by Tess Lake
“Look, I can’t get you a security camera because it’s not safe to put it up in the house. I’ll trade you three cans of tuna instead,” I said.
Adams gave a sigh and rolled over again in the dust and started purring once more.
“Deal!” he said. I suddenly realized I probably could’ve gotten away with just a single can of tuna. I heard some footsteps behind me, and for some reason I expected it to be Eve, so I was very surprised when it turned out to be three teenagers: two boys and a girl. The three of them looked so uncertain and nervous. I felt a sudden impulse to rush forward and hug them to assure them it would be okay. But that would be weird, right? You’re not supposed to just walk up to random teenagers and hug them, are you?
“Um… hi, are you Harlow?” the girl asked.
I stood up, feeling my thighs protesting, and brushed some dust off my knees.
“That’s me, what can I help you with?”
There was a moment of pause as the three teenagers looked at each other. The girl was in the front and the two boys behind her, as though using her as a human shield. I saw one of them looking around the warehouse at all the boxes of chili and cowboy hats and baby wipes.
“I’m Tabby and this is James and Evan. We heard there was a business here and thought maybe there was a job, like helping pack stuff?” she asked. She walked over to me and handed me three pieces of paper. I saw they were typed résumés, and because they were from teenagers who had never worked before, they essentially were listing what they had done at school and a short paragraph at the top about how they had wanted to find a job.
I looked at the papers for a moment, trying to think of what to do. Because I didn’t have any access to Aunt Cass’s bank account where the chili money was going, and because the business was possibly shutting down in a few days anyway, I certainly couldn’t agree to hire them. But on the other hand, there were still enough chili sauces to get out quite a few orders, and maybe if I substituted in some other chili sauces, I could manage to stretch out the time before the business closed down.
“Thanks for this. I’ll have a look and I’ll get back to you. We’re kind of closing down at the moment because we’ve run out of stock, so I’m not sure if there are any jobs here,” I explained.
“That’s okay, but if there is we’d love a job,” Tabby said. She said goodbye and left, the two silent boys walking behind her.
I took the three short résumés to the office and put them on the desk. Honestly, if I’d had the money, I would have hired them on the spot out of pure sympathy for what it was like growing up as a teenager in Harlot Bay. Being a seaside town and heavily reliant on the tourist trade, there aren’t many jobs around and many of the teenagers can’t find any work whatsoever. Teenagers were constantly coming by the Big Pie Bakery to hand in their very slim résumés, hoping to get some work. The moms always did their best to help them get work experience, but the fact of it was they couldn’t hire everybody and neither could any other of the businesses in town.
I went back to finish up packing orders when I heard another set of footsteps behind me. I turned around, this time thinking it would be the teenagers coming back, but again I was wrong. It was Carter, and he had his recorder out and in my face yet again.
I actually felt the magic pull around me, my frustration with him and anger grasping at power. I only barely managed to stop myself at the last moment from swiping my hand at him and not only destroying his digital recorder, but probably sending him sprawling too. I managed to hold back at the last moment and then stood there sort of blinking in surprise that I would do such a thing.
“Where is Cassandra Torrent? The business is taking in money but not delivering. What’s happening?” he said.
I took a deep breath and let go of the magic, feeling it seep away. Since we’d been caught in the fire under the house back at Christmastime, there had been something that had happened that I hadn’t spoken about with anyone except for Jack, and even then only briefly. Although I was very much on this journey to tell the truth and be open, I hadn’t told my family about how I’d felt after pulling all the heat out of the fire. For a short while, I hadn’t seen people, but bodies filled with heat that I could snatch the life out of. I’d seen a chorus of slip witches who had stepped into the darkness and gone to evil, calling to me to join them. Behind all of them, I’d seen a single solitary witch, hidden in shadow, and I knew she’d been studying me carefully. Jack had seen her too for just a moment, but for him the memory had grown blurry. He told me he’d seen someone, but then not long after that he’d said he couldn’t really remember what he’d seen at all. I’d grasped a power that had been far stronger than anything I’d ever done before, and if it hadn’t been for Adams sinking his fangs into my calf, I might have slipped over to darkness entirely and possibly killed everyone I knew.
Since that night, that feeling hadn’t returned, but there had been little moments of frustration and anger when the magic around me and within me had seemed all too eager to respond. Not long after that had happened, my car had struggled to start in the freezing cold, and I’d hit my hand on the steering wheel in frustration. The magic inside me had lashed out and exploded a streetlight that was beside my car. I’d been running and boiling empty wells up behind the mansion and sometimes floating rocks around and, yes, it had been helping. But still, it was like I’d unlocked a door, and now that it had been opened, it was just resting ajar, waiting for me to step through it once again.
“Harlow? Are you okay?” Carter said.
I realized I’d been staring, ignoring him as the furious magic inside me faded away. I gave a double blink and focused on him and saw he was watching me with concern, which was an unusual look on his face.
Although I’d been pushing myself to tell the truth, that was strictly a within-family-and-friends maneuver. Carter was going to get the lie that we’d all practiced.
