Missing in Jinx Cove

by Savannah Mae

  Bea backed away from the door. “Do you want to help me look? You take one room, I’ll check another. We’ll get done faster that way.” She glanced out the door. “Wait a minute. Calliope’s car is gone.”

  “I didn’t see Lyra’s car either,” Melanie said. “Penelope, would you mind checking in the garage?”

  “I’m on it. I’ll meet you inside in two minutes,” she said as she scurried off to look for the missing vehicles.

  Everyone went in different directions.

  Melanie followed Bea, who’d stopped to wake Juliana up.

  “Hey! Get up.” Bea nudged the bed. “Where’s Mom?”

  Juliana grabbed the pillow and placed it over her eyes. “Go away. I’m asleep.”

  “No, you’re not. This is important.” She yanked the pillow off her and threw it across the room. “Where is everyone? We can’t find Mom or the sisters.”

  “How am I supposed to know? I was asleep.” She forced herself up into a seated position. “Wait a minute. How did we get here? Where’s Mom?”

  Bea threw her hands up in frustration. “That’s what I just asked you! Where’s Mom?”

  She fell back on the bed. “I’m so confused. I’m tired, stuck in a creepy house, far away from the man I love, and—"

  They left Juliana to whine alone and knocked on Calliope’s bedroom door.

  “Calliope? Are you there? Sorry to bother you, but there are some people here to see you.” Bea pointed to a door down the hall. “Do you want to check Lyra’s room?” She opened the door. Her shoulders slumped at the sight of an untouched bed.

  Melanie knocked on the other door. “I don’t hear anything. Did someone check Calypso’s room? She sleeps with earplugs in, so you might have to knock hard. And don’t let her chase you away. She likes to yell but ignore it because she doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s all talk.”

  Juliana stepped out of the room. “Will someone tell me what’s going on? How did we get here? I can’t remember. Did we get drunk?”

  Ben and Penelope ran up the stairs. He paused at the sight of Juliana.

  She wore a pink tank top and snug white pajama shorts.

  “Um. Hi! I … You …” Somewhere between hello and help us search, he lost the ability to speak without drooling.

  Juliana froze in place, her fiery red hair tousled and covering one eye. “Hello, there. Are you here to see me?”

  He swallowed hard. “Sorry about all this, but we haven’t been able to get in touch with Calypso or her sisters,” he explained as he made it desperately obvious he most definitely wasn’t looking at her shapely legs or her swimsuit cover model hair.

  Bea shot a glare at her. “Do you ever quit? He said there’s an emergency. For once in your life, can you focus?”

  “What’s your problem? If you don’t like my clothes, maybe you shouldn’t wake me up in the middle of the night,” she shot back.

  Consuelo peeked out of her room. “Enough,” she interjected before the two got out of control. “It’s all my fault. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at me.”

  Melanie and Ben locked eyes.

  “Wait a minute. You’re here?” Melanie asked.

  Consuelo cast her eyes on the ground. “Yes.”

  “But I thought they took you to the hospital?” Melanie asked.

  She nodded. “They did.”

  “Okay, so where’s everyone else?” Ben asked.

  Bea and Juliana seemed just as shocked by her presence.

  “What did you do?” Bea asked.

  Consuelo opened her mouth to respond, but Bea interrupted her.

  “No, don’t. I already know. How could you? You promised you wouldn’t,” Bea said.

  “I had to,” Consuelo explained. “I couldn’t spend the night in the hospital. That would’ve ruined our plans.”

  “What plans?” Ben asked.

  Penelope didn’t give her a moment to respond. “Where are the Jinx sisters? What did you do to them?” She clasped her hands together and closed her eyes. “You won’t get away with this.”

  Ben swung around to face her. “What are you doing?”

  She opened her eyes. “Praying.”

  “Now?” He shook his head. “We don’t have time for prayers. We need to find out what happened.” He turned his gaze on Consuelo. “Look, I don’t care what you do to your daughters. They’re not my problem. All we want is to know where Calypso and her sisters are. If you know what happened, tell us.” He moved out of the way of the stairs. “You can leave. We won’t say a word to anyone as long as you return them unharmed.”

