“No way. I’m not saying here without you, and I’m not letting you go check on this alone,” I said.
“This is no time to be stubborn,” he said.
“It’s always a time to be stubborn,” I said.
“Didn’t I just ask you to be careful?” he said with frustration.
“You can’t ask me to do something you’re not willing to do. Maybe it’s just a blown breaker,” I said.
“A blown breaker doesn’t make sense. This place has all new wiring,” he said. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was shaking his head.
The fact remained that I was not going to let him leave the office without me. He seemed to sense that, and gave a big sigh, “Fine, you can come along. Stay behind me.”
Usually I would take issue with a man giving me orders. Usually.
This time I did as he asked, mostly because he knew his way around the barn and I didn’t. There were still a lot of building materials scattered around, and without being able to see my feet I definitely would have tripped over something and ended up defenseless against whatever enemy was coming.
“Grab my shoulder so we don’t get separated,” he said.
He didn’t have to tell me twice.
His muscles shifted under my touch, and I had to tell myself to calm down as we moved slowly forward. The only light came from the moonlight filtering through the large windows. Even the streetlights had gone out.
“Do you really think it’s a blown breaker?” I said.
“Possibly. I would think it more likely if it was a stormy night, but I don’t know what else it could be.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said. Maybe I should have done more to help him think of possibilities; it wasn’t as if he would ever come up with the idea that a witch had showed up and turned the lights off.
To ready myself, I silently reviewed the spells I’d been practicing. I had yet to actually perform one accurately, but I had brought my wand with me just in case. Stuck in my back pocket, the thin stick of wood was comforting given that we might be under attack.
“Where are we going?” I whispered. As we moved further away from Jasper’s dark office, I was getting more fearful. The barn felt dark and alone, even with Jasper there. In truth, I felt like I’d be the one who had to defend him if trouble arose.
Slowly we moved through every part of the barn. Once we’d made one circuit and Jasper was confident that there was no one else there, he whispered, “I’m going to check the grounds. Will you stay here?” He sounded exasperated, and I was glad that the darkness hid my grin.
Sooner or later I was going to be exasperating, don’t you worry. He might as well get used to it sooner.
Just then there was a dull light in the far corner of the space we were in.
I froze. I knew what was causing the sparkling, however dim it was, and I suddenly wanted Jasper anywhere but inside the barn.
“Yeah, go outside,” I whispered back. “I’ll stay here.”
“And behave yourself?” he said.
“Don’t push it,” I told him.
Jasper left and I moved toward the light.
Fear sprang through me at the realization that I was all alone in a dark barn except for whatever was making that light.
Not wanting to waste another second, I made my way to the corner.
The ghost was floating in front of me. He was a thin and wiry-looking man, and I recognized him from the newspaper clipping.
I was about to give a triumphant cry when I realized that something was very wrong with him.
All the ghosts I had seen before had sparkled, and although the sparkles might be different colors on different ghosts, they were very bright. This ghost was dull and dark. I wished I had brought Paws with me, because he at least might have had a clue about what the problem was..
Hank Smith’s ghost looked down at me and raised his eyebrows. “It took you long enough.”
With Jasper gone, I felt comfortable talking out loud. “I’m Lemmi,” I said. “I’m the new Witch of Mintwood. I’ve been looking for you since your body was discovered in the silo.”
“My body lay there for far too long undiscovered. My murderer was still at large while I was stuck in that stupid dark hole,” he hissed.
“I’m sorry you were stuck there. That must have been unpleasant,” I said. You catch more flies with honey . . . just call me Ms. Bee.
“I’m just glad I was finally freed,” he said. “I was bored out of my mind. For a while I was sure someone would come and look for me and I’d be discovered. How could I just disappear?
“But no one came. The shallow grave I was buried in was enough to keep me hidden for all these years. Am I supposed to be grateful that my grave began composting? I suppose so, because that’s apparently what led to my body being discovered. I was gone by that time, though.”
“Yes, about that. Where have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you,” I said.
“Here and there,” he said with an evasive smile.
“You know who killed you?” I persisted.
I stood on tiptoe and glanced out one of the windows to make sure Jasper was still outside. I could see his flashlight bobbing on the grass, so I knew I had a least another minute to get information out of Hank Smith.
“I don’t have any idea who killed me,” he said. “Isn’t that your job? Witch as you are?”
Yes, I supposed it was, but he could have made it easier.
“Can you tell me what happened the night you died?” I said, ignoring his jibe.
“Sure, why not? It’s taken you this long to solve the case, what’s a few more minutes? Here’s how it went down. I liked to drive around in the evenings and check on the properties I was interested in or had recently purchased.
“The Babbling Brook deal looked good. The farmer wanted to sell it to me and not those rich, offensive Grates. I have to admit I got ahead of myself, planning how I would make the barn like new again. It’s the most gorgeous spot in town, sitting on the water, a great view of the sunset . . .
