Silenced by a Spell Page 9

  “I’m going to kill that girl,” the man said between his teeth. He looked at Lacey. “Look, I’ll give you a refund if that’s what it takes.”

  Lacey shook her head. “I’m sorry but that’s not going to work. I exchanged money for the book and made a deal, and now a further deal has been made again, here in my store. All sales are final. Those are the rules. I can’t go back on it, just like you can’t go back on your sale to me.”

  “It wasn’t my sale!” he refuted. “It was my stupid employee’s sale, one which she’ll soon find out has cost her her job.”

  Lacey frowned. As much as she’d disliked the grumpy girl who’d served her, she didn’t want her to get fired over this.

  “I hope you reconsider that,” she said, in the same calm tone. “It would be unethical to fire your clerk over a misunderstanding. I asked for the book because it was behind the counter. If it wasn’t for sale, that ought to have been made clearer.”

  “Ethics!” the man yelled. “Who are YOU to talk to ME about ETHICS? What is ethical about ripping me off, and profiting from my misfortune?”

  His voice was getting louder and louder, and Lacey was more than acutely aware she still had a store full of patrons finalizing their sales from the auction. She really did not appreciate the man’s accusations. Business wasn’t personal, and she’d done nothing wrong.

  “I will call the police if you continue this way,” she warned.

  “Good idea!” the man cried, grabbing the door handle of the office and flinging it open. “Call the police, and I can tell them about the theft you have so brazenly committed!” He directed his final words into the corridor, yelling loudly so as many people could hear as possible.

  Lacey felt her cheeks burn.

  She clenched her hands into fists. “They’ll take my side on this matter, and you know it. You have no legal grounds to stand on. And if you want to buy the grimoire, you’ll have to ask its new owner if they’re willing to sell.”

  The pawnbroker looked furious.

  Then, suddenly, his eyes widened as if he’d hit on an idea. He tore out of the office and went charging down the corridor toward the shop floor.

  Lacey bolted after him, realizing she’d probably inadvertently given him the idea of looking for the grimoire and taking it back himself.

  She raced into the busy shop.

  Finnbar was behind the counter working the till. At the front of the queue stood Alaric Moon. Gina was holding his prized grimoire open in her hands, chuckling as she attempted to read aloud from its pages in the langue d’oïl.

  “NO!” the pawnbroker cried. “STOP!”

  Gina snapped her head up, surprised. Lacey rushed forward, panicked that the man was about to snatch the book from Gina’s hands, and put herself in front of it. But the man didn’t try to steal the book, at all. Instead, he appeared to have gone deathly pale.

  He pointed a finger at Gina. “You read from the book. You’re cursed!”

  Lacey rolled her eyes. She didn’t believe anything of the sort.

  “Get out of my store,” she said.

  The man seemed suddenly eager to obey. He staggered for the door, looking terrified.

  “Cursed!” he screamed as he ran. “Cursed!”

  The bell jangled loudly as he hurried through the door and slammed it after him. Lacey watched as his short little legs pumped beneath him, carrying him along the cobblestone streets and out of sight.

  The whole shop was completely silent. Lacey felt every pair of eyes on her. She was so embarrassed her cheeks became as hot as a bonfire.

  Finnbar cleared his throat. “Let’s get all these sales finalized, shall we? Don’t want to keep our patrons waiting. I believe many of you have a ghost tour to get to this evening?”

  Lacey snapped out of her stunned shock and nodded. “Yes, thank you, Finn. If you and Gina can sort that out, I think I’ll attend to some office work…”

  She turned and staggered away from all the eyes staring at her. No, she didn’t believe the grimoire was cursed, just like she did not believe in Alaric Moon’s Coffee Nook curse. But being yelled and screamed at right at the finale of her thrilling auction was extremely demoralizing, and she needed a bit of time to herself to get over it.

  Suddenly, the ghost tour she’d been so reticent about earlier could not come soon enough.

  *

  “What a day,” Gina said, turning the door sign to closed behind the last auction attendee to file out.

