The Witches Three Cozy Mysteries 4-6

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Late December in the middle of a Minnesota snowstorm that couldn't decide between a whiteout of blowing flakes and icy sleet sharp enough to sting was no time to go down to a cellar. Especially if that cellar was like the one in Miss Zenobia Weekes' Charm School for Exceptional Young Ladies, which had just one way down, and that was from the backyard.

Luckily, being witches, we had ways of keeping a warm pocket of precipitation-free air around us as we went out the back door and around the protruding solarium to the cellar doors that were slanted just a few degrees above laying flat on the ground.

It might have felt like rubbing in my current lack of a wand when Brianna waved hers about before we were even down the steps to the cellar and the fire in the wood-burning stove flared to bright, crackling life.

It might have, but I knew Brianna didn't have a bone in her body capable of rubbing a thing in. She was only focused on creating more light and warmth.

But I still felt a little jab of sadness at my wandlessness. The warm bubble of dry air spell was never one Brianna had taught me, but making warmth and light had been one thing I had succeeded at.

Before my wand fell into the hands of an enemy witch. She had held it for just a moment, but that had been a moment too long. When I held my wand in my hands, it no longer felt like part of me. And I was pretty sure that it felt the same about me.

Brianna's shadow shrank and gained definition as she walked up to the wood-burning stove, then grew bigger and more diffuse as she continued past it, to another oven built into the stone wall itself.

She took the warm air bubble with her I realized as my back felt instantly cold. I turned to pull the cellar doors shut behind me just as the wind built up to a gust that whistled through the trees in shrieks and moans. The doors kept out the snow and sleet but not that ghostly howling.

I scurried down the wood steps to the stone floor, pulling my sweater closer around me despite the warmth of the fire I was approaching. It was still roaring and dancing over the logs, crackling and snapping as sap ignited. And the smoky smell of its cured wood burning cleanly went a long way to driving off the otherwise mildewy cellar smell. But the stones held on to the cold. Even through the soles of my winter boots I could feel the chill in the floor radiating up to my calves.

"I think we're ready," Brianna said from where she was peering into the oven built into the side of the fireplace. The fire had burned down to sullenly glowing embers, and compared to the wood-burning stove gave off almost no heat at all. "You should touch it."

"Yes, of course," I said. She stepped back, and I reached into the oven, past the charred remains of the logs we had placed within it the night before, and gingerly touched the metal box in the center.

It was cool, but not so chill as the stones under my feet. I grasped it more firmly then brought it out to set it on the closest workbench.

But I was reluctant to open it. "Is this the last thing we can try?" I asked.

"No, of course not," Brianna said. "There's always another thing to try."

"But if this doesn't work?"

"I'll have to branch out beyond the library here for that research," she said. "But don't worry about that now. Let's see if this worked. Because it really should have. I know you're worried, but I'm sure this is going to be okay."

I bit my lip but gave her a nod. I had told her all about my dreams, the ones that had plagued me since the night the witch Evanora had held my wand in her hands. Nightmares, really, about every possible thing that could go wrong while I had no wand to protect me. I was attacked in a million different ways, always reaching for a wand that wasn't there just before the latest nightmarish creature fell upon me and tore me to bits.

"They're just anxiety dreams," Brianna said, squeezing my hand. "And of course, you're anxious. That's completely understandable. The bond between a witch and a wand is a very special one."

I tried and failed at an answering smile, so I settled for another nod. Frankly, given how little magic my wand and I had ever managed to do together, Brianna was being beyond kind.

The clasp on the box wanted to stick, but I forced it open then threw back the lid. Inside was a bundle wrapped in cloth strips, like a very small, very elongated mummy. Brianna watched eagerly as I took out the bundle and carefully started unwinding the strips.

The cloth was not well made. Some of the threads were larger than others, and in some places the weave was so tight it bunched up while in others it was so loose it was beginning to unravel. But what can I say, it was my first attempt at weaving cloth.

Finally, I was down to the innermost wrappings, and I got my first glimpses of the wand within. It glistened in the firelight, still oily slick from the magical ointment I had rubbed into it the night before. Even after baking for a night and a day it wasn't quite dry yet.

This new ointment had brought out a golden tone in the blondish willow wood that hadn't been there before. It was actually quite pretty, but when I tipped my hand to admire the run of light up its length, I saw something else, something darker that slipped behind that flare of reflected light. I couldn't quite get my eyes to focus on it, but I knew I had seen something.

Then the wand was resting naked on my palm. It felt cool and slightly oily on my skin. I closed my hand around it, more an embrace than a squeeze. But it remained cold and inert. My flesh couldn't warm it. For the first time since before I had even worked it into a wand shape, it felt like I was holding just an ordinary stick.

