The mother came up to the counter to pick up a shopping basket, then went back to browsing as if she were on her own for the day and the kids belonged to someone else. I was about to tell her I was concerned about the safety of her children, when words became inadequate. The girl had paused for a moment to look at a display of amulets. That was all it took for the toddler to start scaling one of the wooden shelving units, knocking glass jars off to shatter on the floor. If he fell, he could be slashed by the shards of glass below him. If that wasn’t worrisome enough, the whole unit started wobbling, on the verge of throwing him to the ground and toppling onto him. Before I knew what I was doing, I was whisking the boy off the shelf. After I’d carried him out of harm’s way, I reached out with my mind to pull the whole unit upright again. I struggled against gravity, my powers failing. Defeated, I watched the unit wobble and then... stand straight up again? I was bewildered, until I saw Merlin duck out of sight at the back of my shop.
“What is all the commotion?” the mother demanded, finally dragging herself out of the aisle to see what was going on.
When I thought about the incident later, I realized that the only way I could have reached the toddler in time was by teleportation. That would help explain why the girl looked awestruck. And why she told her mother that the shop lady had to fly so fast to save her brother that she became invisible. Maybe all my practicing was finally starting to pay off. Teleportation was still leaving me drained, but not unconscious like my first successful attempt.
“Shop ladies can’t fly, Bella,” her mother said sharply. “You’ve been watching too many cartoons.” She took the toddler from my arms without so much as a thank you, grabbed her daughter’s hand, and stormed out of my shop with one parting remark. “This store is dangerous for children. You’re lucky they didn’t get hurt.”
“I’d say we both are,” I replied tightly. I couldn’t help myself. Sometimes the customer isn’t even close to being right.
I took a minute to poke my head into Tilly’s shop and thank Merlin for his strategic help. My aunt was involved in a reading, but Merlin was sitting in the kitchen area where the clients couldn’t see him. I waited for him to look up from his new iPad and motioned for him to join me.
“Thank you,” I whispered when he met me in the hallway.
“You are most welcome, mistress. I felt your energy surge, then plummet, hence I came to see if my help was required.” Under the circumstances, I couldn’t bring myself to blast him for using magick without our permission. After all, he had kept the shelving unit from crashing and possibly taking down the next one and the one after that like a line of dominoes. Had that happened, the kids’ mother could have been badly injured.
I closed the shop as soon as the bus pulled out of town. There had been no time for lunch, so I was tired and hungry. Thankfully the trouble with the first customer was the only speed bump of the day. Everyone else who came into the shop was friendly and well-mannered. They bought beauty products for themselves and others on their Christmas lists, as well as healing teas, crystals, and amulets. It was going to be a very magickal holiday for dozens of people.
Since it was early for the cats’ dinners, I walked down the block for a slice of mushroom pizza. Travis had introduced me to what he called “real pizza” when we were in Brooklyn investigating our last case, but when you’re as hungry as I was, New Camel pizza hit the spot. I stopped back at the shop for Sashkatu, who ignored my cajoling to come down from his window sill. The steady stream of people in and out of the shop had apparently disturbed his daytime napping cycle and he was busy catching up. Words held no sway with him when he’d made up his mind about something, but since he was quite portable, I picked him up and carried him home to the accompaniment of his outraged yowls. I figured that some salmon in his dinner kibble would make up for any real or imagined indignities he’d suffered and restore me into his good graces.
Chapter 11
I had just parked myself at the computer to look up the last two names from Ryan’s notes, while stroking a never-ending parade of cats, when Travis called. He wanted to know how my day went and if the bus tour met my expectations.
“It was a financial success,” I said. “A good day all around, except for the toddler who nearly wrecked the shop.” I spent a couple of minutes recounting the details. “How are things going up in Albany?”
“I actually had a couple minutes free, so I checked the public records to see if they were also deceased.”
“Didn’t they ever teach you in journalism not to bury the lead?”
“I must have cut class that day,” he said. I could hear the grin in his voice. “Now, would you like to know what I found?”
“By all means. You have the floor, sir.”
“Okay, Chris Dowland, from Montour Falls, died on January third, 2015, at the age of thirty-seven from blunt force trauma to the back of his skull.”
“I didn’t think the public records listed the cause of death.”
“They do if one has a friend with the right connections.”
“Say no more. Moving along, what about McFee?”
“Ronald McFee, from Hassettville. He was forty-one when he died on June sixteenth, 2016, of carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“Four men, one woman, all different ages, and from different towns,” I mused aloud. “Two were clearly murdered, though by different means.”
“The names on Ryan’s list have only two things in common,” Travis said. “They were all from Schuyler County and they’re all dead.”
“So Ryan’s file is a list of decedents. That’s not much to go on. If I picked five people at random, I’d probably find they had more in common than these five seem to. I can’t imagine what piqued Ryan’s interest.”
“He had a sort of sixth sense about these things,” Travis said. “‘A nose for news’ as they say. And I think his so-called accidental death is proof he was getting too close for the killer’s comfort.”
“We’re going to need a lot more information than the handful of names Ryan left in his notes if we’re ever going to figure out what he was investigating and why. I get that he didn’t like to talk about an investigation he was working on, but it seems as if he didn’t want anyone, including you, to figure out what it was. I don’t know why he bothered telling you where he kept the thumb drive. It’s close to useless without a Ryan Rosetta Stone to decipher it.” I heard the petulance in my tone and immediately regretted it. Nancy Drew would have been ashamed of me. “Sorry, Travis. It’s been a long day.”
“No apology necessary. I understand how frustrating it can be to have information that’s useless. Ryan was always a private kind of guy, but after his folks died, he got worse. He became secretive about the most ridiculous stuff. I figured it was because he couldn’t count on anything or anyone to have his back. I certainly didn’t help him feel welcome or safe in my family. As Ryan got older, I remember thinking he might be borderline paranoid. I asked my mother what she thought, but she wouldn’t discuss it with me. Anyway, she told me not to worry; she was on top of things. After we reconciled, I tried to talk to him about it, but he always put me off by joking. ‘Hey, just because I’m paranoid, doesn’t mean there aren’t people out to get me.’”
“But then why keep investigating the kind of people who really would come after him?” I asked. According to Travis, he’d made a career of tweaking some extremely dangerous noses. “It’s like poking a stick into a pile of rattlers to see if they’ll strike.”
“Look at it this way,” he said. “There are two ways to deal with paranoia. You can either hide under the bed or you can dedicate your life to exposing the bad guys. Ryan chose not to hide and that’s probably why he’s dead.”
“Given how