“What do you think it means?”
The fairy shrugged. “I have no idea. But all of this pretending that Florin was super lovey-dovey with his family is bull. Until a couple of months ago, his cousins hated him. I can’t speak for the rest of the vampire community, but I have a feeling they shared the sentiment.”
Our pizzas came out just then. The fairy handed them to us, and Sara and I made our way back into the cold air of the night. I sat behind her on the broom, so caught up in what the fairy had told us that I forgot to worry about being followed.
Chapter 12
“We need to speak to those cousins,” Ellie said, but Kyran shook his head.
“No, it’s too dangerous.”
“Oh really?” Ellie asked, her hands on her hips.
“Yes. They could be part of this human-killing ring,” Kyran explained. “If they are, they’ll do almost anything to drive suspicion away from them. And if they are part of the ring, and you start asking questions about Florin, they’re going to go to ground. They’re not going to want to get caught. I don’t want you to mess up my investigation.”
“Look,” I said. “What if we promise that we’ll just ask about Florin? We won’t mention anything that could possibly mess up your investigation. Chief Enforcer King is already looking into Florin’s death. We’ll pretend we just want information that could help find the killer in the same way she is. That way, if they go to ground, we’ll know they would have anyway as soon as Chief Enforcer King spoke to them. We won’t mention anything that shows we know about your investigation.”
Kyran nodded slowly. “Ok, that should work. But be careful, ok? I already saw you guys getting almost killed by these vampires once, I’d rather it not happen again.”
“It was only because we were so heavily outnumbered,” Ellie replied, waving away his concern. “Don’t worry. From now on, it’ll be one-on-one at best.”
“Good,” Kyran said.
“The funeral for Florin is tomorrow,” Amy said. “I heard today at coven headquarters. It will start at sunset, here in Western Woods. I imagine all of his family will be there, including his cousins.”
“We should go,” I said. “Who knows what we might find out?”
“Agreed,” Sara nodded. “We probably won’t get to speak to the cousins during the funeral itself, but afterwards maybe we can track them down. And hopefully this time they won’t try to kill us.”
With that decision made, Kyran left soon afterwards, after finishing off the pizza, and after he left I begged off to the bedroom, where I found Mr. Meowgi happily sleeping on my pillow.
“You’re lucky I’m not allergic to you,” I muttered as I had a quick shower and slipped on my pajamas before shoving him out of the way so that I could get to sleep.
“You’re lucky I’m not allergic to you,” Mr. Meowgi replied sleepily, apparently too tired to come up with any wittier retort, or even argue over the fact that I had interrupted his sleep by moving him.
I smiled and got into bed, my body thankful for the rest. It had been a long day, and I was definitely ready for some shut-eye.
Still, as I lay under the covers, desperate for sleep to overcome me, I couldn’t help but think about that feeling I’d had on the way to the pizza shop. I really did feel like someone was following me.
Was I being crazy? Was it just the stress of the day? Or was there really someone after me? Did the vampires already know what we were doing? Were they just waiting for me to be alone in the dark before they struck?
I had no idea.
Eventually, exhaustion overtook my internal stress and I fell asleep, not waking until late the next morning. Sara had left a note in the kitchen that she had gone down to the Coven Gardens to practice a couple of new moves on her broom, and Amy was sitting at the dining room table with Ellie, going through a number of business-related books with her.
They looked up as I came in, and I shot them both a smile. “Hey.”
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Ellie teased. “How’s it going?”
“Good,” I lied. As soon as I’d woken up I was immediately reminded of the feeling I’d had the night before. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing the vampires that night. After all, what if one of them had been following me? What if they had just been waiting for me to wander away from the lamps and into the dark so they could attack me?
Goodness. None of this was going to do. Worrying like this wasn’t me at all. It had probably been nothing, just a slightly overactive imagination.
“I’m going to go out and get some pastries from the bakery for breakfast,” I announced, a little bit more loudly than I had probably intended.
“Ok,” Ellie replied, her eyebrows rising slightly at my tone. “Bring me back a muffin if you don’t mind; I’ve been knee-deep in financial projections for an hour and I’m starting to get hungry.”
“Will do, you want anything?” I asked Amy.
“A muffin sounds great,” she said with a smile. I nodded and headed out the door, closing it firmly behind me. While I had insisted to myself that I wasn’t going to be afraid today, I still did hold my wand in my hand.
And yet, as I walked down the street to the bakery, there was nothing. The feeling that I was being followed was gone. I even stopped and looked around a few times, taking my time to really check every inch of the streets that I could see. But there was nothing.
“See? It was just your imagination,” I muttered to myself. “There’s nothing there.”
As I continued to walk towards the bakery I relaxed a little more with each step, and by the time I returned – with a box of muffins so fresh the bottom of the cardboard box I carried them in was warm by the time I walked through the front door - and the warm aroma of pecans, bananas and chocolate chips wafted delectably to my nostrils – I had almost completely forgotten about my fears from the night before.
I had been overreacting, obviously.
“Yum,” Ellie said when she saw me come into the kitchen, jumping up and taking the box from my hands. “Thanks for the muffins.”
