Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

The customer who'd been examining the shelves at the other side of the store, about as far from the counter as someone could get, shifted the umbrella on her arm ever so slightly.

And with a terrible snap, like a bat's wings, the obnoxiously bright yellow dome snapped open on its own, slamming into the delicately arranged shelves like it had been planning to do just that all this time.

The high-pitched tinkling of dozens of dainty glass bottles slamming into one another and then shattering against the wood floor sent a jolt of panic up my spine. I spun towards the sound, just in time to see the woman leap back with a yelp of dismay and slam the now open umbrella into the shelf behind her.

She hit it and she hit it hard. Unfortunately, Poppy's shelves, while very attractive antiques, weren't secured to the floor. So, the wood groaned, the glass clattered, and the wax thumped as all the heavy candles toppled onto the floor.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Poppy's mouth drop open in horror before both her hands flew up to cover it. There were dozens of potions on that shelf, the light glittering over the glass and throwing little shards of rainbow across the floor as the shelf tipped further and further towards catastrophe. We watched it like it was happening in slow motion.

Once upon a time, my power had been a thing of night breezes, rich earth, and silver moonlight. Lately, it had been more shadows and heat that pulsed beneath the skin in scarlet rivers. But it still rose eagerly when I reached for it, surging up into my hands as I muttered a word and made a gesture as subtly as I could.

In response, a surge of shadow flowed up the heavy wood shelf, pushing against it lightly so the shelf landed more solidly back onto its squat feet. Another couple bottles crashed to the ground, but at least the extremely heavy bit of furniture didn't slam down and crush anything. Or anyone, for that matter.

The three of us then froze for a long moment while the shelving unit shuddered to a standstill. Glass crunched as the pillar candles rolled slowly across the floor, and the scents of citrus, and lavender, and sandalwood flooded the air.

The contrasting scents made my nose wrinkle, and I tugged my shirt up over the lower part of my face in a vain attempt to block it out. My sense of smell was way more acute ever since my blooding, and the overwhelming odor was now giving me a headache.

Thank spell Poppy didn't really dabble in dangerous or dark potions, or we might have all just gotten blown to kingdom come. The last time I'd dropped a potion, it had blown out the front window of my entire store and my mannequin had come to life, turning into Sybil.

Luckily, the same thing didn't happen here and now. Instead, the customer turned around slowly, her face contorted with horror. The umbrella hung off her arm, looking so very innocent, but I now had a feeling it was anything but.

"I am so sorry," she stammered, her face pale. The umbrella creaked as she fought with it, bundling it back down into its collapsed form and doing up the snap like she was putting a leash on a dangerous dog. "I don't know what happened. The umbrella just opened all on its own. I know that sounds crazy—"

"It's not crazy," Poppy interrupted as she turned from the woman to me. "I saw the umbrella do the exact same thing."

"So did I," I answered with a nod.

"I'll pay for everything that broke, of course," the woman continued. "I just don't know what happened or how it could have happened!"

I opened my mouth to say, of course you're going to payfor everything you or your stupid umbrella just broke, but Poppy started waving the woman off like a big na?ve dope. Really, my best friend had very little business sense.

"No, no, please don't worry about it."

"But," the woman and I said in unison.

"No," Poppy insisted, shaking her head. "It was an accident, I know that. I'll get this mess cleaned up."

"Seriously?" I glared at the back of Poppy's head, but she didn't pay me any attention. The urge to huff and roll my eyes was almost overwhelming. It was a wonder Poppy's Potionsever made any money at all.

The woman still looked miserable, looking around at all the sad shards of brightly colored glass spread across the floor. "I'm really very sorry. I didn't think the umbrella would just—well, just open up on its own like that! I guess that's what I get for buying it second-hand."

The woman's words trailed off awkwardly as Poppy went to grab a broom. Rather than leaving the scene of her crime, the woman hovered awkwardly, obviously wanting to leave, but not wanting to look like she was fleeing. It was another second or so that what she'd said twinged in my ear, and my eyes narrowed.

"Can I see that, please?" I held out my hand for the umbrella.

It was just too big of a coincidence. Just a little too convenient.

The instant she handed over the plastic handle to me and I gripped it, I wanted to throw the whole mess out the door. Why? Because the umbrella was cursed.

Of course, it was.

I grimaced, feeling the sooty, gritty sensation of the spiteful magic clinging to my palm. What a nasty bit of conjuring. Deliberately designed to go off at the most opportune moment—to deal the most damage. And just like the other cursed items I'd come into contact with, the curse hadn't been expended. No, it was recharging its energy, so it could erupt again.

It was a little over the top, in my mind. Sometimes a hex was needed, sure. And among adolescent witches, being able to sling a nasty bit of magic was practically a sport. But if I hadn't been here, at this exact moment, then there was a huge chance that the heavy shelf would have fallen on the umbrella's owner, which would have been devastating for both her and Poppy.

