Witch in Training

by Elle Adams

  “To speak to you,” I said. “You were Mr Falconer’s apprentice.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and I braced myself—to run, or call for help.

  “I just want the truth. You were really his apprentice?”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Yes, I was. Two years ago. My grandmother wasn’t happy about it. She thought I could do better.”

  I couldn’t say I was surprised. “Because of her own wand-making business?”

  “No, that came later. I quit my apprenticeship, because I was seeing someone.”

  “An elf.” I doubted the wand-maker would have been happy that his apprentice was messing around with one of his enemies, not to mention the elves themselves were morally opposed to wand-making.

  Her eyes widened. “How did you guess?”

  “Never mind.” I pleaded with the luck potion to hold. “So you left?”

  “I didn’t want him finding out, so I quit. But he wasn’t too happy. He thought my grandmother was responsible. They traded angry letters for a bit, apparently.”

  I kept nodding, certain that this time was going to bring me to the answer. Two old people trading cantankerous spells was convincing enough, and her words rang with sincerity—but still, neither she nor her grandmother struck me as a potential murderer, any more than they had before. Especially now I knew the real reason for her lies.

  “Anyway, she confronted him, at our house. When he pulled his wand out, she hexed him and turned his hair purple. They haven’t spoken since.”

  I nearly laughed. “That’s all she did?”

  “Yes.” She exhaled in a sigh. “And then she set up her own business… and then her accident happened, and that was the end of it.”

  “Do you… think he might have been involved?” I asked hesitantly.

  Her mouth thinned. “She wasn’t—I told you she wasn’t in her right mind, before that. She was no threat to him.”

  “But you were his apprentice. And I heard he doesn’t like his secrets getting out.”

  Annabel shook her head. “We never reached most of the secrets. I was just chopping wood into sticks most of the time. He let me use my own wand occasionally, but he said I had to learn discipline.”

  “He never sent you gathering wandwood?”

  “He probably would have if I’d stayed long enough. But I still don’t know how he actually imbues the wands with life, or whatever it is that makes them tick. The wands just sit there most of the time. I know there are a few secret spells he uses on them, complicated ones. I was due to learn it all eventually, but I don’t think he was committed to training an apprentice. He didn’t even do much wand-making. Spent most of his time wandering around the forest or just in his office. Whatever he was working on, he didn’t want me involved.”

  Weird. “So did you or Ava put a curse on him? I have to ask, because the people who were affected still aren’t turning back even though he’s dead.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t. Neither did Ava, to my knowledge.”

  “How long were you his apprentice for?” I asked.

  “Just over a week.”

  Not long enough for the curse to come into effect. Was there some issue with this secret knowledge that caused it, or was someone determined that nobody else learn the secrets of wand-making? If so—who exactly were they? Did Ava’s ramblings hold some truth—and if so, how had nobody else guessed?

  “Okay,” I said. “He wasn’t bothered about teaching you, then. Did he seem to be… really obsessive over his job? Is that why he wouldn’t talk to you?”

  She frowned. “No. I got the impression he didn’t like the position, but he refused to speak about himself at all.”

  “Wait, he didn’t like it? Wand-making?” I’d assumed that he was grumpy because he cared only for wand-making. So why did he carry on doing it?

  When I asked, she just shrugged. “No clue. If anything, I’d say the evidence is in his shop, so maybe the police have already found it.”

  They haven’t. They never managed to get in.

  I doubted he’d left diaries of his deepest life confessions lying around, and in any case, my newfound luck probably wouldn’t extend to getting past whatever spells he’d left on the wands guarding the doors to his shop. I’d eliminated the most likely suspects, and my luck was running out right before an exam that might affect my entire future as a witch.

  No pressure, Blair.

  14

  Back to square one. I’d been so certain Annabel had been behind the curse at the very least, and now she’d gone, I had no idea what to do with myself. My phone buzzed with a text from Alissa. The hospital had roped her into doing an extra shift, since she was there. She wasn’t kidding about the lucky lattes not having much consideration for other people’s luck. Worse, the light, tingling feeling in my body was beginning to fade, and even if I flew, I might not reach Mr Falconer’s shop before it ran out.

  I turned back to the jail, indecision tearing at me—and Nathan walked out of the doors.

  If ever there was a bad time to run into him, it was now.

  “Blair?” he said, in puzzlement. “What are you doing here?”

  “I ran into Annabel,” I improvised. “Didn’t know they let her out.”

  “Oh, she’s been found innocent,” he said. “Is there any reason you’re back here?”

  “I—Mr Falconer’s apprentices. They’re still missing.”

  “Well, they’re not here,” he said. “I don’t think you should be wandering around here, either, considering.”

  He was right. What had I been thinking? Answer: I hadn’t, thanks to that latte. “What are you doing? Did they have you search the crime scene?”

  “They did,” he said. “Why?”

  “They said one of his own wands was responsible for his death,” I said.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Who said that?”

  “Annabel did. It… to be honest, it doesn’t sound the gargoyles have the expertise here.” I cast a look over my shoulder, wondering if I could inject my last piece of luck into convincing him to explore the crime scene with me.

