by Martha Carr
Laura cringed. “I swear, if that little troublemaker weaseled his way out…”
“What are you talking about?” Nickie asked.
“Huh? Oh, nothing. I just have a—” Another thump sounded, followed by three more in quick succession. Laura stood from the couch, still eyeing the ceiling. “I think that’s coming from the roof.” The thumping sounded like a hailstorm now, which was incredibly weird for Austin, Texas in the middle of the summer. Then the noise amplified, and it came from all around the house instead of just above them.
“Uh…guys?” Emily stepped toward the large bay windows on the north side of the living room, staring at the small shapes falling from the sky amidst a rain of black feathers. “I’m pretty sure this problem is even bigger than mine.”
Chapter Two
“What are those?” Laura peered through the bit of window she could see behind her sister.
“Birds.” Emily glanced through the window with wide eyes and shook her heads. “Birds that aren’t acting like birds at all.”
Nickie and Laura rushed to the window for a better look. “Those are grackles,” Laura muttered.
“I had no idea that there were this many in Austin.” The youngest Hadstrom sister tapped the glass and counted silently. “I don’t know. That’s gotta be at least a hundred right there in the side yard.”
“Okay.” Nickie frowned at the dozens of black birds running across the brownish grass and through the bushes outside their house. “Anyone wanna take a guess why we have at least a hundred messengers of the magical world walking in our yard? It doesn’t even look like their wings actually work.”
Emily gaped up at the ceiling. “I think they fell out of the sky…”
“That’s ridiculous, Em.” Laura shook her head. “The grackles are just as much a part of this city’s magical history as we are. And whole…groups like this don’t just fall out of the sky.”
“Oh, sure.” Emily leaned against the window and stared at their grackle-studded lawn. “You guys hear that?”
Nickie and Laura shared a glance, then they both shook their heads.
“Right. Since when have either of you seen a grackle and not heard it screaming nonstop? You think this many of them on the ground and completely silent is normal?”
The oldest Hadstrom sister took a deep breath and tapped her lips with a finger. “Actually, you have a point, Em.”
“Thank you.”
“Guess there’s only one way to find out.” Laura headed for the foyer and the front door.
“Remember the last time the grackles found us?” Nickie smirked over her shoulder at Emily. “I mean, it wasn’t this many. But still.”
“Right, but those could talk.” Emily shrugged as they followed their oldest sister out the front door. “And the Tree Folk sent them to us. So that would make them magical messengers and…what? Tour guides?”
“Maybe they still have a message,” Laura added as she skirted around the bushes at the front of the house and headed for the side yard.
When all three sisters rounded the side of the house and the sloping hill down to the street, they could hardly keep walking for fear of stepping on a huge black bird no matter where they put their feet. The closest grackles hopped and skittered away from them at first, but not a single black-feathered wing lifted. They stopped at the edge of the gathered birds to figure things out from there.
Laura patted the pockets of her khakis and pulled a fistful of fried crickets from the cargo pocket at her leg. “This might help.” She squatted and extended her hand toward the startled, confused birds. A few hopped away, but two decided their sudden inability to fly wasn’t worth keeping away from a Hadstrom witch. They approached Laura and cocked their heads, beady eyes taking her in.
“Okay, I know you always like to be prepared,” Nickie said, folding her arms with a chuckle. “But when you did start carrying crispy crickets around?”
Laura shook her head and focused on the birds approaching her. “They’re left over from some…you know, it doesn’t matter right now.” Her sisters exchanged a skeptical glance, then the first of the strange-acting grackles got close enough to peck at the bits of fried insect in Laura’s hand. “Anything you have to tell us, little guy?”
The bird swallowed the food then stared up at Laura with its beady black eyes. Its head twitched a few times, then it opened its beak to caw…except no sound came out. Over and over, it tried to caw, and nothing happened. One by one, the other grackles milling about on the Hadstrom sisters’ yard turned to face the three witches and opened their beaks.
