Collards & Cauldrons Page 10
‘Then I will bring the sky to thee
And sing to you where ‘ere you be
For I see you and you see me
Way up high in the old oak tree.’
Nana hugged me around my shoulders, restoring my faith and pushing away the edges of doubt in the best way she knew how. She repeated the song again, rocking me back and forth with her body behind me and her arms sheltering me.
“There, that’s a little better,” she teased after she finished, kissing the top of my head. “Do you think you could turn off the shower so I could see you through the mist?”
I chuckled despite myself and leaned forward, pushing the curtain out of the way and turning off the hot spray of water. “I made a mess in here, didn’t I?”
“Messes can get cleaned up. Some days it takes more effort than others. This time around, it’s going to require more than just you to get the job done, so stop trying to do it all yourself.” She tossed a white fluffy towel at me so I could mop up the pooled water on the floor.
“Nana, I think even with all of us helping, we might not be able to clean up what they’re trying to do to you.” The truth tasted like Carolina clay, but we couldn’t avoid it.
My grandmother leaned against the edge of the sink. The leather cord of her mojo bag she still wore stuck out of the top of her shirt. “Birdy, this may be an odd place to remind you of something important that’s been passed down in our family for generations, but if I have to say these words in a bathroom, so be it. We Goodwins don’t give up. If we find ourselves in a corner, we blast the wall behind us and make another way out.”
“But without my powers, I can’t help find anything,” I protested. “Ben is having issues and fears the Charleston wardens are going to somehow skirt the law, and there’s no way to prove your innocence.”
Nana pushed off the sink and placed a hand on her hip. “Now you’re willfully building walls to prevent from getting out of that corner you’re in. Stop thinking about me, Bird. Look at the bigger picture and find another way out.” She opened the door and exited the small bathroom.
Cooler air rushed in and cleared out the haze of steam. Standing in front of the mirror, I wrote Nana’s name, Priscilla’s, and the word Murder with my finger in the condensation on the mirror.
I wiped through my grandmother’s name with a squeak, crossing it out. If we took her out of the focus, then we were left with the murder victim herself. My finger traced a circle around Priscilla’s name, and droplets of water ran down the slick surface.
We needed to find who the grand dame of the local witches was. We were exposed to the surface of how things ran, but what were the gritty, dirty machinations behind the scenes?
I burst out of the bathroom to find my friends speaking in low voices. All eyes turned to me, and I pointed at Lavender. “People like to share juicy information. Spread it around until no one is sure what the truth really is.”
Mason regarded me with thoughtfulness, his left eyebrow cocking up in comprehension. “You’ve come up with an idea.”
“Well, clue the rest of us in,” demanded Blythe.
“Gossip,” I exclaimed. “If we want to figure out who might be likely suspects other than Nana, we need to know the context of their lives here. Maybe she was sleeping with someone’s husband and the jilted wife wanted to take her revenge. Or maybe she treated the other witches poorly and someone wanted to take her out for it or someone else can rise to social power with her out of the way. There are endless possibilities if we can find out the gossip.”
Lily spoke up, “But if none of the Charleston witches are here, who’s going to be our source?”
“Who sees everything but isn’t seen?” I asked. When nobody could come up with the answer, I smiled for the first time in a while. “Those that don’t matter. Those that are ignored because they’re seen as being less than everyone else.”
Nana nodded in approval. “Remember how Priscilla challenged me on the panel? One of Charleston’s issues with Honeysuckle stemmed from our acceptance of all magical beings. Here, there’s a huge group of beings who aren’t treated equally. Like the fae.”
“And I know at least one half-dryad who works right here in the hotel.” I beamed at my burgeoning idea to gather information. “Let’s spread out and see if we can track down any of the staff you might suspect could be fae and try to get them to talk to us. Our experiences in Honeysuckle and living a different kind of life could be the key to breaking the case wide open.”
Renewed with a purpose, my friends filed out of the room. Ben stayed behind to speak with my grandmother and Mason waited for me outside the door.
“I’m glad our talk on the toilet did you good, Birdy. I’m proud of you,” Nana crowed.
Her words bolstered my confidence in my task. “For what?”
“For blowing out the wall behind you. Now, go see what’s on the other side.”
Chapter Ten
Mason and I worked our way systematically up from the lobby to the top floor in search of David. We checked every corner and supply closet someone could use to hide.
“Maybe the staff was instructed not to talk to anybody. It feels like a ghost town in here. All we’ve seen are guests.” I walked to the end of the hall and back. “Nope. Unless he’s hiding in one of the rooms, I think we’ve run out of places to search.”
The detective scratched the stubble on his face. “We can split up. I can’t believe there isn’t any staff at all.”
I eyed the stairwell next to the elevators. “There’s another floor.”
“No, this is the top one,” Mason disagreed.
Pulling open the metal door, I spotted another flight going up. A chain hung across the stairs with a small sign dangling in the middle. Employees Only.
Mason joined me, and the heavy metal door clanged shut behind us. His observation about a clear way up the stairs nearly discouraged me. “But the wards should prevent us from going up there.”
