Charm His Pants Off

by Cate Martin

  "What do you mean by stable?" Z asked.

  "Well, after…" Brianna started to say, then quickly decided that 'you died' was a tactless thing to say. "After we arrived here, when the bridge had been untended for a time, there were weak points. Places where things could slip through. Gaps in the spells."

  "Oh dear," Z said, putting her hands to her mouth. "No, that was just what I was afraid would happen. Oh, dear."

  "So that was after all this happened?" Sophie asked.

  "Yes. At the time I left, the time portal was as strong as Juno and I could make it. It extended from me to her, although her end tended to move through time. I never quite knew if she did that deliberately or if there was something else going on. Juno was the one with time powers, not me. I barely understood it. I felt sure she should be able to control it."

  "You and Juno built it together?" Brianna asked.

  "Yes. I was here, in my standard time. I never much cared for time travel, so my personal timeline is as close as possible to a straight line, day after day in succession."

  "But not Juno," I guessed.

  "Juno was always searching for… something. I never really understood her. Everything I did to get to her, working on my end with magic I could barely even do to reach out to her across time, and when I finally connected with her, she refused to come through."

  "Why?" Brianna asked.

  "I suppose she knew I was planning on stripping her of her power when she got here," Z said.

  "What? Why?" I asked. "That sounds so extreme. She was your sister."

  "She was making trouble again, I just knew it," Z said. "She meddled in time streams back home. That was what we fought about. It took decades to find her here after that fight. Read my pages; you'll see how sincere I was. I was sorry she had gotten lost in time. I devoted my entire life to getting her back. But once I found her, she chose to stay lost. I could keep a tether to her, but that was all."

  "So the other end kept moving," Brianna said. "But the bridge itself was strong?"

  "I could've gone to her at any time," Z said, "if that's what you're thinking. But I wanted her to come to me."

  "How long did you wait?" Sophie asked.

  "Decades," Z admitted. "It took so long to create in the first place; I couldn't give up on it. But by 1968, when I went to do whatever needed doing, it had been decades. Just waiting for Juno to admit she was wrong and come home so I could forgive her."

  "Did your students know about any of this?" Brianna asked.

  "The magical ones knew about the time portal," Z said. "Not about the family business."

  "Did Juno destroy the bridge?" Brianna asked, but I was already shaking my head before Z answered.

  "Oh, goodness, no. Juno was the bridge," Z said. "It exists because of her. I don't have time magic, but she has it like no other witch that ever was."

  "So when you say you reached out to her, she was reaching back to you? She had to in order for this time portal spell to work?" Sophie guessed.

  "Yes. But the moment her mind brushed mine, she knew what I was intending. She tried to flee, but she couldn't pull away from my timeline entirely. My magic was too powerful, and I would never let her go. But I wasn't going to go after her either."

  "You couldn't?" Brianna asked, frowning skeptically.

  "It was important that she come to me," Z said. "She was in the wrong. It was her place."

  Sophie pressed a hand over her eyes, and I felt like doing the same. Everything came down to two siblings with a beef? For centuries?

  "So what destroyed the bridge?" Brianna asked.

  "I don't quite know," Z said. "I was away, far away, when it was attacked. My magic was part of it; I felt the effects when the spells started hitting it. But more than that, I heard Juno calling out to me across time. She was screaming for help. I used so much power getting to her I'm surprised I survived the experience."

  "What spell?" Brianna asked.

  Z shrugged apologetically. "I didn't write that bit down."

  "What did you see when you got home?" Sophie asked.

  "The part of the time bridge that was tethered to the orchard in the backyard was still attached, but only barely. And the other end was so unstable it was almost impossible to perceive. It jumped through centuries of time. Just trying to look at it nearly drove me mad. What it must have done for Juno, I cannot even say."

  "And the students?" I asked.

  "Oh, the students," Z said with a sigh. "It took days, no weeks, just to get things under control well enough for me to come back out of the time portal. And by that time there was no sign of any of them."

  "They weren't around when you arrived?" Brianna asked.

  "For the split second I was even aware of this house and its contents, no."

  "But the house next door? Was it blown in?" I asked.

  She shrugged. "If it were, I didn't write that down."

  "And Juno?" I asked.

  "I don't know," Z said. "I emerged from the time portal having managed to tether the far end in a specific time, but I heard nothing of Juno. Her cries had gone silent before I made it home, and all of the weeks I spent within the portal showed no sign of her anywhere."

  "What's the last thing you wrote?" Brianna asked.

  "I had just spent a few days in bed recovering," Z said. "I was intending to go back into the portal to do more magical repair. Juno had to be in there somewhere. I thought perhaps she had been… scattered? Maybe I could bring her back together again? I'm sorry, I struggle with deciphering my own writing in the end here."

  "Nice," I grumbled.

  "What else?" Brianna asked.

  "I was planning on bringing Cynthia Thomas across time," Z said. "She was a bright student. Not a witch, but capable of other things. I needed someone I could trust to manage the house while I worked in the place between times. If the government or someone tried to take my house while I was gone, the orchard would be in danger. I couldn't risk that."

  "And you never looked for the students?" I asked.

