1 A Hiss-tory of Magic

by Harper Lin

  I opened the door as Bea jogged up to me.

  “Cath,” she said, as she wrenched my “weapon” from my hand. “That’s an egg beater!”

  I had dripped pancake batter all over the hall. Peanut Butter was licking it off the floor behind me.

  Jake looked from Bea to me and back to Bea. “Either way, Cath wasn’t going to hurt us.”

  “Rough night?” Blake ventured.

  “Good morning,” I answered, stubbornly. “I made too many pancakes. Please come in and eat some.”

  Blake and I went down the hall first.

  Bea took her husband’s hand and murmured, “They’re both learning human ways!”

  “I know! I’m so proud,” Jake murmured back.

  I turned to glower at them. “I can hear you!” Just because I wasn’t a social butterfly like Bea didn’t mean I was socially awkward.

  We all sat at the kitchen table. Bea bustled about being the good hostess, getting the extra glasses and asking who was on shift or stakeout to guard her mother.

  I should have been the one making our guests comfortable and asking those questions, but I was too busy wracking my brain for why the Order would wait to cast such powerful spells as the ones in our spellbook.

  Jake spoke first. “The lead with the Order was a major breakthrough.”

  “Don’t get their hopes up,” Blake said to him. “The social network on the Order’s official website doesn’t list everyone. Min Park wasn’t on it because he quit lickety-split, and some higher-up members get certain privileges.”

  “It’s still further than we would have gotten in two days following French organized crime syndicates.” Jake gave Blake the same look I imagine fathers give to their sons to remind them of something they’d been scolded for, and I realized that Blake was still covering for me. Jake might have known that I was investigating privately, but if he’d known that I’d tampered with evidence—well, Jake just might have found it in himself to be meaner.

  “The Order is exclusive,” Blake said. “They’re superstitious but not any less macho.”

  “So?” I said. “Would they break into Aunt Astrid’s home, attack her, even kill her chef, just because she did tarot card readings and tea leaf readings? Why not start killing in Sedona? Or Glastonbury, on the other side of the pond?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to say,” Jake said. “Mrs. Colette Lanier had a reputation in her town for giving astrology readings, up until her death from cyanide-poisoned biscuits.”

  “That were star-shaped,” Blake scoffed. “It’s just the sort of way the Order would send a message. Those cowards!”

  Jake nodded. “The Order has a worldwide network. Maybe it wasn’t Ted’s dad who crossed the wrong people but his mom.”

  Bea and I looked at each other. I knew we were both thinking the same thing. She and I have had to hide that we were witches all our lives. Aunt Astrid let it slip a little for harmless fun, and she’s had her home broken into and herself attacked. Mrs. Lanier was poisoned to death, and we don’t even know if she was a real witch. But the Order got to have an online social network. It wasn’t fair.

  “New legacy,” Blake was saying, ponderously. “New blood, new people, new initiative, new mode of operations … and judging from their lodges—which have gone into disrepair since my old man’s time—not as many resources to cover up their criminal ventures. You can only pull strings to get someone out of jail from outside of jail.”

  “We’ve got security on high alert both around the perimeter of this house and around your mother’s hospital room,” Jake assured his wife.

  Bea said, “I still want to stay with her. Maybe my being there would help.”

  I knew it would help Astrid. I was just afraid of what it would do to Bea. “Take Marshmallow with you,” I said to her.

  Jake looked doubtful. “I don’t think having a cat in the hospital room would be very hygienic—”

  “But Mom loves Marshmallow,” Bea said.

  I said, “She needs the drip removed and a vet’s checkup, too. Aunt Astrid wanted to have him groomed the day of the fire, but she was too tired.”

  “If he’s groomed first, it should be fine,” Blake added. “Besides, what’s a hospital but a vet for people? And you never hear at a vet’s that it’s not hygienic to have people running around and running things.”

  I wouldn’t have put it that way, and maybe Jake was already convinced, but in any case, after that, Jake and Bea left with Marshmallow.

  Blake saw them off with, then turned to ask me what I’d been hiding from him. I knew he would. He’d prepared me and didn’t know it.

