The Hex Files: Wicked Moon Rising

by Gina LaManna

  Vampire attack, I realized. Lemont was framing Matthew. Framing the wolves. Turning both sides against one another and setting the borough alight with tension.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

  “The Hex Files, obviously,” Lemont snarled. “I’ve got your pathetic file. I found out about Willa’s through a trusted source. Got the wrong Bloomer, but no problem. This one will follow her mother soon enough.”

  Willa’s fists clenched, but I suspected Kady said something to calm her daughter because in the next moment, Willa gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head and relaxed her hands.

  “Sienna?” I asked. “What about her?”

  “She discovered it wasn’t vampire markings,” Lemont said. “Or rather, that it was two different vampires. And if she’d been alive long enough to see Watters’s attack, she’d realize there were three vampires who’d attacked. Sort of clears King from all wrong doing, and we couldn’t have that.”

  I scowled at him. “You swore to protect this borough. New York. Our people.”

  “I didn’t swear anything,” he said. “The oaf Lemont did.”

  I stopped, startled. “Then who are you?”

  “While this has been pleasant, Detective, I’m not in the mood to keep things going,” Lemont—or whoever was posing as him—said briskly. “The nurses will be here soon, and she’s going to find three dead girls.”

  Willa rolled up her sleeves. “I don’t think so.”

  “You won’t get away with this,” I told Lemont. “Sienna’s still alive. Even if you manage to shut us up, she’ll wake up and pin everything on you.”

  “But—” Lemont appeared surprised for the first time during our conversation. “That’s impossible.”

  “You underestimate the power of friendship,” I said. “You might think you’re turning the borough against one another, but you’ll never destroy us.”

  Willa raised her hands then, and a tremor filled the room. Her eyes took on that golden glow all over again, and two beams of light shot from her eyes and straight toward Lemont.

  “What’s she doing?” He jumped out of the way, trying to avoid the spotlights. “What sort of power is that?”

  I had no clue, but I didn’t say so. I leapt forward, seeing as Lemont’s syringe hand was getting dangerously close to Watters’s skin. We were still too far away, and if he injected the killing potion, we’d be too late. I had no love lost for Watters, but I wasn’t going to let Lemont kill another innocent.

  “Ah,” Lemont said, his eyes sparkling as he saw me leap forward. He plunged the needle into Watters’s arm. “Make her stop, or I’ll kill Watters. A twitch of my thumb, and she’ll stop breathing.”

  “Willa,” I called calmly. “Willa, please. Stop.”

  Willa shook herself, and the glow from her eyes cleared. “Get your hands away from her. Leave her alone, and we’ll go easy on you.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Lemont said. “Leave the room, and I’ll let Watters live. I only ask for free passage out of here.”

  “Not a chance,” Willa said.

  “We don’t have another option,” I said, watching Lemont’s trigger-happy finger. “Willa, we have to let him go.”

  “But this isn’t supposed to be how things happen,” Willa cried to me. “He killed my mother! He doesn’t deserve to get away!”

  “He won’t,” I vowed. “We’ll find him. I promise.”

  Lemont smiled at me mercilessly, then pressed the syringe deeper. “Make your decision in five... four...”

  During the countdown, I turned my attention to Willa, who again had her head cocked to the side, no doubt listening closely to her mother. She looked skeptical, doubtful even, and she shook her head twice.

  “Three... two...”

  “Impossible,” Willa whispered. “I can’t.”

  I backed across the room, my hands raised. “We’re leaving.”

  “One...” Lemont finished.

  As he did so, Willa raised her hands and, in a loud, clear voice, she declared: “Show yourself!”

  In that moment, the floating figure of Willa’s mother appeared. She was a colorful version of herself, just faintly transparent, but otherwise quite peppy and healthy looking.

  “Attack!” Willa commanded.

  This time, the golden light radiated from Willa’s hands. When the beam hit her mother, Kady’s ghost was propelled forward and brushed straight into Lemont, who was so startled he let go of the syringe.