“Anyway, my plan was to just drive past and not stop. It was almost eight in the evening and I liked to watch the TV shows that came on then, but as I drove past I saw a light on inside. At first I thought I was imagining it, but then I saw it again, clear as day. Well, the farmer had already moved away and no one else had any business in the barn that I could think of. I figured it was teenagers causing trouble and I didn’t want them to damage my future property, so I pulled over, planning to give them a telling off.”
“What happened then?” I said. My heart was beating in my chest and I wasn’t sure if it was because I was afraid Jasper would come back at any moment, or because I was about to find out exactly how Hank Smith had died.
“What happened then was that I grabbed a flashlight out of my glove compartment and went into the barn. There were some lights, but I didn’t want to alert whoever was inside to my presence.
“I had parked up the road a ways and didn’t expect to be seen. Well, by the time I got in there I didn’t see any lights and I didn’t hear any noises. There was a full moon, so I didn’t really need the flashlight because of the light coming in through the windows.
“I had seen the lights as I was driving by, and I wanted to find out who was there. There was nothing in the barn in those days except some old farm equipment and some scattered bales of hay. I checked around those and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, so I went up to the hayloft to check there.”
“Went up to the place where the doors are to get into the silos?” I said.
Hank Smith nodded in disgust. “It wouldn’t have surprised me if some kids had climbed into one of them trying to cause some trouble, so when I didn’t see anyone in the loft I went over to the silo doors. I open the first door and shined my light down, and there was nothing in there except dirt. At that point I almost turned around and left. I had searched the whole barn and found nothing, so it seemed silly to try the last silo door. I
did, though. I opened the door and peered down, and just as I was peering I heard quick footsteps behind me. The next thing I knew something was shoving against my back and the flashlight was falling out of my hand. That’s all I remember.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said again.
“You should be sorry for not finding me for so many years,” he said.
I didn’t know how my grandmother could have known he was there, but I said I was sorry for that, too, even if it was on her behalf and not my own.
“How likely was it that you would run away to Europe like everyone said?” I said.
The ghost rolled his eyes. “I suppose I talked about it as if I wanted to do it. I talked I talked a lot about going on a trip, which I would have loved to do. Move there? That I probably wouldn’t have done,” he said with a slight frown. “I can see how my secretary Juliet and my cousin wouldn’t really miss me, though. My cousin and I were always at odds over the business and my secretary liked to take long lunches.”
“So if you had said you were going on an extended vacation and then sent an email saying you were staying in Europe for the rest of your life and were wildly happy, they wouldn’t have been totally shocked?” I asked.
“I guess not,” he said. “Still, they could’ve looked for me after I’d gone missing.”
I nodded, but the problem was that to them he hadn’t been missing. They had received plausible email message stating exactly where he was.
There didn’t appear to be anything else to say, and he had clearly grown tired of talking.
“Thank you for your time,” I told him. He had given me a lot to think about, but mainly he had corroborated his cousin’s idea that his disappearing to Europe without so much as a goodbye wasn’t totally out of the realm of possibility. I couldn’t imagine leaving without saying goodbye to my friends, but different strokes, right?
Then something struck me. If he had parked at the barn, who had driven his car back to his house where it was found? The killer, no doubt.
“Where have you been staying?” I asked. His refusal to tell me where he’d been since the discovery of the body made me uneasy. The ghosts’ claim that something horrible was happening was hard to believe, but if it was true, Hank Smith might have something to do with it.
I had never seen a ghost that looked so dim before.
Hank gave me another creepy smile. “Sorry, I can’t tell you that. Maybe if you were a better witch you’d already know.” He started to float away.
“I’m a plenty good witch,” I argued as I started after him. Hank quickly began to move faster, and I increased my pace to keep up. I was just about to dash through the big sliding barn door when Jasper rounded the corner and I ran into his arms.
In the jumble of limbs that followed, I saw Hank Smith float away with a loud cackling laugh.
“Sorry, you all right? I didn’t mean to keep you waiting in here. Is everything okay?” Jasper asked.
I nodded. “Just wanted to come and see how you were doing.”
“There’s nothing out there,” he said, jutting his chin toward the trees.
Just then the lights came back on. Both Jasper and I looked up and around, blinking dazedly. The barn looked exactly the same as ever.
“I’m going to check the circuits,” said Jasper. As he walked away he peered out one of the windows. The street lights had come back on as well.
I looked outside at the lake and the trees and the houses twinkling around the water. In the distance I found what I was looking for. A dark shape standing next to a tree trunk. I couldn’t be sure, but I felt like that was the witch who had shut the power off at the barn.
Something had held her back from attacking Jasper and me. Unfortunately, I had no idea what.
At least I knew it wasn’t my impressive skills, because I didn’t have any. But the barn was apparently protected from evil witches, even if I didn’t know how or why. Maybe it was an old spell that had lingered there for years, or maybe there was something else going on. Whatever it was, danger wasn’t far away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
That night was the usual fun affair that ensued when the six of us got together. Liam and Deacon had a grand time making jokes about former high school teachers, and the rest of us laughed along with them. Since Greer had started working she hadn’t had time to cook, but Jasper had ordered a lot of delicious food. Charlie had offered to cook, but our duty as her roommates and Jasper and Deacon’s friends was to talk her out of it, so we did.
