by Tess Lake
“I was watching you last night with your aunt. You’re powerful witches. Can you use magic to find out what happened to me and my dad?”
“Magic is… complicated. It doesn’t always work like it’s supposed to and sometimes doesn’t work at all. It’s not the answer to everything.”
“But the police found our bones on the island. I saw them. Can’t you steal one of the bones and then find out who murdered us or something like that?”
“I don’t think so. I’ll talk to my aunt, though, and see what we can do.”
“Okay,” she said.
“I’m going to go to work now – want to come with me?”
“Sure,” Holly said, shrugging.
We walked back through the forest to the mansion. Holly had a strange view of magic. Well, not that strange. She was five and on any other day I would have said stealing a bone from a skeleton to use in magic wasn’t something we did, but then last night we’d stolen heat from a fire and used it to lift hundreds of gallons of seawater across a few miles to put out a blazing fire. I’d had no idea at all that that was possible.
Back at the mansion Molly and Luce were still in bed because it was still early in the morning. As I was grabbing my laptop and things to make my belated return to my office, Adams came out my bedroom and walked over to rub himself against Holly’s legs.
“Hi, kitty!” Holly said. She knelt down and started patting him.
I stood there and watched in amazement. Ghosts can rarely interact with the real world, and if they do it takes an enormous amount of effort, attention and years of practice. I knew John Smith could change the channels on the television in my office if he really put his mind to it. Most of the time he asked me to do it. Now here was a ghost patting Adams without any problem. I could see his fur moving where she stroked him.
“Do you have any food?” Adams said to her.
“No.”
“Okay,” Adams said, rolling over onto the ground. Molly stood up and looked at me.
“You have to be extra careful when cats roll onto their back because that’s when they might bite you,” she said very solemnly.
“You’re right,” I said, still trying to gather my wits about me.
I said goodbye to Adams (who again asked for some food) and then drove into Harlot Bay, Holly sitting in the passenger seat. When I left the mansion I had butterflies trembling in my stomach at the idea of returning to my office and possibly bumping into Jack Bishop. Somehow the routine nature of the trip to work calmed me.
I was a little worried that Holly might slip through the moving car but she seemed fine. As far as I know, ghosts can move through solid walls and other objects at will. But at other times they can’t – the walls are solid, the cars hit them. I don’t entirely know the rules. It seems it has a lot to do with intention.
We reached my office and got out of the car. At this time of the morning the streets were virtually empty, which is why I screamed when Hattie Stern suddenly said my name from behind me. I whirled around, my heart pounding in my chest.
“Oh my Goddess, you scared me!”
“Who is your little friend?” she asked.
Then, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, she actually smiled. She looked at Holly and smiled at her, transforming in an instant into a warm cozy grandmother.
“I’m calling myself Holly because I don’t remember my real name,” she said.
“That’s a very good idea. I’m sure you’ll remember your name soon,” Hattie said.
What was going on? Had I slipped into some kind of alternate dimension when I wasn’t looking? My cousins get boyfriends, the mansion gets renovated, there’s a whole type of magic that I know nothing about, and now this? Hattie Stern acting all kind and warm? What next?
“You’re a witch,” Holly said.
“Yes, I am. A very powerful one.”
Hattie looked up at me with the smile still on her face, but the tone in her voice changed just a little.
“I detected some very powerful magic last night. It felt to me that someone was drawing energy from a fire. Is that right?”
She had a steel rod in her voice, much like the one Aunt Cass got when she was speaking seriously.
“We had to put out a fire,” I said.
“Yes, I’m looking into that. Make sure you don’t draw on any other fires or heat sources, even though you want to. It’s a very addictive magic.”
That was virtually what Aunt Cass had said to me yesterday. Well, without the threats of curses added on.
“I’ll be sure to remember that,” I said. “I’ve got to go to work now.”
Hattie smiled at Holly again.
“Very nice to meet you. Come find me at the lemon grove down there if you need my help.”
Holly nodded at her and then Hattie went on her way. Before anyone else could sneak up on me and turn out to be completely different from the way I thought they were, I went into the office building.
The bottom-floor office had a new sign on the door that said Bishop Development. What, like real estate? No one was in, so I walked up the stairs to my office with Holly close behind me. It felt like coming back from a long vacation. Everything felt familiar, but there was a layer of dust on everything and the smell of a room locked up and left abandoned.
Holly wandered around while I opened the windows and then gave the place a quick clean, wiping down the surfaces. There was more money sitting on the desk again – John Smith had clearly been turning up for his therapy sessions and bringing payment but I hadn’t been there. He seemed to forget that I hadn’t been there. Last time this happened I tried to give the money back to him but he’d refused to take it. I scooped the bills into a drawer to wait until I felt poor enough to take them (probably about two hours).
“This is boring. I’m going to go for a walk,” Holly said.
“Um, okay. I’ll be here if you need me.”
Holly walked out through the front door without another word.
Kids. Blunt objects in small bodies.
