“So, we’ve misled people and witches?” I asked.
“It’s for their own good,” Dad said solemnly.
“I can see that…” I said. “But, you’re going to tell me, so tell me.”
“The dead don’t like all that dark and spooky crap,” he said and turned down a dirt road lined on both sides by trees. “They like things that remind them of being alive. They’re already dead, so they don’t get all excited about stuff that reminds them of being dead. Because the ones that are still here want to be alive. Even if they can’t be alive, they want a taste of it again. Most of them will do anything.”
“Oh,” I said. I thought about it for a moment. “That makes perfect sense, though. That’s why people dress up in scary costumes for Halloween, right? So, the dead will leave them alone. No, that makes perfect sense, but I didn’t put that together.”
“Most people don’t,” Dad said. “We actively discourage people from putting it together because anybody can tempt them. You don’t even have to be a witch to become a necromancer. You just have to bake some cookies.”
“Bake cookies?” I asked.
“So, they love anything that reminds them of the best parts of being alive. Salt, sugar, bacon…” Dad said and looked over at Meri. Since Laney was in a car seat in the back, he was curled up on my lap. “But, it’s not just food. They love bright colors too, and emotions. Laughing, crying, fighting… and other things. It all attracts their attention.”
“But salt circles protect us,” I said.
“They do,” Dad said. “But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get their attention. And once you have that, you’re in business.”
“I don’t know how many times I have tried to summon spirits and it’s gone badly,” I said. “You never told me.”
“I would have,” Dad said. “I was waiting for you to be ready. Think of it as leveling up.”
“I’m not sure we should have brought Laney along for this,” I said as Dad pulled up in front of the sanatorium the dead woman used as her home. “What’s her name?” I asked. “I keep thinking of her as the dead woman. I texted Thorn to get the details, but I haven’t heard back.”
“Her name was Samara Delarosa. She was a witch, and a distant cousin of yours,” Dad said. “News of her death has already spread around Coventry.”
“Well, I’m sort of out of the loop,” I said. “Do you know how she died? I was hoping Thorn would tell me, but if it’s already out there.”
“Strangled,” Dad said, “with a length of silk ribbon. Probably a binding tool.”
“That sends a message,” I said. “So, were they trying to bind her, or did she tick off someone else?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Dad said. “And you should have Laney here. She’s safe with us. Or more like we’re safe with her.”
“We’re safe with her?” I asked.
“Just a theory I’m working on, nothing I can really talk about yet. It’s still a nebulous tangle in my brain, but either way, I’ve got a bone necklace to put on her. No dead will come anywhere near her.”
“Witch’s bone?” I asked.
“Probably better that you don’t know,” he said with a chuckle.
We got out of the car, and Dad tied the bone necklace around Laney’s waist. Once she was tucked into the baby sling, she couldn’t reach the artifact and potentially rip it off. With her secure against my chest, Meri at my feet, and my dad at my side, I turned my attention to the ancient building we’d come to explore.
“It still looks sort of abandoned,” I said. “Are you sure she lived here?”
“I think she wanted it to look that way on the outside,” Dad said. “Nice and scary to keep nosy people away.”
“Well, it’s not working on us,” I said. “Are you sure no one is here?”
“I think whoever killed her just left the lights on,” Dad said.
“That makes sense,” I said.
After all, what murderer would stop to shut the lights off on their way out? They had more important things to do like take Samara to my house and kill her. Or, if she was killed here, then transport her body to dump on my front lawn.
Several lights on the first floor and one on the second floor were left on, and the front door was open a crack. “At least we don’t have to break in,” Dad said as we made our way up the front steps.
The front porch of the house, if you could even call it that, was surrounded with tall pillars. A massive coach light hung from chains, and it was on too.
Dad stepped in front of me and pushed the front door open. He didn’t step through the threshold right away but instead we stood there listening for a moment.
When he was satisfied that one was inside, he stepped over the threshold. “There was some protection magic here, but someone broke the spell,” Dad said as I followed him inside.
“So, it was a witch,” I said.
“Unless she broke it herself for some reason,” Dad answered.
We were inside what could only be described as a grand entryway. Well, at one time, it had been grand. The marble floor was dull and dirty. The orange balustrade lining the stairs before us was the same.
There were still signs inside from when the place was a sanatorium. There was a large room off to our right that had a crumbling sign: Day Room
Samara must have been using the space as a living room because it was clean and showed signs of past remodeling. There were three newer-looking sofas placed around a wood coffee table in the middle of the room too.
“Should we split up?” I asked. “This place is pretty huge. If we need to hurry, we might have to do it separately.”
