A Gaggle of Ghastly Grandmamas: Wonky Inn Book 9 Read online

  Where was Mr Wylie when you needed him? “There has to be another way back,” I puzzled. There’s no way Meztli was trekking backwards and forwards from up beyond that cliff.”

  “Maybe we should just call a taxi from reception, eh?” A raven fluttered onto Silvan’s shoulder, forcing the pigeon that had taken up residence on his head to shift over a little.

  The reception.

  There was an elevator there!

  “What if—”.

  The elevator in reception was a carbon copy of the one that had turned up at the inn, in almost every way. Five buttons, even though, as with Whittle Inn, The Gilded Cage only had four floors. However, in this case the button at the bottom had been labelled Four, and the one on the top was labelled G.

  “Bingo!” I said. “But why did we end up in that horrible desolate frozen wood with the man-eating ivy, if our elevator could have brought us here?”

  Silvan shrugged, and a mouse popped its head out of his collar. “Maybe Meztli created a safety mechanism. The elevator was spellbound. None of your other guests ended up in the wood. It simply transported them to the floor they needed. But when we entered, it took us to the wood.”

  I shuddered. “This was all about you! She wanted you to find her.”

  He nodded; his mouth set in a grim line. “It seems she had it all planned out.”

  We exchanged a look. I’d been afforded a glimpse into the part of his life I didn’t often get to see. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know any more.

  Not for now. Maybe another time.

  We loaded most of the animals inside before I pressed the button for G and stepped out. I turned to face my attentive audience of small mammals, rodents, winged creatures and goodness knows what else. “I’m hopefully sending you to the bar at Whittle Inn. You can wait for us to join you,” I told them, “or you can go your own way and do your own thing.” The doors began to slide closed and I crossed my fingers that they would end up where I assumed they would: on the ground floor of my wonky inn. “May the Goddess speed. Oh, and be good!” I instructed them as they disappeared from view.

  Ting.

  The elevator began to climb.

  Ting.

  It passed the next floor.

  Ting.

  A muted sound.

  Ting.

  The faint sound of the doors opening somewhere a very long way away.

  I took a deep breath.

  That left Ezra and the white owl that couldn’t be coaxed from its cage.

  And Mr Hoo of course. I unlocked the front door and popped my head outside, searching for my feathered friend. Mr Hoo had remained in place on the swinging inn sign.

  “Hoo-ooo-ooo hoo?”

  “What kept me so long? I’ve been busy.” I lifted my right arm. “I need your help.”

  “Hoo!” He fluttered down and pecked at my ear, his way of saying he’d missed me I think. I carried him through to the conservatory. He spotted Ezra lying on the floor.

  “Hoooooo?” he asked sadly.

  “Yes.” My eyes welled up again.

  “Hooo-oooo.” He snuggled against me and I took in a shuddering breath.

  “Okay, little fella,” I said, and showed him the white owl in the cage. “I need you to coax the big guy out, as quickly as you can.”

  “Hoo!”

  Mr Hoo jumped off my arm and landed in front of the large white cage. He twittered at the owl inside, which regarded him with great solemnity.

  “Oo ooh,” it said. “Oo ooh.”

  “Hoo-ooo. Hoo! Hoo-oo?”

  “Ooh. Oo-ooh. Tooo-weet.”

  “Hoooooo.” Mr Hoo’s soft hoot sounded mournful.

  “Alf?” Silvan called me over from where he’d been rearranging Ezra’s limbs. “If I take his shoulders can you manage his feet?” He stooped to pick up Ezra’s wand and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

  Ezra was a big chap, but fortunately Silvan was strong, and in spite of his sore ribs we somehow managed, together, to move Ezra along the short passage to the reception. Silvan had wedged open the elevator door with a stool, ready for us to manoeuvre our precious cargo inside.

  “Carefully now,” Silvan said as we swung Ezra into a sitting position on the floor. Silvan rearranged the detective’s coat, tidying the man up. When he looked my way, I saw the pain on his face. “I should have done more. I should have taken Meztli out at the beginning.”

