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Luca, the ferns, and I tore through the Square, dodging children and tables and even right through a disconcerted, actual ghost. The happy hum of shoppers faded as we reached the corner near the tavern. Now, we could hear shouting instead.
I got there first. “What is it? What’s going on?”
“William! Are you okay?” Luca added, panting heavily as he stopped beside me.
We were looking slightly up at the tavern’s wooden porch. William sat at the edge, his glow fading as he looked over his shoulder at us. Beside him, half shaded by a large jack-o-lantern, was Dusty. And just past them, in the shadow, stood Dusty’s new friend, Keith.
“Hello, Red,” said Keith, pleasantly. “And you must be Luca. I’ve heard so much about you.”
That didn’t sit well with me. But I couldn’t pinpoint why . . .
“Keith was just leaving,” said Dusty, bitterly.
“No he is not,” said William. “It’s wrong and I won’t allow it.”
“I can appreciate your point,” said Keith, smiling down at William, “but you’ve got no say in the matter.”
“Together, we do,” said Luca. He nudged me, and I nodded, taking over.
“Why would you want to leave in the middle of the market?” I asked Keith.
His eyes were hard as he returned my steady gaze. “Would you believe I already did what I came here to do?”
“No,” I said, still getting my bearings. “You came here to see to Jack, right? And he’s still in custody, and only spoke to us . . .”
At that, for the first time, Keith faltered. “Purslane spoke to you?”
“Think it over, for the boy’s sake,” Dusty chimed in.
“No,” Keith said, recovering his control. “It’s too late. They’ll be all over the place now, closing in. I should have known it wouldn’t last forever.”
“What wouldn’t last?” I asked, trying to distract him from the fact that Luca, in ghostly form, was now sneaking along the porch behind him.
But Keith suddenly whirled. “It won’t do,” he said, addressing Luca’s shadow. “You think I didn’t see it, the first time I saw you? You think I don’t know who you are?”
Luca blinked back into his normal form, shock written across his face. The night was so dark and chaotic—it was silly to think Keith had seen everything about Luca just a few moments ago. And that’s when I realized . . .
I hopped up onto the porch between Dusty and William, desperate to draw the attention back to myself. I knew now what had bothered me about that I’ve heard so much about you. “The first time you saw us, in broad daylight,” I said. “Halfway up the tower at the Lost River Outlook. You saw Luca there. I didn’t think anything of it when I met you in the market, but I see it now, with the shadows hiding your hair and ears. You look a lot more like you did then, with a cap pulled down over your face and a cleaning mask on. But you were hunched over then, smaller. You were trying to deceive us . . . You said you were a housekeeper for Lavender. But was that even true?”
Behind me Dusty, too, was rattled. “You said you only got to town a few days ago!”
“I said that.” Another form stepped out of the shadows. It was Lavender herself. “Just tell them, Keith,” she added, her voice weary. “It will all come out.”
“No! You think he needs that weighing on him, too?” Keith shot back. “Better now to make a clean break.”
“Dusty’s not helping you get away, and neither am I,” William growled. Blue magic lashed around Keith’s feet. “How dare you implicate my friend?”
“Because this has been collaborative all along,” I said, thinking, glancing between Lavender and Keith. Officer Thorn’s comment about the sorcerer clicked into place. “Keith has needed a lot of help . . . Because he didn’t plan anything out. Not even his alibi. Dusty said that Keith had been working a job in New Dale, but the road from New Dale is totally washed out. And if we assume he was in town earlier than Lavender told us, then the timeline makes sense.
“At the market,” I said, sparing a look down at Dusty. “The market he already knew just fine. It could have started there. Doug said The Hermit’s last day selling was the day before Jack showed up in town—the day Officer Thorn got her cryptic note, on tavern paper. So maybe Keith came through town. He did say he often traveled the area. Only this time, the fates aligned. Vesper, or ‘The Hermit,’ would come in for two days at a time. On her first day, he’s there too. He saw a familiar face in the market. Someone he’s never been able to forget . . . Someone who was never brought to justice.
