Shadow Witch

by Tess Lake

  “It’s him. He’s in charge of it. He’s trying to ruin it,” Mr. Sharp said.

  I’d brought my digital recorder along with me, but I left it in my bag, sensing that if I produced it, Mr. Sharp might panic and bolt.

  “Why did we have to rush all the way out here?”

  “There are cameras everywhere. Oh, on that he spent a lot of money, and so they’re small and secretive. He’s already going to know that you came here, and I’m going to have to make up a lie about why we came down to the back of the garden. But it’s the only place we can talk without him knowing about it,” Mr. Sharp said.

  Although the caffeine and anxiety were buzzing away, I’d spent virtually the entire night awake, so my sluggish brain was slow to put the pieces together.

  “The food quality is dropping? You have to use expired ingredients?” I asked.

  “We promised our residents the best, and that’s all we used to deliver, but since he’s been managing things it’s just getting worse and worse,” Mr. Sharp said.

  “But I don’t understand. Why would Mr. Coldwell try to ruin his own business?”

  Mr. Sharp made a noise that sounded like it was halfway between a snort and hiccup. “He doesn’t own Sunny Days Manor. He only has a small part of it. The Rosenthal family are the silent partners who own the majority. But they trust him to look after it and follow everything he says at their board meetings,” he said.

  Rosenthal? I wondered for a brief moment if it was one of the descendants of the Rosenthals who had owned the orchard where Jake Gottlieb had been caught trespassing. Mr. Sharp looked at his watch.

  “I’ve been gone too long already. I must go right away,” he said. “Please don’t follow me.”

  With that, he scurried out of there, not even bothering to wait for me. I stood in the dark with the lawnmowers quietly rusting beside me, and tried to cudgel my tired brain into putting some facts together. When I’d searched for the details who owned the Sunny Days Manor recently, it had come up with Coldwell, but apparently, that wasn’t the entire story. The Rosenthal family owned the rest, and for some reason, Coldwell was trying to run the place into the ground for his own reasons. Knowing what I did about him and his previous dealings, it was easy to take a guess why: if he could bring it to the brink of ruin, he could probably buy it from them for a song.

  There had been a case in the eighties where he’d wanted to buy two duplexs side-by-side but could only get his hands on one. Allegedly, he’d filled the corridors with bags of garbage at the first one and left refuse outside, attracting rats and producing a horrendous smell that the residents next door complained about, but nothing could be done. Even a lawsuit hadn’t shut him down, and after a year, the owner of the second building had eventually sold to him. Pretty much overnight, all the rubbish and rats at the first place had been cleared out. It was a familiar story of a horrific real estate investor doing bad things to ordinary people in the pursuit of another dollar.

  Although I could guess what Coldwell was doing in apparently running Sunny Days Manor into the ground, there was still a large gap between connecting that and what had been happening to the residents. I was fairly certain that there was no witch involved with Coldwell who had cast a spell on Arlan to get him to jump off the lighthouse. On the other hand, there were more witches in Harlot Bay than I knew about, and not all witches are good. I had a sudden image flash through my mind of Coldwell, slick and oily in his pinstriped suit, with strings tied to his wrists and legs, a witch moving him like a puppet.

  As much as I might have wanted to think about this, it was starting to get cold standing in the garden shed, which had been only marginally warmer than outside. I let myself out and took a breath of the cold crisp air before walking back up the garden path and making my way back to the Sunny Days Manor. The old man I’d seen throwing bread on his lawn was now standing there with his hands on his hips, looking down at it as though he was studying the pattern of the white pieces of bread across the green of his grass. He waved a hand at me as I approached, and I decided to talk to him.

  “Cold day, isn’t it?” I said, using the ultimate let’s-talk-to-an-old-person opener.

  “It sure is. You can feel it in your bones,” he said. I looked down at the scattering of white bread across his lawn. It looked like he’d thrown an entire loaf out there.

  “Going to be some lucky birds later on,” I said.

