A Maze of Murder

by Kate Krake

  Those were the words Quentin himself had used, the very last night I’d seen him.

  Loreton. Quentin and I stood outside the building where we shared a small apartment. Rain poured down, dripping off our noses and soaking through our clothes to our skin. He refused to come inside to talk to me about what had happened.

  “It’s a crime, Bella,” he had said, his words strangled in his throat. I couldn’t tell if it was only the rain, or if tears were streaming down his face too. “The worst crime in both the normal and supernatural worlds.”

  “The police never get involved in supernatural cases, you said it yourself,” I said, crying. “You can’t run. You did what Jackfort wanted.”

  He placed his hand on my cheek, his skin colder than the icy weather. “People will be looking for me now. Bad people. I’ve gotta go.”

  “We’ll go together,” I said, sniffing. “You can’t leave me alone.”

  He grasped my fingers in his hand, holding them tight to his chest. “Alright,” he said. “I have stuff to sort out tonight, but I’ll be back for you in the morning. Sunrise. Okay? We’ll make a plan together. We’ll be alright.”

  I nodded. My brother pulled me into a hug, and I kissed his cheek. I tasted the salt that told me it wasn’t just rain soaking his face.

  That night I didn’t sleep. I packed two bags and told Hemlock we would be taking a trip, the three of us. Hemlock tried to act indifferent, but his fur bristled. He was as nervous as I was. He hadn’t spoken in a few days at that point, and I thought he was giving me the silent treatment over some slight or other. I didn’t realize then that it would end up a permanent thing.

  I would figure out the apartment and the rest of our things later. First, I needed to get Quentin safe and make sure we were all together.

  Dawn came and Quentin did not. He didn’t answer his phone.

  As the sun set, I unpacked the bags as Hemlock watched in silence.

  “Belinda?” Lila’s voice broke through my daydream memory, snapping me back into the present reality. “You don’t look so well.”

  I hadn’t thought about that day for a long time. I usually wouldn’t let myself. Jackfort had dragged it out of me.

  “Sorry, I’m fine,” I said. I hid my trembling hands in my lap. “I’m tired, and I got lost in a thought. What did you say?”

  “I said, do you wonder what might happen if we did find the killer? Like, do we turn them in to the sheriff or something? Force them to confess?”

  “I guess we jump off that bridge when we come to it,” I said.

  I sat down heavily, suddenly bone-tired. I wanted to ask Lila about what Jackfort had meant by Blackthorn Springs being founded on weirdness, but I just didn’t have the energy for any of it anymore.

  Hemlock leaped into my lap. The only comfort I could afford right then was knowing my oldest friend was safe and well. For now. But if Rowan Jackfort came near my cat again, I’d slice him open, belly to neck, without thinking twice about it.

  12

  That evening, I sat in my favorite armchair, my laptop resting on one side, open with four browser windows full of different tabs. One was all about ghost mazes; one all about death curses; one on any info I could find on Naarin demons (which was hardly anything); and another about the founding of Blackthorn Springs and why it might be the magical hotspot Jackfort claimed it was.

  The other side of the armchair was littered with discarded chocolate wrappers. I’d read, switching back and forth between topics, until my eyes ached, my mind spun, and I still had no more information that might help anyone or anything.

  If someone was killed in a ghost maze, they were destined to haunt the place forever. In this particular ghost maze, making it to the center meant death—Edie Jacques had indeed chosen a good one. A ghost maze in itself was a type of death curse. That was a connection too big to ignore.

  As for Naarin demons, a few sketchy-looking forums told me about their refusal to interfere in the affairs of other beings, and some said they could shapeshift into animals. And the bit about Blackthorn Springs being some kind of magical pressure point? A few amateur blogs mentioned it, but nothing set it apart from any other little village populated by at least a handful of weirdos (and I was counting myself in that category). So, really, hours of searching brought me two great big handfuls of hardly anything and nothing at all, with a splash of not a damned thing for good measure.

