by Martha Carr
“She was already what?”
“She was dead when we found her.”
Chuck slumped in his chair. “Oh, come on.”
“Babe.” Nickie leaned forward. “Dave’s fine. He’s not a wizard, and witches and wizards are the only beings the Gorafrex is after. The only ones it’s trying to kill, I mean. As far as we know, all the other hosts were fine when that thing let them go. And it will let Dave go. I promise.”
Her boyfriend glanced back and forth between the sisters and huffed a sigh. “You’ve actually seen the other…hosts?”
“Yep.” Laura nodded. “There are only three we know of, but we were there when every single one of them woke up after the Gorafrex left. They were fine.” Minus the mind-blowing realization that they now have an awake peabrain that lets them access magic. “There might be a little healing involved, but nothing serious.”
Chuck swallowed, stared at his coffee, then sat forward. “Okay. Sounds good to me.” He took another sip and scanned the work Laura and Nathan had stayed up poring over. “Anything I can do to help?”
“Nothing comes to mind right now,” Laura said.
“But we’ll let you know if something comes up. Thanks, babe.”
“Yeah, well, I always try to help you guys as much as I can. You know that.”
“And you’ve never let us down, Chuck.” Laura flashed him a cheery, genuine smile.
“Right.” He nodded and drummed his fingers on the table. “I’m gonna go home and take a shower. Text if you need me. Actually, maybe text me if anything happens? Otherwise, I’ll worry.”
“Sure.”
“You got it.”
After draining the rest of his coffee, he stood, bent to kiss Nickie goodbye, and pulled away just enough to say, “I love you.”
“Love you too.”
Without another word, Chuck walked back through the dining room toward the front door, which he closed silently behind him on his way out. Nickie sipped her coffee and stared at the table.
“Yeah.” Nathan nodded and slid the old journal closer to get started on the rest of their work. “I’d say he’s definitely taking it well.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Emily’s phone went off again when she was halfway home after her opening shift in the kitchen of Meadowlark Tavern. When she stopped at a red light, she glanced at the screen to see a text from John: ‘At least Ansler’s not screaming at everyone again. People are starting to forget about Sunday’s dinner party for swingers. Wish I had more than ten minutes with you in the parking lot.’
She smirked and tossed her phone onto the passenger seat. “Yeah, me too. That’s what happens when everyone works food and bev. Not a lotta room for a social life.” The light turned green, and she floored the gas pedal. “I promise I’ll have more time once we get this stupid Gorafrex taken care of.”
The rest of her trip home took most people eight to ten minutes, but she made it in six. Her wheels screeched a little when she pulled up to the curb, but she rarely noticed that part of her driving, either. She slammed the door shut, jumped up the stairs two at a time, and burst inside the house, expecting to see everyone gathered in the living room or the kitchen.
“All right. I know you guys are done with all the heavy-lifting rune stuff…Hello?” No one answered, and after a quick search, she realized the house was empty. “Huh. Probably better anyway. No distractions.”
She pulled up a group text to her sisters. ‘I’ll be in the greenhouse. Shouldn’t take long. Potion on the way.’ Feeling optimistic about the whole thing, she nodded, stuck her phone in her pocket, and headed into the foyer.
“Okay.” Emily rubbed her hands together and squinted at the staircase. “Let’s see what that overgrown garden can whip up.” The walls rumbled and shifted around her, the staircase folded in on itself, and after a few seconds of sliding and falling and turning, the house pulled up the glass door into the magically hidden greenhouse. “Here we go.”
The moment she stepped inside, Emily thought the house had mistaken her request. “This is a forest…”
Except it was the greenhouse. The glass panels making up the walls and ceiling were barely visible through the thick curtain of vines crawling over every surface. The tiled floor was more cracked and shattered than two days ago, and the plant that had grown teeth on its leaves and tried to eat Nickie’s hand had actual fangs sprouting from its blooms. “Yeah, they do kinda look like mouths. Things are really getting outta hand.”
