Vervain and a Victim

by Ruby Loren

  “As much vervain as you’ve got!” she gasped in the direction of my aunt. “I’ve heard it’s the only thing that will keep them from biting you, and kill them as an added bonus! Even better than garlic.”

  “Oh no,” I said, realising what was happening. “You can’t be serious. Really?” And then, like a complete idiot, I raised my voice. “Does everyone here genuinely believe in vampires?”

  Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at me. Minerva gave her head a single shake. I was about to ruin everything.

  “Because they are definitely real, folks! I saw one creeping around the town last night,” Jesse Heathen announced, entering the shop with his normal panache. “I’ve been talking to Detective Admiral, helping him out with the case. He confided in me, detective to detective, that the murder of Bridgette Spellsworth was almost certainly the work of a child of the night.”

  The reaction was immediate. Garlic was waved, crucifixes brandished, and the crush to buy vervain intensified.

  Linda materialised in the doorway that led into the shop from the kitchen. “Anti-vampire charms! Get your anti-vampire charms here! Fresh and fuelled by Salem magic. The best quality you will find on the market today,” she announced.

  I don’t know why she bothered with the sales spiel. She was nearly crushed by the stampede as our customers snatched up the box of hex bags she’d made. I glanced at them using witch sight and saw that Linda’s magenta magic was all over them. However, I had no idea what the spell was designed to do. All I knew was that my personal rule of not selling any harmful ready-made spells had just been broken.

  I waded through the crush to get to Jesse. “What. Is. Going. On?”

  He shrugged. “No idea. I’m stumped.”

  “Don’t even try it!” I warned him.

  He flashed his white teeth at me, looking annoyingly handsome. “Going by what’s in front of us, I’d say the story of Bridgette’s death has got out… and people around here recognise the signs.”

  “The signs?” I started to say, before I cottoned on to what he was talking about. “Just because she was drained of blood, they think that a vampire killed her?”

  Jesse shrugged. “I guess they must. You’ve got to admit, those marks on her neck did look like bite marks.” He said it in such a carrying whisper half the room probably heard.

  I crossed my arms. “What are you doing? I didn’t think the police had released an official statement yet. Didn’t you sign the same form I did? It said that we had to keep quiet about what we saw, so that the police could notify Bridgette’s next of kin, and decide how much information they’re going to release to the press.”

  Jesse waved a hand. “Bridgette would have loved the splash her death is making! Look at how it’s bringing the community together… not to mention the cash you’re raking in.” He waggled his dark eyebrows at me, his amber eyes flashing with humour.

  “We signed an agreement! You know it was murder. The police keep back details for a good reason.”

  “Who says I said anything?” Jesse crossed his arms, mirroring my stance. “There are so many psychics around here, one of them probably picked up some vibes, or something like that.”

  “Good luck getting the police to believe that,” I told him, rather smugly, if truth be told. I wasn’t above feeling self-righteous that Jesse was definitely going to get his comeuppance when Detective Admiral heard about this.

  “The way that I see it, you’re benefitting a lot from this alleged information leak. What do I have to gain? But look at you! You just happen to have a whole stock of anti-vampire charms and herbs lying around the place.” He shook his head at how remarkable it all was.

  “He’s not going to believe you,” I warned him, hoping that I was right about that.

  “I guess we’ll find out. But you’re the one he’s the most upset with. He hated me right from the start, remember? But you… I think he had high hopes that you were something that you’re not. You disappointed him. That’s far worse than not liking someone.” Jesse gave me one last wicked grin before retreating. “Have a good day of sales! Don’t let the vampires bite,” he called, shutting the door behind him on his way out.

  I was left with a mix of emotions, but I felt a dull certainty that this wasn’t going to end well. Things involving Jesse Heathen never seemed to. After his little speech, I wouldn’t be surprised if Detective Admiral knocked on the door with a warrant for my arrest before the end of the day.

  The final nail in the coffin was when Aunt Linda, who had sold out of her hex bags, rushed out of the kitchen with a tray of steaming cups. “Garlic tea! Get your garlic tea here! Good for health and for keeping the undead at bay.”

  The rush only died down when we’d completely sold out of everything and anything that could possibly be marketed as a vampire repellant. I was left standing with my aunts in a shop that still smelled faintly of garlic.

  “I should get started on the orders for anti-vampire charms. We sold out of the first batch in seconds, but I promised I’d get a delivery out to everyone who wanted them later on today. Look at all the cash!” Aunt Linda said, showing me her bum bag. It was stuffed full of notes and jangled with the sheer number of coins.

  “Don’t either of you feel like we’re taking advantage of people’s gullibility?” I said, mostly directing the question at Aunt Minerva. She was usually Mrs Moral Compass.

  “You can’t put a price on peace of mind,” was her response.

  “The hex bags are real, too. You saw that, right?” Aunt Linda tilted her head at me.

  “I saw that they did something. What is the spell supposed to do?”

  “Banish vampires! It keeps them away. In all honesty, I think the spell is supposed to be for some dust that you sprinkle around the perimeter of your property, but I made some substitutions. I think it should be enough to put off any vampires from approaching the carrier of the spell.”

