A Cold Spell

by Stacey Alabaster

  It was just like with my psychic powers. Here I was, stuck overhearing things that I did not want to hear and did not want to know—only this time, there was no way to turn it off. I just had to stand there still and listen to every word of it.

  They were finally wandering off and for a little while, they broke apart and walked along separate sides of the road. Akiro on the opposite side, and Abby on mine.

  She paused in front of me and looked confused. “Hmm, I don’t remember this one,” she said, muttering to herself. “And I thought I knew everyone in the park. Oh well, maybe some of them had to be replaced.”

  “What do you mean?” Akiro asked, and I freaked out when he crossed the road. But he didn’t recognize me. Or even really look at me. He was fully focused on Abby.

  She glanced away. “Well, after, you know, what happened here to Teresa on that day…the explosion… Some of the statues got damaged.”

  Akiro nodded. “It must be difficult for you to talk about.”

  She shrugged a little. “It wasn’t as though I was inside the park. I was on the outside, as usual.”

  He frowned. “But you have some idea who may have been to blame?”

  Abby bit her lip for a moment. “It’s not for me to speculate on…but there were rumors that one of the workers at the candy shop was jealous of Teresa for getting a performing role here. Sarah hated Teresa, even though Teresa pretended to be her friend.”

  Oh gosh.

  Now I was convinced that Sarah was the killer. And I had all the proof I was going to get while stuck in statue mode.

  This was starting to seem like a very bad plan.

  But Vicky was in big trouble. It wasn’t just small shoes and out of tune banjos she was going to have to worry about. It was her life.

  And there I was, trapped, with the killer just out of reach.

  And forced to watch the man I had feelings for kissing someone else.

  11

  The birds were singing the following morning when my foe-turned-friend returned to the park with a book tucked into her bag.

  Prudence hadn’t bought a trolley with her that day. But that was because if this went how it was supposed to, I would be able to walk out of Old Swift Town in just a few minutes.

  “You are a lucky woman, Ruby Swift,” she said. “And a lucky witch, for that matter.”

  I didn’t feel like either. But after spending all night up, reading through spellbooks, she had figured out how to reverse the spell and I was about to be set free.

  She flipped to the right page, looked over her shoulder, whispered a few words that I couldn’t hear, and all of a sudden, I could move my arms again.

  And my legs. Kind of.

  “Whoa,” I said as the feeling slowly returned, moving from a state of numbness to a feeling of pins and needles in my limbs. When I tried to take a step forwards, I fell over.

  Prudence caught me.

  I was a little breathless. And incredibly hungry. “I need hash browns,” I said. “It feels like years since I ate breakfast.” I laughed and looked up at the sky, which was incredibly blue that day. “And it also feels like years since I’ve been able to lift my head up in this direction.”

  “Well, it’s only been two days,” Prudence said, still helping to keep me steady as I put one arm over her shoulder and leaned on her. Meanwhile, I looked around, taking in all the colors and sights and the sensation on my skin, like I was brand new to earth and this was my first time seeing everything. Because it felt like it was.

  I took a deep breath as we stopped outside the gates. We’d hurried out as quickly as possible to avoid detection. “I suppose breakfast will have to wait until we go and fix Geri.” This was huge, after all. The reversal spell had been found. It was what we’d all been working toward for a week.

  Prudence shrugged. “Why the rush? It’s not like she’s in any danger or anything. And like you said, things have been running just fine since she’s been gone. Better than fine. She isn’t even noticing the passing of time. Not like you were. So, it makes no difference to her when she is unfrozen.”

  I peered her suspiciously, but I was so hungry that I was in no state to argue right then.

  Akiro’s homemade hash browns were the best in town. Freshly fried, plenty of rosemary and chives and just a hint of parmesan, so that when they were fried and the stack was put down in front of you, it was the most delicious smell in the world.

  “Ruby…” Akiro said as I started to gobble them down. “I haven’t seen you in days.”

  But I’ve seen you, I said, but only in my head, then realized I hadn’t actually said anything at all and instead, I’d just been sitting there silently glaring at him.

  I didn’t know what to say to him, so I just shrugged and said, “Yeah, well, I’ve been busy,” a little too bluntly, and he backed away.

  “What was all that about?” Prudence asked as she dug into her eggs.

  I shook my head. “Long story. Let’s just say my time frozen was a mixed bag.”

  She glanced up at me. “So, did it help?” she asked. “Did you get any clues about who killed this Teresa girl?”

  I nodded. “Possibly. There are still some things I need to clear up.”

  But there was another mystery I was about to unravel. I just didn’t know it.

  Luckily, the coffeehouse was super busy, so it wasn’t obvious that I was purposefully avoiding talking to Akiro. When he came over to check if we needed anything else, I just turned my head away, but another table called him over at the same time.

  I dipped the last bite of my hash browns into the relish and then into my mouth. “Ha, I feel like I could eat even more,” I said with a laugh as I reached for my purse. “But we really do have to be somewhere else. I feel bad moving around out here while Geri is still immobilized.”

