by Bailey Cates
“Just an expression,” I said, not wanting to get into the whole lightwitch thing. “Want some more tea? We never did get to finish.”
“Ha. We never even got to start. Is it always so exciting around here?”
Yip!
I gave Mungo a look. “Nah.”
“Well, I’ve got to tell you, I’m beat. Do you mind if I go to bed?”
“Of course not. Feel free to turn the television on up there.”
Her lips tugged up in a tired smile. “Thanks.”
“I have to go to work really early, you know. So when you wake up, I won’t be here. You can hang out, though.”
“I can’t think of anything better,” she said. “I haven’t felt this safe in a long time.”
It was only ten o’clock, but I went to bed, too. Curling up with Mungo on the blue patchwork quilt Lucy had given me, I texted Steve.
Discovered what your gift really was. I never would have believed you capable of such a stunning violation of trust. But your little love spell failed, and so did the creepy binding spell. This time you went too far. I can’t trust you ever again. Our friendship is OVER.
Turned out that was a mistake, because seconds later he was texting me back with a series of denials and apologies. I thought about confronting him, but I was so angry that I knew the exchange would deteriorate into nonsense. Besides, after he crossed the line like that, there was really nothing left to say.
I blocked his number.
The text tones on my phone stopped. Blissful quiet. Never mind the pang of loss I felt. Steve had meant a lot to me.
How could he have done that?
I called Declan. Of course, when I really, really wanted to hear his voice, he didn’t answer. I had to assume he was out on another call, and first sent a hope for his safety, and then one that he’d have a chance to get some sleep that night. I sent a text asking him to call when he could.
The phone rang in my hand. I didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello?”
“Katie, please listen to me,” Steve pleaded.
He called from someone else’s phone? Holy cow!
“I don’t know what you hope to gain from all this,” I said. Mungo bounded to his feet. “Right now the last thing I want to do is talk to you.”
“Katie—”
I hung up.
Almost instantly, my phone rang again.
“Stop calling me,” I almost yelled into it.
“Katie!” The voice that reached my ear was quite different from Steve’s.
“Oops. Sorry, Mama.”
“What on earth is going on there?”
Stroking Mungo’s ears, I settled back into the cocoon of pillows on the bed. “Another murder,” I said. “And Mungo’s ex-witch is the prime suspect. She’s staying with me right now. Plus Steve is back in town and tried to cast a love spell on me—not to mention a burning spell in my front yard tonight. Oh, and Declan asked me to marry him. Other than that? Not much.”
A few beats of silence, then she said, “Well. I guess I’d better get another cup of decaf. This sounds like it might take a while.”
I imagined my mother sitting in the living room of the house I’d grown up in. Her red hair, still bright thanks to a bottle of color, would be piled up on her head. She’d be wearing her long flannel nightgown and fuzzy slippers, and her face would be freshly washed. Still, she would have expertly reapplied her lipstick. Even if Fillmore, Ohio, had a population of only 564, not a single one of those citizens would catch my mother without her lipstick, whether she was wearing her bathrobe or not.
I filled her in on what had been going on the last few days. Over the last several months, she and Daddy had become used to my involvement in murder investigations. I didn’t always tell them about the dangerous bits, but they probably guessed. Still, being my mother, she was most interested in the news about Declan.
“I can’t believe you didn’t call me right away. Have you set a date?”
“Hmm. Not exactly.”
A pause. “You said yes, didn’t you?”
“Actually I didn’t.”
“What? Katie, I was just starting to hope again, after what happened with Andrew.” She wouldn’t come right out and say it, but deep down Mama had blamed me when he’d bailed on our wedding.
“I didn’t say no, either. I’m still deciding.”
There was a long silence. I heard her take a sip of her coffee, which by now must have been growing tepid. “Do you love him?”
“Yes. But there are a lot of things to work out. Practical matters.”
“Of course there are. That’s how it works.” Surprisingly, her frustration seemed to have abated. “Listen to me, sweetie. You’ve blossomed and grown so much since you moved down there with my sister. I know I fought it at first, but you’ve truly come into your own. I know you’re a strong and capable woman. You’ll make the right decision about whether to marry Declan or not.”
My mother was perpetually full of surprises. “Thank you,” I breathed, realizing on some level that if Mama had urged me to marry Declan—or anyone else—I might have decided against it just to be contrary.
We said good night, and I set the phone on the nightstand. The velvet box sat next to the lamp, its plush fabric absorbing the light. I opened it and took the ring out. It was heavy—not white gold, but platinum. Declan knew I wasn’t a diamond kind of woman, and he also knew I used my hands a lot—kneading bread, doing dishes, rubbing cold butter into flour. The bright sapphire was set deep into the filigree, stunning and utterly practical at the same time.
He knew me.
Do you want to be with Declan McCarthy, forever and ever, so mote it be?
I slipped the ring on my finger. It felt nice. Solid.
Right.
Mungo nudged at my arm. I held out my hand, and he nosed the sapphire. Looked up at me with a question in his eyes.
