Witch in Charm's Way Read online

  But Oberon was a vampire and faster than me. He was nearly at James. His hands reached for James’s throat. He snarled. I saw his fangs. And the next thing I knew, I had whipped my wand out and there was a blast.

  Glass smashed. Lily screamed. James went flying out of the now shattered café door.

  Looking stunned, he picked himself up. His eyes were black with anger. He was holding his chest. He pointed a shaking finger at me.

  “You,” he snarled. “You don’t know what you’re messing with!”

  “Go away James!” Lily screamed, her voice high with panic.

  James’s eyes dropped to my wand, and his gaze turned wary. Then he looked at Lily almost accusingly.

  “Stay here in this stupid place then,” he yelled furiously. “You’ll regret it!”

  He stalked off.

  “You crazy witch!” Lily screamed at me. “What the heck is wrong with you?”

  I wanted to explain that I’d been trying to help, but my mouth was gaping open. I was flabbergasted by what I’d done.

  “Don’t you even think about it, young lady!” said Aunt Adele to Lily.

  Because Lily had her own wand in her hand now and she was pointing it at me.

  “How would you like it if I did that to you?” she screeched.

  I took a step back. I didn’t even know how I’d done it. I hadn’t meant to. Never in my wildest dreams had it occurred to me that that might happen.

  She stabbed her wand towards me, her mouth opening to say an incantation to hex or curse me.

  I lifted my wand too, but I knew there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t repeat what I had done. I didn’t know how. I was lucky no one had been hurt.

  Lily’s fierce look hardened to resolution. I braced to leap out of the way.

  Aunt Adele plucked Lily’s wand out of her hand. The girl cried out in anger and wrenched her wand back. She screamed then, because it broke.

  Looking on the verge of tears, she turned tail and chased James out of the café.

  Her friends all followed her.

  I wish I could say that was the last I saw of her but it was not.

  “That poor girl,” said Aunt Adele. “I’ll have to pay to get her a new wand. I do hope they come back.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “You didn’t break it.”

  * * *

  Oberon and friends were the only visitors who came to the café that day, much to Aunt Adele’s disappointment.

  After dark she hung up the closed sign on the café and took me up to the South Tower. She made a room up for me, putting fresh sheets on the bed and lighting scented candles and fussing while I unpacked my meagre belongings.

  “You’ll get some privacy here,” she said. “My room is in the North Tower so you’ll not find me over this way much.”

  Before I went to bed that evening, she admonished me for staying indoors all day, and said that I had better go into town tomorrow and hand out some of her flyers. She had not gone to all this trouble to reopen the café for nothing.

  I didn’t much feel like explaining to her why I had no intention of going out in the daytime so I kept quiet. She went to bed after feeding me a delicious dinner for which I was most grateful, and I went to bed too.

  Instead of going up to my tower, I ended up snuggling in the coach in the lounge, tucked into a warm blanket before the roaring fire, sipping at the cup of hot cocoa I had been craving.

  I found myself vaguely thinking that maybe life in Brimstone Bay could be good for me. I would not have to live with my family anymore. It was lovely here with Aunt Adele. If only I could find a way to keep my secret.

  I let myself indulge in that train of thought for a little while before putting a stop to it.

  No, no, no, I told myself.

  Brimstone Bay was the most dangerous place in the world for someone like me. A town full of witches and wizards? I’d be lucky to last a week.

  I was here to find a cure, and please Goddess let there be one.

  And then I was going straight back to London. I was going to charge into the apartment and pack up all of my worldly belongings, and half of Drew’s most precious things too, just to spite him. Like that noisy golden cuckoo clock on the mantelpiece that I always hated, but which he insisted was a family heirloom.

  While I did it, I would shout and rage at the top of my voice, because if there was one thing that Drew hated it was for his posh neighbours to know his business.

