A Drop of Witch (A Cozy Mystery Book): Sweetland Witch

by Zoe Arden

  I shot Renee a glance and saw her wave off a wizard who had asked her to dance. There were a number of humans at the party, but I wasn’t sure she could tell them apart from the wizards. The humans weren’t supposed to know anything about the magical world, but those who lived here knew plenty. Like Damon. It was commonly accepted that if you lived on Heavenly Haven for any length of time, you would eventually find out the truth.

  Since Margaret’s resignation of the head of the Witch’s Council, they had begun to lead a campaign to bring things more out into the open. The Council on Magic and Human Affairs had said they would consider the matter.

  Margaret Binford stood near the punch bowl conversing with William Carney. He waved when he saw me, but his gaze stopped short. He began quickly walking toward Renee. I watched Damon’s face tighten.

  “I’m sure he just wants to say hi,” I told him as William went up to her. “He probably knew her when she lived here before.”

  “Sure,” Damon said, but his expression had soured.

  William was talking to Renee, who was shaking her head. Damon danced us closer so we could hear what they were saying.

  “I said no,” Renee snapped, pushing William’s hand away from her face.

  “I’m just surprised to see you is all. I never thought you’d step foot on this island again.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “So, what are you doing here now, then?”

  “Visiting my son.”

  “How lovely!”

  Damon slowed us down to a snail’s crawl. We weren’t dancing anymore so much as walking in slow motion. I wished he could forget about his mom for a minute and focus on us. It was almost midnight.

  “What do you say we show these kids how it’s done?” William asked, extending his hand.

  “I don’t care to dance,” Renee said.

  Clearly, William was not getting the hint. By the wobble in his step, I thought whatever punch he’d gotten into had been spiked. He’d probably been the one to spike it.

  “Come on.”

  “No!” she snapped.

  Damon let go of my arm and was on William in two seconds flat.

  “Get away from my mother!” he cried, pushing William in the chest.

  William stepped back, shocked.

  “I only asked her to dance.”

  “She’s not interested.”

  “Fine,” William said, smoothing out his shirt. As drunk as he was, he didn’t want a fight. I sighed in relief as he turned to go.

  “Damon, I want to leave,” Renee said.

  “It’s almost midnight,” I told them. “William didn’t mean anything. He doesn’t know you’re... uncomfortable around wizards.”

  “I’m not uncomfortable,” she said. “I just don’t like them.”

  “So much for keeping an open mind.” I clamped my hand over my mouth when I realized I’d actually said that out loud.

  “What did you say to me?” Renee demanded. She stepped toward me so that we were nose to nose. For a woman who was supposed to be afraid of witches, she sure didn’t act like it.

  “Whoa, now,” Mayor Singer said, suddenly coming between us. Colt was right behind him. “Renee, I think you should get some air.”

  “Me?!” she cried.

  “All of you, just stay out of this,” Damon snapped. “You, too, Ava.” He grabbed hold of his mother and they left together. It was the second time in three days that Damon had jilted me for his mom. My eyes began to water.

  “Do you want a drink?” Colt asked, following me.

  “No. Yes.”

  He returned a moment later with a glass of wine. I drank it greedily and felt it warm my insides. “Thanks.”

  “Of course.”

  I sat on a bench at the side of the room, feeling like an outcast. Everyone else was dancing. The clock was ticking down.

  “I’m sorry your boyfriend upset you,” Colt said.

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not so sure he’s my boyfriend anymore. Sometimes, I don’t even think he likes me.”

  “Really?” Colt asked, a little too happily.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t pounce on his mom when she got in my face like that.”

  “I didn’t think you’d want me to. Besides, I knew you could handle her.” He smiled at me and it lit up his whole face. “Would you like to dance?”

  I coughed on the last of my wine. “Dance? With you?”

  His lips curved up that much more. “I don’t bite.”

  “I-I don’t think so.”

  “Come on,” he said. “It’s almost midnight. You can’t bring in the new year like this.”

