Witch Hunt

by Marie Batiste

  “Okay. Shoot,” he replied. He leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands, and rested them on his belly.

  “You said there were other women that had gone missing,” I started, “How many went to the same college as Rose?”

  “Um- give me one minute,” he said as he ruffled through some papers in his desk. “Here it is. Ten.”

  “Okay. Are those the witches?” I asked.

  “Yes. These were the witches that went missing,” he answered.

  “Do you know what classes they were taking?” I asked.

  “Uh- not offhand. But I can look it up. Give me a few minutes,” he answered. Detective Warren typed away on his computer for five minutes. “Okay, what am I looking for?”

  “Advanced Spells,” I answered.

  After another five minutes he said, “Huh, that’s strange.”

  “They all took the same class,” I stated.

  “Yeah,” he leaned back in his chair.

  “Taught by Professor Pierce?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he answered. “Now what is this about?”

  “Rose was also in Advanced Spells taught by Professor Pierce. He made advances towards her, and it was rumored he had done that with some other girls as well. I talked to her friend Wolf who told me about Rose’s secret boyfriend. He tried to follow them once, but the boyfriend had a cloaking spell that made it difficult,” I explained.

  “Okay. So, let me guess Professor Pierce has what someone would need to do a spell like that?” he asked.

  “Yes. And he said he taught the spell in his class. I know this isn’t enough to arrest him but—”

  “It would be enough to bring him in for a talking to,” finished Detective Warren.

  “Well, Wolf saw the guy from the back, and he doesn’t match the professor’s description, but I figured he might know something,” I said.

  “Okay. Can you give me a list of who you talked to and what they said?” asked Detective Warren.

  I wrote down who told me what. Detective Warren said he would talk to Professor Pierce and the others in the next couple of days and he would let me know what happened. Lola and I left walking past Officer Dave on the way out. We didn’t say a word, but he stared at us all the way to the door.

  “So, I guess now we wait,” I said as we walked to Lola’s bike.

  “You really think the professor had something to do with it?” asked Lola as she straddled her bike.

  “You know what, I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t, but the herbs for the spell are rare and hard to find. He had access to them, and he knew Rose.”

  “It could be a coincidence,” remarked Lola.

  “I don’t believe in coincidences. If he didn’t do it himself maybe he did the spell for someone else. But in either case, I’m going to look for magic shops that sell any of those herbs,” I said. “There can’t be many.”

  I knew of seven magic shops around town and went to all of them. But no one had any of the combinations of herbs that were needed for the spell. Lola dropped me off at the apartment building. She had another errand she had to run but would be back. As I walked up the steps, a whistle floated around me on the wind.

  “Vaughn?” I spun around to find him floating behind me.

  He wasn’t as solid as he had been the last time I had seen him. He was so transparent I could see out to the street behind him.

  “I have news,” he said smiling.

  “What happened?”

  “I spoke to the ghost network and no new ghost named Rose has been reported. Wherever your girl is she’s probably not dead,” he answered.

  “Oh. Thank you, Vaughn. That’s so good to hear.”

  “Anytime,” he whispered before disappearing.

  Her ghost not being on the island didn’t definitively mean she was alive, but it did give me hope. The sun was about to set so I went in and headed to my apartment. To my surprise, the power was still on so that was something. I dropped everything on the kitchen table and headed straight to the sofa.

  I didn’t think the professor took Rose but then again, I wasn’t sure. There was something about the cloaking spell that kept bothering me. I couldn’t explain the secret boyfriend who knew how to conjure such a difficult cloaking spell or the dark thing in her apartment. Based on the man Wolf described Professor Pierce was not a match but maybe he did the spell for someone else or knew someone who could do the spell. Hopefully, the police could get it out of him or find another connection.

  Four days and no word from Detective Warren. I woke a little after ten in the morning, showered, dressed, and prepared my coffee. As I waited for the pot to finish, my phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Hazel this is Detective Warren, I need you to come down to the station.”

