“A little more than half a mile.” I knew the distance only because of my work with the Mad Dash. Although the racers hadn’t taken that route during the race, early on it had been lobbied as an alternate trail. It had been ultimately ruled out as too dangerous, because if anyone slipped and fell along the footbridge or gorge, it was a long way down into a rocky creek bed. I swallowed hard. “Why?”
Vince had already stood up. “I can fly the drone from here. It can go down into the gorge and search the area more thoroughly.”
“It can fly that far?” Harper asked as she cupped a hand over the bowl. The cloud vanished.
“It’s a long-range model,” he said. “Can I open this window?”
She took the bowl to the kitchen. “You can try. It sticks.”
I still had my concerns about flying a drone in a storm, but I didn’t want to ask questions I didn’t want the answers to.
Vince strong-armed the window crank and shoved on the frame at the same time.
“Yow!” He yanked his hand back, looked at it.
Blood pooled along a deep cut along his palm, and I immediately saw stars. I closed my eyes and sat on the sofa. Blood and I didn’t get along.
Harper said, “What happened? Oh geez!”
I peeked through the fingers covering my eyes. Harper went back into the kitchen and came back with a dry rag. She tossed it to Vince.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Just a nick.”
I’d seen the cut. It hadn’t been a nick. It had been a veritable crater. “Tell me when I can look.”
“You can look,” Harper said, “just not at Vince’s hand. Let me see what I have for bandages. You should wash that before wrapping it up.”
“It’s fine,” Vince said, giving the window another shove.
It creaked open.
“Here,” Harper said, returning with a roll of gauze. “There’s one of those urgent care places just outside the village. You might need stitches.”
“It’s fine,” he repeated as though we were both deaf. He perched on the snowy windowsill as the winter chill creeped into the room. “The drone obviously works better in wide open areas, but we’ll see what we can do.”
Within moments, the drone was off. Vince guided it using a handheld monitor, and I had to admit it was rather extraordinary to see the village from above.
However, it was slightly alarming to see how adept Vince was at flying the drone. It was as if it were second nature, especially since he was controlling it with one hand only.
I said, “What do you use the drone for usually?”
“This and that.”
For such a banal answer, it sounded ominous.
“Are you spying on the village?” Harper asked in her usual direct manner as she leaned over his shoulder to watch the footage on the monitor.
“Why would I do that? Nothing ever happens around this sleepy little town,” he said in a way that told us that was exactly what he had been doing. Spying.
Sad to say it wasn’t the first time.
“Why?” Harper glared at him. “You already know about the Craft. What else is there to learn?”
“Isn’t there always more to learn?” he asked, dodging the question.
Her fists clenched and for a second I thought she was going to push him straight out the window.
Instead, she took a deep breath. I imagined she was debating on what kind of pox to curse him with, and I wasn’t sure whether I was grateful or dismayed Andreus Woodshall and the Roving Stones were currently in Delaware and weren’t slated to return to the village for a few more weeks.
Sometimes Vince brought out the worst in me.
The drone passed over some of the Mad Dashers who looked to be returning to the village. All glanced upward in confusion, following the drone’s trajectory.
It wasn’t long before the drone dropped below the footbridge. The red hat was barely visible in the drifting snow.
Vince flew the drone in concentric circles, widening the search zone with each pass. It went without saying what we were searching for … and hoping not to find.
Abby’s body.
No one could survive a fall from the bridge.
“Wait, wait!” Harper said. “Go back.”
“What did you see?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
Vince reversed the drone.
Harper’s gaze intensified. “Near those rocks.”
“I don’t see—” Vince said but then abruptly cut himself off.
Because what Harper had seen became quite visible as the drone zeroed in on a lumpy spot near an outcropping of rocks.
Where bone-white fingers stuck out of a snowy grave.
Chapter Five
I pushed open Ve’s side gate, giving it a good hard shove through a foot of snow, and the arch above the gate rattled its displeasure. In the spring, summer, and fall the arch was covered in climbing roses. But in the winter it stood bare, looking lonely and forlorn as though in mourning for what it had lost.
