Page 20 of Hexes and Hiccups (Mystery In A Bottle #3)

D aisy

“W-What are you two doing here?” Wesley’s heavy, cracking voice rang through the office.

He waggled the book in the air, the potion not entirely secured in his hands whatsoever.

He jerked it forward, not even meaning to, earning a resounding scream out of Sasha, the medical examiner.

“ Q-Quiet! I-I can hardly think! I-I need to think!”

Daisy glanced over at Tessa, who carried the same worried expression as her.

If there was one thing that was for certain, it was that Wesley was under an immense amount of mental stress, and the last thing they needed was for him to go off like a bomb.

The power he held in one hand was tremendous, something that would be foolish to ignore.

To press too far could result in all of them suffering at his reckless hands.

Daisy breathed in deep, holding out her hands for the old man to see as she inched further into the room.

“Mr. Sharp,” Daisy said in the calmest voice she could muster. “You remember me, don’t you?”

He watched her with wide eyes. “D-Daisy Fields. Lotta’s granddaughter.”

“That’s right, Mr. Sharp!” Daisy spread a placid smile across her face. “Lotta’s granddaughter. You know me. You know us, don’t you?”

Tessa was beginning to slowly walk closer to Sasha, intent on getting the innocent examiner away from the danger as soon as she could.

But then Wesley jerked about, the potion wobbling and almost spilling out the lip of the bottle. The movement forced them to freeze. Even the slightest drop could have catastrophic ramifications, something they wouldn’t be able to prevent, especially if Sasha was right in the crossfire.

“E-Everything’s out of control,” he murmured, his lower lip trembling. “It’s too out of control!” Wesley rested the Book of Gossip against his forehead. “Too out of control.”

Daisy pressed her lips together. They needed to get Sasha away from him as soon as possible.

Whether or not Wesley was the culprit remained to be seen, but as far as Daisy was concerned, she was in a state of irreversible danger if they didn’t act soon.

He was obviously on the edge of spiraling down a hole they wouldn’t be able to pull him out of.

Daisy took small steps closer to him. Somewhere within her satchel, she carried a potion capable of stopping him without harm.

All she needed was to get close enough, to have the chance, to have the right path forward.

“Tell me, Wesley,” Daisy said, catching his attention.

His eyes snapped over to her, wide and unsure.

“Go on,” she whispered, giving him a smile. “Tell me what has gone out of control. We can fix it, Wesley.”

“Fix it?”

“If you let me,” she continued. “Tell me what’s out of control.”

Wesley’s eyes were stuck on her, exactly what she was aiming for. On the other side of the room, Tessa inched through the shadows, growing closer and closer to Sasha without daring to make a sound.

“It’s that boy ,” he spat. “That dreadful boy.”

Daisy’s eyes narrowed. “What boy, Wesley?”

“Tyler Stevens!” Wesley shook his head so hard that the potion sloshed again, pulling a simultaneous flinch out of the three women in the room.

“That damned boy and the damned useless people at Town Hall! I told them, I did! I told them every day – he was looking where he shouldn’t!

I told them! I warned them he was causing trouble! ”

Daisy gulped down her nerves as she pressed forward. Her eyes glanced towards the Book of Gossip. “Where did you get that, Wesley?” Perhaps pulling the conversation away from someone he clearly got riled up from might help Tessa get closer. “That book… I don’t think it belongs to you, does it?”

“This?” Wesley waved it around before dropping it against the floor with a loud thud. “A distraction,” he whispered. “The scapegoat. The rumors…the gossip…the writing on the wall…”

Daisy shook her head, unable to understand his incoherent rambling. “A distraction, Wesley? You have been writing rumors around town?”

“No,” he snapped. “Riven wrote the rumors!”

“Riven is petrified.”

Wesley’s face warped into an unpleasant smirk, his thick brow arched and menacing. For the first time, Daisy began to see the old man in a different light, one that was deceitful and outrightly dangerous.

“Good work, was it?” He let out a sharp laugh. “Back in my day, petrification was an outlawed practice. Did you learn that, Ms. Fields? When they made you a Coven Inquisitor?”

She gulped. “I-I didn’t know that, Wesley.”

“No,” he muttered. “‘Course you didn’t. The Elders…the Witch Council…they fear power. Real power. Always have, always will. Petrification, turning creatures to stone, takes real power. Something they’d never have.”

Daisy eyed him. “You…you petrified them? Riven and –”

“Don’t say the woman’s damned name!” Wesley flung the potion about again, forcing Tessa to pause about halfway towards Sasha. “I writhe at it… Harper …I writhe at it!”

“Tell me, Wesley,” she called out. “What is it about the Harpers that does this to you? What do they have to do with the Book of Gossip?”

“Weren’t you listening, Ms. Fields?” Wesley shook his head and tsked her. “Lotta should’ve taught you better.”

Daisy’s hands clenched into small fists. “My grandmother taught me everything she knew.”

“Not enough, it seems.” Wesley kicked the Book of Gossip away. “Riven might’ve been a gossip, but he sure had an inclination towards the truth…finding the truth…no matter what stood in the dragon’s way. But aren’t secrets meant to be hidden? Secrets and cars and bodies are meant to stay hidden !”

Daisy shook her head as he returned to rambling, unsure of what it was he was trying to say. “What did Riven uncover, Wesley?”

“That boy,” he muttered. “That boy Tyler is incapable of silence, did you know that? He’d flaunt his findings all over town. Once, and that was all it took for Riven’s ears to perk up, to hear something he wanted to know.”

