by Tess Lake
“I have no idea what that means,” I said, feeling my mood begin to lift a little.
“It means we might be able to get Aunt Cass back tonight, and then we’ll figure it out together as a family,” Luce said with far more confidence than I felt. Expecting at any moment for the past to intrude on the present, we made our way out of the field back to the car, and soon we were on the ferry, returning to Harlot Bay.
Chapter 18
Let’s get something straight: witches don’t dance naked in the moonlight. I mean, sometimes we do, but it has nothing to do with witchcraft. So instead of the three of us and our mothers performing some solemn ceremony up in the forest behind the Torrent Mansion, imagine us as we were: me, Molly and Luce, sweating and complaining as we carried frozen Aunt Cass up past the front of our end of the mansion and into the forest. Molly was at the front and had her by the shoulders, and Luce and I had a leg each.
“Are her pockets full of rocks? Seriously!” Molly complained.
“I think she’s doing it deliberately,” Luce huffed.
“My arms hurt,” I said.
The moms had gone ahead to set up the spell and instructed us to fetch Aunt Cass. What we really needed was a wheelbarrow, but we didn’t have one. Even a shopping cart would have worked, and with a bit of planning ahead we could’ve borrowed/stolen one to use. Lacking those things, though, we were just forced to carry Aunt Cass up out of the basement (and getting up the stairs was no picnic, believe me), out through the mansion (thankfully there were no guests tonight), along the long gravel path and up into the forest.
Up ahead in the distance, the moms had lit candles in a clearing and were busy setting things up. As we approached, we saw exactly what it was they were setting up.
“Is that a kiddie swimming pool?” Molly asked.
“It does have bright pink seahorses on it,” I said. We trudged up to the clearing. Sitting in the middle was a bright pink kiddie swimming pool covered in pink seahorses, unicorns and flowers. It was about half-full of water with various flower petals floating in it. We stood Aunt Cass up next to it and had a look at what the moms were doing. Mom was whispering to herself while she opened various packages of herbs and sprinkled them into the water. Ro was walking a circle around the outside of the clearing, waving her hands over the candles. Every time she did, the magic around us rippled. A protective enchantment of some kind, I assumed. Aunt Freya was sitting on a stump reading a celebrity magazine.
“Is that part of the spell?” Luce asked her mother.
“My part’s done already. Did you see that Finley Watergate and Bella Bing broke up?” Aunt Freya said.
We sat down on the stump and huddled around, Molly in particular eager for any news of some kind of small misfortune that might occur to Bella Bing. We’d gone to school with her, but after a particular boyfriend incident and some punches and hair pulling, Molly and Bella hadn’t really gotten along.
After a while, Mom finished throwing all the various herbs and flower petals and other things into the kiddie pool, and then she opened up the jar that Hattie had provided. She tipped it upside down over the kiddie pool, but the silvery goop inside was doing its best to hold on to the jar so it didn’t fall in. I swear I saw it developing little tendrils trying to hold on to the glass, but eventually it slipped and landed with a splash in the water. It dissipated into the flower-and-herb mix, and then the entire pool turned a deep green like that of a lush forest. At this, Aunt Freya finally threw the magazine down and stood up.
“Okay, girls, time to warm up,” she said.
“Why do we need to warm up?” Molly asked.
“Because we’re about to be performing some complicated magic and you can’t go into that cold,” Aunt Freya said. She hustled us off the log and then we joined her in literally warming up, waving our arms around, walking up and down on the spot, and then even doing some jumping jacks at the end.
Once we were finished with that, we gathered in front of the moms. High above us, some clouds crossed over the moon, casting shadows over the clearing as they went.
“This is a very complicated spell, but all you need to do is stand exactly where we place you and join with us to cast it, that’s all.”
“Just don’t move,” Aunt Freya said.
“What happens if we move?” Luce asked.
The moms shared a look between them.
“We’ll probably all die,” Aunt Ro said.
