Spell by Midnight (Witch of Mintwood Book 3) Read online

  “Fans are needed in every household at any time of year. Who owns the house?” the woman asked.

  “I own the house. What’s your name again?” I said.

  “Do you live here alone?” the woman continued.

  The woman hadn’t even told us her name, yet she was standing on my porch interrogating me.

  I don’t think so. Strangers were not going to saunter up my stairs and demand answers from me.

  “I’m Bella, fan seller,” said the woman with a wink and a nod.

  “I’m Lemmi, and these are my friends, Greer and Charlie,” I said.

  “Do you have a catalog, or maybe a prototype we could look at?” said Charlie. Clearly I wasn’t the only one who wanted to discover whether this woman really was selling fans.

  “I sure do have a catalog, and it’s right here,” said the woman.

  I had a near heart attack when she started fishing in her fancy black coat. I had no idea what I thought she was going to pull out, but I felt a cold tingle race down my spine. When all she pulled out was in fact a catalog, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Here it is. Take a look,” said the woman, thrusting a booklet at me. “I can come back and see what you think in a day or two. You all take care now.” Then she strolled back toward her car and waved as she sped away, leaving the three of us standing on the porch looking like idiots.

  Finally I said, “That’s never happened before.”

  “I didn’t know women like that knew where a place like Mintwood was,” mused Greer.

  “She puts Macy to shame,” said Charlie. “Are we really supposed to buy the story that that woman was a traveling sales person . . . of fans?”

  “I don’t know, but if she thinks we believe it, then she has no respect for our intelligence,” said Greer.

  “I’m used to that. I hang out with you all the time,” said Charlie, grinning.

  “What do you think she was really after?” Greer said.

  I shook my head. I had no idea, except that it couldn’t be good.

  Charlie waited for a split second after the woman took off down the driveway. Then she said, “I’m going to follow her! I was on my way to work anyway. I’ll see you later.”

  “Be careful,” Greer yelled as Charlie skipped down the stairs to her car.

  We watched until she was out of sight, then closed the door behind our aspiring detective friend and went back to the kitchen.

  “That was very strange,” said Greer.

  “I agree,” I said.

  “Maybe she’s recently divorced and trying to make some money,” mused Greer.

  “As long as she doesn’t come back, I don’t really care what she is,” I said.

  I didn’t expect my day to be that busy except for my latest cat sitting adventure.

  I was often worried that I didn’t make enough money, but word was slowly spreading that I was an excellent pet sitter, and I always had at least one or two jobs going, sometimes more over weekends.

  In this case, a grandmother who was out of town visiting relatives had three cats that needed to be taken care of while she was away. The cats were sisters, and she had named them Nellie, Neely, and Noel. They had very different personalities, some of which you only recognized as a personality if you looked very closely.

  “I’m going to Ms. Ivy’s,” I said.

  “I would tell you to have fun, but it’s cats,” said Greer.

  “Want to come?” I said.

  Greer gave a long sigh.

  I could tell she was bothered this morning, but I wasn’t sure about what. I had a suspicion it might have been the looks Mildred had kept giving Deacon at the barn, but Greer wasn’t saying. Even though it was only cat sitting, I figured getting out of the house might do her some good.

  “Oh, very well,” said Greer.

  She pushed her chair back from the nook and went upstairs to change. Not long after that we were on our way to the Ivy place.

  Unlike other homes where I’d had pet sitting jobs recently, Ms. Ivy’s house was all by itself down a dirt road off another dirt road off the cemetery avenue. I didn’t really like going there at night, but since her pets were cats, Ms. Ivy had said that I could check on them only once a day if I really wanted to, since unlike dogs, they’d be fine without me for long periods. I usually tried to check in twice a day during daylight hours, then left them to their own crazy selves during the evening.

  The Ivy place was a white farmhouse in much better shape than mine. The long driveway was lined with trees, and the house sat on a little hill that overlooked sloping fields. There was so much space on the property that ordinarily the pets were indoor/outdoor cats, and not the friendliest of creatures, but when Ms. Ivy was out of town they became solely outdoor cats.

  We got out of the car and I called them.

  Nelly and Noel came running, knowing food would follow, while Neely was the odd one who liked to sit up in a tree and stare down at me. Nelly and Noel were both gray with white feet, while Neely was all black with strange yellow eyes that I thought were a bit creepy.

  She might have been the first cat I’d ever met whom I wasn’t a big fan of, possibly because she clearly wasn’t a big fan of me.

  I saw Neely every time I came by, because it didn’t appear that she ever went far from the house. But she also had no intention of coming down from her perch in the tree. When I merely waved at her, the expression on her face was skeptical, but if I went toward her tree everything changed.

  “She stares at us like we’re something horrible,” said Greer.

  “I know. I don’t think she realizes that I’m the one who’s feeding her. Otherwise she’d be more grateful,” I grumbled.

  “I think she realizes she’s a cat, which means that by definition she doesn’t appreciate you as she should.”

  “You mean as a dog would?” I said.

  Greer laughed. “Hey, have you ever seen me feed Charger?”

