Captive Magic (Mystic's End Mysteries Book 8)

by Leanne Leeds

  I don’t want to say that my nice, very caring vampire boyfriend seemed overeager, excited even, by the prospect of dragging the detective back here by his short hairs. I don’t. I really don’t.

  But if someone asked me if my nice, very caring vampire boyfriend seemed overeager and excited by the prospect of dragging the detective back here by his short hairs, I would probably remain silent.

  It’s hard to explain to someone that your predatory partner is actually a nice guy.

  Better to just not mention some of those inconvenient dichotomies of nature.

  Clutterbuck and I waited.

  Within seconds, we heard a thump from the darkness. Then a scream. Then another thump. Then, out of nowhere, Chris appeared clutching the detective by the shirt front. When the vampire released his hold, Detective Conroe tumbled to the ground as if his legs were no longer particularly useful.

  He was disarmed; his face was smudged with dirt, but he wasn’t bleeding, and there were no teeth marks anywhere on him.

  “Do you often go for an evening walk down a dark tunnel under the station, Detective?” I asked him.

  Conroe stared at Chris, his shoulders curling as if he expected a blow. “What are you?” he asked the vampire, his voice shaking. “What the hell are you? You’re not human, are you? Oh, God, I think I’m going to have a heart attack.”

  “I assure you, you’re not,” Chris told him.

  “Where were you going?” I asked.

  “What did you do to me?” Conroe was so shocked at the sudden violence he couldn’t take his eyes off Chris’s hands. He wasn’t paying attention to any of my questions. “What are you? Answer me!”

  “Son, do you really think you’re able to demand answers? I mean, you’re on your knees on the ground. I see your sidearm is gone. You don’t have the upper hand here.” Clutterbuck’s voice was calm, almost soothing, as he spoke to the frightened man. “Surely you’ve seen more alarming things in your time working for Karen, haven’t you?”

  “How do you know I was working for that woman? Who told you?” His voice was high-pitched, almost hysterical.

  “Well, you just did, son.” Clutterbuck did his best not to let the guffaw be too condescending.

  But it was pretty condescending.

  “You know nothing that’s going on!” he spat. Conroe’s attempt at showing fight and fire failed as the spittle dripped down his chin. It only made him look more frightened. “You people and your stupid political games. There’s something bigger here, Chief, and you’re on the wrong side of it! You have no idea!”

  “There is a reason I flew down the hallway to grab you, Detective—and clearly, finding out more about what’s going on would be one of the top reasons. If not the top reason.”

  “Where is the witch bottle?” I asked in my third attempt to get Detective Conroe’s attention. I didn’t know if it was because I was the least threatening person out of the three of us, if it was because the guy was a misogynistic jerk, or if I just wasn’t speaking clearly enough to get my question across. But for whatever reason, Conroe was ignoring my questions as if I wasn’t even asking them.

  Which was, admittedly, annoying me.

  “What’s a witch bottle?” he asked, his eyes confused.

  “The bottle that Conrad Noble was holding when he was killed. The one you signed in to evidence. The one that’s now missing. Where is it?”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” he said, his voice lowering.

  “You are lying,” I told him, as sure of his lie as I was that the sun would come up tomorrow.

  “You don’t know that!”

  “Actually, she does, son. Don’t you remember Fortuna’s a telepath?” Clutterbuck reminded him.

  “She’s a devil woman,” he whispered fearfully.

  Chris struck Detective Conroe with his open palm. It was a light tap, really, on the back of his skull—with just enough pressure to get his attention. It was so light that in other circumstances, I’d have considered it a friendly whack between friends. But because it came from Chris?

  The detective screeched like his underwear was on fire.

  “Okay, okay! I gave it to my mom! My mom said the church needed it!”

  In unison, the three of us glanced at one another over the white-faced, shaking, half-crying Conroe.

  “Why would the church need a bottle?”

