by Zoe Arden
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We searched Natalie's home from top to bottom. We searched her car, her backyard, her garage. If Mack had hidden anything here, then he'd done such a good job with it that we weren't going to find it. Natalie's familiars even helped us look—two dogs and two cats—and even with their help, we'd failed to turn up anything.
We sat in in Natalie's kitchen, thinking.
Natalie's head shot suddenly up.
"What if it's not my house Mack hid it in?" she asked.
We all looked at her. "Where else would he hide it?" I asked.
"Think about it for a minute," she said. "It's true that he came to me and asked for help, but according to what you've told me, there are two other people he went to as well." She looked at me and my dad. "Eli, Ava... what do you both have in common?"
Trixie's eyes lit up. She lurched forward in her seat, excited, and nearly knocked over her lemonade. "The bakery!" she shouted.
"That's right," Natalie said. "What if he hid whatever it was at Mystic?"
I looked at her doubtfully. "He was only in the shop for a few minutes. And he never left my sight." I sneezed and reached for a napkin. The rain and its accompanying wind had stirred up my allergies. I sneezed a second time.
"Bless you," Trixie said.
"Thanks."
"Come on. Let's go." Natalie stood up from her chair.
"Go where?" Eleanor asked.
Natalie rolled her eyes impatiently. "Back to your bakery, of course."
Me, my aunts, and my dad all looked at each other doubtfully.
"We can look," Eleanor finally said, "but I doubt it's there."
"We go through that bakery every night with a fine tooth comb," my dad said. "We don't leave until it's sparkling clean. Eleanor won't let us."
Trixie giggled but Eleanor's lips pressed tightly together. "It's important to keep things clean when you're working with food," Eleanor said.
"Yes, of course," my dad agreed. "My point is only that we would have found it by now."
"How can you say that when we still don't know what it is that we're looking for?" Natalie asked.
"Because we would have noticed if there was something out of place," my dad said.
"What if it was a spatula?" Natalie countered. "Or a frosting tip? Would you have noticed an extra frosting tip amongst all the ones you already have?" She put her hands on her hips, challenging him.
He lifted an eyebrow. "You think Mack was trying to hide a frosting tip?"
No one looked as if they were buying that, not even Natalie.
"No," she said, her voice wavering. "I'm just saying that without knowing what it is we're looking for, we can't rule anything out. If he did hide it with one of us, it could be right out in the open. Something we'd never think to look for."
I sighed. "All right, let's go look. I suppose it's only fair after we ransacked your place."
Natalie smiled. "Actually, I think my house has never been more organized. You were all so careful when putting things back that I think the place is actually better off for it. You should come and search my home once a week at least, twice during the holidays."
Trixie giggled, but Eleanor and my dad both frowned. I guessed they weren't in the mood for jokes just now.
Back at Mystic, we left the closed sign up. Luckily, no one was peering through the front window wondering why we were closed in the middle of the day. In Sweetland, anything unusual was worthy of attention, and our bakery being closed in the middle of the afternoon was definitely unusual. If it hadn't been for the rain, I was certain that people would have begun to notice. As it was, the storm had convinced people to stay indoors. Even the tourists had departed.
"Well, I guess there's no better place to start than the front," I said. "That's where Mack was when he came in that night. He never went into the back room."
"That you saw," Natalie said, correcting me. "If he came back after you'd left, he could have gone anywhere."
"We have a very good alarm system here," Eleanor said. "Unless you know the code, there's no way you're getting in."
"And why does it have to be at the bakery?" Trixie asked. "He could have hidden it at our house, too."
"True," said Natalie, "but we know for sure that he was in the bakery, so I think this is the place to start."
Eleanor used a quick soap charm to cover our front window so that no one would be able to see in, just in case someone decided to venture out for a sweet treat even in this rain. I sneezed again and thought about grabbing an allergy pill from my workstation, but the sneeze died away and didn't resurface. I decided to hold off on my allergy pills because I knew it would only make me sleepy if I took one, and the last thing I needed right now was to get sleepy.
"What's this?" Natalie asked, excited, and held up something gray and fuzzy. I took a closer look.
"Lint," I said. "Clearly we need to dust this place a little better."
Natalie sighed and dropped the lint back onto the floor. I knew she was trying to be thorough, but I was beginning to think that maybe she was going just a little overboard. I mean, when you started suspecting a lint ball was part of a top-secret conspiracy, then something was wrong.
After two hours, Natalie and Eleanor were both ready to declare that whatever it was, it wasn't here.
"Well, I give up," Natalie said, exasperated. "I really thought we might find something."
She sat slumped in a chair at one of the small tables we kept in the front part of the bakery. We'd searched the back room as well as the restroom and found nothing of consequence anywhere.
I looked at Trixie. "What about the journal? Do you think it's dry yet?"
"I'll go check on it," she said and hurried to the back room. I'd seen it back there but had been too afraid to touch it in case I hurt it even more than I already had. What if not touching it was an integral part of whatever magic Trixie was using to restore it?
