One by one we snuck across the street and up the Smiths’ driveway until all eight of us were pressed up against the side of their house. Alba tried the door handle.
“Dang it,” she whispered. “It’s locked. I was sure it’d be open.”
Libby rolled her eyes and pointed her finger at the lock, freezing it instantaneously. Once it was frozen, she hit the door handle with the heel of her hand. The knob shattered into pieces and the door fell open.
“Nice,” said Alba with a smile.
Libby and Alba slid into the house first, followed by Cinder and Sweets, then Holly and Jax, then me, and finally, Reign brought up the rear. Inside, we found the group had reassembled inside a small bathroom at the end of a long hallway. We almost didn’t all fit inside the bathroom. Sweets, Holly, and Reign had to stand in the tub while the rest of us crowded the floor. A set of voices from down the hallway poured out.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do with her,” a low male voice said clearly.
A woman’s voice chimed in immediately. “You’re too hard on her. Give it a little time.”
“Too hard on her? I’m not too hard on her.”
“Yes, you are, Samson. You expect too much. You’ve always expected too much.”
“I don’t expect enough,” snapped the male voice, whom we now knew was none other than Reign and Jax’s grandfather, Samson Smith.
Crouched in the doorway of the bathroom, Jax looked up at me, her eyes lighting up. “I wanna see my grandfather!” Without another word, she duck-walked out of the bathroom before I could stop her.
Alba lurched around my shoulder. “Jax! Get back here.”
But Jax kept going, out of the bathroom and down the small hallway that appeared to lead into the kitchen. My heart sank. What if she was caught? She had no powers to defend herself.
“I’ll go with her,” I whispered, taking off next.
Alba reached out to try and stop me from following, but I kept going. Jax couldn’t go alone. It wasn’t safe.
As I got into a crouched position up against the wall next to Jax, the voices continued. “I think we should send her to boarding school,” said Samson. “She’ll learn more there than what we could ever teach her here.”
Jax and I peeked our heads around the corner.
“She doesn’t want to go to boarding school,” said the woman’s voice. We had to assume it was Harlow Smith. “She likes her school here. The children there don’t know her. She’ll be made fun of, Samson. I don’t want to do that to my daughter. I can’t, and I won’t.” From where we crouched, we could barely see Harlow leaned up against the kitchen counter. She didn’t look very tall. In fact, she wasn’t what I’d pictured some rich hotel heiress looking like at all. I’d pictured a tall brunette with an exotic tan and supermodel good looks. This woman was almost the opposite. She was stocky, with sandy blond hair and pasty white skin.
“Harlow, let me be clear. This isn’t up to you. She’s my daughter too, and I’m putting my foot down,” Samson growled.
Jax and I stared at each other in shock. Samson and Harlow had a daughter together?! Jax had another aunt?!
“You don’t think I have a say in this?!” Harlow strode across the kitchen, moving out of my line of sight.
“We did it your way long enough. I’m enrolling her in boarding school. I know of one not far away. She’ll start at the beginning of next month.”
“Next month? School here doesn’t start again until the fall! You’re being unreasonable!”
The voices continued, but then we heard a door slam at the front of the house. Jax looked up at me as I mashed my lips between my teeth. My heart pumped faster. I prayed there was another entrance to the kitchen from the front of the house and that whoever had just come in wouldn’t be coming down our hallway.
“She’s home,” hissed Harlow. “Not a word about boarding school. It’s her last day of school, and I want her to enjoy her break before you force her to spend her entire summer vacation away from home.”
“No, we’ll tell her today. She’ll thank us for it someday,” said Samson coarsely.
“Samson, don’t you dare.” Suddenly Harlow’s voice went from a threatening snarl to a sugary-sweet liquid. “Hi, honey! How was your last day of school?”
Jax and I craned our necks trying to catch a glimpse of Samson and Harlow’s daughter, but the cabinets obscured our view.