  “I can explain,” she said.

  Melanie couldn’t contain her anger. “Oh, really? Now you want to explain? Here, I thought, you were innocent and didn’t know anything. I gave you the benefit of the doubt.”

  Juliana interrupted her, “We didn’t. When we got the phone call from the hospital, our lives flashed before our eyes.” Her eyes welled with tears. “I swear, we didn’t do anything to those women.”

  “What happened at the coffee shop?” Ben asked.

  Consuelo swallowed hard. “I don’t know exactly. One minute, they were there. The next minute, we were knocked out.”

  “We?” Penelope asked.

  She nodded. “Yes. There were two police officers there too.”

  “Yeah, we saw them,” Melanie said.

  “No. There were two officers inside with us. They were passed out on the floor.”

  Melanie gasped.

  “Why?” Ben asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain it. I think someone put a spell on us, but I’m not sure.”

  “Then, you put a spell on your daughters, so you could come back and go to bed?” Melanie wanted to scream.

  She shook her head. “No. I put a spell on them to get out of staying in the hospital. They went to sleep. I was busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  She looked away. “Thinking.”

  “About?” Melanie asked.

  “The mess we’re in,” she answered.

  “You cast a spell on us to get out of a hospital stay? Okay. How did you get us here?” Bea asked.

  She smiled. “I had a little help.”

  “From?” Bea asked.

  Her eyes lit up. “The handsome man who rescued you girls. What was his name again? Tony?”

  “Anthony,” Melanie said. “Where did you see him?”

  “He was at the hospital,” she said. “He’s such a nice guy. I can’t believe he’s single. He said he saw the paramedics load me onto the ambulance, so he followed us to the hospital to make sure I was okay.”

  Melanie and Ben exchanged glances.

  “Yeah, what a nice guy,” Ben mumbled. “Someone should thank him for his heroic acts.”

  Consuelo asked, “What? You don’t like him?”

  Ben shook his head. “Not even a little bit. Ask Mel how well we get along.”

  Melanie had a faraway look on her face. She didn’t even hear what Ben had said.

  “Isn’t Anthony the best?” Ben’s words were laced with sarcasm.

  “Stop,” Penelope said. “Let me get this straight. You were with Calypso and her sisters at the shop in the middle of the night? Why?”

  Consuelo gulped.

  “Mom?” Bea urged. “We’re already in deep, you might as well tell them everything.”

  Juliana crossed her arms in front of her. “You have five seconds to come clean before I tell them your whole life story, the good, the bad, and the oh-so-ugly.”

  Melanie jumped back into the conversation. “We know already. You’re witches. Fine. So am I, but what does that have to do with any of this? Where are the Jinx sisters?”

  Consuelo locked eyes with Melanie. “I think they’ve been kidnapped.”

  Chapter 28: The Montoya Sisters

  While my mother tried to talk Ben and Melanie off the shaky edge of a monumental freak-out, Juliana and I went into the room to get dressed and come up with a
solid plan to locate the Jinx women and prepare for our father’s impending arrival.

  “Did you see the looks on their faces? They think we’re horrible people,” I said.

  Juliana stood in front of the mirror, trying to decide between wearing an off-the-shoulder blouse and mini-skirt combo or a slinky red catsuit with black stiletto boots, or as she liked to call them, her ‘comfy shoes’.

  “Which do you think looks better on me?” She giggled. “Forget it. They both look great on me. I’ll wear the skirt because I shaved my legs this morning and no one wants to waste a good leg day.”

  “Put a paper bag over your head. No one will notice. In case you missed it, we’re in the middle of a major crisis and it’s all your fault.”

  She had the gall to look offended. “How is any of this my fault? I was with you all night. I didn’t lose the creepy triplets.”

