by Tess Lake
“How long ago did you move out of Harlot Bay?”
“Four years ago. Just me and my daughter. Her mom passed away about six years before that. I know it’s a long shot, but I don’t know really where else to go.”
“I’m sure you’ll find her,” I said. I know it was a cliché thing to say, but I was certain that he would find his daughter.
I couldn’t tell him, of course, that I was a witch and my intuition was telling me he would find her, so I smiled and he went off to the next shop. I stuffed one of the flyers in my apron before another flood of tourists clamoring for spiced buns hit Big Pie.
Chapter 19
The blood drained from Kira’s face the moment she saw the flyer.
When I’d come home from the bakery, I’d dropped it on the kitchen table (our go-to collection spot for every random piece of paper and junk mail that we received). I was sitting on the sofa with Adams in my lap, feeling my feet relax and working myself up to standing again so I could have a shower, when Kira arrived home with my cousins. They all looked worn out and smelled strongly of coffee. Despite this, they were all talking about the beach trip we had planned for tomorrow. Traveler would be closed for the big renovation Molly and Luce were sinking all their money into, and so we were all going to the beach for swimming, a barbecue and fun.
Molly and Luce were talking so much that they didn’t see what I did. Kira stopped by the side of the kitchen table, and I saw the blood leave her face when she saw the flyer. She froze for a moment and then slowly reached out to touch the piece of paper as though it might strike at her with sharpened fangs. She looked at me, a quick glance, but it was full of guilt and not just that, but fear too. She then rushed off into her bedroom.
Molly and Luce were too wrapped in up in what they were talking about to notice, and I’m sure to them it appeared I was simply sitting with my feet up with Adams purring in my lap, but in my mind, giant puzzle pieces were thudding into place.
Aunt Cass had said there was a witch in town who was starting fires. By Kira’s reaction to the flyer, I was sure that she knew Sophira Barnes. Not only that, I was sure that Kira was helping her by stealing food, clothing and money.
While my cousins talked their way through making a quick dinner, I sat on the sofa and tested my hypothesis from different angles. Yes, there was a giant leap of logic in there that just because Kira was a witch, Sophira was too, but something felt right about it. When Aunt Cass’s cottage full of fireworks had caught fire and exploded, there had been a sweet scent on the spot, a hint of the magic that had caused the fire. I would have bet a thousand dollars that the missing girl, Kira’s friend, was a witch, and when she started a fire that sweet scent would be there.
“Hello? Harlow? Ms. Torrent?” Molly said.
“What? Sorry, just thinking about something.”
“Wow, thinking. Fancy. What’s that like?” Molly teased.
“Is it a hobby or something you’re planning on doing professionally?” Luce added, piling on.
I did the very adult thing and answered with that noise that goes neena neena neena.
“Did you want any of this satay chicken? Is Kira going to have some?” Molly asked.
I breathed in the scent of sweet peanut curry. Yes, it had come out of the jar, and if the moms found out we weren’t “making meals from scratch” they’d probably get simultaneous headaches, but for a quick meal on a weeknight it was delicious.
“Serve it up,” I said.
Luce called out to Kira, who eventually emerged from the bedroom and sat with us at the dinner table. I put the flyer away and focused my attention on talking to Molly and Luce and Kira like it was a standard night. Kira was back doing her nervous pet thing again, but after a while she relaxed and even started laughing when Luce teased her about how many cute hot boys in shorts would be at the beach tomorrow.
“And that includes our very cute hot boys, who will also be wearing shorts,” Luce said.
I ate my meal and joked along with them. I had messaged Jack this morning and he had told me he hadn’t come up with anything yet regarding the arsonist. He wanted to see me and I wanted to see him too, so I’d invited him to the beach tomorrow. Our plan to stay apart so Jack might have a chance to catch anyone who might be following me had gone nowhere, so we’d decided to abandon it.
I was too tired from a long day of work to think of a good plan regarding Kira and the missing Sophira Barnes. The best I had so far was to tail Kira. I was sure one day soon she would leave my office to work at the bakery and hoped no one would notice that the five-minute walk had taken her an hour.