“Aunt Cass is currently on a business trip sourcing new chili sauces for the Chili Challenge. It is true we have had some supply issues, but we’re getting back on track and expect to be caught up shortly,” I said.
“So all those people who’ve paid will be getting their orders?” Carter asked.
“This is a private business, Carter and I don’t need to answer your questions. Also, you’re now trespassing, so please leave,” I said, my voice turning cold.
“I saw you went to Sunny Days Manor. Did you find anything? Do you have any information about Arlan Raymonds leaping from the top of the lighthouse?”
I stared him down, feeling like if I wasn’t going to swipe at him with magic, I might just slap him in the face. There was so much he’d written about our family that had been lies, so many mean things he’d said to me over the years, and the Harlot Bay Times, his newspaper, had descended into the type of trashy gossip that certainly made money but told about fifty lies per page. Then I saw Carter’s expression change and I suddenly understood he wasn’t asking for the paper. He was asking for himself.
“You sent Eve, didn’t you?” I said softly.
Carter immediately switched off his digital recorder and stuffed it in his satchel.
“No idea what you’re talking about,” he said.
“I don’t have a recorder switched on, Carter. You can tell me and I’m not going to write anything about it. You know that the Harlot Bay Reader is virtually dead anyway,” I said.
Carter looked around the boxes behind me, and I could see an internal battle going on. He wanted to tell me, but something was holding him back.
“Did you know that Sylvester Coldwell owns that place? Sunny Days Manor?” he finally said.
“I’ve discovered that, yes,” I said.
“Wherever he is, there’s always something worth investigating,” Carter said. Then he marched off without a word, leaving me in the warehouse with Adams sitting on a box of chili sauces nearby, giving himself a bath.
A long time ago Carter had fallen through a step at his office and broken hi
s arm. Sylvester Coldwell was his landlord, and after Carter had complained, he and the Harlot Bay Times had been evicted. Not only that, but someone had broken in and stolen some computers from him. Carter had had it in for Coldwell ever since, which, given Sylvester Coldwell’s nature, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. During the series of fires all around town, we’d discovered Coldwell had been connected with many of the properties that had burned down, and there had been plenty of rumors that he’d been connected to fires and strong-arm tactics. It was becoming clear to me that Carter had probably sent Eve to see me, and his motivation had been to uncover some wrongdoing at Sunny Days Manor as part of his ongoing efforts to take Coldwell down.
“That sneaky man is going crazy,” Adams commented and washed a paw over his ear.
“Yeah, I think he might be,” I said.
Chapter 8
“You’ll never find my underground secret lair! Mwahahahaha!” imaginary Aunt Cass said.
“Yeah? Well, we’ll see about that,” I said back to my frozen aunt with as much snark as I could muster.
“I’m going to unfreeze any day now, and then you’ll be in trouble,” imaginary Aunt Cass said.
“You talk big for a woman who is currently wearing a party hat.”
I checked my flashlight and got ready to go searching for Aunt Cass’s hidden underground lair. I’d spent the night at home with Jack. My cousins had both stayed over with their respective boyfriends. Although there was some trepidation about it, I’d shown Jack the video of someone who appeared to be Aunt Cass stealing a file from Sheriff Hardy’s office. We’d talked about it for a while, chewing it over, and I’d assured him that it was possible for one person to cast a spell to look like someone else. Either that or it was actually Aunt Cass, who for some reason had returned to being frozen in the basement under the main part of the mansion. Not that we were going into the magical detective business together, but Jack said he’d started digging into Coldwell and Sunny Days Manor and would see if there was anything he could find quietly using some connections he’d made while on the police force.
In the morning while I was saying goodbye to him, it had suddenly occurred to me that if Aunt Cass was frozen, then perhaps the magic spell she’d cast to keep me away from her hidden underground lair was frozen too. I had plenty of time before I had to go to work at the library, so I rushed down to the other end of the mansion, in through the dining room and the kitchen, and down into the basement. The moms were up there cooking breakfast for some guests who were staying over, and oddly enough didn’t pry into what exactly it was I was doing. So now here I was having an argument with Aunt Cass in my mind, preparing to see if I could find that giant room of hers with the map and the pins and the pieces of string.
I turned my flashlight on and opened the door to the undermansion. It was a comforting warm dark that smelled of old dust and aged wood. I walked towards where I thought Aunt Cass’s lair was, but after a few turns I’d clearly lost my way. I found myself in a corridor I swear I’d never seen before. I walked down to a T-intersection, and there to my left with the door hanging open was Aunt Cass’s lab. Inside I could see Bunsen burners, bottles and potion ingredients spread all over the place, all covered with a thin layer of dust. To my right the corridor stretched off into the distance, impossibly long. I took a quick look inside Aunt Cass’s lab, but there was nothing to be found there. It looked like she hadn’t used it in quite some time.
