The next morning I got up and had a very quick breakfast while Luce and Molly very sleepily discussed the idea of getting a coffee machine for Traveler. They’d obviously stayed up late fretting over what Aunt Cass might do to them or plotting revenge for when she did do whatever she was going to do. I got out of there before they could wake up too much and remember I had thrown their romantic lives out onto the table. I patted Adams and headed out the door.
I drove to work and got there just at eight o’clock. When you’re self-employed, it’s very important that you treat your job as though it were a real job, as though there is a boss watching you come and go. Otherwise, it’s very easy to start sleeping late and leaving early, and pretty soon you’re only working maybe one hour a day. I honestly had no idea if the Harlot Bay Reader was ever going to become successful enough to pay me like a regular business, but I was trying as hard as I could to make it so. The problem with Harlot Bay is not very much happens here. Sure, there are crimes, and the magical confluence in the area certainly causes a few weird things to hit the front page, but it’s hardly enough to sustain everyone’s interest and certainly not enough to generate advertising dollars.
I walked up the steps to my office and went inside and up the stairs. John was sitting on the sofa watching the television. Two very excited, tanned people were discussing the benefits of a truly amazing blender that could make fruit juices in under half a second.
“Hey, John,” I said, making myself a quick coffee and gulping it down.
“Good morning. Did you know you can get this blender for only three easy payments of $59.95?”
“Is it a good deal?”
“Of course it is. This blender has eighty-five separate functions.”
“Sounds nice,” I said, thinking about other things.
“Are you going to be reporting on the graffiti?”
That caught my attention. Graffiti?
“What graffiti are you talking about?”
“Someone sprayed paint on the front of a few shops this morning. Unbelievable.”
“I’ll check it out,” I said, shuffling through my papers. I finally found the Butter Festival flyer that I’d picked up at yesterday’s council meeting.
“Okay, gotta go out, see you later,” I said, checking that my camera battery was fully charged.
“It does crinkle-cut potato chips. Can you believe it?” John said, his attention back on the television.
I left him there, watching the marvels of modern engineering, and walked down the street heading for the town hall where the Butter Festival would take place. As I walked along I browsed through the flyer. There were a series of competition butter carvings running through the week and also some display events. The lead competitor, Zero Bend, was scheduled to do an ice carving at the Festival’s Grand Opening later today. There was a photo next to his name. He had spiky punk hair, dyed black, pink, green and red, which stuck out everywhere. He was wearing a thick pair of black goggles and had a snarl on his face. Black tattooed lines crept up his neck. The small bio about him called him “the bad boy of sculpture.” Below him was Holt Everand, his closest competitor. He wasn’t as punk looking as Zero Bend, but he did look just as crazy, with spiky blond hair so light it practically glowed. There were a few more competitors who’d be there, all with weird names. Harmonious Twang. The Slice. Jim Fire. It was all proudly sponsored by Preston Jacobs, referred to as the Sandcastle King.
I was so caught up in reading that I didn’t see the bunch of adorable six-year-olds walking by under the supervision of their teacher until I nearly stepped on them. It wasn’t cold at all but some of them were rugged up like it was snow season. Maybe they were going to our very old and falling-apart ice-skating rink, Cold Blades.
Zero Bend’s name rang a bell. I couldn’t remember what, exactly, but I was pretty sure he had gotten arrested in some country for doing something stupid and crazy. One of those things that gets about two seconds on the news at the end when they need to say something light-hearted like “Crazy Artist Arrested for Stealing Elephant.”
I stuffed the flyer back in my pocket and continued on down the street past the town hall to the grouping of warehouses they were using to store the tons of butter for the competition. I was expecting someone to be here to let me in to take some photos for the Harlot Bay Reader, but the place was deserted. I knocked on the front door, but no one answered, so I went walking around the side until I found another door that was ajar. I knocked on it and it pushed open under my fist.
I stepped inside, feeling a cool wash of air over me.
“Hello? Harlow Torrent from the Harlot Bay Reader—I’m here to take photos.”
My voice echoed out into the corridor and the room beyond. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. I walked down the corridor, looking into the rooms on either side as I went, but they were empty.
I pushed through the plastic flaps into the main chill room. It was kept at near freezing in there, and my breath plumed out in front of me. I quickly removed my camera lens so it would have time to adjust to the temperature. The tables all around me were filled with giant wrapped pats of butter. Each one must have been at least twenty pounds. I wasn’t one to waste a good opportunity, so I went over to the nearest table, knelt down, and started taking photographs.
I moved around, trying to find a good angle to include the butter brand and the size of it. Every shelf around me was filled with thousands upon thousands of pounds of butter. This was at least going to make a great article. Hopefully I had better pictures and copy than Carter Wilkins.
I wandered around the room, feeling the chill seeping into my clothes. Goose bumps started to form on my arms and I shivered. Was that only the cold? I took a breath of chilled air and let it out again, but the odd feeling that had come over me wouldn’t go away. It felt like someone was watching me, and that’s not normally a sensation a witch ignores. I abruptly decided that I had enough photographs and I had to get out of there, but with all the shelves and tables everywhere, I must’ve gotten turned around. The warehouse felt like a maze. I started walking down a corridor, telling myself, don’t freak out, don’t freak out, don’t freak out when I turned the corner and . . .
