by Amy Boyles
I opened my palm. “Hand it over. Let me see.”
Roman turned away and headed back toward the house. “It’s nothing.”
I struggled to catch up to him. My breath came quickly, and a stitch jabbed my side. I really needed to start running or something. This little exercise shouldn’t have affected me that quickly.
“Roman, why are you hiding it from me?”
He raked his muscular fingers through his thick locks of sun-streaked hair. “I’m not hiding anything.”
“Yes, you are.”
Right before we reached the door, I bolted forward and blocked his path. “Honestly. What is it? What’s so horrible that you didn’t want me to see?”
“Dylan, it’s not important.”
I braced myself against the frame, determined not let him get past. I would win this discussion, darn it.
“It is important, or else you would’ve already shown whatever it was to me. Now hand it over.”
Roman shook his head. “You don’t need to see this.”
“Yes, I do. I need to see whatever it is.”
“Not this time.”
A knot twisted in my stomach. What could be that bad that he wouldn’t show me? “Roman, I’m going to start imagining all sorts of horrible things if you don’t hand whatever it is over to me right now. I’m going to imagine things so terrible that I might not ever speak to you again.”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t you think you’re being petty?”
I shook my head. “Not really. It could be anything, and the more my imagination starts to work, the worse it will be. Like, was it something that incriminates you for something? Or was it a second murder weapon?”
“That makes no sense.”
I crossed my arms. “Well, in case you haven’t noticed, I don’t make much sense half the time.”
He scrubbed his fingers over his chin. “I’ve noticed.”
I opened my hand. “So. What was it?”
“You really don’t need to see.”
“But I really want to.”
Roman’s expression darkened. His mouth tightened and his brow furrowed. “Remember that you wanted to see and I didn’t want to show you.”
I flashed him a bright smile. “I’m a big girl. Whatever it is, I can handle it.”
“I hope so,” he said.
He pulled something out from under his arm. It looked like a photo folded in half. Resigned, he limply handed it to me.
I grabbed it, feeling a huge victory for womanhood everywhere. I unfolded the photo. “I really don’t know what the big deal is.”
“You will.”
I glanced down at the picture. My mouth fell. I dropped the slip of paper. It fluttered to the ground and scraped against the concrete walkway.
I blinked and looked again at the face on the photo as the image stared back at me.
Roman curled his arms around me. “You okay?”
I nodded dumbly. “I didn’t expect—”
Roman squeezed me to his chest. “To see a photo of yourself? Neither did I.”
FOURTEEN
My fingers trembled as I pulled a blanket around my shoulders. Seeing that picture had made me start to shiver.
Roman had brought me back to his room and was holding me to his chest.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” he murmured in my ear.
“Yeah,” I said sarcastically, “that’s why you didn’t want to show it to me in the first place. Because the fact that someone placed my picture under some sort of magically inspired lightning bug mating ritual doesn’t mean anything. Especially with all this craziness with the elf or whatever is going on.”
“I was trying to make you feel better.”
“It’s not helping.”
He squeezed me tighter. “Only because you’re not letting it.”
I sighed. “You’re right. After all, I’m sure there’s a completely logical explanation for this.”
“Of course there is,” Roman said.
I curled my fingers tightly into the heavy cotton blanket. “Exactly. Like the person who is attacking me has now turned to hexing my picture. They’ve decided to stop messing around and are pulling out the big guns. So they’ve hexed me, placed my picture under the tree and tomorrow morning I’ll probably wake up dead.”
“Dylan,” Roman warned.
I raised my hands. “You’re right. You’re right. I can’t wake up if I’m already dead. Stupid me.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous. There’s no telling what the picture was for. It doesn’t necessarily mean that someone is hexing you.”
I patted his stone-hard chest. “You’re being very sweet, but I know that’s not the truth. It’s okay. Maybe since we have the picture that stopped whatever spell was cast.”
He nodded. “I’m sure that’s true. Want to stay in here tonight?”
I nodded. “I think that would be best.”
I snuggled against Roman’s chest that night, but I still slept fitfully, tossing and turning. The only ray of hope I had in the entire scheme of this murder investigation was that in the morning one elf would be pecking at the giant pile of rice. Whoever the elf was, they’d be forced to sort the grains.
At least, that’s what I hoped.
I mean, that was kind of crazy sounding, don’t you think? Every elf everywhere has to stop what it’s doing to count grains of rice?
Sounded pretty crazy to me.
Was Titus even right about that? Surely he was.
Of course, I’d also agreed to unleashing tiny dragons throughout the house to find a killer.
Yeah, maybe I needed to keep things in perspective.
I was stiff when I woke up the next morning. Roman had already left the room. Sunlight barely peeked through the windows. I contemplated going to my room and grabbing my sisters, but I decided I couldn’t wait to see what was going on with the rice. Surely a few folks were already up. If this elf was as horrible as I imagined, I was sure she hadn’t sleep all night. She had probably stayed up cooking monkey brains in a cauldron or something.
Yes, I know I have an overactive imagination. It’s what makes me fun to hang around with.