“Eh, it was okay. We didn’t do much,” said a young-sounding girl’s voice. I wondered how old she was. She couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve. “We had to wipe down our desks, and we helped our teacher clean out her room. We had a picnic on the playground for lunch, and then we watched a video for the rest of the day.”
“And you had fun at Heather’s house after school?”
“Yeah.”
“Did a lot of girls show up for the party?”
“Most of our class.”
Then Samson’s voice sounded again. “Well, I’m glad you’re home. There’s something your mother and I need to speak to you about.”
“Can I have a snack first? Lunch was a bologna sandwich, and I hate bologna sandwiches.”
“Didn’t Heather’s mother have snacks at the party?”
“She did, but I’m still hungry.”
“Okay, well, I bought some of those really good apples. Can I slice you one of those?”
“Do we have any cupcakes left?”
“You don’t need any more sweets. You should have an apple,” snapped her father.
“Samson!” chastised Harlow. “She’d like a cupcake. It’s her last day of school. She’s allowed to have a treat to celebrate.”
“Thanks, Mom,” said the girl.
We could hear feet shuffling around the counter, and the next thing I knew, the girl stood in plain sight with her back to us. She had the same body type as her mother, short and fairly thick. She had short blond hair and seemed to walk with a limp. Something about that limp seemed very familiar.
“Now that you’ve gotten your snack, there’s something we need to get out on the table.”
The little girl noshed on her cupcake. “Get what out on the table, Daddy?”
“Your summer plans.”
“I’m going to spend my summer reading,” said the girl excitedly. “I’ve already got a stack of books waiting for me. I can’t wait!”
“Spend the summer reading? How about you spend the summer practicing your craft?”
“Practicing my craft? You mean magic? Daddy, you know I really don’t do magic very well.”
“If you tried harder and practiced more, you’d get it. All of your older siblings know magic quite well, and they knew it before they were even your age. You’re almost twelve years old, Stella. You should be much further along then you are.”
My eyes widened. Stella? I knew Jax wouldn’t get the reference, but if the rest of the group had heard it, they certainly would. I glanced down the hallway. Alba had her head stuck out of the bathroom and was just as dumbstruck as I was. It couldn’t be?
“But, Daddy, I don’t like doing magic. I’d rather read a book.” The girl leaned on the counter, and from that angle, I could finally see her face. Though she was considerably younger, I could definitely see the outline of Stella Blackwood’s face. Finally! We’d tied Stella Blackwood to Sorceress Stone!
“You’re going to learn how to do magic whether you like it or not. Your big sister SaraLynn is amazing at doing magic. In fact, I hear that she’s already at the top of her class. She’ll likely go on to do amazing things and have an amazing life.”
“Samson, you know I hate it when you compare Stella to Auggie’s children,” snapped Harlow.
“Why doesn’t SaraLynn ever come here to visit?” asked Stella. “Or BethAnn or Merrick? Don’t they want to meet me?”
“Stella, don’t you understand? Your brother and sisters are just so busy doing amazing things that they don’t have the time to come and see you. Maybe if you’d do amazin
g things, they’d want to meet you.”
From somewhere in the kitchen, Harlow sucked in her breath. “Samson!”
Little Stella didn’t seem to notice her father’s mean words. “But I don’t know how to do amazing things. I just want to read. I like reading, Daddy.”
“Well, there are a lot of things you can do in the paranormal world that require reading.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Like research. And potions.”
“Research and potions? Ugh, that doesn’t sound fun.”
“Regardless, Stella, you’re going to boarding school. So enjoy the rest of this month. Next month, you start at your new school.”
“New school? But, Daddy, I don’t want to go to a new school!”
“No buts, Stella. It’s final. Now I’m going up to my room. I’ve had a long day, and I’m exhausted. Oh, and Harlow, please stop feeding this child sweets. Look at her. She’s much too big for a child of this age. I’ve seen pictures, and SaraLynn was half this size when she was her age.”
“Samson! How dare you compare the children! It’s not right.”
