by Emery Belle
“You want me to what?” Hunter shook his head so fast his glasses slid down his nose, but he didn’t bother to push them back up again. “Uh-uh. No way, Wren. I could lose my job, I could go to jail, I could get banned from the island…” He glared at me. “You need any more reasons why this is a terrible, terrible idea you’ve cooked up?”
“What have you cooked up?” Garnet slid onto the bench beside me and leaned over, pushing her long hair over her shoulders. We were lounging around the academy’s beautiful grounds, waiting for our first mixology class to begin, and I had cornered Hunter as soon as he arrived.
I leaned my head back against the bench, then jumped in alarm as I found myself gazing up at a stone gargoyle crouched over me that I hadn’t remembered seeing when I sat down. Everything that had happened in the past week must have been starting to wear me down, I thought, straightening back up before turning and sticking my tongue out at the motionless gargoyle for good measure. Just that morning, I had spent nearly a full minute trying to shove my left foot into my right shoe before realizing my mistake. Coming to terms with the fact that I was a witch was difficult enough, but add to that being plopped down in a strange place, with a new job, while learning how to wield my magic without killing myself or anyone else, and, oh yeah, trying to solve a murder? It was a wonder I was still standing.
“Fiona Thane,” I said darkly to Garnet, whose eyes lit up with understanding. “Sebastian and I managed to get our hands on the ferry’s passenger lists for the weeks leading up to Cassandra’s murder, and Fiona lied about being off the island. And if she lied about that—”
“She may also be lying about Cassandra,” Garnet finished, sounding breathless. Then she glanced at Hunter, who still had his arms crossed stubbornly over his chest. “But what does this have to do with Hunter?”
“My question exactly,” Hunter mumbled, glancing at the academy’s front doors as though willing them to open.
“I need some way to get into Fiona’s house,” I explained to Garnet, “and since Hunter works for the real estate office, I thought he could pretend that he had an anonymous buyer interested in the house. When Sebastian and I met with her, she mentioned something about it being bad enough living in that house, surrounded by all the memories of her failed marriage, and so I figure she just might be willing to consider selling it. Especially if he hints around that the buyer is willing to pay top dollar.”
“Wren, that’s brilliant!” Garnet squealed, clapping her hands together in delight. Then she rounded on Hunter. “Why won’t you do it?” Without waiting for a response, she whipped back to me and said, “You know what? It doesn’t matter. I’ll do it. I can pretend to be from the real estate office—I’ll borrow Hunter’s badge and show it to her before she can get a good look at the name.”
She gave me a mischievous grin. “I could use a little excitement in my life, and besides, you need the help.” She shot Hunter a dirty look, and he pretended to be very interested in a ladybug crawling along the grass at our feet.
“You really think you could pull it off?” I asked anxiously. Though I was grateful for Garnet’s offer—she was shaping up to be a true friend—she did have a tendency to get a little… overexcited.
“Without batting an eye,” she scoffed, waving her hand airily. “When I was a kid, my father had a brother who lived on the mainland. Every time he went to visit, he brought me back a mystery novel as a gift, and I spent more hours reading and rereading them than I could count. I know how to be sneaky.” She winked at me, and I could feel my pulse skipping with excitement.
But before we could work out the details of the plan, the bell rang, and Hunter leapt to his feet and practically ran for the front doors. Garnet and I shared a smirk before grabbing our bags and following him to the mixology lab, where a familiar figure clothed in a neon-pink suit was bending over a crate of empty vials.
“Glenn!” I dropped my bag on the ground and launched myself at him, throwing my arms around his ample upper body before I could stop myself. I had missed him more than I realized, and as I pulled away from him, embarrassed by my sudden display of affection, I could tell from the grin splitting his face that he felt the same way.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, gesturing to the vials. “I thought you said you weren’t an instructor.”