Okay, here comes a freak-out.
A man was handcuffed to a metal chair in his underwear, with frozen blood on the floor around him. A trail of footprints led off behind him.
I knew his face; I’d been looking at it ten minutes ago. He was Holt Everand, one of the Butter Festival competitors. The blue eyes that had sparkled on the flyer were wide open and lifeless. His mouth hung open, making him look like he was surprised about something. On the table next to him was a clawed hammer, the end matted in blood and pieces of blond hair.
He was dead. Most definitely, absolutely, no-doubt-about-it dead.
I heard a noise behind me. I had my camera in my hands and in shock pressed the button, taking a photograph of Holt. The flash burst out, leaving me blinking away stars in my vision.
I whirled around but I couldn’t see anyone.
Holy crap, was the murderer still in the building?
The glare of the flash faded enough for me to peer at my phone. There was no signal—probably the warehouse, but possibly also the magical energy that swirled around Harlot Bay. It didn’t play well with telecommunications.
I stood still, listening for any sound, but all I could hear was my heart thudding. I was clenching my camera like a weapon. After thirty seconds of standing there in the cold, I decided I really needed to get out of there to call the police.
I quickly glanced behind me at Holt. He was still in his chair, still dead, still surrounded by frozen blood on the floor. I looked down and found I was standing on blood droplets.
Okay, murder blood on my shoes, I’m done!
I bolted back the way I came, convinced someone was going to jump out at me at any moment and I’d throw a fireball at them in a panic. It got worse the closer I got to the exit—now is the point where I’d be bashed by a hammer. I ran the final feet to the door, shoved it open and burst out into the warm morning.
I quickly dialed the Harlot Bay sheriff’s office and got put through to Sheriff Hardy. I told him I’d found a dead body, and he told me to stay where I was. It only took a few minutes for the police cars to arrive, and in that time the smudge of frozen blood on the side of my shoe had warmed up enough to trickle down onto the ground.
Gross.
Sheriff Hardy got out of his car and walked over. He looked down at the blood smeared on my shoe and then back up my face.
He’s a solid man in his early fifties, and I’ve known him since forever, but that didn’t stop me from shrinking under his patented police chief gaze.
“Someone killed Holt Everand. He’s one of the Butter Festival competitors,” I said.
“Stay right where you are, Harlow,” Sheriff Hardy told me.
He instructed his men to cover all of the exits of the building and then they went inside. I stayed literally where I was. Some more of the frozen blood on my shoes melted down onto the ground before Sheriff Hardy returned and went back to his car. He came back with a couple of giant plastic evidence bags.
“Going to need you to step out of your shoes and put these on.”
He was holding a pair of blue cotton shoe coveralls, the type that you might see a doctor in a hospital wearing. Something so I didn’t contaminate the crime scene more than I already had.
Once I was out of my shoes (I guess they were evidence now) and wearing bright blue cotton, Sheriff Hardy led me to his car.
“So, Harlow, can you tell me how it is you came to be in a warehouse with a dead body?”
I told Sheriff Hardy about coming to the warehouse to get photographs of the butter and how upon finding the front door locked, I’d gone around to the side.
“It didn’t occur to you that if the front door was locked that perhaps you should wait until someone arrived to unlock it?”
“I wasn’t intending to break in. I just happened to walk down the side. There was an open door. Besides, it’s a warehouse. I thought that someone would be there. I took some photos of the butter.”
“I’ll need a copy of your photographs. Can you bring them to the station? You didn’t see anyone? Hear anyone?”
“I heard a noise, waited a bit to see if I heard it again, and then got out of there.”
Sheriff Hardy blew out air between his lips and then rubbed his hands through his hair.
“Well, the man in there is definitely dead. We probably won’t be able to say exactly when he died because he’s nearly frozen. How did you know his name?”
I pulled the Butter Festival flyer out of my pocket and gave it Sheriff Hardy. He read through some of the bios of the competitors, his eyebrows inching up higher.
“Zero Bend, huh? Well, that explains the crime we just discovered.”
“What crime?”
“Someone went on a graffiti spree last night. You didn’t see it?”
Graffiti spree? John had mentioned it to me, but I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary on my walk through town. On the other hand, I’d almost stomped on a group of six-year-olds, so it was entirely possible I wasn’t paying attention very well.
“Must have missed it,” I said.
“Take a walk down the main street later.”
He gave back the Butter Festival flyer and made some notes about what I’d told him.
“I’ll get a statement typed up for you to sign. Let me know if you remember anything else that could be useful.”
“Oh, okay,” I mumbled, feeling a distant part of me wonder if this was what shock felt like.
I needed my cousins. I needed proper shoes. I needed to get away from the liquid drops of red blood that I’d tracked onto the ground.
I nodded to Sheriff Hardy and walked away. When I turned the corner, I saw the graffiti John and the sheriff had mentioned. It was difficult to explain how I’d missed it.
Fluorescent orange letters were painted at least a foot high on multiple shop windows, the same name over and over again.
ZERO BEND