Anyway, I nabbed a quick shower and tossed on my jeans, sneakers and T-shirt from the night before. I wrung my hair and pulled it into a bun.
The mansion was quiet as I padded through the corridors. Surely someone other than a few of us were stirring. I crossed my fingers and made my way to the back of the house.
I reached for the door.
“Good morning,” came a voice from behind me.
I jerked, jolted by the greeting. Judd, the caretaker, was palming a plate piled high with breakfast fixings. I placed a hand to my chest, slowing my thundering heart.
“Sorry,” he said, smiling. “Didn’t mean to scare you. They’ve got breakfast ready in the kitchen. Please help yourself.”
“Thank you,” I said. But the fact that he’d scared me sent an idea zipping through my head. “Judd.”
His eyebrows shot to points. “Yes?”
“This mansion is old, I know, and you’ve lived here awhile, right?”
“Ten years.”
I cracked my knuckles nervously. “This is a weird question, but have you ever experienced anything strange? Heard sounds, felt cold spots—that sort of thing?”
He flashed me a cocky smile. “You asking if the place is haunted?”
I gritted my teeth. I hated to sound stupid, but the weird feeling I’d had in the basement and all the reading Reid was doing had made me wonder. “Well, yeah, I guess I am.”
Judd shook his head. “I’ve never experienced anything out of the ordinary here. This house is old but not haunted.”
“Oh, okay. I was just wondering.”
“No problem,” he said. “Don’t forget about breakfast.”
He walked on, and I turned to the door. Anticipation gurgled in my gut. My intestines cramped, and I rubbed my abdomen, trying to calm myself down.
&n
bsp; This was it—the big moment when I’d know who was trying to blame me for murder. I threw open the back door and scanned the lawn until I saw the huge pile of rice.
I have to admit, it looked completely ridiculous in the brightening morning. Light cascaded through the gold and red turning leaves, catching a yellow glow over the landscape. The rays were bright, even this early, and I was facing east, so it was impossible to see if anyone was out there.
I shielded my eyes and squinted.
Sure enough, I noted a twitch of movement.
I glanced from side to side. No one was out here except me. If I faced off against the elf on my own, I could be in serious trouble. There wouldn’t be anyone to help if I got in a serious bind.
Since when did thinking straight ever get me anywhere?
Decision made, I rushed toward the glistening white hill. Spiderwebs crisscrossed the grains. Beads of dew suspended on the individual strings, making the entire mass appear luminescent.
I huffed out a breath. I was almost there. It was still too bright for me to make out who the person was, but as I neared, I realized there was more than one of them—and they were doing exactly as Titus said. They were picking and counting the rice.
I steeled my stomach and pitched forward. I rounded the hill, putting the sun to my back, and I said, “Ah-ha! I caught you!”
Because really, what else was I going to say? Lay down that grain of rice slowly and carefully?
That did sound good, I had to admit.
But I still opted for “Ah-ha!” as it was quick and efficient.
The bodies stopped. I gasped.
“Grandma,” I said. “What are you doing?”
My grandma Hazel picked a sliver of grain and placed it atop a small pile she had built. “What does it look like, Dylan; I’m counting rice.”
My eyes widened in confusion. “Why? Why are you counting it? That’s what the elf is supposed to do.”
Reid crossed to us. “Seems like a good thing to do.”
“Yes,” Sera said, popping into view. I couldn’t help but shudder at the dreamlike lilt in her voice. “Seems like the right thing to do.”
I rubbed the heels of my palms into my eyes. “This is wrong. All wrong. It was supposed to be the elf that would count, not y’all. What’s going on?”
The three ignored me and returned to separating the rice from the large pile and putting it in the small one.
Milly appeared. She slowly caned across the lawn. “I’ll tell you what’s going on.”
“Please do, because this isn’t the way things are supposed to go at all. Are they in a trance? They won’t stop counting.”
Frustrated, I strode over to Reid and knocked a grain of rice from her hands. “Stop it! Quit right now.”
“Dylan,” she said, clearly annoyed. “Now I have to start all over.”
I threw my hands in the air and turned to Milly. “What’s going on? What did this to them?”
Milly spat on the ground. “The elf cast a spell.”
“But the elf couldn’t have seen it, right? Because if she’d seen it, then she would have been forced to count.”
Milly tightened her hand on the cane. “She saw it all right. Must have some sort of counter-counting spell.”
“You’re saying she’s one step ahead of us, as always,” I said.
“Looks like,” Milly said.
I drummed my fingers on my thighs. “Well, we can figure out how to beat her after you deal with those three. Can you stop them and let’s clean up the rice before the entire house wakes up and freaks out? The Wood family might actually throw us out for real this time.”
“What makes you say that?” Milly said.
I brushed a strand of dark hair from my mouth. “Oh, I don’t know—a mountain of rice, a gaggle of crazy ladies trying to count it. Looks like we just landed straight from the crazy farm.”
Milly snorted. “Well, let’s see what we can do about this, then.”
She raised her hands. A bit of silvery magic floated from her and whirled around Grandma and my sisters.
They stopped where they were and dropped the rice to the ground.
“What am I doing out here?” Reid said.
