Witch Haunted in Westerham

by Dionne Lister

  Beren unclipped his seat belt and looked at me. “She’s moved back in with her parents until she finds something else.” As sad as that sounded, at least she had parents to move back in with. I didn’t want to slip down the poor-me slide, but I couldn’t help wondering where my parents were, or where their bodies were. All those years that had been stolen from us. I’d give my unit up in a heartbeat if I could have them back. I blinked to erase the thin veneer of moisture that welled in my eyes. Beren frowned. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, just thinking about my parents. Sorry.”

  “Sorry? Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve been through hell, and you have every right to be sad about it. Don’t ever apologise for that. Do you hear me?”

  I gave him a small smile. “Thanks for caring. You’re a big sweetie, and I appreciate it.”

  “I do what I can.” He winked and grinned. “Okay, let’s get this done. And same as before, I’ll get you to do the spell. We can’t risk whoever instigated this finding out what we’re doing or what those people are telling us.”

  “I get it. Lead the way, Agent DuPree.”

  A short, white-haired, rotund lady in a floral, long-sleeved loose dress and sheepskin slippers opened the door. I was guessing this was the victim’s mother. She smiled. “Welcome! You must be Beren DuPree. Please come in.”

  “Thanks, Mrs Thomas. This is my associate, Lily Bianchi.”

  Beren was waiting for me to go first—always the gentleman—so I stepped inside and smiled. “Lovely to meet you, Mrs Thomas. Thanks for seeing us on short notice.”

  “Lovely to meet you too, Lily. What a sweet name.”

  My cheeks warmed slightly—I wasn’t good with compliments. “Thank you.” I automatically wanted to give her one back, but commenting on her name would be ridiculous. What wonderful thing could you say about Mrs Thomas? Maybe I could tell her what a happy dress she had on, but before I opened my mouth, she’d already shut the front door and was leading us down the hallway. Moment lost.

  We entered a cosy sitting room that had a fire blazing in the small fireplace. I created a bubble of silence while Mrs Thomas gave a nod to another woman. “This is my daughter, Miranda. This is Beren and Lily.”

  Miranda, who was about my height and looked more like mid-thirties than forty with her long, wavy dark hair and bright-blue eyes, smiled. She held her hand out and shook mine vigorously. “Lovely to meet you, Lily. And Beren.” She shook his hand too. Her enthusiastic tone of voice was unexpected. “Please sit down. I’ll try and answer what I can, but that stupid agreement will stop me actually telling you very much. I’m terribly sorry about that.”

  Again, Beren and I sat next to each other on the couch—this time it was a fawn colour with tiny pink rose motifs all over it. Mrs Thomas sat on the two-seater lounge next to her daughter.

  Beren smiled. “Thanks so much for talking to us on short notice. I understand if you can’t tell us too much. I might start with an easy question that I hope is okay. Did you enjoy living in your unit?”

  She smiled. “Yes. I loved my unit. It took me months to find one I really wanted that I could afford, so when I finally closed on that one, it was one of the happiest moments of my life.” She got ten points for smiling through this disaster. I’m sure I’d be bitter as hell.

  “Great. So, why did you decide to sell?”

  She shrugged. “Next question.” Well, that was no surprise.

  “Did you ever meet the person, or people, who bought your unit?”

  “No.” Her smile had vanished, and her face was set in what appeared to be concentration. She must be trying hard to not say anything she wasn’t supposed to. If she was someone who got carried away and blurted things out, that would be super hard—trust me, I knew all about it.

  Hang on a minute. I sat forward and looked at her mother. “Mrs Thomas, are you bound by the non-disclosure agreement?”

  Her face registered surprise before she gave me a sly smile and nodded. “Very clever, Lily. In fact, I’m not bound by any such agreement.” Her smile deflated with her shoulders. “Oh, but I probably can’t answer any questions that would help, since I can only talk about what my daughter has told me.”

  “No, no, that’s fine. We’re actually quite interested in events leading up to the sale. Miranda obviously loved her apartment, so why was she in such a hurry to sell?”

