Witch Myth Omnibus: A Yew Hollow Cozy Mystery

by Alexandria Clarke

  “Do you think she orchestrated his death?”

  “She doesn’t seem capable of murder, but I have a feeling that she isn’t telling us the whole story,” I said, thinking back to my meeting with Teagan. Though obviously upset about her home-life situation, I couldn’t see her taking it out on her husband. Not to mention, Teagan was a rather small woman. It was unlikely that she could have overpowered Ronan. From the pictures I’d seen of him, he was too bulky of a man for Teagan to take out on her own.

  Dobbes flipped through the photos of Teagan’s house, destroyed by the fire. He held one up and asked, “What happened here?”

  “The house burned down the same night Teagan was attacked,” I explained, clicking through an electronic version of Teagan’s file on my computer screen to see if there was any other essential information I had neglected to inform Dobbes of. “Again, she says that Ronan was responsible for it. I want to visit the property today, just to see if we missed anything the first time around. Witchcraft leaves traces, and ghosts tend to linger in the areas they frequented while they were still alive. If Ronan’s out there, I should be able to find him.”

  Dominic gave me a quizzical look. “If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly is the process for that?”

  There was no describing what it felt like to interact with a ghost. It was instinctive for mediums, like breathing or blinking. Spirits were drawn to our witchcraft, usually because their souls were desperate to pass over. As a medium, it fell to me to help them do so. Unfortunately, some ghosts denied themselves the opportunity to move on to the next life, out of fear or anger or some other unfinished business. Those spirits were always tricky to handle, and I’d experienced my fair share of frustration over their reluctance to pass over.

  “It’s not so much a process,” I began, searching for a way to explain my abilities in layman’s terms. “It’s more of a feeling. Vibes, almost. I’ve spent my whole life locating and interacting with the dead. They know when I’m around and vice versa. Does that make any sense?”

  “Not really.”

  I made a face. “I don’t know how else to explain it. Do you want to go out to the Riley property with me or not?”

  “Absolutely,” Dobbes said. Though he didn’t understand it, he seemed to have accepted the eccentricity of my employment. “I’d also like to speak with Teagan today if we can manage that.”

  “It shouldn’t be an issue. I’ll ask Torres to arrange it for when we get back. You ready?”

  He glanced up from the file. “Right now?”

  “Yup.”

  I may have been throwing Dobbes into the deep end, but if Torres thought that he was the right man to help me with this case, Dobbes needed to get used to the idea of rooting around in the afterlife. To his credit, he made no objections. Dobbes closed the file, tucked it under his arm, and stood. Then he pulled the office door open and gestured me through it.

  I dropped by Chief Torres’s office, knocking on the doorframe to announce myself. “Chief? Dobbes and I are heading out to the Riley property.”

  Chief Torres glanced up from his computer monitor. He seemed taken aback to see me standing amiably next to Dobbes, as though he’d expected to break up a fistfight between us instead. “All right, then.”

  “Could you have someone call Teagan and set up a meeting with her after lunch?” I asked, tapping my fingers impatiently against the doorframe. “Detective Dobbes wants a one-on-one.”

  “Will do.”

  I turned swiftly, beckoning Dobbes to follow me.

  He looked down at me from his great height. “I was serious before. You can call me Dominic.”

  “Fine. Tell me, Dominic,” I said as we made our way through the station, “have you ever been to a haunted house?”

  Since I didn’t have a car and wouldn’t be caught dead in a police cruiser, Dominic drove us out to the Riley property, his sleek black SUV making the trip in a fairly short amount of time. As we drove, I experimented with the various buttons on the passenger’s side, nearly singeing my ass off when I accidentally turned on the seat heater. As Dominic tried not to laugh, I recovered my dignity, turning on the air conditioning to soothe my burning skin. We drove past the last neighborhood of Yew Hollow. The houses out here were spaced farther apart, and soon there were miles between each one. As Dominic’s SUV wound its way through dirt roads carved into fields of dandelions, Dominic filled me in on his life story. Honestly, I wouldn’t have cared too much about his background had his voice been less velvety, but as it was, his subtle Brooklyn accent drew me in, and I couldn’t help but engage Dominic in further conversation.

