by Raven Snow
“Hexes and Exes”
Supernatural Witch Cozy Mystery
Lainswich witches Volume 2
Raven Snow
© 2016
Raven Snow
Disclaimer
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner & are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover images are licensed stock photos, images shown for illustrative purposes only. Any person(s) that may be depicted on the cover are models.
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
Preview of “Murders and Mothers”
Authors Note
Books by Raven Snow
Chapter One
It was a very stormy night when David Richardson drove his very expensive company car through the Greensmith’s flower garden. Rowen was down the stairs and opening the door in her robe before he had even knocked.
“What is all the noise about?” Aunt Nadine called down from the first landing of the stairs.
Rowen stepped out onto the front porch to intercept the young man drunkenly staggering his way up the steps. She had only met him once, but she recognized that nice suit and haircut. This was her boyfriend’s older brother, Eric. What he was doing here, however, Rowen couldn’t even imagine.
David’s first action upon entering the house, was to vomit on the rug. Rowen recoiled in disgust, and Nadine gave a shriek of displeasure from the stairs. The rug was at least a hundred years old.
The whole house was waking up by now. Rowen’s cousins, Rose, Willow, Peony, and Margo all wandered down to where Nadine was standing. Down the hall, Aunt Lydia poked her head out from her bedroom door, a sleep mask pushed up onto her forehead. “What in the world is going on?” she called.
“I have no idea,” Rowen admitted, but she had a feeling that she should probably call Eric. In the meantime, she couldn’t have David passed out in their entryway. She did her best to steer him toward the bathroom. “Get up,” she instructed. “This way.”
David threw an arm over his mouth and did his best to cooperate. At the very least, he was sober enough to still have some spatial reasoning skills. He limped off to the bathroom with her showing him the way. “Call my brother,” he croaked out before falling to his knees and doubling over the toilet.
Rowen wrinkled her nose and stepped out. “Already on it,” she assured him. In fact, the phone was already ringing.
“Rowen?” Eric’s voice came over the phone tired and sounding a little worried. They both kept pretty regular schedules. It was uncommon that they had a reason to call each other at such a late hour. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s your brother,” said Rowen, already heading back to the front door. She wanted to assess the damage David had done out there with his car.
“What?” Eric sounded a little more awake, but still confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Your brother is in my bathroom right now.” Rowen stepped out in the rain for a moment to find the car still running and parked squarely on the rose bush she and her aunts had just planted. Fantastic. “He hit my roses with his car.”
“What?” Eric asked yet again. “Are you at home right now? What’s my brother doing in Lainwich?”
“I wish I could tell you.” Rowen stepped back inside, slipped on a pair of her cousin’s boots, and jogged out into the rain to quickly park the car somewhere a little bit more appropriate.
“Wait. Which brother is it?” Eric groaned, and then answered that question himself. “Wait. Don’t tell me. It’s David, isn’t it?”
“Bingo.” Rowen wasn’t sure why he had guessed that so quickly. She had never heard him complain about David. The one time she had met him, he’d seemed straight-laced, maybe even a little stuffy. If there was one thing she’d learned about people recently, it was that you could never quite predict them, though. Heck, she had never imagined her own Grammy could be a murderer— but that had happened.
Eric groaned. “I’m sorry.” He sounded absolutely miserable, like he meant it. “I just… Let me help my parents finish up this business deal, and I’ll take the next flight down.”
Rowen flung David’s door open and climbed inside to escape the rain. “You know he’ll sober up, right? I can get him to call you when he does. You don’t actually have to drop everything and race down here.” Rowen smiled to herself. “Not that I would mind…”
That got a chuckle from Eric. “I’m about finished here, anyway. I planned on coming down and staying a while. This just expedites things.”
“Well, if you insist.” Rowen started to back the car out then paused. “I think, maybe, your brother has a problem.”
“Why do you say that?”
Rowen nudged an empty liquor bottle off of the gear shift. “There are several empty bottles and, like, a whole pharmacy in here.” She leaned over to inspect what looked like a blood stain in the passenger seat. Gross.
Eric sighed again. “I’d heard some things… I really am sorry about this, Rowen. I’m so embarrassed.”
