The Witch Squad: A Witch Squad Cozy Mystery #1

by M. Z. Andrews

  “Hi, I’m Libby,” the white haired girl said. “I’m a second year. Girls around here call me the Ice Princess.”

  Alba looked up at her and laughed, as if being called the Ice Princess were silly. “Why do they call you that?” she asked before taking a sip of her water.

  Libby shrugged her shoulders and pointed her finger at Alba’s glass of water and it immediately froze solid, encapsulating the tip of Alba’s tongue in the glass. “I’m not really sure why they call me that,” Libby said, winking at the other girls.

  Jax and Holly’s eyes widened and their jaws dropped. “That’s really cool,” Jax exclaimed.

  I couldn’t help but giggle at the sight of Alba with her tongue stuck out in front of her, attached to her water glass.

  “I’m Cinder, girls call me the Fire Queen,” the red haired girl said as she sat down next to Libby. “You wanna know why they call me the Fire Queen?” Cinder asked Alba pointedly.

  Alba’s eyes widened as she pulled the tip of her tongue out of the glass. She gave a gruff chortle and then shot Cinder a small smile. “Nah, it’s alright. I think I’ll pass.”

  “Are you sisters?” I asked. It was a dumb question, even I knew that, but I had to ask it.

  “Twins, actually,” Cinder said as she took a bite of her hamburger.

  “You’re twins?” Jax asked as if her mind were blown. “That’s so cool.”

  “Never seen twins before, Shorty?” Alba asked dryly.

  Jax shook her head. “Never seen twin witches before.”

  “Eh, we’re a dime a dozen where we come from,” Libby admitted.

  Sweets’ eyes widened. “Where do you come from?”

  “Sweden, our mother is a twin. Her mother was a twin. Our other aunts are twins, our cousins are twins. We will have twins,” Libby explained.

  Even I was impressed by that.

  “Something in the water I guess,” Cinder said, dipping a French fry in ketchup.

  “Well this is Holly, Alba, Sweets, Mercy, and I’m Jax,” Jax pointed to each of us as she introduced us.

  “Nice to meet you all, the whole school is buzzing about Sorceress Stone taking you girls to the crime scene today,” Libby said, changing the subject.

  The thought that that was exciting news to the rest of the school had never occurred to me. I looked around the courtyard and found that almost every set of eyes was on our table.

  “What’s everyone saying?” Holly asked with interest.

  Cinder shrugged. “Just that a girl in town got stabbed and you guys got to go see the body and interview the family and stuff.”

  I nodded. Well, at least they were getting the rumors right.

  “Do any of you think this has anything to do with the Black Witch?” Libby asked with a conspiratory look and a hushed voice.

  All of us new girls looked at each other curiously.

  “The Black Witch?” Sweets asked, her voice catching nervously in her throat. “There’s a Black Witch?”

  “You girls don’t know about the Black Witch?” Libby lowered herself to practically lay out on the table.

  Holly shook her head. “I don’t think any of us do.”

  “The Black Witch lives high up on the hill. Have you ever noticed the turret in the distance?”

  Holly and Alba both nodded. “We can see it from our room,” Holly said.

  “She’s a disaster. She’s completely evil. I’ve personally never met her, but the stories about her are crazy. Her face has been burned by acid. She’s horrible to look at and so she never comes out of hiding and if anyone goes to her, she eats them,” Libby shared.

  “She eats them?” I asked skeptically. I hardly believed that for a second.

  “You don’t know that Lib,” Cinder pointed out. “We shouldn’t spread rumors like that.”

  “Well, that’s what everyone says,” her sister pouted.

  “Why would The Black Witch kill Morgan?” Alba asked Libby.

  “I didn’t say she killed her. I just asked if anyone is suspecting her. I mean, she’d be the first person that I’d suspect.”

  “Why would you suspect her?” I asked pointedly. “You just said that she never leaves her house.”

  Libby shrugged. “She might leave sometimes. I mean, wouldn’t she have to get, like, groceries or something?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Sweets shook her head emphatically. “No, no, not necessarily. A lot of grocery stores have online ordering now and will deliver right to your door.”

