Lend a Helping Hand Read online

  “Fine.”

  I unlocked the front door and stepped inside. The wind blew a few leaves down the street, and I startled. Then I heard something for a split second that made my blood run cold. I could have sworn that the breeze brought the sound of a low moan, but as soon as I caught the sound, it was gone. I rationalized that it was my imagination. Joe hadn’t said anything about the man moaning, so I reasoned that I was hearing things based on watching too many scary movies.

  We stepped inside, and I practically slammed the door shut. Grim scurried inside, and sat down at my feet.

  “We could just go back to your house,” he said. “You seem jumpy.”

  “I’ll show you to the kitchen. You can use the sink to scry,” I said without acknowledging what he’d said.

  I led Grim back to the kitchen and watched as he plugged up the sink and turned on the water. He filled it about halfway before sitting back and staring at the pool he’d created. I just hoped I wouldn’t need the sink before he was done, and I hoped that he was done before my mother came in to clean up.

  While he stared at his makeshift scrying pool, I got the ingredients out of the pantry and cooler for my most popular flavors. Blueberry Bliss was definitely on the menu, but it always was.

  I could feel the Cookbook of Shadows calling to me, but I was almost afraid to look. Somehow, I knew that the recipe it wanted to show me was going to reveal something about the day that I didn’t want to know.

  My hands flew through making the Blueberry Bliss cupcakes. I made some Strawberry Sentiment too. That seemed like a neutral flavor. I didn’t have a reason to make Chocolate Celebration, with sprinkles, but it seemed like a good way to round out the day. People could always find a reason to celebrate.

  Unless there was a zombie apocalypse.

  “Stop it,” I whispered to myself.

  “What’s that?” Grim asked.

  “Nothing. Sorry. I didn’t mean to break your concentration.”

  All the while, the Cookbook of Shadows kept calling to me. Every moment I ignored it, the pull got stronger. It had something it really wanted to show me.

  “I think your book wants you,” Grim said. “I can feel that thing calling out and it’s not even my grimoire. You’d better look.”

  “Fine. I’ll look,” I said as I put the last batch of chocolate cupcakes in the oven.

  I walked slowly over to where the book sat and took a deep breath. I knew I was being stupid. My Cookbook of Shadows just wanted to help me, and pretending like everything was fine wasn’t going to actually make things fine.

  When I opened the book, the pages fluttered for a few seconds. They finally stopped moving on a recipe called Island Punch Immunity. “Hmm,” I said. “I’m not sure people will buy that.”

  “Won’t buy what?” Grim asked.

  “The Cookbook of Shadows wants me to make a cupcake flavor called Island Punch Immunity. It’s got orange, pineapple, and cherry flavor,” I said with a shrug.

  “So we are probably dealing with zombies,” Grim said. “That’s an awesome way to come out of retirement. But people will probably buy that flavor, Zoe. We’re coming up on winter now, and people will just assume that it’s to prevent colds and flu. The island part will just give them a little lift on what I’m sure is going to be a gray day. The people here who don’t know about the supernatural aspects of Destiny Cove…” He trailed off for a moment. “Well, I guess they aren’t going to not know about it for much longer.”

  “You’re good at this,” I said.

  “You know what else I’m good at?” Grim asked. “Usually scrying. I need more time.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll whip up the Island Punch Immunity cupcakes. Heck, I’ll make a double batch, and that will give you more time.”

  When the new cupcake flavor was done, I set aside enough for myself and all of my friends. I sorta felt bad about charging for them and decided to make them half price. That would encourage more people to buy them too.

  Around the time that all of the cupcakes were done, my mom and Tom showed up at the shop. I gave Grim one of the Island Punch Immunity cupcakes even though I didn’t know if raccoon familiars could even become zombies.

  “I’ll put all of these in the case, Zoe,” Tom said.

  “And I’ll get started on the clean-up,” my mom said as she surveyed the damage.