“Die? Are you serious? Isn’t there some other way we could wake up Aunt Cass? What if we just do nothing? Maybe she’ll wake up by herself!” Luce said.
“We considered it, but we don’t think she’s going to wake up on her own. And we need her, especially with what has been happening with the old folks around town. There is magic here that’s more than we can handle,” Mom said.
“I want to be really clear—if we move we die, but are we going to be seeing crazy weird things like monsters running at us or anything like that? Because I’m probably gonna move then,” Molly said.
“There will just be a lot of light,” Aunt Ro said.
“Okay, I guess…” Molly said.
The moms instructed us where to stand, three points around the circle surrounding the kiddie pool, then they hoisted Aunt Cass up off the ground and unceremoniously splashed her into the pool. She sank to the bottom like the statue she was. Then the moms took three opposite positions on the other side of the circle. The three of them closed their eyes and held out their hands towards the pool. Molly, Luce and I shared worried glances, but then all three of us tried to calm ourselves as the magic began to stir.
None of the moms spoke nor moved a muscle, but soon we could feel a flow of magic around us, swirling, as though we were in the eye of a hurricane. It increased in speed as magic was pulled in from around us. As it did, we began to sense a connection between ourselves and our mothers and each other. There was danger here, yes, but there was also a calmness under all of it. I felt myself relax as I held out my hands towards the pool and let the magic flow. Molly and Luce did the same, and in the mixture of magic I could detect all of us. My cousins were fresh leaves and grass. The moms were baked goods. My own was chilled stone, that type of cool earth scent when you go down into a cave.
The green liquid in the pool began to move, slowly circling in a spiral as the spinning of the magic pulled at it. I closed my eyes as the magic flowed through me, feeling it draining my energy rapidly. I had a minute more at most before I would be completely exhausted. Thirty seconds later, there was a burst of bright light in front of us. I had my eyes shut, but the glare penetrated even that. I kept my head down and my arms out, the magic flowing, feeling my energy seeping away.
Just when I thought I would topple, the magic came to a sudden stop. It was as abrupt as one car crashing into another. I opened my eyes and looked down into the kiddie pool. The green liquid within had turned solid like Jell-O.
“It’s done, you can move,” Mom said in a tired voice. The three moms staggered away from their places and slumped down on the log. Me, Molly and Luce did the same. I swear I might have gone to sleep right then and there if I’d been able to find a comfortable enough position against the log. There was a minute or so of just our breathing, all of us gasping as though we’d run a race, the quiet sounds of birds in the trees and other nighttime things making their noises. Then there was a roar as a green goop-covered monster lunged out of the kiddie pool, fell over the side, puncturing it as they went, and rolled to a stop at our feet, covered in sticks and leaves and bits of busted bark. Aunt Cass sat up, wiped the goo off her face, and coughed some of it out of her nose.
“Did I kill it? Is the monster gone?” she demanded.
“We don’t know. There was a big explosion on Truer Island, though,” Luce said.
“Have entire families been going missing in the night, nothing found in their homes but a powdery ash?” she asked, pointing a finger at me. Some goop dripped off it and landed on the ground.
“Nothing like that,” I said.
Aunt Cass leaped up off the ground and tried to wipe her hands clean of the goop.
“Thanks for unfreezing me,” Mom said to her, tired but still sarcastic.
“Yeah, well, don’t make a big deal out of it,” Aunt Cass said.
Chapter 19
I wrote in the final zip code, put the package of chili samples into the pile, and then stood up from the dusty floor of the Chili Challenge warehouse.
“And we are done!” I said to myself. And I did mean done in a very literal sense. The Chili Challenge was now out of the chili sauces it needed to continue business.
I could only hope that Aunt Cass woke up soon, this time from sleep. I guess we’d all hoped that once we’d unfrozen her, she would turn up with a bunch of answers: perhaps how to find witches who steal bodies; or how to track down Hilda; or even what we could do about Sunny Days Manor; and also an explanation of what exactly had happened out on Truer Island. But after Aunt Cass had unfrozen, she had taken two steps and then fallen over, asleep before she hit the ground.
