Just Your Average Small Town Cult (Lainswich Witches Book 14)

by Raven Snow

  Lucas just grunted. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter. It clicked a few times as he ran his thumb over it, trying to flick the thing on.

  “I hope you don’t have a smoking habit.”

  “Shut up. You’re not my mom.” He finally got the lighter going and lit, what looked for all the world, like an old candelabra.

  “What did I tell you about touching things?” Lighting candles sure seemed like touching things.

  “Just leave. Seriously. I can do this myself.” Lucas pulled a candle from its holder and set about lighting even more candles. There appeared to be a lot of them down here. The space became brighter and brighter. The more candles that were lit, the more the room buzzed to life. Rowen looked around. Candles, tons of them, enough to torch the house from the inside out. The play of shadows grew fierce. They threw sharp contrast over scythes and wood carvings and statuary. There were bowls filled with dried herbs and rugs spread out across the ground. “These are all ritual tools,” Rowen said, mostly to herself.

  Lucas didn’t say anything if he heard her. He appeared to be preoccupied by something else entirely. He had squatted down and brought his candle over some chalk drawings on the floor. “Isn’t this…”

  Rowen recognized the sigil at once. “We need to get out of here,” she said, firmly.

  Lucas didn’t seem to hear her at first. Rowen had to grab him by the arm to get his attention. “No way!” he said when she pulled. “We have to call the police.”

  “We’ll give them an anonymous tip. C’mon.” Rowen had no intention of letting the police know she had broken in here. She did however, lift her phone to take a few more pictures. Even with the flash, she wasn’t sure they would come out bright enough. She still had to try. “Blow out those candles. Try to put everything back exactly the way you found it, understand?”

  “We’re calling the cops the second we’re out of here,” Lucas said again, firmly.

  “We’ll do it in the car,” Rowen promised him. “Now hurry it up.” She didn’t like it here anymore. The energy was controlled, secret but dark. It felt like walking in on something you shouldn’t, like the time she’d walked in on Uncle Norm cheating on his first wife. She snapped a couple more pictures just before the last few candles were blown out. “Come on.” She headed up the stairs.

  Rowen half expected to run into one of the Lords on their way. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. They made it outside, carefully locking the door behind them. Rowen removed her glove and tossed it to Lucas as she dialed her cousin.

  “Ready to make your get away?” asked Willow.

  “I’m more than ready.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Rowen passed the story on to Willow. Willow seemed pretty excited about the whole thing. The idea of a cult excited her… which was more than a little awkward with Lucas in the car. Willow didn’t always think before she spoke. “We’ll get whoever killed your father,” Rowen promised Lucas. “We’ll get working on it as soon as we drop you off at home.”

  “You said you’d call the cops once we were in the car,” Lucas reminded her.

  “I said we would leave an anonymous tip. I’ve given it some thought, and I’ve decided who I’m going to give that tip to.”

  “Well, I’m staying with you until you do,” Lucas insisted.

  Rowen tried to talk him out of it, but he swore he would call the police himself otherwise. There wasn’t a whole lot she could do. She finally relented and had Willow drive them to the Lainswich police station.

  “Wait out here,” Rowen told Willow. If Lucas let it slip that the two of them had broken into the Lord residence, she didn’t want Willow involved.

  “No way. I’m coming with.” Willow was already getting out of the car.

  Rowen groaned. Why did she even try? Giving up, she led Lucas and Willow to the front doors of the police station. Rowen was heading past reception and toward Ben’s office when she heard a shriek. Startled, Rowen spun.

  Janice Waite leapt to her feet. She hurried over to her son and pulled him into a hug. “You were supposed to come straight home after school! We’ve talked about this. I thought something horrible had happened to you!”