I ruffled his ears, slid the ring off, and returned it to the box. Getting off the bed, I turned out the light and went to the window. The moon was still bright outside, and a swath of its silvery light cut through the glass and into the room. I placed the open box on the sill, in the moonbeam, and muttered a few words over it.
So mote it be.
Taking a deep breath, I turned the light back on and opened my book.
I read for a while but found it hard to concentrate. For one thing, I kept thinking of Margie’s description of the fire starter. If, that is, the person she’d seen had been the same one who’d started the blaze in my yard. It could have just been somebody who accidentally knocked over a garbage can and became frightened when Margie came out to yell at them.
But I didn’t think so. I’d assumed it was Steve because he’d already tried to hex me with the furata. Who else would have placed a binding spell on me? Such magic wasn’t only used to bind someone in love. You could bind an enemy, or it could even be used for protection.
Had I jumped the gun, thinking it was Steve? Still, there was a bronze figure in my backyard where water and moonlight could strip its power—and I had no doubt he was responsible for that sorcery.
Even so, I remembered how I’d described the foiled burglar in the dark alley behind the Honeybee to the police: bulky coat, hat, hard to tell if it was a man or a woman.
Could it have been the same person Margie had seen? If the attempted burglary had been connected to Dr. Dana’s murder—and given the coincidence of someone trying to break into a store the day after a murder had been committed there, it seemed more than likely they were related—and the same person had cast a binding spell on my lawn . . . what did that mean?
Maybe, just maybe, it meant there was something in the back room of Croft’s store the police had missed. Something the burglar had wanted to retrieve, and barring that, wanted to keep me from finding. And why me? W
ell, I was the only one looking at suspects other than Angie, which made me a threat to the real killer.
Tomorrow, between baking eight dozen pies in the morning and stopping by Dana Dobbs’ memorial in the afternoon, I needed to look in that back room.
Finally, I turned out the light. As I snuggled down with Mungo, another thought occurred to me, and my eyes popped back open.
That evening, Angie Kissel had given me magical information and instructions, both of which I was grateful for. But when we’d been setting protections, she’d been actually invoking power. She’d been practicing magic. Like a real witch.
Did that mean she was coming back to the Craft after all?
Yet again, sleep did not come quickly.
Chapter 22
The next morning, I was surprised when Angie came downstairs as I was making coffee. It was four a.m., and I was getting a later start than I wanted, but I hadn’t expected her to be awake.
“You mind if I come in to work with you?” she asked. “I know I said I felt safe here, but I really enjoyed myself yesterday.”
“We could probably use the help,” I admitted. Especially with Iris gone until Monday, and my mission of getting away to look in the storage room of the Fox and Hound. “Sure. But I’m leaving in twenty minutes.”
She grinned. “Deal.”
Not many women can shower and dress that quickly. Surprisingly, she was ready to go on time, sans makeup and wearing jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved brown T-shirt. It also helped that her pixie hair was even shorter than mine. She rode with me, and it dried in the car on the way.
At the Honeybee, we got right to work. First thing, I set the ovens to preheat. Then lights came on, upbeat music wafted from the speakers, and the loaves of sourdough went in to bake. Soon the heady aroma of browning bread filled the kitchen, and I breathed it in with a sigh of contentment. Magic and murder aside, I loved being a baker as much as anything.
Next, I pulled the crusts I’d mixed and rolled the day before out of the refrigerator and started arranging them in aluminum pans. Angie was ladling pumpkin filling into them when Lucy and Ben came in.
“Ah, you’re back,” my aunt said to her, taking off her coat and putting a forest green chef’s apron over her rust-colored skirt. She smiled. “I’m glad.”
By the time we opened, the first batch of still warm pies was ready for pickup. Half were pumpkin; half were a mix of fruit and pecan pies. The first customer showed up a little before eight o’clock, and after that there was a steady stream of pies into the oven, out of the oven, and out the door.
Around ten we’d finished with all the baking. Lucy, Angie, and I grabbed our caffeine of choice and sprawled in the library for a break, while Ben continued to help customers.
“I never knew running a bakery was so much work,” Angie said, visibly stifling a yawn.
“Oh, honey,” Lucy said. “It’s not always like this. High pie days are unusual.”
“There’s always something, though,” I said. “A catering job, wedding cakes, fund-raisers.”
“And I thought working in a nursery was hard,” Angie said.
I sat up from my half-prone position on the sofa. “Say, would you mind helping Ben out for a bit longer? I want to steal Lucy for a little while.”
“Sure,” Angie said easily.
My aunt raised her eyebrows in question.
I glanced around to see if there were any customers close enough to hear. There weren’t. “Angie, I don’t think you know that someone tried to break into the Fox and Hound.”
She shook her head.
“Two mornings after the murder, super early. I scared them off.”
Lucy snorted. “After they almost killed you.”
Angie’s mouth dropped open.
“It wasn’t that bad. Lucy, I haven’t had a chance to tell you someone set a fire on my lawn last night.”