  “They’ll have to call in an expert, I imagine,” said Nathan. “If you want to talk about this, it’s probably not the best place. Tell you what… want to come to the Troll’s Tavern again? This time, hopefully your cat will behave.”

  My heart skipped a beat. He was asking me out. Maybe… maybe my luck wasn’t out after all, but it had transferred over from the murder case. I mean, if Mr Falconer’s wand had killed him, Annabel was innocent, and so was Ava, and I no longer needed to be involved.

  If only I could banish the sliver of doubt in my mind… and a few cocktails would take care of that. Though I knew my past experience with wine was questionable even when I wasn’t suffering the backlash of an unsuccessful lucky latte.

  “I can,” I said. “I used a lucky latte, but didn’t get anything useful out of anyone. And now it’s backfiring, so fair warning. You might want to stand a little further away in case a roof beam falls on my head or something.”

  “I’ll risk it. Come and tell me all about it,” he said.

  Are you sure? I swallowed down the words and did my best to put what Annabel had said out of mind. I finally had a shot with Nathan. That was worth putting my wild theories on hold for.

  Nathan walked closer to me than usual as we made for the Troll’s Tavern. Or maybe my senses were heightened due to the excitement of the week, the aftermath of the spell, and my ongoing paranoia that I’d forgotten something really, really important.

  When we reached the pub, however, my heart sank. At a table near the doors sat a person I’d hoped not to see again, or at least for a few years. Blythe.

  Yeah, my luck was backfiring, all right.

  As we passed by, she looked in my direction. As a witch with mind-reading abilities, she’d have been able to pick up on my thoughts the instant I entered the pub. I ignored her and walked with Nathan to the same table we’d picked out last time, hoping he
hadn’t spotted her. She’d tried to drive a wedge between the two of us before and almost succeeded, but with her wand bound, the worst she could do was insert herself into our date and make a nuisance of herself.

  After he went to speak to the bartender, she sidled over to my table. There was little point in pretending I hadn’t seen her, and Blythe’s wand was permanently fixed so she couldn’t cast any dangerous spells, including the hexes she’d once used on me. “Blythe,” I said nonchalantly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “So you’re here with Nathan? Have you told him yet?”

  “Told him what?” I said. “Look, if you don’t mind, I’ve had a highly stressful week, and I’m intending to get raging drunk and forget all about it.”

  She sniffed. “Like him?”

  I followed her gaze to a table nearby, where a young man sat surrounded by empty glasses. Leopold. I never did check up on how he’d coped after being fired.

  I got to my feet, sidestepped Blythe and made my way over to him, leaving her blinking after me, as though she was hardly able to believe I had the nerve to pretend she didn’t exist.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  Leopold jumped. “Yes.”

  “You’re drinking your body weight in witch cocktails,” I pointed out. “Your apprenticeship with Mr Falconer didn’t go well, right?”

  He took another shot. “You might say that.”

  “Was he mean to you? I suppose I don’t have to ask.”

  “He’s mean to everyone,” said Leopold. “He refused to teach me anything, just ordered me to sit there chopping wood all day.”

  That fitted with what I’d heard from Annabel, too. “You were only there for a couple of days, right? What did he teach you in that time? He must have explained where the wood came from.”

  “Sure, the forest. He has the elves take it and sell it to him.”

  “He… has the elves do it? I thought they hated him.”

  “I don’t know about the bloody elves, do I? I just did what he said and got yelled at for it. I never even got paid.”

  “You didn’t? I guess you didn’t stay long enough.”

  He shrugged. “He basically said he wouldn’t be able to pay me the minimum salary, and that I should only stay if I loved the work. I said I didn’t, and he kicked me out. But he never planned to pay me anyway. He was broke.”

  My mouth fell open. “What? Seriously? How’s that possible?”

  He picked up one of the few non-empty glasses and drank what was left in it. “Don’t ask me.”

  I wanted to ask someone. He had all those wands, which were worth a small fortune. Unless the academy’s discounts were steeper than I’d thought. That coven… they provide the funding.

  “Okay, but it doesn’t matter now he’s dead, does it?” I said. “I don’t suppose you know who might have done it?”

  “No.” He got to his feet and sloped off to the bar.

  Well, that changed things. What had Mr Falconer been doing with the money from the wands? Was he hoarding the profits for some other means? Or did he owe someone money? Just when I thought I was closer to answers, they slipped through my grip again.

  “Blair?” said Nathan, walking back over from the bar.

  “Sorry,” I said, joining him back at the table, which was thankfully Blythe-free. “Leopold was Mr Falconer’s last apprentice. I know the police said he didn’t see anything, but I just wanted to check. It’s bizarre, but Falconer was flat broke, apparently. I don’t suppose you have any idea what he might have been doing with the profits from the wands?”

  He shook his head, taking his seat. “No, I can’t say I spoke with the man. I thought you were done with the case.”

  I sat opposite him. “Not until I get those mice turned into people again. This new information—it sounds like he was barely making a profit from the wands. That doesn’t really fit with what I know about him.”

  And where did the elves fit, if he’d been trading with them all along?

