Love Witch (Torrent Witches Cozy Mysteries Book 7)

by Tess Lake

  “Don't you think it's just the slightest bit dangerous,” I said, still quite miffed.

  Mom started flipping eggs with expert speed.

  “Well yes, it is a little dangerous, but we need to catch that salamander. At the moment not much can happen, but as it grows and absorbs more of the emotional energy things could turn quite dangerous. As local witches it's our responsibility to intervene,” Mom said. She reached the end of a row of eggs and started going back in the other direction flipping them.

  For some reason I couldn't let it go.

  “ I'm going to be down in the stormwater drain, leaning out over those waters with a glass tube collecting and then testing it and maybe could get swept away in a wash of water. That's okay?” I said.

  Mom finished flipping all the eggs and then grabbed a serving dish and began pulling them off the grill.

  “Yes, darling, it's fine,” she said. “Now take that bacon out to the table and then come back for the eggs,” she instructed. I grabbed the gigantic platter of bacon, wiped the disgruntled look off my face and went out to the main dining room. Every chair was full of the guests who were talking excitedly. A woman in the middle with fiery red hair waved her arm at me and pointed to put the bacon in front of her.

  “Nice to meet you, I'm Galina,” she called out over the noise.

  “Harlow Torrent,” I said back and then put the plate of bacon down. She offered her hand and I shook it. I heard a sudden rush of noise, much like the noise around me but it was people chanting something. It sounded like “No, no, it has to go”.

  It came and went in a flash and I gave Galina a smile before returning to the kitchen to grab the plates full of eggs that Mom had cooked. I spent the next five minutes ferrying food out to the table before Mom finally released me from servitude and I left to go to rehearsals at the theater.

  I rushed back to my end of the mansion and had a quick shower, ate another piece of toast and made sure I had a change of clothes in my bag. Tonight was a part-time at the library night where I'd be sorting papers into piles again and I was sure to get dusty.

  By the time I got ready I saw I was going to be late if I spent any more time at home, so I rushed out, jumped in my car, and raced as fast as I could down the hill, noticing that the orange tourist bus that was parked outside was now gone. Once I reached town, I stopped at some lights and I was sitting there before a shape across the road resolved itself into a poster plastered on the side of a building.

  It said “See Shakespeare's most controversial play The Taming of the Shrew directed by Hans Holtz.”

  The image on the front was a picture of Kira with her arms crossed, looking quite shrewish with Amaris, who played Bianca, in the background.

  I had no idea when the pictures had been taken but they were quite good.

  The light changed and I drove into town. When I rounded the corner to the theater I saw the giant orange bus parked on the street. It was when I stopped and saw the people standing outside the theater with the signs that I started to get a burbling anxiety in my stomach. One of them had a gigantic sign and written on it was “The Shrew is sexist!” with a bright red exclamation mark.

  I saw Galina with her fiery hair handing out signs to the other guests who I'd only seen a short while ago eating breakfast at the Torrent mansion. None of these signs were saying anything particularly kind about the play. I got out of my car and then noticed Carter was off to the side interviewing one of the protesters. I grabbed my things, planning on rushing through them and going into the theater but Carter saw me and came in my direction. He had his recorder out with the light blinking, but in a change of pace for him he turned it off and stuffed it into his satchel.

  “I need to talk to you, Harlow, it's urgent,” he said.

  I saw Galina looking at me; I think assessing if I was just coincidentally on the street or whether I was working for the play. The protesters were crowding around the entrance so I reluctantly waved Carter across to the other side of the road. Once we were away from the protesters he reached into his satchel and pulled out a piece of paper which he handed to me. I glanced over it, not taking in what I was reading. It was a memorandum from the council.

  “Is this saying that something has been approved?” I said.

  “Coldwell managed to get his mall approved yesterday afternoon in an emergency session. This is what it says, that's one of his many business names that he operates under,” Carter said.

  I took a couple of deep breaths and read through the paper again, my eyes finally focusing on the words. As Carter had said the council had convened in an emergency session, although it would be hard to describe exactly why voting on a proposed mall would constitute an emergency, and then had voted for it yesterday afternoon.

  “Normally all council business must be notified in advance but because it was an emergency session they could do it without anyone knowing,” Carter said.

  I took another deep breath and let out a sigh as I heard the protesters across the road begin to chant.

  It was all too familiar. I'd just heard it this morning when I'd touched Galina's hand.

  “No, no it has to go,” they were chanting.

  “Oh goddess, this is going to be bad for everyone,” I said, meaning the mall, but also partially the protesters.

  “They're called the Lanterns. Apparently they quote 'shine a light on the dark,'” Carter said.

  “So protesting a small town putting on the Taming of the Shrew is shining a light on the dark?” I asked.

  “They don't like the play and given the posters that have appeared around town it seems that the organizers are playing off that by highlighting it’s Shakespeare's most controversial work,” Carter said.

  We stood there for a moment silence, me watching a bunch of the teenage actors walk up the street. The protesters graciously made way but kept up their chanting and the teenagers went inside, casting looks at the protesters as they went.

