“Very well. You don’t want to tell me, that’s all fine and good. But listen to me when I tell you to stop poking into this case. You didn’t listen to me the other night when I told you to stay put, but you should now. Just stop. We solved the last case and we will solve this one.”
Before I could say a word in response, he turned on his heel and marched away.
After that, Lark, Pep, and I left in short order, Horticulture’s eyes sparking with amusement as he watched us go. He knew we’d been caught doing something we shouldn’t have done, even though he wasn’t the sort who was going to stand on ceremony himself.
In contrast, Grant was all business. He made sure the door was firmly closed behind us, and that’s the last we knew of that encounter.
Now I was more determined than ever to defy Grant.
We headed for the kitchen to wait for Grant to come and be angry at us some more. We got bored with that almost immediately.
“We never really examined the lawn around the storm doors,” I said to Lark and Pep.
“That’s a good point. Let’s get going. No point just sitting around,” said Lark.
She slid off the stool and headed for the back door. Rose was beside her in a moment, coming out of some hidey-hole. “You can’t leave me here alone. Audrey will find me and that’ll be the last anyone ever sees of me,” said Rose.
“You can definitely help. Just nose around on the ground,” I told her.
Rose seemed to like that idea and trotted along next to me quite happily.
The day was blustery and overcast. Waves crashed against the rocks, white caps topping the gray water.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Pep asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I think I’ll know when we find it.”
The four of us spread out, Rose keeping her nose to the ground. The only trouble was that she kept getting distracted by other smells. “There was a mouse here,” she said gleefully at one point. “I’ll be sure to come back out here tonight.”
“For such a pretty cat, you’re a bloodthirsty savage,” said Lark.
“Thank you,” said Rose.
As we continued to search, I found myself glancing back toward the kitchen, wondering when Grant would come looking for us.
“I think I found something,” said Pep. She bent down and started digging around in the grass.
Lark, Rose, and I hurried over. “You look ridiculous. Aren’t you worried about your nails?” Lark asked as she surveyed her sister.
“I’m not some delicate flower,” Pep argued, continuing to dig.
“Could have fooled me,” said Lark, tucking a strand of her flyaway red hair behind her ear. The wind immediately took it and set it free again. Then she batted around one of her braids. “This weather is ridiculous.”
“As soon as we see what she’s found, we can go back inside,” I said.
“What is it?” Rose asked, sniffing eagerly.
“I don’t know,” said Pep. She held something up and I groaned.
“That’s one of Cookie’s wine openers,” I said.
Cookie collected corkscrews like some people collected reading glasses or stamps. Some people kept reading glasses in every room and on every surface so they’d never be without. It was the same with Cookie and corkscrews. “A good bottle opener is hard to come by,” she liked to say. She admitted to having at least eight of them, but I had a feeling she had more like twenty and had just lost the other twelve.
Pep sat back on her heels dejectedly; she hadn’t found anything important after all. For a moment I thought she might really have had a breakthrough, but now we were discouraged, even Rose.
“I don’t see anything else. We might as well go back inside and get out of this weather,” said Lark. The wind was starting to make her hair rise up like fuzz.
“You’re right. This was a silly idea. But at least we looked,” I said.
Then, just as I was turning to go inside, something white caught my eye.
In the grass by the storm door was a tiny white sphere resting in a tuft of grass. It looked like it had been there for a long time.
I bent down to grab it and stood up in wonder.
Between my fingertips I held a pearl.
Now I had an excellent idea of at least one thing that had gone through those storm doors. Whoever had stolen the crown had come this way.
As we returned to the kitchen, Steve peeked out of his cupboard, then scurried right back inside when Grant came striding in behind us. Sometimes I forgot how respected and feared His Majesty of Magic was among the supernaturals around here; Steve’s behavior was a good reminder.
I tried to focus on Grant, barely remembering to slip the pearl into my pocket so he wouldn’t see it. I would have to wait and examine it later, but I knew it confirmed the theory I’d been nurturing all along, which was that whoever took the crown had gone out the storm door.
Things were looking less and less rosy for Jefferson Judge.
“You just can’t help yourself, can you,” said Grant. Apparently he wasn’t finished lecturing me.
“No help for me,” I offered weakly.
“I’d like to speak with you privately,” he said.
“Very well,” I agreed.
Lark and Pep were trying hard to meld into the kitchen furniture, but they weren’t doing a very good job. Rose, on the other hand, loved dramatics and came trotting in to spectate. She hurried up to Grant, purring loudly. He shrank away. She bared her teeth.
But Grant meant it when he said privately. He wasn’t sticking around for an audience, shrinking or overt, witch or cat. I followed him out of the kitchen, and instead of going to any of the places I expected, he led me to the ice cream parlor. It was closed at the moment, but Lark always left the door unlocked.
“This is an awesome space,” he said.
I tried to not feel jealous, but my hackles rose despite my best intentions. Grant was right; Lark had created a wonderful shop. Every night the haunted house was open there was a line out the door to get inside and have Lark’s ice cream.