  Greer’s dog was super happy and grateful every time, whereas when a cat was fed she was just as likely to stick her entitled tail in the air, eat, and walk away.

  I went inside, checked on the water bowls, made sure the house was still locked up, while Greer continued to stare at Neely, and Neely continued to stare back.

  “She really looks petrified,” said Greer when I came back outside. “How did Ms. Ivy come across these cats?”

  “They were her daughter’s cat’s babies, which means we know they’ve never been abused or anything. She really has no excuse for being afraid, except that she’s afraid of everything,” I said.

  “You know what her face says when she looks at us? It says ‘Death has come,’” said Greer. She chuckled at her own joke. “I’m just so terrifying.”

  “The house looks good and the cats have water,” I said. “Let’s head out.” Greer nodded.

  We were heading toward the Beetle when we heard the sound of another car. It wasn’t that crazy to think that a car might be in the general area, but there were only a few houses along the dirt road that we had come in on, and Ms. Ivy’s dirt road was private.

  “There shouldn’t be any cars coming down this way. Do you think she’s coming back early?” said Greer.

  “No, I think she wanted to stay away as long as possible. She doesn’t like the cold weather,” I said.

  “With Neely looking at me like that, I’d stay away too,” said Greer. Then she chuckled to herself, rolled her eyes, and repeated her joke. “Death Has Come!”

  “Maybe Neely likes her better than she likes us,” I said.

  “Did Ms. Ivy tell you Neely likes her?” said Greer.

  “No, actually she told me that Neely doesn’t like anyone,” I said.

  “I thought so,” said Greer, her worst opinion of cats confirmed yet again.

  Just then the car we’d heard came firing around the bend. It was bright red with tinted windows; I had never seen anything like it before. As soon as it came within view of us, it halted.

&nbs
p; The driver had obviously stopped when he or she saw us staring. I squinted and tried to see who was at the wheel, but I couldn’t. For another split second no one moved, then I started walking toward the car. As soon as I took a step, it roared to life again and shot backward around the hairpin turn and out of sight.

  I glanced at Greer, who was staring open-mouthed.

  “Should we follow?” she asked. We were standing next to my Beetle, hands on the door handles and ready to pursue.

  “I don’t know, clearly we terrified them,” I said.

  “Maybe they’re shy,” said Greer. “It’s very strange, though. The woman’s eyes went wide and she looked shocked.”

  “You could see her?” I said. The only thing I’d seen was glass.

  “Just a little. There were two women in the front seat,” said Greer. “Neither of them looked familiar. The car didn’t look familiar either.”

  “What if they were here to rob the place?” I said.

  Greer bit her lower lip, thinking.

  “I think your only option is to stay here or call Detective Cutter,” said Greer.

  “Maybe they were just lost,” I mused, not eager to call the detective. “Then again, if they were lost, wouldn’t they have just asked for directions instead of running away?” I said.

  “You’d think,” muttered Greer. She made a sort of forward motion, as if she wanted to pursue the red car on foot, but by then it was several minutes since we had even heard the sound of the engine.

  We stood there a little longer, not sure what to do. I felt better about leaving when I remembered that Ms. Ivy had an alarm system. If anyone broke into the house, the company that had installed the alarm would be alerted.

  “Detective Cutter has enough on his plate,” I said. “I’m not sure he’d even come, given that he’s investigating a dead body at the moment. Besides, who would go rob a house in that car? That would be crazy.”

  “I think we can leave now,” said Greer. “Let’s just keep an eye out for our bright red car as we go.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’ll come back first thing in the morning and check things over again. I can’t believe Ms. Ivy has anything anyone would want to steal.”

  “That’s all well and good, but then what, or whom, was that car looking for?” said Greer.

  It wasn’t until we were driving away that I realized what Greer might have meant.

  Chapter Six

  Lucky me, the day of fun and excitement was far from over. I kept hoping we’d hear from Jasper with some news of the silo goings on, but the phone was silent. Charlie kept us updated when she could, but her information was equally fruitless. The Fan Lady had given her the slip.

  We gathered back at home that evening, but since none of us felt like cooking we decided to pick up sandwiches at the Daily Brew. On our way downtown, Greer and I told Charlie what had happened at Ms. Ivy’s. She couldn’t come up with any useful theories about the red car either.

  The café was packed when we got there, so it took a long time for our orders to come up. My stomach was rumbling so loudly I was afraid the people standing next to us would hear it. But we finally got our food, and as we were walking back to the Beetle at last Charlie wondered out loud, “Is there something funny going on in town tonight?”

  I looked up and down Main Street to see what she was noticing. There were a lot of women milling around, peering into shops and glancing at each other, then continuing to walk.

  Now that she mentioned it, something did look strange about the whole scene.

  “Maybe there’s some convention in town this weekend,” said Greer.

  “Yeah, that’s probably it,” I said. I started to feel distinctly uneasy, but I figured it might just be my rumbling tummy. Once I got this hungry it was hard to tell.

  For some reason, Mintwood tended to attract all sorts of weird gatherings and conventions that brought people together who might otherwise never have met. My grandmother had once gone to a color-coordinating convention, though now that I thought about it she might have been lying about what she’d been up to that week. Still, if she hadn’t been lying and color-coordinating conventions were real, I could see something like that drawing a crowd similar to what I was seeing now.

