“Why are the shoes important?” I asked Ethan as we headed toward the exit near the parking lot.
Noelle hadn’t come inside with us, so I could only assume she was waiting in her car…in the cold. The people in this town were weird, like they enjoyed the cold. Maybe they were all Canadians? They sure as heck weren’t from Texas.
It seemed easier to ask Ethan questions than my grandfather, who’d parsed out pieces of information in that meeting as if they were sugar cookies.
My grandfather loved his sugar cookies, and he didn’t share well when it came to sweets.
“The belle of the ball wears the glass slippers.”
“The belle of the ball? What does that even mean?”
Ethan picked up his pace to a trot. “It's an honor, one you probably don't deserve honestly, but he insisted.”
Huh. The ball gown, the belle-of-the-ball slippers—did my grandfather harbor some hope of witnessing a prom reenactment since he'd missed the real thing? Why in the world was he so concerned about my dress, my shoes, and my attendance at this stupid ball?
I believe that he wanted my help, but I'd never given him or my mother the impression that I ran investigations. That was a reach. Why ask me of all people?
When we reached the door, I stopped.
Ethan looked at me. “I know you're frustrated. I would be too. But we have to work together if we're going to find the wand. If you want to go home in any sort of comfort and with any speed, we need to find it.” When I still didn't open the door, he sat. “What can I say to get you to open the door? It’s really awkward for me in my current form.”
I’d just bet. But I shelved the thought of grumpy Gus Ethan twisting a doorknob with his paws or his teeth. Magic must not be an option. That hex he was dealing with was a whopper.
“Why am I really here? There have to be so many people who are more qualified to do this than me.”
“You really have to ask that? He probably just misses you.” Ethan sounded a little bit pissy, and there was definitely an implied accusation embedded in that statement.
One that made no sense. Literally, none.
I looked over my shoulder to make sure no one was near and could overhear us speaking. “Why wait for a crisis? He could have just invited me, or is that against your Hidden Haven rules? No outsiders allowed unless disaster is imminent.”
“He's never invited you to visit?”
Ethan sounded confused, and I felt weird looming over him. I wasn't used to speaking to dogs like they were people. I was a cat person.
I knelt down awkwardly, trying not to flash the world while wearing a fancy dress with a slit up the thigh. “He's never invited me. Not once. Not only that, but he's turned down every invitation I've ever sent to visit me in Austin.”
“Uh, sorry.” He blinked, bringing my attention to his canine lashes, which were much longer than I would have expected on a dog, which in turn had me wondering what exactly Ethan looked like as a human. “I've always gotten the impression that he was close to his family but had a falling out. I guess I always assumed that no one visited him because none of you could be bothered to come to Hidden Haven.”
“Well, that's just not true.” I stood up, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. Not physically, though the slit in this dress was ridiculous. I couldn’t believe my grandfather had picked this thing out. No, it was more an emotional unease, like Ethan had taken a peek inside my head without my permission. I felt abandoned by my grandfather, and I was resentful. Which was embarrassing. I was in my forties, and those were the emotions of a little girl.
“Door?” Ethan asked politely.
“Right, sorry.” I opened the door, allowing him to pass through first. “I don't suppose you're going to tell me how you came to be living life as a dog?”
But I was speaking to his tail, and he didn't answer.
Just as well, because Noelle was standing next to her shiny red Mini Cooper, full of smiles and annoying perkiness. I didn't want to hear Ethan's dog-body explanation with Noelle hovering.
He had to be hexed, and that had to be one hell of a story. I got the sense that grumpy Ethan and I had more in common than either of us did with the persistently cheerful Noelle. He might tell me the truth but would almost certainly edit with a very heavy hand any version shared in her presence.
“I went shopping for you!” Noelle seemed to deliver most statements in a sort of cheerleader-pep-talk tone. Bubbly, happy, and too enthusiastic to endure without large quantities of caffeine.
“That was fast. I only just asked my grandfather for some warmer clothes.”
“Silly, of course I went and bought you clothes right away. You were obviously cold, I need to get that dress dry-cleaned for the ball—you’ve muddied the hem—and I love to shop!”
I turned to Ethan with raised eyebrows.
“She's like this with everyone. It's not just you.” Amusement shone through in his tone, and his tail wagged. He looked surprised for a moment then glanced over his shoulder as if trying to understand what was happening.