The stone walkway leading to Ve’s porch and side door lay hidden beneath the snow, but I knew the way by heart. Archie’s cage, located just beyond the fence that separated Ve’s and Terry’s yards was covered with heavy tarp. Archie wouldn’t be back in his outdoor home again, entertaining tourists, until the weather cleared. Even though he was a familiar, he had some limitations due to his chosen form. Scarlet macaws couldn’t tolerate blizzard conditions, therefore, neither could he.
As I high-stepped through the yard, I reflected how a visit to Ve’s usually brought forth an immediate burst of peace and contentment—I’d loved the time I spent living here, in this house.
Today, however, there was no peace to be found.
There was too much going on inside my head, from concern for Ve and why she hadn’t been out and about today, worry for Harper’s well-being, and grief for Abby.
Abby.
My breath hitched, caught on a wave of emotion. It had been an hour since recovery teams had arrived in the village to retrieve Abby’s body from the bottom of the gorge. Looking back at the green, all physical traces of the Wicked Mad Dash had been erased; the tent was gone, along with the starting line trusses. Mad Dashers had dispersed, most leaving the village and going back to their everyday lives. But the emotional toll of the morning weighed heavily in the air and on the faces of the emergency personnel who remained behind, looking for any and all clues of what had happened to Abigail Stillwell.
Word raced through the village about the horrible accident, and I knew Quinn Donegal, who was the closest thing Abby had to family, was already in contact with the medical examiner’s office. There was going to be an autopsy to determine Abby’s official cause of death.
A shiver ran through me at the thought of falling off that bridge. My stomach ached, and all I could do was hope she hadn’t suffered.
As I climbed the porch steps, I glanced around Ve’s yard and spotted small footprints in the snow. I knew immediately to whom they belonged: Missy.
My dog, Miss Demeanor, aka Missy, was a miniature Schnoodle, part schnauzer, part poodle, that Harper and I had adopted shortly before we moved to the village. Well, we’d been awarded custody of her in a court case, after Harper had been arrested trying to break up a puppy mill ring. Hence, Missy’s formal name. Harper had avoided jail time, the puppy mill had been shut down, and we had Missy, so all well that ended well with that situation.
Gray and white, Missy was a tiny fluff of a dog who loved cuddles and escaping any enclosure in which she was penned. There was a reason we called her the Houdini of the dog world and had equipped her collar with a GPS tracker.
Mine and Nick’s new backyard had quickly proven to be useless in preventing her from escaping, despite our attempt to make it Missy-proof. She never ran far, however. Over and over again, we found her back at Ve’s. There had been a time, months ago, when Ve had asked me if Missy could stay with her when I moved. I hadn’t been able to imagine leaving Mis
sy behind and had said no. But now it seemed to me that Missy had weighed in with her opinion.
After much debate and consideration, instead of fighting Missy’s penchant to run away to Ve’s, we decided to embrace it. With permission from Terry, whose house was sandwiched between Ve’s and mine, we had a contractor build a decorative elevated runway of sorts through Terry’s backyard, complete with scroll railings and paint that blended in with the landscape. There were two ramps—one in my backyard and one in Ve’s. Nick had also installed electric dog doors at both our houses that were controlled by a tag on Missy’s collar, allowing her to come and go between her two homes as she pleased. In the months since these changes were made her behavior had been quite telling: she was more Ve’s dog than mine now.
Stomping my feet on the floor mat outside the backdoor, I peered through the door’s glass panes. Past the kitchen, I could see the flicker of the TV set coming from the family room, but there was no sign of Ve … or Archie. I gave a swift knock, and Missy immediately started barking as I turned the knob to let myself in.
The little dog raced to greet me, circling my feet while her stubby gray tail wiggled. “Hi you,” I said as I bent to rub her head. “Have you been here long?”
The last time I’d seen her, she’d been eating breakfast at my house.
