Rosie took a seat opposite me. “Your gut is rarely wrong,” she said, looking at the map. “So, the plan is still to find his house and go?”

  I glanced into her eyes. She was hungry for adventure. She always was, there was no stopping her once I started to explain. I used the crystal to find Nigel’s house. I knew it was hidden away with a view out over the shore, and from the map, it appeared the house was in the middle of the woods.

  “I’m coming with you,” Rosie said as I gathered crystals in my handbag.

  I slipped my arms into my coat. “Well,” I said, “grab the cakes from the kitchen, we’ll swing by the church on the way back.”

  It was dark outside; the December sun had vanished an hour earlier. It made the early evening drive a little more daunting in darkness. I drove five minutes through the village to a small locked gate which opened to a smaller dirt road.

  “Should I get—” Rosie began as I swished a hand and the gate swung open. “Or, you could do that.” She chuckled.

  “It’s freezing out,” I said. “I can’t believe I’ve never seen this before.” It was on a long stretch of road, and unless you were looking for the gate, it didn’t quite jump out behind the shrubbery.

  The further up the dirt road I drove, the darker everything became. The trees took on an ominous looming life force. It was certainly secluded. But after several moments when only the space several feet in front of my vehicle was illuminated, a large clearing opened.

  “Wow,” Rosie said.

  At first sight, I noticed blue and white police tape everywhere. Nigel’s house was huge, made completely like a wood cabin. Behind the house, there were no trees, but I while we sat in the car, I assumed that was where the view of the shore was.

  “Should we get out?” Rosie asked.

  “I’ll keep the headlights on,” I said, as they shone across the darkness of the house. “And, take one of these.” I passed her an amethyst crystal from my bag.

  Rosie snorted back a laugh as she fished a pendant from behind her t-shirt. “I have this,” she said. “The one you gave me for my birthday.”

  “Always better to be safe.” Opening the car door, a gust of cold air whipped around me. I clutched my coat tighter. “It’s freezing.”

  Rosie’s jaw chattered. “Inside.”

  We jolted toward the front door where the most police tape had been stuck, wrapped across the entire frame of the door.

  “At least we know it’s empty,” I said, flicking a hand forward. The tape dropped and the door creaked open with the chasing breeze.

  An old decaying smell seeped from the house, catching us off-guard. My throat closed in a wretch at the smell.

  “It’s the wood,” Rosie said. “It’s damp. Maybe the bubonic plague killed him.”

  I wasn’t sure how much of that was true, but nobody could’ve lived here in these conditions. At least not all the time. Nigel occupied the house for a few months of the year, and the rest of the year the sole occupier were mites.

  “I’m not going first,” Rosie said, grabbing my underarm. “Do some of that, stuff, turn the lights on or something.”

  I chuckled, clicking my fingers, spreading electric currents through the lightbulbs. We finally had a clear image of the interior. It was a mess. “Think someone died here too?” I asked, plugging two fingers at the top of my nose.

  “Don’t say that,” she said, nudging me inside. “I’m having second thoughts.”

  At our feet, were letters, unopened, trampled over from moody boots. I dipped to pick them up, but it was all spam mail, addressed to the occupier, nothing at Nigel directly. I waved them in Rosie’s face. “How does Jim the mailman know to deliver here?”

  “God knows,” she said. “Put them back, if the police come, they’ll know someone’s been snooping around.”

  “Fat chance,” I laughed. “Hodge would have no idea.”

  The house didn’t have dirt everywhere; everything in its place. It was certainly lived in. It wasn’t nearly as modern as I thought it would’ve been either, at least of all considering Michael was so excited to have this house in his portfolio. If the sale of the house came along with the collection of photos Nigel had of himself and other famous people from around the world or the array of signed cookbooks.

  “Gwen, look at this,” Rosie called from the living room while I searched through the kitchen cupboards, finding nothing but tinned foods.

