The Witch Squad: A Witch Squad Cozy Mystery #1

by M. Z. Andrews

  It hadn’t occurred to us that Detective Whitman would call Sorceress Stone before he went home that morning. I guess we assumed since he hadn’t taken us seriously, he would have waited until a more reasonable hour to alert her to our concerns, but boy were we ever wrong. We entered Winston Hall a little over 2 o’clock in the morning, exhausted and worried about our friend. We had agreed on the drive home that we’d all get a couple of hours sleep and wake up at the crack of dawn and begin our search for Jax. We hadn’t expected to be confronted by Sorceress Stone the minute we walked n.

  She was waiting for us in the lobby, wearing what I could only assume were her witch pajamas – flowy white full length garb, tied loosely around her waist. Her hair was shockingly unkempt and flared out around her head like she’d just poked her finger into an electrical socket. Daytime Sorceress Stone scared me most of the time, but nighttime Sorceress Stone was almost even more intimidating, if that were possible.

  “Do you girls not have a brain in your collective bodies?” she raged at us. “What did I tell you about going to the police?”

  Sweets and Holly hung their heads, but Alba and I challenged her anger. “We were trying to save our friend!” I hollered back at her.

  “You should have woken me!” she snapped.

  “We wanted to, but we don’t know where your room is and there was no one down here to talk to! How were we supposed to get a hold of you?” Alba demanded.

  “There’s a phone on the wall over there, you simply pick it up and dial 666,” she instructed, thumping the side of her head as if it were the simplest thing in the world and anyone should know.

  We looked to where she had pointed. Indeed, there was a small phone attached to the wall. “How were we supposed to know that that was there?” I asked her petulantly.

  “Did you even read the emergency material that we put in your registration packet?” she asked.

  The four of us looked at each other, defeated. No one had apparently read that. I bet Jax had read it.

  “Oh, you didn’t, did you,” she chastised patronizingly. “If you had, you’d see what to do in an emergency situation. First thing it says to do is to call Sorceress Stone. It most certainly does not say to call the Aspen Falls Police Department.”

  “We didn’t know, and my roommate has been abducted,” I said, this time a little more quietly. The wind had sort of left my sails with the revelation that there indeed had been a way to contact her.

  “Your roommate has been abducted. Who is your roommate again?” she asked me.

  “Jax,” I told her.

  Her eyes grew large. “Jax has been abducted? You saw her get abducted?”

  Our heads shook. “I had a vision, Sorceress Stone,” Holly told her.

  “What was your vision?” she demanded.

  “That someone grabbed her. It was a man, I couldn’t see his face. And she’s being held in a room. Her hands are bound and her mouth is covered with tape.”

  “How long ago did this happen?”

  “She wandered off about eight last night. We haven’t seen her since,” I said.

  “I can’t believe you’re just now reporting this. I’ve had it with the four of you,” she stormed. “Follow me, now.” She took off up the stairs towards our rooms, gliding up the stairs as if she were floating. We followed her past the second floor, where our rooms were and up higher and higher. As we walked, I wondered if she were taking us to a magical room where she’d teach us how to do a spell to figure out how to get Jax back or to see where she was. Higher and higher we climbed, until we were at the top of the building. She took a small key ring from her waist and quietly unlocked the room and led us inside.

  “What’s this room?” Alba asked as the four of us girls peered out the window to see our view from that high up. Unfortunately it was too dark to see anything except the glow of the moon and the way the moon reflected off of the tops of the trees.

  Sorceress Stone moved back towards the doorway. “This, girls, is what I like to call, Purgatory.”

  I looked at her in astonishment. “Purgatory?”

  She looked down her long thin nose at us. “Your punishment. You’ll stay here until I see fit to let you out. Maybe then you’ll learn your lesson. You come to me, not the police when something happens. I’ve warned you. Now let this be your lesson.” With that and before we could fight her, she slammed the door on us and we heard a key turn in the lock.

  I pulled on the door handle, it didn’t budge. “You can’t do this to us!” I hollered, pounding on the heavy wooden door.

