A Hive of Secrets and Spells

by Ellen Jane

  “Oh god,” she said out loud as she made sense of Annie’s frantic messages.

  Someone wanted to rent her house. They were offering well above market price, and if Heather did that…

  …she could move in with Sinéad. It would be enough money to support an adjustment to her business as well, helping her set up while she did the private investigator course and changed her paperwork over.

  Heather could uproot her entire life, change everything, and have the rare freedom of doing it relatively risk-free.

  She locked her phone and dropped onto the couch behind her. Unthinkingly, she unlocked it again within a few seconds and began scrolling through to her voicemails. Of course, she found nothing, but she stared at the blank screen for long seconds anyway, unable to swipe away. She slipped her other hand into her pocket as she stared, a coldness seeping into her bones and making her long for comfort.

  Her fingers slid against something smooth, and she pulled it out absentmindedly. It was the little jar of revealing powder she had used back at the Dunnes with no success. She moved to slip it back into her pocket, but the lid hadn’t been screwed on properly and she fumbled it at the last second, spilling it all over herself.

  “Bloody hell,” she muttered, sitting up and brushing the powder onto the floor.

  A flare of light caught Heather’s eye, and she glanced over just in time to see her phone glow blue and then fade. She froze, gaze locked on the innocuous blank screen. The powder only glowed when there was something hidden to reveal.

  She took the jar and upended it on the screen. The powder began to glow and transform into something like a screen of its own with a ghostly image appearing on it. Green tendrils, like vines, wrapped around the phone before disappearing. The blue glow faded.

  Heather stared at the phone in shock. Someone had cast magic on her phone—magic she hadn’t sanctioned or known existed. She hadn’t even known her powder could reveal hidden magic; she only used it to find hidden objects.

  Her mind went to the mysterious letter covered in vines she kept seeing in the letterbox, and she walked outside in a daze. When she reached the gate, she sprinkled the blue powder onto the empty mailbox and watched. In seconds, the powder produced an image of what was hiding beneath the unknown witch’s spell: a letter wrapped in the vines of a gardening witch’s magic. The magic must have been weakened, which is why Heather kept seeing flashes of it. It made sense if the gardening witch had been casting so much—a long-distance working on her and Sinéad’s phones, a working on this letter, and who knew what else.

  In the past, when Heather used her revealing powder to locate hidden items, she sometimes invoked a charm—an additional part to the spell—to help remove the cover or disguise concealing it. If an earring fell below a floorboard, she could dissolve the floorboard temporarily, or she could sift through the mucky silt in a riverbed to find a lost ring.

  If the spell also revealed hidden magic, perhaps the charm would shatter it.

  She muttered the charm and held her breath. A small sound escaped the mailbox, like air rushing out, and an envelope appeared in the empty space.

  Heather withdrew the letter and opened it before it had the chance to disappear again. As she scanned the contents, a buzz of white noise filled her mind, eclipsing her thoughts until she found herself unable to discern anything beneath the fog. Shock melded into an odd sense of acceptance, like she had almost expected this.

  The letter was written by the Dunnes. Only a few sentences, it explained who they were and that they would love to meet Sinéad. Along with the letter was an invitation to attend Ryan’s initiation to the Society.

  Heather turned the letter and invitation over in her hands but found nothing else. No secret message. No sinister motive. Just an invitation tinged with shame and hope.

  The second half of the charm would tell her what the hidden magic on her phone did as well, but she didn’t need to cast it. In her gut, she already knew. Cian’s voicemails hadn’t disappeared by accident; someone had tried to prevent them from communicating, and in the process had wiped Heather’s last memory of her parents as well. The buzzing in her mind grew, but the details of her own emotions were so distant, so irretrievable when paired with the knowledge that someone had tried to hide this from them, and their clumsy magic had destroyed something Heather would never get back.

  A memory popped into her mind—the faint hint of blue glowing on the bees where they had landed in the powder. She’d dismissed it as a trick of the light, never having used the spell to locate concealed magic before, but what if she was wrong?

