Mountains, Mystery, and Magic

by Samantha Eden

  “Ms. Lockheart?” a man’s voice called to me as I watched the ambulance drive away. I didn’t move. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure I’d heard him at first. But when Charlotte shook my shoulders and told me to turn around, I found a dark-haired man in a long coat wearing a pair of Coke bottle glasses walking toward me. He was handsome in an official-looking sort of way, with a thin mustache and a stern look on his face that didn’t take away from his features. Of course, my mind wasn’t in that place at that particular moment. So, when he introduced himself, I was more than a little distant.

  “I’m Douglas Archer. I work for the sheriff’s office. Can we talk?” he asked, nodding at me.

  “I’m a little busy at the moment,” Charlotte answered, looking at her nails and not giving the man the time of day. “Maybe another time, handsome.”

  Douglas looked over at my cousin, the slightest of smirks moving across his face. “I’m sure I’ll live to regret asking this question, but who are you, exactly, ma’am?”

  Charlotte blinked at him. “I’m Charlotte Lockheart,” she answered. “I’m the lady you asked for.”

  “Oh,” he replied, shaking his head. “You might be a Ms. Lockheart, but you’re not the one I’m here for. I need to speak to Isobel.”

  “Izzy,” I corrected him absentmindedly. “You can call me Izzy.”

  “He can call you ‘never’!” Charlotte answered, grabbing my arm and pulling me along with her as she took a step back. “My cousin and I have just been through a very traumatic experience. We don’t have time to answer any of your questions.”

  “That traumatic experience is exactly why you should answer my questions,” Douglas said calmly. “Now, according to the 911 call you placed, Izzy, you say you and your cousin were out walking your cat when you heard a ruckus going on in Mr. Rickman’s house. Is that correct?”

  “What?” I asked, blinking hard and realizing that I was in the middle of what was probably an impromptu interrogation. I couldn’t tell him the truth, of course. Saying something like ‘the ghost of the woman I accidently got murdered yesterday threw him out the window to spite me’ wasn’t likely to earn me many points with the detective. Instead, I needed to try to remember what I told the 911 operator when I called her through that daze of shock and heartache.

  “I’m sorry,” I stammered. “Yes. That’s right. We were walking my cat, and we heard a man scream. We rushed to the house and heard a crash and thud. That’s when we saw Mr. Rickman on the ground. It was horrible.”

  All of it was a lie, all except the last part. This was horrible. In fact, nearly everything that had happened since I’d returned to Spell Creek Mountain had been horrible. I had to make it stop.

  “You know, I’ve never heard of a cat that needed walking,” Douglas answered.

  “You’ve never seen a cat like Randolph,” Charlotte answered.

  Douglas looked down at my cat, who was hissing at him in response to his observation. “Apparently not,” the detective said. “And that’s when you called emergency services?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “And I waited out here for them to come.”

  “So, neither of you actually went into the house then?” Douglas asked, looking from me to Charlotte and back again.

  “That’s what she said,” Charlotte answered nervously.

  “So, I guess that means a search of the house won’t turn up any of your fingerprints,” Douglas said.

  “Not after a cleansing spell, it won’t,” Charlotte muttered under her breath.

  “What’s that, ma’am?” Douglas asked, his ears pricking up, causing his glasses to rise just a little.

  “I said I like your tie,” she responded bitterly. “Did your mother pick it out for you?”

  “Is that what passes for humor in a town like this?” Douglas asked. “If so, I’m loath to take my new position.”

  “You’re staying here?” I asked, swallowing hard.

  “I was just transferred here to replace a man named Wilkin Herman,” he said.

  “Wilkin Herman retired?” Charlotte asked. “But he was the sheriff.”

  “Yes,” Douglas answered. “He was.”

  Charlotte narrowed her eyes. “I thought you said you were a police officer.”