  Miranda’s eyes widened. “Mum, you can’t say anything.”

  She turned to look at her daughter and placed her hands on her waist, bumping Miranda with her arm in the process. “Look, I didn’t sign that agreement, so they can’t do anything. You haven’t told me anything, so I’m free to speak about what happened before you agreed to sell, am I not?” Wow, whatever the agreement stipulated as punishment must have been harsh to scare everyone so much. First the Bensons, and now Miranda.

  Miranda looked at the ground, defeated by her mother’s stare. “Okay, Mum.” Gah, parents making you feel like you were ten again. I could relate to that, except the chastiser wasn’t my mother—it was Angelica.

  I put on my most sympathetic expression and softened my tone. “It’s okay, Miranda. Your mother definitely isn’t bound by the agreement you signed, and I won’t ask her anything about the specifics of the sale. Okay?”

  She looked up at me and nodded. She bit her lip and wrinkled her brow, maybe wondering if I was telling the truth. I looked back at Mrs Thomas. “Why did Miranda decide to put the unit on the market?”

  “Well, this is going to sound out there. Please don’t laugh.”

  I had a feeling I knew what was coming, and it was about time. I shook my head. “Definitely not. We have our suspicions anyway. We just need someone to confirm them for us.”

  She swallowed. “About two weeks before she decided to sell, Miranda came to me and said there was a ghost in her place. I didn’t believe her, of course, until I went over there.” She put a hand to her heart. “I swear on my mother’s grave that her apartment was haunted. A terrible, evil apparition of a violent man. He was screaming. And he had a knife sticking out of his chest. It scared us both half to death. We tried smudge sticks and even called a priest, but nothing worked.” She shook her head. “She had no choice but to sell. I don’t know how anyone could live in there though. Terrifying, really. Poor Miranda had to come live with us after one week. After the second week, she decided to get rid of her place. It really was heartbreaking to watch, and to lose all that money.” She grabbed her daughter’s hand in both of hers. “Oh, darling, I’m so sorry. Maybe these kind investigators can help. Even if it’s too late for you, maybe they can stop it from happening to someone else.”

  Miranda shook her head. “But how?” She looked at Beren. “Are you like Ghostbusters or something? Because if you’re not, I fail to see how you can help. I mean, we can only assume I’m not the only one this has happened to; otherwise you wouldn’t be here asking questions.”

  I nodded. “Yes, we’re following a trail of suspicious property sales. I don’t want to get your hopes up, but if there’s any way we can make this right and get your property back to you, we will.”

  Beren scowled at me and hissed, “Shh, we can’t make those kinds of promises.”

  “I haven’t promised, but I will promise to try and do everything humanly”—witchily—“possible to help.” If there was one thing I’d never back down from, it was a fight for justice.

  Beren looked at Mrs Thomas. “I’m pretty sure your daughter can’t answer this question, so I’ll ask you, just in case she mentioned something before an agreement was reached. How did she choose an agent? Did she look a few up and ask for quotes?”

  “Oh, I can answer that. We were going to do it that way, and in fact, my husband and I were going to help her, but before we needed to, she got an advertising brochure from Smith & Henderson. We found it when we collected her mail—when she’s on shift work as an ambulance officer, she doesn’t have time to pass by and grab the mail from her letterbox, so we did it for h
er. When we called, they put us through to Oliver. He was extremely helpful, to be honest.” Hmm, one thing was becoming clear: Oliver was always there when you needed him. Coincidence? Ha!

  This investigation was about what had occurred, but depending on what happened to these victims in the future, maybe knowing what they were facing would help find a motive. “Are you looking for somewhere to buy at the moment?” I asked.

  Miranda looked at me. “I started looking, but there’s nothing for sale in my price range in the areas I want. I’m going to have to look in places maybe ten miles or so away from my old place, and even that might be difficult. I rang a couple of agents last week, and they said they’d get back to me when they had something suitable, but I haven’t heard back.” She sighed and slumped back in her chair.

  “I know it’s little consolation,” her mum said, “but you can stay here as long as you need to.”