  Lacey snapped the ledger shut. “You can say that again.”

  It had been quite a strange auction, and Lacey was more than ready to put it behind her. At least inducing a state of fear would take her mind off of the horrible experience with the Ippledean pawnbroker.

  “Let’s get to the beach,” Gina said. “Finnbar, are you coming?”

  “Not tonight,” he replied, putting on his brown corduroy jacket and checkered scarf. “I have too much work to do.”

  They headed out of the store together, and Lacey locked up behind them.

  “Thanks for all your hard work today,” Lacey said as the shutters rattled down into place. “I hope your wrist feels better soon.”

  Finnbar tipped his imaginary cap and disappeared into the darkness.

  The two women collected Tom from the patisserie and the group headed down to the beach. The dogs zipped back and forth across the sand, but other than that, there was no one else here. No sign of the ghost tour congregating. No sign of the attendants. The place was deserted.

  “Oh,” Gina said, looking sheepish. “I guess the tour must be tomorrow.”

  “Gina!” Lacey cried, shivering in her jacket. “You dragged us all the way out here for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing,” Tom countered. “Look, it’s a beautiful full moon. We can row over and explore just the three of us. It’ll be even spookier.”

  He was being typically adventurous.

  Lacey folded her arms. “And who exactly will guide us?”

  “Me,” Tom said. “I’ve explored those ruins a hundred times.”

  “And I’ll make up the ghost stories as we go,” Gina said with a chuckle.

  “You two,” Lacey said, giving in with an affectionate eye roll.

  Tom fetched the rowboat. Humans and dogs alike clambered excitedly inside.

  The moon looked beautiful reflected in the rippling water as Tom rowed them across the short distance to the island. The silhouetted ruins looked even more ominous under a full moon, with their jutting towers and crumbling, jagged walls.

  Once they reached the other side, Tom tethered the boat to the jetty.

  “Lead the way,” Lacey said, climbing out of the little wooden boat.

  They trudged across the distinctive gray sand toward the looming medieval ruins. The crumbling castle looked especially ominous tonight under the light of the full moon, and Lacey shuddered as memories from that awful night months ago threatened to return.

  “Quick, someone tell me a ghost story,” Lacey said, worried she was about to tip into a full-on panic.

  “Which one would you like to hear first?” Tom said, in a spooky storyteller’s voice. “If these ancient walls could talk, they’d tell you tales of death, war, murder, and revenge…”

  Lacey hunkered down into her jacket, her stomach swirling ever more strongly. Maybe her coming here was a bad idea after all.

  They drew closer to the jagged stone ruins jutting out from the sand, close enough to see the green moss and lichen growing in the crevices of the stones. Lacey’s stomach twisted into knots.

  “Perhaps we should head back….” she began to say.

  But at the exact same moment, Chester’s head darted up, nose to the air. He sniffed once, twice, his expression turning intense, then went charging off inside the ruins.

  “Oh no! Chester!” Lacey cried as he was quickly swallowed up by the dark shadows inside. “Chester, come back!”

  Her voice echoed through the abandoned corridors of the ancient
building. Chester’s distant bark told her he was going full pelt.

  “He must’ve picked up the scent of an animal or something,” Gina said, as Lacey peered anxiously into the ruins from the precipice. “I bet he thinks he’s got some very important herding to attend to. You know what these English Shepherds are like.”

  She looked down at Boudica, who was lazily sitting by her feet paying no heed to anything going on. The older of the pair, she was often more mellow.

  Just then, from the distance, Chester began barking shrilly. Boudica’s ears perked right up, and she began to whine in response.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Lacey said.

  She knew all the distinct tones of Chester’s barks, and that one was telling her there was trouble.

  Putting her own fear away, Lacey took off after him.

  “Chester?” she called into the blackness, as she followed the sound of his shrill barks. “Chester?”

  It was nearly pitch-black inside the ruins; even with the full moon above, the labyrinthine structure and high stone walls blocked most of it out. Lacey found herself plunged into a velvety blackness so deep it almost felt unreal.

