“I’m getting out of the car,” I said, and then made good on my word and got out of the car.
“Whoa, wait, no! Hold on!” Max got out a little more slowly than I did, and I was almost in the front-yard before he caught me and held fast to my shoulders.
“Quickboots, wait, you’ve got to appreciate our position.”
“Our position? You’re the one the cops detained last night. I’m just a girl… knocking on doors.”
“But wait, there’s things I know. And haven’t told you. About this house.”
Of course there were. Fair was fair, but I thought Max was taking this whole ‘you need to win my trust back for abandoning me last night’ thing a little too far. It was provoking me into rash action and I am not a rash girl. For the most part. Very calm and mild mannered. For a witch.
I wasn’t even trying to think of a spell that would knock the door down if we found it locked which we inevitably would. Though I had one in mind. It would use the roots of the oak tree to shake and shimmy the house until the front door burst open. Which might have bad effects on the foundation, but a witch finds a way.
“So, tell me. You’ve got very little time, Max, because I am feeling like I need to get this done. And part of getting this done is going into that house.”
“It’s haunted.”
I watched his face for the grin I was sure was coming, or the sardonic look. But there was nothing. He was very serious about this.
So I grinned in his stead.
“Max. Maxy. Maximilian. I’m a student of the… not dark arts, but the shadowy sort of realms. The things that move between spaces. And I know there’s spells that can communicate with the departed. Pierce the veil, they like to call it. And I know that, despite what you might see on various television programs, there’s no such thing as haunted.”
“What?” Max practically shouted, looking outraged. “You haven’t seen the vast, VAST amount of literature out there about hauntings, poltergeists, astral projections, spirit communications, all that stuff? No ghosts? Oh, man, you witches are crazy.”
“Crazy we might be, but I know what I’m talking about.”
I didn’t say, but I thought, after all, if spirits could easily come around and communicate with the dead, I’m sure Grand-Mere would have given me some guidance about finding that Grimoire of hers. Somewhere.
“I think… you’re not telling the truth. Or you just don’t know about it, and that irks you in some weird witchy way. But your ectophobia shows me you’re not an open-minded person like I thought you were. Very disappointing.”
I shrugged, and stepped a foot into the front-yard. Max let me go, clearly not wanting his “warning touch” to turn into an “illegal restraint.” But the second I got away from him and into that yard, I suddenly felt a longing. A need for some kind of touch. I’ve heard of micro-climates - a backyard being a few degrees colder or a lot windier than a front-yard. This was… different. The single step from the sidewalk into the immaculately clean yard was like stepping from August heat into an air-conditioned building… no, that could be pleasant.
This was like… I hesitate to even think of it. This was like a ghost just stepped through me.
I shivered there, on the front step of the walkway. I took another step in, and somehow it grew even colder. I started to shake, like I was in the freezer section of the store and all the doors were opened. Heck, even the air seemed to grow foggy.
“What is it?” Max said, so I was obviously showing my distress. I shook my head, tried to pass it off as nothing, but my chattering teeth clearly gave me away. He stepped forward. “Oh, man, it is cold. That’s weird, isn’t it? This kind of chill right here, nowhere else.”
I looked at Max’s face to see if he was still in the “rub everything in” mood he’d been in all morning, but I didn’t see any evidence of it. He’d switched over into serious newspaperman mode, and he was observing things and taking notes. I appreciated it, not the least of all because it kept me from having to be on guard with him. Everything goes easier when people aren’t pretending things.
“Yeah, I…” And then I stopped talking, and started listening. Something was talking to me. Something… whispering. Like the wind, I supposed, except the wind sounds wistful and not nasty. It doesn’t have words with syllables that sounded like they were coming from the bowels of the earth, chanted by something angry and malevolent.
I’d heard whispers in places before. In a bar, once, that my Grand-Mere had helped to protect with her magic. Most especially in the kitchen of my own tea shop, which she had lovingly prepared with her abilities, and made available so I could expand it with my own growing strength.