I like a bit of spiteful mischief as much as the next witch. And up until this moment, the epidemic of curses had been nothing more to me than a mystery to puzzle over. Yes, I'd been annoyed that someone was being so blatant around the mundane population, risking ruining things for the rest of us. But now, the nasty spell work had almost hurt Poppy and that, I wouldn't stand for.

Whenever something or someone threatened my little, bubbly, blonde bestie, that was when this witch's claws really came out. Right—the time for reckoning was now upon us.

My smile had a few too many teeth in it when I offered the woman her umbrella back. Of course, I didn't want to hand it back to her, and I was contemplating just bewitching her into leaving it with me, but it turned out I didn't have to.

Her eyes were huge, her face pale when she said, "you can keep it. It's not raining that bad out."

I did my best to rein my temper in, ignoring the way the shadows at the corners of the room had gotten just a bit darker, a bit more defined. I didn't argue with her, though, because someone was going to have to unpick that mess of a curse before someone else ended up hurt. Maybe I could turn the umbrella's curse into a team building exercise for the coven. But for the moment, I had bigger concerns.

Poppy had emerged from the backroom, broom in hand, to tackle the start of clean up. But she paused in making a pile of glass shards, watching me and the customer, obviously realizing that something was up.

I bounced the umbrella's handle on my palm, trying to keep the anger out of my voice—now was not a time for irritation—it was a time to get some answers. "You said you got this second-hand?"

The woman nodded. "Yes, just this morning—because I wasn't prepared for the rain."

I nodded. "Can I ask where you bought it from?" I had a feeling the answer had to do with the pawnshop on Kitrey Street.

It took her a second to tear her eyes away from the umbrella, like it was a weapon she thought I might use against her. The woman's throat bobbed as she swallowed. "Um, I got it at the pawnshop in town." She made a vague gesture with one hand, towards the north.

Haven Hollow wasn't so big that it had half a dozen pawnshops. No—there were essentially two. And the one on Kitrey was in the same direction in which the woman had just waved. Not only that, but Jenny had mentioned spotting the shoes in the window of the same pawnshop. And I could easily imagine the second victim finding that ugly, ugly painting in a pawnshop. Or maybe the garage sale of someone with terrible taste.

"Thank you so much," I said, my voice like frozen honey. The woman blanched, taking a step towards the door. "You take care, now."

I didn't wait to see if she bolted or not. I just spun on my heel and started towards the back of the shop where there was a tiny room with a desk where Finn did his homework most afternoons. As I strode past a confused Poppy, I muttered.

"I need to make a call."

I didn't wait for her response, just let the furious clicking of my boot heels carry me towards the storeroom.

It had been a while since I was this mad. Not only was someone sending truly dangerous and destructive curses out into a mundane population, but they were also being sloppy about it. A painting falling off a wall, okay, that was explainable—bad nail, bad wire, bad attempt to hang it. Things could and did fall. That was gravity for you.

But a painting that flungitself off the wall, violently enough that someone immediately started babbling about ghosts? Or shoes that made a young woman run and dance herself into traffic? An umbrella that opened hard enough to cause an almost cartoonish amount of destruction? Those sorts of pranks were going to get noticed. They were the types of things people talked about.

And we didn't need any more people talking. We'd already had one influencer trying to ghost hunt in the Hollow, broadcasting everything to the internet. Henner might have been a gifted technomancer, but even he'd struggled to scrub everything off the internet. Things like that were a blatant risk—a threat to this town, and they showed a stunning lack of concern for anyone living here.

Hollows were supposed to be safe. And someone was messing with that safety. Worse, they were selling that danger to the public—the mundane public. I closed the door to the storeroom behind me and leaned my shoulders against it while I took a deep breath. I was a hundred and forty-three years old. I was a mature witch. The days of me letting my temper control my actions or my magic were decades in the past. At least, that was what I told myself as the shadows beneath the shelves and the table, the shade coiled between stacked boxes, twitched and writhed like they were waiting for my command.

Another deep breath, and the shadows dropped back down to the ground with an echoing sigh that I wasn't going to think about too much right then. Instead, I pulled out my phone and hit the contact for Taliyah.

We had work to do.

Surprisingly enough, Taliyah actually picked up on the third ring, just as I was mentally preparing the absolutely scathing voice message I was going to leave her.

"What?"

It wasn't like I'd been expecting a polite greeting. Chief Morgan didn't do those, but I still rolled my eyes.

"Now, is that any way to talk to the woman who has managed to get a tip that will blow this case wide open?" I asked in an overly sweet voice that Maverick would have known meant to start running for cover. I batted my eyelashes for good measure, even though I knew Taliyah couldn't see me.

There was a long pause.

"Are you going to elaborate, Wanda, or did you just call me to waste my time by being cryptic?"

I shrugged and leaned back against the storeroom door. This was more fun than I'd had in days, frankly. "I mean, I'm a witch. I'm supposed to be cryptic. Imagine how demanding people would get if I just went around handing out spells and wisdom to any yokel I tripped over?"

