In Witch It All Began (Emberdale Paranormal Cozy Mystery Book 1)

by Kali Harper

  “I know. I also tried telling Lance, but he wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “They never do,” she said in a low growl, glaring in the direction of Lance’s office. “Once they get their guy, they don’t care.”

  It certainly seemed that way. “Lance told me not to do any more detective work—”

  “Which is kind of what you’re doing now.”

  “Yeah, but I also know Harris didn’t do this. I can’t give you my reasons here, but if we could meet later, I could tell you then.”

  “For coffee?” she asked, not blinking as her blue eyes met mine.

  “And peace of mind.”

  “Maggie’s? Can’t say I ever cared much for the old shrew, but our quarrel with her was all business, nothing more.”

  “I know, and Maggie’s sounds like the perfect place for us to catch up without anyone else overhearing what I have to say.” I touched her arm again like I’d done before, then said, “I need you to yell at me.”

  “Why?”

  “So Lance doesn’t suspect anything. I need him and everyone else to act as they usually would. Think you can do that for me?”

  The smile she’d had before was gone, quickly replaced by her narrowed gaze as she jumped to her feet. “If you think I’m going to accuse my husband, you’ve got another thing coming.” She ripped her arm away from me as I stood beside her, her eyes as hard as when she’d first walked in. “I can’t believe this. Just because Maggie left you a bit of magic, that doesn’t make you a part of our town.”

  Ouch. Tone it back a little bit, please.

  “If you ever come near me or my husband again—”

  “I won’t,” I said, completely sucked into Connie’s act as I tried to remember what it was we’d agreed upon. “He deserves to be in that cell. If not for Maggie’s murder, then for all the lousy charms—”

  “That’s enough,” Lance called from the doorway to his office. “Both of you to your corners. Astrid, go home.” He turned his attention to Connie, her face as red as it could possibly go. “You, come with me.”

  I watched them go, then fixed my sleeve before heading back outside. Sammy didn’t say a word until we were almost home.

  “You invited her over?” He’d overheard our conversation and wasn’t pleased, which was to be expected. In all the time I’d known Maggie, her relationship with the Morgansons was less than pleasant and nowhere near as professional as it should’ve been. Considering how much my invitation upset Sammy, I had a feeling it would anger Maggie as well.

  “It was the only thing I could think of. You and I both know Harris isn’t the killer.”

  “I do, but it isn’t your job to prove Lance wrong. He’ll figure it out eventually.”

  “Not if he refuses to run the toxins report on Maggie and those strawberries.”

  “He what?” Sammy hissed, his golden eyes wide. “He’s a fool.”

  “Or overworked.” I shrugged. “I don’t think he’ll not run the reports, but it clearly isn’t high on his list of priorities right now.”

  “Maybe he was lying to get you off the case.”

  “I suppose.” It wouldn’t have been the first time I was left in the dark, and seeing as I was technically withholding information from him, I shouldn’t have expected any different in return. “But now do you understand why I’m doing this?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “I know, but right now we don’t have a choice. Without Connie’s help, there isn’t much else we can do.”

  The news of Connie’s visit didn’t upset Maggie as much as I’d thought it would. She didn’t tear through the house or make it shake. These were things I knew she could do as a ghost as she’d already done them at my house. Needless to say, the fact her house was still standing and the drapes hadn’t caught fire was a good thing.

  Her pacing, on the other hand, wasn’t helping. Every time she passed the front window, the knot in my stomach grew. Without any magic to call my own, I was depending on my instincts and Sammy’s wards which he’d doubled since we got home.

  Currently hidden under the sofa, the gray tabby was out of sight but still as close as he could get to both me and Connie once she arrived. The other cats in the house were nowhere to be seen, and when a car pulled into the driveway, Maggie vanished as well. I’d begged her to leave the room, and while Connie couldn’t see or hear Maggie, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be a distraction for me or Sammy.

  “You ready?” I asked Sammy, lifting the skirt of the couch until I met his gaze, his eyes illuminated in the dark.

  “No.”

  “Good, because neither am I.” I nearly jumped out of my skin when the doorbell rang, and after steadying my nerves, I stood to let her in. “No one followed you?”

  She rolled her eyes and edged inside, waiting until I closed the door to say anything. “They tried,” Connie said, removing her purse and setting it on the coffee table. “Had to do a few tricks, but Lance isn’t an idiot.”

  “It’s okay, Sammy has the place warded up tight, so we shouldn’t have any surprise guests.”

  “Or be heard,” she added.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “Coffee.” She followed me into the kitchen. “And it better be good.”

  “It’s way better than whatever Lance hands out in his office.”

  “Coffee snob,” Connie said with a grin.

  “I can’t function without it.” Once I got the pot ready to go, we sat at the kitchen table. It was strange having Connie in Maggie’s kitchen, but not terrible. I didn’t hate her, but we’d never seen eye-to-eye. And that’s about to change. “How’s Harris?”