  And then I would yell, “In your face, Drew Barrington-Cholmondeley the Second, husband of three weeks and total creep! I never wanted to marry you and your stupid name anyway!” and drive away into the sunset with a sense of dignity and a fake fist-pump of victory.

  Except I couldn’t drive. I’d never needed to in London with its excellent public transport system.

  I’d worked from home most of the time anyway, as a real-life crime mystery blog writer, earning just enough to get by. Having a car in London had been too expensive for my budget. After moving in with Drew I’d insisted on paying my fair share, so almost all of my earnings had gone towards the bills for his expensive apartment.

  Gosh that was lame. I wasn’t even going to be able to drive off into the sunset under my own steam.

  But this was a fantasy dammit, and I would darn well drive off in it if I wanted to.

  Heck, if I was going to daydream about the impossible, I would etherhop away with a wave of my wand. And then I’d etherhop back to see the shock and astonishment on Drew and Sarah’s stupid faces. And then I would point my wand at them and…

  No, no, I would never do that.

  Not even in my imagination. That way lay the slippery slope. I hated witches who resorted to using magic on Humbles. And I had known more than a few of that kind growing up in Brimstone Bay.

  I tried to drop off in my arm chair but my thoughts plagued me. I tossed and turned for hours. The fire was dying down and it was growing chill. Outside the night was calling to me and my body did not want to sleep. It was a long time before I dropped off.

  I woke up several times to noises. Sometimes noises that I hoped were just the old castle settling in the dark. Sometime the noises of what Aunt Adele had told me were the fairies and gnomes making war in the garden. One time it was definitely the sounds of a person moving around, but when I went to investigate, wand uselessly but firmly clenched in my hand, it turned out to be Aunt Adele humming to herself and shifting crates of stuff around in the garden. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep, not that ghosts really slept as far as I was aware. Their rest was of a different sort.

  Determined to stick to a night-time sleeping routine, I returned to my armchair and firmly closed my eyes.

  The next time I woke, something cold was nuzzling my nose. I gave a yelp of fright when I saw two shiny green eyes looking at me in the semi-darkness. It was a moment before I realised who it was and I chuckled.

  “Captain Villain, is that you?”

  He meowed as if to say, ‘Of course it is me, you fool of a witch.’

  Captain Villain had been my favourite of the cats in Kitten Cove when I was young. I had named him Captain Villain because he was always turning up wherever there was a spot of trouble.

  “Gosh, I’m glad you’re still alive,” I murmured. “You must be pretty old now huh, fella?”

  He made an almost snorting sound as if to tell me he most certainly was not old.

  I stroked his silky black fur. He was almost indistinguishable from the darkness.

  He was perched on the back of the couch. When he patted my cheek with his paw I felt a smear of wetness left behind. I knew what it was immediately. I could smell it. That sharp iron tang.

  I sat bolt upright. I didn’t want to smell it. My stomach roiled. No actually it growled. Loudly.

  “Darn it,” I said to him quietly. “How did you get that stuff on you? You know I’m going to have to wash it off, don’t you?”

  I lifted him up gingerly, not want
ing to get any of the stuff on myself, and carried him out to the garden to hose him down, though I knew he would hate that.

  And that was when I saw Lily Silverswift again. Only this time she was no longer alive.

  3. The Special Agent & The Werewolf

  “What the heck are you doing here?”

  The moment I had said it again, I groaned. Trust me to say that to him twice in a row. And he was looking at me with the same look of mild dislike with which he had eyed me up the first time.

  I had called for the police immediately of course after finding Lily.

  Well, almost immediately. First I had considered hiding the body — carting it off somewhere else that was not on my property — because heavens knew that I hardly needed a dead body to add to my woes.

  In the end I had decided to do the right thing. Captain Villain had looked at me with disgust, as if to say it was most definitely not the right thing. But I had done it anyway. And now I was regretting it.

  Sort of.

  Because the cop who had turned up at my door was none other than America’s beloved Captain Shield himself, Mr Chris Constantine.