  “It belongs to the church—”

  “The hell it does,” I snapped, tensing. Chris reached out and laid his hand on my shoulder. “That bottle does not belong to your church.”

  Conroe stopped blubbering and looked at me. “My church? I don’t go to church.”

  I blinked. “You are not a member of the Holy Grove Church?” I asked, surprised.

  “No. I guess it might be easy to think that. I occasionally go there with my mother. But no, I don’t pay dues or have any membership or go to any of their secret meetings. That’s my mother’s thing.” He swallowed nervously. “But I believe in what they’re doing. I don’t know that I believe everything they say, but…but I believe enough.”

  Chris and I glanced at one another. “What is it they think they’re doing?”

  Conroe pursed his lips as if he wasn’t sure whether he should answer. Then with a nod, he did. “Protecting the town, of course. That’s why it’s so important you talk to your mother. If they don’t do their prayers, and that church folds? Well.” Conroe looked at Chris and then me. “I mean, look at the two of you. The town’s already in trouble, isn’t it? You’re here. Everything Reverend Kane preaches about. Everything the church tries to prevent. You two are kinda evidence of that. Your being here is a sign that the church is failing, that the town is in trouble.”

  We’re a sign that—

  Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, it all clicked.

  I had expected the reasons behind the church’s existence to be more secretive—something dark, something sinister, and something well hidden. But between what Detective Conroe was saying and what he was thinking? Going back through the things his mother had said? Learning the town history from the ghosts?

  Suddenly, it all snapped into place.

  I could see the church’s role in Conroe’s mind. His mother believed the congregation to be the only bulwark against paranormals devastating the town again. Returning to reclaim what they’d lost so many years ago, invading for vengeance. Poltergeists, pixies, zombies, witches, vampires…The Conroes believed without the church, without Karen, they would return.

  Their town history wasn’t buried. The victors rewrote it as a tale of threat against the men that destroyed the Delphi coven. The humans that had triumphed over the paranormals that founded Mystic came up with stories to ensure the townspeople remained vigilant. That history developed and morphed and now lived on in that church—Mystic’s history given new life and a new purpose.

  The Delphi coven came here to protect itself against humans and fell.

  Now, these humans believed they were protecting the entire town against the return of the paranormals and the fall of what they built. The cornerstone of their beliefs was the fear we would do what their ancestors did to our ancestors.

  And yet…they fell. They just didn’t know it.

  The church wasn’t secretive about what it believed—not really. The whole rigmarole about blood devils and devil women and…It was right in front of my face the entire time. Their paranoia, their fear repeatedly proved by the curse that killed the descendants, was a historic fear reinforced by those strange events.

  And then one sociopathic witch was born.

  My mother put it all together to exploit their karmic dread to the fullest—for her own gain and no matter who got hurt.

  A whispered tall tale passed through the generations made real—for power.

  Fifteen

  I wanted to ask her why she did what she did. Was she born this selfish, this power-hungry? Or was it something that developed in her over time? I wanted to look into my mother’
s eyes as she answered. I’d be able to tell if she was lying.

  Suddenly, that urge to hear the truth from her own mouth was almost painful.

  “What do you want to do now?” Chris asked as Detective Conroe eyed me fearfully.

  I was ready to go talk to my mother.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

  So, maybe I wasn’t so ready.

  “Did you kill Conrad Noble?” I asked Conroe directly.

  His eyes widened in surprise. “Me?”

  “Oh, don’t act all wide-eyed and innocent.” I crossed my arms while staring down at him. “You just got finished telling me that your church thinks that saving the world—”

  “Not the world. Not my church. They think they are helping the town—”

  “—by doing whatever it is you guys are doing. You also said that ball—”

  “I told you, I’m not a member of the church—”

  “But you agree with what they’re doing, and you have a gun—”

  “Well, yeah, I agree with what they think they’re doing, but I’m an officer of the law! I wouldn’t break the law, and I certainly wouldn’t murder somebody!” Whatever else Beau Conroe was hiding, the statement was genuine.

