14. The Battle for the Porch
The Battle for the Porch
Luna had no idea what Ashton Vex was planning. Apparently, neither did anyone else.
Scarlett’s thumb flicked across her phone like she was trying to return the glass to sand. “Listen to this one: Anonymous insider says Ashton Vex is about to disrupt reality as we know it. New paradigm incoming.” She snorted. “And here: Definitely aliens. Or crypto. Or both.”
“So the internet doesn’t know anything,” Luna said thoughtfully. “Is that good? Or . . . maybe that’s bad? Is it bad or good, Scar?”
“Dunno. Both?” Scarlett swiped again. “Speculation, think pieces, wild theories. Nobody has a clue. Oh wait—” Her breath hitched. “Hold on.”
The shift in her sister’s tone made Luna sit up straighter. “What?”
“There’s a photo of the CEO here.” Scarlett looked suddenly panicked. “Luna, I know this guy. This is the guy from room 12.”
“What guy from room 12?”
“The hermit! He’s been here a while now. Almost never leaves his room except to grab dinner. Even then, he’s always on his laptop, muttering to himself.”
“Wait . . .” Luna shook her head, unable to get her brain around this. “Vex has been here the whole time?!”
Scarlett stood up, pacing now. “I thought he was just some dum-dum having a quarterlife crisis in our quaint little witch town. Lu, I talked to him. A lot. He kept asking me questions about how magic works, and I thought—” She groaned.
“Oh gods, I thought I was just making conversation with a lonely guest.”
“What kind of questions?”
“The basics. You know, ‘How do witches cast spells?’ ‘Is there a limit to what magic can do?’ ‘Could anyone learn it with the right training?’” Scarlett’s voice climbed with each question.
“At the time I figured he was just curious. I mean, we get that from curious guests sometimes. And I usually just answer honestly because they’ll all forget it when they leave anyhow, so what difference does it make?
But what if he wasn’t just curious. What if—”
“He was working on something.”
The sisters stared at each other as the truth settled like an ill-smelling fog.
Sounds of laughter from another room now seemed hollow, almost mocking.
If Ashton Vex had been staying at the Stargazer while developing this mysterious app, and if Scarlett had been cheerfully explaining the fundamentals of witchcraft to him . . .
The front door banged open, startling them both. Delilah swept in with the energy of someone who’d been solving problems all day and wasn’t quite finished yet. Behind her came a lanky man in a wool overcoat, clutching a leather attaché case like it contained a Higgs boson particle.
“Afternoon, sisters,” Delilah said briskly. She reached behind the desk and extracted a folded piece of paper. “So, first things first. Jasper, this is for you.”
He accepted the paper with obvious confusion. “What’s this?”
“Your cheat sheet. Go ahead and get caught up while I check in with my ladies over here.”
Luna watched with fascination as Jasper unfolded what appeared to be a letter. His expression shifted from puzzlement to surprise to something that might have been delight.
“Dear Future Jasper,” he read aloud. “Past Jasper here. You’ve just arrived in Oak Haven and have, I know, completely forgotten this place exists.
Please don’t panic. This is normal. Well, normal for you.
To speed up the acclimation process, I’ve compiled a brief guide to the major players in your girlfriend’s hometown. ”
“Girlfriend?” Luna mouthed at Delilah, who waved her off impatiently.
Jasper continued reading. “Kelly Melrose: matriarch, innkeeper, do not cross. Scarlett: middle sister, impulsive, agent of chaos. Luna Melrose: youngest sister, world traveler, chronically bad at innkeeping—” He looked up. “Sorry, just reading what it says here.”
“Nah, it’s accurate,” Luna admitted.
“The Earls (Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve): elderly pirates living on hardware store porch. Yes, really. Long story.” He looked up again. “Was I concussed when I wrote this?”
“Not so far as I know,” Delilah said. “You write yourself a new one every few weeks, just to keep it updated.”
“Huh.” He nodded down at his careful script. “Well done, Past Me.”
Delilah turned to her sisters. “So. What’d I miss?”
Luna and Scarlett explained rapidly, their words tumbling over each other: Ashton Vex, the mystery app, the tech blogs, the realization that he’d been staying at their inn the whole time.
Delilah’s expression grew progressively darker. “Let me get this straight. While you—” she looked at Luna “—were off gallivanting through time with Elias, this Vex character was here, pumping Scarlett for information about magic, and nobody thought to mention it?”
“I wasn’t gallivanting,” Luna protested. “I was trapped in 1977 during a blackout and then accidentally time-traveled to Christmas and then got sent to 2026 by—” She paused. “Okay, when you say it out loud, it does have a certain gallivanting aspect.”
