“I hope we’re not going in search of Puddlewood,” said Charlie.
“That would just be foolish,” said Greer.
“Wouldn’t it just,” I agreed.
Looking at the map had made me realize something. Hazelwood was right next door to Mintwood, or at least part of it was. And the part that was next door was near the hill where Ms. Ivy lived.
That, in turn, was where Betty and Possy had taken over a deserted house when this whole conflict had started. And finally, the place where Scarlett had gone missing was on the other side of that same mountain. I hadn’t realized how all those locations lined up until I’d looked at the map again, and more carefully.
“Are we visiting Ms. Ivy again then?” Charlie asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” I said, barely glancing in the direction of the house as I drove.
As we passed Miss Ivy’s house I could see a light on in the living room. I pictured her reading and surrounded by her cats.
I drove a little further until we came to the house where Charlie had been knocked out by magic. Luckily, Aunt Harriet had been around then and had saved the day.
There was another house beyond that one, though, higher up and kind of on the backside of the mountain, and that was the one I was making for now. I only knew the house was there because my grandmother had told me about it a long time ago. She’d told me that an old witch used to live there, but no one had taken it over after she died. I figured it had fallen into disrepair.
Maybe.
“I’m not sure the Beetle can handle all this excitement,” commented Charlie.
The car had started to cough and sputter as the road narrowed and got bumpier, and it was having an even harder time making it up the hill. Charlie shuddered as we passed the house where Betty and Possy had stayed.
“Maybe I’ll just park in the driveway there,” I said.
Charlie made no comment, but Paws had an opinion, as always.
“That’s a great idea. Let’s go walking in the torrential rain,” he said.
“We’re under a canopy of leaves. It shouldn’t be too bad,” said Charlie.
“I can’t believe Jasper wants me to have an umbrella. They just get blown away half the time,” I muttered.
“I think they’re incredibly useful,” said Greer.
I offered no further comment.
When the three of us climbed out of the car, my boots immediately squished into the mud. I was about to slam the car door closed when I realized that my ghost cat hadn’t budged.
“Don’t be unreasonable. Just come on,” I said.
“I’m never unreasonable. I was simply waiting for you to pick me up and carry me for the duration,” he said.
I reached back into the vehicle and picked up the cat. It was strange to cradle a ghost, but I didn’t mind—much—because it was Paws.
Charlie and Greer were already standing as far off the road as possible. The rain wasn’t hitting them too hard because of the trees, but what did hit them was being blown nearly sideways by the wind.
“Let’s get going,” Charlie yelled, turning into the wind and trudging up hill.
Greer and I followed her as quickly as we could.
Since someone had once lived up here there had once been a road. But that witch had been gone for a long time, and the road was badly overgrown. Worse, as we wound our way around the hill we came across a downed tree. I didn’t see any wires, so I figured there was no electric power all the way up here. The rain was still coming down in sheets, making rivers of water and mud run down the ruts in the old road.
It was slow going. At one point Charlie slipped, and Greer darted forward and grabbed her.
Around the next bend we came across a huge boulder, in the shadow of which we found a sliver of respite from the storm. The three of us huddled close, while Paws burrowed deeper under my rain jacket and peered out angrily.
“This better be worth it,” Charlie yelled over the wind.
“I think it will be,” I replied.
“Great, because if it isn’t you’re in big trouble,” said Charlie.
The three of us got moving again. Usually when I was in the middle of nowhere I would see a smattering of ghost animals, but here there was nothing. Because it was summer it got dark very late, but the storm and the tree cover made it so dim that I wished I had thought to bring a flashlight. I could have taken out my wand, but I didn’t want to walk around with it easily visible on an open road, even if it was an empty open road in the woods. We’d just have to do the best we could in the darkness.
Past the boulder and around a last clump of pine trees, the road ended. We were now facing Hazelwood, and I tried to remember exactly where the cabin had been. My grandmother had given me directions once, and I had been racking my brain without success to remember exactly what they were.
“Which way?” Greer yelled over the wind and rain.
We were now out from under any tree cover, and it was very hard to hear, so I pointed wordlessly forward.
We had only taken a few steps when it was clear that if you walked right up to the edge of the road, there were the remnants of a path. We had barely taken a step along it when I thought I saw the cabin through the woods. There were no lights.
“I don’t see a cabin,” said Greer.
“I don’t see anything,” said Paws, hiding his face in my shoulder.
“It’s up ahead.” I pointed through the trees again. It was barely visible, but it was there.
Without hesitation I stepped off the road and into the woods. I knew my friends were behind me even if I couldn’t hear them.
“This is a bad idea,” said Paws. He was now snuggled deep, protected from the water that couldn’t hit him anyway because he was atemporal.
“It’s not as if you have any other suggestions,” I told the cat.
“For future reference, my suggestion is to always stay inside when there’s a storm,” he said.
“Scarlett has been missing for days. I can’t let it go on any longer. We need to have a séance, which means we need to find her so the witches will help me with one,” I explained. My voice was getting lost in the wind, but Paws was so close I knew he could still hear me.
