The Witch Squad: A Witch Squad Cozy Mystery #1 Read online

  She pulled her head out of her hands and sat up, looking around at us. Tears covered her cheeks and her makeup was smeared under her eyes. “I have something to confess.”

  “Confess? About Freddy?” Alba asked her.

  She shook her head. “No, not about Freddy. About me.”

  We all exchanged nervous glances as Jax took a deep breath.

  “I can’t do spells,” she finally admitted.

  A long pause followed as we each took in her words. Finally, I spoke slowly. “That’s ok, you’ll learn to do them this year.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t do anything. I have no powers. I’m – I’m – I’m not a witch.” She looked between us quickly as if her words were suddenly going to alienate each of us.

  Sweets and Holly sucked in their breath. Alba and I looked at each other, our eyes wide open in shock.

  “You’re not a witch?” I asked, unsure if what I’d just heard was correct. The witchiest witch here was not a witch? Maybe I needed the wax cleaned out of my ears.

  She shook her head from side to side. “Uh-uh.”

  Alba looked at her curiously. “Then why are you here?”

  Jax threw herself back onto the sofa and covered her face with her hands. “Because I want to be a witch!”

  “Yeah, well, I want to be Taylor Momsen, but I don’t go to band camp to do it!” I snarked at her.

  Sweets shot me a disapproving glance. “Mercy! That’s not helping Jax.”

  “What? She’s not a witch and she’s at witch college. Last time I checked, they weren’t handing out witch cards at the door.”

  “So? She’s here for a reason, I’m sure,” Sweets said and then turned to Jax. “Why do you want to be a witch, Jax?”

  “You guys wouldn’t understand,” she whined.

  Holly rubbed Jax’s knee. “Try us, sweetie.”

  Jax sat up slowly. “My mother is a witch. My aunt is a witch. My grandmother was a witch. All the women in my family are witches. Do you know how awful it is to go through life with all your family being a witch and you’re not? I’ve been waiting my whole life to come into my powers. And they’ve never come. I’ve given up hope that they are ever coming. I’m just a girl,” she finished quietly, her voice cracking at the end.

  “I can’t believe this. All this time I’ve been your roommate and you never told me,” I said to her. I felt deceived. At least back home, I knew I was the only witch in the room. But now my roommate was intentionally deceiving us about her true identity.

  “I didn’t want you to treat me differently,” Jax cried.

  “That’s not fair, Jax,” I hollered. “You didn’t even give me a chance to treat you normal. Besides, I’d give anything not to be a witch. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for any of this. And you get to be normal. And what do you do? You dress like a lunatic, show up at witch college and pretend to be something you’re not! You’re a little girl playing dress up and it’s ridiculous quite honestly!” Something inside me begged me to stop, but I couldn’t help it. “I don’t even understand how they let you in. This is the Paranormal Institute for Witches. You barely qualify for normal, much less paranormal!”

  Holly and Sweets looked at me with sadness in their eyes. I knew I had taken it too far. Even Alba didn’t look pleased with my little rant.

  Jax’s expression fell and with it my heart. I hadn’t meant to be so vicious towards her. I knew I had a lot of pent up anger for being born a witch. It hadn’t been fair, but it also hadn’t been Jax’s fault. My rant hadn’t been about her, it had been about me. I looked down at the hands in my lap. I dug my thumb nail into the fleshy webbed skin between my thumb and my first finger, hoping the pain would keep me from crying. With sadness in my eyes I looked up and made eye contact with Jax.

  The pain was there. I had hurt her badly. My stomach flipped and I suddenly felt nauseous about the horrible things I’d said and how I’d made Jax feel.

  “Jax, I-,” I began. But it was too late. She stood up, tears streaming down her face and rushed out of the room.

  Holly and Sweets jumped up and began to run after her, but she pushed them away. “Go away,” she screamed.

  “Jax, wait, let us come with you,” Holly cried.

  The sound of Jax’s heels clicking on the tile floor diminished little by little as she ran down the hallway. Holly and Sweets came back to me and joined Alba in giving me dirty looks.

  “That was so mean, Mercy,” Holly barked.

