Patagonia danced behind me, jumping onto the trailing end of the cape with each step I took. My leg was wobbling, and I faltered a few steps. I needed sugar to regain my energy. Patagonia jumped on the back of the cape and hung off, gnawing at the sequins and hissing.
Pushing open the door, I startled the attendant standing in the hallway, holding my robe. I grabbed it from her hand and stuffed it under the cape.
“Thank you. I… uh… just stopped by to pick up my cape.” Throwing my shoulders back, I turned toward the elevator. Patagonia settled on the end of the cape, trailing along behind me like a barge. I studiously ignored the employee’s muffled giggles behind me.
CHAPTER FOUR
I adjusted my costume at the door of the party before entering. I’d had a custom Western saloon girl outfit made for the party. It showed off my legs and cleavage. I stifled a yawn and grabbed a meatball off a passing tray. After returning to my room and throwing away the hideous penis cape, I had ordered a mini chocolate cake from room service. I needed sugar to let my body start to replace the magic I had lost. Once I devoured the cake, I had crashed on the bed.
Patagonia had hung out with me during my nap, gently nibbling on my toes a few times. Perhaps she was hoping for a second serving of spectral rat leg. My own familiar was pressed against the same leg, purring loudly. She would help me heal quicker from whatever magical damage Patagonia had caused when eating my spectral leg.
I had slept hard until Olivia had texted me to ask why I wasn’t at the party. The burst of adrenaline when reading the text sent me flying off the bed, and in a whirlwind, I got ready. I had already created a spell for my hair and makeup. I wanted everything to be perfect, and when in France last month, commissioning my costume, I had consulted with a beauty expert to get just the right look then imprinted it into a spell. I even made a backup spell to use again in the future, I was that enamored with the look.
My dark hair was in a puff on top, elongating my face, and in the back there was the perfect cascade of curls. Mom had been a bit upset that I had chosen to dress as my great-grandmother during her “little crisis,” as the family called it. I was sure that it was embarrassing in the late 1800s for a New York socialite to have a midlife crisis and run off to the West to dance in a saloon, but there was really nothing to be embarrassed about.
Her kids had been all grown up and married off happily, Great-Grandpa had spent all day at work and all evening out with his friends, and the house had a full staff to care for it. Why was it such a scandal that a powerful mage that could take care of herself had a little fun? Mom had insisted I call her for permission, probably hoping she would refuse, but instead, Great-Grandmother Russo had reveled in retelling the story. We had talked until two a.m., and I had only gotten off the phone when I had promised to visit and hear the whole story. I eagerly agreed, her stories of adventure and danger stirring in me the beginning desire of wanting more for my life than to trail behind my mother and practice my spells.
My outfit wasn’t perfectly accurate, but I had modernized a few features that seemed unattractive to modern eyes, and the choice was effective, as I saw several male partygoers glancing at me with an appreciative eye. I crossed the room, looking for Olivia. As family of the hosts, I needed to greet as many of the important mages present as possible. It was all boring and pedantic, but it was expected as part of mage etiquette.
I would thank them for gracing us with their presence, and they would dutifully tell me about the millions that they had made since I last saw them, then they would ask me how my studies were going. I would try to find something interesting to say, but they wouldn’t even try to pretend to listen while searching the crowd for someone more important to network with. They would nod along as I talked before muttering, “Good girl. Keep it up,” and wandering off. It was embarrassing and humiliating, but that was life in general.
This pattern would continue with each new greeting until everyone was so hopped up on sugar and alcohol that they cut loose and partied. I grabbed a flute of champagne as I passed a waiter and weaved through the growing crowd, hoping the bubbles would dull the growing distress in my stomach.
As I got near the center of the room, I stopped dead. There, in a fake garden, was the luck pumpkin that was supposedly stolen. Guards milled around it, though mages could still come up to it and bestow extra luck on it, as was tradition.
