5 A Charming Magic (16 page)

“Go! Now!” She twisted her cape around her followed by a puff of purple smoke and she was gone.

Rowl
! Mr. Prince Charming ran over to the elevator and jumped in. Without hesitating I followed and let the elevator descend to the first floor.

The receptionist was not there.

Mewl.
Mr. Prince Charming stopped at the hospital sliding doors when he saw I was not following him.
Mewwwl.

“I know I have limited time, but I have to check the guest registry.” I pulled open the desk drawer where the receptionist had pulled Petunia’s file from.

Confidential was written big and bold in red on the front of it. I opened it up. The first page was a list of approved visitors along with their photos. Then there was me.

“June Heal. Village President of Whispering Falls. Niece of Dean Helena Heal. She can visit with detailed security. If she visits, do not stop her. Call Colton Lance, sheriff of Whispering Falls immediately. Order of Colton Lance.” Baffled, I looked up at Mr. Prince Charming.

How could they possibly think I was so jealous that I would hurt Petunia? How could they believe Arabella over me? Not that she had lied. I did do all those things. But they were never done out of hatred or out of malice.

Rowwwl
. He darted out of the hospital, telling me I better get going.

Quickly I put the file back in the drawer where I found it. I made sure no one was around before I headed out the door.

Uh
! The wind got knocked out of me like I’d been socked. Trying to catch my breath, I took a deep inhale. The stillness of the night hit my gut. I darted behind the shrubbery outside of the hospital doors just in time.

“I’m at the hospital. The receptionist told me June was here to see Petunia. Can you get a hold of the dean?” Colton snapped his phone shut and walked into the hospital.

“Just in time.” I stood up and watched him walk up to the receptionist desk. The receptionist was there sipping on a cup of coffee, which was where she must have been when I left.

A few words were exchanged between the two of them.

“Is she still there?” Colton’s voice came from my bag. I opened it. Madame Torres glowed like fire as Colton’s conversation came through her like a speaker.

I looked in the doors and the receptionist touched the beach picture hanging behind her. Instantly it showed Petunia in the glass box. No one was there. Including me.

“Where is she?” Colton demanded to know.

The receptionist spit a little bit of her coffee out of her mouth.

“She was here.” The woman swept her finger across the screen, rewinding the video. The only images it showed was Aunt Helena checking on Petunia. There wasn’t any sign of me or Mr. Prince Charming being there. “I swear she was here.”

“You’re welcome.” Madame Torres showed Aunt Helena’s face. “Go!”

Aunt Helena had erased the security tape, giving me a little time to try to figure out exactly what had happened to Petunia.

“Get the tea cup tested,” I whispered into the globe before I stuck Madame Torres deep within my bag and headed out on my long destination to Azarcabam.

Chapter Twenty

“This should be fun.” I stood at the wooden arm in the wheat field trying to figure out exactly which way I needed to go to get to Azarcabam. It wasn’t like I could go to the airport or bus station and check departure times.

Plus I had never ventured any further than the city limits of Locust Grove or Whispering Falls. I had to rely on my intuition and magic to get me there.

Meow.
Mr. Prince Charming’s long white tail was like a finger and pointed to the wooden sign. There was a new finger added with the picture of a train.

“I guess we are going on a train ride.” I reached out and touched the arm. Like magic, the wheat field parted, exposing an old locomotive.

“All aboard for Azarcabam!” The conductor hung out of the engine window.

Wooh, wooh!
The train whistle screamed. Steam blew from underneath the big hunk of metal.

“I guess he means us.” Looking around, I shrugged because there was no one there but us.

There was only one passenger car attached to the engine. The big heavy doors slid open and some stairs lit up, giving Mr. Prince Charming a way to get on.

Mr. Prince Charming wasted no time and darted up the steps.

I looked back toward the wooden sign and the direction of Whispering Falls. There was a tug at my heart. I couldn’t imagine leaving Oscar Park behind, but I knew if we were ever going to have a chance at a future, I was going to have to do this.

