Witch Happens

by A. M. King

  “What about the apartment? My things? I need to leave the key for my landlord, disconnect the phone line.”

  Janvier pointed her finger at the phone and uttered something under her breath. She couldn’t quite make out what it was. It sounded more like Latin.

  “Commanderio finitiora.”

  A faint light ignited from her sister’s fingertip and Febe swore there was a burst of electricity that zinged out of it. An intense energy lingered in the room and seemed to fly onto the counter. The phone jolted.

  “Consider yourself disconnected,” Janvier grinned.

  Febe picked up the phone line only to hear dead silence.

  No dial tone. Nothing.

  Crap. Her sister was a badass witch.

  Then...

  The room spun. Everything was wrapped up and tied neatly into boxes.

  “I’m not supposed to do that,” Janvier said.

  “Do what?”

  “Practice outside of the zone area. But I have no choice. I could lose my license but we don’t have much time to pack. You need to leave here tonight. Your life’s in danger.”

  Chapter 8

  “My life’s in danger?” Febe asked as they exited off the highway toward the small coastal town of Blackshore Bay.

  Janvier drove her SUV onto a long country road leading up to the area near the lake dubbed “Cottage Country” because tourists and homeowners would only visit during vacation time. Of course, it was fall so it was quieter. The town of Blackshore Bay was north of Cottage Country. A very quiet, quaint town where most people knew each other.

  “Yes, your life is in danger, Sis.” Janvier kept her eyes on the road ahead as she drove.

  During the trip, Janvier told her sister about their family bloodline and history. Ebony was seated comfortably in the back seat, seemingly watching the trees go by outside as the car sped.

  “So Marsha doesn’t know yet.”

  “No. She can’t know until she comes of age. By the way, Sis, I’m really sorry about that creepy boyfriend of yours.”

  Febe sighed. “Don’t really want to get into it. He’s my past, not my future.”

  “You know what they say, right? That if he left you high and dry, then he wasn’t going to be around for you anyway. Simple as that.”

  “Not really. I really thought he was the one. He turned out to be a toad instead of a prince when I kissed him. What a loser. Can’t believe I didn’t see through it.” Febe glanced out the window and noticed that they were being followed.

  “Oh no.”

  “What?” Janvier said, casually.

  “We’re being followed.”

  “You just realized that?”

  “You knew?”

  “Yep.” Janvier took a quick turn left onto Brock Street.

  The black sedan followed them.

  Janvier drove further down the road and the black sedan continued to follow them.

  They were in trouble. Two young women in the middle of the night on a dark road leading up to cottage country was not a good thing. Even if they were witches. Something told Febe there was much worse out there than those who knew magic. She was sure of it.

  When they turned onto another road, the car also followed them. Now it was only the girls in Jan’s SUV and the sedan on the quiet road. She was certain that as much magic her sister might know, there was nothing that could get them out of that situation alive.

  Chapter 9

  “You girls lost?” the man came out of his vehicle when Janvier pulled over on the side. He walked up to her window with a flashlight.

  The man was tall and had a thick moustache and grey hair. He had a hardened expression on his face.

  “Oh, Sergeant Heart,” Janvier said.

  “Sergeant? Heart?” Febe repeated, quietly.

  Janvier glanced at Febe, then turned her attention back to the open window.

  “No, sir. We’re not lost.”

  “You do realize there’s a curfew up in these parts of the woods.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Can I see your registration?”

  “Sure.” Janvier was polite and sweet as pie as she reached into the glove compartment and handed the sergeant the information he requested.

  He cast a glance at Febe, narrowing his eyes. He looked at the registration information and back at Janvier. “Don’t let me catch you out at this time of the night again.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry about that, sir.”

  When he moved back to his vehicle, he started his car and made a three-point turn and moved away in the opposite direction.

  “What was that about?” Febe couldn’t wait to ask her sister.

  “That’s the new sergeant for Blackshore Bay’s Police Department. He’s a real peach,” she said, sarcastically.

  “He doesn’t live up to his name.”

  She winced. “There have been a lot of changes in the Bay, Sis. I think you need to know. Tension’s been high. There have been a lot of strange things happening and people have blamed it on witches or wannabes practicing black magic.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, and it doesn’t help that the Gossiping Gosnik family have been spreading their lies and propaganda in their newspapers.

  “They’re still around?”

  Febe remembered the Gosniks. They weren’t kind people. They owned a gossip rag of a newspaper and online website that loved to dish the dirt on the town residents. It was almost comical. A show. Unfortunately, people bought into their stories. They used to tell tales about the Summer family, too.

  One of the Gosnik sisters had a confrontation with their mother a long time ago at the Summer Café and their mom told them not to come back until they had some manners. Well, since then, they’d tried to spread lies about the Summer Café and their food, saying it was bewitched or something. But that faded with time and they’d moved on to other things...at least Febe hoped so.

  Janvier then started her engine again and was on her way, but then she hit something.

  “Oh, no.”

  Janvier stopped the car and got out.