  “Luckier than us, at least. Birds like stale bread,” he muttered, scowling up at the manor.

  I felt that journalistic tingle, the thrill of finding a story and as you began to pull on the threads, it unraveled and revealed itself to you.

  “Have you noticed the food quality dropping?” I said.

  “It’s just been getting worse and worse,” he said, then he looked up at the manor, back at me, and turned and walked off without another word.

  “Can we talk a minute?” I called out, but he was already gone, the back door of his unit slamming shut. Now to add to the tiredness and caffeine and slight anxiety, I had bewilderment. I looked down at his lawn and the scattering of bread and saw that on some of the pieces were the first greenish dots of mold.

  The residents at Sunny Days had their groceries supplied, and it appeared at least one thing Mr. Sharp had told me was true. I wondered if the woman I’d seen had been throwing the bread out for the birds because it was stale also.

  I looked up at the unit, wondering whether I should go over there and knock on the door, when I suddenly noticed a small black cube up on the eave. Winking from the front of it was a tiny lens pointed directly at me. It was one of the expensive security cameras that Mr. Sharp had mentioned. Feeling suddenly very much under the microscope, I walked out of there and took myself out of the grounds, trying to appear normal, as though I was just leaving having come to meet the caretaker for some reason. But as I went, I saw two more security cameras and felt that somewhere behind them, Coldwell would be watching them at some point, and then surely plotting something.

  It wasn’t until I was three streets away that the sensation of being watched finally left me, and it was only when I turned the air conditioning on in my car because I was suddenly feeling warm that I realized I’d broken out in a sweat despite the coolness of the weather. As I drove back through town, heading in the general direction of my office, I realized there was a story here, and with that realization came another: there was no way I could write it myself. There was no point in me digging into this and then sticking it up in my practically dead online newspaper. If I was going to reveal what was happening at Sunny Days, I would have to partner up with Carter to get the news into a real newspaper.

  The idea itself made me wince: first, that I would have to work with him; and second, for what it really meant about my business. It was done, finished, and I wasn’t going to be reopening it again.

  In my office, it was warm and comforting, that familiar feeling of home and the smell of dust and bits of paper. It was quiet, too—Jonas’s office was empty, so there wasn’t even the faint sound of another person around. I stood at the window, feeling the tiredness from staying up all night slowly begin to win the battle as the caffeine faded away. It was probably good I was getting tired, because then I wasn’t able to fully feel the panic that had been swirling around.

  We’d discovered long ago that Coldwell was not a good man, but no charges had ever been able to stick to him. When houses were being burnt down in Harlot Bay, it turned out it was Hendrick Gresso and his demented twin brother who were doing it. Despite Coldwell being involved somehow, and even apparently buying properties that had burnt down from possible arson, there hadn’t been a crime to pin on him. As I stood there at the window and looked out at the street, I had the very unwelcome sensation that the most dangerous thing in Harlot Bay was not a maybe-witch who cast spells on old people, but perhaps just a real estate developer with a long history of getting what he wanted.

  I yawned and went over and lay down on the sofa in m
y office, my lack of sleep making my arms and legs leaden and pulling my eyelids down. As I closed my eyes and felt sleep tugging at me, parts of the day mixed up and were thrown back as my mind churned over everything. Before I drifted off to sleep on the sofa, I remembered what I’d told Molly and Luce at Traveler about how we should learn more spells, train with more powerful witches so we could protect ourselves. The look of horror on Molly’s face when I’d jokingly suggested that we go to Hattie. As soon as I’d had this thought, the rest of them had fled as though scared of it, and it might have been that I was exhausted and perhaps going a little crazy and definitely getting a bit scared, but it suddenly seemed that going to Hattie for training was a very good idea indeed.

  Chapter 12

  I woke up with John Smith looming over me. I shrieked upright, and he leaped back in fear.

  “Oh my goddess, what are you doing?” I gasped, feeling my heart was about to burst in my chest.

  “You were sleeping,” John said.

