by Tess Lake
The Harlot Bay Reader wasn't shut down, but I'd abandoned it, the website sitting there with a thick coat of dust on it. I was down to working even fewer part-time hours at the library, only coming in on some evenings to sort papers after the library had restricted funding for that job. There had been a certain amount of money allocated to it, and Ollie had been delighted to have the opportunity to digitize so many of the old papers, many of which had been at risk of being lost forever through the natural ravages of time (and sometimes floods and mice and whatever else). But then there had been termites found in another part of the library, and unfortunately, they’d to divert some of the funding to fix that up. That had meant my job, which had already been part-time to begin with was now on even fewer hours.
You might think at this point that perhaps I could go and work for Aunt Cass, who was running the Chili Challenge, or perhaps the moms at the new location of Big Pie Bakery, but there weren't any jobs to be had there either. Aunt Cass had hired staff members to help her - three teenagers - and didn't need anyone else. The moms had the same deal. They already had staff members, and although they could throw me a shift now and then, they certainly couldn't fire somebody just to give me a job.
“I can't believe I guessed that. Do you think I could be psychic?” Luce said.
“Well, you didn't know that Jeff Larson was going to get diarrhea on that date when he took you to the ice-skating rink, so I'm going to go with no,” Molly said. She turned back to me and gave me an appraising look.
“So what are you going to do Torrent? Get involved or stay out of it, and probably end up getting involved anyway?”
Since the Shadow Witch had come to town and stolen use of my boyfriend's body, kidnapped Kira and committed a whole bunch of other crimes and evil in pursuit of her dark plans, the three of us had had plenty of conversations about what it is we should do the next time we got pulled into some mystery. Aunt Cass had told me when I had confronted her about the various things that happen in Harlot Bay that there was something strange in our town.
That sounds like quite a shallow explanation considering the number of magical, mystical and murderous things that have occurred in Harlot Bay. But it was an apt description because the truth of it is, there was something strange going on, and we didn't know the source of it. Many of our conversation centered around what it was we three, as witches, were going to do about it. Privately, I had decided that I was going to investigate, that I was going to uncover, that I was going to dig and dig and dig until I got to the heart of whatever it was that was festering in Harlot Bay. I hadn't told my cousins all of this, keeping to myself that I now, like Aunt Cass, had a lair of my own. I was definitely on the side of telling the truth and being open, but at the same time, my cousins and family were very prone to freakouts, and that didn't help anyone.
“I've decided I'm going to get involved,” I said moving past Molly and having a look at the table and the map they'd been drawing on.
“Are you going to need our help? The only reason I ask is that we're kind of busy with this other project,” Luce said.
“Not just yet. I'll start investigating, and if something comes up, I'll be sure to get you involved. So what is this anyway?” I said, pointing at the map.
We all sat down in the booth and Molly rotated the map around, so it was the right side up for me.
“Since Magic Bean has stepped things up a notch, we need to step it up several notches. Refer to my previous comments regarding notches and belts if you will. They're serving delicious food, and amazing coffee and they have a live musician, so we need to do at least that if we're going to compete,” she said.
I looked around the empty Traveler.
“Do you seriously think them having amazing food and a musician has taken all of your business away?” I asked.
“Nope, I think they're bribing bus drivers, but we don't have any proof of that. Yet!” Luce said.
Molly tapped a finger on the map.
“These are locations around Harlot Bay of closed up cafes, places that have kitchens, or the ability for us to serve food. There is a variety of them, and luckily, one is right next door. We've been trying to decide whether we should move the entire business or just expand, which seems like the easier and cheaper thing to do,” Molly said.
“Oh yeah, wasn’t that a diner at one point?” I said, trying to remember. Businesses were always opening and closing in Harlot Bay. It was one of the risks of a tourist town. There were often people coming from outside the community to open up a business, using their savings, thinking that they were going to retire to this lovely seaside life where they had a business for a couple of hours a day and then walked on the beach for the rest of it. The sad reality of a tourist town was that you had to try to make as much money as possible during peak tourist season, and then spend as little as possible of it during the rest of the year when you could go an entire month easily without making a single dollar.
