by Tess Lake
“So you say you’ve written an article about this? Have you published it yet?”
“No, it’s still sitting on my computer. I was hoping to gather a bit more evidence. I really don’t want to get sued—not that I have anything to lose, but at the moment all I’m doing is reporting on deaths and crime centered around butter carving. I can’t really say anything of substance about Fusion or Preston at all.”
“So what do your . . . sources . . . say about this?”
“They think it’s likely that Fusion or Preston is involved in some way.”
That was all I could say—I certainly couldn’t tell him about soul suckers that sucked the blood and life energy out of people.
“Well, it’s certainly an intriguing idea. I’ve already questioned Mr. Swan about his client. I have spoken briefly with Preston Jacobs at the festival. Unfortunately, unless more evidence arises, I don’t really have any reason to question them again. I certainly got the feeling that Mr. Swan was pushing for me to direct my attention toward one of the Butter Festival competitors. I’ve questioned most of them, though, and on the whole, they have solid alibis. Some of them didn’t even arrive in town until the morning when you found Mr. Everand.”
“Be careful if you question them. You probably don’t want to be alone.”
Sheriff Hardy looked at me and then gently nodded. He had been a police officer for decades and was generally fearless, but he had enough sense to know that if a Torrent told you to be careful, you should be careful.
“I assume you’re still going to be investigating Mr. Swan and Mr. Jacobs and the rest of the competitors?”
“I’m a journalist. My online newspaper doesn’t run without news.”
“Spoken like a true Torrent. Not a yes, not a no, and you’re going to go and do something crazy anyway.”
I couldn’t resist.
“Do you know the Torrents well?”
“Of course. I’ve been a police officer for many years.”
It was like playing a chess game against a solid brick wall. Sheriff Hardy stood up and I followed before realizing he had done it once again. He’d ended the meeting simply by standing up.
“Thanks for coming in. We don’t have any other information on Holt Everand at the moment. They still haven’t figured out that liquid in his body, and I think they’re about to give up trying to find out. It’s going to end up as ‘unidentified biological matter’ on the report. I really don’t like having an unsolved murder on the books, so if you come up with any more evidence, please let me know. If you see that redheaded weasel man, stay away. I’m aware of him already. He came to town a couple of months ago and we’ve already had reports from his neighbors.”
I said my goodbyes and drove back to the office to construct a plan. Today was already looking like another busy day. There was another butter-carving final where I could possibly take a photo of Preston Jacobs or Fusion Swan again. I’d probably have lunch with my cousins, and then in the afternoon I had a therapy session with John Smith. In between that, I had to decide whether to publish my article, gather more evidence, or possibly take a trip out to Zero Bend’s house to see if I could talk with him. I decided to hit the Butter Festival. I could investigate, and it doubled as actual work that might earn me income.
I drove back to the town hall and went inside. It was noticeably warmer than yesterday. I could immediately see why: now that they were down to eight competitors, they’d set up refrigerated glass boxes for the competitors to work in. The hall was packed with spectators who were wandering from place to place, watching the carvers at work. On a large board in the back of the hall, I saw that Zero Bend had taken first place yesterday. Only the top eight competitors had gone through, and the bottom eight had been eliminated. I looked around for Fusion or Preston, but I couldn’t see them anywhere. I started wandering, checking out the butter carvers. One Asian girl, called Harmonious Twang, was carving an enormous scowling head out of butter. She was using a steel toothpick to sculpt fine lines through its hair. She was dressed sort of like Zero Bend—black and lots of punk, with ripped jeans and multiple piercings. Remembering that I was a reporter and not just snooping for some sort of spiritual leech entity, I took a photo of her. When it appeared on the viewfinder, I remembered the aura would be appearing too. Hers was purple and perfectly smooth like the butter she was sculpting. It had a clearly delineated edge like a barrier. So much for getting photographs for my website. If this strange new power didn’t go away soon, I’d have to get someone to do my photography for me.
I wandered down the hall past the various other competitors. One had sculpted two kittens playing that looked so lifelike it appeared they were about to pounce at any moment. Another was sculpting a shark with bits of meat hanging from its jaws. It wasn’t very good, and I wondered if they would be in the bottom four. I saw a few Ice Queens up in the stands watching over Zero Bend. The rest were gathered near his refrigerated box. They were all watching avidly, although this was a two-hour competition. I know they loved him, but seriously, could they keep up that sort of attention for that long?
Finally, I found myself outside Zero Bend’s box. He had piled up all of his butter into a tall spire and was carving it away with precision strokes from the top. It was Harlot Bay’s lighthouse, and it was perfect. He’d sculpted two people standing on the balcony, looking out into the distance. They couldn’t have been bigger than my little finger, but each of them was rendered in exquisite detail. It was a man and a woman; he was looking out to the distance, his face distraught as though he was witnessing some great tragedy. She was half smiling; what she was seeing was a little bit funny. As I watched, he carved lines on the surface of the lighthouse. At first they looked to be nothing, but then one line touched another and he gave a swipe with a tiny metal tool in his hand, and suddenly the lines turned into cracks in the exact pattern of the ones on the real lighthouse. I stood there watching him work, marveling at his skill and precision for a while, and then I eventually remembered to take a photograph.
