“I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s find a movie to watch. I just want to rest and eat my weight in junk food. I don’t want to think about a parent hunting down their child and killing them for being gay anymore today.”
But there was no way I was going to be able to stop thinking about it… or the look in Camilla’s eyes just before she switched off the chat.
Chapter Nine
The next morning, I slept in about an hour. I panicked for a second because I could feel that Laney wasn’t in the house with me, but I quickly remembered she was with my mom and dad.
I sent Dad a text asking him how she was doing and how their night had gone. He reported back that everything was great. Mom was in the kitchen fixing breakfast, and Laney was in the playpen watching. He was getting ready to take her out for a walk in the stroller.
“Do you need me to bring her home?” Dad asked earnestly.
“No, if she’s okay, I’m okay. I’ll see her at dinner,” I said. “I’d ask you to put her on the phone, but I don’t want to upset or confuse her.”
“I’ll call you right away if there are any issues, sweetie, but Laney isn’t sick and she’s having a good time with us,” Dad said.
“I’m glad,” I returned. “See you at dinner.”
“See you then, pumpkin.”
Thorn had already gone to work. He’d been more than happy to sit on the sofa watching a movie and devouring pizza with Dorian and me the night before. It had been weird not having the baby around, but it was also good to spend an evening with my husband and one of my best friends.
Since Thorn was gone, Dorian was probably furiously writing, and I had a day to myself, I decided to go see another friend. It had been a long time since I’d stopped into the Brew Station for a coffee and one of Viv’s famous breakfast sandwiches.
I figured I could have a leisurely breakfast at the coffee house and then take food and a latte over to Reggie. She and a distant relative of mine named Eldridge were working. At some point, I’d need to get back to working in the shop and get a grasp on all of Reggie’s new hires.
Once tourism opened in Coventry again, the town had been flooded with travelers and sightseers. Lots of ghost hunters and witches from around the country had begun spending time around town too, and that meant my shop had seen a boom in business. Reggie had needed to hire additional staff and I wasn’t 100 percent familiar with all of them yet.
I went to my closet and grabbed a pair of black jeans and a heather gray sweatshirt. As I was putting my hair up in a bun, I noticed that streaks of black had begun snaking their way through my bright red tresses. It had been a long time since magic had made my hair color shift. I took it as a good sign.
What wasn’t necessarily a good omen was that my eyes were turning black too. They’d looked a great deal more normal the day before, but as I gazed into the mirror, I saw that my irises nearly perfectly blended in with my pupils.
“Less dark magic,” I whispered to myself. “I’ll cut back.”
As I turned from the mirror, it flickered. My imaged changed right before my eyes. The version of Kinsley reflected back at me no longer had black irises, but instead, my entire eye had turned black. The hair that had moments before been fiery red was completely black, but not in a good way. It was lifeless, and clumps had fallen out all over my head.
The reflection bared its teeth at me, and the ones that were still in my head had turned various shades of gray and brown. Most of them were missing, though.
I won’t describe my skin other than to say I looked diseased, but more like I’d died from something awful.
“Kinsley!” Meri’s voice startled me.
“You scared me,” I said, and when I looked in the mirror, it was just regular old me. Well, mostly. The black streaks were still in my hair, and my eyes remained darkened.
“You were gripping the sink and shaking,” he said.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just had a bad vision. I need to cut back on the dark magic.”
“I’d say so,” Meri said.
“Did you see it too?”
“No, but I can see it in you now,” he replied.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play dumb, Kinsley. It’s the hair and the eyes,” Meri snarked.
“My hair and my eyes have turned dark before,” I said. “Right before my near-wedding to Thorn. Remember? It’s not a big deal.”
“That was different. Sure, they were black, but not like this. You have this dullness to you now,” Meri said. “Almost a deadness.”
“You’re just being a jerk,” I said.
“Whatever,” Meri said, but when he turned to leave, his eyes lingered on me sadly for a few moments. “Stop being stupid.”
“Whatever,” I whispered back, but the look in his eyes was like a dagger to my heart.
Doesn’t matter, I told myself as I put my shoes on and grabbed my purse. My hair changing told me that magic was coming back. Whatever had happened to it was reversing all on its own, and I wouldn’t need to use dark magic anymore.
For anything.
That glimpse of myself in the mirror decaying from using black magic had really put the fear into me. I’d wanted a life without magic before, so I could accept living a life using very little of it now. I could not let myself become what I’d seen in my vision. I’d be no mother to Laney if it got that far.
I drove to the town square and parked my car outside of the Brew Station. A bunch of tourists were gathered near the statue in the middle listening to a guide tell the story of my family.
