by Tegan Maher
Lily Rose had turned on the office lights. Inside, papers were strewn across the desk and on the floor as if they’d been rifled through. Drawers on the desk were ajar.
“Looks like someone was looking for something.” I started organizing some of the papers. I picked up a client ledger and flipped through to the last few weeks. “Pages have been torn out as if someone didn’t want their information to be found.”
“Yeah, but there’s a cash box here and a laptop.” She pointed to the edge of the desk. “Why break in if you’re not going to lift a few things?”
“Hm. Is there a back door to check for forced entry?”
She shook her head. “I checked it before we came inside. It’s locked up tight.”
“Weird.” I put the ledger down and picked up several bank documents. “Yikes. The deposits on this statement are low. Even for a new business, the studio is hemorrhaging money.”
After the first few struggling months when Seth and I had opened the boxing gym, we’d kept a close eye on the money coming in and going out to make sure we could stay afloat. He hadn’t known about my secret paycheck coming in from the agency as a safety net.
“This doesn’t help us at all.” Lily Rose tossed a handful of documents back on the desk.
I lowered into the office chair and rested my hands on my stomach. “We need to be able to search for our hex wielder but without a physical object to connect to, it’s impossible to scry. The missing pages in the ledger make it seem like it is an angry client, but how would someone who needs to visit a psychic know how to hex? And if it’s an angry psychic competitor, then why tear pages out of the ledger?”
Lily Rose crossed her arms, her frown deepening. “And if a person meant to do Ginnie and Hunter harm, then why didn’t she pick up on that with her powers? Even if she’s not the strongest psychic, she should still be tuned in enough to know when she’s in danger.”
I considered myself a pretty decent investigator even on a bad day, and I didn’t like not being able to get answers.
Wiggling around, I pulled my cell phone from my back pocket. The list of psychic studios popped up. “We could start investigating the other studios in the area tomorrow morning.”
“That wouldn’t help with all the psychics that run a back door business out of their homes. There could be at least ten more in all of Lakeland.” Lily Rose chewed on the edge of her unlit cigar. “Don’t you know anyone that specializes in hex removals amongst your time witch friends?”
Did my friends specialize in removing hexes? Vee could erase memories, Flick is a witchy lie detector, Lexi moved things with her mind, and Mariana could talk to ghosts. Nothing that really helped in this situation. I picked up two pens from the top of the desk and drummed my belly while I thought. “Even if they could help, I’m not sure they could be here soon enough to help. If only we could read Hunter’s thoughts and ask his whereabouts for the time he went missing.”
Lily Rose huffed. “His thoughts are dog thoughts and other than hungry, thirsty, and got to poop, I’m not sure it would work.”
I sat up straighter in the chair and tossed down the pens. “He doesn’t have to talk for us to retrace his steps. I do have a spell that can scry his movements as long as we have something that belongs to him. Like the dog bed in the front area.”
Lily Rose grabbed the bed while I gathered my spell supplies from the SUV. I kept a local map, old-school style, in the glove box. My scrying crystal and string stayed hidden in my bathroom in a feminine hygiene box. The likelihood of Seth searching through that was zilch.
We cleared the desk in the office and I spread out the map. Lily Rose put the edge of the dog bed so that it touched the paper. I’d preferred an item that could go in the middle, but we’d have to make do because of the size.
I cleared my throat and sat down. “Um, do you mind shifting for a meow-y boost?”
Cats connected spiritually to witchcraft and a complicated spell needed all the help it could get. Lily Rose shifted and jumped up on the edge of the desk. She lifted a front paw and licked the underside a few times.
In one hand I held the string with the crystal and in the other a pen to trace the path the crystal showed us. I hadn’t done a scrying spell since finding out I was pregnant and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d get a helping hand from my future witch baby. If she was like me, her powers wouldn’t actually manifest until puberty, but that didn’t mean that magic wasn’t locked away inside of her now.
I cleared my mind and pictured Hunter in his dog form, shaggy with a wagging tail. “Cosmos hear me and show us the ways of Hunter’s path in recent days.”
The crystal landed on the map and worked a route through town back and forth several times. Because I didn’t want to miss tracing, I didn’t pay much attention to the streets or areas until the crystal stopped.
Lily Rose shifted to human and came around to my side of the desk.
I dropped the crystal and stood to get a better view.
“This is utterly useless!” Lily Rose slapped her hands down on the desk.
She wasn’t wrong. While the paths Hunter had taken were pretty clear, there was no way to put them in order of which day he’d taken a certain route. Only one line went to the outskirts of Lakeland and came back.
“This path here would have been taken in a car. Don’t you think?” I traced my finger along a line that jutted away from the rest, out past Lakeland Linder Airport. I pulled up a map directory on my cell phone to get a satellite view of the buildings in the area. “There’s an equestrian center out there right near where the crystal stopped before it came back to Ginnie and Nell’s subdivision.”
Lily Rose scratched her chin. “You mean the horse place? I think Nell works there now and Ginnie worked there with her before they set up the studio.”
My shoulders slumped. “Then Hunter could have ridden out there with Ginnie to visit Nell and it’s another dead end.”