With Holly gone, I settled down to work. One of the other things that had changed while I’d been frozen for six weeks was that Carter had finally moved into the digital age and put up a website for the Harlot Bay Times. He was still locked in the past, however. You could read headlines and maybe the first quarter of the article but each one ended with a note saying to buy a copy of the local Harlot Bay Times to read the rest!
His front-page article was about the human remains found on Truer Island, and the first quarter of the article was mainly focused on him being on-site as the bones were uncovered during the Gold Mud Run obstacle course construction.
I went over my notes from yesterday and wrote a quick article detailing what I’d witnessed, using a photo of the trench from a distance.
I published the article on my website and tried to get stuck into the rest of my work (I had a huge backlog) but I found it hard to concentrate. My mind kept slipping back to last night. The feeling of drawing the heat from the fire, compressing it and then pushing it out towards the ocean.
I made myself a cup of coffee and then found myself staring at my cup, feeling the heat radiating from it. Before I could stop myself I’d drawn the heat out of the coffee and pulled it towards me. It was a hot cloud about the same size as the coffee cup itself. Without really thinking about what I was doing, I compressed it down to the size of a marble and then floated it through the room.
Although it was invisible, I could sense exactly where it was because it was connected to me. It was floating in the middle the room when someone downstairs slammed a door and I lost my concentration. The marble of heat fell directly onto the polished wood floor and charred a perfect circle in an instant. A thin curl of smoke twisted up to the ceiling.
I filled a glass of water and rushed over but the floor wasn’t suddenly going to burst into flames. There wasn’t enough heat in a cup of coffee to set it alight.
I sat down at the desk, battling the urge
to do it again.
What was going on with me? I tried to focus back on my work but before I knew it I was looking at the glass of water and stretching my hands out towards it.
I could feel the cold, so I pulled on it. It was much harder than heat but soon I had a patch of cold floating away from the glass. I compressed it and let it drift across to the sink. There were a few droplets of water in the sink. When I dropped the cold on them they froze instantly.
The feeling was… electric. Like I’d had an amazing night of sleep and too much coffee. I wanted to do it again. My gaze drifted across to the kettle. I swear I could almost see the heat sitting inside it. I reached out towards it and was about to grab the heat when my phone rang and broke my concentration. It was Sheriff Hardy.
“Harlow, could you come down to the police station now?”
It took me a moment to gather my thoughts.
“Um, sure. I’ll be right there.”
Sheriff Hardy hung up without another word. I blinked a few times like I’d just awoken from a fever dream. I glanced across at the kettle again and felt the desire to pull the heat out of it, grab it and squeeze.
I had to get out of here right now! Hattie Stern had been right about it being an addictive magic.
If the phone hadn’t rung I would have pulled the heat out of that water, and then what? I glanced at the wastepaper basket that sat next to my desk, which mostly contained screwed-up bits of paper I sometimes doodled on when I was thinking. That’s what I would have done: lit a fire in the bin just to pull the heat out of it.
Without giving myself another moment to think about it, I grabbed my things and rushed downstairs. At the doorway, I nearly collided with Jonas, Jack’s half-brother. We hadn’t officially met but my sources had been on the trail. Up close he looked a bit like Jack – he had shaggy black hair and his eyes were that same blue bordering on green. He even had a face full of stubble.
He was also full of heat and warmth, crying out for me to take. I was thirsty and I wanted a long drink. I could pull it out of his body right now…
“Oh, hey, you’re Harlow, right?” he asked. He was carrying a box full of office supplies. He awkwardly offered me his hand.
“What…” I stammered. Suddenly Hattie Stern appeared out of nowhere and grabbed me by the arm.
“Harlow has no time to talk. I need her now.”
Hattie pulled me away from Jonas and two buildings down the street. She hauled me into a small cobbled alleyway, where she finally let go of my arm.
“Well, you are a Torrent through and through. Get told not to do something, so that is the very first thing you do.”
She was glaring at me with that standard Hattie Stern face that she often wore – a mixture of disappointment and looking down on you – but I could also see concern in her eyes.
“I pulled the heat out of a coffee to see if I could,” I explained.
“That’s how it begins, something small, but then you quickly graduate and before you know it you’re pulling the heat and life out of people. Soon that’s not enough and you’re sucking the life out of plants, animals, and everything that surrounds you. It only ends one way.”
“Which is?” My voice quavered as I spoke.
“The witch pulls in so much energy that she incinerates herself and anything around her. If she manages not to do that, then other witches have to hunt her down because she will become a pure force of destructive evil. Cassandra should have trained you if she was going to show you how to use that magic. I can’t believe she would be so reckless.”
“I don’t think she meant to show me how to do it. The fire was an accident – it happened so suddenly.”
“Come to my farm tomorrow at four fifteen. I’ll teach you to control it. I’ll need to see you every week until you can. Or you can ask Cassandra to do it. It’s up to you.”