  I looked between them. “You’re talking as though vampires are real.” I took a deep breath. “Are they?” I tacked on, feeling like a lunatic for even asking.

  “Of course they are. We just don’t tend to get them around here. Vampires and witches generally don’t mix,” Minerva explained.

  “It’s because witches can work spells on vampires, and vampires have magic of their own that they like to use to manipulate you,” Linda continued.

  “Magic of their own?” I queried, feeling completely at sea.

  “Glamour. A vampire can make you feel things and do things. On the whole, they’re nasty scheming creatures, which is why we stay away from them, and they from us,” Linda said, nodding her agreement. Her hair had faded to a more subtle lime shade overnight, I noticed. But it was definitely still green.

  “Do you really think one of them is in town?” I glanced at the empty jars of vervain, wondering if we’d been wise to sell all of it.

  “Don’t worry about that. I’m not even sure where anyone got the idea that vervain has any effect at all on vampires,” Minerva told me, following my gaze. “On the whole, there is no need to worry. Vampires can’t enter your place of residence without an invitation, and they don’t tend to hunt to kill, either. There are rules within their society, and there is a hierarchy. Killing humans attracts attention. It’s far better to take a few sips and make them forget it ever happened.”

  “That is beyond creepy,” I commented.

  “No kidding,” Linda said, rubbing her neck in such a way that made me think she’d had the experience herself. “But if a vampire really killed Bridgette Spellsworth, then it’s a vampire who’s gone rogue.”

  I sat down on one of the chairs in my tearoom area. “I think she was already dead when the vampire, if that’s even what was responsible for draining her blood, came along. Someone stabbed her in the back.” I did some more considering. “If they can make you forget all about it ever happening, I’m guessing vampires don’t usually nearly decapitate their victims?”

  My aunts exchanged a l
ook. “Not normally. Again, it could be a rogue,” Linda said.

  “Or, it could be someone who wants us to draw these very conclusions,” my other aunt pointed out.

  “Whatever it is, it won’t be a problem for long. The locals already know who the vampire is and where he’s hiding. He’ll be dragged out of his hole and turned into a pile of ash before you can say ‘dustbuster’,” Linda informed me.

  “They know who he is?” This was getting stranger by the second.

  “Whilst I was selling my charms, I heard Mrs Meechum from the Post Office say that the vampire is someone who was recently interred in the Wormwood graveyard. He’s a man of Romanian descent, no less.” She raised her eyebrows and gave me a significant look.

  “Like… Dracula?” I said, filling my voice with skepticism.

  “You’re right to be skeptical. A person’s nationality does not make them a vampire! What else did you hear, Linda?” Minerva had her arms folded and an unamused expression on her face.

  My green-haired aunt deflated. “Not much. I think he came over here as a, er… as a plumber. He had a stroke and dropped dead. There wasn’t any money to send him back to Romania, so it was decided that he would be buried here. But some people believe he was turned by a vampire before he was interred. Now he’s woken up and is on the rampage, hungry for his next meal.”

  Minerva rolled her eyes. “Cauldron help us all. That sounds like the poorly-written plot of a horror film.”

  “Don’t shoot the messenger. I think a group is going to head down to the graveyard and dig up the vampire to stop this from happening again. Case closed!” Linda smiled brightly at me.

  “If there’s one thing worse than a witch hunt, it’s a vampire hunt,” Minerva commented. “We’ve seen it before. It never ends well.”

  “How does it end?” I asked, curious.

  “With most of the town’s dead being dug up and exposed to the sunlight. If you’re really unlucky, some of the residents who prefer to stay indoors and live reclusive lives will also be dragged out. On the whole, I think that’s a plus side. They get some human interaction and some sunlight! What’s not good about that?” Linda flipped her palms upwards, before returning to her hex bag construction.

  “It’s all fun and games until people get carried away and someone gets staked,” Minerva told me.

  “And it’s almost never the actual vampire,” my other aunt supplied.

  Great. The town was on a vampire hunt… and it was probably going to be blamed on me.

  5

  Double Date

  I left my aunts to their spell orders and decided to pay a visit to the cemetery. Even though I knew it was practically asking for trouble, I couldn’t shake the idea that had popped into my mind that this story was going to be the lead article in the next month’s issue of Tales from Wormwood. If Detective Admiral discovered I was writing it, it would surely be more fuel for the fires of suspicion that Jesse had started burning, but I could hardly ignore that something big had happened in Wormwood! At the moment, it was a choice between murder and possible vampire attack, or one nutter’s theory that the mayor was secretly two goblins standing on top of each other dressed in a raincoat. Compelling stuff.

  I found a war zone where there had once been a quiet place of reflection.

  Detective Admiral and a few other officers had cordoned off one of the graves and were doing their best to keep the growing crowd back. Many of the clamouring audience were carrying shovels, and I could see the beads of sweat on the detective’s brow from 100 metres away.

  “Grave desecration is a crime! You will all be prosecuted if you don’t stand down!” he shouted, colour rising in his face.