  Sweets began to wring her hands, “Did she just lock us in here?”

  “It’ll be alright, Sweets, we’ll get out of here,” I assured her.

  “Step back everyone, I’m going to try and open the door,” Alba commanded.

  Sweets, Holly and I got behind Alba. She stood up straight, shaking her body, she tried to release the tension from her shoulders and unclutter her mind. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the solid arched door.

  We watched her in her state of concentration. We could see the energy beginning to build inside of her. She lifted her arms and flattened her hands, aiming her palms at the door. Finally she unleashed the energy burst towards the door and opened her eyes.

  I watched, as did the rest of the girls, as the energy bubble Alba had unleashed burst against the door.

  “This room is insulated against magical powers,” Alba said in frustration.

  “How do you know?” Sweets asked.

  “My mom ended up doing it to our whole house. When I’d escaped one too many times, she insulated it. My telekenisis is ineffective in an insulated environment,” she sighed and fell onto a chair.

  “You’re saying we’re stuck?” Holly asked, looking around. “What if we need to use a bathroom?”

  “There’s a door over there, maybe it’s a bathroom,” I suggested.

  Holly walked across the large open room and poked her head through the door. “Yeah, it’s a bathroom.”

  “Great,” Alba said, rolling her eyes.

  “Isn’t this illegal?” I asked.

  “We’re in witch school. Who you gonna call?” Alba asked her smarmily.

  Holly and Sweets looked at each other with a little smile. “Ghostbusters!” they answered in unison.

  I rolled my eyes. “Not the time for humor, ladies. We’re stuck in here, what are we supposed to do about Jax? What if Stone doesn’t let us out until it’s too late? We’ve got to think of something!”

  Holly yawned and looked at the two sets of bunk beds in the back of the room. “Ok, I’ll think of something, in the morning. I’ve got to get my beauty rest, ladies.”

  Sweets nodded. “Me too, I’m exhausted. I just hope we get breakfast in the morning. I’m already starving.”

  I looked at Alba. “We should get some shut eye too, Alba. We’ll be useless tomorrow to find Jax if we don’t get some sleep. And there’s nothing we can do right now, anyway. Maybe in the daylight we’ll figure out a way to escape.”

  “Agreed. Alright girls, take a bunk. We’ll figure this all out in the morning.”

  { Chapter Fifteen}

  Sitting in the uppermost room of Winston Hall the next morning was quite the drag. I thought classes were snoresville, but this was the worst. Not only were the beds probably the lumpiest in the entire place, but the company was a drag.

  At the very least, Sweets was usually tolerable and Holly came in at a dull second, but locked away with no food or drink wore on Sweets quickly. She went from, well, Sweet, to Sour by lunchtime.

  “Why won’t she bring us any food?” she demanded.

  “We’re being punished, Sweets,” Alba snarled. She’d always been a grouchy person, but throw three sour girls on top of Alba and shake and craziness ensued.

  “I realize we’re being punished, but this is ridiculous. I don’t even think she can do this. It’s like corporal punishment!”

  I rolled my eyes. I’d heard it a
ll morning.

  “And I’m pretty sure I’m hypoglycemic,” Sweets continued. “If I don’t eat, I’ll probably pass out. And then what. We don’t even have any way to call for an ambulance.”

  “Not that we’re allowed to call an ambulance anyway,” I added.

  “Exactly, this is crazy. I can’t believe my mother wanted me to go to this school. If she knew the kind of conditions I’m being subjected to, she’d have me out of here in a jiffy,” Sweets continued.

  I looked around despondently. “Well then, maybe you should call her,” I suggested.

  “I will call her! I promise, when we get out of here, I’m calling her.”

  My gaze traveled out the window as I sat in the window seat in the north facing window. The colors of the trees from up here were simply amazing. Fall had truly settled into Aspen Falls. I was able to see the cemetery behind the campus from our height. Beyond the cemetery and up the hill was another castle with two tall turrets that soared high into the sky, taller than the trees around it.

