A Cold Case in Spell Read online

  “I could see that. No, really! You live in the woods instead of in town with the rest of them. You take me—the obvious town disgrace—in and want to teach me how to do magic even though I could be a killer. Or at least if you’re inclined to believe the police.”

  “No one believe most of what comes out of Chief Putnam’s mouth, so there’s no need to worry about that,” she said, waving me off. “The only reason he’s still Chief is because the next person in line won’t challenge him.”

  “His son?”

  “Yes. I’m sure you can see the conflict of interest involved. Anyway, I’m not interested in talking about them, either. There are some much bigger questions here.”

  I leaned back. There were but I was enjoying the non life-changing talk better. “I guess there are.”

  She drained her tea and smacked her hand down on her thigh. “We better get to it then. The sooner we figure out what power you’re working with, the better.”

  I didn’t want to admit that I still didn’t think I was a witch, especially not to her, so I nodded along.

  “Would you mind helping me push everything back?” Fatima pulled two of the chairs away from the round table in the middle of the cottage. “I like you and all, but I really want to keep my furniture in good shape.”

  I hopped up, careful not to spill anything. “Sure, of course.”

  We got the area around the table cleared out, Fatima explaining that we were going to need some space in order to work. “We’re calling upon your power and that can take any number of shapes. At best, it could be a small breeze.”

  I bit my lip. “At worst…?”

  Her brown eyes darkened. “A blaze takes out my home and all they find are our ashes.”

  “Uh…”

  “Just kidding.” A sly smile played on her face.

  “You have a very morbid sense of humor,” I noted.

  “Absolutely. I hear it’s one of my best features.”

  It didn’t matter that I’d only met Fatima less than a week ago. She had just cemented her place as my favorite person in Charming Springs.

  We stood on opposite ends of the round table, Fatima lighting a candle facing each cardinal direction. There was small bowl of water in front of the west candle, a lit incense with a thin wisp of jasmine smoke rising up in front of the east candle, a pile of sand in front of the north candle, and in front of the south candle was a smaller red candle with an unlit wick.

  “Now. What I need for you to do is to take your hands and place them on this center ring right here. Do you see the medallion in the middle?” She pointed to the smallest ring inside of four other rings that spanned across the table. Runes were painted in red in a language I didn’t understand.

  I nodded and slid my hands between the sand and the water.

  Underneath my skin the runes began to glow. I gasped and ran my fingers over them. “What do they mean?”

  “They mean that the elements are balanced in nature as all things should be. We need to find what balances you.” There was a somber look on her face as it glowed in the candlelight. “Keep quiet while I speak the incantations, okay? After, you may feel very tired and that’s normal. Don’t worry.”

  I quickly nodded and she began. The rest of the runes on the tabletop glowed in bright red as she waved her hands over the flames of the candles, speaking in another language. The words Fatima spoke were beautiful, but I could only guess at what she was saying as each candle’s flame grew higher.

  Water. Fire. Air. Earth.

  The flames died down over each of them after a moment until they were all flickering normally.

  Fatima kept going, speaking directly to me this time. “Now, concentrate on the bowl of water, Indie. Imagine it is a clear solid substance, fully in your control. You can make it into any shape, it listens to you and bends to your will.”

  “Wait… okay.” I concentrated on it, watching the ripple in the water from the flame’s reflection. In my mind’s eye the water turned into a fountain, pouring water forth. I imagined the bubbling sound of it, the splashing and distorting of the water’s surface.

  But in reality, nothing was happening. I squinted, trying again. I imagined it as snow, ice, vapor… but nothing worked.

  “Guess that’s a no on water,” I mumbled as Fatima waved a hand over the water candle and the flame went out.

  “We keep going,” she said, nodding to the south candle. “Fire is the most unstable element of all. It is not easy to handle, much less tame.” She sighed. “The smaller candle. Imagine the embers along the wick, rising into a flickering flame. The flame is not flickering at random but is moving to a rhythm. You can create a new rhythm in your mind, and it will move as you command it. Make it weave around the width of the candle, carving and circling its way to the candleholder underneath.”

  I did as I was told, imagining a circling ring of fire in the shape of a tiny dragon, threading around the red candle.

  Talk about fighting an uphill battle. I take that back… there was no battle being waged at all against fire. It was a stone wall that I was trying to dig at with a wooden shovel. Totally useless. The fire was no more listening to me than the man in the moon.

  Moving along.

  “Try with the smoke of the incense. Imagine it spelling out words of your choice. Think of it as though it were a pencil in your hand. Tell a story, draw a picture with your mind.”

  But that didn’t work either. And now my head hurt.

  I was growing frustrated and Fatima looked as though she may have been feeling some secondhand embarrassment.

  I ran my hands through my hair. “This isn’t working.”

  “We’re not finished. We move on to the next.”

  All I wanted to do was finish my tea and chat about the differences between the eleven years-ago Leonardo DiCaprio and the present Leo. Are there any? I didn’t think so.

  But Fatima pulled on my hand and I held it over the sand as she was instructing. “The sand is the earth underfoot. It only moves when something moves it. That something is you. Coax the sand to move carefully, it doesn’t like to be ruffled.”