  “Thank you guys so much. You don’t have to stay and work today if you think it’s too dangerous,” I said.

  “Nonsense, Zoe. We’ll be fine. And if anything happens, I’ll call and we’ll come directly to your house,” Mom said.

  “Yes, dear, we’ll be fine,” Tom called from the front of the store. “Your Mom won’t let anything happen to us.”

  “Well, thank you again. I really appreciate it.” I turned my attention to Grim. “Did you find her?”

  “I have a vague idea,” he said. “I can’t pinpoint her, so we’d have to search. It’s weird. Something is interfering with the scrying.”

  I had to decide if we were going to go searching for Ginger in the middle of everything that was going on. On one hand, leaving her out there seemed unthinkable. On the other, the whole thing sounded like a trap. How was I supposed to know if she was even in the area Grim found? Maybe the demon had led his efforts astray.

  In the end, I decided that I had to look for her and Lupin. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t even try, and at that point, I was starting to look forward to confronting the demon. At least if we walked into its trap, it had to face us.

  “Okay, we’ll search the area you found, but I want to go home first. I need to check on Joe, and I want to make sure she isn’t there before we go out into whatever is going on.”

  When we left, I noticed that there still wasn’t anyone out on the street. Petals to the Metal was dark, so Glinda hadn’t gone into her store yet. I wondered if I’d wasted time and put people in danger for no reason, but I had to push those thoughts aside. It wasn’t productive to dwell on decisions I’d already made.

  Grim and I got in my car and headed for home. “So where was the approximate area you located?” I asked once we were on our way.

  “You’re not going to like it,” he said.

  “Just tell me. It doesn’t matter if I like it or not.”

  “It’s on the outskirts of town past the park to the west,” he said.

  “That’s the old asylum,” I said. “Nobody goes there. Not even the high school kids on dares. Ever since Lonnie Mitchell died.”

  It was definitely starting to sound more and more like a trap. Still, I had to check it out. As long as Joe was fine, and Ginger wasn’t back home, we’d head out that way.

  The grounds of the old asylum were vast and sprawling. If she was there, it would take us some time to find her. I doubted Ginger was sitting on the front steps of the main building waiting for us. Even if she was, it wasn’t like the main building sat right inside the gates.

  The place was massive with a main building, several satellite buildings that served as workshops and dorms, and the old farm buildings. On top of that, there were gardens and farmland inside the gates and the cemetery.

  Destiny Cove had been called Blackwell Rock in the distant past, and that was the name of the asylum. Blackwell Rock Asylum actually had a huge black rock that partially covered a natural well within the gates. The settlers had named the town after the rock, and some time before the town became Destiny Cove, the old inhabitants built the asylum grounds around the rock and named it after the landmark.

  Kids used to break into the grounds of the old hospital that served as both a tuberculosis and insane asylum at different points. It was considered a rite of passage between their sophomore and junior year of high school. The older kids would taunt the underclassmen and tell them that if they didn’t go to Blackwell Asylum before they became upperclassmen, their lives would be cursed.

  One summer in the eighties, a kid named Lonnie Mitchell broke in with a group of friends to spend t
he night in Blackwell Rock. Most kids just walked around for a couple of hours and then showed back up at the gates where their junior and senior friends would pat them on the back and welcome them to the club.

  Lonnie wasn’t satisfied with just doing the bare minimum. He took two friends with him. Lonnie said it was so he’d have witnesses that he’d spent the whole night there. He probably didn’t want to be alone.

  Legend says that everything went fine until around midnight. The boys walked around laughing and trying to scare each other as they shared a six-pack of cheap beer. After that, the details got sketchy.

  What is certain is that the two boys with Lonnie were found at the asylum gates in the morning. Their clothes were ripped and muddy. They’d lost their jackets and were well on their way to hypothermia.

