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  “About the owls at the post office.”

  My blood ran cold and I swallowed hard. Elawa had overheard the conversation, and she must have thought that I ran off because I had finally pieced everything together. She was definitely right, and now here I was, alone with a murderer away from anywhere else.

  “Oh, that conversation was nothing,” I said, trying to wave it off as a regular thing. “I simply didn’t realize that the post office here uses owls, and I think that’s pretty cool.”

  “I know it’s more than that,” Elawa said. “I felt that pulsating energy as soon as you connected everything. You know that I wasn’t told that I was no longer in my brother’s will.”

  Great. The game was up. I nodded. “Yeah, I did only just figure it out then. And then it made sense. You found out that he had sold his shares of the partnership, and that he had just gotten a huge payday, and you killed him, thinking that you were going to be the beneficiary in his will. But you never got the notification that the will had been changed, because the post office owls had all come down with the same infection that prevented them from flying.”

  “Stupid owls,” Elawa said. “And stupid Lorondir. His son is a worthless piece of trash with a gambling addiction, who’s just going to waste away his inheritance. I deserve that money. I’m the one who spent my whole life looking after Lorondir, making sure he always had meals, while he went off being this super famous lawyer making all this money. I deserved that inheritance.”

  “So you killed him for it, and you’re not even getting any money for it.”

  Elawa barked out a laugh. “We’ll see. I’m patient. It’s one of the advantages of being over 2000 years old. That idiot Farawir won’t have a will made, so I just need to wait a few years and kill him off as well; the money will go to me and my brother, his closest living relatives.”

  “Not if you go to jail for Lorondir’s murder first,” I said.

  “And who’s going to tell Chief Enforcer King? I know you are on your way to see her, and that’s why I came to stop you. And trust me. I’m going to stop you.”

  I instinctively reached into the back pocket of my pants and began fingering my wand. Maybe I was finally turning into a witch after all; magic was instinctively what I was turning to. Except, the problem was, I still knew very few spells, and the ones I did know weren’t going to be especially helpful here.

  Elawa took a step towards me, and my heart pounded in my chest.

  “That’s right, you should be scared,” Elawa said with a nasty grin. “I’m going to make sure you regret ever coming to Western Woods and meddling your little nose into my affairs.”

  I looked around. We were still in the coven gardens, and there was no one in sight. The lake was to my left and a few large trees were scattered here and there, but there was nothing that I could see that could help me make an escape.

  Maybe if I ran to the lake, I could manage to get there before Elawa did? Then I could swim away. But what if elves could swim? Elawa was a lot taller than me, and had longer limbs. If she could swim in the water as well, then that wouldn’t help me at all.

  Before I had a chance to make a final decision, however, Elawa held out a hand and the ground underneath me began to tremble. I ran to my right just as the ground opened up into a giant hole, with me scrambling away from the edge as fast as I could. Elawa was not playing around; I had to do something before I ended up dead.

  “Jupiter, bring forth fire, the cousin of Lightning,” I shouted, pointing my wand at Elawa and focusing all of my energy on the spell. A small flame shot out from my wand and towards the elf, but it wasn’t powerful enough to reach her, and Elawa laughed as she looked at the results of my spell.

  “I can’t believe you think you’re a match against me,” she said. “I have thousands of years of experience with elfin magic, and you’re trying spells that a six-year-old could master and failing.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. Honestly, the words didn’t hurt one bit. After all, I might’ve been a terrible witch, but at least I wasn’t a murderer. Still, if I was going to get out of here alive, I was going to have to figure out a way to do this spell more powerfully.

  Elawa reached her hands out towards me again, and once again as the ground beneath me trembled, I scrambled away as once more the earth fell away and a large pit developed. I knew that if I ended up inside one of those pits, it was all over for me.

  “Why don’t you just let this happen? You’re only delaying the inevitable,” Elawa snarled at me as I ran from side to side. Suddenly, I realized that she was so transfixed on me, that Elawa wasn’t paying too much attention to what else was going on around her. I ran from side to side as she continued to make the pits, trying not to make it obvious what I was doing, but eventually, I managed to essentially isolate Elawa on an island, as she had opened pits up all around herself in an attempt to trap me.