  “I guess...”

  He held out his hand and it took me only a second to decide to take it. He clasped his fingers through mine and led me out to the dance floor. His arm slipped around my waist and we were off.

  “You’re a great dancer,” I said.

  “Surprised?”

  “A little.”

  The band slowed down and Mayor Singer jumped on stage, grabbing the microphone. “All right, everyone, it’s that time! Get ready.” He started the countdown. Everyone at the party chimed in with him.

  “Ten, nine, eight... three, two, one!”

  The lights went out, the ball dropped, and I hugged Colt. He kissed my cheek as streamers fell around us. I felt my face burn where his lips had landed. The lights from the disco ball threw an eerie glow around the room. Colt was looking at me. His eyes may not have been as blue as Damon’s, but they were more open.

  He leaned in toward me. I leaned toward him. I could feel his breath on my face. We were inches apart. Just then, the lights came back on. Tazzie Singer let out a loud cry.

  “He’s dead!” she yelled. “My husband is dead!”

  * * *

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

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  “Don’t move!” Colt shouted to the crowd.

  “Don’t move,” Sheriff Knoxx echoed.

  Colt shot him an annoyed look.

  They both jumped up on stage and stood, hands on hips, glaring at each other. The crowd was talking loudly and excitedly. They were torn between wanting to run and wanting to wait for details. Gossip was like currency in this town, and they all wanted their share of it.

  Tazzie Singer let out an ear-piercing screech and fainted. Sheriff Knoxx caught her just before she hit the floor. Kayla ran up and cradled her mother’s head in her lap as the sheriff laid her gently on the floor. Kayla tried not to look at her father, who lay still at her feet.

  “Oh,” Kayla cried when Colt accidently knocked against her father’s foot and it twitched toward her. He was lying face down and, much like Paisley, it seemed impossible to say how he’d died. There was no blood. No bruising. It looked as if he’d simply dropped dead out of thin air.

  “Don’t look,” Sheriff Knoxx told her.

  Sheriff Lincoln Maxwell had been dancing in the back with Felicity. He joined the others on stage and motioned to my dad and some local men to come and help carry Tazzie into the back, where she’d be more comfortable. Eleanor and Trixie went with her.

  Felicity came up beside me. She grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Is he really dead?” She brushed the red hair from her eyes, which were starting to water.

  “I think so.”

  Sweetland’s own Mayor Thomas was supposed to be at the party himself tonight. I scanned the room for him but couldn’t find him anywhere. It wasn’t exactly shocking. Mayor Thomas preferred small parties to large ones. He was single and liked to keep to himself most of the time.

  A few people finally started heading toward the door. A few more followed. Once the charge had begun, only the diehard gossip mongers stayed back. Everyone else began filing out.

  “Hold it!” Colt yelled, amplifying his voice with a quick spell. The crowd marched on.

  “Didn’t you hear him?” Sheriff Knoxx
asked, amplifying his voice in much the same way. It sounded like they were talking through a bullhorn. “This is a crime scene. Nobody move!” He shot Colt an exasperated look. For once, they were acting like they were on the same side. I wondered how long it would last.

  Lincoln stuck two fingers in his mouth and blew. A shrill whistle carried high and loud through the air, despite the talk. “No one move,” he yelled. Everyone stopped walking. Since so many of tonight’s guests were from Mistmoor, they took Lincoln’s commands more seriously. He stood tall and turned to Sheriff Knoxx and Colt. “There you go,” he said. “Just needed a little prompting from someone local.”

  Sheriff Knoxx and Colt both bristled slightly but acknowledged that he’d succeeded in getting everyone to stay put. Sheriff Knoxx and Colt started talking at the same time.

  “Now we need—”

  “Now we want—”

  They looked at each other irritably.

  “We’re going to ask a few questions,” they said at the same time. Colt finally gave up and indicated to Sheriff Knoxx that he should go ahead.

