“I had no idea. Does Valerie know?” I’d always assumed she had a little crush on Jaden but that didn’t seem likely if they were cousins. In less enlightened times, witches often intermarried the same way royalty did, though that practice had fallen out of favor at least two hundred years ago.
“She knows,” he confirmed.
“Wow. I can’t believe she never told me.” Val and I weren’t always on the same page, but I didn’t know she was keeping secrets from me, either.
“Well, regardless, I can assure you it’s not my father. He won’t be happy if he finds out what we’re doing, but he respects blood ties more than council votes and he’d never hurt Val.”
Jaden’s car pulled up in front of my house. Every light inside was ablaze.
“Thanks for meeting me. And for dinner,” I said.
“It’s always a pleasure to dine with a lovely lady.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. At least my cheeks didn’t burst into flames again. “Don’t be such an ass.”
He smiled. “What happens next?”
I opened the passenger door and grabbed my purse. “I guess I find Felix and we settle this once and for all.”
Chapter 10
Valerie was at the kitchen sink, washing her vials and potion making tools. The house was absolutely spotless and every lamp and overhead light blared bright. Even the television was on, still tuned to the last channel I’d watched (HGTV, don’t judge), though the sound had been turned off. All of the blinds and curtains were tightly shut.
Valerie jumped when she heard me come in.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hello,” she said tersely, going back to her washing.
“Cleaning?” I asked, though it was obvious she’d vacuumed the carpet, wiped down all of the counters, and I could hear the clothes dryer going.
“Yes,” she said flatly. “Where did you go? To find more trouble?”
I couldn’t tell from her monotone if she was trying to tease me or being serious.
“I got dinner with Jaden,” I said.
“Jaden Blackmore?” she asked, as if we both knew a dozen Jadens and it was hard to keep them all straight.
“Yeah, you know, your cousin.”
She dropped the beaker she was washing into the sink. She picked it up, collected herself, and said, “Oh.”
“Oh?” I crossed my arms. “Why didn’t you tell me you were related?”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter much. It’s not like they’re inviting me to family dinners or whatever. It’s not a big deal.”
“You always acted so weird around them. I thought you had a crush on Jaden or something.”
She whirled around and glared at me. “I don’t have a crush, Avery. I want him and the rest of the council to see what a talented witch I am. I want them to put me on the council.” She turned back to the sink. “I want them to respect me and my father, and to stop acting like my mother marrying someone she loved instead of someone they’d chosen for her was a crime.”
That made sense. I guess I’d mistaken her desire to always look presentable as a desire to look attractive when all she really wanted was to be noticed for her magic.
“You still could have told me,” I pressed. I’d known Valerie for years. I couldn’t believe this had never come up.
“It’s not information I want spread around,” she said.
The words hit like a slap. I wasn’t a gossip. Even Valerie realized she’d been too harsh because she immediately apologized. I waved it away and pretended it didn’t bother me that she thought I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. But who would I even tell? It wasn’t like people listened to me. Half the coven thought I was a reckless mess. They smiled and nodded at me like I was a child. Even if I did go around spilling secrets, I doubted anyone would believe me.
“I won’t tell anyone,” I said. “I just wish you’d told me.”
“It wasn’t relevant.” Valerie wiped her hands on a dish towel. “I don’t know who your cousins are.”
“I don’t have any,” I said. Not that I knew of, at least. Aunt Cecily never had children of her own, just cats, and she remained perfectly content that way. Raising me had been enough. My mother had no other siblings and I didn’t know who my father was.
Seth came down the hall, as if my thinking the word ‘cats’ alone had summoned him.
I pulled out a can of Seth’s food and got him fed while Valerie finished scrubbing her dishes.
“I’m sorry about what happened tonight,” I said.
“Getting blasted with an attack spell or having our house burgled?” she asked, setting a beaker on a drying mat.
“Both. Keeping the car here was reckless and clearly I angered the wrong person. So I’m sorry.”
She let out a sigh of relief so heavy it rocked her body. Her shoulders shook. For a second, I thought she was crying and then I realized she was laughing out of sheer relief.
“Val?” I pressed.
“I’m so, so glad to hear you say that, Avery. I knew you’d come to your senses and stop this little detective game.”
I blinked. Wait, what?
“I’ve been terrified that whoever was behind the theft would come back and finish me off.”
I looked around the house. Suddenly all the lights being on and Valerie turning into a non-stop cleaning machine made more sense. She was scared to death and unable to sit still.
She wiped her hands on a dish towel. “I hate that it had to come to scare tactics and thievery for you to come around, but I’m just glad it’s over.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it again. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t giving up. That I was more determined than ever to find Felix and figure out what happened to him. But she was so relieved that I didn’t have the heart. I’d just have to be way more careful and work quickly, before the attacker could strike again.
“Yeah,” I finally said. “Me, too.”
