Whatever he wanted, one thing was for sure; he wanted us dead. We had the how, sort of, we knew the where—my favorite place— but we just didn’t know the why. Motive was king; I’d learned that early on from when I used to play with those mystery boxes that arrived by mail. That was really the only thing missing. Who had anything to gain? I had a lot more questions than answers, and that was one thing that I didn’t like.
I met Ryder’s gaze. His lips twitched at the corners as if he knew I was thinking the exact same thing. We both said the word at the same time as if he’d been reading my mind.
“Motive?”
Chapter 15
“How much do you trust my fake mommy dearest?” I asked Ryder.
“About as far as I can throw her. She’s my boss and has been working with the witch’s council for a while. And she doesn’t have any blemishes in her file. Others seem to trust her, and she’s never given me a reason not to. So, I’m trusting her for now on a short leash and watching her moves.”
“I saved some of your things from my bungalow.”
“You found my puzzle, didn’t you? I knew you would. I left clues for you in the event something happened to me. I recall that you really liked your mystery boxes. And I figured my death, should anything happen to me, would be one you tried to solve.”
A smile split my lips. Ryder knew me very well. We were like two peas in a pod, even if in more of a friendship way. He was right; I would try to avenge his death and find the killer. Just like the killer I planned to find and stop in Ryder’s voodoo loving family tree.
I picked up a stick and plopped down in the sand next to the fire as Ryder paced behind me.
“If we think about this rationally, what exactly is the motive? If the voodoo killer has my biological dad, Alexander, tied up somewhere, couldn’t he get what revenge he needed from him?”
Not that I’d wished that on the sperm donor. There was no coincidence that my biological father had been kidnapped and the killer was holding him. We might never have known if Margo hadn’t come clean about the visits in her dream and her quest to find our father’s journals.
“There must be stuff in your dad’s journals this guy is ready to kill for.”
“There hasn’t been a ransom demand that we know of. Why go through all of this trouble killing Georgia’s mom and then coming for us? Hell, if we get down and dirty, why in the heck hasn’t he even used a voodoo doll yet? I would think that would be his preferred choice of torture.”
“Your mom was dead, so if it was just about your sisters’ mothers, why didn’t he kill Margo’s mother too?”
I shrugged. “She went on the run. He probably can’t find her, if our moms were who he was after. Even still, our moms didn’t have anything to do with a voodoo curse. Our biological father’s family was the group that stopped him. It’s possible this killer is screwing with us and trying to pin all of this on your family.”
My mother had died from a spell gone bad a long time ago. Georgia’s mother was killed by someone the council was chasing, someone they referred to as the voodoo killer. She might have never told me that the killer was going to show up at the Witch Wars if the FBI agent hadn’t shown up. We needed the FBI’s file. We needed to know what they had on this guy that maybe we didn’t.
“The best way to find out answers is to look at this with fresh eyes with all the facts. The FBI was after this guy, along with the council. You…” I looked up at him. “You have the council’s file. How hard do you think it would be to get the FBI’s and compare notes?”
“Not hard. I have a guy who owes me a favor,” Ryder said, pausing in his strides. “You think we each have something the other could use.”
“Fresh eyes,” I said.
Ryder slipped a phone out of his pocket and sent a text. “I’m having it emailed to us. All we need is a computer.”
Chapter 16
Out of all the witches on the island, most could probably give me a spell to combat the illusions the voodoo killer was using. It wasn’t a matter of the difficulty of the spell; it was a matter of who to trust to get it. We still had no full motive that made sense. The only connections we had were to the Hexford name and the fact that Margo and Alexander spoke in her dreams. He’d been tied up and held awaiting us to find his old journals and rescue him from this killer. How did we know her dreams aren’t illusions themselves? We didn’t. The truth serum that my sisters and I had concocted a while back would’ve worked as well, although I wasn’t sure we had the ingredients we needed on the island. So, for now, we would go with mommy dearest’s plan to figure out who was doing what.
“I’m sure my dad is back at the hotel by now.” I rose from my spot in the sand and dusted off my butt.
“Do you think that’s a good idea? Someone is trying to kill you, and they’re only using magic part-time. This killer could just as easily strangle you as he could cast a spell on you. This kind of killer is unpredictable.”
“I can be unpredictable.” And the truth was I could be. As my father had never thought that I would leave the island, I could be unpredictable again, if it meant saving everybody I love. Only then did a plan of my own start to form. We needed to know who we were up against if we had any hope of stopping them.
There might be one person on the island that could have noticed things. Would have noticed things. My mother, who happened to be annoyingly absent lately, would probably have all the answers I needed. The only problem was finding her.
“I’ll be back at the hotel in about an hour. There’s something I need to do.”
“Tess, wait,” Ryder called out.
I stopped and spun on my heel, thinking that I was going to need to explain myself. Not that I would. Ryder tossed a pendant through the air, and I caught it. I ran my finger over the medallion. It was similar to the ones that he’d given me to combat spells, only this one was slightly different. I flipped the coin over to find his initials on the back. “What’s this for?”
