Witch Upon a Star (A Midnight Magic Mystery)

by Jennifer Harlow

  “Jesus Christ,” Nathan says as he stares at this happy monstrosity.

  “Come on,” I say, taking his hand.

  We enter the house of horrors through the magically unlocked glass veranda doors. Just stepping inside brings chills, as if he’s imprinted on the walls, watching us. Or that could be the mirrors along the wall with a barre lining the same wall. It takes my overwrought mind a moment but a horrible realization finally breaks through. The bastard recreated my dance studio from our house in Holland. The same grand piano with green padded bench, a stereo with a CD stand filled with classical music, and a gray wingback chair in the corner. He’d sit in that exact chair and watch me, sometimes for hours, or would accompany me on the piano as I glided around the room, always completing my performance with a deep kiss to my audience of one. How could something that made me so joyous then turn my stomach now?

  “Wow,” says Nathan.

  I don’t linger. If I do I’ll give in to my intense desire to throw the boom box against the mirrors, and I probably won’t stop until I’ve earned a thousand years of bad luck. We’re here to search for a Rolodex or any paperwork that may generate a lead: deeds, bills, treasure map, anything to track him down. The living room is far less disturbing, save for an entire wall of VHS movies and the copy of Moby Dick left open on the ottoman. It’s as if he’s just popped out to run errands. There’s nothing here of interest except for the dozen or so pictures of me in frames scattered around. Me at nine working on a puzzle in our flat in Cairo. In Paris at the barre. In Galway as I helped him make dinner. A snapshot of us kissing I took myself when I was sixteen. At least he kept the naked ones hidden.

  The library proves more fruitful. There isn’t a treasure map in his desk, but I do locate a spate of invoices for the renovation and checkbook with the name Jay Asher printed on the checks. He has at least one credit card in that name as well. The phone bill only has numbers for England but I stuff it in my bag with the rest. We’re going to have to call Dr. Black to have them chase the financials and alias.

  We go room-to-room on the first floor, finding nothing else of interest but antiques and a ridiculous amount of photos of me, before venturing up the dark, creaky stairs. The first few bedrooms haven’t been touched in decades. Most of the furniture is covered in white sheets to protect from the dust. Nothing, nothing and more nothing. What we have is good, useful, but there has to be …

  I open the fourth door and gasp.

  Oh, Asher.

  It’s as if a toy store exploded. Trucks, train set, a Matchbox car track, football paraphernalia, video games galore, everything two little boys could dream of to pass the time in their prison cell. I’m stunned into silence, Nathan too, because we check the two closed doors attached to the sitting room without a word: just a bathroom with Mickey Mouse towels and a bedroom filled to the brim with more toys and twin beds, one with “Max” and the other with “Joe” written above them. My stomach is so knotted that stranglehold is the only reason I’m not vomiting all over this abomination. I rush back to the hallway with Nathan a step behind.

  Two more rooms. Just two more. It can’t get much worse, right?

  Nothing behind door number five. But number six … the four poster bed with blush colored canopy, my favorite color, is fit for a king. And if I didn’t want to sleep there, then there was always the matching pink coffin with space for another judging from the empty stand beside that pink monstrosity. “What the hell?” asks Nathan.

  “He was going to smuggle us here in caskets, remember? Mine would just be more a permanent sleeping arrangement.”

  After a pause, Nathan whispers with disbelief, “He was going to turn you.”

  “Probably. What better way to keep me close?”

  “That sadistic fucking …”

  “It doesn’t matter now. Come on, let’s get this over with. Go check the bathroom, I’ll take the closet.”

  It seems the photos and furniture weren’t the only remnants of our nights in Holland he smuggled in during exile. My clothes from over a decade ago take up half the closet with his right beside. The scent of his aftershave and cologne knocks me back a dozen years. One whiff and I’m back in our living room curled up in his lap with my head on his shoulder listening to Puccini and inhaling his aroma like a coke addict. Heaven. Then. Stomach churning now. I shut the wardrobe.

  “Nothing in the bathroom,” says Nathan as he steps out, “except some fancy shampoo and a bidet.”

  “Nor here. I’ll check the dressers, you get the nightstand.”

