by Mara Webb
“There’s a killer on this island,” I announced. “You aren’t safe.” Bryony looked back at me and raised an eyebrow. Somewhere I could hear Miller’s voice as he was trying to fight his way through the crowd.
“What are you talking about?” she muttered back at me. “The ritual is not us killing you, it’s more of a… how can I put this? We are setting you free and your magic will be redistributed. It’s a blessing. It’s not ideal obviously and if your grandmother could see me now, well…”
“What about Holly?” I asked. That seemed to cause a ripple of chatter to wash over the crowd. Had they heard about what Miller and I had found in the cabin? “She was killed, strangled!”
“What are you talking about?” Bryony stopped trying to drag me now and I knew that this was my chance. Hadn’t Fleur told the elders? She had said she was going to, maybe she hadn’t. Darn it.
“Curtis was having an affair, I think that the woman he was cheating with wanted him all to herself,” I announced, pulling my wrist free of Bryony’s grasp.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Daphne shouted, walking over to involve herself in the conversation before I revealed her secrets. “You will say anything to avoid your death sentence. There’s no use fighting it.”
“Hear her out, Daphne,” Bryony insisted. Daphne swallowed and I saw the muscles in her face tense.
“I found out about Curtis’s cabin and I went there to see if Holly was hiding out, trying to get away from it all. She was lying dead on the ground with a wound around her throat from being strangled by something, at first, I thought maybe it was string because the marks were too thin to be from a rope. Now I think it was butcher’s twine,” I explained. Miller had pushed his way through to my side and his fiancé wasn’t far behind.
“Butcher’s twine?” Bryony repeated.
“Yes, butcher’s twine,” I echoed.
“Holly fought back, she had blood under her fingernails from scratching at her attacker,” Miller added. Daphne tried to discreetly pull her sleeves back down to cover the marks on her arms, but it was too late, and Bryony noticed.
“Curtis worked in the house a few weeks ago, you both seemed to be quite friendly,” Bryony said, looking at Daphne.
“Who, me?” Daphne scoffed. “No, I was just…”
“It was you!” Fleur shouted from behind me. “You were the one kissing my sister’s husband in his kitchen this morning!”
This scandalous accusation drew gasps from the crowd. They were treating this whole thing like a soap opera, and if I hadn’t been in the center of it, I would probably enjoy watching it too.
“Show me your arms,” Bryony ordered. Daphne opened her mouth to protest, but the stares she got from the rest of us made it clear we wouldn’t take no for an answer. When the scratches were revealed, Bryony turned to me. “Your grandmother would get premonitions, visions of sorts. Do you have that ability?”
“Y-yes,” I stuttered, too caught up in the drama of the moment to consider that this was the second time Bryony had alluded to having known my grandmother. I’d only had one or two visions, but I didn’t think she wanted me to go through my entire back story of magic experiences.
“Touch these marks on Daphne and tell us what you see,” Bryony ordered.
I reached forward and pressed my fingertips to one of the scratches. Immediately I was struck by an image of Holly inside the cabin, but in the vision she was alive. I was watching it take place through the eyes of the killer, the hands pulling the twine taut around Holly’s neck and feeling the pain as she tried to prize herself free. Daphne had seen this; she had been the person with her hands on the twine.
I let go of her and struggled to catch my breath.
“Why did you do that?” I asked her. Miller stepped closer and tried to prop me up as I staggered back from her and Bryony.
“I… I just wanted a husband of my own. He couldn’t marry anyone else if his wife was still alive! I figured it wasn’t such a big deal!” Daphne screeched.
“You thought wrong!” Bryony bellowed. Before anyone else had a chance to say anything, Fleur came running through us and punched Daphne in the jaw, reaching back to throw another jab her way just as Miller grabbed her to hold her back.
“What are you going to do about this?” Len asked Bryony. “What happens now?”
Bryony took in a deep breath and massaged her temples with the index and middle fingers of each hand. “Give me a minute,” she sighed. “I need to think.”
I looked at Miller. I wanted more than anything for us to be far away from here, somewhere safe together, and I knew he was silently urging me to use my magic and make that happen.
“You know you can’t do anything now,” Darcy announced. She was walking towards me through the clearing in the crowd, the space that people had made so that Bryony could drag me to my doom.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“She’s talking to me,” Bryony replied. My mouth fell open. Bryony could hear Darcy? That had to mean that she had died at some point. This place was giving me a headache.
“I don’t know why you are pretending you have to give it a whole lot of thought. If someone has been murdered and the killer is still wandering around free when the day started, then this day is no longer pure enough to perform the ritual. You must have known that when rumors started that Holly was missing,” Darcy explained.
“Yes, I’m aware of that, but I just figured Holly was having a break from that idiot husband of hers. I didn’t think she’d been killed,” Bryony huffed.
“You know you were looking for any excuse not to have to do this stupid ritual anymore. It’s barbaric!” Darcy exclaimed. “You’ve been telling me for years that you needed a way out of it that people would understand. No one on this island still wants to be using the old magic this way. Someone needs to make a stand and bring this nonsense to an end, it’s gonna have to be you!”
