Haunted by Murder

by ReGina Welling

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” She stated, shuffling papers back and forth and paying special attention to the sections Brad had highlighted. “Someone has been siphoning money out of the foundation, and it looks like Brad found out about it.”

  Clara’s heart dropped into her stomach. Brad had made the discovery and headed straight to speak to John. John had control over the foundation, which gave him the opportunity and means. The motive wasn’t hard to discern; the adage that money made the world go ’round had been proven true more times than a calculator could compute.

  “Who had access to the funds in question?” Clara asked, praying to the Goddess there was some other explanation.

  “Me, obviously, but I think we can rule me out for obvious reasons. Uncle John, Mason, the head accountant. I’ve been taking a more active role, but Uncle John still oversees the day-to-day operations, which includes bookkeeping and accounting.”

  She paused for a breath, then continued speaking while her gaze scanned more of the pages. “Mason handles all our legal needs, but there’s a fair amount of overlap between them because as our tax attorney, he also advises on financial matters and is active in handling our investments. There’s a bookkeeper who sets up some of the payments, but one of the three of us signs the checks. Not that anyone uses checks anymore, but you know what I mean.”

  Any further speculation ceased when Constance marched into the room. “It’s time for dinner. Now you clean yourselves up and come downstairs, and I won’t have any more talk of this at the table. Stephanie needs to keep up her strength for whatever is to come.”

  “We should be leaving.” Mag tried to beg off from a dinner spent under the baleful eye of Constance counting the silver, but Clara couldn’t ignore the niggling feeling she was needed here.

  “I think we should stay and keep Stephanie company this evening. She might have need of our special talents while she sorts things out.”

  “And I have a shipment to unpack. We do have a shop to run.” Mostly, Mag had hit her limit of being social for the day.

  Picking up on the meaning of the term special talents, Stephanie turned to Clara. “There are plenty of extra bedrooms. Why don’t you stay the night and let Mag go home and handle things there.”

  That was logic Mag couldn’t and didn’t want to dispute, so off she went for her first night alone in months.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Feeling no remorse whatsoever, Mag tore through Clara’s kitchen looking for the bottle of faerie-made wine she knew was hiding somewhere in the cupboards. The Fae had a reputation for luring humans into their homes and plying them with food and drink in order to trap them there for a thousand years.

  The thousand years part was so much hooey, Mag thought, but she’d never yet met the human who could drink more than half a glass of the potent Twinkleberry wine and not lose a solid week or more to its heady intoxication.

  The magic blood coursing through her veins could handle the effects far better than a regular human, but if it didn’t and she had to choose a week to lose, though, this one was currently at the top of her list. If she never saw another ghost, it would suit her just fine.

  The wine turned up in the hallway, stuffed into one of Clara’s old boots. Clearly, she hadn’t wanted it found. Well that was just too bad for Clara. Mag popped the cork with a look, took the first swig right from the bottle, and prepared to enjoy her first night alone in more months than she cared to remember.

  No matter how much she enjoyed the quality time with her sister, a body needed some peace every once in a while. A little space to breathe, to cut loose. Pyewacket had taken herself off to Port Harbor for the night, Roma was with Clara, and if the ghosts knew what was good for them, they’d keep to their own plane of existence.

  Tiny bubbles floated out of the pink liquid and rang like little bells when they popped. Closing her eyes, Mag tipped the bottle up again and the second sip buzzed a path down to her toes. Glasses were for sissies.

  Home alone, completely free. She should head back over to her place and fire up the old Crosley unit she’d pilfered from the shop along with a box of vintage vinyl. About ten steps toward the door, she realized she was too wobbly to navigate the stairs.

  Witch perk, she thought, as she conjured the suitcase-style record player from her closet and it landed on Clara’s kitchen table with a thump. A few things from the shop would make this a party. Another short draw on the bottle stole a little more of her concentration, but not so much that she couldn’t summon a little mood lighting for the party.