  “You don’t have to think about all this,” he insisted. “Like I said—it’s out of your hands. You should relax.”

  “I’m a little on edge, thanks to that luck potion. If one of us gets mauled by a unicorn, that’s why.”

  He smiled. “The side effects are a pain, but not so much that anything will go tragically wrong. There’s a reason the more powerful strands of luck potion were banned. And luck spells.”

  “Banned?” I echoed. “So there are banned potions as well as spells? How do they keep track of that type of thing?”

  He picked up his beer glass and took a drink. “Not well enough. I’m pretty sure they put boundaries around the wands themselves, at least at first.”

  Boundaries. “How does that work?”

  “I’m not a wizard,” he said. “You’ll have to ask Madame Grey, or one of the academy staff, it you want to know in more detail. But as far as I know, the wands are doctored with a spell that causes them to shut down when someone attempts an illegal spell.”

  “I didn’t know you could put a spell on a wand,” I admitted. Wait—Madame Grey had mentioned something along those lines. About the rules being changed since she’d got her own wand.

  Wait a minute.

  No way. I was jumping to conclusions. I still hadn’t gathered all the evidence… but there were an awful lot of wands in that shop. Since the wands were identical and their owner wasn’t particularly attentive…

  “Of course you can,” he said.

  I sat up rigidly. “Oh, no. I think I know what happened.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “The curse is on one of the wands,” I said. “If the curse is on an object, it doesn’t matter that he’s dead, because it’ll stay in effect, I guess as long as the wand is around. He probably doesn’t even check his own wands, because they all look identical. That means it’s still there. If we find it, we can turn the mice back into humans.”

  He shook his head. “I highly doubt he wouldn’t have noticed. It’s been a year.”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t check the shelves. Leopold told me he never did much wand-making at all.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It adds up. And if the wands get transferred to the academy, someone innocent might get hurt. I don’t know if he was the target and just protected himself too well, but it’s not worth the risk. What if it’s true and one of the wands killed him? The same one?”

  There was a long pause. Then Nathan nodded. “You’re right. Let’s see if we can get into that shop.”

  15

  The sky had properly darkened by now, and the moonlight threw the dark buildings into sharp relief. My heart drummed in anticipation. I knew my theory was right, though the pieces hadn’t completely fallen into place yet. With Nathan at my side, I felt much safer, even if I’d have to face the backlash if this went wrong. And odds were, something would probably would go wrong. After all, I’d left my good luck streak behind with the latte.

  “If Steve couldn’t get in, we might not be able to, either,” Nathan said. “The wands still need to be moved to another location. It’s a problem when someone like him dies, because it takes specialist attention to deal with magic-related security. And the police don’t have that expertise… don’t tell Steve I said that.”

  I grinned despite myself. “Does he want a repeat of Mr Bayer’s garden and the killer plants? He should have had someone take care of the issue by now. I can’t figure out where those mice disappeared to, either. That was supposed to be my plan—find one of them and use a spell so I’d be able to understand their speech.”

  “Hmm.” He frowned, looking at the window as we drew to a halt outside Mr Falconer’s shop. “There’s a light on in there.”

  So there was. Maybe I should have waited for the aftereffects of the not-so-lucky backlash to wear off before doing anything risky. But we were already here.

  “Is it locked?” I asked.

  “It shouldn’t be.” He pushed the door. I
t didn’t give. “Maybe the police came back.”

  I shoved it, stupidly, even though I knew perfectly well he was much stronger than I was. But after one shove from both of us, the door swung inwards.

  I stared into the shop’s dark, cold interior, which looked the same as usual, down to the mouse cage on the desk. Faint squeaking came from within. Aha.

  I reached for the cage, and the door slammed behind me. “Hey!” I grabbed the door, alarm blaring through me, but it didn’t budge. Footsteps sounded in the gloom. Dread gripped my chest. “Who’s there?”

  I didn’t need to ask. Mr Falconer stood there, very much alive. Not transparent, but solid, and terrifying.

  I raised my hands. “I know who did it,” I said. “But—you’re alive. You faked your death. Why?”

  “So they’d leave me alone,” he growled. “Including the likes of you.”

  “You’re the one who kept calling me.” I raised my voice over the pounding in my chest. “What are you doing here? You should know the police are still investigating.” With every word, I backed up closer to the door, but it was still wedged shut. By magic.

  “The police won’t bother me,” he said. “It’s time you gave me the answers, Blair.”

  “You locked me in,” I said. “Are you going to kill me, too?”

  “I shouldn’t need to, as long as you give me the answers I want.”

  He was actually deranged.

  “You nearly got me locked up for murder,” I said. “And the apprentices—you’re hiding them here, aren’t you?”

  “I can’t have them wandering around outside,” he said.

  “Why, because someone might catch one of them and manage to pry your secrets out of them?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” he said. “I don’t want them talking.”

  “About how you were a terrible mentor?” I asked. “They don’t need to. Annabel told me, and she’s not happy to be blamed for your murder, either.”

  “I should have known that one would gossip.” He took a step closer to me, a wand in his hand. “Tell me where the curse is.”

  So he really didn’t know.