“Don’t worry. They’re your recipe. We’ll enter them under your name and the Jingle Bites Café.” Hollis smiles.
“We really should just enter them under yours,” Willow tells her. “I don’t want to take credit from you. You’ve been keeping this place afloat.”
“Oh!” Hollis beams. “Well. I mean, that’s so nice of you, but maybe next year?”
The Christmas market is bustling,even though it’s a weekday. People are pouring into town for the Bake-Off and the accompanying free treats.
People are even crowded in the part of the market near Lilith’s stall. We wait for the crowd of teenage girls dressed like goth Christmas witches to clear out. And there’s Lilith, menacing like a spider in her lair, smoke from the beeswax candles curling around her.
She strokes the back of her black cat, Salem, then turns her dark gaze on us. “So, you’ve finally solved the murder.”
29
WILLOW
“Wait, we solved it? Yay!” Josie claps. “Celebratory spider cookies for everyone!”
“It’s Lenore. Lenore poisoned Jonah and Taylor Grace,” I muse.
Lilith peers at me. “Excuse me, Lenore?”
“Yeah, we saw her brewing a witch’s potion,” Hughes explains.
“Lenore is not a witch,” Lilith sneers.
“Yeah, but she has access to poison through you. She’s a good enough witch to kill someone.”
“No,” Lilith states. “She isn’t. She’s barely able to keep up in potions class. She can’t tell mint from tarragon, and she ordered eye of newt on Amazon. They sent her plastic shrimp, and she couldn’t tell the difference. She is not the murderer.”
“We have text messages. She and Taylor Grace were fighting, and she had all these poisonous leaves.” Hughes waves his phone.
Lilith picks up a twig, which might be her magic wand, with feathers through the leaves. “These are what you found at the murder scene?” Using two black fingernails, Lilith plucks a leaf.
“Yes.”
“Then you’re the murderer.”
Josie and Hughes gasp.
“No, I didn’t kill her!” I cry.
“You bought these,” she tells me.
“Wait, I what?”
“These are the leaves from the blend to brew mulled wine,” Lilith declares.
“Oh! For the Christmas party.”
“So how did they end up in the shop?” Hughes asks.
“Don’t look at me.” Josie shrugs.
“I don’t have the answer,” Lilith sniffs.
“But you said that we’d solved the murder, so you must know something,” I argue.
“No,” Lilith says, “but the cards said you will solve the murder today. So I assumed you had.”