“Don’t be,” Rowen said quickly, pulling the car out of the garden carefully. “You can’t help who your family is. Believe me. I know what that’s like.”
Rowen parked the car and headed back inside. She retrieved David from the bathroom and set him up on the sofa. He didn’t have much to say for himself. Having emptied the contents of his stomach into the toilet, he simply slurred a thank you, and fell face down into the pillow she gave him.
Everyone had questions but, one by one, they all went back to bed. This was hardly the weirdest thing that had ever happened in the household. Heck, just last week, Margo’s ex-husband Terry had knocked over t
he flower trellis with his car, so this wasn’t even the first drunken car accident in their front lawn this month.
No, honestly, Rowen was actually a little happier when she went back to her bedroom in the attic. Eric was coming home even sooner than expected. It had been two weeks since she had seen him last, and that felt like entirely too long. She might have thanked David… had he not crushed her roses. She was going to miss those roses.
Chapter Two
David was already awake when Rowen came down the next morning. He was slumped over at the bar, pointedly ignoring Aunt Lydia. It seemed she was trying to force a steaming mug of something or another on him. By the smell, Rowen could guess it was the concoction she always made for curing hangovers.
“I’d drink that if I were you,” Rowen told him. “I went through a partying phase, myself. That stuff works.”
David raised his head. There were bags under his eyes, and he was deathly pale. “I wasn’t out partying,” he assured her.
Aunt Lydia frowned and tried to force the mug on him again. “No one cares what you were doing, dear. I just don’t want you vomiting on another rug.”
David cringed at that. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay for it.”
“That’s not the point.” Aunt Lydia looked at Rowen. “I don’t care for this one,” she said in a whisper that might have been private were David not right there.
Rowen only shrugged and finished pouring herself some coffee. She went to stand at the counter across from David once Aunt Lydia had left. “Your brother’s on his way,” she said, taking a sip.
David cringed, but nodded. “I appreciate that. I really am sorry that I… ruined your rug.”
“And the garden out front,” Rowen added.
“Huh?”
“You drove into our garden.”
David groaned and took a sip of the drink Lydia had forced on him. He gagged.
“Keep drinking,” Rowen urged. “Just chug it. You’ll feel better. I promise.”
David did as he was instructed. He set the mug aside. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I can get out of your hair in a minute. I can’t imagine I made a very good first impression on your family.”
“Stay until Eric gets here,” Rowen insisted. There was no point in him leaving. Her family couldn’t exactly think any less of him. Their opinion of him had nowhere to go but up… Not that she much cared what they or anyone else thought of David. It was Eric she cared about. She’d never heard very good things about his family— not even from him. “Or you could come to work with me.”
“You work at some kind of paper, right?” David asked, squinting against the daylight streaming in through the windows.
Rowen nodded. “I own a paper,” she clarified. She imagined he should have known that already. Eric had been the one to help her set it up. “My cousins work there with me. The Lainswich Inquirer.”
David nodded back at her. “I’ll tag along, if you don’t mind.” He probably didn’t want Aunt Lydia forcing any other odd remedies on him. Rowen couldn’t say she blamed him.
“Well, we leave in thirty minutes. Maybe… go take a shower before then.” Rowen pointed him in the right direction, and he headed that way.
Rowen’s cousins came pouring into the kitchen after that. “So, that’s Eric’s brother?” Margo asked, fixing some coffee for herself. “He’s cute.”
Rose wrinkled her nose at that assessment. “He’s a mess.”
“A cute mess, though,” Margo insisted. It wasn’t surprising. She had married Terry. She had a thing for messes.
“Willow got a call from Jenny, who works at dispatch,” Peony interjected. “Sounds like something newsworthy happened last night.”
That drew Rowen’s attention. “What was it?”
Willow shook her head. “I don’t know. Jenny likes to gossip, but she didn’t really want to tell me much. Must be a pretty big deal.”
“I’ll look into it.” Rowen put her mug in the sink. “Will you guys make sure David gets to the office all right? I’m going to swing by the police station and see what’s up.”
