by Bailey Cates
Lucy clasped her hands and beamed at me. “Cayenne pepper—just a hint! That’s delightful! I’ll get some right now.”
Suddenly I realized I hadn’t heard the shriek of the espresso machine or customers conversing for quite some time. Craning my head around the big refrigerator, I saw Ben counting our receipts.
He looked up and smiled at me. “Just running the register tape.”
I glanced at the big clock on the wall. It was a little after five. The Honeybee was closed.
“Oh, no. Lucy, I’m so sorry. I have to go. In fact I’m already late for my volunteer work at Georgia Wild.” I looked helplessly at the mess strewn on the counter. “Could you . . . Do you mind?”
My aunt pressed her lips together.
“I’ll come in early, make it up to you. In fact, let me just put the food away, and I’ll clean up the rest in the morning.” I grabbed a paper bag to load with day-old leftovers to take with me.
She stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Katie, stop it. I don’t mind cleaning up. I’m just worried about you.”
“Worried about me? Why?”
“You’re running yourself ragged,” she said. “It’s like you’ve got a second full-time job at Georgia Wild.”
My jaw slackened in surprise. “Only evenings—and only for a couple of hours tonight since everyone’s coming over for Imbolc. It was Mimsey who introduced me to Wren, after all.” Wren Knowles was the devoted biologist who worked full-time for the environmental nonprofit. She was also the granddaughter of the oldest member of the spellbook club, Mimsey Carmichael.
“I doubt she intended for you to volunteer there every spare minute—I bet Declan just loves that—and for what? To front-load karma?”
Shaking my head, I turned toward the office. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Luce. I would think you’d approve of my volunteering to help the environment. We’re green witches, for heaven’s sake.” Lucy’s reference to Declan bothered me more than I liked to admit. Just the other night he’d complained that he saw me less now than he did before we were a steady item.
Steady. Did twenty-nine-year-olds even go steady?
Behind me my aunt said, “You know very well what I’m talking about. Volunteering for something you believe in is wonderful, but I’m not sure it’s for the right reason. I think you might be doing it out of fear.”
“Am not,” I muttered from the office doorway. Looking over my shoulder, I saw her watching me with wise eyes.
“Ever hear the story of the man who learned death was coming for him, so he went to another town? And who did he meet there but Death himself. You can’t escape destiny, Katie.”
“Come on, Mungo,” I said, picking him up from the club chair where he held court during the days he accompanied me to the bakery. He nestled into my tote bag, and I grabbed my jacket.
Lucy still stood in the same spot.
“I’ll see you at eight thirty, then?” I kept my tone light and breezy as I placed some of the unsold baked goods in the paper bag. Honeybee leftovers were always popular with the Georgia Wild staff. “I think you’ll like my take on bannock cakes.”
“I’m sure I will.” Her tone was mild, but her eyes bored into mine until I managed to tear my gaze away.
At least she’d dropped her lecturing tone. I kissed her on the cheek. “Bring a warm coat. Even with the fire it will be chilly later on. Bye, Ben,” I called, and hurried out to where my Volkswagen Beetle snugged up to the curb.
Front-loading karma indeed. As if.
Chapter 2
But Lucy’s words stayed with me as I drove to Georgia Wild. I had to admit she had come awfully close to the truth. A tiny part of me hoped that if I could do enough good on my own—and volunteering was at least mildly virtuous—then I could sidestep that whole lightwitch thing Franklin Taite had told me about. Gift, he’d called it.
I didn’t quite see it that way.
In fact, ever since he’d informed me I had a calling to remedy dark magic, I’d kind of freaked out. I’d even considered turning my back on my witchy heritage altogether, much like my mother had. But I couldn’t bear the thought of denying who I was or losing my new friends. I’d been an outsider my whole life, and now I finally understood where I belonged.
I was a witch, and I wasn’t going to stop practicing just because some balding police detective told me I’d be called upon to fight dark magic. Bah.