Emily ducked under tree branches and stepped over jutting roots and ferns exploding from the floors. When she reached the far end of the greenhouse opposite the door, the worktable was fortunately still there. “If this is magic acting all weird, at least the furniture hasn’t grown legs and walked away.” She knocked a few times on the wooden worktable and nodded. “Just in case. Okay. I know Mom left some supplies. They gotta be around here…”
After a few minutes of opening and closing various drawers, she finally found the one she wanted. “Yes. Okay, this would be one of those moments where I’m actually glad Laura’s so infuriatingly organized.” She pulled the huge, worn potions book from one of the bottom drawers and brushed leaves off the table to clear a space. “First-time potion. Nice experiment. I can do this.” The pages felt brittle between her fingers, but the recipe book wasn’t nearly as old as the tome of Peabrain magic Laura had been lugging around for a year.
Emily ran her finger along the potions listed on each page. “Instant cleaner. No. Sound-canceling…nope. Hair growth? What is this, Potions for Homemakers?” She took a deep breath and settled her frustration. “I’ll find it. If this thing was organized anything like an actual cookbook, I just need to find the right section. Totally doable.”
The bush with the red and purple leaves and mouth-shaped blossoms shuddered behind her with a whisper of a rustle. The other plants in the greenhouse muffled most of the noise, even when a thin, dirty-yellow vine snaked its way from beneath the leaves and slid out onto the floor. Each mouth-shaped flower on the bush opened wider, exposing the fang-like thorns, and the vine crawled toward the unsuspecting witch.
Emily stood at the worktable another ten minutes, sifting through various potion recipes. A few had seemed relevant to what she needed, but none felt right. “I’ll know it when I find it. Just gotta keep…what? Who in their right mind would use a potion to give someone acne? Never mind. No time to figure that one out.”
Behind her, the vine crept along the ruptured tile floor, slowed down by the other plants reaching out to strike at it as it snaked along after its prey.
“Oh! Yes!” Emily slapped her finger down onto the page and grinned. “Returning stolen things. That’s it. Let’s see…good for physical items, secrets, dreams…stolen dreams? Woah. Identities, voices, wishes. Yeah, okay. This is it. So that calls for…weird.” She turned around as the tip of the yellow vine rose up like a snake to strike. Another mouth-shaped flower bloomed at the very end, opening wide petals like huge jaws.
The young witch jumped and moved her hand to bat the thing away before thinking better of it. Her legacy ring did the rest of the work. The copper ring flashed a bright-green light that slashed through the air. The vine let out a hiss and dropped to the floor before retracting all the way back to its bush on the potting table.
Emily stared at it. “You know magic’s seriously messed up when your own plants turn on you. Maybe they wouldn’t if we spent more time in here tending them…” Her gaze fell upon the gaping red flower on the floor, those fang-like thorns snapping against each other. Finally, the thing’s reaction slowed until it was barely moving, severed from the end of the vine that had tried to take a bite out of her.
Emily hummed in approval and bent to scoop the thing up. She pinched the back of the flower to keep it from flipping over and sinking fangs into her fingers, but she carried it to the worktable and set it down far enough from the book it couldn’t damage the aged pages.
“Now for the super prof
essional supplies…” The next drawer she opened contained an endless selection of glass vials. “Just like my spice rack, huh?” She grabbed one that looked like it could hold thirty milliliters and thumped it down on the table. With a warning glance at her copper legacy ring, she found her place again in the recipe for Returning Stolen Things. “Don’t let me down now. We’re just getting started.”
An hour later, Laura and Nickie looked up from where they sat in the living room as the house rumbled and churned, walls sliding into place, retracting, unfolding, and rearranging. When the wall blocking off the foyer slid sideways toward the front door and disappeared, Emily stood in the foyer, clutching a vial of a sparkling orange substance and grinning. “I totally rocked this, by the way.”
“Emily!” Laura shot up from the couch and gaped at her youngest sister. “What the heck happened to you?”
