Spells Trouble by Kristin Cast (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

How on earth would Hunter and Mercy catch a Cyclops?

Twenty-two

Hunter passed the card to Mercy who flipped it over and examined its silver back. “So, that’s it? I mean, your cards told us that it’s the Cyclops, which is great, but he’s not exactly walking around like this.” She pointed to the strings of saliva dripping from the creature’s chin and the lone eye it was best known for. “Can you do your, you know”—she waved her hand in front of Hunter as if polishing glass—“tarot thing again and ask the cards to be more specific this time?”

Hunter picked at a tender piece of skin hanging from her index finger. “That’s not really how it works.” She held her palm over the charred grass. “And I used up all the magic from this site.” She plucked the card from Mercy’s grasp. “Sometimes the tarot gives veiled answers. It would sort of be cheating if the cards just came out with a big arrow that pointed directly to what we need to know. Half of the magic is how the images are interpreted.”

Mercy groaned and collapsed onto the tall grass. “It wouldn’t be cheating. It would be answering the question you asked in a clear and direct manner.” As she spoke, she held up her fawn hands. Her slender forearms had begun to freckle under the persistence of the spring sun. “When I do spellwork, I know whether it’s been successful or not. If it has, I get results. If it hasn’t … well, nothing usually happens. But that nothing always tells me something. This isn’t a nothing or a something. It’s just—”

“A star!”

“I guess it’s a start, but my point is that it could be a better one.”

“Not a start. A star.”

Mercy sat up as Hunter flipped the card around to face her. “I didn’t notice it at first, but there’s a star around his eye and another in his, um…”

Mercy squinted and tapped the Cyclops’s left pec. “Scraggly chest hair?”

“Gross, but yes.” Hunter looked at the card. “This is the answer. This is who the Cyclops is wearing.”

“A star?” Mercy’s brow remained pinched as she untangled a seedpod from her hair. “You think the Cyclops is parading around town in the skin suit of a star? No one famous has ever come to Goodeville.”

“Sure, but there are famous people here.” Hunter bit down on the rugged tip of her fingernail. Locally famous was super close to famous famous. She snapped off the point of her nail and rolled it along the tip of her tongue.

A star.

A star.

A star.

“Oh!” Mercy clapped, her green eyes widening. “What about that retired Bulls basketball guy?”

Hunter nodded, flooding with ideas of her own. “Or the news anchor who was a former Miss Illinois? Or the deejay at Em’s birthday who performs at all those clubs in Chicago? Or that eighth grader who plays those games on Twitch?”

Mercy rested her chin against her steepled fingers. “Any ideas how we figure out which person is no longer a person?”

Hunter clenched the jagged piece of nail between her teeth and ran her tongue along it. She was missing something. But what? “Let’s go home and look at the grimoires.”

“So, you’re giving in to good ol’-fashioned research?” Mercy stood and offered Hunter her hand. “Welcome to the team, H.”

Hunter gathered the cards and slipped them back into her pocket before taking her sister’s hand and hefting to her feet. “I was on the book team way before you, Mag.”

Mercy shrugged and skipped off toward the car, kicking chunks of dirt as she bubbled over about what information the grimoires possibly held.

Hunter paused at the black footprints burned into the grass. She and Mercy had gotten enough information to focus their hunt and start them down the right path, but Hunter had hoped for a bit more. She so desperately wanted to impress her sister and be the one to solve their problems.

“Oh, well.” She sighed and spit the jagged nail onto the blackened earth before jogging to catch up to Mercy.

As Hunter’s boots carried her away, a line of smoke rose from the ground, from the charred blood and dead grass and torn fingernail. The nail flamed for an instant, the same white as the full moon, before the gentle spring breeze snuffed it out and carried away the black from the burnt earth.

Twenty-three

Polyphemus sat in Sheriff Dearborn’s car on a dirt road that dead ended at Goode Lake. The body he’d unzipped and removed from Dearborn’s spirit had guided him here, though he wasn’t sure why. His only guess was that the skin he wore still searched for its true owner like a lost lamb searched for its shepherd.

He removed his sunglasses and squinted out at the water through his one good eye. “Back to this, now.” He wiggled his calloused fingers in front of his other eye. Nothing. Not even a shadow. It had completely clouded over, gone blind. “Always back to this … Cyclops.” Self-pity hardened in his stomach like a pound of gold. It was a useless, ineffective emotion, but he couldn’t break free of its chains.

Goode Lake’s crystal blue skin shivered with each gust of wind. He rolled his window down and hung his arm out. He knew the sun was warm just as he knew the water was wet, but he couldn’t feel its pleasant rays. He only felt the sticky heat of his true form inside, pressed against the slopes and ridges of this human skin.

He flipped his hand over and cupped the sunlight in his palm. He couldn’t stay in this world without nesting inside of a human form, but oh how sweet it would be to feel the sun against his own skin. Tartarus, the Greek Underworld from which he escaped, had no sun. It had no aquamarine lakes or sandy beaches. Tartarus was dark, cold, barren.

Polyphemus ran his tongue along his bottom lip and pressed his teeth against the wet flesh.

He had promised