Witchy Sour (The Magic & Mixology Mystery Series Book 2) (7 page)

I swallowed, feeling a bit out of my league with some of this island business. A couple of weeks was not long enough to understand its nuances and culture. Plus, Hettie had a point. I’d rather Zin be rejected from the Ranger program until she was ready to face what was waiting for her on the other side.

Zin peered through one eyelid again. “I’m really starting to need to use the restroom. Any chance I can take a break?”

“No,” Hettie said shortly. “Keep going.”

I made a disgruntled noise in my throat, but my grandmother silenced me with one look. We stood in silence for another minute, watching Zin sit there in pseudo-meditation.

“Why are you here anyway?” Zin asked with another peek at me. “Who knows how long I’ll be here. This training business isn’t for wimps.”

“No, it’s not,” I said, hiding a small smile. “However, I was wondering if you and Poppy were available for dinner tonight?”

“You’re not inviting your old Gran?” The gray-haired, sparkle-covered head whipped toward me. “Bummer, dude.”

I cleared my throat and revised. “You too, Hettie. You can come if you’d like.”

Hettie waved a hand and laughed. “I’m just messin’ with y’all. You both need to stop taking everything I say so seriously. I have plans, anyway. Spend some time with your cousins.”

“Are we going to be done training by then?” Zin asked. “How much longer will this take?”

“How much longer do you want it to take?” Hettie looked nonchalantly down at her nails. “I never told you how long to sit there.”

“What?” Zin’s screech could likely be heard back at the bar. “You were making me sit here for no good reason?”

“Oh, there was a good reason,” Hettie said. “I always have my reasons.”

“Are you going to share what that reason was?” Zin let her hands fall to her sides and opened her eyes. A cloudy expression covered her face as she pieced the puzzle together. “Were you just messing with me?”

“Sorta.” Hettie grinned. “I’m teaching you to make your own rules. I was just telling Lily that well-behaved women rarely make history.”

“That’s not what you were telling me,” I mumbled. “You were saying—”

Hettie waved a hand to shut me up. “Same thing. I am teaching you to think critically. I told you to sit there, and you did it for an hour. You didn’t even ask why!”

Zin flew to her feet. “That’s it. I knew you were going crazy, old lady!”

“Calm down! It’s a proper lesson,” Hettie said, shaking her finger at Zin. “When you become a Ranger, you will be given assignments. Sometimes those assignments will be hard, and sometimes they won’t make sense. Are you going to be one of those Rangers who just blindly follows orders like a big, clumsy giant? Or are you going to think for yourself?”

Zin fell silent. “You said when. You really think...
When
I become a Ranger?”

Zin was hung up on the first part of that question, while the last part had resonated with me. Maybe Hettie’s musings were directed at more than one person. Based upon the glittering look in her eye as she swiveled her gaze toward me, I was all but convinced she knew what I was thinking.

“Of course
when
,” Hettie said. “All of my granddaughters can become whatever they’d like in their lifetimes. It’s a matter of deciding what you want, how badly you want it, and what you’re willing to do to get there.”

“How is she supposed to know when to break the rules and when to follow them?” I blurted out. “You know, when she’s a Ranger.”

Hettie sized me up with her calculating eyes. “That’s the second step. The harder step. Unfortunately, that is something I can’t teach, and neither can anyone else. Not even the best of Rangers.”

“That’s reassuring,” Zin grumbled. “Doesn’t leave me a lot of hope.”

“On the contrary.” Hettie peered at both of us closely before responding. “That should give you the greatest hope of all.”

“How?”

“It should reassure you because at the end of the day, the truth comes from inside you,” Hettie said. “No amount of teaching or rules or regulations can tell you what is right or wrong. In order to decide that, one must look within and listen to what their heart is saying.”

“That’s not very clear,” I said, slightly annoyed by all of this
‘look inside yourself’
junk. I thought I’d left Tony Robbins behind when I’d left the mainland. At the moment, I was trying my best to look inside, but the only thing I found was a bit of fear and a lot of confusion. “How about more of a
‘paint by numbers’
style of learning?”

Hettie tsked. “You’ll learn in time. You’re thinking about this in all the wrong ways. You already have the answers.”

“But it doesn’t feel like it,” I said, my voice growing louder. “I don’t feel like I know much of anything at the moment.”

