Beguiled

by Darynda Jones

  How was I going to explain the presence of my departed grandmother? Since lifting her out of the veil, she had yet to leave Percival for this very reason.

  “My aunt,” I said without thinking it through. I had no idea how much Parris knew about my family. She’d been neighbors with Gigi for years, and I didn’t know how close they’d become. But the woman defined busybody. She probably knew more than Gigi knew. Add to that the fact that her husband, Harris, lived on Percy’s other side. Between the two of them, I could only imagine how much they’d gleaned from Gigi’s comings and goings.

  “Night, Parris,” Roane said, leading us away.

  “Oh… okay, night.”

  I kept hold of Annette’s hand as Roane led us into the house. The door opened when we approached. “Thanks, Percy,” I said.

  He’d used the vines to open the massive wooden door and closed it softly behind us.

  “Thank you, Percival,” Annette said.

  The vines shrank back, but not before they paused and bent slightly, as though tipping a hat to her. She eyed them adoringly. They stilled a long moment then slowly faded into the woodwork. Fascinating.

  Before I could follow Roane into the kitchen to inspect the damage, a cat rushed over my feet, its claws adding to the needles prickling my frozen skin. He was followed by a tiny spectral of a boy, blond and dimpled and precious. But only the cat would’ve been affected by the smoke, and he looked to be on his last legs as it was.

  He scurried under a hutch in the drawing room, trying to hide from the boy, but it would take more than that to ditch a ghost.

  “Ink,” I said, kneeling down to look under the hutch. Though he looked as though he’d been at the epicenter of the explosion, his tattered charcoal fur and battle-scarred face were part of his everyday countenance. Then again, he was over forty years old. He had a right to look as though he were at death’s door. Especially since he probably was. “Are you okay, buddy?”

  The boy, still wearing the Puritan attire he’d died in, replete with a wide white collar, knee-length breeches, and buckled shoes, turned to look at me with his huge blue eyes. “He keeps running away.” He crossed his arms and lowered his blond head to pout.

  “I’m sorry, Samuel.” I started to reach out to him before remembering my hand would go right through him.

  Roane took a knee beside me and tapped on the floor. Ink shot out from under the hutch and flung himself into his arms. Samuel was clearly traumatizing the ragged thing. Roane wrapped him in his embrace, the hills and valleys of his biceps contracting with the movement, then beckoned Samuel over with a nod.

  The boy beamed at him and stepped closer, his shoes silent on the hardwood floor. Ink let Samuel run his hand through him, mimicking a petting motion. The three-year-old cooed, and Ink purred, content to be in his owner’s arms.

  But it was the look on Roane’s face that turned me into a soppy pile of mush. The warm smile he gave the boy. The patience he exhibited as he let Samuel pretend to pet him. An odd pressure tightened around my heart.

  Roane would certainly understand the circumstances of how a child could die so young, having done so himself. We didn’t know how Samuel died, but considering the time period, it probably had more to do with an illness than anything malicious. Unlike Roane’s tragic passing.

  The surrealness of my situation hit me again, as it had often over the last few weeks. Those in which I was conscious anyway. If I were to explain my current predicament out loud, no one would believe me. It would sound like the opening of a joke. A wolf, a cat, and a ghost walk into a drawing room…

  I wrapped the blanket closer and rose to my feet to see Annette doing it again. Staring. I followed her line of sight to Samuel, looked back at her, then back at the boy.

  “Annette?” I asked warily. She’d never been able to see the light from my spells, yet she did that very thing moments earlier. And now she was looking at Samuel, an entity she could not see yesterday, as though she was seeing a ghost. Literally.

  But why now? Had my turning her into a bird really given her the ability to see into the veil? Had I somehow created a supernatural creature in all her curly-headed glory?

  I stepped closer. She’d tried to clean her glasses, but she must’ve used her shirt, which was just as soot-covered as the rest of her. The lenses were still streaked with black and gray, and I wondered if she’d let me grab my phone to get a few shots. For posterity’s sake. If I ever had children—not super-duper likely at forty-five—they’d need to see the trials and tribulations of what their auntie Annette went through. To appreciate her even more.