When I got out of the car, I felt a little tingle of something coming from the ley line that ran under the statue. I wanted to walk over and see if my magic was boosted by standing on it, but it was broad daylight and there were a ton of tourists around.
So instead, I headed into the coffee shop. Despite the huge feast from the night before, I was starving and more than ready for a hearty breakfast.
The morning rush was still in full swing, so I got in line and waited. At least the line wasn’t out the door, but I was sure it probably had been less than an hour before.
Viv’s face lit up when she saw me come in, and when Isaac came out of the kitchen to restock some of the hot items, he offered me a wave. The line moved quickly, and my stomach growled as I watched people walk over to tables with trays full of bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches, hash browns, and mountains of biscuits and gravy.
“What’ll it be, love?” Viv asked when I got my turn at the counter.
“Biscuits and gravy, a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit, and a side of extra gravy,” I said. “Oh, and a large hazelnut latte.”
“You going to stick around?” Viv asked.
“Yes, I’m going to eat here,” I said. “Laney is with my Mom and Dad, so I’ve got a day off.”
“That sounds fun,” Viv said. “Though I can’t wait to see her again.”
“I should bring her in more often,” I said. “She’d probably love to be out and about, and I’d love more lattes.”
“Speaking of that, let me get your breakfast and make your coffee,” Viv said.
Some of the patrons in the coffee house were a bit horrified when they saw the food on my tray and realized it was all for me, but I didn’t care. My favorite seat by the window was open, so I took it and watched the tour group until they disappeared into the courthouse.
I shifted in my chair, and when I did, I knocked my bag over. The sketchbook I’d taken from Alicia’s RV came sliding out. I’d nearly forgotten I had it.
Since I still had more than half a latte and plenty of time, I decided to take it out and have a look.
The pictures weren’t what I expected. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but the drawings weren’t it.
Alicia had been very interested in space. Many of the pictures were drawings of a night sky. There were also quite a few of planets. Some of them were of the planets in our solar system, but about halfway through, they appeared to be fr
om her imagination.
The one I’d been staring at for five minutes was a lime-green gas giant surrounded by a pink series of rings. I was transfixed, but I eventually wanted to see what was next.
When I turned the page, a small slip of paper fluttered out and drifted to the floor. I leaned over and plucked it from the floor where one corner had wedged under my shoe.
The paper was a library receipt. It was a book about the space station on the Moon. The one we were going to use to launch commercial space flights to Mars. The space station on the moon, not the book.
I was getting ready to tuck the library receipt back into the notebook when an idea dawned on me. I hadn’t seen the book in the RV, and I suddenly had a burning desire to find out if she’d returned it.
The status of her library book probably wasn’t the most important piece of information in solving her murder, but I hoped it would lead me somewhere. I wasn’t particularly fond of the idea of confronting Alicia’s parents.
I told myself I would if I needed to, but I wanted to check the library first. “Hey, Viv, can I get a latte to go?” I asked as I stood up and tucked the sketchbook back into my purse.
“You got it,” she said cheerfully.
A few minutes later, I had a latte in hand and was headed across the square to the library. I ignored the “no food or drinks” sign on the door as I pushed it open.
The woman behind the check-out desk eyed my coffee with disdain, but she didn’t say anything. “Excuse me, I was looking for information on a book,” I said.
“Could you step down to the information counter?” she asked. “This counter is for checking books out.”
“Oh, sorry. I want information on a book’s borrow history,” I said. “I was hoping you could help me with that.”
“I can’t give you patron information,” she said.
“But can you tell me if a book was returned?” I asked.
“I suppose I can do that,” the woman huffed.
I handed her the library receipt. “I just want to know if my friend returned this book when she borrowed it. If not, I’ll pay to replace it.”
“Oh, well then. We always appreciate when people help the library,” the woman said as she took the receipt.
I knew right then she wasn’t a witch. The woman probably wasn’t even aware the library had an entire other wing. It was split into two, after all. One side was just a regular library, and the other was filled with arcane and occult knowledge. It was for witches only.
My Great-Grandmother Amelda had run the library for decades, but she had recently retired. Now, the arcane side of the library was closed off except for by appointment only, and the public library was run by a regular librarian. Thanks to the internet, neither side was in as high demand as they once had been. Very few patrons milled around as the woman looked up the information on the slip I’d handed her.
“When this receipt was issued, the book was returned,” the woman said. “Unfortunately, a later borrower did not, but you said you’d pay if your friend didn’t return it. She did.”
“I’ll pay for a new copy anyway,” I said and took out my debit card. “It seems like a popular book. I’d hate for others to miss out.”
