“This is so good!” I interrupted before Peaches had a chance to answer Cat. “Is it magic that makes the colors change?”
Peaches nodded, her face breaking out into a smile. “It’s nice, isn’t it? It took me a few tries to get the magic right, but it actually worked exactly the way I wanted it to.”
“That’s awesome,” I told her.
“I was pretty pleased about it, especially since I was worried that when I tried the spell, something would go wrong like it always does, and I’d just set fire to the painting somehow.”
I nodded sympathetically. “Well, it looks amazing.”
“It is pretty good,” Cat said. “But anyway, how is life here.”
Peaches sighed and motioned for us to follow her to a set of Adirondack chairs set in a small circle in the middle of the front yard.
“To be honest, it’s been really boring. I’m so glad you guys came.”
“Boring?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah. I mean, I like Brixton Road normally because it’s a little bit of a holiday from real life. I get to come here and I can relax, and I can work on my paintings, and that’s all. But spending long periods of time here is just awful. It’s just so boring. Nothing happens here, and because the sky just changes color but there’s no real natural sun cycle, the days all kind of meld together, and I’m feeling like my creative juices are just being sucked out of me.”
“Well, you’re in luck. Alice and I came over to try and convince you to come back to Sapphire Village.”
“But the Others are still out there. I don’t want my soul taken. I had one experience with them, and that was more than enough,” Peaches said with a shiver that had nothing to do with the temperature outside.
“I know,” Cat said. “But the thing is, they’re never going to go away. Not until we defeat them. And it’s not going to happen at the rate things are going. We can’t just keep defeating them one by one. We need to draw them out, and we need to take care of all of them, once and for all.”
Peaches looked up at us, fear in her eyes. “Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Of course we do,” I chimed in. “We’re saying that if we put this one, final effort in, there’s a chance we can defeat them all. There’s a chance that we can live the rest of our lives without worrying about them. There’s a chance that we make life easier for all the magical families that have been targeted by them in the past.”
“But what if that’s not enough?” Peaches asked. “I mean, what if they’re stronger than us? What if they take our souls?”
“Look at how you’re living now!” Cat exclaimed. “You’re trapped here, afraid to come back to where you really want to be. You’ve complained yourself about how bored you are. Is this really living? Are you really going to keep doing this forever?”
“It’s easy for you to say,” Peaches said softly. “You’re so good at magic. And Alice, too. Alice is better than both of us. But me, I don’t have that special skill. My magic always goes wrong. Always.”
My heart broke for my cousin. “That doesn’t mean you don’t have powers, though,” I told her. “I mean, you’ve managed to do some super powerful magic. And sure, it wasn’t exactly what you were after, but it doesn’t mean you’re not powerful.”
“Thanks,” Peaches said. “I mean, maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s better to come back to Sapphire Village and face them all together. As long as there’s three of us, we’ll have a better shot than one, right?”
“Exactly. We know that Alice can kill one of them at a time,” Cat said. But if the three of us combine our powers, then we might just be able to do more than that.”
“I’ll think about it,” Peaches promised. “In the meantime, I recommend you get out of here. If Grandma Cee or–heaven forbid–our mom hears you talking about taking on the Others on purpose, you’re going to get one heck of a lecture.”
I glanced at the house. It looked like a cozy little cottage from the front, but I knew that thanks to magic, the interior was absolutely enormous. Grandma Cee was rather terrifying at the best of times, despite not even being five feet tall. I definitely didn’t want to see her when she was mad.
“Ok, we’re leaving. But we’ll be back, Peaches. We miss you up in the human world.”
“I miss it too,” Peaches said quietly. “I’ll think about it and let you know.”
Cat and I turned and made our way back to the portals.
“She’ll come around” Cat said quietly. “She just needs some time to get there on her own.”
“I hope so,” I said. “We can’t do this without her.”
Chapter 9
By the time we got back to Sapphire Village, the sun was beginning to disappear over the horizon. Luckily, with this being the last days of August, there were still plenty of people walking around the village, and Cat and I were confident we could make it to Pickles’ Pizza without the Others coming out to get us.
Sure enough, five minutes after we left Cat’s Cupcakes, we were seated in the warm interior of the pizza shop, the atmosphere slightly smoky from the wood-fired ovens that cooked up the pizza. A hostess led Cat and I to a large booth, and we spread ourselves out.
“I’m definitely ordering something with alcohol in it after the day we’ve had,” Cat said, picking up the drinks menu.
“And I haven’t eaten anything all day, since I skipped lunch to go to Guest Services with you, so just FYI, I will be ordering an extra-large pizza and eating all of it,” I announced, my mouth watering as I read over the menu options that I already knew by heart.
There was a chance–just a sliver of a chance–that I ate here a little bit more often than was good for me.
I was so hungry I’d almost forgotten the reason we’d come here in the first place, until about a minute later when Michelle’s cheery face stopped by our table.