  The information shifted into place until everything she thought she knew rearranged itself and formed a new picture she didn’t understand, not even a little. The knowledge overwhelmed her, too much to grasp all at once. She walked back inside and carefully placed her phone and the letter onto the coffee table before she could do something stupid like throw them into the wall, then went upstairs.

  Sinéad was already asleep, and Heather didn’t have the heart to wake her. She’d tell her in the morning.

  Chapter Eleven

  When Heather woke up to an empty bed well before dawn, she knew something was wrong. She fell out of it, stumbling as her feet twisted in the bedsheets, and raced to the doorway. All the way down the stairs, her heartbeat thundered in her throat, anxiety overwhelming her thoughts until she had little room for anything else.

  She raced from room to room but found nothing amiss in the house—nothing obvious, at least. But she couldn’t shake the sensation, couldn’t shake the certainty. Then her eyes landed on the note.

  Dear Heather,

  I’ve decided to take a more intimate approach. The kidnappers want those jewels returned, and I’m sick of letting them call the shots. It isn’t safe for you if I tell you my plan, but all I ask is that you don’t involve the police until this is over, and please don’t follow me. It might ruin everything and put you needlessly at risk.

  I’ll be safe, I promise. The painting in the workroom can track my location and will warn you if I’m in danger. If something goes wrong, you can use it to find us and rescue me and my family before it’s too late.

  Family is about choice, and it’s time I stopped choosing to walk away.

  Sinéad

  Lying beneath it on the table was another note, much shorter.

  Bring the goods to your parents’ house at dawn on Sunday. We know they sent it to you, and we’re tired of waiting.

  Heather held the note with shaking hands while the message sunk in. Had it arrived sometime during the night, and Sinéad, unable to sleep, had gotten to it first? Or was it amongst yesterday’s mail, and Sinéad hadn’t told her?

  It didn’t matter now. Heather snapped herself out of it, raced to the phone, and called Cian. He answered after more than ten rings, his voice heavy with sleep.

  “Greetings at this most unholy of hours,” he slurred into the phone. “Lord help you if you’re trying to sell me something.”

  “Cian!” Heather said breathlessly, choking on the words.

  Cian snapped out of his stupor. “Heather, what’s happened?”

  “Sinéad’s gone. She’s following the jewellery lead and doing something dangerous, but she won’t tell me what, and we don’t even know if this is the right path, and goddammit, Cian, why would she do that without telling us first?!”

  “Jesus, why would she do that?”

  “Exactly!”

  “Stay where you are.” Cian sounded out of breath, and Heather could hear him jumping up and down in the background, getting dressed. “I’ll be right there.”

  Then he hung up, leaving Heather alone with her fear.

  *

  The two of them stared at the painting in the workroom. It hung on the back wall, taking up two thirds of the space while its subject gazed, lifelike, toward the door. Heather had never seen Sinéad paint a self-portrait before, and her heart twinged that the first time she did, it was because of circumst
ances like this.

  “She’s smiling, so she must still be okay,” Cian said, squeezing Heather’s shoulder before he stepped forward to study the painting. “But I don’t understand how we can use this to track her.”

  “Neither,” Heather said with a frown. “And I would have thought that would be more witch magic than sorcerer.”

  Cian turned to her with an incredulous expression. “You don’t really go for that, do you?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “All that witch-sorcerer divide stuff.”

  “But—” Heather stammered. “It’s how it works.”

  Cian shrugged. “Sometimes. I think it just comes down to personality, really. I mean, no one tells you you’re a witch, do they? You just figure it out when you start making tables dance or when you turn your dog blue after tucking a flower behind its ear.”

  “I… guess…”

  He turned back to the painting, still inspecting it closely as he continued to talk. “It’s like the old question, does your talent call to you because it’s magic, or is it magic because it calls to you? Are you better with people or are you better with things? That’s all the divide is. Some people are drawn to the abstract; some are drawn to the tangible. Doesn’t mean you can’t learn the other, despite what comes naturally.”