This was… of the same kind, but from a completely different direction. I was hearing the whispers not of a kindly old witch giving back to the community who may not have completely deserved her good graces. These were the angry, awful mutterings of a malcontent who sought a way, any way, to hurt people.
“Ugh,” I said. “There’s something… something here. It’s… talking,” I said. I felt embarrassed, saying these things, but it was what I heard and felt.
“Talking, like the voice of a spirit? Like a ghost might whisper into your ear spectrally?” Max said, with an annoying smugness.
“No, like… Something bad. Something… I’ve got to get out of here.”
As I ran from the frigid front-yard, hunched over like my stomach was about to burst, I could hear the whispering for an instant get louder, and laugh. Then it was gone. The instant my foot hit the sidewalk, all the coldness sapped out of me like I’d entered into a warm bath. Sweat immediately broke out on my forehead. I took a deep breath, stepped back, and nearly leaned on the bad house’s fence. I avoided that, took a couple steps to the right, and practically landed on a short hedge that belonged to a neighbor.
That neighbor just happened to be ducked beneath the hedge at the time, and flipped up like a jack in the box, a pair of green-stained clipper in one hand, held in dark gloves, bright blue eyes flaring up at me like she was about to attack.
I recoiled, and it took a second to realize I was looking right into the eyes of Trish Tarkington.
“Mimi Auclair,” she said, with no particular inflection. She wasn’t surprised or upset to see me, just noting that she had.
“Um… hi. Trish, hello!” I said, suddenly chirping up into sales-lady cheerfulness.
“Are you all right? You look flushed,” she said, maybe letting a little bit of ice chip off her ever-present frostiness.
“I am…”
Before I could make up some explanation for why I was sweating and leaning on her hedge, Max came around the corner, smiling. “Just admit it, it was ghosts.”
Trish stood up straighter when Max appeared, her eyes suddenly relaxing as she smiled. Not a put upon smile that she would occasionally bestow on me, but something much warmer and more genuine.
“Well, Maxy! I haven’t seen you at all since I came back to town,” she said, suddenly shifting her weight so her hip cocked to the side, and her voice taking on all kinds of life I hadn’t heard in it when she was ever with me, or even with her fiancee Randall.
“T-rish,” Max said, the sly grin coming right off his face and a look of surprise taking it over. Whether it was a good surprise or a bad surprise, I couldn’t quite tell. But he wasn’t expecting Trish Tarkington to be here anymore than I was.
And I should have, because that’s why the street name Decatur seemed so familiar to me. It was on Trish’s card, it was where I’d sent Lucy to drive over some scone samples when I couldn’t get away from the shop and Trish couldn’t get out to it. The wild coincidence seemed suddenly less wild, and more just what happened in a small town like Lafay.
“You were just at that old house. Now, you know nobody lives in there. They haven’t the whole time my parents have had this house, and that’s been four years. Now, how come you haven’t looked me up?” she said, waving the clippers in mock menace.
“Well, when I’d heard you were in town, I just… didn’t. You know, I’m really busy with my work and my hobbies, murder investigating and the like, they keep me on the streets. No time for… just no time.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Ice princess Trish Tarkington melting into a normal woman, and Max Ransom was at a loss for words. I wanted popcorn and a program to read, to see if I could catch up to the story so far.
“Mm-hmm. Those are terrible excuses, and… you’re running around with Mimi, going up to abandoned houses. Well, I suppose everyone has to make their own fun in this little town.”
As much fun as I was having watching Max squirm, Trish’s words brought my mind back to the real matter at hand.
“That’s right, we are looking at abandoned houses. Trish, do you know who owns that house next door?” I said, pointing at the house even though we all knew what I was talking about. I had to do something with my hands, expelling the nervous energy I’d felt from my strange experience on that walkway.
“Like I said, abandoned.”