“Oh, that’s so kind of you,” the woman, her name tag said Patty, finally offered me a genuine smile. She ran the card and handed it back to me before typing a few things into her computer. “There we go. It’s all ordered. Would you like an alert when it arrives so you can borrow it?”
“No, thank you,” I said. “But could you tell me who checked it out and didn’t return it?”
Patty’s eyes narrowed. It didn’t take much for her to catch on that I’d purchased a new copy in the hopes she’d give me information.
“I absolutely cannot do that. We cannot divulge our patrons’ private information,” she said.
“But you know who it was? Please make an exception this one time. The person who didn’t return that book could very well be a killer,” I said a little too dramatically.
“So you’re with the police?” Patty asked skeptically. “Then you won’t have any problem getting a warrant for the information.”
People who worked in libraries were too smart for their own good. Patty gave me a look that told me to back off and have a nice day all at the same time.
“Thank you,” I said and left the counter. I didn’t want her calling Thorn. That would have been awkward and embarrassing. Getting arrested for harassing the library checkout lady wasn’t on my to-do list for the day.
I had a choice. I could go home, watch movies, and eat leftover pizza until it was time for Laney to come home, or I could keep digging into Alicia’s death. So, I got in my car and headed out of Coventry.
Chapter Ten
I’d taken my antibiotics, steroids, and a couple of Tylenols with my breakfast. By the time I got to the campground, I was feeling rather good. My spirits lifted even more when I saw a beat-up Toyota parked out in front of the offices. I’d driven out there with the hopes of talking with the manager, and it looked like he was actually there.
A dirty, sun-bleached “OPEN” sign hung in an equally dirty window. The pathetic clack of dusty, ancient bells sounded my entrance.
“We’re full,” Burt said as he appeared from a back room. “Oh, it’s you,” he said after a moment. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you about Alicia,” I said. “Why were you in her RV the other day?”
“Why were you there?” he countered. “You know, I can still tell the FBI that I found some people nosing around in there. I’m sure they would love to talk to you.”
“You’re deflecting,” I said. “You can call the FBI. I’ve got nothing to hide, and I had nothing to do with Alicia’s death. Can you say the same thing? Because from what I’ve heard, you didn’t care one bit about that RV until the FBI was coming to search it. You had zero concern that a young woman wasn’t paying her rent on the campsite until you knew law enforcement was coming. Why is that, Burt?”
“She paid several months up front,” Burt said. “I had no reason to be concerned until the sheriff contacted me. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Where did she get the money to do that?” I wondered aloud.
Of course, Burt thought I was asking him. “I have no idea, nor would I care. People pay to rent a campsite, and I take the money. It’s a fairly simple business, and I don’t make it a habit to get into anyone’s personal life. Most people are here for a week at most.”
“So, did you think it was weird that she was here longer?” I asked.
“No, it happens. People have an RV and nowhere else to live. Can’t afford the trailer park, so they live in the woods. The campsites have water, electric, and sewer hookups. As long as the person isn’t consuming huge amounts of utilities, it’s all included. Alicia got a deal because she wanted that site tucked away from everything. Nobody likes that one, so I have a hard time renting it. It was like she’d done me a favor,” Burt said.
“Did you know she was underage when she first stayed here?” I asked.
Burt’s face went a little pale. “Look, I already answered to the FBI about that. I rent campsites. I don’t ask people for ID. She looked old enough, and she had an RV. I never would have suspected a seventeen-year-old would own an RV, so I assumed she was early twenties. I’m so old, it’s hard to tell.”
“This is probably a stupid question, but do you know where she got the RV? It wasn’t her parents’,” I said.
“Not a clue, but I feel like the FBI is really interested in that since they hauled it off,” Burt said. “Look, I went into the RV that day because I was curious. I know that sounds ghoulish, but it was a kind of a big deal. You watch all those murder mystery documentaries on Netflix, and it was happening right here in my campground. I wanted to get a look inside in case, you know…”
“Netflix ever called?” I asked.
“Yeah, so what? There wasn’t anything hinky going on with
me and the girl, if that’s what you’re after,” Burt said.
“Why would you think that?” I asked.
“Duh, because I’ve seen every true crime docuseries on Netflix,” Burt said. “The girl was nice, though. Mostly kept to herself, but if I was ever in the office, she’d come in and borrow a book.” He waved toward a dilapidated bookshelf behind him. I hadn’t noticed it until just then.
Most of the books were shelved vertically, but a few had been stuck haphazardly in front of them horizontally. One of them was extraordinarily familiar, and my heart jumped into my throat when I realized why.
Black Arts & Bones (Familiar Kitten Mysteries Book 11) Page 10