Although my intuition was telling me that the missing girl was Kira’s friend, part of me was very much hoping that she wasn’t behind the fires. The empty houses and businesses that had burnt down weren’t good, but at least no one had died.
But what if she’d started the fire that had killed Lenora Gray?
I knew the guilt of starting a fire you couldn’t control very well. An entire apartment complex had burnt down because I had a bad dream, essentially. Then, a few days after I’d returned home, it had happened again.
We finished dinner and Kira took herself to bed early, tapping away on her phone.
For a moment, I admit that, yes, I considered breaking her privacy and sneaking a peek at that phone. There was definitely something there about “the greater good.” Eventually I convinced myself that I shouldn’t. It wasn’t entirely pure ethical problems that stopped me, either. The fact was that Kira was attached to her phone like there was an umbilical cord. Short of sneaking into her room when she was asleep, there was simply no way I’d be able to get a look at it.
Once everyone had gone to bed, I crept back out to the main room and cast a very simple “wake me up” spell. I drew a line across the floor near the door with my finger. What the spell does is right there in the name: if anyone crossed the line, it would wake me up. If Kira went sneaking out, I’d be right behind her.
With that in place, I went to bed, and despite the thoughts of Kira initially dominating my mind, as I drifted off all I could think of was Jack, the golden sand and the beautiful calm ocean.
Chapter 20
“I say we follow her. We’ll get a crystal and do that tracking thing Kira suggested,” Molly said.
We were on the beach with all the tourists, covering up with sunscreen and discussing our plan to find out the identity of Aunt Ro’s secret mystery man.
“We need to test the tracking thing first, though, make sure it works,” Luce said, rubbing down her arms.
“It definitely works. I’ve done it before. The problem is that the crystals to do it cost at least a hundred dollars and they’re one use only. So unless you have a hundred for a test and then another hundred for real, you might have to trust that it’s going to work,” Kira said.
“We don’t have two hundred right now,” Luce said.
“So when you said that you are sinking every dollar you have into the renovation, you meant literally every dollar?” I asked.
“I think I have forty bucks left in my bank account,” Molly said.
“You might have to buy the ice cream today,” Luce added.
On the way to the beach we’d stopped at Traveler and had a quick look inside before going on our way. The builders had been at work since daybreak and were planning to work late into the night to complete the transformation of Traveler from tourist shop that sold T-shirts and stickers to modern, comfortable, beautiful coffee shop that sold incredible coffee.
The coffee machine, or “Stefano” as Luce called it, was safely packed away in a back room so it couldn’t be damaged. There were a veritable horde of men inside Traveler, demolishing, rebuilding and repainting. Molly and Luce were both so excited they could barely contain themselves. They hoped they would be able to reopen tomorrow, but the builders had warned they might need another day to let all the new paint dry.
“I have a few bucks,” I said. “Maybe enough for chocola
te ice cream.”
“Ah do love me some chocolate,” Luce said in her best Southern, starting with the sunscreen on her legs.
It was ten in the morning and the beach was full of tourists as far as the eye could see. We were quickly heading to the end of the holidays and this was the last big burst before Harlot Bay would finally start to settle down. There’d still be a lot of tourists through fall, and we even had people come in winter, but there was always this giant peak where it felt like everyone in the country had come to town.
Due to Truer Island and the curve of the bay, there were virtually no waves in the ocean. The water was gently lapping and creeping up the beach as the tide came in.
The boys hadn’t arrived yet, so we eventually finished covering ourselves in sunscreen and headed out to the ocean. We were swimming around with all the tourists, laughing and splashing each other, when Luce spotted the boys on the beach and waved to them.
Will, Ollie and Jack had arrived together. Since being hauled into the same family dinner some months ago that had eventually led to Will and Ollie becoming Luce and Molly’s boyfriends, the two of them had become good friends, although really they couldn’t be much more different. Ollie was a librarian who wrote a historical website about Harlot Bay and I think loved reading more than almost anything else in the world. Will worked with his hands all day building gardens. Yet the two of them had become the best of pals, and I think even Molly and Luce had been surprised when they’d discovered that Will and Ollie had gone out a few times just the two of them.