I waited anxiously for her to return with the journal, envisioning her telling us it was ruined beyond all hope. When she reappeared with a gigantic smile on her face, my heart fluttered.
"Is it okay?" I asked.
"Well, I wouldn't say okay," she replied and held it out for me to see. The pages were a light brown and somewhat crusty, but they were readable. Relief washed over me.
"Oh, thank the witches," I said and gently took the book. I had promised myself that if it turned out the book was okay, I would handle it like a baby from now on.
I flipped carefully through the pages, not reading, but scanning. The others sat around me, holding their breath.
"Anything?" my dad asked.
I shook my head.
"No," I told him. "The journal just sort of stops in his senior year."
"That's when things between us started going wrong," Natalie said.
"What happened between you two, exactly?" my dad asked carefully, trying not to sound like he was prying but knowing that the information could be useful.
Natalie shrugged. "Something changed. I don't know what. It was like... like suddenly he was more confident in himself, which was great, except that he got to be too confident. He started acting like he knew what I wanted even before I knew myself. He started ordering my meals for me, making plans for us without asking... it just got to be a bit much after a while."
My dad frowned. "That doesn't sound like the Mack I knew."
She shook her head. "It wasn't the Mack I knew either. That's what bothered me about it. Then I met Bill..." She blushed. "I mean, Bill went to school with us, so I already sort of knew him, we'd just never really talked all that much before, I guess."
I remembered the part I'd read in Mack's journal about Bill picking on Mack and decided that Natalie wasn't aware of that. Maybe she didn't need to be, either. It didn't seem relevant to their investigation right now.
Trixie reached out her hand. "Can I see that journal?"
I handed it to her.
"Even
tually, Mack and I broke things off and Bill and I got serious."
"How did Mack feel about that?" Eleanor asked.
Natalie shrugged. "I don't think he was happy about it, but he didn't seem surprised when it happened."
Trixie made a small gasping sound. We all looked over at her. "These last few pages were stuck together," she said, looking at me. "I just unstuck them."
"And?" I asked, getting excited. By the expression on her face, whatever she had just "unstuck" was something big.
She broke into a wide grin. "The journal stops because Mack says he doesn't need it anymore."
"Doesn't need it anymore?" Natalie asked. "He didn't need to write out his thoughts?"
"No," Trixie said, shaking her head. "Because he could read other people's thoughts now, and things suddenly made sense to him."
"Wait, what?" I asked. "He could read people's minds?"
I looked at Natalie. She busted out laughing. "I'm sorry," she said to Trixie, "but that's ridiculous. Mack couldn't read minds. He wasn't telepathic. There have only been a handful of documented cases of telepathy in all of paranormal history."
"Well," Trixie said, "there's one more to add to the history books. Mack Heathrow could read minds, and he was good at it."
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CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
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"Let me see that book," Natalie said, reaching for the journal. Her face had gone pale and was now alternating between white and red. One minute, she looked like a snowflake; the next, she looked like a cherry.
Trixie handed Mack's journal over to her and she started flipping back and forth through the pages.
"Is this a joke?" she asked.
"I don't think so," said Trixie.
"Would one of you please tell us exactly what the journal says?" asked my dad.
I had to admit the curiosity was killing me.
Natalie sighed. "It says here that he found some sort of necklace while out walking one day. It was just lying there on the ground. He..." she gulped, "...he thought I would like it, that I'd think it was pretty, so he picked it up, thinking he'd give it to me as a present."
"Did he ever give it to you?" Eleanor asked.
Natalie shook her head. "No. It says here that when he picked it up, he felt something, like a teeny electrical charge. Like his skin was buzzing. So he brought the necklace home to look at it more closely."
"Does he describe it?" my dad asked.
She nodded. "A silver chain with a silver pendant shaped kind of like a ball."
"That's it?" I asked.
"That's it," she replied. "At least as far the description goes." She scanned the pages a little more before continuing. "He says that eventually he was compelled to put the necklace on—"
"Compelled?" I asked.
"That's the word he used. He felt compelled to put it on and wear it, and when he did, he discovered he could read people's minds." She was quiet a minute as she looked through the journal some more. She shrugged. "I guess the power started out weak—he knew what his aunt was going to make for dinner, what someone's favorite color was without having to be told, things like that. Eventually, though, he learned to harness the power and was able to read everything a person was thinking."
Natalie's head shot up. She closed the book. "Oh, my roses. That means he knew I liked Bill before I even ended things with him. That means... oh, wow. That explains so much."
My eyes suddenly widened. "My extract! That explains how he knew what sort of extract I was working on and how to fix it."
My aunts and dad looked at me. "You never told us that Mack told you how to fix your extract," Eleanor said.
"Didn't I?" I asked.
"No." She shook her head and pressed her lips together.
"Oh. Oops. He did."