  I hung my head in shame. She was absolutely right. “I know…I,” I began.

  “So mean,” Sweets chimed in.

  “And here I thought we were labeling me the bitchy witch,” Alba said in turn. “Looks like it takes one to know one.”

  “Guys, I’m sorry. I know, I’m terrible. I should have never said those awful things. I feel horrible. It’s just, my life hasn’t been all flying broomsticks and cute shoes. Being a witch has been horrible for me. I’ve been teased and tortured my entire life. And when I finally started using my powers to help me out of sticky situations, it would backfire and I’d get in trouble. People have looked at me as a bad person my entire life. I guess I just don’t know how to be a good person.”

  “Jax is a really good person,” Sweets said sadly.

  “I know she is. I took that all too far. It’s just that she has what I’ve always wanted. She’s just a girl. I’ve always wanted to be just a girl. And to hear that she’d been lying to us all this time…”

  “She didn’t want us to treat her the way that you’ve been treated your whole life,” Sweets pointed out.

  I hung my head again. “I’m so embarrassed. I feel horrible. I’ll find her. I’ll make it right,” I promised, standing up and heading down the hallway.

  I took off down the hall with the rest of the squad close behind. We poked our head into room after room to no avail.

  “Jax!” I called as I walked down the stone walled corridors.

  Door after door we opened and couldn’t find her. My heart sunk at the damage that I’d caused. We retreated back to our room that evening without her.

  “What are we going to do?” Sweets worried as ten o’clock came and went and Jax still hadn’t returned.

  “She’ll come back,” I assured her. “She’s just upset. She’ll come back in the night and I’ll apologize and make things right, I promise.”

  I felt like an overprotective mother as I laid awake that night waiting for my child to come home – to call – to anything, just to let me know she was okay. The rest of the girls had gone back to their own rooms and I lay in my bed, cuddling with Sneaks, waiting for Jax to come back.

  “Oh Sneaks, I feel just terrible for being so mean to Jax,” I lamented. “This is all my fault.”

  Sneaks rubbed his soft dark fur against my skin, sending goosebumps careening across my arms. “Gosh, I’ve got goosebumps again. I just can’t seem to warm up around here,” I told him as I pulled a blanket up from the foot of the bed and wrapped myself in it.

  I began to shiver even more. “Jeez, the last time I had shivers like this, was the first day of school and it turned out that Hartford girl was …” I stopped midsentence. She had been dead. The thought finally registered with me. My shivers were a sign. My spidey senses were tingling again and Jax was missing. “Oh Sneaks, I’m so worried about Jax. Maybe I should go wake Sorceress Stone to help me find her.”

  Just then there was a knock at the door. I shot out of bed and lurched forward into the dark inkiness of my dorm room. Jax was back! “Oh thank God, finally, you’re…”

  But it wasn’t Jax at my door, it was Holly and by the look on her face, I thought she’d seen the devil.

  “Holly! What in the world are you doing here at midnight?” I asked her as I turned around to look at the clock on my desk. I peered back at her in my doorway curiously, I could see she’d come with Alba.

  “Mercy. Oh, my gosh, you’ve got to let us in. It’s Jax!”

  { Chapter Twel
ve}

  “Jax?” My heart began to beat faster, I could hear it thumping in my ears. “You saw Jax? Where? When? Where is she?”

  Holly pushed herself into my room and Alba followed right behind her. Holly looked at Alba nervously.

  “You’ve got to tell her,” Alba commanded her.

  Holly took a deep breath and then told me what she had seen. “I saw her in my dream. She was walking outside and a man came up from behind her and grabbed her. She struggled with him, but he was too strong. Mercy, Jax has been kidnapped!”

  “You’re sure?” I asked, as I felt my food start to move in my stomach. It felt like I was going to be sick and the shivers wouldn’t stop pebbling my arms and legs. I knew she was sure, I knew that’s what my senses were telling me and that was why Jax hadn’t come home yet for me to apologize to her.

  “I’m sure,” Holly said nervously.

  “We’ve got to call the police,” I decided. I pulled a sweatshirt off the chair next to my bed and pulled it on.

