Page 1 of Big Witch Energy

Chapter 1

Caroline

Trudging home through snow from her first felony, covered in a crust of fake blueberry pie filling, was not the way that Caroline Wilton planned on spending her one night off. But life as one of Starfall Point’s resident witches-slash-ghost wranglers had a way of happening when Caroline planned to just sit at home, trying to read.

Her crime spree had started off innocently enough. Early Friday, Caroline had been inhaling her usual absurdly large post-double-shift coffee at Starfall Grounds when she heard Willard Tremont complaining that he’d been having pest problems at Tremont’s Treasures. While not quite as grand as some of the other shops on the island, Willard’s shop catered to tourists’ thirst to take a little piece of the island’s ambience home with them.

“I’m telling you. I’ve been open for thirty years and I’ve never had problems like this,” Willard grumbled to Petra Gilinsky, the coffee shop’s owner and operator. Starfall Grounds—just across the street from Tremont’s—was a modern oasis in the middle of traditional Main Square shops, all bright copper and deep-blue calm. A display case running the length of the store featured sumptuous pastries, fresh-baked by Petra and her twin brother, Iggy.

“I keep hearing weird noises, like something scratching all along the floorboards,” Willard continued. “I never can figure out where it’s coming from, and it’s all hours of the day, doesn’t matter whether I’ve got someone in the shop or not. Sometimes, I swear, it sounds like whispers.”

Caroline damn near choked at that. Faint whispers from all corners of a room? Scratching noises? From her experiences at Shaddow House, the island’s haunted epicenter, Caroline knew those were classics sign of ghost activity.

“Sorry,” Caroline said hoarsely, pounding on her chest as Willard and Petra turned toward her. “Went down the wrong way. Good cinnamon roll, Petra.”

Willard gave Caroline a confused look but continued, “It’s gotta be mice or rats or something, but I’m not finding chew marks on any of the furniture. And I’m not finding droppings.”

“Yes, please mention rats and droppings a little louder while leaning against my bakery counter, Willard,” Petra deadpanned, waving airily at the empty coffee shop. “You’re lucky it’s a slow morning, or you’d lose your rugalach privileges.”

“Sorry, Petra,” Willard said, flushing red under his more-salt-than-pepper hair. Willard was approaching seventy and a creature of habit. Petra’s cherry rugalach was a major component of his morning routine. “I’ve gone all distracted with this thing. I could lose customers if I don’t get rid of…whatever this is before the summer season starts up.”

“I told you not to buy that stuff from Sally Fairlight’s niece-in-law,” Petra snorted, shaking her head. “Lindsay was way too excited about clearing all of Sally’s stuff out of her new ‘summer home.’ She didn’t even wait a week before ‘de-Sallying’ the place. There’s gotta be some bad karma that comes with that.”

“It was just a few things,” Willard huffed. “But Sally was awfully house-proud. Maybe I should have just turned her away, let Lindsay have a yard sale.”

“Eh, Sally would have hated that,” Petra conceded, topping off Willard’s tall black coffee. “Strangers picking through her stuff and haggling down to the nickel.”

“I only bought the lot because I thought her collection of old cake stands was perfect for the store,” Willard sighed. “My own ma had one of them when I was a kid. Pressed glass. A wedding present from her family back in Raleigh. I even put some of those pie-shaped air freshener things from Nell Heslop’s candle shop in them, like a demo? They smell like real blueberry. I thought it would give the customer an idea of what they could do with it.”

Willard just looked so upset, so bewildered, that Caroline decided then and there that she and her coven would do what they could to get whatever was troubling Tremont’s—even if it was just rats. But Caroline was pretty sure it wasn’t rats. Also, the fake blueberry air freshener pies at Starfall Wicks were disgusting—small, thin wax pie-shaped molds filled with a loose, gelatinous air freshener goo that jiggled inside the shell when tilted back and forth.

And they smelled like Barbie’s rejected Dream Home air freshener, so really, they were doing Willard two favors.

Caroline wasn’t sure exactly when they started thinking of themselves as a coven, but that’s what they were, a group of witches working magic together, depending on each other. They were family, a word that was particularly vital to three people who’d had a hard time finding one that worked for them.

Plus, it was a better word than “trio.” Trio made them sound like a jazz band that played at corporate events.

Getting into Willard’s closed shop had been easy enough. It was well known to locals that Willard kept the key to the back door under a plaster frog. It wasn’t exactly a secure vault.

“I don’t feel right about this,” Alice Seastairs had whispered in the midnight darkness, holding the flashlight as Caroline unlocked the door. As always, Alice was dressed appropriately for a spot of light breaking and entering—black sweater, black jeans, black ski cap pulled over her shock of penny-bright copper hair. “Breaking and entering Mr. Tremont’s shop. He’s always been so kind to me, even if we are competitors.”

“We’re not breaking… We’re just entering.” Riley Denton-Everett had selected a “plausible deniability outfit” of jeans, snow boots, and a periwinkle hoodie that made her gray eyes appear bluer. Her plan was, if they were caught, to just pretend she was taking a nighttime walk in northern Michigan’s early spring snow.

Caroline supposed that she and Alice were meant to be running away while Riley was lying her ass off. She thought maybe Riley was depending on the general curiosity about her—the newest local on the island—to carry her over the “potential criminal activity” conversational bumps. Riley was resourceful enough to make little annoyances like that work for her.

“It’s not my fault that Elliot’s been hiding his shop key in the same place for twenty years,” Caroline muttered. They all relaxed ever so slightly when the door popped open without a sound.

Tremont’s was a homier alternative to Alice’s shop, Superior Antiques, where her unfriendly grandparents reigned with an iron fist. Tremont’s had the smell of a proper antique shop, all lemon furniture polish and dust and—Caroline guessed—long-forgotten dreams. Huge stained-glass panels, harvested from old churches off-island, cast rainbow splashes of light from the front display windows. Old-school tricycles hung suspended from the ceiling by piano wire. Mismatched glass cabinets displayed silver candelabras, porcelain figurines, overblown costume jewelry, tin windup toys, anything and everything that might catch a shopper’s attention if they could fight through the sensory overload long enough to focus on one item.

Caroline didn’t even want to think about how many items in this place were “attachment objects”—something that meant so much to the dead in life or its significance in the person’s death, that their spirit stayed connected to that item. Riley lived in a house full of them, with more than a thousand ghostly roommates. Caroline didn’t know how she did it.

“You know, I’m concerned that, from the outside, a bunch of flashlights bobbing around a darkened shop might attract unwanted attention,” she said, glancing around at the charming chaos of the interior. “Somebody sees that through the window, it’s a pretty broad hint that this place is being burgled.”

“Actually, I was thinking we might use this as an opportunity to practice some of our more ‘basic witch’ non-ghost-related magic skills, light a few of the candles in this place?” Riley grinned, gesturing to the displayed flammables. “If anybody sees candles glowing through the windows, they’ll just think Willard is adding a little romantic ambience to the store.”

Riley had seemed fixated on lighting candles with her mind ever since she’d gained her magic. Caroline was a little concerned.

“Do we really have time for that?” Caroline asked. “Isn’t time of the essence when you’re committing a minor felony?”

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