Five Charm Fire Read online

  Why on earth was I already trying to figure out who had killed Jack? Was this just what I did now?

  No, this wasn’t our territory at all. We were going to leave this to the Enforcers, obviously.

  “I liked him, you know,” Sara said quietly.

  “Did you really?” I asked. I mean, I could see why, in a way. Jack had been kind of charming, superficially. But he was so, well, arrogant. He was the kind of guy who would come into the bar when I worked in Seattle, order a bunch of drinks, and hit on all the women, thinking he could get any of them. And while he might get lucky once or twice, eventually most women saw through the veneer and moved on. He seemed like the kind of guy who was nice to spend a few hours with, but once you really got to know him, he was completely insufferable.

  “Yeah,” Sara said. “I think he was nice, really. I know he didn’t really seem like it tonight, but before we were all announced, all of us were waiting in the same room together. And I was sitting in the corner, as I’m sure you can imagine, thinking that I didn’t deserve to be with everybody else here. But Jack came up to me, and he told me that I looked like I was nervous, and I admitted I was. He explained to me how the lights worked and that I wouldn’t really be able to see any of the audience, and that would help. I could just pretend that it was me and Eli and the other competitors and nobody else out there on the stage. It helped, to know that.”

  I nodded slowly, raising my eyebrows. That definitely didn’t match with the macho bravado that Jack had put on here at the bar tonight. But hey, sometimes people were different in public and in private. Maybe my original estimation of him had been wrong after all.

  “Well, I’m sorry. It does sound like he was nice.”

  Sara nodded with a sigh. “I thought he was.”

  “Did you hear anything else when you were in that group?” Ellie asked. “Anything that might tell you who would have wanted him dead?”

  “I’m afraid that’s my department,” a loud voice said from behind us. I turned to see a man that I instantly knew was a wolf shifter. His eyes were deep set and beady, his nose long, and his mouth gave the impression of a permanent snarl. He pulled his lips back slightly, exposing his teeth, which were sharp and pointed. Yup, this guy was a wolf shifter through and through. “You three had better not be thinking about inserting yourselves in the middle of my murder.”

  “Of course not. We were just making idle conversation,” Ellie lied smoothly. “Are you one of the Enforcers from Desert Plains?”

  “I’m the Enforcer,” the shifter replied, puffing out his chest. “Bernard Hound, Chief Enforcer of Desert Plains. Are you the one who called me?”

  Ellie nodded. “Ellie Graham. These are my friends Sara and Tina.”

  “Which one of you found the body?”

  “I did,” Ellie continued. “We left the bar with everyone else, but then I, um, wasn’t feeling that great, so I came back in to use the bathroom before heading back home to Western Woods. It was when I came down this hallway that I saw him.”

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “James something. Went by Jack. One of the competitors in the new broom flying competition,” Sara answered.

  “I thought he looked familiar,” the Chief Enforcer muttered, almost to himself. “He was on TV earlier. And so were you. You’re from the coven of Jupiter?”

  “That’s right,” Sara said. “After the announcement at the stadium, most of us decided to come here and celebrate together. There were probably at least fifteen of the twenty people competing, and a bunch of friends and family as well.”

  “Right. Well, I will need to speak to you again, but I’m sure I can let you go for now. I assume none of you saw anything suspicious take place tonight?”

  The three of us shook our heads in unison.

  “Good. Well, don’t you worry about anything. This is a safe town, and we’re going to make sure everyone knows that they can come to Desert Plains without having to worry about safety. They made me Chief Enforcer here for a reason, and I guarantee you I’m going to find the person who killed your friend.”

  I raised my eyebrows slightly. After all, back in the human world, I had definitely seen enough TV to know that rule number one of police work was to never promise an outcome to friends and family. Besides, we had never actually told Chief Enforcer Hound that we were friends with Jack. As far as I was concerned, he was just an acquaintance to all three of us. Maybe a blossoming friendship—or maybe even more than that—could have developed with Sara eventually, but as far as I knew, she had just met him that day.

  “Okay, thanks,” Ellie said, practically dragging the three of us out of the bar. As soon as we stepped out onto the pavement, one of the transportation chariots showed up and the three of us hopped into it, ready to head back to the portal and go back to Western Woods.

  “Well, that guy’s an idiot,” Ellie said, getting right to the point as soon as we closed the chariot door behind us and began roaring off.

  “That was the impression I got, too,” I said with a small smile. “Is it normal here in the paranormal world to promise a result like that?”

  “Absolutely not,” Ellie said, shaking her head. “I mean, so many things can go wrong in an investigation. All you’re going to do by promising results and then not delivering is make people feel even worse.”

  “I hope he does succeed, though,” Sara said. “After all, I did like Jack. He was nice to me.”

  “Well, I’m sure we’ll see. After all, we’re probably going to have to come back here in the morning and give a witness statement or something,” I said. “To be honest, I was surprised he let us go without taking any sort of official notes or anything like that. We did find the body, after all.”

