by Mara Webb
I awkwardly pretended to stumble, acting was never my strong suit, and threw the scotch at Curtis’s sweater.
“What are you doing?” he complained, pulling the wool away from his skin so that it wouldn’t soak through to the shirt underneath. “This thing is so hard to clean!”
As I’d hoped, Curtis instinctively pulled the sweater up over his head and revealed the t-shirt he was wearing, the short sleeves now exposing his arms. They were scratch free, as were his hands and neck. Dang.
“Are you going to just stand there?” Curtis moaned. “Get me a cloth!” I looked around his immaculate kitchen for anything that could help, but I was evidently taking too long. “For crying out loud, just grab the paper towels!” I threw him the roll and he began laying the sweater over the countertop and patting it dry.
“What is that string for?” Miller asked, pointing at the coffee table.
“It’s parcel string, is it a crime to have parcel string now? I used it to ship off newel post caps to a customer that ordered from overseas. It was a bespoke order,” he mumbled, frantically dabbing at the stain on his clothing.
As much as I didn’t like this guy, it was going to be hard to prove he was Holly’s killer on the basis of string-possession. He didn’t have any scratches or bruises that would indicate that he had been in a fight with anyone recently, so we would have to direct our attention elsewhere.
“Do you want us to call anyone for you?” Miller offered.
“Why?” Curtis scoffed, pulling a container of laundry products out of a cupboard, and scanning over the instructions on every bottle to see which one would meet his current stain-based needs.
“We just told you that your wife was murdered, a normal person would be upset about that and might need some support,” I explained.
“Yeah,” he sighed, putting down a box of ‘wool saver’ and staring out of the window for a second. “You know, I’ve always thought that making vows that mention death was strange. We promised ‘until death do you part’, and yet both of us had made our minds up weeks ago. I suppose in a way I’ve already let go, I mean it’s still super sad, but you know, grief is a weight around your ankle when you are trying to swim. I’m letting go.”
“It was really generous of you to pretend to be cut up about it for almost ten entire minutes,” I muttered as I walked toward the door. I couldn’t help myself though, I turned back despite Miller giving me a look. “Does your new girlfriend know what a piece of work you are? I’m pretty sure having no empathy or sympathy makes you a psychopath.”
“You sound like Holly,” he smiled. “I’m thirty-two. I know that there are people that would spend the next sixty years of their life grieving after something like this happened, but that’s not much of a life, is it? Somehow, I am the abnormal one for not collapsing into an emotional void and becoming functionless, does that seem right to you?”
“Well—” I tried to respond.
“If you were to die today, and by all accounts it sounds like that is what is on the cards for you, would you want your boyfriend here to be heartbroken for the rest of his life?” he asked.
“You’re a creep, I didn’t ask for you to throw philosophical problems at me. Let’s get out of here,” I huffed, leaving the house with Miller and not looking back until we were unable to see the house.
“Don’t let him get under your skin, I won’t let anyone lay a finger on you,” Miller finally said.
“It’s not that,” I sighed. “I just, I don’t know, I feel bad for Holly. I know she’s dead now, which is a separate issue, but having to be stuck with that guy for however long they were together… what a nightmare. She must have had the patience of a saint.”
“I agree,” he smiled. The clock tower rang out again, three loud bell sounds echoed across the island. How was it three o’clock already? How had we missed two o’clock? We’d been walking around so much, I guess time was getting away from us, and we didn’t have much left before I would need to pull the escape cord and get Miller and I out of there.
I felt too invested in Holly to leave before her murderer was caught, it was important to wrap this up, I just knew it.
Maybe we were putting too much stock into the theory that Holly had fought back. The blood under her fingernails might have come from something else, the string on Curtis’s coffee table might have been the very thing that was used to strangle her. Would we ever know the truth?
We were silently walking back towards town, determined to find Len and gauge his reaction to the news that his lover was dead. That stupid question that Curtis had asked, would I want Miller to grieve forever, it was swirling around in my head and I couldn’t shake it loose.
Everyone wants to be remembered, right? For some people, being forgotten is their greatest fear. You want there to be someone that will pass on your stories, keep you alive through anecdotes and pictures.
The music from the town square was louder now and the center of the cobbled area had been cleared as people took flowers up onto the stage. Had they been there earlier?
“Can I interest you in some pork?” a voice called out. I turned and spotted Daphne, the woman that had prepared a bath for me this morning. “It’s not quite ready yet, but I can make sure there’s some left for you!”
“I’m good,” I replied.
“Suit yourself,” she smiled. “But you’re missing out!”
“There you are!” another voice shouted. A small woman, barely five feet tall, shimmied up to Miller’s side and threaded her arm around his. “I’ve been looking for you for hours.”
Miller could barely look at me. I knew that this must be his new fiancé, and it was such a uniquely uncomfortable situation that I had no idea what I should say.
“Mama told me that we might get called on stage tonight for a blessing,” she grinned. “To infuse our union with strength ahead of the wedding.” Miller’s expression remained neutral. I still wasn’t entirely sure how this engagement had come about, and even if it was arranged, why was she so chipper about it?
