Magical Midway Paranormal Cozy Series Books 1-3

by Leanne Leeds

  “Half of the people on this endeavor don’t even know they’re on this endeavor, you idiot. There can’t be anything but mistrust.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me at this point,” Bolt told her, tossing back his white-blond hair. “I have what I was meant to have out of this at long last.”

  “I can’t believe you did all this for a ring.”

  “I did all this for a future,” Bolt snapped at her. “Those naiads took everything from me. And that stupid witch allowed Alexa to walk back onto the Magical Midway as if she had never stolen anything from me. None of the choices presented to me were difficult.”

  It was clear at this point that my suspicion about Bolt was right. Despite his actions, I could understand his anger. What Alexa had done to him—leaving him, taking his ring, stealing everything he owned in the world, and then selling it to an Impy witch for even more—was brutal.

  It didn’t make anything he did right.

  “You seem to have a knack for intrigue, Bolt,” Faleena told him.

  “All elves do, when needed,” he told her.

  “If elves and witches were in charge of the world it would certainly be more entertaining. Unfortunately for you, elf, witches are in charge and witches will remain in charge,” Faleena responded.

  Bolt tilted his head and considered her statement. Then he shrugged.

  “In any case, it appears that no one is the wiser at this point. We simply must run out the clock until midday tomorrow,” Bolt said. “Charlotte Astley will be off at the prison with Alexa, and Wayland will be out of Scout’s hair. Once he’s elevated, there should be no more problems from the werebears. The Witches' Council can run roughshod over the community as is their desire with no more interference from anyone with a spine.”

  “And Gunther? It is important that both are neutralized,” Faleena asked him. “Both circuses must be weakened. Roland Makepeace will crawl into a bottle once his precious son joins his wife in the great beyond. No more heir, no more circus.”

  “You leave that half human weakling to me.”

  I rubber-banded back into my body with a whomp!

  “Faleena!” I gasped, scrambling off the floor. “I… wait a minute.”

  I ran behind the dining room table and scoured the wall until I spotted the small rock Anya’s friend had tossed there. With a stomp, it shattered.

  “Charlotte, are you alright?”

  “Yeah, there was an eye in the corner,” I told Gunther as I leaned over and looked at the sparkling dust on the floor.

  “An eye? You mean like a spyglass?”

  “Yeah, Samson knew that it was there. You didn’t tell them?”

  I didn’t want them to begin acting suspicious, or for whoever was spying to know it was discovered until you returned with more information. Besides, what was anyone going to see in this yurt, anyway? You drooling on the floor with your uncle and your boyfriend watching you? Not exactly exciting.

  “Faleena is involved with this,” I told them, glancing at Anya to gauge her reaction. “I followed her into the woods, and she met with Bolt and Scout. Well, Scout first. Then Bolt.”

  “Did you overhear their conversations, Charlotte?”

  “I did, both of them, but honestly I can’t make sense of them,” I told Uncle Phil as I sat down. “Scout said he had to shake Devana to meet with Faleena, and then they talked about who was plotting against him, but then when he left Bolt showed up. It seemed like the two of them were plotting against Scout, maybe, and us for certain. The two conversations seem diametrically opposed to one another.”

  “There’s no way that Faleena is involved in this,” Anya said crossing her arms. “I’ve known her for years. Forget that I’ve known her for years, actually. She’s a werebear. She would be banished from the entire clan if she were involved in something like this.”

  “Well, something like what, Charlotte? What’s the plot?” Gunther asked.

  “The goal is that Scout gets elevated,” I told him. “That you and I are out of the way, that both circuses are weakened. The only things I know for sure are that Scout was spying on us to make sure we weren’t plotting with Wayland, he thinks Faleena is working with him, he’s concerned Wayland is working against him so he can’t be elevated, and he didn’t want Devana to know that he was going to talk to Faleena.”

  “And Bolt?”

  “Well, Bolt hates me because I let Alexa back onto the Magical Midway. Which is fair, I guess. I mean, I understand why he’s upset.”