She touched my arm and I felt a pull of magic. But it was unlike anything I’d ever sensed before. You can tell a witch by her magical signature. The magic takes on an accent almost, a feeling. Sometimes even a scent or flavor. Hattie Stern’s magic was like a roaring hurricane behind six feet of reinforced glass. She was only letting out the tiniest trickle of power. I glimpsed it for an instant and then it was gone. With it went my desire, for now, to pull heat and energy out of anything I could find.
She let go of my arm.
“Sorry to do that without asking you. I took some of that addiction away.”
With that, she turned and walked away, leaving me alone in the alley. The cobblestones were cool under my feet but I had no desire to reach out to feel the cold with my magic. Whatever Hattie had done had worked.
Again, my mind was spinning, though. The longest conversation I’d had with Hattie prior to this was when she’d wanted to use the Harlot Bay Reader to push her agenda for the town name change. She had approached me out on the main street and the conversation had only lasted for about five seconds before I’d gently turned her down and she’d stalked away without a word. Now she was offering me magic lessons? Offering to train me how to control what was clearly an almost uncontrollable power?
I don’t think my brain could really take any more changes. I swear one more thing and I’d snap. I took a few deep breaths and then walked out of the alleyway, only to find Jonas still standing at the front of the building with his office supplies in hand, looking down the street. Our eyes met. I turned away and rushed off to meet the sheriff. Okay, so what did he see? Someone who wanted to talk to me and pulled me into an alleyway? That’s all. Nothing to explain there.
Chapter 7
By the time I reached the police station I’d somewhat recovered my equilibrium. Mary, the receptionist, greeted me and then called Sheriff Hardy.
“You can go down to his office,” she said.
I walked past a few open rooms and desks down the corridor from the sheriff’s office. At least nothing here had changed. There were the same photographs on the walls. Near the reception desk they were recent and in color. Down near Sheriff Hardy they were in faded black-and-white and some were even in sepia.
There were a lot of grim men with big mustaches.
Sheriff Hardy smiled when he saw me.
“Come in, take a seat,” he said, waving to the chair on the far side of his desk.
Well, it looked like not everything was the same. Last time I was in this office there were teetering piles of paper on every available surface. The desk sitting against the far wall was now mostly cleared.
I took a seat and looked around.
“Slowly making the move to digital,” Sheriff Hardy explained. “We’ve only just started, but already it has managed to take some of the paper out of my office.”
“Wow, Carter starts up a website and goes digital and now the police force too? So much change in such little time.”
“Everyone has to move with the times and accept new ideas. I understand the Torrent Mansion Bed and Breakfast has even started putting on fireworks shows for the guests.”
Sheriff Hardy gave me a meaningful look when he said that and I shrank a little in my seat.
“Ta-da,” I said weakly.
“Of course I know your family had all the necessary permits and safety training, so I don’t have to worry about fires, do I?”
“Um… sure. I mean no.”
Sheriff Hardy looked out at the pile of paper on his desk and shuffled some information out of it.
“We have some preliminary results regarding the remains discovered on Truer Island. As you are a member of the press, I want to share some information with you.”
As a witch, you mean.
I ran an online newspaper that was struggling to survive. It wasn’t like if he gave me information, I’d publish it and together we’d suddenly crack the case wide open.
“I understand,” I said, not really understanding.
“The large skeleton is a male probably in his early forties and the smaller skeleton is a female probably six years or under. There
are wounds on the bodies that suggests they were both stabbed through the heart after being bludgeoned on the back of the head.”
I took in a sharp breath of air and suddenly it was cold again, like ice filling my lungs. I heard a sound behind me. I turned to see Holly standing there with her hands over her face, tears streaming down. There was a circle of spreading blood on her T-shirt, over her heart.
“Holly!” I cried out, but then she vanished.
I turned back to Sheriff Hardy feeling like I was on the verge of tears myself. When Holly went so did the cold.
“Who is Holly?” Sheriff Hardy asked.
“It’s… nothing. Sorry, just… tell me the rest of the report.”
In the world of saves it definitely wasn’t in the top ten, but Sheriff Hardy must have understood. He nodded and looked back at his notes.
“We don’t really know how long the remains have been there. Our best guess is anything less than five years. The gold watch has initials engraved on the back.”
He slid a close-up photo of the watch across to me. Engraved in curly script on the back was K.M.
“We’re looking back ten years for missing men in their early forties and girls under six across the country. There are still a lot of records that haven’t reached the digital age, though, so it’s probably going to take some time. Oh, they’ve moved the Tower of Terror or whatever it’s called, too. The mud run will be going ahead as scheduled.”
I was staring at the initials on the watch and feeling a deep ache inside of me. That watch had belonged to someone, a man, Holly’s father. Like hers, his life had been cut short. Now that I had met Holly it seemed even worse, more painful. All the events and times that they had missed. Every meal, every kiss, every good moment. Sheriff Hardy must have seen the look of anguish on my face because he took the photos away and touched me on the arm.
“Sorry, Harlow. I forget that you’re not a hardened crime reporter.”
I took a deep breath and it was warm. I managed to push away the tears that threatened to stream down my face. I knew it was Holly’s ghostly influence that was causing this… well, most of it. It was still a horrific tragedy.