  Only he wasn’t a cop, because the local police station was really just a front. Humble police did not work there. Instead we had watch witches and wizards from the Conclave of Magic and officers from the Eldritch Council’s Department of Eldritch Law Enforcement.

  In this case I had expected to be sent a watch witch or wizard, since the deceased was a witch herself. I had thought perhaps even Chief Gulliver Raine himself might come.

  Gulliver Raine was the Chief Inspector of the Brimstone Bay Watch. Chief Raine knew our family well, and I had planned to make a special request for him to not tell everyone I was back, if he possibly could.

  Instead I had been sent no watch witch and no Chief Raine either.

  Standing at my door was Special Agent Chris Constantine, or so he had introduced himself as to me. I’d never heard of a Special Agent in Brimstone Bay before. Instead of asking him what that meant, I had demanded to know what the heck he was doing here.

  He darned well knew what I meant, and therefore his response could only have been meant to goad me.

  “Madam, you called regarding a body. Is that right?”

  Madam indeed. I was a younger than him. I knew because I had googled it. He was thirty-eight. A very nice thirty-eight that filled out its trousers quite perfectly.

  So he was keen on not answering my question, was he? Two could play at that game.

  Without a word I marched him through the castle towards the private family garden where I had found her.

  I paused in the garden doorway, not wanting to go out. The early dawn sun was beginning to light up the sky. The day looked like it was going to be too bright for my liking. And wouldn’t you know it, I was finally beginning to feel tired. My eyelids were drooping.

  I needed to top up my sunblock and fast. Not to mention changing out of the lurid pink old gown that Aunt Adele had lent me.

  When I had put it on I had no idea that stupidly handsome Mr High And Mighty was going to pay me a visit of course.

  Refusing to step out, I pointed him to where the body was and turned to go back inside the castle.

  “Where are you going?” he asked sharply.

  “To spend a penny,” I told him. “Is that okay, or do you need to supervise?”

  He had the grace to flush ever so slightly. I must have dragged him out of bed because he looked kind of sleepy. It was adorable.

  “Be quick about it,” he told me, ruining the effect. “I’ll need to ask you some questions.”

  “No! Questions? I would never have guessed.”

  My sarcasm was wasted on him. He didn’t even scowl.

  I hurried off up to my tower to wash my face and slather on piles of sunblock. I was using up a half bottle a day at this point, and it wasn’t like I could waltz into a pharmacy here and keep buying the stuff without someone getting suspicious.

  I put on my one change of clothing – a fresh pair of black leggings and a pale green tunic which had been an old favourite. It didn’t look so great on me now. It was too baggy.

  On my return downstairs, I discovered Special Agent Constantine was done examining the body in the garden. Following the distant voices, I found him in the kitchen having tea with Aunt Adele.

  I paused just outside the doorway to listen. Being sneaky made me feel guilty, but these days I had good reason. I needed to protect myself.

  “Your absolute favourite,” Aunt Adele was saying fondly. “And you want a dollop of cream too, I assume?”

  “You know it, Dele,” he said.

  There was a note of light-hearted laughter in his voice that I had not heard before. My heart gave a silly little flip flop. I told it to calm the fudge down.

  They seemed to know each other. How odd.

  I walked in to find she had cut him a generous slice of my very own favourite chocolate fudge cake.

  “It’s Esme’s favourite too,” Aunt Adele said, beaming when she saw me.

  He did not look impressed. Maybe knowing it was my favourite even put him off, because he pushed aside his plate and took out a notepad and pen.

  He absentmindedly picked a couple of twigs out of his hair. Aunt Adele saw him and chortled.

  “Did the fairies pelt to you? You should have brought them a gift.”

  “Like what?” he said, looking astonished. “Fruit? Nuts? Honey?”

  Aunt Adele threw back her head and shook with laughter. Then she patted him on his head.

