Wonder Wand Way (Witch of Mintwood Book 10) Read online

  Wonder Wand Way

  (Witch of Mintwood, Book 10)

  by

  Addison Creek

  Copyright © 2018 by Addison Creek

  Cover Design © Broken Arrow Designs

  This novel is a work of fiction in which names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is completely coincidental.

  License Notes

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  the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

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  Chapter One

  It was the dead of night. White bursts swirled and flashed before me; the darkness was enveloped in a sparkling explosion. I used my forearm to cover my face, but speckles appeared on my eyelids as I waited for the shock to subside.

  Although I couldn’t see them, I knew that all around me the other witches were doing the same thing. Shocks reverberated through me that had nothing to do with the explosion, but reflected my feeling of surprise.

  What had just happened would change Mintwood forever.

  Hearing a cough from the direction of Aunt Harriet, I was reminded that my aunt was present at last. She had come back to save us.

  Finally the flashes of light all around us ceased. I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

  I lowered my arm and gasped at what lay before me.

  This was the landscape that had felt like home for my entire life. My grandmother’s farmhouse was the most familiar house in the world to me. During the summers when I was young, I would come and stay with her for weeks at a time. In the colder months we came for long weekends.

  The land around her home was just as familiar. Between the farmhouse and the trees stretched grassy fields. Ever since I had come to live here, the field was where I had most often seen the ghosts. When I looked out of one of the first floor windows, what I saw was the driveway and the fields. The seasons might change the appearance a bit, but the substance stayed the same.

  Until now.

  In front of me now was the first major change to the farmhouse landscape I had ever seen.

  The fence would be a topic of conversation around town for years.

  The most beautiful white picket fence I had ever seen now ran along the line of trees that edged the fields. Speaking personally, a white picket fence had never been my be-all and end-all, but at the moment this one looked amazing, shimmering in the darkness as it was. A beautiful sparkle of protection traced the edges of my grandmother’s beloved property.

  It even traced around me as my eyes adjusted to the bright light. When my eyes cleared, I found my companions looking at me.

  Sicily quirked an eyebrow and asked, “You didn’t think I’d do something ugly, did you?”

  Her granddaughter covered her mouth to stifle a giggle.

  “Honestly, I had no idea what you were going to do. This is stunning, beyond my wildest dreams,” I said.

  When I looked back at the farmhouse I could see Charlie and Greer watching us from the living room window.

  For safety’s sake, my roommates had stayed indoors; the ghosts had gone inside as well. Mr. Bone and Mrs. Goodkeep were tucked into the kitchen, and I hoped the tea ladies had taken refuge in there as well.

  My heart ached with relief to see them protected. I hadn’t known how tense and worried I’d been about them until I saw that they were safe.

  Tank was in Greer’s arms, while Charlie was holding Paws. Even from a distance and through the darkness I could see that they were waving at me. I waved back, but even that small motion sent shooting pains up to my shoulder. The work we had just done had been more taxing than I could ever have imagined it would be.

  My hand trembled at my side. For the rest of the night my wand was definitely too heavy to wield.

  I headed over to examine our handiwork as the other witches, our own little coven, spread out along the fence and followed suit.

  Whatever I had been imagining was going to happen, this wasn’t it. Maybe I hadn’t thought the fence would be visible to the naked eye. Maybe I had thought it would be something ugly and spiked.

  This, on the other hand, was something I could be proud of, a beautiful addition to my property. What might have been weeks or months of work had been completed in one fell swoop. Best of all, it would ensure that the place I cared about most in the world was safe.

  At least for now.

  “That white thing had better still allow me out of the field and into the woods,” said a grumpy voice from down around my ankles.

  Confused, I looked downward. I still had the image of Paws in Charlie’s arms, but apparently he had jumped free and come racing over the wet grass to where we were standing. Now he trotted out in front of me to look at the fence for himself.

  Among his other stellar and maddening qualities, Paws had a complex about the impossibility of anything done without his assistance and participation being done right.

  As if he was the only capable creature around here.

  Shaking my head, I followed him over to the fence. He sniffed at it and said, “This is very well done. It will cause some problems, but I suppose the problem it solves is the most important of all.”

  “What problem does it solve?” I asked.

  “We should really be going in,” Josephine called out to me. She had already started to make her way back to the farmhouse, her cape flapping at her ankles as she strode away.

  Paws hadn’t answered me. I raised my eyebrows at him, but he continued to act as if I hadn’t said anything at all.

