A Charming Wish (16 page)

I had to get to Oscar and give him all
the information I had, even if he didn’t have spiritual powers, he
was still my best friend.

“
Do they know anything
about the break-in at your bakery?” Petunia was baiting
Raven.

Raven was tight-lipped and she shook
her head no. Why wasn’t she standing up for me? She was mad at
Kenny too for not making his deliveries on time.

“
Probably June.” Faith
held her chin up with her nostrils flaring. “She was always bugging
Raven to make her some.”

Liar!
My wings were flapping so hard, I thought they were going to
lift me off the ground.
It took everything
I had in me not to use the pink wand and turn her into a wretched
toad. Why was Faith doing this? Slowly I turned around.

The three of them turned to the front,
coming face-to-face with me.

“
I love your wings.” Faith
smiled, scrunching her nose. “Pink is my favorite color,” she
squealed and drew her shoulders up toward her ears.

I waved my wand in the air, making
sure I didn’t open my mouth. None of them recognized me. Raven
stared, sending a cold chill to the tips of my Fairy wings. For a
brief moment, our eyes locked. I looked away, just in case she did
see something in my soul.

“
Why couldn’t we have cool
fairy wings?” Faith had Fairy envy. I could feel her onyx eyes
giving my wings the once-over. I made sure to do a little extra
flutter with each step as the line moved forward.

“
Stop staring.” Raven told
Faith, and then turned her attention to Petunia. “Has the ostrich
returned?”

“
Not a feather. I wish
someone would take that talking bird.” She crossed her arms. “It
talks so much I have a hard time hearing myself think.”

“
Again…June.” Faith said.
I wasn’t sure, but I think there was some pleasure in her voice as
she accused me of everything. “I heard she wanted one of those
feathers for some sort of spell. And I told Officer Gandalf all of
this. She thinks she’s invincible, being the village president and
all, but she has another thing coming to her. She’s not invincible.
She got caught this time.”

“
Who is Officer Gandalf?”
Raven’s nose scrunched up.

“
I have no idea.” Faith
shrugged. “He was in the Tea Shoppe and said he was here to help in
the investigations, so I told him what I knew.”

She told that nosey officer? Turning
away, I covered my mouth. I couldn’t believe she was pinning all of
this on me. What happened to loyalty? I just saved her life a few
months ago. Did she suddenly forget about that?

I lifted my wand in the air. I was
going to give her a little jolt, but out of the corner of my eye I
could see Mac and Gandalf, the new sheriff, in a heated discussion.
Mac’s face had turned all sorts of shades as he pushed his chest
out in protest to whatever it was Gandalf was saying.

Faith wasn’t worth a real accident
being pinned on me, so I eased my way over to the corner where Mac
and Gandolf stood in line so I could hear whatever they were saying
for myself. I had a sneaky suspicion the heated argument was about
my case.

“
Mac, you know as well as
I do all the evidence points to your client.” Gandalf placed his
hand on his baton and stood firm.

“
Like what?” Mac pushed
his glasses up on his nose. He might come to Gandalf’s chest, but
he was a mighty little man. “Just because a cupcake was named after
her doesn’t mean she broke into Wicked Good. Just because she tried
to help her friend catch a runaway animal doesn’t mean she took the
animal, and the search of her property proved it. Just because she
needed new smudging ingredients for the ceremony and she needed to
get in touch with Kenny doesn’t mean she killed him.”

“
Her hand is dipped into
every single piece of the pie.” Gandalf huffed.

“
There is no council that
will convict her based on the evidence you think you have.” Mac
shot back.

Mac was doing a fine job standing up
for me. I admit we had our differences when he was my neighbor when
I lived in Locust Grove. Little did I know he was actually living
there by order of Izzy to keep watch over Darla and me after we
moved away from Whispering Falls when my father died.

“
I’m going to make sure
they do.” Gandolf tugged on his sagging pants, pulling them up. “I
have some eye witnesses that say she was at odds with all sorts of
community members. I’ve seen where being named village president
and having that power can go to their heads. This just might be the
case.”

Hrumph.
Mac cleared his throat and moved ahead with the
line.

Don’t believe him Mac. That darn
Faith.

I continued to walk around to see if I
heard anything that would give me a clue, but everyone was as
tight-lipped as Kenny was up front in that coffin.

The Karimas did a good job on him. He
was head-to-toe in original Native American dress.

I fluttered by, bowing my head in
respect and took a seat in the back of the large room where the
service was being held. It was the only seat available and there
was still a line out the door.

Everyone was there paying their
respects. Izzy was up front in the far right corner, which seemed
to be where the Karimas had seated the family. I wasn’t sure, but
it looked like Kenny was married. Her face was barely visible under
her black veil, but her long brown hair fell braided down her back.
A young man seated next to her looked exactly like a younger
version of Kenny.

My heart broke for them.

“
I really like your
wings.” A breath hit the back of my neck. “Yes, I like
them.”

Startled, I jumped around to find
Patience Karima reaching her fat little finger out to touch my
fluttering gems.

“
Very sparkly.” She
reached farther and her eyes twinkled. “Very sparkly.”

Before she could touch me, I got up
and walked to the standing-room-only crowd, leaving a very
disappointed looked on her face. I knew she meant no harm; she
never did, but who likes their space invaded? Or their wings
touched?

Between the ceremonial music and
chants, the service was long and my legs were getting sweaty from
standing in these tights. I excused myself and moved out into the
hallway. I wanted to be sure I stayed until the end of the service
and make it down for the reception. People tend to talk more freely
when they are eating, and not to mention I’m starving since I
didn’t get to eat a pastry at Eloise’s tea that was a
bust.