  She gave her mum a smile. “I know. Thanks. But it might be a lot longer than we’ll both enjoy.” She laughed. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out, I suppose.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Her mum smiled.

  They sure were dealing with this as well as could be expected. The word “spirit” made me think about the ghosts, and I shuddered. Where were they all coming from? Was some portal to hell open or something? If that was the case, total disaster couldn’t be far away. Was there even a door to hell? If Angelica didn’t even believe in ghosts—or didn’t believe in them before Mrs Soames’s ghost—then she mustn’t have heard any rumours of openings to the shady underworld. Maybe we should talk to a priest sooner rather than later. If anyone would know about that stuff, it was one of those.

  Beren stood. “Thanks for your time today. Sorry if it was difficult for you, Miranda, but I assure you, your mother’s help won’t break any agreement you’ve signed.”

  Miranda nodded. “Okay.” She stood. “Let me know if you figure out what’s going on. If there’s any chance of getting my place back empty of ghosts, I would jump at it.”

  Beren smiled. “We will. And thanks to you too, Mrs Thomas.”

  She stood. “My pleasure.”

  Mrs Thomas led the way to the front door, where we all said goodbye again. Once we were in the car, I took out my notepad and wrote everything down. I’d been so engrossed in the conversation before that I’d forgotten to write at all. Yep, I was an idiot on occasion. Okay, so Angelica would probably have something snarky to say about that, but I was going with my own opinion, thank you very much.

  Beren made a bubble of silence. “So, that was productive.”

  “It most certainly was. Looks like it’s easy interviewing those close to the seller, rather than the actual seller. Whoever set this up is pretty stupid for not thinking of that.”

  “Well, they’re not as stupid as we’d like—they’ve managed to get away with this for at least three months. And that’s just here. How many other places have they been operating in?”

  Damn, I hadn’t thought of that. I clicked my seat belt in. “How many more interviews for today?”

  “Two.” He pulled out his phone. “I’ve had this on silent, but it looks like Liv’s messaged. One of the sellers who’s since died has a niece who’s happy to talk to us. Liv’s booked it in for our last appointment.”

  “Right. We should get moving. It’s going to be a long day.”

  Beren looked at me and smiled. “As long as it’s productive, I don’t mind.” He turned the car on and pulled into the street while I crossed my fingers that we’d be a lot closer to catching the bad guys when we were done.

  Unfortunately, I mustn’t have crossed my fingers hard enough.

  Chapter 11

  We arrived at the PIB reception room at 3:30 p.m. “I need to eat, B. I’m starving.”

  He laughed. “I’m surprised you lasted that long, considering we ate lunch over three hours ago.”

  The door clicked open, revealing Gus the security guy. “Hello, Agent DuPree, Lily.” He tipped his cap.

  “Hey, Gus,” I said.

  “Hey, man. Great to see you. How’s the missus?” Beren asked and followed me out. I was eager to hurry ahead and avoid whatever gross conversation Gus managed to produce, but James stood in the hallway, his poker face not quite in situ—traces of anger vibrated beneath it in his bunched jaw muscles and hard stare. Crap, had I done something wrong?

  “Lily, Agent DuPree, please come with me. I’ve called an urgent meeting in the conference room.” Without another word, he turned and strode away. Beren and I both gave each other confused looks, then jogged to catch up, and it didn’t escape my notice that DuPree rhymed with me. I didn’t dare giggle though because my brother definitely didn’t look to be in the mood.

  We entered the conference room on James’s heels, and Beren shut the door. Ma’am, Liv, and Imani were already sitting at the large table. Imani and Liv gave Beren and I small “hello” smiles, and Liv shrugged, obviously trying to tell us that she had no idea what was going on either.

  Once Beren and I sat, Ma’am started. “We’ve called this urgent meeting because of a tragedy.”

  I sucked in a breath as my stomach dropped to the floor. Please don’t tell me Will’s dead. Oh God, please don’t. Angelica stared at me. “Are you all right, dear?”

  I cleared my throat in an effort to find my voice. “What’s the tragedy?”

