Beached & Bewitched

by Emery Belle

  “Consider this your new home,” he said, sweeping his arm around the last cubicle on the left. “You’ll eat here, sleep here, heck, I can even get you an insta-potty if it tickles your fancy. That way you won’t have to stop working for a second.”

  When he caught my dumbfounded expression, he burst into merry peals of laughter. “I’m kidding, of course,” he crowed, slapping his hand on my back so hard I lurched forward, almost hitting the desk. “Here at The Islander, we like a healthy work-life balance. One vacation day per year, and you can take it anywhere you like, no questions asked.”

  He glanced sideways at me, then burst into laughter again. “Sorry, just a little trick I like to play on our newbies. But seriously now”—he straightened his square black glasses and adopted a somber expression far more befitting a funeral—“we’re glad to have you, Wren. I hope you’ll find the job both challenging and rewarding. Trust me, it’ll be both.” He opened his mouth to say more but was interrupted by Glinna bustling up to him with a portable phone pressed to her ear.

  “The mayor,” she mouthed, shoving the phone toward him. He promptly turned his back on me and bounded away, causing the reporters in the room to scatter in his wake as he barreled right through them without slowing down.

  Bewildered by the sudden turn of events, I perched on the edge of my chair and poked hesitantly at the computer mouse, which squeaked and sprang to life, zipping around the desk with alarming speed as it chased a rubber eraser that had sprouted stubby legs.

  “Stop! Stop!” I shouted as the mouse pounced on the eraser and began tearing it to shreds with its scroll wheel. During a desperate attempt to force them apart, I sustained a nasty welt from the mouse’s cord when it whipped me hard across the fingers.

  “Finito,” a voice said from the cubicle next door, and the fighting immediately ceased. The eraser gathered up the rubber bits that had been torn from its body and shuffled to the corner of the desk to begin repairing them.

  “Thanks.” I breathed a sigh of relief and glanced over the top of the cubicle wall, my heart skipping at least two beats as I caught sight of a handsome man about my age grinning down at me.

  His wavy brown hair fell casually over one honey-brown eye, his tan face was perfectly smooth except for two deep dimples bookending his full lips, and one lean arm was draped casually over the cubicle, fiddling with a torn motivational poster with “Teamwork is the key to success” spelled out in fading print.

  “No problem.” He continued gazing down at me, his eyes twinkling mischievously, and I was just beginning to squirm when he held out his hand and said, “You must be my new cubemate, Wren. I’m Sebastian, obituary writer.”

  I gave him a sympathetic look. “That must be depressing.”

  “At least my subjects can’t send me death threats.” He chuckled, and when I gave him a puzzled look, he fell silent and studied my face, his gaze making me feel deliciously hot in certain… places.

  “You do know why you’re here, don’t you, Wren? I’m glad Percival was finally able to fill the position—no one wanted the job, and I was worried I’d have to fill in indefinitely. It’s fun for a little while, I guess, but not my style.” He straightened an imaginary wrinkle from his dress shirt.

  My heart sank a little as dreams of writing award-winning articles faded from my head. What could be so bad that an obituary writer was feeling sorry for me?

  Sebastian held up a finger and slid away from view for a few moments before appearing behind me clutching a stack of newspapers. He flipped open the one on top and thumbed quickly through the pages until he said, “Here it is,” and tossed the paper onto my desk.

  “The Island Buzz,” I read out loud, flicking my eyes over the headline scrawled across the top of the page. Underneath, in smaller print, the title of that day’s article read, “Mayor Thane Seen With Mystery Woman at The Mage’s Motel: Inside Fiona Thane’s Heartbreak.” It was accompanied by a black and white photo of a shifty-looking man with his hand on the small of a petite woman’s back as he escorted her into a hotel.

  “What is this?” I asked, glancing up at Sebastian, who was reading the article over my shoulder. His arm brushed mine, and a shiver of delight ran down my spine.