“What would he know?” I asked Mungo, who was still in the tote bag and buckled into the passenger seat of the Bug. “I mean, I’d know if I had a calling, wouldn’t I? That’s not the kind of thing that someone else tells you. It’s the kind of thing that bubbles up from deep inside.”
I glanced down to see my familiar tip his head to the side.
“What? You think I feel bubbles?”
Yip!
“Hush.”
Well, maybe I did. A little, tiny kind of bubbling.
Front-loading karma. Doing good deeds I was comfortable with so I wouldn’t be called upon to do something I wasn’t comfortable with.
A car honked behind me, and I realized I’d slowed to a crawl. I shook my head at myself and accelerated. It had been three months since Detective Taite told me I was a lightwitch. How was that different than a white witch? I certainly abided by the Rule of Three that the rest of the spellbook club believed in, which, simply put, stated that everything we did would come back to us threefold—good spells and bad.
I reached over to smooth the fur between Mungo’s ears, and he nosed my fingers. The gesture was oddly comforting, and I felt my muscles relax. “Okay. You’re right. I’m worrying about nothing.”
Perhaps I spent more time at Georgia Wild than I really needed to, but I was genuinely concerned about the local endangered species habitat that the recently launched nonprofit worked to save. Autumn Boles, the founder, was passionate about every single one of the projects we were involved with, from the small cave housing gray bats on a single acre of land to the cypress-dominated ponds tucked into a particular inland pine forest that provided the perfect breeding ground for reticulated flatwoods salamanders. Working with private citizens, environmental foundations, and donors, Georgia Wild bought what habitat it could and sought agreement from existing owners to preserve all or part of their land if it was habitat intensive.
I believed in what they were doing, and I loved working with Autumn and Wren—the latter a witch like her grandmother, but one who preferred to work solitary rather than join a coven. They were great about accommodating my schedule so I could still put in the long, necessary hours at the Honeybee, and they loved it when I brought Mungo into the office.
Yes, life was good—and satisfyingly tame. Declan might not be that happy with my hours, but I was spending my time doing things I felt strongly about. Not that I didn’t feel strongly about Declan . . . but that was different.
Headlights flashed on in front of the small house on Abercorn Street that Autumn and Wren had converted into the Georgia Wild office. I turned on my blinker and waited as a boxy Jeep veered into the street and accelerated quickly away. Thanking the parking gods, I happily slipped the Bug into the empty spot. A narrow covered porch wrapped around the front of the building, and through the winter gloaming I could see the tasteful sign centered on the overhang: GEORGIA WILD—SPACE AND A PLACE FOR ALL.
I got out and went around to the other side of the car to retrieve Mungo and the pastries from the Honeybee. The blinds on the office windows were already closed. Warm yellow light glowed behind them, a comfortable beacon in the chilly evening. Autumn was probably working late again. That woman worked even more than I did.
Running lightly up the steps, I reached for the doorknob. Unlatched, the door swung open at my touch. My nostrils flared as the odor of burnt coffee boiled through the opening. It seemed to carry another scent—or another feeling—with i
t. I could have sworn I smelled . . . dread. Mungo tensed beneath my other hand, and a telltale shiver crawled across my shoulders.
Sipping shallow breaths, I stepped into the former living room where I did the majority of my work. The door latch snicked shut behind me as my gaze swept over the worn Berber carpet, the Goodwill furniture, the overlapping maps and charts tacked directly to the wallboard. The place was clean if not tidy, functional if not beautiful. Two desks faced each other, each with a halogen lamp trained on piles of papers and brochures and manila file folders. Nothing unusual there. Both desk chairs were empty, as was the solitary guest chair by the front window. The yellow light that had looked so friendly from outside came from the tall floor lamp in the corner next to it. Plants tumbled healthy leaves over the edges of the indoor window boxes.
I tossed the bag of baked goods onto a desk and hurried to the coffee station on the far side of the room, sparing a glance at the darkened hallway that led to Autumn’s private office at the back of the house. The thick, dark sludge at the bottom of the coffeepot confirmed long, unattended hours on the hot warmer. Why hadn’t anyone noticed the stink?