  Prudence made no move to leave. She was still eating her eggs. In fact, she seemed to have deliberately slowed down. “Why don’t you order a coffee?” she asked. “You must be dying for one after two days with no caffeine.”

  That was actually true, yes. But I felt like Prudence was stalling.

  I sat my purse back down and stared at her. “Why don’t you want to unfreeze Geri?” I asked her.

  She stared at me. “I never said I don’t.”

  “Well, you practically have. Just not explicitly.”

  “Well, you’re the one who said that things have been better since Geri was frozen,” Prudence muttered, staring back down at her plate. Okay, wow. It was like she just didn’t want to unfreeze Geri. Like ever. She wasn’t just stalling for a few minutes, or an hour. Now it sounded like she was arguing that we should just permanently leave her how she was.

  “Sure…but that doesn’t mean we can just leave her like this, Prudence!”

  Prudence put her fork down with a little thud. “Why not!”

  “Because, Prudence…” And then I stopped.

  I just stared at her as things slowly started to make sense. I leaned back at little. “Why did you let me use the freezing spell when there was a real danger that I could have been stuck like that forever?”

  She turned a little red and tried to hide it. “Like you said, there was a threat to the lives of witches, so it was worth overturning the rule. And you were willing to take the risk.”

  I shook my head. “Nah uh. If there was a real risk I would be frozen forever, you wouldn’t have let me do it. A good leader wouldn’t have, anyway. And yet you did. And conveniently, just a couple of days later, the reversal spell works? After it being ‘impossible’ for a week.”

  She was turning redder and redder.

  “Prudence. You messed with the spell. You gave me the words to say on the day of the picnic. And they were the wrong words, weren’t they?”

  She dipped her head. “I only had the best of intentions, Ruby. I know this must look like it was just a power grab, but I had the coven in mind. I know I can run it better than Geri!”

  “We have to make this right, P
rudence. Take me to your house.”

  Vicky was shocked by everything she had heard, but she was trying to stay professional. “Are you going to tell Marvin?” I asked her as we walked toward Prudence’s house.

  “What if he doesn’t believe that she is trying to sabotage me? I can’t lose my job. But I can’t let her win either,” she said.

  We had another issue to face first. I knocked on Prudence’s door and Vicky barged her way in, glaring at Prudence as she took her place in the middle of the dining room and began to play.

  Her guitar was fixed and sounded better than ever. We thought that having familiar faces surrounding Geri, as well as some soothing music, would ease the transition a little bit. But Vicky was playing a hardcore angry rock sound.

  “Will there be consequences for this?” I whispered to her while Prudence was making the preparations in the kitchen.

  Vicky stopped playing her guitar for a moment. “If Geri finds out what happened.”

  I blinked. “How would she NOT find out?” I asked in surprise.

  Vicky shrugged a little. “She won’t have any concept of how much time has passed.” She didn’t bother to lower her voice too much. “And she certainly won’t know that Prudence told you the wrong words on purpose. Unless you tell her.”

  I ignored that part and focused on the not having any concept of time passing. “I did! Believe me, I was aware of every passing second. Every single one.”

  Vicky looked a little bemused at my tone of voice. I hadn’t told her about how I had accidentally eavesdropped on Akiro’s date.

  “Yeah, but yours was completely different,” Vicky said. “Geri isn’t aware of her surroundings at all. She can’t hear what anyone is saying or see what they’re doing.”

  Prudence walked into the room right at that second and caught the end of our conversation. I could see from the look on her face that she was thinking, I sure hope not.

  “You know, if we took her back to the park, Geri might not realize anything had happened at all,” Vicky suggested. She was still angry at Prudence, but she did genuinely want to help. And she knew far more about witch matters than I did.

  Prudence sighed heavily. “Already considered that. But we can’t book out the park at such short notice and it is FULL of families right now in the middle of school holidays.”

  I knew Prudence didn’t want to do this. Her whole plan had come undone thanks to me, and now she could face serious consequences for her actions, but she had to at least try to make things right.

  She took her position while I stood well back out of the way. There was no way I was going to risk being frozen again.

  I knew exactly what sensations Geri must have been feeling as she reanimated and the feeling slowly returned to her limbs.

  “I have been frozen for an entire week!” she spluttered.

  Vicky stopped strumming her guitar and stared at me. I was just as shocked as she was.

  Prudence’s cheeks were so red that I thought she was going to actually self-combust. She dropped the candle she had been holding, though none of us were focused on that at first.

  It must have been dawning on her that Geri had heard and seen everything during the time that Geri had been ‘staying’ in Prudence’s dining room.

  “There are going to be serious consequences for this, Prudence,” she said in a low voice. “You are going to regret the day you ever messed with a spell, and with the leader of your coven.”

  “I can’t believe you are on Prudence’s side,” Vicky said to me as we walked down Prudence’s driveway and started toward town. She wasn’t judging me for it, and she wasn’t being argumentative. She seemed willing to be swayed by what I had to say, she was just in total disbelief that I could take this stance.

  “We can’t deny that she was a better leader.”

  “Well, define ‘better.’ She was just less strict.”