  “This,” he said, jabbing his finger onto the page, “is your new gig as the official Magic Island gossip columnist. It’s your job to dig up dirt on everyone in town and spin it into a story that sells.” He furrowed his brow. “I wouldn’t say you’re going to be the most popular woman on the island. I’ve been doing my best to avoid writing anything of substance since Cassandra left.”

  “Who’s Cassandra?” I asked, unable to tear my eyes from the page. A wave of horror swept over me as the reality of my new job hit me like a ton of bricks. I hadn’t exactly started off on the right foot with some of the people I’d met on the island—namely the fearsome Lord Macon and Misty the she-dwarf—but this pretty much cemented my position on the lowest rung of the social ladder. I might as well be a pile of unicorn dung, and even that probably carried some amazing magical properties I wasn’t yet aware of.

  “Cassandra was the last reporter to hold this job,” Sebastian said, and resumed flipping through the pile of papers in his arms. “She up and quit two weeks ago without any kind of notice; Percival almost had a conniption when he realized she was gone.”

  “Where’d she go?” I asked nervously, imagining her being held captive in Mayor Thane’s basement and tortured for information on her sources, a fate that surely awaited me as I began snooping into the islanders’ private lives.

  Sebastian shrugged. “Left the island, from the looks of it. No one’s seen hide nor hair of her since then. Probably just got tired of all the hate mail.” His last words were said so casually that he could have been commenting on the weather instead of the sorry state my life was about to become.

  A familiar voice drifted across the room, and we both looked up in time to see Percival loping by, wagging a playful finger at us. “Keep the flirting for after-hours, kiddos. Time’s money.”

  My cheeks burned scarlet, and even Sebastian looked a little pink around the ears as he muttered, “I’d better get back to work,” before quickly slipping out of my cubicle, leaving the pile of papers behind. I pushed them to the side of the desk and bent down to switch on my computer, figuring that I’d start by seeing if Cassandra had any articles she’d been working on when she quit.

  As soon as I pressed the start button, though, the computer let out a series of head-rattling thumps, began shaking violently, and exploded in a cloud of plastic and a shower of sparks. I shrieked and jumped backward, furiously patting at the sparks that had landed on the hem of my shirt, singeing it black.

  Sebastian’s head poked around the corner again, his eyebrows raised. “A privacy charm,” he said, looking impressed. “Cassandra didn’t want anyone to snoop around on her computer when she wasn’t around, so she must have placed a charm on it that would make it explode if anyone else tried to turn it on.”

  He frowned. “That’s an incredibly complex spell. I didn’t know she had it in her. Always took her for a bit of an idiot, if I’m being honest.”

  “What am I supposed to do now?” I asked, shielding my nose and mouth against the stench of burning computer parts and trying not to gag.

  “Don’t worry, there are plenty of spare computers in the basement.” Sebastian pointed to a door at the opposite end of the row of cubicles. “Just be careful to avoid Larry.”

  I gulped, my mind flashing back to the man-eating parrot at the courthouse. “Who’s Larry?” I asked with trepidation.

  “The locust that guards the vaults. He can be a tad frightening to the newcomers, although he usually sleeps all day, so you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

  “Will—” I began, before stopping short and pressing my lips together. As Sebastian waited politely for me to continue, I exhaled slightly. “Will you tell Percival where I went if he comes around?”

  I’d been abou
t to ask Sebastian to come with me for moral support, but I didn’t want to seem like a coward, especially when I was only dealing with a measly locust. It had to be, what, a couple of inches at most? I’d squished bigger spiders in my apartment back in Oregon. Time to put on my big girl pants.

  I headed for the basement door, then descended a surprisingly well-lit, carpeted stairway until I reached a sprawling warehouse-type space with dozens of closed doors surrounding its perimeter. The majority of the main room was stacked floor-to-ceiling with cardboard boxes stuffed with teetering yellowed piles of old newspapers, spare office supplies, and broken appliances. It was a hoarder’s paradise.

  Edging carefully around the boxes, I squinted around the space, trying to locate the spare computers, until I stubbed my toe hard on what looked like an old washing machine and let out a slew of choice curse words that could have awoken the dead. Which, on this island, was probably entirely possible.

