by Mara Webb
Greta appeared in front of me and blocked my path to the café door. Not that she could actually block me, not really, I could just run right through her. It just seemed rude to do that when she clearly had shown up to get my attention.
“Sadie, stay back,” she warned.
“What happened in there?” I asked, breathlessly.
“I don’t know yet, but the energy here feels dark.”
“You pick up on energy now? Is that new?” I asked.
“No, when you got stuck over on Green Holt, I wasn’t able to come because of the dark energy around the island. Remember?”
“Oh yeah,” I said, shaking my head. How could I have forgotten that whole mess so quickly? “Wait, is Effie in there? What about Tara and Fern? Rosie?” I was reeling off names and Greta just shrugged.
“There is something going on and I don’t know what it is, I just think that you should stay away from it.”
“What if they’re in trouble? Who exactly are they supposed to get help from?” I asked.
“Er… not you! Maybe Miller could come, or Ryder? What about Kate? Kate loves a challenge!”
“I’m sure she does, but none of those people are here right now and I am not going to stand out here and do nothing if my friends need me. If you are so desperate to get someone else involved, then float on over to the police station, or to the hotel on Tivercana, and get back up,” I declared. “I’m going in.”
I stormed right through the middle of Greta’s body as she began to fade. The sign on the café door was turned to say ‘closed’ and the door was locked. I held my right hand against the handle and concentrated on pulling it open; within seconds it yielded. Maybe my magic was coming along better than I thought.
As soon as I was inside, I felt it. The air was cold, I could see my breath in front of me. On a day as hot as this one, there was no logical explanation for the temperature being so low in here. I didn’t think our AC was capable of this, something else was going on.
“Hello?” I called out. No response. Maybe Greta was right, and I should have waited outside until someone else showed up. I shouldn’t be in here alone. The blinds on the windows were down on one side of the building, the area that usually took in the most sunlight in the afternoon. Who would have closed those?
I stepped forward and felt my right foot slip on something. When I looked down, I noticed a drop of blood on the floor. What had happened here? There were plates on the empty tables, it looked as if the place had been evacuated in a hurry.
“Sadie?” a croaky voice called. I rushed to find its source, heading around the counter and looking around to find whoever was calling out to me. Effie was on the ground with a knife in her hand and she looked pale.
“Effie!” I shrieked.
“It’s not as bad as it looked, you should see the other guy,” she smiled.
“What happened?”
“That’s a long story. Or maybe it’s not, it’s just that there’s some backstory to go with it and I think I should probably see a doctor first,” she groaned.
“There’s blood all over you!” I winced. “What do I do?”
“You should probably call someone,” she said. “I don’t feel great.”
I was panicking. Did I know the number for 9-1-1? Wait, it’s just 9-1-1, isn’t it? Did they even have 9-1-1 here? Did an island of this size have ambulances? These are probably questions I should know the answer to by now.
“The phone is there,” Effie said, pointing the knife at the cash register. The phone was next to the open drawer.
“Were you robbed?” I said, standing up to get the phone. It seemed that the drawer was still full of money, which only deepened my confusion.
“No, I guess it just all happened so fast that I didn’t close it,” Effie spluttered. I picked up the phone and turned back to her, looking for guidance as to who I should call. “9-1-1 works here, or you could call Brielle. Just make it quick.”
I dialed the emergency number and made my plea for assistance. I didn’t know how to explain what exactly the issue was, but apparently the Hallow Haven emergency response team didn’t need all the details. They must have seen some pretty weird stuff around here, so just agreed to send someone.
“I need an ambulance at The Sand Witch!” I yelled into the phone.
“Someone will be right with you,” the woman on the phone agreed. That was it. Next thing I knew I was listening to the dial tone as she had hung up on me.
“Where is everyone else?” I asked.
“They’ve taken him,” Effie managed. “This is all my fault; I should have spotted the signs earlier.”
“What signs? Effie?” I could see her eyelids starting to droop. “No, stay awake!”
“It’s just a few minutes, I just need to rest my eyes. I’m so tired,” she mumbled. I heard a loud thundering sound from the other side of the cash register and the whole room flooded with light. What now?
I grabbed a rolling pin that happened to be nearby and stood up, braced for a fight. It was Brielle, she had appeared in the café with her medical bag.
“You can use your magic to travel like that?” I asked, astonished.
“I heard you’ve used travel magic before, it can’t be a total surprise,” she said, jumping over the counter to her cousin’s side. “Is this her blood?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. Effie had closed her eyes and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I watched as Brielle checked Effie for wounds.
“She’s not been hurt, as far as I can tell,” Brielle said, slightly confused. “I think she’s in shock, but I don’t know what happened.”
“She said something about ‘not spotting the signs’, I don’t know what she was talking about.”
“I should get her to my clinic. Kate is still with Emmy; I didn’t tell her that her sister was in trouble. I’m not sure if that was the right move or not, but if she knew what was happening, she would tear this place apart with worry.”