  I’d also checked up on Kenny Langdel and found plenty of mixed reviews about BrewHaHa and a Twitter account that hadn’t been updated in five years. I searched Conri O’Farrell, but apart from a listing in the business directory, it was like the guy didn’t even exist according to the internet. Something which I actually thought of as a point of merit for a person.

  I yawned, closing the computer and snuggling into Hemlock. He slept in his signature position, half next to me and half on top of me, so there wasn’t enough room for me to move properly. If only he would speak, he could have told me if he’d witnessed anything off about Conri, something to end this ridiculous attraction that was made all the more confusing by the other feeling that screamed he was dangerous.

  “What did you see, hmm?” I said, patting Hemlock’s head. “If you won’t tell me, maybe you could let Lila know?”

  If Hemlock agreed, or even if he’d understood, his only response was nuzzling his head deeper down beside my leg and purring.

  I stroked his head. He’d certainly liked the vet in the clinic. But was that anything to go by? Could I even trust the cat’s opinion of people? Hemlock had always hated any man I’d ever dated, not that there had been a lot of them. At the time, I had always thought it was just his jealousy and not a personal judgment of the guys in question. But he’d always been right, in the end.

  My last boyfriend, Eric Steiger, had been a great guy, in the beginning. He was a banker in Loreton with a bright future, a great heart, and a fantastic sense of humor. He was addicted to trivia and epic fantasy novels, and we would do jigsaw puzzles together until all hours of the night. He was perfect. We had been together for nearly two years, not living together officially, but spending every night at one or the other’s apartments, and I was expecting him to propose any day. That was, until the night I accidentally performed a float spell in my sleep—something I’d had no idea I could do and had never been able to replicate—and levitated him off the bed. He woke up with his face against the ceiling and then crashed back onto the bed. I confessed everything about my witchcraft, thinking we were strong enough to handle it. He didn’t say much and went to work the next day as usual. But he didn’t call that afternoon, didn’t show up for our dinner date, and didn’t answer his phone. When I showed up on his doorstep three days later to demand an explanation, he gave me my things in a box and told me he never wanted to see me again. So much for perfect.

  Since then, it had just been me and Hemlock. That’s the way Hemlock liked it, at least. I had grown to accept it. It was easier and for the best.

  “He’s been in Grey Mountain,” I said, speaking to myself. Hemlock stopped purring and stared at me. Was he trying to warn me against something? Was he saying it was ridiculous that I was even attracted to Conri? Maybe he was trying to tell me there was absolutely nothing wrong with him, and developing an interest in an eligible bachelor was a perfectly normal thing for a grown woman to do. The vet had won him over during his clinic stay, after all. Maybe it was okay for me to like him too.

  “Oh, why can’t you just talk to me again?” I said. “It’s making me crazy trying to figure out what you’re thinking all the time. You know that, right?”

  Hemlock readjusted himself, pawing at my legs, and shifted position, his chin on my knee. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought he was smirking.

  “Fine,” I said to the cat. “I’ll figure it out another way. It’s a puzzle, and what do we do with puzzle pieces? We solve the most obvious ones first—the corner pieces, and then the edges.”

  Conri wasn’t c
onclusively in the clear. People lie all the time. What evidence did I have to go on that suggested Conri wasn’t lying? In this puzzle, he was undoubtedly one of the tricky, almost impossible pieces, like a patch of clear blue sky in a landscape puzzle. Or maybe he was a piece of a completely different game? Either way, I had no choice but to put him back in the box for a while until I sifted through the easier clues. And the next step was to get to know my late next-door neighbor better.

  I lifted Hemlock from my lap and carried him into the bedroom, placing him on the end of the bed. He scrutinized me as I changed out of my jeans and into my black sweatpants and jacket.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I said. Hemlock blinked.

  I slipped a black knit cap onto my head.

