by Tess Lake
“Goddess, it’s not like I remember it,” I said after I managed to swallow that mouthful.
“Yeah, these young kids can be out of control,” Kira said.
“You’re a young kid,” I reminded her.
“Hey, I’m going to be of legal drinking age in… well, a couple of years,” Kira said.
“And what is that you have in that bottle?” I asked.
“It’s water,” Kira said, lying smoothly. Then she pointed to two boys standing across the other side of the party. They were looking around as though bored and occasionally sipping their drinks.
“That’s Asher and Cooper. They’re the children of some very rich people and also absolute scumbags. If you need drugs, they’re the ones to talk to. I think you should look into them,” Kira told me.
“Asher and Cooper, huh? Do they have last names?”
“I think it’s Asher Parks and Cooper Little. Maybe it’s the other way around,” Kira said.
“Thanks. So how’s it going working with my Aunt Cass?” I asked.
Kira made the “zipping her lips shut and locking them and then throwing away the key” motion.
“If you want to be in, you gotta be in, but if you’re out, I can’t tell you. Sorry, H-bomb.”
“Okay, fine,” I said and stuck my tongue out at her.
“I’ve gotta go now. It’s not doing much for my street cred to be seen hanging out with three weird old women who’ve shown up at our party for some reason,” Kira said.
I knew she was joking, but there was a spiky bit of truth in it as well. She called out to one of the boys who was dressed like he’d dragged garbage bags out of a dumpster, and walked away. I looked around, seeing Molly and Luce had managed to get into conversations with boys who were both forgetting to look my cousins in the eye and looking somewhere further down.
I was trying to decide whether I should find another teenage boy to interrogate, not that the first one had been a good conversationalist at all, when a teenager came running out of the bushes, yelling, “It’s the cops! Get out of here!”
Teenagers scattered like roaches when the light was turned on. I ran over to Molly and Luce, but it was too late. There seemed to be police officers everywhere and before we knew it the three of us were caught. Most of the teenagers got away. A young policeman told us not to move and then, as we all stood there feeling incredibly embarrassed, Sheriff Hardy came waltzing out of the darkness and looked us over.
“The Torrent cousins caught again,” he said. I looked at him, hoping I’d see that familiar twinkle in his eye, but there was nothing there but disappointment.
Chapter 12
Imagine a storm. Not one of those little storms that rattles the windows and maybe there’s a bit of lightning, but a full-on, epic, destroy-a-town, flatten-a-community, wipe-out-a-civilization type of storm. The type that, as it’s going on, and buildings are being ripped up off the ground, there happens to be a bunch of volcanoes exploding and fish walking on land and all kinds of apocalyptic things happening. Now take that storm with all its fire and fury and lightning, and compress it down into the bodies of three witch mothers. This was our morning.
Sheriff Hardy had let us go last night after discovering that we had not been the ones supplying alcohol to a bunch of underage teenagers (that privilege went to the three twenty-something-year-old males who were taken in). We’d driven home in near silence, hoping against hope that somehow our mothers wouldn’t find out about what had happened. We had no idea where Aunt Cass had gone and we certainly hadn’t seen Adams all night at all. By the looks of our faces in the morning, all three of us had spent a restless night, and that tiny hope that perhaps we’d gotten away with it was squelched when our three mothers came bursting in the door in a storm of fire and fury.
“Harlow Torrent, you promised!” my mother shrieked.
Aunt Ro walked over to Molly and pinched her on the arm before waving her finger in her face. “Sneaking out to a party at your age!”
“What were you thinking? Oh wait, let me guess, you weren’t thinking,” Aunt Freya yelled at Luce.
I’m going to stop right here with describing what happened next, because honestly it went on for a while and it got a bit repetitious. I sort of lost track of time, but I think after maybe an hour of severe interrogation, our savior finally appeared. It was Aunt Cass. She told the mothers to quit it and then reminded them that they had work to do, which finally got them marching back to their end of the mansion. Mom slammed the door so hard behind her that a small crack appeared at the top.
With our mothers gone, the three of us slumped back exhausted on the sofa. It was rare we got the same kind of crazed intervention yelling that we used to get when we were teenagers, but then again, I guess we hadn’t been caught out on Truer Island at an underage party in a long time. Really, it was like playing that record again that you’ve heard a million times before. It’s very familiar and you hate it.
Aunt Cass looked over the three of us with her arms crossed, shaking her head. It was then I noticed Adams come waltzing out from behind the sofa to sit beside her. He copied her expression and even made a tsk noise at us.
“Getting caught by the fuzz, how embarrassing. Did the three of you forget that you’re witches?” Aunt Cass said.
“The fuzz? Are you talking about me?” Adams said.
His question seemed to throw Aunt Cass off her whole superior act she had going.
“No, you’re not the fuzz, the police are the fuzz,” she explained.
“But I’m the one that’s furry. That guard man isn’t furry,” Adams said.
“Guard man? Who are you talking about?” I asked.
“I think he means Sheriff Hardy,” Luce said.
“Yeah, that one. He guards things, that one,” Adams said.
“Can everyone pay attention to me, please?” Aunt Cass burst out, annoyed that the conversation had gotten away from her.