  Lucas’ pale face had gone very red as he stood there wrapped in his mother’s arms. “I told you that there was something I wanted to look into,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “And I told you no!” Janice grabbed her boy by the shoulders and pushed him back to arm’s length. “I’ve been waiting here to talk to someone for the last twenty minutes, and you were out with… the Greensmiths?” Janice’s eyes settled on Rowen and Willow. A deep scowl slowly creased her features. “What? It wasn’t enough that you broke into my house? You had to kidnap my son too?”

  “Seriously?” Willow regarded Janice with raised eyebrows. “That kid is big enough to fight off both of us. How would we kidnap him?”

  “They didn’t kidnap me, Mom. They gave me a ride home.” Lucas broke free from his mother and took a step back.

  Janice didn’t let distance remain between her son and herself for long. “Come on.” She grabbed his hand. “We’ll talk about this back at the hotel.” She pointed a finger at Rowen and Willow. “You better hope I don’t decide to press charges.”

  Rowen watched the both of them go. It felt like she should say something, but what? What could she say that wouldn’t just make things worse? “This just keeps getting better and better,” she sighed once the door had closed behind Janice. She walked past the staring receptionist after that, making her way straight to Ben’s office.

  ***

  “So you broke into another house?” Ben was holding his head in his hands. They’d finally done it. They’d finally broken him.

  “The kid was going to break in with or without me,” Rowen reminded him. She had been careful to go over that point several times.

  “So?” Ben looked up, his expression so intense it made Rowen jump a little. “You’re the adult. You either talk him out of it or call the cops. Don’t pretend like you didn’t want to see what was in there, too.”

  “Fine.” Rowen tapped her phone. It sat on the desk between them, open to the pictures she had taken. “I wanted to look around inside because I thought he might be on to something. You can’t tell me he wasn’t right. Look at this.”

  “I saw.” Ben took a deep breath before sitting up straight. “All right. I’ll tell the Tarricville police I got another tip. Send those pictures to my phone. I’m not sure how much good they’ll do, but I can try my best here.”

  “And what about Rory?”

  “What about him?”

  “Can’t you do something?”

  “Like what? Arrest him? On what grounds?” Ben motioned to the phone. “There isn’t any evidence he’s done something wrong.”

  “Oh, come on. You know my mom’s track record.”

  “There still isn’t anything I can do.” Ben paused. “Be careful, though. Keep an eye on him.”

  Rowen nodded. Of course she would at least do that much. The next order of business was to go speak with her mother.

  ***

  The glass door had been replaced at Odds & Ends, and just in time for the tricentennial, too. Rowen looked it up and down as she pulled the door open. There were handprints on it already, but the glass looked thicker, harder to shatter. “Nice,” said Rowen as the little bell rang. “Glad insurance came through for us already. That was super fast.”

  “It was Lucy, actually,” said Nadine. She was standing at some shelves in the corner with a dust rag. “She came for a reading with your mother and, next thing we knew, a new door is being delivered and installed. We’ll have to pay her back, of course.”

  Knowing Lucy, that probably wasn’t necessary. Rowen didn’t mention that though. There were pressing matters to attend to. “Is my mother here?” The neon sign out front offering tarot readings was on, so Rowen assumed she was.

  Nadine nodded. “She’s in the back.”

  �
�Is she with a client?”

  “No.” Nadine lowered her voice, getting a little quieter than usual. “We haven’t really had many customers lately. None, really. Well, except Lucy. Do you think it has anything to do with… well…”

  “Margo?”

  “Not just Margo,” Nadine said quickly. “A number of things besides her as well.”

  “I don’t know.” Rowen didn’t see any point in lying to her aunt. “It’ll pass, though. It always does. They’ll be back to begrudgingly tolerating us before you know it.”

  “Not funny.”

  Rowen hadn’t exactly meant it to be funny. She smiled at her aunt anyway and headed into the back. Tiffany was seated at her usual table. She was rocking on the back two legs of her wooden chair. Her bare feet were visible beneath the ragged hem of a pair of old bell bottoms. She had found the time to plait flowers in her hair again. The pink petals clashed with her auburn hair, but it was doubtful she cared. She looked up from the folded paperback she was holding. “Rowen! I thought I heard you come in.”

