Yule Graves: A Rue Hallow Mystery (The Rue Hallow Mysteries Book 5)

by Amanda A. Allen

  “Rue,” Ponytail hissed again.

  “Brush up, protect your family, renew the wards on your home, hire a real witch if you need one, but girl up.”

  “You are a terrible keeper,” Gerry said.

  “Let me let you in on a big fat secret, Gerry. My family has been the keepers of St. Angelus for generations. And I’m probably the warmest and kindest of them all.”

  Gerry’s look was poison. I was pretty grateful her skill set didn’t exceed my own at that moment.

  “The ghost isn’t here,” I told Ponytail, “And my family drama is escalating to a point where even Jerry Springer would be appalled. “Let’s go, Ponytail. Call me if the ghost comes back,” I wrote my number on a pad of paper and walked towards the cop car.

  “My name is on my shirt,” Ponytail said.

  I turned and examined her chest. “Look at that. Too bad you’re cemented in my head as Ponytail now.”

  “You’re an evil little brat,” Ponytail said as she started the car.

  “Yep,” I agreed.

  CHAPTER 6

  To say I hadn’t expected a phone call from my biological father’s secretary wasn’t dramatic enough. For a moment there, you might have been able to knock me over, I had been so completely flabbergasted. Sitting outside of his office while he kept me waiting wasn’t shocking at all, it was somehow so…not right…but along the lines of what I figured he’d be like. My mind was racing with did he not believe the reports? But I did look so much like his daughter Ruby, it was ridiculous. And then there was how I’d met his children first, I could see how that could make someone mad, but…I hadn’t been intentional about that…and I wouldn’t apologize for it, either. This waiting…was driving me mad.

  “Ms. Jones,” the secretary said coolly, “you may go in now.”

  Gods, what a joke. What a criminal joke. I wanted to demand how he could leave me waiting in his outer office for 9 minutes, but I also wanted to get a feel for the playing field. That this had gone from officially meeting my family to a playing field was a sure indication of how I was feeling about the man.

  When I walked into his office, he didn’t stand or greet me in any way. A quick glance around showed Hiro and a man who looked like a cross between the one who must be my father and Hiro. I guessed this was the keeper uncle, David Knotley. My face was as expressionless as I could make it when the man who must be my biological father waited a moment before he gestured me into a chair. I examined him because I wasn’t sure I’d ever take another opportunity to meet him and saw my eyes peeking out of his face. He had the same shape of a nose, though mine was far more delicate. The same shape to my cheekbones. I didn’t question for a second that this was my father.

  I glanced again to Hiro and saw how uncomfortable and upset he was.

  Great. Lovely, etcetera. I crossed my legs, leaned back, and waited. I was a pro at not being intimidated.

  After a couple of minutes—which feels like an eternity in the silence—he said, “I assume you would like to be acknowledged.”

  I don’t know why I hadn’t expected him to say it. Or why it stabbed me through my center so quickly, but it did. My head tilted, just a bit, and I looked him up and down—hiding that burning pain inside of me and then I took a deep breath and stood, “I think we’re done here.”

  I turned and began to walk out, but when he asked, “Why are you here then?”

  I didn’t answer. Answering was for people who deserved to know your thoughts. I did, however, look over to Hiro. This was his father. This…creature. And Hiro had been kind and thoughtful and helpful. He’d protected Saki and genuinely sought me out, for myself, I had thought.

  “Your mother must be amazing,” I said, since I knew, without asking, that he was horrified by our father’s actions. That this was the man who was my father was yet another betrayal by my mother, but it also made me all the more grateful for what she had done for me, in giving me my Daddy. It was time to face the truth, I hated what she had done, I hated how it affected my Daddy. I hated that this was my life, but I was glad it was too. I was glad that I could look back at the magic and love of my childhood—for those things were there, in abundance—and realize how very lucky I was that she’d seen the problem of our family and broken the chain of generation upon generation of cold, heartless parenting.