“Sure,” said Margo, agreeing a little too quickly and happily for comfort. Rowen really hoped she wasn’t looking for some romance on the rebound.
Rowen wasn’t exactly welcome at the police station. During the whole ordeal with Grammy, she had sort of rubbed them the wrong way. She and her family had been very hands-on during the legal proceedings that had followed. While they could hardly arrest anyone in her family for it, it was clear that they thought her family had used some sort of witchcraft to make sure Grammy’s sentencing went well for her. They wouldn’t admit to believing that, of course, but Rowen could just tell it was what they thought.
In the intervening months, Rowen had been a bit of a thorn in their sides by slowly winning over the town. She didn’t try to make their job harder, and she certainly didn’t interfere with investigations. The local police had a lot of weaknesses, though. As a journalist, it felt like her job was to expose them— which she did, and often.
The police chief had a tendency to sweep things under the rug. John was up front now, sipping coffee, and having a word with Ben. Neither of these men were real fans of her. Both of them frowned when they saw her coming.
“I don’t have time for this,” said the police chief, John Tweed. He said something under his breath to Ben and walked away.
Ben, at least, had the decency to force a smile as she approached. He was an ex-boyfriend from high school. With his blond hair and easygoing charm, it wasn’t difficult to remember why she had liked him. He could be a real manipulative jerk, though. She still hadn’t forgiven him for trying to trick her into implicating her family in that double murder a while back. Granted, they had been both directly and indirectly responsible… but still.
“And to what do I owe the pleasure?” asked Ben.
“I hear there was some excitement last night?” Rowen forced a smile of her own. Not a whole lot happened in Lainswich. He would know what she was talking about.
The smile fell right from Ben’s face. “Did Jenny say something?” He groaned. “We really need to have a word with her about that.”
“She’s a friend of Willow’s,” Rowen said quickly. “She didn’t tell her any details. She just mentioned having a busy night. I’m just following up on some gossip. Don’t blame her.”
Ben glanced over his shoulder, as if to make sure his boss wasn’t still around. He lowered his voice. “We were going to call you in here, actually. This saves me a phone call, I guess.”
Rowen frowned, unsure of what he was getting at. She wasn’t sure she liked it. The local police were never forthcoming with this sort of information without a reason. She doubted they would have called her over just to give her the scoop. “Why?” she asked, her suspicions raised.
Ben took another look around. He frowned, thinking to himself for a moment. “Come in here.” He led the way toward the back where the station’s interrogation rooms were. On his way, he exchanged a few words with someone at a desk. They frowned at Rowen, but handed over a folder. Ben took it and continued on to the room.
“I’m not being questioned about anything, am I?” Rowen asked, lingering in the doorway.
“I just want to ask some questions and get your opinion on something.” Ben held up his hands to indicate his innocent intentions. “I don’t think you’re a murderer.”
“Murderer?” That got Rowen in the door. She went to the table and looked down at the folder Ben had placed them. “Who got murdered?”
“A gym teacher. Mrs. Martel.” Ben looked up at Rowen, then down at the closed folder. “It’s graphic.”
Clearly, there was some reason Ben wanted her to take a look. The name rang a vague sort of bell, but she couldn’t put a face to it. “Let me see,” she said, prompting him to open it up.
Ben took out some pictures. They weren’t all that violent, but they were certainly disturbing— what must have been Mrs. Martel lay beneath a wrinkled s
heet. Her hand stuck out of one corner, motionless. There was some blood on what looked to be a basement floor around her. A circle had been drawn around the sheet she was under. There were some strange symbols drawn around its perimeter. Melted candles were arranged meticulously around the room.
No wonder Ben had wanted to call her in for some questions. “You think this is occult related.” It wasn’t a question, just a statement. Obviously, that had to have been his first thought.
Ben took out another picture and laid it on top of the first. It contained close-ups of a lot of the symbols. “Do you recognize any of these? Do you know what it could mean?”
Rowen frowned at the symbols for a while. She thought back to all her aunts had ever taught her, and all the writings her Grammy had shown her. “This doesn’t look familiar,” she admitted. “If you don’t mind me taking them home, I could compare them against some books of this kind of thing,” she offered.
