Spells A La Carte (Mystic Cafe Series Book 3) (14 page)

I was lost in thought on the drive to Rory’s. It seemed impossible for us to ever get the books back. I wondered how the town would change without the magic. What would we do? Surely there was some way the Organization could get the books back.

We pulled up in front of Rory’s house and of course all was quiet. His truck wasn’t there and there was no sign of Meredith or Ron.

“Do you think they’re still inside?” I said.

“I guess we’re about to find out,” Tom said as he shut off the car. “Let’s go check it out.”

We hurried up to the front door. Tom knocked, but I knew there was no way even if they were inside that they would answer.

“Do you happen to have a key?” he asked.

I shook my head. Tom tried the door, and to my surprise it was open. We exchanged a look.

“Let me go first,” he whispered.

He knew that I wouldn’t stay outside, but I would agree to let him go first. After all, he was the investigator. Tom eased inside the house and after a few seconds, I followed. We went from room to room, but there was no one there.

Not surprisingly, the books weren’t there either. I wanted the books back, but more importantly I wanted to know where Rory was and if he was okay.

“Now what do we do?” I asked.

Tom ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

If Tom was out of ideas then I knew we were in trouble. Tom and I stepped outside again and headed down the front steps. Just as I reached the bottom, I noticed something in the grass. A cell phone was on the ground beside the steps.

I stopped and reached for the phone. “Look what I found.”

Tom turned around and I handed him the phone. He looked at it for a second. “It’s Meredith’s phone.”

“What do we do with it?”

He tapped the screen. “She’ll come back for it.”

“You think so?” I asked.

“I do. We’ll wait for her to come for it.”

“Then what? We can’t confront her because she won’t tell us where Rory is.”

Tom stared down the street for a moment. He placed the phone in his pocket. “Okay. We’ll wait for her and then follow her.”

I smiled and Tom gave me the saddest look I’d ever seen. I was glad that he was doing this for me though. We headed back to his car to wait for her. I hoped that he was right at that she would come back. If she didn’t then I had no idea what we would do.

Tom pulled the phone from his pocket. “I’ll be able to see who she’s had contact with.”

“Good idea,” I said.

He scrolled through the calls. “She’s deleted everything.”

I pushed the hair out of my eyes. “Maybe that means that she didn’t want the phone at all?”

As silence settled between us, I wondered what I should say. I could talk about the weather. No. I could ask him what he’d been doing since he had been gone. I had been dying to find out.

“So have you had a lot of cases since I saw you last?”

He leaned back in the seat. “Quite a few. They were all boring compared to…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“Compared to what?” I pushed.

He looked me in the eyes. “Compared to working with you.”

My whole body tingled when he said that. Why did he have to be so sweet? Not to mention sexy.

I didn’t respond because I didn’t know what to say. So the silence returned. I knew Tom was watching me without having to look over at him. He wanted to say something. I could tell by his tension.

“What about Rory?” Tom said.

So that was what he wanted to talk about.

I glanced at him. “What about him?”

“What if you find out he was involved in helping Meredith?”

I released a deep breath. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it. I don’t think he would do something like that to hurt me on purpose.”

“Sometimes you never really know someone.” Tom reached out and squeezed my hand lightly.

My skin tingled at his touch. Before I had a chance to respond a car pulled up. It wasn’t just any car though. It was Mary Jane’s car.

“Look. It’s Mary Jane’s car,” I said.

When the car pulled into the drive, I recognized Ron behind the wheel and Meredith was in the passenger seat.

“I can’t believe that they can just steal a car like that and then just casually drive it around. It’s as if they think they can’t get into trouble no matter what they do.”

“Maybe that’s because they’ve gotten away with so much in the past.”

If I had anything to do with it now they wouldn’t get away with it. 

“So what’s the plan? Do we call the police?” I pulled my phone from my pocket.

Tom touched my arm, stopping me from placing a call. “We can’t call the police just yet. First, we should find out if they have the books.”

“How do you plan on doing that?” I asked.

“We will go up to the house and see what happens,” Tom said without looking at me.

“That doesn’t sound like much of a plan,” I said.

“Sometimes you just have to wing it.”

That wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear, but I guess he did have a point.

We watched Ron and Meredith walk up to the house. They never looked over at us.

“See, I told you they aren’t very smart. Anyone who thinks they can pull off a scheme like this should at least look around at their surroundings.”

Ron and Meredith searched the yard and around the steps. She was looking for her phone, but she wouldn’t find it. After a few seconds, they walked into the house.

“Okay, now’s our chance to go up there and check it out.” Tom opened the car door and motioned for me to do the same with a tilt of his head.

I released a deep breath and then reluctantly opened the door. My stomach turned and my heart rate increased.

We got out of the car and headed up to the door. I expected for Ron or Meredith to spot us right away, but so far we’d gone unnoticed still. Tom was right. They weren’t the best at this crime thing. Now if we could just get our hands on the spellbooks.

That was when it hit me. What if she destroyed the books? Was that her reason for wanting them? But why would she want to get rid of all the magic in town? It wasn’t like it was hurting her at all.

As we stood in front of the door, I said, “You aren’t just going to just knock on the door, are you?” I really wished we had more of a plan. This winging it really wasn’t my thing.

After Tom peeked in the window, he turned to me and said, “They have the books. We can’t handle this ourselves though. We need backup.”