  “You guys, I’m sure this Black Witch has nothing to do with Morgan’s death,” I discounted the notion as ridiculous.

  “You don’t know that, Mercy,” Holly said, biting at her fingernails once again.

  “No, I got the distinct feeling it was a man that did this,” I said. I knew my gut was leading me in that direction, but I just didn’t understand why. But my mother always told me to follow my gut, even though usually, it only led me to the kitchen.

  “I got that feeling too,” Alba agreed.

  “Well, maybe it was someone from the wizard school,” Cinder suggested and tilted her head towards the wizard’s side of The Institute.

  I nodded. That thought really hadn’t occurred to me, but now that Cinder said it, I had to give that some serious consideration. I didn’t know anything about the guys. In fact, I hadn’t even met any of them yet, granted I had only been on campus a total of 24 hours, but one would think we would have seen the men during breakfast at the very least, but none had appeared.

  “Where are the men anyway? Don’t we share the courtyard?” I asked.

  Cinder nodded her head. “We do. They try and keep our class schedules so that the men eat their meals at alternate times than the women. I think it’s just because there’s not a ton of seating out here, so they try and stagger it so we don’t all fight for space to sit outside. Occasionally you’ll see one of the guys who missed breakfast join the girls or vice versa. Usually the only time we interact with the Wiz Kids is on the weekends.”

  Alba harrumphed loudly. “You call the men Wiz Kids? I bet they love that.”

  Cinder shot Alba an annoyed glance.

  “What happens on the weekends?” Holly asked, her interest perked.

  “We have social hours and sometimes dances or other events. It’s not that they try and keep us apart or anything, they just really have two separate schools with a common area in between.”

  “So, you think the wizards could have something to do with this?”

  Cinder met my eyes seriously. “Around here, you have to consider everyone a suspect.”

  “Why is that?”

  “There is so much magical energy circulating through these buildings and through this town. Aspen Falls isn’t just your usual, run of the mill town, you know. Witches and Wizards have been coming to this school for centuries. The town is used to us. Libby could literally go downtown right now and shoot the waterfall in the center of town. Freeze it solid. Not a single townsperson would blink an eye.”

  “You’re kidding me?” I couldn’t believe it. I’d never been in a place that accepted witches like that. It seemed like a fairy tale to me.

  “Not even remotely,” Libby agreed. “I mean think about it. They have a college called the Paranormal Institute. People come from all over to go to this school. Some of the biggest names in Witchcraft and Wizardry have gone to school here.”

  “Morticia Addams went to school here,” said Cinder with a convincing nod.

  Jax laughed. “She did not, that’s a lie.”

  Libby shook her head. “No, it’s not. She went to school here. So did the Long Island Medium. What was her name?” Libby asked her sister.

  “Theresa Caputo.”

  “Yeah, Theresa Caputo, she went to school here.”

  I let my head fall in my hands. These girls were a bunch of nuts.

  Jax rolled her eyes and sat up straighter. “Now I know you two are full of it. I’ve never seen anything on the sch
ool’s website about having famous people having gone to school here. They’d advertise the heck out of that if it were true.”

  Cinder shrugged. “Would they? That would draw attention to the school. There are a lot of witch hunters in the world. Why would the school want to draw big amounts of publicity? Witches know how to find the school if they need to. That’s really all that matters.”

  “We’re losing track of the point here,” I finally said. I’d had enough of Libby and Cinder’s silly stories. “The point you were trying to make is that you think we should consider everyone a suspect.”

  “Oh, yes,” Cinder said, nodding her head as if she’d just remembered what she were talking about. “Everyone is a suspect. You have no idea how many retired witches and wizards are living in Aspen Falls. I know for a fact that the town baker is a potion maker.”

  Sweets’ eyes opened wide. “Really? What kind of potions?”

  Cinder shrugged, “Just your basic herbal remedies for back pain, joint pain, high blood pressure – you know, baked with love in a loaf of bread.”

  “Oooh, maybe I should go meet the baker someday. I’d love to do an internship down there.”

