A Slice of Christmas Magic Read online

  I stopped in my tracks. She was about a hundred feet ahead of me before she realized I wasn’t following anymore. She turned back. I started walking again, and she waited for me.

  “Is it really that dangerous?” I asked, trying to keep the quiver out of my voice.

  “We’ll be fine,” she said firmly. “Plus, we have a vicious guard dog on our side.” Mitzy yipped in agreement. I tried to smile, but I couldn’t shake the anxious feeling threatening to suffocate me.

  Chapter 3

  Dear Elodie,

  I think my roommate is trying to control my mind. I catch him staring at me sometimes intensely for long periods of time. When I ask him what he’s doing, he ignores me and continues to stare. Usually I leave the room. Sometimes I even leave the apartment. The strangest part is after I catch him staring at me, I often have the urge to do his laundry or wash his dishes. That has to be coming from him, right? How do I stop him?

  Sincerely,

  Mind Meld Man

  Dear Mind Meld Man,

  It sounds like you and your roommate should spend some time apart. Maybe far apart, like in different apartments. Otherwise I’d recommend wearing a tinfoil hat and hoping for the best.

  Ask and I’ll Answer,

  Elodie

  “I’m coming with you.” I could hear Lena’s voice loud and clear even though Aunt Erma’s cell phone was pressed to her ear.

  “Now, Lena,” Aunt Erma began in a tone I knew meant she was about to try and talk her out of it.

  “I said I’m coming,” she roared. “So help me, Erma, if you don’t get back here right now …”

  “All right, we’re on our way,” Aunt Erma relented.

  My head was spinning during the drive back to town. My thoughts had begun to blur as the car had warmed up, but there was still a swirling feeling in my stomach. Mitzy settled in my lap and as the snow melted off her fur and soaked through my pants my eyes snapped open. “Does the Morning Pie Crew know about the tree?” I asked.

  She shook her head and merged onto the highway.

  “You’re the only one I’ve told.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s safer. People can get strange around that much power. Even the most trustworthy people …” Her voice trailed off, and she tightened her grip on the steering wheel.

  “I thought you guys shared everything.” I couldn’t help but feel a little proud to be in on the secret, but it scared me too.

  “Everyone has secrets,” she said. She pressed her lips together and kept her eyes fixed to the road.

  I stopped prying. I stared at the road too until we returned to Hocus Hills.

  Lena was waiting on the curb in front of her hardware store.

  “I’m driving,” she announced once Erma had pulled up and rolled down the window. “We’ll get there faster.” She turned on her heel before Aunt Erma could protest. Aunt Erma rolled her eyes and parked the car.

  “I’ll be right back. I have to put Mitzy in the apartment,” she said. I saw her sneak around to the alley with Mitzy in tow. There were a few people peering in the windows of the pie shop. I remembered the “Back in ten minutes” sign with a twinge of guilt. They’d probably forgive me if only they knew we were going to save the world from the power-hungry Drake family. Unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to give them that excuse.

  Minutes later I was in the back seat of Lena’s car, clinging to the handle by the window with one hand and gripping the plush blue seat with the other. Speed limits were merely a suggestion in Lena’s world. I swear as we rounded the corners, the car tipped up on two wheels. When I said this out loud, Lena told me to stop being so dramatic.

  “You’ll thank me when we get there and get this taken care of quickly,” she said, speeding up as the light in front of us changed from green to yellow.

  “Here, eat this.” Aunt Erma handed small squares to me and Lena before popping one into her own mouth.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It will protect you,” Aunt Erma answered.

  “From what, a car accident?” I asked.

  “The magic.”

  I inspected the square before eating it. It was white with little green flecks in it. Was it part of the tree? I glanced at Aunt Erma and she gave me a sharp look, confirming my suspicion. I took a tentative bite. It tasted like salt-water taffy, so I put the rest in my mouth and chewed. I always expected to hear wind chimes when I ate something magical, but to this date that had not happened.

  In between muttering wishes for a safe arrival, I asked about the plan.

