Episode 3 of The Witch’s Key: Like Any Good Witch
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Episode 3: Like Any Good Witch
As the others talked, I watched.
If anyone was paying attention, they would just think I was your average teen with a major crush, staring at the object of her desire. At worst, they would think I was a stalker.
I could live with that, as long as no one suspected what I was really up to.
Basically, I needed his DNA, which sounded a lot more disgusting than it was.
Since I’d never even spoken to him before, and since he was obviously keeping an eye on me, I needed to be sneaky about it.
So, I watched his every move from the corner of my eye.
I did my best to be discreet about it, but I nearly jumped out of my seat the minute I saw him step into a back room and take a sip of a drink with a white straw.
“You okay?” Brandy asked.
“I have to run to the bathroom,” I said. “Be right back.”
I started toward the front of the cafe, and Peyton called out after me. “The bathroom’s the other way.”
“I’ll find it,” I called back, waving my hand over my head.
With any luck, they’d go back to their discussion about Peyton’s epic birthday party plans coming up, and they’d forget all about me for a minute.
Thanks to my spell from this morning, most people took no notice of me at all. I was just a blur in the crowd. Kai, of course, seemed to notice me just fine, but he was back on the registers now, and the cafe was swamped.
In fact, there were so many people inside, it was probably some kind of fire code violation. Wall-to-wall teenagers hopped up on sugar and first-day-of-school nerves.
Slowly, I inched my way closer to the door marked “employees only” and watched the patterns of anyone who came in and out of that door.
From what I could tell, there wasn’t an actual kitchen in this cafe. There was just a back store room where employees could go to take a break or grab things to restock the main room, like straws, napkins, flavorings for the coffee, and stuff like that.
Besides the manager, who Olive had called Melvin, there were four other employees working. Olive and one other girl were making coffees and packaging cupcake orders. They were also managing orders coming from the tables. Kai was obviously on the register for now, and there was a younger guy bussing tables and restocking the napkin stations.
The manager and the young guy were the two who went into the back room the most, so I kept an eye on both of them from my hiding spot at the end of the bakery counter. I waited for a moment when the kid had just started to empty the trash and the manager was dealing with a couple of very obviously upset girls complaining about the quality of their iced coffees.
I bent down as if I needed to tie my shoes and whispered, “Tacitus.”
Casting a spell on my boots was likely overkill, but hey, I’d been denied the use of my magic for the past three months. Now that I had my key back, I was going to use it.
The simple spell made my boots silent, so between that and the spell I’d cast on myself this morning, I was able to very quickly and easily slip through the employees-only door, grab a napkin, and lift Kai’s straw from his drink. With what I’d like to think of as ninja-like skills, I slid the wrapped straw into my bag and got the heck out of there.
No one suspected a thing, and I made my way back to my table with a smile on my face.
“That must have been some bathroom break,” Brandy said. “You were gone for twenty minutes.”
“No, seriously?” I asked. It hadn’t seemed that long.
“Okay, maybe ten, but still,” she said. “You missed all the good talk about the party. I know you’re new, but trust me when I say that Peyton’s parties are epic.”
I did my best to get into the conversation, because I genuinely was happy about having found some new friends so quickly, but all I could think about was getting home and casting a spell on that straw.
By nightfall, I hoped to know exactly what kind of magical being this Kai Richards was.
**
“Lenny, is that you?” Martin appeared in the grand foyer an instant after I walked through the door.
“No, it’s one of the other people who live here,” I said with a smile. “I brought you a present.”
I presented him with a regal gold and navy box that sported the Sir Bean logo, but it was the cupcake inside that I knew he would love.
“It’s lemon meringue. Your favorite,” I said. “Apparently, one of my new friends’ mothers is a cupcake goddess. Have you ever tried one?”
“Can’t say that I have,” Martin said. “Come with me to the kitchen, and we can split this and talk about your day. I’ve been dying to hear how things went. Better than anticipated, I presume?”
“Much better.”
I stared longingly at the stairs leading up to my room. I desperately wanted to get up there and cast that spell, but I owed Martin a conversation. Plus, I did want to tell him about my new friends.
We made a couple sandwiches and cut up some fresh fruit before sitting down at the ancient walnut table in the kitchen. There was a formal dining room in this house that probably rivaled the Queen’s, but we never used it. It was way too cozy in the kitchen, which is where you could find us most of the time when we were together.
We talked about my day, my use of the mirror, and our plans to order some cell phones.
“So, just out of curiosity, have you ever known a normal human who was immune to one of your spells?” I asked.
Uncle Martin shook his head. “Can’t say that I have. Why do you ask?”
I explained about Peyton and the invisibility spell. “I mean, obviously I didn’t make myself entirely invisible. I just made it so that people wouldn’t notice me unless I was speaking to them,” I said. “But she just walked right up to me and started talking. It didn’t work on her at all.”
“Interesting, indeed,” he said, scratching his chin with an index finger. “Are you quite sure she’s human?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t sense anything different about her. I’m not perfect at identification yet, but I can usually sense when someone isn’t fully human.”
The corners of Martin’s lips twitched a bit, and I leaned toward him, my chin in my hands.
“And what’s that about?” I asked. “You’re trying your hardest not to laugh at me, aren’t you?”
He did a very good job of controlling himself, but I could still tell.
“You’re talented, just like your father was at your age,” he said. “But you still have so much to learn. There are mystical beings you’ve never even heard of in this world. There are those who can cloak their magic so completely you would never know it until the moment they crept up behind you and put a dagger of ice in your heart. I wouldn’t expect there to be a lot of that sort at the local high school, but it’s possible this girl has a touch of magical blood in her lineage that made her immune to that one spell. She’s likely harmless.”