“I didn’t say it was going to be easy,” Hettie said. “But it’s true. You already have the answers. It’s like a gold coin that’s been buried under a mound of dirt for centuries.”

Zin squinted. “Now we’re talking money?”

Hettie shook her head. “At first, you don’t even know that coin is there. Maybe it’s buried on your lawn, and you don’t even know to look for it. Then one day, someone tells you that you have all of the money you need, you just need to start digging.”

She paused a minute, looking between us and leaving a moment of silence for us to catch up. “You start digging, but it takes some time. See, there’s no road map to this coin, you just know it’s there. Somewhere inside of your yard. So you dig, and you dig, and you dig. You make mistakes and dig in the backyard when it’s buried in the front. Maybe you don’t dig deep enough, or wide enough, or fast enough.”

Zin moved a few steps closer, and we stood shoulder to shoulder as Hettie faced us both.

“Then one day, you find that gold coin. It’s buried in your yard alright, it just took some time to find it.”

“That’s it?” Zin asked. “Then it’s over?”

“No, then the hard part is just getting started,” Hettie said. “See, now that you’ve found the coin, it’s likely crusted over with mud, maybe a bit tarnished and dirty. Slowly, carefully you need to polish it. Dust it off. Let it sit for a bit and clean it a little every day. Then one day out of the blue, you’ll look over and that dirty gold coin you never knew existed will shine like the sun itself.”

I stood still, listening to every word.

“Throughout all of this, you can’t forget one thing.” Hettie’s eyes slid between the two of us. “At one time, you never knew that coin existed. Patience, girls. You must work a little at it every day and have patience. Then one day, you will see exactly what I’m talking about.”

Chapter 7

Hettie wrapped up her lecture and, a few minutes later, called an end to training for the day.

“What’s next?” Zin asked. “I thought you were working tonight, Lily.”

“I was looking for you and Poppy,” I said. “We closed up shop early, so I wanted to see if you two wanted to go out to dinner. On me.”

“Go,” Hettie said, directing her words to Zin. “And put some nice clothes on. You’re not a Ranger yet, and I’m still holding out hope you’ll find a man who’ll change your mind and marry you.”

“I’m an independent woman,” Zin said. “Maybe there’s more to life than swooning at big muscles.”

“Girl, of course there is,” Hettie said. “You start swooning, and I’m gonna have to have a talk with you. Look at me, I’m an independent woman. I worked with the Rangers and I had kids. They’re not exclusive.”

Zin raised a finger, resting it thoughtfully on her lip. “Hang on a second, how do I know you’re not lying about working for the Rangers? Is this another test?”

“I can prove it to you.” Hettie crossed her spindly arms. “My Ranger-ness, that is.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Let’s go,” Hettie said. “Lily was looking for Poppy anyway. Let’s go pay her a visit.”

“Where is she?” I frowned. “I was headed to The Twist.”

“She’s at Ranger Headquarters, of course,” Hettie said. “It’s her day to work dispatch.”

“I’ve never been there,” I said. “Never even seen the place. Am I allowed inside?”

“Stay behind if you want,” Hettie said. “But I’ve got some Ranger-ness to prove to my other granddaughter. C’mon, Zin.”

I took a few jogging steps to catch up to my grandmother. “Where is it? What does this place look like? So we’re just allowed to waltz in and visit?”

“You’re exhausting with all your questions,” Hettie said. “Isn’t your mouth tired? How does Gus do it? Just wait and see. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Will I be able to talk to a Ranger?”

“Any Ranger?” Zin winked. “Or Mr. X?”

My cheeks burned at her suggestive gaze. “Any Ranger. I just want to get an update on the missing spellbook. See if they have any information or leads.”

“Oh, sure, you can talk to ’em,” Hettie said. “They have a customer service department. But first things first, I have a very important call to make.”

Zin rolled her eyes. “Don’t do it, Hettie. It’s not funny.”

“What’s not funny?” I asked. “What’s she going to do?”

“Poppy works dispatch,” Zin said. “Hettie likes to prank her.”

“I think I’ll order a pizza today,” Hettie cackled. “Let’s make a bet. Who thinks I can keep her on the phone longer than three seconds?”

Zin took the “under” bet, so I was stuck with the “over three seconds” bet.