Now it looked like Jack was getting included in that circle as well. The three of them stripped off their T-shirts and came wading out into the ocean.
It was Kira who gave word to my thoughts.
“Oh my Goddess,” she whispered, looking at the three very manly men walking out towards us. Will was a landscape gardener who hauled around bags of potting mix and plants and lumber all day, so he was a strong boy, and despite the fact that Ollie worked in the library, he looked like a rock star who on his days off hit the gym.
As for Jack… well, he’d been working renovating houses and was a former cop. He looked like someone had carved him out of rock. The three of them waded out where we were, Molly and Luce diving upon their boyfriends so fast they took both of them under the water.
I was too stunned to do anything like that. So I stood there with my mouth open, Kira the same beside me until Jack swam up, grinning.
“Hey, Harlow,” he said.
I mumbled something, possibly about biceps, who knows, and sort of shook my head like I was waking myself from a concussion. Kira recovered as well, sinking up to her neck and swimming away a little, pulling her sunglasses down so she could observe from a distance. I finally found my voice.
“Hey, Jack,” I said.
Jack dived under the water and came to the surface right in front of me, water pouring off him like he was a sea god. He kissed me quickly on the lips, tasting of salt. I laughed and tried to push him away from me, but it was like pushing a mountain.
I splashed him instead.
We spent the day swimming and relaxing on the beach. In the afternoon we snagged one of the free barbecues and let the three boys have at it, cooking up burgers and fried onion while we sat at a picnic table and opened a bottle of wine.
We had burgers and ice cream, and then around four in the afternoon we eventually said our goodbyes, tired but happy.
Luce and Molly gave their boyfriends very passionate kisses. Jack and I settled for a very demure kiss and a promise to meet up in a day or two for another lunch date.
We took a quick detour past Traveler, which had transformed since the morning. The new counter was in place, as were the tables and chairs. The builders were still working furiously, sawing and hammering seemingly everything in the shop.
We arrived home to find Aunt Cass waiting for us. She was sitting on the sofa stroking Adams like she was a Bond villain.
“Can I trust the two of you to keep a secret?” she asked, pointing a finger at Molly and Luce.
“Of course you can,” Molly said automatically.
“We’re like bank vaults,” Luce said.
Aunt Cass scoffed at this, then must’ve decided she didn’t want to get up off the sofa just so she could speak to me and Kira alone.
“I finished the new beacons and have them set up around town. The next time there’s a fire, we’ll get a precise location,” she said.
“That’s great,” I said, looking at Kira out of the corner of my eye.
“Yeah, it’s good,” Kira mumbled.
Now that Aunt Cass had the new beacons up around Harlot Bay, it would only be a matter of time before we found the hidden witch. I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure that it would be Kira’s friend, but the slight flash a panic on her face strongly suggested it was.
“Why is that some big secret?” Luce asked.
“Your mother has very specific ‘views’ about me climbing up in high places.”
“Like when you climbed to the top of the church spire because you were sure there was hidden treasure up there?” Molly asked.
“There was hidden treasure up there. Hidden historical treasure,” Aunt Cass replied.
It was a few years ago now that Aunt Cass had climbed the peak of the highest spire of the tallest church. She’d pulled off the capstone to discover the stonemasons who’d built it had left some letters up there, along with a few coins, and one of them had left an entire journal. The historians of the town were very excited about this discovery and called it treasure, but it definitely wasn’t the type of treasure that Aunt Cass had been looking for. She’d been searching for the gold coin type of treasure.
“Will we be able to find the hidden witch even if she doesn’t start a fire?” I asked.
Aunt Cass shook her head.
“No, that’s all I had to work with, so that’s what it’s tuned to. Unfortunately, we have to wait for something else to burn down.”
“What do you mean hidden witch?” Luce asked.