  “Charlotte, focus, please,” Uncle Phil said with a pained look.

  “Right, sorry. He got his one ring back, and he was given it back in order to do whatever it is he’s doing. Faleena knows about his ring.”

  “How would Faleena know about his ring?” Anya asked.

  I shrugged.

  “And what is he doing?” Uncle Phil asked me, snapping his fingers toward my face to get my attention.

  “Bolt seems to be working with her to ensure Gunther and I are out of the way. Bolt said all he needs to do now is run out the clock to midday tomorrow, and Scout should be elevated. Faleena reminded him he needed to take out Gunther. Then everything’s done.”

  “Did he say anything about Chase Trout? Anything that indicates he knew who the murderer was?”

  “Honestly, Gunther, I didn’t get the sense that he cared about the murderer or what was going on with the werebears at all. He was much more focused on me and you.”

  “Wonderful. Did you get any sense of what I need to watch out for?”

  “He basically said he was going to ‘take care of’ you, as in permenantly. He didn’t elaborate how, and as soon as he made the threat, I raced back here to tell you all.”

  Gunther paced. Uncle Phil watched him, and Anya sat silently.

  “Charlotte, I’m so sorry that I brought Faleena to meet you,” Anya said quietly. “I feel like my sisters and I are always causing you problems.”

  “This isn’t your fault, Anya. Bolt and Faleena both have been known for years to everyone here,” I told her. “And your sister wasn’t your fault, either.”

  “Yet again, suddenly, there are drama and plots seemingly out of nowhere,” Gunther murmured. “But what if it’s not out of nowhere? Has there been anything that’s happened in the past few months that didn’t have the Witches’ Council’s fingerprints all over it?”

  “Why would the Witches’ Council want Chase Trout dead?” I asked them. “And is there really no one in here that thinks the names Chase and Scout Trout for bears isn’t the least little bit funny? Not even a little?”

  “Stop that, Charlotte, that’s disrespectful,” Uncle Phil told me.

  My uncle was right, but it had been killing me not to say something. I had werelion named Leo, and a Sphinx that spoke and rhymes. Why not call a bear Chase Trout?

  “Sorry. Look, the Witches' Council was talked about multiple times in the course of the conversations I overheard between Faleena and Bolt. It could have been just a political reference? But I don’t think it was.”

  “What do you think?” Uncle Phil asked.

  “I think it’s the same thing as it always is,” I told him. “I think the Witches' Council arranged all of this, and it seemed to me Faleena was the person conducting the entire conspiracy.”

  “Are you saying you think Faleena murdered Chase?”

  “If Scout didn’t, and Devana didn’t and Wayland didn’t and Bolt couldn’t, who else could it be?”

  “Are we sure that Wayland has nothing to do with this?” Gunther asked me.

  “Nothing I sensed from him and nothing they said about him and that clearing gives me any indication whatsoever that he’s a part of any of the conspiracies,” I said.

  I don’t believe so, either, Samson agreed.

  “Samson says he doesn’t think so,” Uncle Phil told the non-telepathic group.

  “Then I think we need to have a conversation with Wayland. I realize that he’s defensive, but we’ve barely spoken
to him since that first day, and he hasn’t sought any of us out at all even though he’s looking into what happened to his friend,” Gunther said. “That means he not only knows that Charlotte didn’t do it, it also means he doesn’t think we have any information that’s useful to him.”

  “Well, that’s kind of offensive,” I pointed out. “We are the lawgivers after all.”

  “I don’t think so, Charlotte. I think if we let him know what we know it might make him open up to us with what he’s learned. Maybe together, we can all figure out what the true motivation behind all of this is.”

  12

  Gunther and I left the yurt. He was insistent that Wayland would be more receptive to our questions if we didn’t go stocking through the festival like a mob looking for him.

  “Hey, I have a question to ask you,” I asked him as we hiked on the dirt road.

  “Shoot.”

  “What is Ethel Elkins?”

  “Ethel Elkins? The old lady from my circus?” he asked. “She’s a norn. She’s very old and has trouble walking. Honestly, I don’t know where she came from. She’s just kind of always been there.”

