Seven Year Witch

by Samantha Silver

  My phone beeped, and I checked it quickly. It was a text from Ellie.

  Get out of there, the fairy’s coming back.

  My heart jumped into my throat as I looked between the computer and the printer. The sheet I wanted still wasn’t coming out. I had to make a decision, and fast, or I was going to get caught snooping through the gym’s records.

  Great.

  Chapter 12

  “Did you get it?” Ellie asked breathlessly when she came out of the gym a minute later.

  I held up my phone with a grin and shook it. “The printer wouldn’t work, so I snapped a shot of the screen.”

  “Good thinking! So you’ve got the names?”

  “I do. Let’s get out of here first, though.”

  With the sun now solidly setting, Ellie and I made our way back home, where we found Amy and Sara waiting for us.

  “Oh good, you’re back,” Amy said, motioning for us to help ourselves to some pulled pork tacos. All that running had built up my appetite, and I happily reached for the food as I recounted the day’s events.

  “I think you’re probably right that Rosa would have been poisoned at the gym,” Amy said. “Does anyone stick out to you on the list of people who were there at the time?”

  I opened my phone and scrolled through the names. “Leon was there, her former head of security,” I said. “I don’t think he did it, though. I mean sure, she fired him, but it wasn’t like he needed the work. And he didn’t seem particularly broken up about it.”

  “And Ophelia?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “She wasn’t there. I don’t think she was even a member at the gym; she just went to drop some stuff off for Kyle.”

  “How about him?” Ellie asked. “Is he on the list? After all, maybe we have the motive wrong. Maybe it was just a lover’s spat. Since he worked there, no one would think twice about him being near the cubbies.”

  “He wouldn’t show up on here,” I said. “This is just from swipe keys from members. Kyle was staff.”

  “Right,” Ellie said. “Well, maybe we should look into that just in case. Let me see the other names.”

  I passed my phone over to Ellie, who frowned as she read through the list.

  “I don’t know that any of these other people would have had a reason to kill Rosa,” Ellie said. “There were two shifters, three vampires—although what they were doing going to the gym in the middle of the day, I can’t imagine—and four witches. The witches are all older and I recognize them from the coffee shop when I worked there. They would go into the gym every day at the same time, then come to Hexpresso Bean for a coffee after.”

  “So not exactly the type to be cold-blooded murderers,” I said.

  “Not unless somebody came between them and their grandwitches,” Ellie said with a smile.

  “Great, so we’re nowhere,” I said. “Maybe we should look into Kyle. Maybe he liked Rosa’s money so much that he killed her for some of it.”

  “Well, the funeral is in a couple of days, so we’ll see him then,” Amy said.

  “Right. I’m kind of hoping business will be better tomorrow anyway,” I said. “I spoke to a few people who thought it was a shame that people are afraid to come, and they will be spreading the word around that it’s still safe to eat there.”

  “Sorry I wasn’t much help today,” Sara said with a shrug. “What with the final races coming up, I’m not going to lie, my mind is elsewhere a lot of the time.”

  “Don’t you worry about that at all,” Ellie said emphatically. “Your race on Tuesday is absolutely the most important thing that you need to be thinking about.”

  Sara nodded. “I was doing the math again today. If I win on Tuesday and Derek comes in second, we tie for the trophy. If he comes in third or fourth, I win outright.”

  “I saw you training on the lake today,” I said with a grin. “You are amazing. And your magical skills have gotten so much better, too.”

  “Thanks,” Sara replied, a blush crawling up her face. “It’s all really thanks to Amy, though. She’s the one who’s made me practice spell after spell after spell until I could do them right.”

  “Your newfound confidence is what’s made the difference,” Amy said. “Whether you believe in yourself or you don’t, either way, you’re right. So when you never believed that you could cast the spells properly, you didn’t. But once your confidence grew and you realized you did have it in you to be a good witch after all, all of a sudden you had no problem casting the spells. It was all you.”

  “Well, whatever it was, I’m glad that I can now look my mom in the eye and tell her that I cast advanced-level spells properly.”

  I beamed at my friend; I was so proud of her for the way she had grown in the last few months since the broom competition began. Who knew that all she needed was to find what she was really destined for in life?

  The next day was a Saturday, and so I prepared myself for more customers in the morning than we’d had the other day. After all, Saturday mornings were when all paranormals—well, except for the vampires—liked to enjoy a nice breakfast, preferably with something sweet and with all of their family. The nearby parks were an especially popular spot, with most of the picnic tables always taken up, and I had a sneaking suspicion that a decent number of people were going to come by to get some food to take away.

  I tried not to get my hopes up too high, though, since I knew that there were also a lot of people now avoiding The Witching Flour.

  When the doors finally opened, however, there were already two witches who had evidently gone for a morning run ready and waiting. That was definitely an improvement on the previous day.

  “Hi there, what can I get you?” I greeted them with a friendly smile as they came in.

  “Well, seeing as I just ran six miles, I think I’ve earned this cinnamon bun,” one of the witches laughed, pointing to what was definitely going to be a perennial bestseller.