  Alba shook her head. “We have to tell Sorceress Stone. She’ll throw a fit if we call the police but didn’t report Jax missing to start with.”

  “I feel like Sorceress Stone doesn’t like Jax. What if she tells us we can’t report it? What if she doesn’t do anything about it? We can’t let Jax meet the same fate that Morgan Hartford did,” I argued.

  “I’m so freaked out right now,” said Holly. She hopped up on Jax’s desk and absent mindedly grabbed a snow globe off the side of her desk that belonged to Jax. Flipping it over she gave it a good shake and then turned it right side up and watched as tiny little golden leaves fell over the miniature town of Aspen Falls. Suddenly her body stiffened and her eyes stared across the room blankly.

  “Holly?” Alba asked nervously.

  Holly didn’t respond. With the globe in her hands she didn’t move. It was as if she were in a trance.

  I touched her knee. “Holly, wake up.”

  Alba held her hand up as if to stop me. “Maybe she’s having a vision.”

  We watched as Holly’s body shook while her eyelids fluttered open and then closed and then open again. “Jax!” escaped from her lips as she finally lost whatever possession had been holding her and she crumpled to the desk.

  “Alba, grab her!” I hollered as I shot forward to grab her before she tumbled off of the desk. We both got an arm around her and pulled her off the desk, sitting her down onto my bed carefully.

  “Holly, wake up,” Alba said, shaking her gruffly.

  Her eyes fluttered open. She looked straight ahead for a moment, before catching her bearings and then looking around to find us staring at her nervously.

  “Are you alright, Holly?” I asked.

  “I saw Jax,” she announced immediately. “She’s alive.”

  “Where is she?” Alba asked.

  “She’s being held somewhere. I saw her. Her arms were tied and her mouth was gagged. Oh my gosh guys, she’s so scared. We’ve got to find her.”

  “Did you see anyone there with her?” I asked.

  Holly shook her head. “I didn’t see anyone.”

  “When you had your dream earlier, could you see who took her?” Alba asked.

  “It was a man, I only saw the back of his head. I couldn’t see his face.”

  It was obvious between the dream and the premonition she just had, Holly was rattled. “You going to be ok?” I asked her.

  She nodded, but held her hand out to stare at her wobbly hand. “Yeah, but I’m kind of shaky do you have anything to drink?”

  I opened the small mini fridge and pulled out a little bottle of orange juice. “Here, it’s Jax’s.”

  I slipped on my sneakers while Holly guzzled the juice. “We have to tell Sorceress Stone, there’s no way around it,” I told Alba.

  “Ok, I don’t even know where to find her,” Alba said with a little grunt.

  “We’ll check the lobby and see if there’s anyone down there. If we can’t find her, then we’ll just have to call the police ourselves.”

  Holly stood up. She was wobbly on her feet, but quickly she gained her bearings.

  “Come on ladies,” I said. “We don’t have much time.”

  Sneaks tried to follow me out the door, but for once I didn’t want to let him go. If we didn’t find Jax soon and something happened to her, I’d need the comfort when I got back.

  “Sorry, Sneaks. You stay here for now. It’s safer here,” I said and shut the door behind me.

  The three of us raced down the stairs and to the lobby. No one was around and there wasn’t even an emergency phone number posted anywhere. We had no idea how to reach Sorceress Stone.

  “We’re just going to have to call the police,” I said. “We can’t wait any longer.”

  As I dug my cell phone out of my back pocket, Holly and Alba saw a shadow cross in front of the doors leading to the courtyard. “Did you see that?” Holly asked.

  Alba nodded. “Yeah, I wonder who is up wandering around outside at this hour?”

  “Do you think it’s Jax? Maybe she got away,” suggested Holly. She chewed on her fingernails nervously.

  “I doubt that it’s Jax. Why would she be running away from the building? I think we should go see who it is, it could be her kidnapper,” I rationalized. My heart was in my stomach as the three of us snuck to the edge of the darkened wall and then slid against the wall to the glass doors and peered outside.

  “I can’t see anything,” Holly whispered.

  “Shhh,” I hissed. “Whoever it is will hear you!”

  “They’re outside, they aren’t going to me,” Holly whispered back.