  “I was born in Brooklyn,” he explained when I asked about his accent. “I relocated to the Washington, DC, area when I was about thirteen. Eventually, the accent faded a bit.”

  “Why did you move to DC?”

  His hand tightened ever so slightly on the steering wheel. “I’d been living with my mother and sister in Brooklyn. When they passed away in a car crash, I had to move in with my dad’s parents in DC.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  It made him more human, somehow, to know that he had dealt with such a horrible tragedy so early in life. I socialized with a lot of people who had dark backstories. It was a side effect of being a medium. When death was always the first thing on your mind, mortals who had personal brushes with the grim reaper found you comforting.

  “There,” I said, pointing through the windshield at the heap of destruction that was all that remained of Teagan’s house. Dominic parked the car along the curb. As I unbuckled my seatbelt, he stepped out, walked to the other side of the car, and opened the door for me.

  “I’m capable of opening a door, believe it or not,” I said, unfolding myself from the SUV. Dominic’s car was so large that I had to hop down to the dusty dirt road of Teagan’s street.

  “Sorry,” he said, but he kept his hands at the ready just in case the height of the SUV presented another challenge for me. As if to prove my point, I heaved the door closed on my own.

  I planted my hands on my hips, taking in the charred leftovers of Teagan’s house. The main reason for my visit was to see if I had missed any traces of witchcraft. If Ronan’s suicide was linked to the other mysterious deaths in Yew Hollow, it would at least give me something to work with. A glimpse of Ronan’s ghost wouldn’t hurt either. Neither craft nor spirit presented itself to me right away, but that didn’t mean our visit was a bust. I started toward the rubble, wanting a closer look.

  “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea,” Dominic said, but he followed me anyway. He cleared a particularly large piece of debris, part of a counter or a cabinet, from my path, his eyes sharp for other potential hazards.

  I picked my way through what was left of the kitchen, steering clear of the remaining parts of the roof. The scorched supports didn’t look capable of holding much weight. The only evidence left of Teagan’s struggle was the blackened oven and several shards of glass covered in dried blood. There were no signs of witchcraft, no ritual remains, no leftover auras. The house was as normal as a house could be, other than its unexpected demise.

  “Smells like gas,” Dominic said as he inspected the oven.

  Sure enough, the smell of gasoline was too strong to ignore. I was correct in assuming that someone had doused the house with an accelerant. There was no way one forgotten oven had the power to burn down the entire structure, rather than just the kitchen. It meant that Teagan was right about one thing. Someone was definitely trying to kill her, or at the very least, drive her out of Yew Hollow.

  “There’s nothing here for me,” I said, kicking aside a pile of debris. “See anything?”

  Dominic shook his head.

  “Let’s head out to the woods where we found the body,” I suggested. “Maybe we missed something the first time.”

  As I stepped over the outer wall of the foundation, my foot got tangled up in the mangled remains of red brick. I tr
ipped, reaching my arms out to catch my fall, but Dominic appeared out of nowhere. He caught my forearms, and I bounced gently off his chest rather than hitting the ground and eating a lot of dirt. Blushing furiously, I righted myself and pushed him off. Maybe chivalry wasn’t dead after all, but I didn’t need Dominic to think that I was incapable of taking care of myself.

  “Thanks. Damn house.”

  “Maybe it was a ghost,” he said, a smile playing at the corners of his lips.

  “Not funny.”

  Together, we abandoned the house, heading out to the trees in the backyard. I led Dominic toward the spot where we’d found the body. It wasn’t far from the house, just a quarter mile or so, where the foliage thickened and the sky was barely visible through the impenetrable leaves of the trees. There was nothing left of the incident other than a forgotten string of crime-scene tape. I tore it down from the trees, balling it up in my hand.

  “We found him here,” I said, pointing to the space beneath a large oak tree, “with a handmade noose around his neck. We think he hung himself from that branch.”

