Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 1-3 Page 20

  “I thought I would come and…just…phew I’m really out of shape…I was thinking you don’t need that spell anyway…maybe just a nice herbal tea?” Kate wheezed.

  “Why shouldn’t I carry out the ceremony, Kate? Huh? Is it because you lost the spell book?” Effie sassed.

  “Whaaaaaaat?” Kate said, dragging out the word. “Nah, that would be, why that would be terrible!”

  “Where is it?”

  “Okay, look. I don’t know when it went missing but I went to get it a few months back and it wasn’t on the shelf. I looked everywhere and it was just gone. I didn’t want to get into trouble with you, and I figured it would show up eventually, so I didn’t mention it,” Kate said, trying to smile at her scowling sister.

  “Why would you be in trouble with me? What did you do?” Effie replied. “Kate!”

  “You won’t like it, so I’ll just blurt it out like ripping off a band aid, m’kay?” Kate grinned. “So about six months ago, or something like that, Max came round when you were out and said that he had left some of his stuff here. I just figured that he was telling the truth because, I dunno, why lie about it? Right? So he went into your room and left with a box of stuff and I saw that he had some CDs and a big pair of headphones and whatever.

  “My point being, he was taking his stuff, so no big deal. I didn’t mention it because I thought if you knew he’d been in the house you would go crazy and you haven’t wanted to hear his name out loud since y’all broke up, so I kept it to myself. At some point later that week I needed the book for a spell to fix a hang-nail. Long story short, I couldn’t find it and had to get my doctor to fix it. But now you know!” Kate smiled.

  “Hold up,” Effie said. “Let’s rewind. You are telling me that my ex-boyfriend came into this house, went into my room without supervision and then left with a big box of things around the same time you lost track of the book?”

  “It’s probably unrelated. Right, Sadie? The book is probably under a sofa cushion or something,” Kate said.

  “Kate!” Effie shrieked.

  “I know!” Kate said, throwing her hands up in the air. “I was hoping that I was wrong and that maybe it would just show up, but I think I accidentally let your boyfriend steal the family book. I would like you to know that I have felt bad about it ever since, if that helps.”

  “Dude, you know that doesn’t help. Why wouldn’t you just tell me? Why wouldn’t you have tried to get it back?” Effie exclaimed.

  “I was worried that you would be angry, which I now recognize is not as problematic as a human getting his hands on a book of dark magic. But hey, hindsight is always 20-20, am I right?” she chuckled in my direction.

  “We need to get that book back, Kate,” I said.

  “What if the clearing is something to do with page 89?” Effie asked. Kate suddenly looked very somber. What was on page 89?

  12

  There were probably multiple points over the thirty minutes that preceded this moment where I could have said something. Even a whimper of protest would have been useful. But no. I had followed Effie and Kate out of their house and all the way to the shrubbery in which we were now hiding.

  “Go over the plan again, because what is sounded like was that we were going to break into a man’s house,” I said. “You know I’m the peacekeeper, right? I don’t think it’s a good look for me to be flagrantly disregarding the law.”

  “First of all, no one is making you do anything,” Kate smirked. “Secondly, it is probably going to be a real pain in your butt if some random human is casting dark magic spells over the islands. This is a preventative break-in! This is happening in the name of law and order!”

  “I feel like that makes sense, which is what worries me. I think I’ve been hanging around with you two for too long,” I sulked.

  “Just imagine what Sheriff McHotty is going to say when he hears that you swooped in and saved everyone in Hallow Haven from a human with a death wish. He’s gonna be real pleased with that,” Effie said.

  “I know you are trying to butter me up, but I’m already hiding in a bush with you guys. Part of me is clearly convinced that this is a good idea,” I replied.

  I wondered how long we needed to stay knelt in the dirt. It didn’t look as though anyone was home, and the driveway was empty. We had been looking at the house and hadn’t seen any movement.

  “You guys are up to no good,” Greta mumbled as she appeared beside us. “No one hides in bushes if they are proud of themselves.”

