The Enigma on Eden Road Read online

  “You know,” he said, floundering around with his hands in the air. “The murders and such.”

  “Oh, oh, of course,” I said with a firm nod. “Of course, I can’t think they would be down to chasing after someone who’s been—” long pause as I hadn’t the foggiest idea what he was talking about. I wasn’t ignorant, just preoccupied.

  “Burning all that chemical stuff in the garden,” he continued. “I’ve already tried phoning this council this morning, but goodness, that took forever, and I’ve had jobs up to here.” He raised a hand to above his head. “I think I should take retirement too.”

  Cassandra stood. “What stuff is he burning?”

  He threw his hands into the air once again. “Old papers, probably,” he said. “Let me show you what I’m talking about.”

  Greg led us through to the kitchen from the hallway and out into the garden.

  The faintest whiff of smoke travelled the air, but there wasn’t much in terms of smoke, the garden was already fairly dark. I took a look around the garden, noticing Jinx and Ivory at the bottom in their pearlescent white coats of fur and feathers, they both played, which was odd.

  “Well, I can see Ivory, so I can’t think there’d be any smoke here.”

  “He’s probably put it out,” Greg whined. “I mean, the man is a maniac. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

  It was probably the same thing that had been getting into a lot of the other people in Cottonwood, fear. It was a powerful motivator and often made people do extremely stupid things, there was no saying that this was the case for Greg’s neighbour.

  “Has he done this before?” Cassandra asked.

  I wasn’t sure, given I’d only lived here sporadically over the many years of owning the house, but I do remember odd things about Greg’s neighbour, Mick, like how he had tried to steal from his house when I’d visited, and how he’d stunk of smoke—it was probably connected to all the burning.

  “Well,” Greg began, sighing into his shoulders. “The man stinks to be frank with you. He’s quite a large man as well, definitely doesn’t look after himself.”

  “I faintly remember,” I hummed. “Long grey beard?”

  “That’s the one!”

  “I’ve only come face-to-face with him once before and when that happened, I almost had to peg my nose shut because of the smell coming from him.”

  “This place is no longer a safe place,” Greg continued. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to continue living next door to him much longer.”

  Patting Greg’s back to comfort him, I took his hand and squeezed it a little. “You should go get some sleep,” I said. “You look tired.”

  “I tried napping earlier,” he continued, “but couldn’t get much done because of that smell coming in through my windows. I wouldn’t be surprised if I have to get rid of all my furniture because of what he was burning.”

  I cooed softly, a shushing. “I don’t think you should really be stressing yourself out over this,” I said. “I think once everything calms down, the local council will be able to take your complaints and help you.”

  He smiled. “I hope so, for his sake more than mine.”

  Greg didn’t have a bad bone in his body, so I wasn’t sure why he was pretending to make threats. It was cute to see him do it, bringing a large smile to my face.

  FOUR

  After Greg had left, it was only a matter of time before I was running on empty and my energy levels resembled that of a corpse.

  “I think we should talk about it tomorrow,” I told Cassandra as I washed away empty mugs.

  Cassandra sat at the table with Jinx purring asleep in her arms. “Probably a good idea,” she said. “But we’re on our own now, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep.”

  I tssked my teeth together. I didn’t want to leave it like this. There had to be something we could do to bolster our way forward. “I’ll try and think of something,” I said. “But right now, my mind is thinking of how comfortable my pillow is.”

  “You can go sleep,” she said. “I’ll think of something.”

  After cleaning away the mugs, I retired to my bedroom.

  Sitting on the bed, I massaged the back of my neck with a hand, rolling my head slightly as I jabbed at the tender nodes where I’d been holding all my tension.

  Before undressing, I did a quick search of my pockets, removing anything I’d kept during the day; once those clothes were off and in the washing machine, whatever I’d had in there would’ve been lost forever.

  A glossy piece of card came out of one pocket, alongside some lint. I turned it over, my face dropped. It was the card Destiny dropped, the card from the house. On the card, there were several people, each of them with faces scratched to the surface of the photograph itself.

  “Cassandra!” I shouted from my room.

  In a panic, she ran. “What? What is it?”

  I showed her the photo. “I forgot all about this.”

  She grabbed it from my hand. “This is our saving grace!”

  Of course, it was our lead, and I’d forgotten all about it. I slapped a hand to my forehead. “We can do a spell to bring the photo back to its original state,” I said, jolting an idea into my mind from the physical bashing.

  Cass snapped her fingers. “What do we need?”

  I sat once again, opening my hands with palms facing up. My book of shadows appeared in my lap. “I’ll look for something,” I said.

  “Once we know the faces, we can find the people who did it, then find the source, and voila,” she said with a cheery smile and a chuckle. “We’ll be done for midnight.”

  “If I don’t die of exhaustion beforehand,” I said. “I don’t have the energy I once had.”

  “But you are the midnight witch,” she said.

  It only worked when I reminded myself of it, not something I needed to be used against me when I wasn’t feeling up to it. I was the midnight witch, but I wasn’t the exhausted witch, that was definitely a title belonging to someone else, possibly at this time the financial chair to the High Witch herself.