  Mag’s decorating tastes ran straight Victorian, all the way, but when it came time to cut loose and have a little fun, she partied like it was 1969. Or at least the decade between sock hops and disco.

  With a little frown of concentration wrinkling her forehead, she chose a nice lava lamp and a disco ball from the contents of her shop, and settled them into place with a nice, steady flow of magic.

  She programmed the Balefire colors to add a little more ambiance, and settled down to enjoy the peace.

  Except the peace was a little too peaceful.

  “Bored now.” Mag commented to the empty room. “Hagatha Crow. Hagatha Crow. Hagatha Crow.”

  Comparing Hagatha to Beetlejuice or Bloody Mary tickled Mag’s sense of humor and she didn’t expect calling her name three times to work. When it did, her mind was too muddled to follow through on the implications.

  “Care for a snort?” The bottle, when she handed it over, was still three-quarters full even if Mag looked like she was four days in on a three-day bender.

  “Well, well. Someone has been using their Faerie connections.” Lifting the bottle to her nose, Hagatha inhaled, sneezed when a few bubbles tickled, then toasted Mag and took a healthy drink. A stray moment of clarity made Mag think lowering Hagatha’s inhibitions might be a bad idea, but in the interests of not being drunk alone, she waved it away.

  Taking turns, they put a hurt on the better part of the bottle and began trading stories from past exploits, including the one that ended with the Raythe that drained away Mag’s youth.

  “See, it wasn’t a spell,” Mag slurred, watching the Balefire flames dance, “so Clara’s barking up the wrong tree thinking she can find a way to fix me. I'm not fixable.”

  “Unicorn feathers!” Hagatha snorted. “Magical being did the deed, that’s enough.”

  While Mag’s mind went off on a wild tangent and tried to picture a unicorn because her muddled brain couldn’t remember whether they had feathers or not, her drinking companion listed off a combination of spells that, woven together, might work.

  “Complicated one, that spell. And then you’d need a—,” Hagatha flapped her hand while she searched for the right words. “Hair of the dog. Raythe blood or bone would work. Too bad you lost all that pixie honey. It would take most of a hive’s worth to distill enough hormones.”

  Squinting, Mag tried to take it all in. Could there really be a way to regain her lost youth? Or was Hagatha just blowing faerie dust out of her behind? In the pink twilight of her wine-induced haze, Mag thought it sounded plausible, but then again, she also thought she could hear her hair growing, so who knew?

  ***

  Clara stared out into the icy depths of the howling snowstorm, a violent shiver playing down her spine while she tried to make out shapes through the unrelenting white. Everything before this moment was a blur, and she couldn’t remember how or why she’d come to be in this place, freezing to death.

  She spun in place, trying to decide which direction to take when everything looked the same. Tendrils of dread inched down her body to grow the kind of roots that bound a person’s feet to the ground.

  Tension built to the point where biting down on the scream wouldn’t be enough to hold it back, and she opened her mouth to let it fly.

  “Clara Balefire. You wake up now!” Steam wafted when Roma’s ice met Clara’s warm breath. “Something is wrong and you need to wake up.”

  “Wha
t?” Bleary eyes crusted with sleep and ghost chill, Clara finally surfaced to find Roma’s prone figure hovering about an inch above her. “Get off me, and quit breathing in my face.”

  Another cold gust blew past Clara’s face as Roma huffed in frustration. “Wake up and listen, you daft witch. Someone is prowling around downstairs. Now, you need to get out of that bed, and go check on Stephanie. Right this minute. Do you hear me?”

  “I don’t … what?”

  “Someone. Is. In. The. House.” More puffs of chilled air blew tossed Clara’s hair and she finally tuned into what Roma had said. “My danger alarms are blaring.”

  “Stephanie.”

  Shedding sheets and blankets like a cocoon, Clara rose and dressed herself with magic. Three long steps took her to the door as her hair bound itself out of her eyes, and then she turned back to look for her magically miniaturized bag of tricks.