  “You heard the man,” Ellie said with a dry smile. “There’s a reason they made him Chief Enforcer in Desert Plains. But anyway, I’m sure we’ll hear all about it in the papers tomorrow. News like that isn’t going to be kept quiet for very long.”

  Chapter 6

  As soon as we got home, I was suddenly overtaken by a wave of exhaustion.

  “Amy left a note saying she’s gone to the library, as if we couldn’t have guessed,” Ellie said with a laugh, waving a piece of paper in the air.

  “In that case, I’m heading straight to bed,” I said. “It’s definitely been a very long day.”

  “Me too, but I’m having the world’s longest shower first,” Sara said.

  I made my way to my room, where Mr. Meowgi, my familiar, was happily purring away in the middle of the bed.

  “You’re going to have to share some space,” I grumbled as I slipped under the covers, softly pushing him to the side.

  “You’re such a bed hog,” he murmured sleepily.

  “You get this bed all to yourself for, like, eighteen hours a day,” I replied. “The very least you can do is share it with me the rest of the time.”

  “I need my beauty rest,” Mr. Meowgi replied. “Besides, when you’re in training as a martial artist as much as I am, sleep is as important as exercise, as it allows the muscles to recover after a hard workout.”

  “That might apply to this situation if you had ever done a hard workout in your life,” I said, snuggling under the covers.

  “I’ll have you know that I’m one of the greatest martial artists of my generation.”

  “I’m sure you are. Good night, Mr. Meowgi.”

  “Good night, Tina. Try not to fumble around in your sleep so much.”

  “I’m so tired I don’t think my subconscious will have the energy for that tonight.”

  I was asleep basically as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  When I woke up the next morning, the events of the previous night came flooding back to me, hitting me like a freight train a second before the headache. Even though I hadn’t drunk very much, apparently I was now old enough that three or four drinks over the course of multiple hours were enough for a bit of a hangover. Great. But that was nothing compared to the ot
her events of the night. One of Sara’s new coworkers was dead, and we had found the body. And I definitely didn’t know what to make of the Chief Enforcer in Desert Plains, but my initial impression of him wasn’t the greatest.

  I dragged myself out of bed and made my way to the kitchen, where the aroma of waffles floated toward me.

  “Yum, does that mean you really are calling in sick?” I said to Ellie, who was standing in front of the waffle maker in the kitchen.

  “Even better, an owl came by this morning and dropped off a note asking the three of us to go back to Desert Plains today and answer some questions about Jack’s death. Nothing quite like a letter signed by another town’s Chief Enforcer to get your boss off your back when you want a day off work. And this way I don’t even have to pretend I’m not totally hungover. Have a waffle. They’ll help.”

  I did as Ellie ordered, taking one off the stack and drenching it in the maple syrup and fresh strawberries that she had left on the table. Standing at the kitchen island, I took a bite, and instantly my headache began to disappear.

  “Oh my goodness, there’s magic in these, isn’t there?”

  Ellie turned to me and grinned. “What’s the point of being a witch if you can’t use it to your advantage?”

  “Some sort of hangover cure?” I asked as I dug in and shoved another huge piece of waffle into my mouth.

  “We’ve yet to discover a true hangover cure that solves everything,” Ellie explained. “But this one does have something for a headache, and it also covers nausea. That general sense of just wanting to crawl into bed and sleep for the entire day, though, we’ve yet to find a potion to cure.”

  “I would have thought a hangover cure would have been, like, the second thing that witches and wizards would have tried to solve once they discovered they had magical powers.”

  Ellie laughed. “It’s funny you should say that. It’s one of the things that a lot of ambitious witches and wizards try to solve. But it seems to be one of the only things that our species can’t solve by magic.”

  “Your equivalent of the common cold, then,” I said.

  “Oh, have humans not figured out the answer to that one yet? Goodness, I haven’t had a cold in, well, years. I don’t really remember. I guess when everybody just takes the anti-cold potion as soon as they get sick, the virus stops making the rounds so much.”

  “The magical world is sounding better and better every day,” I said as I bit into a juicy strawberry. “So when do we have to go back to Desert Plains?”

  “The letter asks for us to come by this morning sometime,” Ellie said. “I was thinking maybe as soon as Sara gets up and has some food? Get it out of the way early?”

  I nodded just as the front door opened, and Amy made her way in. She was still wearing the same clothes as the day before, and the bags under her eyes definitely betrayed the fact that she had been up all night. Under one arm she had a giant notebook, and in the other an extra-large take-out cup from Hexpresso Bean.

  “You know, for most people, the walk of shame happens after you spend the night in passion with a man of some sort,” Ellie teased as Amy came into the kitchen.

  “What I learned last night was far more exciting,” Amy replied, and I almost choked on the piece of waffle I was eating.

  “I absolutely guarantee you it was not,” Ellie laughed.

  “Was it about the coven of Titan?” I asked quietly, and Amy nodded. “Ooh, what did you find out?”

  “To be honest, not as much as I’d hoped,” Amy said, opening her notebook. “They’re definitely one of the most secretive covens out there, but I think that makes it more likely that it’s the coven Tina’s biological parents are from.”