We sat around the big barn table talking and reminiscing. It wasn’t until dessert – raspberry cream pudding – that the topic turned to current affairs.
“Do you think Detective Cutter is making any headway with the case? Knowing who the deceased is must help,” Liam mused.
“He’s certainly working hard. I know he’s interviewed a lot of people who were close to Hank Smith,” Jasper said. “He’s talked to my parents a couple of times, but they don’t know anything that’s very helpful.”
“What did your parents tell the police about the barn sale?” I asked, turning to Deacon.
“They didn’t think that Hank Smith’s getting the barn was a done deal, but they’re just as surprised as anyone at his death,” said Deacon.
“How are they holding up?” I asked.
“They’re doing a bit better now. They decided they can’t possibly be charged with murder, so that’s good,” he said.
“They aren’t going to be charged with murder,” Charlie scoffed.
“It’s silly that they’re even suspects,” I said. “But just like the rest of us, they need to know what happened to him and how he ended up dead in the bottom of the silo.”
I couldn’t wait to tell Charlie and Greer that I had finally found the ghost of Hank Smith. For that matter, I couldn’t wait to tell Paws. All of his doom and gloom predictions about missing ghosts weren’t true if Hank Smith was floating around after all.
After dessert, we all went our separate ways. Charlie had to work in the morning and Deacon and Jasper had a lot of their own work to do. Liam was still trying to run his shop, which meant that he worked all the time and couldn’t afford to stay out late carousing with us, as he called it.
In the car I told my friends what had happened at the barn.
“Well, do you think it was witches?” Charlie said.
“I’m sure of it,” I said.
“I wonder why they didn’t attack you,” said Greer.
“I don’t know. At first I thought they were going in for the kill, but then they stopped for some reason,” I said.
“Maybe Jasper scared them away,” said Charlie.
“Jasper’s just a human. I don’t see how he could scare witches,” I argued.
They both agreed it was unlikely.
Then I told my friends about Hank.
“So he was there, which will probably surprise Paws, but he looked strange and he didn’t want to tell you where he was going?” said Charlie.
“Right,” I said.
“I don’t like it,” said Greer.
“I don’t either,” I said. “I would’ve kept chasing him, but I ran into Jasper.”
“Oh, did you now,” said Greer. She quirked an eyebrow and smirked.
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t start that.”
“He wanted to talk to you privately. What was that about?” said Charlie.
I shrugged, suddenly feeling awkward. “He wanted to tell me to be careful.”
Charlie squawked. “Of course he did! He likes you! He can’t take his eyes off you. He was giving you the kind of look that said he was wishing you would talk more so he had an excuse to look at you.”
I ignored my friends. Clearly they had no idea what they were talking about. Jasper’s grandfather wouldn’t even give me the time of day.
“Hank makes it sound like he didn’t have plans to be at the barn, and whoever he ran into killed him randomly,” said Charlie.
“True, but what are
you saying?” I asked.
“Well, we’ve been thinking that whoever killed Hank Smith did so because he was Hank Smith, but maybe that wasn’t it at all,” said Charlie.
“We sort of got on that track because the Grates are suspects,” said Greer.
“If it wasn’t somebody targeting Hank Smith, I feel like we’re back to square one,” I said.
“What was Hank Smith planning to do with the barn once he bought it?” Charlie asked.
“I think I read somewhere that he was planning to tear it down and sell the parts. After that he’d build something bigger and better on the same spot,” I said.
“I think his cousin said something like that too,” said Charlie.
“His cousin didn’t want the property, though. Usually they bought properties in more populated areas,” I said. “We’ll catch a break soon, though. I’m sure we’ll find something.”
We were nearly home, and we drove the rest of the way in silence. On top of talking to my friends, I had a ghost cat I needed to have a little chat with.
“Who is Ellie?” I asked Paws as I walked up the front steps. But instead of joining Mr. Shimmer himself on the porch, I went inside, cracked the window, and settled in to speak with the cat that way. Charlie and Greer disappeared to shower and change.
“Afraid of the cold?” said Paws.
“I don’t like the cold. There’s a difference.”
“The result is the same,” the cat pointed out, making me want to kick him.
“Are you going to answer my question?”
“No,” said Paws.
“Why not?” I said.
“Because telling you who Ellie was won’t help,” he said. “Plus, I don’t want to.”
“You just decided that, did you?”
“I never thought I would hear that name again,” said Paws.
“But you did, and then someone stole those letters out of Grandmother’s bedroom after breaking into her house. That’s serious. They didn’t take anything else, so they must have been after the letters specifically,” I said.
Spell by Midnight (Witch of Mintwood Book 3) Page 14