  “What happens if we find the Drakes?”

  “We play a game of shake the Drakes,” Lena said in such a deep, sinister voice that despite my nerves I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “If we see the Drakes, you, Susie, will call Violet,” Aunt Erma began. “And you, Lena, will detain Stan and Dennis. I will take care of Brenda.”

  Why did I always end up with the lamest jobs? While others would go down in history books for saving the world and taking down the bad guys, I would be credited in the footnotes for making a phone call.

  We squealed into a parking spot on the street at the edge of town.

  “We should walk in so we can sneak up on what’s happening. Get a feel for what we’re getting into,” Aunt Erma suggested.

  “Everyone take note of where we parked in case we get separated.” Lena pointed to the street signs on the corner. My stomach flipped. In case we got separated? That thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. I began to regret my insistence to come along. I glanced at Aunt Erma, and she reached over and squeezed my arm. For a moment I felt as if everything was going to be okay.

  I was on high alert. My ears strained to hear something that sounded like evil magic. It was quiet except for the wind that whistled around the buildings. A paper bag blew by like a tumbleweed. By this time of day, the streets should have been bustling. It felt like a scene from a horror movie but even more surreal. I scanned the windows of every building we passed and braced myself in case Brenda’s face appeared. We peeked into a bakery. It should have been full of people buying their bread and doughnuts, but it was empty.

  I positioned myself in the middle as we walked shoulder to shoulder towards the center of town and resisted the urge to reach out and grab Aunt Erma’s hand for protection.

  “Where is everyone?” I whispered. The layout of the town was similar to Hocus Hills except their town square was a little smaller, and there was a duck pond near the gazebo.

  Lena shrugged.

  “I don’t know, but it can’t be good,” Aunt Erma said.

  I stopped in my tracks. “I hear something,” I said. They both stopped, and I held my breath as we listened. There was a sound coming from the church.

  “We need more yarn,” we heard a deep voice yell. The church was a large white wooden building with steps leading up to a set of dark wood double doors. We crept up the steps, and Lena pushed the door open a crack. She peeked inside.

  “I think we found everyone,” she said, pushing the door the rest of the way open.

  The church was jam-packed with people of all ages. It was a flurry of activity, but I couldn’t figure out what they were doing. Some people were rushing around the room picking up skeins of yarn and moving them from one pew to another. Several people were knitting. Knitting? This seemed like more than just a quirky small-town activity. There was a large red circle that looked like a knitted parachute. People were working on different edges.

  “What are they making?” Lena wondered aloud.

  “A mitten,” a man with an armload of yarn balls yelled as he rushed past us.

  “The world’s largest,” one of the women who was knitting called.

  “Are the Drakes here?” The room was packed, but I didn’t see any sign of them.

  Aunt Erma shook her head. “I don’t feel their magic. It’s strange that they’re not here though.” She looked a little uneasy, and I took a small step closer to her.


  “Why is everyone knitting?” I asked. I almost felt dizzy from the hysteria around us.

  “It must be part of the spell,” Aunt Erma said.

  “But why?” I asked. It seemed like such a strange activity, and not at all in line with their ultimate goal of more power.

  “It’s probably an accident,” Aunt Erma said. “They’re too power hungry to focus on getting the spell right. They’re frenzied as they alter the spices. It’s very hard to get the intention right – takes a lot of finesse. That’s why you should always keep it simple.” She was speaking to me now. I wasn’t sure it was the time for a magic lesson, but I nodded as I looked around at the chaos. I certainly didn’t ever want this to happen.

  “How are we going to break the spell?” Lena asked, jumping out of the way of a frantic boy who was chasing the yarn balls he had just dropped as they rolled across the floor.

  “Do we need to break it?” I asked, looking around. I mean, what they were doing was crazy, but it didn’t seem to be harmful. Unless they started capturing people inside the giant mitten once they finished knitting it.

