I took a deep breath at the sight, relieved beyond words.
But something else was wrong.
I peered around the big cat. “Did Alice come and take that off the table?” I asked him, feeling silly for talking to a cat.
He turned and looked at the spot as if he’d understood my question, then pulled himself upright and batted a tiny piece of fluff to the floor with an enormous paw, jumping down after it.
So much for the secret genius of Fenwald.
I stared at the conspicuously empty spot on the table, frowning. The bumpy, stained suitcase was gone.
Why was it gone? Who’d taken it? I decided it had to be Alice, but I had no idea why she would have removed it from the table before I’d gotten it cataloged. And, if it was Alice, why had the vortex led me there?
The bell on Croakies’ front door jangled softly. I panicked, realizing there was a magical vortex spinning on the wall and a human customer might have just come into the store.
That was not good.
I hurried toward the dividing door and burst into the bookstore, looking frantically around. “Hello?”
Nobody answered me.
Nothing seemed to be moving.
I ran down the center walkway, peering down every aisle.
Nobody.
My gaze slid to the spot where the vortex had been. I skidded to a stop at the end of the aisle.
It was gone.
The wall was smooth and unblemished. The picture of Alice and Fenwald in front of the Eiffel Tower was hanging back in its spot.
And I was apparently losing my mind.
Alice stood with her arms crossed over her chest and her chin jutting. Next to her, his tail sliding over the cool concrete floor, Fenwald jutted his chin too. Oliver, the tree frog, had no chin to jut, so he contented himself with blinking accusingly in my direction.
I bit back the chorus of excuses I’d been making to myself since learning the artifact library had been robbed, and I’d somehow missed the whole thing.
“Tell me again,” Alice said in a tone filled with exaggerated patience. “How this happened right under your nose.”
I bit my tongue against the desire to remind her that her pug nose had been in the same vicinity as mine. One could even argue it had been closer to the scene of the crime than mine had been.
“A man came into the store…”
“What did he look like?” Alice interrupted.
I opened my mouth to describe him and realized I couldn’t. “I…don't remember.”
Alice sighed, the sound like a martyr’s last breath. “You didn’t see him? I thought you were sitting right there in the bookstore.”
“I was.” I frowned as I remembered looking right at him. “I saw him. Even talked to him. But for some reason, I can’t remember anything about him.”
I’d expected another martyr’s exhalation on that one, but Alice looked thoughtful instead. “Go on.”
“I asked him if he needed help and he told me he just wanted to look around.”
When I didn’t continue, Alice sent me a sharp look, lifting a slightly bushy eyebrow.
“I heard a thump a few minutes later and called out to him. He popped his head out from between the aisles and told me he’d just dropped a book.” My mind formed the picture of a dark head, the face a blur within a softly formed outline. “I went back to work until I realized I hadn’t heard anything from him for a while. Then, I went looking and found the vortex.”
“Describe the scene completely,” Alice ordered.
I thought about it for a moment, wanting to get it right. My brain pulled together the details I could dredge up. Like the man’s face, everything about the vortex and the area around it seemed suddenly muzzy.
“I remember a foul stench…” I said. My eyes went wide as I realized my mistake.
“Like sulfur?” Alice asked.
I shook my head, wrapping my arms protectively around myself. “No, it was probably nothing.”
“No. Scent is key. Magical energy usually leaves behind a rotten-egg smell. Are you sure it wasn’t like that?”
How did I tell her I was smelling her cooking? “I…I thought maybe I was smelling spoiled meat.” There, that didn’t imply her cooking. Did it?
She arched both brows. “Spoiled meat?”
I nodded.
“Like what we smell here, now?”
I blinked. “What?” I realized my sense of smell had gone numb to that particular scent. But I thought about it and realized I had smelled it at the cataloging table first. “Yes. You’re right. I smelled it here this morning. When you were coo…” I quickly swallowed the word, hoping she didn’t catch my meaning.
I’m never that lucky.
“When I was cooking?” Alice’s small eyes turned to hard little pebbles behind her oversized glasses. “You thought the stink was coming from my cooking?”
My mouth opened and snapped closed. Then it opened again. I gave her a sickly smile. “Sorry.”
She shook her head. “Brilliant.” Alice pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed a number.
“Are you calling Detective Grym?” Despite my best efforts not to grimace, I felt my face forming into a frown anyway. The last thing I wanted was to face the dour detective with yet another failure proclaiming my inadequacy. In fact, I’d left his car the day before promising myself I’d avoid him at all costs in the future.
Alice stared at me as a ringing sound came through the phone. Finally, a small voice said, “Hello?”
“Lea, sweetums, do you think you could pop over for a few minutes?”
Alice listened to the response and then nodded. “Brilliant. Cheers!” She hung up and gave me a cool glance. “Leandra is an earth witch. Hopefully, she’ll be able to read the magic signature of our thief.”
I liked the sound of that. But I would have equally appreciated the sound of being beaten about the head and shoulders with a pencil if it meant there’d be no Detective Dismal. “Good!” I started toward the front of the building, looking forward to seeing a real witch at