“Only one way to find out.” With a determined grunt, I lifted my leg to step over the chain with the sign.
The detective yanked me back. “Don’t ever breach a ward like that. You could get hurt or, if they’ve done their job properly, you could alert the local wardens to your attempts. Let me try.”
He held up his hands in front of the stairs and concentrated. His eyebrows lifted high in astonishment. “Huh. The ward is still there, but it’s not at full strength. There’s a hole in it. Come on.” With caution, he climbed over the chain and up the first two steps. “Stay in the middle like I did, and you should be fine.”
I approached the stairs and twisted my body to step over the chain like I was trying to beat some invisible obstacle course in order to make sure I stayed in the middle.
Mason snickered at my attempts. “If I could make it through just fine, what makes you think you had to try and shrink yourself to fit? Let’s see where this leads.”
I let the detective lead the way in case he encountered another layer to the wards. We approached another steel door with no window. How were we to know what stood on the other side? Mason put his finger to his lip to keep me quiet, and with slow deliberation, he turned the knob and opened the door with care. A warm breeze replaced the stale air of the hotel and a beam of sun blinded me.
“I think we’ve stumbled on a crack in the wards.” Mason triple-checked before he moved forward. “If there’s nothing harmful on the other side, we might have found an important asset to help us with our investigation.”
“Well, we won’t know what’s on the other side if you don’t move,” I teased. “Or you could let me go first and protect you instead. I’m pretty tough.”
“I believe you.”
I searched his face for the lie, but only the truth of his statement rested in his eyes. “Thank you. That means a lot.” I shoved him aside and pushed my way into the sun before he could say anything else.
“Hey,” he called after me.
The brightness from real
sunlight disoriented me, and I shielded my eyes. Staying inside for so long made me appreciate the light that much more.
“I think I found where your dryad might be hiding,” Mason said, walking past me and further onto the roof of the hotel.
Stark industrial vents gave way to green grass underneath our feet. Wildflowers sprouted in clumps all over. A hedge of roses in bright colors stopped our progress, but the sight beyond them both confused and delighted me. A small lake of crystal blue water with green reeds bending in the breeze on its shore sparkled in the afternoon sun.
“Glamour,” Mason and I said at the same time.
A voice beyond the rose bushes whispered, “See, I told you it wouldn’t work.”
“Shh, stop talking,” scolded someone in a high pitch. “They’ll hear us.”
A disembodied voice I recognized groaned, “Too late. Might as well knock it off.”
With a few shimmers and the scent of a spring breeze, the view in front of us changed. Instead of an idyllic lakeside view, we found David sitting with a few other non-human looking friends on rickety rusted lawn chairs around a plastic kiddie pool behind short rose bushes. The half-dryad’s green hair hung about his face. He pushed it back and greeted me.
“We’ve been looking everywhere for you. There are a few things I’d like you to explain to us.” I waved at the others I didn’t know yet.
One of them leaned forward. She blew out a big bubblegum bubble the same hue of pink as her hair and popped it. “I wouldn’t trust them.”
Something with wings circled my head, and I suppressed my instinct to wave it away. Two pixies flew around, chatting to David in their unintelligible voices.
“Yes, I know they’re witches, Flit and Fleet. But they’re from that town I was telling you about. Honeybee or something,” explained David.
“Honeysuckle,” I corrected.
“Right. The town where anybody is allowed to live freely,” the half-dryad finished.
The pink-haired friend scoffed. “I highly doubt that.”
“No, it’s true. Witch, vampire, fairies, gnomes…we have all manner of people living in our small hometown.” Mason’s deep voice seemed out of place with the company we kept.
The chair beneath her creaked as she pushed herself out of it, landing on her feet and pointing at her back. “Even me? This is what happens when a fairy falls in love with a witch.” Two wings fluttered, but their tiny iridescent size wouldn’t lift her off the ground because they didn’t come close to matching the proportions of her body.
“Rayna,” David pleaded.
The diminutive young woman popped her gum again. “My biological father ran off, unwilling to legitimize my half-breed status. And when I grew too big to fit in with my mother’s clan, she kicked me out. I’ve got no place to go and nothing I’m good for except doing the laundry in the bowels of this place. If you think I’ll give that up to talk to you two, then you’re exactly as smart as I think all witches are.” She stomped off, ignoring her friends’ pleas.
David pushed his green hair out of his face. “I’m sorry about Rayna. It’s taken her a long time to settle down somewhere. And if you’re going to ask me about the things I think you might, then I can understand. In fact, if no one else is willing to speak plain and true, then you need to leave now.”
The two pixies dipped in the air, their voices buzzing in harsh tones. One of them tugged the other’s arm. The one who didn’t want to move yanked itself free and flew to hide behind David, crawling out from underneath the green strands of his hair.
“Fleet, why don’t you stay and listen? If things get too scary, you can leave,” the half-dryad suggested. He grinned when the other pixie ventured out from its hiding place to rejoin its friend.
“I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable, but if you would give us a chance, I think you would see we mean you no harm.” Mason held up his hands as if in surrender.