There was a slight bit of panic at this, but the moms had calmed us down, explaining that it was a side effect that could happen sometimes. So then we were forced to carry her back down the hill—this time she was about twice as heavy because she was wet with that green goop—and into the mansion and eventually into the shower, Mom, the brave one, volunteering to wash her off before putting her to bed. That’s where Aunt Cass had been for the last three days, sleeping so soundly and so still you would almost think she was dead if not for the almost imperceptible rise and fall of her chest.
The days had gone slowly after a sudden rush where it felt like everything was happening at once. Hilda still hadn’t been found, and as far as we knew no other old people had gone wandering. Molly and Luce’s coffee machine part hadn’t arrived, so they were still whiling away the days with Traveler locked up tight. Even Jack hadn’t managed to dig up anything more about Coldwell, and now he was looking into the Rosenthals, who were the silent partners of Sunny Days Manor.
For my part, I felt like I’d been sprinting to win a race and then I’d come to a sudden stop because in front of me all there was an open field with no direction where I should go. So I spent my time fruitlessly as well, trying to dig into Coldwell and just finding more of the same slight hints that he was bad, but nothing concrete. Trying to think my way through a plan about Sunny Days Manor and those recordings that it would be extremely good to get our hands on. We’d discussed it amongst the family, but the moms had convinced us we shouldn’t go there to break in just yet. They said we needed a plan, and with that we agreed, but between the Big Pie reopening and everything else going on, whatever that plan was hadn’t eventuated yet.
“Hard at work, I see?” Aunt Cass said from behind me. I whirled around, gasping in shock. Aunt Cass was standing there with her arms crossed, wearing a simple white T-shirt with the Chili Challenge logo in the center of it. Underneath it was written “Hot enough for ya, sucker?” She was wearing a pair of jeans and some gigantic black boots that I recognized from when she’d dressed up as Blackbeard during Harlot Bay’s annual pirate festival.
My surprise only froze me for a minute, and then I leaped forward and hugged her. She patted me on the back.
“Okay, okay, yes, I’m here, good,” she said.
I let her go and she turned and walked back into the office. Her laptop was sitting open on the desk, and as she approached, the gasping noise came out of it that showed a new email had arrived.
“I have so many things I need to talk to you about,” I said, following her in. Aunt Cass looked down at the laptop and laughed to herself.
“Oh, that Emilio, always so worried that he’s doing something ‘illegal’ and he is going to go to ‘jail’ for the rest of his life,” Aunt Cass said, doing the sarcastic air quote fingers. She sat down in the chair and typed out a quick response. The laptop let out that witch crackling sound as she sent the email, and she laughed to herself.
“That will never get old,” she said. I sat down in the chair across from her, my head spinning somewhat still. Although it had been me who had found her out on Truer Island, the fact was she’d disappeared somewhere just after Christmas and that was months ago now. Even though she’d been frozen downstairs under the basement, I felt like I hadn’t seen her at all since the middle of winter.
“No, seriously, I have so many things I need to talk to you about, it’s really important,” I said.
“Go, but I’m going to be typing on this while you do,” Aunt Cass said, not bothering to look up.
I paused for a moment, not sure where to begin. The witch who stole bodies? The image of Aunt Cass stealing files? The gigantic explosion out on Truer Island? In my haste, I leaped on the topic that was probably the least important of all.
“You need to pay all your chili suppliers because you’re out of chili now,” I said, waving my hand towards the ever-diminishing piles of boxes.
“On it,” Aunt Cass said, the witch’s cackle laughing away as she sent another email.
“I’ve been trying to hold Chen off, but if he doesn’t get paid soon, something’s gonna happen,” I said.
“Don’t worry about Chen, he’s just a big old teddy bear,” Aunt Cass said. “The chili business is under control, and I can see you’ve got some résumés here for some new staff, so thanks for that. What’s next?”