So I took myself out of there and headed down the impossibly long corridor. The wooden floor groaned and creaked as I made my way along, and then my footsteps became muffled when I stepped onto the thick carpet that had been laid sometime in the past. There were a few doors along the corridor and I tried each one. Three of them just opened into bedrooms, sparsely furnished and clearly suffering flood damage. I ignored them and continued on my way until eventually the corridor turned and I found another door. I touched the handle carefully, using all of my senses to detect whether there were any spells in the vicinity, but it was kind of hard to detect them underneath the house. There was old magic here, traces of past generations of Torrents who cast all kinds of spells. Sometimes they were like echoes of a shout from long ago or a small patch of still water just sitting quietly, waiting for the unwary to blunder into it. When I didn’t get electroshocked or turned into a frog or something like that, I twisted the door handle and opened it.
The interior of the room was pitch black as there were no windows and no light source from above. I shined my flashlight around and saw that it was in ruin as well, but at least this time it wasn’t a bedroom. There was a table along one wall and opposite it what looked like a wrecked bookcase. I shined the flashlight down on the floor and saw that the carpet continued on into the room. It was a faded red and had clearly been worn by someone pacing. I hadn’t cast a magical light in a while, and as usual the problem with being a slip witch is you don’t know how powerful or weak you really are. If I was powerful it would be nothing, but if I was weak I would try to cast a light and probably pass out, possibly hitting my head.
Being super cautious, I sat down on the floor before summoning a light to my palm and letting it drift up into the air. It pulled on me quite strongly and I yawned; I must be weaker than I’d thought. Once the light floated up to the ceiling, I stood up and made my way into the room. New details leaped up at me immediately. On the left wall there were shredded remnants of old paper stuck with rusted pins. Some of them even had fine threads of string hanging off them, long ago rotted away. I caught hints of emotion calling to me from the deep past. It was an impression, really, one that I often got when I went to the Harlot Bay library. This was a place of study and contemplation. Someone had come here often to study and think.
I made my way over to the wall with the pins, but everything was so rotted away there was nothing to find. Whatever had been held up on the wall had long ago been dissolved by age. It wasn’t hard to guess what had been there, though. I’d been looking for Aunt Cass’s underground lair, where she had a giant map covered in pins with bits of colored string all over it and newspaper articles stuck to the walls. I’d clearly found something similar. It looked like someone had pinned a map or papers against the wall and also tied bits of string around those pins, but time had claimed it.
I carefully made my way over to the other side of the room, where the wrecked bookcase stood, barely hanging on. It sagged against the wall, the wood split and aged, appearing to have been soaked in water at one point and then dried again and left to crack open. I caught the scent of saltwater, as though there had been a flood all the way from the ocean, which was impossible. Well, I guess impossible for non-witchy people. Who knows, perhaps a witch from the past had cast a spell and brought some of the ocean to her? If there had once been books on the shelf, they were now long gone, little more than piles of dust. It appeared mice had been living down here too, chewing their way through everything. I touched a shred of a book cover and had it crumble to dust under my fingertips. It appeared to me that Aunt Cass’s spell to hide her lair must still be working, but my desire to find something like this had brought me to this place. The Torrent Mansion had been home to generations of Torrent witches who were no doubt as scheming as the current batch were. It was no surprise that there was more than one underground lair.
I made my way slowly around the room again, calling the light closer to me so I could see clearly. I was about to give up and leave when I saw a thin scrap of paper on the ground, curled up near the leg of the table. I knelt down, holding my breath, and gently touched the paper. It didn’t immediately crumble into dust, so, very carefully, I uncurled it. There was faded writing in what had once been black ink but now was little more than a silvery line. It said: “Where are the fathers?”
As soon as I read it, whatever residual magic had been holding it together let go, and the piece of paper crumbled away into dust. I stood up and brushed my hands clean.
“Where are the fathers?” I said aloud. I
t was a question plenty of Torrent witches had asked, as often our men went missing once they could no longer live with the reality of having a witch for a lover or a mother or a partner. Our own fathers had gotten together with our mothers pretty much in the same year, had the three of us, and then all within a very short period of time decided to leave their families. It was a hurt long buried. I let the thought slip out of my mind because I knew if I pursued it, it would only end in the same place. Feeling the slight ache of disappointment that my father had left and that, honestly, no one knew where he’d gone. I was sure he was out there still somewhere in the world, but he’d obviously decided when I was very young that he hadn’t wanted anything else to do with our family, and so he’d left.
I took another look around the room, and as I did, another idea occurred to me like a flash of light in the darkness. Everyone else had a lair, why not me? This one was ruined and wrecked, but surely I could find another room to work out of, or perhaps I could use one of the old cottages up behind the mansion. Generations of Torrent witches had built there, and then generations of Torrent witches had abandoned what they’d built. So long as I steered clear of Aunt Cass’s illegal fireworks storage, I’m sure I could use one of the stone cottages to make a private space for myself. No one else went up there, and most of the time no one bothered opening up any of those old stone cottages, which we were just content to let sit there, gently marking off the years until the end of time.
Lost in thought, I didn’t really notice that the trip back to the basement was much shorter than the one out. I was quickly back with Aunt Cass and Grandma, both of them frozen.
“Told ya you wouldn’t find it,” imaginary Aunt Cass said.
“You’re right, but I found something even better—a great idea.”