  Just then we heard the door latch unlock and the door opened with a loud creak. Libby and Cinder walked in, each with two trays of food in their arms.

  “Well, well, well,” Alba said as she walked towards them. “What do we have here?”

  “Lunch time, ladies,” Cinder sang as Sweets immediately came to claim a tray of food.

  “Well, it’s about time!” she yelled.

  “Sorry, we had to wait for the cafeteria to make it,” Libby said handing her two trays to Alba and I.

  I looked at the open door. “Hey ladies, we’ve got an open door,” I pointed out.

  Cinder shook her head. “Don’t do it, Mercy. I know you want to. I know Stone locking you in here is the pits, but we’ve all been in purgatory at one time or another. She’s hard on freshman, but she lightens up. Trust me.”

  “When is she planning on our punishment being over?” Holly asked.

  “I heard her telling Hobbs that she’d let you out sometime after lunch was over,” Libby told us.

  I looked at Libby curiously. “Did you hear that Jax is missing?”

  Libby nodded her head. “Yeah, it’s all over school.”

  Sweets stopped eating. “So she hasn’t come back yet?”

  Cinder shook her head sadly. “No.”

  “Is anyone doing anything to try and find her?” Alba asked angrily.

  “I’m really not sure,” Libby said.

  “Hey Cinder,” I said, waving her towards me in the window seat. “Come here, would you?”

  The red-head walked towards me and I pointed to the castle across the valley. “Is that The Black Witch’s castle?”

  Cinder nodded. “Yeah, why?”

  “Is there any way she’s got anything to do with all of this?”

  “You think she did?” Cinder asked.

  “I think Seymour is behind all of this,” I told her honestly. “But I feel like he could have a partner. Maybe he’s working for The Black Witch.”

  “The police investigated Seymour. It’s all over school. They searched the cemetery and his place. They didn’t find anything,” said Libby.

  “And he had an alibi,” Cinder added. “He was at work that morning, he’s got a timecard to prove it. There’s no way he had time to kill Morgan.”

  My heart dropped. I was so sure it was him. “You’re kidding. They couldn’t find Jax?”

  She shook her head. “Uh-uh. No sign of her.”

  “Did you hear, we found him doing magic in the cemetery late last night. Did you know he was a wizard?” I asked the older girls.

  Cinder nodded. “Yeah, we all knew that. He’s a wizard, but he’s not a bad guy. He’s grumpy and all, but he’s not a bad guy. I really don’t think he would have hurt his niece.”

  “He’s so creepy though! And Morgan’s dad really set off my senses,” I added. “I was sure there was something going on with those two.”

  Libby stood up. “We have to get going, we really weren’t even supposed to be talking to you four.”

  Cinder nodded. “Yeah, Stone is probably going to give us hell for it. So if she asks, we dropped of your food and didn’t say a thing!”

  I smiled. “Got it. Thanks for the food and the intel.”

  “No problem,” Libby said. “We’ll see you two later.

  Libby and Cinder left, locking the door behind them as they went.

  “We should have just left,” Alba sighed.

  “Why didn’t you, the door was open?” Holly asked her.

  Alba sat down and picked at her food. “Because I need this school. And because I was hungry.”

  The four of us devoured our food quickly and it gave all of us a sudden burst of energy. We investigated our holding cell and found that in the back of the closet was a hidden staircase that took us to the top of the turret we were in. Holly and Sweets had no interest in exploring, so Alba and I took the stairs all the way up to the very top of the castle.

  “Wow, it’s cool up here,” I hollered down the stairs to Holly and Sweets. My voice echoed against the stone walls and down the stairs.

  “Look, Red, this must be where they store their old stuff. Check this out,” Alba said and led me over to an adjoining room. It was filled with old pieces of furniture and trunks of old clothes. Alba opened a trunk and pulled out an old gown.

  “Cool. This would be fun to spend a day going through,” I said to her.

  “Well, we’ve got a day.”

  “Really? Do you want to go through all of this today?” I asked in surprise. That was the last thing that I felt like doing.