  Her eyes began to well up behind the glasses.

  I poked an arm out from under the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. “Annette, you’re going to smudge your smudges.” After laughing at my own joke, I looked closer. Her face was covered in soot, yes, but there were fine lines all over it like the silhouette of something she’d been behind when the blast hit her. In fact, they looked like vines. Had Percy tried to protect her? Was that how she came out of it unharmed?

  While I marveled at this new discovery, Annette continued to stare. “He’s beautiful,” she said, her tone wistful.

  I glanced over my shoulder and teased her by asking, “Which one?”

  “He’s so tiny.” She covered her mouth with her fingers. “He’s so…” She blinked, then turned to me slowly, her angelic face twisting into a scowl. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Taken aback by the sudden turn of events, not that it was unusual for the fiery vixen, I tucked my arm beneath the blanket again. “Tell you what?”

  She pointed and then cast an accusing glare on me. “That.”

  After glancing between her and Samuel again, I glared back. “I seem to remember several conversations involving our newest guest.”

  “But he’s so tiny and little and small.”

  “Have you been reading your thesaurus again?”

  “He’s just…” Clearly distressed, she covered her mouth again. “How did he die?”

  “I’m still a little shell-shocked by the fact that you can see him.”

  “Right?” she said, snapping out of her stupor. “Ever since the bird thing.”

  I cringed. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay.” She went to pat my arm but had refocused on Samuel and ended up patting my face. Oblivious, she knelt beside Roane and held a hand out to the little rascal. “I’m Annette.”

  He looked at her and giggled. “Your face is dirty.”

  “Really?” she asked, clearly in love, then his words sank in. “Wait, really?” She wiped at her cheeks. “Like how dirty?” She stood and whirled around to me. “My face is dirty? How’s my hair?”

  After Annette ran upstairs, utterly mortified, I mourned the loss of my chance to snap a few shots for the children I would never have and followed her and Minerva upstairs to change. I ordered an exhausted Minerva to bed and hurried to my room.

  Five minutes later, I came down in the same tee, but with an actual bra underneath and a pair of sweats below that. And just in case there was any broken glass, I donned my sneakers as well.

  I stopped just outside the kitchen and girded my loins, metaphorically, before walking in. Roane was right. It’d been all but destroyed. The fact that no one was hurt was a miracle. I had to wonder again if Percy had anything to do with that.

  Ruthie and the chief were wiping soot off the upended breakfast table and chairs.

  “Gigi, I can get that,” I said, hurrying forward to help.

  She finished wiping down her chair and sat down in it to surveil the battleground. “I just needed a place to sit down.”

  Percy’s massive kitchen was part industrial and part antique. A charming blend of several centuries. At least, it had been. Hopefully a good cleaning would fix most of it, but I feared the oven was a goner.

  I sat beside her in shock. It was so much worse than I’d imagined. “I’m sorry, Gigi. We can fix it. It’ll be good as new
in no time.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m not worried about what happened. I’m worried about why it happened.” She still had splotches of soot on her face, and a light coat covering her silvery-blonde shoulder-length hair. It almost looked black now, and it suited her in a strange way.

  Then again, maybe I thought that because mine was so dark, an inky black so unlike Ruthie’s or my mother’s, according to pictures I’d seen of her. But we did have the same blue eyes. Apart from the fact that she was elegance and grace incarnate and I often resembled a headless chicken seeking out sustenance, we could’ve been twins.

  The chief folded his large frame into the chair beside her and took her hand. His dark skin smooth against the graying stubble he now wore. “Don’t worry, hon,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze, “we’ll find out who did this.”

  Roane had cleaned off the counter and sink, which was on the opposite side of the kitchen from the oven, and started a pot of coffee before beginning his quest. I watched as he opened cabinet doors and tested spices, tasted the sugar, and examined the canned foods.

  Just now remembering no other emergency vehicles had showed up, I wondered how the chief had arrived so quickly. “How did you know there was an explosion?”

