by Elle Adams
“Maybe she doesn’t need to.” I kept walking until I came to the hedge maze at the back of the coven’s garden. “She and her familiar are close enough not to require a potion to communicate. Yet they lost to Vanessa of all people.”
And now I had to ready myself to give her a trophy as if she deserved it.
As if sensing my thoughts, Tansy scampered up my side, climbing onto my shoulder to curl her tail around the back of my neck like a comforting scarf. “I believe you. I just don’t trust a word Aunt Shannon says. Or Vanessa.”
“Neither do I, but do you really trust that chicken either?” I asked. “Her ‘helpless victim’ screaming being an act wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to happen in the last couple of days.”
“I guess not.” Tansy’s tail tickled my ear. “I still wonder if the Henbanes might be up to their old tricks.”
“I don’t see anyone in their garden.” I slowed my pace as we weaved our way through the maze and past the dragon-headed fountain in the centre. After Tessa’s murder had been solved, Mum had removed the spell which prevented me from using the gate from the maze to the woodland path. Since I had zero desire to go back through the coven’s headquarters and face my family, I unlocked the gate and made my way outside into the Wildwood.
The comforting sounds of wildlife and the hum of magic soothed my nerves despite my meandering thoughts. Maybe nobody at all in the contest was innocent, after all, but if none of them had told Ramsey of Anne’s previous involvement with Malcolm, the quickest way to confirm or refute Vanessa’s claims was to get that chicken to confess. Too bad she remained stuck under the spell I’d inadvertently put on her. I held up the sceptre, examining its gleaming edge. “I need to figure out how to undo that immobilising spell.”
I wouldn’t normally have expected to master a powerful magical object right away, but I’d had to dive headfirst into the job of Head Witch without any time to adjust, and it was no wonder I’d screwed a few things up along the way.
“If you’re looking for someone to use for target practise, you’re out of luck,” said Tansy.
“I’m not that mean,” I said. “What’s the best spell to unfreeze that chicken, do you think?”
“Not a heating spell,” she said firmly. “Unless you really fancy barbecued chicken wings.”
“Tansy.” I suppressed a laugh, unable to help myself. “I don’t know what we’ll do if it turns out she is guilty.”
Arresting a chicken for attempted murder wasn’t exactly how I’d expected the contest to end, but it was better than the culprit getting away. Not that she’d be going anywhere as long as she remained frozen. I lifted the sceptre and pointed it at the nearest object—a tree branch—before casting an immobilising spell.
“Did it work?” Tansy scaled the tree and jumped up and down on the branch. “Not sure. It feels pretty sturdy, though.”
“I should have picked something more mobile to practise on.” I turned around and then jumped a foot in the air when I saw Harvey of all people watching me through the trees. “I didn’t see you there.”
“Sorry I startled you.” He walked over to join me. “I don’t think I’ve seen the sceptre up close before.”
“I’m not having much luck with it.” I lowered the sceptre, fighting the urge to unburden myself and tell him everything. He didn’t want me sobbing on him about my failings, and besides, I was supposed to be catching a killer.
“The sceptre chose you,” he said. “Didn’t it? I admit I’m not an expert on the subject.”
“It chose me, but I’m pretty sure it has a mind of its own.” I definitely wasn’t the best witch for the job by anyone’s standards, and I suspected that if it hadn’t been me who’d intercepted Grandma’s killer, it would have chosen Mum instead. “Wish I’d had a trial run first.”
Harvey studied my face. “Are you okay?”
“I turned a chicken into a statue earlier, and now I can’t figure out how to undo it.” So much for not running my mouth off. I sat down on a raised tree root and rested my head on my knees. “Also, I’ve been barred from my own office because an intruder got inside, and apparently the Head Witch isn’t allowed to fight her own battles.”
“An intruder?” His brows rose in alarm. “Are you in danger?”