  “What a bold claim,” Effie gasped. “I am proud of myself, always!”

  “Me too!” Kate exclaimed. “Plenty of strong, independent women hide in people’s yards. You are so judgmental!”

  “Greta has a point,” I laughed.

  “If you want to know if the house is empty then I could just float on in there and have a look. You are going to get eaten alive by mosquitoes if you stay out here much longer,” Greta said.

  “Yeah, you don’t even want to know how many mice are running around out here,” Fitz scoffed. I hadn’t noticed my talking cat familiar sneaking up on us, but now we were a crowd of three witches, one ghost and a talkative shifter. Someone would notice us soon, surely.

  “Greta, please check if the house is empty,” I instructed. “Fitz, just, stay still.”

  Greta drifted away from our hiding spot and through the walls of the house. Within a minute she poked her head back out and gave us a thumbs up. Effie ran round to the back door, lifted a rock up by a plant pot and found a spare key.

  I considered mentioning that she shouldn’t leave fingerprints on the key as we were technically doing something we shouldn’t, but then I remembered that Hallow Haven didn’t have a forensic science department. Unless someone caught us in the act, we would probably get away with it.

  “Just for the record, I will say it one more time. I think this is a bad idea,” I said, almost bragging as if I had the moral high ground. Both Effie and Kate laughed as they continued to break into Max’s house and I dutifully followed behind them. They sometimes treated me like I was a pesky younger sister, but as I had grown up as an only child, I liked it.

  The kitchen was different. It was every cliché of a kitchen for a single man. Empty containers from microwavable dinners lined the counters, six-packs of soda piled up beside the refrigerator and the whole place smelled vaguely of instant mac ‘n’ cheese.

  “Oh, poor baby,” Effie said, holding aloft a cereal box.

  “Do you remember that you don’t like him?” Kate prompted. I watched as Effie drifted between pity and rage.

  “He isn’t looking after himself, but it’s not my job to do it for him. I’m not his mother. But he needs me. But that’s just too bad! I wonder if he is taking any multi-vitamins?” Effie spluttered. Her mood swings were almost tripping over themselves as they took control of her. They had been broken up for a year though, right? If this guy couldn’t bring himself to prepare a meal properly then there’s probably some other stuff going on.

  “We’re looking for the book, Eff,” Kate said.

  “Yeah, I know,” Effie sighed. “Maybe I should whip up a quiche and leave it in his refrigerator.”

  “What a weird thing for a group of burglars to do?” I smiled. “Unless this guy keeps books in his kitchen, we should probably move on.”

  “Yeah, I have literally eaten out of bins and I wouldn’t touch a thing in this guy’s cupboards,” Fitz added.

  We walked through a doorway into a living room that also screamed ‘a bachelor lives here.’ The sofa was buried under dirty clothes that had possibly been on the way to a washing machine, but never made it. A few pizza boxes lined the floor, and the curtains were drawn still. It looked like he had left the place in a hurry.

  “I don’t want to say it, but…” I began.

  “What?” Effie asked.

  “Are we gonna find a dead body in this house?” Fitz interrupted. “I mean, could someone actually be living in such filth? It kind
a looks like he had a party last night and then never woke up to clean it.”

  “That wasn’t what I was going to say, but thanks,” I grumbled. “I was going to say, are we going to be able to find anything in here? If he had a book of dark spells, wouldn’t he have used one to tidy up the place?”

  “Sadie,” Greta laughed. “If you had ten million dollars, would your first thought be to buy a new vacuum cleaner? No! You would do something wild and exciting!”

  “She’s right,” Kate said. “If he does have our book then he’s hit the jackpot. It’s not like he would know which ones to avoid or which ones will bring terrible, terrible consequences…” she trailed off and it looked as if the color drained from her eyes for a second, leaving them as two orbs of white. She blinked and then smiled again. Weird.

  “I think it would be upstairs, I’ll go check,” Effie announced. Before any of us could suggest that she not go alone, she was halfway up the stairs.