  “Maybe,” I said, but I completely understood why he hadn’t. It would have been against the witches’ honour code. Witch-on-witch killings were anathema to our creed. Ezra had wanted to arrest Meztli. Sadly that hadn’t been possible. Perhaps, without Ezra, Silvan would have behaved differently.

  I reached out and linked my fingers through Silvan’s. “You did your best. It all happened so quickly.”

  He turned his face away and cleared his throat.

  Deciding he needed a little space, I stepped away. “I’ll grab Mr Hoo so we can get out of here,” I told him softly and retraced my steps to the conservatory.

  I found Mr Hoo and the white owl with their heads together, twittering so quickly I’m surprised either of them could hear what the other was saying. By some miracle, Mr Hoo had persuaded the white owl to leave the safety of its cage. They had perched on top of a pile of empty cages.

  “We need to go,” I called.

  Mr Hoo swivelled his head to level his bright orange eyes on the white owl. “Hooo?”

  “Ter-woo,” it replied.

  I lifted my arms, and first Mr Hoo and then the white owl soared across the room to settle on me. Even between the pair of them they weighed nothing at all. Just two enormous fluffy balls of feathers. The white owl, obviously nervous, turned its head away so that I couldn’t scrutinise it, but Mr Hoo twittered conversationally, making every attempt to put it at ease.

  She’s alright most of the time, he was saying, you can trust Alfhild.

  After glancing around one last time at the cages and baskets, mindful that I didn’t want to leave anyone behind, I gently carried the owls back to Silvan, waiting for me at the elevator, fully in charge of his emotions once more.

  “Ready? Silvan asked, and I nodded.

  “Let’s get Ezra back to the people who matter.” I stepped in ahead of him, and he removed the stool. The doors slid smoothly closed.

  Ting.

  I stared at the buttons. Upside down. Four, three, two, one, G. “What if these don’t take us back to the inn?” I asked.

  Silvan’s index finger hovered over the G. “Then we’ll be in for another adventure.” His dark eyes met mine. All will be well. Trust in the magick.

  “Hoooo!” Mr Hoo agreed.

  I sucked in a breath.

  “Alright then,” I agreed. “Let’s go home.”

  I can’t explain that journey. What should have taken ten or twenty seconds seemed to take much longer. I avoided looking in the mirror at the back of the lift, staring straight down at my feet instead, but by gazing at my feet I could clearly see Ezra’s, and that brought a lump to my throat.

  Ting.

  It had taken long enough to get to the first passing point.

  Ting.

  My arms were aching from holding them out at my sides as I supported the owls.

  Ting.

  The white owl, probably sensing my discomfort, fluttered uneasily, and I had to duck to avoid having my eye taken out by the corner of its wing.

  Ting.

  Finally.

  I held my breath as the doors slid open, revealing the concerned faces of Gwyn and Elise waiting for us in the bar of Whittle Inn. My instinct had been right. Delia had connected the elevator at The Gilded Cage to the one she had created in my bar.

  Elise gasped and clamped a hand to her mouth when she spotted Ezra on the floor of the lift. She scanned our expressions, searching for good news. I gently shook my head and she rushed towards us, as though she would scoop Ezra up and breathe fresh life into him. Silvan caught her and held her as she collapsed on th
e floor at his feet.

  “Not Ezra,” she wept. “Not my friend.”

  The Ministry of Witches were on the ball, as they always were. Gwyn contacted them and within no time at all, by breakfast in fact, they had sent representatives down to transport Ezra’s body back to London, while other forensic investigators undertook a thorough examination of The Gilded Cage which they accessed, as we had, by using the elevator.

  Our guests, waking up that morning and drifting down to the bar expecting a fry-up, took everything in their stride. Some of them chose to eat in The Hug but others were happy to use the kitchen table, and we created a number of sittings to accommodate everyone. Monsieur Emietter, in his element surrounded by so many adoring witches, filled and refilled plates, all the while gesturing extravagantly, waving his spatulas around with wild abandon while conversing in his own language with those who could do so.