  “What is it? An animal?”

  The girls moved closely to whatever it was blocking them in the road.

  It was a body. A dead woman.

  Chapter 10

  “Now, you’re sure you didn’t see anything?” Sergeant Heart asked the girls when he arrived back on the scene. He’d already called for backup and the forensics team would be there soon.

  “Nope. Not a thing,” Janvier said, wide-eyed.

  He gave them a cynical look and scribbled something down on his notepad. His radio was making sounds from the dispatch.

  Febe didn’t want to look at the body, but she glanced again. There was something odd about it.

  In the spotlight from the sheriff’s cruiser, she could see the woman had long, tangled blond hair. She was on her side, almost in a recovery position, from what Febe had learned in a first aid CPR course. The woman’s hands were bloodied. But what was noticeable was a mark on her right hand. Her wedding band was on her ring finger, but beside it, there was a missing ring or a bloody mark all around her other finger. It was as if someone had yanked her ring off her middle finger, which pointed upward.

  “Don’t go near there. Forensics will be here soon,” the sergeant said in a hard tone. He seemed more bothered that she was near the body than that there was a body on the road.

  “No, I won’t touch anything. But...” Febe tilted her head to the side as if to get a better look. “It looks as if something’s missing from her finger.”

  “Don’t go near there.”

  “I won’t,” Febe said, disappointed that the sergeant didn’t even want to look at the dead woman’s middle finger.

  Just then, another car pulled up.

  A taller man came out of his vehicle, an unmarked police car with emergency lights flashing in the window. The man stood probably over six feet tall – a lot taller than the sergeant. Much younger, too, maybe in his mid-twent
ies to early thirties, Febe couldn’t be quite sure. But what she was sure of was that he had the most striking features she’d ever seen on a man. Strong jawbone with groomed stubble, high cheekbones, dark eyes. He had a distinctive look, as if he could be a cover model for GQ or something. He was handsome, but Febe directed her thoughts away from that observation.

  Men were so not on her agenda right now. Or probably ever again.

  “What’ve we got here?” he asked the sergeant.

  “Well, Trey, we have a female,” he said looking at the ID that he’d found on the body. “Age forty. We need to notify the next of kin.”

  “Hey, that’s Gosnik, isn’t it?”

  “Come again?” the sergeant said.

  “The woman whose family owns that gossip site, right?”

  “It is? I’m not into those Internet things.”

  “They also own a newspaper,” the other guy said. “Uncle, you really need to get on top of what’s going on now.”

  Uncle?

  “That’s his nephew, Detective Trey,” Janvier whispered to Febe. “He’s hot. But I don’t trust any of them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Like I said, they’re both new to the town. They’ve made a whole lot of changes since they came here.”

  “Whatever happened to the old sheriff? Smith, right?”

  “Oh, he was like ninety or something. He retired, remember?”

  “Oh, right.”

  “That’s the trouble with small towns like these. People keep their posts forever until they die or can’t function anymore.”

  “Got it.”

  Febe felt uneasy about that. Given what she’d just been through with her last job, she really didn’t like any form of nepotism. Didn’t matter which company. Okay, so the Summer Café was run by the women in the Summer family, but that was different, right? It was a family-run private business. But this was the law in Blackshore Bay.

  Ebony strutted around the area getting her exercise, oblivious to what was going on. Or was she? Now that Eb could talk, Febe didn’t know how to read her feline friend.

  But right now, Febe had other problems. She’d just left Toronto to move back to Blackshore Bay and already she’d had more trouble than she could handle.

  “Ma’am,” the detective said while shining a flashlight on the back of Janvier’s SUV. “You mind telling me what these boxes are for?”

  Febe glanced inside the vehicle. “Those are my things.”

  “You’re going somewhere?”

  “I’m coming back. I...I’m moving back to Blackshore Bay. My sister was just helping me move my things.”

  He looked at her doubtfully. Trey was handsome, but he looked a bit sneaky when he arched his brow. “Really now? In the middle of the night?”

  “Is there a time that is specified for moving one’s belongings?”

  “Not really. But there is a curfew around this neck of the woods. It’s been a dangerous place. You’ll need to be careful.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  The officer got the girls’ information and address.

  “The Summer House? You ladies live up on the hills?”

  “Yes. It’s our family home, why?”

  The sergeant and the detective exchanged glances. “Just be careful when you’re travelling in the woods, ma’am,” he reiterated.

  “Oh, we will.”

  Chapter 11

  “So you just got back into town and you had to kill someone,” Aunt Trixie said, sarcastically, when the girls arrived at the family mansion.

  The Summer House was a massive Victorian house on the top of a hill. The police had finished interrogating the sisters and the forensics team had arrived on the scene taping off the area with their bright yellow crime scene tape..

  “It was a Gosnik,” Janvier told their aunts.

  Trixie’s eyes opened wide.

  “A Gosnik? Which one?”

  “Not sure. They didn’t say.”

  “Something’s very strange about that death.”

  “You don’t say,” Janvier said.