“So he starts out by trying to alert the justice today, Officer Thorn. But what can he really say? He doesn’t have any actual proof. He needs her to find it. To find Jack. So he sends his note and starts the search. But it isn’t enough. It’s been so long—the whole family is so distraught—” I looked at Lavender, whose sad eyes agreed. “When she shows up again the second day, carefree, it’s too much. So Keith follows her—it must have been in person, since thanks to Doug we know that magic wasn’t able to trace her. And in person, he could have used her teleport link to get to the top of the tower, right after she did—but then she would certainly notice him . . .”
Lavender had her head in her hands, crying. Keith looked at her, then at me. “Listen,” he said, his voice choked. “You’re right. This isn’t me. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t even know Lavender owned the tower, I just went where I had to. I wasn’t thinking of anything except my brother’s little boy. I did follow her—we’re good at the woods, my kind. But not so good with the magic. I didn’t think it through. I went down into the tunnel, the cave, after her. Then she disappeared in a magic ring. When I stepped after her, I showed up in that apartment and she already knew I was there. She was yelling. Purslane—poor Purslane—”
Luca spoke softly. “Why did he run?”
“Because I told him to,” Keith burst. “I was frantic. I didn’t even know where he might go. She was trying to hold on to him and I pushed her out of the way. He went into the ring and disappeared.”
“He must have teleported and ran out through the cave,” I mused. “Otherwise Luca and I would have seen him. But like William said, we never saw any indication that anyone came and went from the tower. Because Vesper always came and went via the tunnel, leading into the cave and her magic shortcut.”
“But you did kill her,” William reminded Keith and the group at large.
“I did,” Keith agreed heavily. “It was like I could see her kidnapping him all over again, but this time I could do something. I shoved her with all my pent-up anger from all these years. She hit the wall, and then the floor.”
“The wall?” I was surprised. It fit with his story, but not with the crime scene Officer Thorn and I had found.
Keith sighed. “When I came back to my senses, I knew it wouldn’t do. It was too obvious. No one falls backward into a wall. But maybe if it looked like she had only hit the floor, it might pass as an accident. I’ve picked up my share of cleaning jobs in my time. All I had to do was throw on some old clothes of Purslane’s and clean up the apartment real good, and then leave by the trap door. But by then, you two were there.”
“And you were scared we would go upstairs, find the entrance, and see what had happened,” I supplied.
“Should’ve known somebody would eventually. But I couldn’t think of anything except the boy.” Keith looked at Lavender again. “By the time I got down here, he’d already been picked up by the police.”
Lavender cleared her throat. “He told me everything, but not until late that night. It was my idea to hide his arrival in town. But neither of us was happy about it.”
“And that’s why you sent the second note,” I concluded. “That’s why the writing was different, and the note torn in haste.”
“I could hardly think straight,” she admitted. “I knew what Keith had told me, and I believed him, but—but part of me still couldn’t believe she was dead.”
“So you had Thorn tie up the loose ends for you, and then you hoped to skip town,” said William. He sounded much more skeptical than I was capable of being in the face of so much emotion.
“It was never about the cavern, the plants, or the amethyst at all,” Luca added quietly.
At this, Lavender startled slightly.
Something that had been nagging at the back of my brain finally came forward. “Except for Vivian—Vesper,” I said. “For her, it was all about the cavern. Do either of you know why she took Purslane, or Jack, in the first place?”
Lavender exchanged a weary look with Keith before sighing. “When I heard the rumors about the crystal, it was almost as bad as the rumors about Purslane. I remember it very clearly. Vesper had given it to my daughter . . . And on the same night when she stole our little baby, she stole it back, too.”
“Makes sense,” William said. “If she found the cavern, she would have known she needed the spell power—and someone with plant magic, too.”
“But why didn’t you say that earlier?” I asked Lavender.
“The crystal was never the important thing, to me,” she answered. “I thought it was a bad omen when Violetta first brought it home. It was too big a gift, from too uncertain a source. But she didn’t listen . . . and the first few reporters who came to town were too interested in it, not interested in poor Purslane. Oh, Red, I see now I should have told you. But after years of keeping quiet—when only Purslane himself returned—I didn’t want to make things worse for him, to have him be the victim of fortune-hunting or accused of theft.”