  With that thought filling my mind, I whipped around, my heart pounding, and scanned the furthest corners of the room for any signs of movement.

  Only silence greeted me.

  I continued creeping around the boxes until finally my eyes lit on a row of computers hidden under a desk on the far side of the room. I made my way over to them, sidestepping a waist-high box filled with dusty martini glasses, but my foot caught on the corner of the box and sent it toppling over.

  The glasses shattered as they crashed against the floor, sending shards flying every which way, and as I dropped to my knees to begin gathering the larger pieces, a sharp edge slit open my thumb. I cried out in pain as a few drops of blood dripped onto the ground.

  The cry echoed back to me, bouncing off the walls, and was met by an ominous cracking sound that caused the hairs on my arms to stand to attention. I held my breath, listening with all my might as the cracking grew nearer, snapping through the air at regular intervals. The lamps above my head began to sway and flicker before the entire basement was plunged into darkness so thick I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face.

  “Who’s there?” I called out, backing away from the center of the room and bumping into yet another box of supplies.

  “I should be asking you the same question,” a reedy voice answered from somewhere in front of me. “Who trespasses on these premises without permission?” Another crack reverberated off the walls, this time accompanied by a blast of air that rushed past my face.

  Groping behind me blindly, I searched desperately for a place to hide, but my hands came up empty. Just as I was debating making a break for it, back to the safety of the upstairs offices, light flooded the room once more and I discovered, suddenly and brutally, the source of the cracking sound.

  Wings.

  A locust the size of an elephant was crouched in front of me, its antennae twitching, its expressionless brown eyes boring into mine. Two pairs of wings swept slowly up and down in the air as the creature cocked its head at me, sizing me up, its gaze lingering on my midsection.

  “Just plump enough to make the perfect afternoon snack,” it said, then reared up on its hind legs and jumped toward me.

  With a scream that probably reached back to the mainland, I launched myself behind a nearby shelf of reference books and made a mad dash for the doors surrounding the room’s perimeter, tugging on them as I ran, my sobs becoming increasingly hysterical as I realized each one was locked. I looked around in desperation, then grabbed a long wooden bench from a pile of broken furniture. As the locust swarmed at me, I heaved the bench over my shoulder and barreled into the nearest door.

  It did the trick. The door blasted open, and I was launched down another set of stairs, tumbling head over foot until I reached the bottom. The locust, unable to squeeze through the doorway, cracked its wings ominously at the top of the stairs for a few moments before flapping away, leaving me with a bruised bottom and an egg-shaped bump on my head that was rapidly expanding.

  Still stunned from the fall, and hardly daring to take a full breath, I crouched at the bottom of the stairs, straining my ears for any sign of the locust returning. But the cracks grew fainter as it flew back to whatever pit of hell it had ascended from, and only after several minutes of silence passed did I dare climb unsteadily to my feet and look around.

  The room was bleak and looked long-abandoned, with cobwebs draped across a tattered couch, upturned lamps scattered across the carpet, and a broken grandfather clock leaning against the far wall. The floor was covered in brownish-red stains that trailed behind the couch, as if someone had splashed buckets of rusty water onto the beige carpet without bothering to mop them up.

  Needing to catch my breath for a little while before figuring out how I was going to get past the locust for a second time without becoming its tasty little snack, I dragged myself over to the couch and dropped onto one of the ripped cushions.

  “Dorothy, you’re definitely not in Kansas anymore,” I muttered to myself as I picked up two ends of a broken wand from the couch and examined them closely. The end closest to my eyeball emitted a feeble shower of pink sparks, and, startled, I tossed it behind the couch, where it landed with a soft thud.

  Too lazy to turn around properly and retrieve it, I propped my tender bottom against the back of the couch and stretched my hand to the floor, feeling around for the wand. My fingers grazed something soft, and I frowned, then inched my hand further to the left. Was that… fabric of some sort?