“I’m not,” he said, grabbing a handful of the vials and shoving them into his pockets. “But Professor Lane is dealing with a little emergency at the day care center and asked me to fill in for today’s lesson.” He puffed out his chest. “I used to be quite the potioneer in my day, you know. Developed the island’s first ogre repellant spray.”
“What kind of emergency?” Hunter asked as Glenn busied himself at the workbench in the front of the room.
“I’m not privy to all of the details,” Glenn said, setting out the vials and pulling a box of herbs from the storage closet behind him, “but apparently one of the fairy babies got her hands on the caretaker’s wand and accidentally turned half of the class into pot-bellied pigs. None of the reversal spells the staff tried so far have worked, and so they called in Professor Lane to see if he could come up with a potion that will rectify the damage.”
He folded his hands together, looking grave. “We don’t want the butcher to get his hands on them, or else we might be getting more than we bargained for the next time we eat a ham sandwich.”
Hunter swallowed hard, looking sorry he asked, and I was lost in a sea of unpleasant images until Glenn set a large black cauldron on the workbench with a thunk that echoed throughout the room. “Now then,” he said, resting his hands over his stomach and looking at each of us in turn. “We’ll be starting today with a basic healing potion, good for minor cuts and scrapes, bruises, that type of thing.”
He wagged a finger at us. “But before we begin, I must caution that you are not to use this potion to try and heal a more serious injury, or you might suffer devastating consequences. You certainly don’t want to end up like Lorna Potswath, do you?”
Dare I ask? Before I could decide, Garnet beat me to the punch.
“Who’s Lorna Potswath?”
Glenn nodded at her. “I’m glad you asked, Miss Moon, that shows great courage. Lorna Potswath foolishly drank this exact potion in an attempt to heal a broken tooth—which is not an IAMB-approved use, I might add—and ended up growing a second tongue that became so engorged it weighed down her entire head. She spent the rest of her life dragging her chin along the ground… if she felt brave enough to leave her house, that is.”
He bowed his head. “Let her sad tale also be a cautionary one, for it is only through knowledge, and sometimes trial and error, that we avoid a similar fate.”
The three of us shared looks of alarm as Glenn continued bustling around the workbench, setting out a number of ingredients that looked completely foreign to me. “The healing potion is very simple, as long as you take great care in measuring out the ingredients precisely. An extra dash of ground dragon nails might just cause you to sprout wings and fly off into the sunset.” He giggled to himself, then gestured to a bunch of wilted greens tied together with string.
“The fennel leaves need to be chopped in exactly one-inch pieces and then ground into the bottom of the cauldron with a stone pestle. After that, you’ll add two dashes of dragon nails, a sprig of holly, a quarter cup of lemonade, two liters of salt water, and, finally, one hair from your own head, with the root still attached.” As he spoke, he added the ingredients to the cauldron, then finished by yanking out one of his own hairs with a flourish and tossing it into the mixture, which bubbled furiously before turning the same shade of neon pink as his suit.
After demonstrating the potion’s healing properties by carving a slim cut into the back of his hand with his wand, dabbing on a generous portion of the potion, and holding up his hand to show us how the skin had sewn itself back together in thirty seconds flat, it was our turn to test our luck. As Garnet and I ground our fennel leaves, she waited until
Glenn was busy helping Hunter before leaning over and whispering to me, “So what am I on the lookout for when I pay Fiona a visit?”
“Anything that looks out of place,” I whispered back. “See if you find some kind of evidence that either ties her to Cassandra or proves that she actually did have an alibi for the night of the murder. Client meetings, receipts, tickets to the ballet… hopefully you’ll have a chance to look around without her breathing down your neck.”
“I’ll find a way,” Garnet said, with far more confidence than I would have felt in her shoes. It was a tall order, I knew, but I couldn’t think of any other way to either prove or disprove Fiona’s guilt. And I could only cross my fingers—and every last one of my toes—that Fiona wouldn’t sniff out what we were up to and report us to Kellen. I had no doubt in my mind that he would follow through on his threat of throwing me in jail.
