Brownies and Broomsticks: A Magical Bakery Mystery (23 page)

Still, I needed four blue candles.

I checked the time. A little after ten. Probably too late to drop in on Margie. Besides, borrowing a cup of sugar from a neighbor was one thing; borrowing candles for a location spell was something else. A quick run to the twenty-four-hour market netted me a box of short tapers. More blue-green than blue, they were still the color of water, so I hoped they’d work. I would have preferred votive candles because I didn’t have holders for the tapers, but all the smaller candles in the store’s limited selection were heavily scented and stank to high heaven. The tapers smelled like plain old paraffin.

I lit one of them and allowed the wax to dribble into a small puddle on a paper plate. Then I stuck an unlit
taper in the middle and let it cool. The melted wax held the candle upright quite nicely. I repeated the makeshift candleholders on three more plates and set them at the four compass points on my living room floor.

The spell also called for jasmine incense, which I didn’t have. But rooting around in my aromatherapy satchel netted a tiny bottle of jasmine essential oil. Lucy had added clove oil to the candles in Mimsey’s scrying spell, so I carefully dribbled a little onto each candlewick and let it drip down the sides of the candle. The volatile concentrated oil infused the whole house with heady floral tones.

I looked at Mungo. “How am I doing?”

Yip!

The final thing I needed was natural water. Perhaps bottled spring water would have been fine, but I had a stream running through my backyard and that seemed a great deal more natural than water encased in plastic. I grabbed one of the wine goblets Declan had brought the night before and opened the French doors. Mungo followed me outside and to the back corner of the lot. The scent of new-mown grass filled the darkness. Cicadas buzzed, and bright moonlight echoed off the stream water. I remembered that Bianca practiced moon magic. I looked up. The moon was slightly larger than half full, but I didn’t know if it was waxing or waning. Oh, wait. Mimsey had said she’d charged her shew stone by the full moon, so it must be waning.

I had to start paying more attention to that kind of stuff.

“Am I supposed to say something when I get the water?” I asked Mungo, leaning down toward the stream.

“Katie? Is that you?” My neighbor’s voice came drifting over the fence.

Startled, I dropped the goblet.

Moments later Margie leaned her elbows on the three-and-a-half-foot fence that divided our yards and peered down at me. “Who are you talking to?”

Mungo barked.

Forcing a laugh, I said, “Just the dog.”

I could feel him glaring at me in the darkness.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked.

“Me? Oh! Well, um …” She licked her lips. Leaned forward conspiratorially. “I’m sneaking a little treat.” She held up a length of Twinkie so bright yellow it glowed in the moonlight.

“A … Really? Why do you have to sneak it?”

“Redding thinks they’re bad for me, throws a fit when he sees me eating one. He won’t let the kids touch them. I think all the preservatives are what keep me going some days.”

“Margie?” A man’s voice came from her house. “Where did you run off to?”

“Oh, my Lord, he’s going to wake the kids if he doesn’t pipe down. See you later!” And she was gone.

“That was close,” I whispered to Mungo.

The grass had cushioned the goblet when it fell, so it hadn’t broken. I set the intention of using the water in a location spell in my mind, scooped some up from the stream and hurried back inside before Margie returned to finish her illicit junk food.

In my living room, I checked to make sure the window shutters were tightly closed and doused the floor lamp. I was a little nervous, but not because I had any
reservations about the spell itself. I had reservations about me. Lucy had told me I needed to learn how to manage my power, learn how to harness magic. I was aware that doing a spell alone without really understanding the mechanics might be risky.

But it was a simple spell. For a good cause. And I didn’t have time to wait. Someone, probably Ethan Ridge, had lost a
lot
of blood. Waiting until I could get help from my witch nannies might do more harm than good.

In order for the spell to do any good, I needed to cast it
now
.

I lit the four candles and settled cross-legged in the middle of them, facing west. Mungo snuggled into my lap. Deeply breathing in the scent of the jasmine oil, I imagined my roiling thoughts calming to the smooth sheen of undisturbed water. When I felt ready, I looked down into the wineglass and swirled the water clockwise with two fingers of my right hand. I put my hand back in my lap, and my furry familiar licked away the water droplets.

