Chapter 6
“I don’t like that look on your face,” I hissed, hurrying after Zelda as she all but frolicked down Main Street in a flurry of her blue sundress and aggressive purpose.
She flashed me a grin over her shoulder, the kind that said I definitely stole the cookies, and also set the kitchen on fire, and maybe seduced your neighbour. “Oh, sweet pea. That’s just my resting mischief face.”
I barely had time to blink before we hit the town square. A few townsfolk looked up from their café tables. Someone dropped a scone. An old woman in an apron holding an empty serving tray clutched her pearls with the reverence of a woman who could sense a scandal before it even materialised.
“Zelda, what are we doing?” I whispered, grabbing her arm, feeling anxious.
“Public service,” she said breezily, lifting a small velvet pouch from inside her bra with all the casual drama of a stage magician about to pull a rabbit out of her cleavage. “Also, I’m bored.”
“No. No, absolutely not. That’s a truth-hex pouch, isn’t it?”
Too late.
With a dramatic twirl and a surge of magic, she flung the contents into the air. Glittering powder arced overhead like magical confetti, catching in the morning sun before dissolving into a shimmering haze that began to sparkle and curl through the air around the square.
I grabbed Zelda by the elbow and yanked her into the narrow shade beside the coffee shop, ducking beneath a wrought-iron awning dripping with flowering vines. The scent of dark roast and burnt sugar curled around us, almost masking the symphony of chaos erupting in the square.
Around us, Assjacket’s finest were unwittingly vomiting up secrets like magical hairballs. The enchanted mist Zelda had so generously released hung in the air like golden pollen, shimmering faintly under the sun’s lazy descent. And it was working. Too well.
“You are the worst person I know,” I muttered, my voice the kind of low that cracked glass.
Zelda beamed like I’d nominated her for Witch of the Year. “You’re just mad it’s working.”
“I am furious and impressed, which is the most volatile combination of emotions you have ever inspired in me.”
She swished her glitter-dusted cloak dramatically and curtsied. “Thank you.”
“Not a compliment,” I snapped. Silence fell. Then…
“I never liked your lemon squares, Carla!”
“I slept with my cousin’s fiancé before the wedding and I’d do it again!”
“I’ve been hiding the town mascot in my basement because I think he’s my reincarnated grandmother!”
“I’m not really gluten intolerant—I just like the attention!”
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Oh gods. This is worse than the raccoon summoning.”
Zelda preened beside me, hands on hips, looking smug as hell. “Isn’t honesty liberating?”
I stared at the chaos erupting before me. Secrets were flying like pigeons in a fireworks factory. “You’re lucky I already love you. Otherwise I’d be burying your bones under your herb garden!”
I quickly covered my mouth with my sleeve before the truth-dust could worm its way down my throat. Across the square, a barista burst through the café doors yelling, “I’ve been spitting in Meredith Moran’s coffee for three years!” which, honestly, felt like a justified felony.
Zelda stood radiant in the middle of the shimmering madness, eyes alight, arms raised like a chaos goddess in full couture-cult regalia.
“This is not a solution,” I snapped, ducking as a woman sprinted past us crying, “I told my therapist I was fine but I’m actually just high on elderflower tinctures and lies!”
“It’s working!” Zelda beamed, spinning in place like she was Maria von Trapp and the hills were indeed alive. “Listen to the clarity!”
“It’s a confession parade with jazz hands,” I hissed. “You’ve dosed the entire historic district with a sentient truth bomb. That’s not clarity, it’s a lawsuit in slow motion!”
Behind us, someone screamed, “I hexed my HOA board president with erectile dysfunction and I regret nothing!”
I yanked Zelda behind a stall overflowing with ethically-sourced vegetables. “You’ve broken the town. People are going to jail. Or starting polyamorous cults.”
“Probably both,” Zelda said brightly. “You’re welcome!”
I rubbed my temples, teeth clenched so tight I was one ill-timed confession away from snapping in half. “This is not how we find out who killed Beau.”
“It might be,” she said with maddening calm. “Truth magic just needs the right trigger. You drop the spell like a net, then you watch for the ripple.”
I glared at her, then peered around the corner of the stall.
The golden mist had begun to settle, glitter sinking into cobblestones like stardust giving up.
The town square looked like a renaissance faire that had suffered a moral implosion.
People clutched their heads and their dignity like both might be salvageable.
Then, through the rising cacophony of personal revelations and magical embarrassment, a voice rang out, sudden and unfiltered, as sharp and precise as a bell cut from stone.
“The attorney was there that night!”
Time cracked open. The square stilled around me, or maybe I just moved faster than it. I turned toward the voice, scanning until my eyes locked on a short, plump man.
“Dennis?” Zelda said incredulously.
The town’s mailman, hobbled by a limp, powered by spite, and possessed of an uncanny knack for overhearing things that should never be said aloud, stood near the fountain with his mouth open wide in horrified disbelief.
He looked like someone who’d just blurted a prophecy and now desperately wanted to swallow it back down.
I strode toward him, boots crunching against gravel that shimmered faintly gold under the spell’s glow.
“Dennis,” I said, my tone carefully measured. “What did you just say?”
His jaw worked, clenched tight against the truth, but the enchantment had its claws deep. He couldn’t lie. Not right now.
“I—I saw his car. Parked behind the funeral home.” His voice cracked. “Night Beau died. It was late. Black sedan, that ridiculous personalized plate of his. No one else in town drives a car like that.”
“Whose car?” I pressed, heart thudding. “What time?”
“Ramsay O’Connor, the town attorney. About three in the morning. Was doing my early route. Had some overnight parcels. The streets were dead, but the lights were on in the parlour. Just glowing through the curtains like someone was waiting.”
“Did you see anyone go inside?”
He shook his head, then cursed as his mouth moved without permission. “Didn’t want to get involved. O’Connor’s a vulture.”
I turned slowly to Zelda, who was grinning like she’d just caused a controlled demolition and filmed it for a highlight reel. “Still mad?” she chirped, practically vibrating with smug.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “I want to strangle you with your own moonstones.”
“But it worked.”
“Yes,” I admitted, teeth clenched. “It worked.”
“Yay!”
“I’m not celebrating.”
“You just said it worked.”
“I will feed you to a reanimated gnome.”
She gasped. “Kinky!”
Before I could summon a counter-hex, a commotion to our left snapped our attention toward the far end of the square.
Someone had knocked over a flower stand, and a blur of motion—a tall figure in a cheap charcoal-gray coat—vanished into the alley between the florist and the tea shop.
I only caught a glimpse, but my instincts kicked hard.
“Did you see that?” I whispered.
Zelda was already moving. “Oh, hell yes.”
We gave chase, cutting through the confessional madness, dodging townsfolk in various stages of magical overshare.
As we reached the alley, I caught the faint scent of smoke and something colder underneath, like old paper, dust, and decay.
The space was empty, save for a single, half-burned piece of legal paper that had obviously been dropped near the drain.
I knelt, fingers brushing the parchment.
Revise clause 9. Beneficiaries change—confidential. Burn after review.
Zelda hovered behind me, her breath catching. “That’s from a will, isn’t it?”
I looked up toward the empty mouth of the alley, heart pounding. “O’Connor was there,” I murmured. “And someone didn’t want Beau to make that meeting. I’ll bet they don’t want Beau talking now, either.”
The golden mist still clung to the corners of the square, secrets still unraveling in echoes behind us. But the path ahead? It was narrowing. And someone was running scared. Zelda met my gaze for a long moment. And then almost in sync, we raced to the funeral home.