  I needed to thank her for what she had done. I needed to tell her that I saw why she did it, that I did not feel it was okay, but that I was not going to spend the rest of my life punishing her for saving me from…this.

  I opened the door and my father said again, sharply, “Why are you here then? You want to be acknowledged. To be a Knotley.”

  I turned then, furious, and said in a low whisper, intended to keep my thoughts and who I was from beyond the knowledge of those in the outer room. “Acknowledgment goes two ways. I neither need nor want you.”

  I shut the door quietly then because I was far too good to slam it in his face and turned. Directly behind me was a delicate little woman and the sister I had yet to meet.

  “So you don’t want the money,” my sister Ruby asked. “You don’t want the parties and the adulation of the Knotleys and the credit cards? I saw your car.”

  “It’s a horrible car. I wanted to see what he was like. I saw enough.”

  “You have no idea,” Ruby said.

  “I suspect I might,” I replied. “I don’t care about being a Knotley. I do, however, care about having siblings.”

  “But not a father?” The old woman asked, examining me.

  I examined her back and liked what I saw. She was older, but she was sprightly. I bet she was the type of woman that wouldn’t be stopped by anything including age.

  I told her the truth, “I have all the fathers I could ever need or want. My mother was far kinder than I knew.”

  “Even though she had to potion him?” The woman was direct, I’d give her that.

  I froze, shocked that she knew that. At first, I thought that Hiro must have told this woman. But…

  “PreciousRuby79.”

  She nodded once.

  “I would be excited any other day,” I told the only other potions person I knew who was on my level—outside of my mother.

  “But not today?”

  “Not today,” I turned to leave, and my hand was grasped by a surprisingly strong grip for such an old woman, sprightly or not. She handed me a folded up piece of paper which I slipped into my pocket.

  “We need to talk another time,” she said.

  I nodded but didn’t think that day would happen until I did things like figure out what was happening with my Daddy, solve it, prove my mother wasn’t the murderer and other such things. I made my way back to the ancient station wagon taking in slow deep breaths before I started the engine. Which really rubbed in the smell of old roses, mold, and death.

  I didn’t look back, so I hadn’t realized that my half-sister Ruby had followed me down until she opened the passenger door.

  “So,” she said, sliding into the cracked leather seat, “Where are we going?”

  “How many like me are there?” I asked her. That scene up there had been so practiced, so…gods. How many children had he fathered outside of marriage? And then treated like unwanted beggars?

  “Three, including you.”

  “I didn’t know that I could be grateful for my mother,” I said again, feeling sick at the thought.

  “She sounds like she’s a peach,” Ruby said.

  “I’m going home,” I told Ruby. “To St. Angelus. I…have a lot to take care of.”

  Understatement of the year, I thought. Pulling out my phone to text my sister, Bran.

  Ruby didn’t leave, so I just started the car, backed up, and headed towards home.

  For a while, I followed a white suburban for the sake of liking the bumper stickers and wondering where they were going. It was, I supposed, stupidly melodramatic to be bummed but I was. And I kind of hated myself for feeling that way. I never had expec
ted much from my biological father.

  And yet, here I was disappointed because he was so…undesirable. I didn’t know I had hoped for a father who was like my own Daddy but related to me. I should have known better. If I had been naturally my Daddy’s, he wouldn’t have let anything—not even decades of love potions keep him from being in my life. Yet bio-dad…

  “If it helps,” Ruby said, “He’s always left something to be desired. Not just as a father, but as a human.”

  “What about your mom?”

  “She’s soft and sweet and kind and well-bred,” Ruby said. The ‘well-bred’ said so much about the calculating nature of my bio-father. I guessed that even family was business to him, and I was just a potentially undesirable result of a liaison.

  “Why are you coming?” I asked her. “Why are you in my car?”

  “Hiro has met all of you,” Ruby said, making me feel like some sort of alien rather than a sister. “You’re the only one he talks about.”

