My gaze wandered over the buildings, to the edges of the woods that encompassed Wandstown. Occasionally, a ward glinted at the edge of town. Usually they were reassuring, but the more I thought about it, the more I had a sinking feeling that the foe we sought already had his claws into our quiet little village.
My intuition was very strong that Jagger had something to do with Miss Iris’ disappearance, but things weren’t adding up as well as I’d have liked.
I needed more information.
Down the street a woman burst into tears and ran across the lane, away from the man she’d been walking with. Another recent run-in with Miss Iris came flooding back to me.
“I don’t want to go to that dingy old cabin!”Miss Iris had yelled at Jagger.
My spine straightened as an idea struck. Had he finally gotten her to go to a dingy old cabin? And if so, was it by force?
Chapter Seventeen
Wandstown was a secret supernatural town. Only certain humans who were involved with the PIA knew it existed, but even they had to get specific enchantments placed on them before stepping inside the town’s wards.
But the area hadn’t always been that way.
At the turn of the century, when the academy was still a school for high-risk human children, there were already a few settlers nearby. One such group was a human family, the Butchers, who claimed their roots in the wilds of Maine all the way back to the eighteenth century. The Butchers were notoriously hard and difficult people who disliked outsiders. When the school became a supernatural spy academy decades later, they were branded as a threat to nearby witches.
A large-enough threat that the government informed the school that they planned on relocating the family against their will. The headmaster at the time didn’t want the Butchers to suffer, so he offered an alternative solution. Mind witches were brought in and made the process of the Butchers’ exit from the area relatively painless.
Although the family hadn’t been around for decades, the residents of Wandstown still called the decrepit cabin that had once been their home Butcher cabin. To my knowledge it was the only permanent structure permitted outside the boundary wards of the town. Residents mostly ignored it, checking on the cabin only once or twice a year to make sure no one was squatting inside. It was the perfect place to hideout, so that was where Alex and I headed first.
“How long did you say Miss Iris has been with this guy?” Alex asked as he batted a tree branch away from his face.
I shrugged. “I’m not really sure. If I had to guess, I would say that they haven’t been dating long. She broke up with one of the chefs who works at Spellcasters two or three months ago, so it couldn’t have been longer than that.”
“So she’s had a lot of boyfriends?”
My eyes narrowed and I glared at him, sensing judgment in his words. “Even if she did, that’s none of your business.”
I liked Alex, but still, I did not need him shaming one of my favorite Wandstown residents.
Alex held up his hands. “Didn’t mean it that way. I only asked because if she’s had a lot of boyfriends, that would explain why no one really bothered to check this guy out.”
My lips pressed together. He had a point. Out of all the Wandstown residents, Miss Iris was most likely to welcome a newcomer. And if he was single, handsome, and charming enough, she’d date him too. The other residents had probably just figured that Jagger was all right once Miss Iris started dating him. I wondered if Jagger had stumbled upon her. Or had he actually meant to use Miss Iris as a mark the whole time?
I was still pondering what Jagger’s motives could possibly be when Alex stopped suddenly. Without a word he bent down and began examining what looked to be a patch of flowers in the meadow about a quarter mile away from the cabin.
“I don’t really need flowers right now.” My voice was teasing although I was really wondering what the hell he was doing. “We’re kinda on an important mission.”
Alex shook his head and waved me over. “This actually might be related to said mission. You see how the tops of all these flowers are missing?”
I looked down. There was a bunch of flowers, all the same type, growing closely together. Within the bunch about twenty stems seemed to be missing their heads. “Yeah . . .”
“Well, I know exactly what kind of flower this is and what it does to the human body.”
I cocked my head. “What’s that?”
Alex stopped fingering a bloomless stem and met my eyes. “When the petals are ground up with water and a few other common ingredients, they make a powerful sleeping elixir. I wonder if someone used it on Miss Iris?”
My blood chilled. A sleeping elixir?Hadsomeone drugged Miss Iris?
I had trouble drawing breath. This could be getting more dangerous than I had anticipated. I stared into the woods, in the direction of Butcher cabin. If we went to get help, what would happen to Miss Iris in the meantime?
A light turned on in the cabin, right where I was staring. My blood froze. So someone was in the cabin, and I highly doubted it was anyone from Wandstown. All my thoughts of turning around for reinforcements vanished. Wordlessly, I grabbed Alex’s hand and pulled him toward the cabin.
Both of us walked lightly and peered around every tree before darting forward a few more feet. The extreme caution seemed a little ridiculous, but it really wasn’t. Someone was inside Butcher cabin and everything inside me screamed that it had to be Jagger—a shifter with incredible hearing. If I was right, the best chance we had at saving Miss Iris would be to ambush the shifter.