“David, this is about my grandmother. If you could help us, you might be able to save her,” I pleaded. “Please.”
He moved aside and offered me the seat he’d vacated. I thanked him and sat down. Mason refused Rayna’s empty chair, choosing to stand next to me.
“The floor, or more correctly, the roof is yours.” David sat down in the half-fairy’s chair ready to listen.
I explained the situation so they could all understand the stakes at hand and maybe forgive my determination to push to learn as much as possible as soon as possible. Once I felt like I’d won a bit of their trust, I gripped the metal arms of the chair to steady myself.
“We need to know more about Priscilla Ravenel Legare,” I explained. “More importantly, we need to know who might have wanted to punch her ticket.”
A slightly plain and short figure stepped out from behind a bush we hadn’t noticed. “I think the easier answer would be who didn’t want her dead. It’d be a much shorter list.”
“But if we’re trying to be helpful, Molly, perhaps you could give them some insight to what life is like in their household since your sister still works for them.” David stood up to offer her his seat.
Molly shook her head no and stayed where she was. “I won’t say anything that might get Meg in trouble. She’s protective of her job, and I won’t betray her. We brownies are fiercely loyal.” Just when I doubted we’d be able to learn anything useful, she held up her finger. “I mean it when I say the list of people who might have done it will be long. But I’ll try to help you narrow it down.”
She listed off all the top witches who might be a contender to take over as proverbial leader in the witch community. “See, Priscilla didn’t hold an official title. She wasn’t on the witch council. Hers was more an enforced position through her bullying and cunning skills at using information to get what she wanted.”
“She blackmailed people?” Mason asked.
“Oh, her hands were clean. Always. But if you traced all the lines of manipulation going on under the surface, almost all of them would lead back to her.” The look of disgust on the brownie’s face matched the curdling in my stomach.
David scoffed. “You don’t know the half of what she and her kind have done. Do you know why I’m here? It’s not because I think I can’t belong anywhere. It’s because two generations ago, my great-grandfather took my great-grandmother to a healer here in town. Because he wasn’t a witch, he was given a simple tonic that did absolutely nothing for her. But that didn’t stop the healer from charging him an amount of money my great-grandfather couldn’t pay.”
Although it was off topic, I needed to know how the story of his descendent wove in and around the half-dryad’s tale. “What happened?”
David hid his face with his hair again. “After my great-grandmother didn’t get better, my great-grandfather wanted to raise enough money to take her to a different healer in a town not too far from here that would help any magical beings. A witch in town offered to pay for the treatment if my kin would work for him.”
“It’s the old company system,” Mason interjected. “My guess is that your great-grandfather accrued even more debt despite performing the duties of his job. And that debt rolled into bigger debt.”
“Until I am the last in our line to try and take our family name off the ledger once and for all. Except I cannot rise above a certain position within the workforce. Another rule enforced by Priscilla.” David crossed his arms and sat back in his chair.
His story spoke of a horrible practice not only allowed but also pushed into action by the elite witches of Charleston. As much as I sympathized with him, the confession suggested something more sinister.
“You do realize you have given a reason for all of the non-witches who are in the same boat as you to hate Priscilla. That means there could be countless perpetrators.” The detective paused, waiting for them to catch on. “That includes you.”
David and Molly gazed at each other with great surprise until giggles burst out of them. The two pixies tittered while they hovered.
David attempted to stop laughing. “Because there’s no way anyone like us could harm her. We physically can’t. It’s part of the enchantment over the city. It dampens any magic we possess until we’re almost shells of who we should be. And it makes it impossible if we wanted to retaliate.”
“Some have made it out. Most of us who end up here get caught in a cycle we can’t break free from. For me, I won’t leave my sister and she won’t leave the family. Probably now more than ever.” Molly spat on the ground.
“I don’t understand. If Priscilla was so bad, then why does your sister stay?” Mason asked.
Molly’s prominent brow furrowed underneath her wiry bangs. “I can’t say, I already told you. But if you get a chance, you should try talking directly to the daughter. Now that her mother’s gone…no, I won’t say any more about them.” The brownie turned to leave. “I wish you luck in the impossible task before you. In this town, if you’re not one of them, then there’s really no help for you.”
I wanted to grab her and force her to tell me more. A few names of witches who might try to take Priscilla’s place of power wouldn’t guarantee the wardens would investigate them. And with her refusal to give specific information about the family, we’d hit another dead end.
“We’re never going to solve this,” I muttered under my breath.
The two pixies rose higher in the air from where they hovered and bounced in tandem. One of them flitted to David and spoke in his ear.
“Flit’s asking me why you haven’t asked either him or his sister any questions,” the half-dryad conveyed to us.
“My deepest apologies, Flit,” I addressed the one bobbing next to David. “Is there anything you can tell us about Priscilla?”
The pixie’s wings wavered in quick pulses. The high-pitched buzz of his voice grew louder in his excitement.
“He says that nobody ever takes notice of their kind and that he and Fleet saw your grandmother. Hold on one moment.” David held up his finger to allow the pixie to tell him more. “Fleet saw your grandmother enter the bathroom while the mean lady and her offspring argued.”