Brielle placed both her hands on Effie’s body and then the same thundering sound rang out again. The bright light was almost blinding, and I closed my eyes tight and turned away from it. When I looked again, they were both gone.
What was I supposed to do now? The only sound was my own breathing; rapid and shaking. Effie has said that everyone else had ‘taken him’, but what did that mean? The only person she could be talking about would be the IRS guy, right? She had said he’d been ill, but I don’t see how someone feeling unwell could have lead to all this.
I felt a tear roll down my cheek and I tried to prevent a second one appearing, because I knew if I opened the floodgates that I would be a total wreck in seconds.
“Sadie,” Ryder gasped, bursting through the café door. He ran to me and wrapped his arms around my body. I didn’t ask him where he’d come from, or why he had come here, I was just grateful to see him. He was holding me so close, and I couldn’t fight urge to cry anymore. I wept onto his shoulder uncontrollably and he let me, saying nothing until I had it out of my system.
“Effie’s hurt,” I said, finally.
“I figured. I have a scanner, I thought that something had happened to you which is why I ran here so fast,” he said. He was still holding me, and I was mumbling into his chest, his replies spoken against my hair. I stepped back, pushing him away enough so that I could look at his face.
My mind was swarming with a thousand things to say. I couldn’t feel the cold air of the room anymore, just the heat of Ryder’s body against my own.
“My magic gets stronger when I’m around you,” I confessed. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It gets stronger around him too, doesn’t it?” he asked. He was referring to Miller. I looked up and our eyes locked, for a brief moment it was all I could see. I allowed myself to imagine what my life would look like if I’d gone down this path, instead of the one I was currently on with my sheriff boyfriend.
Something caught my eye through the window and I q
uickly realized what it was. “Get down!” I yelled. The glass shattered as a huge, dark creature burst through the window and landed a few feet away. Ryder tried to push himself in front of me, but I knew that was a bad idea. “Miller, it’s me,” I said calmly.
The wolf snarled, looking at Ryder with laser focus.
“He isn’t the threat here, something happened, and Effie got hurt. Ryder heard about it over the scanner,” I explained. The beast didn’t back down.
“If he hurts you again, I’ll kill him,” Ryder warned. The wolf snarled again.
“Enough!” I shouted. “You can’t keep putting me in the middle like this. Both of you need to step down.” I was angry, frustrated, in pain and worried about my injured friend. That was a dangerous cocktail of emotions. I heard a gentle whimpering from Miller and saw that he had crouched low, submissively. I turned to Ryder and he was crouched, his hands up to protect his face.
They were scared of me, and justifiably so. My feet were no longer on the ground, I was towering above them with my left hand pointed at Miller and my right at Ryder. Each hand was a blur of blue energy. What was I planning to do here? What was my magic trying to do?
As soon as I realized, I dropped back to the ground with my eyes closed. When I landed, I opened them again. I wasn’t in the café now, I was in the tea shop off the high street, ‘Coaled Water’.
“Welcome back, child,” the owner called out. “Your magic grows, you’re learning.”
“Why am I here?” I asked. My hands were no longer glowing with magic, but I could still feel the power of it under my skin.
“Why do you think? What unanswered questions are in your head that could have brought you to this place?” she said. I couldn’t see her anywhere, her voice echoing out from the back room. It reminded me of the Wizard of Oz with the booming voice from behind the curtain.
“I…” I paused. How could I focus on one question? There was a dead woman in a pool, what had happened to her? What is Derek hiding? Why is Susan’s son skulking around in my hotel room trying to give me pointers? Where did Miller go all night after he injured me? Is Miller the one I’m supposed to be with? If I wanted to be with Miller so badly, then why did I have feelings for Ryder, too?
“Rage is not the path to wisdom,” she said. “You are angry, I can feel it from here.”
“My friend is hurt, I don’t know what happened to her,” I explained.
“And you think that you could have prevented it? You feel guilt,” she said. The woman stepped out into the room and I felt the light outside the windows get dim. After recent events, my instinct was to assume that the weather was messed up again and that we were about to go through another full moon. Although, with Miller just randomly shifting into wolf form in the middle of the day now, did it really matter?
“I think that there is a lot of mess around me. I feel like I am a tornado that hit the shore of the island and spun everyone around, I am the cause of the problems. It can all be traced back to me.” I wondered if I’d only used the word ‘tornado’ because I had been thinking about the Wizard of Oz a few seconds ago.
“There was chaos before you, there will be chaos when you’re gone,” she nodded. “How you choose to sift through the problems you face is entirely up to you, but I will give you a piece of advice…” I waited, anxiously, for her to finish the thought. “Narrow focus brings results. You are letting too much into your head, that is your personal space, child. Protect it.”
She had a point. I was taking on problems that weren’t even mine.
“How would you suggest I start with that?” I asked in earnest.
“Most good days start after a good night’s sleep,” she smiled. “I just so happen to have just the thing to help you with that.” She turned to pull a brown paper bag from a shelf, unlocked a cabinet beneath the cash register and I could hear her mumbling something as she crouched down. “I am giving you some tea that will give you dreamless sleep, but I don’t have much left at the moment, so you might have a fraction of one dream. Close enough though, right?”