  “No dear. Grubs. Mealworms. Ant eggs. They’re fearsome meat-eating little critters. Did none of your friends have fairies in their gardens growing up?”

  Clearly not. The look on his face made even me laugh. His delusions of fairies being delightful darlings was being shattered.

  “Just wait until you see the beastly little carnivores chomping their way through…” I paused, seeing the dismay on his face, and added, “Never mind.”

  “Is the body safe out there?” he asked.

  “Of course it is! They don’t eat people. Just bugs.”

  This reminder that Lily was out there was sobering. I gave a sigh.

  As Aunt Adele poured me a cup of tea and cut me some cake, and started cooking breakfast.

  Chris Constantine said, “Adele has assured me that the seven ghosts had nothing to do with the death. She was with them at the time. Nor did they witness anything relevant.”

  “Nor did they have any motive to attack that poor girl,” insisted Aunt Adele.

  Agent Constantine turned to Aunt Adele. “But I may need to ask questions of them later.”

  I couldn’t help but snigger. “Good luck with that.”

  He furrowed his brows, but did not respond to my implication that he ought to be afraid of them.

  He asked me questions in that stiff and serious manner of his.

  “Did you know the victim?”

  “How did you discover the victim?”

  “What were you doing out in the garden at that time of the morning?”

  I was both annoyed and relieved at this line of questioning. Annoyed because he was treating me with suspicion. Relieved because I had once been accused of murder before, and I was very thankful he did not seem to know anything about it.

  I told him about meeting Lily yesterday, and who had been with her, and all about the argument that she had had with her ex-boyfriend James, and that after our little confrontation how they had fled, one running after the other.

  “Her wand broke,” I said quietly. “Maybe if it hadn’t broken, she’d still be alive. She could have defended herself.”

  Realizing this, I felt awful. It wouldn’t have broken if she had not been arguing with me.

  Agent Constantine didn’t reassure me that it wasn’t my fault. He didn’t say anything at all. This made me feel worse.

  When I told him that I had discovered the body after my cat had tracked some blood into the house, he wa
s sceptical.

  “I didn’t see a cat with you on the train.”

  Ah, so he remembered that did he? I had begun to think maybe he had not recognised me.

  “He’s not really my cat. Captain Villain is one of the cats that lives out at Kitten Cove.”

  “Those strays?”

  “They’re not strays,” I said, offended. “They’re cherished by the townsfolk. The ones who have any sense anyway.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Captain Villain?”

  I felt myself flush with embarrassment. It was like he knew that I had named Captain Villain as a parody of Captain Shield all those years ago. One had been so good at making trouble, and one had been so good at fixing it.

  My lips twitched. It was funny really if you thought about it.

  He didn’t look amused.

  “How did the cat get inside the castle?”

  I furrowed my brows thoughtfully. “I don’t know. None of the doors and windows were open. Maybe he got in when Aunt Adele was doing some work out in the garden.”

  Aunt Adele shook her head. “I didn’t see him, dear.”

  “But he could have,” I said stubbornly.

  She shook her head firmly.

  “Perhaps you left a window open?” he suggested.

  “Oh no,” Aunt Adele and I said together. Aunt Adele had reassured me that she’d locked everything up tightly to put me at ease in a strange new place last night.

  “Then how?” he asked bluntly.

  “Maybe he’s a magical cat,” I suggested with a small smile. The cats of Kitten Cove often were.

  He looked doubtful. He had a lot to learn about this town.

  “How would the cat have known that you were in here?” he asked.

  “How am I supposed to know?” I said sharply. “Do you really think I murdered a girl that I barely even knew and then I made up this stupid cat story to try and cover it all up?”

  “What were you wearing last night?” he asked.

  Now my cheeks really did go red.

  “You saw what I was wearing when you arrived,” I said huffily. “And for your information, there wasn’t a spot of blood on it. I didn’t touch her.”