  I stopped, and laughed.

  “What is it?” she said. “Why are you laughing?”

  Instead of answering, I replied with a spell. But this time, instead of pointing my wand at Elawa herself, I pointed it at the grass on the little makeshift island she was now standing on.

  “Jupiter, bring forth fire, the cousin of Lightning,” I tried again, and this time, the flame caught on the grass and it began to smolder.

  “What are you doing? Get away!” Elawa shouted as she began to try and stamp out the fire. That distraction was what I needed to get people’s attention. After all, I needed someone else here to help.

  Running over to the nearest large tree, I did the spell once more, pointed my wand at one of the smaller branches covered with leaves.

  “Sorry, mister tree,” I whispered to the tree as the leaves and branch caught fire, and the tree began to burn. I really, really hoped that someone would eventually notice and come by to help.

  To my surprise, no matter how much Elawa was stamping out the flames on the grass, it didn’t seem to matter. The fire stayed lit, and eventually the edge of her robes caught, and fire engulfed her.

  “Help me!” she began to screech as the flames enveloped her body.

  I gasped; I had wanted to distract Elawa, not immolate her. As her screams filled the night, I did what I knew I had to: I took my wand, and I did another spell.

  “Jupiter, God of thunder, use my wand and bring forth water.”

  I repeated the spell three or four times, every time resulting in water gushing forth from my wand, until finally the flames were out and Elawa lay on the ground in a crumpled heap.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I just kind of stared in horror, hoping that despite everything Elawa wasn’t dead. After all, she might have been a murderer, but I wanted her to face justice for her crimes. And I didn’t want to be a murderer. I hadn’t meant to kill her; I had only wanted to distract her.

  “Tina? What’s going on?” I heard Ellie ask behind me. I turned to find her, Sara and Amy rushing towards me.

  “I don’t know if she’s dead or not,” was all I could say, pointing at the elf still crumbled in a heap.

  “I’ll go get my mom,” Sara said, rushing back from where she came, obviously to get her broom so she could fly the hospital.

  Elawa groaned suddenly and began to move. At least it meant she wasn’t dead.

  “She’s the one who killed Lorondir,” I said. “She tried to kill me, and I tried to distract her and accidentally set her on fire.”

  “Don’t move,” Amy said to Elawa, taking out her wand and pointing it at the elf.

  “Help me,” Elawa begged.

  “Healers are on their way, but don’t you dare move,” Amy said. “Trust me, if you try to hurt Tina again I will destroy you.”

  At Amy’s words, the reality of the situation rushed over me, and I collapsed onto the ground, completely overrun by emotion and exhaustion.

  Epilogue

  Ten minutes later, Sara’s mom Heather, three elf Healers and two elf assistants came over, the assistants carrying a number
of medical supplies. Amy did a quick spell to fill in the pits that Elawa had created, and the medical staff quickly made their way over to her as she moaned in pain.

  Ellie had gone over to find Chief Enforcer King, and texted us to let us know that King would meet us at the hospital, where she wanted to take our statements before arresting Elawa.

  “I thought you weren’t going to get involved with this,” Chief Enforcer King told me with a serious expression on her face as soon as she saw me.

  “I genuinely wasn’t,” I replied earnestly. And it was true; I had gone to do the right thing, but Elawa had eavesdropped and realized what I knew. “I was on my way to get you, when Elawa stopped me.”

  “How did you know it was her?”

  “It was the owls. Amy’s familiar is an owl, and she mentioned that all of the owls in town got an infection that stopped them from flying for the past week. So, when we uh, may have noticed that a copy of the new will was sent to Elawa on Monday, it didn’t click then, but there was no way she could have gotten the mail. After all, all of the owls were sick, so they weren’t doing deliveries.”

  “How did you know that Lorondir had seen his sister that morning? Did she have the opportunity to poison him?”

  “It didn’t click at the time, but one of the fairies told me that Lorondir and his sister had coffee together every Wednesday morning. Lorondir was murdered on Wednesday, so she would have met with him that morning for coffee.”

  Chief Enforcer King nodded. “I have to admit, I am impressed that a witch managed to figure all of this out.”

  I grinned. “Does that mean I’m not in trouble?”

