by Sonya Clark
Daniel lowered his beer. “Shit.”
Ray lunged forward. “You telling me Britney Parker was pregnant?”
“I’m telling you I felt two heartbeats. If the coroner was bought off, then the only way to get an answer is a séance, if I can get her to calm down and talk to me. I think she can’t figure out how best to communicate with anyone.”
“You better believe I’ll be leaning on Martin Holt. And Mackie too. If anyone in that damn family will talk, it’ll be him.”
Daniel gave me a look. “I might be able to help with that.” He meant his vampire powers of persuasion. He didn’t like to compel people but he’d do it if he thought it was truly necessary, or if I asked. I wasn’t prepared to ask that of him yet. I’d done it in the past and knew I’d most likely take advantage of his ability in the future, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.
Breaking and entering, however, I was down with. “Ray, do you still work tomorrow night?”
The three of us worked out our plan. It wasn’t hard anymore to understand why Ray had taken this case so seriously. Somebody was going to regret that, and regret he’d gotten me involved. I’d felt Britney’s sorrow in those moments in the restaurant kitchen and it made me livid with rage. It made me want to take it out on somebody, and make them feel what that poor dead girl went through in her last heartbreaking moments.
Chapter 17
Dear Roxanne,
I’ve made great strides in creating a rite that should rid you of the entity you summoned by accident. There will be complications, however. It will require a higher level of sacrifice on your part than I originally thought. I understand how attached you are to your auric vision but as it’s your strongest power it may be inextricably linked to this entity. As cancer frequently requires some amount of excision, banishing this entity may require a reduction of some of your powers. I can’t say it would be permanent. In fact I’m sure myself and the others here would be able to help you work toward regaining as much of your spectral vision as possible, as well as whatever other powers you might lose in the rite. I know this might seem terribly unfair to you but you have to understand this is the price those such as ourselves pay for experimenting with dark magic.
I was too busy cussing to read the rest. I had to close the laptop and walk away. The spring day was warm enough to be on the porch so with a sweater and a cup of coffee I made myself comfortable in the swing. As comfortable as I could be while seething.
The demon possession case that first brought me into contact with Blake also brought me into contact with the overdeveloped sense of self-importance that came out in his writing style. When searching for clues about how to deal with the demon, I’d found Blake’s grimoires. This was before I met him in person and my first real look into his head. I thought he was a pretentious asshole then and now the feeling came back. He’d let himself be mentored by a man who sounded like a sadistic son of a bitch. What kind of scars that left, I could only imagine. The same with the guilt about the deaths of the people he’d befriended to form a dark coven of sorts. Rozella had been a tough teacher but she’d never hurt me and never would have tolerated me hurting others.
She’d never have allowed someone to tell her to give up her power, either. Blake was deluded if he thought I would seriously consider anything like that. It made me wonder about the people he was mixed up with, about this old friend who ran the witchcraft school where Blake was currently taking yoga lessons, conducting his own classes on something or other, and plotting to excise my magical ability for my own good.
Between flashes of white hot anger, another emotion rose. Fear. Not that Blake would do something to me against my will. No, he had about as much chance of that as he did of breathing on Mars. It was fear for us. For the first time I had to admit to myself this might be a serious threat to our relationship. I wouldn’t give up Stack or my auric vision or any of my magical ability. Frankly, I wasn’t sure it was even possible. Even if it was, I would not do it. Stack might be a pain sometimes but he was no danger to me or anyone else. If I couldn’t make Blake see he was wrong about Stack, I didn’t see how we could keep going.
So I had to make him see, that’s all there was to it. His first meeting with Stack had not gone well. They’d have to meet again, this time with me there to referee.
The sound of a car approaching interrupted my thoughts. I looked up, expecting to see either Ray’s cruiser or his truck. Instead it was a dark blue minivan with a woman driving. She parked the massive thing crooked in the gravel drive and exited the vehicle, giving me a hopeful look and a wave as she made her way toward me. I waved back out of reflex, no idea who the woman was.
“Hi, Roxanne.” Apparently she knew who I was. “How are you?”
“Fine, thanks.” I did my best to sound friendly, at least until she proved otherwise. “Can I help you?”
She stepped up to the porch and paused, allowing me the chance to take a good look at her. Average height, a little on the plump side of curvy, hair a brassy shade of bottle blond with nearly two inches of roots, sharp gray eyes in a face once pretty, now raw and worn. I still had no idea who she was.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” She could have been my age, I guessed, though I thought she looked older.
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t.” I pointed at the rocking chair opposite the swing. “Have a seat.”
She held out her hand. “Marlie Evans. It was Kline back then, Marlie Kline. I was a senior the year you were a freshman.”
I shook her hand and she sat. “The name rings a bell.” A big one too. Marlie Kline was part of a group of popular girls who liked to treat people like me as their own personal doormats. I didn’t know how to deal with that back then but I sure as hell did now. “Why are you here?”
Marlie heard the frost I didn’t bother to keep out of my voice. “I guess you do remember me, huh?” I didn’t answer. She looked away, staring out past her minivan. “I heard you were back. Heard you were.” There was a long pause. “Heard you had a business.”
