“Hi Hugh,” Sweets sang. “Hi Tristan.”
Jax looked up quickly to catch Tristan following Hugh into our room. She’d been pulling a pair of khaki pants on over her striped tights and at the sight of Tristan, she nearly fell forward onto the bed.
“Howdy, ladies,” Hugh drawled. “Hey there, Miss Mercy Mae, I’ve sure missed you.” He wrapped an arm around me and pulled me in for a big squeeze. The affection in front of my friends felt awkward and I wriggled out of his arms quickly. If he noticed my standoffishness, he didn’t mention it.
“Hi Tristan,” Holly sang. “What are you doing here?”
Tristan squirmed uncomfortably in his patent leather shoes. “Umm, I just – uh, Hugh thought I should, you know, umm, help you girls out a little.” He pulled at the collar of his shirt like it was suddenly choking him.
“It’s so kind of you to help us out,” Holly said. “Isn’t that nice of Tristan, Jax?”
“Holly!” Sweets hissed.
“What?!”
Hugh sensed the awkward tension in the room. “Ladies, are you ready to go? I think we’ve got a shot of getting in there unnoticed if we get moving now. Sorcerer Stone has an evening class right now. If we get in and get out quickly I think we’ll be golden.”
“I’m ready,” I said.
“Me too,” Sweets agreed.
Jax buttoned up her khaki pants and straightened her navy crewneck sweatshirt. “There, do I look manly?”
Tristan gave her a shy smile. “You look adorable.”
I rolled my eyes. Young love.
She giggled. “I’m going for manly, not adorable.”
“Oh,” he said. “You look adorably masculine.”
“I’m ready then,” Jax said with a big smile.
“Lose the hat,” I instructed. I grabbed the pointy black witch hat off of her head and handed her a baseball cap as Tristan led her out of the room. Sweets and Alba followed behind closely.
“You’re gonna wanna cover those up,” I suggested to Holly, pointing at her exposed cleavage. “Giant boobs don’t exactly scream I’m a man.”
“They’re hard to hide!” she complained.
“No they aren’t. Just put on a coat.”
“My coat is purple. Boys don’t wear purple coats.”
“Some boys do.”
“Not the manly ones,” Hugh quipped.
“Wizard boys do,” I told him. “Isn’t purple the national color for wizards?”
“I thought it was red,” said Holly.
Hugh sighed then pulled off his brown Carhartt jacket and handed it to Holly. “Put this on. You can’t go into Warner Hall looking like that and not expect every head to turn.”
Holly’s eyes lit up. “Maybe I want all heads to turn.”
I took the jacket out of Hugh’s hands and shoved it at Holly. “Not today you don’t. Put on the jacket!”
The days were starting to get darker earlier as the end of October loomed. By the time we got back to the courtyard, it was already dark outside. Hugh and Tristan stopped us at the entrance to the boy’s dormitory.
“Wait out here, I’m going to check and see who is in the lobby,” Hugh whispered as we hid in the shadows on the other side of a spruce tree. “Don’t talk to anyone.”
Hugh and Tristan disappeared inside while the five of us huddled together behind a tree.
We’d been there only seconds when Holly’s voice broke the reverent silence. “Oww! Who stepped on my foot?”
“Oh, sorry, I think that was me,” Jax chirped back in a whisper.
“It definitely wasn’t you. It was either Alba or Sweets.”
“How do you know it wasn’t Shorty?” Alba questioned her with annoyance.
“I think I know the difference between Jax’s weight on my foot and you or Sweets’ weight on my foot.”
“Ok, well if your giant breasts wouldn’t take up our entire hiding space, maybe I would have more room to stand, so that I wouldn’t have to step on your foot!”
“Can you two shut up?” I whisper yelled at them. “Someone is going to hear us!”
Hugh stuck his head around the tree. “Y’all learn to whisper in a sawmill?”
“It’s all them,” I whispered back.
“Well put the muzzles on ‘em. Coast is clear. Hurry up!”
“Thank God,” I said as we came out of hiding and followed Hugh into the men’s dormitory.