After a few minutes of gathering my
thoughts, I was about to return when someone slipped out the side
door. The profile caught the corner of my eye.

“
What the. . .” I watched
the person carefully shut the door behind them before I rushed over
to take a peek. The long trench coat and large dark sunglasses
would have been a great cover-up if Adeline had worn a wig to go
with it. Her short blonde hair was a dead giveaway
though.

I ducked back into the door when she
turned around to get one last look at the funeral home from the
bottom of the steps. I peeled back the curtains from the window to
get a better look and make sure it was Adeline. It was confirmed
when she took off her glasses and wiped her eyes.

“
Returning to the scene of
the crime are you?” I whispered and drummed my fingers
together.

Why?
I wondered as I watched her run down the street. What would
be her reasoning to kill Kenny?

My pink bag glowed a hot pink. Looking
around, I made sure no one was out in the hallway before I started
to check all the closed doors to see if any were unlocked. I
couldn’t trust Madame Torres to be quiet and I couldn’t risk being
caught by anyone from the community. Especially dressed as a
fairy.

The second door I tried was unlocked.
Without making a sound, I closed the door behind me and didn’t
worry with flipping on a light. I didn’t want to see any dead
people, or even know what was in the room. Everything I saw
Patience doing the other day gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Madame Torres appeared. She wasn’t in
her usual colors of reds, purples, and greens.

“
Did you do this in honor
of me?” I asked about her appearance in all pink.

“
Shhh….” She held a finger
to her hot pink lips, and her eyes bulged, filling the entire glass
ball. Madame Torres let a firework display burst out before the
ball went black.

“
You wanted me to see
fireworks?” I didn’t understand this at all.

“
Shhhh!” And then Adeline
appeared as she had a couple of days ago at the shop.

“
I knew you’d know what to
do. I swear you are way better than my doctor.”
Madame Torres replayed the words Adeline had
spoken.

“
You really should go to
your doctor.” I encouraged her. “I’m not a doctor. I just know how
to put herbs together.”

It was surreal to watch myself having
a conversation from a few days ago. I had forgotten that Adeline
wanted Belur’s bottle and really didn’t like what I had to
say.

“
What was that?” I asked
Madame Torres when something Adeline was doing struck me
funny.

The scene rewound like a tape and
Madame Torres played it back in slow motion. During the
conversation, I had walked around trying to figure out why I
couldn’t read Adeline, but Adeline was mocking me behind my back
when I told her she didn’t need a remedy.

“
Madame Torres,” I gasped,
“Do you think she was seeking revenge because I wouldn’t give her a
remedy the other day?”

The ball went black, just like the
room.

“
Madame Torres?” There was
noise coming from out in the hallway. I didn’t know whether Madame
Torres shut off because someone might see her glow from under the
door, or if I was right and Adeline was seeking revenge.

“
Ouch!” I thrust my fists
to my side and Teletransported by accident, ending up in Eloise’s
garden next to the aloe.

“
What happened?” Eloise
came rushing over wearing her gardening gloves and hat. “What is
that?” She pointed toward my ankle. “Where are your
shoes?”

I looked down and noticed I was back
in my old clothes and there was blood dripping from what looked
like a claw scratch.

“
June,” Eloise eyes turned
dark. “Where have you been?”

I shook my head and held my ankle in
pain.

“
I’ve only ever seen this
one other time.” Eloise picked a stem off the aloe plant. “It was
when another villager got a hex put on them.”

Madame Torres glowed from my bag. I
raked it toward me and pulled her out.

“
You have got some really
bad ju-ju following you around.” The plump girl eyed me up and
down. “Which means someone has put a bad hex on you.”

Madame Torres reminded me of what the
girl told me at Hidden Hall.

“
When did you go to Hidden
Hall?” Eloise dabbed the aloe on my scrape. “Have you encountered
any unknown Dark-Sider along the way?”

As if my intuition light flipped on,
Adeline popped into my head.

Was Adeline a spiritualist? A
Dark-Sider? An evil Dark-Sider?

Chapter Twenty-one

The more I thought about my
relationship with Adeline, the more I believed my intuition was
telling me something.

It could be true. She might be a
spiritualist. I had no clue I was a spiritualist until I moved to
Locust Grove.

“
Do you think you are
going to be okay?” Eloise asked.

After she had doctored up whatever
evil spirit had tried to do to me, I rested on the couch with a
nice cup of tea left over from the ruined tea meeting with the
Marys.

“
I’ll be fine.” I worried
about Eloise. I knew she was hurting about Oscar. He would never
know he had an Aunt in Whispering Falls since he denounced his
gift. “Are you?”

“
You know.” She picked at
her short red hair. Her emerald eyes filled with tears. “I lived
without him for over twenty years. As long as I see him through
you, I’m going to be okay.” She clasped her hands and changed the
subject. “Any breakthroughs? Have you heard from Mac?”

“
No.” I fluffed up the
pillow behind me and leaned back. “But while I was at the funeral
home, Faith and Petunia were having a field day accusing me of all
of the crimes.”

“
Why would they do that?
They are your friends.” Eloise slipped into the kitchen before
returning with the steaming teapot to refill my cup.

“
Some friends they are.” I
blew on the hot liquid before I took a sip. I did need to talk to
Mac. I wasn’t getting any closer to solving the crime. I guess I
was going to have to tell him what I knew and about their
threatening me.

“
Did you tell Oscar?” She
had a faraway look in her eyes.

“
No, but that’s a good
idea.” I bit my lip. “So, do you think I could slip out of here
without the Marys finding out?”