He hesitated, looking from me to Mr. Lichen, and shook his head.

  “Sorry, Miss Greene. That’s very sweet of you, but I’m feeling a bit under the weather today.”

  “Not to worry,” I assured him. “I hope you feel better.”

  “Thank you kindly, Miss Greene,” he nodded. “Good day, Mr. Lichen. And...thank you.”

  He shuffled out through the patio gate, wiping sweat off his forehead.

  I would have left it at that, but something Phineas said gave me pause.

  “What do you mean before about Amelia's death being ‘ironic’?” I asked.

  “You know.” Mr. Lichen took a sip of the Mango-Getter. “For her to drown.”

  “Why so?” I tried to sound nonchalant, but I was getting worried. Had Mr. Lichen somehow found out about Amelia’s powers?

  “Cuz she’s a Windermere, of course!” Mr. Lichen exclaimed. “They own the lake, don’t they?”

  He shook his head, took another drink, and winced as the brain freeze hit. Chuckles warbled from under the table. I frowned down at the both of them and went back inside the shop.

  Allie Smith and some of her friends were hunched together at a table in the corner, whispering and sipping on Watermelon Whirls. They stopped talking and sat up straight when I approached their table.

  “Hey, Aunt Sam,” Allie said sheepishly.

  “Hi Allie. Can I get you girls anything?”

  They shook their heads vigorously.

  “Miss Greene?” One of them, a tall girl wearing a high ponytail, spoke up. “Allie said you and her mom found the body. What happened?”

  Allie glared at her.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “The police are looking into it.”

  “It was the Otter King.” Another girl chimed in, looking around conspiratorially. She was chubby and cute, with straw-colored hair and glasses that framed her large, blue eyes.

  “Will you stop with this “Otter King” stuff?” The girl with the ponytail scoffed. “That’s just an internet thing.”

  “I saw him,” the blonde girl insisted. “Like, just two days ago! By the dumpster at the park.”

  “That was probably a raccoon,” Allie offered. “They can get pretty big.”

  The blonde girl shook her head. “This wasn’t a raccoon, y’all.”

  They started bickering about raccoon sizes and internet forums. I left them to it and went to check on Mara, who had come in earlier and was talking to David at the counter.

  “Hey Sam,” she waved as I approached. “Sorry to bother you at work but I think I left my sunglasses here during book club...”

  “Oh, right! I put them in the back for safekeeping...let’s go grab them. David, can you hold down the fort?”

  David straightened and gave a mock salute. I linked arms with Mara and led her to the storeroom.

  “I had to tell you right away,” Mara burst the second I closed the door behind us. “I picked up a whisper this afternoon...I didn’t recognize the voices but I think it was the police. It was a man and a woman talking...about Amelia.”

  “Must be the Gallaghers. They’re new here. What were they saying?”

  “Well I started really tuning in when they mentioned you and Tessa. They were talking about some letters they found in Amelia’s desk when they searched the house. Nasty letters...threats.”

  “From who?”

  “Ronald Williams.”

  “The craw-fish farmer?” I asked in disbelief. I saw Ronald at the market almost every week during craw-fish season, selling craw-fish by the pound and serving up samples from his boiling pot. He was always friendly and was a big fan of Happy Blending’s Peach for the Stars smoothie. Once I thought about it, though, I realized that I hadn’t seen him at his usual stall in the last few weeks.

  “I know, it’s weird,” Mara replied. “The thing is, they have a suspect.”

  “Well, that’s good...I suppose.” I was still reeling from the idea that there could be a murderer in Goodsprings.

  “That’s not all,” Mara continued. “I kept listening as they went to speak with Lily Windermere. She mentioned that Amelia and Thomas, her fiance, had been fighting that evening before she left for book club. The police are going to look into it.”

  “What a mess,” I breathed. Mara nodded.

  “I just hope they sort it all out soon. Listening in on all this drama is exhausting. It will be hours before I can pick up another whisper.”