  Suddenly, she passed beneath some kind of awning that led her into what appeared to be a large courtyard between several buildings. With the open sky above her, at last there was more light to see by.

  A very tall watchtower loomed before her. Beneath it, she spotted Chester pawing at something in the gloom at the bottom of the tower. He’d found something, something that looked like a large black lump.

  “Chester!” she cried.

  He let out a shrill bark.

  Lacey hurried forward, realizing as she drew closer that the lump was in fact a body.

  She skidded to a halt beside the still body and peered down. With a gasp, she realized she knew who she was looking at.

  It was Alaric Moon.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Bile leapt into Lacey’s throat. Her hands began to shake. She could tell from the unnatural position Alaric Moon was lying in that he was certainly dead. She stared, aghast, as Chester whined and pawed at the body in the sand.

  In the distance, she could hear Tom’s voice calling her. “Lacey? Lacey, where did you go?” but it seemed like his voice was traveling over thousands of miles to reach her rather than just the other side of the crumbling medieval tower.

  Horrified by the dead man before her, Lacey tore her gaze away, peering up to the top of the tower from which he’d most certainly fallen. She squinted against the fine rainfall that immediately coated her lashes.

  “What do you think, Chester?” she said, her voice quavering with distress. “Do you think he fell?”

  Chester looked up from his frantic, futile attempts to revive the dead man, and barked twice.

  Lacey looked back from the tower, forcing herself to look at the contorted body of Alaric Moon. There was quite a distance between the place he’d hit the ground and the base of the tower.

  She gasped, a horrible panic making her heart skip.

  “Oh no, you don’t think he jumped?” she exclaimed.

  Chester barked three times. His expression was growing ever more intense with every moment that passed without the dead man rousing.

  A sudden thought struck Lacey. Chills went up her spine. She whispered, breathless with fear, “He was pushed…”

  Just then, footsteps came thundering toward her. It was her trio of companions, Boudica the dog at the lead, with Tom close behind, and Gina bringing up the rear as she staggered after the both of them in her cumbersome, sand-caked Wellington boots.

  Boudica reached Lacey first. Unperturbed, she ran straight up to the crumpled heap of Alaric Moon and began sniffing him in much the same way Chester had. Then the two dogs began conversing in their telepathic way.

  Tom called to Lacey, “Is that a seal?”

  Lacey turned to him and shook her head. She’d thought the same herself, at first. The curve of Alaric’s black cape around his hunched form made him distinctly resemble the creatures that often congregated on the island, and Tom’s brain, like her own, had obviously gone straight to the most logical explanation. But the reality was far more sinister.

  “It’s one of the out-of-towners,” she replied as Tom drew to a halt beside her. “Alaric Moon. He was at my auction.”

  Tom’s face immediately blanched. He looked queasy, and a grimace appeared on his lips. He grabbed Lacey’s hand, and she didn’t know if it was to comfort her, or because he himself was the one in need of comfort.

  His hands were warm, Lacey noted, and a sudden thought hit her. She slipped out of Tom’s hold and went over to Alaric, pressing a hand to his forehead. Stone cold. He was long dead.

  The thud-thud-thud of Gina’s heavy footfalls caused Lacey to turn.

  “What the bloody hell is that?” the older woman cried, her gray eyes widening behind the thick lenses of her red-framed spectacles.

  “It’s a body,” Tom murmured in response. He got his cell phone out and pressed his thumb down three times: 9-9-9.

  Gina blanched. “A body? A dead one?”

  Lacey stood and went over to her friend, resting a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I’m afraid so.”

  Poor Gina looked like she was about to faint. Or retch. Perhaps both. She reached a hand out for the tower to steady herself.

  Lacey couldn’t fault her for her visceral reaction. She, too, felt like she was suddenly in a dream. No, a nightmare.

  “I’d like to report a death,” Tom said into his cell phone, pacing away from them.