  “I think he might’ve been one of those doomsday people,” I said, carrying an old tin of beans from the early 90s. “He’s a hoarder.”

  “You’re telling me,” Rosie said, kneeling in front of a cabinet. “Look at all these letters. They go back years.”

  I rushed to her side. “The police didn’t take these,” I said.

  “They were buried.”

  The first letter on the top was penned to him, the ink now faded. As I opened it, I saw the business card stapled to the right-hand corner. “Michael,” I said. “Look.”

  “There’s more,” Rosie said, flicking through a stack of letters.

  “You’d think he’d change his logo in all these years.” I blindly pushed a hand into the cabinet, pulling out another letter. “The last one,” I said. There was a slight weight to it as I held it in my hand. “Oh, that’s weird.” I pointed to the name on the front of the envelope. ‘Nigel D—’ the rest of the name had been rubbed out, only a slight indent remained.

  “Who’s it from?”

  The letter was dated five years ago and had been torn open at the side. I patted the envelope on my palm. A letter came out and so did a coin. “Oh.”

  “What is it?”

  “Look,” I said, raising the coin. “I’ve seen this before.” It was the exact same coin as the one Eva found. I had it somewhere. I quickly frisked myself, but it wasn’t on me. “I think I have one like it in my handbag.”

  “Well,” Rosie said, patting me with the back of her hand. “Who’s it from? Michael? Oh god, I bet it’s from him. This is who all letters are from.”

  My fingers fumbled to unfold it.

  It was short, to the point.

  Nigel,

  You can’t ignore me. I’m in need. I’m family!

  You know where I am.

  Visit me before it’s too late.

  The letter didn’t end in a name. Just a large ‘X’.

  “Wow,” I said, handing the letter to Rosie.

  “It doesn’t sound like him,” Rosie said.

  I agreed. Michael certainly wasn’t a man in need, and some of the letters he’d sent asking to buy the house were much older than the penned letter pleading in need. “I’ll take it with me,” I said, rubbing the coin. “I don’t know what else we’re going to find.”

  “Well, I think everything else has been taken,” Rosie added. “I couldn’t find a single letter from Rhonda.”

  I twisted my wrist to see my watch. We’d been in the house for almost an hour. We had thirty minutes to get to the church before service began.

  CHAPTER 12

  We left the house in the same way we found it, damp and hidden. On the drive to the church, we passed the café. It was closed now and equally cast in darkness as was the rest of the village. Small spots of light came from the streetlamps, shining their cone of orange light on the ground.

  “Think we’re late,” Rosie said, pointing out at the street with a row of parked cars.

  “I don’t think I’ll be sticking around anyway,” I said. “Dropping the cakes off and getting home. I want to see if I can do something with that letter to find out who wrote out.”

  “You think they’re the ones who did it?” she asked.

  As I pulled into a tight space and parked. “Perhaps.” I rummaged through my bag to grab the coin Eva handed me. “It’s the same,” I said, holding it with the one from the letter.

  “That’s so weird,” she added, running a thumb across the smooth surface.

  The church was packed with people, most of which I’d never seen in my entire life.

  Bridget was stood at the door. “Care to donate?” she asked before noticing me. “Oh, Gwen.”

  “I’ve brought the cakes,” I said. “I was right to bring more than one.”

  She turned to look through the foyer into the church, sneering. “Yep. I hate it when there are too many people.”

  Rosie pulled her coat off. “I guess everyone’s really coming out for Nigel, eh?”

  “At least they all donated,” she said, resting a hand over the donation box.

  As we entered, I noticed people with their smartphones hidden below copies of the Bible, concealed to record what was happening. I recognised Diane and her cameraman without his camera, they stood at the back.

  I found the table at the back and placed the boxed cakes on it. Easily accessed alongside the coffee dispenser. Bernard had already calmed people into the pews. Rosie took a seat while I stood at the back, telling myself to leave, even if a nagging in me thought the killer could be in this very room.