Harmless. Sure, when it came to Peyton, I believed him.
But what about Kai?
And what about the missing girls?
I desperately wanted to ask him about both subjects, but if he told me to leave it alone, I’d have to listen to him. In this case, I figured it was better to do my own investigating and ask for permission later.
“Thank you for dinner. I’d better get upstairs and start on my homework,” I said.
“Homework on the first day?” he asked. “Barbaric. Besides, we haven’t had a chance to split the cupcake yet.”
“Oh, I had one already. That one’s all for you,” I said. “Good night, Uncle.”
“Good night, dear one. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I rushed up to my room faster than anyone who was simply looking forward to homework. I had a much more important project to work on.
I fished the straw out of my bag. It was still wrapped in the napkin, so hopefully any DNA Kai had transferred to the actual straw was still there. This was my first reconnaissance mission, and I didn’t want to screw it up.
I disappeared into my large closet and rifled through some of my father’s books. It took longer than expected to find the book on identifying magical creatures, but I finally found the spell I was looking for.
Over the past few years, my parents had taught me a lot, mostly by showing me what they were working on. I was smart, and I caught on pretty quickly. But Martin was right. There was still so much I didn’t know.
I’d seen my parents use this particular magical spell a few times in the past to verify a creature’s identity, so I was hopeful I would be able to replicate it on my own.
I sat down on the floor in front of my spell cabinet and took a deep, centering breath. When I felt ready, I lifted my finger to the silver key I wore next to my mother’s locket. With clear intention, the spell cabinet doors swung open, revealing all of my tools.
Like any good witch, I’d been collecting magical items since I was about five years old. When he or she is ready, every good witch is gifted with a spell cabinet by the Witch’s Council, and it’s up to her to decide what she wants to fill it with.
Within reason, of course.
Certain types of magic were forbidden until you’d unlocked the next key.
Over the years, I’d chosen to fill mine with various herbs, salts, gemstones, and spell components we’d found on our travels. I also had a section at the top that housed my favorite deck of tarot cards, a small cauldron, a mortar and pestle, and a sage smudge. Naturally.
I pulled the miniature cauldron down from the top shelf, along with the mortar and pestle and a handful of herbs.
It took me a while to locate my vial of melted snow from the Arctic, but I finally found it hiding in the back behind a dragon’s fang.
I took all the tools to my desk in the corner and unwrapped the straw I’d stolen from Sir Bean.
This better work.
I read the spell’s instructions about fifteen more times before I started mixing it all together. When the base ingredients were all in place, I used a small pair of embroidery scissors with a skull on them to cut off the top of the straw, right where Kai’s lips would have touched it.
“Cognosco.”
My hand trembled as I let the straw fall into the mixture below.
Excitement bubbled inside me as the spell did its work. The white smoke that poured from the cauldron looked exactly like it was supposed to. Now, I just had to wait a few minutes for the spell to identify Kai’s origins.
When that happened, the smoke would change colors. Red for vampire. Orange for were. Pink for fae. And so on.
I had a list of smoke colors and their corresponding creature here in the spell book, so it was only a matter of time.
Only, time was ticking and the smoke hadn’t changed colors.
I tapped my foot against the wood floors. When I’d watched my parents do this, the smoke had changed much faster.
After ten minutes, I started losing hope. The smoke was dissipating. Soon, there would be nothing left. I read through the spell again and shook my head. I’d done everything right. I hadn’t missed an ingredient or said the wrong word. It should have worked.
Disappointment fell over me like a shadow as the white smoke went out entirely, leaving nothing but a pile of ash inside the cauldron.
**
When my alarm went off the next day, I was ready for it. I’d hardly slept at all the night before. Instead, I’d tossed and turned, dreaming about the night my parents died and all the things I wished I’d done differently.
I’d learned months ago that the best way to get through nights like that was to just stay awake. So, a few hours earlier, I’d pulled out my ancient laptop, connected to Martin’s base-level wifi, and done a little research on the missing girls.
There wasn’t a lot to learn, though. It was always possible the police were holding back on what they knew, but according to the local press, there were no leads and no real clues to follow.
The girls’ families had all just woken up one day to find them gone. No note. No evidence of a struggle. Nothing missing or out of place. They’d just disappeared.
At first, there had been some speculation that the girls had just run away from home. That’s what people always said when teen girls went missing. But after the third teen disappeared, people started to take it more seriously.
At this point, it seemed like everyone in town was just waiting for them to find the bodies.
I shuddered at the thought of it.
I wanted to believe all four of those girls would be found alive, and if there was anything I could do to help, I at least wanted to try.
Which is why I didn’t say a word about it to Martin. Instead, I planned to do some extra research at school today and see what I could find out from my new friends. There had to be some clues the police were either overlooking or that they thought weren’t important. Things I would recognize that they would think were trivial or unrelated.
I had to at least try.
“Leaving early today?” Martin asked, just catching me as I walked out the door. “You haven’t even had breakfast.”
“I’ll grab something at school,” I said. “I’m going to do some work in the library before the first bell. I might be late again today, too. I’ll try to make it home for dinner.”
“Well, that’s quite the change from yesterday,” he said with a smile. “It’s good to see you enjoying yourself. Have a nice day.”
“Bye,” I said.
I stepped out with a smile on my face, but it was immediately wiped away by the sight of the dark-eyed guy standing on the sidewalk directly outside the gate of my uncle’s house.
Kai Richards not only knew what I was. He apparently also knew where I lived.
“We need to talk,” he said.
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