"Nothing," I said with a sigh. "Nothing at all."

I put it back down on the mound of wrappings in the box then wiped my hand on my jeans. The oil remained, the minty but also sappy aroma clinging tenaciously to me.

"Maybe you should try a spell," Brianna said. "Just a small one. Something for both of you to remember each other. Like the light spell, you did to get those hoodlums to back off. Try that."

I looked down at the wand, rubbing the back of my hand against my lips and realizing too late I had somehow gotten ointment there as well. The taste was tarry, like a Scottish breakfast tea but stronger. It brought to mind a day from my childhood, a summer day so hot the pavement on the street was sticky. It had smelled a bit like this ointment tasted.

"Amanda?" Brianna said.

"Sorry," I said, picking up the wand again. "I'll give it a try."

I raised the wand then closed my eyes, summoning an image of what I wanted to create. I wasn't expecting anything as spectacular as what I had managed in the heat of a fight or flight moment. I only needed a few sparks.

I felt my own magical power flowing through me, but when it should have also flowed smoothly into my wand as an extension of my hand, it didn't.

It didn't stop entirely. But it did hesitate. Not like how the latch on the box had fought me, like something gone a bit rusty from disuse.

No, this felt like the wand was waiting for someone else's permission before accepting my power.

But it had accepted it. And now my power was flowing through the length of the wand. My eyes were still closed when the sparks began to appear, but I knew they were there. I could see the wand in my mind's eye, forming the little bursts of power as I had asked it to.

But it felt wrong. The wand wasn't part of me. It belonged to someone else. It was still willing to do my bidding, but only as long as it felt like it.

What if it was trying to lure me in, to get me to rely on it just so that in some moment of great need it could turn on me?

Suddenly the flow of energy felt less like something I was channeling through my wand and more like something the wand was pulling out of me. It was consuming that part of me, like a vampire.

I screamed and flung the wand away from me. Brianna threw up her arms and ducked as the bit of wood sailed in the space over her head and under the timbers of the low ceiling. Sparks trailed behind the flying wand in little clouds like exhaust from a jalopy in a cartoon.

Then it clattered to the stone floor and laid there, just an ordinary stick someone had sanded and polished to ridiculous perfection.

"That looked like it was working. What went wrong?" Brianna asked as she slowly straightened.

"I don't know. It's just not right," I said. "I see darkness in it, but never when I'm looking at it straight on. It feels like a cold, alien thing in my hand. And there's something choking the flow of energy between us. It's like there's someone else interfering between us somehow. I feel like it's just waiting to betray me."

Brianna chewed her lip for a moment then went to the workbench and retrieved the box and the wrappings. She used the cloth to pick up the wand without letting her skin touch it then laid it gently back in the box and snapped the lid shut.

Then she held the box out for me.

"What am I supposed to do with that?" I asked.

"I don't know," Brianna said. "But it's yours. Part of you. Your responsibility. I'll keep researching, but in the meantime, you have to do all you can to rebond with this wand. Keep it with you but try not to touch it. Just in case it really is trying to work against you."

I really wished she had just dismissed my impressions as silly. But she was taking me completely seriously. My stomach was knotting up even tighter than before.

I took the box and headed back up the stairs to the backyard, swinging open the door and stepping out into the storm. The wind caught my hair, coated it in sleet that froze on contact, then plastered it across my eyes. But I pressed on, crunching through layers of snow and ice until I was up the porch steps and into the solarium.

I had changed from boots to house slippers and was still trying to disentangle frozen hair from frozen eyelashes when Brianna finally joined me.

"You should have waited," she said, waving her wand over me. My hair was instantly dry, if just as chaotic as ever. Brianna didn't have Sophie's perfect hair skills, no more than I did. "I just had to grab a few things as long as I was down there."

"For what?" I asked as she kicked off her own snowy boots and pulled on a pair of knee-high red and green mukluk slippers.

"I want to check the labels on these bottles against what's listed in the book," she said, tapping the bulging pockets of her sweater. "It's possible the ointment we prepared wasn't quite right."

I doubted very much that Brianna had made any mistakes, but I didn't say so. She wouldn't be satisfied until she had double-checked all of her own work for herself.

"I'm starving," I said instead. "That soup must be ready by now, right?"

I'd been smelling it for most of the afternoon. Bits of beef browned to the height of umami, the sharpest of cheddar cheeses, dark beer and just a hint of cream. Mr. Trevor had been skeptical as he always was when he tried out a new recipe, but I was sure this beef and ale cheddar soup was going to be divine.