She barked and I smiled. “I imagine hanging out with Ve and Archie is much better than being slobbered on by Higgins at home.”
Higgins, an enormous Saint Bernard, seemed to have an endless supply of saliva. Even though he’d been living with me—and Missy—full-time for months now, we were still adjusting to the copious amounts of drool.
Missy barked again, and I could have sworn she nodded.
“I can’t blame you for that. Is anyone else here?”
She barked again then went running into the family room.
“Hello?” I called out.
Tilda, my aunt’s cranky Himalayan, eyed me with disdain from her perch at the top of the back staircase. It was nice to know some things never changed. Tilda and I had a love hate relationship that hadn’t changed one bit after I moved out.
“Ve?”
I heard a moan from the family room and kicked into a jog. I found Ve curled into a ball on the sofa, and Archie laid out on the love seat. Each had an ice pack balanced on their forehead.
Magic Mike was showing on the TV.
So much for Doris Day.
Then I realized the TV was muted. And that it was deathly quiet in the room and all the shades had been pulled low. Other than the light from the TV, it was dark as midnight even though it was a little past eleven in the morning.
“What happened?” I asked, crouching down next to Ve.
“Shh.” She lifted a finger to her lips. Redness infused her normally creamy complexion. Coppery hair sprung out about her face, looking like inflamed tentacles.
“What happened?” I said again, more gently this time.
Archie was on his back, his feet and all eight toes in the air. He halfheartedly flapped a colorful wing. “Piña coladas,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
“So many piña coladas,” Ve murmured, wincing her way through the words. “We partook in a Magnum marathon last evening.”
I sat on the edge of the coffee table. Now that they mentioned it, I smelled coconut in the air. “Piña coladas?”
“It seemed a delightful idea at the time.” Archie’s normally grandiose baritone voice with its English accent had lost its peppy edge. “What with Magnum, P.I. being set in Hawaii.”
“Alo-ha,” Ve added as she adjusted her ice pack.
I couldn’t stop a grin. “Aloha indeed. So, you’re both … hungover?”
Archie nudged his ice pack with the tip of a wing and cleared his throat. “‘I almost regret it.’”
He wasn’t feeling too badly if he could still play our movie quote game, and the clearing of the throat was a dead giveaway that a quote was on its way.
I shrugged, lifting my hands up, palms out. “I don’t know that one.”
“Raiders of the Lost Ark,” he said gleefully, giving himself the macaw version of a high five.
He loved one-upping me.
Shifting on the coffee table, I turned my back on him. “I’m guessing your phone is turned off?”
“The ringer. Dreadful noise.”
“Shrill,” Archie added with a full-body shudder. A loose feather floated to the floor.
Ve cracked open an eyelid. “Why? Did you call?”
Her bluish-gold eyes, so like mine, were shot with redness. “Several times.”
Missy hopped up on the couch next to Ve and burrowed into the fleece blanket, looking perfectly at home. Ve absently patted the dog’s head. “Is something wrong? Are you okay?”
Her gaze skimmed over me, as though checking to make sure I wasn’t bleeding and still had complete possession of all ten fingers and toes.
“I’m fine.”
“Nick? Mimi?” With a moan, she struggled to sit up and the ice pack slipped off, nearly hitting Missy on her head. Halfway up, Ve’s cheeks went from red to green, and I pushed her back down and reset the ice pack.
“They’re fine, too. There was an incident this morning at the race. Abby Stillwell went missing while out on her warm-up run.”
“Abby? Oh dear.”
“Was she located?” Archie asked, studying me with his tiny black eyes. The white ring around them seemed even brighter than usual.
I wrung my hands. “Eventually.”
“Oh dear,” Ve said again. “She’s not…?”
Her voice trailed, leaving the question unsaid.
I tried to block the sudden image of Abby’s fingers poking up through the snow. “Her body was found beneath the Aural Gorge bridge.”
“She fell off the bridge?” Ve gasped.