“Let’s stick together for a little while longer,” Dad said. “That appears to be her living room, so let’s see what’s the other way.”
We found our way down a hallway, past a decaying formal dining room, and ended up in a huge kitchen. It was an expansive space that had at one time been used to prepare meals for all of the patients at the sanatorium, but Samara had installed new appliances. They looked to be commercial grade, so she must have had some money.
I started poking through some of the cabinets. “Maybe I should make some cookies,” I said offhand. “You know what, I don’t know why I said that. That’s a silly idea.”
“It’s not, though,” Dad answered. “It’s actually a great idea. Can you find everything you need?”
I looked around some more in the cabinets and then checked the fridge. “I’ve got everything I need here,” I said. “You think baking cookies will draw her spirit here?”
“If she liked cookies,” Dad said. “And who doesn’t?”
I held out a bag of expensive gourmet chocolate chips. “I’m pretty sure she did. I don’t know who would buy these except a cookie connoisseur.”
“Either way, if her spirit is around, it will be drawn to the baking cookies,” Dad said. “So, it’s worth it.”
“I doubt she’s going to be able to tell us who killed her,” I said as I dragged a huge mixing bowl down from one of the cabinets.
“Here, let me get that for you,” Dad said. “Don’t want you dropping it on Laney’s head.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“She’s probably not going to be able to tell us who killed her, but she can at least tell us who might have wanted her dead,” Dad said.
“And why she broke into my shop,” I added. “And why she’s messing around with magic.”
“One thing at a time,” Dad said. “We don’t know if that’s all connected. I’m going to keep looking around, though. You’ll be all right down here? I’m going to look upstairs. See what’s in that room with the light on.”
“I’ve been in spookier places,” I said.
Dad left the kitchen and headed upstairs while I mixed all the cookie ingredients together in the bowl with a large silicone spatula. “I’m baking cookies,” I said. “We’re supposed to be communing with the dead, and I’m baking.”
“If
it helps, think of them as necromancy cookies,” Meri said. “I’m going to go check out the rest of the first floor. Holler if you need me.”
“All right,” I said as I cracked the first egg into the bowl.
“Baking cookies,” I said to Laney. “This is what I’ve become.”
She cooed at me, and it made my heart constrict.
“You’re right,” I said. “It’s a good thing to become. It’s just weird to go from investigating murder and fighting the forces of evil to being left in the kitchen to make cookies. But like Meri said, it’s technically necromancy, so I can deal with it.”
“You shouldn’t be breaking the eggs right into the bowl,” the voice made me whirl around, and I nearly dropped the second egg onto the floor.
Behind me stood the mostly transparent specter of Samara Delarosa. She had her arms crossed over her chest, and her foot tapped silently, but with annoyance, on the floor.
“Samara?” I asked, but I’d seen her corpse. I knew it was her.
There was no mistaking the shock of platinum blonde hair, and high, pinched features. Her ghost was also wearing the same outfit she’d died in the night before.
“You can get shells in the batter if you break the eggs in the bowl. You need to break them into a separate bowl, and then dump them in,” she said and took a step closer.
All the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood up. The temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees in a matter of seconds. She was sucking all of the energy out of the room in order to manifest.
“Samara, I need to talk to you about who might have killed you,” I said.
“Crack the eggs into a separate bowl,” she barked at me.
Realizing that she was fixated on the cookies, and that I wasn’t going to get anything else out of her until I followed her directions, I got a smaller bowl and cracked the rest of the eggs into it.
Samara stood near me nodding her head and watching me finish the cookie dough. I shivered in the cold kitchen and hoped that my body heat kept Laney warm.
The lights began to flicker as I rolled the cookie dough into balls and put them on the pan to bake. I hoped the power wouldn’t go out.
After I closed the oven with the cookies inside, I turned to Samara and looked at her head-on. I’d been sort of watching her from my peripheral vision so that I didn’t spook her. Sometimes if the living looked too hard at the dead, then the ghost realized they had passed on. That could cause them to panic and disappear. I’d dealt with her standing over me while I made the cookies, and I wanted answers.
“Samara, I need you to tell me who might have wanted you dead,” I said.
I also wanted to ask her if she was responsible for the break-in at my shop, but I needed to take it slowly. Again, ghosts could spook easily, and it wasn’t like I’d summoned her inside of a controlled circle. She was there, in my presence, on her own accord. She opened her mouth to answer, but the voice that came out wasn’t hers.
Because it wasn’t her.
“Remy?” Thorn called from the entryway. “Kinsley, are you here too?”
Thorn had arrived, and of course he recognized Remy’s car. For a moment, I thought about running out the back door and hiding, but that would never work.