  Kady’s figure returned to Lemont, frightening him into stepping backward and stumbling over the bed, toppling over. Willa kept her eyes open, hands extended.

  “Take his breath,” she said. “Now.”

  And Willa’s mother followed orders, extending her own hands toward Lemont as he lay sprawled on the floor. A swirl of air, tinged silver, emerged from Lemont’s lips and spiraled upward and away. Lemont struggled to breathe, couldn’t. He coughed, rasped, flipped to his stomach as his fingernails dug against the cement in an effort to inhale.

  Meanwhile, I retrieved the fallen syringe and pressed the needle into Lemont’s neck. “Give it back,” I shouted to Willa. “He needs to live, to pay for his crimes—whoever he is.”

  Willa lowered her hands, and just as quickly, her mother’s ghost disappeared. Or vanished from sight, seeing as Willa continued to talk to her.

  “You can breathe,” I told Lemont as he desperately heaved in oxygen. “But one wrong move, and you’re dead of your own potion. Willa—get the chief. Newton, Matthew, someone!”

  Willa had barely turned for the door when it burst open and Nash was there, followed by Jack and Nurse Anita.

  “It’s Lemont!” Nash called. “Dani, be careful—”

  “Thanks for the warning,” I said dryly. “Get the chief some cuffs, will you?”

  Chapter 33

  It was an unlikely trio of women who found themselves spit out from the magical sixth borough onto the dirty, bustling, crowded streets of regular old New York City.

  I stood flanked by Willa and Sienna as we made our way through the city streets toward NYPD headquarters. It was the morning after everything had blown up in our faces. The morning after Willa had come into her powers, after Watters had been attacked and Lemont arrested, after Kady Bloomer had passed away.

  Matthew was still at the precinct questioning Lemont—or whoever was imitating him—in the interview room along with Chief Newton and Nash. Sienna had thankfully been revived in the wee hours of the morning, and save for some leftover frostbitten tingling sensations in her extremities (that Nurse Anita had promised would diminish over time), she appeared to be her normal surly self.

  “I’m sorry we had to drag you out here,” I told Willa. “I know you have a lot to deal with at the moment, but we appreciate your help. Me, and the rest of the precinct.”

  Willa shrugged. “Actually, I don’t mind the break. It’s a nice distraction from—you know—feelings.”

  “How do you feel?” Sienna asked curiously. “It’s got to be weird thinking you’ve lost your mom, and then poof! There she is, commenting on your ugly hairstyle.”

  Willa patted her head. “My hair is ugly?”

  “Of course not.” Sienna patted her head. “I was imagining my mom coming back to haunt me. It’d be miserable.”

  “It’s not miserable,” Willa said, “and I’m glad I get to see her again. It helps with the grief. But I also can’t hug her anymore, or smell her, or touch her. I won’t come home to find her gardening with Juno or cooking dinner and demanding we sit out on the front porch and sip sweet iced tea.”

  “Maybe you will,” I said. “She might still garden with Juno or be in the kitchen and help you cook. Or sit on the porch with you. Do you know how long she’ll...”

  “How long she’s sticking around?” Willa shook her head. “No. I asked her, and she doesn’t know either. We’re both new at this—me with my powers, and her with this ghost schtick. I suppose we’ll figure it out. Ma
ybe she’s got some unfinished business or something. I’m not going to rush it.”

  “And Matthew,” Sienna prompted me, “how is he doing?”

  I shrugged. “You know him. Back to work. He’s fine.”

  “It’s been confirmed that Lemont was responsible for all the attacks?”

  “Whoever he really is, yes. He’s confessed to the murders of both werewolves and Willa’s mother. Lemont also admitted to attacking Watters and freezing you.”

  Sienna shuddered.

  “And what about the attack on you?” Willa asked, and Sienna looked up curiously. “Yes, there was an attack on her, too,” Willa scolded, “and she didn’t report it.”

  “It was nothing,” I said, “but yes, he admitted to that one, too.”

  “Any clue on the how or why?” Sienna asked.

  “The Hex Files,” I said. “It all comes back to them.”