“If you’re up against a Shields, that should block the magic, if it is actually one of my family members. The Shields are notorious for putting hexes on each other when they have family feuds. My three times great-granddaddy passed down a coin to his descendants. That little gem wards off hexes.”
“I’m sure Friday, aka Theo, wishes he’d had something similar when the Hexfords placed the hex on him.”
“My branch of the family tree didn’t just get excommunicated. It was chopped down and thrown into a tree shredder. The tension between the family members with at an all-time high. My great-great-great granddaddy, though, was smart to have some type of protection from the bad seeds. That pendant saved his butt more times than should be legal. I haven’t had need for yet, but maybe you will.”
Ryder was always looking out for me. “Thanks.”
I slipped the pendant into my pocket and started my walk toward the middle of the island. Toward where the mountain peaks met the waterfall. Layers of clouds darkened in the sky. It didn’t matter whether it was raining or a sunny day, this was always my favorite place to go. It was my mother’s, too, and the one place I knew where to find her.
I pushed through the open brush and came out to the breathtaking view of the mountains.
A frothy waterfall poured into the ravine. The jagged rise of the mountain beyond the streams stretched up into the darkening sky where ravens and crows circled.
“Mother,” I called out in a singsong voice.
My mother was never that far from me when I was on the island. She liked to keep an eye on me and see what I was up to.
“Mother!” I called out again. Aggravation slipped into my voice.
My mother’s apparition appeared beside me out of thin air. “Yes, dear.”
“You said you took me away from the Hexfords because they didn’t tell you everything. You didn’t have time to elaborate on it before you disappeared. What did you mean?”
“I knew one day you would ask.” My mother’s apparition floated over the drop to th
e canyon floor where the water met the ground. She turned to regard me again. “The reason the Hexfords needed heirs, of course, was to stop Hilda Gold from using black magic, but that’s not all. Of course, I knew they would try to entice you with money or whatever your heart desired, but I wanted you to make a decision based on your heart.”
“You’re stalling, Mom. What was the reason?” I rested my palms on my hips.
“Darling, I invented that look. It won’t work on me.”
I growled and dropped my hands to my sides. She was most definitely stalling. “Tell me, or I’ll never come back. I swear it.”
“I signed on to bring more of his bloodline into the world before I found out what he was truly after.”
“And what was that?”
“I can’t tell you. This is part of your journey, your master plan.”
“Is that why you’ve been so conveniently missing since I arrived?”
My mother turned back toward the mountains, giving me her back. “Vinette and I worry about you, dear. We blame ourselves that you aren’t trained in protection spells.”
I’d always been patient with my mother, until now. “Mom, if you know who the killer is, you need to tell me.”
My mother turned back to stare at me again, sympathy in her eyes. “And if I don’t?”
My heart clenched at the thought that she could be able to stop this by giving me just a single name. And yet she wouldn’t. “If somebody I love gets hurt because you wouldn’t tell me, I’m not sure I could forgive you.”
“If someone gets hurt, you should be mad at me. I was the one who kept the secret of you being a witch. It’s my fault you aren’t trained to handle this.”
I tossed my hands up and spun around, heading back toward the hotel. This was a waste of time. I couldn’t rely on anybody to help me. Not when the killer was using an illusion spell.
“The truth will set you all free,” my mother called out to me, making me pause in my steps.
The truth would have set me free, maybe, if she’d been truthful with me from the beginning. My life was one big bag of lies that had spilled open. It was a thirty-minute walk back to the hotel from my current location. I had made these steps several times in my life. Whenever I got upset, depressed, worried, or experienced any other emotion, that forest landing was the place I always went to. It calmed my soul, but today, it seemed to have lost its charm.
The clouds turned darker through a canopy of leaves in the trees. I could smell the rain in the air. I could taste the apprehension of its approach. There was a storm coming all right, including one that didn’t involve rain.
Chapter 17
When I arrived back at the hotel, neither my father or pretend mother was anywhere to be seen. I’d expected to be stopped again by the invisible force field around the hotel but was surprised that nothing stopped me from entering. Had Masterson lifted the lockdown spell from the hospital?
All of my sisters, along with King and my sisters’ boyfriends, were in the lobby. Their raised voices made it difficult to even hear what the problem was. Sure, they were probably worried about me, but I was here.
“Hey, guys,” I called out. My words went unnoticed.
“Guys,” I called out even louder.
No one bothered to even look in my direction, so I stood on top of one of the tables, slipped my fingers between my teeth, and blew like I was trying to get the attention of a hot male stripper.
All talking ceased, and they turned in my direction. “The spell is down, and I’m back. You don’t need to come save me.”
Pippy’s eyes narrowed, and she shot a lightning bolt at me, which I deflected with my protective bubble. “She still has our mother’s powers. It’s her.”
“If you’d asked, I would have told you that. Did you have to try to electrocute me?”