When Samson didn’t answer, we realized he’d already left the room through another door. We could hear the girl crying as her mother comforted her from across the room. “Oh, Stella, sweetheart. He doesn’t mean it. He’s just had a hard day.”
“Daddy doesn’t love me as much as he loves the other kids,” whispered Stella through sobs. “I know it.”
“Oh, he does too. He just has a poor way of showing it. I’ll talk to him.”
“Thanks, Mommy.”
“Now, finish up your snack and run upstairs and take a bath while I finish cleaning the kitchen.”
Before they could say their goodbyes, I tugged on Jax and led her down the hallway. Passing the bathroom, I waved at the group inside. “Let’s go,” I mouthed to Alba.
Seconds later, the group of us stood outside the home of young Stella Blackwood, feeling like we’d all just received the shock of a lifetime.
39
It might have been dark when we left Stella’s small hillside village, but we found the sun peeking up above the eastern horizon when we arrived back in present-day Aspen Falls. Our short walk through time had been both dark and quiet, as no one spoke a word until we’d emerged from the steam sauna into the light, feeling both stunned and curious.
“I can’t believe how mean my grandfather was to the aunt I never knew I had,” said Jax, her voice filled with both shock and sorrow.
Alba put both hands on her hips. “Listen, Shorty. The least of our problems right now is that your grandfather was mean.” She looked at all of us seriously then. “Alright. I don’t think we can keep this secret from her any longer. I think it’s time the kid knows what happened to her mother.”
Jax’s eyes widened as her head whipped around to stare at Alba. “My mother?! What happened to my mother?”
“Alba, are you sure this is such a good idea?” asked Holly.
“We have no choice. We have a lot of things we need to figure out, and I think now that we have all of the pieces of the puzzle, I think it’s time we went to the Council with everything we know.”
Jax wrinkled her nose. “What are you guys talking about? Does this have something to do with you trying to make me a witch?”
I shook my head. “I wish it did, Jax. We tried to make you a witch, we really tried. But this is about something else. Something that took precedence over us trying to get your powers for you. For the most part, it’s what we’ve been working on since we’ve been gone.”
“Ohhhkay?” said Jax, looking at each of us curiously. Her eyes narrowed in on Reign, who couldn’t look her in the eye. “Reign, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“Me?” he asked, pointing at himself.
Her head bobbed up and down.
“Well, Nugget. You see…” Reign rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “It’s about SaraLynn and the Council.”
“Oh no. Did she do something to make the Council mad at her?”
Reign nodded. “They certainly are mad at her. At least they were…”
“Were? They aren’t mad at her anymore?” Jax looked around, confused.
I shoved my brother out of the way so I could look Jax directly in the face. This information needed to come from me. “Jax, you remember the day you were home sick?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, while you were gone, Brittany called us all into an assembly, and she delayed finals week until next week.”
Jax looked shock. “She did? Why?”
“Well, because something happened to your mom during a Council meeting.”
“What happened?” Suddenly Jax sucked in her breath and her eyes widened. “Omigosh. Did my mom get fired?! Is that what all this is about?”
“I wish it were that easy, Jax. No, Sorceress Stone didn’t get fired.” I took both of her hands. “Jax, she got killed.”
Jax pulled her head back. She furrowed her brows. “Killed? What do you mean?”
“Killed Jax. Like dead. Sorceress Stone is dead,” I squeaked, my heart lodged squarely in the back of my throat.
“Dead? No way. My mom’s not dead.”
“Jax, she is dead,” said Sweets with a nod. “I’m so sorry, sweetie.”
“Yeah, Jax,” agreed Holly. “I’m sorry too.”
“We’re sorry too,” whispered Libby.
“Shorty, we tried lots of things. We went back in time to stop the murder from happening, but it didn’t work. It happened in literally the blink of an eye.”
Jax, whose jaw had yet to shut, blinked several times. Finally, she closed her mouth and looked at Reign curiously. “Is it true, Reign? Is my mom dead?”