  “I give her five minutes before she’s crying,” Kate mumbled. “Oh man, this place really takes me back.”

  “Have you spent much time here?” I asked.

  “The thing about living on a group of islands like this, you go all in. By that I mean, my sister starts dating a guy and then it’s suddenly the most interesting thing that is going on anywhere around. I hung out here all the time, I am a super annoying third wheel. You’ll figure that out for yourself when you and Miller become o-fish,” she laughed.

  “Huh?” I replied, tilting my head.

  “She means official. I think all the hair dye has burned through the scalp to the brain,” Greta sassed. “I remember when Effie and Max were together. Kate wasn’t the only third wheel, I would hang around with them too sometimes. Max used to throw these huge parties after his band would play a show. Everyone would be in this house until the sun came up.”

  “Maybe if he had gotten a little more sleep, the band wouldn’t have been such lousy performers,” Fitz said.

  “Someone is in a spicy mood today,” Kate said, tutting in Fitz’s direction.

  “I think we all know why,” he replied.

  “Do we?” Greta laughed. “Wait, this isn’t still about… Fitz, you can’t be serious.”

  “I can be, and I am,” he huffed.

  “What am I missing?” I said.

  “Oh, just a small matter of manners, Sadie. Manners and dignity,” Fitz replied, jumping up onto the sofa laundry pile to begin ranting. “Once upon a time I attended one of these ‘parties’.” He lifted his paws into the air to dramatically add the quote marks. “I brought a huge platter of corndogs to one of his parties and I didn’t get to eat a single one of them. He took the tray out of my hands and started passing them around as if they were his offerings!”

  “You brought food to a party and people at the party ate it, I can’t believe you are still annoyed about that,” Greta sighed.

  “Well, it’s the corndog thing and the fact that he once argued with me that the moon landings were fake and I just don’t have time for that nonsense in my life,” he grumbled.

  A sound of wailing sobs floated down the stairs and Kate grinned at me. “I should have put money on this,” she said as we all turned to run up in search of Effie. We found her lying on a double bed, her arms wrapped around a picture frame.

  Kate prized it out of her hands and turned it around to reveal that it was a framed picture of Effie and a man that I had to assume was her ex-boyfriend Max.

  “Why would he keep this if he didn’t still love me?” Effie cried.

  “Darling, he has trash all over the ground floor of this house. Clearly, he isn’t a big fan of keeping things organized. He probably just forgot to set the picture on fire,” Fitz answered. It wasn’t a helpful response and triggered another wail from Effie.

  “Get out of here furball,” Kate scolded. “Look, I know this is horrible and you are going through it at the minute, but if Max is using dark magic then people could be in danger. You know why we are looking for this thing, don’t you?”

  “P-p-p-page 89,” Effie sniffed.

  “What’s on page 89?” I asked.

  “You think he performed a ritual sacrifice?” Greta screeched. “Are you freaking kidding me!? Sadie, how have you allowed this to happen on your watch?”

  “I have no idea what is happening right now, so I don’t know if I should be getting the blame,” I said defensively.

  “So Ryder showed you a clearing, right?” Kate said. I nodded. “There was blood on a stone and blah blah, the whole thing looked fishy. As soon as you told us, we were both thinking ‘oh, this sounds like bad news.’ Add that to the murder of Jake Hall and then the fact that our book is missing…”

  “You think that Max killed Jake?” I said. “That’s… that’s a huge accusation and I—”

  “Not necessarily that he killed him, look, we just need to find the book,” Kate said.

  “Well, it’s right here,” Greta said, pointing at a desk that was littered with potato chips and screwed up balls of paper.

  Effie pushed past all of us and snatched the book off the desk. It was exactly as she had described it, down to the gold embossed shapes on the front of the black leather binding. She flicked through the pages and stopped at one that had been bent over as if bookmarked.

  “Is that…?” Kate asked.

  “Yep, page 89,” Effie replied. She had become pale and it looked as if the pink and purple color of her hair became suddenly less vibrant.