  Their accounting of the story was that there was something, or a lot of somethings, still lingering inside the asylum. Whatever the entities were, ghosts or demons, the boys said demons, but the townsfolk that did believe them said spirits, they lured Lonnie to the well under the black rock. He jumped in and disappeared.

  The boys said they spent the rest of the night being chased all over the grounds by the demonic entities. The main gate was locked, and they’d collapsed from exhaustion trying to find a way to squeeze through the bars.

  No one wanted to believe them, but Lonnie was gone. At first, people said he was hiding in the nearby woods and that he’d come home when he got tired of his prank.

  When he wasn’t home by that night, the police decided to try and dredge the well. They didn’t find anything. No one knew how deep the well really was, so it was possible that he’d just sunk so far that no one would ever find him. And he never came home. Eventually, the town had to accept that he was really gone and it wasn’t a prank.

  After that, the high school kids stopped going there. Even during the day, people stayed away. Every decade or so, kids hear the legend and get it in their head to try again.

  None of them ever actually make it to the gates. Most report that they see a boy dressed in old-style clothes waiting at the gates with his hands wrapped around the bars.

  They always run away and summon the sheriff, but despite the country sheriff’s office and the state police searching the grounds, no one ever finds the person the kids are talking about.

  And that was where I was going to have to go look for Ginger, according to Grim. Of course it had to be the scariest place in town. The place I tried to not even think about. But maybe that had been the problem all along. Maybe I hadn’t been thinking about it because there was some sort of dark magic keeping me from thinking about it.

  “That makes sense,” I said aloud to myself.

  “What makes sense, Zoe?” Grim asked.

  “I think there is some sort of magic masking that place. You can’t let me forget about it again. We have to find a way to remember or else we’ll probably forget it exists again.”

  “You could write yourself a note,” Grim said. “I’ll probably forget too. I only found it through scrying, and that might only be because I haven’t been here long.”

  “I will make a note.”

  I pulled the car over to the curb and grabbed a notepad and pen from the glovebox. I could have put it in my phone, but that was too easy for magic to mess with. Writing the note down on paper felt more secure. When I was done, I took the note and put it in my pocket.

  We drove the rest of the way home, and I kept meditating on Ginger being there. I didn’t want to go out to the old asylum. That might have sounded fun to a bunch of young kids, but I knew there were things there I didn’t want to deal with. Once my conscious mind was linked to the place, I could feel something wasn’t right about it at all.

  That meant I needed to go there either way. Even if Ginger was home, I had to investigate the darkness seeping out of Blackwell Rock Asylum.

  When I turned onto my street, I immediately noticed the state police car sitting at the end of my driveway. It wasn’t in the driveway. Instead, it was parked across it so that no one could leave. I immediately knew that was a bad sign.

  I parked my car in front of the neighbor’s house and waved to Mrs. Cranston. She was peeking out the curtain with one eye, but I could see her. Instead of waving back, she pulled the curtain shut fast, and I chuckled. She wasn’t a magical being, but I knew Mrs. Cranston could tell there was something not quite normal about me and my family. She wasn’t bold enough to come out and ask, though. Instead she just watched us closely while pretending not to care.

  My front door was closed, but it wasn’t latched all the way. Someone had closed it hastily. I walked inside and heard a man’s voice I didn’t recognize.

  Glinda and Trucker stepped out of the living room to see who had walked through the front door. “Oh, good. It’s you. I was a bit concerned,” Glinda said.

  “What’s going on?”

  “A state police officer showed up a few minutes ago looking for Joe. He said they had to speak in private. It sounds like it might be heated,” Glinda said.

  “I wonder what’s going on,” I mused.

  We all stood there waiting for them to come out of the kitchen. Well, Trucker didn’t wait. He had a box of crackers in the living room, and he went back in to start munching again.

  A few minutes later, Grim followed. “Hey, goat. You mind sharing?” he said as he scrambled across the floor into the living room.