  I interrupted, “Have you logged into your account on the Order’s website?”

  He looked at me with surprise. Did nobody in the police department really think of that?

  Rejoining the Brotherhood

  The Wonder Falls police department outsourced its computer savvy to Winnifred Hansen, whose image matched the wholesomeness of her name. She made video tutorials for quilting and knitting that Aunt Astrid loved. I hadn’t known that she’d also coded and designed the websites for every major business in Wonder Falls.

  Blake and I met the middle-aged Mrs. Hansen at her house to tell her our plan. For someone on the cutting edge of technology, she wasn’t much for getting straight to business. She made Blake and me coffee and suggested to me that the Brew-Ha-Ha be made into an Internet café.

  “Forget the small-town charm of Old Wonder Falls,” she told me. “I haven’t seen the sun in days and I’m just fine.”

  Blake faked a cough to tell me, “Careful!”

  Winnifred caught it instantly. “Hey,” she said, “I’m helping your investigation, aren’t I? So, if some whippersnapper with an entrepreneurial spirit and a lousy attitude finds her website under”—the rest was lost in a whirlwind of jargon that I doubt even Bea would have been able to decipher—“and it’s allegedly by me, then what are you going to do?”

  “We’ve got laws against that,” Blake objected.

  I understood the first part, or I thought I did, and ventured, “I understand that Darla Castellan has that effect on people.” Of course, I never did magic to ruin Darla’s life, and hacking might as well be something like magic done by non-witches. I felt a little guilty, egging on Mrs. Hansen for what she was doing—using her knowledge to work against someone else—so I added, “She’d be more occupied by her divorce proceedings, I’ve heard.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Hansen said. “I’ve been divorced a few times. It’s a hassle, I can tell you. I’ll go easy on her from now on, then. Goodness knows there’s been worse than her in town, lately.”

  That prompted us to remind her of the Order, and she led us into the den where her computer was. After that, it was just a matter of getting Blake to sit down and type.

  After he’d logged in, Mrs. Hansen nudged him aside and set to browsing. She observed, “Well, Detective Samberg, if you were afraid of stalkers, I can tell you not to worry. The permissions on your account say ‘sour grapes’ to me!”

  I asked, “What does that mean? Is Blake’s account no good?”

  “Not entirely. I have more access now than I’ve had for hours, but everything important is encrypted. Of course it is. Whether I try to figure which members of this site might be in Wonder Falls or I try to figure who else in Wonder Falls might be on this site…” Mrs. Hansen shrugged. “I only have two hands.”

  Blake sighed, but not with relief. He said, “I know what would make this easier. Excuse me, Mrs. Hansen…”

  Blake went to the chat box and typed, Moved to Wonder Falls. Done some thinking. Time to rejoin the brotherhood.

  “Are you sure about this?” I asked Blake.

  Blake shook his head.

  I took his hand. “Then don’t do it.”

  “But there are innocent people being attacked,” Blake murmured.

  I drew myself up. “You shouldn’t be one of them. I don’t want you to be one of them!”

>   Mrs. Hansen scoffed, reached over, and pressed the “enter” key.

  “Mrs. Hansen!” I shrieked.

  “Oh, spare me. Samberg knew what would make this easier. He was right.”

  Blake stared at the screen in mute horror, so I spoke up. “You’re out of line! Those are very dangerous people!”

  “You think that was out of line? Honey, you haven’t seen anything yet.” Winnifred typed a string of numbers that I didn’t recognize, followed by the words, “Message me.”

  Blake found his voice too late. After Mrs. Hansen put that message through, he said, “That’s my cell phone number.”

  “Consider it a burner.” Mrs. Hansen looked him over and said, sarcastically, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you had such a full address book and active social life.”

  Blake’s phone began to ring. He leaped up and backed away as if a dog were attacking him. He wriggled his phone out of his pocket and threw it in the air.

  I caught it. “Calm down, Blake! I’ll answer it. They’ll think it’s a wrong number and hang up.”

