Pretty Little Fliers: A Cozy Witch Mystery (Magic Market Mysteries Book 1)

He knocked on the weathered wooden door.
“You’re so polite.” I hiked up my brows and shivered, rivulets of rain trickling down my face. “I say we just bust down the door—the guy sounds guilty.”
Peter grinned at me. “Tempting, but police procedure and—” His smile faded. “You’re soaked.”
My teeth chattered. “Eh. A little rain never hurt anyone.” The rain had plastered my mess of hair to my head. It was now such a matted tangle that I’d probably have to cut my ribbon tie out of it.
His thick brows drew together. “Why didn’t you spell your jacket?”
He meant, like every other normal magical person on the island. Though rain pattered against Peter’s hood and Daisy’s coat, the spell he’d cast over them before we left the office helped repel the water and keep them dry. I, however, had lost all my magical abilities and run out without grabbing an umbrella.
As I opened my mouth, unsure what lame excuse was about to come out of it, Peter reached for the brass doorknob and turned it. His brows hiked in surprise. “It’s open.” He pulled the door open and pressed a warm hand against my back. He ushered me inside. “Let’s get you out of this weather.”
I stepped inside the dark space, and Peter and Daisy ducked in behind me. The unlocked door had saved me from making up some lie that Peter’s dog would surely have called me out on, but….
“Are we allowed to just go in like this?” I whispered, the utter quiet and blackness inside unsettling.
With a crackle, Peter lit his wand, the end glowing a bright, pale blue. I blinked, spots dancing under my eyelids.
“Since it was unlocked and is technically a place of business…” Peter winked at me. “Sure.”
He held the wand aloft.
“Wow,” I breathed.
Plants crowded every surface in the front room, which, with its tall counter in the corner and till, was apparently the shop. Glowing green spores swirled around the ceiling, where baskets of flowers and plants with enormous root balls the size of watermelons hung.
Peter ducked, vines trailing over his head and shoulders as he led the way past shelves and tables crowded with pots of unusual vegetation, Daisy hugging close to his side.
“Martin Shaw?” he called again.
Still, no answer came, but the place was far from silent. I cringed away from a terrarium where a fanged trap plant with veins of bright red crunched loudly on crickets. An odd bubbling noise came from another corner. Somewhere in the back, a clock ticked away the seconds.
“Mr. Shaw!”
We passed through the curtain that led to the back rooms, where I’d expected to find the botanist’s living quarters. Instead, the plants seemed to have taken over every inch of the place, like an overgrown garden. I sneezed as I passed a particularly pungent plant, its odor sort of spicy and familiar, with glowing, pale, bell-shaped flowers. Vines laced up the walls and ceiling in the kitchen, and potted varieties crowded together in the sink.
Seedlings and big, established plants grew in pots, barrels, jugs, and mixing bowls over what would have been the kitchen counters and table. Enchanted tiny whisk brooms and clippers magically tidied up, trimming branches and sweeping away soil and cuttings.
We edged into the bedroom next, Peter’s wand lit and at the ready, Daisy’s tail straight and ears pricked. I hid behind them and used them as a human/canine shield, seeing as my only meager powers involved speaking to parakeets. Not likely to protect me from a plant-obsessed killer.
A glowing rose hovered magically inside a glass terrarium on the nightstand in the corner. Beside it sat a twin bed with rumpled flannel sheets. In here, the plants were of an aquatic nature. Glass aquariums, some rectangular, others round bowls, were stacked in precariously leaning towers against the wall. Inside them, moss balls glowed, seaweed swayed, and anemone tentacles brushed over their fish prey.
I jumped and screamed when a man burst from the closet.
“Halt!” Peter commanded, his wand aimed at the guy.
Daisy barked, her pointed ears tucked back.
The man froze, a black pot with a withered stalk in his hands. His small eyes widened behind his wire-rimmed glasses.
“W-what? Who are y-you?!” His shallow chest heaved, and his narrow shoulders hiked up toward his ears—and the fisherman’s hat on his head.
“Martin Shaw?” Peter asked in a deep, commanding voice.
The man’s skinny throat bobbed. “Y-yes?”
“Why were you hiding?” He kept his wand aimed at the man’s chest.
“I-I wasn’t hiding.” The man scoffed, and his large gray mustache twitched. “I was in the closet, taking care of my poor wittle noctas.” He pouted at the shriveled black plant in his hands.
“Your… noctas?” Peter dropped his wand a few inches, and Daisy’s hackles lowered.
“Yes, yes, it’s my dark room.” He rolled his eyes. “Or as c-close to one as I can get!” His lip curled. “No matter how I enchant it, no matter how I board up the window—argh!” He shoved another pot on the bookshelf beside him over and plunked the one he’d been holding down beside it. “That cursed light manages to fry them!” He stroked the pot, his demeanor suddenly softened. “My poor baby.”
Peter glanced back at me, and I returned his wide-eyed look. This guy was batty. I scrunched up my face as Peter turned back to face the weirdo. Then again, this was coming from the girl who talked to animals, so was talking to plants really any worse?
Flint cleared his throat, and this jolted Martin out of his intimate moment with his dead plant.
I edged around Peter and pointed at it. “Is that what killed that one? Light from the sign outside?”
Martin sniffed, his mustache twitching below his huge nose. “Yes. It’s a public nuisance, is what it is.”
“Is that why you killed Bim Pavani?”
Martin gasped, and I whipped my head around to look up at Peter. Way to go with the surprise accusation. He was so mild-mannered, I’d half expected him to politely ask Martin Shaw to confess. Maybe Peter was tougher than