Cold Cases and Haunted Places

by Trixie Silvertale

  I placed my hand in his and forced my attention away from how warm it was. “Ready when you are.”

  The twist of time and space happens so fast that you hardly have a chance to take in a breath when you teleport—at least that’s my take on it. When you land your feet wherever you’re headed, there’s a sense of dizziness that usually leaves you leaning against something to catch your balance. In my experience, that something was usually Ash.

  I quickly disentangled myself from him and straightened up. We were surrounded by a picturesque scene of a cozy stone cottage set in a clearing a little ways into the woods. The untouched fresh-fallen snow didn’t seem to add up with the colorful gourds Fatima had decorated the front of her house with. A large black cast-iron cauldron was bubbling over one of her fire pits, emitting an orange haze.

  “See, this is exactly what I’m talking about. This is the time for crunchy dead leaves, cinnamon everything, apple cider, and pumpkin pie. Horror movies… though maybe not the gory horror stuff, because gross. I’m more of a fan of the kids Halloween movies, myself. I’d say it’s time for the witches and bats to come out but…” I shook my head. “I mean this is what fall is supposed to look like. Not the middle of January.”

  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said something similar.

  Ash placed a hand on my shoulder. “Just wait until the spring. That’s when the animals get cranky.” His cheeky near-English accent was enough to make me want to throttle him sometimes, I swear.

  I cut my eyes at him. “Not helping.”

  “I better get back to reading that register. Feel free to come back if you’re so inclined.” His cloak rippled as he blinked out of existence right in front of me.

  “Well, with that kind of attitude…” I grumbled, picking my way carefully across the path up to Fatima’s cottage. Even with her expert fire magic, the stepping stones always managed to ice over during snowfall.

  I didn’t even have the chance to knock before the door swung open. The smell of allspice and curry breezed past Fatima as she stood in the doorway, gesturing for me to come inside.

  She pushed back her head covering to reveal the shiny black hair I was so jealous of. “I was just about to put the tea kettle on.”

  I took a seat at the polished wood table made from a huge stump Fatima had cut down when she first moved to Charming Springs. “Tea sounds good. What kind?”

  “Oh you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.” There were crinkles in the corners of her dark eyes as she smiled. “I needed a pick-me-up, so I was going to use some juniper and ground starfruit seed mix. Refreshing, but still sweet. I was maybe considering turning it into my own hot toddy… especially with the news.”

  For a moment I’d completely forgotten about the familiars. Guilt sunk into me as I watched her head back into the kitchen. “I still can’t believe it. I mean, how is it possible that all of the familiars were affected? It’s gotta be magic, right? That’s what Goldie seems to think.”

  “Before we get to that, it’s your turn,” she said to me from the kitchen. “Consider this a pop quiz.” She was pointing to the tea kettle on top of the gas burner.

  The tiny blip of flame under the gas burner was all I needed. My hand shot forward, my fingertips twitching as I focused the thread of fire magic exactly where I wanted it to go. The flame on the burner grew higher and I relaxed some, happy to see that I could loosen up a bit and still keep the magic flowing.

  That was new.

  “To answer your question, I believe Goldie’s right, as usual. This incident has magic written all over it.”

  The second the kettle started whistling, I released my concentration on the fire completely, and Fatima took the kettle to pour the water into our cups.

  “Not too shabby,” she said with a smile as she placed a handful of her own special blend into the tea strainer in my cup. “You’ve been practicing.”

  “Fire isn’t the problem, and I’m getting there with water. Air… I can feel the improvement. But earth…”

  “Is a different story,” she finished. We both knew that earth magic was the hardest of the four elemental magics to master. You had to be almost doubly as mentally strong as the other witches and wizards to move such dense material in comparison.

  “If you ask me, magic has a funny way of being both a blessing and a curse,” I mumbled.