  "I was intending to, once the portal was more stable," Z said. Then she smiled brightly. "Perhaps there's a second volume."

  "Perhaps," I said, but Sophie was shaking her head. She hadn't found one, and we both doubted one existed.

  There was a reason there were never any more students in the school. Miss Zenobia had dedicated herself night and day to repairing the bridge across time that contained her sister.

  And Juno had hidden from her. Or been hidden from her, although somehow I had never gotten a damsel in distress vibe off of her.

  "One last question?" Brianna said.

  "Yes, dear?" Z said, clasping her hands together.

  "Explain this code to me," she said.

  "Oh, it's perfectly simple, provided one is acquainted with the language of the Celts," Z said.

  She went on from there, but I tuned her out. Honestly, it wasn't going to make any sense to me anyway.

  Chapter 14

  We ate an early dinner in gloomy silence, each lost in our own thoughts, only minimally responding to Mr. Trevor when he addressed us.

  He wasn't offended. He knew when we were in problem solving/investigation mode. And the more I learned about Miss Zenobia and got a sense of what his years with her as his boss must have been like, the more his unbothered attitude began to make perfect sense.

  If he were anyone besides who he was, he would've quit decades ago.

  "Well? What are we thinking?" Sophie finally asked, folding her arms as she looked at each of us in turn.

  "I feel like I know less now than I did before," I said. "What really happened in 1968? Miss Zenobia went far, far away, and something came from across time to attack her students?"

  "Is that what we're thinking?" Brianna asked, blinking.

  "What did you think?" I asked.

  "I thought they were fighting each other," she said.

  "What gave you that idea?" I asked.

  "Three and three," Sophie said. "
That's a weird way to say six."

  "I don't think it was accidental either," Brianna said.

  "I thought that just meant three determined witch students and three…"

  "Slackers?" Sophie said.

  "Come on, who doesn't lose the mission a little bit when they're eighteen or nineteen?" I asked.

  I was asking the wrong people. They had both been working extremely hard on earning master's degrees while I was back in my hometown, doing the same job as always. I guess in my way; I'd never lost the mission either. I had simply been doing what that annoying compulsion had told me to do.

  "I should talk to Juno," I said.

  "No," Sophie and Brianna said at once.

  "Why not?" I asked. "She can explain everything. She was there."

  "And you would trust her version of events? She keeps offering you dark power," Sophie pointed out.

  "She keeps offering me power," I amended. "The darkness I tend to find on my own."

  "We'll keep it as an option of last resort, okay?" Brianna said. "We did get one lead we can work on."

  "The three other students," Sophie agreed. "We only have first names."

  "First names and a photograph with last names on the wall upstairs," I said.

  We all looked at each other then got up from our chairs at once to race up the stairs to the wall outside Miss Zenobia's office.

  Sophie got there first, taking the picture down from the wall and bringing it into the library where we could see it in better light.

  "Do you recognize any of them?" she asked.

  I looked at each of the faces in turn. They were all dressed like middle-class girls from 1968, if a bit more preppy than hippy. Patricia Dougherty had most of her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, the bangs getting tangled in the lashes of her blue eyes. Linda Sasse was shorter and rounder with dull brown hair, dark eyes, and freckles everywhere. Debra St. John reminded me a bit of a green-eyed Morticia Addams, willowy tall with dark hair spilling loosely around her shoulders.

  "No," I said. "But that's not surprising. I don't really see things in the threads in a photograph kind of way. It's more like I'd know then again if I met them. Their magic would feel familiar."

  "I'm not sure how useful that will be," Sophie said. "Knowing who's killing you just before the spell hits."

  "Let's not start with the dark thoughts," Brianna said. "We have their complete names now. That's a good thing."

  "You think they'll be listed in the phonebook?" I asked.

  "Maybe they're all dead," Sophie said. "Maybe whatever was after our mothers went after them too. We're really only guessing they weren't all on the same team."

  "I'll start with Googling the names anyway," I said with a sigh and went over to the computer to switch it on.

  "I'm going to call Sephora and see how it went with the Boston coven," Brianna said. "I'll see if the names mean anything to her."

  "I'll check the school records," Sophie said. "Maybe there's something." But she didn't sound hopeful.

  I was just about to sit down at the computer when I heard the chime of the doorbell.

  "Who could that be?" I asked.

  "Door to door salesmen?" Sophie said with a shrug.

  "Maybe it's Antoine," I said.

  "It isn't Antoine," Sophie said.

  "You sound sure," I said.

  "I am sure," Sophie said, showing me her phone, not close enough for me to read the texts themselves, just how many of the little colored bubbles there were when she scrolled through them.

  "You've been keeping in touch," I said, wondering when she found the time. Hadn't we constantly been together?

  "With Auntie Claire too," she said. "And it's not Auntie Claire downstairs either."

  The doorbell chimed again.

  "I'm on a call!" Brianna yelled from the back of the library.

  "I'll get it," I said, and tromped down the stairs to pull open the heavy front door.

  And found Nick just turning to leave. He spun back around as I swung the door open and I saw he had a manila folder in his gloved hands.

  "Hey," he said.