“Autumn?” I called. “Wren?”
The mournful sound that erupted from the back of the building brought every follicle on my scalp to attention. Mungo whined from inside the tote still hanging from my shoulder. I patted him on the head almost without thinking as I backed slowly toward the exit.
Yip!
His bark startled me so much I almost dropped the tote. At least my gasp made me realize that I had stopped breathing altogether. I deliberately inhaled, mind racing, intuition breaking down in the face of fear—but of what I didn’t know. Maybe the fear was my intuition talking.
Bright light dawned at the end of the hallway for a brief moment, then vanished. A crash sounded as something moved toward me from the office. I whirled to the door, fumbling at the handle so I could get the heck out of there.
“Katie!”
I paused, turning back. “Wren?” Mungo’s head popped up out of the tote.
She staggered into the main office, one shoulder bouncing off a wall as if she’d had a few too many daiquiris. A framed topographical map of northern Georgia crashed to the floor, spraying broken glass.
“Good heavens! What’s wrong?” I hurried to her side, grabbed her arm, and eased her into one of the desk chairs.
“Autumn,” she panted, looking wildly around the room.
I knelt on the floor in front of her, careful of the glass shards. Mungo jumped out of the tote and ran toward the short hallway. From the corner of my eye I saw him skid to a stop at the entrance.
Taking both of Wren’s ice-cold hands in mine, I said, “Honey, settle down. You’re hyperventilating.” I looked around the office as if a paper bag would suddenly appear out of thin air. Then I saw the to-go bag from the Honeybee. Standing, I grabbed it, dumped the spicy sweet contents onto the desk blotter, and shoved it toward Wren. “Here. Bend down, head between your knees, and breathe into this.”
She obeyed like a child, closing her eyes. The paper bag inflated and deflated several times. She shuddered. I put my arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay.”
Shaking her head, she straightened in the chair and let the bag drop into her lap.
Taller than my five-nine, and a year younger, Wren Knowles was gangly and bird-boned, knobby-kneed, and oddly ethereal on her best days. Now she seemed a faded version of herself. Her face was white as alabaster against her tangled black hair and her big blue eyes blinked rapidly at me from behind thick, rectangular-framed glasses.
“Now.” I glanced over at my familiar who still peered toward the office. “What happened?”
Her hand fluttered to her mouth as if to keep words inside. Gently, I took it and held it in my own.
“Autumn,” she croaked.
I waited, the initial feeling of dread that I’d felt upon entering Georgia Wild intensifying exponentially.
“She’s . . . dead.” The second word came out as a wail.
I’d known, in a way, since seeing Wren stumble out of the back, but hearing the actual words was different that just having a feeling. With an effort, I swallowed. When I finally found the words, they came out in a whisper. “Are you sure?”
Her head bobbed, and a tear spilled onto her cheek. “Look for yourself.”
That, of course, was exactly what I did not want to do. Still, squaring my shoulders, I set my jaw and turned toward the hallway. Mungo leaned his head back and met my eyes, nervously licking his lips.
I took two confident steps before faltering, then steeled my nerves and continued on. At least Mungo stuck close to my heels. The door to Autumn’s office had swung most of the way closed behind Wren, but a wedge of bright white shone around the edges. I pushed it open.
The harsh fluorescence of the overhead fixture glared down on the tableau. The desk had been cleared of everything. Well, almost everything. Autumn lay on top of it on her back. Her arms were folded over her chest as if she were in a coffin. She wore black slacks and a white silk blouse. One loafer dangled off her foot, but the other had fallen to the floor where the usual contents of the desktop were now scattered. I stared at the pink pearl polish on her exposed toenails, mesmerized.
After a long moment I forced my attention back to her body. If Wren looked pale, it was nothing compared to the complete lack of color in Autumn’s skin now. It looked even whiter than her blouse. Her unadorned fingers curled beneath the cuffs, the natural nails buffed to a high gleam but not polished. Her peanut-butter-colored hair curled around classic features in a heart-shaped face, but her eyes were closed and her lips were a disturbing blue.
