Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 1-3 Page 9

  “I’m not Fern, I’m Tara. How many times do I need to tell you?” the woman snorted.

  “How many times do I need to tell you to wear a name badge?” Effie hissed. This might be my cue to leave, or I should be stepping up as the owner of the café and resident peacekeeper to calm the situation. Effie, Tara and Fern all started laughing and I realized that this might just be the way that they communicate, slightly hostile but with tongue-in-cheek.

  “Could I take a sandwich to go?” I asked. “I feel like exploring.” Effie gave me a look as if I had just recalled Pi to fourteen decimal places, awestruck and proud.

  “Of course, you should always follow your gut,” she beamed, hurrying out of the kitchen to the front of the café. I was standing alone with Tara and Fern now; they had taken themselves back to work and were performing an intricate ballet around each other as they threw various herbs into a large pot. The cook in me knew they were making a casserole, the new witch in me suspected some other concoction.

  “Do you want to be our taste tester?” one of them asked. They had moved around so much that I couldn’t remember who was who.

  “Err, do I want to be your taste tester?” I grinned. This prompted loud belly laughs from the pair of them.

  “Just a taco casserole, nothing sinister today.” I walked over to grab a spoon from a pot of utensils and scooped up a mouthful. Before it had even touched my lips, I could tell it was going to be good, the smell of the spices made my mouth water.

  I closed my eyes as the flavors played on my tongue. Even if it turned out to be a sinister witch’s brew, I would probably go back for seconds. “Hey, don’t ruin your appetite,” Effie scolded from the doorway. Tara and Fern seemed pleased by my reaction and hopefully that was enough to put me in their good books.

  Effie handed me a paper bag that was weighted with food she had prepared for my impromptu wanderer’s picnic. “Where are you feeling drawn to?” she asked.

  “Just the sand,” I replied. I didn’t mention that I wanted to follow the route that the wolf and Simon had taken when they ran away from my house.

  “Well, if you feel pulled in any direction just follow it. I remember when I would get the first bursts of witch instinct and it made me feel like a superhero, walking in some random direction until I found whatever the universe wanted me to find. I once found Kate’s headphones a full eight months after she lost them on a hike!”

  Effie wanted this to be intuition, but I suspected I was just being nosey. I didn’t know who to turn to now that the boat logs were pointing away from Simon. I was sure I had seen him outside my house, but no one would believe me unless the boat logs confirmed it, which they didn’t. I was also wrestling with the werewolf encounter. Maybe there was some evidence that it all really happened out on the sand, proof that I wasn’t inventing my reality.

  With an encouraging pat on the shoulder from Effie, I was walking along the golden beach. The water seemed calm, the turquoise ocean rolling gently onto the shore and reeling back again, over and over. I walked around the cafe, past the window of my living room where Simon had been stood the night before and continued in the direction of the marina.

  There was no one at the marina. The silence was only punctured by the gentle bobbing of the boats on the water and my feet shuffling along the beach. I didn’t feel like stopping, whatever I was being pulled towards wasn’t near these boats. If I thought that Simon and the wolf had made a great escape, it wasn’t from here. I walked further along the sand towards a cluster of cliffs that, from the base, were far enough away from my house that I couldn’t see it anymore. I must have turned a corner.

  There was a number of huge boulders near the base of the cliff. It looked as though huge chunks of the rock had slipped away and plummeted down to earth. For some reason I decided that this was the perfect spot to eat lunch.

  I sat on a rock that was flat enough that I could spread my food across it like a table, laying down a few serviettes first and arranging my sandwich, drink and cookie as if I was putting on a low-budget dinner party.

  As I started to eat, I turned my head to gaze out at the ocean. I could never have done this on a lunch break back home, not without driving for an hour or two first. Even then the beach would be flooded with tourists.

  I turned back to the rock pile I was sitting on, expecting to see a rock pool or two. Instead my eye was caught by a set of keys that were shining under sunlight. I reached over to grab them before straightening up to inspect my treasure.