“Aunt Freya thinks there’s a witch who’s stealing bodies,” I said. Aunt Cass didn’t stop typing the whole time while I went through Wolfram Dole leaping over a high wall and then dying, and the magical marks I’d found on his body. I talked about Arlan leaping off the lighthouse and how I’d saved him, and Hilda apparently buying spell ingredients, getting lost around town and most recently stealing a car, and then her clothing being found on the beach. Aunt Cass didn’t interrupt me the whole time, which was extremely unusual; however, she did occasionally raise an eyebrow.
“So that’s what I have so far, and we don’t really know what to do,” I finished.
The laptop cackled at that moment and Aunt Cass smiled to herself at the joke before looking up at me.
“That is what we call in the business ‘a pickle.’ As in ‘you’ve got yourself in a pickle,’” Aunt Cass said.
“I know what a pickle is,” I retorted.
Aunt Cass continued as though I hadn’t spoken.
“I’ve heard about witches stealing bodies before, but not for a very long time. When witches come across them, they usually band together to hunt them down. I’m going to have to think about it and get back to you,” Aunt Cass said.
“Hunt them down?” I said, suddenly remembering the line I’d read in Juliet Stern’s journal. She’d written that she and Torrent were going hunting.
“Yes, hunt them down, work together as a team, you’ve got my back, I’ve got yours. You know how teams work, right?”
“So delightful to have you back,” I said as sweetly as I could in the face of her sarcasm.
“I saw the photo of me with a party hat on while I was frozen, and I don’t know who did it, but when I find out they’re in trouble,” Aunt Cass said, pointing a warning finger at me.
What to go on to next? I was about to tell Aunt Cass about Sunny Days Manor and Coldwell and see if she had any ideas about getting the video footage, when a stray thought crossed my mind. It was more an image than a thought. Hattie Stern looking down at a white card in her hand and reading from it to remind herself of something. What was that again?
Aunt Cass tapped away on her laptop while I tried to chase the thought that was like a word on the tip of my tongue.
“I think I…” I began.
The thought was ephemeral, weaker than a soap bubble ready to burst apart as soon as I looked directly at it, but then I finally managed to catch the trailing edge. “I mean, Hattie says there’s a spell cast on me,” I said, feeling like I was revealing something deeply embarrassing or possibly stupi
d.
“What!” Aunt Cass yelled. She leaped up and rushed around to my side of the desk. “Someone cast a spell on you?”
It wasn’t directed at me, but I still shrank back in my chair at the fury on her face. I’d seen her angry before, frustrated and annoyed, and then just her general level of snark, but this was something new. She looked like she might murder someone.
“Yes, Hattie saw a glimpse, and then John Smith saw something too. I don’t know, it’s probably nothing,” I said, suddenly thinking I should just get out of there and leave it be.
Before I could stop her, Aunt Cass cast a counter. The magic wrenched around me, hit and washed through harmlessly. Even by herself, she was multiple times stronger than Molly and Luce together. When the spell didn’t hit anything, she crossed her arms and frowned at me.
“Are you sure there’s a spell on you? Because that would have gotten rid of it, and I didn’t feel anything,” she said. She stomped back around to her side of the desk and sat down and returned to clicking away on her laptop.
All I wanted to do now was leave or change the topic to something else, but I could hear a small voice in my mind telling me to keep talking about it, to keep pushing. Remember, there is a spell on you.
Oh, but ask her about what happened out on Truer Island! What monster?
“You said there was a monster out on Truer Island. What happened exactly?” I asked.
“You know, I don’t remember all of it. I was out in the cave with the frogs and suddenly out of nowhere comes this thing, this monster. First it looked like a bear, but there was something wrong with it, and I don’t mean it was hideous with gigantic teeth or blood dripping from its claws. There was a wrongness about it, as though it shouldn’t be there, as though it wasn’t something natural. The frogs fled and then we fought. Sometimes it was some other kind of animal, like a lion, and sometimes it was the shape of a man.”
Aunt Cass’s voice grew dreamy as she tried to remember.