  “I said I work for the sheriff’s office,” he answered. “And, given the fact that I’m the new sheriff, that isn’t untrue.” His eyes lingered on Charlotte for a beat too long before passing over to me. “We found two framed photos on a fireplace inside Mr. Rickman’s home, Izzy. Do you know who they depicted?”

  I did, but I couldn’t come clean about that right now, not after everything I’d just said.

  “I just told you I didn’t go inside the house. How would I know that?” I said.

  “One was of Fallon Fulcrum, and the other was of Riley Davis,” he said. “One of them died in your presence after lamenting the fact that you’d returned and the other was seen arguing with you outside a popular restaurant. Now he’s not answering his phone. Should I expect another body to turn up, Izzy?”

  My eyes went wide. Not only was all of this happening because of me, but now it was painfully obvious that the new sheriff thought I was responsible.

  “I’m not sure what you should expect, sir,” I said, shuffling uncomfortably. It wasn’t a lie. For all I knew, Riley could be dead by the morning. Heck, for all I knew, he was dead right then.

  Douglas stepped closer to me. “If you know something, you need to come clean right now, Izzy. I promise, things will only get worse for you the further along all of this goes.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt that,” I muttered.

  “Are we under arrest, Sheriff Dullard?” Charlotte asked, sneering at him as she pulled me away from him.

  “It’s Douglas, and of course you’re not under arrest,” he said. ‘You’ll know when I arrest you because you’ll be in handcuffs.”

  “Is that a threat or a come-on? Because I don’t take kindly to threats, and if it’s the other thing, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to buy me dinner first.”

  “This isn’t a joke, ma’am,” Douglas answered tersely.

  “Really? And how would you know? I thought we both just agreed that you didn’t know a thing about humor in a town this size.” She spun me around and started walking away from the man. I could hear the tapping of Randolph’s paws against the sidewalk, letting me know he was following. “That’s the fastest I’ve ever hated someone so cute,” Charlotte said.

  “He’s just doing his job,” I lamented.

  “Yeah?” Charlotte said. “Well, if he does his job for much longer, I predict he’ll find himself turned into a tadpole.” She shook her head and gritted her teeth. “And that is a threat.”

  24

  I walked back into the B&B with Charlotte and Randolph in tow. With everything that had been going on, my head was spinning and my heart was racing. I wasn’t sure what to think about any of this. In the day I’d been home, two people I knew had died and a third might be soon to follow, and that wasn’t even taking into consideration the prediction of the third tarot card.

  I took a deep breath as I entered, watching Dallas and Savannah rush us. They scooped the both of us into huge hugs. Obviously, they had already heard the news.

  “Is it true?” Savannah asked. “Is Mr. Rickman really dead?”

  “He is,” I answered, blinking back tears. “As it turns out, maybe the Ace of Cups wasn’t Riley after all.”

  “I think you’re right,” Dallas said.

  “A guy who could make me feel like I did back in high school,” I lamented. “Why didn’t I think of my old high school teacher? It was staring me right in the face. I should have seen it.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself,” I heard a familiar voice say. Looking up, I saw Grandma Winnie walking toward me. Just the sight of her was enough to turn me into a slobbering mess of a kid. She was the person I’d always leaned on, after all. It would only make sense that I’d lean on her no
w too. “Those tarot cards are notoriously hard to read. The only woman I ever knew who could make any sense of them at all was—”

  “My mom,” I said, her face flashing through my mind’s eye. What I wouldn’t give to have her here right now. Even if she wouldn’t have been able to fix everything, which she totally would have, she’d have at least made me feel better about all of it. “I’m not my mom, though, Grandma Winnie. I’m not even half the witch she was.”

  “There you go again, being hard on yourself,” the old woman answered. “You’ve got a lot of nerve. Do you know that?”

  “What?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at my grandmother.

  “You,” she repeated, pointing a finger at me, a finger that was responsible for some of the craziest powerful spells I had ever seen in my life. “You don’t get to talk about somebody I love like they don’t matter, like they’re a disappointment, even if that ‘somebody’ is you.”