“It’s like they’re all choking,” Emily muttered, frowning at the black-dotted grass full of bobbing, soundless birds.
Nickie shook her head. “This is so weird.”
“Yeah.” Laura scattered the rest of the crickets on the ground. “It’s okay, birds. We get it. Can’t fly, and you can’t deliver whatever message you dropped out of the sky to give us.” She dusted off her hands and stood. “You know, the Engineer did say that any of the activated energy cores would do some weird things to magic.”
“You think this is from the energy cores?” Nickie’s eyes widened. “The Gorafrex only managed to turn one of them on.”
“Well, one and a half, technically.” Laura rolled her shoulders and sighed. “Looks like that’s enough to make these guys lose what makes them them. I bet they’d tell us why they can’t fly, if they could talk.”
“Oh, boy.” Emily cocked her head. “Maybe it’s something we can help along with a little bit of legacy-ring magic, yeah?” She lifted her hand to cast a spell with the copper legacy ring on her thumb. Both of her sisters clamped their hands on her raised arm and lowered it back down. “What?”
“Not a good idea, Em.” Nickie shook her head.
“I said it might be from the energy cores the Gorafrex already powered.” Laura nodded toward the birds. “But I’m not sure. Not yet. I don’t think you wanna be responsible for seriously injuring these guys, right?”
“No, I…I’m just trying to help.” Emily frowned at her sisters. “And you guys think I’m just gonna blow them up, don’t you?”
Nickie bit her lip. Laura put an arm around her youngest sister and led Emily out of the side yard. “I think we need to know exactly what happened to the grackles before we start experimenting with how to help them. Obviously, we still have a lot of other things to figure out right now too. Like how to get the Gorafrex out of whatever human it hops into next.”
“Yeah, okay.” Emily waved over her shoulder and Laura’s arm to the milling, flightless, eerily quiet grackles. “Hang in there, guys.”
Nickie came up behind her sisters and nodded. “Locking up the Gorafrex and smashing every single power core left would do them one better, I think.”
Laura shot her a quick glance and nodded. “That’s the plan.”
“Hey.” Emily’s eyes lit up like two lightbulbs. “You know who’s more likely than anyone to have answers about the grackles?”
“No, Em.” Laura shook her head and opened the front door before they all stepped inside. “I’m this close to losing my cool with him, and I have a feeling he’s just gonna rub the whole thing in our faces.”
“But that’s what he does.” Emily spread her arms, grinning. “And it’s hilarious. It’s also a good motivator to figure out what we want to know when we go find him to ask.”
“You guys are talking about Gilroy, aren’t you?” Nickie shut the door behind her as the last one inside and chuckled. “Might be the best option we have right now.”
“No. Just…no.” Laura raised her arms in surrender and stepped backward.
“Come on, Laura.” Emily pointed at the living room windows and the confused grackles on the other side of them. “They need us to figure out what’s going on. And sometimes, we need help too. You can’t say that snarky bust hasn’t given us good information.”
“Only after hours of us being heckled first.”
Nickie
snorted. “Let’s just give it a try. It can’t be that bad.”
“It’s always that bad. Gilroy is my least favorite family heirloom.” Laura folded her arms and pursed her lips. “He does know pretty much everything, though.”
“Right?” Emily spun around in the foyer and glanced at the stairway to the second floor in front of them, the small dining room on their right, and the living room on their left. “So where’s that jerkface today?”
“Emily, I didn’t say I agreed to talk to him right now. Personally, I don’t have hours to waste on being called an idiot witch and an ugly pockface and told that my grammar’s horrendous.” Laura stepped toward the staircase. “I’m gonna look things up the old-fashioned way. In some books.”
Before she reached the first step, the staircase slid away from her like a compressing accordion. The walls rumbled around them, then all three sisters were forced to wait in the foyer while their magical house rearranged itself to help them find Gilroy the talking bust.