  “No seriously, Sis,” Febe said. “The fact that the sergeant had Gosnik’s ID and purse meant she wasn’t robbed. It was intentional and probably premeditated.”

  Febe loved to solve puzzles. She would often do it in her spare time. Studying human behavior was her specialty, after all. At least that’s what it read on her degree.

  She wondered why the sheriff didn’t want to pursue that angle.

  “You made a good point, Febe.” At least Aunt Eartha was on her side.

  “It’s nonsense. Gosnik obviously put up a fight, maybe clawed the guy herself and then he just fled without her purse,” Trixie said.

  “No, I don’t think it was that at all,” said Febe.

  “What do you know? You’re an ad executive.”

  “I actually have a degree in psychology and behavioral science with a minor in criminology.”

  “Psych and what?”

  “Psychology and behavioral science, remember? I just couldn’t find work in that field without furthering my studies, so I ended up in advertising.”

  “What does that have to do with psychology and criminology, apart from the fact that a lot of advertisers use psychology to lure us into buying their products, then charge us criminally high prices.”

  “Trixie!” Aunt Eartha said, with her hands on her hips. “Would you please leave our niece alone?”

  “Sorry, it’s just that since she came of age, so many weird things are happening.”

  “That’s because good things are about to happen. Sometimes it’s just the storm before the calm. There are five of us now, strong in our magical energies. Soon Marsha will come on board and we’ll just need one more. The dark energies know that.”

  “Pfff.” Aunt Trixie had her arms folded across her chest and her chin up.

  Aunt Trixie had always had something against Febe since she was young and caught Trixie taking her mother’s makeup. When Febe told her mother, Trixie called her a snitch and said she’d put a hex on her.

  Up to this point, she’d thought her aunt was just pulling her leg, but goodness gracious, she was a real witch. They all were. Febe really didn’t know when she’d get used to that.

  Then on the other hand, if what Janvier said was true about Ebony, Aunt Trixie wasn’t all that bad.

  “There’s a rumor that the Gosniks are witches too, although they hide it,” Aunt Trixie said.

  “Really?” Febe was stunned.

  “If that’s the case, it looks as if either she was hit by a random attacker or...or worse. Maybe it was the evil hunter who sensed her and hunted her down.”

  Aunt Eartha shook her head. “That would not be a good thing. It means that time is running out. We could be next.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Let’s not think about that right now. It would take a lot to wipe us all out, if that’s the case and this was a witch hunt. We still have until next October. We only need seven witches who are in unity with each other to agree to channel our energies and banish the evil hunter for good.”

  “Seven witches?” Febe repeated.

  “Yes. So far there’re three remaining Summer sisters out of the four, your mother would have made four but she...is no longer with us,” Aunt Eartha said solemnly. “So, after your sister Marsha comes of age, we’ll need one more by the next blue moon.”

  “Blue moon?” Febe asked.

  “Yes. A Full Moon occurs roughly every twenty-nine days. If the Full Moon falls at the very beginning of a month, there is a good chance a Blue Moon will occur at the end of the month. So the next Blue Moon is at the end of October of next year.”

  “Wow!”

  “Yes, wow. It is all based on the lunar phases.”

  “But why is this important?”

  “Energy.”

  “Energy?”

  “Yes. As you know, when the sun sets, the moon rises with the side that faces the earth exposed to sunlight. The Mo
on has phases because it orbits our wonderful planet, which causes the illuminated side to change. The Moon takes about twenty-seven days to orbit Earth, but the lunar phase cycle, new Moon to new Moon, is around twenty-nine days.”

  “And that’s when we come into renewed energies?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what if we can’t find another witch by then?”

  They all exchanged glances. “It wouldn’t be a good day for any of us.”

  Chapter 12

  “That’ll be five dollars and fifteen cents, please,” Febe said to the nice, elderly lady at the counter the next day.

  She knew she didn’t have to come to work, but she just couldn’t handle moping around the house. Right now, she felt as if she was doing something constructive. At least it got her mind off her troubles back in the city. She was working at another job, how lucky was that? She was glad that she had her family to be there for her when she needed them more than anything in the world right now.

  Of course, that also brought a whole new basket of problems of its own. She always knew there was something odd about her family. Didn’t everyone feel that way at some point? But she had no idea just how odd her family was. But still, she loved them.

  “Thank you, dear,” the customer said.

  “You’re so welcome.”

  Just then, she heard music.

  “Oh that sounds nice,” Febe said, humming as a man playing the guitar outside the café strummed beautifully.

  The woman turned around. “Oh, that’s Yella.”

  “Yella?” Febe was stunned.

  “Yes, I’m surprised you haven’t heard him perform before. He’s sweet. He serenades all the customers as they come into the café. Such a nice touch. I do hope he finds a real job someday soon.”

  Febe glanced out the window. There he was playing away. He was well-dressed, considering he was playing on the sidewalk outside the café. He had shoulder-length sandy blond hair and blue sparkling eyes. He looked very friendly. He had a dimple on his cheek as he smiled and sang.