  “How’s business?”

  “Oh, fine. Lucy dropped by and we chatted for a while. She bought us a new door! Did you see?”

  “Yeah, of course I saw it. I had to come through it, didn’t I?”

  Tiffany let all four legs of her chair touch down. She pointed to the seat opposite her. “Go on. Sit.”

  “I can’t stay long.” Rowen did as she was asked anyway. “Is Rory here?”

  “Oh, no. He had things to do.”

  “Like what?”

  Tiffany shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s his own man. Sometimes, you just have to wander, you know?”

  Rowen really didn’t know, but she knew her mother did. Her mother had always been quite the wanderer. “So, how well do you know Rory?”

  “Intimately.”

  Rowen cringed. “No, I mean like… his past, his family, his personality.”

  “Well, I met his family for the first time just a little while ago. I mentioned that, I think. They live in Tarricville. They’re really nice.”

  “And how close is he to his family?”

  “Oh, close.” Tiffany’s smile broadened. “I like that in a man. It’s important to me that he loves his family. That’s the most important thing there is, right?”

  Rowen fought the urge to point out that family had never seemed to be the most important thing to Tiffany. “Has anything about him ever struck you as odd?” she asked instead.

  “Oh, Rowen.” Tiffany folded her hands on the table and looked her daughter in the eyes. “I know what you’re getting at. You’re afraid I’ve brought home—oh, I don’t know—another murderer or something!”

  That was precisely what Rowen thought. “I didn’t say that.”

  “He’s a good guy, Rowen. I’ve known him for a while now. He’s sweet.” Precisely how long Tiffany had known the guy was unclear. Knowing her, probably less than half a year.

  Rowen pulled out her phone. Her finger hovered over the screen for several long moments before finally just unlocking it. “Keep it to yourself, but I broke into his parent’s house today.”

  “What!” Tiffany looked at her daughter and then at her tarot cards. She glared at the latter accusingly, like they had let her down by not foretelling this. “Why?”

  “I didn’t realize it was his house.” That seemed to be worth mentioning first. “I was investigating that cult stuff I’m sure you’ve heard about.” Rowen turned her phone so that her mother could see the photos she’d taken of the basement. “I found that there just a minute or two after I found Rory’s picture.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Really?” Rowen put her phone down. Tiffany wasn’t stupid. She could be willfully ignorant of the facts, but she wasn’t stupid. “Rory is part of the cult that murdered Edward Waite. It’s too much of a coincidence to be an accident.”

  “That’s not possible,” Tiffany insisted. “What reason would he even have to kill that man?”

  “Maybe because Edward was going to expose the cult on the local news? Edward had a drug problem and his marriage was failing. He’d just lost his job. He probably figured he had nothing to lose.”

  “I don’t buy it. I would have realized.”

  “No offense, but a lot gets past you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like your last two boyfriends being murderers?” Rowen suggested.

  “That was different!”

  “Yeah? How?”

  “Rory and I are married!”

  Rowen stood. There was a heat building up in her that was screaming to be let out. “Just be careful around him, okay?” Rowen headed for the door, ignoring it when Tiffany called after her to wait. She wasn’t going to argue about this.

  “Everything all right?” asked Nadine, looking up as Rowen strode past.

  “Not really. Will you keep an eye on my mom?” Rowen didn’t wait for an answer. She went to her car. There was somewhere she needed to get to before the place closed.

  ***

  The Lainswich library was a nice one. Rowen didn’t frequent as often as she would have liked. She was a slow reader. When she did check out a book, it got placed on a shelf somewhere and forgotten until she had accrued as high a late fee as a person could accrue. It was cheaper to just buy books.

  Rowen parked out front and headed inside. “We’re closing in fifteen minutes,” said a woman behind the front counter. Rowen nodded at her and headed toward the back, where they kept the computers and research books. She didn’t immediately spot Tina and Peony. They were here. At least, they had said they were when she texted them a few minutes ago.