  Heather gaped at him. “But then… all our magic societies… all our hierarchies…”

  Cian grinned at her. “Are nothing but arbitrary structures without meaning?”

  She thought about it for a few seconds. “What a mess,” she said finally.

  “Ah, there it is!” Cian pointed to Sinéad’s left hand, which she had clenched into a fist. A tightly rolled sheet of paper poked out of the sides.

  Cian tapped the section of the painting that held the paper. “Go on, then! Show us where you are.”

  Painting-Sinéad lifted one eyebrow before sighing and unrolling the paper to reveal a map with a giant red cross marked on top of the police station.

  Heather frowned. “She told me not to go to the police. Why would she be at the station?”

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” Cian said, his gleeful demeanour dropping away.

  “No, it doesn’t.” Heather’s voice fell flat. “But she doesn’t want us to follow her, so we can’t do anything about it. She said it would ruin her whole plan if we went to the police or followed her at all.”

  “I guess so.” Cian draped his arm around Heather’s shoulders. “But she’s safe. And there’s not much else we can do but continue as planned. Can you show me those letters again?”

  Heather took the three worn letters from her pocket—one from Sinéad, one from the kidnappers, and one from the Dunnes. She had read them several times since Sinéad left. Cian sifted between them, chewing on his lip as he read the now familiar words. Heather had told him everything the second he arrived, her stomach sinking as he explained how he’d seen a flash of something strange in his mailbox, too.

  “Why didn’t they want us to read this letter?” Cian muttered under his breath, scanning the letter from the Dunnes once more. “It doesn’t seem important.”

  “Maybe they didn’t want you to meet the Dunnes,” Heather suggested. “But then, why would they think you were helping the Dunnes hide something if you never received this letter?” She pointed at it, frowning. “The letter even says you weren’t in contact with your parents before now. Why would they think you’re involved at all?”

  Her mind drifted, swirling in a jumble of thoughts. Oddly, it kept returning to the moment last Christmas when, for the first time, she had truly thought she might be able to solve the mystery. Back then, two seemingly connected clues had actually been entirely unrelated. One culprit had become two.

  Her eyes widened as she realised what her brain was telling her—how little the mess of letters in this case made sense, and what actually did.

  “It’s more than one person.”

  “What’s that?” Cian blinked at her.

  “The person who tried to block you from getting this letter isn’t the same person who took the Dunnes and sent you and Sinéad those messages. I’d bet money on it.”

  Cian tapped his fingers against his leg thoughtfully. “Why do you say that?”

  “It doesn’t make sense. On one hand, they’re trying to keep you away, and on the other they’re bringing you in and following you closely. Even if they changed their minds and thought you knew something after all, their actions don’t add up. Hiding this letter with magic is secretive and a little desperate; sending you threatening letters is brazen and aggressive. It’s not the same person.”

  Cian’s eyes widened, and he reached out to squeeze Heather’s shoulder. “I think you’re right.”

  It was nice to feel something was making sense, even if it didn’t help them yet. They couldn’t find one person; now they had to find two? At least they knew one was a gardening witch.

  The memory of Mr Williams tending to the hedges popped into the front of Heather’s thoughts. He had used vines to manipulate the shears at the top of the hedge. Was that common magic for gardening witches? Or was it a clue? The Dunnes seemed to know a few gardening witches in their community, after all, and being gardening witches themselves, they may even have regretted sending the letters and tried to retrieve them. But that wouldn’t explain the phone calls the person tried to block between Cian and Sinéad.

  They moved to the kitchen and put the kettle on. Time passed strangely, seconds slowing until Heather felt overwhelmed by the sensation of moving backwards, and then the kettle whistled even though she had only just put it on.

  “What’s your favourite?” Cian asked, holding up the jars of tea from Sinéad’s cupboard. “Earl Grey? Yorkshire?”