I lined myself up, noted the no flash photography sign stuck to each room, and took a photo. Today, Zero Bend’s aura wasn’t looking so great. Instead of being the glowing yellow it was yesterday, it was murky, with tendrils of pale green lodged in it that had made his aura go dark. I watched Zero Bend for a little longer, wondering if that was the effect drugs had on an aura. I took another photo from a different angle. In this one his aura was looking fainter, almost see-through. Was my power fading? Or was that Zero Bend?
If this new power was fading, I’d better use it quickly. Was there anyone else I wanted to photograph? I decided Aunt Cass was out of the question—it simply wasn’t worth the risk. I very much preferred not having zits all over my face and enjoyed being able to walk in a straight line. Maybe I could photograph Jack Bishop, but I wasn’t really sure how I’d arrange that. Every time I got near him I seemed to lose my grip on my senses. Yesterday I’d somehow agreed to a date with him. If I got stuck in a conversation with him again, who knew what would happen?
I took another few laps of the main hall, but I didn’t come across Fusion Swan or Preston Jacobs. There were tourist spectators, the Ice Queens, and that was it.
It was getting close to lunch, so I put my camera away and decided to head to Traveler.
Chapter 18
The coffee machine was big, shiny and imposing. It had multiple spigots, numerous buttons, and even a red wheel that looked like something you’d use to keep a submarine door shut.
Printed in black letters across the top was Fuoco Oscuro.
“This is the coffee machine you bought?”
“I thought it was smaller. It looked smaller online,” Luce said, fretting.
“It has forty-two buttons on it, and see that dial? It has twelve settings. There are three switches on the back that we think change between modes,” Molly said.
“Did it come with—”
She gave me a tattered instruction manual with about a hu
ndred pages in it. There was a coffee stain on the front. The entire thing was in Italian.
I flipped through it. Every few pages, there were pictures of a sad stick figure person suffering a variety of terrible accidents: being burned by steam, electrocuted, burned by hot water, having their hand cut off . . .
This alternated with a happy stick figure enjoying all the different types of coffee the machine made.
“Macchiato, Ristretto, Affogato . . . seems like they’ve covered the entire world here. Look, they have Americano.” That one had a stick figure wearing an American flag t-shirt drinking from a cup and looking very happy about it.
“There are seventy-two different illustrations of coffee-man there losing limbs, eyebrows, being burned, electrocuted and generally hurt. I know, I counted,” Molly said, crossing her arms.
“Have you turned it on yet?”
“Did you not hear me? We bought a death machine that just happens to make coffee on the side!”
“It might make really great coffee if we could work out how to use it,” Luce said.
“And we can’t send it back because we bought it second-hand. We’re stuck with it.”
I flicked through the manual and found coffee-man with his face a sour green and poison symbols surrounding his head.
“I can’t believe Ro would suggest you buy this one. It seems crazy complicated.”
Molly and Luce shuffled uncomfortably.
“What?”
“That’s not the one,” Luce said. “We decided to buy a coffee machine because it’s a good idea, but we didn’t want to give her the satisfaction, so . . .”
“The guy who sold it to us sent sacks of free beans too, so it seemed like a good deal,” Molly added, pointing behind the counter. I leaned over and saw five sacks neatly lined up.
“There must be an English instruction manual somewhere. Have you looked online?”
“The Italian company that made this went into bankruptcy. I talked to this one guy online who claimed they only built six of these machines before they went down.”
I looked at my cousins, who were sailing the waters between downcast and fearful.
“Oh, c’mon, it’s not that bad! We’ll just turn it on. See what happens.”
“Your funeral,” Luce said and stepped away. I looked at Molly.
“You can turn it on it you want. I happen to like my eyebrows where they are.”
“Me too,” Luce added.
“Chickens, the pair of you,” I said and plugged in the Fuoco Oscuro.
Immediately the buttons lit up like Christmas lights and a speaker crackled to life inside the machine.
“Ciao!” a man’s deep voice said.
“It talks? Great,” Molly said.
“Um . . . ciao?” I replied.
Lights flickered on the front of the machine and then the voice streamed Italian at us at high speed. The buttons lit up one by one and the voice talked about each one. Or so we thought—it was in high-speed Italian. Past lasagna, pizza, calzone and ciao, we were lost.
After a few minutes, the machine said ciao again and then sat there, lights glimmering, ready and waiting.
“Argh, we’re so dead,” Molly moaned. “I just wanted to make a good cup of coffee.”
The machine chimed and the bean hopper (I think) on top opened up. The man spoke more Italian at us.
“Seriously, it’s voice-activated? How did you afford this?”
“It was heavily discounted,” Luce said.
“A voice-activated, commercial-quality coffee machine was heavily discounted?”
More uncomfortable shuffling. I held my tongue until they cracked, which was about three seconds later.
“Aunt Cass loaned us some money. Not very much money! It really was heavily discounted . . . but yeah,” Molly said.