  Although I’d been frightened half to death, I was still groggy. It was dark in my office, and John was glowing with a pale blue nimbus of light surrounding him.

  “I’m sorry I scared you. My name is John Smith,” he said and held out his ghostly hand.

  My heart sank. John had always had severe memory problems, but it had never been this bad before. Now he’d forgotten who I was as well? But perhaps there was something good to be made of this bad situation.

  “Who’s Talica Moore?” I blurted out.

  John looked at me, frowning, and then he suddenly smiled. As he did, he transformed, growing younger in an instant. He was suddenly wearing a red striped jacket and straw boater hat, the type of costume you might have if you were to suddenly break out in a harmony with three or four others. He looked to be in his thirties. He reached up to take off his ghostly straw hat, and I saw that encircling his head was the thin ruby lines like a crown. The lines streaked down the side of his head and down under his shirt to where a new wound would be above his heart. I’d seen this once before, long ago, when I’d Slipped and gained the ability to see people’s auras. It occurred to me in that moment that when I’d been with Molly and Luce out at that creepy house on Truer Island and we’d come under the influence of a spell, I’d seen a similar thing around their heads. The ruby crown.

  I sat there waiting for John to speak, hoping he would say anything that I could use to identify him. My blurted question at least had revealed him in a costume, and that had given me a clue. Now I could see if I could find any men who had been in a cappella groups. John smiled down at me. But then the pale blue nimbus around him began to shift. I felt the chill of it as though he was an iceberg, the cold air rushing off him. He turned darker and he began to shiver.

  “The three of them lied to me,” he said through chattering teeth.

  I couldn’t help myself. “Who lied? Where did you die?”

  John looked at me, an expression of pain on his face.

  “What’s that around your head?” he asked.

  Any grogginess that may have been hanging around was suddenly wiped away by the shock of cold that went through me.

  “Is it red? Like a crown made of light?” I asked, but John was no longer looking at me. He was hunching over into himself as though he was in great pain.

  “Why is it so cold?” he asked.

  I leaped up from the sofa. “Where did you die, John? Please tell me!” I said, near frantic.

  That got his attention. John glared at me with a mixed expression of confusion, fear, and anger. The light around him darkened for a moment.

  “I’m not dead!” he shouted. He lunged to grab my wrist, and for a moment I felt the touch of ghostly fingers, ethereal and cold, before John was flung away as though shot out of a cannon, vanishing through the wall. He dropped the ghostly straw boater hat, which faded away into nothingness a moment later.

  “John? Are you okay?” I called out and then felt a little foolish. As far as I knew, there was no way to physically harm a ghost, but I guess there were many ways for them to be emotionally harmed. There was no answer. Wherever John had landed, he wasn’t coming back for the time being. I sat down on the sofa, my heart still thudding. I was taking deep breaths, trying to calm myself, when my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Molly, asking me where I was. A moment later my phone buzzed again as Luce messaged me the same. I looked at the time and saw it was just past seven. I quickly messaged back that I would be there soon, grabbed my things, and locked up my office. On the way home, I was trying to concentrate on driving, but I felt like I’d been hit with another double shot of caffeine.

  I hadn’t made any progress with John for quite a while. Not since the time he’d mentioned Talica Moore when he’d mistaken me for someone else when I was wearing a fifties-style dress. Back then he’d asked the same question about why it was so cold, and then, when he’d seen Jack approaching, had made a rather sour remark about it all happening again before completely forgetting everything. I’d dug into this with my family, with the moms and Aunt Cass, but everything had been a dead end. No one knew who Talica Moore was, nor the reason he would say it was all happening again.

  Since then I’d continued seeing John every week, fruitlessly rummaging around in a past he couldn’t remember.

  I’d been feeling bad since I left the office, but by the time I approached the mansion I was starting to recover. Although it had been a shocking experience, I’d gotten something positive out of it. All I had to do now was put the number one researcher in town on the case. I could ask Ollie to find any traces of any a cappella groups or the like in Harlot Bay and see what he could come up with. Given that John had mistaken me for Talica Moore when I was wearing fifties-style clothing, perhaps there was some connection there. It would be extremely unusual for a ghost to assume a form of clothing he’d never worn before.