  She gently closed and opened her eyes in an “ah huh” moment. “We haven’t heard anything from Will. This isn’t about him, so you can breathe again.” Which is exactly what I did while pretending I hadn’t just been about to cry. “Right, team, we have a problem, a colossal one. Olivia has set up five interviews with sellers of those properties for tomorrow, and one interview with the son of one of the deceased sellers. I’m afraid to say that they’ve all died.”

  My mouth dropped open. Had she just said what I thought she’d said? Imani shared a shocked look with me before asking, “Excuse me, Ma’am, but did you just say all those people died? As in died today?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid so. We received notification of the deaths from an anonymous source before the police were aware. It’s clear they didn’t just die but were killed, and it’s obvious why they were killed. The murders look like natural deaths and two suicides. The message we received appeared on my laptop screen when I turned it on this afternoon. As soon as I read it, it disappeared. Anyone we make appointments to speak with is to be killed. We are to stop investigating this immediately.” She sat up straighter and sniffed. She wasn’t calling this whole thing off, was she? We had to stop these crazy murderers. This was madness! Ma’am hooked me with her glare. “Of course we’re not going to pull the plug on the investigation, Lily. And no, I didn’t read your mind—you have no game face.” She rolled her eyes. “We really need to work on that.”

  My cheeks heated. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time they’d gone against what I thought was the proper thing to do. But the way Ma’am was staring at me, with an “honestly” expression, I wasn’t going to say a word. You had to pick your battles, and this one wasn’t worth it. At least they were going to keep investigating—that was the main thing.

  Angelica stood. “I’m sorry, but I have another meeting to attend. I’ll leave you in Agent Bianchi’s capable hands. We’ve discussed how to move forward, and I’m counting on you. So do your best.” She made a doorway and disappeared.

  James cleared his throat and was about to speak when I put up my hand. “Yes, Lily?”

  “What about the people we’ve already spoken to? Are they safe?” My stomach twisted with worry. They had all been lovely people, had already been through enough. This was horrific. I wouldn’t know what I’d do if I found out I helped get them killed, especially after reassuring Mrs Thomas she was doing the right thing.

  “We’ve put magical protections around their houses, stopping any witches or their magic from entering. The other victims were all killed at home. We’re tailing all the people you interviewed as well. This
is consuming a lot of our resources—resources we can ill afford to sacrifice. Even if we could employ more agents, we haven’t got the time to train them for immediate deployment. If we have any other major incidents, we’re screwed.”

  Oh. That was kind of shocking. My brother hardly ever swore, and I think that was the first time I’d ever heard him say “screwed.” I hoped he and Angelica had put a good plan into place because this wasn’t going to be easy.

  James turned his gaze on Beren. “Beren, can you give me a rundown of what happened today.”

  “Certainly. We’ve deduced that all the owners sold in a hurry and for way less than what they should have gotten. We’ve had haunting confirmed by three sources because their close family members were present and unrestricted by the agreements the sellers had signed. We weren’t privy to what the penalties for breaching the agreements were, but they must be serious because all the victims were terrified to say the wrong thing. My deduction would be that a witch, or group of witches, is haunting these houses and forcing the people to sell. I would imagine the agent who died, Oliver, was under instructions to make sure the vendors sold to those companies—regardless of how low the purchase price was. If they were operating under normal circumstances, he would have received less per sale because agents work on commission—the higher the sale price, the better. But since he had to do so little legwork to sell them, maybe he thought it was acceptable.” Beren magicked a glass of water into his hand and took a sip. “In any case, the motive appears to be cheap property; however, there must be more to this because the perpetrators have gone to extreme lengths to stop people from talking, and they’re only targeting non-witches.” Would this all stop now Oliver was dead, or would another agent take up the slack? Samuel, maybe?

  “Like an ethnic cleansing?” I asked. I mean, it seemed as if they’d forced all these non-witches out. Obviously selling in a hurry, they were still having problems trying to find somewhere to live. Making them take less than expected prices sounded like something you’d do to someone you hated—we weren’t just talking walking away with a good deal, here. Some of the amounts were life-changing in a negative way.