“Oh my goodness!” Noelle squealed. “You made Ethan's tail wag.”
Why did that sound so dirty in my head? Especially when it was Noelle, the picture of innocence, saying it?
Awkward.
“Right, ah, where can I change?” Because I was not talking about Ethan's wagging tail.
“We should go to the sheriff's office, shouldn't we? Ethan, don't you have a list of suspects sketched out already?”
“Go ahead and drop Camille at my office, if you don't mind. I'll walk, and meet you there.” While his tone was pleasant enough, Ethan didn't bother to wait for an answer. He turned and walked away. His tail was notably not wagging.
Noelle didn't seem to notice. She bounced on her toes, clapped her hands, and said, “I hope you like what I picked out for you.”
“As long as it's warm, I'm sure I won't have any complaints.” I eyed her in all her bouncing enthusiasm and added, “Thank you for going to the trouble.”
Five minutes later at the sheriff’s office, I was reconsidering the premature gratitude I’d extended to Noelle for the clothes she'd selected. I took one look at the pile of soft pinks (a sweater, an infinity scarf, and another pair of Uggs) and grays (the jeans, a long-sleeved silky undershirt, and a puffer jacket) and immediately told her with a sweet smile, “You can bill my grandfather.”
In her defense, she had no idea what my personal style was. I‘d shown up in a red ball gown with Christmas-green dyed hair.
She must have detected some lack of enthusiasm on my part, because she said, “I did waterproof the Uggs.”
I wasn't twelve years old, and I had some semblance of manners, so I thanked her with as much sincerity as I could muster. She'd gone to the trouble of picking these clothes out, and for all I knew paid for them out of her own pocket. At least pink and gray didn't clash terribly with green hair…probably. Then again, not really my problem. I wasn't looking at myself.
Ethan had remained suspiciously silent during this entire exchange. As I left to change in the bathroom, I heard him tell her, “No, you cannot help with the investigation. I appreciate the offer, but Camille and I can handle it.”
When I returned, decked out from head to toe in pinks and grays but also significantly warmer, Noelle was gone.
Ethan snorted.
Hands on hips, I said, “How is it after less than half an hour in my presence, you know I’m not a pink and gray person, and yet Noelle hasn't a clue?”
“I don't think it would have crossed her mind that your favorite color was black. Noelle doesn't actually consider black a color.” He snorted again.
“How do you know black is my favorite color?” Black wasn’t my favorite. I liked all dark colors equally. I was nonjudgmental that way.
He rolled his eyes.
I chuckled. Because a dog, rolling his eyes. “It's going to be hard to get used to you like that.” I waved a hand vaguely in the direction of his brown-furred canine body.
“Why? You never knew me any other way.” He trotted across the large central room to a wall with a large whiteboard. It was completely blank.
It was a bizarre setup for a sheriff’s office. There was no partition between the front door and the huge room that made up most of the place. No security or screening for weapons. There were two offices at the back of the main room. I was guessing the one on the right was Ethan’s since it had sheriff prominently displayed on the glass door, and also because the door was open and I could see a big dog bed inside along with a massive desk and a newish computer atop it.
It was like walking into a hotel lobby and stumbling over the clerk who’s checking you in. Times a hundred, because theoretically security should be of great concern here.
I followed him. “Is there any crime in Hidden Haven?”
“Until now, I’d have said only minor pranks from kids, items of low value going missing occasionally, and the odd drunken brawl. It's a pretty low-key, low-stress place to live. Obviously, the theft of the wand is a more serious offense.”
I passed a few tables on my way to the back of the room. “What exactly is this room used for?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Ah. The tables are for arts and crafts. There are a few clubs that meet here when the town hall’s activity room is booked. It’s more a community building with my office and Jake’s in the back.”
“Jake?”
“My deputy, the office on the left. He’s not here this Christmas. Visiting relatives out of town.” He pushed the big whiteboard with his nose, and it slid quietly to the side, revealing a second board underneath, this one with writing on it.
It looked like Ethan, or someone with an opposable thumb under Ethan’s direction, had made three lists. Each one was labeled and included a few names. I assumed this was our initial suspect list.
“‘Mischief Makers’ I understand, and ‘Profit’ seems pretty clear, but what does ‘Town Revealers’ mean?” I had a guess, but why choose Hidden Haven if you didn’t want to live in a secret town?