  He was shocked—shocked, I tell you—that I could think he was a murderer. It surprised me it hadn’t occurred to him he looked guilty of something.

  “What about that argument between Conrad Noble and his brother at the church?” Chief Clutterbuck asked.

  “What argument? What are you talking about, chief?” There was confusion in his eyes.

  “Just how much investigating have you been doing, Detective?”

  “Well, boss, you kept getting in my way!” Conroe answered hotly. He jerked upward, and his muscles tensed.

  “Settle down, there, Detective,” Chris murmured. “Restrain yourself from making any moves I might…misinterpret.”

  Conroe glanced over his shoulder at Chris and sank back down to the floor.

  “Have you been helping my mother leave her cell to visit the church?” I glanced down the hallway the vampire had sped through to retrieve him. “You haven’t told us what you were doing down here, and you obviously know about this underground corridor and where it leads. You know more than you’re letting on.”

  “Well, obviously. But that doesn’t make me a murderer.” He rolled his eyes to the side and flinched as he caught Chris’s deepening stare. “Look, I know what you are. You’re the bad guys. I don’t know what you told the chief or why he’s down here helping you. But you are the problem. Karen told us that someday you people would return to destroy the town, and you’re obviously—”

  “Wait, slow down there. Why do you think we’re the bad guys?” Clutterbuck asked him. “I mean, exactly. Be specific.”

  “Because you are hanging out with the witches and vampires,” Conroe said like it was obvious. “You used to work with Karen, boss! You know they are the bad people! I don’t know what happened to you—or who got to you—that you turned on Karen and everything she’s done for this town—”

  “Karen may have been responsible for my wife dying, Detective Conroe,” Clutterbuck barked at the younger man. “So, whatever you say next, whatever you think you need to say to me? Keep that in your mind before you utter your next words. I’ve been having one hell of a week, and my patience for people’s crap is wearing very, very thin.”

  “I don’t think she was.”

  All three men turned to stare at me.

  “You don’t think she was what?” Clutterbuck asked.

  “I don’t know that my mother actually killed anyone,” I admitted. I explained Miss Bessie’s description of the curse—that women who challenged the town leaders would mysteriously die. I told them how many ghosts I’d been able to recover and how many women had been captured more than a hundred years ago. “From everything we’ve learned recently, it seems that the curse causing deaths isn’t on the entire town. I think the curse is active on the descendants of the Delphi coven, and it might only be activated when they anger descendants of the men that founded the town.”

  “That’s why people aren’t just falling over dead every time a man and a woman get into a fight,” Clutterbuck said.

  “Right.” I nodded. “But Karen’s ancestor—the witch that started the curse—could have made it with any parameters. The deaths were infrequent, but they sped up over the past twenty years or so.” I looked, took a deep breath, and gazed back up. “Maybe my mother uncovered exactly how this curse worked, and she used it to her advantage.”

  Before I could say any more, Clutterbuck turned white. “My family…Our history…”

  I turned to him with as much sympathy as I could muster. “You are the descendant of a town founder, aren’t you?” He swallowed and nodded. “It’s possible that’s why she targeted you. Also possible she knew how to manipulate you both so that the curse—”

  “Don’t say any more. Just don’t say any more.” The chief looked slightly queasy.

  “Look, all I’m saying is that my mother never seems to get her hands dirty.” I turned to Chris. “She created an army of paranormals she could control. Did she ever step in herself? Or did she always send all of you off to do her bidding?”

  Chris shifted uncomfortably. “If you had to ask me point blank for something she’d done? Specifically?” He tilted his head and looked lost in thought. “Even Dalida’s explosion…She got someone else to do it.” The vampire frowned. “She seems very careful to keep her hands clean.”

  “She’s only in jail because Martin turned on her,” Detective Conroe pointed out. “We all know it. His money and power protected her before.”