“Except the lawn is kept up, the tree is trimmed. The outside looks freshly painted…” I shook my head, wondering how anybody could actually set foot near there without being completely bowled over with the feeling of menace that had attacked me like a guard dog.
“I suppose a gardener does come by once a week. It’s none of my business, so I don’t put my nose in. Max, you know I’m getting married, right? I still have time to squeeze another person in, just barely. Or two, I suppose, if you’re dating somebody.”
She didn’t as much as glance my way after saying that, because I supposed the notion that Max might like me couldn’t breach anywhere in her mind. Trish was not wealthy, and the neighborhood we were in right now was as good as most in Lafay, but it certainly wasn’t where the local rich people made their homes. But she still had that knack down of placing a big line between people and “help”, and I was decidedly help.
I didn’t really mind, though, because I had more to think about now, so while she was talking and Max was hemming and hawing, I took a look at her yard. If her clippers and gloves weren’t for show (and who would she be trying to show off to, the five cars that might drive down the relatively remote street in an hour?) then she tended the hedges and garden that lined up against the fence. And she did an immaculate job. Bushes and bushes of roses of a dozen varieties, all blooming magnificently, formed scrubby lines that led into sparser bed of tulips, just as varied. Red, gold, peach, pink, blue, and everything in-between.
Then I realized, with an admiring smile, “Randall’s Boutonnieres. You grow them all? Yourself?” I said. Trish was in the middle of saying something flirty to Max, so it took her a little time before she realized I had spoken.
“What? Oh, yes, of course. He’s my special man and when I need him to look special, I’m not going to go to some awful store that’s got three-week old buds wilting in a too-cold refrigerator.” And again, she smiled, thawing just a little bit more.
“You could practically get your wedding flowers from your own garden,” I said, genuinely impressed. I had my own little herbarium growing in a shed of Sibyl’s backyard. That was the source of our last big fight, and from the vehemence somehow I think her husband Gary got the idea I was making something illegal out there.
It caused many a cold and unpleasant dinner around the old table. But I was learning a little bit of the difficulty and dedication it took to really get a plant to grow just the way you want it to. I was suddenly impressed with Trish, and couldn’t help but be a little more sympathetic to her.
She clearly wasn’t as in to reevaluating me, as my compliment whipped right past her like it was a far-off neighbor’s dog barking.
“Well,” she said, “Don’t let me stop whatever you’re doing.”
“We were just going,” Max said, and he grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me away.
I was surprised by his vehemence, and it wasn’t until we’d reached the car and Trish had stepped into her house that I had come up with some irritated words.
“What in the world do you mean, we’re going? I have to go into that house. It’s infested with something, and I think it’s what attacked me last night. I think there’s a demon, right there, living in the middle of Lafay.”
“Hmm,” Max said, showing all the interest as if I’d just said that my neighbor had to borrow a leaf blower. This was big news! Demons! Horror beyond compare! Scary stuff.
“You don’t care?”
“I… look, I don’t want to talk to Trish Tarkington.”
“Uh, oh, now you have to tell me all about it. I need the Trish Dish.”
Max looked at me for a long time, opened his mouth, then his phone beeped. He read a text, nodded at it, and sent a reply.
“No, this is not getting you out of a long, probing session of girl talk,” I said. Then I poked him, to let him know it was all in fun, but not really. Talk.
“Okay, there’s more important things. It’s just… we were pretty serious, or so I thought. For a while. I had come to town, she wasn’t going to college yet and was the prettiest thing around and I’m… never mind. All of a sudden, she dumped me with an e-mail and ran off to some place up north, saying she had a ‘calling’.”
“Oh, wow. That’s yucky. She’s yucky,” I said.
“Never-mind. It’s not important.”
“What’s more important than your heart?”
“Investigating a murder, doing what I can do, that’s more important. And that sometimes means getting my spies to follow people and check up on them.”