“Let the water show me the location of Ethan Ridge. Let the water show me where he is.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Let the water show me the location of Ethan Ridge. Let the water show me where he is.”

Four times I repeated the incantation, peering into the water and waiting for an indication of where the apartment manager might be. For a vision, a feeling about a location, a nice big intuitive hit.

Anything.

But there was nothing.

I tried for more than half an hour and came up with exactly diddly-squat on the divination front.

Of course, Cookie had said she wasn’t any good at scrying. But they’d also said I was a catalyst. Did that mean I couldn’t do magic myself, could only help others? Heavy disappointment settled over my shoulders at the thought.

Suddenly I had an image of myself, sitting in the middle of four burning candles with a dog in my lap, muttering at a glass of water to find a missing man. Embarrassment and shame crowded out my disappointment at failing.

What was I thinking? I’d swallowed the whole witch thing hook, line and sinker. Poor Katie was a lonely little girl with a big imagination who made up stories that made her seem special. And then she’d grown up into poor dumped-by-her-fiancé Katie who grabbed on to a gigantic piece of nonsense that made her seem special and feel like she finally belonged.

I’d been so careful not to rebound to a man after my engagement failed. But that boomerang energy had to go someplace, and only now did I realize how primed I’d been for Lucy to convince me of my magical heritage.

Hedgewitch. Oh, brother.

Disgusted, I blew out the candles, threw them in the garbage, and dumped the water down the sink.

At my feet, Mungo whined.

It hit me: I’d skipped supper, and he’d had only a snack of boiled chicken.

“There’s kibble in your bowl,” I said.

A tiny growl emanated from his throat.

“Okay, okay.” I opened the refrigerator door and took out the leftover bourbon-pulled pork Steve had brought. I dumped some in Mungo’s bowl, made myself a small sandwich, and grabbed one of Lucy’s seven-layer bars. Then I put it back. She’d probably drugged them to give me more evidence that magic was real. Whatever she’d put in them had knocked me out, and I couldn’t afford to oversleep again tomorrow.

Next to me on the bed, Mungo turned over on his back and went to sleep, pork fumes on his breath. Could have been worse, but it would have been nice if he was as willing to brush his teeth before bed as he was to eat people food.

I didn’t want to think about how much I had liked the idea of being a witch or how pathetic that made me feel. Magic was hooey. I had to face the harsh reality that there was nothing I could do to influence the world around me.

Wait a minute. So waving a magic wand couldn’t change the world. That didn’t mean I had to give up the belief I’d held my whole life—that fate was what you made it. That people control their own destiny. And that even if they can’t always control the things that happen to them, they get to decide their own reactions.

I could still help Uncle Ben and keep the Honeybee afloat. I just had to figure out how.

Mungo wiggled against me, as if he was scratching his back. He didn’t bother to wake up, though, so maybe it was a dream. I stroked his wee head with my fingertips.

“Familiar, indeed. What a bunch of gobbledygook.”

He was instantly on his feet, and I snatched my hand back in alarm. But he just stood there on the bed, blinking at me in the waning moonlight. It was too dark to really read his eyes, but I had a distinct feeling of disapproval.

Stop making up stuff like that, Katie. He’s just a dog.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”

He didn’t lie down right away, but after a few more moments of staring at me like I was a piece of bacon, he did. Still didn’t take his eyes off me, though. I closed mine and tried to ignore him.

The events of the day sifted through my waning consciousness. The joy of working in the Honeybee kitchen. All the enthusiastic customers at the bakery. Mrs. Standish’s elaborate views and expansive gestures. The almost audible click as I’d put together the connection between Ethan Ridge and Albert Hill. Declan’s disapproval on the phone, contrasted with his warm greeting when he came to pick me up. The way he looked at me when he didn’t think I was paying attention.

The smell of blood and whiskey in Ethan’s apartment.

The half-packed boxes sitting among the wreckage of a struggle.