  Of course he wasn’t going to tell me the main problem the fence solved. Riddles were much more likely to prevent danger than actually communicating with somebody.

  Said no one ever.

  Chapter Two

  The other witches didn’t stay long once we finished the séance. It was late, and they all had long drives home, or at least long enough so that they wanted to get going.

  Harriet, of course, was going to spend the night at the farmhouse. I hadn’t asked her how long she intended to stay, because to be honest, I was afraid of the answer. It was just nice to have her around, even if it was only for a little while.

  I slept in the next mo
rning. Warm covers were a hard thing to depart from when there were no pets to take care of, and performing that spell the night before had taken a lot out of me. When I woke up I tried to pick up my wand, but it still felt so heavy in my hand that I set it right back down again. It was as if it needed more sleep too, so I left it on my bedside table and made my way downstairs.

  Pinned to the railing on the stairs was a note from Harriet. “Had to fly. Back soon. Maybe for good.”

  Disappointment churned in my belly. Had she really run away so fast?

  Then I told myself not to get sidetracked by frustration with Harriet. She’d be back when she was ready, and I had enough to worry about as it was.

  When I got to our cozy kitchen, Greer’s dog Charger was asleep in front of the wood stove. Smart dog. But I had slept for so long that even Greer was up before me for once.

  I had thought that there would be cause for celebration the morning after the séance. We had, after all, protected the farmhouse from a danger that had been threatening us for a long time. I hadn’t been sure we’d manage it, but we had. It felt like success to me.

  My two roommates were sitting at the breakfast nook when I walked in, and they looked up at me with expressions that made me stop dead. They looked so concerned that a smile that had started to form on my face died.

  Charlie had told me the day before that she’d be working from home today, writing a story on the mystery meetings at the Daily Brew that we’d been alerted to by Mintwood’s one established hairdresser, Miss Violetta. Charlie was worried about Mintwood spies, and she didn’t want anyone looking over her shoulder as she worked on the story. If it got out early, all her hard work could be ruined.

  In front of Charlie was a sandwich of cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and some meat. I guessed it was turkey, because that’s all we had in the fridge at the moment.

  Greer had woken up just long enough ago to make herself some perfectly cooked eggs and bacon, and now she was staring grumpily into her coffee, apparently trying to wake up enough to eat the food before it got cold.

  Charlie was dressed for the day, while Greer was still in a robe and slippers.

  As usual, examples in opposites.

  “Morning,” I said, trying to regain some of my good mood despite their expressions. “What’s wrong?”

  They exchanged glances.

  “You should be the one to tell her,” muttered Greer.

  Charlie looked shocked and annoyed. “Why should I be the one to tell her? You’re the one who’s so big on sharing.”

  “Nobody who knows me thinks I’m big on sharing. Besides, you’re the reporter,” said Greer.

  “I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Charlie said.

  “You share stuff for a living. You sharing stories with readers is you sharing stuff for a living. If either of us should tell her, it should be you,” Greer insisted.

  Charlie peered over into Greer’s coffee mug. Greer wasn’t sure what she was doing and frowned at her suspiciously.

  “You should drink at least half of that cup before you try to speak to people,” said Charlie.

  Greer rolled her eyes.

  “I’m going to give you until I have my breakfast put together and I’m sitting at that table with you to tell me what’s going on,” I said. “And it better not be about Jasper.”

  My voice sounded strong, but my heart twisted inside. I had done my best not to think about Jasper, and it had worked pretty well so far. I had gone almost eleven seconds without picturing his green eyes or hearing his name bounce off the inside of my skull.

  So, progress.

  “It isn’t about Jasper,” said Charlie quickly. “I wouldn’t want you to worry about that.”

  “Right. He’d want me to worry, though,” I grouched quietly.

  The fact was, I was worrying. I was worrying about Jasper constantly and I was worrying about everything else most of the time too. The beautiful picket fence outside had helped, but not enough to make me stop fretting, and my friends weren’t helping.

  I had glanced out the window as I joined my friends; I could see the fence even though it was mostly around the other sides of the house. Now that it was in place, whenever I looked out the window and saw it, the protective barrier around the farm simply made me happy. In broad daylight, it looked like a normal white picket fence. Maybe to everyone who wasn’t a witch it would always look like a normal white picket fence.

  I settled in at the breakfast nook with some cereal, because Greer hadn’t made breakfast for me. She had made the coffee for both of us, though.

  “All right. I’m sitting here. Now you have to tell me what’s going on,” I said.

