by Cate Martin
"It feels wrong leaving the two of you here. I'm sure Sephora would be willing to ask any questions of anyone we think might know something," Brianna said.
"Sophie is going too," I said. "Not to Boston, but back to New Orleans."
Sophie nodded as if she had known I would say that. "It's time to find out what really happened to my mother. Now that I have real magic to help me."
"I'll stay here," I said. "There's nothing useful back in Scandia, and Nick is looking into the official missing persons reports and anything else he can find through his channels. I should be around in case he turns up anything."
"Splitting up doesn't feel like the right thing to do," Brianna said, hugging herself as if the thought made her suddenly cold.
"It's only for a few days," I said. "Long enough to find out all you can. And we'll be in contact the entire time."
"And you'll summon us back here the minute there's even a hint of trouble," Sophie said. "You won't try to face down a threat alone."
"I promise to call for help if I need it," I said. "I'm not going to risk everything thinking I can handle it on my own. If a mouse slides through that time portal, I'll be waiting for you to get here before I touch it."
"Then I guess we should start making some travel arrangements," Brianna said.
"At least there's one good thing," Sophie said.
"Going home again?" I asked.
"No, I was thinking that at least tonight we don't have to choke down any of that tea," Sophie said.
Chapter 23
Miss Zenobia Weekes had built a pretty massive house all for the purpose of keeping a watch over the time portal in the back garden. I suppose she had to. There were no small houses on Summit Avenue. Most of them were proper mansions, especially on the side that overlooked the river valley.
I don't know if making the house into a school had been part of the plan from the start, the presence of students being part of the camouflage or what. Maybe in all of those decades she spent trying to reach her sister, she had just gotten lonely.
Whatever the reason, the house was huge. I could spend entire days moving from room to room going about my own business and never bumping into either Sophie or Brianna or Mr. Trevor.
But I would know they were there. I would hear the sounds of pages turning in the library and the scribble of a pen on paper. Sophie was light as air when she danced, but the touch of her toes on the attic floor was still a familiar cadence. Even Mr. Trevor coughed or sneezed from time to time.
It had only been an hour since Mr. Trevor had loaded Brianna and Sophie's bags into the trunk of the town car and driven them to the airport, but I was already going mad from the silence. Even the cats, apparently feeling betrayed by Brianna's departure, had disappeared into the walls or wherever it was that cats went when you couldn't find them anywhere.
I found myself in the kitchen making another cup of tea I didn't even really want. I just couldn't stand being so aware that I was the only one breathing inside that enormous house. The soft roar of the electric kettle helped.
I was just pouring the water into the mug when Mr. Trevor came in the back door.
"Do you want some tea, Mr. Trevor?" I offered.
"Tea would be lovely," he said as he came into the kitchen tugging off his gloves. "Everyone is off safe and sound. I checked their flight information on my phone after I parked the car."
"This house gets so quiet when no one is here," I said. "How did you stand it all those months alone?"
"Well, Cynthia had been here with me during the day," he said. "The nights could be long at times."
"What was Miss Zenobia like?" I asked. "You knew her better than anybody, right?"
"I don't know if that's strictly speaking true," he said. "She was so often away."
"I got the sense from her journal that that became necessary after our mothers left the school in 1968,” I said.
"Yes, a bit before my time," he said, bending to blow on his tea. "I've often wondered what this place was like when it was an active school. Perhaps a bit crowded. That's strange to think about."
"Did she ever talk to you about her sister?" I asked.
"She never mentioned her at all," he said. "I didn't even know she had one until you told me about her."
"And yet everything she did was because of her sister," I said. "It must've been lonely, keeping what was most important to her a secret."
"Oh, yes. She was very lonely," he said. "Cynthia and I tried our best to be companions to her. But I'm sure we were poor substitutes."
"For her sister?" I asked.
"Maybe not specifically," he said. "She was centuries old with a power I can scarcely imagine, and a responsibility I can't even grasp. And she had no one to shoulder any of that burden with her. Yes, I think she was very lonely."
"She could've gone back east to where there were other old, powerful witches," I said. "Or she could've invited one to come here and stay with her. Didn't she have any friends?"
"She never spoke of other witches to me," Mr. Trevor said. "Perhaps her journal could tell you more."