  “Truer words were never spoken. I’ve been wondering about it myself,” she said, pouring me a cup. “The familiar’s fate, I mean. As simple as their magic may be, the veil of familiar magic is enough to make your head spin. Unfortunately, there aren’t many texts about it. I believe it’s more a closely-guarded secret between the familiars themselves.”

  I nodded. “That was the feeling I was getting, too. But if that’s true, then how would someone have the power to pull something like this off? I mean, everyone seems to think it was magic, so I guess the next step is to pinpoint the why. Why would anyone want to stop the familiar’s magic from working?”

  We went over the facts, though there wasn't much to go off of.

  “They’re mundane. So they’re literally incapable of doing anything other than acting as an animal in their mind. Could it be something to do with their memories, you think?” I asked, leaning back in my chair. “If someone did something to their memories then it could’ve erased all of their memories from after their transformation. I know it’s a longshot.”

  “It is possible.” She tapped her fingers along her cup. “I hadn’t thought about that, actually. My thought is that this may not even be an intended incident.”

  I mulled that over for a minute, steadily sipping the hot tea. If I wasn’t careful, I’d burn a hole right through my lip. “It might have been a side-effect from some other magic gone wrong, though I don’t know what kind of magic would’ve caused that outcome. What I don’t get is this; no witch or wizard in town uses magic outside of their element, right?”

  Fatima finished her cup and set it gently on the table, her eyes fixed on me. “That’s the story. But…”

  I sighed, already knowing where she was going with it. “But we’ve been wrong before.”

  4

  Kickboxing was my new obsession, if obsession meant doing something over and over again and expecting different results.

  Every other morning I trudged over to Get This Fitness at the crack of dawn, ready to sweat myself right into the shower again. But this morning was different. I got up and immediately remembered what was going on. The energy I wanted to use to kick the crap out of a black sack of sand just wasn’t there. It felt wrong to want to forget about the familiars even if only for a little while.

  I made myself some food and decided I would feel much better springing into action than sitting around thinking all morning. Actions speak louder than words and all that.

  “Where to start?” I mumbled to myself as I slipped my feet into my snow boots. Even still, a tiny little part of me found it ironic that I first arrived in Charming Springs in a pair of shorts and a tank top.

  “I don’t really know where to start,” I said, fully aware that I was answering myself. Ash was helping Fatima go through her library of non-traditional magic, while the Special Council was doing their own investigation by interviewing each witch and wizard with a familiar—something Goldie had been summoned to help organize.

  Which left me sitting here doing nothing.

  I was due at the Gazette in less than two hours, and as the new editor in chief, it was my responsibility to keep to that schedule.

  But… it wouldn’t hurt to check out some of the places that the familiars congregated, at least. It wasn’t much to go off of, but I had to feel like I was moving forward, like I was doing something to help. After all, this huge story was going to be front-page news and I’d need to check out every detail I could to make it a worthy read.

  “Well, Goldie, Ash, and Fatima are out. Maybe I could ask for Drusilla’s help?” I tapped my finger to my chin. Drus
illa was my right-hand woman at the Gazette, where she worked for much longer than anyone would guess by the look of her. Then again, vampires did have that whole immortality thing going for them. I suppose if I was turned into one when I was in my early twenties, my skin would look flawless, too.

  I glanced out the window of the camper. Despite popular belief, vampires didn’t all sleep through the day and party all night long. At least not all of them, though I did happen to know that Drusilla usually crashed late into the night and slept until twenty minutes before she ended up at the Gazette. How she pulls that off and still manages to look like a gorgeous vixen every time, I’ll never understand.

  So Dru was out, too. Which meant I was on my own.

  I shoved my arms through my coat and whipped out my notebook, tucking it into one of the many pockets. “To The Coop, then.”

  Though I wasn’t surprised to see it, something heavy dropped in my gut as I pulled Big Ben up alongside The Coop. There wasn’t a single animal inside, familiar or otherwise, looking through the glass.