“And Vex seemed like a regular nerdy hermit. After all . . .” Scarlett flicked her head in Jasper’s direction “we do get a lot of those. How could I have known this particular one was planning something nefarious?” She turned away, a flicker of guilt crossing her features.
Delilah was already in problem-solving mode. “Where is he now? Still here?”
“So far as I know, yeah. Hardly ever leaves room 12. Come on, let’s go confront him and—”
“And what?” Delilah interrupted. “Accuse him of . . . what, exactly? Being weird? We need additional information.”
“We already know what he’s up to: CastR! What additional information could we possibly need?”
“We could . . .” Luna suggested slowly, “use a spell on him? Truth spell?”
Scarlett groaned. “Again I ask: why? We already know.”
“Absolutely not.” Delilah’s voice had that concrete quality that she’d learned from their mother. It meant the discussion was over. “We’re not hexing anyone without talking to Mama first.”
“Mama’s out promenading with Elias, and since when do we need her permission to do anything?”
“This is different,” Delilah insisted. “This isn’t some local crisis we can handle with a few spells and some quick thinking.
If this man is really developing an app that commodifies magic, that’s .
. . that’s huge. That’s the ballgame for our entire culture.
And magicians too. We need to think strategically, consider all angles, maybe even—”
“I agree with Delilah,” Luna heard herself say, surprising everyone. “Mama should be consulted.”
Scarlett’s eyebrows shot up. “You? Miss ‘I’d rather portal to the bottom of the ocean than ask for help’? You’re siding with Delilah?”
Luna frowned. The truth was, Mama had taken Elias for a walk well over an hour ago.
A grand tour of Oak Haven, supposedly . .
. but the town wasn’t that big. Even the grandest tour of Oak Haven was a twenty-minute exercise at most. What was going on, and, more importantly, why hadn’t he returned to her yet?
She wasn’t going to say that to her sisters, of course.
“Elias had a rapport with Vex when we met him,” she said, which had the virtue of also being true. “He should be involved in any plan we make.”
Delilah glanced at her watch. “How long have they been gone?”
“Pushing an hour and a half?”
“We should go find them,” Delilah decided.
“Fine,” Scarlett said. “But after that, we’re having it out with the code monkey in room 12.”
They headed for the door. “Hey, Jas,” Delilah called, “watch the desk, yeah? If anyone needs anything, just tell them we’ll be right back.”
“Uh-huh . . .” Jasper said distractedly. His head was still deep in his letter to himself.
The sisters barely made it out the door before a fresh round of bickering started up.
“I still can’t believe you didn’t realize Vex was suspicious,” Delilah said. “I mean, this one—” pointing at Luna “—perpetually has her head in the clouds . . .”
“Hey!” Luna objected.
“. . . but you? You, I would expect to have some sort of instinct.”
“Well, maybe if you were around, like, ever!” Scarlett replied defensively. “But no, you’re always off playing History Detective with Jasper.”
“It’s called having a job, Scarlett. Maybe you should try it.”
“I help Nate at the hardware store!”
Delilah scoffed. “Help him off with his trousers, maybe . . .”
“That’s not— Okay, that’s accurate, but—”
Scarlett stopped speaking abruptly. They’d rounded the corner, onto the street directly facing Williams Hardware. The scene drove all bickering from the sisters’ minds.
Three men in identical black suits stood in the middle of the street, their backs to the approaching sisters. They wore old-fashioned top hats that would have looked ridiculous if the men hadn’t radiated such menace. Each carried a staff topped with a crystal that pulsed with a sickly red light.
Beyond them, on the hardware store’s porch, Luna could see her mother and Elias.
And the three Earls, who’d apparently decided that antique weapons were the appropriate response to whatever was going down.
Nine wielded his flintlock pistol and Ten held a cutlass.
Eleven was hefting a rusty harpoon with the enthusiasm of a man who’d been waiting seventy years for a good scrap.
The lead magician’s voice carried clearly down the street: “Elias Shaw, by order of the High Council of Magicians, you are to return with us immediately, to face judgment for your unauthorized departure from the Void.”
Oh no.
These were Elias’s jailers. They’d come to take him back.
Luna’s first instinct was to sprint down that street and throw herself between Elias and these men in their absurd hats. To open a portal right there and drag him through it to somewhere, anywhere else.
But Scarlett’s hand closed around her wrist. “Wait.”
On Luna’s other side, Delilah’s grip on her other arm was equally firm. “Not yet,” Delilah breathed.