  Before I turned, a hand tapped my shoulder. “Leaving already?” Nora asked.

  “I was,” I replied, “I just want to get home, it’s been a long day.”

  “Long days are all part of the thrill,” she laughed. “I’ll miss not working through the night, I might even be able to get a normal sleeping pattern.”

  “Being awake so late boggles my mind,” I said.

  “When your familiar is a night owl, a nocturnal schedule becomes the norm.”

  A hum came from the back of my throat. “You were at the police station this morning, right?”

  “I was,” she replied. “Looking for some insight.”

  “What did you find?”

  “A dead end,” she said, tugging at the ends of her sleeves. “What about you? You’ve been on my heels, so it seems.”

  “Not your heels,” I said with an emphatic smile. “But Rhonda was released, and I’m still no closer to knowing what happened to Nigel.”

  She touched her neck and feigned a smile. “That’s a win for you, right?”

  It was a win, but now I was invested, and if Rhonda was free, then someone else had to be guilty. “I went to Nigel’s house,” I replied with a whisper, looking around to make sure nobody was listening in. “And I found this.” I dug a hand into my bag and pulled out the two coins.

  “Two?”

  “No, well—one of them was found in the café.”

  “Oh, Gwen.” Her hand moved to her mouth. “They’re closer than we think.” She slipped a hand into the small brown satchel around her shoulder. “Because I found this yesterday around midnight.”

  “So, these are—”

  She nodded. “I’m getting closer,” she said. “And you found that at his house?”

  “In a letter,” I said.

  Her eye twitched. “Brownies aren’t malicious, they don’t place these things on purpose, they leave them,” she said. “Like breadcrumbs, they’re dropped.” Her eyelids fluttered. “No rhyme nor reason.”

  “So, someone put it in the letter.”

  She looked away for a moment, her gaze above my head. “It was something I’d thought.” She pulled a coin from my hand, measuring it against the one she’d found. “Someone is controlling this creature.”

  I looked out among the small sea of people watching Bernard. “Someone here?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Can’t you trace the coin and see where it came from?” I asked. It was one of the many plans I had swimming around in my mind.

  She handed me the coin and offered me a smile, the type you gave someone for being naïve – but I didn’t know why she was giving it to me. “It sounds ideal,” she replied, “but little magical creatures have magic too, and these coins don’t hold anything.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  Nora placed the coin between her top and bottom teeth, biting it. “Because they don’t want to be found,” she said. “The only way they’re found is if you follow the trail to their home. We’re lucky to have found more than one coin.”

  “And if I tried to trace it?” I asked, throwing out a hypothetical.

  “A wild goose chase of nothing,” she chuckled, “trust me, I’ve tried.”

  The coin I’d found connected everything together. The brownie’s coin was found in a letter in Nigel’s house, while it was quite peculiar there were also a lot of letters from Michael too. Rhonda was free now, so there was no reason for me to continue looking into this.

  “Gwen,” Nora said, snapping her fingers to rouse me from my thoughts.

  “Hmm?”

  “I know you feel it,” she said, “it’s like a seasickness, you know there’s something, but you can’t put your finger on it.”

  “Well, it’s kinda—”

  “That’s your intuition,” she replied. “A sign of a great investigator.”

  I hadn’t considered myself to be an investigator. I was a baker, but I did enjoy the mental games this brought me. “Well, thank you,” I smiled at the compliment. “I should be going now, I have a cat at home who’ll be getting restless without me.”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “But don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

  I did. “Yes,” I replied. “Why?”

  “The person with the connection to the brownie is inside this room.”

  I looked around the room, too many people to get any reading at all. “How do you know?”

  “One of two reasons,” she said. “There are lots of people here, that means things for the brownie to steal. And two, everyone from the village is here.”

  “So, what will you do?”