Laura raised her arms and dropped them in exasperation. “Why do I even try? My sisters, my house…you know, I bet Speed would’ve done whatever he could to get me to agree to this too.”
Emily batted her eyelashes and gave her best cheesy grin. “Just another sign, then, right? That Gilroy’s the man we need.”
“I don’t think he can be considered a ‘man’ if he’s just a head, Em.”
“Or whatever.”
Laura glanced at Nickie, who just stood in the foyer and chuckled, running a hand through her long dark hair as the house settled on where they’d find their magical talking encyclopedia. They were still closed off from where the living and dining room usually were, which left them with one option.
“The greenhouse?” Emily raised an eyebrow and blinked. “What’s he doing in there?”
“Honestly, Em, I think you’re just gonna hurt yourself trying to figure out why Gilroy does anything.” Laura passed her sister and headed for the magical addition to their giant Victorian house on Pressler street. She opened the screen door and stepped out onto the tiled floor of the greenhouse, the rest of the place from floor to ceiling made of paneled glass.
“Maybe he wanted some sunshine,” Nickie offered as she and Emily came in behind her. “This is the only way he’s gonna get it when he can’t go outside.”
“You know what, maybe we should put him outside.” Laura gazed at the vines and flowering plants hanging from the frame of the glass ceiling and flourishing in rows of planter tables stretching across the entire room. “Getting pooped on by a few passing grackles would be a good lesson for him.”
“Yeah, if the grackles could fly…” Emily tried to hold in her laugh, but when Nickie snorted, it just burst out of her.
Laura shook her head and walked through the rows of plants. “Either of you been in here lately?”
“Nope. Been a little busy with work and full-time school.” Emily wiped imaginary sweat from her forehead. “Thank the ancestors that’s over.”
Nickie squinted at the watering cans on the table in the corner opposite the door. “Didn’t we set this place up to pretty much take care of itself?”
“Well, yeah. We did.” Laura lifted the draping frond of a thick fern spilling over the side of the table and ducked past it. “I just didn’t think all the plants in here would’ve kept growing on their own without someone checking in once in a while.”
“Looks like we grow some pretty amazing plants, though. Laura, did you put this one in?” Nickie reached out to brush her finger along one plant’s purple-and-orange-striped leaves. The first leaf under her finger shuddered and retracted at her touch. The surrounding leaves sprouted fang-looking thorns, and she jerked her hand away before the rest of the plant could rip her finger off. “Jeeze!”
“What?” Laura turned and eyed the orange-and-purple bush, which now looked like a bunch of leaves again.
Nickie blinked at her older sister. “It has teeth, Laura.”
“No…” Laura squinted, then glanced between her sisters before turning and heading off through the jungle their greenhouse had become. “Probably shouldn’t touch any more of these.”
“There are more?” Emily shied from the luminescent blue vines lifting from a split clay pot and trying to brush against her arm.
“I mean, that’s just a guess.” Laura shrugged and stepped around a potted bush on the floor with bright-red berries that doubled in size and shrank again, over and over. “But probably.”
“Okay. Our greenhouse is now a seriously creepy jungle.” Emily cupped her hands around her mouth. “Gilroy!”
Laura and Nickie ducked and covered their ears. “Too loud, Em. Come on.” The oldest Hadstrom sister stopped in front of a tree growing out of the tiled floor. She studied it from top to bottom with a frown, then pushed the branches aside and held them there for her sisters to walk past. “This is…odd.”
“You really put those little magic gardeners to work, didn’t you?” Nickie stared at the trunk of the tree poking through the tiles, then raised her eyebrows at Laura.
“I wasn’t trying to make this happen.” Laura followed her sisters and gently returned the branches to their rightful place. “But it definitely got a little out of control.”
“You think Gilroy just wanted to hide from us?” Nickie asked with a little chuckle.