  Waste of time on my part. Nothing in the dresser save for a few pieces of lingerie with the tags still attached. Ugh.

  “Hey, Annie. Check this out.” Nathan holds up a leather-bound notebook and envelope from the nightstand as he crosses the room toward me. “Found this. The return address is from Garland. Vinnie Spano P.I. Agency.”

  Inside the envelope are surveillance photos. Over a hundred shots, most taken with a telephoto lens, within the space of the week judging from the variety of clothes. Me picking up the boys from the bus stop. Nathan and I out to dinner. Another dozen of me and the boys around town. Me with my friend Audrey chatting on the sidewalk. Nathan at his desk at work. The boys, my mother-in-law, and Nathan when he collected them from her house two weeks ago. Me at the dance studio teaching. Along with the photos is a log of all our activity that week. School pickups, duration of shopping trips with what I purchased, Nathan’s appointments with locations, addresses of the boys’ friends. A damn roadmap of our lives.

  “Jesus wept,” Nathan mutters. “How did we not know?” I put everything back into the envelope, shoving it into my purse. “How did I … how—”

  I touch his cheek. “Hey. If this isn’t my fault, it sure as hell isn’t yours.”

  “I am the man, Annie. I am supposed to protect my family, and I let this … psycho fuck sneak back into our lives, our home. He’s been stalking us for almost two months. I was a goddamn Federal Agent for four years. I should have sensed this. I should have … I should have …” He shakes his head.

  “There is nothing you could have done, Nathan. There was no way to prepare for this. To foresee it. And you’re here now. We’re here now. We will find him, and we will make sure he never comes near us again.”

  “You’re damn straight he ain’t gonna bother us again, because I’m gonna kill him,” spews my husband through gritted teeth. “I swear to God or whoever or whatever is listening, I am going to rip out his black, rotten, corroded heart and make the bastard choke on it.”

  “Hey. Hey,” I say, pulling the man I love into my arms. He hugs me tight. “I’m supposed to be the dark dour one. You’re Mr. Sunshine, remember? Don’t you dare let him take that away from you, okay? Not for a second. We’ll find him.” I kiss his neck. “I prom—”

  The creak of wood in the hallway cuts my sentiment short. Nathan drops his arms and steps away, hands at the ready to fry any oncoming monster. I pull out the silver nitrate Mace, though with the shutters open I doubt there’s a vampire coming toward us. Stuff still stings though. There’s another creak. “Who’s there?” a man shouts from down the hall. “I have a gun!”

  Merde. Nathan glances at me, and I shrug. “Woodbury?” I whisper.

  “Lodi.”

  I nod. “Please don’t shoot,” I call as I slip the Mace back into my coat. “We’re friends of Richard’s! We’re not armed!”

  The barrel of the rifle rounds the corner first and we hold up our hands, palms out in Nathan’s case. Saved our bacon in Lodi with that witch, though probably not needed today. An elderly man with wild gray hair in a brown wool jumper and equally old, short woman literally cowering behind him step into view. “Who are you?”

  “A-Anna. Asher. I’m Anna Asher. You must be Philip and Ellen. Pleased to finally meet you both.”

  Both sets of eyes narrow on my face before growing wide once more. “It is you,” the man says, lowering the shotgun.

  “Who’s he?” Ellen a
sks.

  “My valet.”

  “Are the children here too?” the woman asks.

  My jaw tightens, as does Nathan’s, but I somehow shut my anger away. We need them on our side. “No. Just us. For now. May we please lower our arms?” The man nods, and we all relax as best we can. “We’re sorry for startling you. Richard didn’t phone to tell you that we were coming?”

  “No,” says the woman. “And surely he told you Asher is no longer in residence.”

  “No, he did, but Richard said we could come have a look around anyway,” I lie.

  “He did?” Ellen asks.

  “How else would we find this place if his lordship hadn’t told Miss Asher about it?” Nathan counters.

  “It’s very important we locate Asher before anyone else does,” I say. “There is a literal bounty on his head, and he has many, many enemies. We don’t want him harmed. If there’s anything you can tell us, anything at all. You were the two closest to him all these years.”