  “Oh, you know… or I suppose you don’t.” She shook her head. “He’s a warrior, always has been. Even after Maggie got the prime spot in town for her charms, he soldiered on.” For some reason, she didn’t sound as upset about this as I’d expected. “It was hard. To this day, he hates how he has fewer customers while others blame him for charms that didn’t work or are too watered down,” she said, emphasizing the last bit with air quotes. “He and Maggie may share the same magic, but their practice is completely different. Harris is more reserved, which is why folks say what they do. He’s extremely careful with his charms.”

  I nodded, then took a pair of mugs out of the cabinet, talking as I did. “I don’t know much about charms, but I did hear layering one on top of another’s enchantments can have adverse effects.”

  “Yes, which is why Lance is so quick to keep Harris where he is.” She repositioned one of the bobby pins of her bun, then said, “Maggie and Harris are the only ones capable of casting charms in town.”

  “Professional ones, you mean.” I placed her mug on the table along with some cream and sugar before sitting down again.

  “You don’t think there’s an amateur running around, do you?” She didn’t touch her coffee, meeting my gaze instead. “Is that why you don’t blame Harris? Do you know who it is?”

  “Not yet, no, and until I can prove my theory, Lance isn’t willing to hear what I have to say. Not enough to get Harris out. I actually think it’s a good thing he’s there,” I said, nursing my own drink.

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because with Harris in jail, the real killer might come out of hiding.”

  “You watch too many crime videos.”

  “I may be spending too much time around Kat as she’s a huge mystery fan. Anyway, if the killer thinks we believe Harris is the one, then he—”

  “Or she,” Connie added, “might get cocky.”

  “Not to mention careless,” I finished for her, smiling as I brought the mug up to my lips.

  “And we’re supposed to sit on our thumbs and wait?” her words came out in a growl, but it wasn’t directed at me.

  “I want to find him, same as you. And no, I’d rather not wait if I don’t have to.” I paused for a long moment and considered my next words carefully. “Have you ever practiced charms?”

 
“Goodness, no. Harris offered to teach me once, but I refused. You don’t play with magic that isn’t yours, supervised or not.”

  “So what kind of magic do you do? No one ever told me,” I lied.

  “It’s pretty useless, all things considered. It’s also ridiculous.”

  “It can’t be any worse than me talking to Maggie’s ghost.”

  Connie stiffened as the color drained from her face. “She’s haunting you?”

  “Ever since this all happened, she’s been hanging around the house.”

  “Can’t say my power is as terrible as that. The only thing I can do is predict the weather. I can tell you right now what it’ll be like next year.”

  “Anything good?”

  “Partly cloudy with a chance of rain.” She offered me a partial shrug.

  “It still sounds useful, though. It gives you plenty of warning unless the weather’s changed.”

  “It doesn’t. Emberdale had a terrible storm a few years back.”

  “The Static Storm.”

  “Yes. I’d warned the town for months up until its arrival, but its course never changed.”

  “Is it bad because it keeps your magic from working?” Acting like a normal community for a few days didn’t sound so bad to me.

  “If it were that simple, it might not have been such a big deal. Aside from making magic risky to use if not close to impossible to control, it’s especially dangerous for the shifters in our community or anyone else who doesn’t have a stronger hold on their magic. Chaotic magic exists at all times, and while the Static Storms can knock out our powers, it also had a very small chance to make things more chaotic with no way for us to control it. For close to a week after the storm passed, many of the spells we used backfired. There were no fatalities, thank goodness, but it was still scary.”

  “I’ll be sure to ask you when I need an umbrella, then.”

  “I can write it on your calendar,” she offered.

  “You know what you could do? Sell calendars for the next year that mention every storm known to man. You could call them The Magical Farmer’s Almanac!”

  “You sure have a funny way of looking at things.”

  “I try.”

  “So Maggie’s around, huh?” Connie glanced over her shoulder, then back at me. “Is she talking now?”

  “No. I told her I needed a bit of privacy for this. I didn’t want any distractions.”

  “And I suppose that was Sammy’s tail I saw poking out from under the couch?”

  Man, she was good. “Yup. Like I said, he has wards all over the place, so we should be good.”

  “You’re rather pleasant as a witch.”

  “You aren’t so bad yourself. So, what can you tell me about charms? Maggie told me some things, but if an amateur were to cast one, do you have any idea if we’d be able to tell?”

  “It would depend on the charm itself and who it’s directed at. I don’t know how Maggie did it, baking her charms ahead of time, but Harris did them as the orders came in. It made for a longer wait, but it was so he wouldn’t hand one off to the wrong person.”

  I smiled, then leaned in close and spoke low enough so only she would hear me. “Want to know a family secret? Maggie put name tags under the parchment paper of every cookie sheet. That way, when she picked a tart off the tray, she could also double-check.”

  “That woman was a lot smarter than she looked.” Connie finished up the rest of her coffee, then set the mug to the side where it was completely forgotten. “Unless this amateur screwed up somehow, such as leaving a spell book out in the open, it would be close to impossible to find out who they are. Why? What’s this hunch you’re chasing down?”

  A book! Of course.

  “What’re you doing?” Connie asked, watching me as I took out my cell phone.

  “Sending a quick text. It’s a hunch, but maybe it’ll be enough.”