“The Head Witch is never not in danger.” Upon seeing the genuine concern on his face, I added, “It’s not the intruder who’s bothering me, it’s the fact that I’m supposed to let everyone else deal with the hands-on work while I sit behind the scenes, signing letters when I’m not handing out trophies for inane competitions. I don’t know how Grandma handled it.” If Carmilla was to be believed, she’d taken matters into her own hands more than once, yet nobody seemed inclined to let me do the same without a fuss.
“Is your family still giving you trouble?” he asked. “I’m sure they have a lot to adjust to, but you’re the Head Witch. You outrank them. Technically speaking.”
“He’s right,” said Tansy. “Your mother appointed you an assistant without asking permission first, didn’t she? And she elbowed you out of the investigation when you have every right to be involved.”
“I don’t know what your familiar is saying, but I’m guessing she agrees with me,” Harvey said. “I imagine your mother is adjusting to sharing responsibilities with another person, but that’s no reason to disrespect you.”
“True, but I did screw up with the chicken.” Harvey’s confused expression prompted me to add, “The chicken might be a murder suspect, but I turned her into a statue before we could get her to confess. It’s been a really weird week.”
“Sounds that way,” he said. “Is that why you’re practising with the sceptre?”
“Yeah… I haven’t even had time to learn how to use it properly yet,” I admitted. “It’s like a supercharged wand that glows occasionally. Mum insists it’s more of a ceremonial item than a magical weapon, but I’m starting to wish I’d been born in the days when being Head Witch meant fighting duels.”
“I’m far from an expert in coven history, but isn’t that why they used to have to appoint a new Head Witch so frequently?” he asked. “They kept getting killed or maimed?”
“True.” I might not have remembered everything from my lessons, but I knew that a fair few of the coven’s customs had come about to keep the Head Witch from a premature death. “Grandma was ninety-two, though, so it’s understandable that she’d have wanted to take a back seat.”
“Her familiar spends all her time sleeping.” Tansy scampered around my feet. “Who says either of us has to follow in the last Head Witch’s footsteps?”
Everyone. Or so it felt like, anyway. “I thought I could put up with the meetings… even the paperwork. But I don’t think I can deal with being shut away when someone wants me dead.”
“Someone wants you dead?” Alarm flitted across Harvey’s face. “They’re after you right now?”
“Yes, and Ramsey has all but shoved me out of the investigation,” I said. “Mum keeps lecturing me about not breaking with tradition. Carmilla hinted my grandmother used to be more of a hands-on Head Witch, but that was a long time ago.”
“Isn’t every Head Witch different?” he asked. “Not that I’m advising you to go chasing a potential killer alone, but your family should give you space to decide how you want to run things.”
“I thought I’d started to get through to them, but I guess not.” I rose to my feet. “I should go, anyway. I’m losing track of time in here, and I have to go and announce my cousin as the contest’s winner soon.”
“She won?” he asked.
“Vanessa did, yes,” I said. “You can come to the ceremony if you’d like to see me make a public fool of myself.”
“I’m sure you won’t,” he said. “Focus on what’s important to you, not them. I don’t know if that helps, but it’s what I try to do when I’m having a dispute with my team. Stick to your guns.”
“That does help,” I said. “I hope we do get to have our da
te at some point this century.”
He laughed. “It’s early days, like I said. I’ll see you soon.”
“I’ll let you know when I’m free.”
I watched him walk away down the path, debating for a moment whether it was worth returning to my office. The intruder would be long gone by now, and knowing Ramsey, he’d have cordoned the place off while he searched for any more curses hidden inside.
I found myself wandering farther down the woodland trail, turning the clues over in my mind. The intruder couldn’t have been from among the contenders. As far as I was aware, none of them had been missing from the arena except the ones who were already dead or under questioning by the police. That alone pointed to Aunt Shannon’s involvement, but it didn’t explain why she’d sent the chicken fleeing the garden too. Of course, there was an easy way to find out if she’d tried to get into my office… look for signs of that glowing ink on her hands.