Lily Rose didn’t have to voice her hopelessness. I could feel it radiating off her body. No way would I allow her to give up on Hunter. Since my thirteenth birthday, Lily Rose had been a faithful familiar, and over the years she’d taught me to use my magic to help people. Now she needed my help and I wouldn’t let her down.
I gathered my supplies and shoved them in the tampon box. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“Where?” she asked.
I led her out of the studio and to my SUV, talking to her over my shoulder. “We need to start at the beginning.”
Chapter Five
By the time we reached the hospital, the sun had lowered and dipped behind the seven story building. I’d stopped only long enough to top off my vehicle with gas and purchase a new cigar for Lily Rose to chew on.
I’d forgotten to exchange phone numbers with Nell, so we had to start at the emergency room to find out the prognosis on Ginnie.
Since information could only be given to blood relatives, Lily Rose posed as the worried grandmother who’d been so concerned she’d forgotten her wallet at home. When I rubbed my belly and began to sniffle, the nurse took pity on us sent us up a few floors to a smaller waiting room.
To my surprise, almost all the chairs in the smaller waiting room were occupied. The occupants acted as if they knew each other. I made eye contact with a woman with a sharp nose and small dark eyes. She clapped her hands. “I win!”
Lily Rose backed away from the woman as she approached us. “I told them that a pregnant woman was on her way up to see Ginnie. They all owe me five bucks.”
“You’re Ginnie’s family?” A waiting room full of psychic witches? Perhaps Lily Rose and I could just ask them what happened to Hunter. All this power in one room should be good for something.
The woman smiled. “I’m the girls’ Aunt Peal.”
“Is Ginnie okay?” Lily Rose asked.
A man who fished a five dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to Peal answered for her. “They are giving her intravenous antibiotics for an infection from the bites. Ne
ll sent us a group text that she’d be here.”
“You couldn’t divine it on your own?” Lily Rose crossed her arms and leaned against the wall.
“For some reason we never get a psychic warning with Ginnie,” Peal said. “She’s always falling down or eating some contaminated food. The nurses here practically know us all by name.” She waved a hand toward the doors that led to the patient rooms. “She is truly blessed to have Nell to take care of her. It’s been that way all of their lives.”
I turned toward Lily Rose. Familiars normally did a better job of keeping their witches out of harm’s way. “Has Hunter ever mentioned that Ginnie is a frequent visitor to the emergency room?”
Lily Rose pushed away from the wall. “He might have mentioned she’s accident prone.”
I thanked Peal for the information and moved down the hall away from the waiting room, gesturing for Lily Rose to follow. I needed to take a moment to rearrange all the facts in my mind map. I liked using the shape of a tree and building branches for the suspects, but in this case there were zero actual suspects. I made a branch for Ginnie. Terrible psychic, accident prone, reliant on non-magical sister. I made a branch for Hunter. New familiar, new business, newly hexed. Finally, I put up a mental branch for Nell. Psychic barrier, always takes care of sister, co-dependent. But Hunter had recently made Ginnie a lot less dependent on Nell. It would take something extreme to get that dependence back.
I rubbed my belly and my intuition gave me an awful what if. Interesting how all the information pointing to any suspects had come from Nell. Yet, none of it had given any conclusive information. I couldn’t help but think the psycho studio break-in appeared staged.
Lily Rose must have sensed my thoughts were coming to a peak. “What are you thinking?”
“I’ve seen quite a few cases of domestic violence where even the most observant of family members had no idea something was going on.”
She instantly bristled. “Are you accusing Hunter of hurting Ginnie? That man wouldn’t hurt a flea on his back.”
“Not Hunter,” I said, putting together all the information we’d gathered. “This seems to have been going on longer than Hunter has been Ginnie’s familiar. What if we’re looking at a form of Munchausen by Proxy on a sibling?”
The words left an icky taste in my mouth as I said them out loud.
“The powerless sister?” Lily Rose asked.
“Nuala,” Nell called out as she passed through the double doors toward the waiting area.
Lily Rose and I pushed away from the wall and joined her at the waiting room.
“Let me at her,” Lily Rose practically growled.
“No. I need to work her for more information first. We can’t accuse her before we figure out how to remove the hex.”
Lily Rose nodded and made her way to stand in front of a vending machine while I headed toward Nell.
“How is Ginnie?” I asked.
“The antibiotics appear to be working but they want to keep her for observation. We waited a little too long to bring her in.” She wiped beneath her red-rimmed eyes. “Did you find anything at the studio?”
“The office had been trashed.” I gave a vague answer.
A crease formed between her eyes as she gave us a concerned frown. “But you didn’t find any answers as to who could have done this?”
I think you already have the answers. I glanced at the charmed stone hanging around her neck. If she’d had that since she was a little girl, how often could she get away with harming her sister and no one in her psychic family being the wiser? I guessed as many times as she wanted. Hunter would be collateral damage in her schemes to keep her sister close and reliant on her. Accusing a non-witch of performing a hex on a familiar and harming her sister couldn’t be made without solid evidence. All I had was a mind map tree and a hunch.