“I do. An online store.” I wanted to be petty and mean and throw her off Daniel’s porch but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Those sharp gray eyes and face that had once been pretty told a tale of things I’d managed to escape. Sympathy made me soften my tone. “Is there something you needed?”
“I can’t shop online.” She twisted her hands in her lap. “Not without my husband asking about what I been spending money on.”
“If you could shop online, what would you be buying from my little store? You like candles? Incense?”
Marlie met my eyes. “I like that fidelity spell kit you got.”
Sitting in Miss Rozella’s kitchen, either doing homework or learning roots and herbs. The tang of High John the Conqueror biting the air as she chopped a big hunk into smaller pieces for inclusion in mojo hands, the little red spell bags that even then were becoming my specialty. Music in the background, always music. Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Al Green, Otis Redding. She’d sing along and teach me the words with the same care and devotion as when she taught me magic. An impatient knocking at the back door, quiet voices rising with desperation. People came to Rozella for all manner of problems. For the most part she’d take their money and try her best to help them. Until the online store, I’d rarely practiced that way and when I had it hadn’t worked out.
“Is that right?”
“I can pay cash. I get a little bit here and there, save it up. He don’t know.”
“I’ve got the stuff I need to make up one of those kits, no problem. And I’ll be happy to take your cash. But Marlie, you’ll have to do your part. Do you understand?”
She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. The skin was pink, and the whites of her eyes were the same. She’s spent the morning crying. “I think so. Tell me.”
“I can sell you the spell kit and tell you what all you need to do and how to do it, but you have to go through with it. You’ll need some of his hair. It can be from a hairbrus
h. For the other half of the spell you’ll need something connected to the woman he’s cheating with. A picture will do.”
She thought for a moment. “I found a picture on his phone. I think I know how to get it and print it off. Will that work?”
“It’ll work just fine. You have to want it, too. You have to believe it can work. You can pray too, as part of it, if you want. You know that, right? I don’t want you to feel like you’re doing something wrong.”
“I have prayed. I’ll keep praying. I just.” A sob slipped out, tired and worn. “I just want him to stop. I just want things to be the way they used to be with us.”
“I know.” I stood, opened the door and held it for her. “Come on in. I’ll make you a cup of coffee. Get the kit together and tell you how to set it all up.”
Marlie paused at the door. “I know I wasn’t very nice to you in school. I’m sorry for that.”
“It was a long time ago.”
She nodded. “Still, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d run me off. Thank you for helping me.”
“How’d you find me, anyway?”
“It’s the biggest thread on the Blythe Grapevine right now. Last time I looked there were about three dozen or so comments.”
“What’s the Blythe Grapevine?”
“You ever heard of Grapevine?” I shook my head as I ushered her inside. She said, “It’s this site, pretty much a gossip site for small towns. No telling how many towns all over have their own forum. You’re the hot topic on the Blythe forum. The thread is called hoodoo woman.”
“An internet gossip site for small towns? For real?”
“Oh yeah. There’s all kinds of stuff on it.”
“Well. It really is the twenty-first century, isn’t it?”
As soon as I had her dealt with and gone I planned to take a look at the site. This hoodoo woman thread would be my first stop, no doubt, but I’d be looking for any and every mention of Britney Parker as well. I knew from experience there was no gossip quite like small town gossip. Imagine if this Grapevine site had a decent search function.
I had a mental image of a digital version of one of the ladies, any of the ladies, from Steel Magnolias pulling up gossip threads. Twenty-first century, indeed.
Chapter 18
Daniel hovered over my shoulder. “God damn, people can’t spell.”
“You said that already. Why don’t you move on to critiquing their grammar? Or better yet, go read on your own computer. You start critiquing the grammar of everyone on the internet, it should take you what, like, forever?”
“Vampires don’t have obsessive compulsive disorder. That’s a myth.” He pointed at the screen. “Did you really put a sex curse on the basketball team?”
“They got the clap from partying with strippers. I had nothing to do with it.” I scrolled further down the page. The hoodoo woman thread was indeed long and full of reminders of why I left Blythe in the first place.
He moved to the opposite chair and sipped his Bloody Mary, which really was bloody. “How did a bunch of high school basketball players find strippers? An away game?”
“There used to be strip clubs on the outskirts of town. Got run out of business years ago. This is such bullshit. I never did a spell to rig any homecoming court vote. Like I gave a damn about crap like that.”
There was more from high school, all nonsense. Except for the one about selling spells to pass advanced placement chemistry class. I totally did that. But then I found something I was really hoping wouldn’t show up. Ray’s name.
Did she really date Ray Travis?
I heard they fukked on the hood of his patrol car.
I herd she put a spell on him and that’s why he left Lisa. That spel will keep him in love with her forever.
Think she sell a spell like that?