The train didn’t wait until we were seated before the metal wheels began to turn, causing the shrill noise of hot metal on hot metal. The door slammed shut right as Mr. Prince Charming and I took a seat on one of the two red velvet benches. Mr. Prince Charming curled up and closed his eyes.

I wanted to do the same thing, but I was afraid to close my eyes in fear of not knowing what was going to happen. There were red velvet window shades down both sides of the passenger car. Mini tassels hung in a v-formation on the edge of each of them. If I wasn’t so sure I was in present day, I’d thought I had traveled back into the 1800’s.

I held tight at the train creaked back and forth. Mr. Prince Charming wasn’t disturbed one bit. His head bobbled back and forth, but his eyes were shut tight. Maybe I should have woken him up to watch me as I slept, but I didn’t. I figured he needed his sleep to keep me safe from harm.

I pulled on one of the shades, making it zip up and flap against the glass window. I peered outside. Everything was zooming by, but in the distance I could see a large castle on a hill. The ground was covered with thick snow. Something I was not used to. Whispering Falls’ climate was strange and comfortable all year around, even though Kentucky had every single season.

When customers commented on how the weather was, we responded by saying we were having an unseasonably strange weather pattern moving through the valley.

Not Azarcabam. It looked like it was cold, very cold. I wasn’t dressed for it. Looking at the snow sent a deep chill in my bones.

Thoughts of Oscar filled my head. Oscar the spiritualist would have loved this little adventure. He would be trying his hardest to clear my name. I shoved images of him out of my head. There was no time to daydream. The more time wasted, the more time I had to spend looking for Gerald and getting back to Whispering Falls to derail anything Arabella had planned for my hunk of a man.

I pulled the shade back down. The tassels swayed with every turn of the train wheels. Suddenly it stopped. Everything stopped. The noise of the wheels, the tassels hitting the glass, the creak of the metal. Mr. Prince Charming jumped up. His eyes caught mine. We were both silent. He eased himself off the bench and sat by the door.

I lifted the edge of the shade. It was pitch black.

“Come on!” There was a tap on the window. “Get out!” The voice was gruff, not to mention scary. “”I said get out!”

The door flew open and the stairs appeared. There were no lights to light my way like there were last time.

“I said get out of my house!” The gruff voice was screaming and beating the window.

Mr. Prince Charming took off down the steps and I wasn’t too far behind. He darted behind an old barrel alight with fire. The smoke flew up in the air along with the flames. Men in black cloaks, mustaches, top hats, and dark lined eyes stood around it warming their hands as bellows of laughter shook their bodies.

“Well, well.” One of them turned and eyed me. “What do we have here?”

I looked back at the passenger train car. There wasn’t a trace of it. Only a wooden shack and a man beating on the window with a cane screaming.

“You must be new in town.” The man grinned, exposing holes where teeth should have been.

I looked down. I didn’t fit in with the jeans and t-shirt I had put on to go to work in. I grabbed my bag and held it close to me, trying to keep warm from the falling snow.

“We can scoot over and give you a little warmth.” Their laughter filled the air around me. I had never been so scared in my life.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mr. Prince Charming dart into an old wooden building.

“Thief!” A couple of men stood around another barrel, their guns strapped on their hips. They screamed at another man as they took his head and pushed in deep into the barrel full of water. Holding him under after they continued to scream, “Thief!”

The men were dressed in brown pants, brown vests, and stripped button-down shirts. They all wore a top hat. Their eyes were lined as if they all wore makeup and each one had a mustache. The women wore long black cloaks and veils to cover their heavily blackened-lined eyes. Some had jewels dangling around their foreheads like the tassels on the train shades, and some had none.

I definitely stood out like a sore thumb.

I wasn’t sure if it was night or day. All I knew was that it was dark and I wouldn’t be safe unless I slipped out of sight into the dark shadows alongside the old buildings. I inched my way to where I had seen Mr. Prince Charming go, taking in all the sights along the street. There didn’t seem to be any order in the village as everyone sort of rushed around.