  Both Sienna and Willa had been somewhat caught up to speed—with as much information as I could share. Some things needed to be kept quiet. Other pieces were private business that weren’t mine to tell.

  “The how,” I continued, “is a little more tricky. We need to figure out who—or what—is posing as Lemont. If we can find the real Arthur Lemont, that might crack the rest of this case wide open.”

  We entered the doors of the NYPD headquarters and signed in, waiting impatiently for our visitor passes to process.

  “You’re from the Sixth Precinct?” The woman at the desk looked up, a slight gleam to her eye. “How are things? The lieutenant?”

  “Watters is fine,” I said. “Or, she will be.”

  “And the chief?”

  I shrugged, surprised to find a paranormal working the front desk. Then again, stranger things had happened. The NYPD was one giant bag of surprises these days. Not all of them good.

  “We’re not sure,” I said finally. “That’s what we’re here to find out.”

  The receptionist nodded and handed over our passes. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  We took the stairs to the top floor and let ourselves into the chief’s office. His personal assistant had been instructed to let us through without question, and I gave a quick prayer of thanks for the understanding (and magical) receptionist at the front doors.

  “Oh, God! No!” The second Willa stepped through the door, she crumbled forward, sinking to her knees. Her hands came up on either side of her head as she muffled her ears. “Make it stop!”

  Lemont’s personal assistant looked over at Willa, alarmed. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “How about you give us ten minutes,” I suggested, “alone.”

  She didn’t need to be asked twice. Standing, she headed out of the room and shut the door solidly behind her.

  “Willa, what’s wrong?” I sank next to her on a crouch. “Talk to me, honey. What’s bothering you?”

  Her eyes teared up, and she wordlessly shook her head. “I can’t! Oh, you poor souls. I’m going to find you. Hang on, my darlings. Hold on, I’m coming.”

  Willa found the strength to pull herself to her feet. She scurried toward the wall-to-wall closets on one end of the room and threw herself at them, pounding at the doors as tears dripped down her face.

  “Get this thing open, will you?” she gasped, turning to me. “They need help!”

  “Who needs help?” I asked, hurrying to her side and muttering a Lock Lifter that had the door popping open. “Willa, I don’t hear anything. Is this... are they...”

  Sienna and I exchanged a look when Willa didn’t answer. Instead, she surveyed the extra-long drawers of something that resembled a massive filing cabinet.

  Sienna reached forward, shook her head. “Oh, Good Lord.”

  It sunk in for me as Sienna spoke. The metal filing cabinet had clearly been custom-built with the help of someone’s skilled magic touch. There were sprinkles of Building Block Residuals around the edges, signaling the construction was somewhat fresh. I squinted, picking out traces of some sort of room extender in the heavy Residuals around the drawers, which would explain how someone had gotten a cabinet seven feet long to fit into a closet.

  The individual drawers appeared to be shallow and long, running the length of the wall. I was willing to place a morbid bet and guess that if I pulled out each drawer, it would be just deep enough to fit a body inside, complete with a Flash Frost spell to stall the decomposition of dead bodies.

  “He’s got his own personal morgue,” Sienna said, running her hands along the drawers with the softness she reserved for the bodies she kept in her lab. “What an awful man. Can you hear them, sweetie? The souls?”

  Sienna asked the question softly, but Willa wasn’t paying attention. She fumbled for the bottom drawer, then pulled it open. We all glanced down at once, horrified for what we’d find. Sure enough, it was as we expected.

  The real Arthur Lemont, or rather, his corpse, had been frozen into the drawer just as Sienna had been in hers. I wondered if he’d died there.

  “Bastard had some practice before he got to me.” Sienna knelt, rested her hand on the ice just as I had done when I’d found her. “I’ll bet he died in here. Was thrown in unconscious, just like me, then left to wait out death.”

  Willa said nothing. Instead, she stepped back, her eyes traveling from the drawer upward, until she stared straight ahead. Then, she bowed her head. “I’m so sorry for this,” she said to the thin air. “You didn’t deserve it.”

  Silence followed. Sienna moved, probably to ask questions, but I rested a hand on her arm and shook my head.