“We had to be sure.” She smiled in that way I’d expect from her sister. One of these people, or heck, even one of the staff members, wasn’t who they said they were, and I was going to have a hell of a time figuring out which one.
King headed in my direction and pulled me into his arms. He rested his forehead against mine. “I was worried.”
“I was too. Where’s Livvy?” I asked.
King gestured to my old office, where the light was streaming from under the door. “I’ve had my eye on her the whole time, and she said Mildred told her a spell to keep everyone locked out.”
“She sure is the smartest little girl I’ve ever met,” I whispered before leaning in to kiss him. He stilled my advancement.
“Tiara tutu man.”
I grinned. “Guinevere.”
He kissed me like a starving man. “Where have you been?”
“I can’t discuss it here with all of them, but I’ll tell you later.” I patted his chest. “Stay, you, while I go look in on Livvy.”
Georgia and Margo had started to follow me when King stepped in their way. I rapped my knuckles on the office door. “Livvy, it’s Tess, let me in.”
“King told me not to trust anyone,” she said.
“I’m not just anyone,” I said in a singsong voice.
“Prove it,” she answered.
I chewed my lip, trying to think of how I could prove it to her. She would probably let her guard down if I reminded her about putting her in a bubble when I saved her life or maybe the fact that I knew she visited her daddy in the tree outside her window. “Did you know that office belonged to me when I lived on the island?”
She didn’t answer.
“Did you know that office used to be my mother’s before it was mine?”
Still no answer.
“There’s a secret in that room, one that only three people know. Me, my dad, and my mom.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“My oasis.” I grabbed a piece of printer paper from behind the reception desk and wrote down my secret, knowing that there was no way after seeing it that she could claim that I was someone else. I folded the paper and was about to shove it under the door when I stilled. “You have to promise to keep my secret and then let me in when you know it’s me.”
“I will.”
I slid the paper under the door and waited.
“No way…” Her voice trailed off as I sat down tailor-style and rested my back against the door.
Five minutes later I watched as most of my siblings disappeared. I still hadn’t heard from Masterson or Noah about Watson, but worse case, I’d drive the cart over there myself. Just as I was debating what to do, I heard Livvy in the room saying words that were no doubt being given to her by Mildred. I heard the door lock click at my back, and then I fell inside my old office when she opened the door, lying on the floor staring up at her. I grinned.
Livvy was wearing my shell necklace and rubbing it between her fingers, much like I used to do when I was her age.
“Did you make this yourself?”
“I did,” I said, rolling to sit up and push myself off the ground. I stepped into my office, closed the door, and locked it behind me. Livvy had found the latch on the filing cabinet and pulled it from the wall to reveal my secret hideout.
“Did your mom know that space was there?” Livvy asked, stepping back into the room I hadn’t been in since the day my mom died. All my little girl dreams had died with her.
“She was pregnant with me when the hotel was built. She had it designed as a play area for me to use.” I rested my palm on one of the pictures still hanging on the wall. It was a drawing of the sea with a rainbow touching the water. Those had been simpler times, when life was uncomplicated and less messy.
Hanging beside my drawings were various pictures that I’d taken with my first camera. One of Noah and me, one of me with most everyone that I’d cared about at the time. My new sisters and soon-to-be new family would replace the faces of previous workers that I used to pretend to be related to. Easier times.
“Are these all your friends?” she asked.
I glanced at her to find he
r watching me and nodded. “There weren’t many young people on the island as I was growing up, but that didn’t stop me from making friends with the grown-ups, much like you.”
“You’re lucky. I wish I’d grown up here,” she said.
“Once I’m at the Hexford Inn for a year, my time will be up, and maybe we can come visit more often, depending on what King says.”
“I’d like that,” she said, sitting down at the desk pressed up against the wall. “Mildred said someone is trying to hurt you and your sisters.”
I sat down on the floor and crossed my outstretched legs. “Yep. Someone is trying to hurt us, and I have no idea who is hiding among us.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means they can change their appearance to look like any of us. So be smart and don’t trust anyone unless you’re sure it’s them.”
“You’re the only one that doesn’t treat me like a typical little girl.”
I smiled up at her. “Why would I treat you like a typical little girl? You’re probably smarter than all of us combined.”
“If it were me wanting to know who was lying about who they were, I’d use the truth serum you and your sisters made. I’d pump it through the air filtration system until no one was immune.” Livvy giggled.
“That’s not a bad idea,” I said, watching as she dug around in my old desk. “Although I think I’d give them all cake and whoever doesn’t eat has to be the bad guy, right? No one good would ever turn down cake.”
Maybe Livvy had a point. A spell, just the right kind, might be exactly what I needed.
Chapter 18
The next two days everyone was restless. No one trusted anyone, and King had a hard time letting me wander the island alone. It wasn’t that I didn’t need him. I was trying to keep the peace. Ryder was still hiding on a part of the island where he was comfortable. I didn’t blame him. Someone had killed an innocent man and spelled him to look like Ryder, probably in an attempt to get me while I was vulnerable.
Witchy Past Page 7
