by Tess Lake
I was so caught up in reading that I didn’t see the bunch of adorable six-year-olds walking by under the supervision of their teacher until I nearly stepped on them. It wasn’t cold at all but some of them were rugged up like it was snow season. Maybe they were going to our very old and falling-apart ice-skating rink, Cold Blades.
Zero Bend’s name rang a bell. I couldn’t remember what, exactly, but I was pretty sure he had gotten arrested in some country for doing something stupid and crazy. One of those things that gets about two seconds on the news at the end when they need to say something light-hearted like “Crazy Artist Arrested for Stealing Elephant.”
I stuffed the flyer back in my pocket and continued on down the street past the town hall to the grouping of warehouses they were using to store the tons of butter for the competition. I was expecting someone to be here to let me in to take some photos for the Harlot Bay Reader, but the place was deserted. I knocked on the front door, but no one answered, so I went walking around the side until I found another door that was ajar. I knocked on it and it pushed open under my fist.
I stepped inside, feeling a cool wash of air over me.
“Hello? Harlow Torrent from the Harlot Bay Reader—I’m here to take photos.”
My voice echoed out into the corridor and the room beyond. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. I walked down the corridor, looking into the rooms on either side as I went, but they were empty.
I pushed through the plastic flaps into the main chill room. It was kept at near freezing in there, and my breath plumed out in front of me. I quickly removed my camera lens so it would have time to adjust to the temperature. The tables all around me were filled with giant wrapped pats of butter. Each one must have been at least twenty pounds. I wasn’t one to waste a good opportunity, so I went over to the nearest table, knelt down, and started taking photographs.
I moved around, trying to find a good angle to include the butter brand and the size of it. Every shelf around me was filled with thousands upon thousands of pounds of butter. This was at least going to make a great article. Hopefully I had better pictures and copy than Carter Wilkins.
I wandered around the room, feeling the chill seeping into my clothes. Goose bumps started to form on my arms and I shivered. Was that only the cold? I took a breath of chilled air and let it out again, but the odd feeling that had come over me wouldn’t go away. It felt like someone was watching me, and that’s not normally a sensation a witch ignores. I abruptly decided that I had enough photographs and I had to get out of there, but with all the shelves and tables everywhere, I must’ve gotten turned around. The warehouse felt like a maze. I started walking down a corridor, telling myself, don’t freak out, don’t freak out, don’t freak out when I turned the corner and . . .
Okay, here comes a freak-out.
A man was handcuffed to a metal chair in his underwear, with frozen blood on the floor around him. A trail of footprints led off behind him.
I knew his face; I’d been looking at it ten minutes ago. He was Holt Everand, one of the Butter Festival competitors. The blue eyes that had sparkled on the flyer were wide open and lifeless. His mouth hung open, making him look like he was surprised about something. On the table next to him was a clawed hammer, the end matted in blood and pieces of blond hair.
He was dead. Most definitely, absolutely, no-doubt-about-it dead.
I heard a noise behind me. I had my camera in my hands and in shock pressed the button, taking a photograph of Holt. The flash burst out, leaving me blinking away stars in my vision.
I whirled around but I couldn’t see anyone.
Holy crap, was the murderer still in the building?
The glare of the flash faded enough for me to peer at my phone. There was no signal—probably the warehouse, but possibly also the magical energy that swirled around Harlot Bay. It didn’t play well with telecommunications.
I stood still, listening for any sound, but all I could hear was my heart thudding. I was clenching my camera like a weapon. After thirty seconds of standing there in the cold, I decided I really needed to get out of there to call the police.
I quickly glanced behind me at Holt. He was still in his chair, still dead, still surrounded by frozen blood on the floor. I looked down and found I was standing on blood droplets.
Okay, murder blood on my shoes, I’m done!
I bolted back the way I came, convinced someone was going to jump out at me at any moment and I’d throw a fireball at them in a panic. It got worse the closer I got to the exit—now is the point where I’d be bashed by a hammer. I ran the final feet to the door, shoved it open and burst out into the warm morning.
I quickly dialed the Harlot Bay sheriff’s office and got put through to Sheriff Hardy. I told him I’d found a dead body, and he told me to stay where I was. It only took a few minutes for the police cars to arrive, and in that time the smudge of frozen blood on the side of my shoe had warmed up enough to trickle down onto the ground.
Gross.
Sheriff Hardy got out of his car and walked over. He looked down at the blood smeared on my shoe and then back up my face.
He’s a solid man in his early fifties, and I’ve known him since forever, but that didn’t stop me from shrinking under his patented police chief gaze.
“Someone killed Holt Everand. He’s one of the Butter Festival competitors,” I said.
“Stay right where you are, Harlow,” Sheriff Hardy told me.
He instructed his men to cover all of the exits of the building and then they went inside. I stayed literally where I was. Some more of the frozen blood on my shoes melted down onto the ground before Sheriff Hardy returned and went back to his car. He came back with a couple of giant plastic evidence bags.
