Dead Witch on a Bridge

by Gretchen Galway

  “You didn’t hurt me. It was my decision to break the secrecy binding—”

  “For my sake. And I appreciate it. But I think it would be better if you didn’t tell me any more.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re already under suspicion. Breaking more oaths to talk to me isn’t going to help your case,” he said. “I’d feel bad if you got in trouble because of me.”

  I’d been trying to protect him by telling him about the wellspring, but maybe he was right; we could be a danger to each other. When the Protectorate witches began coming to Silverpool to investigate Tristan’s death as well as the loss of the torc, I would be in the spotlight. He might get caught up in the dragnet with me just as I would get caught up with my father. Guilt by association.

  “All right,” I said. “I won’t say another word.”

  “I’d better get back.” He patted Random on the head and began walking away. “I have a feeling the fairies are gathering. I want to go home and get the crystal out, see if I can figure out where they are. Last year they got into my water heater, and it cost me a month’s rent to replace it.”

  I glanced over my shoulder, searching the grass for any hint of the missing fae. The only sound was a flock of quail darting through the woods. “Good idea,” I said. “It does feel… restless around here.”

  Jasper pedaled away, and I got into the Jeep with Random and drove the opposite direction. An offshore fog had crept in from the west, blanketing the town in dim, gray light, making noon feel more like dusk. When we reached the stoplight near the bridge, I looked to my right, over the bank and down to the river, feeling a shudder run through me.

  Tristan. I could feel his spirit lingering nearby, weightless but shackled in place. He wasn’t the type of man to walk away from unfinished business. Or float away.

  The dead didn’t talk, but they could haunt you. Mindless and bodiless, only their emotions remained, and those were in a concentrated state that I’d never liked to get too close to. Every cemetery, city street, hospital, old house held the unfinished emotional remains of the dead. Most were harmless, even beautiful. But a witch murdered at the height of his powers would have unfinished business, and I worried about how long it would keep his soul trapped here, ephemeral but miserable.

  The Protectorate will investigate, I told myself. They’ll find who did it.

  I made a quick stop at Cypress Hardware to get dog food, glad the store was militantly dog-friendly, and sped home.

  For a few minutes I waited in the Jeep in front of my cottage, feeling for any hint of danger or unwanted visitors. When I was as sure as I could be—my father had tricked me just the night before—I prepared a defensive spell and then took Random and his dinner inside.

  Quiet, empty. Safe.

  “Hungry?” I locked the door behind me and poured his kibble into a bowl. I hoped he wasn’t going to be finicky, because I couldn’t afford raw, organic, grass-fed—

  Before I could finish the thought, the food was gone. He’d inhaled it as quickly as my father vanishing from a burglary.

  “Not picky, I see.” I patted him approvingly as I walked to my file cabinet in the other room.

  It looked like a secondhand secretarial file cabinet from the late twentieth century—beige-painted steel, massively heavy, scratched and dented from decades of abuse.

  But inside…

  I put my hand over the beads around my neck and sent out a thrust of power. The canister lock twisted and popped. The top drawer began to shake as if a large truck had rumbled by.

  I sent out another dash of power. This time the middle drawer shook. You’d think a gnome was inside trying to kick his way out.

  For the third drawer, I closed my eyes and muttered a few words that meant nothing to anyone but me. Keywords. Passwords.

  “Crispy crème brûlée,” I said softly. “Icy-cold chocolate eclair.”

  The folks in Silicon Valley weren’t the only ones with security tricks. When I was done, the bottom drawer began smoking not with heat but with cold tendrils of dry ice. I took a deep breath, exhausted from the use of power, and sat on the floor.

  I reached inside my jacket pocket and took out the three vials as I pulled the drawer open. Inside were my most valuable treasures, only a few of them dangerous. I set the vials next to my old baby blanket and locked the drawer and cabinet again.

  Relief washed over me. It was a risk to bring springwater into my house. But riskier not to.

