by Amy Boyles
Sera stopped scrolling on her phone and placed it on the table beside the bed. “I agree with Reid. Using tiny dragons is really the craziest of crazies. Grandmas, I think you’ve topped yourselves.”
“If I wasn’t completely desperate,” I said, “I wouldn’t even be considering this. But someone’s fingered me for murder and I’m not guilty. I’m willing to use tiny dragons to help me out.”
Reid threw a pillow at me. “Oh, please. No one’s actually framed you for murder. All they said is that they saw you with the needle.”
I tossed the pillow at her head. “It’s basically the same thing. Seeing me with the needle. They might as well say they watched me kill Lilly. I mean, one thing leads to another here. I’ve been accused of murder.”
“Calm down, tootsie roll,” Milly said. She shuffled over to the bed and sat. “It’s not the same thing, though clearly someone’s trying to place the blame off themselves. Tell you what. We use the tiny dragons to get you off, and you come over and scrub my house from top to bottom.”
I shifted my hands up and down like they were scales and I was the statue of justice. “I don’t understand what one thing has to do with the other. How do murder and cleaning work together here?”
Milly thumbed her nose. She pinpointed her beady little eyes on me. “It doesn’t. I just need to get my house cleaned.”
I shrugged. “Fine. I’ll come over and scrub your house. Reid can help. Can we please get back to the tiny dragons and how they’re going to stop me from being arrested for murder?”
Grandma clapped her hands. She drifted to the center of the room and waited. So did we. For her to say something.
Finally she cleared her throat. “We set the tiny dragons loose in the house. If they see anything suspicious, they come back and tell us.”
“So what about when someone sees the tiny dragons? I’m pretty sure that would get us into some serious trouble with the witch police, not to mention Roman.”
“Come on,” Reid said. “You won’t even accept his hand in marriage. Why do you care if he gets mad at you?”
I gulped down a couple of deep breaths. Her words made my heart quiver. “Don’t you have your own boyfriend to worry about?”
Reid shook her head. “Not anymore. I broke up with Taylor.”
Reid had met Taylor Cobblestone at Castle Witch a while back. Though he was a little scary at times, for the most part I thought he was a decent guy.
A ray of sadness shot into my heart for her. “You did? I’m sorry. Why didn’t you tell me?”
She fingered her curls. “It’s no big deal. We wanted different things out of life. It wasn’t going to work out. It’s okay. I’m fine. I’m only nineteen; I’ve got my whole life ahead of me.”
“As I’ve said,” Sera said.
“Anyway,” Reid said. “We were talking about you, Dylan, and the fact that you haven’t said ‘yes’ to Roman.”
“It’s none of your business whether or not I’ve accepted his proposal.”
Reid brushed some lint off her sleeve. “But you haven’t.” She bent her knees and curled her arms around her legs, hugging them. “You’ve got the man of your dreams sitting here asking you to marry him, and you’re too chicken to even consider it. Of course you won’t break up with him, because he is the man of your dreams, but you also won’t marry him.”
I flared out my arms. “Wait a minute. What does one thing have to do with the other? Maybe it was never my life’s goal to get married. Did you ever stop to think about that?”
Grandma shook her head. “Girls, girls, girls—don’t fight. If Dylan wants to let the best thing that ever happened to her shrivel up and die, that’s her choice.”
A headache ballooned in my brain. “Let’s get back to the tiny dragons. I’m all for letting them loose to see what they can do, but I’m really not interested in getting a visit from the witch police or hanging upside down in a dungeon or even being boiled alive because I’ve let people see my magic.”
“Aha! That’s the ticket,” Milly said. “Because there is another witch here; I would bet my life on it. They know you’re a witch, but we don’t know which witch they are.”
“Huh?” Reid said.
Milly flashed me a devilish grin. “And quite possibly that’s exactly why Lilly was murdered.”
“What makes you say that?” I said. “I mean it, Milly. I love you and all, but don’t you think you’re kind of jumping from A to B to Z?”
