Spell or High Water Read online

  The falls were magnificent—curtains of water glittering with literal fairy dust. There were a number of legends associated with the falls, but pirate treasure was a new one.

  “I don’t see any shipwrecks,” I said to Alissa. “Are you sure this isn’t a hoax? Anyone might have drawn that map to play a prank. Sky… he’s not exactly the most reliable feline.” Except when it came to feeding times. “For all I know, he drew it himself.”

  She snorted. “Maybe he did. But we’re here.”

  Maybe it was the lure of the glittering falls, but the cave did look like the sort of place where one might hide buried treasure. I held up the map, which seemed to glitter, too. “Hang on.”

  “What are you doing?” asked Alissa, as I held the map underneath the water.

  “Testing a theory. This was…” I trailed off as the map shimmered, then the scrawled X lit up. “It’s glamoured.”

  Fairy dust removed enchantments, even strong ones. Before my eyes, the X glowed brightly, marking a clear spot on the lake. The glow spread to my hands, and Alissa gasped. “Look. In the water.”

  She hurried down the path alongside the falls. At their base, the glittering coalesced into a shape I couldn’t quite make out. “I can’t walk that far.”

  But I have the boots. As long as I was careful, I should be able to make it without falling to my death. I clicked on the boots and hovered above the ground.

  Alissa grumbled, “I should have bought a pair of my own.”

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” I told her. Glamour. Why was the path glamoured? It was a type of magic used by fairies to hide things from sight, but I’d thought it was little-known to humans.

  Under the glowing light, a boat lay next to the shore, shimmering with magic.

  I looked up at Alissa. “There’s a boat down here.” It floated on the surface, and when I grabbed the edge, it was solid. Definitely real. I gave it a tug. The boat obligingly floated along the lake’s edge around to the more easily accessible part of the bank. I waved to Alissa. “Climb back down the way you came. I’ll meet you there.”

  “If you’re sure.” She gave the boat a sceptical look, but turned to climb down the path behind the falls.

  By the time she’d reached the bottom, I’d pulled the boat up to the bank. It might be lightweight, but it felt very solid, and the shimmering of magic made me certain it was more sturdily put together than any human creation.

  “You’re getting in the boat?” she asked, scanning the water’s surface.

  “Must be the only way to get to the treasure.” I held up the still-glittering map. X marked the spot, barely a minute away from here.

  “If you want to risk being a snack for water imps.”

  “Didn’t you used to be part of the High Fliers? You’re not saying you never fell into the water?”

  She grinned. “Once or twice. That boat looks well put together. And I’m not missing out on pirate treasure.”

  “I think you might have to lower your expectations. Also, this boat was hidden by glamour. That implies the fairies were involved. Do fairies hoard treasure? The nereids?”

  “I have absolutely no idea.”

  Fairies. I was half fairy—and that’s all I knew about that side of my family. My past was still a mystery, and the weird tug that drew me to the boat came from the same instincts that had saved my life a couple of times. Despite the fairies having abandoned the falls that were their namesake a long time ago, some part of me still held onto the hope that I might get answers somewhere here. After all, I’d received a note a couple of weeks ago telling me to come to the falls at the solstice. The note didn’t have a name attached, and the solstice wasn’t for a while yet, but I couldn’t help hoping all the same.

  “Then let’s find out,” I said aloud, and climbed into the boat.

  The instant Alissa joined me, the boat began to move by itself—gently, but suddenly enough for me to give a shout of alarm.

  “Whoa.” Alissa grabbed the edge. “It’s spelled, but I can’t say I know how.”

  “Any chance you know where it’s taking us?”

  “Nope. This one’s on you.”

  It was, because I should have seen the spell before I sat in the boat. “You went along with it when you know I’m a disaster magnet. I guess you’re not over the High Fliers.” I glanced up at the broomstick-riding daredevils in question, who’d formed a V shape to soar over the lake. The leading witch’s broom dipped down, too close to the water, and she fell—

  I gasped, but blue-tinged hands caught the witch before she hit the water. Looked like the merpeople were keeping an eye on the situation after all.