  Doing my best not to feel ashamed, I swallowed against the lump in my throat. A tiny part of me thought maybe I was secretly a witch after all and here I was, dashing that dream to pieces. Fatima had already told me that earth powers were only for the strongest, so of course she’d saved that for last, hoping it would be any one of the others.

  Just do what she tells you. Try it and do it anyway.

  I bit my lip and concentrated even over the pain thudding at my temples.

  The small pile remained unchanged. I inhaled again and focused on it even more.

  But then it shifted under my hand. Sand granules were actually moving. It was almost as if I were creating an invisible line in the middle of the sand pile. In this way I felt a little like Moses parting the Red Sea. And then things got really weird.

  It wasn’t just the sand on the table of my hand over it—it was the sand becoming part of me, doing exactly as I told it, all the way down to the granule. I was the sand and it was me. The sand rose up swirling around in its own vortex before crashing back down to the table and spreading out well over the edge of the table.

  I stumbled backward, yanking my hand away. “Oh my god. Oh my god. What was that?” My voice shook just as much as my hands.

  Fatima inspected the sand for a minute and finally looked over at me. “It’s weak but it’s there.”

  “I-I, really? Earth? I have earth powers?” There was no helping the giddy grin beaming across my face “Seriously?”

  “You do,” she said, nodding. But there was something else in her eyes.

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “It’s nothing really. I think your power is there, it’s just under-utilized,” she hesitated. “Weak, in other words. I’ve never seen something like this.”

  My smile slipped. “Is there something wrong with it? If it’s too weak does that mean I can’t
use it?” How could it possibly be too weak? I just made a mini sand tornado, for crying in a bucket!

  “I truly don’t know the answer to that, but a wild guess would be that your power has been dormant for a long time. Beyond just you, your ancestors as well. It’s the magic that’s anchored here that strengthens everyone’s magic anyway. When witches and wizards leave Charming Springs they find they don’t have nearly the kind of power out there as they do here. It might have something to do with that, though I’ve never heard of magic being that weak in someone. You just need to practice. Using magic is like working any other muscle in your body.”

  “Of course.” I shook my head and collapsed down on her loveseat, just as beat as she told me I would feel. “Of course I would find out that I’m a witch but only a little bit. With weak powers that don’t do diddly squat. It just figures.”

  Fatima went through her own little stash of books to pull one out specifically about the element of earth. “Some light reading for you,” she said with a wink, very obviously trying to cheer me up.

  I took the small green book, turning it over in my hands. Leather-bound but colored an acid green with the tree of life printed on the front. “Pretty.”

  I found myself not willing to talk about magic or the search for it in me anymore. I begged Fatima to change the topic and was tired but relieved when the chat turned to me showing off pictures on my phone.

  It was the first time I felt normal in the middle of such a paranormal place.

  12

  The Case Of The Iced Witch

  Today was day one of my incredibly amateur investigation, and I was already missing one key component.

  The empty coffee pot taunted me from its stand.

  “Unbelievable,” I muttered to myself. “This is an outrage. Ash, if you can hear me, we need more coffee! This would be a great time to do your poof-away to the store!”

  He didn’t vaporize out of thin air to stand around and stare irritatingly at me, so I figured he wasn’t here. I sighed and went to search the fridge for something that contained caffeine. Without access to my stash of food in the camper, I was stuck living on the practical rations Ash kept in the library’s kitchen. You’d think he’d at least keep plenty of coffee on hand, considering all the research he did.

  I scoured the whole place but the best I could come up with was a chocolate bar that looked older than the curse itself. I hastily shoved it back into the cabinet with a shudder.

  With no other choice, I poured myself some water and pulled up a seat at the worn-down wood table that had been plunked right in the middle of the kitchen.

  Today was a good day to help solve a murder case, not to mention find the person who obviously was trying to frame me with my crowbar. That was another thing that was setting a fire under me and motivating me to look for answers. How had they found the crowbar and when did it go missing? Just another question to add to the list I guess. Speaking of…

  “Hm. If I’m going to figure out whodunnit, I’d better make a list.”

  There was a stack of notebooks piled to one side of the table, and a pen sticking out of one of them. I snatched the notebook on top, glad to see that for some reason it was empty, and scrawled across the first page Who Killed Beatrice?

  Nope. Scratch that. The Case Of The Iced Witch.

  I swear I wasn’t making light of the situation… but considering I was the prime suspect, it was all I could do to keep from panicking on the inside.

  It was the way I took down all my thoughts. As a writer, I was nothing without my written thoughts.

  “Okay. So where to begin…. Where to begin…” I tapped the pen cap against my chin. How did the police do this type of thing? They started with what they knew and then the evidence, right?

  “Beatrice was at the Special Council meeting at… uh, sometime in the late afternoon,” I said, writing it down next to a bullet point.

  I recalled her barging into the church. She’d told the rest of the council to meet at the building…

  “Yes. They met at the Special Council building at four o’clock,” I said, scribbling it over the last bullet point.

  I could’ve sworn I heard the sound of tapping somewhere in the library but… I was supposed to be the only one here. I paused, listening for it.