The line crackled as Taliyah let out something between a snort and a sigh. "So, you're just calling to tell me I'm going to be Thane of Glamis and then king?"

The reference caused a surprised laugh to slip out of me. "Wow, Shakespeare, Chief Morgan? That's a little high brow for a small-town cop, isn't it? Still, nice one."

Cloth ruffled as Taliyah adjusted her phone. "Wanda, I hate to tell you this, but Haven Hollow has a distressingly high crime rate for such a small town, and I actually am busy, so if you could get on with it, I'd really appreciate it."

"Touchy, touchy," I tsked into the phone. "But fine. I just had a run-in with a woman who happened to have the ugliest of cursed umbrellas."

The umbrella in question, still hooked over my arm where I was ignoring it, rustled as it struggled against the snaps keeping it closed like an irritated animal, but I ignored it. It hadn't built up near enough power to cause any problems at the moment.

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about a cursed umbrella that just caused a bit of a mess at Poppy's shop, but it's drained and harmless right now." Maybe my voice was a little mocking, and maybe I shouldn't have been taunting the cursed object, but I was annoyed enough to be feeling petty about the whole thing. "But it won't remain that way for long."

"Okay, so you're thinking it has something in common with the other cursed items we've come across?"

"Right. And guess what? The lady carrying it mentioned buying it secondhand from a pawnshop."

I let the silence draw out, and I could practically feel Taliyah on the other end of the line, refusing to play the game. Eventually, cop instincts won out, just like I knew they would.

"What was her name?"

I blinked. Okay, that hadn't been the question I'd been expecting. "What?"

"The woman carrying the cursed item… What was her name?"

I glared down at the phone for a second before lifting it back to my ear. "Why the spell would I know that? She's a human." As if that were reason enough not to know her name.

The creak of Taliyah tightening her grip echoed down the line. "Do you have a description at least?"

"Yellow, plastic handle, the fabric is–"

"—a description of the woman."

"Oh." I rolled my eyes. "No."

"You have no idea what a person you met ten minutes ago looks like?"

Honestly, the woman's face had already faded into the mists of memories that weren't interesting enough for me to bother keeping around. "Well, when someone is ordinary in all possible aspects of the word, they are also difficult to remember."

"You would make the worst sort of detective."

"Anyway," I started. "The point is that she was carrying a distinctive umbrella—one that I now have with me." I paused a moment. "Why do you even want her name?"

"So I can question her," Taliyah answered, over-enunciating in the way people do when talking to toddlers with attention span deficits, which was rude, really.

"Why would you want to question her?" I mean, the human woman wasn't the one laying the curses. I'd have felt magical potential when she touched my hand to give me the umbrella, unless she was way more powerful than I was and was able to hide that power from me. And what were the chances of that? Not to mention that if such were the case, I had no idea why she'd have been shopping at Poppy's store in the first place, or why she'd have been so mortified about breaking things.

I could actually hear the way Taliyah was grinding her teeth, the faint squeak of enamel being abused. I'd definitely been hanging out with Lorcan too much. "So I could find out where she got the cursed umbrella."

Honestly, she gave me no credit. "She already told me, Taliyah, which was the reason why I was calling."

"Okay?"

"As I told you earlier, she got the umbrella at a pawnshop—potentially the same pawnshop where Jenny purchased her shoes. Now, isn't that interesting?"

"Which pawnshop?"

Okay, I hadn't been expecting applause for my contributions, even if it might have been nice, but I'd thought I would have gotten more than a barked question thrown at me. Irritation soaked into my voice, and I didn't bother to hide it. "Kitrey Street."

"You're sure that's the one?" A pause. "Did she tell you specifically that the umbrella came from that particular pawnshop?"

"Well, no," I started. "But how many pawnshops are there in Haven Hollow?"

"Three."

I snorted. "Shows how much you know—there are two."

"And a new one opened up last week."

"Oh." I breathed out a sigh. "How do you even know that?"

"When you're in law enforcement, you need to know those sorts of things."

"Okay, well, big gold star for you." Then I paused. "Is the new one north of Main Street?"

There was a pause then, and a few clicks as Taliyah looked something up. "No."

"Well then, Kitrey's still the one." I raked my hand back through my hair, pushing it off my face. "Now, I was thinking–"

"—thanks, I'll look into it."

And then she hung up.

She hung up on me. On me. On Wanda Depraysie, High Witch of the Scapegrace Coven of Haven Hollow. Not only that, I'd just given her the clue that could break this case wide open, and she thought she could just go off and be a police chief and cut me out of things?

Oh, no.

No, no, no.

I was in this now; I was invested.

Plus, I had a few choice words ready for the person who was flinging dark magic at humans and putting us all at risk. They were not nice words either.

Unfortunately for Taliyah, I knew how to search for an address, too.