  “Well at least they're not stopping people enter the theater,” I said.

  “The play and the protesters are small news. We need to work out what to do about Coldwell. I need you and your family to help,” Carter said.

  Keep in mind here folks that Carter has no idea that we're witches, or at least I don't think he does. You should also keep in mind however that I was fairly sure he referred Eve Navarro to me a few months ago when her grandmother Hilda and other elderly residents of Sunny Days Manor were going missing, apparently under the control of a supernatural force.

  “What exactly am my family or I meant to do about this? I'm not even a journalist anymore. I've stopped writing for the Harlot Bay Reader, I'm writing a book now,” I said.

  That last bit surprised even me. I'd known I was writing a story while I was sitting in my lair, but it was news to me that I was writing a book as well. It was the second time I'd told Carter something that was true about my life that apparently I was unaware of.

  “We all know that your family has been involved with the Sheriff and various crimes around town, mostly on the solving side of them. I also suspect your Aunt Cass has worked with the police in the past. I'm not going to publish any of this. Coldwell cannot build that mall. He cannot be trusted and we need to work together to take him down. He is a bad man and he will continue to do bad things,” Carter said.

  Carter has had it in for Coldwell since he’d evicted him and the Harlot Bay Times from their original location. He’d then had to move to a new location which Coldwell in a moment of spite purchased, so that he could evict Carter again.

  “Where are you working from these days?” I asked.

  “My home, in a room out the back,” he said.

  “Well, hopefully Coldwell won't be able to evict you from there,” I said.

  “I wouldn't put anything past him,” Carter murmured. We both stopped talking when three shiny black cars pulled up out the front of the theater and from each of them four men emerged dressed in black suits, wearing mirrored sunglasse
s. They were all hulking giants, seemingly printed from the same press. They moved over towards the protesters who were still chanting and walking around with their signs.

  “I can't believe they would be so stupid to send hired goons. This is going to go so badly,” Carter said in breathless anticipation. He started fumbling for his phone, obviously hoping to film an altercation that he could publish online.

  The men must have been well trained however. Four of them took up positions at the front of the theater after politely making their way through the protesters, and the rest went inside. The four outside stood there with their hands clasped in front of them wearing their mirrored glasses, standing like statues.

  “Why are there guards? Is it about the poisoning?” Carter asked me.

  I sighed, folded up the piece of paper and stuffed it in my bag.

  “I honestly don't know. I just got here myself. I'll talk to my family and see if there's anything I can find out about Coldwell but honestly I'm not a journalist so there's probably nothing I can do about it,” I said.

  I saw Peta get out of her car and so I took this opportunity to say goodbye to Carter and rushed across to her so we could make our way through the protesters together. It was only once we got inside that I saw she had a bruise on her cheek.

  “What happened, did someone hit you?” I said.

  “That’s exactly right! Some crazy girl who I think was one of those crazy girls who was chasing Jonas walked up to me in the street yesterday and punched me in the face.”

  “Oh my goddess, are you okay? What happened?”

  “I'm okay, I ducked but she still scraped me. It looks a lot worse than it is. I pushed her away and then she ran in her ridiculously high heels down the street. I think those crazy girls need to get the memo that Jonas has a girlfriend now and it's me, so let it go,” she said.

  We moved away from the door and were halfway down the aisle, so we were out of earshot of the guards near the door and the milling teenagers and actors down near the stage.

  I lowered my voice. “Where did this happen?” I said.

  “It was down the street, on the corner. I was on my way to the supermarket and it happened out of the blue. Why?” Peta said.

  “I don't have the time to tell you right now but there's something magical going on. We'll talk at lunch,” I said.

  I couldn't help but think of what Aunt Cass had said. Wherever this salamander went it intensified the feelings of love until they became so strong that they turned to jealousy and hatred and violence. Even before the salamander had been in town there had been fights over Jonas when it had spread around town that the young, handsome, real estate developer had been looking for a wife. It had gotten so bad that a fight had broken out between two girls and their mothers outside Jonas's office and when he tried to intervene he had been hit in the head with a full glass tray of brownies, which had knocked him out and sent him to the hospital. I couldn't help but wonder whether the influence of the salamander was causing those girls to go crazy again.

  The door swung open as a few more cast members arrived and I felt a jolt of electricity that ran down my spine. There, on the other side of the road, were a couple I'd seen some months ago. It was a woman and a man who’d come to stay at Torrent mansion. The man was wearing the same absurd costume he was back then. He had ridiculously thick glasses, a bright plaid coat, and a Hawaiian T-shirt. His teeth were yellow and oversized. The woman standing beside him had blonde hair, heading to white, stuck up in a pile on her head like a beehive that was so heavy you'd think it might tip over at any moment.

  Just like last time she was wearing a blue trench coat over a plaid shirt. She was standing across the road holding a video camera in her hands.

  I don't know what it was that made me go crazy, perhaps the protesters, perhaps Mom telling me snitches get stitches, or seeing my friend with a bruise. Whatever it was I rushed back out of the theater, burst through the protesters and crossed the road.

