Witching for the Best Read online

  When I was a kid, Dad had told me this was where fairies went to the beach. That pretty much guaranteed that I spent the better part of every day for a week rummaging around out here getting covered in Lupine petals and pinched by crabs. That was until Mom made him tell me that this had been in fact a lie, and that fairies hated the beach.

  The scene I strode up to that morning was slightly less idyllic. Xander stood by the water with his arms crossed, glaring out towards the soft waves. The water just barely revealed the little labyrinth of algae-covered rocks that littered the cove, and the smell of brine was thick in the air.

  Not far from Xander were two other wizards, each standing next to a little rowboat with the Moonlight Cove police force emblem on it. The two of them kept looking out onto the water anxiously.

  “Maybe it’s a double date in the rowboat?” Luna suggested unhelpfully, and I shot her a look as we made our way down toward the little group. “That, or you’re about to get whacked. I’ve seen those mafia movies; a last-minute fishing trip with no witnesses is never a good thing.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” I whispered back before we got into earshot.

  Xander turned at the sound of our approach, his hard gaze looking me up and down before going to Luna for a moment, then back to me. He gave a curt nod.

  “Thanks for coming out here on short notice,” he said.

  “Looking for a free consultation?” I asked jokingly. “I haven’t formally applied for a private investigator license yet, but I’m sure I can offer you a law-enforcement discount.”

  Under normal circumstances, I might not have been quite so glib, but the memories from the murder investigation that took place about a month ago were still plenty fresh in my mind. When my own mother had been a suspect in a murder case, I’d rubbed shoulders with Chief Xander Forsetti and his sister, Officer Morgan, mostly about how I should keep my nose out of things. Of course, when I’d eventually figured out who the murderer was before Xander, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to gloat just a little bit.

  Xander knit his brow, but I could tell he was keeping himself from making a comeback in the tense pause between us that followed.

  “I called you here because I appreciate that you can be of help to us, I hope,” he said with a little tightness to his voice that didn’t diminish the natural authority he carried in anything he said. At times like this, I was surprised I stood up to him as much as I did last month when he was telling me off for interfering.

  And to be fair, I was interfering. But it paid off in the end.

  “Well, I’m here,” I said, stepping up beside him to look out onto the waters.

  Xander pointed out to the edge of the cove, where a dingy buoy was bobbing lazily. “See that?”

  I did.

  “Anything look unusual about that buoy to you?” he went on, glancing down at me, and I squinted my eyes as I looked out to the far end of the cove.

  “Besides the fact that it could use a little TLC?” I ventured. He didn’t seem particularly amused, but he took the binoculars off his neck and handed them to me. I peered through the heavy things and took a little time to find the buoy before I could focus in.

  I frowned.

  “There’s something bobbing in the water next to it,” I said, and I looked a little closer. “Is there something tied to it?”

  My heart was already sinking even before I heard Xander’s murmur of agreement.

  “Doesn’t look like driftwood to us, nor to the jogger who called it in,” he said gravely. “We need to get out there and confirm one way or another, but it’s low tide right now, and you can see for yourself why that’s a problem.” He gestured to the nearly-exposed rocks in the water.

  “Ah,” I said, understanding now why I’d been called out here. “So you need that kind of help.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d be grateful,” he said, looking down at me with a little less consternation. “We can wait for high tide, but I’m worried that by then, some of the marine life might, well, take interest,” he said, and I winced, understanding the implication.

  If that was a body out there, he didn’t want to wait around for the fish to confirm it.

  Still, I raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you planning to accuse me of doing it once you have your answer? It doesn’t count as returning to the scene of the crime if you called me here, you know.”

  Xander let out a sigh this time, hanging his head a moment before looking at me with some sincerity. “Look, Arti. I understand your hostility. Really, I do. But what happened in the last investigation, it was a mistake. I had a lead that I wanted to follow, and it ended up being the wrong one. I apologize that you worried about your mother because of that.”