Raymond caught my eye and sauntered over. “So I guess the bet is off. The pumpkin was never missing.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was never really gone. We determined that there was no evidence of the pumpkin leaving the area, so we checked again and found it. There was a mix-up. Instead of being in the room on the right, someone stored it in the room on the left. It was just shoved behind something, but luckily they found it a few hours ago.”
I had been in those rooms, and while there had been a pumpkin present it had not been as tall as a basketball player. “How could they have missed it? And wasn’t that room sealed until this morning? And—”
“Vanessa! There you are.” Olivia grabbed my shoulder and turned me toward her. “People have been asking to meet you.”
“Olivia! The luck pumpkin. Something’s wrong. There is no way—”
“No! I don’t want to hear it. It’s back, the party is saved, and no one is going to ruin it. Come on. The duke of something or other was asking about you.” She dragged me off as I pointed to the pumpkin. “Don’t give the luck pumpkin another thought.”
But I did—it was all I could think about as Olivia presented me to visiting mages like a show pony. Something had changed in the last year. Maybe the more sexy costume had set it off. In previous years, I had been treated like a child, but suddenly I was a marriage prospect for every rich family with a single son. The first time some matron had insisted I speak to her awkward, gangly-limbed offspring, I only vaguely noticed, but by the fifth time, I had their number. It was even more annoying than I expected.
And all the while, I kept an eye on the luck pumpkin. It looked exactly like the one mother had spelled earlier in the week—same height, width, and it even had the dark webbing on one side and notched vine sticking out the top. In every way, it was the same, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it couldn’t be. But why?
A pale, scrawny boy three years younger than me was asking about my mental health history and my feelings about being a stay-at-home mother when I couldn’t take one second more.
“Excuse me, Frederick, it’s been lovely chatting, but I must attend to something for my mother,” I lied through my teeth before running away. I felt like a rat escaping a sinking ship. Perhaps the spectral rat transformation had left me with some rodent qualities.
He tottered off to the bar, hardly disappointed to be free to drink rather than interview me for the position of future Mrs. Frederick-the-Boring.
I shuffled over to the luck pumpkin and placed a hand on it. It looked the same as I remembered. I reached out with my magic to touch the spell under the skin. I picked up faint hints of thyme, rosemary, and pine. All ingredients that I knew Mom used for the spell. She hadn’t yet let me assist her, but since we were sharing a room, it was impossible to hide everything about the spell from me.
I pushed a little deeper, careful not to disrupt the spell. I picked up something foreign, something I wasn’t as familiar with. It was almost soapy. I closed my eyes to concentrate, my hand resting on the hard rind of the enormous vegetable.
I delicately felt along the edge of the spell, trying to identify the ingredient in the spell that eluded me. I almost had it when an explosion threw me into the air then onto the ground, knocking the air out of me as heavy wet clumps landed on me.
Screams erupted around me, but I kept my eyes squeezed shut, my body throbbing in pain all over. The spell had exploded and torn into my interior, magically. Strong hands grabbed my shoulders.
“Vanessa, are you okay?” Vin said.
I cautiously opened my eyes
, gasping for air. Vin was covered in threadlike orange goop and seeds. I was as well. My outfit was plastered to my skin by orange goop. Looking over Vin’s shoulder was the remnants of the pumpkin base, jagged edges on the ground, while everything and everyone within a twenty-yard radius was covered with orange goop.
“What happened?” I moved my joints. Nothing seemed broken, but my head was throbbing, as well as my eye from falling on the pastry display, my leg from being magically eaten by Patagonia, and my entire backside from being thrown by an exploding pumpkin. It had been a rough day.
Vin leaned in close. “Don’t say anything, but I know you did this. I can recognize your magic, but I don’t think anyone else has noticed.”
Though people were watching in shock or wiping off pumpkin debris, no one else had been knocked to the ground. They crowded about, pointing and talking.