  “Um, okay. Is there something wrong?” I asked.

  “I just need to talk to you about something.”

  “Okay. I’m on my way.”

  I downed a cup of coffee before I left my apartment and knocked on Lola’s door. She answered still in her pajamas, a red tank with heart shorts. I noticed a few bruises on her thighs but decided against asking about them. She dressed in under five minutes, and we made our way to the precinct where Detective Warren waited for us.

  On our way to the elevator, I saw Officer Dave.

  He scowled at me as he walked by and muttered, “Private Investigator.”

  “Officer Gingerbread,” I replied.

  After a quiet ride in the elevator, we went and sat at his desk.

  “What is this about?” asked Lola.

  “Well, let me tell you about the past few days,” started Detective Warren, “I sent a couple of uniforms to talk to Syn and Wolf about the boyfriend and what Rose said about Professor Pierce while I went and talked to the man, himself. I asked him about the spell and told him to show me the ingredients to make it. He did. The school keeps records of the herbs they buy, what classroom gets what, and how much is used. They make the professors keep meticulous records of how much is used and what for. Pierce’s records didn’t match the school. I checked the missing herbs against the list of the ones he needed for the spell and behold those were the exact herbs missing. Now the Professor says he hadn’t done a cloaking spell in weeks, but he is the only one that can access the herbs in his class.”

  “Did you find anything else?” I asked.

  “We searched his house and found nothing but when we searched his car, we found a pink and blue charm bracelet in the trunk. When we showed the bracelet to Syn and Wolf they recognized it as Rose’s. We have people combing through the car and so far, they’ve found a few strands of hair. The color matches Rose’s,” answered Detective Warren.

  “He did it,” whispered Lola. She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms.

  “Has he confessed?” I asked.

  “Not yet but I figured you would want to watch the interrogation seeing you helped make this happen,” answered the detective.

  “I would love to,” I said. I had never witnessed an interrogation before.

  We followed the detective down a hallway to a room with a large window that allowed us to see into the next room and a speaker box next to it. When the detective closed the door, the speaker automatically chimed on.

  “Where is the girl?” asked a detective.

  “I don’t know,” said Professor Pierce. The professor’s tear-stained face was red and puffy. His hands trembling on the table. “I didn’t take her.”

  “Then who was it? Better yet how did her bracelet and hair end up in the trunk of your car?” asked the detective.

  “I don’t know!” Professor Pierce shouted. “It wasn’t me.”

  “So, you know who took her?” asked the detective.

  “I…” Professor Pierce took a deep breath and shook his head.

  “Who?” the detective asked again.

  “It was—was,” Professor Pierce gurgled. “Was—was.”

  “We need some help in here!” The detec
tive banged on the window. Detective Warren ran past us and rushed out of the door into the interrogation room. Professor Pierce was sprawled on the ground gasping for breath. His hands clawed at his throat as a thick black substance oozed out of his mouth. The more he fought to speak the more goo oozed from him. He fought for every breath. His body turned purple and then blue. The gurgling stopped, and a thick black substance pooled around his head. By the time paramedics arrived Professor Pierce was dead.

  “What just happened?” asked Lola. She walked closer to the window.

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  What just happened? And what was that black stuff coming out of his mouth? And what was he about to say?

  “You should leave,” Detective Warren said as he came back in the room red-faced and covered in sweat.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. He seemed to have choked on something. Maybe it was a suicide,” answered the detective.

  “Suicide?” asked Lola.

  “He could have taken something before we picked him up and it just went into effect,” explained Warren.

  Professor Pierce lay on the floor with a black substance still oozing out of his mouth and complete terror in his eyes.

  “Are you sure? Suicide doesn’t seem—”

  “Hazel, you should leave,” interrupted Detective Warren.

  The seriousness in his eyes told me it wasn’t a suggestion. Lola and I left the building and rode home in silence. I thanked her for the ride and went up to my apartment. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. My many, many thoughts.