  “I just don’t know what to do,” I admitted, shaking my head at the woman. “I don’t want to think I’m responsible for all of this, but the world keeps telling me that I am, both figuratively and literally.”

  “That’s not the world, my love,” Grandma Winnie answered. “The world is too big and bold and caught up in its own messes to blame anybody for anything. What you’re dealing with is some bitter person who hates you and happens to be in possession of some intense magic. Now, who could that be, Izzy? Who hates you enough to kill people in your name?”

  “Not just in her name,” Charlotte said, her voice filled to the brim with anger. “There’s a new sheriff in town, and I don’t mean that in the metaphorical way they say it in the movies. There is a literal new sheriff in town, and he’s a Grade-A jerk. Also, he obviously thinks Izzy is doing all of this.”

  “What?” Savannah asked, her eyes going wide. “There’s no way he could believe Izzy could be capable of murder.”

  “He doesn’t know me,” I said. “And judging by the evidence, I don’t exactly look innocent. Fallon died in front of me right after she said I never should have come back, Riley was last seen arguing with me on the side of the road, and I just so happened to be walking by Mr. Rickman’s house when he’s tossed out his window by the vengeful spirit of Fallon.”

  “Spirit?” Grandma asked. “You saw a ghost tonight?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “But I’m not sure why Fallon’s ghost would want to kill Mr. Rickman. She didn’t have any of Fallon’s mannerisms, really. Though, to be fair, I did see a picture of Fallon with Mr. Rickman when I broke into his house.”

  “When you what?” Grandma Winnie growled. “Please tell me I misheard that and my granddaughters didn’t break into the house of a murdered man.”

  “Technically, he hadn’t been murdered when we did it,” Charlotte jumped in from behind me. “And what were we supposed to do? That ghost wasn’t going to follow itself.”

  “I’m sorry, Grandma, but we did what we did,” I said. “And we saw what we saw. There was a photo of Fallon on the mantle of Mr. Rickman’s fireplace.”

  “Which could mean any number of things,” Grandma Winnie said. “Or it could mean nothing at all, but if the ghost of Fallon didn’t act like Fallon, it could have been because the spirit wasn’t in control of itself.”

  “Are you saying that someone was using Fallon’s ghost like a puppet or something?” I asked.

  “Like a deadly puppet,” Grandma Winnie said. “It’s not as uncommon as you’d think, unfortunately. I just never taught you girls about any of that, given how dark and dangerous it is. Not to mention the fact that it can be tracked.”

  “Tracked?” I asked, my heart jumping at the idea. “You mean, you can figure out who might be behind all of this?”

  “I can certainly try,” Grandma Winnie said. “It won’t be easy. It’ll take some time, and more than likely, it’ll only show us a clue as to who the magic belongs to, but it should be enough to point the finger at someone.”

  “I just can’t imagine who it would be,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t have any enemies. The closest I had was Fallon, and she’s certainly not responsible for murdering herself.”

  “That’s the thing about enemies, dear,” Grandma Winnie said. “More often than not, we don’t even know about them until it’s way too late.” She cleared her throat. “Now, to trace the magic, I’ll need something it came into contact with. So, I need Charlotte and Savannah to head back to that poor teacher’s house and grab something the ghost of Fallon might have drifted through or something.” She shook her head. “But be careful. The last thing we need is for that new sheriff to see one of us snooping around a crime scene.”

  “Then let me go,” I said, looking uneasily over at Savannah and dreading what I was about to say. “Savannah has such a huge heart, but her magic still needs a little work, and I don’t want that to be a hindrance if things go south out there.”

  Savannah bristled a little, which made me feel bad. Still, she couldn’t have been surprised. Unfortunately, my grandmother was having none of it.

  “Absolutely not,” the old woman answered. “You’re the worst one of us to be out there. The sheriff already has enough questions about you. I can’t risk his having any more. Besides, you’re needed here for other things.”

  “Other things?” I asked, my brow furrowing. ‘What other things?”

