That plan got a wrench thrown into its gears within a few minutes, however, when Bailey’s own near-doppleganger, Braley, trotted up the sidewalk and marched into the little building. Perhaps she was simply in a hurry, but her steps seemed a little crisp.
“Is that strange to you?” She asked Aiden when she made the observation.
“I’ve seen you walk,” he said. “You have to admit, you do tend to... march, a little bit.”
“What’s that mean?” She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Well,” he said carefully, “I mean... you walk with purpose. That’s all.”
She shrugged. “Okay. I’ll admit to that. But if someone had just killed my mother, that wouldn’t be the case. When Wendy passed I could barely get out of bed. I dragged my feet everywhere; it was like the life was just sucked out of me. I felt like I’d lost everything.”
“So what are you suggesting?” He wondered.
Bailey pointed at her Faerie carbon-copy through the window. “That while she might have lost a mother, she must feel like she gained something else.”
Aiden mulled this over a moment. “Are you sure you can judge her based on your own reactions?”
“I suppose not,” Bailey admitted. “But I think now would be a good time to pop in, don’t you?”
“We can agree on that at least.”
So they stood, and crossed the street, making their way to the bakery’s door.
They stood outside it for just a moment. The sound of some heated discussion was barely audible, none of it clear enough to make out—but someone was definitely angry about something.
Bailey tugged the door open, and led the two of them inside.
Whatever argument had been taking place evaporated quickly. Ara and Fran both offered professional grade smiles to their guests.
Braley, however, spared them only a brief scowl. She turned to Fran. “I’ll come by after you close. We’re not done talking about this.”
With that, the red haired girl marched past them; Bailey barely avoided being body checked as she did.
When the door closed behind the girl, Bailey turned to look askance at Fran and Ara. “Is... everything okay?” She asked, and then thought better of it. “Sorry... of course it isn’t. I mean to ask how you’re all holding up. Braley was Cleo’s daughter, wasn’t she?”
Ara nodded, and Fran shot her a brief, annoyed look before she sighed and nodded as well.
“She’s only just met her father,” Fran said. “Ara says she told you. Not that she has a right to go flapping her lips. She’s upset, of course, and confused about that relationship.”
“Is that what you all were arguing about?” Aiden asked, passably concerned for the harmony of the women’s friendship rather than interrogating them about what had happened.
Ara wrung a cloth in her hands, and cast a furtive glance at Fran. Neither woman seemed inclined to answer.
“What can we get for you?” Fran asked.
“We’re... not really hungry,” Bailey told her, though it was beginning to be a lie. “I mostly just wanted to see how things were going. I see they cleaned the place up.” She glanced around the cleaned floor. The glass was broken still—that would take time to replace, probably. But other than that detail she wouldn’t have known anything terrible happened. It seemed like an odd detail to leave, though. Surely they could have just fixed it with magic if this place was just an illusion.
Not everything had been cleaned, it seemed. There were still motes of dirt and dust under one of the tables, along with something glinting steeply angled light that barely lit the place.
“So I suppose you’ll be selling the place then,” Bailey said as she put a mental pin in these observations. “Now that Cleo’s... not involved.”
“Sell?” Fran asked. She shook her head. “No. I’ve had a change of heart. Though it might be hard for Ara and I to run the place on our own. Cleo was the brains and talent.”
Ara frowned at her, but eventually gave a shrug. “It’s true. Still... she wanted to keep the place. And Braley isn’t likely to be much help.”
“Braley?” Aiden asked. “Does she work here as well, then?”
“Oh, no,” Ara said, taking a sharp eye from Fran. “Well... she works at the library. But... with Cleo gone, of course, she’ll take over her third of the business.”
“The voting power, at any rate,” Fran grumbled. “She’s not a baker. She never wanted to be involved, though we offered to teach her. She just wants to do her own thing. She and Cleo were at odds about it sometimes—Cleo wanted her daughter to take over the shop when she retired, just like Cleo did from her mother.”
Bailey sighed. “So she would prefer to sell to Carson, I take it?”
“She thought Fran still wanted to,” Ara said. “Fran set her straight. And we offered to show her how to make the cupcakes, even give her Cleo’s recipe cards. She didn’t want them, though. When Fran told her she’d changed her mind... it didn’t go over well.”
“She must have been surprised,” Aiden said. “Inheriting part of a bakery out of the blue.”
“Oh, she knew,” Fran said. “She’s known for years.”
“Forgive me for asking this,” Bailey said, “I know it’s probably difficult to consider, but... do either of you know where Braley was when Cleo was... when she passed?”
Ara and Fran both looked utterly shocked at the question; but not for the reason Bailey imagined. “Didn’t you hear?” Ara asked.
“Hear what?” Bailey felt a thrill of alarm in her stomach, and saw the same concern on Aiden’s face.
“They already arrested someone, girl,” Fran said. “Marcus Carson. Part of the reason I’m not inclined to sell anymore. He killed Cleo because she wouldn’t sell. Guess he thought he’d get away with it and Ara would cave once it was just me and her.”
“I would have, probably,” Ara admitted.