  “How do I look?” I said. I didn’t need him to talk to understand the flick of his tail meant he thought it was a very bad idea.

  “I know, I know,” I said, looking at myself in the mirror. In head-to-toe black, I looked like a cat burglar, which I supposed I was in a way. Except I wasn’t actually going to steal anything solid from Kenny Langdel’s house. Only information.

  * * *

  I slipped out the back door and into the night. The moon was a fraction off full, so it gave me enough light to see by without having to rely on the flashlight I had in my pocket for when I got inside.

  It had been several lifetimes since I had done anything so blatantly illegal as this, but the thrill of it all was all too familiar, all too comfortable, and I slipped back into the role of petty criminal like I was putting on a well-worn pair of shoes.

  I crossed the cobbled walkway between the two yards. A brown owl perched upon the ancient picket fence around Kenny’s place. As I approached, it didn’t move except to swivel its head to watch my every step. The fence was weather worn and half-rotted, and I slipped through the loose boards easily.

  I knew Kenny had kept a key under the gnome by the back door. I’d seen him use it from my top-floor window, from which I could see his whole backyard. It was a foolish hiding place, and anyone who could be so careless deserved to be broken into. The key was still there. I slipped it into the lock, and the backdoor opened freely. This was far too simple.

  The house was silent as a crypt.

  I moved the tiny flashlight around the room, the beam just enough to erase the darkness one piece at a time.

  The inside of Kenny’s house was not at all what I expected. Where the cafe attached to the front of the place was all straight, hard lines and chrome surfaces, Kenny’s home looked like it belonged to someone’s grandmother.

  There was a green velvet couch draped in doilies, yellowed with age. Old-time portraits hung on the wall in ornate frames, little children in formal frills playing with small dogs, photographs of unsmiling people. A collection of babushka dolls lined the mantel along with a few candlesticks and dusty old dried flower arrangements. My interest getting the better of me, I took a close look at the dolls. Some looked like they might be antique. One in particular, a black, red, and white doll, reminded me of the nesting set my last foster mother had owned, forbidding me or anyone to touch it.

  I swallowed the lump rising in my neck.

  “Focus on the job,” I whispered in the pressing darkness.

  There was no obvious proof here that Kenny was a supernatural. But it now seemed like half the town was a secret witch, fairy, demon. Who knew what else there was? Maybe Kenny was a vampire stuck in time, which was why his place looked like a set piece from a 1920s period drama. Obviously though, vampires couldn’t be killed by death curses.

  Death curses typically needed a few standard ingredients: an effigy of the victim, an assortment of herbs and other flora specific to the individual spell, candles arranged in a set pattern, and a personal item of the intended victim’s, preferably something taken from their home. With so much clutter, it was impossible to tell if anything was missing. Besides, who was to say it couldn’t be a pair of socks or a washcloth or something equally unremarkable I had no chance of noticing?

  I moved through the overstuffed living room, past a kitchen with a cast-iron stove and a ceramic sink. The house had two bedrooms. The first was bulging from door to wall with cardboard boxes. As I moved the little light across them, I could see they were overflowing with books and floral fabrics that looked like dresses, plus a few more ornaments and other knickknacks. It looked like a life packed away. Or in the process of being packed away.

  The second bedroom was spotless, spartan by comparison. It had a hard single bed, the striped quilt pulled up with military precision. This was where Kenny had spent his last night on earth. A half-drunk glass of water sat on the nightstand. A book lay next to the cup, a western novel judging by the cover. Beside the book were a small box of tissues and an empty package of hard candy. Ordinary.

  I stood in the middle of the bedroom, circling the light around. Again, there was nothing unusual here.