“Yup, it was called Wilma's Diner, and it was open for just three months before it shut down,” Luce said.
“Any idea what happened to Wilma?” I asked.
“Nope. But the good news is that it's been sitting there empty for so long that the Council is more than happy to let us use it under the free rent program. It's has a full kitchen out the back and enough space that if we wanted we could open up a café. They've also given us permission to knock a hole through the wall and make an entrance so people can come and go to both businesses.”
I looked back at the map. There was a circle around Magic Bean, one around Traveler and the empty building next to it, and a few other places that I knew were empty buildings as well, but there were some other circles drawn in red that were definitely not boarded-up businesses.
“Are these… witches?” I said, pointing at one of the circles.
Molly and Luce looked at each other, a quick guilty glance between them.
“We think the Donaldsons are getting help from a witch who is doing something to make the food delicious,” Luce said.
“So that's a short list of possible suspects,” Molly said.
“What's your plan here? You going to find some witch and say hey, are you supplying the Magic Bean with flavor-enhanced magic sauce?” I asked.
“We're currently still formulating the plan,” Molly said. I saw Luce glance over my shoulder and widen her eyes as she looked out the front window. We both turned to see what had in the last week become a familiar sight: teenagers making out.
“Can't they find private places to kiss each other?” Molly asked.
“Yeah, just like we did, out in the woods and the forest, down dark alleyways so that no one can see you,” Luce added.
“What is that boy wearing?” I mused.
The teenage boy and girl across the road were maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. The weather was getting warmer, but it wasn't that warm outside, certainly not enough to warrant the microscopic pair of shorts the boy was wearing. His T-shirt had been ripped with holes that looked like they had been mended with plastic tape. The girl's outfit was what we’d probably call teenager trying too hard. Too short in all directions.
“I know we used to wear things like that but, again, they weren't really like that were they?” Molly asked.
A while ago we infiltrated a teenage party in the hopes of tracking down some thieves and gotten a sudden wake-up call as to the fact that we were no longer teenagers ourselves and were slipping towards sharing the attitudes of our moms.
The couple pulled apart and then I recognized them, now that I could see their faces. The girl was Amaris, and the boy was Garrison. The both had roles in the Taming of the Shrew.
“Are they more Shakespeare escapees?” Luce asked.
“Yep. Out and about for the day just kissing in public.”
“They both need to get hold of themselves. It's not proper,” Molly said, sounding like an eighty-year-old dowager.
Apparently, Molly forgot what “proper” meant a
moment later when the door jangled and Ollie came walking in. He spent a lot of time at the library and often had a vest or waistcoat and shirt combination going on. Today, perhaps in deference to the warmer weather, he'd done away with the vest and was just wearing a white shirt with the top button undone. Molly flung herself at him and practically smooched the poor boy into the ground. When they pulled apart his cheeks were going red, his hair was messed up, and his eyes were starting to go wild. He turned towards us and awkwardly smiled before clearing his throat.
“Hey, everyone, good to see you,” he said.
“No, it's so good to see you,” Molly cooed, still holding his arm and then leaning forward giving him kisses on the neck.
“Um, Harlow, I had some papers that I found, that research you asked me to do. I figured you might come by here for lunch,” Ollie said. He came over to the table, practically dragging Molly along with him and handed me a sheaf of photocopied documents. I looked through them, seeing they were are a mix of newspaper articles and lists of names.
