Chapter Ninety-Seven - The Delicate Unboxing of Ninja Boxy Part Five

My jaw dropped. “Wh-who?”

“The Coven of the Keeping Hand.” Boxy flapped the ransom note in the air again. “The coven I once told you about that stole my Eye Shadow? They put out a quarterly magazine with a column titled ‘No One Will Know If You Hide Your Submarine in the Sea,’ which is how I recognized the A in the ransom note. It’s the same A.”

“No one will know about your submarine in the sea?” Travis asked no one in particular. “Really?”

“So whoever catnapped Studmuffin has access to that coven’s magazine as well as the CE Magazine, whatever that is.” I zipped over to Boxy’s side and pointed out the T in tell, plus the copyright date and CE Magazine in teeny-tiny print below it. “If we could figure out what that CE word is exactly and get a list somehow of all the people who subscribe to both magazines, that might help narrow things down.”

Detective Palmer’s mouth twisted in doubt. “Or we could go right to the source of this magazine. What’s this magazine called, Boxy?”

“Ummm,” Boxy began, taking his cell phone from his back pocket. “It would be easier if I showed you. The Coven of the Keeping Hand was a very secretive coven and often communicated in code.” He tapped a few buttons on his phone. “A code I cracked in five minutes flat.”

Dad toasted him with his hot chocolate mug. “That’s my Boxy.”

Since it had fallen open in shock and stayed there, I had to consciously close my mouth again. “Wow. Impressive. So you’re not only a secret ninja witch, but you’re also a code-cracker?”

“What can I say?” He shrugged like it was no big deal and then showed all of us who’d gathered around him his phone.

Cass shook her head at the screen. “That’s just a magazine with a bunch of random letters on it. It doesn’t say anything.”

She was right. Even my dyslexia agreed when I couldn’t make any sense of the letters. The title of the magazine read XJAJI JA OCZ FJJKDIB CVIY.

“Ah, but it does say something,” Boxy explained. “See the arrows on the letters’ tips that point right or left?”

The five of us nodded.

“How many letters are in Coven of the Keeping Hand?” he asked.

“Twenty-one,” Detective Palmer answered immediately.

“The X in the title has a left arrow. Twenty-one letters to the left of X is C. C for Coven. The J in the title also has a left arrow. Twenty-one letters to the left of J is O. O is the second letter of Coven. A has a right arrow, so twenty-one letters to the right of that is V, the third letter in Coven. And so on and so on until you’ve spelled Coven of the Keeping Hand.”

“The whole magazine is written this way?” I asked. Talk about a dyslexic’s nightmare.

“A large chunk of it, yes,” Boxy said with a nod.

The detective tapped his notebook. “How many witches are in this coven, Boxy?”

“Oh, thousands, probably. They have headquarters all over the world.”

My shoulders slumped.

“But.” Boxy held up a finger. “They also have headquarters here in Belle’s Cove. The entire place is still mapped out in my head since I used to work for them.”

“Doing what?” the detective asked.

“Oh, you know, a little of this and a little of that,” Boxy said smoothly.

Nice non-answer there, Boxy. The truth was he used to, um, free rare artifacts from their owner’s hands and give them to the Coven of the Keeping Hand. Keyword, used to. Shockingly, they weren’t a very nice coven. It was pretty obvious why Boxy didn’t want to say a word about what he did in front of the detective.

“Let’s go check it out.” Detective Palmer surged up from the table. “But not you, Victoria.”

My mouth popped open. “But…why?”

“Because it’s best you don’t get into any more trouble. I’m turning a deaf ear to all the things you’re not telling me you did today to find your familiar. You have cobwebs in your hair, a faint mustache, and a green arm for reasons I don’t want to know.”

“It’s because we skipped right over Halloween to Christmas,” I said simply. “A witch has to get her spooky-season fix somehow.”

The detective shook his head. “We do this my way. The lawful way. That’s the way to get Studmuffin back to you, I promise.”

“Whether it’s your way or the paws-before-laws way doesn’t matter,” I said with a shrug. “Whatever way gets him back to me is all that matters.”

Detective Palmer’s gray eyes narrowed into two sharp points of suspicion. “The paws what way?”

“Uh, um, nothing. I didn’t say anything. Have fun storming the Coven of the Keeping Hand.”

There was his freight-train stare again, threatening to crash through me to peer at all my hidden secrets. Lucky for me, he flicked it to Boxy and nodded. “Ready, Boxy?”

“Ready.” On his way to the door, Boxy wrapped me up in a quick hug and whispered, “If Travis is who you want, don’t ever let him go. Your dad will be fine…eventually.”

Wait, how could he know about all that if I hadn’t even said anything? I sighed. Because he was Boxy, that’s how. He could read me like an open book witch.

“Thank you,” I told him. “Try to behave.”

After he released me, Boxy threw back his head. “Ha!”

With them gone and nothing else to do, Dad baked cookies from the sugar, flour, and butter he must’ve scrounged up from somewhere in my kitchen. Cass, Travis, and I kept decorating until every bow, tinsel, and piece of tape I owned was strung up all over my apartment. Then we frosted Dad’s cookies and stuffed ourselves with them. If it weren’t for the paw-shaped hole in my heart and the ticking clock, it would have been a really good time. Dad even smiled in Travis’s general direction once or twice.

Then, with only half an hour until midnight, my phone chimed with a text from Boxy:

Headquarters are locked up better than Fort Knox. No one’s home.

My shoulders drooped.

WAIT! Someone’s backing out of the garage!

In a blizzard thirty minutes to midnight? The only people crazy enough to do that were catnappers and…well, catnappers.

Follow them, I voice-to-texted him back. We’ll head to Gas, Guzzles, and Go now!