Pep was also doing a great job running the gift shop, and Lizzie was haunt hunting.
As for me, I wanted to be a detective, but I had no defined role at the haunted house itself. With everyone else seemingly thriving in their jobs, that fact was starting to wear on me.
We sat in the dark space at one of the empty booths. Grant stared across at me for a moment, then looked down at his hands. I wiggled uncomfortably. A second lecture didn’t really feel called for.
Grant was going to tell me to mind my own business, I was sure of it. If not that, then he was going to tell me that he couldn’t see me anymore. Then I realized that there was no way he would say that. We couldn’t stop seeing each other because we’d never really started.
I tried to straighten out the mushy jumble that was my mind, but all I could focus on was that my hands were tingling from the nearness of him. I found myself taking him in, noticing that he had large hands of his own that looked like they had done a lot of manual labor in their time.
There were nicks and scratches and scars up and down his fingers, as if they were used to fighting. He was His Majesty of Magic, after all.
He looked up at me. “I want to apologize.”
I was thrown so wildly off stride that I nearly fell out of the booth we were sitting in.
Grant reached out to grip my arm as I wobbled on the edge of my seat. My face instantly felt hot and the back of my neck started sweating. I coughed to cover up the fact that I was unable to say a word.
I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything for which I wanted an apology from Grant. Unless maybe he was going to apologize for not handing over every case file he had ever worked on. Since that seemed only slightly unreasonable to me, I had no idea what else he might be sorry for.
“Apologize for what?” I asked after a long silence during which I managed to settle back into my seat.
He shoo
k his head. “I’ve been at this for a long time. I’ve been His Majesty of Magic for years now. Time flies, but it’s been awhile. When I was younger, I was so dedicated to getting trained, so dedicated to finding out what had happened to my family, that I didn’t see anything else. I haven’t focused on anything else in years. I just wanted to be the best warlock. The way for me to do that was to solve every case, to perform every enchantment perfectly. I had to be better than everyone else.”
“I’d say you’ve achieved all that,” I murmured.
My mind was racing again. Something had happened to Grant’s family? How out of the loop had I been all those years when I was living in the damned, so-called real world? Who needed it anyway? Grant was talking as if I knew exactly what he was referring to, but I was clueless.
Imagine, a detective totally lacking in clues . . . cool.
Grant’s sudden wish to open up made me want to keep quiet. I hadn’t realized how badly I wanted him to confide in me until he was.
Now he nodded slowly. “I’ve achieved a lot. Eventually I stopped thinking about my family constantly. That was important. They still fuel me, but it doesn’t consume me. I’m able to work. If I were unable to work, I don’t know what I’d do. Being an investigator has been the most important thing in the world to me for years.”
“That single-minded dedication has paid off,” I said. Broomness, I sounded lame.
“Yes, it certainly has. It has also come with a high cost.”
I could see his chest rising and falling. He was breathing hard now, staring at his hands again as if he just had to get this out. Maybe he felt that if he actually looked at me, he wouldn’t be able to go on.
The idea that I had that much of an impact on him made me breathless as well.
“I miss my family more than I can tell you. I don’t want you to get the impression that I don’t think about them. That isn’t the cost I’m talking about, though,” he said. “That is a private cost.”
I wanted to reach out and take his hands, but I resisted, waiting for a clearer signal.
“The cost I’m talking about is also a personal cost, but a different one. I sacrificed friendships. Sure, I’m friends with Stuart. But I hardly ever see him, and now that I’m here I see him even less. I never really cared. If Stuart contacted me I responded, and I even saw him now and then. If he didn’t, I forgot he existed.
“That’s how single-minded my pursuit has been. I’m not used to having to consult anyone on other matters. When your grandmother offered me that open cottage, I took it. But I should have asked you first. It took me weeks to figure out that I should’ve asked you. I’m just so used to thinking only about myself. I realize that sounds incredibly selfish, and it sounds that way because it is. I don’t think about Stuart and I didn’t think about asking you.”
“Cookie didn’t think it was up to me,” I said.
Grant smiled a little. “Even though her whole motivation is getting you a husband?”
I winced. Most guys ran away when the word husband was thrown around. I supposed in Grant’s case he might fly away.
“She might not have thought it was up to you, but I should have known better. I should have thought a lot of things that I didn’t. Again, I have been so used to being on my own, it’s become a bad habit. Stuart might have mentioned that other women have tried, but other women got nowhere, as is surely obvious.”
That had been a particularly fun evening. When Stuart had said something about Grant being so desirable I had nearly pulled his hair out. Lucky for him he left on his honeymoon shortly afterward.
“I may have heard something like that,” I said dismissively.
“I never cared. Some of them were actually interested, but I didn’t care. If it wasn’t going to help me solve a case, I didn’t think twice about it. For the last ten years that’s what has made me His Majesty of Magic.”
His blue eyes were shining like two suns, right onto my face now. He was finished averting them. They were bright and intense and Lark could have shown up with the biggest homemade ice cream sundae in the world and I wouldn’t have cared.