  Precious seconds went into figuring out it wasn’t there and trying to remember why.

  “Where? How many?” Voice pitched low, Clara decided she’d have to make do with only the magic her mama gave her.

  “One and I’m not sure where he is now, since you took your sweet time waking up.”

  “Dial back the cranky. I’m up now.” All the way up, and fueled with enough adrenaline to make her fingers feel shaky when she eased the door open and pressed her ear to the crack.

  Was that a stealthy footstep, or just her own pulse fluttering in her ear?

  “Oh for Pete’s sake.” Roma’s voice ricocheted off the walls with a distant, hollow-sounding echo and startled Clara hard enough to draw a flicker of Balefire into the palm of her hand. She doused the flames, but not before they compromised her night vision.

  If Roma weren’t already dead, Clara would have been tempted to send the medium into the light with her butt on fire. “I hope whoever it is can’t hear you,” she stepped away from the door and whispered.

  “If I thought he could, I’d put the fear of Roma into him. Wait here.” With that, Roma swept through the door, presumably to go locate the intruder.

  Clara did wait. Not because Roma told her to, but because she needed a moment to prepare herself for what was to come. The angel on her shoulder insisted it could not be John sneaking around the house with murky intentions. The devil on the other figured he was as good a suspect as any. Heaven help him if it was, because that would put two marks against him in her book.

  Worse, for Stephanie’s sake, would be the ultimate betrayal if Brad had returned like a thief in the night.

  “What are you waiting for? Go protect Stephanie.” In the darkness, Roma looked like a pale shadow.

  Wait, don’t wait. Roma needed to make up her mind. “Where is he? Did you see who it is?” Clara asked.

  “Ransacking the office, so why are you just standing there? If he hurts her, I swear I’ll haunt you forever.”

  “Go to Mag, tell her what’s happening, and get her to call the cops before she does anything else. I’ll take care of Stephanie.”

  Keeping that promise would take all her concentration, and getting rid of Roma’s distracting influence was half the goal with sending her for help. “Go now!”

  Whether it was stealthy footsteps or merely the sound of her own pulse whooshing in her ears, it felt like time was running out as the reluctant ghost faded.

  The distance to Stephanie’s door was under ten feet. Four good steps for a woman of Clara’s height, but it took half of forever to tiptoe that distance when she had to stop and listen for the sound of feet on the stairs.

  Heart racing, she nudged open the door and silently thanked Constance for running a well-oiled—literally—home.

  Stephanie came awake with a start when Clara shook her shoulder.

  “Shh. Don’t make a sound. There’s someone in the house and I need you to hide while I deal with him.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know,” Clara practically dragged the younger woman out of bed and bundled her into a closet larger than her bedroom over Balms and Bygones. “Find a place to hide and stay there no matter what you hear, okay? I can handle this.”

  The first sound of stealthy footsteps sent Clara back into the bedroom Gathering herself for whatever was to come, she waited and listened for the sliding sound as the doorknob began to turn.

  What would she do to keep Stephanie safe? How much magic could she use without running afoul of the harm-none rule? If there were lines to be drawn and then crossed, Clara would have to make those decisions on the fly. Most importantly, she trusted Roma to get to Mag and Mag to get help—of the human variety—here before she reached any point from which she could not return.

  To that end, she drew from the pool of Balefire that was her family’s birthright, and sent a flickering tongue of it into the doorknob.

  A muffled exclamation followed the knob returning to its original position and Clara grinned. Round one to me, she thought. Let’s see what’s next on the roster. She could feel him there, on the other side of the door, and wished she had a hint of Roma’s ability. How fun it would be to thrust her head through the door and say, “Boo!”

  If she’d remembered to bring her charm bag, she would have been able to do more. It occurred to her then that she could have asked Roma to have Mag send the bag along. Clara could only call it to her if she knew its exact location, and Mag could have put it anywhere.

