A Cauldron of Witch Tricks

by Constance Barker

  “What was that?”

  Nann got up to look at the computer. “E-mail alert. There are still seats available at Wozniak’s fund raising dinner tonight.”

  “Yeah, but we have lasagna.”

  Nann opened the message. “I know. I’d just like to hear the guy’s speech. A private fund raising dinner would be just the place to bust out the anti-magic talk. Holy schmoly, a hundred bucks a plate? Damn, I really wanted to hear what he had to say about magic stuff.”

  “So go to the dinner. You can have leftover lasagna.” Pokey curled into a ball in the chair. “Sometimes, it’s better that way.”

  “Do you know how many plates I can make for a hundred bucks?”

  Pokey shook his head. “No. But I know you could buy five hundred Little Debbie Zebra Cakes. Which sounds like a better investment.”

  “Forget it,” Nann said. “But you get the idea.”

  “Yeah. You’re broke.”

  For a moment, Nann contemplated. A plan formed in her head. “Maybe I’ll go unannounced.”

  A bell rang as she said it.

  “Sounds like my idea is a good one,” she said.

  Pokey snorted. “That’s the bell on the oven. Lasagna’s done.”

  YET HALF AN HOUR LATER, she sat in the parking lot of the Sunset Inn. It was jam-packed. Apparently, people were into local politics in Port Argent.

  Nann had come prepared. Given the locals’ sudden dislike of her, she thought it better not to appear in person. She opened her conjure bag. From within, she pulled out two full taper candles, one red, one black. She performed the ceremony a time or two, with varying results. But she was full of carbs from the lasagna. It should be okay.

  Concentrating on her breath, she slowly sank into a partial trance. Nann charged the candles with her own energy. Then she sank deeper into her self-hypnosis. The candles lit themselves simultaneously. She’d been practicing that for a while. But she didn’t smile in triumph. She had a bigger task to conquer. When her inner stillness fully bloomed, she spoke the incantation:

  “I am excluded from your sight

  like a shadow against the night

  and so, ignored is what I’ll be.

  A faux invisibility.”

  With a whump! both candles burned themselves right down to her hands and extinguished without smoke. Slowly, she brought herself closer to full consciousness. Did it work? She got out of the car and headed toward the hotel. The few people in the parking lot paid her no mind. But why would they, anyway?

  Following a few signs and the rattle of flatware, she made her way to a small dining room. Couples stood between red velvet ropes. Each handed an invitation to a man at a podium. Nann skipped the line, walking right in. She tensed, expecting someone to challenge her. But no one did.

  Even so, as she made her way to the back of the room, that uncomfortable wave of buzzy nausea rolled over her. It was so strong that she nearly dropped the thread of her ceremonial trance. Gritting her teeth, breathing deeply, she held on.

  At the end opposite the speaking lectern, she found an unset table. Here, the sickening sensation slightly slackened. She took the one napkin from the table, unfolded it, and dabbed at her damp face. Boy, this was tougher than she would’ve thought.

  Most of the tables were already populated. She recognized Barb Buford. Other faces seemed familiar, the kind of people you see around town. She didn’t know any of them. There was a reporter Nann frequently saw on the news. Funny, she was the only media person in the room.

  Bored, she began a head count. When she got close to four grand in fund raising, she stopped. I am in the wrong business, she thought. Waiters brought in food. Ironically, many of the entrees were lasagna. Nann was glad she’d already had dinner.

  To her surprise, Audra Simmons walked in, dressed in black, hat with a veil. People murmured condolences. Audra, the perfect widow, smiled and thanked them.

  A moment later, she was surprised to see Doug Baker enter. He sat at Audra’s table. His hand covered hers in sympathy. After a moment, Audra glanced over her shoulder and pulled away. Nann took in the scene. Was he comforting her, supporting her as her husband’s friend and campaign manager? Was it something more? They hadn’t come in together. That would almost have been comical. Audra was strapping, nearly as tall as Tink, but curvier. Baker was a skinny guy, hardly taller than Zinnia. A regular Mutt and Jeff couple. She smiled to herself. What was she even thinking?