  If it weren’t for their interest in my father, I would’ve been relieved to see Protectorate agents in town. Unlike me, they didn’t mind killing things.

  Because I had a sickening feeling that something in Silverpool would need killing.

  Soon.

  Chapter Twelve

  Around two in the morning, Random’s furious barking woke me from a shallow sleep.

  Other than my eyelids, which sprang open, I didn’t move a muscle.

  Somebody was trying to break into the house. They might already be in my bedroom—

  No. I felt nobody that close. And Random was still barking in the other room.

  I heard a crash from the kitchen, something wooden and heavy falling over, rattling to the floor. Gathering my power in my hands, I jumped out of bed and sent out a blast of sleep, the same I’d used on my father the night before.

  I paused, heart pounding, trying to hear any hint of what was in the other room.

  Had my guarding spells failed? I would need to brush up on my technique. I’d been trained to hunt and destroy my prey, usually prowling the grimy streets of urban California, not to defend a tiny house in a rural village nestled in a redwood forest.

  I crept into the kitchen and saw a chair on its side in front of Random, who glared at the back door like a trained police dog, although his body was beginning to slump, a reaction to my sleep spell.

  The kitchen was filled with the aroma of cedar and woodsmoke, a neighbor’s chickens, my compost heap. All the scents of the Silverpool outdoors, now blowing into the house through the open door that shouldn’t have been open.

  Before I moved into the room, I put my back to the wall and listened for the sound of fae or human footsteps or magic from anyone. Everything unfamiliar came from that door, a muddy haze of energy spilling in from outside.

  “Thank you, Random,” I said quietly.

  I patted him gently as I walked to the door and looked outside. Birdie’s house was around the corner through the woods. Behind her, the couple with the chickens. I held up my hands and sent out another blast of sleep, then listened for thudding bodies. Nothing.

  I closed the door, replaced the chair and the dead bolt, and went to the living room. Before bed I’d fitted my staff through the drawer handles of the file cabinet, and now I pulled it out like the sword from the stone and returned to the kitchen. I removed the chair from under the door, unlocked it, and went out to the backyard to look for intruders.

  The spell around Willy’s tree was fine, untouched; I saw no sign of him. If a demon had come near, he or she would’ve attacked the gnome first. Although Willy was not my servant, other witches over the centuries had enslaved domestic fae, forcing them to use their magic for human purpose, and a hostile demon would’ve tried to take him out before going for me.

  I rubbed my face, trying to clear my head. Sending out the sleep spells was exhausting even when I was awake; doing them when I’d just been dreaming myself was like drinking a bottle of cold medicine.

  I went inside, replaced the chair and dead bolt again, and took a long, deep breath. My heart was still beating too fast, and I was worried about what might’ve happened if Random hadn’t woken me. The fact that somebody had been able to open that door was a problem. A big problem.

  I found Random curled up at the foot of my bed with his nose tucked under a crocheted yellow blanket.

  “Hey, I owe you a steak,” I said, stroking his back.

  He opened one eye a millimeter, gave the staff a suspicious look
, stretched apart his jaws in a yawn, tongue curling the way yawning dog tongues do, dropped his head back to the mattress, and returned to sleep with a sigh.

  Leaving him to the bed, I took an old comforter out of the closet and returned to the living room, where I plopped on the couch that had its back to the wall. Trying to stay upright, I propped myself up with some pillows, and I balanced the staff, warm to the touch, across my thighs, wrapping both my hands around the bumpy-but-polished shaft.

  I tried to stay awake the rest of the night. Between my yawns and moments of dozing, I tried to focus on the doors, the windows, the vents, on the alert for anything unusual. Finally the dawn came, and I fell into a deeper sleep, interrupted only by the clucking of the neighbor’s chickens, a distant leaf blower roaring and whining, Willy singing to the dew on the grass, all the sounds I would expect on a normal day.

  “Alma, are you up?”