  “Peppermint,” Heather said flatly, but before he poured it into the infuser, a thought hit her. She sat bolt upright. “Wait!”

  Cian froze with the jar tipped over the teapot.

  “I’ve an idea.” Heather stood and walked around the counter, taking the jar from him and setting it on the bench.

  She added a few more jars and examined them, testing the combination out in her mind. Then, when she felt certain she had the right mix, she added leaves from several of the jars to the infuser, finishing with a sprinkle of cinnamon. Cian watched her quietly, and when the tea had brewed and she poured them each a cup, he took it without question.

  “Protection spell,” she explained. “It won’t be like a sorcerer’s, so if you have a song tucked away there that would be grand, but it will manifest something to watch over her.”

  Cian blinked for a second before holding up his cup. “Then, cheers.”

  Heather clinked their cups together, and they sipped their tea in the quiet of the kitchen. After a few moments, the air sparked, as if charged with something unseen. The curtains rustled, and the tapping of a beak against glass broke the silence. When they turned, Heather startling so much she nearly spilled her tea, a raven sat on the windowsill and regarded them both with one eye. The edges of its body shimmered, ghostly, in the moonlight, its feathers melding into shadow when Heather looked too closely.

  After a moment, it flew away.

  “It’s not much,” Heather said, her voice steadier than she thought possible, “but it’s something. The raven will only be visible to the three of us as well, so it won’t give her away.”

  “It’s far more than something.” Cian said quietly, staring into the space where the raven had disappeared. “Well done, little witch.”

  The words threw Heather back to the first time she met Sinéad. Something powerful stirred in her chest when she thought of all that had happened since then.

  She cast a silent wish that Sinéad would return safely and sipped her tea.

  *

  They managed a few hours of fitful sleep, but both Heather and Cian were up early the next morning. With little else to do until they heard from Sinéad, and hesitant to risk exposing her by following the jewellery lead, they decided to cont
inue their investigation by speaking to Mrs Fletcher. With any luck, they could at least clarify the oddities in her statement and tie up any loose ends.

  The case had taken on an edge of urgency now. Sunday was only hours away, and as much as Sinéad was certain they knew the motive and how to appease the kidnappers, Heather still had her doubts. Even Cian was more silent than usual, despite how sure he had been yesterday when Sinéad wasn’t yet risking her life on a gamble.

  Before they were even through the gate, the curtain twitched, revealing a beady eye that watched them all the way up the path. It was only when they stepped onto the porch that the eye disappeared, and they heard Mrs Fletcher move from the living room to the front door. Heather stared at the peep-hole, wondering if Mrs Fletcher was just watching them, waiting until they rang the doorbell.

  Since the door remained shut, she assumed so. Casting a glance at Cian, she reached forward and knocked. It swung open immediately.

  “Yes?” Mrs Fletcher glared up at them, lips pursed in disapproval. “What now? Did you lose your notes? Typical. Come inside, and I’ll tell you everything from the start. Make sure to write it down somewhere safe this time.” She walked away before they corrected her.

  Cian rolled his eyes, lips twitching at the corners, and stepped inside to follow. Heather shut the door, the hairs on the back of her neck tingling as the hallway descended into eerie silence. The thick carpet sucked in all the sound, like the air hadn’t moved in weeks.

  “Have you decorated recently, Mrs Fletcher?” Cian asked as he shoved his hands into his pockets and strode down the hallway. “Feels very light. Breezy.”

  “No,” she said sharply, turning around once she reached the kitchen and pointing to two chairs. “Sit. Do you have pens?”

  “Mrs Fletcher,” Cian said, leaning forward and clasping his hands together. “You’re very thoughtful, looking out for us like this, but we aren’t here because we’ve forgotten anything. We have follow-up questions for you.”

  “Follow-up?” She narrowed her eyes. “How can you have follow-up questions? I told you everything. There is nothing more to say.”