  Rowen was about to send out another text when she caught a glimpse of purple hair down past a long aisle of books. Rowen went in that direction and found an open door leading to a part of the library she had never spent time in. Inside there were newspapers on racks and rows and rows of different media. VHS, DVDs, big old poorly bound books that looked terribly old. Tina and Peony were seated side by side at a microfiche reader. There was something on the screen, though the two didn’t seem to be paying much attention to it. They were talking quietly to one another, smiling and laughing.

  “Find anything interesting?” Rowen asked, making them both jump.

  “Oh, hey Rowen,” said Tina, putting on a smile. She played with the back of one of her pearl earrings, like she was embarrassed to have been caught slacking on the job. “I’ve been helping Peony look for anything that might help with the whole cult story.”

  “I know,” said Rowen. “I really appreciate that.”

  “We found stuff,” said Peony, standing and going to the opposite end of the table to retrieve said “stuff” before she could be accused of slacking. She handed the microfiche to Tina who loaded it into the machine.

  Rowen went around behind Tina and leaned on the back of her chair as the screen came to life with images. “What am I looking for here?” she asked, scanning the cramped, sepia text of what looked like a court document. It was difficult to guess at the age of the document, but Rowen guessed old, really old.

  “It’s really old,” said Peony.

  “I got that,” said Rowen.

  “It’s about us.” Peony pointed at the screen. Tina slapped her hand away before she could smudge it with her fingerprints. “See? Right there. Greensmith.”

  Rowen squinted at the tiny text. Sure enough, she was right. The archaic language was difficult to understand, but the Greensmith name was definitely there. It looked to be some sort of trial document. She kept reading. Anna Greensmith, on trial for hexing a fellow who had been killed in a farming accident. “So, this town really has had it in for us since the beginning.”

  “Well, no. Not exactly,” said Tina, indicating some more text before Peony could poke the screen again. “She was found innocent. See?”

  “I’ll be.” Rowen was genuinely shocked by that. To think Lainswich had used their brains back then.

  “Though,
they did murder her a few years later,” said Peony, waving what Rowen assumed to be the relevant microfiche. It wasn’t official or anything, though. It was just, like, an angry mob with, you know, pitchforks and torches and stuff.”

  Tina frowned. “The records didn’t mention pitchforks or anything. Just torches… and guns. I mean, they had guns back then.”

  “Oh,” said Rowen, all affection for Lainswich going chilly again. “Well, that’s great for the display at the store, I guess.”

  “Are they still doing a display at Odds & Ends?” Tina asked, raising her perfectly shaped eyebrows. “Peony said someone broke in, so I wasn’t sure.”

  “I don’t know what they’re planning anymore,” Rowen admitted. “Either way, I was kind of hoping you had more for me here. Like maybe something about a cult existing in Lainswich? Or, heck, maybe even Tarricville.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t know about Tarricville,” said Tina, removing the microfiche and handing it to Peony. “But we did find one thing.” She loaded up something new. This time there were newspaper articles on the screen.

  “What am I looking at now?” Rowen asked, leaning in close again.

  “This picture here.” Tina pointed to an article on the third page. There was a large, black and white picture at the top of the page. The headline read, “Movers and Shakers of Lainswich Celebrate Opening of Town’s First Country Club.” Rowen looked at the picture next. Everything was a little grainy, but she could still make out faces young and old. A couple of them looked familiar. She scanned the article.

  “That’s Ferris and Diane Stonewall,” said Peony, like she couldn’t wait for Rowen to read the article and draw the connection herself. She pointed to two young adults in the picture. Tina slapped her hand away before she could touch the screen again. “You know. Eric’s grandparents?”

  “I remember who his grandparents are,” Rowen assured her. She kept scanning the article.

  “They donated the old house for the country club,” Peony continued. “Weird, right? Who donates a house for a country club?”