As were the bruises on her neck.
Then I noticed the wrinkled, dark red paper peeking out of her right hand. My breath caught and that telltale shiver ran down my back again as I looked up to see the screen saver on Autumn’s computer. It was an iridescent blue dragonfly, buzzing from corner to corner, side to side. A dragonfly: my totem, which Lucy had explained served as a kind of metaphysical tap on the shoulder. Pay attention.
Pay attention, indeed.
Swearing under my breath, I forced myself to move closer. To place quivering fingertips on her neck.
To hope against hope.
But Wren was right. There was no pulse. Our friend and colleague Autumn Boles was decidedly dead.
Chapter 3
The first time I’d met Detective Franklin Taite, he’d insulted me. The next time, he’d revealed his knowledge of real magic in the world, but he’d also threatened me. The third time? More threats, including one to drag me into the police precinct for questioning. Finally, he’d told me I was a lightwitch and had a calling to battle dark magic, and a week later he had up and transferred to New Orleans.
Nice.
Now his former partner, Detective Peter Quinn, stood regarding me in the front office of Georgia Wild. I was pretty sure he didn’t miss Taite much. He certainly seemed more comfortable working alone. Searching eyes gazed out beneath his shock of thick gray hair. He wore charcoal-colored slacks and a leather sports coat over a crisp white shirt sans tie. A resigned, almost wry expression infused his patrician features.
“I only touched her neck,” I said in response to the last question he’d asked me. “And only one time to make sure she was really, you know . . . dead.”
“And nothing else?” Quinn asked. “I mean, by now you know better than to touch anything else, right?” Sarcastic emphasis on the by now.
I glared at him. “I really liked Autumn, you know.”
He relented, looking down. True, I hadn’t lived in Savannah for a whole year yet and this was the fourth suspicious death that I’d been smack-dab in the middle of. But in my defense, the first one had Quinn pointing a finger at Uncle Ben as a murder suspect, and I just couldn’t have that. And the second one? It had be
en just a coincidence that Declan and I had stumbled across that body in Johnson Square.
Right?
“And anyone who watches television knows not to touch anything,” I said. “Though my fingerprints—and Wren’s—are going to be all over this place.”
“This one’s closer to home, I guess,” Quinn said. “I’m sorry about that, Katie. But darn it, how—” He shook his head. “Never mind. It’s not like you get into these situations on purpose.” His expression was unreadable as his eyes met mine. “Do you?”
I bristled. “You think I enjoy being around so much death?”
He hesitated, then shook his head and looked away again.
Death? Or murder? The image of the blue marks on the dead woman’s neck played for a moment on my mental movie screen.
“Why was she lying on the desk like that?” I blurted.
“It appears she was posed.”
“Posed? Who would do something like that?”
“Her killer.” Quinn watched me, unblinking.
“Oh . . . but . . .” I swallowed, hard. “So it’s definitely murder.”
“We need to confirm how she died, of course,” he said, but I suspected he was thinking of those marks on her neck, too. “In your opinion, might she have committed suicide?”
“I—I don’t think so,” I stammered. But even as the words came out of my mouth, I realized just how much I didn’t know about Autumn. “I don’t know,” I amended. “Listen, I’m afraid I really can’t tell you anything else. I got here after Wren found her, and then I called you.” I glanced pointedly at my watch.
Quinn held my gaze for a few more heartbeats. I could feel him evaluating how to handle me. “You don’t know if she had any enemies?”
I shook my head. “Not really. She was recently divorced, but I don’t know much about her ex. All she said was that her marriage stagnated and then died. And she has . . . had . . . a boyfriend who came to pick her up here at Georgia Wild a few times. Hunter Normandy.” He seemed nice enough, yet I hadn’t really taken to him. Though I didn’t actually see auras, I often sensed them, though only recently had I realized that not everyone had the same experience. To me, auras were kind of like flavors. Call me weird, but some people were spicy and some were salty and some were sweet or bitter. Hunter, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any flavor at all.