I spent the rest of the night combing through various old magical books from my small collection. I’d bought several old and unique spell books from local magic shops and a traveling book seller who came to the Underground Market on rare occasions. Among these were weird and strange spellbooks written by witches who never had covens for one reason or another (maybe they didn’t know covens were a thing, or there weren’t any in their area; maybe they didn’t even know witches existed until they realized they could do magic, etc. etc.), or witches who were exiled from their covens for practicing strange or illegal magic.
The books were expensive, so I bought them only sporadically and didn’t usually tell Val, who would immediately point out that that chunk of change could have been better put to use for groceries or bills.
Sadly, I couldn’t find a tracking or lost object spell that didn’t need at least a drop of Felix’s blood or a thread from the fabric of the shirt he was wearing, something to ground the spell so it could find him.
At four in the morning, I decided to try the same hybrid spell that had found Felix’s car, this time substituting a thread from one of my lesser-worn shirts for the motor oil. I mixed the ingredients and pushed magic into the concoction. There was a flash and a bang. Black smoke curled up from my cauldron but it only filled the room until my eyes watered. I opened a window and fanned it out with my hands, scared the smoke alarm would go off and give me away. The smoke vanished into the open air, the spell a dud.
At least Val hadn’t woken up. I could hear her soft snoring down the hall.
Since that was a bust, and I didn’t want to risk waking Val with another bad spell, I decided to call it quits for the night.
I went to bed and laid awake, unable to sleep. Magic wasn’t going to lead me to Felix, apparently. Which meant I’d have to find him the hard way.
Chapter 11
I stood in front of council member Lani Reed’s large house. Standing at the top of Queen Anne Hill above downtown Seattle, it wasn’t quite a mansion but for someone like me who lived in a small, two-b
edroom, one-bathroom house, it might as well have been.
Several of the high-ranking old-money witches lived behind a gate on top of a hill in Bellevue in the shadow of the Blackmore mansion, but the Reeds had always stood apart. Unlike so many of the old witch families, the Reeds believed that the council should be elected, not appointed, and that being from a family with members already on the council should not be enough to earn one a place on its own. My mother had agreed, and when she’d been added to the council, it had been in part thanks to the campaigning of Lani and her now-deceased father.
The three-story house was Victorian in style, blue with white trim and a giant turret on the left side. A porch circled the house, ending at the turret. The front door had a smoky glass inset with the Reed family crest engraved on it, a shield with a ferret-like creature winding around a sword.
I reached out for her doorbell and hesitated. Lani had been a dear friend of my mother’s, but she wasn’t close to my Aunt Cecily, and I didn’t know her any better than the other council members. For all I knew, she considered me as much of a lost cause as the rest of the council did.
Still, I had to start somewhere. I rang the bell.
A moment later, a young woman with dark skin and silky hair pulled into a ponytail answered the door. She was a little younger than me and wore gym shorts and a sweaty tank top over a sports bra. She wore a fitness tracking bracelet and tennis shoes.
“Hey,” she said, a flash of recognition on her face. “Avery, right? You’re in the… you know…”
“Coven?” I supplied.
“Yeah,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Kate.”
I’d seen Kate around and already knew her in the way people who go to the same school know each other, but we weren’t friends. We’d probably said all of three words to each other in the past decade.
“I know. It’s nice to see you again,” I said, shaking her hand.
“Sorry I’m such a mess. I was on the treadmill.” She gestured for me to come inside. The entryway to the house was large and extended back to a grand staircase.
“I was hoping to speak with your mom,” I said.
“Sure. She’s in her office.” Kate turned and led me down the hallway to the right. The one to the left seemed to lead to a formal living room. This one led to a guest bathroom and another closed door, with an office at the very end, before the hall curved around and headed toward a kitchen. I could make out the gleaming granite counter tops. “See you around!”
She bounced off to finish her workout and I knocked on the open office door. Lani Reed looked like I remembered: short black hair with bits of gray, cropped so it dusted her ears, bright blue eyes, and tan skin. She wore a pearl-colored blouse and a black skirt.
“Avery,” she said. “This is a nice surprise.”
She sounded genuine so I tried to relax a little. “It’s great to see you,” I said. We hugged. It was stiff but a nice welcoming gesture.
Lani’s desk was big, dark wood and her office walls were covered in photos of Kate, her husband Gary, and shelves that held plants and herbs. She dragged a chair from the corner around to the front of her desk. “Have a seat.”
She sat in her desk chair across from me, making this casual meeting feel more like some kind of formal appointment. “What’s up?” she asked, once we were both seated.
“I heard about Felix Prescott,” I said. I figured it would be better to present myself as a concerned coven member, rather than admit I was trying to hunt him down.
Lani’s face softened. “Oh sweetie. The circumstances reminded me of your mother, too. I’m sorry. It must be jarring after all these years to feel like it might have happened again.”
Tears pricked my eyes and I fought them back. I wasn’t here to mourn my mother but Lani saying that brought feelings of loss to the surface.