Aiden held up a hand, “I’m sorry... wait, Carson?”
“They found his prints on the murder weapon,” Ara said. “And apparently saw him having an argument with Cleo just before she died.”
Fran spat. “I hope he rots in prison.”
“Oh,” Bailey said. “Ah... well I suppose I’m glad that’s resolved. Or at least that they have a suspect.”
“Suspect?” Fran asked. She narrowed her eyes. “They arrested him. How do you mean suspect? It’s fairly obvious. Carson doesn’t like being told what he can and can’t have. Just ask Braley.”
“They’re involved, aren’t they?” Aiden asked. “I thought I saw them at the fair together, for a bit.”
Ara draped the rag she’d been wringing out over her shoulder and grimaced. “Probably not anymore. Hard to forgive a man for doing something like that. They weren’t entirely open about their relationship.”
“It was more of a fling,” Fran added. “An open secret, but they’d both officially deny it if you asked. Especially now, I’d imagine.”
Bailey processed that, and tried to imagine how she’d react if Aiden killed Chloe. Not well, she decided. Not well at all.
The glint under the table caught her eye again.
“What... was the murder weapon?” Bailey asked. “If that’s okay to ask.”
Fran snorted. “Stupidity. He won the Sheriff’s pocket watch and chain off him just this afternoon when they were gambling over lunch. Idiot. Not that I’m complaining, mind you—I’m glad he got caught.”
“Right, of course,” Bailey muttered. “And... his fingerprints were on it.”
“Came back within an hour of cleaning up the scene,” Fran confirmed. “We may look like a backwoods little town, but our Sheriff knows his business.”
“Certainly,” Aiden said. “I’m sure they’ll put this all to rest soon enough.”
Fran and Ara both nodded hopefully.
“Thanks for talking with us,” Bailey said. She gave the ladies another sympathetic smile. “I’m so sorry for your loss, again.”
“Thank you,” Ar
a said.
As they turned to leave, Bailey reached into her pocket and winced as she let her phone slip out and skitter to the floor in the direction of the table where the glimmer of metal had caught her eye. She made a show of cursing under her breath and then knelt to retrieve it. As she did, she grabbed the glinting object as well—it was a tiny curl of metal, but she didn’t have time to look closely at it, instead putting it in her pocket along with the phone.
“Clumsy,” she sighed when Aiden raised an eyebrow at her.
They said final goodbyes on their way out, and were silent until they got to the street. When they got there, Aiden turned to her and glanced at her pocketed hand. “That was fairly heavy handed. What did you do that for?”
Bailey drew her hand from her pocket and held up what she’d found. It was a bit of gold, and she turned it to catch the failing sunlight. “I believe it’s a link from a gold chain,” she said.
“Looks like it. It was used to strangle Cleo, I suspect; perhaps it broke.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Bailey muttered. “But...”
“You don’t think Carson did it?”
She shrugged. “Just think about it... why would he? It didn’t make sense before, and it still doesn’t.”
“You think we should still talk to Braley,” Aiden surmised.
Bailey nodded. “Yes. They might have arrested someone already, but... I have a feeling this game isn’t over yet.”
Chapter 18
“IT’S SOME KIND OF BRIDGING spell, in the form of an enchantment,” Avery said to the coven ladies as they gathered around the table. He’d seen the inside of the attic sanctum briefly before they hurried him back downstairs, but he hadn’t quite become so endearing that they were going to let him in just yet.
“An enchantment in what sense?” Frances asked.
There was the colloquial and then there was the technical. “The strict sense. It’s Faerie magic. No doubt about it. The thirteen children are all being somehow co-opted into supporting a different part. Now, whether that’s for redundancy or out of necessity, I don’t know. But it’s actually a little brilliant.”
Three sets of disapproving eyes settled on him, and Avery squirmed internally with a mix of shame and irritation. “I mean, it’s also awful. Don’t get me wrong—I’m clear headed about this. But suppose the person casting it is... maybe not strong enough to sustain it for very long, or maybe they don’t have the skill to pull off something like this on their own. Or, maybe the origination point is actually in Faerie, which seems pretty likely, and the... well call it the signal isn’t strong enough from there to here so instead each kid gets part of it and sustains it. But!” he held up a finger, and tapped the papers in front of him.
“But,” he said, with less enthusiasm, “the... the individual signals are out of sync right now.”
“Which means?” Aria asked.
“Well it’s like if the three of you were all working on the same spell but each of you was going a different speed.”
“It wouldn’t work,” Chloe said softly. “Group casting requires harmony, rhythm; coordination.”
“Exactly,” Avery said. “So, that’s what’s happening here. Whatever effect is supposed to be happening, it’s not... ready, yet. But, look at this—”
“Just tell us, boy,” Frances snapped, waving at the papers. “This nonsense is wizard business. Plain English.”
“Well, this part is just musical notation and—”
“Avery,” Chloe said gently, “just the important points.”