  Soon, the state police officer walked out of the kitchen and down the hall. Joe was right behind him, but he looked ashen.

  “We’ll be in touch,” the state cop said before showing himself out.

  “I’m sorry,” Joe said when he was gone. “I know I said I would sleep, but I was interrupted. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep now.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Let’s make some coffee and I’ll explain,” he said. “I don’t suppose I can have another Blueberry Bliss cupcake?”

  “You can, but I have something I need you to eat first,” I said, remembering the Island Punch Immunity cupcakes in the back seat of the car. “I’ll be right back.”

  When I stepped outside, the police officer was still there getting into his cruiser. He waved at me and gave me a half smile before getting the rest of the way into the car.

  “Wait,” I called out. “Wait, I have something you need.”

  “Excuse me?” he asked politely as he got back out of the car.

  “I have something for you,” I said.

  I had no idea if he was a magical or not, but I still wanted him to have a cupcake. I didn’t know how to explain it, but I had a few extras and I couldn’t send a law enforcement officer out without protection.

  He got out of the car and walked to the sidewalk. “Hold on,” I said as I passed him to get to my car.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Oh, I have a cupcake for you.” I couldn’t think of anything better to say, so I just said that truth.

  “Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten that Joe’s girl was a baker. Thank you so much. I am really hungry. It’s been such a long night.”

  “Here you go,” I said and handed him the cupcake.

  “You know, I’ve heard around that these little treats have a little something extra in them.” He saw me studying him. “I’m just me, but my wife is fae. She’s a water elemental.”

  “Oh,” I said and chuckled. “Okay, than. Well, that cupcake is Island Punch Immunity. I’m selling them at the shop today,” I said. “Flavor of the day.”

  “Well, thank you for the free cupcake,” he said. “Maybe I’ll stop by your shop and get a box for the boys out working today.”

  “I think that might be a good idea.”

  When he was pulling away, I took the cupcakes and went back into the house. Joe was in the kitchen making coffee, so while he did that, I set the cupcakes I’d brought from the store out on a tray.

  Glinda, Trucker, and Grim drifted in after me. I used a touch of magi
c to speed up the coffee, and then we all sat around with a cup of the dark brew and our cupcakes. Grim had already had his, so he raided the pantry for more crackers.

  Once Joe had a chance to eat part of his cupcake and drink some of his coffee, I pushed him a little for information. “So, why was that state police officer here?”

  “It’s bad,” Joe said and some of the color drained from his face.

  “Tell me, please.” I couldn’t stand the tension anymore.

  “The state trooper who assisted me with the shooting is dead,” he said.

  “Oh, no. How did that happen?”

  “When he came out to help me, that was the end of his shift. He called his wife just before he drove away and told her he was coming home. She got up, made him breakfast, and waited. She said that it should have only taken him fifteen minutes at most to get home. When he didn’t show up after forty-five minutes or so, she was going to call his supervising officer. Before she did, she happened to look out their kitchen window. Her husband was dead in the driveway. He’d been shot and had bled out.”

  “That’s weird,” I said. “She didn’t hear the gunshot?”

  “She said that she’d heard a pop, but it hadn’t been what she’d expected a gunshot to sound like. Two neighbors came out and said they’d heard it too, but it had sounded more like a car backfiring. Everyone on the street knew they had a police officer as a neighbor, so no one really worried. They thought if it was something bad, he’d handle it or alert them. His gun hadn’t been fired, and they took mine just as a precaution.”

  “You’re a suspect? Why?”

  “The officer that was here said that I’m not a suspect, but they have to clear my weapon. He said that even though he thinks it’s ridiculous, I have motive. I could have something to hide about shooting the man on the side of the highway. He said I could have been covering my tracks, so they have to rule it out. He also said that he has no idea if and when they will be able to do that.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Because whoever shot Officer Benson dug the bullet out and took it with them.”

  “Oh, that’s gruesome.”