Hettie pulled out a small device that looked similar to a phone, but functioned more like a walkie-talkie. The contraption didn’t have any numbers on it, just buttons and dials in a variety of colors. I hadn’t seen anything like it on The Isle. Hettie pressed the largest, reddest button. “Yes, hello, I’d like extra cheese on my pizza—”

The line went dead almost immediately.

“I win.” Zin grinned. “I’ll let you buy me dinner, Lily.”

“Drat that was fast,” Hettie said. “She’s learning.”

Hettie pressed another combination of dials. “Buzz us in, will you Poppy?”

“This is the emergency line.” Poppy hissed. “I told you not to use it.”

“This is an emergency,” Hettie said. “Zin needs to use the restroom.”

Zin raised her hands in annoyance. “I can wait.”

“And Lily needs to talk to her man,” Hettie added. “Be a darling and let us in.”

Poppy sighed. “Don’t make a scene in here, okay? They’re still mad at me for buzzing you in the last time.”

I looked at Hettie as Poppy disconnected. “What’d you do last time?”

She shrugged. “Nothing.”

“She drew mustaches on the wall of photos,” Zin said. “The wall with pictures of all the head Rangers for the past fifty years.”

“It was a joke,” Hettie mumbled. “People need to relax.”

“A joke that didn’t wipe off,” Zin said. “You drew a handlebar moustache on the greatest Ranger of all time. And another one had a goatee.”

“Are we here?” I looked around, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

We had passed The Twist. As the sun sank lower in the horizon, the wild jungle in front of us turned a shade of dark that sent shivers rattling through my body and increased my pulse with every step. “I thought we weren’t supposed to go into The Forest. What about that big, black building on the other side of The Isle? I thought that was where HQ would be located?”

“That’s where they want you to think it’s located,” Hettie said. “But that’s just corporate. The only people working there are the finance folks. Rangers hold some meetings there for show, but anything top secret is taken care of here.”

“Where is here?” We stood just on the outskirts of The Forest. “I really don’t think we should go in there. It’s getting dark.”

“Poppy should be buzzing us in anytime now,” Hettie said. “Keep an eye out.”

“An eye out for what?”

“There,” Zin said, pointing. “Did you see that?”

If Zin hadn’t alerted me, I would’ve missed it. Between two of the largest trees on the edge of the woods, a miniscule bolt of lightning shot between them. “What is that?”

“The portal to the entrance,” Zin said. “Sort of like human elevators from what I hear. You walk through, and it takes you to a new level.”

“That’s not at all like an elevator,” I mumbled. “I don’t see any door, and I don’t see any other ‘floors’ located around here. Can’t we just wait for Poppy to come get us?”

“Don’t be silly.” Hettie grabbed my hand. “We only have a few seconds before it closes.”

“Is the entrance always here?” I asked as my grandmother pulled me toward the space where a thin stream of lightning had danced just seconds ago. “How do you get in without Poppy’s help?”

“You don’t,” Hettie said. “The entrance can be between any two trees. It’s completely random, and is rarely the same two trees. The gateway is impossible to find without an invitation.”

“What if someone wants a meeting with a Ranger?” I asked. “How do they find one?”

“People don’t set up meetings with Rangers,” Zin said. “Rangers come to them.”

Hettie nodded. “She’s right.”

“But what if someone needs help?”

“It’s the Rangers’ job to know about it before the situation gets to that point,” Hettie said. “Now, will you stop talking a moment so I can concentrate?”

I shut up quickly, letting Hettie grab my elbow in her bony fingers. Zin stood close by her other side, and the three of us strode toward the trees.

A tugging sensation began deep behind my navel, and I was taken back to the moment when I’d first arrived on The Isle—transported from the mainland by a boat the size of a dingy that had carried us into massive wave. Some sort of portal like this one, except now, I knew what to expect.

However, knowing what to expect did not prepare me for the process. My rib cage constricted and my breath vanished as I hurtled headfirst through blackness. When I came to, my feet hit firm ground, and I collapsed in a heap on the cold, tile floor.

“Sorry about that,” Hettie was saying when I managed to open my eyes and blink away the stars. “First timer, here.”

I blinked furiously, trying to clear away the stars as Hettie and Zin each hooked an arm through mine and hauled me to my feet.