  When we got back to the farmhouse, I knew I was in trouble. I pulled the car up and Greer and Charlie got out ahead of me, carrying their sandwiches.

  Paws was sitting dramatically on the porch, waiting for me and my friends to file past on our way into the house. Charlie and Greer kept right on walking, but I knew I wasn’t going to get away with following them.

  “Traitors,” I muttered.

  “We’re there for you, just not right now,” said Charlie with a slight smile. Then she shut the front door from the inside, leaving me on the porch with a very angry ghost cat.

  “Are you proud of yourself?” he asked, his tail swishing angrily.

  “Proud of myself about what?” I said. Best to answer questions with questions. In the history of the world that never annoyed anybody.

  When Paws wasn’t happy with me he wasn’t one to hide it. Just like he wasn’t hiding it now.

  “About what happened last night?” he said through gritted fangs.

  “Nothing happened last night,” I said, not going for two for two on the question with a question front.

  “Yes, it did,” he said, his tail losing all sense of control and direction.

  “The body . . . that wasn’t really our fault. You see, there was this woman named Macy. She wanted Jasper to show us around. He didn’t want to, but she did this simpering pouty thing and he gave in and then . . .”

  “I don’t care what anyone else did but you!” Paws yowled. “You found a dead body without me!”

  “Oh, so that’s what this is about: you not having somewhere to wear your fancy clothes!”

  “No, that is not what this is about at all,” said the cat.

  “So what then?” I said.

  “You have to learn your magic! You don’t care what’s to become of us!” He was walking back and forth as he ranted, oblivious to where the crate ended and air begun.

  “I never knew how dramatic cats could be,” I muttered. I flopped into one of the rocking chairs on the theory that I might as well let him yell at me and get it out of his system.

  “You found a dead body, but the ghost wasn’t there. Do you know why the ghost wasn’t there?” Paws demanded.

  “He was probably just around somewhere,” I shrugged.

  “Oh, just around . . . Not likely!” he cried.

  “Should I go back tonight and see if I can find the missing ghost that goes with the dead body?” I asked. I thought about breaking and entering yet again into Jasper’s barn and flinched.

  “You should do no such thing! You know what you should do? You should find your grandmother’s wand! All of this would be much better if you could just do a little bit of magic. So find the spell books and get reading! If the ghost that goes along with the dead body is missing, there’s a reason for it, and not one you or I will like. In that case you need to be well armed, and part of being well armed as a witch is having your wand.”

  I sighed. Something was holding me back from doing what Paws demanded. Something was keeping me from fully committing to my responsibilities as the Witch of Mintwood, but I had no idea what it was and I didn’t want to figure it out tonight. I just wanted to eat my sandwich and curl up under my fuzzy covers in bed.

  “I will get on it soon, I promise,” I said.

  Paws sat back, looking disappointed. I went inside with the food, too hungry to do anything else tonight and definitely too hungry to argue with a cat who I knew was right.

  In the middle of the night I woke up to a very strange noise. I sat up in bed and listened.

  Old farmhouses are very chatty. They creak and groan, and when the wind howls there are all kinds of whistling noises. Whatever had awakened me was nothing like any of those.

  The noise got louder
as I listened, so I threw off the covers. Then I heard Greer in the hallway.

  My feet hit the cold floor and I scrabbled around for my slippers, grumbling that if I ever slept through the night again it would be a miracle.

  When I opened my door, Greer’s face was hidden in shadow.

  “What’s that noise?” she whispered. She was wearing a baggy sweater and baggy cotton pants with big fluffy slippers.

  I shook my head. I had no idea what the noise was.

  Then a burst of light made us both jump.

  “Let’s get Charlie,” I said, and we rushed downstairs only to find Charlie already awake and running into the living room wearing matching striped sleepwear.

  Charger usually slept in the kitchen (close to the action, but far away from Paws), but he was awake as well, and looking unhappy. Greer’s black lab was standing at the bottom of the stairs, his tail waving madly as he stared out the window at the dark woods beyond. Our curtains were open, but I couldn’t see anything outside but piles of darkness.

  Then another flash lit up the living room for a split second.

  “Is it lightning?” said Greer.

  “I don’t see how lightning could be coming from the trees,” said Charlie.

  Looking up, I knew she was right. But the light wasn’t coming from the sky, either.

  “Maybe it’s some stupid teenager fooling around,” I said. “They’ve come to annoy me before, apparently because my grandmother had a reputation for being kooky or something.”

  “I don’t think it’s lightning.” Greer moved a step closer to me.

  “It’s getting brighter,” whispered Charlie.

  I glanced outside to see if Paws was on his box, but he wasn’t. Where would he be at a time like this? Why did he always disappear when I needed him?

  Charger went over to the window and started to whine, and I followed him and peered outside.

  “I don’t see anything,” I said, Then my stomach turned. I didn’t see anything, including any of the ghosts who usually dotted the front lawn at night.

  “What’s wrong?” said Greer, coming up to my elbow. The second she looked out of the window she realized it too.