“I mastered my first potion. That’s what happened.” Emily shrugged off her sister’s concern and danced into the living room.
Nickie laughed and instantly bit it back. “How many times did you blow yourself up before you mastered it?”
Emily scoffed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t blow anything up, break anything, destroy property, or lose important information. I made us the potion.” She stopped in front of the coffee table and thrust the potion at her sisters. “For returning stolen things.”
Laura and Nickie stared at the vial of sparkling orange. “Em, it’s not like we’re trying to get back a wallet or a car…” The oldest Hadstrom sister tilted her head.
“What? Yeah, I know that. Come on. This also works for…” Something brushed across her arm, and she looked down to see a bundle of pine needles walking down her forearm toward the vial in her hand. “And, by the way, the greenhouse has seriously gotten out of control.” She brushed the needles onto the floor and stomped them into the area rug. “I didn’t even see any pine trees.”
“Obviously, things got weird in there.” Nickie stood and pulled handfuls of leaves—both green and brown—from her sister’s tangled hair. “Really, though. You look like you blew something up and got tossed into a forest.”
“That’s exactly what it is in there. But I found Mom’s old potions book.” Emily grinned.
“That’s right…” Laura sat back against the couch cushion and laughed. “I organized that whole worktable before we all got too busy to even bother with gardening.”
“Yeah, well, we had more than enough for me to make this.” Emily shook the vial at her sisters, then pumped her arms in a victory dance.
From the armchair on the other side of the coffee table, Nathan cleared his throat.
“What the—” Emily jumped away from the chair and did a double-take. “You’re still here?”
Nathan laughed, and Laura gave her little sister the death stare.
“Yeah, I’m still here. Laura and I finished the rune. Then she and Nickie went off to successfully break another energy core, I think. Right?”
“Oh, yeah.” Nickie nodded, a smile spreading over her face. “It was successful all right. Took a little longer than normal, though.”
Emily pursed her lips. “Magic problems?”
“Probably.”
“Hey, how’s Chuck doin’, by the way?”
Nickie blinked and took a deep breath. “Chuck’s…adjusting.”
“I think it’s already sunk in for him,” Nathan said. “He’s been running errands all morning.”
Emily squinted. “Errands for us?” Her sisters nodded. “Huh.”
“And he brought Dave’s toothbrush.” Laura nodded at the coffee table.
“That’s definitely a toothbrush. Wait, why does Chuck have Dave’s toothbrush?”
Nickie snorted. “I’m pretty sure he pulled it from the guy’s office, Em.”
“Oh…uh, why do we need his toothbrush?”
Laura took a deep breath. “We’re gonna use the singing bowl. Find Dave that way, and then use our weapons and the rune-imbued lance and your potion there to get that thing out of Chuck’s friend and back behind bars, so to speak.”
“Right.”
“Is it an actual singing bowl?” Nathan leaned forward and grinned. “I love those things.”
“This one was made by a Tibetan monk. I can’t remember how many hundreds of years ago.” Laura shook that little memory frustration out of her head. “It tracks magical frequencies back to the source. In this case, an item’s owner.”
Emily crossed her arms, gently squeezing her potions vial. “We had an actual wand last time we used that thing. A toothbrush isn’t exactly a magical item.”
“It is when it’s been in a Peabrain’s mouth.” Laura raised an eyebrow. “Even if that Peabrain doesn’t know what he can actually do.”
“Yeah, okay. Sounds like it’s worth a shot. When are we headin’ out?”
“We were just waiting for you. We should probably get going. Less time for magic to turn itself inside out, right?” Nickie slapped her thighs and stood from the couch. “I’m so ready for this to be over.”
“You can say that again.” Emily nodded at the part-Kashgar sitting in their living room. “You coming?”
Nathan’s eyes widened before he shook his head. “Nope. My work here, at least until Laura asks for my help again, is done.” He dusted off his hands just for show and leaned back in the armchair. “I’d totally like to see that singing bowl in action, though.”