  “She’s okay!” said Alissa. “The merpeople are used to this by now.”

  “Hope they catch me if I fall out looking for treasure.”

  A couple of minutes later, the boat stopped before the ruins of a magnificent sailboat, painted in shades of blue and white. “That’s our shipwreck?” I asked. “That’s not a ship.”

  “I mean, technically speaking,” said Alissa, half rising to her feet. The boat rocked, and she sat back down. “Ah. If I could see the treasure, I might be able to levitate it over…” She trailed off as a head popped up out of the water. I jumped, rocking the boat, and Alissa nearly fell in. I caught her arm, staring at the seaweed-covered head. A merman.

  “Are you here to get rid of him?” asked the merman.

  “Get rid of him?” echoed Alissa. “No. We’re looking for treasure.”

  I waved the map at him. “Know whose this is?”

  He squinted at the map. “It’s his doing. I should have guessed.”

  “Who is he?”

  “The pirate.”

  “There really is a pirate?” asked Alissa.

  “Yes,” said a male voice. “I am a pirate.”

  Chapter Three

  A man appeared on the boat’s deck, dressed in old-fashioned clothing. His hair was long, and he wore a hat. Not a pirate’s hat, but a pointed wizard’s one, though nobody I knew actually wore hats like that, since they had a tendency to fall off or get stuck in doorways. No talking monkey, either. Or a parrot. He did wear an eyepatch, but it had slipped, showing that both his eyes were intact and neither looked like it was made of glass.

  “Have you come to recover my treasure?” he asked.

  “You’re not a merman,” I said. “You’re a ghost.” A wizard ghost, to be precise. He stood—or floated—above the deck, a pensive look on his face. I could see through him to the glittering water on the other side. It was enough to make me slightly seasick.

  “Aye,” he said. “It’s been a while since I saw landlubbers like you around these parts.”

  I blinked. “Do pirates actually say that?”

  “Have you ever met one?”

  “Nope. Definitely not a wizard pirate, either. Let alone a ghost one. How’d you die?”

  “Oh, I drowned,” he said. “As you might expect, when my ship capsized.”

  Hmm. He didn’t sound much like a sixteenth-century pirate. Not least because I was fairly sure pirates did not sail across magical hidden lakes in the northwest of England. He was a twenty-first century man playing dress-up, but he was also very much dead.

  “And is this your map?” I asked him, holding it up so he could see it.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s mine. You found my treasure?”

  “No. I thought the map said the treasure was here.” I looked at the wrecked sailing boat. While it lay on its side, most of its contents presumably buried under the water, I wasn’t about to dive in and check.

  “It was,” he said, his expression darkening. “Someone stole it.”

  Uh-oh. “Really?” I asked.

  “Yes. They stole it straight from my ship.”

  “Er, isn’t it more like a yacht?” Boats were not my area of expertise, but most pirate ships, to my knowledge, were huge vessels, not single-persons sailing boats with a picture of a flying pixie on the sail. “I thought skull an
d crossbones was more of a pirate thing than, er, pixies.”

  “It’s a stylistic choice,” he said. “I thought it looked quite distinctive.”

  “You’re not wrong there,” Alissa muttered under her breath.

  This was going well. His face reddened, which I wouldn’t have thought possible on a ghost, but I hadn’t exactly had a ton of prior experience. I was normally scared of the very idea of ghosts, but I tended to associate them with creepy dungeons and castles, not in the middle of a lake.

  “Er, so, how was it stolen from the boat?” I asked quickly. “Was it when you were on board?”

  “No. I parked the boat on the beach.”

  “There isn’t a beach,” I said. “You left treasure unattended on your boat?”

  “Not unattended. I was sleeping aboard. I can’t sleep and sail at the same time.” His tone suggested I was dense for thinking so.

  “Well, of course not,” I said.