“Mostly twenty-somethings who were raised here and like the life well enough not to leave but don’t appreciate the need for secrecy. Without hiding the entire town, we’d be just like every other small town in America, either dying or overcome by tourism.”
That seemed debatable. I could think of positives and negatives to both sides. I’d given that particular aspect of Hidden Haven a thought or two over the last thirty years.
His reference to the suspects’ age had me wondering about Ethan himself. I eyed his chocolate muzzle. Not even a hint of gray. His dog form appeared to be no more than five or six.
He rubbed his muzzle with his paw. “What, something on my face?”
“No. Sorry, just wondering how old you are. And how in the world you became a dog.”
“Forty-five, and it should wear off around New Year’s.” He made a low growling noise in his throat, then muttered, “It better.”
“Don’t suppose you want to tell me how you landed in a dog suit?”
“No.” He stared unblinking at me. An impassive Labrador face seemed an impossibility, and yet Ethan achieved it.
Grinning, I lied and said, “All right.” I wasn’t letting it go. Not by a long shot. “I notice your ‘Mischief’ suspect list is the longest, but it’s also at the bottom.”
“Mostly bored teenagers. They’re all good kids, no one truly problematic, but they do occasionally overstep and do something regrettable. I’ve already had the school phone tree circulate a message for us: we won’t ask any questions if the wand is returned before noon today.”
I looked around the room for the time. Unfortunately, none of my personal possessions had made the trip from Florida with me, so I had no watch. The clock on the opposite wall read just after eleven, leaving the better part of an hour within the window Ethan had provided.
“When did you first realize the wand was missing?” I grabbed one of the dry erase markers.
“Around seven this morning. Cyrus gets to his office at seven on the dot every weekday morning. He didn’t notice it was missing from its case until he went to the kitchen to get coffee. There wasn’t any broken glass or notable evidence of a theft to draw his attention to it on his way in the building.”
“Wait a second. You’re saying this priceless artifact, a vessel for large quantities of magic that is already a rare item, made even rarer by the fact that your town uses it to store Christmas cheer—which is basically impossible, so far as I understand magic—that wand was stored in a glass case in the town hall’s entryway.”
“That’s where it’s been displayed for the last thirty years. Ever since your grandfather bought a ghost town in the middle of nowhere and turned it into Hidden Haven.”
I stared at the patch of blank whiteboard in front of me and processed the absurdity of that choice. It had only been a matter of time, obviously, before someone snatched the thing. What did Grandpa think “priceless” meant? That it had no value?
Finally, I drew a line with an arrow pointing to the right and added today around seven near the beginning.
“And when was the last time anyone could verify it was in its case?”
“You don’t have to take that tone. The case was reinforced with a spell that releases only when its counter is read aloud by specifically authorized voices and requires a special key to unlock it.”
Because that was somehow better than a bank vault. Or a safe. Both of which could have also been magically reinforced, thereby providing both practical and magical protection. But no, they’d relied entirely on magic and the goodwill of almost five hundred witches.
Gah. Maybe that naivete I’d sensed in Noelle ran rampant through the whole town. There was trust, and there was practically waving an indispensable, priceless object around with a flag attached announcing, “Please steal me.”
When I was fairly sure I wouldn’t lose the thin veneer of calm I’d adopted, I repeated, “The last time anyone can verify it was in the case?”
“Cyrus leaves around three, but Melba, his assistant, comes in later, so she stays till five thirty. Cyrus can’t remember, but Melba’s certain it was there when she left.”
“And Melba is trustworthy?” I asked. “We can rely on her testimony?”
“Absolutely. She has no motive to sabotage the town. The opposite, in fact. She’s completely devoted to your grandfather.”
She obviously knew a different person than I did.
I added Melba’s departure time to the timeline. “Tell me about this special key. You said the glass case wasn’t broken.”
“Right. The key.” For the first time since we’d started discussing the case, Ethan’s canine face was showing a great deal of emotion. He had frowny canine eyebrows and his lip was lifted a bit, more a grimace than a snarl. “I’ve talked to him about it. I have. But getting someone like your grandfather to change his habits is difficult. Cyrus is about as stubborn as they come.”
I rested my forehead against the whiteboard. I considered banging it, but a brain injury wasn’t helping anyone. Also, I was a witch mentor. I was supposed to be mature and levelheaded. Head-banging on walls was neither of those.