Well, I’d had about enough. Who was Lisa? I went back to the front page for Blythe. The site was a mess, ugly as hell to look at and full of ads. The search function was terrible. Most of the topics were absurd and the comments were worse. It took a lot of looking to find anything approaching real information. However, there were several threads about ghost sightings and Britney’s death, all heavily trafficked. A lot of it sounded like crap but I made notes anyway. Ray might know more about some of the ghost sightings and the rumors about her death might be of interest to him. The thread listing several names of Britney’s married lovers was a goldmine, worth all the crap I waded through to find it. It might turn out none of it was true but at least the names were a place to start.
The phone book and a more general internet search were my next steps. Daniel flipped the TV between food shows and old episodes of Golden Girls, getting more restless as the minutes ticked by. I tried to ignore him and do my work.
A lawyer, a doctor, a judge. Not just older, married men but powerful men as well. Britney definitely had a type. It was what she knew, though, so I guess it made sense.
Daniel called my name from his slumped position on the couch. I checked the time. We had forty-five minutes until time to meet Ray and it would take twenty to drive into town. I powered down the laptop and got ready to go.
The cemetery where I’d first met Rozella stood three blocks from the heart of downtown but was secluded enough to make for a good spot to meet. Daniel and I left the SUV several blocks away in the library parking lot and walked to the cemetery. Nearly midnight, we were the only people out. Daniel hummed a song that tickled the edge of memory until finally the music encyclopedia in my head identified it.
“Tennessee Flat Top Box,” I said as I passed through the cemetery gate.
“Took you long enough.”
“We playing now? Okay. I’ll play.” I began to hum.
It didn’t take Daniel long to get it. “Lyle Lovett. LA County.”
“Is Lyle considered classic country yet?”
“I don’t know but he’s considered good music in my book. You see anything? The hair on the back of my neck is standing up singing Ring The Alarm.”
“Get out! You know a Beyonce song? How did that happen?” I turned in a slow circle to survey the area for spectral energy.
“You seen that woman? God. Damn. I don’t care what she sings.”
I rolled my eyes. “Real progressive of you.” A shade hovered over a grave at the east edge of the cemetery. It barely had enough energy to manifest and seemed to be caught in a loop. I pointed in its direction. “There’s something over there, by that old broken marker. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“If you say so.” He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “You ever think we spend way too much time in graveyards?”
I kicked at an empty beer bottle. “It’s where all the cool kids hang out.”
He snorted. “The cool dead kids, maybe.”
“You’re a vampire. Aren’t you getting into pot, kettle territory?”
Headlights raked the darkness. Ray parked his patrol car right outside the gate, killed the lights and the engine, and joined us. His mouth was set in a grim line. He greeted Daniel with a nod and me with a look I didn’t want to examine too close. He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket, handing it to me. “This is the access code for the alarm system in her apartment. I’m pretty sure it hasn’t been changed.”
The Ray Travis I knew years ago would not have even considered looking the other way over something like this, much less helping in such an overt fashion. I gripped the paper tight. “Thank you.”
“I’ll be patrolling the square as long as I can but if I get called away there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll send you a text and let you know. Just be quick, be careful, and don’t do anything crazy.”
“Have you ever known me to do anything crazy?” I teased.
His lips quirked. “It’s not raining so I guess I’m safe. Text me when you’re done.” He left.
The dark could hide my blush but Daniel, being a vampire, could detect the slight rise in body temperature that went along with it. “Girl.”
I adjusted my glasses. “Come on, let’s go.” I left the cemetery at a brisk pace.
Of course the vampire had no trouble keeping up. “Gurrrl.”
“Shut up.”
“Don’t leave me hanging, Roxie.” He leaned close, exaggerating his accent. “Confess your sins.”
Britney’s empty apartment was above an antique store on the square. It was owned by the Parker family, which gave us a break because anyone else probably would have sold or rented the place by now. We slipped through an alley to the fire escape. The bottom of it hung over the ground, two feet above my head. Daniel lifted me with ease. “I don’t believe in confession. Not too sure about sin, either.”
Despite being old and rusty the fire escape held our weight without too much creaking. Daniel jimmied the window and entered, going straight for the front door and the alarm system with the paper I’d given him. Ray had drawn a layout of the place for us as well as all his other help. The beeping stopped within seconds thanks to Daniel’s vampire speed.
He didn’t need any light but I did. I took a small flashlight from my bag and headed for the bedroom while Daniel went through the kitchen and dining area.
Clothes and shoes were scattered everywhere. The bed was unmade. Except for the layer of dust and the fact that Daniel had been able to enter, it might have seemed like a place where someone still lived. Unease trickled through me. Being here felt wrong, intrusive. I’d never had any qualms about doing what a job required, mostly because I was picky about what jobs of this nature I took on, but disturbing the home of a murder victim just felt wrong. Even though I was trying to solve her murder and help her ghost find peace.
I shook off the feeling and got to work, checking the usual hiding places first. Nothing of note was under the bed, in the drawers, or the top of the closet. The only thing of interest I found was a small corner table with old candle wax on the wood. Yellow, blue, red, and green - traditional witchcraft colors representing the elements. I searched for more evidence of Britney being a practitioner. All I found was empty space where some books might have been stored, the dust level there not quite as high. If Britney was any sort of witch, someone had done their best to remove all traces of proof.