  “Something happened,” Dallas said, stepping toward me.

  “Oh, no,” I muttered, my heart dropping. After everything we’d been through, I wasn’t sure I could take anything else.

  “No,” Dallas said. “It’s actually a good thing.”

  “What sort of good thing could it possibly be?” I asked, almost afraid to imagine.

  “The kind that you might be happy about,” a familiar voice said from the hallway. I turned to find Riley emerging from the shadows. He looked tired and more than a little run down, but he was awake. He was alive, and that was all that mattered. Well . . . almost all that mattered. “I’d actually like to talk to you, Izzy,” he continued, reading the look on my face. “I think that, for better or worse, it’s time the two of us started being honest with each other.”

  25

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” I said honestly to Riley as he held the door open for me to walk out the back of the B&B and into the sprawling backyard that served as a spot for grilling in the summer months, a pretty awesome spot for a campfire in the autumn and winter, and held an amazing view no matter what time of year it was. I ran my hands through my hair and looked around at the mountains which surrounded us. Though today had been a complete storm of craziness and heartache, I had to admit that I felt at home here. There was a peace that came with being in these mountains. It felt like we were in a world all our own, where no one could touch or spoil us with the outside world and its nonsense. I loved that feeling, even if today had proven that not everything in these mountains was as perfect as I’d hoped it might be.

  “So am I,” he answered, stuffing his hands into his pockets and looking not at the splendor that surrounded us, but at me. “Our last conversation was kind of intense. I’d hate for that to be the last thing we ever said to each other.”

  “Me too,” I responded, remembering that I’d had that exact thought. “Luckily, we won’t have to worry about that.”

  “Good thing, too.” He chuckled. “Because if your grandmother is right, then we have a lot bigger things to worry about.”

  “If I’ve learned anything in my life, Riley, it’s that Grandma Winnie is always right,” I lamented. “I don’t know if you remember him, but Mr. Rickman died tonight.”

  “Yeah,” Riley said, shaking his head mournfully. “Your sister told me, and of course, I remember him. He’s a big part of the reason I am where I am right now.”

  “He inspired me, too,” I admitted. “I wouldn’t have gone into cooking without him.”

  “He was good about that, but that’s not exactly what I mean,” Riley said, shuffling uncomfortably.<
br />
  I glared up at him. The sun was coming up behind him, causing him to look even more handsome in the early morning light. I shook my head slightly. I couldn’t let myself think about that right now. There was too much going on, and I needed to stay on track.

  “What do you mean then?” I asked.

  Riley swallowed hard. “Can we go over to the gazebo?”

  “Knock yourself out,” I responded, motioning for him to go. I followed him over, remembering all the evenings we’d studied inside this gazebo, all the late afternoons where I had to force myself to think about science or math instead of thinking about kissing him.

  He slid into the gazebo, patting the place next to him and inviting me to sit there. I did, though not as closely as he might have liked.

  “Tell me what’s going on, Riley,” I commanded.

  “You remember I told you that on prom night, I found out that you were a . . . a—”

  “A witch,” I said, rolling my eyes as I finished his sentence for him. “I do remember that. It led to a really bad evening for me.”

  “I heard,” Riley muttered. “And again, I’m sorry about that, but what I didn’t tell you is how I found that out and what it meant.”

  “That’s true. You didn’t,” I answered, suddenly very curious as to both of those things.

  “It was Mr. Rickman,” Riley said simply.

  “Mr. Rickman?” I gasped. “Our old art teacher told you I was a witch?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “Not just you,” he answered. “Your entire family, and not just your family. He had a list of all the witches in the surrounding areas. Heck, he had a list of all the supernatural creatures in the surrounding area. I didn’t believe him at first, but when you take a camping trip and watch a guy morph into a werewolf under a full moon, it’s hard to argue with evidence like that.”

  “Why?” I asked, leaning toward him. “What was going on that he felt he needed to tell you that? How did he even know?”