  “So it sounds like there are two suspects,” I said slowly, thinking. “But that still doesn’t explain how she could have drowned. Amelia was probably the most powerful of all of us. I once watched her part the entire river with a flick of her wrist. Drowning just seems...unlikely.”

  “Maybe she was unconscious,” Mara offered. “And couldn’t use magic.”

  “Maybe.” I conceded.

  “There was something else that stood out to me,” Mara mused. “The police said there were tracks on the lake shore by where you found the body...tracks, not footprints. Some large animal had been there.”

  “Black bear?” They were known to come out of the woods from time to time, looking for food.

  “That’s what the police thought, too, except they mentioned these tracks had six toes.” She gave me a pointed look.

  “Six toes...what the freak! Do you think it’s a cryptid?” I asked. One of our duties as the Goodsprings coven was keeping a catalog of all supernatural creatures in the region. These were rare enough, however, that this catalog consisted only of the moth man that lived upstate, a ghoul that had settled in a cemetery in Savannah, and a mysterious talking rabbit that my grandmother had met while tending to the orchard one day.

  “Could be. But it seems unlikely that there could be one so close to us that we didn’t know about it.”

  “I suppose the drowning would make more sense if a cryptid killed Amelia,” I said. “Sounds like we have our own suspect now.”

  “I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” Mara said. “I’d prefer to leave the police work to the police.”

  “Of course, but if there’s a cryptid out there, that’s coven business.”

  Mara sighed. “You’re right. But where would we even start looking?”

  I cracked open the door and peered out into the smoothie shop.

  “Let’s talk to some teenagers.”

  Chapter 9

  Mara and I cornered Allie just as she was about to leave with her friends.

  “Almandine dear,” I said, seizing her arm. “Would you mind lending me a hand with something? The computer in the back’s frozen up again and I can’t seem to get it to work.”

  I have a tiny office space set up in a corner of the storeroom...just a desk, computer, and file drawer. I rarely have need for it, but Mara sometimes uses it as a quiet space to compose her column and David will occasionally do some online shopping during slow hours.

  The three of us crammed into the storeroom and Allie sat down at the desk.

  “The computer’s not really broken,” I confessed. “We have some ‘book club’ business to discuss.”

  Allie’s eyes lit up. While she wasn’t a full-fledged member of the coven, we still included her in low-impact rituals and other minor magic chores. She wanted further involvement, but we had to always be careful. Tessa is a good teacher and Allie’s a fast learner, but as a young witch her fire magic is still unpredictable.

  “Is this about Amelia?” she whispered excitedly.

  “Maybe,” I said. “We were hoping you could tell us more about that “Otter King” y’all were talking about just then.”

  Allie rolled her eyes.

  “That’s just an urban legend...Genevive thought she saw some giant otter or something at the park and looked it up on the internet. Now she’s convinced it’s some sort of mythical water monster.”

  “Do you happen to know,” Mara said slowly. “If this monster has six toes?”

  Allie tilted her head, looking confused.

  “Six toes? Why are you asking—oh my goodness is the Otter King actually real?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Mara replied. “But the police found some strange tracks on the lake shore that we think might belong to a cryptid.”

  Allie spun around in the chair and tapped the keyboard to wake the computer up. She pulled up the browser and began typing furiously.

  “We should see what the witch forums say,” she said.

  “Witch forums?” Mara and I said in unison. What the crikey?

  Allie snorted. “Mom didn’t know about them either. Y’all never go online for spells or recipes or anything?”

  “Not really, no...” I admitted. I had known there were other covens around, sure, but for some reason I’d never thought to seek out other witches online.

  “Six toes...six toes...” Allie muttered, scrolling. “This might be it. There’s something called a dobhar-chu. No idea how that’s pronounced. It’s like a dog...fish...thing. Looks like it lives in the water, has been known to kill humans, and...yep. Six toes on each of its six feet.” She pulled up a picture, an ancient engraving that depicted a monstrous, toothy beast attacking a fleeing person.

  “Ugh,” Mara said. “Does it say how we can, um, deal with it?”