Bryony let out a long breath and looked over at Darcy. “When Sadie was found on this island, I was secretly hoping that all this would happen. Not that Holly would get murdered, obviously, but that you might step in and help.”
“Hello?” I said, clearing my throat. “Sorry to be a total pain, guys, but you’re both just casually talking about how threatening me with public execution has just been a pawn in your weird little games. Do I get a say in all this?”
“Oh, we weren’t actually going to kill you,” Bryony rolled her eyes. “Either Darcy would have done something, or this big handsome man of yours would have saved the day. Your grandmother would never let me hear the end of it if something happened to you. It was more for show, I don’t think we’ve actually managed to get through a May Day ritual in over fifteen years actually, something always goes wrong.”
“You bet,” the healer grinned. She stepped towards us and I shook my head in disbelief. I knew that the healer couldn’t see Darcy, or at least I didn’t think she could see her. It was like being some weird translator between the living and the dead, or the living and whatever Darcy was supposed to be.
“Wait, are you the reason we haven’t done anything terrible recently?” Bryony gasped.
I thought back to comments Effie had made about how Greta knew of a good witch lurking on the dark island to keep them from performing their darkest magic.
“You knew you couldn’t be left here completely unsupervised, right?” Darcy laughed. Miller grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly. Understandably, he had no idea what was going on. I wasn’t sure I was fully aware either, but it seemed as if I wasn’t about to be set on fire in the middle of the town square.
“Does this mean I don’t get to stay?” a man asked from somewhere in the crowd.
“I don’t know who you’re talking to,” Bryony shrugged, then looked at the rest of us like ‘get a load of this guy’.
“I’m Kane, I guess I’m talking to whoever is in charge,” he called out. Kane!
Bryony looked at me and leaned close enough that her words wou
ld only be heard by my ears. “It’s not straight forward, and there is a lot to get ironed out, but I think it’s time that this island was back under the official eye of the peacekeeper, don’t you?” she said. I nodded. With a smile, Bryony straightened up and replied to Kane. “The person in charge is this one.” She was pointing to me.
18
“It just sounds like a lie,” Kate laughed. “I’m not saying it didn’t happen, but don’t you think that it’s a little farfetched?”
“Dude, Miller was there too,” Effie replied. “I would totally agree that Sadie was lying if she had been somewhere by herself, but I don’t think Miller would lie to us.”
“Why would you assume I was lying? What happened to solidarity? Why do you need Miller to back up my story?” I complained. Since we’d gotten back to the main island a few hours ago, we’d been talking almost non-stop.
A police escort had taken Kane to the airport and Kate had cast a spell to help him forget his entire ordeal. We didn’t need him getting back to his office and telling everyone about what we all got up to in Hallow Haven.
Kate had only complained half a dozen times about missing karaoke night for this ‘welcome back’ dinner, and had made it clear that I owed her one. I assumed this meant that the next time there was an event that required costumes, I would have to go big.
Effie had offered to cook for us, and we had decided to eat in the café at a long table by the window that faced out over the ocean. I’d been ravenous, Miller was almost done with his third bowl of food and Kate and Effie were still complaining that I was skimming over the details.
“The bit I don’t understand,” Kate continued, “is why you decided to cast a ‘good luck’ spell by yourself. When I came back to the house and you were gone, I obviously went up to your room to see if you’d passed out on the bed. As soon as I spotted that pentagram on the floor, I knew we had a problem.”
“Yeah, how could you leave out the lucky heather?” Effie laughed. “You really are a novice. It’s almost embarrassing.”
“Guys, I nearly died. Actually, I did die, then almost died a second time,” I shrieked. “I figured I’d get a little sympathy from you.”
“Read the room,” Effie laughed. “We were worried when you were missing, but now you’re back and clearly still have all your limbs, so what’s the point in being worried now?”
I guess they had a point.
“Sage is my aunt,” I said, nonchalantly.
“Yeah, we know,” Kate shrugged. “Wait, did I forget to tell you that part?”
“Are you freaking kidding me?” I said. I laughed, because if I didn’t laugh, I would have to tip my bowl of noodles onto the ground and storm out. “I need better friends,” I smiled.
“At least you have lover boy back on home turf,” Kate grinned. “You know, if I found out that my boyfriend snuck off to marry another woman then I’d be livid. You should be spending a few weeks in the doghouse, months even. And yeah, I mean doghouse because you’re kind of a dog.”
“Werewolf, actually,” Miller muttered under his breath.
“Whatever, dog breath,” Effie teased. She had broken into Miller’s house yesterday, but I hadn’t asked her if she’d found anything interesting. Now wasn’t a great time to bring it up either, and I hoped she hadn’t left the place a mess, but she kept eyeing him curiously and I wondered what she was thinking about.
“He didn’t actually propose to someone else, he was just going to marry her,” I said. “In my head that sounded like a good counter point, but out loud it sounds dumb. I might be on their side,” I smiled.
“I didn’t want to mar— there’s no point going over everything again right now, let’s focus on the fact we made it out of there alive,” Miller sighed.