  I put the last bite of sandwich into my mouth to free up my hands enough to explore properly. Turning them over, holding the jagged edged up to the sky and then finally reaching into my own pocket.

  The keys I had found by these rocks was identical to the set of keys I had been given for the café and the house. Someone had a set of keys to my home and had dropped them by this cliff. On the assumption that werewolves don’t use keys, these had to belong to the other living thing that was creeping about in the dark.

  Simon.

  Had this been the reason I felt the urge to go walking up the beach, to find these keys? There was something about this pile of rocks that was still holding my attention and I continued to eat my lunch as I stared at them, hoping inspiration would strike so that I wasn’t standing here for hours.

  I wondered if a set of keys wasn’t the only treasure here, maybe there were other things that had been dropped when people climbed over them. With my drink in my hand, I tried to shove one of the larger rocks aside, painfully slamming my shoulder against a solid surface that didn’t budge.

  I scrambled up and over a few, seeing wet sand on unusual parts of the rock as if it had been poured on from above... or the rock had been rolled over. There was no way this quantity was just from sand that had fallen loose from shoes walking over the pile, these rocks had been moved and then put back.

  I searched my brain for another explanation, but for some reason I couldn’t think of anything else that made sense.

  Was there some super-strong weightlifting key thief rolling enormous rocks around the beach for fun? Or maybe there was something behind these rocks, a hiding place or an escape route. I knew that I couldn’t move any of this alone, unless Effie taught me how to do it.

  I was still getting by with the ability to transform my empty hand into holding a cookie. Speaking of cookies, I had one waiting for me on my picnic rock.

  As soon as I bit into it, I knew there was a problem. A pain at the back of my mouth radiated through my jaw towards my ear, an unexpectedly hard nut had been buried in the cookie dough and I’d injured myself. I cupped my face and gathered up my trash before beginning the jog back towards the café.

  I tried to maintain an Effie-like attitude that these things all happened for a reason, but I couldn’t see why an emergency dental appointment would be a necessary part of my week.

  Turns out I was wrong.

  15

  “Miss Alden?” the receptionist announced to the waiting room. I raised my hand like a school student, and she waved me through. The café was almost at maximum capacity and so Effie had given me the directions for the dentist’s office, and I had hurried here alone. I hadn’t mentioned the keys that I had found by the rocks, but then again, I could barely speak without the pain shooting across my cheek.

  I followed the corridor to the room with the open door and just assumed that it was where I was supposed to go. I just wanted pain relief; I didn’t care which dentist gave it to me.

  “Hi! What a pleasure to meet you, I’m Dr. Barrow. Please, take a seat! You know, I had heard we had a new member of the Alden family on the island, but I wasn’t expecting them to walk through my door today. It reminds me of a time...”

  “My tooth,” I whimpered. It’s one of the rare anomalies that catch you off guard, a talkative dentist. Either he has his hands in my mouth so I can’t respond, or my face is numb, or I’m in so much pain that I haven’t the patience to hear him out.

  “Oh yea
h, sorry. I’m a people person and most people come in here not wanting to speak, or they hate dentists. I think I might be lonely. Hey, a problem for another time, let’s have a look at those teeth,” he smiled. I did not need my medical professional to be having an existential crisis right now, but I doubted there were any other dentists to choose from on the island.

  I lay on the chair, a dental assistant appeared out of nowhere and handed me a pair of glasses to shield my eyes from the examination light overhead, and Dr. Barrow leaned over my face to look at the problem.

  “That looks painful,” he mumbled. I made a nasal sound in agreement. “I will need to numb the area and then it shouldn’t take more than two minutes for the extraction.” Extraction? I was suddenly in the mood for a general anesthetic. I braced for the injection, then prepared myself with a playlist of songs on my mind’s jukebox so that I could focus on those instead of the sound of medical instruments.

  Nothing was clanging on a metal tray. I hadn’t had an extraction before, so my heart was racing, but I figured that they would need equipment, right? I moved my tongue around my mouth, pressing it against my cheek and soft palette to see if the numbing had taken effect, I couldn’t feel a thing.