  “Right, right,” I grumbled. “Go make some tea then. Cranberry and mint.”

  As Cassandra left, I flicked through pages, looking for a simple spell to bring back a tainted photograph. If it was done at the time, I could’ve easily waved a hand and it would’ve been undone, but as I had no idea when it was done, and the damage caused, the spell needed to be something more complicated.

  Gathering a second wind of energy with my tea, I powered through the book of shadows, snapping my fingers after glancing at a single page to be taken to the next. I didn’t realise how many spells I had to fix something.

  “Found it!” I shouted, rushing into the kitchen to see Cassandra with a silver plate in hand, balancing the mugs of tea on top.

  “What is it?” she asked, placing the teas on the kitchen countertop.

  I placed the book of shadows on the table. “It’s a spell,” I said. “We need to get some water. Some thread. Oh, and a clothes peg,” I listed, sliding a finger down the page. “And probably something to hang the two pieces of thread from.”

  Cassandra snapped her fingers and the objects appeared. “As for the last thing, we could just suspend the thread in mid-air.”

  I’d never been someone who would use magic as gratuitously as Cassandra did, but it was refreshing to see her do so. I’d always been brought up on the notion that magic should be used conservatively, not too much, but equally not too little.

  “The spell is in English,” I said, “so, not sure how well it will perform. I don’t recall doing it, but it should work if we put a bit of power behind it.”

  She nodded. “Okay, let’s start.”

  I double checked the equipment. We had a small bowl with water, some thread, and a plastic clothes peg. Just like the spell had called for. We had everything we needed to make this a success.

  “We say the spell, dunk the picture, say the spell again, and then hang
the picture,” I said.

  “How long does it take to work?”

  I shrugged. Perhaps one of the reasons I’ve never used it. “I guess until it develops again.”

  “Ugh.”

  Indeed. But at least it meant I’d get to go to bed after and sleep until it was morning—or Cassandra wakes me with the news, but some sleep was better than no sleep at all.

  With both our eyes on the paper, we said the spell aloud. “What once was new, is now old, return it to its former mould.”

  We submerged the photograph completely in the water, keeping it under for five seconds before pulling it out.

  Again, we spoke the spell. Cassandra suspended the thread in mid-air as I pushed the photograph onto it with the use of the plastic peg.

  There was nothing immediate.

  We waited, looking at it for a moment as it hovered over the kitchen table. There could’ve been better places for it. Water dripped, almost hitting my book of shadows. Snapping my fingers, I pulled the book away.

  “Tomorrow, I think it will be developed by tomorrow,” I said with a hopeful smile.

  Cass sighed. “I hope. Or else—”

  “Or else, nothing,” I said. “It will work.”

  FIVE

  Once I was in bed, it took five minutes of rolling around getting comfortable before I was sleeping. I’d dressed my face in an eye mask and plugged my ears with earplugs. They were both essentials on the road as a travelling witch, especially when you slept during the day.

  Nothing had sunk in that night, from finding Destiny and the fate of her family, to meeting Phil’s brother, officially, for the first time without being shrouded with mystery, and then the Witches Council closing their gates. I was sure the Council shutting shop would have been felt across the country, and yet, it hadn’t set inside me yet.

  Until the dreams kicked in.

  A strong believer in dreams and the theory of dreams, I knew better as a witch to ignore what my dreams were telling me, because sometimes, dreams could just be the key to solving an entire investigation.

  That night, I dreamt I was taking a test—alone, in an assembly hall filled with empty chairs and I was in the middle with a blank sheet of paper. There was a giant zero in the centre of the page; I’d failed.

  The floor opened around me.

  Swallowing me whole.

  “Ack!” I flew out of bed, levitating a foot above my mattress. My eye mask over my head, I didn’t like flying much.

  My failure represented a lack of preparedness. Falling represented an unwilling to let myself go. Perhaps if I let go, I’d be prepared—but that made zero sense at all.

  I lowered myself onto my mattress and took a couple breaths before a muffled sound came from the doorway. I pulled the earplugs out to reveal Cassandra’s voice calling out my name.

  “Yes?” I called out, lowering myself steady back to the mattress.

  “Nora, it worked!” A pounding of knocks came to the door. “Nora! Nora!”

  “Right, right,” I said. “I’m coming.”

  I hurried out of my bedroom, wrapping a nightgown around myself.

  Cassandra stood in the kitchen, staring at the picture in awe. I hurried to her side to see who it showed on the image. There were five people, they stared back at us in the photograph, smiling faces.

  “Harry,” a croak broke from the back of my throat. “It’s Harry.”

  “That’s who I thought it was,” she said. “It’s not looking good.”

  “Not for him, it’s not.”

  “And the others. Do you recognise any of them?” she asked.

  I didn’t. There was a larger man stood beside Harry with an emblem on his chest, dangling from a large gold chain. “That must be the Lord Mayor,” I said, pointing at the man. “I can’t believe we found them.”

  “I can’t believe it’s the same man from the woods.”

  “He must have been watching us,” I sighed. I wanted to take the blame, but I knew whoever it was, he had been following us long before the encounter in the café. “I bet he turned Destiny.”

  “That, or he works for the people who turned her.”