He looked at me, and my eyes met his at last. He was deadly serious.
Here I had been thinking he’d pulled me into the ice cream parlor to yell at me about the investigation. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead, he was talking about himself. More than anything in the world I wanted him to continue. I didn’t know how to make it happen, so I just stayed quiet.
“I know this is rambling. Sorry, I don’t usually ramble. I just felt like it was very important to be clear with you that I know I’ve made some mistakes. I haven’t told you some things I should have, things it would have been only fair to let you know.” He paused, as if he didn’t know quite how to say the last thing. “I hope you can forgive me,” he said at last.
I was so dumbfounded, I couldn’t think of a word to say. When he looked at me as if he actually expected me to forgive him out loud I said, “Of course. I’m happier with you living down the road.”
That was the truth. It really took care of the sadness I’d felt for the entire week the Brewer wedding party had been at Haunted Bluff, a sadness wrapped up with the idea that Grant was there, and soon he’d be gone.
As inarticulate as I was being, it was enough to bring a look of relief and a small smile to Grant’s face. “There’s actually one other thing I’d like to say.”
“Anything,” I told him.
He searched my face, as if seeking courage.
“I kissed you and I left. Then I came back and got wrapped up in a murder. Not a great start. I realize that. What you need to understand is that with all of that, I haven’t been able to get you out of my head. I’ve never felt like this about a witch before. To be honest, I just didn’t know what to do about it,” he said.
For that entire speech his eyes never looked away from mine.
When I was almost ready to explode, I realized that I wasn’t breathing again. I took in a great gulp of air, but I didn’t need to say anything, because Grant had more he wanted to get off his chest.
“I’d like to take you out to dinner. I’d like to go an official date with you. Because I can’t imagine anything I’d rather do. This may sound silly, but I don’t care how many investigations I have to conduct, I don’t care how many responsibilities I have at the moment. All I want to do is take you out on a date.”
If Cookie had been eavesdropping, I knew what she’d tell me to say. I knew what my heart wanted me to say. I just couldn’t say it.
He must have seen some of that in my face. His broad shoulders started to sag.
“Honestly,” I began. “I haven’t held any of that against you. I’m so out of practice dating myself, the idea barely occurred to me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve fantasized about going on dates with you, but somehow I never really believed it would happen.”
Grant shifted. Clearly, I wasn’t giving him the responses he wanted. I felt bad about that, but I had to continue.
“I barely thought about dating these past few years. Living in New York, it didn’t really seem like an option. I knew I’d need to date a warlock if I was ever to date at all, and you couldn’t exactly walk up to coworkers and friends and ask if they could perform enchantments.
“Then you came along and I was all judgy and stuff. I didn’t want you here doing the Skeleton Trio investigation. We don’t really trust outsiders. If you didn’t grow up in Shimmerfield, what’s the point? That’s kind of our default attitude, as unfair as it may be.
“Anyway, you broke down every defense I had. I didn’t even notice it was happening until it had already happened. You made me breathless. And then I found out who you were.
“I had believed that you were a myth, but you turned out to be real. Once you kissed me, that was it for me. So what I want to say to you right now is that you’d better be serious about dinner. Don’t play with my heart. And just because you’re taking me to dinner doesn’t mean I’m going to
do what you tell me when you go back to being an investigator. That’s a pretty elaborate ruse to get me out of questioning your suspects,” I finished with a smile.
He smiled back at me, but his look was intense. “I thought you were going to tell me not to expect you to put out,” he said.
“That either,” I added quickly, and felt my face go as hot as the fireplace.
I had never had such a serious conversation in my life. I had no idea what was possessing me to have it now. All I could think was that I had to hope it wasn’t a mistake.
Grant leaned forward, his eyes sharp and warm at the same time. “I’m serious about dinner.”
“Jane?” a voice yelled from the hall. For a split second I didn’t move. Grant’s eyes never left my face.
“Dinner it is, then,” I told him, meeting his eyes one more time.
His smile warmed my heart.
“Jane?” The yelling was more insistent now, a high-pitched screech echoing off the thick walls.
Very pleasant.
Not.
Grant and I stood up, left the ice cream parlor, and ran smack into Grandmother Cookie. When she saw me with Grant, her eyes narrowed.
“If I had known who you were with, I wouldn’t have interrupted you,” she said.
“Sorry for your not being able to keep track of me every minute of every day,” I told her.
“Don’t get snippy with me,” she said.
Before she could say anything else, there was a massive explosion. All three of us went flying. That was the last thing I remember.
Chapter Seventeen
“What was that?” I asked groggily.
Grant was pulling me into a sitting position and asking if I was all right. My ears were ringing, so it was difficult to hear him. I had never felt such a powerful force in my life.
Frantically, I looked for Grandma Cookie. Unlike me, she hadn’t actually hit anything when she went flying. She had merely flown into the air and landed gracefully. I scowled at her and she smirked.
“The benefits of being an old witch,” she said with a shrug.
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