  I raised my eyebrows, actually a little surprised to hear a sincere apology coming from the mountain of a man before me.

  “I was just being thorough, and I had to follow all my leads, wherever they took me. I have a feeling that’s something you can understand,” he added, arching an eyebrow at me.

  “Okay, okay, I gotcha,” I said, waving him off. It really did mean a lot to hear him own up to the mistake, but that didn’t mean I had to go all helpless-civilian on him just then. “Apology accepted. One high tide, coming right up.”

  I felt my cheeks burning red as I stepped back immediately after saying that. I’d never really had to announce what I was doing before, so I hadn’t exactly mastered the art of sounding like I knew what I was doing.

  I took a few steps closer to the shore when I caught Luna out of the corner of my eye, chasing after a crab that was snapping at her with its claws while she bounced around it, batting.

  “This is why I don’t take you anywhere with me,” I muttered towards her just before the crab pinched her nose, and she shook her head fiercely to get it off while hissing at the little thing. I rolled my eyes and turned my attention to the water.

  I had the innate ability to control the tides near me. It wasn’t a spell, exactly, in that I didn’t need to wave my finger around, I didn’t need to speak a word, and I didn’t really need to do anything to make it happen except think about it. All witches and wizards had a similar special power, which they were born with.

  For my family, the Mani coven, the moon was the most sacred thing in the sky, so I took a little quiet pride in the fact that my power was about as moon-based as you could get. Of course, I probably had the power because of our coven, and not the other way around, but hey, my ego didn’t need to know that.

  I took a breath and calmed my heart as I looked out over the greenish-blue waters that looked a little more gray close up. There was no reflection, just darkness, which was totally normal for this part of the west coast, and there was something comforting about that in a way I couldn’t explain.

  In my mind’s eye, I imagined each lap of the waves bringing the waters further up, waters growing higher almost like a bathtub, and before my eyes, the real water kept pace almost as fast.

  The men by the boat shouted in surprise and staggered to drag the boat back, and at the same time, Luna jumped when the icy waters touched her feet. As she did, the crab went flying off into the water and landed with a soft plunk before my familiar scurried away from the rising tide with her fur standing on end.

  I bit back a smile at Luna as the tides rose. They gently swallowed the rocks, and within half a minute, the tide was high enough that you’d never have known they’d been there.

  “That’s great,” Xander said, putting his hands on his hips with a smile. “I’d heard about your power, but I’ve never seen it in person.”

  “I don’t exactly get a ton of reasons to use it” I said with a nervous laugh.

  “Well, it certainly came in handy today” Xander said with a sigh as he watched the other wizards climb into the boat. One of the men pointed to the boat while saying a spell, and a moment later it pushed off from the shore without a sound, silently slicing through the small waves with the most efficient motor imaginable – a magical o
ne.

  It was a few tense minutes as we watched them head out there, and I felt like Xander and I both knew what was going to be coming back.

  “Who are those two, anyway?” I asked, stepping back over to Xander while Luna caught up to me, rubbing up against my leg. It wasn’t out of love. The wetness I felt on my ankle told me she was just using me to dry off. Apparently, I was useful as a portable towel.

  “Two of my cousins,” Xander said. “They’re not the sharpest tools in the shed, but they’re hard workers.”

  I was about to reply when we realized the wizards had reached the buoy, and a few seconds later, one of them turned and waved to us with a grim look on his face.

  “Damn,” I heard Xander mutter, and I didn’t need clarification.

  A few minutes later Xander’s cousins were pulling the boat back onto shore. There was a human body in the boat with them.

  I covered my mouth at the sight of it as my eyes widened. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a dead body, but the first one I’d seen hadn’t been completely waterlogged.

  Xander approached and helped them carefully haul the boat onto dry land where we all surrounded the boat to look in. I made my way forward as well, despite knowing Xander would probably prefer me to stay back, and before I could stop her, Luna jumped up into my arms, then up onto my shoulder to perch and peer down.