  “I mean circus-wise. What does she do?”

  “Ethel? Um… nothing, really. She’s a norn. She’s just herself. She doesn’t really do anything formally at the circus.”

  “I didn’t realize that you guys had folks that just lived on the grounds without taking on a role or job.”

  “Only with Ethel,” Gunther said. “Normal rules don’t really apply to norns, though. People are pretty afraid to cross them. They’re huge, and they foretell a person’s destiny. Some say they can affect it, too, but I don’t know that for sure.”

  The dream I had the other night kept popping up in my mind. What the old woman said at the end, about everything tying together. No matter how much I pushed it away, her words kept popping back up like the dream was trying to tell me something that I wasn’t seeing.

  “In good ways or bad?”

  “I guess that depends on your perspective.” Gunther smiled. “Hey, that’s Wayland’s cabin. The small one with the shield on it that has the ramps in front. Well, it used to be Chase’s. I guess no one’s worrying about guarding Wayland.”

  “You think she would talk to us?”

  He nodded. “Ethel Elkins? Sure, I don’t see why not. She likes me. What made you think of this?”

  “I don’t know, really. Just that dream I had the other night. I guess now that I’m over the shock of it I’m trying to understand what she was trying to tell me.”

  Gunther nodded but said nothing more. He and I had gotten to a better place since my meltdown. I think he feared to make me defensive again by continuing to talk about the dream.

  Gunther and I walked toward the small cabin. Glancing around the fairgrounds, I noticed this area had tons of these small cabins all over the place, each decorated with different bear carvings. “They’re awfully small for bears to stay in. Are they bigger on the inside?”

  “No, why?” Gunther asked.

  “Well, our yurts are huge inside, but the outside looks normal. The inside can contain little villages or big rooms and stuff. I wondered if bear shifters have that same kind of ability. These seem incredibly small for people to live in.”

  “How much room do you really need for a one-week festival?” Gunther answered as we drew closer to Chase’s.

  “Here we are.” Gunther stepped back and held his arm out politely to allow me to go first. Very quaint and old world charming, that Gunther.

  I stepped up and knocked on the door.

  “Go away!” screeched someone from within the house. The voice was distinct, and definitely not Wayland Black’s. “I got nothing to say to anyone today! Unless you’re bringing Brandywine, go away!”

  “That’s not Wayland,” Gunther said turning.

  “No, but the voice sounds familiar,” I told him as I racked my brain to place it. “I’ve heard that voice before.”

  “Of course you have. We were just talking about her.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That’s Ethel Elkins.”

  With all of the weird things that have happened since I became the ringmaster of the Magical Midway, an old woman popping up where she shouldn’t be just two minutes after I thought of her and asked about her shouldn’t be that big of a deal. It’s a weird coincidence, maybe, but one that could have just as easily happened in the human world. No magic involved. Just odd.

  My stomach, however, raced down through my legs to wrap itself around my ankles. The coincidence was mind-boggling.

  “Mrs. Elkins? It’s Charlotte Astley and Gunther Makepeace. We were stopping by to talk to Wayland, and I understand he’s staying here in Chase Trout’s cabin,” Gunther called through the closed door.

  “Are you deaf, boy? I said go away!” It sounded like cabinets slammed from within the little house, and the small structure shook with the force.

  “I thought you said she was a little old lady? It sounds like someone loosed a gorilla in there.”

  “Ethel’s a bit tougher than she looks,” Gunther responded. He stepped up and knocked on the door. “Ms. Ethel, come on now. We won’t bother you long. Charlotte and I really need to talk to Wayland. Is he in there?”

  The door swung open, and I gasped.

  “You two kids don’t listen at all, do you?” the old woman squawked as she filled the door frame.

  “You’re the one that’s not supposed to be in here, Ms. Elkins,” Gunther informed the old lady politely.

  “Says who? You think you know so much, Gunther Makepeace. Let me tell you, you don’t know squat,” she grumbled as she waved us in Chase Trout’s old cabin.