  Alba leaned forward and looked across the table at me. Her eyes met mine and I felt like she was trying to tell me something without actually telling me something. I raised one eye brow and tipped my head curiously to the side. Why would Alba be trying to tell me something? When I didn’t get the message from her eyes, she reluctantly whispered across the table. “Mercy, may I have a word with you?”

  It was a small table, her whisper carried across it and everyone stopped eating and looked at me. My eyes swiveled from side to side watching the girls’ curious expressions.

  When I didn’t budge from the table, Alba added, “In private, please?” She stood up and took her half eaten plate of food and glass of water with her.

  I looked down at my beautiful fried delectables sadly. I grabbed another egg roll and my Paranormally Delicious coffee cup and stood up, following her back inside our building. She didn’t stop when inside, but continued up the stairs where she halted in front of my dorm room door.

  “Can we talk in here?” she asked me. I thought I detected a hint of impatience, but pushed that idea out of my head immediately.

  “Sure?” I said curiously. I pulled my lanyard out of my sweatshirt and unlocked my door, letting us both in the room. I sat my coffee cup down on my desk and flopped down on the bottom bunk. “Have a seat,” I offered and gestured towards a chair.

  She sat. Her movements were jerky and unnatural and I could immediately tell that she had something important to talk to me about. My heart jerked up into my throat as I sat up.

  Alba leaned forward and met my eyes. I braced myself for the words to follow. “I know you saw Morgan’s ghost at the crime scene.”

  { Chapter Seven}

  “What did you just say?” I asked, stunned. Heat immediately began filling my cheeks. How in the world did she know that?

  “You heard me, Red,” she answered, blatantly rolling her eyes at me.

  Alba’s attitude hit me like a bag of bricks to the face, my walls immediately went flying up. “I’m sorry, why would you think that?” I asked, unwilling to admit anything to her.

  “Because on very rare occasion I have the ability to read minds,” she reminded me.

  Ugh, I groaned to myself. I had forgotten about that.

  “What I don’t understand is why you would keep that information to yourself?” she demanded. “In fact, you lied to us about it.”

  I crossed my arms defensively and felt myself growing angry. “Why would I tell you anything? You don’t even like me.”

  “I don’t dislike you,” she said flipply.

  “So you’re saying you like me.” I clarified.

  “Don’t flatter yourself, I’m only asking because the rest of those idiots don’t have a brain to split between them and I thought you could use a little help finding her ghost.”

  “So you’re saying I have a brain to split? Gee thanks, you want half?” I deflected with a laugh.

  Alba sighed and sat back in her chair. “I’m trying to be serious here. I know you saw Morgan’s ghost.”

  My mind reeled. I didn’t know what to say. I sat there quiet for a moment, trying to gather my thoughts when all of a sudden, a big black cat jumped onto the window sill of my second floor dorm room. I looked at it curiously. How in the world had he just done that? I stood up and immediately looked out the window; there was a fire escape balcony just next to us. He must have jumped over from there.

  “Hi little guy,” I said kindly as he jumped through my open window and into my room. “You can’t be in here buddy.”

  “Your cat?” Alba asked me with narrowed eyes. “I didn’t think we were allowed to have pets.”

  I shrugged. “Not mine.” I plucked him up off the floor and sat back down on my bed with him, petting his back mindlessly. “I’ll take him outside in a minute.”

  “We need to talk about this, Red. I know you saw Morgan. Why didn’t you share that information when we were there?”

  I took a deep breath and then sighed, slumping down into my chair. “I didn’t know what to do. Stone was extremely to the point when she said she didn’t want any of our help. Besides, I’m not 100% sure it was her.”

  “Where did you see her?”

  “On the side of the road, it was like she was watching the whole scene go down from afar. She looked scared.” As I finally had a moment to actually think of Morgan, my heart fell for the poor girl.

  “Of course she looked scared. Wouldn’t you be scared if you were watching your murder investigation scene play out right in front of your eyes? You should have said something. Now she’s probably scared and alone.”