“How much?”
“A few thousand. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worried about it. You two are the ones who borrowed money from her. Where did she get a few thousand from?”
Luce shrugged. “Maybe the online business she was running?”
The machine must have picked up on something, because it suddenly beeped at us and the man inside said “Aqua!” quite sternly.
“Well, if you can’t learn how to use it, maybe the guy who sold it to you will take mercy. See if he’ll accept it returned, and he gets to keep a few hundred bucks for his trouble.”
“We already went down that path,” Luce said. “He hasn’t replied to any of our messages, and the website is in Russian so we can’t figure out who else to talk to.”
“Russian?”
“They sell a lot of ex-military equipment too. I messaged someone and they offered me a rocket launcher, I think.”
“Aqua! Adesso!” the machine said.
I turned the coffee machine off before the man inside could yell at us some more.
“So what are you going to do?”
Molly walked over to the sofa and slumped down on it. “What can we do? I doubt some other sucker will buy it from us. We’re going to have to work out some other way to make money so we can pay Aunt Cass back.”
“She might be reasonable about it,” Luce offered.
Molly snorted in disbelief. Aunt Cass didn’t spend much time with reasonable, and if she did, it was generally in pursuit of getting her way somewhere else. If she was ever reasonable, it was time to get scared and watch out for the hidden punch.
“There must be someone in town who speaks Italian. Maybe they can help you.”
Luce slumped down next to Molly and glumly contemplated the Fuoco Oscuro.
“Yeah, I guess,” she said finally.
Molly’s phone rang just as mine chimed in my pocket. A message from Mom telling me to come to dinner tonight and to “dress nice.”
Oh no.
“Do we have to? What if we’re busy? We could have other plans,” Molly argued.
She mouthed “it’s Mom” to us while we listened in.
“Yes, plans could include sitting around watching television and drinking wine! Like you guys lead such incredible lives.”
Molly listened to Aunt Ro, her face tensing up. Her eyebrows were going to start twitching like Carter Wilkins’s any minute now.
“Okay, okay! We’ll come, get off my back already! Why do we need to dress nice?”
Aunt Ro chattered something and hung up.
Molly turned to us, worry creasing her face.
“They’ve invited guests to dinner tonight. I think they found the landscaper and the librarian.”
“Did she say anything about Jack?”
Molly shook her head.
This was bad. Real bad.
I decided to spill the beans in a way that didn’t implicate me.
“I saw some business and architecture books in the lounge when I went to talk to Aunt Cass. I think they’ve been to the library.”
Molly groaned and covered her face with her hands.
“And of course, two days ago they were getting the quote or whatever they were doing from William, so I’m fairly sure they found him too.”
“This is crazy. I’m going to go over to that bakery right now and find out the truth,” Luce said.
“No, don’t do that,” Molly said.
“Why not? They’re meddling and I can’t even go to ask a question? I swear, if you make one more Art of War quote, I’m going to throw something at you.”
Molly swallowed, and I saw her trying to rephrase what she was about to say.
“You can’t be hasty. If someone . . . pushes you into being hasty, then you’re not thinking. That’s how you lose . . . in life.”
“That sounds like you mangling a Sun Tzu quote to me,” Luce said.
“No, it’s not. I made that up right now.”
“They had me deliver some donuts into the pantry yesterday. You don’t think . . . ?”
“If they serve magic donuts and desserts to those boys, I’m going to murder everyone,”
Molly said through gritted teeth.
I suddenly remembered Molly and Luce’s strange behavior yesterday in defending Aunt Cass hiding in their trunk. Now I knew more of the story—Aunt Cass had loaned them a chunk of money to buy a giant coffee machine. Given that they were treading on thin ice for their apparent snitching on her, it made sense that they didn’t want to annoy her any further, and the loan sealed the deal.
“You guys are too scared to confront Aunt Cass now that she’s your loan shark?”
“No!” Molly said.
Behind her, I saw Luce gently nodding her head.
I wondered briefly if I should call Jack and see if the mothers had gotten to him. I rummaged in my pocket for his card. When I pulled it out, I saw it was water damaged and the number was unreadable. Stupid fountain. Stupid magical immune system. I knew he was staying at the Hardy Arms Hotel, but there was no way I was going to go walking over there to see if I could find him. Turning up at his hotel room would very much deliver the wrong signal. If he was coming tonight, I would find out and I could possibly be prepared, but if he wasn’t? That would be weird.
“We just need to come up with a plan. Ideas. I need ideas, everyone.” Molly stood up and started pacing the store, and Luce soon joined her.
“Do we have anything we can use against any of them?” Luce asked.
She looked at me and I shook my head. I mean, sure, I had Aunt Cass’s mad scientist laboratory under the house, but there was no way I was giving that up simply to get out of a dinner. Besides, Jack might not even be there. I certainly wasn’t going to get myself cursed just to save my cousins.
“Maybe Aunt Ro is seeing Sheriff Hardy?” I said.
“So we invite him to dinner? Genius!” Molly said.
“For what reason? I mean, I know him, we all do, but is inviting him to dinner a good idea?”