I explained about the hexed cake and how Abby was likely dehydrated and possibly became disoriented. “Plus, the weather might have been a factor. At times, there were whiteout conditions. One misstep…”
“Were there no witnesses?” Archie asked.
“No,” I stood and turned on a light. It was much too dark in there. “Not who have come forward anyway.”
Both Archie and Ve groaned at the sudden brightness.
I turned the light off again.
“Tragic,” Ve said.
I wasn’t sure if she meant the light or Abby, until Ve added, “She was so young.”
A clinking noise came from above our heads, and we all looked upward.
“Sounds as though we have company.” Archie rolled and flapped until he was in an upright position, his tail hanging over the side of the loveseat.
Missy’s head came up, and her ears perked a second before she started barking.
“Missy,” Ve said sharply, “dear God, stop that yapping!”
Archie covered his ears. “Talk about shrill.”
Missy glanced at Archie, gave one last defiant yip, and then began whimpering as the return air vent near one of the windows popped forward an inch. Just enough for two small mice to wiggle through, one white, one brown.
Both dear, dear friends.
“Hello down there! Oh my stars,” Mrs. P, the white mouse in the pink velour dress, said. “Have you heard the news?”
In the past year, Vaporcrafter Eugenia Pennywhistle, a witch who had the power to become invisible, had adapted to her familiar form without skipping a beat. Her animated personality almost seemed better suited to this lifestyle than her previous human one. Although so much about her had changed physically, her raucous laugh, her enormous heart, and zest for life had remained the same.
In his endearing French accent, Pepe, the chubbier of the two mice, added, “The news pertaining to Abigail Stillwell?”
Pepe had been a familiar just shy of forever. Hundreds of years. Originally from France, he was a Cloakcrafter, a witch who worked magic with needle and thread, who lived in the walls of the Bewitching Boutique. He was quick to temper, quicker to lov
e.
Both slid down the curtain and leapt onto the back of the love seat. “I didn’t know Darcy was here. Then of course you know about poor, poor Abby. Hello, doll,” Mrs. P said, using her pet nickname for me. “Do I smell pineapple?”
Ve once again struggled to sit up. She kept a hand on the ice pack this time, and her face merely paled instead of turning a full-on shade of green. “Don’t talk about food, please, I beg of you.”
“Are you sick?” Mrs. P asked her. A small tuft of white fur stuck up between her ears. “Should we call on Cherise? Oh, wait, she’s out of town with Terry. Dennis, then?”
I’d called him myself an hour ago, using Spellbound’s phone since mine still wasn’t working. It had taken some arm-twisting, reminders of my help to his family in the past, and a threat to call his mother to get him to agree to see Harper this afternoon, but he’d finally conceded. I was going to meet him at her apartment at noon.
“No, no, I’m fine,” Ve insisted, suddenly reminding me of Vince.
I hoped he had seen a doctor about his hand.
“Is it a cold? The flu?” Pepe twirled his whisker mustache and took a step back, away from any potentially offending germs.
“Piña coladas,” Archie said by way of explanation.
Pepe smiled. “Ah, but of course. Magnum, P.I. reruns, I assume?”
“You know what they say about people who assume,” Archie intoned righteously as he fluffed his feathers. “For all you know, we could have been watching Blue Hawaii, a favorite of Ve’s.”
Mrs. P sat and adjusted the hem of her dress. “It’s not been a favorite since she and Terry broke up again. What’s it been, a year now?”
Terry, after all, possessed an uncanny resemblance to a 1970s-era Elvis. So much so that he often wore disguises in public.
“Close enough,” Ve said.
Pepe chuckled, an infectious ho-ho-ho. “So Magnum it was.”
Ve said, “A shirtless, young Tom Selleck tops Elvis any day. Those legs. Have mercy.” She fanned herself with her hand.
“No doubt about that.” Mrs. P barked out her trademark Phyllis Diller laugh.
Ve recoiled at the sound and rubbed her temples. “My head might fall clear off my body by the end of this day.”
To Catch a Witch Page 5