Milly shook her head. “No, I’m not, toots. Think about it: you’ve got a witch who wasn’t a very good witch, now she’s dead. You’ve got someone blaming another witch, so that inherently means there’s probably a third witch that nobody knows about, but who knows you.”
“I think it’s really a seventh witch.” Reid smiled brightly. “There’s five of us and then Lilly, who would have been the sixth one, and then the murderer, who is the seventh.”
I shot a look to Sera. She shrugged. “This whole thing makes about as much sense as unleashing tiny dragons in a mansion. You know what? I’m all for it. If we let the dragons hunt for someone doing witchcraft, maybe we’ll get this cleared up faster.”
I snapped my fingers. “That’s it! We unleash the dragons. They find that witch, and then I’m off the hook and we go home.”
“And you marry Roman,” Grandma said.
I ground my molars. “Enough with the me-marrying-Roman remarks, thank you very much. I will figure my life out myself. I don’t need anyone else’s help to do that.”
Reid quirked an eyebrow. “You positive about that? Because I’m pretty sure I can help you figure out your life and I’d be much better at it than you are.”
I raked my fingers through my hair. “Let’s just get our tiny dragon game plan together.”
So that’s what we did. We decided on twelve dragons because that seemed to be enough to keep track of without getting bogged down in tiny dragon world. Since there were five of us and not exactly an even number of dragons, everyone took two except me. I took four.
Sera, Reid and I roamed the halls.
“Okay,” Reid whispered. “What exactly are we supposed to do?”
“Didn’t Grandma tell you?” I said.
She shook her head. Sera shrugged. “Nobody told us anything.”
I let my head drop back on my neck in frustration. “You were supposed to get directions. I went to the bathroom, and the grandmas were supposed to tell you what to do.”
Reid grimaced. “I got really hungry so I couldn’t concentrate. In fact I’m kind of bordering on hangry, so if we could just get the whole tiny dragon thing going, I can go get some food and life will be good.”
I growled. “Fine. I guess we go to all the rooms and shove them under the door? That sounds like a pretty good plan to me.”
Sera nodded. “Sounds perfect. Let’s go.”
So I walked around with four tiny dragons in my palms. They were about the size of my thumb and stared up at me, a questioning expression on each of their faces.
Their ebony skin was rubbery, and red glittering eyes watched me curiously. They yawned and stretched as if they were tired, but the spell that the grandmas were supposed to have put on them—once again while I was in the bathroom—should have made it so that they would do what we needed.
Since we’d been at the mansion for a day, we knew where everyone was staying. So we darted around each of the rooms and pushed the tiny dragons toward the doors. The creatures crawled underneath, shuffling slowly on their little stumpy legs.
I prayed to all that was good and holy in the world that they were not seen by anyone. My sisters and I were at our last door, where Mr. and Mrs. Wood were staying. I shoved the little guy into the space under the door.
The door flung wide.
I jumped back.
“Ah,” cried Reid and Sera.
“Holy crap,” I said.
The first thing I thought was that the checkerboard character had been seen. I grimaced and glan
ced at the floor.
He wasn’t there. The little guy must’ve moved like lightning to have disappeared so quickly. I did a double take, and sure enough, it was gone.
“What are you girls doing here?”
I’d been so wrapped up in the dragon I’d forgotten that someone had actually opened the door. My gaze drifted up, and there stood Claire Wood, the mother of the bride.
Her veil was gone. I gasped at the sight of her.
“Oh, dear Lord,” Reid exclaimed.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought the woman looked horrid.
Little green spots constellated her face. They looked like tiny boogers on her skin.
Claire’s gaze zigged from one side of the hall to the other. “Girls, come in. It’s bad enough you’ve seen me like this. I don’t want anyone else to.”
I was almost afraid of what I was going to be stepping into on the other side of that threshold. But at Sera’s prodding—and by that I mean her pushing me forward and whispering, “Get in there”—I went.