  “Who’s not going to hear you?” a voice suddenly asked from behind us.

  Alba, Holly and I jumped, letting a startled scream out. We turned around to find none other than Sweets in her bathrobe and a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers holding a snack from the vending machine.

  “Sweets! You scared the crap out of me!” I hissed at her.

  “What in the hell are you doing down here?” Alba cursed.

  Sweets shrank down before shrugging and eyed her honey bun. “I was hungry.”

  “Well, for goodness sake, be quiet, we’re on a stake out,” Holly whispered.

  Sweets squatted down low, mirroring our stances and peered out the window with us. “Who are we looking for?”

  “Jax’s kidnapper!” Holly told her.

  Sweets’ eyes grew large. “Jax has been kidnapped?”

  Holly nodded. “Yes. And we just saw a suspicious figure walk past these doors.”

  Her eyes grew even larger. “You think it’s her kidnapper?”

  “It could be, we’re going to have to go out there and check. Why don’t Alba and I go, Holly, you and Sweets stay here in case we need you to call for help.”

  Holly and Sweets nodded. They were obviously happy not to have to go out where the kidnapper was.

  “What are we going to do out there?” I asked Alba.

  She shrugged. “I have no idea. Wing it!”

  “Ok, let’s go,” I whispered and followed behind her as she quietly slid the courtyard door open wide enough so we could squeeze out.

  Alba led the way as we walked out into the slightly illuminated darkness. The dull glow from the street lamps surrounding the courtyard revealed nothing. There was no one in the courtyard and it was hard to see past the short stone walls surrounding the cobblestone area. Alba pointed towards the sidewalk to our right, the direction in which we’d seen the dark figure moving through the window.

  Without word, I followed her closely, my heart pounded like a canon in my ears, making the silence of the night loud and scary. I looked back and saw the dark shadowy outline of Sweets and Holly watching Alba and I through the window. Alba moved forward quickly, crouching low to the ground. I couldn’t help but think about the fact that she moved quite stealthily for a woman of her size.

  We clung to the darkness and shadows of the building as we made our way around Wins
ton Hall and towards the Canterbury Building, a building that we had had many of our witch classes in over the past week. The sidewalk split in two at the stairs of the old building, wrapping around it we had to make a decision of which way to go. Alba pointed to her left and then pointed to me and to our right. She wanted me to investigate on my own. Panicking, my head shook vigorously from side to side. Alba’s eyes narrowed on me and she pointed staunchly to her right, wordlessly insisting that I venture that way on my own.

  As Alba headed in the opposite direction, I reluctantly turned around, facing the darkness head on. With my heart in my throat, I took a dozen steps forward and then the sound of a man’s voice rode past me with a gust of wind. I stopped dead in my tracks, terror gripped my body. I wanted to turn around and scream for Alba to come back, but my body was paralyzed with fear. What if that man was the one that had taken Jax? And what if the man that had taken Jax had been the one to kill Morgan?

  As I debated what to do, I stood there with my eyes closed engulfed in black, trying to sink into a safer state of denial, when suddenly I felt an energy whoosh past my body. It felt different than the wind, but maybe it was the wind. I felt my long hair lift off of my shoulders and dance around my face. My eyes shot open, searching for a sign of what I was feeling, but saw nothing. I continued to hear the sound of a man’s voice, chanting off in the distance.

  Against my will, I found my legs carrying me forward, towards the chanting. As trees began to clear, I could see a colorful swirling of lights floating off in the distance. I had never gone this far on the campus and I wondered what I would find up ahead. I wished that Alba and I wouldn’t have split up.

  The cobblestone path ended at a rickety picket fence. There was a gate at the end of the path, so I assumed it was part of the campus property, but perhaps wasn’t for student use. The chanting and energy field was coming from inside of the picket fence. I knew if I wanted to find out who the man was and what was going on, I’d have to be brave and open the gate.

  I put one hand on the gate and suddenly a body appeared behind me out of the darkness and touched my shoulders. My body convulsed in fear as I spun around to see Alba. I had never been so scared, yet so relieved in my entire life. “Alba! You scared the hell out of me!” I hollered in a whisper at her.