by Delia James
I met my mentor’s sharp blue eyes. I knew what I had to say to her, but I had no idea where to begin. Max pawed at her skirt and Leo balanced himself on his hind legs, briefly anyway. Julia smiled down and picked them both up to lie across her lap.
She also apparently decided she needed to take charge of this particular conversation.
“I heard,” she said, “that Kristen Summers has been arrested. I assume you’ve talked to Valerie since then. How is she?”
“Really worried.”
“I’ll call her. We should make sure the rest of the coven is checking up on her and her family.”
“I’m sure she’d appreciate that.”
“And Kenisha told me that you searched Ramona’s apartment.”
“Oh. Um.” I thought about Kenisha sitting out front in the cruiser, staring out the windshield at nothing. Somehow, I got the feeling that conversation had not gone well.
“Were you able to find anything useful?” Julia prompted.
Now I knew it had not gone well, because if it had, Kenisha would have managed to let Julia in on the important details, just like she did for me.
“Julia . . . ,” I began, and I stopped.
I didn’t come here to talk about Kristen, or even Ramona. I came here because I’m worried about you and what you’re doing, and so is Val, and so is Kenisha, and so would everybody else be too if I’d had five minutes to fire up the phone tree.
“Anna? While I do appreciate a dramatic pause, if you have something to say, I’d much rather you did so.”
“Julia.” I twisted my hands together. “I’m worried about what you . . . about what we did. I think maybe we should—back away for a bit. Especially on the magic.”
“I don’t understand you, Anna. You, of all people, cannot be suggesting we should just sit and wait.”
“No, of course not. But . . .” Memory jumped to the front of my mind. I was in Ramona’s apartment, and Kenisha was ordering me to stand still, to touch nothing.
“Ruby is at my house,” I told her instead. “Alistair found her and she’s been hiding in my basement. That’s why Max and Leo . . .”
“Yip!” Leo, sensing he had become an important topic of conversation, wriggled off Julia’s lap and trotted over to sit on my toes. “Yip!”
“Anyway, that’s why they couldn’t find her, because of the wards on the cottage.”
“That’s wonderful!” Julia pressed a hand against her chest. “Such a relief.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “Because now we don’t know where she was, or who tried to steal her, if anybody even did.”
I watched the implications of this settle into Julia’s thoughts slowly, and I watched her brush them away. My spirits plummeted.
“Yip?” Leo wagged hopefully. I patted his head. Max, not to be outdone, dug his nose under Julia’s hands so she had to start petting his head again.
“What is your impression of the situation, Anna?”
“I think Ruby was stolen, or cat-napped, or whatever. Alistair doesn’t want to let her go.” Of course, that may have just been because the furry lunkhead was in love again. It says something about the direction my life had taken that I was getting used to having conversations about my cat’s powers of judgment.
Julia didn’t even crack a smile. “There is an invocation we could work. We would need several of the others. Of course, we will spare Kenisha . . .”
Spare Kenisha. I could just imagine what Kenisha would think about that.
“Julia . . . because of what Alistair did, because of what I did, we’ve lost any chance of finding out where Ruby really was, or who took her. What if it gets worse? What if we end up shifting things around so much that Kenisha and Pete are never going to be able to fit the pieces all back together again? What if we become responsible for Ramona’s real killer getting away?”
“Yip!” announced Max sternly. I ignored him.
“You agreed with me, Anna,” said Julia coolly. “You agreed we would make use of your gifts to find out who the witch is who interfered . . .”
“We’re the witches who are interfering, Julia,” I said. “We’re getting in the way of the police.”
“The police will have to manage their own affairs. If magic was used to harm Ramona, that is our business.”
“The two aren’t separate! Not where Ramona’s death is concerned.”
Julia’s eyes glittered, hard and unrepentant. I felt a deep chill rising in me. In the back of my head I saw Kenisha with her arms folded and her eyes narrowed. This was exactly what she’d warned me about. I heard her whispering to me in my kitchen, asking me to keep an eye on Julia, to make sure she didn’t go too far.
Of course Julia saw the accusations in my expression. I’d never been able to hide anything from her. Max wriggled off his mistress’s lap and ducked behind her full skirt.
I wished I could do the same.
“Julia, does this have something to do with the Forsythes?”
“It has everything to do with the Forsythes,” she snapped. “Ramona is dead!”