  That sound was not normal. It sounded like Livia. Why would Livia be in my—

  Was she inside? I jumped to my feet, the staff ready to strike. No. She wasn’t inside. “Livia?” I asked carefully, an edge in my voice.

  Then I heard knocking on the door—the front door I never used because the front yard was a wilderness of shrubs, wildflowers, herbs, redwood saplings, and weeds. I walked over, reluctantly set the staff in the umbrella stand near the door, paused, then opened it a crack and peered out. “Livia?”

  Random came up from behind me and began barking at the new intruder.

  “Hello,” she said, recoiling slightly. “I thought you’d be awake by now.”

  Putting a leg out to block Random, I glanced down at my sleeping uniform of pull-on shorts and a nightshirt. “What time is it?”

  “Almost ten,” she said as if it meant something.

  “I was up late,” I replied, stroking Random’s head. He settled down and sat at my feet to stare at Livia with me. “What do you want?”

  She swatted away the tall branches of overgrown oleander poking her in the side. “May I come in? I’m organizing the memorial service.”

  “Sure, of course, right.” But I hesitated. I didn’t really want Livia in my house. She didn’t approve of my lifestyle, and I didn’t approve of her personality. But what choice did I have? Tristan needed memorializing.

  I kicked aside a moving box I’d never unpacked to open the door wide enough for her to enter. She had the grace to say nothing about being forced to step over an aggressive rosemary bush.

  I stopped myself from apologizing or using the excuse that I only used the kitchen door in the back. The truth was I used the front garden as a living moat of passive magical protection, not that I could tell her that. Besides, it was kind of fun to have her assume the worst about me. I couldn’t wait to offer her canned coffee. Reheated in the microwave, if she was particular.

  “We need volunteers for the service,” she said, taking off her puffy suede boots and setting them near the umbrella stand. Her socks were black with little red and white wine bottles on them. “There’s a list of things you could help us with.”

  “Us?”

  “It’s a communal effort.” She took a tablet out of an orange leather purse and looked around the living and attached dining room, at its mismatched old furniture, unpacked boxes, plastic storage bins of craft supplies stacked six feet high, the old file cabinet, my makeshift bedding on the couch. “I have a friend who’s a clutter consultant. Would you like her number?”

  “I don’t need any more clutter right now,” I said, “but you can give me her name and I’ll keep it handy in case I find a little more room in the future.”

  Livia gave me a sharp look. She was annoying but not stupid. “I was only trying to be helpful.”

  I had to remind myself it was bad luck to be rude to a guest, even an uninvited one. “Sorry. I didn’t sleep well. Coffee?”

  Shaking her head, Livia began walking around the house on her own. “I don’t have time to stay.” Her voice trailed off as she poked her head into my bedroom, the bathroom, the spare room. “The house has good bones. You could really make something out of it.”

  “I rent,” I said.

  She joined me in the kitchen, her eyes still looking at everything but me, her gaze drifting over the vintage enamel sink, the crown molding, the built-in ironing board, the original backsplash tile. “Where’s the laundry? The garage is detached.”

  “In the old pantry.” At first I’d thought Livia was just being a curious snob, but now I wondered if there was another reason she was taking such an interest in the minutiae of my living quarters.

  “But there wasn’t a litter box in there, was there? I’m always trying to find a good spot for the litter box, and I didn’t smell yours so I thought you knew some magic I didn’t.”

  I did indeed. “I don’t keep her inside,” I said. “I’m allergic.”

  “So you don’t really have a cat,” she said, “so much as feed a stray. Did you have her neutered? The explosive feral cat population is bad for their own health as well as songbirds—”

  Her invasion had gone on long enough. “You had a list of jobs for the memorial service?”

  She pursed her lips together, lifted her tablet, and ran her finger over the screen, her thin eyebrows drawing together. “I want it to be tasteful and civilized, just as he was.”

  I was reminded of the time Tristan, practicing a new spell, had bitten the head off a squirming, freshly bathed mouse, hoping the animal instinct would rise up in him, commune with his innate magic and the amulet around his neck, and transform him into a red-tailed hawk, his favorite living thing.