  We turned onto the main road of Swift Valley. “Hmm. True. But that is the way that I prefer things.” I glanced over at Vicky. “I thought you would prefer things that way as well. After all, aren’t you the free-spirited artistic type?”

  She shrugged a little.

  “I think I prefer a stronger leader actually who tells me what to do…you know, takes the pressure off a little. Gives me more time and room to be creative in non-witch stuff.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t thought about it like that before, but I still preferred Prudence’s way. I hated being told what to do. I even believed Prudence when she said she had the coven’s best interests at heart. But it didn’t matter. For what she had done, it was likely she would be thrown out of the coven entirely. There was no way that she was going to be allowed to stay on as leader.

  We had reached the center of town, just near the pool and the library and the town theater. Little Women’s run had come to an end, and the lights were off at the theater. There was nothing on that night.

  “What is that?” Vicky asked, pointing to a black object up ahead. I stopped and stared, because it did look very strange. It was cat-shaped.

  “Oh my gosh!” I hurried over to the small statue and bent down. I patted it, thinking it would move.

  But it didn’t.

  Indy was frozen.

  12

  “This isn’t the work of someone from our coven,” Geri said quietly she stared down at my poor frozen cat, siting on my kitchen table. Outside, one of my cows was staring through the window of my farmhouse with big bovine eyes, trying to make head or tail of what was going on. Geri had already tried to reverse the spell four times, and Indy was not moving. “It’s not the same spell.”

  I had just about enough of freezing disasters. I never wanted to see anything frozen again in my life. I would never so much as order ice with my drink ever again.

  “So, who would have done this?” I asked her, feeling a bit teary at the thought of Indy staying like this forever.

  Geri took a step back and stroked her chin, deep in thought. “It must have been the work of a local witch who isn’t part of our coven.” She glanced up at me and frowned. “There was a younger woman a few months back who was not accepted. She got to the same stage of the process you did, the freezing spell stage, but she didn’t pass. It looks like she might have stolen the spell, though. And made some adjustments.”

  I glanced over at her. “Beth?”

  Geri nodded slowly. She looked away, out the window, past the cow and at the mountains beyond. “There’s still a lot you don’t know about how this whole witch thing works, Ruby. But there are witches, local witches, who don’t always have our best interests at heart.” She glanced back at me. “And some who are just not cut out to be members of the coven.”

  “So not everyone passes the probation stage is what you’re telling me.”

  She laughed a little in surprise. “Well, that is why it is called a probation, dear. Because it can be failed.”

  I wondered just how angry Beth had been to not be accepted into the coven. Had she known that I was pretty much taking her place? Did she have it out for me?

  But if she did, why did she have to take it out on poor Indy?

  I remembered that day in the library that I had confronted her and been so sarcastic about her acting in Little Women. I’d practically told her she was not as good as the main actress. Shoot. And the theater was so close to the library. If Indy had escaped and gotten lost that night, she could have been lingering around the library, and Beth could have stumbled upon her and realized what she was. And I’d just driven off and left Indy in the path of danger.

  “I need to see Beth right now,” I said, starting to leave, but Geri told me I couldn’t go.

  “Can’t go?” I asked in disbelief. “Who are you to tell me where I can and can’t go?”

  But the meeting where we all voted to decide on Prudence’s fate was coming up, and I had no choice but to attend—if I wanted to have say on how Prudence should be punished. And I did.

  I also didn’t want to risk my place
in the coven.

  “She’s not going anywhere,” Geri said, nodding toward the cat on my kitchen table. “Now come on. We’re all due in my house in ten minutes.”

  There was no group consensus on what should be done with Prudence, even after an hour of us “discussing” the matter, which had mostly just involved Prudence having to stand in the middle while we all made a circle around her and Geri had read out a list of Prudence’s crimes.

  Geri was glaring at us all in disbelief. She felt betrayed. She’d expected that we would all have voted to have Prudence expelled from the coven. And even though most of the witches HAD voted that way, not wanting to incur the wrath of Geri, there were still four of us who were holding out. Including me. So, we were at a standstill.

  Prudence looked a little hopeful.

  But Geri was about to make an executive decision. “If you can’t come to the right decision on your own, then I will just have to pull rank,” she said. “Prudence is suspended from the coven until further notice!”

  A massive roar erupted as everyone tried to have their say. “We should give her a second chance to—” I tried to say, but I was drowned out by all the noise.

  Prudence was asked to leave the room, but that only made everyone argue even louder.

  “That is it!” Geri bellowed, silencing all of us. “The freezing spell is NEVER to be used by a witch ever again. Under any circumstance. It has called enough trouble. Do you all of you understand this?”

  We all glanced around at each other, and everyone just nodded like kindergarten children who were being told off. Did we really not get a say in this at all? What kind of democracy was this?

  “Ruby?” Geri asked. “Do you agree?”

  I couldn’t help but be a bit rebellious. It just wasn’t in my nature to completely shut up and be told what to do.

  “But what about my exam?” I asked all innocent like, even though I was really being a smart aleck. “Don’t I have to perform the spell for that? What am I going to do now?”