  “We weren’t close,” Philip says with a huff. “We got his blood, he told us what to do about the house, and we did it. Nothing more. He weren’t exactly Mr. Friendly.”

  “Until a few months ago he moped about, just reading or watching the telly when he got up at all,” Ellen adds. “At least until a month ago when he told us you and the boys were coming to live here.”

  “You mean when he kidnapped them all,” Nathan snaps.

  “What? We don’t know nothing about no kidnapping,” Philip says. “All he told us was you and the two boys were going to live here, that we needed to fix this place up for you, and to start searching for a governess for the children. Mr. Asher left five days ago saying you and the children were coming back with him, but the night after that Lord Richard phoned and told us to close up the house. That Mr. Asher weren’t allowed on the property no more, and if he did show up, we were to phone his lordship immediately. He hasn’t come back though.”

  “He hasn’t called or sent for his clothes?” I ask.

  “No,” says Ellen.

  “What about his friends? Does he have an address book?” Nathan asks impatiently. “There has to be someone through the years who came to visit or someone he mentioned who he could turn to.” The couple shake their heads no. Nathan steps toward them, his scowl deepening. “Come on! Think!”

  Philip begins to raise the shotgun again, but I grab Nathan, receiving another electrical shock but still holding on. “Stop it,” I warn. He ceases moving but still fumes, breathing heavily in and out through his nose like a bull. In ten years of knowing him, through over fifty cases with the F.R.E.A.K.S. exposed to the worst humanity has to offer, I’ve never seen him this enraged. “I’m so sorry for my friend. This has been most upsetting for us all.”

  “We can’t tell you nothing else,” Philip grumbles, “because we don’t know nothing else. The only people who came here came with his lordship, and Mr. Asher barely spoke to them.”

  “Except for that one girl,” Ellen reminds her husband.

  “A girl? Brown hair and eyes? About sixteen? Pillowy lips?” I prompt.

  “That’s her,” says Ellen. “She just showed up at the gate about six months ago. Mr. Asher had us turn her away. She came back every night for over a fortnight, but he refused to see her. That last night she got so upset, she glamoured Philip to invite her in, then smashed all of the photo frames in the house. She was about to burn the photos in the fireplace when Mr. Asher finally rose from his coffin and literally tossed her out on her bum without a word said.”

  Definitely Christine. “Has she come back since? Did she mention where she’s been living?” I ask.

  “We didn’t exactly have a conversation,” Philip says.

  “She must have mentioned—” Nathan says, taking another looming step.

  “You calling me a liar, sir? I said she didn’t,” Philip snaps, moving his finger to the trigger. “And that’s all we know. Now, get out before I shoot you. You’re trespassing.”

  Merde. Somehow I manage a gracious grin. “Well, thank you for your assistance. If Asher does return, or you think of anything else to help us find him, please call us.” I pull out a piece of paper to scribble down the F.R.E.A.K.S. main number. Philip reluctantly snatches it from me.

  “Thank you. We don’t want to trouble you further. We’ll see ourselves out. Come on, Nathan.” I take his hand and lead him from the room, down the hall, and out the front door into the bright, blue day.

  “They know more than they’re letting on,” Nathan says as we continue up the gravel driveway.

  “Most likely.”

  Nathan stops dead. “Then what the fuck are we doing? We should march back in there and—”

  “And what? Torture the elderly couple? Make an enemy of one of the most powerful vampires on Earth who happens to know our home address?”

  “He helped Asher! He hid that … murdering, rapist bastard for years! He led that psycho right to our doorstep! And those people,” Nathan shouts, pointing at the house, “were gonna stand by while he kidnapped my children and turned my wife into a walking corpse! I don’t just wanna torture them, Annie, I want to fucking kill them! I—”

  I grab my husband by the coat, receiving a few hundred tin-gling volts through me, but still yank him against me into a firm hug. His heart thumps wildly, so fast I worry he’s about to have a heart attack. At first he stands as rigid as granite, but I hold on. After a few seconds, hesitantly he raises his arms, lowers them again then gives in to me, embracing me as desperately as I do him. This man is my strength, my light, and if he loses that, his beautiful sparking essence, we’ll both be adrift forever. “That house …” he says, voice quaking.