  “No!” Blake said. “They’ll hunt you down for that alone. Give it back to me. I’ll play along with them until we can get them behind bars.”

  I lobbed the phone back at him. He caught it, steeled himself, and then crumpled. “I can’t. I can’t do it.”

  I wrenched the phone from him and actually looked at the screen this time. “Oh, it’s just Jake.” I answered the phone.

  “There’s been another fire,” Jake’s voice said from the other end of the line. “Meet me at 78 Whitewater Street, corner of Black Lake Bank. It’s in Old Wonder Falls.”

  “That’s Nadia LaChance’s place!” I said.

  “Cath?”

  I tossed the phone to Blake, who caught it and said, “Yeah, I’m on the move. Mrs. Hansen?”

  Mrs. Hansen had begun typing furiously. “See yourselves out. Lock the door behind you. I’ll call Chief Talbot if anything comes up, and you’re welcome for the coffee.”

  On the way out, Blake asked me, “Who’s Nadia LaChance?”

  “At the insurance office yesterday morning. You couldn’t have missed her,” I said to him. “She’s the closest Wonder Falls town ever came to having a Goth girl, so she stuck with that fashion all the way through her twenties. The Order’s really scraping the barrel, aren’t they? If they’re targeting anybody who looks the slightest bit like they believe in magic, should we be guarding the kindergarten next?”

  “It must be more than that,” Blake said. “Cath, what aren’t you saying?”

  “She hates my guts. She has ever since…” Well, scratch that theory. “Yesterday, after the fire. Umm… ” What else was there to say? “She has a live-in girlfriend, so this could be a hate crime. She has an artistic Bohemian twin sister.”

  Blake took all that in. “Maybe she and her twin dress up like each other to trick people, and one of them is evil.”

  “Now that’s scraping the barrel!”

  Another Attack

  When Blake and I arrived, I was horrified to catch sight of Treacle on the balcony of the second story of Nadia’s house.

  “I found the smell! What I smelled yesterday!” Treacle thought at me. “She’s still inside!” Treacle sent me an image of the interiors of the house.

  “Treacle, get out of there!” I thought.

  “She fed me treats! She always does! When she didn’t this time, I knew it was because of these other people who came downstairs and went away. They left the door open, so I went upstairs and found her like this. They started this fire. Maybe she saw their faces!”

  Out in front, the fire brigade seemed to be having some problems with the nearest hydrant. Reuben Connors was almost laughing. “Let it burn out! It’ll be fine.”

  Blake only looked in the direction that I was looking; he didn’t know what Treacle had told me. “He’s a smart cat,” Blake said. “He’ll find his own way out. Cath?”

  I glowered at Reuben, looked back at the balcony, steeled myself, and—despite Blake’s protests—ran into the burning building.

  The smoke and ash stung my eyes, and the heat was like walking into an oven. I pulled the front of my shirt over my nose and mouth so that I could breathe and ran through the fire as fast as I could. Actual flame doesn’t burn unless you actually touch it for more than three seconds, but the flames were growing, and I was surprised by how fast I ran out of air because the smoke was so thick. It was like drowning without the water.

  When I got to the bedroom, I was squinting so hard that I had to close my eyes and just feel around for a body. The image that Treacle had sent me had helped, but at that moment, I wondered if I’d gotten myself into real trouble.

  I felt a leg then an arm. No time to check if she’d broken any bones or bled out anywhere. I couldn’t see a thing.

  I hauled the slackened body up. I heard something drop, like a phone—maybe she had called the fire brigade herself. Then I half dragged, half carried Nadia to the balcony. On my back, she shifted. Good. She was still alive.

  I took a huge gasping inhalation of the open air. It wasn’t exactly fresh, because it was still tainted by enough ash and smoke to make me cough.

  The long ladder from the fire truck reached the balcony. Treacle hopped onto the roof, took a running start, and leaped. He landed safely in the sprawling branches of a nearby maple tree and scurried the rest of the way down.

