Storm a-Brewin' Read online

“What …?” It was all I could manage to say, and as soon as I said it, I felt a lurch as he dropped to his knees, still holding me firmly in his arms.

  The chill of the rain hit me next, and I shivered, feeling slightly more in touch with reality as I threw my arms around his neck. It took all my energy to cling to him, but he held me twice as hard. “Oh goddess, Nora. I thought …”

  He didn’t say what he thought, but I had a good guess based on the way his voice cracked as he spoke. I turned my head slowly. The world around me wobbled. “Where are we?”

  “Erin Park,” he said.

  He set me gently on a low stone wall but kept his arm outstretched behind me to make sure I didn’t lose my balance while the world continued to wobble.

  The more I saw of what was happening around me, the less I was able to make sense of it. How much time had passed since I … wait, how did I get there? And why were Darius, Ansel, Quinn, James, and Hyacinth also laying face-up in the rainy street?

  Deputy Stu Manchester hunched over Hyacinth, smacking her gently on the cheek and hollering at her without getting a response.

  Three other familiar faces were attending to the rest, and I had this strange feeling they were connected somehow, but in my current state, I couldn’t quite … make the leap …

  Eva Moody had Darius Pine’s head in her lap as she leaned over him, speaking softly and brushing his wet hair away from his face.

  Donovan Stringfellow was shaking Ansel roughly, but though the werebear’s eyes were open, he seemed about as drained as I felt and didn’t lift a finger.

  And helping Quinn Shaw rise slowly to a sitting position against the curb was a rosy-cheeked, blond-haired witch whose name ... I knew it. It was on the tip of my tongue. I knew I liked him. But his name …

  “Drink this,” said a soft voice to my left. I turned toward it and when I saw myself staring back at me, I jumped and nearly toppled backward off the wall, would have if it weren’t for Tanner smartly keeping his arm behind me.

  “Doppelgänger!” I shouted. And some of the recent revelations came flooding back in a muddled mix.

  “Nora, it’s okay,” Tanner said, but suddenly it sounded like he was about to laugh. “That’s not a doppelgänger. That’s just Kayleigh.”

  I blinked a few times, trying to process it.

  Ah. Of course it was. While Kayleigh Lytefoot did bear an uncanny resemblance to me, albeit a prettier and more youthful one (despite being hundreds of years older than me), there were some obvious differences I’d missed. For one, she was about half my height. And for another, she had wings.

  The pixie was kind enough to suppress the laughter at my expense and held out the bottle again. “You’ve been Befuddled. It won’t go away until you drink this.”

  “But how did you—”

  “Uh-uh-uh,” she said, cutting me off gently. “Drink it first, ask questions later.”

  Not great advice to live by, but seeing as how I was struggling to remember my own last name, when I looked at Tanner and he nodded, I decided to trust whatever was in the bottle.

  It tasted like Grim’s breath smelled. “Bleh!” I felt it coming up and only just managed to swallow it back down. Within seconds, the mental jumble lifted, and in its place a million more coherent questions. The most pressing one I addressed to Tanner. “Did you get them?”

  “Bloom did. I think she’s still inside with them.”

  He nodded toward the house which I now recognized as the Bouquets’. “How did they Befuddle me?”

  “A Befuddlement Brew, more likely than not,” replied Kayleigh. “Unfortunately, it’s not an incredibly difficult potion to make, but the effects can be devastating … as you’ve just seen and experienced.”

  “It can’t be legal, can it?” I asked.

  “No. It can’t and it’s not. But spiking someone’s drink with anything they don’t know is in there is illegal.”

  Ah yes. The tea. At least that minor mystery was solved.

  The others were starting to wake up now. “Are you sure that’s really Hyacinth and James?” I asked Tanner uneasily.

  “I’d say I’m at about a ninety percent sure on that.”

  I jerked my head around toward him. “That doesn’t seem high enough.”

  He shrugged. “I’d say one-hundred, because I saw Bloom slap cuffs on the doppelgängers, but, well, you never really know about folks, do you?” I looked back out over the spread of people in the street. “No, I guess you never really do.”