“I’m in here,” I called. “In the kitchen.”
Samara disappeared, and the temperature in the kitchen immediately began to warm up.
Thorn walked into the kitchen and stopped right after he’d crossed the threshold. He surveyed the room.
“Are you baking cookies in the dead woman’s house?” he asked. “With our baby? You brought the baby?”
I could see all of the earlier talk about embracing who I was about to fly out the window for Thorn. Then like some sort of Yuletide miracle, he slammed it shut.
His eyes narrowed and his jaw strained, but Thorn gave me an accepting nod. He walked across the kitchen, kissed me and then Laney’s head.
“I’m going to pull these cookies out of the oven, and you need to go,” he said. “Jeremy is on his way here, and we’re supposed to search the place. You and your father cannot be here for that.”
“Dad!” I called out. “We’ve gotta go!”
“I’ll go get him,” Meri said and then darted out of the kitchen.
I got Thorn an oven mitt, and he pulled the barely baked cookies out of the oven. “Pity,” he said. “These look amazing.”
“I’ll go home and make some for us,” I said. “If you’re planning on coming home, that is.”
“Why wouldn’t I be coming home?” Thorn asked with genuine confusion.
I waved my hand around the kitchen like a clumsy, drunken spokesmodel. “Because of all this…”
“I said what I said, Kinsley,” Thorn replied. “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”
“I saw the look in your eyes when you found me here,” I countered.
“I didn’t say it would always be easy, but I did mean it,” Thorn said.
“Come on,” Dad said. He’d appeared outside the kitchen.
I followed my father silently out to the car. After putting Laney in the car seat, I climbed into the passenger seat while Dad set the car to take us home the long way.
We couldn’t go back the way we came and risk passing Jeremy. So, we had to go the opposite way and then make our way back to Coventry.
“What did you find?” I asked once we were a mile away from the house. “I mean, did you find anything?”
“I got her grimoire, and I found this,” he said and pulled a little black spell bag out of his pocket.
I took it and looked inside. “So, she was the one who broke into my shop, and she somehow gave one of these to Lilith too. But Lilith didn’t kill her.”
“No,” Dad said. “But how many other witches was she tormenting? If she was hurting other witches, and one of them found out it was her, they might have taken her out.”
“So, that makes all of us a suspect,” I said. “Was that the only spell bag? If she had more of them, Jeremy might find it and put two and two together.”
“It was the only one,” Dad said. “She must have died before she could make more.”
“Well, that’s good. It will keep me from instantly becoming a suspect.”
“I need to go to the hospital and check on your mom and Lilith,” Dad said. “Are you going to be all right if I drop you off at home?”
“I should come with you,” I said.
“You don’t want to be there with the baby. It’s not going to be comfortable for either of you. Hopefully, they’ll be able to release Lilith soon. You can go visit her once we’ve taken her home,” Dad said.
“All right,” I relented. “Well, then I’ll start going through Samara’s grimoire. Perhaps I can figure out a way to counteract these spell bags. Well, first I have to figure out exactly what they are.”
“Call me if you need any help. I can come back later,” Dad said. “Actually, call me either way. Let me know if you do figure something out.”
Chapter Six
After I got home and got Laney settled, I started gathering ingredients for the chocolate chip cookies. I probably should have cracked the grimoire first and begun my research, but when the chocolate cravings hit, sometimes there’s no denying them.
That, and I was still trying to make my life as a wife and mother my priority. Most likely, it was a silly time to be worried about such a thing, but there I was.
And, I was without the chocolate chips I’d used at Samara’s house. I didn’t keep those kind on hand because we didn’t eat huge amounts of chocolate chips, but I’d hoped the house would gift them to me. Alas, Hangman’s House did not feel like indulging me.
But I was determined. Nothing but those particular gourmet morsels would do, so Laney and I were going to the grocery store. She was already fed and freshly changed, so all I had to do was grab my purse and slip into some shoes.
She cooed at me as I buckled her into the car seat. Rides seemed to
be one of Laney’s favorite pastimes, if babies could have favorite hobbies. I’d read in a book that at that age, Laney wasn’t very aware and she was only beginning to show emotion, but I didn’t believe it. When I looked into her eyes, I saw something there.
Of course, sometimes, she would just spit up on me, but other times, I could swear there was a deep awareness there.
The drive to the grocery store was uneventful, and Laney was snoozing by the time we got there. The store had been slightly damaged by the tornado, but the owner’s insurance had already gotten contractors out there to fix everything.
Haunted Hex (Familiar Kitten Mysteries Book 10) Page 5