  I pointed upward, to a thick, sturdy branch protruding from the oak tree. Dominic stared up at it then did a circuit around the tree. He studied the tree and the ground around it, his eyebrows drawn together in concentration. I, on the other hand, focused on what wasn’t visible.

  Witchcraft was fickle. It presented itself in ways that mortals weren’t familiar with, a strange metallic scent on your tongue or just a feeling, like the tickle of a spider’s web across the hair on your arms. I shivered. Only the leftover musk of death found its way to my senses. There was no indication that Ronan’s spirit had lingered, or if he was still around, he certainly wasn’t making his presence known to me.

  “It’s no use,” Dominic said, kneeling down to get a closer look at the space beneath the oak tree. “There’s nothing left here. Footsteps would’ve been washed away, and I assume your officers picked apart the rest of the crime scene already. This was a waste of time.”

  I nodded in agreement. It was frustrating but true. We needed to work with what we had, and the crime scene wasn’t giving up any new secrets.

  Then, from deeper in the woods, a branch snapped. Dominic and I both whipped around to face the noise. My heart pounded in my throat. These woods were unsettling enough without the addition of bodiless sounds.

  “Probably just an animal,” Dominic said in a whisper.

  “Then why are you whispering?” I whispered back.

  He shrugged then stepped forward toward the source of the noise. I grabbed his arm, halting him in his tracks. I felt the pulse at his wrist beat steadily beneath my fingers. Unlike my own nervous heartbeat, his was strong and slow.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed.

  “I’m going to go see what it was.”

  I shook my head, my grip tightening on his arm. “Don’t. If Teagan’s right and her husband is terrorizing the town, I won’t be responsible for the new guy getting offed. Chief Torres already thinks he’s taking a risk on me. We should just go.”

  “Morgan, do you want to solve this case or not?”

  He had a point. Besides, with his impressive physique and resounding voice, he could scare off a number of creatures that made their home in the woods. Ghosts, however, were a different story. You couldn’t scare what was already dead.

  Despite my protests, he gently removed my hand from his arm and trekked deeper into the forest. Reluctantly, I followed along behind him. The rational part of me knew that whatever had made the noise probably wasn’t a huge threat to us—it could’ve been a particularly fat raccoon—but the whole Riley property gave me the chills. If something sinister lingered in the woods, I really didn’t want to know what it was.

  Suddenly, Dominic kneeled in the dirt.

  “Check this out.”

  I hesitantly leaned over his shoulder, trying to see what he was looking at. Something shiny glinted in the dirt, and as Dominic prodded a few leaves aside, I saw what it was.

  A wedding ring.

  “It has to be Teagan’s,” I said as Dominic parked the car in front of the station. Once again, he insisted on opening and closing my door for me. I’d given up trying to stop him, wondering how he’d grown up in Brooklyn with such good manners. I had also spent time in New York, and the city had relieved me of all faith in humanity, as nearly everyone there had been the epitome of rude. But Yew Hollow was all small-town charm, and Detective Dominic Dobbes fit right in.

  We’d captured the ring in a clear evidence bag. It was too small to be a man’s ring, and now that I thought about it, I didn’t remember seeing a wedding band on Teagan’s left hand. The real question was how it had ended up in the woods behind Teagan’s house. As soon as we entered the station, I corralled Chief Torres in his office.

  “Chief!”

  He nearly jumped out of his office chair. The wireless mouse of his desktop computer crashed to the floor, splintering into several pieces. “Jesus, Summers. Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”

  “Is Teagan here?” I asked.

  “Interrogation room. Did you find anything?”

  I held up the evidence bag. The wedding band, despite its layer of dirt, shimmered beneath the fluorescent lights.

  “Is that hers?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out,” I said, pocketing the bag.

  “We’ll try to lift some prints off of it after we speak to Teagan,” Dominic added, nodding respectfully to Chief Torres. “Maybe it’ll give us some insight as to who else was in those woods on the night of Ronan’s death.”