  I heard the wizards commenting before I saw her. “Elderly female, seventies or early eighties, time of death, uh…” he trailed off.

  “You know you’re not qualified to guess at that,” the other wizard said.

  “You’re not qualified to row a boat, either, so can it,” the first shot back.

  “Didn’t know we’d be doing this before I could make up the magical boating test-” the other tried to say in his defense before Xander shot them both a death-glare that shut them up.

  I peered over the edge of the boat and gasped.

  “You shouldn’t be seeing this, Miss Mani,” Xander said in his authoritative tone.

  “No,” I said, looking back at the body after taking a deep breath. It’s not that. “It’s, well, I know her.”

  Everyone looked at me with raised eyebrows.

  “That’s Susanna,” I said. “Susanna Andhrimir. Elisa’s aunt.”

  “Elisa? The cafe owner?” one of the wizards said, and Xander ran a hand over his face, groaning.

  “That’s the only Andhrimir family in town,” Xander confirmed. “Susanna used to run a restaurant near The Magic Bean, but she sold it and retired when I was still a kid. I’m pretty sure I heard my mom say she lived at the local nursing home.”

  One of the police wizards began to speak, but I was already turning and walking away from the boat so fast that Luna had to jump down from me and trot alongside.

  “Miss Mani?” Xander called, sensing trouble and jogging to catch up with me. “Where are you going?”

  “Is that any of your business?” I called over my shoulder, but he had already caught up to me and stopped in front of me, making me come to an abrupt stop and look him in the eye.

  “Since I’m pretty sure I know exactly what you’re going to do, then yes,” he said, being as stern as he could, but I could tell he was trying not to be harsh.

  “Look,” I said, gesticulating my hands in a circle, “I need to go see Elisa as soon as possible. I know her; she needs to hear about this from me before it gets to her from the rumor mill.”

  “That’s my job,” Xander replied. “I’ll handle it. Besides, word isn’t about to get out anytime soon.”

  “You said a jogger called this in, didn’t you?” I said, crossing my arms stubbornly. “What jogger do you know isn’t going to start gossiping as soon as they get back into town?”

  Xander’s mouth turned into a tight frown, knowing either that I was right, or that no matter what, I wasn’t about to be stopped. We glared into each other’s eyes for a few long seconds before I continued.

  “It’ll be better for her to hear it from me instead of some random cop, anyway. I’m not going snooping, I’m just looking out for a friend, okay?”

  Xander glanced back at the boat and the wizards by the body, and he let out a sigh, running his hand through his hair.

  “Fine,” he relented at last, “I’ve got more pressing things to deal with right this second anyway. Go straight there and don’t talk to anyone else along the way, do you understand?”

  I just rolled my eyes and moved past him, striding up the beach back to my broom, which I’d left leaning against a tree near the entrance to the cove. Luna bounded up ahead of me and perched on the bristles, purring as she flicked her tail.

  “Miss M-” Xander called behind my back, but he gave up halfway through and groaned, turning and making his way back over to the body.

  I didn’t have time to be smugly satisfied about winning the encounter, which I totally did, by the way.

  I had a hard conversation to race to.

  Chapter 3

  As I walked away from the beach, I looked down at the wet sand and dirt caked on my favorite pair of black boots. I wrinkled my nose and with a quick muttering of a purgoroa spell and a point of my finger, the offending dirtiness disappeared. Luna was close behind me, walking gingerly with a disgusted expression on her tiny face. She was shivering and damp, sand clinging to her feet and tail. She looked up at me with her big green eyes helpless and pleading. I bent down and gave her a smile, whispering the same spell over her body. She stiffened up in discomfort at the sensation of magic wicking away the dirt and sand from her fur coat. I knew she would appreciate being clean once the spell worked its magic, but I couldn’t blame her for feeling uneasy. Animals, even familiars, generally tended to be a little naturally wary of magic. It was an instinctual thing for them to avoid something that felt unnatural.