  Granted, at this point, I probably should have turned around. I was feeling especially lazy, though, and more than a little bit sore from my tumble down the stairs. I was also in full-blown denial. But by the time my fingers walked up what could have been lips, and then a very distinct nose, before becoming tangled in strands of something that felt suspiciously like long hair, I could no longer keep kidding myself.

  I wasn’t alone.

  Chapter 7

  It turns out that in a choice between staying in an isolated room with a dead body and facing a Wren-eating locust determined to make me its next meal, the decision is pretty easy.

  “Murder!” I screamed, running up the stairs, across the now-empty basement, and up the second set of stairs leading to The Islander offices. “Someone was murdered downstairs!” I dropped to my knees at the front desk, and Glinna peered down at me in concern.

  “Everything all right, Wren?” I could see her hand hovering near her fairy-dust pouch again, and I rolled out of the way as she attempted to throw another fistful onto my head.

  “No,” I panted, trying to swallow down the bile that had risen in the back of my throat. By this point, I could barely talk. “Someone… downstairs… blood… dead.”

  The entire office had gone silent, and I could see a few of the reporters sharing skeptical gazes. “Think she paid a visit to the puff shop before she came into work today?” a paunchy man murmured to another before they both began snickering behind their hands like schoolboys.

  “Maybe she’s hazing us, you know, since it’s her first day and all,” said a waiflike woman sporting a pink dress and fangs as long as a walrus’s.

  “I think it’s supposed to be the other way around, Bessie,” a bald man with a knobbly head squeaked from somewhere near her knees, picking at an enormous wart on his chin.

  “What’s going on out here?” a booming voice called, and I lifted my head to see Percival poking his head out of his office door. “Shouldn’t you people be worrying about hitting your deadlines? Clock hasn’t struck six, folks.”

  Spotting my deathly white face, and the crowd of creatures now gathered around me, Percival leapt through his office doorway and hurried toward me, practically knocking a cluster of dubious-looking dwarfs out of the way. “Wren?” he asked, peering down at me with a look of concern. “Are you all right?”

  “There’s a dead body in the basement,” I choked out, then clamped my hands over my mouth and promptly threw up all over his shiny white shoes.

  The entire office suddenly erupted, and Percival swayed on his f
eet unsteadily for a moment, his face draining of all color, before Glinna dumped the entire contents of her bag of fairy dust onto his head. That seemed to revive him a bit, and he grabbed the edge of her desk for a moment, as though steeling himself, before turning to me with a hard look in his eyes. “Show me.”

  I barely registered Sebastian pushing his way through the crowd as I led Percival and Glinna into the basement, through the broken door, and down to the gloomy room that had become some unfortunate soul’s final resting place. Glinna let out a soft gasp and shielded her eyes as she caught sight of the rusty-looking splatters on the floor that I now realized were blood, and Percival drew in a deep breath and followed the direction of my trembling finger toward the couch.

  “Cassandra,” he moaned softly, kneeling down beside her. “You’ve been down here all this time?” He gazed up at me, the pain in his eyes jagged and tangible. “How did you find her?”

  As I gave him a brief rundown of the events that had led me to the basement, I edged closer to the couch, trying to swallow down my nausea. The woman who had met her end down here, in this lonely place, was my predecessor, the person who had sat at my desk, whose sharp pen had made her an enemy of so many. I felt compelled to look at her, to comfort her, even though I knew she was long beyond comfort. After all, we were now kindred spirits.

  Her strawberry-blonde hair was tangled over her ghost-white face, her arms and legs were sprawled out at odd angles, and if not for the hole in the center of her chest, I might have mistaken her serene expression for a peaceful sleep rather than a violent, bloody death.

  I heard a sharp intake of breath behind me and turned around to find that Sebastian had edged into the room behind Glinna, who was crying quietly into her hands. He raked his fingers through his thick brown hair, his face lined with sorrow, and then stepped forward and gently guided me away from the body by the elbow.

  “I’ve called the police,” he said in a low voice to Percival, whose head had dropped to his hands as he sat back on his heels beside Cassandra’s lifeless form. “Kellen is on his way. Until then, he said to tell you that no one leaves this building.”