“Going to need you to step out of your shoes and put these on.”
He was holding a pair of blue cotton shoe coveralls, the type that you might see a doctor in a hospital wearing. Something so I didn’t contaminate the crime scene more than I already had.
Once I was out of my shoes (I guess they were evidence now) and wearing bright blue cotton, Sheriff Hardy led me to his car.
“So, Harlow, can you tell me how it is you came to be in a warehouse with a dead body?”
I told Sheriff Hardy about coming to the warehouse to get photographs of the butter and how upon finding the front door locked, I’d gone around to the side.
“It didn’t occur to you that if the front door was locked that perhaps you should wait until someone arrived to unlock it?”
“I wasn’t intending to break in. I just happened to walk down the side. There was an open door. Besides, it’s a warehouse. I thought that someone would be there. I took some photos of the butter.”
“I’ll need a copy of your photographs. Can you bring them to the station? You didn’t see anyone? Hear anyone?”
“I heard a noise, waited a bit to see if I heard it again, and then got out of there.”
Sheriff Hardy blew out air between his lips and then rubbed his hands through his hair.
“Well, the man in there is definitely dead. We probably won’t be able to say exactly when he died because he’s nearly frozen. How did you know his name?”
I pulled the Butter Festival flyer out of my pocket and gave it Sheriff Hardy. He read through some of the bios of the competitors, his eyebrows inching up higher.
“Zero Bend, huh? Well, that explains the crime we just discovered.”
“What crime?”
“Someone went on a graffiti spree last night. You didn’t see it?”
Graffiti spree? John had mentioned it to me, but I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary on my walk through town. On the other hand, I’d almost stomped on a group of six-year-olds, so it was entirely possible I wasn’t paying attention very well.
“Must have missed it,” I said.
“Take a walk down the main street later.”
He gave back the Butter Festival flyer and made some notes about what I’d told
him.
“I’ll get a statement typed up for you to sign. Let me know if you remember anything else that could be useful.”
“Oh, okay,” I mumbled, feeling a distant part of me wonder if this was what shock felt like.
I needed my cousins. I needed proper shoes. I needed to get away from the liquid drops of red blood that I’d tracked onto the ground.
I nodded to Sheriff Hardy and walked away. When I turned the corner, I saw the graffiti John and the sheriff had mentioned. It was difficult to explain how I’d missed it.
Fluorescent orange letters were painted at least a foot high on multiple shop windows, the same name over and over again.
ZERO BEND
Chapter 6
“What are you wearing on your feet?” Molly asked me.
I sat down on the sofa and took a deep breath. The day was warm, but the cold air of the freezer seemed clogged in my lungs.
“I saw a dead body,” I began, peeling the booties off.
I told Molly and Luce about finding Holt Everand dead and practically frozen in the warehouse and hearing someone before I got out of there.
“Then Sheriff Hardy took my shoes because they had blood on them.”
Molly had her hands up covering her mouth. Luce was clenching an empty cup with white knuckles.
“Do you think the killer saw you?” Luce asked.
“I heard a noise . . . maybe someone saw me.”
The thought was chilling. What if—
“What if they saw you and followed you back here so they could get rid of any witnesses!” Luce yelled.
“Calm down,” Molly snapped at her.
“Calm down? Calm down? There could be a psycho ice warehouse killer out there watching us right now!”
Luce dramatically pointed out the front window.
Across the street, old Mrs. Osterman was shuffling along behind her equally elderly terrier, Rumtum. He was wearing a plaid jacket that protected him from the weather. A light puff of wind would have taken both of them down.
“Pretty sure it wasn’t Mrs. Osterman,” I said.
“Yeah? That’s how they get you. It’s always the person you least suspect.”
“Well, in that case, we should tell Sheriff Hardy to round up all the six-year-olds in town, because I saw a bunch of them this morning, and they were cute and adorable and definitely not on my murder suspect list.”
“This was a methodical killing,” Luce murmured to herself.
I decided to ignore her until she came back to reality.
“What did Sheriff Hardy say about it?” Molly asked.
“Not much. They’re investigating. From the frozen blood, he could have been killed any time in the past day.”
“. . . probably lunatics traveling cross-country, bashing in heads as they go . . . ”
I gave her the Butter Festival flyer. Her eyebrows rose when she read Zero Bend’s name.
“Did you see the graffiti?” she asked me.
“On my walk here. Pretty weird for him to graffiti his own name, though, right?”
“. . . network of serial killers, filming their kills, sharing them online . . . ”
“He does look weird. Wasn’t he the guy who threw someone out a third-story window?”
“Haven’t done my research yet. The photos were my first work.”
“. . . draining the blood of the living, making some creepy spell most likely . . . ”
The photos! I’d completely forgotten about them despite Sheriff Hardy asking me to bring a copy to the station.
I opened my bag and pulled out my camera. It looked big and expensive, but actually it was about third-hand, slower than a wet week sometimes, and I really wanted to upgrade it. I flipped out the small view screen.