  When I entered my apartment, I dropped my things by the door, sat on the sofa, and sighed. I knew what the police would say. Professor Pierce abducted Rose because she thwarted his advances. He took her in his trunk and probably buried her somewhere when he was done.

  But to me, that didn’t make any sense. During the interrogation, he was adamant he didn’t take her, and I think he was about to say a name when the black goo came out of his mouth. The terror in his eyes as he was fighting for his last breaths was something I would never forget.

  He fought to breathe. He wanted to live, and he looked horrified and confused about what was happening to him. If he had planned to commit suicide, he knew what was coming. He would have known what to expect so he wouldn’t have been confused. Or scared.

  Did he change his mind at the last minute or did someone stop him from speaking their name?

  It took a week for Detective Warren to call me back. When he did, he told me the hair in Professor Pierce’s trunk did belong to Rose. I asked him about Pierce’s alibi, and he told me he didn’t have one. Detective Warren said he and his boss considered the case closed, and he thanked me for my help in closing the case and hung up. That was it. No explanation on what Pierce took that killed him. Or what Pierce was doing the night Rose went missing. Not even news on Rose’s body.

  I called Mrs. Stone and asked her to meet with me. I waited in my office with her file and my notes. She joined me on her lunch break. Mrs. Stone wore a pink and white pants suit with pink kitten heels and her hair in a tight bun. Her eyes were red. She looked as if she had aged ten years since the last time I had seen her.

  “Did the police contact you?” she asked as she sat down.

  “Yes, ma’am. Have you heard from them?” I asked.

  “Yeah, they came to me when the DNA from a hairbrush in Rose’s apartment matched the hair from the trunk.”

  “I called you here because I wanted to know what you wanted me to do?”

  “Do about what? The police said the case was closed,” answered Mrs. Stone.

  “True but they didn’t find her body. Did you want me to keep looking?” I asked.

  “Well, I-I don’t know,” answered Mrs. Stone as she stared at her hands. “I…”

  “Okay. Okay. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll keep the file open for a month to give you time to think about it and you can come back and let me know.”

  “Okay. Thank you,” she said. Mrs. Stone stood up abruptly and darted out of the room. I’ve seen that before. I’ve done that before. It’s the, I don’t want you to see me cry so let me hurry up and leave before the tears fall, walk.

  Once she was gone, I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. Even though the police said the case was over something in my gut said it wasn’t. But what could I do? Mrs. Stone wasn’t sure if she wanted to proceed and even if she did, I couldn’t think of where I would start.

  What am I supposed to do now?

  Chapter 10

  A vampire, a witch, and a werewolf walk into a bookstore

  Purrdiful lived in a boarding house with five other people. A far cry from living with Miss Pepper and the obscene number of cats. In between my boredom, waiting to hear from Mrs. Stone, and calling Detective Warren, Miss Pepper called me again. Purrdiful hadn’t been back yet, and she was getting worried.

  The boarding house was an old run-down building being held together by magic. It looked like it should have been condemned. Boarded up windows, an overgrown yard and cracked stone steps. I touched the building. The wood was soft. Some of the wood crumbled into my hand. The green door wasn’t locked. It wasn’t locked the last time I had been there either.

  “Hello?” I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. “Hello?”

  “We’re in here!” yelled a voice down the hall.

  I followed the voice down the hallway into the living room where four people including Purrdiful sat on a large purple sofa watching TV.

  “Oh, it’s you again,” said Purrdiful when I stepped into the room.

  Why is there a bunny by the window? The purple sofa sat under a window next to a stuffed bunny that was taller than me. The TV sat on a clear cube in the middle of the room. That was all the furniture they had. Purrdiful sat sandwiched between a man with bright purple hair and heavy eyeliner and a girl with white hair, elf features, and a knife-shaped nose ring. Seems like an interesting group.