I mentally ran down our list of potentials, and Sibyl’s name flashed out at me at once. Max had somebody following my sister?
“You know Mr. Handsome?” he said, catching me totally off guard.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Well, I’ve been keeping tabs on him, and I got a text while talking to, um, her,” he said, pointing at the house, apparently unable to say Trish’s name. Cute.
“Yeah?”
“Well, he’s been spotted. Five minutes ago, sitting in the Jiggs’ cafe, chatting and laughing with the sisters.”
Chapter 13
I was upset about so many things at once I was, again, struck completely dumb. The second I could think of a single sentence to say to Max, my thoughts latched on some other outrage and said, “And here’s another thing!”
I was mad at the Jiggs for being bad and probably causing all the horrible things that ever happened around my life. I was mad at Hank for going and dealing with them, and not just giving them the cold shoulder, and the high-hand, and all the other things that would let them know people as handsome… I mean good, as good as he is don’t deal with people like them. I was mad at Sibyl because she was the first one I thought of when Max mentioned he had somebody followed, and it wasn’t right that I should suspect my sister of anything (and of course, it was her fault that I did.)
But not one of those people was sitting in the car with me, driving along and obviously getting more and more relaxed as we headed to what would have to be an ugly confrontation. Max was whistling a little tune! Like a happy little dwarf, going to his newspaper mine to dig out some more human misery to sell.
“Stop whistling,” I said, pursing my lips and looking at him with a very cold expression.
I am apparently not good at this, because Max laughed when he looked over at it.
“Aw, Mimi, what’s wrong? Sad that Mr. Handsome is playing both sides of the magical fence?”
“I’m mad that some snoop thinks everything that goes on in town is his business, so he has spies all over the place. I’m mad that… that he knew yet another important thing about something we’re supposed to be partners in investigating, a murder no less, and he didn’t share it with me. How did you even know about Hank?” I said, my voice getting heated.
That did not phase Max, who was unwisely still chuckling about his cleverness.
“I know about Hank lik
e I know about a lot of other things. Because he was seen outside the hotel walking into the alleyway with a pretty girl, and then he didn’t come out. Yeah, Mimi, when you disappeared for a couple of hours and couldn’t be found, I did what I could to find you and when I heard that this guy had apparently taken you I pulled out every stop I have and called in some favors I needed to get him on the radar.”
I was surprised that Max’s own voice had become somewhat heated. Somewhere in the middle, this had quit being a game for him. He was still smiling, but it didn’t have the full force of smug self-satisfaction. It was thinner and grimmer.
“I was worried about you, and I don’t like strangers coming to my town and bothering my citizens. After all, everything that goes on in here is my business.”
I wanted to bite back at him, because I was truly still annoyed. But I was touched, too, and I put my hand on his shoulder and gave it a little squeeze.
“But I’m fine, and I wouldn’t have been if it weren’t for Hank.”
“Could be. But we don’t know why yet. And we need to find out. If he’s conferring with those women you are so convinced are baddies, maybe he has more motives than just having a very sensible crush on the local tea shop proprietor.”
I giggled, and turned around in the car, looking out at the street. Maybe Max was just manipulating me to get himself off of the hot-seat, but it worked. I couldn’t direct any more anger at him. Truth was, that anger was just turning into confusion because I didn’t know what to think. About anything, or anyone, not at the moment.
“Okay, you need to tell me about these spies of yours,” I said.
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Partners.”
“Sidekick. Disappears, needs to be rescued by the hero.”
“One of these days…” What I was going to do one of these days, I’d never have a chance to say because we were already there. It’s not a big town, getting from one place to another hardly ever took more than 15 minutes, and we were about half that away from Shady Tree, the pleasant (if, I sniff, a little ominous) name for Auclair Tea’s main competition. I could practically see my front door from theirs, and it was not a bit of friendly rivalry.
Never Date A Warlock (Sister Witchcraft Book 4) Page 10