We were very close to the cabin. When we got a foot away I took one last step.
The cabin was in extreme disrepair. There were no lights on, inside or out. If I had been hoping that Scarlett was sitting there warm by the fire, I would have been very wrong.
Still, I wasn’t expecting a trap.
And that was a mistake.
I took that last step up to the wall of the cabin and instantly knew I was in trouble. A glittering circle appeared around the old building, sheer white and green magic. I felt a tingling all along my feet and face and hands, any part of me that was close to the protective circle.
This was very advanced magic.
I stood there frozen. Unable to move, all I could do was watch as the cabin door slid open.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Just like me, my friends hadn’t noticed that anything was wrong in time to save themselves. They both walked into the barrier and went suddenly motionless. Now we were standing in front of the cabin, helpless.
As the door swung open, all I saw was blackness beyond it.
Paws was howling something, but I couldn’t hear him over the roar of the wind, the magic, and the fear in my own heart.
What had I just gotten my best friends into?
“I told you this was a bad idea,” said Paws through gritted fangs.
Then, out of the doorway, there stepped a girl about my age. She had very curly brown hair held in two messy buns. She was wearing a rain slicker and hiking boots. She had a smattering of freckles across her nose, and a kind face.
I stood there, hoping that the impression of kindness turned out to be right. Given that we were her prisoners, at the moment maybe it was just wishful thinking.
She stared at us. I had never met Scarlett before,
but this was surely Sicily’s granddaughter.
We had found the missing Witch of Hazelwood.
“What you doing here?” she demanded in a whisper-yell.
I tried to say something, but I couldn’t get any words out.
“Try again, dummy,” said Paws.
“You’re a witch,” said the woman in surprise.
“Yes, I am,” I said, and the magical sparkles disappeared.
“Come in before you get us all caught,” Scarlett demanded.
Charlie and Greer were looking at Scarlett in wonder.
“Those were some protection sparkles,” I said to her.
She shrugged. “I don’t know why I bothered, actually. It wouldn’t have kept Ellie out, but I guess it kept me safe from dark ghosts. Not that any of them came looking here.”
The cabin was in worse shape than even I had expected. There was a hole in the wall and half the floor was mud. Two of the windows were broken.
In one corner of the floor was a backpack. I figured it must have been the missing one from Scarlett’s little house.
“These are my friends.” I introduced my roommates.
“I’m Scarlett, the Witch of Hazelwood,” said Scarlett. She peered at me again. “I still want to know what you’re doing here, but now is not the time. Follow me.”
I had just been wondering how Scarlett could possibly live in such a rundown place when I realized exactly how. She knew the same trick as her grandmother.
Scarlett opened a trap door in the floor of the cabin, inspiring Charlie to whisper, “We actually have to go down there?”
“It’s terror personified,” said Paws ominously.
“Don’t lie to her,” I ordered the cat.
“It doesn’t look like he’s lying,” said Charlie.
“This way,” said Scarlett, heading down the stairs revealed by the trapdoor.
Reluctantly, Charlie followed her down. Greer wasn’t far behind, and I brought up the rear. Scarlett called out to me to close the trap door on my way through, and when I did, we were plunged into darkness. For a split second I was tempted to panic, then I felt extreme comfort come over me.
A softly glowing candle was winking and shining in front of us. The cellar wasn’t a cellar anymore, it was transformed into a beautiful sitting room with a large couch in front of a roaring fire. Don’t ask me where the smoke went; it was magic. There were several layers of beautiful rugs, and on one wall a cabinet filled with food was topped by a hot plate. On the opposite wall were books.
It was the most comfortable-looking bunker I had ever seen.
“Oh, I see,” said Charlie. “This is nice.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Greer. “Now I understand how you were able to hide out here for a few days.”
“I had to think of all of it on the spur of the moment. I was lucky I came across this cabin,” said Scarlett. “Otherwise I would never have been able to spy on Puddlewood.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing?” I gasped.
Scarlett nodded, her expression serious. “Sure is.”
“What happened?” I demanded.
“How have you managed to stay hidden?” chimed in Charlie.
“Where does the smoke go?” Greer wanted to know.
“Maybe we’d better sit down and clear everything up,” said Scarlett. She pulled her wand out of her sleeve and set it on the table next to her. Charlie was offered the plush armchair by the fire and accepted it gratefully. Greer and I took the couch. Scarlett pulled up another chair.
“I was going for a hike a few days ago. I’d had a fight with my grandmother and just needed to clear my head. While I was out there I noticed tracks, like, a lot of them. I’d come further than I meant to into the Hazelwood forest and it was getting dark. Then I heard voices. Naturally, I followed them.”
“We found your water bottle, but it wasn’t that far into the woods,” I said. It was one of the things that had been puzzling me.
“Oh, I’m so glad you found it. No, that was just me being silly. I was busy taking pictures of leaves and I dropped it somewhere. When I realized I’d lost it, I figured I could just find it when I went back that way.”