  As I pulled up to the mansion, I realized I could set Ollie to work on tracking down the real owners of Sunny Days Manor as well. I had the name Rosenthal, the apparent silent partners to Coldwell. Perhaps if I could find one of them, it would lead me to more clues about what was occurring at the nursing home. At the very least, I could alert them to the fact that Coldwell was possibly running the manor into the ground so he could then make a lowball offer to purchase it from them.

  I was getting into my car when another idea hit me with such force that I froze for a moment, looking out over Harlot Bay and feeling like an idiot that I hadn’t thought of it immediately. Mr. Sharp had said that there were video cameras all over the Sunny Days grounds, and in fact I’d seen some. That meant somewhere there was a security system that had recorded video, and perhaps in there, there would be a clue about what was happening to the residents. Somewhere there was video footage of Arlan leaving on his way to leap off the lighthouse. There would be video footage of Wolfram Dole, perhaps jumping a six-foot-high wall. Could that security footage have captured something supernatural too? Perhaps there were just ordinary crimes going on at the Sunny Days Manor, the low-level sleazy stuff of Coldwell trying to make a profit in the only way he knew how, but I’d definitely detected a magical scent around Arlan. I wonder if there was a video somewhere showing a witch casting a spell on him.

  I went inside to find Molly lounging on the sofa, tapping away on her phone, and Luce sitting at the kitchen table, typing on her laptop. Adams threw himself to the floor and rolled around, purring at my feet.

  “Finally you’re here, I’m starving,” he moaned.

  I glanced at Molly, who briefly shook her head to indicate that she had, in fact, fed him when she got home.

  “I think you’ve had dinner, my friend,” I said, scooping him up off the floor. He snuggled into my neck and made some protesting noise that he hadn’t eaten dinner, but then soon forgot that as his purring took over. I dropped my bag on the floor and slumped into one of the other chairs. Adams started kneading at my top, beginning to dribble.

  “So how was the Sunny Days Manor?�
� Molly asked, not taking her eyes off her phone.

  “You won’t believe what I found,” I said. I told them about Mr. Sharp and his accusations against Coldwell. I told them about the cameras and the old man throwing moldy bread for the birds. By the time I’d finished that part of the story, Luce was wide-eyed.

  “That means there must be video footage somewhere! We need to figure out where it is and get hold of it. Can Jack help?” she asked. Her laptop chimed in front of her, and she looked back at it briefly, frowning for a moment.

  “Sergei says it’ll take three days to get here and he wants five hundred dollars,” she said.

  “What choice do we have?” Molly asked.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “Stefano needs a part replaced. We got some warning lights the other day, so I had to go back to that Russian website to see if I could find anyone who could help us. This guy can priority ship us the part, but he wants a lot of money for it,” Luce said.

  She typed something on the laptop, hit a button and then closed it.

  “It’s done. It’s on its way,” she said.

  Despite the fact that I had a million things to tell my cousins and also wanted to explore this idea of how we could get hold of the video recordings, I wanted to know about what was happening at Traveler as well.

  “So do you guys suddenly have enough money to just buy a part like that?” I asked.

  “Three double-decker buses today,” Molly said.

  “We’re gonna beat those Magic Bean people into the ground with our superior coffee making, beautiful faces, and charming attitudes,” Luce said.

  “That’s amazing news,” I said.

  “Back to this video footage, can Jack help?” Luce repeated.

  “He has a lot of spy cameras,” Adams murmured from somewhere under my neck.

  “I suppose he can. I’ll talk to him and see what he thinks. After all, he was investigating Coldwell in the past, so maybe he can find something now. Oh, Molly, I need you to ask Ollie something for me,” I said. I told her I needed Ollie to look into who the silent partners were who owned Sunny Days Manor, the Rosenthals, and if there was anyone local who I could speak with.