  “I got a call on my cell.”

  “Parris?” I asked, surprised she would call him directly.

  “Not exactly.” Before he could finish his thought, someone knocked on the door. “And that would be him,” he said, his face grave.

  He started to stand, but I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “I’ll get it. You guys rest.” It seemed this day would never end.

  I hurried to the door, not realizing Annette had come downstairs until I got to it. I glanced over my shoulder and grinned at her. She’d showered. And cleaned her glasses. And twisted her hair into matching mini-buns on the top of her head like bear ears. She looked even more adorable than usual. My heart could only take so much.

  Realizing too late we needed a peephole, I opened the door to one Mr. Donald Shoemaker, a fifty-something who lived down the street and had been trying to get me out of the house since I got here. He’d even filed petitions with the city, claiming Percival was an eyesore.

  Percival was magnificent. A moss-green brick, six-gabled three-story with more personality than a house had a right to. He only looked crumbling. He was strong and fierce, and I loved him.

  Mr. Shoemaker, not so much. He stood on the other side of the threshold, a determined set to his jaw. Standing right behind him was one of the chief’s patrolmen. Officer Pecs, to be exact. At least, that was the name Annette and I had come up with for him, mostly because he had pecs to die for. I turned on the porch light, hoping to catch a nametag, but he wore none.

  “Oh, hi,” Annette said, squeezing past me to hold out her hand to the towering officer. She smelled like citrus shampoo. “I’m Annette.”

  He took her hand reluctantly. “Ma’am. We’ve had a noise complaint.”

  “Of course you have,” I said, eyeing Mr. Shoemaker.

  “It was an explosion,” he said to the officer, though he didn’t take his eyes off me. “My windows shook.”

  I cringed at the thought.

  “That was me,” Annette said, a soft blush pinkening her cheeks. She hitched a thumb over her shoulder. “The oven and I went head-to-head. I lost.”

  “Your boss is just inside if you want to talk to him,” I offered, my expression the picture of innocence.

  “Yes, ma’am. I saw his car.”

  “He’s looking at the damage now, but no one was hurt. Would you like to come in?”

  “That’s okay. As long as no one was hurt. I think the chief can handle it from here.” He didn’t seem as convinced as his words would suggest, and I wondered if he knew about all the strange happenings in this house on seemingly a daily basis. I wondered if all of Salem knew, actually.

  Mr. Shoemaker bristled, his boyish face turning petulant. “You’re not going to do anything?”

  “What would you have me do?” he asked, honing his voice to a razor’s edge. He probably had to be able to do things like that in his line of work.

  Mr. Shoemaker had no answer. He turned back to me as the officer gave Percy’s innards one last inspection, then walked away. “Ms. Dayne,” the man said, his caramel hair showing more gray than I remembered, “I strongly suggest you go back to Arizona.”

  Annette folded her arms over her chest, probably reining in a sassy comeback.

  “Right. You’ve suggested that several times, and I’ve ignored it. I feel we’re at an impasse.”

  “Apparently.” He tried to look past me into the house, but he was almost as vertically challenged as Annette.

  “Maybe if you got another petition going,” I offered. “Those are great.”

  Giving up, he bit down and pushed his black-framed glasses up his nose, a nose reddened by the biting chill. His breath fogged on the air as he stood there, and I tried my best to get past his defenses. To see what he was searching for.

  I was still learning why I could read some people from a block away and others evaded my probing, but I was beginning to believe it had more to do with intent than anything else. If someone was walking up my drive with the sole purpose of asking for my help to find something they’d lost, they were already open to my magics. They already knew what I could do whether they truly believed it yet or not. Mr. Shoemaker either didn’t know or didn’t want me probing him. Go figure.

  But my own curiosity sometimes got the better of me, like with Gigi earlier. She’d acted as though I could get past her defenses whether she’d wanted me to or not. Maybe I could. Maybe all it would take for me to know what Mr. Shoemaker wanted was to insist.

