by Zoe Arden
My dad shrugged. "Yesterday sometime." He said it as if it were no big deal that he'd been to a dark magical bakery. Then again, he'd said it was Sadie who'd had the cravings, and he would have done anything for her.
I looked at Lucy, whose eyes were continuing to widen. She looked like an owl. I knew what she was thinking. Edith had still been holding out on us. She hadn't said a thing about my dad being there just the other day. And that meant that she'd also been lying when she'd said she'd gotten rid of those cupcake liners. She still had them. She was a very good liar, I had to admit. I'd bought everything she'd said. I hoped that Mike Bison was getting more out of her than we did.
"Why are you all looking at me like that?" my dad asked. "I know what people think of Creams, Cakes, and Creations but it's really not that bad, you know. A lot of what they sell is perfectly safe as long as you consume it the right way."
I couldn't take much more. "Yeah, but—"
Eleanor cut me off with a look.
"It's perfectly fine, Eli. We were just a little surprised. I don't think any of us realized you'd had time to go to Mistmoor Point yesterday."
"I used a new speed spell I found in one of those books Ava checked out of the library the other day. Got me there in thirty minutes flat."
"Thirty minutes?" I cried. He'd have to show that spell to me later. Thirty minutes to get to Mistmoor was almost unbelievable.
"Actually," my dad said, "I was going to swing by Sadie's right now and just check on her."
"Of course," Eleanor said. "Tell her we say hello."
"I will."
"Dad!" I called just as he reached the front door. He turned back to me. I ran to him and gave him a hug.
"Hey," he said, chuckling, "what's that for?"
"Just because I love you," I told him, "and I don't say it nearly often enough."
"I love you, too, kiddo." He kissed the top of my head. "I know you're all grown up but you'll always be a kiddo to me."
I took both of his hands and squeezed them tightly, then flipped them over. There was nothing there except what you'd expect to see—an empty palm. He gave me another quick hug then made his way out.
"It's not him," I said when he was gone. "I checked his palms. There was nothing there. No mark."
"I don't know," Trixie said. "Something seems off, don't you think? Since when does Eli eat dark cupcakes?"
"Since Sadie talked him into it," I said triumphantly. "It must be her. We were right all along."
"What about her palms?" Lucy asked. "I thought you said you've already checked them and there's nothing there either."
"Maybe I just missed it," I told her. "Maybe the mark is smaller than I thought. I didn't get a very good look."
"Maybe," Lucy said thoughtfully.
"I just don't know—" Eleanor's thought was cut off by the re-entrance of my father.
"I nearly forgot, I promised Sadie I'd bring her one of our crumb cakes. Her sweet tooth has just been out of control the last couple of days. I suppose that's a good sign though, don't you think? Means she's on the mend."
"I'd say so," said Trixie. We watched him walk into the back room.
"Is there anything that says dark spirits have a sweet tooth?" I asked when he was gone.
"Not that I know of," said Eleanor. "But that doesn't mean they don't."
"We can't let him leave," I said suddenly. "What if it is in Sadie and it kills him next?"
"What if it's in him and he kills Sadie?" countered Lucy.
My dad reemerged from the back, crumb cake in hand. "I just need a box for this.”
"No!" I shouted so loudly that he almost dropped the cake. I looked at my aunts. "Let's just tell him," I said.
"Ava..." Eleanor gave me a warning look but I ignored her.
"Dad... Sadie's possessed. She accidentally conjured a dark spirit over a week ago and it's been using her to kill ever since. If we don't get it out of her soon, it might stay in her forever." There. It was out. Finally.
My dad looked around from one of us to the other. "I know," he sighed and set the crumb cake down. "We don't have much time left, and I'm afraid I'm out of options."
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CHAPTER
THIRTY
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We stared at my father, our jaws hanging open.
"You... know?" Eleanor said.
For the first time since I'd met her, she looked utterly befuddled. It was somewhat unsettling. Normally, Eleanor was the most together person I knew. Seeing the look of astonishment on her face made me feel that much more anxious than I already was.
I drew in several deep breaths, trying to calm the sensation of waves rolling around my stomach. The last thing I needed to do right now was throw up.
"Are you serious?" Lucy said, her own face pallid and green. She was holding one hand in her other, her knuckles white.
"Of course, I'm serious," my dad said.
"How long have you known?" I asked him.
"Since the day it happened," he said, leaning against the counter. He let out a long, unsteady breath. When he looked up again, I saw fatigue on his face. Something else, too, though. Relief?
"I didn't realize it right away, oh, no, not right away. That rain cloud appeared out of nowhere and I thought it was just a fluke. I got Sadie home and put her to bed, gave her some cold medicine, and just sort of hung around to keep an eye on her."
"And?" I asked.
His eyes looked tired and red. I hadn't realized before how red they were. It looked as though he hadn't slept in a week. Maybe he hadn't.
"And when things finally started going wrong," he said, "I refused to accept it."
"Things like what?" I asked.
"I was in her living room watching television when the lights began to flicker. It started to rain, pounding against our windows like the water wanted to get into her apartment. Only when I actually looked out the windows, I could see that it wasn't raining anywhere else but above her building." He shook his head sadly. "I should have known then."