“But you didn’t end up going back that way,” I said, everything becoming clearer.
“Exactly,” Scarlett nodded.
“So, anyway, it’s getting dark and I hear voices. I figured it might be someone who was lost or who needed a witch’s help, never thinking it could be something dangerous.” Scarlett stared into the fire, remembering.
“But then it was?” I said.
“Exactly. It was dark ghosts. A lot of them. They didn’t see me, luckily, but I knew I had to follow them. I’d heard rumors from other witches that we were starting to have a dark ghost problem, but I hadn’t really believed it. After seeing all of them in person, I believed it at last,” she said, shaking her head.
“So I followed them,” she continued. “Again, I figured I’d just see where they went and then go back. I’d let my grandmother and Madame Rosalie know where they were and that would be the end of it. Until you came along, Lemmi, I was the youngest witch of a town, definitely the most inexperienced and green. I had no business taking on so many dark ghosts by myself.”
“So you triggered a mud slide?” All was becoming clear at last.
“Yes, I did, and then the ghosts knew I was there. There was at least one witch with them. I had to run. The thing was, they were already nearly home. Somehow I thought it would be a good idea to head for higher ground. I knew the hill well. It had always been a joke that it was half in Hazelwood and half in Mintwood. The ghosts didn’t chase me for long, but I was afraid to leave. I was afraid to do magic.”
“We came to take you home,” I said.
Scarlett sighed. “I like that. I can give my report to the witches, and they’ll know what to do.”
I just hoped she was right.
“One question for you. Did you find a wand?” Scarlett asked.
My friends and I exchanged looks. “Yes, is it yours?” That wouldn’t make sense. She had greeted us with a wand.
“No, it was one of the dark witches’,” said Scarlett.
“And she’ll want it back,” I said grimly.
We had found Scarlett, and she had told me a lot more than I had expected she would. One part I still wondered about was the voodoo doll. Sicily had insisted that she wasn’t worried about it, but I was. Ellie was trying to spread her power. And so far, she was succeeding.
We left the cabin, Paws snuggled inside my jacket again, and drove her straight to Sicily’s place, which applied another shock to Charlie and Greer’s systems.
We pulled the Beetle into the hidden yard that surrounded the three shacks. Sicily, sensing our approach, came running out in the rain without a jacket or a spell for protection, and hugged her granddaughter.
Scarlett was home safe. We were all safe.
But for how long?
Chapter Twenty-Three
Now that one mystery was solved, it was time to turn our attention back to the other. Until it was time to debrief the Witches’ Council about Scarlett, I had to turn my attention to the case of the skeleton at the library.
“Do you think Hansen has found out who killed Isabel?” I asked as we drove home.
“I think we have a way to find out,” said Charlie.
“Are you going to tell us what that is?” Greer demanded.
We were close to the farmhouse after leaving Scarlett with her grandmother. The rain had stopped, but the road was still covered in mud.
“All in good time,” said Charlie.
“You people and your surprises and secrets. Can’t anyone just be straightforward anymore?” said Greer.
“I’m straightforward annoyed,” said Paws, peeping his head out of my rain jacket.
“Anyone but Paws?” said Greer.
When neither of us answered she muttered, “Maybe not.”
Charlie’s idea was simple. She lai
d it out in detail the next morning and enlisted our help in carrying it out. We were going to invite Dana, Horace, and the rest of the family to the bar, where we expected Isabel’s ghost to be. In that way we might be able to determine whether what Dana told us was true, or if indeed she might have killed her sister because she had wanted to inherit the house.
“It’s an excellent theory, but we have to put it to the test,” I mused. Hansen, Jasper, and Deacon would be there, not to mention Tom and Detective Cutter. Mrs. Snicks wanted to come, and we were glad to have her involved. If this worked, it would be the biggest whodunit reveal of my Mintwood Mystery career so far.
If it didn’t, Detective Cutter was going to be very annoyed. We had simply invited everyone to a casual gathering. Charlie hadn’t said she thought she knew who the killer was.
While I went with Greer to the bar to get ready and to prepare Isabel, Charlie was frantically running around Mintwood to put last minute details into place.
We were the first to arrive at the bar, because no one else could get in until Greer got there. Greer unlocked the front door, and as expected, we saw Isabel sitting on her favorite stool. She turned around to see who had come in and brightened when she saw us.
“My drinking buddies!” she said gleefully.
“How’s the rum smell?” I asked her.
“Glorious, although one of the other bartenders wised up to Greer’s weird habit of leaving the cap off, and he’s taken to putting it away. Drat him.”
“I’ll have a word,” said Greer as she went around behind the bar.
“You all look tired. Party you didn’t invite me to last night?” Isabel asked.
I shook my head. “No, but we think we might have discovered a motive for your killing. It’s going to be difficult for you, but we’ve invited your family here today.”
“I can’t escape them even in death?” Isabel groaned.
“It’s to help catch the killer,” I explained.
“Oh, very well. Some of them won’t come, you know. Anna hasn’t gone anywhere that she didn’t want to since before she could walk. True story.”
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