“You’re counting rice,” I explained.
She shook out her burgundy curls. “Am I an elf?”
I laughed. “Not since last I looked.”
Grandma wrung her hands. “Girls, it appears we’ve been outwitted once again.”
“No kidding,” I said. “We’ve been outwitted from the start of this mess. Let’s get rid of the rice before anyone notices, and go someplace where we can talk privately.”
Grandma flung out her arms, and the rice vanished. I gnawed my bottom lip, hoping no one saw that. Even if they did, they’d just think it was a trick of the morning light or something, probably not magic.
“Let’s go to the room,” I said.
We tromped back through the mansion, wishing good mornings to those we passed on the way to the bedroom. When we got to the grandmothers’ room, Grandma magicked up a bit of breakfast in the form of fried eggs, grits, link sausage and coffee.
“So that we can speak about this in peace,” she said.
I chewed on the tip of a sausage. “What happened this morning?”
Grandma’s head bobbled. “I got up and wanted to see what sort of creature was down there counting the rice. So I rose and went outside. Reid and Sera were already there.”
Sera nodded. “It was strange—as if something was pulling me to go count it.”
“A spell,” I murmured.
“You’re getting good at this witch stuff, toots,” Milly said. “That’s exactly right.”
“The elf didn’t reverse the spell; she singled the three of you out. But how? And why wasn’t I involved?”
We were all silent. I glanced at the faces until I landed on Milly’s. “Where did you spend the night last night?”
“Me? Oh, I spent it on the couch in the main hall.”
“The couch?” I said.
“The bed in here bothers my back. So I slept out there.”
“Grandma, did you sleep in your room?”
She nodded.
“And Reid and Sera, you slept in our room, too?” I said.
They both nodded.
My gaze washed from face to face. I waited for them to key in to what I was insinuating, But they all just stared blankly at me.
Sometimes you just have to beat a dead horse, I suppose.
“These rooms have spells on them,” I said. “I’m guessing Nan slept somewhere else, too, because she isn’t here and she wasn’t at the rice.”
Milly nodded. “She slept on a couch, too.”
Grandma fingered her silver hair. “The rooms are spelled?”
I jabbed a sausage in the air. “I didn’t spend the night here, but Sera and Reid did. First thing you know, they’re outside this morning under the influence of the trap that we set for the elf—who’s nowhere to be seen. And how did the elf know about the tiny dragons? Sure, it’s possible that she or he saw it, but what if either the elf has been—”
I stopped. What if they’ve been listening to us is what I was going to say. But then we’d give our hand away.
I clapped my palms together. A giant bubble enveloped the five of us. It cut us off from the rest of the room, enclosing us in a pink shimmering container.
“I get the feeling this is going to get hot really fast,” Reid whined.
Sera shot her a look. “We’ll only be in here for a moment.”
“Right,” I said. “What if the elf has either been listening to us or cast a spell on the rooms that everything we do to it will backfire?”
Milly stroked her chin. I’m pretty sure I saw a few black hairs peeking out from under a fold in her skin. I was tempted to hand her a pair of tweezers to nab those little suckers.
“That’s a good theory,” she said. “The elf has been listening to us or spelled this room. If it’s been
spelled, it’s an excellent camouflage, because I don’t sense it.”
“Me neither,” Grandma said.
“But would you sense it?” I said. “We’re talking about elf magic, not witch magic. Would it be different?”
A spark ignited in Grandma’s eyes. “There was a time, many years ago when I hunted down a forest of elves. They were hiding in a grove behind a wall of dead trees. I did everything I could to see them, but even though I could clearly see the trees, I couldn’t find them.”
“Did they make you blind to them?” Reid said.
“No, though that is an excellent theory, young Reid.”
“Is that like calling me young Skywalker?” she said. “Are you now going to take me under your wing as your mentee and teach me how to do things with mind control?”
“No,” Grandma said. “We work magic, not mind control.” She lightly tapped a finger to her lips in thought. “It took me more than a day to figure out how to break through the spell the elves had cast. I knew it was a spell. I knew they were behind those trees, but for the life of me, I couldn’t needle out how they were staying hidden while in plain sight.”
“So what did you do?”
Grandma smiled. “One of the most natural substances in all the world, and often used as a method to neutralize spells, is mud. Plain old mud.”
“Mud?” I said, confused. “I thought that would be salt.”
Sera and Reid stared at me.
I shrugged. “What? Sometimes I watch shows on ghosts and the people in those shows always use salt to neutralize things.”
Grandma shook her head. “In this case, because I know elves are creatures of nature, mud was the correct vehicle.”
Vehicle? Whatever floats your boat.
“I conjured a ball of mud to fall from the sky. It splattered to the ground, and with that, the spell that prevented me from seeing the elves was broken. I could then communicate with them. Boy, were they mad, let me tell you. Their little faces turned red, and they spat at me.”
“Okay, well, we’re not trying to get a vengeful elf to spit anything on us,” I said.
“So what do we do with the mud?” Reid said.
“Yeah,” Sera added, “are we supposed to dump a cloud of mud on this place? And how is that supposed to help us?”