  “I know.”

  “He’s insane.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m gonna kill him, Annie. He has to die.”

  I squeeze the love of my life tighter. “I know.”

  We stand in the middle of the driveway, in the monster’s beautiful prison, clutching one another until all his rage, all his hate dissipates, and my Nathan returns to me. Damn you, Asher. Damn you for pushing this wonderful man into your darkness for even a moment. And damn me for the same sin. Never again.

  “I love you,” I whisper. “I love you so much.”

  “Not half as much as I love you,” Nathan whispers back. “I won’t let him touch you again. Never again. I promise.”

  Took the words right out of my mouth.

  MONTE CARLO, MONACO

  JERSEY WAS ALMOST WORTH all the emotional Sturm und Drang. Almost. While waiting for the ferry, we phoned Kansas with the leads from the financials. Dr. Black promised they’d interview the private investigator Asher hired along with tracing the bank account and credit card number we uncovered. The boys were gone, but when we reached our hotel in Monte Carlo several hours later, they deigned to give us five minutes before Agent Lau and Tara took them roller skating again. Max even perked up when he told me about the Big Bird skates he always selects, though he may choose Scrooge McDuck today.

  As I listened to their chipper voices chat about watching Doctor Who episodes with Oliver and playing magic with Martina, my body physically ached for them as if I were going through drug withdrawal. I would have sold my soul in that moment to be able to scoop them into my arms and inhale their scent, that strange mix of shampoo and strawberry fruit rollups they adore. Before this we’ve never spent but one night apart. If they’re missing us or upset in any way, it does not come through over the telephone. Really, thank the universe for that fact and the F.R.E.A.K.S., even Oliver.

  After we hang up, I need to take a few minutes alone in the bathroom. I can barely shut the door before my hands begin to tremble. By the time I flop on the toilet, I can barely draw breath. One conversation with my children and what little vigor I still possess leaves me. I can’t let Nathan see me like this. I can’t. I’ve been using all my willpower to retain my strong veneer for him. In our decade together I have never seen him this grim. Not
at crime scenes, not when his development company faced a lawsuit, not even when his stepfather was diagnosed with melanoma. He’s barely spoken, barely released my hand since we left that house of horrors. He even wanted to follow me into the ladies’ toilet at the train station “just in case.” My husband, who apologizes when someone bumps into him, snapped at the porter when Nathan accidently made him drop a suitcase. I’ve been so focused on him I haven’t allowed myself permission to process my own emotions. They’ve been skating on the fringes of consciousness, but I walled all the fear and horror away until this moment.

  With the faucet running and holding a towel up to my face to mask the sound, I burst into tears, even folding in on myself, hugging my knees. This is madness, absolute utter madness. Asher, oh Asher, what have you become? Was Richard right? Did I do this to you? How could you do this to me? He was going to kill me. Turn me into his undead bride. Use my children to keep me in line. Imprison us all in that mausoleum. Wipe Nathan from our memories after killing his flesh as well. Evil. And sad. So sad.

  Yes, fool that I am, a tiny part of me sobs for him as well. I cannot help it. Locked away from the world he so loved, haunting that house, that prison, with no human contact. His own personal hell with no escape in sight. Perhaps he really did go mad. I always believed I’d be the one who couldn’t live without him, that if we separated I’d wither and die. Lose my mind. I almost did in Rome. If he’s experienced half the misery I did in those two years, I wouldn’t wish that on any soul, even his.

  What am I going to do when I come face-to-face with him? If I do. Alain’s the end of the line. Asher’s smart enough to cease using the Jay Asher alias and bank account tied to his crimes. We didn’t talk much about his finances, but I got the sense he had multiple accounts under multiple names for this very contingency. When I joined the F.R.E.A.K.S. I told them a few I recalled which, at least during my tenure there, never had any activity. So Alain is our last, best hope. Our Hail Mary Pass as Nathan would call it. We’re out of moves. Out of options. Out of hope. I just want to go home. To hug my children, sleep in my own bed, chat with Audrey over coffee, laugh at Urkel with Nathan, teach my ballet classes. Get my damn life back. I worked so hard for it. How dare he try to take it from me?