Claire Wood stood in the small suite. She wrung her hands and said, “Sit down, girls.”
“What happened to you, Mrs. Wood?” I said. “Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?”
“Is it contagious?” Reid said.
Sera and I shot her dark looks.
My baby sister shrugged. “What? It’s a legitimate question.”
Claire crossed to a side table and poured herself a glass of water from a carafe. “Would anyone else like a glass? Or after looking at my horrible face, do you need something stronger?”
“Do they make moonshine in these parts?” Reid said.
I elbowed her. “She has a hankering for all things mountain man. Don’t mind her.”
Sera shoved her hair away from her face. “But what happened?”
Claire took a long sip and wiped a dribble of water from the side of the glass. “It was that girl, that Lilly. I had a small brown age spot I wanted to get rid of. Lilly said she had the perfect cream for it. Said she’d given it to her mother to get rid of a sun mark, and it had worked like a charm. I thought, if it can work on one area, what can it do for my entire face?”
Make it look like a giant booger?
Seriously, I am going to hell. And not in a handbasket.
“So you covered your face with the cream?” I said, prodding her.
Claire brought a trembling hand to her mouth. Her lips quivered. “I did. At first it worked great. But then this morning, this is what happened. I was mortified. Can you imagine—it’s the day of my daughter’s wedding, and I can’t show my face in any of the pictures? What sort of wedding memories will that create?”
Reid tucked one hand in the crook of the opposite arm. “So you killed Lilly. Killed her for disfiguring you, didn’t you?”
Sera frowned. “Reid,” she hissed.
Claire gasped. “Of course not. I would never do such a thing. But I can see where you would think that.” Claire grabbed a tissue and dabbed her eyes. She padded over to the mirror above the dresser and proceeded to wax poetic about her youthful beauty.
“The best thing I ever passed on to Rose was my good looks. And now I don’t even have that anymore.”
She hiccupped, and a gurgling cry bubbled in her throat. “The worst thing is, I don’t know if it’ll go away. I could look this way for the rest of my life.”
Claire Wood bawled into the tissue. I crossed to her and placed a hand on each of her shoulders. “It’ll be okay.”
“How do you know?” came her muffled voice through heavy sobs.
“Because Lilly was a horrible witch.”
Claire blinked. “What?”
I stumbled over my words. “I mean, she was a horrible snitch.”
“What’s telling lies got to do with anything?”
Sera jumped in to rescue me. “Snitching is another term for a person making lotions and creams.”
Claire frowned. “Never heard the term.”
“Well, you also trusted your face to a woman who ended up with a needle in her back,” Reid said.
I shot Reid a glance that said, shut it. Which she did. My baby sister even made a motion like she was locking her jaws good and tight with an invisible key.
Too bad I couldn’t actually cement it closed, at least for a little while.
“I knew I never should’ve trusted her,” Claire said, “not after the rumors started.”
I lifted one carefully penciled brow. “What rumors?”
Claire clamped her mouth. “Nothing. Never mind. No rumors. I didn’t hear anything. Girls, I think it’s time you go.”
Crap. Right when the good stuff was about to happen.
“Let us know if you need anything,” I said.
Claire escorted us to the door and closed it quietly behind us. I led my sisters a little ways down the hall.
“What do you think she was going to say?” I said.
Sera shrugged. “I don’t know, but it seemed like it was going to be good.”
“I bet she was having an affair,” Reid said.
I rolled my eyes. “What makes you say that?”
Reid rubbed her hands together devilishly. “Because what else would Claire have heard? What other rumors?”
“Maybe she heard that Lilly danced naked under the full moon?” I said. “That’s possible.”
An arm coiled around my waist. I felt Roman’s mouth brush against my ear. “But not nearly as interesting as this.”
I pulled away from him and frowned. “You know, we’re trying to do some detectiving here.”