  To Kat, I texted, “What was the name of that book you lost again?”

  She replied a few minutes later, right after I’d poured Connie a second cup, this time of tea. “Witching for a Spell. Why?”

  “I’ll call you later.”

  Putting my cell away, I couldn’t help the wide grin on my face.

  “You’re pleased,” Connie said, returning my smile with one of her own. “Something I can help you with?”

  “You already did. A few days ago, Kat lost a book. Well, she didn’t lose it exactly, but she realized it was missing.”

  “In that mess of hers she calls a shop?”

  “Yeah,” I said with a laugh.

  “How she can even navigate in there, Lord only knows.”

  “The book she’s missing is Witching for a Spell. Do you know of it?”

  Her eyes lit up. “Harris has the first one, I believe. It mostly goes over the basics of charms and other enchantments, which he uses as a guide whenever he gets stuck.”

  “So it wouldn’t be a spell book you’d use on its own.”

  “No. It’s a companion piece. You’d need to be well-versed in enchantments in order to understand most of it. You don’t think your amateur—”

  “Was a fool?”

  “What would possess someone to use magic that isn’t their own?”

  “The same reasons for murder I’d think.” I counted on my fingers as I spoke. “Money, revenge, and love.”

  “And which one might this be?”

  “If it’s who I think it is, it could only be one thing.”

  “A fool in love.” She shook her head. “Sounds a lot like Harris.”

  “Did he really have an affair?” When she met my eyes, I continued. “I may have overheard you two talking at Felix’s.”

  “Hard not to. Things got pretty heated.”

  “I don’t mean to pry.”

  “It’s fine, it’ll be all over town tomorrow anyway. He had an affair with Adelle.”

  “The Whisperer?”

  “Yes, but he swears it was purely emotional.”

  I couldn’t imagine seeing Harris with a shifter let alone the one who harassed Sammy back in Lance’s office. “Maggie had a crush on Harris,” I said, “but she says he never knew.”

  “That affair I may have believed,” Connie admitted, her eyes downcast. “At least then they’d have something in common.”

  “Opposites attract,” I told her, then recalling what I heard her say about their business license, I said, “You let the license lapse to get back at him.”

  “I did, but that isn’t reason enough for Lance to convict him. Why would he turn himself in?”

  “Stand in his shoes a minute. He saw how you handled the renewal. Considering how it happened around the same time as Maggie’s death…”

  “It does line up nicely, doesn’t it?”

  “It does.”

  “But you never suspected me.”

  “I did, but once I heard you got your revenge on Harris, I figured you killing Maggie would’ve been too over the top. You also spend a lot of time around someone who uses charms, so you couldn’t be that reckless to endanger yourself let alone someone else.”

  “Are you going to tell me who you think this amateur is now?”

  “Yes, but in return, I need you to keep Harris where he is and act the same way you always have. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “This is just what I need,” I told Sammy, digging deep furrows into the ground with the trowel Felix had loaned me. The feeling of the hard Earth under my knees and the cool soil in my hands were exactly what a day like today called for.

  The sun shone on my back, warming me as I broke up whatever soil I could, removing clumps of grass to make room for Maggie’s garden. I hadn’t told her what I was doing, so when Felix drove up with a truckload full of supplies, she was skeptical.

  “Now’s no time to play in the dirt, Astrid,” she said with a huff, arms crossed over her chest.

  “I’m taking a break.”

  “I’m so so
rry if investigating my death is such an inconvenience for you.” She didn’t mean it. Maggie was frustrated and she wasn’t the only one.

  My head pounded from my lack of sleep and I was beyond exhausted, but I couldn’t stop now. Not when we were so close.

  “The break isn’t for me,” I told her after a long moment. “Have you taken the time to grieve?”

  “Grieve? Grieve?” she yelled, throwing her arms in the air. “I’m dead, Astrid. D E A D. Dead! No sense feeling bad for myself.”

  Touching one of the flowers at my side, I traced a petal with my fingertip, its blue shine matching the sky. “Then let the rest of us do it for you. I may be able to see you and talk to you, Mags, but this is a completely new level of strange for me. Give me some time to process—”

  “The longer you play in the dirt, the harder this will become. What if he gets away? Or worse, what if he comes after you? We don’t even know what he was after.”

  “She,” I corrected her. “It could also be a woman, you know.”

  Sighing, Maggie sat beside me and ran her fingers through the soil between us, her spectral form reaching under the Earth. “How could you tease me like that? I can’t even tend my own garden.”

  “I thought seeing the bright colors would make you happy.”

  “No. What would make me happy is finding my killer.”

  Here we go again. I loved Maggie to bits, but when she got overly passionate about something, not even I could keep up with her. “I did want to try something if you’re interested.”

  “Anything so long as it doesn’t include me staying here while you go gallivanting off without me.”

  “Not this time. I could use your talents.” I stood and dusted my hands off on my jeans, the blue denim stained with dirt.

  “You want me to walk through walls, don’t you?” she asked with a resonated sigh.

  “You haven’t even tried,” I reminded her, gathering my tools and the remaining flowers so I could put them away.