“Should we turn off the lights at the trophy ceremony to see who lights up?” asked Tansy when I mentioned this aloud. “Might work.”
“That’d expose the intruder… if they’re in the room.” Yet there were other clues which remained unexplained. Anne and Malcolm and their scheming, which went back years. The Henbanes and whether Persephone had done worse than cheat…
I came to a halt. Somehow, my steps had brought me to the cottage where Dad lived with his wife, Jessica, and her two werewolf kids. They’d both said I could drop by any time, but that had been days ago, before I’d been Head Witch. I wasn’t yet sure if the same applied now that I had a sceptre in my hand and a target on my back.
Before I could retreat into the woods, the door opened, and Dad came out. “Robin! I wondered what you’d been up to.”
“You haven’t heard?” I approached the cottage, taking in the welcome sight of my ordinary father, whose life was a world away from mine. Short and round, he had a growing bald patch amid his grey hair, but his smile was as infectious as it’d been when I was a kid.
When Jessica came into view behind him, her smile was more forced, less certain. “Oh… it’s you, Head Witch.”
“You can still call me Robin,” I said to the blond werewolf. “Sorry. I was just walking in the woods. I don’t want to intrude.”
“I did say you could drop by anytime,” Dad said. “Didn’t you have some kind of big ceremony this evening?”
“Yeah… the trophy ceremony for the Familiar Contest, but that doesn’t start for a while.”
The sound of delighted squealing came from behind the house.
“The boys are playing in the back garden,” said Jessica.
“Perks of living near the forest,” I said. “Must be fun.”
“Come and look.” Dad beckoned me around the side of the cottage through a patch of trees, from which I could see two fluffy werewolves tumbling around in the grass. Adorable.
“Somehow they make more mess when they’re in the form of wolves,” Jessica said. “Despite being smaller. Pity shifters don’t qualify to enter a contest like that one, because I think they’d win.”
“I bet.” I watched them tumbling over one another, thoughts clinking against each other in my mind. “I’m guessing you heard Vanessa won the contest, Dad?”
He grimaced. “Her? Really?”
“Yeah, and I can’t accuse her of cheating because I was chasing a runaway chicken at the time.”
“Eventful week, then?”
“You might say that.” I’d have to tell him everything later, but judging by the way the sun had begun to sink behind the treetops, I had less than an hour to get ready for the ceremony. “Never a dull moment when you’re Head Witch.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I doubt I could deal with the pressure,” he said. “You’re doing great.”
“It doesn’t feel that way,” I admitted. “I need to decide what kind of Head Witch I’m going to be, I think.”
“Don’t let anyone rush you,” said Dad. “You can figure it out in your own time.”
He had his own share of experience with Mum’s controlling nature, so he knew exactly what I was dealing with. “I’ll try.”
Dad had met Jessica several years after he and Mum had split up, and while the coven and the press had made no secret of their disdain for him marrying a werewolf, he seemed far happier here than he’d been while married to Mum. I could see the appeal of living out of the spotlight, and while that kind of life wasn’t in the cards for me, I was glad his door was open for me to run to when the job of Head Witch grew too overwhelming.”
“You should get to that ceremony of yours,” he said. “See you soon?”
“Sure. I’ll try to drop by later this week.”
I turned my back on the cottage and left via the woodland path, feeling considerably more upbeat despite the looming prospect of handing Vanessa a trophy. Tansy ran around the forest while I walked back, chasing birds to her heart’s content. Then she let out a shriek that had me running to her side.
“Tansy!” I came to a halt where she’d paused, halfway down a tree, sniffing at a small hole at the base of the trunk. “What is it?”
“I nearly trod on it.”
I peered into the hole, and my heart lurched. Several pens lay inside, barely concealed underneath a pile of grass cuttings.
“That’s where the killer hid their weapons.” The hole was small enough that a person would have trouble getting inside… but a small animal wouldn’t. Like the chicken, for instance.