  “Only because your friends back up your statement that you left to go and find me, and that you were followed and attacked. However, in the future, I would appreciate it if you did your best to stay out of trouble.”

  “Don’t worry,” I replied with a small smile. “I have absolutely no intention of getting into any more trouble.”

  “Good.” Chief Enforcer King closed her notebook. “Elawa isn’t admitting to anything, but I think we have plenty of evidence here to put her way for life. I think as soon as she gets in touch with a lawyer - it’s too bad for her she killed the best criminal lawyer in town - she might change her tune when she sees how much jail time she’s about to face.”

  I said goodbye to Chief Enforcer King, and a few minutes later my friends all came over to see me.

  “How did you know that it was Elawa who did it?” Amy asked, curiosity written all over her face. I explained everything that I had figured out to the three of them, and Amy groaned.

  “I should’ve figured that out,” she said. “After all, Kevin is my familiar, and I knew that the owls were all sick.”

  Ellie grinned. “Poor Amy. It must be so hard for her when someone else solves the puzzle first. You know, Amy, you would probably make a pretty good enforcer.”

  “Please,” Amy scoffed. “I’m a witch. I can’t be an enforcer.”

  Ellie winked at me, and I smiled back. After all, the first movie night had gone better than I could’ve expected - well, other than that whole part where I was almost killed by a murderer. But I was confident that given time, I could change the attitudes of the people here in Western Woods and make them realize that they weren’t all that different from one another after all.

  Also by Samantha Silver

  First of all, I wanted to thank you for reading this book. I well and truly hope you enjoyed reading this book as much as I loved writing it.

  If you enjoyed Two Peas in a Potion I’d really appreciate it if you could take a moment and leave a review for the book on Amazon, to help other readers find the book as well.

  You can also sign up to my newsletter to receive an email every time I release a new book. To sign up for my newsletter, click here now.

  Want to read more of Tina’s adventures? The third book in the Western Woods Mystery series is available on pre-order, due to release in November 2018. Click here to pre-order your copy on Amazon now.

  Other Western Woods Mysteries

  Back to Spell One (Western Woods Mystery #1)

  Three’s a Coven (Western Woods Mystery #3)

  Willow Bay Witches Mysteries

  The Purr-fect Crime (Willow Bay Witches #1)

  Barking up the Wrong Tree (Willow Bay Witches #2)

  Just Horsing Around (Willow Bay Witches #3)

  Lipstick on a Pig (Willow Bay Witches #4)

  A Grizzly Discovery (Willow Bay Witches #5)

  Sleeping with the Fishes (Willow Bay Witches #6)

  Get your Ducks in a Row (Willow Bay Witches #7)

  Magical Bookshop Mysteries

  Alice in Murderland (Magical Bookshop Mystery #1)

  Murder on the Oregon Express (Magical Bookshop Mystery #2)

  The Very Killer Caterpillar (Magical Bookshop Mystery #3)

  Death Quixote (Magical Bookshop Mystery #4)

  Moonlight Cove Mysteries

  Witching Aint’s Easy (Moonlight Cove Mystery #1)

  Witching for the Best (Moonlight Cove Mystery #2)

  Thank your Lucky Spells (Moonlight Cove Mystery #3)

  California Witching Mysteries

  Witches and Wine (California Witching Mystery #1)

  Poison and Pinot (California Witching Mystery #2)

  Merlot and Murder (California Witching Mystery #3)

  Cassie Coburn Mysteries

  Poison in Paddington (Cassie Coburn Mystery #1)

  Bombing in Belgravia (Cassie Coburn Mystery #2)

  Whacked in Whitechapel (Cassie Coburn Mystery #3)

  Strangled in Soho (Cassie Coburn Mystery #4)

  Stabbed in Shoreditch (Cassie Coburn Mystery #5)

  Ruby Bay Mysteries

  Death Down Under (Ruby Bay Mystery #1)

  Arson in Australia (Ruby Bay Mystery #2)

  The Killer Kangaroo (Ruby Bay Mystery #3)

  About the Author

  Samantha Silver lives in British Columbia, Canada, along with her husband and a little old doggie named Terra. She loves animals, skiing and of course, writing cozy mysteries.

  You can connect with Samantha online here:

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