  The doorknob rattled twice as if touched by a tentative finger to test for danger. She waited until it moved again, hit it with a level two blast, and listened for a reaction. Muffled cursing barely penetrated the thick door, but she’d bought herself a minute or two. Surely Roma would have rallied Mag by now.

  In fact, Clara wondered why her sister hadn’t shown up already. It wasn’t like Mag to miss out on catching a bad guy, and she’d expected Roma to flit right back once the message was delivered.

  Round three failed to deter the intruder, who must have wised up and wrapped something around his hand before turning the knob. It was too much to hope the hot knob would keep him stymied for long.

  Running on pure instinct, Clara went with the first idea that came to mind, cast a glamour to turn dark hair to blond, and made a mad leap for the bed. She pulled up the covers just as the figure eased into the room.

  Dark against dark, he kept to the shadows and approached the bed. When the hand reached past her to pick up a pillow, she still wasn’t sure who stood over her with the intention to kill.

  ***

  Roma materialized in Clara’s living space with a popping sound. “Mag, you need to—” she trailed off when she got a good look around.

  “Wanna drink?” Lounging on a reclining lawn chair in front of the Balefire, Mag waved a wine bottle in Roma’s direction. Swirls of fringe marched up the arm of the free-love era suede jacket Clara would never let her wear in public. To complete the ensemble, she’d gone with a vintage tee that, on closer inspection, appeared to be autographed by half the performing lineup at Woodstock.

  In the fireplace, the roaring Balefire spit sparks and cycled through a psychedelic series of colors. It was pretty, if mesmerizing, to watch. Sandalwood incense and sage leaves burned in several censors, smudging the air with smoke and scent.

  “Cure what ails you,” with an exaggerated head nod, Mag slurred the suggestion and tried to focus her eyes by opening them as wide as she could. When that didn’t work, she squinted.

  Dismayed, Roma said, “You’re drunk.”

  “Lil bit.” Mag agreed. “Don’t tell Clara I found her stash.”

  To Mag’s right, cuddled into a second lounge chair, an equally bleary-eyed Hagatha Crow cackled wildly and started repeating the word stash as if she’d never heard it before. The potent combination of faerie wine and powerful magic lowered the old witch’s inhibitions—not that Hagatha’s were all that strong to begin with. Sometime during the last half a century, she’d misplaced the bulk of her give-a-crap.

  Based on her actions, she didn’t seem to mi
ss it, either.

  “I need you to call the police and send them out to Huffington Manor. Can you do that?” Roma might as well have been talking to the lava lamp. “Mag, do you hear me? Clara’s in trouble.”

  “Go ’way. Shoo.”

  Offended by the way Mag waved her off, Roma took matters into her own hands. “Whizzer! Come!” She called the ghost dog. “Where’s the kitty? Go find Jinxie. That’s a good boy.”

  Peeing on every surface wasn’t the only reason Whizzer lived up to his name. Whiz certainly described the speed with which he made the rounds, and cornered Jinx in Clara’s bedroom.

  “Get off me you crazy dog,” floated out of the room followed by the sound of two feet hitting the floor.

  “Thank the stars.” Roma said as he entered the room, “I need your help. Call the authorities and send them to Huffington Manor. Clara’s in trouble. Hurry now—there’s no time to waste.”

  ***

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The rough whisper fell over Clara while the pillow hovered over her face, but his was still in shadow. It could be John—she prayed to Hecate it wasn’t. Would he really try to kill the woman he’d raised as his own? Clara’s heart said no, but her heart had been wrong before.

  The pillow began its descent, but Clara had wasted too many seconds trying to identify her assailant and he moved faster than she’d expected. He landed on her chest, knocked the wind out of her, and pushed the smothering cushion down hard.

  Clara couldn’t breathe, and the shock of it drove everything out of her head but the urge to try and buck him off.

  Meanwhile, he continued to apologize and as her struggles decreased, his volume increased.

  “I’m sorry.” Either Clara was closer to death than she thought or she thought she heard the angels sing when she realized the man trying to kill her was not the man she wanted to date.