  “Hey what are you doing? Why are you filming us?” I called out to the couple.

  They both bolted, putting on a surprising turn of speed as they sprinted away from me down the street and around the corner.

  For some reason this made me even angrier and I followed, chasing after them. By the time I turned the corner they were down the street getting into an old car with a rental sticker on the window.

  It started with a cough and then roared away. It took everything I had in me to not fling some sort of spell at them, something to break the car, to make them stop.

  It was only when they turned the corner and disappeared from view that the feeling of anger began to subside and I found myself wondering how I could be so stupid as to think I would cast a spell in full daylight, likely in view of others. Yes, they had been filming the theater but perhaps they'd been filming the protesters. They were certainly weird and had been at the Torrent mansion at some point, but they hadn't done anything to me. Could this be the salamander? How strong was its influence?

  I marched back to the theater, past the protesters and the guards, and went inside. The director was already calling everyone in, explaining that the guards were private security who would be roaming the theater to ensure that everyone was kept safe. As I joined the group I couldn't stop myself thinking that we certainly needed a lot more than giant men in mirrored sunglasses to keep us safe from whatever supernatural things were going on in Harlot Bay.

  Chapter 8

  I was so engrossed in Hans's “autobiography” that I didn't realize someone had spoken to me until they reached down and touched me on the shoulder.

  I heard a burst of music, piano layered over piano, echoing as though in a concert hall. Solemn low tones and fast jaunty music mixed. It came in a burst of sound and then it was gone. When I looked up I saw it was Marcus Fyfe, the music director, who had touched me.

  “Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see you there. What did you say?” I said.

  “I said did you hear? The great director is awake,” Marcus said with a smile.

  Days had slipped by, as they do. Rehearsal still continued, guards loomed about the place putting a serious kink in the teenagers' plans to kiss and canoodle away in darkened corners. The protesters turned out to be some of the politest protesters I'd ever seen. They stood outside the theater every day protesting and chanting, but let us come and go. They were still staying at the Torrent mansion, which was certainly good for the moms and their income, although it meant I hadn't gone down to that end of the mansion because I didn't want to see any of them at all. No one had been injured, nothing else had been sabotaged, and we hadn't captured the salamander yet. It seemed like life had returned to some normality. Aunt Cass had certainly made herself scarce. Every time I went to find her I couldn't, and if I rang she didn't answer her phone. We were quickly approaching the nights when we were to collect water samples to track down the salamander, according to Aunt Cass's list of times, dates and locations.

  “Really? He's awake? Is he talking?” I said.

  “Apparently he is. He claims he was poisoned, which of course we know he was, and that soon he will return to put on the finest production of the Taming of the Shrew the world has ever seen,” Marcus said, dramatically waving his arm.

  He imitated Hans so well that I laughed and we both rolled our eyes. Yes, part of me was glad that Hans wasn't dead and now was awake and speaking, but at the same time the man was a colossal, gigantic, enormous, huge, and every other word that meant massively big, horrible pain who had an ego so large you could hook ropes to it and use it to ferry passengers across the Atlantic.

  “Join me?” I asked Marcus.

  “Sure,” he said and took a seat across from me.

  We were in the Pie Barons, which was one of the local pie shops that served an extraordinary range of delicious pies. After three days of rehearsal the director had declared today we’d have a two-hour lunch break. Normally I would have gone to Traveler to hang out with my cousins, but since they'd
been given the approval to expand into the building next door they'd been hard at work transforming it into a cafe so they could serve food. They had hired a local to knock down part of the wall in between the two buildings to make a thoroughfare, and were busy cleaning and fixing the interior.

  The waitress came to our table and took Marcus's order and after she left he tapped his finger on my book.

  “Do you love the dear director so much that you're reading his autobiography now?” Marcus asked.

  “Oh yes, that's exactly what's happening. He's such a fascinating character and I want to be just like him,” I said, deadpan. “I was just reading it because I thought maybe it could give me a clue as to if there was anyone who hated him enough to poison him. But that list has a lot of people on it,” I said.

  “I think most of the theater community he's ever worked with could certainly be called in for questioning,” Marcus agreed.

  I was about halfway through the autobiography and what I'd discovered was that Hans had made enemies everywhere he’d gone since he'd been a child. He'd quite modestly put this down to his genius, but even though the autobiography would surely have been written in his favor it was easy to read between the lines, especially now that I knew him personally. His arrogant ways caused him to make enemies and those enemies often did things to him, including one of them stabbing him. He'd been stabbed, had a bottle of wine smashed on his head, been shoved off a stage into an orchestra pit, and even at one point claimed to have a bounty on his head. His autobiography was a mixture of stories of disaster like this, and triumphs as he’d began to put on Shakespeare performances that were successful. In every scene and chapter, he was portrayed as the hero. There was an entire chapter devoted to his early twenties when he claimed he'd worked with a director who had failed to take care of safety on set and as a result, there had been an explosion and a fire in which six actors had died as well as three of the audience. After ripping the director to pieces, Hans had written that this event had given him a special appreciation for life and he was going to seize it and never give up doing what he was put on this earth to do.