I hadn’t told anyone about the photograph I’d seen in Darcy’s house, the one with my adoptive mother. Despite the fact that Kate was a mind reader, I was seemingly able to hold on to this little secret. It was proof that my powers were growing.
“Oh, by the way, have you signed up to some weird magazines or something?” Effie asked.
“What? No, what are you talking about?”
“Maybe it’s a prank. You just got another letter with the wrong name and address on it this morning, maybe someone should check on the mailman and make sure he hasn’t lost his marbles,” Effie explained. “That’s the second weird letter we’ve had this month. The first one I just took back to the post office myself, but if it’s going to keep happening then…”
“I’ll go check in with Jeff,” Miller nodded. “He knows these islands like the back of his hand, it’s not like him to be making mistakes like that.”
After a lengthy dinner, I finally felt full. That didn’t stop me from reaching out for a slice of cake when Effie offered to fetch us a dessert from the kitchen. In the distance, I could see the starlight dancing over the still waters around Hallow Haven. This discovery of new family members filled me with hope, there were good things coming my way, I could just feel it.
“When are we allowed to talk about the woman from The Bureau?” Kate asked. I shot her a look. “What? I know you’ve only been back for like, five seconds, but it’s been eating me alive, and I want to know. How come she told Sadie that your house was her house?”
“I don’t know, honestly,” Miller replied. “I should probably go and speak to her about that.”
“Yeah, and then what’s the plan? Huh?” Effie pressed. She had returned with an entire Victoria sponge cake and a large knife, a knife that she was now waving about as she ranted in Miller’s direction. “You guys are all loved up, and that’s great, but that woman is here because Sadie has two guardians and she’s not really supposed to. Do you and Ryder have to fight to the death? Huh?”
“Yeah, it’s gonna be a really sad day if one piece of eye candy murders the other one,” Kate sighed, tucking into a large piece of cake and shaking her head.
“They are not going to kill each other,” I scoffed. Although now that I thought about it, I didn’t have any clue what would have to happen next. Greta’s ghost rushed through the wall of the café and smiled as she caught sight of us.
“There you are!” she announced. “Kane is gone, the plane has taken off! I had to really bug Tom the pilot to switch off the karaoke machine in his living room and get to the airport, but that IRS guy is finally out of our hair.”
“Wahoo! That calls for another piece of cake!” Kate cheered, cutting herself a second slice.
I ate my dessert quietly, listening to the comforting sound of my friends bickering about nothing in particular. Miller reached over and put his hand on my knee underneath the table, the warmth of his skin on mine was another reminder that we were both out of harm’s way, for now.
We had a lot to take care of in the coming weeks. Now that the dark island was stepping away from their sinister past, we would have to find a way to add regular trips out there into our schedule. I hadn’t even asked what they planned to do with Daphne, I’d just been so happy when they’d offered us a boat home that I’d hurried away from there.
Come to think of it, I didn’t know where any of the convicted criminals in Hallow Haven went. The jail cells at the police station were just for holding people before they were transferred, but where were they being transferred to?
“Sadie? Are you listening?” Effie called. “I said you’ll have to get out to the far side of the island soon, those farmers are making complaints about trespassers again.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, every few months they call the station and complain about people trampling over their property,” Miller explained. “It’s never anything serious, and when we get over there, they can’t give us any useful information. They just find a footprint or two and expect us to go full CSI on it. I have explained we can’t arrest someone from a footprint, but clearly they don’t listen.”
“Everyone walks over the farms,” Kate shrugged. “It’s just land, you can’t own land.”
“Well, legally speaking, yes you can,” Miller pointed out.
“Whatever, dog breath,” she smirked.
“I’ll be sleeping in late tomorrow, but after that we can go and talk about footprints,” I smiled to Miller.
“Yeah, I’m pretty beat too,” he nodded.
“If you guys want to sneak off to bed together, just say that,” Kate laughed. “You don’t have to put on some whole ‘I’m so tired’ performance.”
“I don’t know why I’m friends with you,” I moaned.
“Ignore her,” Effie said. “We’ll get out of your hair.” It was at the mention of hair that I noticed Effie’s was back to its original lavender and peach. “Next time you want to use one of Sage’s little magic kits, you make sure one of us is with you. Deal?”
“Deal!” I agreed. I didn’t want to get into another mess any time soon. I would have to figure out a time to go and visit Sage and ask her about the fact that she was my aunt, a fact she obviously had known about the whole time and had neglected to tell me.
Kate polished off her second slice of cake, then took the dirty dishes from the table to the café’s kitchen. Effie put a hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye. “I’m glad you only died once out there,” she smiled.
I was about to respond, but the sound of the café door opening caught our attention. It was Ryder, he looked flustered.
“Sadie! She said you were dead!” he shrieked. Ryder raced between the tables and chairs and threw his arms around me. I felt the magic in my hands surge, his proximity often did this to me, and I feared that Miller would notice the effect his rival had.
“I’m fine,” I replied. I wanted to melt into his embrace, but I felt too aware that Miller was right beside me. I could practically hear him growling in complaint.
“I said she died, not that she was still dead,” a woman called out. The woman from The Bureau had followed Ryder into the building and was watching us all from a safe distance.