“I took a whole lot of photos before I found the body! Maybe there’s something in them.”
Molly came over to sit beside me as I scrolled through the images.
“. . . need to close the town borders, trap the murderer here, hunt them down . . . ”
“Butter, more butter, butter from a different angle,” I muttered. The view screen wasn’t very big, only a few inches across, so I’d have to double-check them later, but I was fairly sure I hadn’t accidentally caught a murderer in the background leering at me from the shadows.
Luce finally stopped talking to herself and sat down on my other side to look through the images.
“You took a lot of butter photos,” she said as I zoomed through another twenty or so.
“I don’t think there’s anything here—”
I hit the final photo. The one I took accidentally when I pressed the button in shock.
It showed the warehouse, the frozen pool of blood, the neat butter packages, and . . . no Holt Everand.
Just a black aura, like a hole in reality, where he should have been.
Chapter 7
Molly’s spare shoes were pinching my toes, and I tried not to pace the park while I waited for the Butter Festival’s grand opening.
After seeing the black hole where Holt should have been, there was perhaps a mini-freakout at Traveler involving three witches. Then we calmed down and I copied all the images to a memory stick for the sheriff—except for the last one. Molly lent me her sneakers and I left to go to Scarness Park for the grand opening.
Scarness Park is down on the foreshore and not surprisingly right next to Scarness Beach. There was a permanent stage built near a children’s playground, and adjoining that were a few free public-use barbecues.
Behind the stage are rocks that form the break wall and then the beach and calm water. The tide was going out. In the distance you could see Truer Island. A few lazy seagulls drifted on the virtually nonexistent breeze. A fat pelican floated on the rapidly disappearing water.
It was a beautiful day and a wonderful time to be alive . . . for anyone who hadn’t seen a dead body recently.
I was calm . . . sorta. The idea that someone bad had seen me at the warehouse wasn’t sitting very well in my stomach.
Behind the crowd was a huge object hidden by a black sheet. It was protected by a guard rope and assistants dressed in all black. Presumably it was the giant chunk of ice that Zero Bend would carve.
I turned back to the stage and looked up at the banner proclaiming “Butter Festival” in bright red and blue letters. All around me were tourists, locals who supported the festival, locals with nothing better to do, and locals who disapproved of it (Hattie Stern). She’d pursed her lips at me when I caught her eye. There were also a bunch of girls dressed in punk clothing that was very short and revealing.
Without warning, throbbing bass burst out of the speakers. BOOM-cha-BOOM!
The mayor leapt up on the stage and received a hero’s welcome. He took the microphone.
“Buuuuuuuuuuuuutttttttttttteeeeeeeeeerrrrrrr!” he called out like he was inviting a wresting superstar to the stage.
The crowd cheered again. I found myself getting caught up in it. Yeah, butter carving! It’s amazing!
“The man of the hour to open the festival, Preston Jacobs!”
The mayor whipped the crowd up into a frenzy—well, most of the crowd. Hattie Stern was still sucking lemons.
Preston Jacobs bounded up onto the stage.
We’re a seaside town, so tans aren’t that unusual here, especially with our magically influenced weather, but Preston Jacobs had taken it to a whole new level. He was glowing, his skin somewhere between leather brown and bright orange. His hair was yellow. Not blond. Not white. It was like the sun had burst on his head. He took the microphone, shook the mayor’s hand and smiled at the crowd. All I saw was gleaming white teeth before I had to close my eyes, afterimages floating behind my eyelids. I blinked away the glow coming from his perfect mouth and saw his eyes, a vivid sparkling blue so vibrant there was no way it could be real.
“Thank you, Harlot Bay!” Preston called out, his voice echoing across the crowd. He had a slight accent, a twang from somewhere further south
that suggested that while he looked like a surfer, perhaps he might rope cattle too and had a yeehaw cocked and ready to go.
He moved behind the podium and put the microphone in its holder. The thick gold watch on his wrist gleamed.
“Welcome to the Harlot Bay Butter Festival. This week we’re going to be seeing some of the world’s greatest artists fighting it out to win this”—he gestured to a giant trophy sitting at the back of the stage—“and also take home five hundred thousand dollars!”
The crowd went crazy, and he raised his arms like a televangelist at the front of a congregation.
Preston leaned down over the podium, smiling warmly, the skin of his face so tight it looked like it might snap at any moment. He was unnaturally smooth. My guess: extensive plastic surgery.
“You know, folks,” he said, his voice dropping down, “I lived in Harlot Bay many years ago, and I can’t think of a better place to hold this championship. This town, this beach, was where I played as a kid and where I got the idea to sell sandcastle-making supplies. In a way, Harlot Bay gave me everything, and so when Greco Romano”—a scattered cheer went up—“called me, I said yes immediately. Thank you, Harlot Bay, for your welcome, and in return we hope to provide you with art that challenges, art that amazes, art that changes your conception of what art truly is.”