  “Did anyone see anything when the lights went out?” Sheriff Knoxx asked.

  “The ball dropped,” someone yelled.

  “Yes, we know that,” Sheriff Knoxx said. “I mean anything else? Like someone on stage with the mayor?”

  “The band was on stage with him,” Felicity called.

  Sheriff Knoxx sighed. “How about something relevant to the mayor’s death? Anyone see anything like that?”

  Lincoln shot him a look. He and Felicity had been going together for quite some time, and it was obvious he didn’t like Sheriff Knoxx snapping at his girlfriend.

  Sheriff Knoxx colored and cleared his throat. “What I mean to say is—”

  Lincoln cut him off. “That we just want to know if anyone saw anything strange tonight. Now, we could question you all one by one, but there’s a few thousand of you here, and I don’t think you want to start off the new year by having us sequester you.”

  There were murmurs of agreement.

  “So, what we need to know is whether anyone saw anything unusual,” Lincoln finished.

  “Like what?” someone asked.

  Lincoln looked at Sheriff Knoxx, who looked at Colt.

  Colt stepped forward, taking his turn now.

  “Like Polly Peacock.”

  Excited murmurs sprinted from one side of the room to the other.

  “Or a stranger,” Lincoln said, shooting Colt an annoyed glance. Clearly, he didn’t want people getting agitated over Polly, especially since we had no idea whether she was even here. “Did anyone see any faces they didn’t recognize?”

  “I did!” Blossom Woodruff said. She was the only daughter of Edith Woodruff, who owned the competing bakery to Felicity’s shop.

  “Can you describe them?” Colt asked, getting excited.

  “It was a woman. I’d never seen her before. She was in her late thirties, maybe, and wearing a black dress. I noticed her right away because of that. It looked like she was dressed for a funeral instead of a party.”

  There were murmurs of agreement.

  “I saw her, too!” someone yelled.

  “Me, too! She wouldn’t even dance!”

  I cringed as I realized who they were talking about. I hopped on stage and whispered to Colt, “They mean Damon’s mom, Renee.”

  He nodded and whispered something to Sheriff Knoxx and Lincoln.

  When he came back to me, he looked serious. “Can you text Damon and tell him we need to see him and his mom?”

  “What? Why? You don’t really think she had anything to do with this?”

  “Until we know more, we need to run down every lead.”

  I scoffed and jumped off the stage, my irritation growing. Renee may have been a nasty woman, but she didn’t strike me as a murderer.

  “The doctor’s here!” Bernice Kramer called from the back of the room. She was Mistmoor Point’s oldest living witch and loved a good party.

  “Make way for Dr. Wallace,” Lincoln called out.

  The people parted, creating a path for Dr. Wallace to get to the stage. He climbed the stairs and bent over Mayor Singer’s body.

  “I left here just an hour ago,” he said, clearly shocked by all that had happened in his absence. “I’m not as young as I used to be and wanted to get to bed early.”

  “What made you come back?” Sheriff Knoxx asked.

  “Felicity called me.”

  Lincoln shot Felicity a grateful look. She beamed back at him.

  “Can you tell us anything, Doctor?” Colt asked anxiously. “Was he murdered?”

  “Give me a minute.”

  Dr. Wallace went to work examining Mayor Singer’s body. He poked at his back, pinched his arm, and did all manner of things which, to me, looked like he was playing with the body rather than testing it. He pulled something that looked like a stone out of Mayor Singer’s pocket, held it up to the light, and stared at in until his face turned pale. The stone was deep green with flecks of red throughout, resembling blood.

  “Help me flip him over,” Dr. Wallace said. “Quickly.”

  Lincoln and Colt gently rolled the mayor over. There were shocked gasps across the room.

  “He’s blue!” Blossom shouted.

  “He looks like a Smurf!” someone else cried.

  “Get back, quickly,” Dr. Wallace said with such authority that the three lawmen complied without question. “Everyone out of this room at once!”