By the time our potions were brewing, a thick layer of sweat covered my forehead, Hunter’s glasses were askew, and Garnet’s pin-straight hair was curling at the ends. “Excellent, Miss Moon,” Glenn said as he glanced into Garnet’s cauldron, which was simmering with butter-yellow liquid. “Looking good, Mr. Wallace,” he added to Hunter, whose potion had turned a pleasing shade of midnight blue when he added his hair.
When Glenn came to my cauldron, he plugged his nose and peered into it tentatively while I tried to ignore the rotten-egg odor pouring out of it in great bursts of murky steam. “And what do we have here?” he asked, leaning over and then immediately beginning to dry-heave. “Did you put in two dashes of dragon nails?”
I nodded, then continued nodding as he ticked off the rest of the ingredients. “Well, then,” he said, frowning, “I think we’ll just let this one rest in the cauldron for now and test Miss Moon’s and Mr. Wallace’s potions instead, shall we?”
I nodded again, feeling about two inches tall, and my feelings of inadequacy were only made worse when my classmates’ potions healed their cuts without a hitch. “Don’t feel bad,” Garnet said as we left the academy a few minutes later, looping her arm through mine. “It can’t be worse than setting the entire classroom on fire when you’re supposed to be performing a simple cleaning spell, can it?”
When I laughed, she chucked me on the chin good-naturedly and said, “That’s my girl.” She tipped her head toward Hunter, who had his nose hidden in his mixology book, pretending not to be paying us any attention. I could tell from the way his ears twitched every time we spoke, though, that he was listening with all his might, probably praying that we had forgotten all about tricking our way into Fiona Thane’s house.
“So, Hunter,” Garnet said, slowing just enough for him to catch up to her. “Why don’t you just give me your real estate badge, and…” When Hunter groaned, Garnet waved her hands at me and mouthed I’ve got this before steering him away by the elbow.
Still chuckling, I set off toward the dorms with the intention of having a quick shower and a much-needed nap. I was going to need my full wits about me tonight, when I planned to sneak back to Lazar’s shop after hours to find out what he had really been doing the night of Cassandra’s death. Garnet was right—there was no way I could ask Lazar, or even his wife, any questions without raising his hackles, and I had a gut feeling that he was a dangerous man. I knew better than to let his trick wands, fake eyeballs, and jovial personality fool me—I could very well be dealing with a vicious, unremorseful killer.
These thoughts were weighing heavily on my mind when I stopped at a crosswalk to let a magi-cab pass and heard the sound of a twig snapping behind me, though the streets were practically empty at this time of day. I whirled around, my heart pounding in my throat, and thought I caught sight of a man dressed in black whipping around a nearby office building.
Suddenly, the stress of the last few days came crashing over me, and without realizing what I was doing, I began pounding down the sidewalk after him, my eyes blazing with anger.
When I rounded the building, it was completely empty other than a couple of seagulls tearing open a package of cookies. “Come out, you coward!” I yelled, and the seagulls squawked in alarm and took flight, abandoning the broken cookies on the pavement.
I stomped into the middle of the courtyard and turned around in a circle, looking for any signs of the man. “I don’t know why you’re following me,” I continued shouting, “or who you think you are, but if you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to make sure the next time I see you will be the last.”
It was an idle threat, especially since I wasn’t even allowed to carry a wand yet and he could easily best me in a physical fight, but I didn’t care. I was sick of always having to look over my shoulder to see if he was there, sick of thinking I was crazy because no one else seemed to know what I was talking about whenever I tried pointing him out.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was in some way connected to Cassandra’s murder, had perhaps been sent to keep me quiet, to make sure I didn’t uncover the truth. Why else would he be following me?
I whirled around again, craning my neck to see into every nook and cranny surrounding me, but came up empty. “Fine, have it your way,” I spat, then stomped away, this time without bothering to turn around and see if he was following me.