"You didn't?"
He cocked his head to the side. "Didn't know or didn't want to accept it? I'm embarrassed to say it's the later."
"What finally convinced you?" Eleanor asked.
"It was later that same night when she was sleeping in her bed. I thought she was out cold but then I started hearing noises coming from her room."
"Noises?" Lucy asked. Her voice sounded shaky.
My dad nodded. "Like... someone tapping at the window. Only it wasn't tapping, exactly. It was too loud for that. I could hear it even over the thunder and rain. I guess it was the spirit, though I still don't know what exactly was causing it. I never saw anything in her room or outside of it that would be making the noise. It was almost like it was in my head."
He let out a long breath and shuddered.
"Anyway, I finally went to check on her... and she was floating."
"Floating?!" Lucy and I shrieked at the same time.
He nodded. "She was sleeping... and levitating. I had no idea what to do. In all my years as a wizard, I've never seen that happen. People can't just float like that, it's too close to flying."
"What did you do?" Trixie asked.
He looked at her. "What do you think? I got her down. Took me an hour and a half to get her back in her bed and keep her there. She kept wanting to float to the ceiling." He sighed. "That was a long night, the first of many."
"Oh, my roses," Lucy said. Her face had gone pale.
"Why didn't you say something?" Eleanor asked.
"Why didn't you?" he countered.
Eleanor bit her bottom lip. I looked around and realized Trixie and I were doing the same thing.
"We were worried that you might... that it might hurt your relationship with Sadie if you found out," Eleanor said. "It was all so new. Your relationship, I mean. I didn't want to take the chance..."
"She's the first woman you've really seemed to care about since Mom died," I told him.
"The first woman other than you and your aunts," he corrected.
"I'm sorry," I told him. "We should have told you. We should have trusted you to be able to handle it."
He shook his head. "I'm guilty of the same thing. I was afraid you might think less of Sadie if you knew what had happened, like she'd somehow conjured the dark spirit on purpose. I didn't want anyone to know."
"Is that why you keep going by to check on her?" I asked.
He nodded. "I've been afraid to leave her alone for too long. She'll seem fine one moment, and the next she'll turn into a crazed murderer." He drew in a deep breath. "For a while, she seemed better and I thought it was all over but then it was like she suddenly got worse again."
"Oh, Eli," Trixie said sympathetically, patting him on the back.
"Dad, I'm so sorry."
"After she killed that tourist, I was really afraid to say anything. Especially when that Mike Bison showed up." He hesitated. "I thought about talking to Colt," he said, looking at me, "but he's seemed so preoccupied lately and hasn't been around the house as much as he usually is."
I kicked myself for not telling Colt exactly what was going on. I should have told him from the beginning. If everyone had just been honest with each other from the start, then two deaths might have been avoided.
"How did she kill the tourist?" Eleanor asked, her lips pressing tightly together. "We were there when it happened and none of us saw a thing. She was nowhere in sight."
My dad shrugged. "She was hiding in the back alley when I found her. She'd slipped away from me a little earlier and I'd managed to track her down to Knobs and Broomsticks. When I found her... she wasn't herself."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"I got her home as quickly as possible and tried to perform an exorcism."
"By yourself?" I screeched.
"Eli!" Eleanor scolded. "Don't you know how dangerous that is?"
He nodded. "I know, I know, I just didn't know what else to do."
"The night Red was killed..." Lucy said. "Did you know that it was Sadie who'd done it?"
"Yes." He paused. "I'm sorry about that. I really am. I thought she was getting better. She seemed so much better."
Eleanor gasped. "That was the day we brought the banishment cookies over to her." She looked at me, her mouth open.
"Oh, my roses," I said. "That means they must've worked for a bit."
"Maybe you were right," Eleanor said, looking ashen. "Maybe I didn't make the banishment charm strong enough or fix it up quite the right way. Oh, dear... If only I'd double checked it before I'd baked them, maybe things would have turned out differently."
"Don't blame yourself," my dad said.
"I've made some more since then," Eleanor said suddenly. She'd been leaning against the counter and suddenly went into the back room. She returned a minute later with two platefuls of cookies. "I made more molasses cookies as well as some peanut butter chocolate chip cookies this time."
"They look delicious," Lucy said.
"If we can get her to eat them," Eleanor said, "I think these might do the trick."
"That shouldn't be too hard," my dad said. "She's always hungry."
"Try one," Eleanor told us. "Tell me what you think. I have more in back." We looked at the cookies. "They won't hurt you. They'll only hurt the dark spirit. As long as there isn't one residing inside you, then you'll be fine."
We all reached out to take a cookie. My dad grabbed one of the chocolate chip ones. I grabbed a molasses. Lucy and Trixie grabbed one of each.
"I doubled the banishment extract this time. I was already suspicious that I'd gone too light on it last time, though I didn't want to admit it," she said, blushing. "This is the hard stuff—pure extract, no filler—but the cookies themselves should taste no different."