"So, it's this necklace that the killer's after then," my dad said. "That's what Mack was trying to give us. He knew someone wanted it, and he was trying to find a safe place for it."
"Someplace where no one would find it," I said.
"Someplace where they wouldn't think to look," Natalie said.
I looked around the bakery. "I still don't think it's here, but now that we know what we're looking for, maybe we should double check?"
Eleanor sighed. Trixie groaned.
"You're right," my dad said. "It won't hurt to take another look. If he really could read minds, he might have been able to figure out our security code."
My face blanched. Oh, my roses. He was right.
We got slowly to our feet and began our search all over again. We were still without a treasure map, but at least we knew what the treasure was now. That had to make things easier, didn't it?
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CHAPTER
THIRTY
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We finally stopped the search sometime near supper. There was nothing hidden in the bakery; we just had to accept it. Natalie went home to get dinner ready for her kids, and Eleanor and Trixie decided there was no point in opening the bakery again when it was still so gloomy outside. We were just sitting around chatting, waiting for the weather to clear up enough so that we could make it home without getting soaked.
The weather on Heavenly Haven was usually so mildly temperate and sunny that Eleanor thought the Witch's Council must be behind this rainstorm. Though not official, they were in charge of making sure the weather on the island stayed nice all year round. Every once in a while, though, they liked to throw out something a little out of the ordinary just to keep the locals on their toes.
One time, it had snowed in July. It was the first and only time snow had touched the ground on Heavenly Haven. The residents had adored it, but the tourists had freaked out.
Controlling the weather, even unofficially, had its advantages. There was another time a hurricane had been headed our way and the tourists had run for their lives, certain our little island would be swallowed up by it. At the last second, though, the hurricane had veered left instead of going straight and we'd ended up with some of the most beautiful sunsets we'd ever had.
"We're back to square one," I said, a little whiny. I was hungry and tired and disappointed we hadn't found anything.
"How can you say that?" asked my dad. "We know what we're looking for now. We know what the killer is after."
"Yeah, but how does that help us? Who knew about the necklace? It sounds like he never told anyone. You and Natalie were both pretty close to him and he never mentioned it."
"I didn't know him when he was in high school," my dad pointed out. "And Natalie..." He shrugged.
"I feel sort of bad for Mack. He gets picked on all his life, then gets this enormous power he thinks will turn things around, and ends up changing so much because of it the woman he loved stopped loving him."
"I'm not sure she ever stopped loving him," Eleanor said. "Not completely, anyway."
He shrugged again. "The rain's letting up. Why don't we all go home?"
Eleanor and Trixie shrugged their agreement, and we all rose from our seats.
"I think I'll stop by the Cove on the way back," I told them.
"Can you bring me back a Brass Monkey?" Trixie asked.
"Sure," I told her, and my dad and Eleanor both put in requests for lattes, though Eleanor wanted pumpkin spice and my dad wanted white chocolate caramel.
Coffee Cove wasn't busy when I arrived. There were a few patrons scattered here and there sipping their steaming mugs of caffeine, but there was no line and the place was eerily quiet. Lucy was leaning against the counter, her eyes drooping shut. She lifted her lids when I came in and straightened up.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi. Slow day?"
She looked around. "How could you tell?" she said sarcastically.
"Got a minute?"
"A minute? I've got hours. My shift doesn't end till nine and unless this rain lets up, I think I'm doomed to an evening of boredom. We'll be lucky if we get another five customers in here today."
"We decided to close up for the day and go home," I told her.
"That's smart. Melbourne and William ought to do the same." She paused. "Maybe if Melbourne knows Trixie's free, he might close up so he could spend some time with her." There was a twinkle in her eye as her mind began to work.
"Is he here?" I asked. I didn't see him.
"He's in his office. I'm pretty sure he's sleeping, even though he says he's doing paperwork. He's been in there for hours. How much paperwork can one little coffee shop have?"
I shrugged. Lucy grabbed us each a coffee and followed me to a table.
"You won't get in trouble if he comes out and sees you sitting here?" I asked her.
She shook her head. "Nah. Melbourne loves me, and anyway he's not a nut. He knows how slow it is right now. Luckily for me, he abhors busy work. He'd rather just let us sit around and chat." She nodded to our left and I saw her co-worker, Ben, sitting at another table holding hands with a pretty girl.
"Looks like he's in love," I said.
"Yeah, he's a nice enough guy. He should be in love."
There were a couple women sitting alone doing work on their laptops, and a man with dark hair reading the newspaper as he sipped his coffee. The bottom half of his face was hidden behind the paper, but every so often he burst out in laughter. I couldn't hear it because of the silencing charms, but I could see the way his eyes crinkled and the corners of his cheeks dimpled as his body shook. I could almost see his beard, but then the paper covered his face again.
"So, what's up?" Lucy asked me.
I sighed and filled her in on the searches we'd conducted, as well as what we'd discovered about the necklace.