  Even as I got out I could feel the change in the air. For downtown being the busiest part of Charming Springs, it was almost like a ghost town. And the people who were out and about wore grim expressions. This didn’t just affect the witches and wizards with familiars… it affected the whole town.

  I hopped out of the truck and went to take a look inside. There were obvious traces of animals—paw prints, scratch marks and the like—but nothing stood out to me as weirdly out of place. Except for me, that is.

  Through the frosted windows I could make out a man carrying boxes inside the building to the left of the place. There was a worn utility belt around his waist and some kind of plastic pipes were hanging out of the top of the box. This must have been Old Man Hunley.

  A woman wearing pink satin pajamas with a towel wrapped around her head was smoking a cigarette on the stoop of the row house, watching him go back and forth.

  Three calico cats dove out of the house and circled around her satin-clad legs as she yelled something to Old Man Hunley.

  “Hello, Mrs. Hunley,” I whispered to myself. “Maybe one of you knows something we don’t.”

  It turned out that I had the right idea. Maybe.

  “It’s horrible what happened to them,” she said in a thick New England accent, blowing smoke away from me. “I noticed something was off right away—didn’t I, Tom?” She smacked at her husband’s chest as he came to stand next to us.

  “Yes, Doris. You did,” he sighed, giving me a half-hearted smile.

  By the triumphant look on her face, she must have been pleased with his acknowledgement. “Exactly. I saw that cat that’s always staring over here prowling around early that morning. He seemed up to his usual, lying by the tree in there, reading a book. But then when I left to go to my spin class, I saw him again. It was so odd. He was pawing through our garbage! And let me tell you, that guy is persnickety about his food. I once tried to offer him some milk on a hot day—this was before the curse, of course—and he had the nerve to call me ignorant! How was I supposed to know it was rude to offer a familiar food in a bowl on the ground?” She shook her head, the towel in danger of tumbling off.

  I paused. “Do you know what time you saw him first?”

  Mrs. Hunley shrugged, folding her arms. “It was when Tom was leaving to go to work at the quarry. Maybe five-thirty?”

  Pulling my notepad and pen out, I asked her to repeat herself, and scribbled down both the time she first saw the cat and the second time. Nearly three hours had elapsed then, which at the very least, gave me a window to work with.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Hunley. I appreciate it,” I said, tucking everything back into my coat. “I’ll make sure we get a good shot of you, don’t worry.”

  An impish grin broke out across her heavily made-up face. “The left side is my good side. Oh, and please make sure to use natural lighting. My skin looks horrid under fluorescent.”

  “Sure thing.” I waved at the both of them and walked back to the truck. Under the guise of being here on duty, I might have told a little fib to Mrs. Hunley about getting her picture in the paper with her answers to my questions.

  A door to the left of me creaked open and I turned to see the woman everyone referred to as Crazy Rachel carefully coming down the steps.

  I didn’t even give myself the chance to deliberate—she was in a hurry, wherever she was going.

  “Hi! You must be Rachel,” I said warmly as I approached her. This woman was definitely easily spooked, and I didn’t want her to think I was accusing her of anything.

  She pushed a piece of graying hair behind her ear and adjusted her glasses. “I am.”

  “I’m Indie Warren, the editor of the paper?” I held out my hand for her to shake, but she looked warily at it as if it was going to bite her. I quickly withdrew it.

  “Okay. Nice to meet you.” She was eyeing the street past me, very obviously waiting for me to move.

  “We’re following the story that’s unfolding about the familiars in town, and I wanted to talk to you, if you have a moment.” Please give me just five minutes. Just five minutes.

  She hesitated, clutching her small purse to her chest. “I don’t know… I’m on my way out.”

  I nodded. “Totally understandable! It’ll only be a few minutes. You have my word.” I turned on the charm to the best of my capabilities, but when you have a resting witch face, it can be a tad difficult to pull it off.

  Rachel sighed, finally nodding. “Just a couple of minutes. I am rather busy.”