Inside the big stone room looked much like the Winston Hall dormitory. I’d been inside a couple of times and this time I was having a strange feeling. “We should hurry,” I told the girls. “I’m feeling weird about this.”
Hugh took my hand and led me, with the rest of the group following, to a stone staircase that descended into the basement of Warner Hall. The last time I’d been in the basement Jax had been abducted and the girls and I were trying to save her. I glanced back at Jax and either she wasn’t nervous or she was hiding it well. When I saw Tristan’s hand slip inside Jax’s I felt a little bit better knowing that he was keeping an eye on her.
The basement was eerily quiet, which should have set alarm bells off in my head, but instead, we pushed forward.
“How far to the lab?” Alba asked, keeping up with me and Hugh.
“Just around the corner,” he assured her.
I held my breath as we rounded the corner. I was almost positive that Merrick was going to surprise us and be standing there, waiting to bust us for being where we weren’t supposed to be, but much to my surprise, the corridor was empty.
Hugh pushed open the door to the men’s potions lab and flicked on the light, casting shadows around the dimly lit room.
“It looks just like ours!” Sweets commented as she entered the room with Holly right behind her.
“Almost identical,” Jax agreed. “Except theirs is surprisingly cleaner.”
Alba peered around curiously. “Almost like no one has been down her for awhile.” She ran a finger along the counter. “It’s not that dusty, though.”
Walking around the counter, I peered into the glass cabinets on the wall. Everything seemed to be in place. Nothing jumped out at me suggesting that someone had recently done a powerful spell.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Tristan asked.
“Anything that would tell us who killed Ronnie,” I said. “Our two prime suspects are Philip and Sorcerer Stone. We just don’t know which one it is. We thought maybe coming here might help us find a clue or something.”
Hugh looked around nervously. “Darlin’ I don’t want to rush you ladies, but I’d really hate for Stone to find y’all in here.”
“We’ll hurry,” I assured him. “Maybe just to be safe you and Tristan should keep watch?”
He gave me a thumbs up signal. “We’re on it. C’mon Tristan.”
When they were outside the door, I whispered to the girls. “Doesn’t it make sense that if Ronnie died of magical means, by inhalation of a toxic magical substance that it would have had to have been in the potions lab?”
Alba nodded. “Absolutely. If he had been outside, there would have been plenty of ventilation.”
“Exactly, and if he were inside the building the only place that the murder could have taken place is the potions lab. Unless the suspect gathered the ingredients and took them to Ronnie – which, I suppose theoretically is possible,” I pointed out. “It just wouldn’t make a lot of sense.”
Sweets put her hands on her hips as she perused the room. “I wish I knew what clue I was looking for.”
Jax and Holly wandered towards the casting circle on the other half of the room. Just as ours had a circle with a star painted inside of it, so did theirs. A black candle sat on a small plate in the middle of the circle. Holly pointed at it and crouched down to look at it more closely. “Look. There’s a candle. Think this is a clue?”
Alba shrugged. “It’s possible. Let me see it,” she said, holding her hand out for Holly to pass it to her.
Holly plucked the candle
up from the plate and stood up, but immediately her body stiffened. She teetered on her feet for a second before falling backwards onto Jax.
“Holly!” Sweets cried.
Jax screamed as she broke the fall with her body and got smashed to the ground. Within seconds, Alba had a finger aimed at Holly and lifted her off of Jax. She had Holly hovered in mid-air for only seconds before carefully lowering her to the ground in the center of the circle.
Hugh and Tristan stuck their heads into the room.
“What in the world?” Hugh asked, seeing Jax and Holly on the ground.
“Come in and shut the door,” Alba instructed.
Tristan rushed to Jax’s side. “Should I call the EMS?”
“No, she’s fine. She has these spells where she sees things that happened in the past. She can touch things and see how they’ve been used and sometimes she has premonitions. Her episodes almost always put her in a catatonic state until the vision is gone. She always comes out of it alright, but she’s always shaky when she wakes up. Usually, we give her orange juice or something to eat when she wakes up. Do you have any snacks in here?”
“I got nothin’ on me,” Hugh said nervously patting himself down.