I chose my words carefully. “We were able to scry Hunter’s whereabouts for the past few days. It seems that he visited the equestrian center where you work. Was this before or after he’d been missing and came back unable to shift?”
Nell glanced around the waiting room as if searching for the memories. “I would guess that would have been before. Ginnie likes to bring me lunch sometimes and visit the horses. Hunter would have driven her.”
“We saw some financial information left out on the desk. It didn’t appear the studio was doing well in its first couple of months.”
“I had hoped for the best, but I knew deep down that opening a psychic studio was a bad idea.” She turned away from the other family members in the lobby. “Our family isn’t known for being the best psychics in the area.”
“Ah.” I nodded. “And what happened to Ginnie’s last familiar?”
Nell scratched the back of her head and kept her eyes cast toward the floor. “She just moved on, I guess. I heard familiars do that sometimes, but I wouldn’t really know since I’m not a witch.”
One of the twins kicked hard enough to make me wince and I placed a hand over my stomach. Did my little one just detect a lie? Nell had never once made a comment that suggested jealousy or spite but I trusted my intuition. The woman in front of me set up this scenario to sabotage her sister and ensure Ginnie’s continued reliance on her.
Or maybe my hormones had made me crazy enough that I worked out a very wrong angle. Only one way to find out.
I yawned into my other hand. “I think we’ve done all we can today. We’ll check in on Hunter and Ginnie tomorrow.”
Nell thanked me and joined the rest of her family. They gathered around her and she soaked up the attention like a mop. A dirty mop.
Lily Rose handed me a candy bar that she’d bought from the vending machine. “What do we do now?”
We walked to the elevator and she pressed the call button.
I glanced back down the hall. “Nell said that Hunter and Ginnie must have visited her to bring lunch, but my spell would have shown where he’d been while he was missing. I don’t know how I overlooked that. I think we need to check out the equestrian center.”
Lily Rose focused her stare on my stomach.
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “With Nell busy here, I can’t imagine that checking out a horse stable could get dangerous.”
Chapter Six
I turned on my blinker and pulled into the equestrian center’s gravel drive.
“What if your intuition is wrong?” Lily Rose toyed with her cigar, picking at the edge that would normally be lit.
“Then we’ve only wasted an evening poking around some stables. If we can find where the hex was performed, then maybe we will have something tangible to use to reverse it.”
“Not that I doubt your theory, but Nell doesn’t have any magical powers. How did she perform a hex so complex?”
“She wears a magical charm around her neck. I can imagine it took strong magic to make it. It wouldn’t be so hard for someone without magical powers to use it if they came from a family of witches. All they’d need is the knowledge of how.”
She poked my shoulder. “Six months pregnant and you still investigate like a boss.”
“Keep your compliments for after we find hard evidence. Without it we’re stuck in the mud.”
“Nah,” she started. “I’ll let you do the evidence thing first. But if that doesn’t work, I’m going to turn into something that Nell can only imagine in her nightmares, and I’ll make her confess.”
“Lily Rose!”
“Don’t ever think I’m above it.”
The last thing I needed was one of the paranormal agencies to send the equivalent of me to investigate my familiar for harming a human. Hard evidence had to be found before Lily Rose took matters into her own hands.
I parked in front of the main house and cut my headlights. “The plan is three-fold. We find evidence, we return Hunter’s shifting capabilities, then we steal the charmed necklace from Nell and her family quickly catches on to her misdeeds.”
A light on the front porch flicked on and
the curtains moved at the window.
“What do we do about the people who own this place? They aren’t going to let us snoop through the stables.”
I wiggled out of the front seat and smiled at her from across the hood. “Don’t worry. I come up with cover stories for a living. Just play along.”
The mixture of manure and other earthly odors hit me the closer we approached the house. I’d finally found a combination of smells that killed my appetite.
The front door opened and a man stuck his head out. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we’re closed. We reopen at seven if you’re looking for a tour.”
“Oh gracious me.” I put a hand over my stomach, partly to play my part and partly because of the manure odors. “Am I sure glad someone is here. We stopped on the main road to let my grandmother’s dog take a pee and he shot straight up your drive and around the stables.”
“Grandma?” Lily Rose let out a snort.
He glanced from me to Lily Rose and back.
“Yeah, my dog,” she finally added.
I added a little extra waddle. “He’s terrible around horses. I’d hate for him to bite one.”
The man’s face showed his concern at the boarded horses getting attacked by a dog on his watch. He came out the door, slapped a cowboy hat on his head, and grabbed his boots from the front steps. “I’ll turn on all the flood lights in the back. What’s your dog’s name?”
“Stupid,” Lily Rose answered.
I leveled her with glare. “Now, Grandma, that’s no way to talk about Buster Brown.”
The man shoved his feet into his boots and led us around the main house to the back. He walked down to a large shed with an electrical pole that held a rectangle electrical box. As he flipped several switches, lights flooded the grounds before us.
Lily Rose blew out a hard breath. “There’s a lot of ground to cover. And this guy’s going to feel awful when we don’t find a fake dog.”
“Yeah…you might have to play two different roles to get this ruse to work.” While Lily Rose preferred to be a cat in animal form, she could in fact shift into any animal she wanted.