“It’s hard,” I admitted. “I was just wondering if you thought maybe there was a connection.”
Lani was silent for a long moment. “I wondered about that, but I think it’s just coincidence. The council has ruled that Felix ran off on his own.” She didn’t sound convinced.
“They said the same thing about my mom,” I argued. Well, some of them had said so at the time, despite protests from people like Lani herself that my mother would never have abandoned me.
“I know. And I don’t believe Meredith left of her own accord. But Felix is not your mother. He and Sam have had their problems and with the stress of a new baby…” She turned her hands palm up, a so you see gesture.
“It’s hard to believe he’d just run off,” I said. I hadn’t known Felix super well, but he never struck me as the sort of guy to abandon his family. “And kind of surprising the council would decide that so quickly.”
Lani nodded. “Some on the council thought we ought to make a greater search effort, but we were out voted. It seems Felix left a note.”
I blinked. A note? I hadn’t heard anything about a note.
“He did?”
She nodded gravely and opened one of her desk drawers. She pulled out a folder. Lani was the council’s archivist, meaning she kept files and notes at meetings. In human circles, her position is referred to as “the secretary.”
She turned the open folder toward me and slid it closer. Inside was a photocopy of a long slip of paper from one of those grocery list pads people keep on their fridges. On it in a messy scrawl was “I’m sorry. Someday, I’ll be back but for now I must go.” The signature was illegible except for the oversized and unmistakable “F” and “P”.
I stared at it. Read it again. Looked up to search Lani’s face for some sign this was a joke. “This can’t be real.”
Lani shrugged and closed the folder, putting it away. “It was found in his car.”
My heart picked up its pace. There’d been no sign of a note in the car when Jaden and I had searched it. I bit back my protest and forced my tone to remain even. “Oh? I thought they didn’t know where his car was.”
She leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “They found it after our vote, but don’t tell anyone I told you that. The vote was made on information only a few on the council were privy to. This note seems to confirm that they were correct.” She sat back in her seat and put the folder away.
My pulse raced. “Where was his car?”
“It was found in a parking lot near the airport,” she said flatly.
That wasn’t true. It had been found in the International District and stolen from my garage, but I couldn’t say that without admitting what I was up to.
“Who found it?” I asked.
Lani frowned. I was pushing too hard. “I don’t know,” she said and I saw the wall come down over her face. She’d just revealed council secrets to me, a lowly and young coven member, and she was already regretting it. “Does that matter?”
“No, I was just curious,” I said quickly, scrambling. “I brought Sam a pie and she said the car vanished with him.”
“Oh,” Lani said, with a smile. “Well, that was very kind of you. What use is a coven of witches if we don’t support each other?”
From the way she abruptly stood, I realized we were done talking. She may have been fond of my mom but she was still loyal to the council and didn’t want to make trouble. Besides, as far as she knew, the car had been recovered with the note, making it obvious Felix had left on his own. She had no reason to doubt that was the truth and I could only change her mind by admitting that I’d found the car first. I honestly didn’t know whether Lani would turn me over to the council if I did, so I kept my mouth shut.
But unfortunately for me, the note only proved the opposite: Felix had not left of his own accord, but someone was sure trying to make it look that way.
Not having my bike was a bummer and made me wish witches really did fly around on broomsticks. (Yes, I’d tried many broom-levitation spells as a teen. No, none of them ever worked.) I rode the bus back to my neighborhood. The sun was still out though quickly retreating behind th
e mountains and the evening air was still warm, making the walk pleasant.
At least until I saw Jaden parked between me and my house. He leaned on his car, looking bored. He was a few blocks down from my house and I wondered if Valerie had seen him. I hoped not, because then she’d know I hadn’t given up looking for the missing witch.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I have news,” Jaden said grimly.
My stomach twisted, scared of what kind of bad news merited such a grave tone from Jaden. “The council found Felix’s car.”
“I heard.”
He raised an eyebrow in question and then opened the door to his car, gesturing for me to get in. I did, and then caught him up on my visit to Lani’s to tell him about the note.
“The note is a fake,” I said.
“I have to agree,” Jaden said, hands clenching the wheel of his parked car. “I told my father that I found it suspicious but he’s siding with the rest of the council on that score.”
I growled in frustration. “It has to be someone on the council.” I braced myself for Jaden to fight me on that.
“Unfortunately, that seems likely.” I met his eyes. One of his eyebrows quirked up. “You thought I’d argue?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “You’re one of them.”
Jaden studied me for a long moment. “The council is merely the leadership board of the coven, Avery. We’re witches like everyone else.”
I bit my lower lip and stared at my reflection in the passenger side window. It had gotten darker outside since we’d started talking. “What did Felix do?” I finally asked.
Jaden tilted his head. “Besides vanish?”
I rolled my eyes. “To tick someone off.”
That little crinkle appeared on Jaden’s forehead again and he ran his fingers through his hair. “You think someone on the council killed him.”
Risky Magic: A Trash Witch Novel Page 7