  Amazingly, Greer and Charlie both continued to shift uncomfortably in their chairs instead of coming clean. The staring contest they’d had while I was getting my cereal hadn’t gotten them to any conclusions about who was going to be sharing this epic news with me.

  Whatever it was.

  At my glare, Greer finally leaned forward, resting her forearm on the table. It was only then that I saw what she was trying to cover up.

  On our little kitchen table was the Caedmon Chronicle, the newspaper that was the bane of Charlie Silver’s existence. The only reporter in the county who could compete with her worked for the Chronicle. If you asked Charlie’s opinion on the matter, Hansen Gregory might be the only reporter in the entire state who could compete with her. He wrote for the Chronicle and she wrote for the Mintwood Gazette, and they had been rivals from neighboring towns for years.

  Charlie’s eyes darted to the paper as soon as Greer’s movement revealed it.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “What did who say?” Charlie asked.

  “In the paper you’re trying to hide. What did Hansen Gregory say?” I asked through gritted teeth.

  Greer’s mouth tightened. “We weren’t going to tell you. We thought we’d have a bit more time and be able to get rid of the paper before you got up. I was going to put it in the car where you couldn’t find it.”

  “I always read the paper in the morning. I like to see the spread of news and not just the good stuff. Pretty sure I’d have noticed if you hid the Chronicle,” I said.

  “Yeah, but you’d just have thought Charlie was being unreasonable, and it wouldn’t have been hard to convince you that that was true,” said Greer.

  “So that’s your excuse,” Charlie muttered to me.

  Charlie had severe mood swings about whether the Chronicle was worth reading. Sometimes she thought it was and sometimes she thought it was a rag bent on the destruction of good journalism. It entirely depended on whether Hansen had scooped her in that week’s big story.

  “Did Hansen get the lead on the sign refurbishment project?” I asked her.

  Charlie straightened up. Her eyes flashed. “There’s a sign refurbishment project?”

  Greer rolled her eyes. Then she grabbed up the paper and plumped it in front of me. “Sometimes she’s so gullible.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I took the paper and picked it up to read. Front and center was an article by Hansen Gregory. He was the Chronicle’s star reporter, after all, but even he would be excited about getting the front page above the fold. I scanned the headline quickly, then, with a frown, started skimming the article.

  “He seems to think that there’s something strange going on in this county. He offers only circumstantial evidence. He says that sometimes people see groups gathering in stores that are closed. Some people claim to see strange lights. Someone even found a warehouse out in the forest,” I said.

  I shrugged and put the paper down before I had finished reading the article. “It’s not a big deal. Half the stuff he’s talking about isn’t even witchy stuff. Is that what you’re worrying about?”

  “Go to the end of the article,” Greer urged. She looked deadly serious.

  The end of the article had an interview with a Ms. Newburyport, who had lived by herself in
Hazelwood for the past twenty years and who claimed to have seen a witch in the forest one night. She was convinced that the county was infested with them, and it was only getting worse. The conclusion to be drawn was that all of the strange events Hansen had summarized could mean only one thing: witches were real, and they lived among us.

  Chapter Three

  “You’re being remarkably calm about this,” said Charlie, shaking her head. She had been staring at me across the table as if I were a pot about to burst.

  I had spent the past half hour telling my roommates how unimpressed I was about all of it. It simply didn’t worry me, and I wasn’t sure why they were both in such a tither over a little article. Everybody heard rumors about witches around here from time to time, and they always had. Miss Violetta’s first explanation for the secret meetings going on at the Daily Brew had been that it must be a gathering of witches. For all we knew, her suspicions had contributed to the Hansen’s featured story.

  “I just don’t see what’s so bad about it,” I shrugged, nibbling on a piece of toast Greer had left unattended.

  “Hansen’s getting closer to your secret. He spends all kinds of time with you, and he’ll start to suspect, if he hasn’t already,” hissed Charlie, who seemed beside herself with worry.

  I looked back and forth between Charlie and Greer. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure if they were serious or kidding, but they certainly seemed serious, hard as it was for me to believe.

  I shook my head. “I feel like both of you are missing one very key point.”

  “What point is that?” Greer asked.

  Charlie, always the most dramatic, said, “The most important point is that we might all go to jail. You are missing that.”

  I sighed and shook my head. “Even if he suspects that there are witches around here, it doesn’t matter, and anyone else who wants to can suspect the same thing. That also doesn’t matter.”

  “What you talking about?” Greer asked. She made a motion with her hand that encouraged me to get to the point.