“Big seller?” I asked.
“Not generally no,” she said, handing me the bag and punching numbers into the register. “I just had one guy who bought almost all of it a few days ago.” I felt as if a lightbulb had turned on above my head like I was a cartoon character. The feeling coincided with the sunlight shining through the windows once again and the room growing bright.
“Who did you sell it to?” I asked.
“Mr. Colter,” she smiled. My jaw fell open. “I told him to be careful and to weigh out the portions carefully because too much at once can be dangerous. Imagine if you just dropped unconscious while climbing the stairs!”
I thought about what I’d seen on his hands that night by the pool. It hadn’t been crumbs at all, but loose-leaf tea. “Or if you drank it and went swimming?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
17
After I paid the woman, who finally introduced herself as ‘Sage’, I headed off in the direction of the police station. I had no idea if Miller would be there, but he wasn’t the only one who worked there, and I just needed to tell them what I knew.
There wasn’t long before the sun would start to set, and this had truly felt like the longest day of all time, so I would be grateful for it to end. Of course, a night with a full moon brought its own set of problems, but that was a problem for later.
“Is Miller here?” I asked the receptionist.
“He just got back,” she nodded.
“This way?” I said, pointing to the interrogation room. She nodded again. I didn’t knock, I just walked inside. Miller was sitting down opposite Derek and a man that was presumably Derek’s lawyer. Miller looked at me, then quickly looked back at Derek. I couldn’t read his expression.
Back on Tivercana, Ryder had seen me with Miller, and I’d felt as if I’d created an uncomfortable situation. This time, Miller had caught me in Ryder’s arms, and I felt guilty about that too. I’d had enough. I couldn’t live my entire life feeling at fault for my every move. I was letting these two men, these two incredibly gorgeous men, dictate my life. Something had to give.
“Has he said anything yet?” I asked.
“Nope,” Miller answered, shaking his head. “All we’ve managed to establish is that he represents Rick Colter as a client.”
“Well then, let me ask you this,” I said, taking a seat. “If you are aware that your client is a murderer, do you have the freedom to break attorney-client confidentiality to inform the police?”
Derek didn’t answer. I looked at his lawyer.
“I can answer that,” the lawyer said. He looked all business, his suit was wrinkle free, not a hair out of place. “Hypothetically speaking, a lawyer may receive a confession from their client which establishes their involvement in a crime. The job of the defense council is to achieve the best possible outcome for the client. You would have to create reasonable doubt so as to avoid a guilty verdict. It would be wise to avoid outwardly stating ‘my client is innocent’, the language you use is important.
“You would just need to phrase things in such a way as to add confusion. You can brush off most things as circumstantial evidence. For example, a client’s fingerprints on an object that was involved in a crime doesn’t necessarily mean they committed a crime. Do you follow?” Miller nodded.
“Thank you,” I said. “Derek, did you know that Rick had been married before?”
“I was aware of that,” he acknowledged.
“How did that marriage end?” I asked.
“He was widowed, some sort of accident on a boat trip lead to her drowning,” he said.
“So, Susan was his second wife to have died from drowning?” Miller asked. Derek nodded.
“I’ve heard that Rick had taken out a life insurance policy on wife number one, which came into effect just weeks before the accident. There was quite a large pay out from that apparently,” I said. Miller looked over at me and then back to Derek. This w
as news to him.
“It was investigated by the insurance firm, they determined that there was no foul play,” Derek offered.
“What about this time? Did he have a policy out on Susan?” Miller asked.
Derek looked nervously at his lawyer. “There will be no comment,” the lawyer replied.
“Are those the papers that you were looking at with Rick in the restaurant? Emmy got a picture of you with him, were you checking the dates on the life insurance policy? Huh? Susan was still in the water and the pair of you were checking the fine print to make sure you were in the clear for the payout!” I ranted.
“I…” Derek began.
“You thought Emmy’s photograph might show what was on those papers and implicate you in conspiracy to commit murder with Rick, that’s why you attacked her and destroyed the camera!”
“Do you have any proof that my client attacked anybody?” the lawyer asked.
“I’m so glad you asked,” Miller grinned. “There was a CCTV camera in the corridor outside Emmy’s room. Any guesses what we saw on the tape?”
“I want immunity!” Derek yelled.
“I need a moment alone with my client,” the lawyer interrupted, leaning forward and putting an arm across Derek’s chest as if holding him back from saying something stupid.
“Immunity for what?” Miller asked.
“I’ll tell you how Rick killed her if you give me immunity!”
“You do realize you have just admitted that you know that he killed her, that’s obstruction of justice for a start. Do you even know much about the law?” Miller asked with an impish grin.
“Wait, hang on…” Derek let out a sigh as he realized he’d played his hand. “What are my options here?”
“Cooperating with this investigation would be a good place to start,” Miller said.
“I need a moment with my client, now!” the lawyer insisted. Miller chuckled quietly as he stood up to leave the room.