“You think I give two flying chopsticks what any of you witches think?” On the far side of the greenhouse, under the shade of two massive potted plants with draping vines covered in shimmering silver flowers, Gilroy’s marble visage rotated toward them from atop his intricate pedestal. The rumble of stone spinning against stone was surprisingly loud in the greenhouse for how much the overgrowth should have muffled it. The bust sneered at the sisters and blinked in dissatisfaction.
Chapter Three
“There you are.” Emily laughed and approached the bust. “Enjoying yourself with a little bit of nature, huh?”
“Probably more than you enjoy being absolutely clueless.” Gilroy rolled his marble eyes and glanced between each of the sisters. “Who knows? Maybe you’re having fun.”
Laura shook her head. “This is like when Grandma Eloise made us eat creamed corn that summer we stayed with her. ‘It’s good for you girls. Eat it, or I’m taking your wands.’”
“Hey, I’d take Gilroy’s attitude over creamed corn any day of the week.” Nickie gestured toward the bust and shrugged. “At least he stops talking when you walk away. Grandma’s cooking wouldn’t leave me alone for days.”
Emily laughed and leaned toward the bust on the pedestal, propping her hands on her thighs. “We have some questions for ya, Gil.”
“If I had a nickel for every time I heard that one…”
“You still wouldn’t be able to spend ‘em, Gilroy.” Nickie lifted her hands and wiggled her fingers. “No hands. I’d buy you a nice hat or something, though, if you wanted.” Emily turned her head to look at her sister and let out an exaggerated laugh.
Laura sighed. “Okay, let’s just get this over with. Gilroy, what happened with the grackles this morning?”
“That is literally the most open-ended question you’ve ever asked.” The bust tilted his head side to side and glanced at the glass ceiling. “I mean, I have all the time in the world to tell you everything that happened with the grackles this morning. You’d probably drop dead before I finished.”
Laura let loose a frustrated groan. “Why can’t you just give up information like a normal database?”
“I like to watch your face turn red.”
“You just—”
“Okay, Laura.” Nickie patted her older sister on the shoulder. “We haven’t even started. This is a process, remember?” Laura closed her eyes and imagined herself in a pristine reading room with all the things they needed to know laid out in front of her in ancient texts that didn’t try to hide information. “We just have to try again with another question, right?”
“Right.” Emily nodded. “All right
, Mr. Gilface. Does the fact that a hundred grackles in our side yard who can’t fly or deliver their messages have anything to do with the one and a half energy cores the Gorafrex already powered?”
Laura, Nickie, and Gilroy all blinked at the youngest Hadstrom sister in surprise.
Gilroy snorted. “Yes.”
“Ha!” Emily pointed at the bust and turned to her sisters with a proud grin. “That’s a new record.”
“Well done with the wording, Em.” Nickie gave her sister a thumbs up and smiled back. “So now we know that that’s the reason. What can we do about it?”
“If you haven’t figured that out by now,” Gilroy replied with a roll of his marble eyes, “you’re more useless than you look.”
Nickie and Emily cracked up laughing. “You just can’t help it, can you, Gil?”
“I can’t do a lot of things. Like make you smart, for example.”
Laura stepped back. “I don’t think I can handle this.”
“Laura…” Emily chuckled and grabbed her oldest sister by the shoulder. “He’s just a bust. And a magical know-it-all. We’ve been dealing with that stony attitude since we were kids.”
Nickie barked out a laugh. “Good one, Em.”
“Yeah, you like that? Just came right out.”
“Okay, focus.” Laura twirled a finger at them. “If we’re gonna do this, let’s do it. We can’t forget what we still have to do, okay? We have at least eight energy cores to destroy. What I really want is to find the witch-killer before it finds a different human host and wakes up their peabrain, but that’s pointless if we still haven’t figured out how to get the Gorafrex out of its host first. So… let’s stay on track.” She nodded toward Gilroy and folded her arms.
“We haven’t forgotten, Laura.” Nickie dipped her head and raised her eyebrows. “We know how serious it is.”