“Done and done.” Laura stood, snatched up Dave’s toothbrush, and nodded at her sisters. “The Clubhouse is stocked. We’ll grab everything we need from there before we hit the one-mile mark, right?”
As if they could read each other’s thoughts, the Hadstrom witches all turned at the same time and headed for the front door.
Nathan pushed to his feet and blinked. “Yeah. Sounds good.” But they were already out the door, so he hurried after them.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
In the passenger seat of Laura’s car, Nickie held the magic-tracking singing bowl in her lap and swirled the red-tipped mallet around the bowl’s rim. The sound of it reverberated through the car, even with the driver-side door open and Nathan peering over Laura in the driver’s seat. “That sound, right?” He looked at each of the sisters with an enthusiastic grin. “I could listen to that all day.”
In the backseat, Emily folded her arms. “You obviously haven’t heard it nonstop in a car while tracking down a magical being.”
“No…” He frowned at her. “Is it that bad?”
Emily tipped her head at him and didn’t say a word.
The singing bowl glowed with a red light before it overflowed and shot the magical tracker through the windshield and northwest across Pressler Street. “There’s our direction.” Nickie set the mallet in her lap and nodded.
“Time to go.” Laura looked at Nathan and smiled. “Thanks for all your help. We wouldn’t be doing any of this right now without you.”
“Naw. You would’ve figured it out. But I like that I wasn’t just getting in the way.” He leaned down until his face was inches from hers. Nickie turned over her shoulder and shared a wide-eyed glance with Emily in the backseat. “Get rid of that thing and come back in one piece. Got it?” Laura’s smile widened into a full-blown grin. “You be careful, Professor Hadstrom.”
“I always am.” For a few seconds, all three witches thought the part-Kashgar physics professor was going to make his move and kiss Laura right there in the car. But, he just nodded and stepped back. “Let me know when we can celebrate you guys finally finishing this thing.” With that, he shut the driver-side door and walked around the back of Laura’s car toward his blue Jeep parked at the curb.
Laura gripped the steering wheel with both hands and blinked.
“Wow.” Nickie eyed her older sister with an appraising smirk. “I’m impressed.”
“Yeah, and I don’t think he meant celebrate, like, all of us together, either.” Emily scooted forward and peered around the driver�
��s seat. “He was talking about just the two of you. Alone.”
“To celebrate,” Nickie added.
“Well…good.” Laura grabbed her seatbelt and buckled it before shifting into drive. “I wouldn’t have invited either of you anyway.”
Her sisters laughed as Laura drove them up Pressler Street toward downtown, following the general direction of the red light that had shot from the magical-frequency tracker in Nickie’s lap.
Half an hour later, Laura glanced at the singing bowl and nodded. “We have to be pretty close. Try it again.”
Emily groaned and plugged her ears.
Nickie drew the mallet around and around the bowl’s rim. With the metallic ringing came another flash of light. They’d gone through the flashes of red, orange, and yellow as they drove closer to wherever the Gorafrex was hiding out. Nickie almost didn’t register that the light shooting out of the bowl and almost straight in front of them was white. “That way.” She pointed, then blinked.
“Hey, that was white,” Laura almost shouted. “You guys saw that, right?”
“Yep.”
“Totally white.”
“We’re almost there.” Laura pulled over on the side of Barton Point Drive in the Barton Creek West neighborhood, parked, and turned off the engine. “Got your charms?”
Nickie and Emily pulled out their keyrings and gave them a little jingle.
“Good. Let’s—” Laura took a deep breath, then unbuckled her seatbelt. “I’m gonna do this outside.”
“What? Why?”
The oldest Hadstrom sister pulled her keys from the ignition and opened the door. “That lance isn’t gonna fit in my car without poking someone’s eye out.” She shut the door, and Nickie and Emily both chuckled.
“Yeah, okay.” They each got out to stand on the sidewalk with Laura, and all three thumbs slipped over their individual thumbprints on the round silver charms.