  Detective Knoxx and Lincoln shared a confused look, but Colt sprang into action. Apparently, he took the word of a doctor quite seriously.

  “All right, everyone line up. We will have deputies…” He looked at Lincoln and whispered, “You do have deputies here, right?”

  Lincoln nodded, offended.

  “Of course, we have deputies here. We’re not some backwoods country town.”

  Colt continued, “We will have deputies at every exit taking your information. You cannot leave without first signing out with a deputy.”

  Lincoln ordered his deputies to the doors where they readied themselves with pen and paper. Otis Winken had stayed in Sweetland to “hold down the fort” as Sheriff Knoxx had put it. The Sheriff had felt so guilty about making Otis miss the party that he’d allowed him to bring Tadpole to work, provided that he didn’t spray anything.

  Once the party guests had all left, Lincoln, Sheriff Knoxx, and Colt all turned to Dr. Wallace.

  “Well?” Lincoln asked. “What do you have for us?”

  Dr. Wallace’s face looked grim. “Do you see how his entire body is turning blue? How his eyes are bulging?

  Those of us left all nodded.

  Dr. Wallace held up the stone he had found in the mayor’s pocket. “It was a blood spell.”

  Sheriff Knoxx’s face went white. Even Colt looked as though he’d been hit over the head with a baseball bat.

  “A blood spell?” Colt asked. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “What’s a blood spell?” I whispered to Felicity, who’d been allowed to remain behind with me. Sometimes being the girlfriend of a police sheriff had its perks.

  “It’s dark magic,” Felicity whispered back to me. “The spell removes the victim’s blood in such a way as to leave their body intact, even though life is gone.”

  “Wait... what? Remove the blood? You mean like... drain it?”

  “Yes, but in the case of blood spells, it happens instantaneously. It’s very, very dangerous. If it’s not done right, it can spread.”

  “Spread?” I squealed.

  Dr. Wallace looked up at me. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Whoever cast this spell was an expert. This bloodstone has a very complicated incantation inscribed on it.”

  “That’s it, then!” I blurted. “It has to be Polly. She needs the blood from her victims to make her ritual work.”

  Colt and Sheriff Knoxx exchanged a look.

  “What?” I asked. “Is th
ere more?”

  Sheriff Knoxx began to speak. “I received a call from Dr. Dunne this morning. He got the toxicology reports back on Paisley Mudget. He’d already made his diagnosis, as it turns out, he was just being extra cautious. Didn’t want to give me a wrong diagnosis.”

  “And?” I asked. “What was the diagnosis?”

  “Paisley was murdered... with a blood spell.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

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  I woke up the next morning to something tiny and black crawling up my bed. I stared at it with one eye still closed and groaned. I lifted the ant-like thing off my sheet and held it in my palm, looking directly into its invisible eyes.

  “Colt, you can’t send video bumpers into my bedroom. That’s an invasion of privacy.”

  To emphasize the point, I squished the spyware between my fingers. I expected it to crumble to pieces since it was so small, but my fingers made no dent in it whatsoever. It sat on my finger pad, irritating me until it finally kicked into gear and flew out of my room.

  I sighed and pulled the covers back up over my head. Today was not a good day to get out of bed. And it was just the first of the new year.

  “Oh, my roses,” I said, tossing the covers aside, suddenly awake. “Ten days. I only have ten days left before Polly comes for me.” I shuddered as the realization struck home and quickly changed my clothes to go downstairs.

  In the kitchen, Colt was sitting at the breakfast table eating bacon and eggs with my father. “Sorry about the video bumper,” he said when he saw me. “Your dad was getting worried when you didn’t get up, so I suggested sending a bumper up to check on you.”

  I looked at my father, who shrugged. “Sorry,” he said.

  My dad and Colt looked a little too cozy sitting together at the table like that, spying on me. Then again, it was kind of nice that they were finally getting along.

  “Where are Trixie and Eleanor?” I asked.