  When I moved to exit, my sneakers squeaked on the polished floorboards, deafening against the silence. There was no one around to hear, but I still slowed to an exaggerated tiptoe. Something hard crunched underneath my shoe, and my foot rolled forward. I trained the light down to the floor and saw a small round woody thing, like a seed pod. There were two of them. I moved the flashlight around, bending closer to the floor. A third pod lay next to the bed. I went down on my hands and knees and shined the light underneath the bed. The floor was littered with dozens of the little pods. I might not have been a real witch, but I knew a spell when I saw one.

  I slid one of the pods into my pocket. It was a tiny thing, hardly bigger than a quarter, yet the psychic weight of it felt as though I’d pocketed a boulder. I slipped out of Kenny’s house as silently as I had entered. Invisible.

  Or not as invisible as I had thought.

  The figure stepped out of the black, and I almost screamed. My first thought was Jackfort. The person flicked on a blinding flashlight, and beyond the glare of the beam was Sheriff Bonney.

  “Belinda Drake,” he said. He had lost his usual boy scout look. He aimed the beam in my eyes. “I assume you’ve got a good explanation for being here?”

  “I was just out for a jog,” I said. “I like to keep fit.”

  “At night?”

  “Days are so busy, running the shop and all. You’ve gotta make the time for the important things.”

  “Inside Kenny Langdel’s house,” he said.

  My stomach dropped. I was busted.

  “Inside? I wasn’t inside,” I said, struggling to buy myself some time while I thought of a way to explain something I couldn’t—not to a sheriff, at least. “I was in the yard, looking for my cat. You haven’t seen an old black tom, have you?”

  “Deputy Garon told me all about your meeting with her the other day,” Bonney continued. “Seems a bit unexpected for a nice lady like you to make such crazy claims about witchcraft. And now I find you skulking out of the home of the deceased in the middle of the night.”

  At this point I thought it was best I remain silent, let Bonney lead the conversation.

  “I know your type, Ms. Drake,” he said. He sounded fierce, nothing like the sheriff I knew in the light of day.

  “My type?” I said, sweating despite the cold night.

  “You’re a loner. People around town say things, like you’re hard to get to know, you don’t want to be a part of the community.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. Though I wasn’t sure if it was entirely a lie.

  Bonney shook his head at my protests. “And since you’re alone all the time, you think you’re invisible. That you can go on and do whatever you like and get away with it.”

  “I…” I stammered, with no idea of where to take this next.

  “Blackthorn Springs is a special place, and since you now own a piece of it and seem like you’re intent on sticking around, at least in the short term, there are a few rules you need to start following.”

  “Rules?” I said. I had the dark s
uspicion he wasn’t just talking about the whole “not breaking into houses” rule of most civilized societies.

  “I see you, Ms. Drake,” he said. “This might be a sleepy little town, but that doesn’t mean law enforcement has their eyes closed. We see everything. We see who’s not following the rules.”

  “Then you know Kenny Langdel’s death was about as far from natural causes as you can get?” I said.

  Bonney flicked off the flashlight and slid it into a ring on his belt.

  “Good night, Ms. Drake,” he said. “Remember, I’m watching.”

  I hurried back to my home. The patrol car was parked across the road, and I knew Bonney was still there, watching me as promised.

  I felt like snakes were crawling around inside me. I stood under the hot shower, trying to cleanse myself of the creepy sensation of being in the dead man’s house and the weirdness of the sheriff, a side of him I had never dreamed could have existed. His threats were confusing and muddled, and I suspected he was only trying to rattle me. Unfortunately, it had worked.

  I tried to push my mind back to a calm and lovely time before death curses had come to ruin my life. But then, a death curse had already ruined my life anyway.

  13

  “What have you done?” Lila said without saying hello. She pushed a cardboard cup of Jenkins’s coffee into my hand as she rushed through the door, late again. The box of truffles poking out of her bag told me why.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, trying to ignore my burning face that was probably beet-red right then.

  “I can see it all over you. You’re really guilty about something. Is it the vet? Did you and him—”

  “No!” I squeaked.

  “Well, what, then? Spill it, witch.”