Well, he’d said he was going to leave now that Mrs. Templeton couldn’t blackmail him into staying. I thought about what he’d said. That she’d threatened him with exposure. Would that really be enough? Given what she did to Frank Pullman for leaving some sawdust on her floor, I could see that maybe it would
be. But perhaps she used something more than an old prison sentence against him. Something a bit more specific. A bit more recent and possibly unknown by the authorities.

Real blackmail, with real stakes. Maybe she knew Ethan was back to his old ways with a new twist, taking advantage of grieving widows like Mrs. Standish. And if he was doing it with her nephew’s help, the likelihood that Mrs. Templeton would learn of it was high.

That would give Ethan even more of a motive to kill her.

But then someone had gone after Ethan. Was it really Albert Hill? I found that hard to imagine, though I couldn’t put my finger on why. He was mean and, though not fit, certainly physically capable of assaulting another man. He was greedy to the point of being unbalanced. His wore his ego like a bright yellow rain slicker—nothing subtle about it at all.

Ah. That was it. Albert might be a sociopath as Bianca and I had speculated, but he felt emotion. He was, in fact, a coward. I’d met him only once and seen him two other times, but it was evident even in the brief encounters. Insecurity lurked behind that glaring ego, and fear behind the meanness.

Still, cowards can be dangerous. Scared dogs bite just as often as aggressive ones; their own fear serves as enough provocation whether there’s an actual threat or not. Albert could have incited Ethan to kill Mrs. Templeton and then been afraid Ethan would turn on him.

Or not. Whatever had happened to the apartment manager might not have had anything to do with the
murder. As Detective Quinn had pointed out, he had enough low-life friends to account for an assault. For that matter, we didn’t even know for sure whether Ethan had been attacked or had attacked someone else. Anything was possible at this point.

Would Ethan have opened his door to someone he thought of as a threat? Had he even known who waited in the hallway, since the doors didn’t have peepholes? Maybe he didn’t know to be wary of whoever had knocked. After all, the guy wasn’t exactly the brightest bear.

Those boxes, half full, made me feel kind of sorry for the guy. He was so close to getting out, to leaving and making a new life. Maybe not a better life, but a new one, where he could at least make decisions about whether or not it would be better.

A NEW START
.

My eyes flew open.

Those boxes seemed to be everywhere. Frank Pullman had them in his pickup. Ethan had them in his apartment. But so what? It was a popular moving company in town. Lots of people probably got boxes from there. Big deal.

I glanced down. Mungo still stared at me from the darkness.

“Will you stop it? You’re starting to give me the heebie-jeebies.”

He blinked, once, very slowly.

“Fine.” I squeezed my eyes shut again.

And the image of the storage company logo came back, bright blue and insistent. However, this time it was emblazoned on the boxes I’d seen when Cookie
and I had exited the laundry room at the Peachtree Arms.

The boxes in the wire-enclosed spaces in the basement reserved for apartment dwellers.

I snapped awake. Ethan’s door had been open when Declan and I arrived. After we found that he was gone, I’d assumed that the door had been left open. But before that, I’d figured he was in the basement laundry room or someplace in the building, planning to return shortly.

He was in that basement. I knew it.

I could see it.

Abruptly, I sat up in bed. Mungo let out a sharp bark, ran once around the perimeter of the bed, and returned to his position by my side, panting. I tried not to be aware that he ran widdershins, or to wonder whether that was significant.

The impression of Ethan Ridge in the apartment storage area grew stronger as the seconds passed. I shook my head. It was my overly vivid imagination. Had to be. Besides, the police had searched the whole building.

Hadn’t they?

But what if they hadn’t gone into the locked storage spaces? What if he was hiding down there?

I reached for the phone to call Detective Quinn. Paused. He probably wouldn’t be working this late. I could leave a message, but that would mean morning before he got it, and even then he might not pay it any mind. I wasn’t exactly on his list of favorite people right now.

I could call 911 and report a crime in the apartment
building’s basement so the police would have to respond. Could I do it in such a way that they wouldn’t find out it was me? If they found Ridge, would it matter if they found out?

Hmm. Yes. And Quinn was already mad enough at me.

Ben was already upset with me about poking my nose into things, too. And he didn’t even know about what Declan and I had found at the Peachtree Arms earlier that evening.