“Hi, Cat, Alice,” she said, the smile dropping somewhat. I assumed she was trying to figure out what was an appropriate amount of enthusiasm with which to greet customers that you lived through a tragedy with less than twenty four hours earlier.
“Hi, Michelle,” I said, throwing her a small smile. “How are you holding up after last night?”
“I’m doing ok,” she said. “It’s super sad, of course. And I didn’t know Vanessa really well, so that helps. I imagine Polly is feeling a lot worse than I am today.”
“We went by to see her earlier, she’s definitely not doing well,” Cat said, nodding sadly.
“Oh, that’s too bad. I texted Tom–he’s a friend of mine who lives in their house–but he wasn’t really a fan of Vanessa, so I don’t think it affected him too badly.”
“You didn’t go and see him last night or today, did you?” I asked.
“Nah,” Michelle said, shaking her head. “I didn’t have time this morning. I had to go into Portland for a doctor’s appointment. I tore something in my shoulder a while ago and they wanted me to get an MRI. Besides, we’re not that good of friends. Have you heard anything about who did it yet?”
Cat and I both shook our heads. “We haven’t heard a peep,” Cat said. “It’s too bad. I kind of want to know who it was who did it.”
“No kidding, right? It feels so weird to know that we were in a room, casually discussing a book with a murderer.”
I tried not to think about that fact too much.
“Agreed,” Cat said. We ordered our drinks and food, and Michelle promised to be back with our orders shortly.
“So, do we believe the story about getting an MRI in Portland this morning?” I asked, and Cat’s brow furrowed.
“I don’t know. I mean, I think she’s probably telling the truth. But besides, it’s not like she wouldn’t have had time to go into that house before or after the appointment, before coming here.”
“Though checking with that friend of hers, Tom, would be pretty easy,” I pointed out. “So if she did go, she must have broken in somehow, and left the vial there.”
“Well, whoever did it must have just broken in. Polly says there had been no visitors at all. And the only other option is that Vanessa bought the cyanide herself.”
“And then we’re back to the suicide theory. There was a Sherlock Holmes story where a woman killed herself, and it turned out she did it in an attempt to frame another woman. I can’t remember the details, but it was over a man. Maybe it was something like that?”
“That makes no sense, though. The motive doesn’t, anyway. Vanessa was engaged to be married. She had a man locked down for good.”
“Yeah, but forget the motive. What about the rest of it? Maybe Vanessa killed herself to get revenge on one of the other women there?”
“Maybe,” Cat said skeptically. “But if so, she’s done a really bad job. We only really have one major suspect.”
“And no real reason for her to have wanted any of the other women in jail over anything,” I said. “Fine, it was a stupid idea. But I’m just spitballing here.”
“Spitball away,” Cat said with a smile. “I mean, we’re going to have to figure something out, otherwise we’re just treading water.”
“I want to go back to the suicide theory anyway,” I said. “I mean, maybe Vanessa just took a little bit of the cyanide to the meeting somehow and slipped it into her own coffee.”
“Then why didn’t we find any record of her having bought it?”
I shrugged. “She could have deleted the email.”
“Maybe,” Cat said, but she still looked skeptical. Just then, Michelle came back with a tray of drinks balanced precariously on a tray. She put them down on the table with a smile before promising that she’d be back soon with our food.
I sipped on my lemonade while Cat started downing her Long Island Iced Tea like we were in the desert or something.
“At least you’re not driving home,” I teased.
“Hey, I’m at least three drinks away from not being able to drive,” Cat said. “This case is making me want to drink. I hope that after we find the killer everyone will trust that it’s safe to eat at my place again.”
“They will,” I said confidently. “People are worried that cyanide somehow got into the food without you noticing, and that it was an accidental death. That’s all.”
“Yeah, because I just leave cyanide hanging around the shop all the time. Someone must have just put it in the box labeled flour by accident.”
I giggled. “I know. It’s silly. But people are scared. They don’t want it to happen to them.”
“After seeing how much pain Vanessa was in, I don’t want it happening to me. I always thought cyanide poisoning was supposed to be instant.”
“I Googled it the other day. It turns out it can take a while to die from it. There’s also an antidote that’s apparently pretty effective, but you have to get the person to a hospital in time. We just didn’t have the chance with Vanessa.”
Cat shuddered. “What an awful way to go.”
“Do you think it would be better, or worse than having our souls taken by the Others.”
“Better,” she said quietly.
“Do you know what it’s like? To have your soul taken, I mean. Have you heard?”
Cat shook her head. “No one knows. Once it happens, you’re gone for good. But I know what it felt like when they were coming after me, and I felt like there was nothing I could do. It was the most horrifying feeling in the world. It didn’t hurt, but it felt like… you know when you do something wrong, and you feel so guilty you kind of want to curl up into a ball, and bile rises in your throat, just because you feel so bad?”
“Yeah, I do,” I said.
“It feels like that but multiplied by a thousand. It felt like my insides were being squeezed to a pulp, but like my feelings of sadness and guilt were so overwhelming I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. And that wasn’t even the end, since you came to save me. I imagine it feels worse.”