There was an eerie suspicion in my gut that someone other than the drifters around the fire barrel knew I was there. I glanced around, but the shadow was pitch black. I couldn’t even see my hand before me. I continued in the darkness with my eyes on the small glowing lights. They were in the direction where Mr. Prince Charming had run off to. It was obviously where Gerald was and Mr. Prince Charming was getting me there.

A wind blasted past me, catching the nape of my neck, nipping me with a bite of cold. It was enough to get me moving and moving fast.

The doors of the old building swung inward when I pushed my way past the drunkards gathered on the floor at the opening. The foul air of sour whiskey and cigarettes filled my lungs.

Bar? I looked around. The old saloon was filled with men clanking their pewter goblets and drinking to anything they could possibly wrap their drunk minds around. Mr. Prince Charming stood at the top of the old wooden steps that were clear across the room. Our eyes met.

“Geez, couldn’t make this any easier could you?” I groaned, trying to stay along the wall, sight unseen. This didn’t seem like the place I wanted to be if someone saw me. There wasn’t anyone around here who looked like me and I surely didn’t want my head stuffed down into a bucket full of water like the guy I saw in the street.

I was here for one reason only. To find and question Gerald. Evidently I was in the right place because Mr. Prince Charming had led me here.

I hurried up the steps figuring the drunken men below couldn’t follow me because their vision had to have been blurred with the way they were carrying on.

There was a hallway branching to the right and left once I got to the top of the steps. I saw the tip of Mr. Prince Charming’s tail turn the corner down the left hall. I followed him into the open door around the corner.

The room looked like the same room Madame Torres had shown me—only it was trashed. The small bed was overturned, the little wooden desk was in pieces on the floor with what looked like the remains of the chair that had matched it.

“I hope Gerald escaped this.” I looked around.

There were voices coming from down the hall. I disappeared behind the door.

“Did he really think he was going to get away with it?” The woman cackled. “We will see about that Gerald Regiula.” The voice was familiar.

I peeked my head around the door when I heard the footsteps pass. They were dressed in head-to-toe black and veiled like the other women I had seen in the streets.

“This must have just happened.” I stepped out from behind the door and took a good long look around the room. Mr. Prince Charming ducked his head from the overturned bed. “I wonder what they were talking about?” I rubbed my hand around my wrist, feeling all of my protective charms.

They had obviously taken Gerald against his own will, at least that was what the room looked like, but where did they take him?

I tiptoed across the room and looked out the tiny window. Barrels of fire could be seen all over the dark city. The only thing lit up was the castle-looking building way up on the hill.

“I don’t think I can do this right now.” Suddenly my eyes felt very heavy. I slid down the wall and landed on my butt. Mr. Prince Charming sat straight as an arrow with his face to the door.

“Do you think you could keep a watch while I…,” I was going to say rest my eyes, but I did more than that.

Chapter Twenty One

The sound of claps, tambourines, hoots and hollers, along with a lot of foot stomping woke me up.

“Oh,” I sighed, rubbed my eyes and remembered where I was. “Azarcabam.”

Meow.

Mr. Prince Charming was still sitting in the same spot that I recalled before I had drifted off to sleep. The sky was still dark and I was no closer to finding Gerald than I was before. He looked at me before he ran out of the room, not giving me any time to really wake up and adjust to my current situation.

After a few more hoots and hollers, the music started, leaving me a little curious to what was going on.

With my hand planted firmly on the ground, I pushed myself up to my feet, but not before looking down to see what I had touched.

“Gerald.” I grabbed the vintage ring,
my vintage ring
. “Petunia.”

It was a sure sign Gerald was here. The first real sign since I had been here. Why did he have the ring?

I bit my lip trying to remember if I saw the ring on Petunia’s finger while she was in the hospital, but I couldn’t recall.

The sounds of fiddles brought me out of my thought process. I slipped the ring in my bag and slung the bag over my shoulder before I headed out to find Gerald.

Carefully I eased down the hall behind Mr. Prince Charming. The saloon was empty. There was a basket of old bread sitting on the bar next to a lot of empty whiskey jars.