I mean, Miller was a catch, there was no denying that. But he was my catch. Didn’t she know that he had been in a relationship when he arrived? Had they spoken about where he’d come from?
“Hi,” I blurted out. She looked up at Miller, then back to me.
“Hey,” she replied. Silence fell between us. “We need to get back to find my parents,” she announced, tugging at Miller’s arm. He tried to pull away, but she doubled down, grabbing his hands and beginning to walk away almost dragging him with her. She was stronger than she looked.
“I can’t go with you,” he protested. She lifted her right hand into the air and snapped her fingers. In an instant Miller stopped resisting. She shot me a look, then proceeded to walk away with my boyfriend into the crowd. She’d just used magic on him, right?
What was I supposed to do now?
15
In a crowd of strangers, I felt alone. My one link to the main island had just walked away in the arms of another woman and now I was left wondering if I would ever see him again. Should I have chased after him? I tried to follow in the direction they had walked, but I could see no sign of them.
“You’re lost,” a familiar voice said. I turned and saw the woman that no one else was able to see, Darcy.
“Do you mean geographically or emotionally?” I asked. “Because on both counts, yeah, I’m lost.”
“No time like the present to follow me on a side quest then,” she grinned.
“Side quest? This isn’t a videogame,” I laughed. A few people in the crowd saw me and assumed I was talking to myself, they started to give me a wide berth. “Besides, I have a million things to do.”
“Oh, come along now, don’t pretend you aren’t curious as to what my little side quest might be!”
“I don’t know if you heard, but there’s been a murder on the island,” I whispered. “Not only that, but it looks like I’m gonna have to kidnap my boyfriend from a mind control spell,
and—”
“Oh, you are a worry wart, aren’t you? Just like your father,” she smiled. Well that certainly caught my attention.
“What do you know about my dad?” I asked.
“You’ll just have to follow me and find out!” she laughed, walking through the crowd, and I mean literally walking through them. She was a ghost, and I was struggling to keep up with her as she effortlessly glided towards the side road. Fortunately, she waited for me before she carried on. “I forget how limiting a solid body can be,” she chuckled.
“Are you here to help me get off the island?” I asked.
“Not necessarily, but I can point you in the right direction of a few things,” she replied. I didn’t really need another person in my life that wouldn’t answer simple questions in a straightforward way.
“Where are we going?” I asked, almost jogging to keep up as she turned corner after corner.
“You sure are nosy,” she laughed.
“It’s not really nosy to ask where you are taking me,” I complained.
“Well, if you want to be like that, then technically you are following me and I’m not taking you anywhere,” she smirked. “Through here.” She stepped through a closed door, then pulled it open from inside. “You can’t open this from the outside, a spell of mine that I am quite proud of.”
Is it a bad idea to walk into this weird ghost-lady’s house? Oh, sure. But my feet were carrying me over the threshold before I could debate the safety issues for too long.
“I know you said you aren’t the grim reaper, but… are you the grim reaper?” I asked. She lived in a narrow town house, the hallway that I was standing in had exposed stonework and a series of hooks that held up sun hats. Picture frames with pressed heathers lined the wall to my left and I felt as though one of them in particular looked familiar.
“I’m not the grim reaper,” she replied. “Unless you want me to be. Would you prefer it if I was? I always thought ‘grim reaper’ sounded like a wrinkled old man, and I thought that the grim reaper was supposed to be the one that brought death, took you to the after place. I didn’t bring death to you, you died and then you saw me. I’d say that there’s a pretty big difference.”
“Are you dead?” I asked. She shrugged. “How can you not know if you’re dead?”
“Well, you didn’t know you had died until you were told, so I’d get off your little high horse,” she laughed. “Would you like some tea?” I eyed her curiously. She ignored my appraisal and walked out of the hallway into a country-style kitchen with yet more heathers decorating the walls.
“Was there something in that first cup of tea that you gave to me? Some sort of hallucinogenic substance?” I asked. I thought back to ‘Coaled Water’ on the main island, and how the owner, Sage, had given me enough clues to solve a tea-based murder not long ago.
“Nope! Just tea, nothing spooky or magic or weird,” she said, boiling the kettle. I sat down on a stool at the breakfast bar and looked around the room, the pestle and mortar a few feet away from me had some sort of powder in it, shelves by the stove were covered in empty jars and the whole place smelt so familiar. Had I been here before? How could I have?
“Sure, I’ll have a cup,” I replied. Through the walls I could faintly hear the activity of the May Day celebrations, but it felt comfortably still here with Darcy.
“You love him, huh?” she smiled. I must have been daydreaming, because the last thing I’d seen was her switching on the electric kettle, and now she was handing me a hot drink. “I recognize the signs; staring off into the middle distance with a goofy smile on your face, that rush of adrenaline you feel when you think about them. Miller is your person.”