  “What does that mean,” I asked.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” Ruby answered.

  “That should probably bother me,” I said, “But I don’t have time be bothered by it. Plus I’m part-snake.”

  Which was true, but I was also part-Daddy. And I wanted to curl up in my princess bed inside of Martha and tell Chrysie and Felix about what had happened and in telling them to know that they wouldn’t be angry like Bran or thoughtful like Jessie. They’d just rage with me and be sad with me and tell me it was going to be ok.

  I needed my chosen family back and these ones that had been saddled on me by fate to let me breathe a little more freely.

  CHAPTER 7

  Being interviewed by the police is something that a person should get used to and yet here I was being led through my own house to yet another interview. In the past, the police of St. Angelus and the Keeper of St. Angelus had a working relationship. They brought each other in on cases that were discovered as each did their jobs. To me, these officers were…not respectful…I could see them registering me as a kid and wanting to put me in that department, but I could also see the twitches of their faces as they realized that technically I was the keeper. It was an unfortunate fact that I could supposedly use the talisman of the thinning. The technicality was that I was the keeper until I wasn’t, and it was making these police officers a little bit twitchy.

  Especially as someone had died in my home. They were searching the rooms now, and that wasn’t a joke given the fact that my house, Martha, was an in-your-face mansion. She was huge. I thought of her as a house, but she had wings. And landings. She had rooms I had barely glanced into. We had been waiting in a freaking library with a hidden room and ladders. Even professionals would struggle to find all the corners, and there was probably a lot to cause these folks concern.

  If they were looking for cyanide or other poisons, they would find them. This wasn’t just a mansion, it was a mansion that had been lived in by generations of witches with questionable morality. I didn’t even really second-guess that someone in my family history had murdered someone or that they had used cyanide to do so. Had they left their paraphernalia behind? Probably. The big question in my head was how many of my ancestors were murderers? I mean…the ghost of one of my family was the only reason I hadn’t been destroyed by the haunt that had ridden my sister like a pony. He had been a hero—at least to me. I suppose Gwennie felt I was kind of heroic. With my coven anyway.

  The ghosts of my family had worked as a group to destroy the monster who had been possessed by a legion of screwed up spirits and had murdered who knew how many of the Hallow family. My ancestors were dangerous, powerful, and scary. Even to me.

  They weren’t all monsters, but the way my mother had taken Daddy as her own wasn’t something that any of them would be all that alarmed by. Or, not alarmed because of the morality. More because of the lack of pride. We might not be the most lovable people, but others hadn’t needed to just take their partners.

  “You sent me after a fake ghost,” I told Drake, “to get me out of the way while you questioned my Daddy and my mother has confessed to a murder she didn’t commit.”

  Drake looked me over and then said, “The ghost was real.”

  “There wasn’t one there. Didn’t you talk to Ponytail?”

  “Hey,” Ponytail said, but both Drake and I ignored her.

  “Why are you playing games with me, Drake?”

  I must have sounded sad because he was far too much like my Daddy when he said, “Rue Hallow-Jones, I am not playing games with you.”

  “Then why? You know Daddy didn’t kill your stupid caroler.”

  Drake cleared his throat and leaned back and then said, “Yes.”

  “And yet here you are searching my house.”

  “I have to pursue all the avenues,” he said.

  “I don’t believe that,” I said. I slammed my hand down on the table and yelled, “You’re a better cop than that. You’re better than this!”

  He cleared his throat and then said to Hoffer, aka Ponytail, “Go for a walk.”

  It was the order to walk, the need for privacy, and the conclusion was so very damn obvious. “Gods,” I swore, “Mother of the Gods, Hecate Mistress of Darkness, For. The. LOVE!”

  “I’m sorry,” Drake said. “Leander Hallow is the Mayor. I have to at least…”

  “Shut up! I just can’t hear it. I can’t!” I crossed the room to kick the wall. I kicked until my foot hurt and then kicked some more.

