When we got to the front hall we found my whole family, every one of them dressed in black. Only Pep was missing. I figured she must still be in the gift shop, oblivious to what was going on in the rest of the house.
“Any luck?” I asked.
My mother shook her head grimly. “There’s not a trace of anything fishy. We still have no idea what happened.”
Lizzie was staring at Grant with a look of excitement I had never seen on her face before, except maybe when she looked at Kip, who was her longstanding crush.
Meg was gazing at him too, and after a moment of puzzlement she glanced at me and asked, “Whose car is that out there?”
“His,” I said flatly.
I hadn’t paid any attention before, but now I took in the fact that he was wearing a uniform, all dark gray with a silver collar and silver cuffs.
The rest of my family wasn’t so slow to notice such details, and my mother gasped when her eyes landed on him. “So it’s like that now, is it?” she said. Her eyes narrowed.
“I’m just here to help,” said Grant.
Cookie mimed a pitchfork.
“Supernatural Protection Force investigators are never just here to help,” she said.
“If I had known a warlock was coming I would have worn a different outfit,” said Meg in frustration. As it was, she was wearing pink pants and a blue and yellow shirt.
“Believe me, I just want what’s best for the haunted house,” he insisted.
“What’s best for the haunted house is to let us solve our problems ourselves,” said my mother.
“I think he could be a lot of help,” said Corey. “We can go on more patrols now.”
“Who’s patrolling?” I demanded.
Corey shrugged. “Me, Cam, Kip, him.”
“What about me?” Lizzie demanded.
“You’re not ready for two and two patrols,” Corey said dismissively.
It was getting late. I kept glancing out the windows.
Lizzie folded her arms over her chest and pouted. “I have a right to go out on patrols too. At least as much right as Cam.”
“Oh, come off it. You just want to go out on patrols because he’s hot,” Lark said. Then she turned to Grant and said, “Don’t get any ideas. I didn’t say that because I like you. I said it because I’m not blind.”
“Understood,” Grant grinned.
“What’s going on here?” Pep asked, coming in from the gift shop with a clipboard in her hand and her glasses on her face. She stopped short when she saw Grant. “Strangers?”
“He’s an investigator here to help us look into the attack on the skeletons,” my mother said, her annoyance dropping from every syllable.
“The more help we can get, right?” Pep asked, addressing my mother. “I take it you didn’t find anything tonight?”
“You went out hunting tonight?” Grant asked sharply, suddenly all business.
“Of course we did. The Skeleton Trio incident just happened, and we wanted to get right on it,” my mother huffed.
“And you didn’t see anything?” Grant asked.
“No, we didn’t see anything,” my mother replied.
There was something about the way Grant was asking questions that was softening her. I was amazed.
“Were there any tracks?” he persisted.
“Not that we saw,” said Corey.
“What about smells?” he asked.
“If there were any smells, the wind took them away before we got there,” said Kip.
“I’d like a full debriefing, if you don’t mind,” Grant said. “We’ll use the library.”
Despite Grant’s take-charge tone, everyone else turned to look at my mother for permission. I thought she’d have taken offense at his assumption of command, but she was already nodding.
So Mom and the four official investigators made their way to the library without so much as a by-your-leave to the rest of us.
Lizzie, still fuming, darted up the stairs without a word.
“She’ll come down tomorrow. She just likes to make a scene,” Meg commented.
“Maybe she’ll stick to her room for a couple of days until she gets over it,” Lark said, combing her fingers through her short black hair. “A girl can dream.”
We heard Lizzie’s door slam, and that made me grin just the tiniest bit.
“I don’t mean to be rude or to interrupt, but the haunted house is due to open in half an hour,” Mirrorz said, entering the foyer.
“Oh, no! We’re out of time!” my mother cried.
The next few minutes were pandemonium as everyone tried to get to their places while simultaneously stuffing down cold sandwiches in place of a real dinner. I glanced at the closed library door several times, wondering what the four of them were talking about. I didn’t like it one iota that I wasn’t allowed to be part of conversation. I knew I’d make as good a hunter as any of them, but instead I was stuck being a ghost liaison.
As I tried to leave, my grandmother grabbed my arm, her knobby fingers and long nails digging into my skin. She was stronger than she looked.
“If you aren’t careful, Lizzie’s going to move in on your territory. Strike while the iron is hot! I tried to help you out by giving him a tour, but you’re going to have to stop being such a sourpuss if you’re going to get anywhere.”
“And why again would I want to get anywhere?” I asked.
“Did you see his jawline? That’s why you should want to get somewhere.”
I sighed deeply. It had already been a very long day.
I stayed up late helping with the haunted house, because Corey, Kip, and Cam were preoccupied with the amazing Grant.
“Just think if we weren’t here,” said Lizzie dreamily as she helped move the old flatware that was used in the haunted dining room.
“Where else would we be?” Lark asked wearily.
Lizzie clearly wanted to talk. She’d been chattering all night, and Lark understood that her cousin talked even longer if no one else said anything.
