Free as a Bird by Hailey Edwards

Author:Hailey Edwards [Edwards, Hailey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Dog Books, LLC.
Published: 2024-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

From the state of the antique bureau Joan had been using as a desk for her experiments, we verified she had located her microscope. Based on the spread of her supplies, and the open bottles of slide mounting medium, she had been creating more spore slides when she was taken. None of the ones she had begun were finished, and the medium was still wet, but that didn’t help much. It required twenty-four hours to cure. The best guess, since the girls hadn’t spotted her on their way in, was she had been gone less than an hour. With all leads exhausted, we—minus Betty—gathered in her room to plan our next move.

“How did they get in?” Ida checked the window. “The latch is in place, so that eliminates the one unmonitored exit.”

“We would have heard if she left out the front door.” Flo palmed a crystal, ready to fight to get her back. “Unless whoever took her muffled their footsteps with magic. Or used an invisibility charm. Those aren’t easy to cast, which would mean we are searching for either a powerful full-blooded witch or a coven.”

“We all left for several hours. The house was empty during that time.” Ida picked up Scrappy when he trotted into the room. “Someone might have let themselves in, hidden, then waited for us to get back.”

“I don’t smell anything,” Zander growled from the doorway. “There’s no hint of anyone that’s not us.”

“Spells that conceal scents are even more costly than invisibility.” Wally didn’t mean money. He meant in effort. In power. “If magic helped them take Joan, then the person or persons responsible are more dangerous than we anticipated.”

“Check the yard.” Ida patted Zander’s cheek. “Maybe Joan left the mushroom for us to find.”

“You think she left us a trail of mushrooms instead of breadcrumbs?”

“Why not?” Flo almost smiled, but the expression didn’t make it onto her mouth. “It would be a very Joan thing to do.”

“It would break her heart.” Ida placed a hand on her chest. “She would hate to waste mushrooms.”

“We have enough energy stored in the crystals for one tracking spell.” I rubbed my forehead. “I planned to spend it on the shoe we found at Connie’s, but Joan takes priority.” I couldn’t believe she disappeared right under our noses. “Leslie has contacts within Witchlight. She can get us a few charged crystals to use for Connie later if she doesn’t have any.”

With no access to our usual party supplies and partygoers, we couldn’t refill our own crystals.

The Yard Birds served a vital purpose in allowing us to siphon the energy of women with witchy ancestry to fuel our magic. The process didn’t harm them, and we paid them for their efforts in booze, chicken wings, pizza, and all sorts of other rich foods no one our age could eat without popping omeprazole first.

“Without Joan to regulate us,” Ida fretted, “this will hurt.”

The more powerful the spell, the more we relied on her to distribute the flow of magic between us.

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