  “The grave has already been disturbed… when that thing crawled out of it and killed Bridgette!” someone in the crowd shouted.

  I stood on tiptoe and was just able to see through the non-crowded side of the grave to where the headstone stood. The earth in front of it did indeed look disturbed, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that were simply down to the local voodoo practitioners gathering graveyard dust. I was sure that many of them would have viewed a Romanian plumber’s grave as a neat way to add a little exotic flair to their spell work.

  “We are trying to conduct an investigation into a death that is being treated as suspicious, and you are hindering that investigation,” Detective Admiral yelled at the crowd. “Either you disperse, or I will charge you all with obstructing a police investigation! A guard will be left at this site. Anyone who attempts to dig anything up will be prosecuted, and any action taken against the guard will be classed as assaulting a police officer. Am I making myself clear?”

  There was a muttering amongst the ranks as this was discussed.

  “On your head be it. You’re endangering an officer’s life when the vampire rises again tonight,” one man told him.

  “That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” the detective said, voice full of derision. It was clear that he didn’t believe the deceased Romanian plumber was Count Dracula in disguise.

  When the crowd started to disperse, I took the opportunity to slink away with them. After the showdown I’d just witnessed, I’d wager that the detective would be out gunning for someone to blame… and I wanted him to bump into Jesse first.

  Instead of going back to the shop, where madness reigned, I hit the local library to do some research for the article I knew I had to write. Whilst Bridgette’s murder still remained a mystery, there was something about the scene of the crime that had been bothering me ever since I’d spoken to my aunts about it. It was the cauldron and the silver coin. When I’d mentioned it, both of my aunts had done their annoying shared look, and then pretended to know nothing about it.

  I didn’t believe them.

  That was why I found myself searching for any number of combinations of ‘Wormwood, cauldron, and coin’ on the internet, trying to find the answer. When the internet failed me, I hit the books, but there was nothing that I could find. At least - nothing that had been published. In Wormwood, that didn’t mean much. In the same way that things like big roads and modern housing developments had a knack of avoiding the town, there wasn’t much acknowledgement in print, either. Most of the folklore that I had written about in the magazine, even in the days before I’d believed it could possibly be true, had been through word of mouth. I’d known I wouldn’t find anything significant out about Wormwood on the internet or in books.

  I had hoped to find something similar in another town’s history. Folklore long past often bore many similarities to the lore that people still believed was happening right this second in Wormwood. Even though that theory had checked out in the past, this time I was left with no search results and no answers.

  The next day passed in a flurry of vampire-themed pandemonium. More anti-vampire charms were sold, more repurposed garlic flower teas were flogged, and anti-vamp dust was added to the list of undead fighting products on sale at the Salem Apothecary.

  We weren’t the only business in town cashing in. Hellion Grey was allegedly selling magical stakes made from blessed wood that would no sooner touch a vampire than make it burst into flames. The jeweller across the street was doing a roaring trade in crucifix jewellery - selling off stock she’d probably had since Buffy’s popularity waned. And finally, every fortuneteller or psychic with an ounce of business sense was selling readings that calculated your chance of death by vampire, and offered you various methods of avoiding such a fate.

  Vampire fever had gripped the town, and it was showing no signs of loosening its hold.

  It was no surprise that Detective Admiral, nor any of the Witchwood police force, had got round to following up on their initial questions. The way I’d heard it, they were still staked out in the cemetery and dealing with a flurry of tip-offs about suspected vampires - and therefore, alleged suspects in the murder case. Detective Admiral would probably be considering committing murder himself when he got his hands on the person responsible for putting the id
ea into Wormwooders’ heads that this crime had been committed by a vampire.

  I really, really hoped that he wouldn’t decide that person had been me.

  When the shop closed for the day and evening fell, a hush also settled over the town. Everyone seemed to be waiting for something to happen.

  I ignored the strange crawly sensation and struck out across town after dark. My article research had stalled when I’d been unable to find out anything about the cauldron and the silver coin. With the police keeping quiet about the rest of the details (the ones that hadn’t been spilled, anyway) I had very little to go on. That was why I decided to pay one of my least favourite people a visit.

  It hadn’t been hard to find out where Jesse Heathen was staying. Everyone knew everyone else’s business in this town. One question had been all I’d needed to discover that he was staying just a few doors away from the mayor. Given the fact that I believed Jesse had something on the mayor, something he was holding over him, it made sense. Keep your friends close, and your enemies two doors down.

  I walked down the high street and marvelled at the silence. Wormwood was hardly a happening town, but this was extraordinarily quiet. That was what made the sound of a group of footsteps approaching that much stranger. I carried on walking and soon met a crowd of people moving in the opposite direction. A torch was flashed in my face and then there was the strong smell of garlic as someone wafted a bunch of it under my nose.

  “She recoiled!” I heard someone say, voice filled with excitement.

  “She’s not a vampire. I saw her standing in the sunlight changing the shop display today,” another person contributed.

  I blinked in the bright light.

  “She could have been changed after that. How long does it take for a corpse to reanimate?”

  “We should test her properly,” another said.