  I perched on a stool at the bar, leaving Charity, Florence and Archibald to look after our guests. My own heart beat with a hollow monotony, compounded by my empathy for Silvan and his misery, and I watched the comings and goings of the investigators while nursing endless mugs of strong coffee. They tracked backwards and forwards from the elevator and through the inn with evidence they’d collected at the scene, neatly labelled and bagged—all of the baskets and cages and crates, for example—before also assembling all of Elise’s and Ezra’s original investigative notes as well, intending to hold a proper enquiry once they’d returned to London.

  Silvan and I were taken aside separately by the investigators from the Ministry of Witches to answer all of their questions. I did so openly and honestly, explaining all I knew about Delia’s death and all that had happened after we’d stumbled on The Gilded Cage. I didn’t mention that Silvan had been there before, some time ago, on a secret mission. That was for him to share.

  Or not.

  “But I don’t understand how Ezra ended up there,” I mourned. “He’d headed back to The Hay Loft. I let him out myself.”

  “I think I can help you with that,” Gwyn intervened. “I heard Ezra at the back door and I let him in. He said he’d left his mobile phone contraption thingie here in the bar somewhere, and when I showed him in, we found Mr Hoo creating a merry kerfuffle because you’d disappeared into the lift without him.”

  “So he followed us?”

  “Mr Hoo was most insistent.”

  I glanced over to the fireplace. Mr Hoo had taken his habitual spot on the high-backed armchair there, but he’d shuffled over a little to allow the white owl some space. They warmed their feathers and dozed, the trauma of the event behind them at last.

  “They should have stayed here, where they were safe,” I lamented. “Although it probably wouldn’t have made much difference to the outcome.”

  “Except by all accounts you would have been outnumbered,” Gwyn replied in her crisp, no-nonsense way. “And then Silvan would be standing in front of me now, trying to explain what had happened to you.” She had a point. “And believe me, Alfhild. The day he returns home without you, I’ll make jam out of his innards. Now buck up. We have an inn to run.”

  When the investigators had finally gone and the scene had been released, I gathered all of our guests into the bar. We stood shoulder to shoulder, forming a large circle around the elevator. I couldn’t bear its presence in my inn for one more minute.

  I didn’t know how to undo the spell Meztli had cast that had created this portal between The Gilded Cage and Whittle Inn in the first place. Nobody did. But the one thing I was sure of was that as a community of witches, we were stronger together.

  I stood in front of them and called them to order. “My friends,” I began, “you are a wider part of the Whittle Inn family. Thank you for your friendship, and for maintaining your relationship with my beloved great-grandmother even after death called her from this plane.” There were murmurs of appreciation.

  I took a deep breath. “You who congregate here with Alfhild Gwynfyre Daemonne and myself today, share hundreds of years of experience between you. What I’m asking is that we pool our collective wisdom and our knowledge,” I indicated the elevator, “and that you join me in an effort to banish this grim monument to an unhinged and unhappy personality, so that we can truly make Whittle Inn a happy place to be once more.”

  A chorus of ayes greeted my words, and with no dissenters, I lifted my wand. The other witches followed suit. I banished thoughts of Ezra from my mind, accepting that he’d found a better place on the other side, and focused entirely on my own spell. I blocked out what everyone else was doing, imagining the elevator being erased, along with The Gilded Cage and the skeletal wood on top of the high cliff that surrounded it.

  I brought my focus back to the elevator itself, imagined the brass of the buttons and the ironwork, so curly and ornate, simply melting away. The ores pooled to form a large puddle that poured through the floorboards and sank deep into the earth a long way below. And I imagined the wood losing its shine, ageing and beginning to decay, gradually rotting away, crumbling into dust until I could blow it away with a single breath. I scattered it on the breeze, and Florence’s feather duster swept it away.

  And when I looked up, the elevator had disappeared and the hole in the roof had closed over … and all was as it should be.

  Pleased, but feeling a little shaky, I organised several trays of sherries to be handed around for everyone to indulge in while the Wonky Inn Ghostly Clean-up Crew reset the tables and chairs so that we could get back to the serious business of holding games tournaments. Perhaps it would have been better to cancel, but I sensed that everyone at Whittle Inn needed a little light relief. For my part, I intended to hit the Buckaroo table with a vengeance after I’d grabbed a shower and had something to eat.