“Can’t the Organization send people to help get the books?” I asked.

“I doubt they can get here fast enough.”

“We’ll call the police,” I said.

“We can’t do that. The police won’t care if Meredith and Ron have our books. We have no way to prove that they took them.”

I glanced out at Mary Jane’s car in the driveway. “But we do have a way to prove that they have a stolen car.”

Tom smiled. “Good thinking.”

Tom pulled out his phone to call the police and that was when the front door opened. Meredith and Ron stepped out onto the porch. They froze when they saw us. By the expressions on their faces I knew we were in for a fight. Before I even had a chance to think about what to do next, Meredith tossed a powdery substance our way.

Oh, no, not again. I knew that I had just been hit with her magic.

***

I woke up staring at the blue sky. A fly buzzed around my head. I swatted at it and then looked to my left and then my right. Tom was lying nearby. I scanned the scene and realized that we were on the front lawn. The magic had knocked us out again. How did she keep getting away with that? Every time it happened it left me with a headache and feeling like a complete fool. How could I continue to let her to get the best of me?

I looked to the driveway and realized that the car was gone. Now what would we do? Tom roused and sat up. He rubbed his head. “Don’t tell me it happened again.”

I pushed to my feet and stumbled a little before getting my balance. “Okay, I won’t tell you that it happened again and that they got away.”

Tom looked at the driveway and cursed. I felt the same way. Tom raced up the steps and peeked inside the house.

I ran after him. “Are the boxes there?”

“No. They’re gone.” He leaned against the side of the house.

Now we were starting all over again. We had no clue where Meredith and Ron were headed. I had no idea how we would even begin to find them. I was hoping that Tom would have a plan—after all, he was the detective. Didn’t he do this stuff all the time? I didn’t want to ask. I supposed he was already feeling enough pressure as it was. His silence had me worried though. Maybe he was out of ideas just as much as I was. If only there was some way I could figure out where Rory was. Would he be able to lead us to the stolen books?

“We should go. Maybe we can catch up with them.”

Tom and I ran toward the car. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that they were probably long gone by now. We had been out for several minutes. That was plenty of time for them to get a good distance through town.

Tom pulled out his phone as we headed for the car. “I’m going to call the Organization. I’ll alert them that the books are gone. Maybe we can track them again somewhere out of the city.”

I knew Tom didn’t like that he hadn’t gotten the books back. He was a perfectionist and in his eyes he had failed at his job. I supposed I was a bit like that too.

I got in the car and fastened my seatbelt. Before Tom had even started the car, my phone rang.

I looked at the screen. “It’s Grandma Imelda.”

“You’d better talk to her. She’ll be worried.” Tom started the car.

I sighed and then answered the phone.

“I want to know what is going on, young lady.”

Uh-oh. I was in trouble now. Tom glanced over at me and smiled. He must have heard her comment. I explained everything to her.

“Why didn’t you call me sooner?” she asked.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” I said. “Now all the books are gone.”

“There is one book that you are forgetting,” Grandma Imelda said.

“Which book? Where is it?” I asked.

“It’s at the coffee house.”

I couldn’t believe that I had forgotten all about the coffee shop. Instead of the two shops we thought that hadn’t had their books stolen, it had really been three. Grandma Imelda was right, the coffee shop still had a book. But would the book still be there now?

Tom glanced at me as he drove down the road. “What’s wrong?”

“Grandma Imelda, I’ll call you back as soon as I find out anything else. Thank you.”

“Please be careful,” she said with worry in her voice.

I wished I didn’t have to worry her like this. That was why I had avoided calling her. But now I was glad that she had called because we could go to the coffee shop.

I hung up the phone. “We have to go to the coffee shop.”

“You must really need a caffeine fix,” Tom said as he pulled up to a stop sign.

“No, not that. I forgot about the spellbook there. It could possibly be the last book in town.”

Tom punched the gas. “Tell me where to go.”

“It’s right off Main Street. Turn left on Third Street. You’ll see the sign. I just hope we can get there in time,” I said.

Tom pushed on the gas more. The car sped down the empty street as if we were on a racetrack.

I held on to the side of the car door. “Don’t get a ticket.”

We arrived in town without getting a ticket or getting into an accident.

“You’re going to miss it. Turn left at the next street.” I pointed. “It’s just down the next block.”

I wasn’t sure what to expect when we got there. Normally the street would have been full of traffic, but now it was practically a ghost town. The coffee house was probably closed. My anxiety was high and my stomach was twisted into giant knots.

“You can park on the street. It’s just right up there.”

Up ahead I noticed the car in front of the shop.

“It looks like we’re going to have company there,” Tom said as he pulled up behind Mary Jane’s car.

It was parked right in front of the coffee shop. But Meredith and Ron were nowhere in sight.

“Do you think they’re inside?” I asked.

Tom shut off the car. “I would be willing to bet on it.”

“Yeah, me too,” I said with a sigh. “What should we do?” I asked as I took off my seatbelt.

“We have to go inside,” Tom said.

I knew that was the reality, but I wasn’t looking forward to the confrontation. And I wasn’t looking forward to getting hit with the magic again. “Is there any way we can avoid their magic?” I asked.

Tom opened his car door. “Don’t let them hit you with it.”

“That doesn’t help,” I said as I climbed out of the car.