"Maybe," I said. Brianna had explained how to decode it and left me with all of her notes and a fresh notebook to transcribe into, but I really wasn't looking forward to starting that task.
"She was a very private person," Mr. Trevor said. "And neither Cynthia nor I were the type to pry. But we both knew she was sad. She was always tired. Her work was very draining, and she did it all alone. She was lonely. But she never wavered."
"She was driven? Determined?" I asked.
"No, it was more like regret," he said. "She had so many regrets, and her strongest motivation was not to add to them."
"I wish she would've found us before she died," I said. "I wish we could've had more time to learn from her and hear all of her stories."
Mr. Trevor gave me a sad smile as he picked up his tea to head upstairs. "I believe that too was one of her regrets," he said.
I made as much noise as I could filling the cats' bowls with kibble, but none of them came running.
Perhaps they just needed more time. They liked me well enough as a substitute for Brianna when she was too busy rushing around the library to give pets.
I spent the rest of the afternoon and all of the evening after dinner working on decoding the journal. It was slow work, first decoding the words and then translating them into English and then trying to figure out which of those two steps had gone wrong when the result didn't make sense.
When I finally went up to bed I found that I couldn't fall asleep. I had had the same trouble the night before, and Brianna thought it might be withdrawal from her dream tea. I smiled as I remembered the look on Sophie's face when she discovered that Brianna had exposed us both to an addictive substance without warning us first.
I was just drifting off when something hopped lightly onto the bed beside me, kneaded at the comforter tucked behind my knees, then settled into a tight, purring ball. A few minutes later I had two more purring balls of fur snuggling against me. The sound of their purring and breathing was better than a lullaby.
I didn't wake up until nearly midmorning, but I knew what I had to do.
I threw off the covers and ran up to the attic to get dressed in the clothes from my wardrobe up there. The one that held all of my 1920s clothes. I had my wand, Cynthia’s amulet, and the cloak enchanted with all of Brianna’s cloaking spells.
Long before I knew I was a witch and had the power to see time and read people's stories in the threads that connected them to all of the world around them, I had known I had something about me that made me different from other people. I couldn't see the future, and I had never considered it any sort of luck, but sometimes I would just know I had to do something, or to avoid some other thing. I had relied on it. It had never steered me wrong.
But when I went out to the orchard on my own and reached out with my power to find the end of the time portal, it wasn't that sort of feeling that was guiding me.
I knew I could use my power to pass through that portal, narrow as it was. I could arrange my own threads end to end in one long string that was fine enough to pass through the eye of the needle that was all that was left of the gate to the time portal.
It wasn't a compulsion, like those feelings from before. Those had descended on me as if from on high, and I had obeyed their demands.
This wasn't that. This was a choice. But I knew in my bones it was the right one.
I reassembled myself in the 1928 version of the orchard, touched Cynthia's amulet I wore around my neck and then the wand tucked away in its hidden pocket. Like the cloak, they were still with me.
But I didn't expand my awareness to look for the other witches. If they were watching then they already knew I was there. They weren't going to stop me.
I followed the path around the side of the house to the sidewalk, then followed Summit Avenue until I reached the cobblestoned side street lined with carriage houses that was Maiden's Way.
I didn't know what day of the week it was; I had lost track during the week of sleeping. I didn't know what time it was, except too late for breakfast but too early for lunch.
But I knew as I climbed the narrow staircase to the apartment over one of those carriage houses that when I knocked on that door, Edward would answer.
And he did. He was dressed for work but still home, and he flung open the door at the first touch of my knuckles as if he had been waiting for me the whole time.
"Amanda!" he said. "What are you doing here? Is it safe? Is it all over?"
"It might never be all over," I said.
"Then why are you here?"
"Because this is where I'm supposed to be," I said, but then shook my head. "No. It's where I want to be."
He started to smile at that, but the worried line between his eyebrows quickly reasserted itself. "But the witches-"
"Aren't going to stop me," I said.
"Stop you from doing what?" he asked.
My best smile just seemed to confuse him, but that's OK. When I grabbed hold of the front of his jacket and tugged him down to meet my kiss, that confusion was gone.
He kissed me back, with gusto. But then he pulled away from me again to look me in the eye.
"Otto told me where you're from," he said. "Is it true?"
"Yes," I said.
"So this, us, is going to be complicated," he said.
"Yes."
"It might not last," he said.