“Sweets, do you have anything for Holly to eat when she wakes up? Her blood sugar is going to be low.”
Sweets shook her head. “The one time I don’t bring a snack and look what happens,” she cried sadly.
Hugh rushed to the door. “Tristan, let’s go find this girl some orange juice and a donut.”
“Cafeteria’s closed now,” Tristan said, following Hugh to the door.
“We’ll figure somethin’ out, we better hurry, she’s not lookin’ too good.”
“Thanks Hugh, hurry back, please,” I said, shooting him the sweetest smile I could muster while still being worried about my friend. I looked down at Holly. Her eyes were moving a mile a minute behind her closed lids.
“Good thing you were standing there, Jaxie,” Sweets said, putting an arm around Jax’s shoulders. “Holly would’ve hit the floor!”
Jax glared at Sweets with little enthusiasm. “She totally smashed me!”
“Look at the positive. You saved Holly from possible brain trauma. This stone floor could have done some damage!”
Jax sighed. “True. Is she going to be alright?”
“She looks like she’s alright,” Sweets said.
“What if she comes out of it and says my uncle did this?” Jax asked nervously. “My mom would be so upset!”
I stood up and put both hands on Jax’s shoulders, I looked her in the eyes. “Jax, if your uncle is a murderer, we need to know about it.”
She nodded.
“You need to prepare yourself for this. Your uncle could be fingered as Ronnie’s killer.”
“Oh, is that so?” we suddenly heard a deep voice ask from the doorway.
My heart dropped. I recognized the voice immediately. We all turned towards the door just in time to see Merrick Stone entering the potions lab.
“What are you girls doing in my potions lab?” he demanded angrily.
“Uncle, I’m so so sorry,” Jax began, stepping in front of all of us girls to shield us from her uncle’s anger. “This is all my fault. I – uh, I needed to practice a spell.”
“You can’t do spells, niece. Remember, you’re not a witch? Pick a different lie,” he sneered.
“Oh. I realize I’m not a witch, Uncle, but I am taking classes and I was doing a spell and the girls’ potions lab was out of tinder root and I needed some. My friends were nice enough to bring me over so I could look for some.”
He looked down his long thin nose at the rest of us skeptically. “It doesn’t look like you’re looking for tinder root, the ingredients are over there, in the cabinets.”
Jax swiveled around and looked at the four of us behind her and then faced her uncle again. “Oh, yeah, right. Well. We were getting the bottle and then my friend here,” she pointed behind her, “fainted. And we were trying to get her to wake up when you came in. Really, we were just about to leave.”
“I heard you when I entered. You were talking about that Edwards boy’s death. You all think I did it,” Merrick said angrily. His face was flushed red and his body was in a defensive position.
Jax shook her head quickly. “No, Uncle. You misheard us.”
“Silence!” he roared. “I didn’t mishear anything. She said,” he pointed directly at me, “that I could be fingered as the murderer.”
I looked around at the girls. “Is that what you heard? Hmm. Yeah, we should get you some Q-tips or something. No, I said your uncle should be cleared as the murderer. Yeah. Jax was worried about you and I was just trying to make her feel better.”
Suddenly Merrick peered at me more closely. “You’ve got to be Linda’s girl. Am I right?”
I nodded then stepped forward with my hand extended. “You are. Name’s Mercy. Pleasure to meet you.”
He looked down at my hand disdainfully. “You think you can be defiant because your mother and I share a child together? You think I won’t punish you because you’re Linda’s daughter?” he asked me smugly. “Well think again!” He reared back and shot at my feet with a sudden bolt of colorful electricity, making me jump across the floor. “This will teach you to enter the buildings on my side of the school without permission!” Over and over again, he struck at my feet, sending tingles radiating throughout my body. It was the first time I’d ever been struck with a magical force. The shrill sensation was nothing I’d ever felt before. It wasn’t what I imagined being electrocuted felt like, it was more of an energy surge that paralyzed the cells in my feet, like the prickles you feel after your feet have fallen asleep and you try and walk on them. What began in my feet was soon radiating up into my legs. I felt like I had thousands of needles stabbing at my flesh. I bounced around, trying not to let him hit me, but time after time he recharged and sent more energy my way.