He smirked. His green eyes glittered with mischief. “So you don’t want to hear what I’ve got to tell you? Even if it’s the most interesting thing you’ve heard all day.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Spill it.” He handed me a wallet wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag. “What’s this?”
“It’s the groom’s wallet.”
“Where’d you find it?” Sera said.
Roman’s eyes narrowed. “In Lilly's room. Right next to her bed.”
SIX
“What was the groom’s wallet doing in Lilly’s room?” I said.
Roman tucked the wallet into his suit jacket pocket. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
I grinned broadly. “Can I come, too?”
“No.”
I frowned. “Why not? I’m your assistant when it comes to solving murders.”
He cocked his head and chuckled. The sound filled the room and sent a tingling sensation all the way down to my toes. “You’re not my assistant.”
“But you showed us the wallet,” I said.
“Yeah,” Reid added. “I think that means you want us to help you.”
Sera shrugged. “They’ve pretty much got you on that one. You’ll have to take them with you or there’ll be heck to pay.”
Roman sighed. “All right. You can come with me, but if I tell you to leave, you leave.”
I clapped my hands. “Of course. I’m the best assistant ever. Listen, do you want to give me a word, like a safe word, so that you don’t have to say ‘leave’? Maybe instead you can say, ‘It’s getting warm in here.’”
Roman stroked his chin in thought. “Let me think about that. No. I’ll tell you to leave.”
“Aw,” Reid said. “I really wanted a secret safe word, or whatever.”
I curled a hand around her arm. “Come on.”
Right then, Rose Wood bounded around the corner. Her silk wedding dress flapped behind her.
“Sera,” she said. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
Sera shrank back. “Oh? You have?”
Rose clutched my sister’s arm. “Since we can’t have the wedding because of Lilly, we’re still going to serve the food. Can you coordinate with the kitchen?” Rose turned to Roman. “I mean, that’s right, isn’t it? You want us all here for a while so you can investigate.”
Roman nodded. “That’s right.”
Rose s
wayed to the left before catching herself. “Can we at least eat? I haven’t had a bite for two days to make sure I could fit into this gown.”
Two days. Whoa. She had more willpower than me.
Roman shoved his hands in his pockets. “Feel free. My team is getting hungry, too. They may need to eat a little later, if that’s okay.”
Rose nodded. “There’s plenty of food.”
Sera nodded. “Reid, do you want to come with me? I’m sure I could use some help.”
Reid pouted out her bottom lip. “I guess so, but I really wanted to see what Dylan and Roman were going to do.”
Sera dragged Reid away. “Another time.”
Rose followed. I watched Rose as she went. She didn’t look too upset about the wedding having to be rescheduled.
Of course, everyone dealt with grief differently.
“Did she seem upset to you?” I said to Roman.
“Not like I would expect,” he said.
I clutched his sleeve. “Have you questioned her yet? Ruled her out as a suspect?”
Roman unhooked my hand. “Hold on, there. We’re talking to everyone.”
“She saw the needle. May have been the murderer.”
He nodded. “Let me do my job.”
I crossed my arms. “If you insist.”
Roman and I went downstairs to a suite. He knocked. “No talking. No asking any questions. If anyone found out I had you helping me on this—”
“They’d say you were the most awesomest boyfriend ever,” I interrupted.
“That’s not what they would say.”
I pulsed my eyebrows. “You don’t know that. It could be what they said.”
He shook his head. “No. I know that wouldn’t happen.”
The door swung open. The groom, Dave Tingle, stood on the other side. He had sandy brown hair that curled behind his ears, dark eyes, and an easy smile.
“Can we talk to you for a minute?” Roman said.
Dave nodded.
We entered the room. His suite was nice—dark wood, a four-poster bed, big windows to allow bright sunlight to filter in.
“These are some sweet digs,” I said.
Roman shot me a look.
I grimaced. “Sorry.”
That’s right; I wasn’t supposed to talk. Apparently not even a teensy-weensy little bit.