I really, really, really wanted to lie to him. But I couldn't. "Anytime we're apart, there's a good chance I won't be able to get back to you again. It can happen at any time, without warning."
"And you're okay with that?" he asked.
"Are you?"
"Well, that's true of anyone, isn't it?" he said. "I could get hit by a bus tomorrow, and you'd never see me again."
"This is different," I said.
"Maybe it's better," he said. "Every minute is precious, and we can never forget that. We'll always be living every moment together as if it could be the last. Even if those moments end up being all too few, they'll be so much richer."
"You think so?" I asked.
"I know so," he said. "Here, I'll show you right now."
Then he picked me up, spinning me around and into his little apartment, and kicking the door shut behind us.
Oh, how he showed me.
Check Out Book Six!
The Witches Three will return in Charm Offensive, out now!
* * *
The Witches Three agreed to split up to better investigate their mother’s pasts. Brianna lurks deep in the witchiest parts of Boston, researching in secret libraries and questioning covens that date back further than the English colonies. Sophie stalks mysterious wielders of magic through parts of the French Quarter of New Orleans that tourists never see.
And Amanda, alone in Miss Zenobia Weekes’ Charm School for Exceptional Young Ladies, breaks all the rules. She juggles her time between 2019, coordinating the investigation with the other two, and 1928, where Edward awaits her. She knows she can’t go on living two lives forever. Always she expects the 1928 coven to ambush her.
To her surprise, the attack comes in 2019, when her good friend Nick disappears. Not like a missing person, but like he never existed. His own grandfather doesn’t recognize his name or photo.
Investigating murders? Old hat for the Witches Three. But investigating a person who never existed? Could be tricky.
* * *
Charm Offensive, Book 6 in the Witches Three Cozy Mystery series!
Check Out the First Book in a Brand New Series!
The Viking Witch Cozy Mystery Series starts here with Body at the Crossroads.
* * *
When her mother dies after a long illness, Ingrid Torfa must sell the family home to cover the medical bills. Her career as a book illustrator not yet exactly launched, Ingrid faces two options: live in her battered old Volkswagen, or go back to her mother's small town in northern Minnesota.
The small town that still haunts her dreams more than a decade since she last visited it. Or rather, not the town but the grandmother.
All of the drawings she fills notebooks with witches and the trolls that do their bidding? Not as whimsical in her nightmares as she sketches them in the bright light of day.
If not for her beloved cat Mjolner, living in the Volkswagen just might tempt her.
But the cat wants four walls and a door, so north she goes. And finds trouble in the form of a dead body before she even finds her grandmother's little town. How much can a town of stoic fishermen possibly be hiding?
As Ingrid is about to find out, quite a lot.
* * *
Body at the Crossroads, the first book in the Viking Witch Cozy Mystery series!
Also from Ratatoskr Press
The Ritchie and Fitz Sci-Fi Murder Mysteries starts with Murder on the Intergalactic Railway.
* * *
For Murdina Ritchie, acceptance at the Oymyakon Foreign Service Academy means one last chance at her dream of becoming a diplomat for the Union of Free Worlds. For Shackleton Fitz IV, it represents his last chance not to fail out of military service entirely.
Strange that fate should throw them together now, among the last group of students admitted after the start of the semester. They had once shared the strongest of friendships. But that all ended a long time ago.
But when an insufferable but politically important woman turns up murdered, the two agree to put their differences aside and work together to solve the case.
Because the murderer might strike again. But more importantly, solving a murder would just have to impress the dour colonel who clearly thinks neither of them belong at his academy.
* * *
Murder on the Intergalactic Railway, the first book in the Ritchie and Fitz Sci-Fi Murder Mysteries.
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About the Author
Cate Martin is a mystery writer who lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Also by Cate Martin
The Witches Three Cozy Mystery Series
Charm School
Work Like a Charm
Third Time is a Charm
Old World Charm
Charm his Pants Off
Charm Offensive
* * *
The Viking Witch Cozy Mystery Series
Body at the Crossroads
Death Under the Bridge
Murder on the Lake
Killing in the Village Commons
Bloodshed in the Forest
> Corpse in the Mead Hall
Copyright © 2019 by Cate Martin
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Shezaad Sudar.
Ratatoskr Press logo by Aidan Vincent.
ISBN 978-1-946552-96-9
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