“No problem,” I replied. “They don’t have any magical enhancements in them. I didn’t know what you wanted, and besides, sometimes it’s good to eat a muffin just for a muffin’s sake.”
“Fair enough,” Amy said as she got up herself.
“So how are the numbers coming along?” I asked, motioning to the sheets of paper Ellie and Amy had been working with.
“Good,” Ellie said with an enthusiastic nod. “I honestly didn’t expect the response to my business to be so huge so fast, and I think I’m going to have to think about getting a permanent space sooner rather than later.”
“Oh yeah? That’s great!”
“I think so, but to be honest, I’m a little nervous. It’s a lot more money than paying for a stall at the market twice a week.”
“Yeah, but you’ll also be able to open every day,” I countered. “You’ll be able to turn it into a real, full-fledged business sooner than you ever dreamed.”
“That’s the hope, at least,” Ellie said. “Right now, one of the problems I’m running into is that there’s nowhere available. At least, not that I can find. There are a few commercial properties up for rent in town, but either they’re right on the outskirts and no one is going to go there for their pastries, or they’re not at all set up to work as a commercial kitchen.”
“What about the property where the café used to be?” I asked. After all, that was obviously the perfect spot for Ellie’s business: it was already set up for baking, since she used to bake there, it held a prime location right downtown by the beach, and was already so well-known as a place for people to stop and get a quick bite to eat that she would get customers by the dozen based on that alone.
Ellie bit her lip. “Unfortunately, the rent is a little bit higher than I had hoped to pay. The space is a lot bigger than I would need by myself. The café was a major business in town. I don’t plan on being that, at least not straight away, and I d
on’t think I can justify the high rent price. At least, not until I know for sure that people are going to come.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding in understanding. I could definitely see where Ellie was coming from.
“We’ll see, though. I might not have any other options,” she said with a shrug.
Ellie grabbed her muffin and took a huge bite out of it. Suddenly, a squeaky voice called out from my neckline: “Why would you eat a muffin when you could go for a much more nutritious broccoli egg white scramble instead?”
Amy and Ellie both froze, looking at me curiously.
“Did… did your pin just criticize my eating habits?” Ellie asked, her eyes dropping to my neckline. I’d forgotten that I’d put my broccoli pin on my collar. After all, I was wearing a green cardigan over my blouse, and thought they went pretty well together.
“Oh, yeah,” I laughed. “I forgot to tell you, I bought a few pins at the market.”
“Do you know how many calories are in that muffin? Hundreds! Meanwhile, one spear of broccoli only has approximately eleven calories. Plus, broccoli comes packed with Vitamins C and K.”
“Alright, thank you, we get it,” I said to the broccoli pin, stifling a laugh. Amy looked interested.
“Who made these? Does she have others? I imagine it would be a good way to get random facts during the day.”
“Only you could turn a talking pin into an educational tool,” Ellie said. She looked directly at the broccoli pin and took a huge bite of the muffin, and I laughed.
“Please don’t start a war with Mr. Broccoli,” I said. “He might be a little bit annoying, but he’s cute, and I like having him on my collar.”
“I am not annoying, unless you call education annoying.”
“Amy certainly doesn’t,” I said, as she came closer, inspecting the pin, as if trying to figure out how the spell that had made Mr. Broccoli worked.
“That’s right, education is the key to life,” Amy said. “Seriously, where did you get this?”
“A witch was selling them at one of the stalls at the market,” I said. “I have a couple of other ones, too. Although they don’t judge you for eating. The sloth one mostly just snores.”
“You have a sloth pin?” Ellie practically squealed. “Now that I need to see.”
I went to my room and showed off the pins I’d gotten, and handed Amy the little card that came with the stall owner’s information on it. She took it happily, storing it away and promising she was going to be having a chat with the witch to find out how she got the broccoli to yell out facts at people.
I settled down at the kitchen table to eat my own muffin, trying not to think about the fact that in a few hours we were going to the vampire funeral to try and get as much information as we could that might lead us to a murderer.
Chapter 13
“What do you mean, we can’t come in?” Ellie asked the vampire, whose arms were folded in front of him.
“I mean the three of you were spotted at the bar in Spokurse yesterday, where you attacked a number of vampires. Until further notice, you’re unwelcome at our celebrations, and that includes the funeral.
“Come on Ellie, it’s ok,” I said, taking her by the arm and pulling her back. For one thing, I didn’t want to start some sort of inter-species war between vampires and witches here in Western Woods. Relations between different types of paranormals were already strangely separate in the paranormal world, and I had been doing my best to bring different paranormals together, not drive them apart.
And for another thing, I could actually see where the vampire was coming from. After all, the day before we had gone into their bar and attacked them, then driven them out with a mysterious pile of light. I mean sure, they had surrounded us first, and they had fully intended to kill us, but I could also understand why they were holding a bit of a grudge.
“I can go in,” Amy said quietly. “Why don’t you see what you can find out here? I’ll be back in a little while.”
Amy made her way past the guard and Ellie, Sara and I turned around and started walking back along the path towards town.