  I lowered my head, reached out with my mind, and asked him, “What are you searching for?”

  He let out a long breath that misted in front of his face before leaning closer and saying, “A way to get you out of this house and out of this town.”

  “Then you’ll have to get used to disappointment.”

  Something on the ground caught my, eye and I dropped my gaze to see Percy—well, Percy’s vines—glide across the porch toward Mr. Shoemaker’s sneakers. One of them curled around his shoelace and tugged it loose as another wound around and untied his other shoe.

  Before Percy could do anything more, Mr. Shoemaker turned on his heel and walked away, pausing slightly when he noticed his untied shoes.

  Annette hmphed as she watched him stalk off. “He’s like ninety-five percent dark chocolate. From the looks of it, you think it’s going to be smooth and sweet. Instead, it’s gritty. And bitter. And when you bite into it, it bites you back.”

  I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorjamb opposite her, eyeing the man suspiciously. “I don’t know, Nette. I think there may be more going on here than simply a disgruntled neighbor.”

  “Like a disgruntled neighbor who has a thorn in his side and is determined to see you kicked out of Salem?”

  I shrugged. She did have a point.

  We walked back into the kitchen, and Roane carefully lifted a canister to Annette. “I don’t know what you think you put in your cake, but it was not flour.”

  “What?” She hurried over, but he held up his other hand to stop her. “It says flour on the canister.”

  “What were you making, exactly?” I asked her.

  “Pumpkin roll.”

  “And you blew it up?” Disappointment gripped me hard. I would’ve killed for a pumpkin roll. I’d killed for less. At least, I liked to tell myself I’d killed for less in those rare moments I tried to be a badass. A level of coolness I never quite achieved.

  Roane put the canister on the counter and slowly opened the lid. After a quick sniff, he turned back to her and nodded. “Nitroglycerin.”

  What the actual fuck? I shot her an accusing glare. “Annette! We’ve talked about this. Friends don’t kill friends with nitroglycerin.”

  She sank into a chair beside Gigi. The chief stood
and walked over to him. “I need to get a team in here. There could be fingerprints.”

  “There aren’t,” Roane said. “None other than Annette’s.”

  “And you know this because…?”

  He gave him a sideways glance and said, “Wolf.”

  The chief nodded, accepting Roane’s conclusion without further question, as though it explained everything. A fact I found more than a tad confounding. How could he, wolf or not, possibly know there were no other fingerprints on the canister?

  I walked over to see what nitroglycerin smelled like. Roane pulled it away.

  “Roane, what could I possibly do?”

  “Do you know anything about your magics?”

  “Yes,” I said, my hackles rising. “Wait, why?” Clearly, he knew something I didn’t.

  Instead of explaining, he gave in and eased it closer, but just barely. “One sniff. Not too close,” he added and slid his fingers into my hair to hold it back when I bent over the canister.

  One sniff was all I needed. The acrid scent reminded me of burnt caramel. I rubbed my nose and turned to my grandmother. “Gigi, could this be what poisoned you?”

  She’d hired us to ferret out who’d poisoned her. Breadcrumbs, Inc., the new venture Annette insisted we start so we could capitalize on my newfound ability as a finder of lost things, was off to a horrible start. Especially since Annette used part of the evidence in her cake and then blew up the kitchen with the rest of it. We’d have to up our game if we wanted to survive the rest of the week.

  “No.” Ruthie shook her head and thought back. “I distinctly remember the taste of belladonna and mushrooms, most likely death cap.”

  “I found those already,” Roane said, gesturing toward the pantry where Ruthie had died. Of course the wolf would sniff out any kind of discrepancies. “They were ground into a powder and tossed into a soup mix.”

  “Yes,” Gigi said, nodding. “I’d made soup that day, but I’d had it not two days earlier as well.”

  “That narrows our window of opportunity.” I sat beside her at the small oak breakfast table and took her hand into mine. “Then it’s official. Someone definitely poisoned you.” Not that we didn’t already know that, but Roane’s confirmation seemed to solidify it all. “I’m sorry, Gigi.”