  “I am right in thinking you were raised without magic?” he asked. I nodded. “Okay, so you won’t have seen a cool dentist before then?” he chuckled. “Can you feel this?” He poked my cheek with his finger, and I felt the urge to smile, but physically couldn’t. I’d had dental anesthetic before, and this wasn’t usually how they confirmed that it had kicked in.

  “What are you doing?” I tried to ask, but with the plastic thing in my mouth propping my jaw open it came out like a strange noise.

  “You need a wisdom tooth out due to, what I’m assuming was, a nut incident,” he said. He held his palm in front of my face, fingers spread as if he was shielding my eyes from the sun. A second or two later, he was holding the tooth and smiling at me with a child-like enthusiasm. “I can move objects effortlessly and I’m a dentist! Is that the perfect combo or what? I’ve also wriggled a sesame seed free from one of your teeth too!”

  The dental assistant helped me sit up, and I turned to face Dr. Barrow in amazement at the speed of my treatment. The anesthetic had removed the pain already, but I felt sure that I wouldn't have pain once it wore off.

  “You’re a witch too?” I asked.

  “Yeah! Fun, isn’t it? I used to just use my magic to clean my bedroom as a kid, then I figured dentistry was the way to go. I am probably the most popular dentist on the planet, I mean, people still don’t talk to me much in here, but they aren’t scared of me!” he beamed.

  “How big of an object can you move?”

  “Is this about Greta?” he replied, leaning forward on his spinning chair in anticipation of some juicy gossip.

  “I can’t confirm or deny it,” I teased. I didn’t think it had anything to do with Greta, but if he was able to move objects regardless of their size, weight or location then maybe he could move those boulders on the beach.

  “Sandy, cancel all my patients! I’m out of office on official peacekeeper business!” I hadn’t actually asked him to come with me, or that I had any plans for his object-moving skills, but apparently, I didn’t need to because he had invited himself along anyway.

  He removed his gloves, held out his hand to help me hop out of the examination chair and guided me through to the reception area as if he were demonstrating the trotting skills of a show pony. I couldn’t help but smile, or at least think about it, my facial muscles weren’t moving yet.

  “What do you think of the place so far? Have you eaten any of the seafood here yet? I personally wouldn’t touch calamari with a ten-foot pole, but some people are really into it. Same with prawns for me, and clams... I don’t actually think I like seafood at all, I always order French fries in those places and...” Dr. Barrow rambled on and on.

  Greta appeared and caught us both off guard, we were towards the end of the main street now, the café was in sight. I wasn’t sure if everyone knew about ghosts, or if everyone could even see them. Greta seemed unconcerned with Dr. Barrow staring at her.

  “Fitz, really? Have you been doing this the entire time I’ve been dead?” she asked. My frown lines deepened as I stared curiously at the ghost of my cousin. She was talking to my dentist.

  “You always tell me to make myself useful!” he replied. What was going on? “I’m not doing anything illegal; I earned my qualifications same as everyone else. I don’t see why it should be a problem just because I’m a shifter.”

  “Shifter?” I interrupted. I felt the need to re-insert myself into the conversation as I was clearly missing key pieces of information.

  “Fitz is my familiar. I don’t know what I did in a past life to be assigned a shifter familiar, but now he’s yours and I suggest you make your peace with it fast because it won’t be changing anytime soon,” Greta moaned. I looked back at Dr. Barrow and he was staring, un-blinkingly at a passing butterfly. I stared a little closer at his eyes, the pupils fully dilated like a cat stalking prey.

  “What’s a familiar? What’s a shifter? What...?” I floundered.

  “Fitz is only in this human form by choice, he is usually a cat and I have caught him in pigeon form at least twice. He won’t admit it, but I know what I saw,” Great smiled. “A familiar is like an assistant for witches. I read somewhere that familiars are actually low-ranking demons, so keep that in mind,” she laughed.

  “How does- but he’s a dentist, how can he? With the? What?”