“Hey, on the bright side, they can’t surround us and try to kill us if we’re not in there,” Sara said, trying to lighten the mood.
“We could always cast a spell to change our form and sneak in. No one would suspect a squirrel,” Ellie offered, but I shook my head.
“No, I don’t think we should do that. Not only would we end up basically starting a war between species if something messed up and we got caught, but it’s a funeral. It’s their right to exclude us. I think we should just respect their wishes and try and figure out what we can from out here. They’re all going to have to leave eventually anyway, right?”
“Hold up,” Sara said suddenly, stopping in her tracks. “Over there.” She pointed through the trees to a small clearing about fifty feet away. I had to squint, but sure enough, there were two of Florin’s cousins. They looked like they were having an argument.
“Invisibility spell?” Ellie suggested, and I nodded. We looked around to make sure no one was coming, and Ellie quickly turned Sara and I invisible before turning the new wand – this one was two different shades of pastel purple in vertical stripes about a foot long – onto herself.
The three of us began sneaking through the forest, trying to get close to the vampires to overhear their conversations while being as noiseless as possible. It turned out that was somewhat difficult to achieve when there were three of us who had no idea where the others were. Someone stepped on my toes and caused me to trip into the underbrush, and I knocked into someone else – or maybe the same person – but eventually we got there, and by some sort of miracle, the two vampires seemed too wrapped up in their own conversation to notice our arrival. We had certainly made a lot more noise than I’d intended.
“We have to keep quiet about this, Drogin,” one of the vampires said. I recognized him as being the one who had ambushed us at the warehouse the day before. “Things could get dangerous for us.”
“Things are already dangerous for us, you idiot. Of course that Enforcer was going to come around and ask questions, Florin was killed in her town. The idiot couldn’t even get himself killed somewhere a bit more subtle.”
“Well, what’s done is done. We can’t do anything about it now. But we have to make sure that no matter what happens, nothing comes back on us. The last thing we need right now is some heat from Enforcers.”
“Agreed, Flavin. And we will. The Chief Enforcer has no reason to suspect anything. From what I heard from people here in town they all think that fairy did it.”
“They might be right,” Flavin said with a shrug.
“Exactly. Who cares? The point is, Florin is dead, there’s nothing anyone can do about that, and that does free us up a little bit more, but we still have to be careful. Until that fairy is arrested or whatever, there’s a chance that the Enforcer here will be looking into Florin’s life, and if she finds out about us, we’re cooked.”
“Right. We keep quiet, and we keep our heads down. Now, come on. We’re going to be late for the ceremony, and that would be the last thing we would need. We don’t need to stick out right now. We need to blend in, and not be noticed.”
Flavin and Drogin headed back towards the path, passing so close to me that I held my breath for fear they might hear it as they passed, and made their way past the vampire guarding the entrance and out of view.
“Let’s meet back in town,” Ellie muttered quietly, and the three of us made our way back to the main part of Western Woods, careful not to let anyone know we were there. Ellie reversed the spell on the three of us, and when we were able to look at each other once more, we spoke while walking back towards home.
“It doesn’t sound like they did it,” I said. “At least, it sounds like Drogin didn’t do it. He said that Florin couldn’t even get killed somewhere more convenient for them.”
“Right,” Ellie nodded. “And it certainly sounds like they’re p
art of something criminal. Probably the human world deaths that Kyran is looking into.”
“But we don’t have any other suspects,” I complained.
Luckily for us, Amy was on the case. The three of us did our best to stay up as long as possible, with the help of some magical potions, taking our minds off things by chatting about the broom competition with Sara, who was competing again two weeks from now.
“You’re in third place in the overall standings right now, right?” I asked, and Sara nodded.
“Yeah. Derek is winning at the moment, but I’m going up against him next week, so I have a good chance to put some points on him. I’m too far behind to move ahead of him and into first place, but I can launch myself into a solid second with next week’s result, and then work on closing the gap between me and him from there.”
I smiled at Sara, and she tilted her head at me. “What is it?”
“It’s just so nice to see you being this confident,” I said. “I know I’ve only known you for a few months, but when I first came over to Western Woods you just had absolutely no faith in yourself, and now look at you. This broom riding competition has changed you in the best possible way. I’m so proud of you, and it’s so nice to see you being successful at something that you love.”
Sara blushed, and Ellie nodded enthusiastically.
“I agree with Tina, totally. You have no idea how amazing it is to see you speak about moving into the lead like it’s absolutely nothing. This, coming from a witch who was so sure she would never get picked for the broom competition in the first place.”
A grin passed across Sara’s face. “It feels different, for sure. I guess I just never had anything that really felt right for me before. But I found it now. When I’m on that broom, I know that I can do anything, and this competition shows that. It helped me realize that even though I’m not good at a lot of the traditional things that witches are supposed to be good at like spells, I still have my own skills, and that means something. Although I still need to work on my spell casting; while I’m one of the strongest broom riders out there, being able to defend against attacks and cast some of my own is a weakness.”
Six Ways to Spellday Page 7