Daisy stepped closer as her heart slammed against her chest. Something, she realized, lay at the tip of his tongue. “What was it?”

“Dragons live a long time, did you know that?”

“Wesley –”

“How was I supposed to know that he was there?” he shouted, his weak voice echoing through the room. “How was I supposed to know that it was Riven, thirty years ago?”

Daisy’s eyes went incredibly wide. “Wesley…thirty years ago? That’s…you…”

“That’s right,” he hissed, a frightening expression on his face. “Tyler dove deep into Lake Silverpine and found the car. He boasted about town, and Riven overheard. But he was there, you see, thirty years prior, when Evelyn made her choice, and when I made mine!”

“She disappeared,” Daisy whispered, her eyes flicking over to Tessa.

“She disappeared and they found her…” The realization slammed into her like a ton of bricks.

“It was you, Wesley, wasn’t it? You were the man the police were after, the man who admitted to being obsessed with her.

You couldn’t let her go, could you? Couldn’t let anyone else have her, could you ? ”

Wesley shook and trembled like a madman. “The dragon figured it out,” he whispered. “So I turned him to stone and took the book.”

“A distraction,” she murmured. “To keep us off your trail.”

“And when that little rotten boy managed to tell Fern,” he paused to shake his head, a rattling breath caught in his throat, “she threatened me. Me! ‘Your time has finally come, Wesley,’” he mocked in a sharply feminine voice.

“‘Everything I knew you did, everything they never believed. Your time has come.’”

Daisy could hardly wrap her mind around it. “Riven,” she whispered. “He knew everything?”

“I wouldn’t say everything ,” he said. “But enough. Enough to start a fire, enough to begin another rumor. His theory, it was backed up enough, and I remembered him, then. He was there, and I couldn’t let another thing stand in my way.”

“So you petrified him,” Daisy said. “And used the rumors to confuse the town.”

Wesley nodded. “I knew the Council might return him to normal eventually. By that time, the town would be so overcome with his foolish book that they’d hardly turn my way. But it was –”

“Tyler,” Daisy whispered. “All this time. Tyler figured it out without even realizing it.”

“And now,” he growled, holding the potion out towards her, “now I am left with you .”

Daisy glanced in Tessa’s direction. The empath was crouched down beside Sasha, just in arm’s reach of her.

Wesley was far too distracted by Daisy’s voice and presence to look away, to notice that they were closing in upon him.

Daisy held Tessa’s stare and caught the empath’s nod, her hands reaching for the examiner within seconds.

Wesley let his head drop into his hands, his shoulders trembling. Short and incoherent murmurs left his lips as he stood there.

While he wasn’t watching, Daisy reached into her satchel, fishing through the bottles till she felt a familiar one, her hand wrapping around it instantly.

Across the way, Tessa was grasping onto Sasha, pulling the girl away from Wesley as fast as she could.

The man was beginning to notice, his attention slowly inching in their direction.

“ Wesley! ” Daisy shouted as she fully pulled the potion out from her pocket.

He jerked towards her, the dangerous vial in his hand falling out from between his fingertips.

Daisy launched the potion over her head, aiming it directly at his feet.

The world seemed to move in slow motion as Daisy ducked out of the way, watching as Tessa shoved the examiner behind a cabinet and fell alongside her.

Daisy’s potion smashed against Wesley’s feet, and a puff of pale blue smoke filled the air all around him.

It wrapped and transformed into a spherical shape, covering the old man’s entire body.

At the same time, the dangerous potion cracked and exploded against the floor of the examiner’s office.

The floor swallowed itself instantly, creating a menacing and wide hole within the office.

It creaked and moaned and shifted till the potion finished.

It hadn’t wiped everything out but it was substantial enough.

Tiles fell and cracked as the hole swallowed it up.

Behind the cabinet, Sasha and Tessa remained unharmed, allowing Daisy to let out a deep breath she didn’t realize she had been holding.

Daisy picked herself off the ground when the floor stopped moving.

Beside the hole, Wesley was safely trapped within a bubble-like sphere.

It bounced and jiggled as he poked at it, his shouts and screams muffled slightly by it.

Daisy inched closer to him, bewildered by the venomous look on his face.

She recognized the man to have been sour, but never inherently evil.

Suddenly he was something else entirely, showing a dark side he might’ve never planned to show.

Daisy shuddered as he screeched and slammed old, wrinkled fists against the bubble.

“Daisy,” Tessa called out as she held the examiner in her arms. “You did it.”

Sasha cried and sobbed into the empath’s clothes, not daring to let her go.

“You’re alright,” the empath cooed, rubbing her hand across the girl’s back. “Don’t worry.” She looked up at Daisy, a smile on her face. “Everything’s coming up daisies, now.”

As Daisy retrieved her phone from her satchel, avoiding looking at Wesley’s angry expression, she dialed the Sheriff’s number, and pressed it to her ear.

Everything was coming to an end, the trouble that Willowbrook had been drowning beneath slowly fading.

So much hate and heartbreak began it all, an otherworldly obsession that went far too out of bounds, ripping a daughter away from her mother.

Daisy only wished there could have been a better ending for Evelyn Harper, though she found comfort in hoping that Hecate watched over her well.

“Sheriff Dalton,” she said once the phone stopped ringing. “It’s Daisy Fields.”

“Ms. Fields! To what do I owe the pleasure of a phone call at one in the morning?”

“A case solved.”