  “What are you doing here, ma’am?” I asked her as I closed the door behind me.

  “It’s all a matter of life and death,” she whispered, her voice dropping low. “The thirteenth witches will know this. If they do not know it now, they will know it soon enough.”

  “Mrs. Elkins—”

  The gigantic old lady held up her hand, demanding silence. She glanced to both of us, her eyes softening. Ethel’s gnarled fingers caressed my cheek, then Gunther’s.

  “You two are idiots,” she said. Coughing, she banged her cane on the wooden floor with a loud thwack. “You are, unfortunately, the only two idiots we paranormals have in this little prophecy. So I work with what I’ve got.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about, and if you’re going to keep calling me an idiot, frankly, I don’t know that I’m gonna bother trying,” I told her, crossing my arms.

  “Snippy, snippy, snippy,” the old woman cackled as she squinted at me. “Looks like I should have picked the Magical Midway instead of the Makepeace Circus to park my rear at. Though to be fair, no one would have believed that Roland would have outlasted Phil, what with all the drinking and angst. Can’t see the future perfectly all the time. Sometimes we guess!”

  “Gunther, what the heck is she talking about?”

  “I don’t know, actually,” he told me, confused. “Ms. Elkins, what are you talking about?”

  The old woman's eyes widened as she froze.

  “Not yet,” she said emphatically, her cane hitting the floor. Wobbling across the room, she grabbed Gunther and me by the arms and shoved us with some force toward the door. “You were looking for Wayland. Go do that. Now.”

  “I am so confused,” I muttered as Ethel shoved me against the door frame.

  “Ms. Elkins—” Gunther began, but the old woman whacked him. He stared at her, shocked, and we all froze at the door, staring at one another. I could hear Gunther’s breath, and the old woman wheezing. A shout echoed from outside the open door.

  Ethel Elkins nodded and patted our cheeks simultaneously one last time. She remained in silence for a few moments more, and then she nodded again. With a deep breath, she spoke one last time.

  “What is happening must happen. I cannot help you. I’ll be back when I ca
n. Now go, both of you. Go do what you were doing.”

  She nodded to us both, showing us out and closing the door in our faces.

  “What the heck was that?” I asked Gunther as I stared at the closed door.

  “Norns can be a little confusing sometimes.”

  “A little confusing? There was no purpose to any of that!”

  “Oh, there was a purpose,” Gunther said as he pointed toward a fire twenty feet away from the cabin. “You can absolutely be assured that there was a purpose to it. Nothing a norn does is without a purpose. Come on. Let’s go look for Wayland.”

  “No need,” a gruff voice called distantly from the darkness. “I’m right here.”

  “Wayland? It’s Gunther and Charlotte,” Gunther called toward the trees. We walked around the cabin toward the voice and found Wayland drinking beer from a can in a lounge chair. He was alone, staring into a campfire that had long since gone out. The ashes were piled high and cold.

  “What do you two want? Shouldn’t you be enjoying your last day together?” Wayland observed as he belched and threw the empty can toward the firepit. He reached behind, and I heard another can echo in the quiet clearing as it opened. “They seem pretty determined to make sure you go down tomorrow, heat merchant.”

  “I didn’t do anything to your friend, so I don’t plan to go down for anything,” I told him. “We wondered if you had found out anything.”

  “Oh, I found out a lot of things,” he said. The big man took a long chug off the beer can and burped loudly again. “Your elf is a snake. Well, not a real snake, but a—”

  “We get your meaning.”

  “Yeah, I bet you do. I hear you got issues with snakes. Water, if I remember correctly.”

  “Wayland, come on,” Gunther said as he sat down on the foot of the chaize. “You can give Charlotte guff when we solve this case.”

  “Guff? Okay, boy scout, have it your way,” he said. “Chase was killed. Someone stabbed him with a tree branch. His brother’s an idiot, but I don’t think he plotted to kill his brother. Your elf snake is trying to frame your girlfriend for the murder. There. There’s what I know.”