  “Two things. They’re not creepy and they’re not triplets. Did you hear what I said? Melanie and Ben think we’re nuts,” I said. “I can’t believe Mom cast a spell on us.”

  Juliana applied a thick line of liquid eyeliner with one hand and pink lip gloss with the other. “I don’t even want to begin to ask what else she’s done to us.” She assessed her reflection. “What do you think the deal is with Anthony and Melanie? Did you see the look on her face when Mom mentioned his name? There’s bad blood there.”

  “Lower your voices. I don’t go around casting spells on you for sport. I only do it out of necessity,” my mother said as she walked by the room. “Hurry up. You don’t need to put on a fashion show. This is business.”

  I gave Juliana the side eye. “See. I told you not to bother with all the décolletage. We have to make this right before Mom’s ingenious plan backfires on us.”

  Juliana managed to slip into the skirt and blouse with the use of only one arm while she brushed out her hair with the other. “I bet they had a bad breakup. Anyway, that spell Mom put us under could’ve come in handy when I was in high school.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You may have been dropped off at high school, but as I recall, you never made it inside the building. Can we please not make this about you?”

  After we were dressed, we headed downstairs.

  “How do you want to do this? Do we go after Ben and his entourage?” I asked. “I can’t blame them for leaving. They must think we’re freaks.”

  “They didn’t leave. They’re in the living room,” my mother said. “Let me do the talking.”

  Juliana hobbled down the stairs with one shoe on and the other hanging out of her mouth by a flimsy strap. “Is everyone alive?” she asked through clenched teeth.

  “For now,” I said as I watched her try to navigate the last few steps.

  “What does that mean?” She came to dead stop when she saw that they’d returned.

  “Surprise,” I mumbled.

  She used the banister as leverage and slipped her shoe on her foot. “So, they’re not mad at us anymore? We’re all good? I can go back to bed?”

  My mother peered around the corner. “Do you have something more important to do tonight? I’m sure I can find plenty of fun and interesting things to occupy your time.”

  Juliana and I exchanged glances.

  Juliana said, “I’ll sit on the chaise. Do you want to sit with me, Bea?”

  I couldn’t sit down fast enough.

  Penelope leaned forward, her eyebrows furrowed, “Who took them?”

  My mother took a long, slow breath before addressing her question with the worst possible response she could’ve given, “I don’t know.”

  “Weren’t you with them?” Penelope looked at her son. “What do you mean you don’t know?” She rose to her feet. “I don’t want to point fingers, but when something doesn’t smell right, I must. What happened at Abracajava? Were you involved?”

  Melanie clutched her phone, her fingers ready to dial at a moment’s notice.

  Ben hadn’t taken his eyes off Consuelo since she’d entered the room. “Why didn’t they take you?”

  My mother swallowed hard, seemingly thrown off balance by his questions.

  “Tell us where they are,” Melanie pleaded with her.

  Ben and I exchanged glances.

  “I know something,” I said.

  Juliana gasped. “You do?”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “Yes, I do.” I glanced at my mother. She offered a grin and a nod. “You see, our mother went to help the Jinx sisters cook up a concoction to help us find who kidnapped us. They planned to spike some homemade cookies with a truth spell and have us pass them out to everyone in town.” I giggled at the absurdity of it. We willingly went along with the plan as if it was normal.

  “We know about the plan? We were on our way to the coffee shop to help,” Melanie said.

  My mother continued, “When they walked in, they discovered it had been ransacked. Calypso threw a fit and … It all happened so fast. I can’t remember the exact timeline, but suffice it to say, the police officers were knocked out cold and the sisters disappeared.”

  Ben nearly choked on his tongue. “They couldn’t have vanished into thin air.”

  “They did,” I said. “I don’t know how to say this to you, but this sometimes happens to people like us.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because of jealousy, anger, spite. This might all come as a surprise, but not all witches get along,” Juliana explained.

  The look Ben gave her sparked laughter from everyone around the room.

  Melanie dead-panned, “Sure. We all knew that, didn’t we? I think they teach that in elementary school these days.”