  The eating part went on for a long time. Nann felt her full stomach make her drowsy when the candidate began a round of handshaking and schmoozing. She hoped her DVR was recording her shows. While she had always considered politics, especially local politics, boring, this even confirmed it for her. Wozniak spent longer at Audra’s table than at others. Cahoots, Nann thought. That was the word for it.

  A round of applause startled her. Had she been sleeping? She looked up. The schmoozing was over. Finally, Gene Wozniak made the lectern.

  “Thanks for coming out on a weeknight. I know it’s difficult, in the wake of Blake Simmons’ death. As you know, Blake and I were more than colleagues. We were good friends. But we must carry on. Most of you, I know, are concerned about school funding, especially with the population of our neighboring town to the east growing so rapidly with the reopening of the paper mill. This is why, more than ever, we need a Port Argent voice in county government.”

  Applause followed. Nann felt the strain from different angles. The staticky sickness, the carbo load, the warm room, the unrelenting boredom. She missed most of what Wozniak said. It was all she could do to stay awake, and stay invisible. Just as she reached the point where she could no longer keep her concentration, or stop from falling asleep, his words jarred her into focus.

  “...given this select group, what is a major priority in this town. Protection from the Dark Arts. It is not such a concerning factor in any other area of this country, perhaps even the world. In any other place, the threat of a vampire plague or the uprising of monsters from the swamp would be laughed at, sanity questioned, motives suspect. We all know that here, it is a major concern.

  “As you all know, your town supervisors and town council work tirelessly to keep the Dark Arts outside the town borders. But we need more help, more resources. When you send me to the county supervisors, that help and resources are guaranteed.”

  Applause interrupted him.

  “We can start wiping out the Dark Arts on a much grander scale. Together, we can keep Port Argent real—real secure, real normal, real.”

  Applause rose to thunder. Barb Buford gave a standing O. Then, she looked around, saw she was alone, and sat back down. But Nann had had enough. Enough of the sick feeling, enough of the anti-magic rhetoric, enough of staying invisible.

  Unnoticed, she strode out of the dining area. Once in the lobby, the discomfort faded. Even if she did feel better, was she any closer to making Wozniak her prime suspect? Nann hopped back into Cricket and let the car drive her home. She really didn’t know what to think.

  Chapter 11

  Zinnia wandered into the bookstore around the lunch hour. “What’s the matter?”

  “I still don’t have a really good suspect.” She told Zinn about the speech.

  “That really doesn’t make him any more or any less of a suspect.” Zinnia agreed. “But much more of a creep. What is with these people? Prejudice against magic and Pretes—that’s still discrimination.”

  “I’m not voting for him, that’s for sure,” Nann said.

  “It’s too bad his wife has such a good alibi. The cops always look at the spouse first,” Zinnia said. “At least, on TV shows they do.”

  “We do in real life, too.”

  Nann and Zinnia turned to see Deputy Schwenk enter the store. He had a bag of Chinese takeout in his hand. Uh oh.

  “Well, I guess it’s just me and Tink for lunch,” Zinnia stood. Before she walked out the door, she shot a smirk over her shoulder.

  Nann ignored her, preferring to fo
cus on the take-out. “Chinese food?”

  “From your favorite place.” Keith looked out the window and locked the door.

  Double uh-oh. Maybe triple. Of course, her favorite Chinese cuisine was the only decent Chinese cuisine around.

  “What did I do?” Nann asked.

  “To deserve Chinese food?”

  “Okay, sure.”

  Keith Schwenk unbagged the little cardboard boxes and handed her a plastic fork. “On the sheriff’s say so, I looked into Simmons’ blackmail scheme against you.”

  Nann felt a chill current run through her. “There can’t be anything there.”

  “That’s what I said, but I did it anyway. Here’s the thing—given the number of hoops your great aunt and uncle had to jump through, the reams of forms the state and feds had to process, at this point, even if the house you live in isn’t really Founder’s House, legally, it is. The IRS agent I talked to said they would’ve looked into the letter, and dismissed the whole thing in less than five minutes.”