  “And I’ll have a lemon poppy seed muffin, please,” the other witch said. “And we’ll have them here.”

  “Sure thing,” I replied, placing their orders on a couple of plates and sliding them toward the witches. The second witch handed me some cash while the first witch looked around admiringly.

  “This is such a great spot,” the first witch said. “I’m so glad there’s finally a great new baked goods place here in town. But I do wish you’d get a coffee machine. After all, coffee is kind of a way of life here.”

  “That is true,” I admitted as I gave the second which her change. “I know that getting a coffee machine is on the agenda, and finding somebody who knows how to use it well, but Ellie thought she would just iron out the kinks first before taking that next step.”

  “Well, as soon as she does, you’ll have a regular customer out of me,” the first witch said. “I know a whole bunch of witches and wizards are worried because Rosa bought the cinnamon bun that poisoned her from here, but the idea that anyone else is in danger is completely ridiculous. And quite frankly, the smell coming out of this place is good enough that I’m willing to risk my life to eat some of these pastries.”

  I laughed and thanked the witches as they made their way to a corner table, right by the window so they could people watch as they ate. The witch had a good point about the coffee machine, and I made a mental note to ask Ellie about it again.

  Before I got a chance to go to the back, however, a couple of shifters came in. Relief washed over me; apparently not everybody in town was afraid of The Witching Flour. I remembered Leon’s promise to get the word out that this place was fine and wondered if maybe these shifters hadn’t been urged by him to visit. After all, they were both lions.

  While we never got the overwhelming number of customers from the first day, there was a more-or-less steady stream of paranormals who came in looking for something to eat over the next couple of hours. I hoped that this meant that even if we didn’t find the killer, eventually people would start coming back all the same. />
  Ellie spent most of the day in the kitchen at the back, working on making more dough for a few days ahead. At one point, when things finally slowed down around noon as everyone went to have lunch instead of pastries, I slipped through the doors and smiled at her. “Have you seen all the customers we’ve had so far?”

  “I have,” Ellie said. “I’m trying not to get my hopes up, and I keep telling myself that Saturdays are always going to be the busiest day of the week, but I am happy about it.”

  “So you should be. I told you people would come back.”

  “Not all of them, though,” Ellie said. “Not until we find the person who killed Rosa.”

  “Well, we’ll get there,” I said. Just then, I heard the front door to The Witching Flour open, and I held up a finger. “Back in a sec.”

  I made my way back out to the main part of the store to find an old witch who had collapsed into the closest chair to the entrance. Lucy had already rushed over to see if she was ok. Was it a medical emergency? I quickly filled a glass of water and brought it over to the witch.

  “What is it? What’s going on? Are you alright?” Lucy asked the witch, who gratefully took the glass of water I handed her. “Do we need to call a Healer?”

  “Nothing like that, young witches,” the witch said. “I’m afraid I’ve just had a little bit of a shock. I was in the park across the street, sitting at one of the tables and enjoying the view, when one of the shifters came out from the woods. He said they found a body.”

  Chapter 13

  “Where?” I asked, and the witch immediately gave me directions. I told Lucy to take care of her and give her whatever she wanted, sprinted to the back to tell Ellie to take care of the store, and made my way out to the park across the street. I immediately recognized the two wolf shifters who stared awkwardly at the ground.

  “Are you the two who found the body?” I asked, and they nodded.

  “We were going for a hike in the woods behind the park,” the taller of the two said. “Tristan here thought he could smell something, and we found her about twenty feet off the side of the trail.”

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “We don’t know her,” Tristan said. “She’s a witch, that’s all we know.”

  “Have you told Chief Enforcer King yet?”

  “The old witch who came by said she was going to find her,” the taller shifter said. “We said we would stay here and stop anybody from going to the trail until she gets here.”

  “Ok,” I said, pulling out my phone. I had a sneaking suspicion it was going to take the old witch sitting inside The Witching Flour a little while before she was going to be able to get help. I called the Chief Enforcer, and she picked up on the second ring.

  “I’ll be there in less than five minutes,” she replied when I told her the situation. “Please don’t let anybody near the scene.”

  “She’ll be here soon,” I said to the shifters. “Do you mind waiting around? Since you’re the ones who found the body, you’ll be able to lead her to it more easily.”

  “That’s fine,” Tristan said. I couldn’t help but notice how pale his face was. Both wolf shifters looked to be in their late teens; coming across the body like that while on a midday hike had to be quite a bit of a shock. A couple of minutes later, Chief Enforcer King arrived, looking all business.

  “Right,” she said, nodding to the shifters as she arrived. “Tristan, Cameron, good to see you again, although not under the best circumstances. Can you take me to the body?”

  “Sure thing, Chief Enforcer King,” Tristan replied, and the two shifters began walking up the trail into the forest. I tagged along, and as the trail began to rise, my legs really felt the workout from the night before. My muscles ached, but I pushed through until we made it about half a mile up the trail. Tristan and Cameron stopped and pointed to the left.

  “She’s over there,” Cameron said. “About twenty feet away.”