  “Can we talk?” I asked from the doorway.

  Purrdiful sighed. She stood up reluctantly and led me into the dining room. We sat at a long black table with red and black chairs.

  “What does she want?” asked Purrdiful.

  “You said you would come back, and you haven’t even called yet. She was worried.”

  “Worried about what?”

  “You. You left home with no explanation, and she was worried,” I answered. “She just wants to know that you are okay.”

  “I’m fine. Tell her to leave me alone,” said Purrdiful. She leaned back and folded her arms.

  As I stared at her, I wondered if familiars went through a rebellious phase like everyone else. She was rebelling against her master like a sixteen-year-old girl rebels against her mother. Meanwhile, Miss Pepper was only concerned about her wellbeing and just wanted to know if she was okay. Miss Pepper would probably be waiting for her to return whenever she was ready. That’s sweet. And dangerous. If Miss Pepper had to do powerful magic, she could hurt herself without her familiar around.

  “You aren’t some teenage child that gets to leave home and explore the world. Honey, you are a familiar and Miss Pepper is your master. You are supposed to help her, not drive her crazy and make her worry. And I get it. The other cats are a bit much, but you need to suck it up and go do your job. Or at least check on her twice a week.”

  “But—” Purrdiful started.

  “There are no buts. Suck it up!” I stood up. “I will call her and tell her you are okay. I will also tell her where you are.”

  I walked out of the room before Purrdiful could say another word. Being a familiar must be difficult. You are in constant service to someone else. Your life isn’t your own. I understood Purrdiful wanting to have her own life, but that time has passed. She was a spirit and she had to help her master. While I waited for the bus, I called Miss Pepper and told her about Purrdiful’s whereabouts. There’s a spell that she could activate to bring Purrd
iful back, but it would be against her will and she didn’t want to do that. She thanked me and hung up.

  Now, what am I going to do for the rest of the week?

  By the end of the week, I finished my laundry, cleaned out my fridge, bought groceries, and cleaned my apartment. After all that the crippling boredom I felt was unbearable, so I went for a walk. It was a cool, clear day. A light breeze kept me from sweating as I walked past the bus stop.

  People-watching in my neighborhood was always interesting. The fairies left trails of sparkles as they dashed through the air. A woman from the fire island crossed the street in front of me. It was easy to tell, not because of a marking but by the clothes she wore. She had long raven hair and dark skin. Her loose royal blue tunic dress rippled in light breeze. There was a gold braided belt wrapped around her waist. Her gold sandals and gold bracelets glinted in the sunlight. Most people from the fire islands dressed like that even though they’ve lived on Crystal Lake for a long time. Unless they were slaves or poor. When the poor or slaves got here, they wanted no parts of their old lives and were quick to adopt the fashion of the island. Which really wasn’t anything special.

  I would love to have been from the water island. Their robes were so beautiful. They were like pieces of artwork. I saw a woman wearing one the other day and it was so delicate and beautiful. I would have hung it up on my wall rather than wear it. But I guess the tank tops and jeans found on Crystal Lake weren’t bad.

  I found my way to the bookstore Paige worked at and went inside.

  “Are you here to ask us more questions?” Paige asked as the door closed behind me.

  “Us?” I asked. Syn peered from behind a bookshelf and Wolf stood next to him. “Oh, no. I just came for some books.”

  “Learned anything new,” smirked Wolf. His weird vampire sidekick was missing.

  “Not really,” I said.

  Syn, who wore a long-sleeve gray shirt and jeans sat at one of the tables in the middle of the floor. I watched him. The last time I met him I was irritated because he had ignored my calls. This time I noticed a few things I hadn’t seen before. He had a scar above his right eye. His body was well-toned instead of muscular like Wolf. He was covered up the last time I saw him too even though it was warm enough for shorts. Hmm. As I studied him, his bright green eyes met mine. They were beautiful. Too beautiful. Like polished emeralds. Bright and consuming. I looked away.