Vin stood up, dragging me behind him. He turned to the crowd and lifted his voice. “Don’t worry, everyone. It was a simple misfiring. A premature pumpkin explosion. Security can help those of you affected clean up a little.” He turned to look at the display of pastries, now covered in stringy orange pumpkin guts. “More food will be out shortly.”
The noise in the room rose as everyone started talking at once, but I was focused on Vin, who frog-marched me to the entrance, globs of pumpkin falling off me and leaving an orange trail across the room.
He caught Olivia’s eye and jerked his head to follow us out of the party before turning me to face him. “What is wrong with you? Why did you blow up the luck pumpkin? Mom is going to kill you.”
“If I don’t first,” Olivia hissed in my ear. “What did you do?”
I held up my hands, warding off their anger. “That wasn’t the real luck pumpkin.”
Olivia’s face was turning red, and a vein at her temple was throbbing in time with each word she bit off. “What do you mean?”
“I know it looks the same, but it couldn’t have been. It wasn’t in the room earlier today. I checked.” I gulped hard as her eyes narrowed even more. “I was helping! There was something wrong with it, and I—”
She turned to Vin. “Get her out of here. I have to… I don’t know… something. This is a disaster. Dad is going to kill me.” She stomped off.
Vin dragged me down the hall toward the elevator, leaving a trail of orange pulp. “Mom’s going to be furious.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Running a Q-Tip in each ear post-shower, I finally removed that last bit of orange muck from my body. I shoved the sopping-wet costume into the corner of the tiled bathroom floor so I could comfortably reach the hairdryer to dry my hair and think.
Something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what or how to prove it. That hadn’t been the real luck pumpkin, or maybe it was, with the spell altered, or it was a replicate or… The options seemed endless, and none of them answered the question of why. Why would someone steal the luck pumpkin in the first place? And why had that pumpkin exploded?
I needed to narrow down the options in order to figure out what had happened and how to prove to Olivia, Vin, and everyone that I hadn’t screwed everything up.
When there was a knock at the door, I shrugged on the robe and answered. A young man, cranky about having to work on Halloween, rolled in a tray of food. “Here are your seared scallops with gremolata.”
I thanked him and slipped him a fifty-dollar tip. He perked up slightly and had a bit more spring in his step as he left the room.
Grabbing a fork, I dragged the cart over to the table and grabbed a chunk of the perfectly cooked scallops and a generous amount of the green gremolata spread underneath. I shoveled it into my mouth and was happily chewing when the taste hit me—soap. I struggled to swallow the mouthful while grabbing the menu.
The soapy flavor of the gremolata matched the flavor I had detected on the spell, and the menu confirmed my suspicion. It was made with fresh cilantro, an herb that my mother and I both detested due to a genetic quirk that made it taste soapy to us. Since I was a child, she had taught me how to substitute basil or parsley for the foul cilantro. She never would have constructed a spell using cilantro as a base.
I gave Patagonia and Bethsaida the plate then paced the room. I finally had a solid clue. If the spell wasn’t the one cast by my mom, then it wasn’t the same pumpkin. Which led to two more questions. Where was the original pumpkin? Where did the second pumpkin come from?
The pumpkin that blew up had to be a copy. They had found it in the room with the window that I had snuck in. The only thing in that room had been a pumpkin. Sure, I was being chased by Patagonia, who was trying to eat me, but I was pretty sure it had been bigger when I passed through the room the second time. What if someone had replicated the original pumpkin?
And the original pumpkin had to still be around. They confirmed it had never left the area, so it had to be there somewhere.
But why? And who? Clearly someone that didn’t think cilantro tasted like soap. I’ve never trusted those people.
I would love to pin the pumpkin swap on Keri, my nemesis, but I had no proof. That was really what I needed, but Olivia had banished me from the party.