  There it went again.

  I spun around, searching for the location of it. There was a door behind me that led to a back alley for deliveries (what deliveries? Who knew?) that had a padlock on it. Though the key was stuck inside it, so I had no idea what the point of the padlock was.

  Yep. The tapping was definitely coming from the back door. I slowly approached the door, doing my best to tiptoe and stay quiet. There were no windows in the kitchen so I couldn’t peek out to take a better look.

  Tap-tap. “I know you can hear me!”

  I blinked. Twisting the key in the lock, I pulled the latch open and yanked the door after it. The wind had picked up and in swirled a ton of fat snowflakes and a large white owl.

  “Goldie? What are you doing here?”

  She shook the snow from her feathers and head, letting out a soft hoot as she stood on the table. “Dropping by to check on you, obviously. Ash mentioned something about making sure the library hadn’t caught on fire, but I reminded him you were an earth witch. So an earthquake was much more likely.”

  “Rude. You can tell your friend that I don’t need a babysitter. I’m a grown woman, believe it or not.”

  She shrugged. “I’ll pass on the message. It’s kind of my job.” She nudged the notebook with her talon. “What’s all this?”

  I hesitated. Should I tell Goldie about my plan? She might laugh, but then at the same time, she seems nosy enough to appreciate the sleuthing. “I’m going to prove I’m not Beatrice Wimberly’s killer.”

  “Ooh, do tell! How so?”

  “The goal is to find the one who actually did it, seeing as I’m the prime suspect according to Chief Putnam.”

  “That old turkey wouldn’t be able to solve his way out of a chicken coop. I wouldn’t worry too much about him,” she said, hopping to the chair. At least everyone seemed to have the same take on the chief.

  “It’s not that simple. He’s the police chief so if he’s the guy heading this investigation then I need to be two steps ahead of him. I don’t like the way he’s been trying to push me being a suspect. It’s like he wants it to be me or something.”

  I sat down in the other chair and pulled the notebook toward me. “I’m no detective, but maybe if I start putting things together myself I can find the real killer and point the police in the right direction… And now that I think about it… if I find the killer then it would get the Special Council off my case. Anything to prove my innocence with them would be helpful. At least until I can find a way out of here.”

  “Hunting down a killer? Don’t you think that sounds a little dangerous?”

  “It could be. But what’s also dangerous is having the town’s police chief assuming I’m responsible for the air witch elder’s death, while at the same time, the Special Council think I’m responsible for what’s happened with the curse. Or curses—I don’t know, it’s hard to keep up with. So while I don’t know if there’s imminent danger in trying to track down a possible killer, I do know that nothing good will come from getting thrown in jail.”

  “Hm. So you’re taking your chances. Gotta say, I don’t really blame you. I think you’re right about Chief Turkey Gizzard. He doesn’t seem to like you very much.”

  So I wasn’t imagining it!

  “No, he doesn’t. And I’ve learned a thing or two about staying safe. My grandparents lived on a farm most of their lives together and they taught me how to take care of myself. Nan still sleeps with a loaded rifle nearby her bed, even though she’s in a nice retirement community where the nearest cougar is her neighbor, Beth.”

  Goldie shuddered. “Ugh, big cats. Every time I see a shifter wearing the skin of a big cat it gives me the hooties jooties.�
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  I snorted. “The hootie jooties? What, is that like the heebie jeebies but for birds?”

  She snapped her beak together. “That’s exactly what it is, and for the record, your human way doesn’t sound any better.”

  I threw up my hands. “Touché.” I regarded Goldie for a moment, with something like a plan starting to form in my head.

  “Listen, you’re a smart gal. I mean you are an owl, after all. I don’t suppose you want to help me with this, do you?”

  The key to tracking down potential suspects would be to have someone on the inside. And no one had better access to anything than Goldie, from where I stood.

  She considered it, quirking her head to the side to better read from the open notebook. “The Case Of The Iced Witch. Sounds like a mystery novel. All you need now is a bunch of colored string and maps with red circles all over the walls.”

  “Do you want to help or not?”

  “Of course I’ll help. Where do we get started?”

  We moved our hunting party into the main library and set to work.

  After a solid two hours of writing down notes, chatting about the accuracy of my personal favorite show, Murder, She Wrote, and discussing the difference between being nocturnal and diurnal, Goldie and I looked at our work.

  “It looks like we have a decent list to go off of,” I said, cramming some pistachios in my mouth that I’d found in the corner of a cabinet in the kitchen. Luckily they were still fresh.

  She let out a soft hoot in agreement. “I’d say so.”

  We had a list of suspects, though it was very, very short.

  “Her husband’s name is Victor. He’s a character. If you’ve ever heard the term trophy wife, well, he’s a trophy husband. Though I’m not exactly sure why. I’m not into humans but he’s one sad sack looking version of one. I think it’s the arms. He has ridiculously short arms and the rest of him is tall like a tree. And he has hair that looks like straw. Sometimes I want to nest in it until I realize it’s the top of his head. So there’s that,” Goldie had said, tucking her beak under her wing to scratch at herself.