  I looked down at the floor regretfully. I could tell she felt bad about that. “I just thought Miss Stone would handle things, and then she didn’t.”

  “Maybe she didn’t see her,” Alba suggested.

  “Well, duh, Captain Obvious,” I said sarcastically. “Of course she didn’t see her. If she had seen her, we’d have this murder solved by now.”

  “You don’t know that, some ghosts don’t know who killed them.”

  “I know that. But a lot of them do know,” I argued.

  She stood up and put her hands on her hips. “We’ve got to do something. I can’t handle going about my day now with Morgan’s ghost wandering Aspen Falls. What if she falls into the hands of the wrong person? Cinder said that there are other witches and wizards running around the town. We’re not all good witches you know.”

  “Yeah,” I said, eyeing Alba keenly. “I know this.”

  “Oh quit. Just because I’m gruff doesn’t mean I’m not a good witch. I’m a good witch. I’m just not a nice witch.”

  “Umm, so does that make you a bitchy witch?” I asked with a snicker.

  Alba rolled her eyes at me. “We’re going to need a car if we’re going back down there. I don’t have one here, do you?”

  I shook my head. “Nope, Mom drove mine back to Illinois.”

  “Ugh, we’re going to have to involve the other girls then. One of them has to have driven here.”

  “Sweets has a car, I saw her unloading it on the first day of class,” I remembered immediately.

  “Ok, we’ll get Sweets to take us, but we are not bringing tweedle dee and tweedle dum,” Alba insisted as she opened my door.

  I scooped up the cat and followed Alba out the door, along the hall, and down the stairs. In the courtyard I sat the cat down, patted his head and gave his rear an encouraging little shove when he didn’t just run off right away. “Go on, go,” I said to him. He was such a pretty cat, I almost wished I could keep him, after all didn’t every good witch need a black cat to keep her company?

  Sweets was still sitting at the table with Holly and Jax. Libby and Cinder had gone. Alba and I looked at each other, unsure of how to talk to Sweets about using her car without Holly
and Jax overhearing.

  I jerked my head towards Sweets as if to tell Alba to get moving. She cleared her throat. “Sweets, can we have a talk with you?” Alba called in her sweetest voice.

  Sweets’ face lit up. She practically leapt out of her seat racing to get next to us and be in on whatever we were cooking up. “What’s up girls?”

  I looked back at the table. Jax and Holly were leaning back, straining to accidentally overhear our conversation. “We need to borrow your car.”

  “My – car? Why?” she asked, surprised at the request.

  I shrugged. I didn’t know if I should tell her that I had seen Morgan’s ghost.

  “Red saw Morgan’s ghost down at the crime scene,” Alba admitted quickly.

  I guess we weren’t planning to keep that a secret.

  Sweets smiled excited and her eyes widened. “Oh, and you want me to drive you?”

  Immediately Holly and Jax shot out of their seats. “Where ya driving them, Sweets? Can we go too?” Jax asked excitedly.

  “I’ll just go grab my purse,” Holly squealed, bouncing on her toes, making her breasts jiggle visibly in her low cut blouse. “This is so fun. It’s like we’re detectives!”

  Alba rolled her eyes. “No, we can’t all go.”

  “Why does Sweets get to go?” Holly demanded to know.

  “Because she brought her car to college,” I pointed out. “And we need a ride.”

  Jax stuck her lip out. “So? Why do you get to go?”

  “Because … Alba wants me to go,” I said, unsure if that was a good reason.

  “Where does Alba want you to go?” Holly asked.

  “Back to the crime scene,” Sweets announced.

  Holly and Jax’s heads swiveled immediately to Alba. “Why do you want to go back to the crime scene?”

  Alba groaned. I knew that was exactly what she was trying to avoid, but it was too late. Now they’d all have to go. “Ugh, Mercy saw Morgan.”

  “We all saw Morgan,” Holly said in confusion.

  “I saw her ghost.”

  “Ohhh,” Jax and Holly cooed in unison.

  “We’re going,” Jax said sternly. “Holly go get your purse. Sweets, get the car.”