  “I will find the real killer, Rue. I promise.”

  I took a long, deep, fury-filled breath.

  “Thank you for accepting my mother’s confession.” I kicked the wall one more time and then sent my apologies to Martha. She seemed to accept them so readily that I felt sure I was not the only one of her people to lash out physically.

  “It would have been cruel to focus on your father,” Drake said gently.

  “Gods, Drake,” I said, sitting across from him to lay my head on my own table. I pounded my head lightly against the table and then said, “I just want to go to school. Why is that so hard?”

  “Because the Hallow never make anything easy. I really am sorry about your father.”

  For a moment, I thought he meant my bio-dad and then I realized he meant my Daddy.

  “I am a witch,” I told him. “I am powerful enough to be accepted by the Talisman of the St. Angelus Thinning. For some inexplicable reason, I am badass at potions. I refuse this as Daddy’s fate. I will save him.”

  “You’re a good daughter, Rue Hallow.”

  I swallowed because that was a compliment I wasn’t capable of believing but wanted to be true.

  “What do I need to do?”

  “We do have a few ways to test for potions, witchcraft, ghost activity.”

  “You mean as cops?”

  Drake nodded. “In a witch town…”

  “And…”

  “Several members of that choir are touched heavily by ether.”

  “The ghost,” I said, realizing what game Drake was playing. He had sent me after that ghost on purpose.

  “It’s the only report we have recently. These aren’t normal humans—they should recognize a ghost’s touch.”

  “I don’t know why they want to add to their numbers on the other side so bad,” I said, standing with a clear purpose in my head. I was going to find that ghost and slay it hard. Or whatever keepers did. “That’s probably Necromancy 102.”

  Drake paused, laughed, and then I found myself joining in. I didn’t mean to. I mean…could my life be more stupid than it was right now? But…I was certainly the worst keeper on the planet.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Your sister is a freak,” Ruby said.

  I left the office, glanced around, saw all the cops and said, “Keep them out of my room, Martha.”

  Several of the cops looked up at that, eyes narrowing.

  “Gwennie,” I yelled.

  She appeared a bit later.

>   “Don’t leave,” I ordered. “Stay with my Daddy.”

  “I’m a kid,” she said. “Your dad is messed up in the head.”

  “But he’s excellent at Super Mario Brothers,” I said. “Don’t leave or Martha won’t let you back in.

  “You don’t have to threaten me,” Gwennie said, and I realized I actually hurt her feelings. I did not have time for this.

  “I’m trusting you. We’re talking about my Daddy, not a hedgehog. Look after him for me?”

  Gwennie examined my face and then nodded once. Her face was as expressionless as mine usually was, but I wasn’t sure I was up to stone face these days. I was just so very angry.

  “Where are we going? Can we burn something?”

  “How good are you at necromancy,” I asked Ruby.

  She paused and then said, “I’d give me a solid B minus.”

  “Better than us then.” Bran’s hair was a long mass of red curls, and I wasn’t sure she’d combed it in weeks. She wound it up on top of her head, grabbed a jacket, and then her witch bag.

  I dropped my own over my shoulder, put on the talisman, and then glanced the sister I’d just met over. She didn’t have a witch bag or a talisman, but she did have more know-how than Bran and I combined.

  “Let’s go then,” I said.

  I led the way out of the house, to the wagon, and then drove to Gerry’s house on sheer memory. As I drove, I explained Leander’s plan, why we were targeted, and what we needed.

  “We need to know why the ghost is targeting, Gerry,” Ruby summed up.

  “So we know who the killer is,” Bran said.

  “Then we find proof, truth-serum them, or just beat them until they confess,” I finished.

  Gerry’s eyes were blood-shot when she answered the door. Her husband was behind her and he seemed just as upset. There were kids, and the kids were far too quiet.

  “What have you been doing, Gerry?” I asked.

  “Why are you here?” Her voice was a hiss, an angry one. “You just left. Left me to fight alone.”