“I mean with you and the Forsythes.” You and Wendy, or you and Rachael.
“You’ve been talking with Kenisha. She’s convinced you I’m trying to settle some old score.”
“No, that’s not it.”
Julia waved one hand, tired and dismissive.
“All right, yes, I’ve been talking to Kenisha. She’s my friend and my coven sister, and she’s worried because you haven’t been talking. To any of us. At all.”
“I am talking with you now, Anna.”
“Well, then you can listen to me tell you that Rachael said she’s the one who broke her mother’s wards. She said it was family tradition. She had to undo any spells Ramona might have left in the world. I saw her at the clinic this morning. She was painting over all of Ramona’s warding circles there, too.”
Julia went very still for a moment. “I hadn’t thought about that,” she breathed. “That is possible, I suppose. But still, she should have known how suspicious it would look.”
I had meant to go on (gently) and talk about survivor’s guilt, and how Julia should ask herself whether what happened when her good friend Dorothy died was affecting how she felt about Ramona’s death. I wanted to say that maybe it wasn’t the best thing to sit alone in her shop or her apartment, brooding. Maybe it was time to call on her coven for help and support, because that was what we were about, right? Guarding and healing. Right?
But I didn’t. Because between one word and the next, a new idea hit me so hard it took all my breath away.
There was another way to look at the fact that the books of shadow were missing. Especially when you knew that there were all kinds of old feuds and suspicions in town, just below the surface, and if you knew that there had been an extra, invisible set of locks on Ramona’s apartments and they’d been jimmied, just like the balcony doors.
If you had a suspicious turn of mind, like, say, the only witch cop in New Hampshire, you might wonder if Julia Parris had broken in and stolen the books. Julia had the opportunity. She’d at least been near the apartment building the morning after Ramona was killed. She certainly had the means, since she was one of the most powerful witches in New England. She even had the motive, because while she liked Ramona, she very clearly and openly carried a grudge against the rest of the Forsythes. Specifically, against Wendy Forsythe.
And she hadn’t called the rest of the coven together. She was working her magic alone, in secret. Like she didn’t want her friends and sisters to know what it was she was doing.
I didn’t believe Julia had deliberately interfered with a crime scene or an investigation any more than I believed that Valerie had. The problem was, it didn’t matter what I believed, or even what Julia and Val were really doing. What mattered was the part of the picture that the police
could see. And what the police could see right now did not look good.
Especially if Kenisha decided there really was something strange about Rachael letting me into the apartment in the first place, murmured that unhelpful little voice. I told it to go soak its head.
“Julia, I think you need to take a step back,” I said. “I think if you’re forgetting details about ritual . . . you’ve maybe let this become personal.”
As it turned out, this was exactly the wrong thing to say. Julia’s face hardened. Leo retreated to her side, at the same time Max reappeared from under her skirt.
But I didn’t need hints from the dachshunds to tell me that Julia was angry. Every clipped-off word she spoke made that abundantly plain.
“Before you continue with your accusations, there are two things you should consider. The first is that I found the wards had been shattered the morning after Ramona’s death. That is at least a full day before Rachael returned to town.”
“I know, Julia, but . . .” But it didn’t matter. Well, okay, it did matter because it meant Rachael had to be lying, like she was lying about having Ramona’s books of shadow, which was important, but . . .
“The second is that your own Vibe told you there was a considerable streak of greed in the person who murdered Ramona. Greed that could have been for a share of Ruby’s fame. It could have been a share of Kristen’s business. Or it just could have been money. Like the money a woman might loan her sister to start a business she hoped would turn much more profitable than it has.”
“I know, Julia, but—”
“But,” she cut me off, “since you feel my assistance is unwelcome, I withdraw it.” She lifted her walking stick and touched me on the shoulder with the glass handle. She whispered something too low and too fast for me to hear. I felt a jolt, like static electricity, and a rush, like someone had pulled a blanket off me to let in a burst of cold air.
“So mote it be,” said Julia. “The summoning is removed. As you wanted.”
“Julia.” I swallowed. “It’s just that—”
“It’s just that you feel you are no longer able to trust my judgment. So, perhaps you should just leave.”
“Julia—” I tried again.
“I asked you to go, Anna.”