Reign swallowed hard. He had to force his eyes to look up at her. “Yeah, Jax. It’s true.”
Jax’s knees looked like they might give out as she stumbled backwards.
“Catch her!” hollered Sweets.
Alba and Reign both shot out their magic to catch her midfall. Slowly, they lowered her to the ground until Jax was seated on the soft grass.
“Is this a dream?” Jax whispered.
I crawled onto the grass in front of her. “Jax, it’s not a dream. I’m so sorry.”
She looked up at all of us with tears beginning to cloud her eyes. “But you’re all witches. Why didn’t you bring her back to life?!”
“It’s still possible,” said Libby, sitting down on the grass in front of me. “I froze her. She’s stowed away safely in the tower. I’ll unthaw her, and maybe we can come up with a way to bring her back.”
“But why didn’t you do it already?!” sobbed Jax.
“Because we needed to figure out who murdered her first. Otherwise we were afraid whoever it was would just kill her all over again. We had to solve the mystery first, and we haven’t been able to do it yet.”
“I don’t understand how this happened. She was murdered? Why?”
“We’re not really sure,” said Alba. “We have a lot of suspects, and we’re trying to narrow it down.”
Jax ground at her eyes. “Who are the suspects?”
“The Council,” I said sadly.
Jax’s eyes popped open wide. “The Council? The Great Witches Council?”
“Yeah.”
“The whole Council?”
I nodded. “They all had motive, means, and opportunity. One of them did it. We just have to figure out which one.”
“They all had motives to kill my mom? What were their motives?”
Alba shook her head. “I know you want answers to all these questions, Shorty, but I’m gonna be honest with you. Going into that time portal makes time out here move at different speeds. Time’s running out. By the look of that sun, it’s not Friday anymore. If I had to bet, I’d bet it’s Saturday already.”
“Saturday?!” bellowed Jax. “My birthday is tomorrow?”
Cinder shook her head. “And graduation is tomorrow too. We haven
’t even begun to work on our project.”
“Don’t worry,” said Libby. “Tonight. We still have tonight, Cinder. We’ll get it figured out.”
“Tomorrow’s Mother’s Day,” whispered Jax as sobs began to rack her body. “Now I don’t have a mother anymore?”
Reign got down on his knees and put his arms around Jax. “I’m so sorry. We’re still working. Maybe there’s more we can do.”
“Like what?” bawled Jax.
“For starters, we have to solve her murder,” said Alba, taking charge once again. “Shorty, I know you’re grieving, but we have to keep moving. After discovering that Stella Blackwood is Stone’s half-sister, we have to ask ourselves why she didn’t mention that when we interviewed her.”
I nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. She lied to us!”
Holly shook her head. “Technically it wouldn’t be a lie. We asked her when she first met Sorceress Stone. Maybe they never met until this week.”
“Well, then, she withheld important information,” I said.
“She could have told us,” said Holly, nodding. “But Elodie didn’t mention that her daughter had had serious problems with Sorceress Stone and that she’d been expelled.”
“And Poppy didn’t mention that Stone had bought the Institute out from underneath her,” agreed Libby.
“And Gemma Overbrook made it sound like she and Stone were old buddies,” added Alba. “She never mentioned that they’d fought over a boy and over class rank.”
“And then there’s Daphne,” I added. “She had that secret that Sorceress Stone was threatening to divulge.”
“But I find it really suspicious that Harlow Smith added her daughter and three other witches that all had grudges against Stone to the Council.” Alba shook her head. “That’s what’s standing out to me.”
“But she didn’t add Daphne,” said Holly. “Dixie did.”
“And yet somehow Daphne still wound up with a motive to kill Stone,” said Alba.
“Somewhat of a motive. Sorceress Stone knew about her secret, but Daphne said herself that she was getting her powers back. It wasn’t exactly as big of a bombshell as people might have wanted us to believe,” I said.
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