  “Er,” Alissa said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but we’re not near the coast. There’s just a lot of mud, not sand. It’s not even salt water. And if we try diving in, we’ll either get eaten by water imps or drowned by a siren.”

  “Sirens,” he hissed. “They got my boat. Drove me into the water. That’s how I drowned.”

  “And the treasure along with it?” I asked sceptically.

  “The treasure was inside the boat, and they took it,” he whispered. “My treasure—gone. Stolen. And I’m doomed to stay here until someone gets it back.”

  “So that’s your unfinished business?” asked Alissa. “Finding this—treasure? What does it actually look like, anyway?”

  “It’s an enchanted harp,” said the pirate ghost. “Golden as the lake itself.”

  “Okay,” I said. “How long ago was this, anyway?”

  He screwed up his forehead. “A while. I think….” He faded, and a moment later, he was gone.

  “Word of advice: don’t ask a ghost when they died,” said Alissa.

  “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know it was a sensitive topic. But it’d help us find this… harp. I mean, I get that he probably didn’t actually die in the fifteenth century or whatever, but we don’t have much to go by.”

  “No, he’s definitely a recent ghost. More to the point, I doubt there’s a huge group of people who’ve run away from the wizard and witch community to become pirates. Someone will remember who he was when he was alive, I’m sure of it.”

  “Worth trying, I guess.” I leaned back, then jolted upright as the boat began moving again. “Whoa. Did he put the spell on the boat?”

  “Maybe,” she said doubtfully. “The map, though—that was glamour. Fairy magic.”

  “He’s not a fairy.” My own unique paranormal talent involved being able to sense what type of paranormal someone was, and I’d have pegged him for a wizard even without the hat. I’d yet to work out if my magic was a witch power or a fairy one, but it came in handy when faced with unknown paranormals.

  Alissa didn’t speak for a few moments while we glided back to shore, the boat doing most of the work. If the wizard had put the spell on it, it must be strong to have survived his death.

  “Know anyone who has an enchanted harp?” I asked. “I’ve never seen one.”

  She shook her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell, no. There’s more enchanted objects than people living here, so it’s not a surprise.”

  “But I think there’s probably only one pirate ghost.”

  “You’re probably right there. Which is why I’m sure someone must know who he is, or was.”

  Chapter Four

  Back ashore, I spotted a familiar figure walking down the bank: Nathan. As the town’s security guard, it was usually up to him to keep an eye on the overly adventurous High Fliers, and occasionally cart them off to hospital if they fell off their brooms.

  “Blair?” he said, sounding surprised. “Where did you just come from?”

  “A shipwreck. I don’t suppose you know of a wizard with a fondness for dressing like a pirate who ran away to sea? I mean, lake?”

  “Sadly, no,” he said. “A pirate? Really?”

  “Is that unusual here?” I asked. Sometimes I had to check. In a town inhabited by witches, wizards, shifters, vampires, elves, and more, the threshold for ‘weird’ was considerably higher than my former mundane life in a normal, magic-free town.

  “It’s the first I’ve heard,” he said. “Did you see this… pirate wizard?”

  “His ghost,” I said. “Apparently he drowned, and he’s stuck here until someone recovers his treasure. Would you believe it.’

  “It’s you, Blair,” he said. “You have a knack for ending up in these situations.”

  “So does my cat. He’s the one who brought me the treasure map. I thought it was the merpeople’s at first, but nope, one lost wizard.”

  “Well, good luck with it.” He gave me a smile and continued down the bank.

  Alissa nudged me in the ribs. “So, has he asked you out on another date yet?”

  “Every time I think he might, something like this happens. Mostly thanks to Sky. Why does my cat always think I’m the person for the job?”

  “Because you have the right skillset for getting at the truth.”

  She was right. Beyond the ability to tell what paranormal type someone was—which meant I’d have been able to tell the pirate was a wizard even if I’d overlooked the hat and the obvious fake mannerisms—my other paranormal ability enabled me to sense whether or not someone was telling the truth. The ghost might have been misled, but he really did seem to think this treasure of his had been stolen from his own boat. Not that he’d given me any clues as to who’d taken it.