  “The dobhar-chu is a guardian of rivers, lakes, and wetlands,” Allie read. “It can only be summoned on a full moon and requires a casting circle drawn with a silver wand and lined with freshwater pearls.”

  “That’s a tall order,” I muttered, thinking of my plain oak wand and casting bag full of acorns and rocks.

  “Yeah...” Allie said, distracted. “And there’s a huge warning on the instructions. It advises witches to not attempt the summoning. Says the dobhar-chu is too dangerous.”

  “But what do we do when it’s already here?” Mara asked.

  “Doesn’t say. It doesn’t look like anyone’s seen one since the 17th century.”

  Mara sighed in frustration and a blast of cool wind blew my hair into my face. I tucked it back behind my ear.

  “Sorry,” she said, embarrassed. Allie giggled as she tried to untangle her own wind-tossed mop.

  “So what do we do now?” Allie said after a moment.

  “What we do now,” I said. “Is get your mother. It’s going to be another long night.”

  TESSA CLOSED THE RESTAURANT early that evening and arrived at Happy Blendings just after sundown. Our plan was to start at the park where Allie’s friend Genevive had supposedly seen the dobhar-chu. The park was across the street from the west shore of Windermere Lake, just a few miles from Windermere Manor. As we drove down the dark lakeside road once more I looked out on the trees, dotted with flickering fireflies, and wondered again if something had been out there that night, watching us from the darkness.

  The park was completely dark when we pulled up. None of the electric lights in the parking lot seemed to be working. The air was hot and thick with the smell of the lake and felt suffocating in the darkness.

  “Yeah...forget this,” I heard Tessa say and a bright light flared up from my left, cutting through the darkness. I looked over and saw her holding a tiny, hot-pink flame in the palm of her hand.

  “Why didn’t you do that before,” I asked her. “Last night, when my phone went out? When we had to stumble in the dark after finding a dead body.”

  “I was holding strawberries,” she said, as if it was obvious.

  Allie attempted to replicate her mother’s spell and ended up with a puddle of electric-blue light that ran down her arm and dripped between her fingers.

  “Ew,” she said, shaking it off. Flecks of light hit the gravel, sizzled, and vanished.

  We walked around the park, Tessa leading the way, looking for tracks or any sign that the dobhar-chu had been here. We eventually found the dumpster Allie’s friend had mentioned.

  “Something has definitely been going through the trash,” Tessa said, holding the light out. Garbage was strewn everywhere...trash bags ripped apart, takeout containers shredded, and grease-stained pizza boxes gnawed.

  Mara picked up a piece of metal pipe from among the trash and held it up.

  “Um...y’all...” she said nervously. “This definitely wasn’t a bear.”

  Tessa moved the light over so we could get a better look. The pipe bore the imprint of a bite mark. Several enormous teeth had clamped down and crimped the metal.

  “Whatever did that,” Allie whispered. “Is really, really big.”

  Tessa caught my eye. Her face was tight with fear, an expression that I’d rarely seen her wear. I looked over at Mara, whose eyes were wide and fixed on the pipe she held. I cleared my throat.

  “Well, now we know it was definitely here,” I said briskly. “And I bet I can pick up a scent from all this trash.”

  The others looked confused for a moment, then realization dawned on Tessa’s face.

  “If you’re sure, Sam.” she said. “Do you have the energy?”

  “Of course,” I said, starting to stretch. “I’m still riding the sugar rush from David’s last smoothie experiment.”

  Every witch in the Goodsprings coven has what we call a “wild form”, an animal shape we can take from time to time. Mine is a red fox, which comes in very handy for scaring off squirrels and rabbits that come into my garden. In fox form I would have excellent night vision and a keen sense of smell...perfect for tracking down a monster in the middle of the night.

  The problem is that wild form requires a lot of magic, moreso than most witches can spare in a day. Going into wild form is already tough, but coming out can be almost impossible if you don’t have the energy or focus. My grandmother told me that some witches have gotten stuck in wild form and have had to live out their lives as animals...I used to have nightmares about it.