“So if we fail in our plan to kill the Others, it’s going to suck.”
“It will definitely suck,” Cat confirmed. “But we’re not going to fail. We’re going to get them. We’re not going to have to live in fear anymore. After all, they need souls to keep their energy. We’re not giving that to them. We’ve managed to take a few of them out, and they should be getting weaker, as long as they’re not getting the souls of other witches from elsewhere.”
“So you’re saying we have a chance.”
“I am. I think we do. Especially if Peaches comes and joins us.”
Before I had a chance to say anything else, Michelle came back with our pizzas. My mouth began watering as the aroma of cheese, crust and oregano wafted toward my nostrils.
“This looks amazing,” I told Michelle.
“Yeah, they’re pretty good, aren’t they? Hey, are you guys going to Frank’s official party tomorrow?”
“Oh, right! The election is tomorrow, isn’t it?” After the former mayor had been arrested for murder, there was obviously a vacancy at City Hall, and the town was going to the polls tomorrow. With everything that had happened, I had completely forgotten about t.
“I don’t know who you’re supporting, but we’re catering for Frank’s party tomorrow at the conference center. Free pizza,” Michelle said with a smile.
“We’re definitely going to be there,” Cat said. “Not only for the free pizza, but because Frank is a good guy, and he definitely deserves the job. Much more than Denise, anyway.”
Denise Williams was a sour human being who seemed to hate Cat and I simply for existing. I preferred to avoid her completely, but Cat was definitely on the side of antagonizing her at every opportunity. Now that she was running for mayor and in the public eye, there had been plenty of those.
“Great,” Michelle said. “I agree. I think we need someone with a good head on his shoulders like Frank in charge. He’s a reasonable guy.”
“Exactly,” I agreed.
Michelle left a couple of minutes later and Cat and I dug into our pizzas, any semblance of conversation forgotten as hunger took over and we devoured our food.
Chapter 10
I was up just after six the next morning. I still had ninety minutes before I had to meet Chase for breakfast, so I made my way downstairs. I figured if anything I could do a little bit of organizing in the bookstore, and maybe even get in a little bit of reading myself.
Instead, I found Archibald sitting–well, floating above–one of the seats, glowering at me.
“It’s about bloody time,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you for hours.”
“Sorry, Archibald. Some of us still need to sleep in order to function. What do you want?”
“After I heard about what had happened at your book club, I began to wonder whether or not that sort of thing happens at other book clubs.”
“Murders, you mean?”
“Yes, exactly!”
“And what did you find out?”
“Well, sadly, I didn’t come across any other gruesome deaths, but I did learn about this thing called self-publishing.”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes! Now, as you may know, I am a little bit old fashioned—”
“No kidding,” I murmured, earning myself a glare for interrupting.
“And I do rather believe that if a book isn’t accepted by a publishing house, it is not worthy of publication. However, as I have been dead for nearly two hundred years, all of my contacts at my publishing house back in London have long since died as well, and I believe the company that published my works is no longer in existence either.”
“So that leaves you with only the option of self-publishing?”
“Well, yes. After all, I’m incapable of representing myself in meetings, or even of writing down my words. However, the doodad over there which reads me books, you’re able to write words on it, are you not?”
“I am, yes,” I said.
“So, if I were to give you the words of my poems, and you were to insert them into the machine, you would be abl
e to then self-publish my works, would you not?”
“I suppose,” I mused. I had never looked into self-publishing and didn’t know much about it.
“Great,” Archibald said. “So it’s all settled, we’re doing that.”
How on Earth did I get myself roped into these things?
“We can do that later,” I said to Archibald. “For now, I’m going out to get breakfast. Think about what you want to write though, since you’ll have to dictate it to me.”
“Oh, I have a whole collection of poems,” Archibald called out to me as I made my way out the door. “I’ve been dead for two hundred years; I have had plenty of time to come up with art worthy of publication.”
That was exactly what I needed on my plate right now: finding out how self-publishing worked in order to soothe the ego of a two-hundred-year-old ghost.
I put Archibald out of my head as I made my way to the local café for breakfast. I liked this particular place: counter service only, with cute little tables on the patio that let us bask in the early-morning sun before it got too hot. It was absolutely perfect.
When I got there, Chase was already leaning back in one of the patio chairs. He grinned when he saw me and got up, planting a quick, but passionate kiss on my lips.
“Hey, how are you?”
“Good, thanks. You?”
“Well, I’ve got one busy day in front of me. I ordered you a coffee, but I didn’t know what you wanted for breakfast.”
“Cool,” I said, and he followed after me as I went back inside to order food. Today definitely felt like a pancakes and berries kind of day.
“So how is the investigation going?” I asked as we sat back down, taking a sip of my delightfully creamy, rich latte.
“Are you asking because you care about my life, or are you asking because you’re trying to get information out of me for your own investigation?” Chase asked with a cheeky smile. I put on my best innocent expression.
“You told Cat and I not to investigate, and we promised we wouldn’t!”
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