  “Fine, oh, look at this, a box of old books!” Alba said with interest.

  “Spell books?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Nah, I don’t think so. This one looks like a yearbook!”

  I joined her and pulled a book out of the box too. “This one is a yearbook too,” I said, blowing dust off of the leather bound cover. “The Paranormal Institute, 1936,” I read.

  “They had yearbooks back then? Crazy!” Alba said.

  I flipped the book open and looked through a few of the pages. I recognized many of the areas of campus in the book. “Oh look, there’s the Canterbury Building,” I said and showed Alba the picture.

  “Cool,” she said.

  We heard a voice float from the downstairs to the attic. “Find anything good up there?” Holly hollered.

  “Yeah, we’ll bring some stuff down,” I hollered back. “Come on, let’s bring a few of these down, the girls are going to love these. It’ll give us a way to pass the time before Stone decides to let us out.”

  Alba and I put everything away except two yearbooks. We climbed back down the stairs and spent the next hour pouring over the yearbooks. The fashion back then was so different. The ladies in their fancy dresses looked so properly witchy that I felt like I really didn’t deserve the title.

  “Look at this one, is this Stone?” Alba asked, pointing to a thin young woman in a long black dress holding onto the arm of a handsome man in a suit. Her hair was dark though and it didn’t quite look like Stone.

  “It looks like her, except the hair. What’s the caption say?” I said, pushing my glasses up on the bridge of my nose.

  Alba held the book closer to her face. “It says BethAnn and Oliver enjoy the Autumnal Equinox celebration in the town square.”

  “Huh, not Stone, that’s weird. Totally thought it looked like her,” I said. “Maybe it’s her mother or something.”

  Just then we heard the door click and it flew open with force. I quickly grabbed the book from Alba and slammed it shut, shoving it into the back of my pants, covering it up with my top.

  “Well, have you girls learned your lesson yet?” Sorceress Stone asked from the doorway.

  We all nodded like zombie robots. Of course we’d say we’d learned our lesson. We needed to get out of their so we could go hunt down Jax.

  “What have you learned?” she asked exasperatedly.

 
No one said anything. So she pointed her little bony finger at Holly. “You, what did you learn?”

  “Don’t call the cops, call you if there is an emergency,” Holly said in a robotic voice.

  “Good. Now, about Seymour Hartford. The police have conducted an investigation on Seymour. He has an airtight alibi for the morning of the murder. He was working on campus and he has several witnesses that will swear to that fact.”

  “What about Jax?” I demanded.

  A dark shadow seemed to cross in front of Sorceress Stone’s eyes. “We’re working on finding her. You need to stay out of it.”

  “She’s my roommate, how can I just stay out of it?” I asked despondently.

  “And she’s our friend,” Holly added.

  “Listen, ladies, I can appreciate you wanting to help your friend. But we do things a certain way around here. We will find her. Stay out of it,” she ordered. “Now, your punishment is complete. You may go.”

  With that, the four of us grabbed the few things we’d had with us when we got to the room and scampered out of the prison and back to my dorm room. Sneaks ran to me almost immediately and wrapped himself around my leg, purring on contact. I’d forgotten that I’d left him in my room. “Hey buddy,” I said as I reached down and scratched under his chin. “Did you miss me?” If I hadn’t been so worried about Jax, I might have given more thought to the fact that it looked like he nodded his head after my rhetorical question.

  Before spinning on my heel to look at the girls, I took the yearbook out of the back of my shirt and threw it down on the bed. “Now what? Where do we start?”

  “I’ll tell you where we start,” Alba said. She grabbed the Aspen Falls snow globe off of Jax’s desk and tossed it to Holly. “We’re going to start with Holly. Jax needs you to see her again.”

  Holly nodded and took a seat on Jax’s desk chair. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then put the snow globe between both of her hands and exhaled while focusing her energy on the item. We could tell it was working again when her body went rigid as it had the last time she’d had a vision. This time her trance lasted almost a minute, causing her to crumple forward when she was finally released its hold.