  Heck, even non-magical humans supposedly reacted to magical properties with a feeling of unease or malaise. It was enough to deter them from handling magic-imbued objects and to keep them out of magical boundaries. Our little town of Moonlight Cove was protected by exactly that kind of boundary. The town was under a powerful, routinely-maintained enchantment to render it virtually invisible to non-magical people. Only witches and wizards could live here, and only witches and wizards could come to visit, which they did in droves. Moonlight Cove was a magical seaside resort, a place for people to come and relax, safe from the prying eyes of curious, magic-less humans.

  I gulped back tears as I thought about how awful it was going to be telling Elisa her aunt was dead. I grabbed my broomstick from the leaning spruce tree I’d set it against earlier, and hopped on. Luna, desperate to not be left behind, clambered up my pant leg and perched on my shoulder, curling around my neck like a soft black scarf.

  “Luna, what is going on in our town these days?” I asked sadly. She was purring gently, the vibrations of her tiny body soothing me. I could tell she was purring for my benefit rather than hers. To calm me down and make me less nervous about the horrible task I’d given myself.

  “I don’t know,” she answered softly. “It seems strange for Moonlight Cove.”

  “That’s what I keep thinking. This place used to be so quiet. So safe,” I sighed. A teenager had been killed just a few weeks earlier, and now this. I kicked my feet against the ground, pushing us up into the air just enough for my broom to take control. I guided it slowly back to Old Driftwood Road so we could begin the long, winding journey back into town so I could break the awful news to one of my best friends in the world.

  The roads were pretty clear, everyone having already made their way to work for morning shifts. Here in Moonlight Cove there wasn’t much need for cars, or any other kind of motorized human vehicles. Of course, there were people in town who collected vehicles for the novelty of it, but they didn’t really drive them. The streets had never been built to accommodate cars, and we all stuck to our brooms and feet. The town was relatively small and compact, even though the densely-packed streets and neighborhoods made it
feel fuller than it could have been. There were lots of independent shops and restaurants, no big box stores to be had here. Everyone had a comfortable, easy life. We all worked hard but with passion. Different covens often had affinities for particular kinds of industry. Businesses were passed down through generation after generation, as most of us stayed here our whole lives. Sure, a lot of kids eventually went out to the human world after graduating from the Moonlight Cove Academy, but a lot of them – like Xander Forsetti – eventually came back here for good. It was comfortable. It was familiar. It was home.

  Elisa Andhrimir and her sister Bella ran a coffee shop near the Moonlight Cove Manor called The Magic Bean. They both hailed from a coven associated with the culinary arts, and their cafe was very popular and successful. I loved having it so close by, both so I could visit my friends and to take advantage of their fantastic coffee. It didn’t take me too long to get there, and my heart was already pounding as I leaned my broom against the side of the little café. It was small, almost a hole in the wall, but it was almost always packed full. When I walked into the cafe, the little bells above the entrance chimed and Elisa, who was standing behind the counter, looked over. Her face lit up as soon as she saw it was me. I went up to the counter and greeted her, my stomach feeling nauseous. I was not looking forward to having to wipe the smile off her face. I knew I could have left this job up to Chief Xander, but I also knew Elisa would prefer to hear the news from a friend rather than from an official visit from the police.

  “Hey, Arti!” Elisa exclaimed. Then, as soon as she saw the look on my face, she cocked her head to one side. “What’s wrong?”

  I looked around the crowded cafe and then back to her. “El, there’s something I need to talk to you about. In private.”

  She nodded slowly. “Oh. Um, okay. Just let me go grab my new cashier guy. He’s in the back sweeping up some spilled flour.” She rushed back to the kitchen and came back with a gawky young guy following behind her. He gave me an awkward smile and took over the register, looking a bit nervous. I hadn’t seen him before; he must have been a very recent hire.