“We could be official investigators, of course,” said Lizzie. “We could travel the world like His Majesty of Magic!”
Pep snorted. “That’s a myth for silly people like you who aren’t practical,” said Pep.
Lizzie glared at her. “He’s real! He solved the Mystery of the Ghostly Haunting and the Mystery of the Silver Spoon! Everyone knows about him.”
“The silver spoon was probably just lost in the dishwasher and some lowly paper pusher found it and decided to turn it into a story,” said Lark.
“He’s real! He’s the most successful warlock in the world,” said Lizzie.
“That’s because there are only like five of them,” said Pep.
“There are more than that,” Lizzie argued. “Do you think Grant knows him?”
“Knows who?” I asked.
“His Majesty of Magic,” Lizzie cried impatiently.
“Sure he does,” I muttered. “He’s totally real.”
“I’m going to ask Grant if he knows him,” said Lizzie breathlessly.
“You do that,” said Lark.
Pep looked a little less certain. She followed the workings of the wider magical world more than the rest of us did. For the most part people didn’t interact much, because that would draw attention to our existence, but there were instances where it wasn’t avoidable. Anyhow, I was sure Pep knew more about other supernaturals than I did.
Regardless of Pep’s uncertainty, Lizzie was clearly being ridiculous, as usual. Grant would probably laugh at us. It was people like him who did the real work, after all.
Wait, was I complimenting Grant?
Because they were so rare, warlocks were the rock stars of our world. The males in my family had a little bit of magic, but not enough to warrant warlock status. Witches with lots of magic were a lot more common, so the men were forced to find other ways to be useful, like haunt hunting and what amounted to police work.
The best warlock in the world was
known as His Majesty of Magic. Far and wide, all the witching world knew of him. But to me his successes sounded too impressive to be real, so I considered him fictitious. If you were His Majesty of Magic, you weren’t a haunt hunter. Instead you worked for the government as a special investigator.
It didn’t take me long to become more annoyed than ever that my family hadn’t told me about the problems facing the supernaturals even though I’d been in New York.
Now we had a government investigator landing on our doorstep.
Chapter Eleven
I was so excited to see whether Grant would still be there in the morning that I wasn’t even worried about Lady Oakley when I finally went to bed. I was sure something would scare him away from Haunted Bluff, maybe Gus dive bombing him or Steve stepping out from the closet. There was no shame in lasting only twelve hours here. Actually, lasting that long was pretty good.
No, I told myself as I drifted off to sleep, Grant wouldn’t last the night.
In the morning I flung off the covers and raced downstairs for breakfast.
To my complete and utter disbelief, there was Grant sitting amongst the rest of the family as if he’d been there forever. Lizzie, adorned with a sparkly top and an elaborately made-up face, had already arrived at breakfast and claimed her seat next to him.
Cookie whispered to me that Lizzie had been scouting out the breakfast table for twenty minutes waiting for Grant to show up so she could just happen to take her seat next to him.
Lark, who wasn’t a morning person, was staring at the table angrily, while Pep chattered away about the latest sales at the gift shop. They were going great and she was thrilled about it.
Grant’s eyes found mine when I came in, and they stayed there until I looked away. I made a point of sitting as far away from him as possible; just because my mother had warmed to his presence didn’t mean I had to, at least not until they let me go out hunting.
I put bacon, eggs, and a blueberry muffin on my plate. Grant leaned over to look at what I had chosen. “You took the best blueberry muffin,” he said.
Not knowing what the point was, I said, “How do you figure?” Was he accusing me of taking something I shouldn’t, or what?
“It’s the lightest and the fluffiest and it has the most blueberries risen to the top while not bursting and bleeding through the paper,” he explained.
“Cool.” I was baffled.
“Good choice.” Grant returned to reading the paper.
“What are your plans for the day?” my mom asked Grant.
“I need to get going on the investigation. Smashed up skeletons are making everyone nervous. They’re worried that this is going to spread beyond Shimmerfield,” he said. “I’ll begin by examining the crime scene again in daylight to see if I can find anything we missed in the darkness.”
“We should talk to all the skeletons again too,” said Corey thoughtfully.
“Mirrorz offered to help,” said Cam.
“That would be really useful. He was the first supernatural here, so he knows everyone and can get information we can’t,” Corey said.
“What about the rest of you?” Meg asked
I searched my brain for something exciting I could say I was going to do and was coming up empty until I remembered that Uncle Taft had wanted help cleaning all the clocks on the property. There were hundreds.
When I told my mom that I was becoming a clock cleaner, she rolled her eyes. “He’s so concerned with all the clocks,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know what he expects to accomplish.”
“At least he doesn’t give tours to haunt hunters and stir a cauldron like a crazy person,” Lark said.
“Who would do such a thing?” said Cookie.
I was so unspeakably jealous that my little brother and my cousins were getting to help with the investigation that I decided to look into things myself. The only problem was that I’d have to wait until evening, when I could slip away and Grant would already have examined the scene himself. Hopefully there would still be something left to find.
“We gathered up the bone fragments,” Kip told my mom. “Some of them were smashed into fine dust, but we’re going to put all the material in the greenhouse.”