  The sarcasm went right over Juliana’s head. “Oh, do they? That’s so cool. We went to elementary school in L.A. and they never taught us anything about that. We spent most of our time trying to hide who our mother was. You have no idea what it’s like to live with an-”

  Melanie interjected, “An actress?”

  “No,” Juliana said. “An Oscar-winning actress.”

  “Is there a difference?” Ben asked.

  She and Melanie exchanged eye rolls.

  “No. Don’t you get it? Everyone in L.A. is an actor or actress but only a select few are Oscar winners. People hated us for that. And when she won twice, life got worse. Imagine if we would’ve told them our father won Oscars too. They would’ve run us out of town.”

  Penelope groaned, “What does any of this have to do with anything? What are you blabbering about? No one cares about what you did or didn’t learn in Los Angeles. As a matter of fact, if I hear another person mention that wretched city, I’ll come up with my own spell to cast on all of you.”

  Melanie couldn’t take it any longer either. Her face turned red as she held her breath and waited for the meandering conversation to find its way home.

  “Mel?” Ben nudged her arm. “Are you okay?”

  She shook her head, her lips pursed tight.

  “Do you want to sit down?” he asked.

  She shook her head again, this time, slowly.

  “Okay. How about a drink? Would you like a drink? I’m sure Calypso has a bottle of wine or two tucked away for emergencies somewhere in the house.”

  Melanie didn’t respond to his inside joke.

  “Take a deep breath,” he suggested.

  She let out a loud sigh before turning her wrath on us. “You did something to them and I want to know what and why or someone will-”

  Ben cut her off. “No threats.” He held a hand up in the air to block her scathing stare from view. “Enough. I don’t care about the spell you put on your daughters. I don’t care what happened at the hospital. I really don’t care about any conversation you had with Anthony. All we want to know is where Calypso and her sisters are. Can you tell us anything about what happened?”

  My mother glanced at all of us and said, “If I tell you what I think, will you promise not to do as I say?”

  “What is that supposed to mean? Why do we have to do as you
say?” Melanie asked.

  She gulped before offering an explanation, “You see, like I told my girls, I have a plan, but it won’t work unless everyone is in agreement.”

  “Can we stop this? This is a waste of time. It’s settled. We’ll work together. Fine. But, first, you have to tell us everything. Did you hear anything? Did you see anything? Do you know if they have enemies?” Melanie asked.

  “Calypso probably does,” we all said at the same time.

  “Which one of her enemies would kidnap them?” Melanie asked. She looked at Ben. “Can you think of anyone she’s mentioned lately – besides present company?” She nodded in our direction.

  He shook his head. “I can’t keep up with who the enemy of the week is. I don’t know.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “Let’s take a step back. I think we’ve gone too far. Are we sure they were kidnapped? Maybe they’re off on a secret mission or they got tired of life here and left town for a while.”

  “They’re almost eighty-years-old. They’re not spies and they’re definitely not going to up and leave their lives. They have a home, two businesses, friends.” She snorted, “Okay, so, maybe not friends, but enough acquaintances to have some semblance of a social life. They wouldn’t run away without telling someone. Something had to have gone wrong. No matter what it is, they need our help,” Melanie said.

  Juliana asked, “Why didn’t they use their skills to stop this? How do witches get themselves kidnapped? Obviously, they must not be very good at what they do if they allowed that to happen to them.”

  She didn’t see the irony in her sentiment. Someone had to point it out to her. It might as well have been me.

  I smacked the back of her head. “We’re witches and we were kidnapped.”

  She moved out of my reach. “I know, but this is different. They have like sixty years on us. Shouldn’t their abilities be stronger than ours? Shouldn’t they know how to get themselves out of a situation before it turns bad?”

  My mother shook her head. “That depends on many factors. Factors we might never understand unless we were in their situation. There are spells that can incapacitate people, but you have to know what you’re doing. There’s no willy-nillying your way through that kind of spell. It’s all hands on deck and everyone ready to clean up the mess should it implode on you.”