Chapter Twenty-Eight

"We have to work fast," I explained to Precious as I started gathering up herbs I wanted her to take home. No way in Hades I was going to let those bats get their taloned fingers into my stash.

"Wait, we're still going to do this?" asked Precious. "But... the head of your coven..."

I turned with my hand on my hip. "What? You think we're going to just sit here and let them destroy the world over a burned twig? If I'm going to hang for committing a crime, let's make sure it is for a crime worth committing. Now, go downstairs and grab Ajax. I'll fill you in on everything I discovered."

She turned and ran down the steps, her uniform skirt flying and hard-soled penny loafers smacking the stone.

I was furious. Why was my coven hell-bent on squashing me? It was like they were monitoring my every move, waiting for me to make a mistake. Maybe whoever had made the girls disappear was whispering encouragement in their ear. There was no way that Miss Trudy could have felt one little spark catch one little branch on fire.

There was a folded piece of paper with my name written on it in Ajax's delicate handwriting. Listen, the man could silversmith works of art. Penmanship was child's play.

But he never came into my room. He would have left it in the office or handed it over when we switched shifts.

Dear Miss Spell,

I must leave immediately. It is a family matter in need of urgent attention. I must return to the dwarf kingdom immediately. I'll be back. I'm so sorry I could not stay to deliver this in person.

-Ajax

Precious came racing up. She paused, clutching the doorframe as her breath heaved. "Miss Spell! Something's wrong. I can't find Ajax anywhere!"

I stormed across my room and flung open the door to my workshop. I put the note in my cauldron and pulled out my mortar and pedestal. "Thinking you can just leave a note and I swallow this nonsense hook, line, and sinker?" I shouted at it.

Her eyes became wide with fear and then filled with tears. "When? How? Is he going to be okay?"

I stopped, remembering that despite a maturity beyond her years and a brain smarter and wiser than every single witch in my old coven, she was just a kid. I needed to be the grownup in the room. I calmed myself, walked over to her and took both her hands. "That's what I'm going to try and find out. But I need your help. Think you're up for it?"

"Good girl," I said. I pointed at the door. "Go find something from his room. Bring it to me. I'll prep this spell, but I'm going to need you to make the magic work. I'm running low on power."

I could hear her feet pounding down the stairs once more, and just a few minutes later, come pounding back up.

"It felt like it would have the most of his essence," she explained as I wrinkled my nose.

"Well... essence is a good word for it. Well done." I took the dirty sock with the tip of my wand and then dumped it into the pedestal. I steeled my courage and pounded it into the wet mixture, trying to ignore the smell, and poured it into the cauldron. I stirred it and said, "Now, can you give this mixture a little juice?"

Precious nodded and joined me at my side. She spread her feet and centered herself. She held her hands over the cauldron and closed her eyes.

"Gentle! Gentle!" I cautioned. She wanted so bad to find Ajax, she was about to tap out all of her inner resources into this one little spell. "We're just confirming that we're getting our story straight. Save some for the big stuff for what we're going to have to do later."

If the letter had been written by Ajax, it would have stayed the same color. Mix the color yellow with yellow and you get yellow. But my mixture was a lurid green, which means that someone else had added something to the mix.