He sighed. Aiden would have wanted to see the math. Then again, he was a wizard. Perhaps the differences were more fundamental than Avery imagined they were. “They’re very gradually getting into sync. It’s possible that having them all close together is actually speeding it up; I don’t know for sure. But at the rate I was able to parse out from the hour long recording I got from Piper... I think we have probably no more than about...” he checked the paper. “Five hours. Four, to be conservative.”
“Until?” Aria asked.
Avery rubbed the back of his neck. “Um... well I don’t recognize all the elements... but the ones that I have been able to figure out imply it has to do with opening a door. I mean... making a door, and then opening it. Like putting a wedge into a small crack and then hammering it in to break it open. The crack was probably already there, or something else happened to make it and then... well the magic sort of crept through that, got into the kids and now they’re hammering the wedge.” He glanced at Frances. “Is that plain enough?”
“Don’t get smart with me—”
“Frances, leave it,” Chloe said quietly. “Can you tell what the origin of the enchantment is? You don’t think it’s a person?”
Avery shook his head, “It’s been going on continuously for too long. If it was a person... well I don’t think we’d want to meet them.”
Frances frowned. “Sustained enchantments have to be laid on something. A hex bag, a talisman, a certain tree or another. Has to be in line with the nature of the enchantment; not just any old thing will do.”
“That’s my understanding,” Avery said. “Even though that’s not saying much. The point of this one is to open a passage to or from Faerie. Now, we know that Isabelle went over; or at least, we gambled on that, right? So if I were going to place any bets I would say that the place she crossed over is probably where the object is. Or structure.”
“Structure?” Aria wondered.
Well, it seemed the witches didn’t know all there was to know about magic. Avery kept his expression humble, though. Probably they knew a lot more that he didn’t know. “Um, yes,” he said. “A collection of objects. They would have to all be close together but there is a sort of... ceiling for a single object. How many individual parts it can handle before they sort of blend together and lose cohesion.”
“Summoning circles,” Chloe said. “They require multiple layers of symbolism all operating individually. One for protection, one for confinement... one for each critical part of the process.”
That was new information—wizards generally didn’t deal in summoning, and as far as Avery knew neither did witches; but perhaps Chloe was more broadly educated than the other two were comfortable with because they both gave her uneasy sideways looks.
“If we find the objects,” Avery said, “then I suspect we’ll be able to shut the whole enchantment down.”
“Safely?” Aria wondered.
When Avery didn’t answer right away, all three women’s faces fell.
“I can’t say that it’s entirely safe to break the enchantment with brute force,” he said slowly. “You’d probably know more about that than I would. But I know what will happen if we don’t break it fast enough.”
“There will be a crack in the wall between our worlds too big to manage,” Chloe said sadly.
“Yes,” Avery said. “That’s what my calculations suggest.”
“Well then,” Frances said, her voice thick. “Let’s get what we need.”
Having all of the children in one place did make it, at least, easy to find the origin point of the enchantment. The revelation the coven ladies used made the strange, wafting threads of it manifest as strange currents in the air, and all they had to do was follow the isolated breeze as it defied the rest of the evening wind and led them toward a copse of trees just north of the Seven Caves, not a ten minute walk outside of town.
“We saw this place in the mirror,” Chloe commented as they trekked through the sparse woods.
It took time to find what they were looking for once they had what everyone agreed seemed like the right place. It was a stone circle just two yards across, made of rounded, flat rocks worn smooth by a river somewhere that wasn’t local. Each of the stones looked vaguely familiar...
“Are these key stones?” Avery asked, staring at the carvings on the rocks.
“They do look similar,” Frances said from where she knelt to examine one.
/> No one touched any of the stones. Magic was thick in the air here, and the arrangement was very possibly significant. It was never a good idea to go moving things in such an arrangement around without some direction.
“Are you confident you can break the enchantment?” He asked.
The three women conferred for a time quietly, among themselves. Each had a sack slung over their shoulders, full of odds and ends and materials meant to cover whatever method they ultimately decided was needed.
Here, Avery was sure his usefulness ended. Cantrips and hand magic were no match for the kind of magic he could feel on these stones. That he could feel it at all said something about that. It emanated like heat from them; heat that radiated past his skin and down, into the core of wherever his magic arose from, and prickled very much like the sun when it grew too dangerous to stay out in it much longer. Briefly, he wondered if you could suffer the mystical equivalent of a sunburn.
The three women broke their circle and turned toward the ring of stones. “We believe so,” Chloe said. “And we shouldn’t waste any time.”
Avery grudgingly stepped aside and let them get to work.
They laid out objects at points that fell between the stones, carefully selecting each one from among the three bags. In a way, the process looked very much like that the crones employed to open the door to Faerie in the cave.
Aria spread pinches of powders inside the circle as well, while Frances cleared patches of leaves and used a rod of quartz to carve figures into the ground. There was a mathematical harmony to it all that began to take shape; a sort of intuitive counter pattern to the magic of the ring of stones. He found himself wondering if there wasn’t more math involved in witchcraft than the women led on—or, if they simply apprehended it differently. Knowing just what the differences between wizardry and witchcraft were would require a thorough education in both—and he suspected that was not forthcoming any day soon.
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