  “We had that same thought last night,” I nodded.

  “A lot of what I’ve discovered about the coven is ancient history stuff,” Amy explained. “For example, I can tell you they live on the magical island of Kilokilo, which is about fifty miles off the coast of Maui. The entire island is small enough that it’s basically made up of a single town, and unlike most other magical towns, Kilokilo is inhabited entirely by witches and wizards.”

  “Even I knew all that,” Ellie said.

  “Did you know that the original witches and wizards that live on Kilokilo came from the South Pacific?” Tina asked. “The islands there were where most of the water covens lived, until thousands of years ago they began exploring, since overpopulation was becoming an issue on those tiny islands. Most of them moved to other parts of the world that we know well, like the water covens in America, and there are plenty in Europe and Asia and Africa and South America as well. But the coven of Titan, instead of travelling to other parts of the world where there were already different covens and carving out their own place in the world alongside them, decided to go the opposite route. They created their magical island about as far as they could from any other covens and declared that their coven was off-limits to anybody who didn’t have permission to be there.”

  “So their policy of isolationism has been around for a while then?” I asked, and Amy nodded.

  “As far as I can tell, it was over five hundred years ago that they began that policy, and it continues to this day.”

  “Do we even know who is in charge of the coven there?” Ellie asked.

  “Yes, and it’s one of the few things that we do know. Their leader is Christian Cassini. Lita said she met him a couple of times, and he seemed normal enough. I imagine if you bore a similarity to him she would have picked up on it, or at least mentioned it since. But, to be totally honest, the coven of Titan doesn’t have the best reputation in the magical world.”

  “Do we really have to tell her about that?” Ellie asked, giving Amy a pointed look.

  “We absolutely do.”

  “Yes, you do,” I said firmly. “I don’t care what it is. If this might have any sort of bearing on where I’m from, I want to know it.”

  Amy looked at the ground. “The thing is, a lot of the worst witches and wizards have come from the coven of Titan. It’s kind of why they’re left alone, in a way, I think. Most people are happy to let them live on their little island, away from anyone else.”

  “You mean to say that members of the coven of Titan are evil?” I asked.

  “No,” Amy said at the same time as Ellie chimed in with, “Yes.”

  The two of them shared a glance. “Of course they’re evil,” Ellie said. “I mean, sure, not all of them. But a few. Maybe even more than just a few.”

  “Evil is a strong word.”

  “Who was that, that your mom used to talk about? The one who tried to destroy an entire paranormal town because they didn’t like the fact that they kicked him out from the college there?”

  Amy sighed. “Yeah, I remember that. That was exceptional, though.”

  “What happened with that?” I asked, looking from one of my friends to the other. Could I really belong to the coven that was full of evil people? I didn’t think I was evil, after all. But then, would I even know? Did the worst of people know they were bad, or did they assume that they were the hero of the story and justify to themselves all the bad things they did? Maybe I was evil and I didn’t even know it.

  “It was about fifty years ago,” Amy said. “There was a wizard then—I don’t think anybody knows his real name. He just went by Titan, obviously from that coven. And to be fair to Ellie, this guy was evil. He was absolutely brilliant, too. By all accounts, he was one of the best wizards of his generation. Maybe one of the best wizards ever. He certainly thought so, anyway. He was accepted into one of the most prestigious paranormal colleges out in England, Hexford. Anyway, a couple of years into his studies, there was some sort of controversy. Exactly what happened was kept very quiet, and to be honest, I don’t know very much about the ensuing story besides rumors that have come to us over the years. But he was kicked out of the college, and he took it badly.”

  “He tried to cast a spell that would have all of the inhabitants of not on
ly the college but also the surrounding town killed,” Ellie said. “It was only by accident that he was caught; one of his professors came by to offer him private tutoring, since he was considered so brilliant, and found him casting the spell over the potion he had concocted that would have poisoned the entire town. He was stopped, but only barely, and he did manage to escape.”

  “So what happened to him? Did they end up catching him?”

  “No,” Amy said with a shake of her head. “That’s the end of the story. He disappeared, and nobody has heard of him since.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “So he’d be pretty old now, wouldn’t he?”

  “Yeah, in his late sixties. That’s not insanely old for a wizard, though,” Ellie said. “A few have been known to live to over a hundred and fifty.”

  “Wait, really?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Yeah, we generally have longer lifespans than normal humans. If you’d stayed in that world, you probably would have eventually become a celebrity for your extraordinarily long life.”

  “Well, that’s a nice bonus to wake up to. What do you think happened to him, then?”

  Amy shrugged. “Maybe he realized that living life as a pariah wasn’t a great choice and changed his identity, living a normal life now.”

  “Please,” Ellie said. “There’s basically no chance of that. He was completely rotten to the bone. Someone like that doesn’t just change their ways. You don’t go from trying to poison an entire town of people to just being a normal wizard somewhere new. My bet is he’s dead now. Either he got in with the wrong crowd and they killed him and the body was never found, or he had an accident or something.”