Kip wasn’t talking to me, but I made a mental note of what he’d said. The greenhouse had to go on my list of places to check.
Lark and Pep said they’d help with the clocks, and there was always the gift shop to be tended to, or grounds work if we ran out of clocks.
Eventually the breakfast crowd broke up, and my cousins and I went off to find Uncle Taft. This was easier said than done; we had to scour most of the mansion before we found him.
“Where do you think he is?” Lark complained as we scouted a couple of the upstairs rooms.
“Who knows, this place is too big,” Pep said.
“We could try the roof,” said Lark reluctantly.
Uncle Taft did like the roof. I shuddered.
The section of the roof that anyone could safely stand on was very small. Most of the roof tilted crazily and was old and dangerous.
It was the last place I wanted to look, because I hated heights. But it was the only option left.
And lo and behold, when we got there we found Uncle Taft.
The smell of early fall met my nostrils as we stepped out onto the room. I could see leaves drifting gently across the yard, carried by the wind, and there was an aroma of salt in the air coming off the ocean.
Uncle Taft was standing by the edge of the roof with his hands clasped behind his back, giving the impression of a king surveying his realm.
“Hi, Uncle Taft,” I said.
When he heard my voice he toppled over and sideways and did some sort of ninja move, as if he expected somebody to sneak up on him. “Who goes there?”
“It’s just us,” said Lark, holding up her hands.
When he saw the three of us he softened. “Oh, just you girls.”
“Yep, just us. Nothing else to do but search for you,” said Lark.
“Nothing wrong with that,” he said.
“We came to help you with the clocks,” I explained to him.
“What clocks?” he said.
“All the clocks you wanted to clean around the mansion,” I replied.
“I said that so you three could get out of doing real work. I really don’t want any help,” he winked at us.
We looked down to see that he was in fact putting a clock together at that very moment.
“So we can go?” Lark asked in disbelief.
“Of course. You’ll only draw attention, and I don’t want that. I’m trying to hide,” he explained gruffly. “If you stay you’ll ruin my stakeout.”
“Oh, okay. Hide from what?” Lark asked.
Uncle Taft looked up fearfully. “I can’t tell you.”
“When will you be able to tell us?” Pep asked.
“Probably not until it’s too late,” he said nonchalantly.
“Helpful,” said Lark.
“He already got us out of work, let’s not push our luck,” said Pep.
Carefully we backed away and off the roof. I couldn’t have been more relieved.
“What are we going to do now?” Pep asked. “We could always organize the gift shop files.”
“You have GOT to be kidding me,” said Lark.
“I have an idea,” I said, biting my lower lip. “I don’t think you’ll like it, though.”
“You want to go to the greenhouse?” Lark asked.
“Oh, no. We can’t do that,” Pep said. “We’re not supposed to. It’s part of the official investigation.”
“Why not?” Lark asked; then she turned to me. “Now we have to go.”
“No, we’ll get in a lot of trouble,” insisted Pep. “There’s a government investigator here now. We have to take things seriously.”
“You take everything seriously,” Lark responded.
“I only want to take serious things seriously. This is a serious
thing,” Pep argued.
“We’re going. Are you coming or not?” Lark asked.
“Of course I’m coming. Can’t have you two getting in trouble without me,” Pep shook her head.
“That’s the spirit,” I grinned.
“How are we going to find anything?” Lark asked.
“I’m not sure, but we have to try. We can’t have skeletons being smashed up around here. The rest of them will get angry,” I said, “and that won’t be pretty.”
“How are we going to get into the greenhouse?” I asked.
“I have a sneaking suspicion that the door would be a great idea,” said Lark. “Unless you want to complicate this?”
“I do want to be very sneaky,” said Pep with a grin.
Lark shook her head. “It took you a matter of five seconds to go off the rails.”
“When we find out who smashed the skeletons, you’ll be darned grateful,” Pep insisted.
When we got near the greenhouse we slowed down and stood next to a huge, ancient maple tree, trying to look innocent and casual. The result was that we looked very guilty.
I took a deep breath. It was time to investigate.
“Where do you think the family and Grant are right now?” Lark whispered.
“They were heading for the scene of the crime, which is a lot farther out,” said Pep. “They brought the remains in last night, so it shouldn’t be too hard o find them. I don’t think anyone’s in there right now.”
“Maybe we can pretend we’re watering the plants,” I said.
“We could try, but Cookie is always the one who does that,” she said.
“Cookie is senile,” said Lark.
“I wish,” I said.
We walked up to the greenhouse, still trying to look as nonchalant as possible. Pep was sort of striding and tossing her hair, while Lark was humming a tune and I was trying to think of a good excuse for going into the greenhouse; saying we were there to water the plants wasn’t actually going to work if anyone accosted us. I didn’t come up with anything.
“I think we did that pretty well,” said Lark once we were inside. The large space was empty except for lots of greenery and a gentle mist in the air.
Spooky Business (Jane Garbo Mysteries Book 1) Page 8