“I don’t have any more attention to give right now considering I just spent an hour getting yelled at. I need to get ready to go to work,” Molly said.
“It’s Saturday,” Aunt Cass said.
“I know what day it is, I’m going to work,” Molly said and walked off to her bedroom. Luce quickly made up some excuse and escaped also, leaving me sitting there with Aunt Cass looking at me, along with my duplicitous cat.
“So my cat is your accomplice now?” I asked.
Aunt Cass didn’t get a chance to answer because Adams pounced and there was a startled croak as a frog, who had crept in somehow, had a small black cat land directly on top of him.
We both scrambled and I managed to pull Adams away as Aunt Cass picked up the frog and deposited it outside.
“But I was going to eat it!” Adams protested.
“You don’t eat frogs,” I said.
“I could have torn its head off and left it as a present for you,” Adams said. I put him down and he went over to the door to keep watch in case another frog somehow got in.
Realizing her grand moment was over, Aunt Cass sat down in one of the other chairs and flopped back.
“Did you find any leads last night?” she asked, seeming to examine the ceiling.
I almost told her the names Kira had given me. Not that I had any reason to suspect that they were connected—just that they were some dodgy teenagers who were involved in other criminal things, so they might be involved in this. But then I remembered all the times Aunt Cass had refused to discuss whatever it was she was doing downstairs and my resolve hardened.
I remembered the line Kira had used last night. I knew who it had come from.
“If you’re in, you’re in, but if you’re out, I can’t help you,” I said.
“There are more frogs outside, let me out,” Adams said.
I shook my head. He was a magical cat who could pretty much come and go from any room at any time, but he was still a cat, and he insisted on me opening and closing doors for him all the time.
A
unt Cass sighed and then stood up and put her hands on her hips.
“What I’m doing at the moment is imbuing a spell into an object to keep these frogs away. But if doesn’t work, I’m going to have to go out to Truer Island and stay there,” she told me.
She seemed a little frustrated, at least, but mostly resigned. I guess at her age, with decades of being a slip witch, eventually you got used to it. I knew for me, it still hurt quite a lot when I slipped. Aunt Cass said goodbye, managing to push Adams out of the way so she could get outside without him pouncing on one of the many frogs gathered out there.
As soon as she was gone, I got out my phone, which was working for a change, and looked up the two teenagers. Kira had their names correct the first time. Asher Parks and Cooper Little. I quickly found social media accounts for both of them, but they were locked down, so I couldn’t really view any information. I searched a bit more, but all I could come up with was a few other social media accounts of other teenagers that were all locked down as well.
Clearly the kids today were tech savvy and were probably very aware that their parents and teachers, and probably other teenagers, would be looking into every single thing they posted to see what they were up to.
It wasn’t long before Molly came back out from her bedroom and Luce emerged too. Neither of them had gathered any useful intelligence last night, apart from: teenage boys are stupid; teenage boys keep looking at your cleavage; and oh my God were teenage boys like that when we were teenagers? None of this was a surprise to any of us.
“I’m not going to work. We’re going to see the owners of the Magic Bean,” Molly said.
“Seriously? After they tried to attack us?” I asked.
“They’ve lost as much as we have, so we figured it was better to make peace and get them on the case as well. Maybe with all of us working together we can find where the coffee machines went,” Luce said.
Soon they were gone, leaving me alone in the house with my somewhat traitor of a cat who was sleeping soundly on the sofa. I was at a bit of a dead end with the teenagers and was sitting around wondering how I could possibly learn more about them short of trying to track them down at another party (which I was never, ever going to do again) when my phone chimed at me. It was Jack asking me if I wanted to meet for lunch.
Ah, Jack Bishop, former policeman… he might know how to investigate some teenagers.
Also, I was really happy that I would be seeing my boyfriend.
I quickly messaged him back that I’d love to meet him for lunch. He told me to meet him at Hoodoo Voodoo, which was this kind of fake voodoo shop that sold all kinds of wonderful and weird bits of junk. They’d recently expanded and added a small café, which was apparently producing quite nice sandwiches and coffees.
I got myself ready for the day, and as I was showering, I realized that my promise not to get involved was pretty much broken now. I had told myself I was on a holiday, but it seemed I’d been pulled back in, no matter what I had intended. First, it had been Aunt Cass investigating on her own, giving me names to look into, and then of course there was Luce and Molly with their stolen coffee machine. Then I’d found a connection between Mom and the three teenagers who had died forty years ago. It had come out of nowhere, almost as though someone had planted it to bring it to my attention.
After I got out the shower, I was dressing when my phone chimed again. It was a message from Peta, my friend. She would be arriving next week on the day before Christmas. I had already invited her to the Torrent family Christmas dinner, which was shaping up to be an epic feast. All the boyfriends would be there, as well as Sheriff Hardy and Jonas. Thinking of Jonas and remembering that I’d told him I might possibly have someone for him, I quickly messaged Peta back, telling her that Jack’s brother was coming to the dinner. This exploded into a flood of messages back and forth between us, which for some reason we kept up rather than actually just calling each other and speaking. I told her that he was a developer and builder and Jack’s brother, and, from what I knew so far, a genuinely good guy. Then I left it at that and refused to tell her any more. I wasn’t going to get her hopes up. They’d have to meet each other and see what they thought.