  I leaned over and grabbed my left calf, then my right, feeling the stretch through my legs and back. Once I felt sufficiently limbered up, I sat on the ground, gave the others a thumbs-up, and began to shift into wild form

  I can’t speak for the others, but I’ve always found shifting to be a bit uncomfortable. Not painful, just...itchy. I felt my ears and nose elongate, my limbs retract, and a bushy tail sprout from the base of my spine. Thick, short fur appeared everywhere and my cheeks prickled as whiskers formed. Within seconds I was a fox, looking up at the concerned faces of my coven.

  I barked up at them and pranced around in the grass for a bit, enjoying the feeling of the wet blades on my chin and tummy. I swished my tail around and snapped at some fireflies. Wildform is dangerous, sure, but it can also be so much fun.

  After taking a few moments to orient myself, I padded over to the dumpster. The smells were overwhelming...rotting food, dirt, lake water, people...but I was able to zero in on one in particular. It was an earthy, musty smell that was unlike anything I’d ever smelled before. It surrounded the dumpster and meandered off into the trees. I barked and stood on my hind legs, alerting the others. When I saw that they began to follow me I darted into the trees, yelping as I went to guide them.

  Through my fox eyes, the dark forest glowed with life. Insects skittered in the undergrowth, clicking and whirring as I padded through their mossy world. A whisper of wings above me made my ears perk up and I caught a glimpse of a lamp-eyed owl vanishing into the treetops. The scent I followed wove between trees, slid over logs, and clung to the edges of clearings. As I chased it, it thickened into a pungent, wet-dog smell that tickled my nose and threatened to overwhelm even the stink of the summer-warmed lake.

  The trail led me to a sandy part of the lake shore that was almost entirely surrounded by tall, rustling reeds. Six-toed tracks the size of dinner plates dimpled the sand around me. I sniffed around cautiously—the scent was strongest here but didn’t proceed in any other direction. Once I was satisfied that I was alone in the area, I pointed my nose skyward and yipped until I heard the crackling, stumbling, and occasional swearing of Mara, Allie, and Tessa emerging from the woods.

  “I’m starting to think Amelia had the right idea about what we should do with these wetlands,” Tessa muttered, shaking leaves out of her hair and flicking a mosquito off Allie’s arm. I zig-zagged between their legs and back to the tracks. Mara gasped as Tessa’s pink fire illuminated the imprints.

  “That’s definitely it,” whispered Allie. “They look exactly like the forum said.”

  “So...” Mara said softly, “do we just wait for it to come back?”

  “What if it doesn’t come back?” Tessa asked. “We could spend all night being mosquito food for nothing...”

  “Maybe we could try a basic locating spell,” Mara suggested. “I should have all the ingredients...”

  “No need,” growled a deep, rumbling voice behind us. “I’m already here.”

  Chapter 10

  A gargantuan, glistening otter head emerged from the water, barely rippling the surface. A long, six-legged body followed, then a tail that was as thick around as any one of us. The dobhar-chu, roughly the size of a station wagon, stepped onto the sandy shore, swishing its head to and fro to part the reeds.

  Mara, Allie, and I took a step back. Tessa moved between Allie and the creature, the fire in her hand flaring hot and white. The dobhar-chu eyed it lazily and shook what must have been several gallons of lake water off its back and tail, drenching the lot of us. It leaned forward to sniff us, close enough that I could see the droplets of water running down its whiskers, and huffed.

  “Witches,” he rumbled. “Rude witches, barging into my nest at night.”

  He yawned, exposing a pink mouth full of jagged teeth, and laid down on the sand in front of us.

  Mara and Tessa looked at each other, then down at me. I tried in vain to throw off my fox form, but the arrival of the dobhar-chu had put me on high alert and it was difficult to concentrate on shifting. I peered up at my coven-mates and made what I hoped looked like a shrug with my forelegs.

  It was Allie that spoke first.

  “S-Sorry about that,” she stammered. “We, uh, weren’t sure if you existed, so...um. Looks like you do! So...” she glanced over to her mother, who sighed and shook her head.

 

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