She scooted to the edge of her seat. “What?”
“It was burning magic. A binding spell. Angie and I thought it might have been Steve.”
“Steve!” she exclaimed. “Why would you think that?”
Angie and I exchanged a meaningful look. “Because that little ‘souvenir’ he gave me yesterday turned out to be another kind of binding spell,” I said. “A love spell.”
Lucy gasped.
“You did put it in my tote bag, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Me? Why would I do that?” she asked. “You didn’t seem to want it.”
I frowned. “So how did it get in there?”
The look of horror on my aunt’s face deepened.
“Don’t worry,” I said quickly. “Angie showed me how remove its power. But when someone set a burning spell in front of my house right after that, we thought of Steve immediately.”
“Oh, dear,” Lucy said.
“But I was thinking about it overnight,” I continued. “And the person who set the fire might have been the same person who tried to break into the Fox and Hound.”
My aunt opened her mouth to say something, but I barreled on to explain how similar Margie and my descriptions of the spell caster and the burglar had been. “What if it was the same person? And what if he or she was trying to get into Croft’s store for a reason other than robbery?”
Lucy frowned. “Like what?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. But I’d like to take another look around that back room where Dr. Dana died.”
“The police checked it already.”
My shoulders rose and fell. “True. It’s probably a long shot.”
Or maybe not such a long shot.
Lucy must have seen something in my eyes, though, because she nodded as if making a decision. “Let’s go next door right now.”
* * *
I was happy to see there were several customers in the Fox and Hound when Lucy and I went inside. Mrs. Potter was back in the children’s section, helping customers select books for the little ones on their Christmas list. Croft bustled out from the mystery section with an actual smile on his face. It broadened when he saw us.
“Hey, you two.”
“Hi, Croft,” I said, gesturing at the numerous browsers. “Looks like things are getting back to normal.”
“Thank God,” he said with feeling. “It’s not as good as last year yet, but I have high hopes.” He put his hands on his hips. “Now, what can I do for you ladies?”
I walked to a secluded corner. Lucy and Croft followed. His smile had dropped once he realized we weren’t in shopping mode, but he listened as I said, “Remember when you offered to do whatever you could to help find Dr. Dana’s killer?”
“Sure I do. I’m not senile yet, you know.”
“Of course not. I’m wondering if you’d let us look in your back room. The police have released it, haven’t they?”
“Yup.” One side of his mouth came up. “What are you looking for?”
“No idea. But I got to thinking about why someone might want to break in from the alley. What if it wasn’t random?”
“Huh. Well, I don’t know what you think you’re gonna find, but you’re welcome to check it out. I haven’t moved much around since, well, you know. Just tidied up a bit.” He made a face. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back there without thinking about that night.”
“Thanks, Croft.” I smiled and considered bussing him on the cheek. I was pretty sure he’d die of apoplexy, though.
We went through to the storage room and shut the door behind us. Silence descended. There were no windows, so it was utterly dark. I flipped on the light switch by the door, and fluorescent bulbs flickered to life above us. Lucy’s eyes moved over the room and its contents with an expression of sorrow on her face. I knew she was thinking about the loss of life that had occurred there so recently. Witches might profess that death was simply a jo
urney to the next plane, but that didn’t mean we handled it better than anyone else.
I’d never been farther into this room than the doorway with Margie, though apparently my aunt had ventured quite near the body before the police had arrived Saturday night. Now we moved inside to assess the situation. Without the scents of mulled cider and—for Lucy, at least—almonds to flavor the air, the distinct smell of ink on paper I always associated with libraries and bookstores filled my nose and tugged at a nostalgia for something I couldn’t quite define.
Croft wasn’t the tidiest housekeeper, but things were arranged in a fairly logical manner. Industrial wall-mounted shelves were divided into sections. There were a few cartons of books, but most of the extra books were stacked freely, easy to view and restock out front. One shelf was labeled RETURNS. Other shelves held boxes of toys, games, and gift items.
The space on the floor where the victim had fallen was clear now. One small section was cleaner than the rest, and from what I could remember, that was probably where the sweet tea had spilled. The table where Dr. Dana had been signing Croft’s extra stock had been moved to one side, but it was still stacked with her books. A rack in the corner held the folding chairs that Croft used for events.
Here and there I saw dark smudges of powder that I recognized from another crime scene. Quinn hadn’t mentioned fingerprints, but I supposed the police had to make an attempt. Since Dr. Dana had probably been given the poison before she ever came back here, it seemed unlikely fingerprinting would be helpful, though.
“Let’s try to be methodical,” Lucy said briskly. “You take the upper shelves since you can reach them better, and I’ll take the lower ones. This unit first.”
I nodded. “Look for anything that might seem strange, out of place, or in the least bit suspicious.”
We got to work, checking each stack of books, looking behind them, and even flipping through a few.
Nada.
Then we checked the bins of nonbook items for sale, taking things out of shipping cartons, lifting boxes, and looking underneath them. I peered behind the shelving units and got down on the floor to check beneath them.
