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“Hello!” it greeted.
I sighed and called back to Daithi, “It’s okay. It’s just a parrot.”
“You’re certain it’s not a familiar?”
That’s a good point. No. No, I’m not certain.
“Fuck. It could be.” I considered it again. “How can you tell?”
“If it is, then we must hurry, Charlie. It could be communicating with its master now.”
“Shit, you’re right. Go upstairs and see if you can find anything witch-related that can help us learn more about their project. I’ll sweep here.”
As he walked away with a nod, I ignored the one-word parrot and continued my search for personal details. Her life as a human was my expertise and where I knew I could hurt a person if need be.
I found her laptop in the dining room/study. Helpfully, she had a piece of paper with a list of her passwords in her desk drawer. Witch4life. It made me cringe as I typed it in and loaded up her bookmarked website. I looked through her emails but, as a typical middle-aged lady, she had given her email address to thousands of websites that now spammed her inbox and made searching for anything relevant impossible.
I made a note of her information to log in at home, where I wouldn’t be rushed. Then I tried to log in to her bank account, but without the answers to her security questions, I couldn’t view any of her recent purchases. I pieced together some of her information from the letters on the counter and set up an alert for any new purchases and their location.
I was still typing on my phone when Daithi came downstairs. “Any luck?” I asked.
“Luck was not in her possession, but I found a bookcase, which seems very useful.”
He suddenly had my full attention. “You found books on witches?”
“No. However, the bookcase is interesting. I think you should see it.” He turned on his heel, his green hair flipped behind him.
I got up from the desk and followed him to the stairs, muttering, “What could be so interesting about a fucking bookcase? We don’t have time to admire woodwork, Daithi. We’ve got bitch witches to find.”
He was looking down at me from the top. His lip twitched. “It is not the woodwork that has me intrigued.”
I followed him into the master bedroom, which was decorated similarly to the entire house, with pinks and soft furnishings. The bookcase was floor to ceiling and covered the entire wall opposite the bed. Made of a dark wood, it had thick shelves that were all linear; itwassome nice woodwork. And books lined every shelf.
“Shit me, Debs. Get yourself a referral for therapy; you’ve got an addiction.”
“Reading is not common?”
I shrugged and touched a book on the shelf. A romance. It demanded that I pick it up and take it home. It wasn’t a calling I’d had from a book before. But I trusted my instincts and pulled it from the shelf.
“Not so much now that you can just watch a story on Netflix.” Daithi raised a brow at me and looked at my new possession. I shrugged. “It wants me.” I looked back at the shelves. “So, other than Debs being a book hoarder, what’s interesting about it?”
“Can you not see it?” he said cryptically.
“See what?” I stepped back and took another look at the shelves. My eyes drifted to a deep line in the wood. “Oh. Wait.” I followed the line up to the top of the bookcase. “What the fuck?” Excitement bubbled inside me. “Is this a secret door?”
“I believe so.”
“Daithi, this is so fucking cool,” I breathed.
I could feel the amusement in his voice. “I’m glad you are so enthused about this.”
“Enthused? I’m fucking buzzing. I’ll get one built as soon as all this shit is over. Witch bitches shouldn’t get all the fun things.” I moved a book to find a doorknob. The wood groaned as I twisted the handle and pulled it open. I grinned back at Daithi. “Come on, then. Let’s go investigate the secret room.”
Stepping into the room made me immediately on edge. Like walking into custard, the air had a thick quality and tasted like alcohol and regret. I could smell sickness and hospital and salty tears. And worst of all, I felt like it had dragged all the positivity from me. Like there was a dementor sucking out all the happiness.
“Can you feel that?” I asked Daithi. He nodded but said nothing.
After a few seconds, the feeling vanished as though it had never been there at all, and I shrugged off the experience.