  “I kinda hoped that. Does that mean I’m not the prime suspect?”

  “On the one hand, even if Simmons’ threat wasn’t actionable, you could still have felt threatened. On the other, given all the philandering, adultery, petty crime and not-so-petty crime he threatened other people with, it puts you pretty far down the list. I have to wonder why he bothered with you.”

  “Politics.”

  Keith raised his brows and forked some fried rice into his mouth. Nann told him about Wozniak’s speech.

  “Ah. Some kind of anti-magic platform.”

  “That’s insane, right?”

  He shrugged. “Around here? Makes perfect sense. Calamity Corners, well, they just kind of let all the weird stuff lie. Port Argent is another story. They’re very uptight about anything paranormal, or supernatural, happening in their town. If Blake was attempting to oust you from Founder’s House, things would look better for him.”

  “Even if it was illegal?”

  “Sure. Think about all the people he blackmailed. I’m sure they’d be happier if Blake picked a magic person as a target. At the least, it gave Simmons less time to shake down the rest.”

  Nann dug into her chow mein. “I should feel relieved?”

  “Not exactly.”

  She chewed in thought. “Because of the MO.”

  Keith eyed her, eating, not speaking. He was trying to make her come to his conclusion.

  “You want to know if there’s a Prete around here who could’ve pulled it off.”

  He pointed his fork at her, nodding.

  And thus, the bribe of Chinese food. Of course, Nann had only last night infiltrated an anti-Prete convention without witnesses. Given the sort-of invisibility. So she was one. No one had reported an alligator in the area, so Zinnia was out. Tink, she knew, sometimes visited the other world of the Fae to visit relatives, but she didn’t know if she could reappear in the Earthly realm wherever she wanted. Recently, the author, Nick O’Broin, had displayed some kind of teleportation magic. But he lived in Pennsylvania. What motive would he have? Her thinking just brought her around to a depressing conclusion: as far as magic MOs went, she was still the prime suspect.

  “I’d have to give it some thought.”

  He nodded. “We’ve been thinking that we were looking for a suspect with an understandable motive. And there are more than we can easily track down. Ninety percent of the cases are cheating spouses, so no leverage there. In this area, we might be looking at a supernatural suspect who felt threatened enough by Simmons’ blackmail to take action. Given the unexplainable modus operandi, maybe the motive is something beyond the norm as well. That’s what the current thinking is.”

  “And why I’m still a good suspect.”

  He shrugged in sympathy.

  The food went flavorless in her mouth. All the time she’d been in this place, she’d tried to keep the magic hidden from normal folks. She’d been fooling herself. Everyone knew about magic. Simmons knew about Tink and Zinnia. Barb Buford knew Aunt Nancy was a Druid. The sheriff, apparently, knows Nann practices magic. Gene Wozniak knew enough about Druids to keep them out of his hotels when they came for the big Beltaine celebration. She’d been putting in a lot of effort to remain secret. What a waste.

  Still if Simmons shared the same political philosophy as Gene Wozniak, what was that box of dusty mystic paraphernalia doing in his shop? He certainly hadn’t been in that much of a hurry to dispose of it. It made her wonder if Keith and the sheriff were really on the right track.

  All she knew was, the small-town government of Port Argent wanted to get rid of the Pretes. Tink, Zinnia, Pokey, and most of all Nann, since she actually lived in Port Argent. Maybe that was the motive: to frame some Prete for the murder of Blake Simmons. One less preternatural creature in the vicinity, she thought.

  A sudden pounding at the door made both she and Keith jump. The deputy’s brows gathered. “What’s she doing here?”

  At the door, a tall brunette poked her keys against the glass. Couldn’t anyone read the hours posted there? Nann got up. She pointed at the hours posted on the door. Why did no one ever read the store hours? “We close for lunch.”

  Up close, Nann recognized Audra Simmons. The woman pounded on the glass, pointing at Keith. Maybe the woman was in trouble. Although she didn’t want to, Nann let Audra inside. Immediately, Nann swooned and stepped back. Her head went light, as if she were suddenly engulfed in a cloud of paint fumes. Audra took her stagger as an invitation.