  I could see where the shifters had walked off the path from the way the shrubs and grass had been moved, and I subtly followed Chief Enforcer King into the woods, being careful to step exactly where she had so as to not mess up any evidence.

  Sure enough, twenty feet from the path, there was the tiniest clearing in which the body lay. She was definitely a witch, probably in her mid-to-late teens, with fiery red hair that framed her head like a halo. She had been fit, and from the way she was dressed, I imagined she must have been going for a run through the forest when she was attacked. She wore exercise clothes and nice white running shoes, with a set of headphones still in her ears. I tried not to focus on the large blot of blood on her shirt. The poor witch had obviously bled to death.

  “Do you know who she is?” I asked Chief Enforcer King, who nodded.

  “I do, yes. She was studying to become an Assistant Healer. I believe she’s one of your friend Sara’s distant relations. Third cousin, or something like that. I’ll ask you not to tell Sara about this until I’ve had a chance to inform the immediate family.”

  My heart sank. Such a young life, extinguished so needlessly.

  “Do you think this is related to Rosa’s poisoning?” I asked, and Chief Enforcer King turned and gave me a sharp look.

  “It’s much too early in this investigation to tell. Besides, I can’t be talking about an open investigation with a civilian. In fact, you probably shouldn’t even be here. I’m going to have to ask you to go back to the trail.”

  That was fair enough; I knew I had been tempting fate by following Chief Enforcer King over here, and I nodded. “Ok. If you need me for anything, I’ll be at The Witching Flour.”

  I said goodbye to the shifters, wished them luck, and made my way back down the trail to the park before heading back into the bakery. There were a couple paranormals around now, all huddled around the witch, who was telling her story.

  “I don’t know who it was,” she said. “The two shifters just suddenly came out of the woods and told me they had found a body, and they needed help.”

  “Chief Enforcer King is over there now,” I said. “She has taken control of the scene and will be investigating.”

  “Do you know who was killed?” someone called out, and I shook my head. Technically, I wasn’t lying. While I had seen the body, Chief Enforcer King hadn’t told me her name. And I respected her desire to tell the family in private before the small-town rumor mill got going.

  “I don’t know who it is, no,” I said, making my way back to the counter. A few others asked a couple of other questions in the same vein, but when people quickly realized that I wasn’t going to give them the gossip they were after, they moved on.

  “You really don’t know who it was?” Ellie asked in a quiet voice when the store had emptied once more.

  “I don’t have a name, but I did see the body. A young witch studying to be an Assistant Healer.”

  “And she was murdered?” Ellie asked, and I nodded.

  “While out for a jog, by the looks of things,” I said. “Stabbed, if I had to take a guess.”

  “What is this town coming to?” Ellie said, shaking her head sadly. “That poor witch.”

  I had to agree. The rest of the afternoon was rather somber, with a few customers coming in here and there, and everyone wanting to know who it was. By the time we closed a couple of hours later, we had a name: Diane Vihar. Her family had been told, and her distraught mother had called all of the relations in town. I knew that by the time we got home, Sara would know. I hoped for her sake that the two of them weren’t close.

  “This is just awful,” Ellie said, shaking her head as we cleaned up after closing. “Two murders in three days.”

  “Do you think they could be related?” I asked, and Ellie shrugged.

  “I can’t see how they would be,” she said. “After all, Rosa and Diane were killed in completely different ways. One was poisoned and the other was stabbed.”

  “That’s true,” I admitted. “Still, it seems weird to me to have two murders
in this town so close to one another and not have them be linked.”

  “Sometimes that’s just how the universe works,” Ellie said with a shrug. “I think we need to focus on Rosa’s murder. After all, it’s going to be even more important now, since Chief Enforcer King will have to split up her time between both investigations.”

  “True,” I nodded. “That’s a very good point.”

  By the time we got home, Sara had definitely heard the news.

  “She’s upstairs in her room, crying,” Amy said to us quietly. “Diane was her third cousin, and Sara used to babysit her from time to time when she was a teenager.”

  “Oh no,” I said sadly, my heart breaking for my friend.

  “And it happened right across the street from The Witching Flour, didn’t it?” Amy said.

  “Well, about half a mile into the woods,” I corrected. “And luckily, this time I don’t think anybody can blame Ellie’s bakery, since Diane was stabbed.”

  “Did it look like she suffered?” Sara’s voice came from the doorway. It was shaky, and as I turned to look at her, her eyes were red.

  “No, she looked at peace,” I replied honestly. “Just like she was sleeping.” I left out the part about the blood.

  Sara nodded. “She was the cutest kid, you know? Absolutely adorable. She loved dinosaurs more than anything, and I always encouraged her to go into science. I was super proud of her when she decided to study to become an Assistant Healer, and I know she wanted to eventually study to be a full-blown Healer like so many of the women in my family.”

  “She sounded great and I’m sad I never got to meet her,” I said honestly.

  “She really was great,” Sara agreed. “I’m going to win the next broom competition for her. I promise.”

  With that, Sara made her way to the front door, and a moment later we heard it close behind her.