  “I’ll wait to get a reading on them all,” she said, “but there are too many people right now.” She nodded to the ceiling. “My owl is at the window, watching.”

  “Good idea,” I replied. “I wish I could stay. Come by the café tomorrow, I’ll be happy to discuss ideas.”

  “Of course,” she said. “And make sure your place is warded against magical creatures too. I know you have some personal wards, but a strong ward over the café will keep it from entering.”

  “Any suggestions?”

  “Black tourmaline,” she responded almost immediately.

  I had some hidden away, I used it to protect the backroom. I hadn’t thought I’d need to use it for the entire café. “Thank you,” I said before leaving.

  While reversing out of the tight parking space, I noticed several men in high-vis jackets on the building site at the old hotel. It was mostly submerged in darkness, but I watched them for a moment as I drove slowly toward them. I was looking for Michael, someone in a suit, but as my eyes searched, a man shouted and raised his hands above his head. The universal language for, what do you want? I quickly drove away.

  “Odd,” I mumbled.

  I thought it was illegal to work in a construction area after a certain time, or once it was too dark. I had no experience in the field, but common knowledge and sense told me if you couldn’t see more than two metres in front of yourself, it’s probably not something you should be doing.

  I stopped at my mother’s new house, driving into the empty drive. A strange sensation crossed me over the threshold of her property. An instant warmth.

  “Darling,” my mother said loudly from her front doorway. Her voice travelled loudly. “I knew your curiosity would get the better of you.”

  It had been a few weeks. Part of me didn’t want to see what she’s done to Marissa’s old house, and another part of me didn’t want my mother harping in my ear.

  “Yes,” I said, stepping out of the car. “What’s happened?” A warmth whooshed around me, a stark contrast to the cold nipping my face into a light rose. “What have you done?”

  “Magic, dear,” she said. “It still needs some work doing, but so far, I’m happy.”

  “But what have you done?” I glanced around, the shrubbery and plants were all in bloom, the air felt lighter, the sky seemed brighter through all the darkness, nothing felt like December.

  “I don’t like the cold,” she said. “Plus, if I can’t sell the crystal, I’m going to use its magic.” She approached me, dressed in a large silk robe. “Come in and have a look, I was going to wait until the next full moon to show it off, but I’ll make an exception.”

  I was here now, I had to see what she’d done. Nothing was the same. Almost like Marissa hadn’t lived here. My mother had the longest list of changes; nothing from Marissa’s house had remained except the exoskeleton of stones itself.

  “That’s what’s keeping me and this whole thing running,” she said, pointing to a large glass case from the ceiling to the counter in her kitchen. “An inch of solid glass,” she said. “Nothing can get through that.”

  “You’ve been busy then,” I said, admiring the glint to the crystal.

  “I’ll make us some tea,” she said, snapping her fingers. “What will it be? I’ve got some homegrown strawberries. Perhaps a fruit and cinnamon tea.”

  I smiled, watching my mother settle in was nice, considering I’d never watched her make anywhere a home like this before. “So, you’re controlling the whole season from here?”

  “Only for the house,” she said. “Let’s sit down in the living room, the tea will be out shortly.”

  My mother hadn’t moved a finger, just a click and the kettle whistled away as it boiled. This is probably what she’d shown my son, and soon he’d be home for Christmas break, probably staying at his grandmother’s house because she had all the magic going on. I’d tried to be conservative with my powers while he was a child, and now it would come to bite me.

  “Are you going to tell me about your evening or do I have to drag it out of you?” she asked, swishing her chiffon nightgown at her legs.

  “I thought you weren’t interested,” I replied. “You left in a hurry.”

  She raised her hands, gesturing to everything in the house. “When I have this, I’d rather not waste my time elsewhere.” Julian flew in and perched on her finger, squawking incoherently.

  “I found another coin at Nigel’s house,” I said. “It’s in my handbag in the car.”

  “Fake gold is hardly a scandal,” my mother chuckled.

 

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