  The front door of the house opened, and Hyacinth and James walked out. Except it wasn’t them, because they were only just rousing from a long, befuddled sleep.

  The suspects’ hands were behind their backs, cuffed at the wrists as they proceeded ahead of Sheriff Bloom. She looked a little befuddled herself, though just in the usual way.

  “Alright there, Manchester?” she asked.

  Stu looked up from Hyacinth, met the sheriff’s eyes, and nodded.

  “Culpepper?” she asked as she drew closer to us.

  Tanner tipped his head. “I think we got it.”

  She arched a brow and looked around. “Well, you certainly have plenty of help.” As her expression darkened into a warning, I picked up on what she was saying.

  All five of us were together. Right out in the open.

  Hyacinth and James, the imposters, were staring straight at me. I stared right back. What did I have to fear from them now that Bloom was here?

  Then, suddenly, their faces disappeared.

  I gasped and covered my mouth, and Tanner said, “Ulck” under his breath before Bloom led both suspects into the magic-powered police cart and slammed the door behind them. As they rode off, a more pressing matter took control.

  A crisis had hit, and here we were, our complete secret circle, all in one place. If this wasn’t the proof the town was looking for, I didn’t know what was.

  At the very least we needed to get Landon out of here before any gawkers were drawn in like nosy moths to a flame.

  Besides Bloom and the doppelgängers, who wouldn’t be speaking to the press anytime soon, the only others who had seen us so far were Stu Manchester and Kayleigh Lytefoot.

  I knew we could trust Stu for a number of reasons. For one, he already had a pretty good idea about the circle and had been one of the first to tell me I needed to make sure no one found out. But mostly, I think he was hoping a complete circle in Eastwind could help him out with his workload, and he wasn’t going to ruin that possibility by putting any of us in harm’s way. Also, I was pretty sure he liked us—yet another reason he wouldn’t turn us in for a reward.

  And Kayleigh … We could trust her, too. Not only did she like us (she had a special affection for Tanner that I tried not to think too hard about), but as the owner of the apothecary, she followed a creed of discretion. People knew their secrets were safe with her, whether those secrets involved the purchase of extra strength wart removing potions, ingredients that hinted at dark magic, or the first complete witch circle in Eastwind in three hundred years. At least, I hoped her silence extended to that last bit.

  It was almost dawn, and people would be heading to work soon. This scene was all the confirmation most people would need to justify any simmering fear of us, and once they’d justified that, doing horrible things to us was only a few emotional steps away, hopping from fear to anger to hate to dehumanization to justification to do whatever they wanted to us because we were monsters in their eyes.

  In a town that had just passed the Safe Haven laws, albeit through trickery, the well of fear to draw from was deep.

  As Kayleigh flew around, attending to the rest of the victims, it was officially high time to get Landon, Eva, and Donovan out of here. If Hyacinth came to and saw them…

  I called out to the three of them, and when each looked up from their temporary patient, I waved them over.

  “You’re okay!” said Eva breathlessly.

  “What happened?” asked Landon.

 
“It’s a long story,” I said, “and I’m still trying to fit it all together, but right now, you guys need to go. Especially you, Landon.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “You called me here and I—”

  A bright flash to our left cut him off, and when the five of us turned to see what it was (I already had a sinking suspicion) another bright flash temporarily blinded me. I blinked away the light burns and saw a head appear from behind the camera.

  “Ha-ha!” declared Lot Flufferbum victoriously. “I KNEW it!”

  Donovan drew his wand quickly, and both Eva and I reacted at once, shoving his arm down toward the ground.

  When Flufferbum turned and scurried off, Tanner hollered after him, “Hold up there, Lot!” but the man didn’t listen. He had a front-page story to run.

  “Swirls,” said Tanner.

  Yep. All that and more.

  Epilogue

  The only upshot I could see to the front page of the following day’s Eastwind Watch was that it meant Landon could come out of hiding and join the four of us in public.