  “Hmm,” said Alissa. “The other question is, if the map’s his, did he draw it before he died?”

  “And why did it have fairy glamour on it?” That was the part that bugged me the most. I’d sworn to stop getting involved in other people’s business, but Sky had brought the map straight to me. He’d probably seen the ghost himself. Like when I’d adopted him, what the cat said was law, and I’d do well to accept it. Still—maybe the ghost’s presence so close to the waterfall did link to my own history in some way. The only way to find out was to get to the truth.

  “No clue,” Alissa said.

  “As for the harp,” I said, “the idiot was asleep in his boat on the bank. I assume that’s what he meant, not the beach, anyway. And someone robbed him. Someone who knew he had it.”

  “Magical harps aren’t that unusual,” said Alissa. “I know who to ask.”

  “The witches.” I nodded. “Since he was a wizard, despite the ridiculous costume. Ask Madame Grey, she’s bound to know if any of the wizards have ever run away to be a pirate. Let’s face it, it’s bound to stick in the memory.”

  We made right for the witches’ main headquarters. Madame Grey, leader of the town’s witches, was a little stern and scary, but she was also Alissa’s grandmother and had taken me under her wing after I’d been offered a job here without knowing Fairy Falls was a paranormal town. Since the witches’ place had often been the accidental target of my failed attempts at witchcraft, I’d been on the receiving end of her stern temper more than once. Luckily, I was in her good books at the moment.

  I found my mentor, Rita, in the entrance hall of the building which served as the main site for coven meetings. While not quite as stern as the head witch, she’d been tested to the limits of her patience when it came to getting my wand-work up to scratch. A forty-something witch with red hair, flowered robes, and bangles jangling up and down both arms whenever she moved, she turned around when Alissa and I came in, a stack of potion ingredients in her arms.

  “Hey, Rita,” I said.

  “Blair,” she said. “I thought today was your day off.”

  “Never a dull moment.” I cracked a smile. “I wondered… has there ever been a wizard from this town who ran away to become a pirate?”

  She blinked slowly at me. It was rare that yo
u could say something weird and have the reaction actually match it, but that was apparently one of the exceptions.

  “We found a ghost,” I explained. “By the lake, on an abandoned ship. I mean, boat… yacht… thing. He’s claiming to be a pirate, but my senses tell me he’s a wizard and he’s not that old. So I figured there must have been a wizard who staged a rebellion and ran away to sail around the lake.”

  “Oh, several,” she said, without missing a beat. “There have been at least five in the last few years alone, to my knowledge.”

  “Seriously?” I asked. “What’s the attraction? That lake is nothing like the sea. Doesn’t it annoy the merpeople, too? Or at least the nereids?”

  “I don’t imagine they pay too much close attention. Not unless they trespass on the wrong territory.”

  “Oh,” I said. “So… how do you banish a spirit? The merpeople nearby seemed a bit ticked off.”

  “Generally, the only way to get rid of a ghost is to help them with whatever task they need to complete to move on to the afterlife.”

  “Well, he claims someone stole his treasure,” I said. “An enchanted harp. Ever seen one of those?”

  She pursed her lips. “Enchantments? Talk to Gus, he’s the owner of the local enchantment shop. Otherwise, it’s not something I know a lot about. Do let me know if it seems he was murdered. And please be careful around the lake.”

  “Will do,” I said.

  When she’d gone, I turned to Alissa. “Okay, time for Plan B.”

  Chapter Five

  “I can’t believe so many people have run away to become pirates,” I said. “How was I to know it’s the chosen rebellion method for sulking wizards?”

  “That, or joining the High Fliers,” said Alissa.

  “I’d almost say the brooms are less of a hazard,” I said. The pirate ghost was in a serious state of denial, but how much, I couldn’t say. “Where’s this enchantment shop?”