  “Hope no one’s got a recording device on them,” Detective Conroe said under his breath.

  Clutterbuck glowered. “When he turned on her, her protection was gone. Karen used to—”

  “More specifically, Martin’s father,” Chris corrected.

  “Yet again, keeping her hands clean. Pulling strings that appeared to be held by someone else,” I added.

  Detective Conroe looked up at us, his face troubled. He pushed himself up unsteadily and turned. “You’re making her sound like some kind of criminal mastermind.”

  “If the shoe fits.” I shrugged.

  “You have to be wrong.”

  “Well, there’s a simple way to find out, isn’t there?” I held out my hand to the detective. “Come upstairs with us to talk to her. See if what she says to us is what she’s said to you or what you know from your mother. You used to be Gabe’s partner. He said you’re a good cop.” I half-smiled. “Mostly.”

  He paused as if considering, then nodded. “Okay.”

  “If you see anything hinky, if you find a reason not to trust her, you’ll tell me where the witch bottle is?”

  Detective Conroe paused again and stared at me. Then he nodded a second time.

  As far as jails go, it was nice.

  “Why, Beau, you didn’t have to accompany my daughter to visit me,” my mother said in a singsong voice. She was lounging, relaxed, on a thin mattress in her cell. Wearing pink pajamas shining brightly against white silk covered pillows, my mother didn’t pull her eyes away from the television. She could have been home watching Netflix and chilling instead of locked up awaiting trial. “Have you all seen this show?”

  I glanced at the television and recognized it instantly. It was the latest documentary about a serial murderer. Not the type of fare I would’ve watched if I was behind bars. “We have some questions for you,” I started, but she held up her hand.

  “The show will be over in just four minutes. Surely you can let me finish—”

  With a wiggle of my finger, I sliced the power cord in half. The screen went dark, and the back of the television smoked.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have placed you with the Addingtons,” my mother said flatly. “Clearly, they didn’t teach you any manners.”

  “They taught me plenty of manners. I know which
fork to use and everything,” I responded in an even tone. “Why did you send Beau Conroe’s mother to get me here? What could you possibly have to say to me at this point?”

  Karen White slowly lifted the silk sheet covering her legs and moved them delicately to the floor—where her matching fuzzy slippers waited. Once her feet slipped in them, she reached for a matching robe.

  She took an extraordinarily long time to put it on—as if she were putting on a show and had to establish the pacing.

  “Is that any way to speak to your mother?” Karen asked as she tied it closed. Glancing to my right, she raised an eyebrow. “You, vampire, have been far more trouble than you were worth.” Throwing her head back imperiously, she stepped toward Chris. “How is your sister doing? Still well, I presume?” Her tone dripped with menace.

  Chris hadn’t been a vampire long. Martin’s father extended an offer to him when he was alive. Become a vampire (and Martin’s bodyguard) in exchange for a pile of cash and the magic that could permanently heal his ill younger sister.

  The cash was from Martin Senior.

  The magic was Karen’s.

  We believed that my magical binding of Karen—a spell preventing her from harming anyone—protected his sister. So far, we had been right.

  So far.

  It didn’t mean she would not get her sociopathic jollies reminding him of the risk she posed.

  “If you threaten one person in this place, I’m out of here,” I told her angrily. So angrily, we attracted a guard’s attention down the hall. I paused while Clutterbuck assured her everything was fine. Once her head pulled back with a nod, I turned again toward my mother. “What do you want from me? You better spit it out, because I don’t want to be here one second longer than I have to be.”

  “The image of me you’ve built up in your head, Fortuna, is so much worse than the reality.” My mother turned her attention to the posse surrounding me. “Why did you bring all these men with you? Send them away, so the two of us can talk. Mother to daughter.”

  Chris’s neck and shoulder muscles tensed. Even though there were metal bars between my mother and us, he was warier of her than I’d ever seen him of anyone.