I grabbed my phone. “Let’s tell Ramsey.”
14
Fifteen minutes later, I was at the police station again. I’d all but resigned myself to being late for the trophy ceremony by this point, but with the police searching the forest and the coven in an uproar, it wouldn’t have surprised me if it ended up being postponed anyway.
Ramsey walked out of one of the offices. “Those pens are secured, but the killer might have had more than one hiding place in the forest.”
“I know,” I said. “They were well hidden. I’d never have found them if Tansy hadn’t been in the tree at the time.”
“Tricky.” Tansy looked over my shoulder at Ramsey’s office. “Are Minty and Jarvis still in there?”
“Yes, and I still haven’t managed to undo that spell of yours yet,” Ramsey said. “Are you sure Minty has information?”
“Yes,” I said. “If she didn’t break into my office, then she still worked with Anne when she was helping Malcolm run his cheating scheme. I’m certain she has more to tell us.”
“If Vanessa told the truth.” He approached his office and opened the door, revealing the chicken sitting on the desk in a pile of frozen feathers. “Can you undo the spell?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I should cast a different one instead.” If my immobilising spell had stopped her for hours at a time, then maybe some kind of motion spell would be needed to undo it. “What’s the opposite to an immobilising spell?”
“Didn’t you pay any attention in lessons?”
I frowned at him. “Sorry if I didn’t anticipate having to unfreeze a potential murder suspect who also happens to be a chicken. Would a motion spell do?”
“Yes, it would.” He walked over to the desk. “Are you sure about this?”
“Nope, but that’s a running theme this week.” I nodded to him. “Hold her in case she tries to run.”
Then I pointed the sceptre at her, giving it a wave. A jet of light shot from the end, colliding with the chicken. At once, Ramsey’s grip broke as the chicken leapt into the air, bouncing off the walls like a Ping-Pong ball and upending Ramsey’s carefully arranged desk. Jarvis ran from underneath with a yowl of displeasure, and when I caught him, his claws sank into my wrist.
“Ow!” I lost my grip on the cat, but Ramsey wasn’t having much luck with the chicken either. She continued to zip around the office, and it wasn’t until she crashed headlong into a cabinet that she came to a halt.
“I think it wore off,” Tansy remarke
d from where she’d perched on the windowsill.
“You think?” I rubbed my sore wrist and approached the dazed-looking chicken. “Sorry about that, Minty.”
“You tried to kill me!” shrieked the chicken. “Like Anne!”
“We’re not the ones who killed her.” She might well have accidentally touched the pen herself while trying to kill me, but the only way to find out was to push ahead with a proper interrogation. “I need to ask you some questions. Why were you at the arena?”
“That magpie chased me.” She sobbed. “She wouldn’t leave me alone.”
“Did you talk to the woman too?” I asked. “Her owner?”
“She insulted my witch,” she said. “She accused me of horrible things.”
“Like what?” I asked. “Did she imply that Anne brought those cursed pens to town herself?”
She made a whimpering noise. “Slander.”
“It isn’t true?” Ramsey stepped in behind me. “We need to know who broke into Robin’s office. The break-in occurred around the same time as you were chased out of the building, by my estimate.”
“Not me, not me!” She began flapping her wings in agitation again.
“Did you see anything, then?” I asked. “At the office?”
“No.” The sheer number of feathers she’d left from her panicked flight made it unlikely that I wouldn’t have found any traces of her in my office, but I couldn’t yet rule out the possibility that she’d been involved.
I drew in a breath. “Is it true that Anne worked with Malcolm, helping him cheat by offering free potions to the contenders and placing bets on who she thought would win?”
She gave a startled squawk. “What?”
A hissing noise came from near the door, where Jarvis had found his path out of the office blocked by Tansy.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked.
“Is it true?” I addressed the cat instead. “Did the two of them work together? Anne and Malcolm, rigging the contest and placing bets on the winners?”