If he had been sent to stop me from investigating Cassandra’s death, then he was in for a rude awakening. He wasn’t going to scare me into silence, and I had no intentions of quitting. Besides, I couldn’t spend any more time worrying about the man in black today. I had a very important job to do.
Chapter 13
The moon hung low in the sky as I walked to Lazar’s shop that night, casting eerie shadows over the sidewalks. My earlier bravado had faded, and my skin was jumpy with nerves. It was my first foray into investigating Cassandra’s murder on my own—Sebastian had to stay late at the office to hit a deadline, and Garnet had dinner plans with her family. I considered asking Hunter to join me, but something told me he wouldn’t exactly be open to the idea. So here I was, alone, unarmed, and scared out of my wits.
As I rounded the corner, I breathed a low sigh of relief when I saw that Lazar’s shop was closed and the blinking neon sign was dark. Crouching on the sidewalk, I poked my head over the window ledge and peeked inside, checking for signs of life, but other than the life-size rubber ogre still swinging his club at phantom targets, the shop was as silent as a grave.
Well, a human grave, at least.
I checked my pocket for the credit card I’d stuffed there before leaving my dorm. Though it was useless for making purchases on the island, it would come in handy tonight, thanks to the lock-picking skills I’d learned as a girl from some of the more adventurous foster kids I’d grown up with. I could only hope that Lazar had chosen to use a simple lock on his door instead of a spell, or my plan would be worthless.
I crept toward the door, still crouching low, and slid the credit card in the vertical crack between the door and the frame. After maneuvering it for a few heart-pounding moments, during which I was certain a spell would activate and I’d be melted into a puddle on the sidewalk, I heard an unmistakable click and the lock slid open. Hardly daring to believe my luck, I straightened up and slipped inside.
“Wren Winters!” the shrunken head screeched into the darkness, but I clapped my hand over his mouth and gave him a threatening scowl that didn’t seem to scare him in the least. Instead, he stretched his lips into a wide, mocking grin and eyed me from head to toe.
“Here to steal any more pictures?” he asked, running his fat brown tongue over his crooked teeth. “Here to do any more investigating?”
“How did you know about that?” I hissed, glancing around the silent shop.
He rolled his eyeballs right, left, and then backwards, so that all I could see was the red-veined whites of his eyes. “I am all-seeing and all-knowing, Wren Winters. Nothing gets past me… which is why Lazar chose me to guard his shop, and his secrets.”
My shoulders slumped. “So you told him it was me who stole the pi
cture of Cassandra?” A toy broomstick chose that moment to spring to life in the corner of the shop, and my heart nearly skidded right out of my chest.
The shrunken head swung from side to side on his chain, and I ducked to avoid getting hit in the face. “I said that Lazar chose me to guard his secrets, not the other way around. Only a fool would entrust others, and Lazar is nothing if not that.” He eyed me curiously. “Are you also a fool, Wren Winters?”
I started to shrug, then glared at him. “I am not.”
“Good.” He gave me a curt nod. “Now tell me why you have come to visit me on this very pleasant evening.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I thought you said you were all-knowing, so shouldn’t you already have the answer to that?”
The shrunken head’s smile stretched even wider, and a chill of fear ran down my spine. Something told me that this creature, whatever it was, should be dealt with using an abundance of caution. “It is never wise to make assumptions, no matter how obvious they might seem. Appearances can be deceiving, Wren. You would do well to remember that.”
“Tell me about Lazar,” I said, deciding to cut to the chase before the shrunken head’s riddles got me so confused I no longer knew which way was up. “Did he or did he not have anything to do with Cassandra’s death?”
“Death is a funny thing,” the head said, going still for the first time. “Such finality. Such heartbreak for those left behind. When Lazar found out what happened to the object of his most ardent affections, he was inconsolable. He was halfway through drinking a poison of his own making when I convinced him that his wife and children needed him, pathetic man that he is.”