  “He has powers of his own, but he is bound to you through an unbreakable bond. Now that you have met, your fates are linked. Clearly when I died, he decided to abandon the cat life and just live as a dentist, hopefully now you are here he can go back to doing what he does best,” Greta said, making a coughing sound to get Fitz’s attention.

  “Huh?” he said, turning his face away from the butterfly but with his eyes still darting back to check on its location.

  “I was just saying, you can get back to being a familiar now,” Greta said.

  “Okay, well I have part-time hours at the dental office due to an agreement with the other dentist who is a friend of mine. That means I can help you out with your witch stuff, but I have other stuff going on as well,” he explained.

  “That sounds reasonable,” I agreed.

  “You’re a pushover,” Greta laughed. “I assume you are heading on down to the rocks again.”

  “How did you know?” I asked, beginning to walk in the direction of the boulders with Fitz skuttling along behind me.

  “I saw you earlier, I was wandering around by the marina and spotted you having a picnic there. You ran away cupping your face and I knew that the stars had acted to bring you and Fitz together, it was only a matter of time. Something about those rocks required the two of you to meet,” she said.

  We walked closer to the water to give the café a wide berth, Greta told me tales of familiar history and how in the old times familiars could be animals or imps. I couldn’t decide if she was embellishing for dramatic effect, or if I was now supposed to believe that imps were real.

  Dr. Barrow, or Fitz as I guess I was now supposed to call him, was making sure his feet didn’t get wet. I was carrying my shoes and letting the gentle waves lap at my ankles, but he wanted no part of it. By the time we reached the rocks, we had passed multiple groups of people bathing in the sunlight on brightly colored towels and they didn’t seem to notice, or care, that there was a ghost floating along beside me. They mustn’t be able to see her.

  “Here?” Fitz asked. He jumped up on to the rocks. Somewhere mid-leap, his human form morphed into a black cat’s body. I hadn’t seen the transformation as I had been looking at the cliffs, but a human had left the ground and a cat had landed.

  His ability to speak wasn’t inhibited by his new cat body. No one could see us now, so he began to use more of his magic to lift up the rocks, allowing them to rise above the ground b
efore placing them down softly on the sand.

  My biceps started to ache slightly, as if I were lifting something heavy. It was only a slight, dull ache but it seemed worth mentioning. Greta anticipated what I was about to say.

  “Your magic is connected,” she said. “He uses his magic to move something and you share the load. When we put these rocks here in the first place my arms were burning for days.”

  “You put them here? Why?” I asked. The more rocks that Fitz moved, the more of the cave behind them I could see. It seemed to twist downwards.

  “There is a tunnel system that connects the islands. I shut it down because the Davick’s and the Conerty’s were using it as a battlefield. Honestly, they all need their heads banging together. I figured if there was no sneaky way to get from one island to another then some of the fighting would stop. The boats are monitored, but the arguments continued.

  “Peacekeepers can go anywhere they like, but the outer islands are very particular about who else can visit them. I thought this pile of boulders would be the best solution for everyone. As far as I knew, no one had the ability to move these rocks except Fitz.”

  I told her about finding the keys and the incident with the wolf and Simon. I told her that they ran this way.

  “Simon Davick,” she sighed. The look on her face seemed to be one of disappointment, as if she and Simon had been close and the thought that he might be her killer was too much to handle. Fitz finished moving the rocks and the cave was now on full display. Did that mean that the werewolf was living down there too?

  16

  Fitz stayed in his cat form as we headed back to the house. He wasn’t talking much now, just leaping dramatically over wet patches of sand, bouncing high into the air and landing gracefully. Greta had decided to leave the caves open. The rock barrier clearly wasn’t stopping people from using the tunnels, so she told Fitz to leave the boulders where they were.

  I heard the rumble of an engine and looked up to see a small plane in the distance headed towards the island. I wondered who was on board. A brief moment of panic, or possibly excitement, rose up as I considered that maybe my ex-boyfriend had tracked me down. Did I want him to do that though? It always seemed so romantic in movies, but in reality, it was an incredibly creepy thing to do.