  “I was thinking you would collect the photographs, make a slideshow that would run continuously on the flat-screen at the tasting room,” Livia continued. “You’ve lived in Silverpool longer than I have, know the people I don’t, and you had your own… brief friendship with him, and of course you’re artistic. Can you do that? Please let me know now if you can’t do it so I can find somebody else.”

  “Of course I’ll do it,” I said. “When’s the funeral?”

  “Not a funeral. A memorial. We want to celebrate his life. That’s why I chose the event space at the winery. I can’t stop people from wearing black, but I can set the tone with the setting, the food, the drink. I’ve convinced the winery manager to open up the reserve bottles from last year. We can drink it in his honor.”

  I didn’t like Livia, but I thought she had the right idea about what would’ve pleased Tristan. He’d loved his vineyard and playing at being a professional winemaker; like Livia, he’d adored the trappings of wealth: handsome property, expensive furnishings, collectible statues and paintings, custom-made shoes. Bling.

  “He’d like that,” I said quietly. “When?”

  “Saturday at one. The tasting room.”

  “I’ll do the slideshow. Anything else?”

  “Some prints would be nice. Old school. A flattering image of him in a classic pose, enlarged and framed. There might already be an easel at the winery for visitors—with the hours and menu, that sort of thing.”

  “I’ll go up there and check it out.”

  “I’ll tell Donna what you’re doing so she lets you in.”

  Although I was confident I would be able to walk inside without any help—now that Tristan was gone, his spells would be useless—it would probably be better for me to avoid doing magic until I knew who had killed him and why. Now that I was out of the Protectorate, I could hide my nature with a triple strand of beads around my left wrist, a trick that had been forbidden to me when I’d worked for them. The rules and regulations for an agent were longer than the US federal tax code. But the beads only hid my powers if I wasn’t actually using them, like concealing a handgun. The moment I cast a spell, my camouflage would disappear.

  I thanked Livia, assured her I would follow up on the slideshow, the framed portrait, the easel, and walked her back to the front of the house. Next to her boots, my staff was humming inside the umbrella stand; it was
still attuned to me from the night before and sensed my eagerness for Livia to leave. I hoped she didn’t notice the slight rattle, though if she did, she’d assume it was a mouse.

  Which made me think of Tristan again, the way the rodent gore had trickled down his short beard and dripped on the celadon polo shirt with its Silverpool Vineyards logo, looking like spilled pinot noir.

  “Saturday,” Livia repeated as she pushed out the door and climbed over the shrubs in the front yard. “But you should have it done by Friday night so we can prepare.” She walked through the overgrown oleander and disappeared. A moment later I heard the hum of her Tesla drift away.

  I shut the door and locked it before grabbing the staff and waving it at the entire front of the house. What else did I have to do to keep people away? Did I need an actual moat? With flesh-eating spiders and a poison oak hedge maze without an exit?

  This was ridiculous. I needed to up my game on my self-defense spells. What I already knew was obviously not enough. I would have to ask an expert.

  I would have to ask Helen Mendoza.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The drive to San Francisco took almost two hours and reminded me of why I’d moved to the boonies. Seems like another million people moved to the Bay Area every Wednesday. Each with three cars. Once again I thought of my father and his gift for apparition, but even he couldn’t travel seventy miles through empty space and expect to survive. I didn’t know how far he could travel now, but when I’d been growing up, it had been less than two miles. That’s why we’d always had to rent a room fairly close to his target; if the heist went bad, he could escape to his safe spot in a hurry.

  The Golden Gate Bridge was fogged in, the visibility so limited I could barely see the people walking and cycling on either side of the lanes. The rust-red beams faded into white over my head, and the sea below was a blurry gray. I felt as if I were passing into a dream world.

  The weather was good luck for me; Helen loved the fog, and it would put her in a good mood, possibly good enough to answer her front door.