  “Do you know who it is?” Gina asked Lacey, her voice quivering.

  “It’s Alaric Moon.”

  “From the auction?” Gina rapidly fired back in a panicky voice. “The man who bought the grimoire?”

  “That’s right,” Lacey said, perplexed at her friend’s sudden shift in tone. “Gina, do you know something?”

  Gina had gone as pale as a ghost.

  “The curse, Lacey!” she cried. “I unleashed the curse by accident, and now a man is dead.”

  Lacey had guessed three possible reasons for Alaric’s untimely demise: accident, suicide, or homicide. She hadn’t even considered the so-called curse.

  She shook her head sympathetically. “The curse didn’t kill him,” she assured her friend.

  “How can you be sure?” Gina shot back, panic making her voice squeak. “I read from the book aloud! The pawnbroker man said I’d cursed everyone!”

  She looked like she was on the verge of breaking down. Lacey took her by the shoulders and gazed into her pained eyes.

  “Gina, listen,” she said, firmly. “There is no such thing as a curse. Don’t torture yourself. Alaric’s death is not your fault.”

  Gina’s eyes darted left and right as she searched Lacey’s eyes for reassurance.

  “I promise you,” Lacey reiterated. “This had nothing to do with a curse.”

  Tom stepped back to the group, returning his cell phone to his pocket. “The police are on their way.”

  Lacey nodded her acknowledgment, her mind swirling as she struggled to process what was happening. Just this morning, Alaric had been swishing his silly cape around the High Street, yelling about milk and cursing people. Now he’d been reduced to a dead heap.

  *

  The police arrived in their big, motorized dinghy, like a strange black monster advancing from the ocean onto the sand. Among the uniformed officers were the plain-clothed murder detectives, DCI Beth Lewis and Superintendent Turner.

  “They sent the detectives,” Lacey said to Tom.

  He was still quite pale from shock. “What does that mean?”

  “It means they suspect foul play,” Lacey explained. “I know how Superintendent Turner operates. If he thought it was a suicide or a fall, he would’ve left the work to the officers already on the beat.”

  Tom gulped hard. Gina looked frightened.

  “Murder…” she whispered under her breath.


  Lacey left the word hanging in the air, and turned to watch the officers as they climbed from the dinghy and huddled together. Superintendent Turner was at least a foot taller than everyone else, and his long trench coat somehow gave him even more gravitas than the uniformed officers. The graying process of his hair was now fully complete, and in the moonlight, it almost looked like a halo glowing on his head.

  Of course, Lacey knew better. Superintendent Turner might technically be one of the good guys, but his way of going about seeking justice left a lot to be desired. Not to mention his prejudice toward her as a foreigner. She was just glad she hadn’t been the one to make the call; if she’d even suspected her name was being treated like a red flag, it would have infuriated her.

  The group of officers dispersed, fanning out across the beach—one holding a roll of that dreaded, neon crime scene tape that Lacey had so come to loathe—and leaving the two detectives behind. They turned their heads in unison toward where Lacey, Tom, Gina, and the dogs were waiting on the sidelines.

  “They’re coming this way,” Gina noted, nodding her head to them as they began their approach. She seemed terrified, and it looked to Lacey as if she was shrinking into her bright yellow rain mac, like a tortoise into its shell.

  “We’re witnesses,” Lacey told her. “They’re just going to take our statements. All you need to do is tell the truth. We’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Gina visibly trembled. “You haven’t,” she mumbled.

  The moment Superintendent Turner spotted Chester, his expression soured. His gaze snapped up to the trio of witnesses, scanning them until he found Lacey. His eyes narrowed.

  Lacey felt her hackles rise. She stuffed her hands into her pockets defensively, as Superintendent Turner closed the final distance between them with rapid, stomping strides.

  “I should’ve expected you’d be here,” he said, gruffly.

  “How are you this evening, Karl?” Lacey replied, attempting to extinguish his combativeness with politeness. “Beth?” she added, as DCI Lewis reached his side.