Forehead still propped against the board, I said, “It was in his unlocked desk drawer, wasn’t it?”
“His desk drawer that was locked, but any eight-year-old with a bobby pin could pick the lock.”
“Right.” I lifted my head, because wallowing in past mistakes wasn’t helpful. It really wasn’t. Not a good idea. At all. When I’d halfway convinced myself the truth of those statements, I said, “Any idea who would have had access to my grandfather’s desk anytime in the last, oh…whenever? I’m guessing he didn’t notice the key was missing or he’d have raised the alarm.”
“It couldn’t have been more than, um, a week.” Ethan’s grim tone told me he’d already gone down this path.
Probably why there wasn’t already a timeline on the darn whiteboard.
I sighed and extended that line I’d drawn earlier out to the left a bit, added three dots to indicate the passing of a greater period of time, cried a little inside as I considered how much larger our suspect pool had gotten, and then added a note about the key being seen about a week previous.
“Let me explain the spell.” Ethan’s tone was placating, a sign I was looking as frustrated as I felt.
“Please do. You mentioned it being keyed to specific voices?” Maybe that would be our new limiting factor. Fingers and toes crossed it wasn’t a list of people a mile long.
“Ah, yes. That’s technically true—” I cringed, and Ethan cleared his throat, before continuing. “But I’m not sure that’s going to help. It’s the easiest of the protections to break. All you’d have to know was the identity of the voices the spell is keyed to and magically mimic them.”
“And don’t tell me, half the town knows about the security precautions in place to protect the wand, including such details. The kind of details, I might add, that should be specifically kept secret as a part of the security.”
“Not exactly.” But then he negated any hope his words sparked by sighing. And then speaking. “The spell requires a specific sequence of words to be spoken when turning the key in the lock, and while the existence of a spoken spell as a part of the security protocol isn’t widely known, the people who would know that would also be able to guess whose voice they should mimic.”
Good grief. This town.
“Don’t tell me. My grandpa and you.”
“Close. Cyrus and Mabel. The protections predate my time in Hidden Haven.”
My head started to ache. I realized that I’d been so consumed by the fact that I was freezing earlier that I’d completely forgotten that I hadn’t eaten breakfast this morning. And I was probably dehydrated, too.
Add in the stress, and I was begging for a migraine.
I rubbed my temples. “I need food, caffeine, water, and an interview with Mabel. Preferably in that order.”
“I’ve got Mabel covered. You ran out of Cyrus’s office so fast you must not have noticed I stopped by her desk on the way out. I asked her to swing by shortly after noon.”
I nodded. “Right. Give the phone tree time to work its magic.”
As if. But then, Ethan knew his town better than I did, so maybe there was some hope that honesty would kick in and the wand would make its way back to us.
“I’ve also got nuts in my desk drawer and a minifridge in my office. If that’ll hold you until after Mabel’s visit, then we can have food delivered.”
Before I could answer, a brisk knock on the front door was followed by Mabel herself entering. With to-go bags of what I really hoped was food.
Not sure why she knocked. Or poked her head in and looked around the room before she walked in. It was a public space, and weirdly configured as it might be, it was the sheriff’s office.
When she spotted us, she smiled warmly and said, “I picked up lunch from the café for everyone, I figured neither of you had eaten.”
“Thank you, Mabel!” I caught myself before I started bouncing on my toes and fully channeling Noelle. I toned down the enthusiasm to a more friendly, less psychotic-cheerleader level, and said, “I could really use a meal. Also, it’s nice to meet you.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you as well, Camille.”
Maybe the food and the warm smile were part of her master plan to fool us all, but in that moment I put to rest the niggling question as to whether perhaps my grandfather’s assistant might be the thief or in cahoots with the heist mastermind.
I probably wasn’t cut out for this investigating business if food and a smile won me over.
My stomach grumbled, and I mentally shrugged, because food. Also, who liked migraines?
“So Mabel,” I said as I snagged the bag she offered me. “Tell us about this key Ethan mentioned. And the voice recognition for the spell. Also who might have the counterspell to deactivate it. And while you’re at it, everyone who knew about any of the three security elements.”
Then I had to swallow a moan, because there was chicken salad on croissant and hot soup. It was like she’d read my mind…or someone had shared my preferences with her. Hmm.