  We had to watch our backs, of course, but so long as Eastwinders were afraid of us, I thought the odds of them messing with us when the five of us were together were pretty slim.

  “How’s Grace doing?” I asked quietly as we sat at a round corner booth in Franco’s.

  Landon grabbed another slice from one of the pizzas on its stubby stand in the middle of our table. He folded the giant slice longways and took a quick bite, cheese stringing from his mouth as he pulled it away and set it on the plate. “Fine. She says she doesn’t mind the reading time. That, and she likes not having to go to work.”

  “Same,” said Eva, then, “Oh, sorry, Nora. No offense.”

  “It’s fine. I’m actually enjoying the break, too.”

  The rain outside fell slowly, in large, tired drops, like even it was sick of the rain and could use a sunny pick-me-up.

  After finishing out his shift, Tanner had stopped by his house for a dry change of clothes before meeting us for an early lunch. “I could probably use a day off,” he said, yawning. “Bloom looks like her head’s going to explode. Doppelgängers in Eastwind. She’s never looked so furious.” He shivered. “It’s absolutely terrifying.”

  “And kinda hot, right?” said Donovan.

  “Strangely enough, yeah.” His eyes jumped to me. “Not that I would ever … you know.”

  I shrugged. As someone with a serious girl crush on the sheriff, I wasn’t in a position to judge.

  “Is it weird that I feel a little violated knowing one of the doppelgängers impersonated me?” I mused.

  “I’m sure it was more unpleasant for them than it was for you,” Donovan said.

  I glared at him.

  “It was a smart move, though,” Tanner said. “Looking back on it, seeing you there when I wasn’t expecting it completely threw me off my game. And since I figured you were already looking into it, I left pretty much right away.”

  “Not to be alarmist,” Eva said, “But couldn’t there be more doppelgängers hiding around town?”

  “There could always be more,” said Landon.

  Tanner sighed. “Technically, he’s right. But they’d be a fool to stick around at this point. Bloom is on a crusade now. The High Council is accusing her of falling asleep on her watch.”

  Donovan tossed another slice on his plate exasperatedly. “For fang’s sake. It was probably someone on the High Council who invited them into Eastwind in the first place.”

  “You don’t know that,” Eva chastised.

  “You’re right, I don’t. But considering I’ve had to pull this thing off the front window for the second day in a row”—he grabbed something off the floor and held it up to display the “no werewolves” sign—“it sure is convenient that the doppelgängers showed up right when the High Council needed some public support.”

  Tanner backed up his best friend with, “He’s got a point. And while it hasn’t been officially announced yet, it’s pretty clear from both Darius Pine’s and Quinn Shaw’s statements that they didn’t vote for the Safe Haven laws, nor did they ever intend to.”

  That was among the conclusions I’d drawn during my previous sleepless night, but it was nice to have it confirmed by testimony. “Does that mean the act will be overturned soon?”

  Landon answered. “It should. Legally speaking, it’s not enforceable under the present circumstances.”

  “And everyone’s recovering okay?” Eva asked.

  Tanner nodded. “Yeah. The Bouquets are settling back into their old house—apparently, they’d been held hostage for a while, even before they were presumed to buy the new house. The doppelgängers had been feeding them the Befuddlement Brew for weeks.”

  “Why’d they keep taking it?” asked Donovan.

  I could answer that. “Wouldn’t be that hard, would it? They’re already befuddled, so you just tell them it’s something else and they’ll take it. Trust me, the confusion is strong.”

  “What about Ansel?” Donovan asked. “Is he off the hook for the witch snare?”

  Tanner nodded. “Unofficially, yes. Bloom suggested he lie low for a while until they could release the full story to the Watch and people stopped suspecting him of trying to murder three witches.”

  Eva nodded. “He and Jane are renting a room at Darius’s lodge for a while under an alias.” She frowned. “They’re in the room next to me, and … I got no sleep last night.”

  Landon’s face turned pinker than usual.