Grabbing my phone, I called my mom, but it went to voicemail again. The battery was low, so I plugged it into the charger, which was lying on top of the dresser next to my mom’s unused costume and spell. She had planned to go as a distant great-grandmother whose outfit was super dowdy, boring, and included a face veil. She had told me who it was, but I had been texting on my phone and missed the details. It wouldn’t fit right since it was meant for my mom, but it would completely disguise me.
I threw on the outfit and drank the accompanying spell for my hair and makeup, giving it enough magic to activate, all while putting together a plan. It was almost midnight, and if I couldn’t find the pumpkin by then, it wouldn’t matter. By the time I was grabbing the phone off the charger to head out the door, I had managed to get a list of what I needed to do. It consisted of finding the pumpkin and figuring out who stole it and why. It wasn’t much of a plan, but I would need to make it work.
A quick elevator ride downstairs and a trot across the casino, and I was back at the doors of the party. I showed Mom’s ticket to the security guard, who barely glanced at it before waving me in. The pumpkin guts were gone from the floor, but so were most of the partygoers. Little clusters of people milled about in the cavernous empty room. The security guards, including Vin and Raymond, had abandoned their post at the faux garden where the pumpkin carcass had been. They were now grouped around the bar. Olivia sat a table alone, sucking down a bright-pink drink that appeared to be served in a fish bowl.
The desserts on the display in the middle of the room had been replaced. Keri and Ellen Morgan were at the far dance floor, dancing with a group of men and women that had stayed at the party. Most of the important people, as they liked to refer to themselves, were gone. Probably left to go to the party across town, the only other mage event they could reach before midnight. Like rats leaving an exploding pumpkin ship.
It appeared that only those working the event and a few stragglers had stayed. The pumpkin thief was probably long gone.
I scooted across to the far wall to poke my head in each of the two rooms. I kept my head down and tipped away, but no one gave me a second glance. Peeking in each room showed them to be completely cleaned out. Even the empty box from earlier in the day was gone.
Leaning against the closed door, I surveyed the room. If the original pumpkin was still present, where could it be?
My eyes landed on the dessert display, the tiered display that towered above my head. Tipping my head and squinting, I tried to imagine how big it was compared to the pumpkin as I walked over to the display. While the display did get narrower with each tier, it appeared to be wide and tall enough. And it had been stored in the same room as the pumpkin before it disappeared.
Once I was up closer, I leaned in. I grabbed the extra fabric of the costume in one hand so it wouldn’t
swing against the desserts. The frosted glass hid what was inside, but I would swear that I almost saw orange peeking through. My breath was hot under the veil. I flapped it a few times as I circled the display, looking for a seam or door or some way to get in, but the outside was uniformly smooth.
“What are you doing now, and why are you wearing Mom’s costume?” Vin whispered in my ear, catching me off guard.
I jumped then spun around. “I had to get back into the party. The luck pumpkin. It’s here.”
He rolled his eyes. “Have you been drinking? What is wrong with you today?”
“No, seriously.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him in close so no one would overhear. “It never left this area. Raymond told me that. So where is the only place it could be? Here, obviously.”
“No, it was in the garden until you did your magical Gallagher impression.” He chuckled at his own joke.
“Who?”
“You know, the comedian with the hammer that smashed watermelons.”
“How is that funny? Focus, please. Help me figure out how to get inside the display.”
“There is probably just refrigerant inside.” His eyebrows screwed up. “That’s weird.”
“What?”
“Give me a second.” He closed his eyes and breathed deeply before letting out a sigh. “I’m not saying you’re right, but…”
“But what?” I bounced on my toes.
“I have a spell I use all the time during security to check items. It’s similar to echolocation that animals use to see in low light conditions. I send out a little burst of magic, and it bounces back to me with information. My magic is going in but not coming out.”
“Like it’s blocking magic.”
“No, if it was blocking magic, this spell would just bounce back to me. It’s absorbing magic in a really specific way. It’s way too complicated for a cupcake stand.”
The Case of the Exploding Luck Pumpkin_Casino Witch Mystery Short Story Page 3