  “Like a—a cleaner?”

  She shrugged. “The Council has them,” she said. “So, I assume the other side has them to hand as well.”

  Now, that was a real thought. “We need to track him down.”

  “I don’t think this will cut it,” Cassandra said, grabbing the picture from the peg. The thread and peg both fell loose, landing on the table. “We need something of—”

  “His?” I asked. “I got it. I have his card. The one he gave to me.”

  “You could just call him then,” she said.

  “No, no, no. Risk him knowing we’re onto him. He knows we’re witches, clearly.” But he doesn’t know what we now know. “We should eat first,” I said, “then we can scry for him.”

  “I’ll whip some food up,” Cass said. “You get a map of the area.”

  I nodded. I wasn’t sure I had a map laying around anywhere. Perhaps I had one of Cottonwood, but he could’ve been all the way in Canterbury by now, and I wasn’t sure I had anything large enough to see that far.

  Digging into my wardrobe, I had to have something we could use as a map. Scrying only worked when you had a visual locator key, a map, and since I was travelling a lot as a working witch, a usually kept a map to hand.

  In a box marked ‘equipment’, I found everything I needed.

  After retiring, I placed whatever I had no use for into that box. It was brimming with objects I had no use for anymore; maps, compasses, anything really for navigation, you never knew when your powers might give out or you fall ill from not replenishing yourself.

  “Found it!” I shouted, a map of Kent, in its entirety.

  “Breakfast is ready!” Cassandra called at the same time.

  It was quick, but then again, Cassandra didn’t do things by hand—often.

  She’d prepared a small spread of greasy goods for us to sink our teeth into; bacon, fried eggs, toast smothered in butter, and some sautéed mushrooms in a small dish.

  My appetite arrived from nowhere. I quickly demolished my share of the food, downing almost an entire litre of water to top it all off. I was ready now, ready to continue with the investigation. It gave me the source of energy I quenched after.

  Clearing away the empty plates and used cutlery, I placed the large map in the centre of the table.

  “This is what we’ve got,” I said. “So, unless they’re out of the county, we might be lost.”

  “I doubt he’s left,” she said, bringing the voice of reason into this. She was right, why would he leave when they were just getting started. “I don’t think he would have left Cottonwood.”

  “Something is keeping them here,” I said. “Whatever it is, I’m sure we’ll find them.” My gut rumbled with nerves as I presented his business card.

  “Well, it’s neither of our cases now,” Cassandra said with a devilish smile. “So, I’ll give you the honours.”

  I handed her the card. “You’re still in training,” I said. “Best let you get all the practice and experience you need before they send you off to whichever town in whatever place, searching for ghoulies and ghosties.”

  She chuckled at the comment, accepting the piece of card. She already had a crystal attached to a piece of string in hand, and in that same hand, she held the card, moving over the map.

  “Say a few words,” I said. “Whatever comes to mind.”

  Glancing at me with the side of her eyes, she wasn’t convinced. “Okay then.”

  “Nothing fancy,” I added. “Just a small tip of your tongue spell.”

  She coughed into a fist, glancing at me once again. Jinx purred at her, rubbing her back up against her ankles.

  “Go on.”

  “Find the being, find the beast, locate them fast, before they feast.”

  Thud.

  The crystal scry pulled Cassandra’s hand to the m
ap.

  SIX

  The map showed that Harry Bateson was at the town hall, right at the centre of Cottonwood. If someone was going to set up a beacon, surely, they’d set it up right in the centre of the city to give it the best radius.

  As per my dream, I needed to be prepared.

  “I’ll grab the bloodstone,” Cassandra called out. “You know, in case he—”

  “In case he turns,” I finished. “This could be where it all ends.”

  “Fingers crossed,” she squealed. “What will we do without Phil to take them away?”

  I shrugged. I hadn’t got that far yet. “Wrap them in the witch thread, then knock them out. Probably use Ivory’s old sleeping place to store them.” I hoped there weren’t many, because I didn’t think more than two could fit inside the cramped cupboard.

  “Should we kill them?” she asked.

  “Not if you can help it.”

  We didn’t go around murdering creatures and monsters, we were investigators, not their executioners. Of course, sometimes, a vanquishing wasn’t always off the cards, sometimes you needed to vanquish a monster—or anything from the spirit realm really.

  Once we were prepped and ready to go, a sudden aching wave came over me at my stomach. I leaned back against the wall in the hallway, planting my arms on my thighs. I could feel the heat of sick in my chest.

  “You okay?” Cass asked, placing a hand on my back.

  “I will be,” I said.

  “Nervous?” she chuckled.

  While it might have been funny, it was also probably true, but I had no reason to be nervous or feel sick—other than the fact we were going into this blind and without help. I wanted to tell Cassandra to leave, so I could go it alone and get through all of it without ruining her work for the rest of her life.

  Cassandra pressed a glass to my hand. “Some water,” she said.

  “Thank you.” I sipped the water and calmed my breathing. “I’m not nervous,” I told her, but I was telling myself more than anything. “I’m apprehensive. I don’t know what kind of pack we’ll be going into.”

  She scoffed. “I heard you’d done worse.”