  “It could be dangerous to leave them like this. They won’t be able to stop until they’ve finished no matter how tired they are, and some of them could actually work themselves to death,” Aunt Erma said. Okay, that sounded bad. She was surveying the scene intently. “Lena, do you have them?”

  “I told you you’d need me,” she said as she fished around in her yellow purse. She set it on the floor, and her whole head disappeared as she leaned into it. I was tempted to grab her feet, so she wouldn’t fall in. I didn’t know what exactly was inside there. I had asked her once how the magic purse worked. Was it just like a closet or was there a whole house inside?

  “Oh no, dear, I couldn’t tell you that. Your aunt may be ready to divulge all of her secrets, but I like to keep one or two up my sleeve,” she had said.

  “Ah, yes, here it is.” Her muffled voice emerged from the purse a second before she did. She triumphantly held up a stack of Erma’s Pies boxes.

  “You keep pie in there?” I asked.

  “You never know when you’ll need some,” she said. “Impromptu dinner party, afternoon snack, an antidote to stop crazed knitters.”

  Aunt Erma took the boxes from Lena and opened the lid. She took a deep breath.

  “The triple berry. Yes, this one should work. The unaltered spices will counteract the altered spices they used.” She pulled a bottle out of her pocket. It was clear and plain, not like her other spice bottles, but it had green flakes in it. I recognized them as leaves from the tree but I didn’t know when she’d had a chance to crumble them up and put them in a bottle. She sprinkled a healthy dose on top of all the pies. “A little extra boost,” she explained.

  “They’re not all going to eat willingly. We’re going to have to coax them,” Lena said.

  Lena did some more digging in her purse and emerged with three forks and a knife. We each took a pie. I watched Aunt Erma approach a young man who was knitting and offer him a bite of pie. He shook his head vehemently, his sandy brown hair flopping across his face. Without missing a beat, Aunt Erma shoved a bite into his mouth. His eyes widened so much I thought they might pop out of his head. He chewed and swallowed, all the while making “Mmmm” noises. Then his face changed. His brow furrowed, and he looked around.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lena said. “You’re just having a strange dream. Go home.”

  The man shrugged and shuffled off.

  “All right, everyone, understand the plan?” Aunt Erma asked.

  Lena and I nodded. Then we all set off, shoving small bites of pie into people’s mouths as we went. Some of the people I encountered eagerly opened their mouths when offered pie – they were probably hungry after all this knitting – while others proved to be a bit more challenging. I dodged a man who tried to jab me with a knitting needle. I snuck behind him and reached around to shove a forkful of pie into his mouth.

  “Aren’t they all going to talk and figure out they had the same strange dream?” I asked Lena as I airplaned a bite into a young girl’s mouth. Lena did the same with the girl’s mother. The girl dropped the yarn ball she had been winding up and followed her mother out the door.

  “Most of them will have forgotten about this completely by tomorrow. Only a few will have a distant memory of this strange dream,” she said. “It won’t be enough for them to put it together that it actually happened.”

  “Some of them might be a little sore tomorrow from all the work,” Aunt Erma said as she ran past, chasing a man with gray hair and thick glasses. The man threw a ball of yarn at Aunt Erma, and she tackled him and shoved the bite of pie into his mouth before he could stop her.

  I was bitten at least six times, but we finally cleared the church of all frantic knitters. I leaned against the wall and began planning which pajamas I was going to put on as soon as I got home – the footy pajamas with the turtle print – and what I was going to eat – pizza with three sides of pie.

  “We have to get all this out of here.” Aunt Erma motioned to the giant knitted circle that had yet to take shape as the largest mitten in the world.

  “Why?” I asked. I didn’t want to let anything keep me from that pizza any longer than necessary.

  “It’s a lot harder to convince people it was a dream when they can come to the church and find two tons of yarn and a knitted circle as large as a parachute.

  After we’d cleared everything, dispersing some of it to different shops and shoving the rest of it into the back of Lena’s car, we headed back to Hocus Hills.

  “What are those?” I asked as we pulled into town, pointing at a light pole plastered with sheets of paper.