  "Hi, Nick," I said. "I wasn't expecting to see you again so soon."

  "Can I come in? Just for a minute. I have something for you, but it's cold out here," he said.

  "Sure," I said, stepping back so he could brush past me. He pulled off his hat and ran a hand through his hair but shook his head when I gestured towards the parlor.

  "Better not in these boots, and they're a bear to lace up," he said. "I'll stay on the rug here. I just wanted to give you this." He thrust the manila folder at me.

  "What is it?" I asked. It smelled of photocopier ink.

  "My grandfather told me what the two of you had been talking about, and I had some extra time in the records room, so I did a little digging."

  I looked up at him, and something in the redness to his cheeks and the way he wasn't quite looking at me told me some of that story was not strictly speaking true.

  "Extra time in the records room, huh?" I said. But then I saw what I held in my hands. "Crime reports? From 1968?”

  "Yeah," he said. "There were a bunch of case files for that address on that date, things that just got dropped without being solved."

  "Like whatever happened to Coco's house," I said, flipping through the pages. There were a lot of pages.

  "I don't know who Coco is," Nick said.

  "She lived next door. In 1928."

  "Oh."

  My eyes were on the pages, not just because the details were interesting but because I could feel him processing so many things after I said "1928." I felt that little flinch first, where the idea of time travel dug at him, followed by a centering sort of breath, and then a deliberate attempt to… well, be cool with it.

  "I checked out the article you already found first to match the details," he said. "Time and place, like that."

  "Wow," I said, looking more closely.

  "The article you had was just the beginning of a bunch of weird cases that got dropped," he said.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "There were seven missing persons cases," he said.

  "Seven?" I asked but then shook my head. Not my first question. "Why missing persons? Wouldn't it be assumed they died in the explosion?"

  "No, look," he said, taking the folder back and reordering the pages. "There was an explosion on the morning of the Fourth of July. No one ever figured out what caused it aside from ruling out fireworks and the like, and the newspapers dropped the story without a single follow-up. Which is weird, but I think you'd have to find newspaper records to follow up on that."

  I took a deep breath, choosing my words carefully. "There could have been magic involved," I said at last. "Some witches can make people forget things. Like they did with that wardrobe and everyone who saw it except you."

  "Interesting," Nick said, looking back down at the papers. I could see a new flash of red to his cheeks, then that effort to be cool with it reasserted itself. "But then look here. This is the paperwork from the police who responded to the explosion. Three witnesses were interviewed. The weird thing is, they were three of the seven missing persons cases later. One of the other four cases was dropped; the woman was never missing in the first place I guess. Just a shut-in. But these three were never seen after these were taken.”

  Then he started handing me copies of old photographs. The first few were of the ruined building, better quality than the scanned newspaper.

  Then I saw my mother, wrapped in a blanket and sitting in an ambulance. And then there was Marie Dubois and Lula Collins, standing together and talking to a bevy of men in uniform.

  "They made witness statements?" I asked, seizing the folder back from him.

  "Technically, yes? But they weren't very helpful," Nick said. "Just a lot of vagueness about hearing something outside and going out to investigate and not seeing anything."

  "They all three gave witness statements?" I clarified as I shuffled
through the papers.

  "No, actually," Nick said, surprised. "The one in the ambulance photo didn't speak. She had a head injury, but the paramedics didn't think it was severe enough to have done brain damage. Either she was always mute, or she was just in shock. She had been so pregnant they were worried the trauma would induce labor."

  "They didn't ever find out if she was mute or in shock?" I asked.

  "No. They were all taken to a hospital to be checked over, but they disappeared while they were there and were never heard from again," he said.

  I flipped through the last few pages, not really seeing the text my eyes were scanning over. "There were seven missing persons cases, you said?"

  "Yes," he said. "These three, never solved. Three more who also had an association with this address. You know that plaque out front that says charm school? Apparently that was still a thing in 1968. From the looks of that plaque I always thought it was a lot longer ago than that, but I guess not."

  "Patricia Dougherty, Debra St. John and Linda Sasse," I said, finding names on the appropriate forms.

  "And Zenobia Weekes," Nick said, pointing to something deeper in the pile of papers. "She was reported missing but turned up here a month later, said she was never gone. I guess she didn't answer the door when the police knocked.”

  "She might have been busy," I said.

  "Does this help? Whatever you're working on?" he asked.

  "I think it does," I said and mustered up as much of a smile as I could manage. "Thanks."

  "I can keep digging for more," he offered. "You might want to give me a few hints as to what you're looking for, though, so I don't tear off in the wrong direction."

  It would be easier not to tell him. I hated how it felt like I was testing him every time I made any reference to magic.

  But maybe that was why he had come. He wanted to test himself.

  I flipped back through the folder and dug out the picture of my mother in the back of the ambulance.

  "This is my mother," I said. "Kathleen Stinson. Sorry, Olgesen. I'm still getting used to all the names."

  "Okay," he said cautiously, taking the photo from me to look at it more closely. "She does look like you." I could see it in his face, the question he was about to ask, but I pointed at the picture again, at the baby bump just barely visible under the folds of blanket.