Not too long ago I'd had somewhat of a breakthrough with John Smith, the ghost who I’d been working with for years to help him move on. John had a severe memory problem. He didn't remember a wife or children, where he lived, how old he had been, any jobs he had done. He occasionally displayed knowledge that he had lived in the town for quite a while, but it was never enough to tie him to any historical period with any accuracy. Quite a long time ago he'd called me Talica Moore, a person it seemed he was very fond of, before forgetting who she was. That name had led nowhere. Through all of my searching, I'd never discovered a connection to anything to do with Harlot Bay. Then one random afternoon I had awoken to John looming over me in my office, and I blurted out to him who was Talica Moore? Suddenly, John had changed, growing younger until he was about in his early thirties and wearing a straw boater hat and striped clothing that very strongly suggested he was a singer in an acapella group. With this one clue, I'd put Harlot Bay's lead researcher on the case and asked Ollie to find me every single acapella group that ever existed in Harlot Bay and surrounding areas to see if we could track down who John might be. I briefly flicked through the papers, seeing that some of the articles even had photographs with them, albeit in black and white and not very clear.
“I came across a bunch of church newsletters that happened to list different music groups who were playing for them, and then that made it a lot easier to track down their names and the people who were singing in them. There's no one called John Smith, but it's possible that whoever you're looking for might be under another name,” Ollie said.
“You are so wonderful, Ollie. Thank you so much for helping Harlow,” Molly said. Then she looked at me and raised her eyebrows. “I trust that's enough research for you to get on with? That you won't need Ollie to do anything else for you?” she asked. The pointed tone might have gone straight over Ollie's head, but to me, it was crystal clear. What she was saying was “Don't get my boyfriend involved.”
Jack was the only one of our three boyfriends who knew that we were witches. Ollie and Will were still unaware. I had asked Ollie to investigate the name John Smith and all the acapella groups, and told him it was for an article for the Harlot Bay Reader. Despite the fact that the Reader was collapsing down to nothing and he knew I was barely working on it, he'd still helped me because he's just that kind of guy, and also, he loves to do research.
“Yes, that might be good for now,” I said, somewhat noncommittally. I didn't want to tell Molly at that moment that I had in fact given Ollie quite a few research jobs to do, dealing with digging into the deep past of Harlot Bay. I also had him looking into the past of my family, trying to put together a family tree and also one for Juliet Stern, who was somehow related to Hattie Stern. That request I'd covered with a small lie saying that some of us in our family were interested to know our family tree. As before, Ollie had agreed to help without asking any further questions.
“Right, well, I need to go to work now,” Ollie said. He glanced down at the map covered in circles, and then at my two cousins. His eyes narrowed slightly.
“Are the three of you planning something again? Because this right here looks suspicious,” he said.
“Nope, just looking for locations to expand our café,” Luce said, grabbing the map, all the bits of paper, and folding them all up at once, looking in fact super guilty and that we were definitely planning something.
Molly gave Ollie another passionate kiss, and then he finally extricated himself from her arms and left, the door jingling behind him. Molly turned on me the moment he was gone. “I don't want you to give him any more jobs to look into anything. I don't want him involved!” she said, pointing a finger at me.
“But he's the best researcher in Harlot Bay. He loves it, and let's face the truth, we need all the help that we can get,” I said.
“I want to tell him that I'm a witch when I'm ready to tell him that I'm a witch. I don't want him to come across some weird ghost thing in all the papers and then it's a surprise,” Molly said.
“It was a surprise for Jack, and he took it fine,” I said, somewhat snarkily, crossing my arms.
“Maybe we should work out when we're going to tell them,” Luce said. Molly started to speak, the morning threatening to careen off into an argument when the door jangled again and in came Peta.
“Harlow? What happened? The theater is closed and there was no one there.”
I jumped out of my seat.
“Oh my goddess, I'm sorry, you were out with Henry G weren't you? We think Hans got poisoned,” I said in a rush.
Peta had returned to town around Christmas and had thus far been a little like me, somewhat adrift, sliding towards poverty, and trying to work out what job she could do or even if they were jobs available in Harlot Bay for her. She’d been an architect in a past life, and then it slipped sideways into doing interior design but had finally decided it wasn't the life for her and so had returned to Harlot Bay. She was dating Jack's half-brother Jonas, and when I had gotten a job working on the theater production so had she, as assistant to the costumer Henry G.