  I already had my notepad and pen ready to go. “Sure, of course. It won’t take long at all. To start off with, what’s your full name?”

  “Rachel Kowalski.”

  “Okay, great. You live here, correct? Sorry, I just want to make sure I get it right,” I quickly added, seeing the slight twinge of annoyance in her eyes.

  “I do, yes.”

  “Ms. Kowalski, I’m sure you’re aware of the situation with the familiars in town. How they’ve suddenly gone mundane. We’re just scoping out areas where they frequent, hoping someone will have seen something that might help us.”

  She nodded. “I did hear about that, yes. It’s been too quiet around here.”

  “I can imagine. Did you happen to notice anything odd the morning this happened? Maybe something that might not have seemed like a big deal at the time?”

  “I was inside that day with a migraine. That was actually how I first realized something was going on. It had gone quiet instead of the usual carrying on over there. The Coop can get quite noisy at times, though I don’t mind. It’s nice to have company nearby at least.” She sighed and the air of loneliness rolled off of her as clear as day.

  I wrote down a few points and smiled. “Okay. Do you know when you first witnessed the erratic behavior of the familiars? Or did you hear about it first?”

  “It was probably that evening. My migraine lasted all day, and when I went out to Ye Olde General Store that night, I saw one of the regulars at The Coop—a tortoise named Frank—stuck in the snow. It was odd of course because he knows better than to try and walk through it. But he just kept trying anyway. I asked him if he needed help but he didn’t say anything. And when I tried to help him, I think I scared the heck out of him. I knew something was wrong then.” She paused to pull her cap down over her ears more. “I really must be going now.”

  I nodded. The tortoise named Frank was a name I came across on the register. He was a newer entry, belonging with a water witch.

  “I think that’s good. If you remember anything else that might be of help, please let me know. Like I said, I’m the new editor at The Charming Springs Gazette. Is it all right if I add your quote to the article?”

  “Yes, I suppose. If you don’t mind, I’ll just be on my way…” she brushed past me, looking mildly embarrassed. She wasn’t the only one. I felt like I’d just nagged the poor woman.

  “Of course, that’s no problem…” I tra
iled off, watching her disappear down the block as quickly as she could.

  She was anxious, but just as I suspected, Rachel didn’t seem so crazy after all. Then again, the creepy stuffed squirrel was nowhere in sight, so that probably had something to do with it.

  I glanced down at my watch and groaned. It was nearly time to go get ready for work, so hunting down Goldie to discuss what I’d learned was going to have to wait.

  5

  “See ya, Dru,” I said, waving at her as I closed and locked the doors to the Gazette behind me.

  She flipped her long black hair over her shoulder and winked at me before leaving a trail of snow powder in her wake—her usual sign off.

  I was no sooner climbing into Big Ben, than Goldie came circling overhead. She dropped lower until she found a cleared bench to sit on.

  “How did things go with the Special Council?” I asked, giving her a knowing look. “You might as well hop in.”

  Goldie hated riding in vehicles, but it was much warmer than the alternative. “If you insist. Also… where are you going?”

  Technically my house was right outside of the Gazette, and normally I’d be walking to the camper after work, but I had different plans in mind.

  “Well first I was going to look for you,” I said with a smile. “So we can scratch that off the list. Then I was going to see if you wanted to come help me find Gallows.”

  She cocked a feathered eyebrow at me. “Why are you wanting to look for Gallows?”

  Wasn’t it obvious? “Isn’t the Special Council trying to find him? I thought they could use an extra pair of eyes.”

  “Oh. I suppose they wouldn’t mind. They’re still busy going through the register.”

  “I thought Ash had it?”

  She nodded. “He does, but they have their own version. Each power elder has a list of their current familial bonds, apparently.” The truck’s heater kicked in, startling her, but she cozied down in the passenger seat after a moment. “If I had to make a wild guess, Gallows is probably going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs in the forest, not far from his place.”