“He is about to be someone else’s person though,” I sighed. I took a sip of the tea, looking at Darcy who was studying me from the other side of the kitchen. “How did this island get like this? It is so different from every other place in Hallow Haven. Sacrificial rituals, arranged marriages, no police… it’s a lot to process.”
“People all see the world through their own lens, often times you find that people with a similar viewpoint flock together and it just so happens that this island was uninhabited when a group of like-minded individuals were looking for a place to meet. Dark magic is dangerous, but the people here are willing to take the risk,” Darcy explained.
“So, they originally lived on the main island?” I asked.
“Yeah, but I’m talking over a hundred years ago, maybe longer. The peacekeeper at the time was at a loss about it, I remember hearing stories about arguments, big town hall meetings and all sorts of protections spells, but the dark witches were never happy. They wanted to be free to practice their magic how they saw fit, they were adamant that they could use it without repercussions.”
“Were they exiled to this island?” I pressed.
“It was a less-than-mutual decision, let’s put it that way. The people that choose to stay here are happy to run the risk that the consequences of dark magic will fall on them. It’s a sort of, ‘you leave us alone, we leave you alone’ deal. The peacekeeper stays out of their way, they keep all that dark magic to themselves. It’s a win-win, sort of,” she smiled.
“Do you use dark magic?” I asked. She raised an eyebrow at me, and I felt as if I’d said something inappropriate, but she had just said that the people that stay here are happy to risk the fallout of using dark magic, so that had to include her, right?
“I don’t use it, but I benefit from it. I suppose in a way it’s the same thing,” she replied. I wanted to ask more questions, but Darcy felt like the only person I could speak to at the moment, and I didn’t want to run my mouth and get kicked out of her house. “Have you figured out what happened to Holly yet?”
It caught me off guard. I hadn’t considered that she would have heard about Holly yet, but I suppose statistically speaking, once enough people know a secret it is bound to get out.
“Well, it looks like she was strangled,” I said, not knowing which details to share and which to omit.
“That’s right,” she nodded.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“I saw her too, the mark around her neck looks pretty damning I’d say. Any clues as to who might have done it?”
Was I supposed to tell her everything we knew? Should I mention the blood under Holly’s nails and that we were looking for scratch marks on the attacker? We. It was just me now, I had no idea what Miller was doing between now and his nuptials, so I was on my own.
“Not yet,” I answered. It wasn’t a lie, necessarily. “Have I been here before?” The question was out of my mouth before I had thought about it, something seemed so strangely familiar, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Not that I know of, but you can have memories triggered by all sorts of things. Tastes and smells are pretty common ones, maybe it’s the tea you’ve had before,” she smiled. “What is your plan to get your boyfriend and yourself clear of this island before sundown? I can only help so much, you see, and I can hardly create a scene to keep people distracted while you swim off home… no one can see me!”
“I don’t have a plan,” I admitted. “I was just going to grab Miller and use my magic to get us out of here.”
“Are you going to remember your lucky heather this time?” she smirked. That was it, that was what was familiar. The framed, pressed flowers on the walls, the smell in the air; Coaled Water. I had gotten that good luck spell from Sage and had left the heather on my bed unused. Was that why it had all gone wrong? Was that why I had ended up here?
“You know Sage,” I said, more as a statement than a question.
“Jeez, I thought you were supposed to be a quick learner. I’d heard so many great things about you and then you’ve been oblivious to what is in front of your eyes since you got here,” she laughed. “I thought she told you all about me.”
I racked my brain trying to piece together anything Sage had ever said to me. “The stuff in her shop, she said sh
e makes it with her sister. Are you her sister?”
“Ding, ding! We have a winner,” she grinned. “I thought I was going to have to bust out the family photos at some point, but you finally got there.”
“Wait, so you make the stuff for the shop, and send it to the main island?” I asked.
“Yes!”
“So, when you said you benefit from dark magic…” I trailed off, looking around at the house as I searched for signs that she was some sort of dark sorcerous. What would those signs be? I had no idea what a dark sorcerous would own, I was in way over my head.
“Hey, I don’t make dark magic kits for newbies, if that’s what you are thinking,” Darcy said, putting her cup of tea down and jousting a finger in my direction. “The amount of magic being used on this island means that the plant life is particularly potent, it makes for good spell ingredients and I harvest them, grind them up and send them to Sage.”
“Oh,” I replied, slouching as I let go of the idea that Darcy was some dark magic dealer.
“Sage told me that she’d given you what you needed for a good luck spell. Given that you died on the way here, it’s pretty clear to me that you didn’t do exactly what you were supposed to do,” she said. “I will give you some lucky heather and hopefully that will keep you out of trouble long enough for you to find Holly’s killer. I think that’s your ticket out of here, Sadie.”
“Yeah?” It felt reassuring that my gut feeling that Holly’s killer was important was right, or at least that Darcy agreed with me. I only had a few hours left, but that might just be enough time to get out of here with Miller and Kane. I hadn’t actually seen Kane since I arrived though, or at least I didn’t think I had. That was probably something I needed to address. “Hang on, why would Sage tell you what I’d bought?”