Peta sat down with us, and I quickly went back through the story of what had happened in the morning. Luce didn't notice that Peta picked up the sandwich from the Magic Bean and had taken a bite while I was telling the story.
“Wow, that's terrible, but I can't help but feel like the guy deserved it,” Peta said.
“That's what I said!” Molly said.
“I know this is a terrible story but can I just say this sandwich is amazing. Did you guys make this?” Peta said
She popped the last of it into her mouth.
“No, we needed that for forensic analysis!” Luce wailed.
“Sorry. It was just too good,” Peta said.
“So anyway, rehearsals are shut down for today but I think we're going back tomorrow,” I finished.
“Do you think Hans is going to be okay?” Peta asked.
“The paramedic said he was still breathing when they took him but, honestly it didn't look good. I think green foam coming out of your mouth isn't a great sign,” I said.
Now, it might sound as though the four of us are quite callous and uncaring people who were very unconcerned that Hans had been poisoned and might be dead. But he was the most horrendous man I'd ever met, I think, short of Sylvester Coldwell, the slippery real estate agent who was involved in various crimes around Harlot Bay. I have rarely hated anyone, but it was easy to say that I hated Hans. He was arrogant and cruel, yelling at teenagers, demanding coffees, being abrupt and merciless. I don't think he enjoyed his life unless he made someone cry every single day. So you shouldn't judge us too harshly when Peta clapped her hands and said “Next topic, I don't care,” out loud and the four of us started talking about her and Jonas, and then Molly and Luce's plans to open a café next door, the rash of teenagers around town making out everywhere, and then finally plans for what we might do on the weekend. We might have sat there for hour
s just chatting but finally, a small tourist bus parked out the front and a group of customers came in, looking around the empty Traveler as though they were unsure whether it was safe to enter.
“Okay, well I've got pick up some more fabrics for Henry G, so I'll see you all later,” Peta said.
We all said goodbye, me leaving my cousins behind to begin serving coffee. I went back to my car, and started up the engine to drive up the hill and back home. Despite the fact, I had seen Hans frothing green at the mouth, and I had to give him CPR in an attempt to save his life, that moment quickly slipped out of my mind. I admit it was a little bit odd because typically such horrific things stick with you, but the truth of it was I had much bigger fish to fry. Perhaps whales to fry or some other gigantic sea creature like maybe a Kraken. With an unexpected afternoon off, the moms busy at the bakery, Aunt Cass likely at the Chili Challenge, and my cousins away, I decided to take myself off to my secret lair.
Chapter 3
I was in my lair staring at my wall of crazy when Adams stepped out of the shadows and dropped a cat bowtie at my feet.
“Good, you're here, put that on me,” he said.
“Put that on me please,” I replied.
Adams frowned.
“Why are you saying please to me? Put my bowtie on me now,” he demanded.
I held my tongue but rolled my eyes. Cats were very much like toddlers, quite abrupt and with little knowledge of social niceties. In fact, they were probably worse than toddlers because least a toddler wouldn't scratch you if you didn't do what it wanted. I crouched down and clipped the small cat bowtie around his neck and then straightened it up.
“So why do you want a bowtie, Mr. Fancy Cat?” I asked.
“It's private,” Adams said. He stepped past me, heading for another shadow against the wall.
But I was suddenly curious.
“No, tell me, why do you need a bowtie?” I said. Adams bolted around the corner of an old desk, and I took two steps before stopping myself. There was no point chasing him. He was already gone, disappearing into the darkness the way only a magic cat can. As much as I was intensely curious about why Adams would want to wear a cat bowtie and even thought for a moment that I should come marching out of the cottage where I had set up my lair to see whether I could find him, I fought off these urges and turned my gaze back to the wall of crazy. Right in the center of it were two cards where I'd written in big bold letters You have a spell cast upon you. On the next one, it said The spell tries to stop you knowing anything about itself. So don't get distracted!