the office, and sure enough, the other doors had popped open.
Belladonna pushed the closest door open tentatively. Light flooded into the room, and what Bella saw took her breath away. The object in the center of the room wasn’t a coffee table. It became apparent that it was something much more sinister when she looked at it from a head on angle.
Even before Belladonna reached out and slowly pulled the cloth that covered the object off, she could tell it was a coffin. Bella would never be able to tell you why she dragged the black cloth off the fancy casket, but something compelled her into action.
It was as if Bella was in a dream as she tiptoed across the floor like a child and stood before the long, shiny black box. Her fingers extended out in front of her to touch the lid, and it was as if she was watching a movie.
Belladonna’s thumbs wrapped under the edge as she gently lifted up. She braced expecting the casket’s lid to make a creaking sound as it opened, but it was completely silent. Bella expected it to be heavy, but it almost floated open.
The gasp of surprise caught in her throat and that was a fortunate happening. Belladonna closed the lid as quickly and quietly as she could. She rushed out of the room and back into the office where she used the laptop to relock the doors.
Sterling was waiting for her in the hallway, and they both made their way as quickly as possible away from the rooms. It became immediately apparent that they were lost, but that made no sense.
The tunnels underneath the Frost house were straightforward when Sterling and Belladonna came in, but now they were in an entirely different order. It was almost as if the house was alive and was purposefully trying to confuse them. That would mean that they were trapped in the dungeon with a vampire.
Belladonna was almost certain she hadn’t woken it when she peered into the casket, but how could she have been sure? It could be after them right now, and they were lost.
The hair on Sterling’s back stood just as Bella heard what sounded like long fingernails scratching on the walls behind them. That made the hair on the back of Belladonna’s neck stand up too.
She wanted to tell Sterling to shift, but she realized that the reason the cat hadn’t changed into a dragon yet was that there was no room in the tunnels. Belladonna and her familiar were stuck down in the dungeon with a vampire, and they had no defenses.
Normally, Belladonna wouldn’t be afraid of a vampire. One of her good friends was a vamp, and she was one of the sweetest beings Bella knew. But, the vampire in the coffin was different. Evil emanated from it like inky black tentacles.
You couldn’t see it, but you could feel them winding their way into your body and around your throat. Belladonna could almost feel the despair gripping her heart as she looked at the pale, hideous face.
The sound of fingernails scraping against stone grew louder, and Belladonna began to panic. Sterling paced back and forth from one wall to the other. She wanted to shift to her dragon form and protect her mistress, but there was no room. Both of them felt helpless.
“Oh dear. You’ve certainly gotten yourself into a pickle, haven’t you?”
Elsbeth Tory appeared in front of Belladonna and Sterling. The cat ran up to her, and Elsbeth bent down to greet her former pet. Bella watched with fascination as the woman stroked the cats silver fur, but as she did, it was apparent that her hand was partially transparent. It didn’t seem to matter to Sterling, though.
Belladonna noticed immediately that there was something different about Elsbeth besides the fact that she was an apparition. Mrs. Tory looked much younger than she had the day she passed.
“Elsbeth, is that really you?” Belladonna asked as she took a step towards her predecessor.
“It is, darling. But, we’ve got to hurry. You’re the current dragon master, so it won’t do to have you dying in this dungeon. Oh, and I was in the middle of a bridge game with Einstein and Edith Wharton when I got called away.” Elsbeth said with a wink. “I was winning.”
With that, Mrs. Tory took off down the hallway, and Sterling followed.
Belladonna could feel the vampire approaching in the dark behind her, so she didn’t hesitate to follow as quickly as possible.
It was all a blur after Elsbeth took the lead. She could power through whatever confusion spell was keeping them in the tunnel. When Belladonna’s mind cleared, she found herself and Sterling standing on the other side of the secret door that led into the tunnels.
Belladonna pushed the shelving unit back into place until she heard it click. After picking up Sterling from the basement floor, she ran out of the house as fast as her legs could carry her.
Eleven
Carly sat at the dining room table staring at the letter and vial of red liquid that had just arrived in the mail. She couldn’t believe that the Vampire Queen had sent her a handwritten note and incantation. Carly suspected that the vial contained a few drops of Linestra’s blood mixed with dragon’s blood oil.
At least, that’s what the incantation said she needed to bring Nick out of his death-like coma. Somehow, Linestra had sensed that Nick was struggling, and she’d sent the blood mixture and spell as a way to help.
Carly could feel the powerful energy pulsating from the blood in the vial. Linestra must trust her a great deal because Carly could use the blood to increase her own power instead of using it to wake Nick.
The thought had crossed her mind, but she’d quickly dismissed it. She tapped her foot restlessly waiting for the moment when she could go downstairs and use the gift to revive Nick.
It felt as if the sun was setting even slower than normal as she waited. It was down far enough that it didn’t burn her, but Carly wasn’t sure if a new vampire could handle any amount of sun. She had to wait for dark.
When the sun was finally a distant memory, Carly rose from the table and ran down her basement stairs. She made her way into the little room that housed the coffin where Nick slumbered.
After lifting the lid, she stared at him for a little while. Nick was a good-looking man before, but his transformation had given him an otherworldly beauty that almost took her breath away.
Party Hexed: Cozy Witch Mystery (Witches of Winterfield Book 4) Page 6