  “I’m not sure.” Lena slowed the car down. Aunt Erma finished reading first and gasped.

  In big bold letters, the signs said, “Tired of hiding? It’s time to work for the Improvement for Magical People. If you’re ready to step out of the shadows, stay tuned for more information from the IMPs.” The flyers were everywhere.

  “It was all a circus. They just wanted to get you out of town, so you couldn’t stop them from doing this,” Lena practically yelled.

  Aunt Erma let her head fall to the back of the seat. “I don’t know why we didn’t see that before.” She sighed.

  A crew led by Violet was already pulling posters down.

  “We were so focused on what you guys were doing that we didn’t even see this happen until it was too late,” she said. “They worked fast. It was done in a matter of seconds.”

  Aunt Erma’s brow furrowed. “Their magic is getting stronger.”

  “I know. The regular spells aren’t working to clean it up, so we’re doing it the non-magic way,” Violet said.

  I grabbed a bag and went to work, quickly pulling signs off the light poles and the sides of buildings.

  “Hey.” Holly appeared by my side. “I hear you saved the world from crazed knitters.”

  “Yup, I’m a regular superhero,” I said. “What’s their deal anyway?” I held up the signs I’d just yanked off the front of the florist shop.

  “There are some people who think that non-magical people should be hiding from us since we’re supposedly the more powerful ones,” she said. “Personally, I think they should just chill. Our life here is pretty great, and it could be really dangerous for magic to get out in the world.”

  “How long have they been around?”

  “I don’t know. A long time, but they haven’t really been active for the last several years. Everyone thought they disbanded and gave up. No one realized Alice was part of this bigger movement until the posters were plastered everywhere,” she said.

  “How do we stop them?”

  “We keep them from getting too much magic.”

  It sounded so easy and so impossible at the same time. They had some of Aunt Erma’s spices, but they didn’t know about the tree. I saw a small group of people b
y the gazebo looking at one of the fliers and talking animatedly. I inched closer, pretending to be focused on my job of cleaning up.

  “I was trying to do a spell to fix my roof last year, and the Magic Enforcers stopped me because the magic was too big.” The sarcasm was clear in his voice.

  “It’s Violet. She’s out there squashing magic. Maybe if she’d let people practice more, we wouldn’t have people attacking our town and our neighbors. We’d be equipped to fight them off,” a woman said.

  “The IMPs might bring a breath of fresh air. We’ve been stuck living like this for so long, we don’t even consider new ideas anymore,” another woman chimed in.

  I quickly scooted away, stuffing another handful of fliers into my almost full bag. I had to go tell Aunt Erma what I’d heard.

  I found her heading back toward the pie shop. A crowd had gathered outside, and people began to stir when they saw Aunt Erma approaching. I grabbed her and quickly told her what I’d overheard.

  “How are we going to deal with this?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell Violet.” Her forehead wrinkled. “This is exactly what they want.”

  “The IMPs?” I asked.

  She nodded. The clean-up was almost done so I headed to the pie shop to help.

  “Come in, everyone,” she said as she shuffled between the grumbling crowd to unlock the front door. “Thanks for your patience. Coffee for everyone, on the house!”

  “Someone was looking for you,” Nadine, one of our regulars, whose blonde curly hair was always gathered in a poof on top of her head, said to me. As far as I could tell, her job in town was to spread gossip.

  “Oh yeah? Who?” I asked, following her through the door.

  “I don’t know. Some guy.”

  “Henry?” I asked, even though I figured he would call me if he was looking for me.

  “No, some curly-haired guy I haven’t seen before.” She shrugged.

  “I guess this mystery man will have to come back if he wants to talk to me.” I went back to the kitchen and stopped in my tracks.

  “Mom,” I said.

  “You recognize me. I’m so touched,” she said, barely looking up as she sliced a peppermint cream pie. My mom’s brown hair was just a shade lighter than mine. Unlike mine, it was smooth and perfectly styled. Instead of her usual business suit, she wore jeans and a dark green sweater.