The morning slipped away from me as I sat on the sofa and thought about things. Hattie Stern had given a clearly bewitched book to Ollie, Mom had been lying about her old boyfriend, and Aunt Cass had obviously been investigating things on her own. There were definitely teenagers breaking into homes, and there was, I felt, definitely some connection between them and the teenagers who’d died forty years ago. I realized as I sat there and went through it all that it wasn’t just being a journalist that had me interested. The fact was, I could never really write about the truth of all the strange happenings in Harlot Bay. I could never write about the morchint that had infected Preston Jacobs, driving him to murder. I could never write about the ghost girl I had met or the hidden witch who had been causing fires. There was definitely not much I could write about in this case either. I was starting to bet that Harold Jackson’s death wasn’t going to turn out to be from natural causes given the newspaper clippings that Sheriff Hardy had obtained from Carter.
“That lemon witch was in your office this morning,” Adams murmured from the sofa as though talking in his sleep.
“What?” I said, startled out of my daydreaming.
“The lemon witch,” Adams repeated.
“Do you mean Hattie Stern? She was in my office? When?”
Adams opened his eyes and then yawned at me.
“I told you, this morning,” he said and then settled back down again.
“What was she doing?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,” Adams said and then went back to sleep.
I sighed in frustration. Adams, although a magical cat, was still a cat and he did not really concern himself with the comings and goings of humans. I knew he was telling the truth, though, and that meant Hattie had been in my office for some reason—I guessed looking for something. But what?
Chapter 13
The café section of Hoodoo Voodoo was actually three small tables with chairs that sat where their rack of imitation skulls used to be. A tourist couple was sitting at one table eating toasted sandwiches and drinking coffee, and Jack was at one of the others browsing through a book of voodoo magic spells when I arrived.
“Planning on cursing someone?” I said when I walked up to the table.
“I thought I could use a zombie, you know, help me out with renovations,” Jack quipped and then stood up and gave me a kiss. We sat down and he slid the menu across at me before putting the book down.
“Arrested for underage drinking, my oh my. Is this what the Torrent cousins get up to on a cousins’ night?” he asked.
He was smiling at me, but I still felt a burst of embarrassment that we had been caught and, yes, we had lied to our boyfriends. I blushed, my face turning as red as a tomato. He laughed and grabbed my hand.
“I’m joking. Joking. I don’t care. I trust you,” he said.
It had already been an emotionally fraught morning, what with waking up after being caught by the police the night before, then our moms coming with hellfire and brimstone, and now this? Jack saying he trusted me?
I almost told him.
I almost blurted it out right there in Hoodoo Voodoo, adjacent to the fake skulls and black candles and other weird bits of fake magical junk they sold, with tourists sitting nearby eating their toasted ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches. I nearly blurted out to him that I was a witch. The words came right up to my lips, but then I held them back. I knew I would have to tell him eventually, and being that he was a good man—maybe one of the best men I had ever met—I knew he would take it well, or I guessed he would. But it was always one of the trials a witch had to go through and it wasn’t uncommon for the men they told to leave them shortly after. Then the witch had to wipe their minds or risk being exposed.
Next year. Next year, I told myself. I’ll tell him next year.
“I trust you too,” I finally said and squeezed his hands.
Since he’d been working a lot more, his hands had become rougher. I don’t think I’d seen him recently without some kind of a patched-up injury and other scratches he had obtained from working on his house. I plucked a small fragment of wood out of his hair and put it on the table.
“Dining room wall, had to go,” Jack said.
Hoodoo Voodoo was an order-at-the-counter type of place, and after the rough night and even rougher morning I’d had, I decided to go with comfort food and ordered a toasted ham, cheese and tomato sandwich and a mochaccino. Jack ordered the same and then went to the counter to pay for it all before coming back and sitting down across from me.
“So, I need to talk to you about something,” I told him.
“You’re investigating something again? I already knew that.”
What was it with people already knowing what I was going to ask them? Well, I guess he was an ex-policeman.
“You know how there’s been some thefts around Harlot Bay recently? I suspect it’s a bunch of teenagers,” I began. I told him a small lie about how a source of mine had informed me that there was a teenage gang of thieves who were breaking into homes and said I thought perhaps they had inadvertently been involved in the death of Harold Jackson, the old man who had been scared to death.
Our coffees arrived while I was explaining this to Jack, and then our toasted sandwiches soon after.
“Sounds likely,” Jack said and took a bite of his toasted sandwich. “Teenagers are slender and get through windows, and they’re dumb enough to do it. There’s always a ringleader. Do you think they’re being led by someone?” he asked me.
I took a bite of my toasted sandwich (which was spectacular and delicious, by the way) and smiled back at him. I honestly forgot sometimes that he used to be a cop and he immediately understood what I was talking about.
“I don’t have any clues on that yet. I have some names of some particularly dodgy teenagers in town that need investigating, but there’s something else as well.”