“I’ll let Miss-passionately-kisses-her-boyfriend and Miss-sneaks-out-to-a-party explain,” Aunt Cass said, pointing at me and then Kira.
“How do you know I went to a party?” Kira said.
“You can’t fool the cool. And I’m the cool,” Aunt Cass said. She shooed Adams off her lap and went back to the main house.
“Dude, rookie mistake. Deny, deny, deny. Even if they have photographs of you doing it, you deny. She probably didn’t know you snuck out to a party, she’s only guessing. Then you confirmed it,” Luce said.
“Oh, I didn’t realize,” Kira said, shrugging.
We were all sandy and tired from the day. After having showers, it was fend for yourself regarding dinner. None of us had the energy to go down to the main house, even though we knew there would be a spectacular meal. I end up eating a bowl of cereal, having a cup of coffee and then sharing a piece of cheese with Adams. He wasn’t smelling like lavender anymore. I assumed this was either because he’d stopped visiting or perhaps because he was washing himself more thoroughly before he came home. I had once seen him swimming in a pond up around the back of the property trying to catch fish, so maybe he was dunking himself there.
It had been an amazing day. Molly and Luce were practically bouncing off the walls with happiness and excitement that the renovations at Traveler were nearly done. I was feeling happier than I’d been in a very long time. Yes, there had been good times since I’d moved back to Harlot Bay, and, no, this isn’t that cliché thing where everything in your life is suddenly better because you meet a man.
There was something definitely there between us. Jack was staying in town, and despite the fact my online newspaper might fail and I’d have to spend a very long time working behind the counter of the bakery, I was feeling very happy about it.
I went to sleep with Adams at the foot of my bed, my dreams filled once more with the golden beach, lapping waves and a gorgeous man with eyes
that verged on blue and green emerging from the sea in front of me.
Chapter 21
I woke up in pitch darkness with Adams’s paw in my mouth.
“Get up! There’s a fire at the bakery!” he yelled. He jumped off me as I fumbled my way out of bed so groggy I lost my balance and crashed into the wall. I hit the lights and nearly blinded myself. In a daze, I managed to get dressed.
“What do you mean?” I asked. Clearly the dumbest question in the history of time.
“You have to go to that bakery right now!” Adams yelled and ran off to wake the others. I rushed outside and started my car. The adrenaline had woken me up like a bucket of cold water to the face. I didn’t bother waiting for Molly and Luce. I raced down the hill, seeing lights behind me as my family followed. I blew through a stop sign without obeying it and had to take a moment to force myself to slow down and take a deep, shuddering breath. It felt like I wasn’t breathing at all, and then suddenly I was gulping air, as though I’d been suffocating. As I came into town I heard the howl of the fire siren. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely turn the corner.
Sheriff Hardy was already on site and his men had blocked the street. It was two in the morning, yet there were still a few tourists around and others coming out of their hotels. I pulled up in the street, not bothering to park my car properly, and promptly fell out on the road as my legs gave way. I got up, feeling my hands stinging, and stumbled down the street towards the roaring blaze that engulfed the Big Pie Bakery. Sheriff Hardy came towards me with his hands out and grabbed me in an enormous hug.
“No,” I moaned, pain spiking into the very heart of me.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, they’re trying to put it out,” Sheriff Hardy said. He let me go as the rest of my family arrived. The moms rushed over, quickly followed by my cousins, Kira and Aunt Cass. Kira was as white as a sheet, shocked at what she was seeing. Aunt Cass was angry, baring her teeth at the fire as though she wanted to scare it into submission. Mom and Aunt Freya clung to each other, their faces anguished as they watch their life’s work burn. Aunt Ro stumbled into Sheriff Hardy’s arms. She sobbed as though her heart was breaking, and I suppose it was. They clung to each other, and through the terror and fear I saw it wasn’t merely the sheriff and someone he had known for a long time. Sheriff Hardy kissed her on the cheek and was whispering frantically in her ear as she held on to his shirt, her tears leaving a wet patch on the front of it.