  “Deputy Schwenk, what are you doing here?”

  Keith lifted his little white container. “Eating Chinese food.”

  “Why aren’t you arresting this woman?”

  Nann gripped the knob as her knees went weak. What was it about Audra Simmons that affected her like this?

  “Not enough evidence.” Keith shoveled fried rice with his fork.

  Audra put her hands on her hips. “Have you brought her in for questioning? You brought me in for questioning.”

  “We’ve questioned her.”

  “Then why isn’t she in jail?”

  Keith put his container on the checkout desk and stood up. “Look, Mrs. Simmons. I understand you’re under a lot of emotional strain, and I’m sorry for your loss. However, I don’t tell you how to sell antiques. Don’t tell me who to arrest.”

  Chapter 12

  Even in her stupor, Nann caught sight of a glitter peaking between the top buttons of Audra Simmons’ blouse. She saw a rough stone, very pale lavender, threaded through a rough thong. It burned her eyes, leaving an after-effect like a flashbulb. That must be the anti-magic charm, she thought. Nann couldn’t do more than think. The charm was working well.

  “It was obviously this woman who killed my Blake,” Simmons said. “How can you sit here eating lunch with a murderess?”

  Keith’s brow wrinkled. “Just what do you base this accusation on?”

  “Oh, please, Deputy. Everyone knows why.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Why... she’s a witch, obviously.”

  Nann wanted to retort. A tremble in her jaw stopped her. She really had to find a way to counteract that damned charm.

  “A witch? That makes her a murderer?”

  “It’s a well-known fact that my husband opposed the Dark Arts. Who else would want him dead more than a practitioner?”

  “Frankly, a lot of people, Mrs. Simmons,” Keith said. “I’m not at liberty to discuss an open case, or potential suspects. When we make any progress, you’ll be the first to know. Otherwise, this store closes for lunch. Didn’t you read the posted hours?”

  Audra spun on her heel and headed through the door that Nann held onto for support. “You’ll be hearing from my attorney,” she said.

  The moment she left, Nann felt the horrible sensation drain from her nerves. She’d encountered the sensation so many times, she knew that more than one person had such a charm. But who would make anti-magic charms? BJ the swamp wizard was a kn
own charmist. Could he even make one without harming himself? Brock Junior was crazy, so maybe so. Though she dreaded it, she’d have to talk to him about it.

  When she recovered enough, she moved back to the desk. Keith cast a concerned look at her. Nann ignored it, trying to look as if she dug into her cooling food with relish. “Thanks for sticking up for me.”

  “I don’t know how the rumor got started, but I really want to nip it in the bud. More than one person has mentioned you as the obvious suspect. It’s just screwing up the investigation.”

  “Plus you know I didn’t do it,” Nann pressed.

  “Yes. That, too.”

  She twirled noodles onto her fork. “Does everyone really know I’m a Druid?”

  “Probably. I know you’ve always tried to protect that facet of yourself. But you’re Nancy’s niece. Nancy was pretty up front about practicing magic.”

  Nann frowned at him. “So you’ve known about me all along?”

  “I had a pretty strong suspicion.” He smiled. “But if you wanted to try to keep a lid on it, I wasn’t going to out you.”

  “Thanks for that, I guess.” Ultimately, she felt kind of foolish about trying to maintain some kind of secret identity. Whatever. “You brought Audra Simmons in for questioning?”

  “We did, although it was pointless, for two reasons. First, at the time of the 911 call, she was drinking with the winners of the AMN golf thing.”

  “Pretty solid alibi.”

  Keith ate, nodding. “Second, that panic room. Nobody could get in there unless Blake let them in. There’s no keyhole, no knob on the outside.”

  “I’m telling you, I’ve read a lot of locked room mysteries.”

  “It’s just a pain in the ass. If not for Blake’s voice on the 911 call, the officers being practically on top of the scene, it could have gone down in a lot of different ways. We’ll figure it out. Eventually.” He sighed. “One thing’s certain: Audra wasn’t in the neighborhood at the time of the murder. She’s cleared.”