  “Lemont says you’re right,” Willa said, startling us with a direct look at Sienna. “It happened like you said. He was knocked unconscious in his office and then left to die. He wasn’t sure how the visitor escaped. He had never seen the man, the thing, who attacked him before and doesn’t know a name.”

  “I’m sorry to say, but your attacker took your form,” I said, glancing at the floor because it was too weird for me to talk to thin air. “We didn’t suspect anything until it was too late. I’m truly sorry.”

  “He says it’s okay,” Willa said with a watery smile. “He says he always knew you and Matthew were good cops. He would never have suspended you.”

  I frowned. “How does he know all this?”

  Willa listened, then laughed. She cleared her throat. “Well, Lemont said that after he died, his spirit was around. He could hear everything that went on in the offices. Speaking of, his attacker spent a lot of time looking for the master file. I assume that he’s talking about The Hex Files?”

  I nodded. “Is it... did he take it?”

  Willa shook her head. “It’s here.”

  Sienna stood, looking as if she found this whole talking-to-ghosts thing a little too strange for her necromancy taste, and began thumbing through the desk drawers and presumably looking to retrieve the file.

  “What can I do to help you?” Willa asked softly. “I can’t help but think that I’m here for a reason.”

  More silence, and then a gasp of realization.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Did he say something?”

  “He, er,” Willa stammered, “thinks I’m supposed to help him pass on. But I don’t really know if that’s true. And I don’t know how to do that.”

  “Well, you seemed to be able to communicate with your mom,” I said. “And when you held your hands up, it looked like you could control her in a way.”

  “Yeah, but I was really, really angry,” Willa said. “I just put my hands up and went with what was in my heart. Things just started happening. I don’t think I can replicate it.”

  “Maybe that’s why you got the powers you did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have the biggest heart of anyone I know, Willa,” I said. “I think maybe your powers are telling you to use it.”

  Willa nodded, chewing on the information for a moment. Then she looked up to thin air again. “Are you ready, Chief?”

  I suspecte
d he was responding because Willa’s face shifted, grew soft and sympathetic, and very, very sad.

  “I understand,” she said. “I promise it won’t hurt. You’ll be better off this way.”

  “Willa?”

  “I’m going to help him,” she said confidently. “He’s ready. We’re both ready.”

  “Um,” I hesitated, raised a hand. “One more thing.”

  Without my having to ask, Willa listened carefully to the ghost, then relayed the location of the master file. I bowed my head gratefully, thanked the chief for all he’d done. It was a strange goodbye, certainly, but it was better than nothing.

  Sensing it was time, Willa raised her hands, closed her eyes, and lapsed into a deep, somber silence. After a moment, her fingertips began to glow golden as they had in the hospital, then her palms, then a radiant sort of light flashed through the room like a siren.

  At once, the light ceased. There was a blink in mid-air, like a shooting star so briefly crossing before us, and then it broke into bits of glimmering gold and ascended toward the ceiling.

  Once the last of the bright had gone, Willa smiled.

  “It’s done,” she said. “He’s home.”

  Chapter 34

  After Willa had successfully helped the chief pass on, she’d done the same thing to the rest of the bodies we’d found locked in the fake-Lemont’s drawers. There were three vampires and three werewolves, though why, exactly, we couldn’t be sure. All of them were in human form, but their species were made clear by markings and fangs and other indications.

  Willa had spoken kindly to each of them, gathering as much information as she could before helping them to pass on. By the time we left the building, there was a sense of peace on her face. As if she were finally content.

  “I think I’ve discovered my purpose,” Willa said. “I hate that I lost my mother over it, but she’s still here. I think she will be with me for a long time.”

  “Forever,” I corrected. “Whether she can talk to you about your hairstyles or not.”

  Willa smiled. Sienna offered a small grin too, though she clutched the master file to her chest and looked too preoccupied with keeping it safe to fully engage in conversation. We’d found a box locked in an invisible closet that Lemont had directed us to. Thanks to the chief, we were one step closer in our quest for control of the files.