  “Can I see that?” I asked, holding out a hand.

  “Sure,” Effie replied, stretching out her hand to pass it to me. “Hold on, what’s that?”

  She was looking at my open palm. I brought my hand closer to my face to see what she was looking at. Blood. Why was there blood on my hand? I hadn’t cut myself. It made no sense.

  “Well aren’t we a bunch of dummies,” Kate snorted. She was laughing for some reason, which made me think that maybe something funny was going on. It wasn’t. “I saw Tim with a bunch of gasoline, and then we ran off on some crazy side quest looking for the book and getting all up into Max’s business. We didn’t even check Tim’s hands, but Sadie did.”

  “Did I?” I said, furrowing my brow.

  “You shook his hand. Part of the sacrifice ritual outlined on Page 89 of this book,” she said, pointing at the black leather, “is to create a demonic space for the ceremony. That includes fire and a drop of blood from the people looking to brew dark magic. You’ve seen how they do it in films, right? Press a blade into the inside of your hand and voilà!”

  “So Tim might have killed Jake?” I said. “I’m totally lost here.”

  “I think Kate and I need to think things over for a hot second. Maybe the pollen count is extra high today and is sending us both crazy, but at the minute we both seem to be accusing the men in our lives of being thieves and killers that are dabbling in the dark arts. Let’s take this book and go grab an iced tea at The Sand Witch,” Effie suggested.

  Greta vanished into thin air and Fitz bounded down the stairs ahead of Effie and Kate. I stood looking at the framed picture on the nightstand for a moment longer, before looking back at the desk. I picked up one of the screwed up balls of paper and unraveled it. Something about what was written on it reminded me of something, but what?

  13

  Sitting around a table with Effie and Kate made me feel like I was hanging with the cool kids in high school. We were drinking our iced teas in The Sand Witch, the café that I was the owner of, but still felt as though the two of them had seniority. Maybe it was because of the topic of our conversation.

  Rosie, one of the other witches that worked here, was operating the cash register and would occasionally join us when there was a lull in the line to pay. She didn’t have a clue what our current emergency was but liked to chime in with updates on her love life.

  “Anyway, he didn’t text me back right away and I figured he was asleep, right? It turns out…” Rosie began. She looked up
and saw three people waving their credit cards in the air and leapt out of her chair to see to them.

  “Is there not a more private place we could talk?” I asked. “My living room is less than thirty feet from here.”

  “Yes, but do you have endless supplies of caffeine at your house?” Kate said.

  “Well, we can get refills from the café and then speak freely about all this,” I replied, gesturing vaguely at the book in Effie’s hands.

  “Good point,” Kate nodded. We stood up to leave. My eye was caught by a man entering the café with a boyish grin and a sparkle in his eye. He spotted me and gestured for me to walk over. It was Oliver, a reporter for the island newspaper.

  “Morning to ya,” he sang in his gentle Irish accent. “Could I speak with you about something important? Maybe outside?”

  I looked over my shoulder and saw Effie and Kate stepping behind the café counter and making their way to the kitchen.

  “We’ll see you there!” Effie mouthed at me. They were taking the shortcut to my house through the kitchen door. I turned back to Oliver and wondered what information he was planning to press me for. So much was going on at the minute and I was quickly forgetting who knew what.

  I followed him out onto the sand, and he pulled out a Dictaphone from the pocket of his shorts and fiddled with the buttons.

  “What’s this about, Oliver?” I asked.

  “Well, where do I start? I suppose I’d love an update on the Battle of the Bands contest, I hear that you have been roped in to judge the competition as our very own peacekeeper celebrity!” he smiled.

  I let out an audible sigh of relief.

  “Oh that! Jeez, I thought you were going to ask me about Ja—”

  “Jake Hall?” Oliver interrupted. “I’m sure the readers would be thrilled to know that you and the police department are making progress with the hunt for the killer that is still at large on the island. Do you happen to know if there is more than one killer? Was it a group effort to break into The Guitar Yard?”