"Yeah, I think so," Brianna said absentmindedly. She was looking inside the pocket now, squinting at those labels. I wasn't sure how old the contents were, but the labels were written in a distinctly Victorian script.

"You're eating before you go upstairs," I said to her, grabbing her arm and pulling her into the kitchen when I saw she was indeed starting to go up the backstairs instead.

"But I just want to-"

"Food first," I said.

I'm not sure if it's because of all of the years I spent working in a diner or what, but when I'm upset, I always feel better when I can get someone else to eat something. It's weird. But I rolled with it, filling two bowls from the steaming, slow cooker and watching Brianna take several bites before giving in to my own growling stomach.

The first mouthful warmed me more than even Brianna's spell had done. Suddenly, as bad as things were with my traitor of a wand and my lack of other witchy skills, everything all felt manageable.

Or maybe it was just because it was New Year's Eve, when you swept out the old problems and welcomed in new opportunities.

"Hey girls," Sophie said from the doorway in an enticing drawl that immediately had my suspicions up. She was dressed in jeans and a sweater. The jeans as always looked crisply new, the dark blue color unfaded by washing, and her sweater lacked the stretched-out shapeless quality that most of mine shared.

Then I saw something flash in her hand. Something golden.

"What do you have there?" I asked.

"Funny you should ask," she said, sliding into an empty seat at the table. She was holding whatever it was close to her chest and covering it with her hands, but then with a flourish, she slapped it down into the middle of the table.

"What is it?" Brianna asked as if just noticing she was there.

"An invitation," Sophie said. "A party invitation. It's just what we need right?"

"What sort of party?" Brianna asked.

"What sort of party? Don't you know what night this is?"

"New Year's Eve," I said, and Brianna nodded. "But why would someone do up formal invitations like this and then not deliver them until hours before? Most people make their plans way ahead of time."

Although not us, apparently.

"We've been a little lax in checking the mail," Sophie said.

"Mr. Trevor does that," Brianna said.

"He does here, yes," Sophie said. When she saw neither of us were following her, she added, "here and now."

"Oh," Brianna said as I pulled the card closer to get a proper look at it. Then I turned it over and saw a handwritten note on the back. This script was pretty far from the formal Victorian handwriting on the bottles in Brianna's pocket. This was the handwriting of a girl who was being subjected to the finest of educations but was doing her best not to let a bit of it sink in.

"Coco," I said.

"Coco is having a party?" Brianna asked.

"Coco's parents," I said, showing her the front of the card.

"Oh," she said, then more slowly as the significance of that dawned on her, “Oh. A 1927 party."

"Soon to be 1928," Sophie said with a wide grin.

"Ooh, we have to go," Brianna said, clapping her hands together with glee. I had never seen Brianna get that excited about anything that wasn't an ancient text written in a forgotten language.

"It's just what we need," Sophie said. "A 1920s party. It'll be divine. I'm sure the weather there is nicer than it is here."

"It has to be," Brianna said.

They were both so excited they were glowing. It almost hurt to look directly at them.

I looked down at the card in my hands.

To my shame, my first thought was not of Evanora and whether this was a trap. Sure, that was my second thought, and the one I couldn't shove aside.

But my first thought was of Edward, and whether he was also going to be at this party. My brain was certain that would be a bad idea since we had decided to take a big step back from all relationships and focus on the being a witch thing. But my heart was oblivious to what my brain was dictating. It just kept knocking hard against my ribs.

"Amanda, don't you agree?" Sophie asked.

"This is perfect, Amanda," Brianna said. "It will take your mind off of your wand problem."

"Oh, right," Sophie said. "How did that go?"

Brianna gave her a short shake of her head.

"I'm not sure this is wise," I said. "What if Evanora is there?"

"At the party?" Sophie asked.

"Anywhere near the party," I said. "She could be watching the school, waiting for us to cross the time bridge. Even if the party itself isn't a trap, she might be laying one of her own."

"We'll be careful," Sophie said.

"Search spells," Brianna said. "We can keep an eye out for her. And you won't be alone this time. We'll be with you."

"She might not be alone anymore either," I said. I had taken some of the edge off of their enthusiasm. I felt like the worst sort of killjoy. I might not have earned a break, but they both could use one.

"If you really want to go, we'll go," I said, and Brianna started hopping up and down in her chair, hands clapping again. "But we have to be careful. Really, really careful."

"We will," Sophie promised, squeezing my hand. "To be honest, I kind of want to go back to the past and lure this witch out for what she did to you. But not tonight. Tonight, we party."

I sighed, but then forced a smile on my face. "All right. Tonight, we party."