“Like I said, none of it was planned, by either of us,” Keith said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have stayed. Maybe if I had known going in I’d kill her, I would have thought of a getaway. But with Purslane injured—and not talking—and what if he knew—it was his own uncle who did it—”
Keith broke down. His feet still strangely still and captive under William’s magic, his shoulders shook violently as he covered his face with both arms. I looked down at Dusty just as he looked up at me, and in that moment I completely understood why he might have been tempted to let Keith go. The man—the whole family—had they already suffered enough?
It was at that moment that Officer Thorn turned up. A breathless Trent holding a flying broom, a bright-eyed Maggie, and a rather smug Gloria clustered behind her.
“See?” said Gloria. “I knew that ghost was telling the truth. Leave it to them to find a criminal at a holiday market.”
* * *
Officer Thorn and William took Lavender, Keith, and Dusty back to the station. Dusty assured me before he left that he hadn’t ever been told anything, at least until the fight we’d interrupted on the porch, but he knew his testimony would be important.
Gloria, who had apparently noticed the ghost I’d disturbed as Luca and I ran to the tavern and had been the one to get Maggie to reach out to Officer Thorn, soon went back to her booth. No doubt she’d continue keeping a sharp eye on the crowd. But Maggie lingered, looking up at us all with worried eyes. It was only when we decided to get some hot chocolate and rest over by the Pomegranate that she lightened, and let us go.
“I could use something,” Trent admitted, as he fell into step with Luca and me. “I’m not saying Maggie’s cookies aren’t great, but it’s been a long day with not a lot of food to go round.”
“I’m not sure hot chocolate is going to round out your daily nutritional needs, exactly,” I said, starting to scan the stalls for actual dinner food.
“No, hot chocolate is definitely what I need,” said Trent, firmly. “Stick to the plan.”
With that settled, I glanced up at Luca, who walked just behind me. “Okay?”
“Just drained. As you must be,” he said, one hand on my shoulder.
“Yes,” I admitted, with a sigh. “But it makes sense, now, at least. I knew there had to be something—when William mentioned romance this morning, it stuck with me. I know people do kill over discoveries and money and the like, but everything about this crime felt so much more personal than that somehow. Maybe especially because of the way it affected Jack.”
“I think he pieced it all together yesterday,” Trent said. “And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. He’s a resilient kid. Between his plants and his paintings and Olivia, he’ll get through it.”
This made me smile, and playfully, I punched Trent’s shoulder. “A kid who is practically two hundred years older than you.”
“Everyone is vulnerable and little in the face of my new medical powers,” Trent replied with a grin.
So emboldened, he flirted shamelessly with Saki as we ordered our drinks. I exchanged a tired but amused glance with Luca, realizing why Trent had wanted to come to this stand at all. Samhain was turning out to be a rather romantic time of year. Despite all the danger . . .
We sat cozily ensconced on the Pomegranate’s porch this time, a far cry from the confrontation at the tavern. The market was still going strong, though the noise was muted. Sakura’s special hot chocolate came with different flavors, toppings, and ghostly visions in the steam. My dark chocolate with cinnamon and chili was delicious, but it was only when Luca’s salted caramel vaporous cat phantom made him smile that I felt like I might relax.
Dusty and William found us there not much later, and took their own seats at the table.
“Everything came out pretty fast,” Dusty said. “Just like you thought, Red.”
“That last note was Keith,” William added. “He swears he didn’t mean anything by it, really, but he heard you talking to Lavender and was worried.”
So he had been the one in the kitchen, then. I nodded, noting that William sounded like he still had not forgiven Keith in the least. And, to be fair, he was a criminal.
“So the note from Paracelsus was coincidence?” Luca asked over the dregs of his hot chocolate.
“Probably. But I have a few things to follow up with him about, anyway,” I said, thinking of the “alchemist” from Pine. “So we should know soon. How about the cave? Are we really going to have the party up there after all?”
At that, Trent stirred. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. A dragon crashed Thorn and my vigil today.”
“You mean Daisy?” I said, half anxious, half amused.
“Yeah,” he admitted, grinning. “And she’s helping with the party. Plus, she said that you, Red, should swipe that huge amethyst.”