I bit into my cookie. It was delicious. Sweet and brown sugary and everything that a cookie should be. "It's amazing," I said. Eleanor beamed. "Even better than the last ones."
"I'm so glad," she said.
My dad was looking at the cookie. He put it back on the plate.
"Maybe we shouldn't eat anymore. Sadie's pretty bad just now. She might need all of these to get better."
Lucy put her cookie back too but Trixie had already devoured most of hers. "Too late," she said. "They're amazing, Eleanor."
"What we need is a plan," Lucy said. "A way to get Sadie to eat these cookies without thinking something is wrong."
"She'll eat just about anything with sugar in it these days," he said. "Give them to me and I'll take them over to her now."
"No," Eleanor said. "For this to work, really work, I think we all need to be there this time."
"All of us?" Lucy gulped.
"Yes, dear. All of us. I'm not taking any more chances." She looked at my dad. "We'll wait till nightfall. After the bakery closes, we'll all go down there together. And this time, we won't leave until we're sure the dark spirit is gone."
* * *
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
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Rocky jumped on Eleanor when we came in, almost knocking her to the ground to lick her face.
"Rocky gets bacon?" he asked, his voice hopeful, never doubting for a moment that she'd say no. Eleanor sighed and went into the kitchen, preparing his bacon just how he liked it—extra crispy.
I didn't even wait for Snowball to ask me, I just opened her can of tuna and placed it in her bowl.
Tootsie received a combination of things—chicken, tuna, and a few bacon bits sprinkled on top for good measure. I was quite certain we had the most spoiled familiars in the witching world.
Me, Trixie, and Eleanor each took a seat around the kitchen table. I got up a moment later to make us all a pot of coffee, wondering how my dad had managed to talk us into this. He hadn't even been gone ten minutes and already my heart was racing in my chest. I felt like I couldn't breathe and kept trying to take deep breaths only to end up hyperventilating.
"How do you think Eli's doing?" Trixie asked. "Maybe we shouldn't have let him go over there alone."
"It's what he wanted," Eleanor said.
"That doesn't mean it was the right decision."
Eleanor pursed her lips. "I know that. If we'd stuck to my original plan, we'd all be going down there together. In a way, though, I thought Eli's points made sense. She doesn't suspect him of anything."
"For now," Trixie said. "That could change at any moment."
"It'll be a lot easier for Eli to get her to eat those cookies I made than us," Eleanor chided.
"She ate them last time," I pointed out.
"But that was before she'd killed Red. She's been getting stronger. That means she might sense that something was amiss if we went down there now."
"If Lucy were here," Trixie said, "she could be our tiebreaker."
"Lucy is meeting us there; she had to go home first and grab a few things. Anyway, there is no tie," I said. "There's three of us here, and I agree with you, Trixie. We shouldn't have let him go alone."
"But it's only a half hour till we get down there ourselves," Eleanor said. "How much could happen in a half hour?"
Trixie shot Eleanor a look and she blanched. "All right, so a lot could happen but it won't."
"How do you know?" Trixie asked.
"Because he's got Colt's superwand," she said. "If it wasn't for that, I'd agree with you. But it is a fact. So, even if anything does go wrong, he'll be able to defend himself."
I had finally been forced to talk to Colt about the Sadie situation. He'd been at COMHA headquarters in a meeting with Dean Lampton most of the day but when he got out he'd received about fifteen text messages and four voicemails from me asking him to call as soon as possible. He'd called me, frantic, afraid that something was wrong. I'd felt guilty about scaring him an
d I apologized for a full minute after he'd told me he'd thought someone else was dead but I was still glad I'd called him.
"You're right, that's the one thing my dad has going for him right now. Colt's wand."
Talking things over with Colt had been... difficult.
"You did what?" he yelled. "What do you mean Sadie's possessed? How could you not tell me something like that?"
At least that was better than not believing me at all, I'd thought. It had served no comfort to me, though. Colt sighed repeatedly on the phone, so much so that I wondered if he was doing it deliberately. He had to be aware of it, no one could let out that much breath over twenty times and be doing it on accident but then Colt wasn't like other people. It was one of the things I liked so much about him. He was different.
I could envision the shake of his head through the phone line as we spoke. I could see the way his short, dark hair swished gently around him. He'd been growing it out lately and I wondered if that had anything to do with his undercover assignment. I could hear the tsking sound he was making to himself, unaware that I could hear him. I wished that I could reach through the phone and tell him I was sorry. That it was okay, I didn't do anything wrong, not really. I didn't tell him about Sadie and the spirit, that was true, but Eleanor hadn't told Sheriff Knoxx and Trixie hadn't told Melbourne. No one knew besides us. Somehow, I didn't think that argument would go over so well.
"Don't do anything else," he said. We were already closing up the bakery at this point. Trixie was giving the final wipe to the counters and my dad was just getting ready to leave for Sadie's.
"Well..." I said.
"Well?" he snapped. "What does that mean—well?"
"My dad is bringing Sadie some more banishment cookies. He's leaving in like a minute."
"Ava, don't let him go down there alone. If she's possessed—"
"But it's part of our plan. He has to."