  * * *

  Nadia had regained consciousness by the time we touched the ground again. The rescue left parts of my skin feeling like I’d had awful sunburn, and even though I was glad that I could breathe again, there are fewer smells more foul than singed hair.

  Nadia shook off the firefighters who tried to get her onto the gurney and into the ambulance or at least give her a blanket. She walked towards me. “They say you ran in to save me while the place was on fire,” she said. “I guess you’re not so bad after all.”

  I guess you’re not so bad after all? I gave her a disdainful blink. “Gosh, Nadia, can you hold a grudge or something?” I had to remember that she might have stolen the book.

  “Hey.” Nadia chuckled. “I’m not like your cousin. I’m not made of hugs, you know?”

  “Nadia!” Ruby elbowed her way past Fire Chief Gillian and tottered over to throw her arms around Nadia. “You should have gone shopping with Darla and me! This never would have happened.”

  “I have no regrets,” Nadia said flatly. “She spent the night here to talk about nothing but herself. We’re too old for slumber parties, and a few seconds was always too much Darla for me.”

  So she was saying that she would’ve rather burned? Was it Pick on Darla Castellan Day, and I hadn’t been invited? Then again, it wasn’t as if the entire town had been made aware of the secret organization that was disrupting the peace and that they could and probably should be picking on instead.

  “Nadia’s probably right,” I said. “Nobody actually lives in this part of Old Wonder Falls any more. The whole block could have gone up in flames before someone other than Nadia phoned the fire brigade. Great thing you got this place insured, huh?”

  Ruby grumbled, “Processing takes a while, at least in Sutherland’s hands. But I’m so glad you’re safe!” She hugged Nadia again. The smell of artificial jasmine cut through the smell of burnt hair. She pulled away enough to ask, “You shouldn’t have called if that meant it left you smothered almost to death!”

  Nadia said, “Those jerks broke my cell phone! I wasn’t about to wander around alone looking for a phone booth.”

  I asked her, “Did you see who might have done this, then?”

  “Yeah!” Nadia said. “They weren’t from around here. I clawed this one guy’s stocking off his head, and I didn’t hit my head or anything.”

  “I’ll go and get you a lineup, then.” I edged away and wandered the crowd.

  Treacle found me.

  “That,” I told Treacle, “Was very reckless of you.”

  We�
�re closer to the truth! Treacle objected.

  We’re too far from anything that makes sense! I thought back to the beginning, Ted Lanier had been given a concussion and the Brew-Ha-Ha set on fire in predawn morning. Aunt Astrid was given a concussion in her own home—but no fire—and the attack had happened in the early evening. Nadia LaChance, in her own home, had no concussion, and the attack had taken place at noon. If there was a group of agents from the Order doing this, then maybe they worked in shifts.

  I needed Blake.

  “Blake!” I called out to the crowd, but I couldn’t find him. I picked Treacle up. “Blake! Samberg!”

  The police car had the window rolled down. When the communicator on the dashboard started its static sound, I picked it up.

  It was Jake. “Samberg, please copy!”

  “The fire’s done. It was definitely the Order’s doing, but Nadia’s alive—able and willing to identify them.” I said. “Did you try Blake’s phone? I can’t find him, either.”

  “His cell’s busy. We’re the only people he knows!”

  My heart sank. “We’re not the only people who know his number, though.”

  Human Sacrifice

  The rest of the afternoon was spent getting Nadia’s statement. I left Treacle with Peanut Butter at my place and then went to the hospital. Aunt Astrid still hadn’t woken up. I told Bea about that morning.

  Bea was aghast. “But the Order has the book! The real one! Why bother attacking people who have nothing to do with it?”

  I wondered for a moment. “Well, you did say that a lot of the spells needed a human sacrifice. Can you tell me more about them?”

  “These spells were written in the medieval age. They took into account if the moon was void or what planet ruled the hour of the spell.”

  “That sounds complicated!”

  “If none of the members of the Order were like us, basically born into magic and having to feel out for the right conditions and walk in the other worlds—they might want to do it by the book.” Bea thought about it some more. “They could capture a human sacrifice to have ready, but Nadia wasn’t captured, was she?”