Feeling defeated, I finally cried out, “Alba, get Holly and the rest of the girls out of here! Now!”
Alba took no time in launching Holly into the air.
“Not so fast!” Merrick roared. He took one hand off of me and wielded it towards Alba. Without hesitating, Jax launched her body in front of the stream of energy, shielding Alba and Holly, but putting herself right in the energy current.
“Jax!” I hollered. “No!”
{ Chapter Sixteen}
Merrick had Jax suspended in the air in an electrical current. She appeared to be paralyzed, unable to move and unable to speak.
“Jax! Are you ok?” I screamed at her wildly, still dodging the bursts of fireballs Merrick was shooting at me. She didn’t move, didn’t flinch.
Jax’s display of heroism was all Alba needed to be able to help Sweets and Holly escape through the open door – with Alba flying Holly out.
“Run girls, go!” I hollered at them as they slid out the door.
Merrick tried to stop them with his body, but they scampered out too quickly.
They’d only been gone seconds when the door suddenly burst open, with Hugh and Tristan on the other side, shoving their body weight into the door, it slammed against Merrick, sending him reeling and the electrical currents in different directions. Jax’s lifeless body crumpled to the ground in a heap.
“Tristan!” I hollered. “Jax!”
Tristan shot forward and scooped up Jax, throwing her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “Get her out of here! Take her to the other girls,” I instructed him frantically.
“Don’t worry. I’ll find them. Come on. You come with me, Hugh can handle Stone,” Tristan hollered at me as he raced towards the open door.
“No, I’m not leaving Hugh. Get help!”
Tristan raced out of the potions lab just as Sorcerer Stone was stumbling to his feet. “You’ll pay for that, Mr. Brooks!”
“Mercy Mae, it’s time you skedaddle on outta here,” Hugh said, taking a ninja fighting stance in front of Stone.
/> “I’m not leaving you, Hugh. Stone doesn’t fight with martial arts. He fights with magic!”
The thought hit Hugh right where it was needed. “Thank you, darlin’. You gave me an idea! Get behind me!”
Hugh sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes. In seconds a dark grey storm cloud began to form in the high ceiling of the potions lab. Then the winds came up, a gust slammed the door shut hard. I rushed to get behind Hugh so I wouldn’t get caught in the storm he had brewing. Suddenly a lightning bolt struck the ground, with a huge booming thunderbolt following it.
Sorcerer Stone, who had been cautiously watching everything happening around him, laughed at Hugh. “You fool. You think a little thunder and lightning show is going to protect you?” When he pulled his hands back to launch another electrical strike towards us, Hugh pounced.
He called to the wind. It seemed to suck down out of the clouds he’d covered the ceiling with and it grabbed a hold of Sorcerer Stone’s body, sending him reeling backwards, crashing against the glass cabinets.
“Now Mercy! Go now!” Hugh hollered. “I’ll be right behind you.”
I nodded and ran to the door. It took all my strength to pull it open, the wind was so strong, but I managed and I ran as fast as I could, stopping only at the bottom of the stairs to wait for Hugh to follow me.
As the seconds passed, my body grew more and more tense, worrying if Hugh was going to make it out of the room before Merrick was adequately sedated. The noises that came out of the room were those of a typhoon or a hurricane. I gnawed on my bottom lip like crazy until finally, the noise stopped. I held my breath as the door to the potions lab opened with a loud creaking sound.
Hugh darted out and quickly slammed the door shut. I let out a sigh of relief, but before coming to join me, he bent over and blew on the door knob. His icy breath froze the handle shut tight.
“Wow, that Dentyne Ice really works!” I said with a brilliant smile as Hugh joined me on the stairs.
“Let’s go darlin’, that man is gonna be hotter than a preacher’s knee when he gets outta there.”
Hugh took me by the hand, practically dragging me up the stairs and out the front door. Back in the girl’s dorm lobby, Tristan was waiting for us.
Witch Degrees of Separation: A Witch Squad Cozy Mystery #3 Page 14