  Chief Torres’s desk phone rang, so he gave us the thumbs up as he picked up the receiver. I tapped Dominic on the back, indicating that we should leave Torres to his business. Together, Dominic and I pushed open the door to the interrogation room.

  Teagan looked no better than she had the day before. The nasty cut on her forehead was starting to scab beneath its stitches, and the accompanying bruise had darkened to a deep purple, trailing down along her temple. She looked dead tired, as though she’d been up all night worrying about Ronan’s next attempt on her life instead of sleeping.

  “How are you, Teagan?” I asked, sitting down across from her. Dominic leaned against the wall.

  “I’m exceptional,” she deadpanned. She jerked her head in Dominic’s direction and asked, “Who’s he?”

  “This is my, uh, partner, I guess,” I said. “Detective Dobbes, meet Teagan Riley. Detective Dobbes is helping me out with your case, Teagan.”

  Dobbes inclined his head politely. “It’s nice to meet you, Teagan. Hopefully Detective Summers and I can shed some light on your situation.”

  “I hope so too,” Teagan said, looking Dominic up and down. It took me a few seconds to realize that she was admiring Dominic’s stylish stature. I twitched, suddenly aware of my strange desire to kick Teagan under the table. Instead, I clicked my fingers at her, recapturing her wandering attention. Her eyes snapped back to me.

  “We took a ride out to your house earlier today to see if we could pick up any other details at the scene,” I said to her. Without ceremony, I extracted the evidence bag from my pocket and tossed it onto the table in front of Teagan. “Does that look familiar?”

  Her eyes widened as she leaned forward to grab the bag, inspecting the ring through the clear plastic. “My wedding ring! Where was it?”

  “In the woods behind your house. Any reason you can think of as to how it ended up there?”

  Teagan shook her head vigorously. “I took it off the night of his funeral. When I went to bed, I took it off and put it in the drawer of the bedside table. I figured it got lost in the fire.”

  “Hard to believe it somehow walked out to the woods, then,” I said, unable to keep the sharp edge out of my voice.

  Teagan’s eyes narrowed. “I told you. I told you it was him. How else would it have ended up back there?”

  Dominic stepped away from the wall and approached Teagan
. Despite his intimidating height, he seemed to radiate a sense of calm, a useful talent that I had never fully grasped the concept of.

  “Ms. Riley,” he began, the Brooklyn accent intensifying as he put on his good-cop persona. “Is there any reason why you might’ve gone into the woods behind the house following your husband’s death?”

  “No,” she said shortly. “The nightmares are enough. I don’t ever need to go back to that place again.”

  “Nightmares?”

  “Yes, I have dreams about Ronan. I had one the night he attacked me.”

  “Allegedly attacked you,” Dominic corrected. He rested one hand on the table, leaning next to Teagan. “We don’t know that the culprit is your husband’s ghost. Did you know that someone covered your house in gasoline before they burned it down?”

  “No.”

  “Did you hear anything outside? Or notice anything odd, such as a strange smell or anything like that?”

  “Everything was odd,” Teagan responded. She fiddled with a bandage wrapped around the palm of her hand, and I caught a glimpse of the long, jagged gash beneath it. “He wrote on the mirror in my own blood. Things moved on their own. The door wouldn’t open when I tried to leave the house. It locks from the inside, Detective Dobbes. How would you explain that?”

  “What did he write on the mirror?”

  “Until death do us part. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  Dominic made eye contact with me, as if asking what I thought about this information. I’d already known about the message on the mirror. It was in Teagan’s report from the night she had been attacked. The problem was that there was no proof of paranormal activity in Teagan’s house. We had Teagan’s word and no witnesses, and it was this fact that raised eyebrows at the force. Dominic had caught on. I could tell that he was asking himself the same question that I had. Was Teagan telling the truth?

  “Detective Summers, can I speak with you outside?” Dominic asked. I nodded, the legs of my chair scraping against the floor as I pushed myself away from the table and stood. Dominic held the door open for me and said to Teagan, “We’ll be right back.”