  “What I still don’t understand,” I said, “is how the doppelgängers managed to trick everyone into drinking the befuddlement brew. I know Ansel’s story. He was on his way to Sheehan’s to apologize to Jane, and the doppelgänger disguised as James invited him inside to see their new house. Darius said the same basic thing happened to him.”

  Eva snickered. “That’s what he told you?”

  “What,” I said, “is that not what happened?”

  She bit back a grin. “Nope. I got the real story from him. One of them pretended to be Bonnie, his date, and showed up to the restaurant before the real Bonnie could get there. Then, um, she sort of asked him if he wanted to cut to the chase before buying him a shot. I guess the Befuddlement Brew was in the shot. The last thing he remembers is leaving the bar with her.”

  “Good golem,” I said. “He didn’t … with the doppelgänger …”

  Eva laughed. “No, I don’t think he made it that far before he became too confused to even unbutton his own shirt.”

  Tanner and Donovan shared a horrified glance. “I’m making my own drinks only from here on out,” said Donovan. “And never letting them out of my sight.”

  I gazed past Landon at a small group of leprechauns who studied us suspiciously, whispering behind flat hands. A few tables over was a faun couple pretending they hadn’t been casting us nervous glances for the last half hour. “Scale from one to ten, how concerned for our safety should we be?”

  “Ten,” said Landon. “Oh, you mean now that people know about the circle?”

  “Yes …?”

  “Twelve.”

  I looked to Tanner, who probably had a more informed guess.

  “I really couldn’t tell you, Nora. If there’s anything I’ve learned in this job, it’s that you never can tell with people.”

  “Oh, gee. Thanks. You’re really making me feel better.” I smacked him on the arm.

  “What?” he said, chuckling. “That doesn’t always work out for the worst. Sometimes you end up getting help from unexpected places.”

  Donovan glared suspiciously at his beer before concluding it was probably safe and taking a sip. Then he said, “That’s literally never been the case for me.”

  “Maybe that’s because you’ve always been the unexpected help,” Tanner replied. “Like when Nora needed help banishing that drought demon. She never in a million years thought you’d help her out.”

  When the mood around the table shifted from friendly to
complicatedly tense, Landon said, “Halloween coming up soon.”

  While it was glaringly obvious he was just trying to change the subject away from the time Donovan and I teamed up and kicked off a chain of events that included making out in the Deadwoods while I was already with Tanner and the many mistakes that followed, no one seemed keen to point that out. Instead, Eva piped in quickly with, “What does that mean, exactly? I’ve heard a little, and I know what it means back in Nora and my old world, but does it get, you know, kinda crazy here?”

  “Yeah,” said Tanner firmly. “It usually gets a little crazy.”

  “Ruby says the veil thins,” I prompted.

  Donovan nodded, looking like even the mention of it brought back traumatic memories. “That it does.”

  “And spirits are just, what, running around?” I asked, assuming I was being ridiculous.

  “Sometimes,” said Landon honestly. “But mostly they fly.”

  “Last year wasn’t so bad,” Tanner added. “I think we only had half a dozen vengeful spirits, and they were so long dead that everyone they had a grudge against was long gone, too.”

  “It varies from year to year?”

  Tanner nodded.

  “No one really knows why,” Landon explained. “But I have a few theories.”

  I was sure he did.

  “Do those theories lead to a forecast for this year?” I asked.

  To be clear, I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of an extra helping of ghost drama, but there was a small side of schadenfreude at the thought that other people would have to deal with the same annoyances I faced on a daily basis, even if for only a few hours.

  “Yeah,” Landon said cautiously, appearing like he regretted bringing up Halloween after all. “Taking into account factors like weather, total deaths in the last year, history repeating itself, and multiplying that by total number of death-beings in the town”—I wasn’t sure what death beings were, but I guessed I fell into that category—“I would say it’s going to be the most severe Hallow’s Eve Eastwind has seen in … ever.”

  Donovan groaned. Eva looked around like she’d missed something. Tanner cringed.