Although I was used to the blaring noise the town called their siren, I understood his confusion. The siren sounded more like a foghorn than the police or ambulance sirens of other cities and towns. It was also incredibly loud so that the entire town could hear it. And while I wasn’t fussed by the amount of noise, my heart rate spiked at its implication.
A resident of Wandstown was in trouble.
I grabbed his wrist. “It’s our emergency signal. We need to get to Town Hall. They’ll tell us what’s happening.”
Moving fast, we ran down the streets. When we burst through the doors of Town Hall only a few minutes later I was surprised to see that it was already brimming with people. Even elderly Miss Rogers, clad in a nightgown and slippers that reflected her urgency, had beat us here.
I nodded at two spots in the back row. As soon as we sat down, the Mayor of Wandstown beat his gavel against the podium and everyone quieted.
“Thank you, residents, for arriving so quickly.” He spoke into a microphone, pausing briefly to adjust the height before continuing. “It seems those already aware of the issue have spread the word efficiently.”
“Yeah! Sally Parker came banging on my door and said to hurry it up before running off like a jackrabbit,” Old man Elijah called out and twirled his cane in the air. “I’d like to know why I’m missing my programs!”
“Yes. Of course. Then I should get on with it.” The mayor gulped and the microphone amplified the noise. “It appears that Miss Iris has gone missing.”
A chorus of gasps went up from the crowd.
My spine straightened.
“No one knows the exact time she went missing, but she didn’t show up for work today, which is unusual. She usually pops in to check on things even if she’s not on the schedule. Nor was she at her beloved wine club this evening. It was the ladies of the wine club who called this very meeting, for last night Miss Iris had mentioned she wouldn’t miss it for the world. No one was able to get a hold of her on her cell phone, and she wasn’t at home when one of the ladies went to check. As you might imagine they were all very worried.”
I bit my lip. Yes, Miss Iris missing her wine club was suspicious. I didn’t know a damn thing about wine, but Miss Irislovedto talk about all the varietals she’d tried when the ladies had wine night. As far as I knew, she never missed it.
“Does anyone have any information as to where Miss Iris might have gone?” the mayor asked, wringing out his hands.
No one said a word. A few people, clearly the parents of Spellcasters students who had gotten swept up in the tide of townspeople rushing to Town Hall, looked very bewildered. One of them was a super muscular father with wild brown hair who reminded me instantly of Jagger.
Jagger . . .
I stood up.“Has anyone asked Jagger where she went?”
Everyone shook their head and a few people whispered Jagger’s name as if they’d never heard it before.
“They’ve been dating for . . . a while, I guess. He’s a shifter. And to be honest he seemed a little . . .”
“Handsy?” someone supplied.
“Possessive,” someone else offered.
“Controlling? Or at least he would be if Iris would let him,” another voice said.
“Yeah, all those things.” I made eye contact with the Mayor, who was taking this information in with wide eyes. Clearly, he was among the few who hadn’t met Jagger yet. “I think we should probably find Jagger and talk to him. Even if she isn’t with him, he might know where she is.”
Everyone split off, each having their own idea of how best to help find Miss Iris. Alex stuck with me. His parents hadn’t come to the meeting. I suspected most of the Spellcasters families were at the tavern and the workers had probably left a skeleton crew to take care of the tourists while other servers went to Town Hall to see what the fuss was about.
Before I’d done it, I hadn’t been sure if bringing up Jagger was the right idea. But almost right away my unease had disappeared. Other residents seemed just as unsure about the shifter as I was. And no one had any solid information on the guy, which seemed strange.
Whathadbrought him here anyway? Wandstown was a sleepy little place. The biggest draw was that Spellcasters was nearby. But why would a random shifter just roll into town?
Flashes of conversations in which Miss Iris had mentioned Jagger ran through my mind. Slowly, a thread that tied the conversations together emerged. The shifter seemed taken with Miss Iris’ father.
I turned to Alex. “Do you know anything about the headmaster who ran Spellcasters before my mother?”
Alex’s eyebrows knitted together. “I looked him up briefly just in case he came upon the mental exam. Like you said, he was the headmaster before your mother—for an extraordinarily long time too. Twenty years, I think. Before that he was a spy, also like your mother. On his biggest case he took down a ring of shifters, killing most of them. I think he had a personal motive for that one? If I recall correctly, one of the shifters had attacked him before. Other than that, I don’t know much. Why do you ask?”
I nodded. That was information anyone could find in a textbook on Spellcasters history. However, I noticed that Alex had omitted the fact that Headmaster Bulspot had a daughter—Miss Iris. His lack of knowledge in this aspect of Spellcasters history wasn’t unexpected.
Miss Iris had always kept quiet—or at least quiet for her—about her relationship to the ex-headmaster because he had enemies from his spy days. But Jagger was too young to have been one of those enemies.