  I returned my wand to my pocket and found a slip of paper there. The telephone number of Ezra’s brother-in-law. A man who could fix my boiler. I remembered how Ezra had smiled at the unintentional euphemism and my heart ached for his loss. I intended to call his brother-in-law and invite him down to the inn and, while he fiddled with my workings, I’d ask him to tell me stories about the sweet detective I’d known for too brief a time.

  “Ooh, Miss Alf!” Florence hopped up and down, beckoning me over to the bar.

  I meandered over to where she and Charity were huddled together reading a newspaper that one of the investigators had left behind. “Have you seen this?”

  “What is it?” I leaned over to get a better look. “Next Cam Vendez Witching Impossible Movie to be filmed in East Devon.” My mouth dropped open in astonishment. “Whoa! No way!”

  “I know, right?” Charity grinned in excitement. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if they filmed somewhere near Whittlecombe?”

  “It would.” I read below the headline, unable to hold back a squeak of excitement. “Ooooh. Tough guy actor Dom Bruise to team up with hot Witchywood icon Brian Ben-Olds in the latest instalment of the Witching Impossible franchise.”

  Silvan, alerted by my sudden excitement, came to join us, squeezing Florence out. She wiggled her feather duster at him in annoyance.

  “Witching Impossible 7, as yet untitled, is the high-octane follow-up to Witching Impossible 6: Wall Doubt. Destined for a 2021 release, filming is scheduled to take place in Venice, Hong Kong, New York and East Devon, UK. Sources have confirmed that Brian Ben-Olds will co-star with Dom Bruise!” I jumped up and down. “So exciting!”

  “Who’s Brian Ben-Olds when he’s at home?” Silvan asked.

  I jabbed my finger at the photo that had been included with the story, a library shot of him, taken a few years earlier when he’d been the lead in a war movie. “Only the handsomest hunk to ever grace the planet earth,” I enthused. “His hair is longer now.”

  “Really?” Silvan narrowed amused eyes at me. “You like long hair, huh?” He shook his own mane at me. Neither of us had cleaned up from the previous night’s activities. His clothes were caked with mud and muck, his face streaked with dust and grime, an
d his hair full of forest detritus. He needed a bath.

  I probably didn’t look much better myself.

  “He’s a great actor too, Mr Silvan,” Florence told him. Trust her. She was addicted to Witchflix. No doubt she’d seen all of Brian Ben-Olds’ movies.

  “I don’t doubt it for a moment,” he replied, smiling at me.

  I pretended to fan myself. “He’s scorching.”

  “Hmmm,” he snaked an arm around my waist.

  “Why, I do believe you’re jealous, Mr Silvanus,” I said, in my best Vivien Leigh southern belle accent, batting my eyelashes at him.

  He grinned and bent his head to kiss me.

  “Really, Horace.” Phyllis Bliss’s dulcet tones broke into our moment. I sensed Florence fade away, while Charity made a beeline for the exit. Phyllis stood on the other side of the bar, holding up her sherry glass. I waited for her to reprimand him for his appearance and for his choice in women, but instead she beamed at us, an enormous smile that dispelled the gloom of the day.

  She raised her glass at us. “Alfhild, I’ve been watching you this week. At first I imagined you were a grumpy sloven, no matter what your great-grandmother told me—”

  Blooming cheek!

  “—but now I see that the way you balance your life coupled with the strength you demonstrate in adversity is a credit to your great-grandmother. You are every bit as bright and brave as she was, and in many ways, given your tendency to be overly emotional, rather more sensitive and compassionate.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I settled for a heartfelt, “Thank you!”

  Phyllis turned to Silvan “You’ve found a good one there, my boy. Don’t let her get away. In fact,” she leaned towards him and lowered her voice as though that would prevent me from hearing what she would say next, “when will you make an honest woman of her?”

  Silvan gaped at his granny in horror, but I picked up my own sherry glass and clinked it against hers.

  “Cheers, Phyllis!” I laughed, flushing a bright pink.