Somebody growled. I looked down at Max and Leo, who’d closed ranks between me and Julia. In the next eyeblink, I got to my feet and scooted out of that office as fast as I could without actually running. I walked through the sitting area and down the aisles and out the front door without once looking back.
Because just for a second, instead of two sweet miniature dachshunds guarding my mentor, I’d seen two full-sized Doberman pinschers.
And they did not look happy.
41
WHEN I PULLED into the cottage driveway, the sun was setting in a blaze of red and gold. Alistair was sitting on the porch, bolt upright, with his tail curled around his feet. It was the kind of highly dignified feline pose he adopted only when he was extremely annoyed at me.
“Merow!” he announced.
“So, I take it Val got here okay?” I asked, scratching his ears.
For an answer, Alistair vanished.
“We’ll call that a yes, then.” Despite all my worries, I couldn’t help smiling, just a little.
“Hello, I’m home!” I called as I unlocked the front door.
“Hello!” Valerie called back. “We’re in the kitchen, drinking your tea!”
I dropped my purse on the table beside the door and hung my outside clothes on the hooks. When I turned around, Val was there with two mugs of peppermint tea in her hands. Melissa did her best to wriggle in welcome despite being securely confined in the BabyBjörn sling on Valerie’s chest.
“Ab-ab-ab!” she told me.
Val handed me a mug, along with an apologetic smile. It didn’t take long to see what the apology was for.
“Hi, Anna.”
Kristen Summers stood uncertainly on the hallway threshold.
“Kristen!” I exclaimed. “This is great! What happened? I mean . . . I thought . . .”
“Her lawyer got the bail hearing moved up, despite Blanchard’s best efforts,” Val said. “And honestly, we didn’t know where else to go that wasn’t surrounded by media.”
“No, no, it’s fine. I’m glad. Come on into the living room.” I went first and pulled the drapes, just in case of overzealous newspersons. As I did, I couldn’t help but notice that Alistair was not anywhere in sight, and neither was Ruby. I glanced at Valerie and she shook her head. She hadn’t told Kristen we’d found Ruby yet.
Kristen took the armchair by the fireplace, and Valerie took the sofa. I settled onto the window seat and tucked my feet up under me.
“Did you see Julia?” Valerie asked as she lifted Melissa out of the sling and laid her on the afghan beside her. “How is she?”
“Yes. Good. Worried.” Which was mostly true. The only problem with having Kristen here was that there was a whole lot of that conversation I couldn’t repeat right now. “I also went to talk to Cheryl Bell.”
“Am-oom!” exclaimed Melissa.
Now we were all looking at Kristen. She hunched forward with her elbows on her knees, watching the steam rise from the mug she held in both hands.
“What did Cheryl have to say?” she asked. “I mean other than cheering over the fact that I managed to get myself arrested?”
“For what it’s worth, she doesn’t think you killed Ramona.”
“You’re kidding, right?” said Kristen, and the surprise was genuine. “I would have thought she’d be turning handsprings.”
“Actually, she was worried, because if you were tried for murder, the lawsuit over Ruby would go on the back burner and it would take her that much longer to get the money.”
“Now, that sounds like Cheryl,” Kristen muttered.
Val and I looked at each other. She winced in sympathy. She also tickled Melissa’s tummy, just a little.
“She said something else, too,” I told them all.
Kristen grimaced. “You might as well go ahead. I’m already sitting down.”
“She said . . . she . . . that Ramona . . . well . . .”
“Anna,” said Val sternly. “You’re stammering.”
“Yeah. Right. Well. Cheryl said that Ramona offered to sell her Ruby for ten thousand dollars.”
“What?” Val and Kristen chorused, but then Kristen added, “And you believed her?”
“No, actually, I didn’t. At least, I believe maybe Cheryl offered it, but not that Ramona took it. But, well, there’s a problem . . .”
“Because why would Cheryl lie about something like that?” asked Val.
“Because she’s Cheryl,” said Kristen wearily. “She lies; it’s what she does.” But Kristen saw the doubt blossoming on Val’s face, and she clenched her hands tight around her mug of tea.
“The problem is, Ramona really was having money trouble,” I said. “And apparently her sister, Wendy, was on her case about it. Maybe it got to be too much.”
“No,” said Kristen flatly. “I won’t believe it. Ramona was my friend, and she loved Ruby. She would never turn her over to Cheryl, not for any money.”
“Kristen . . . ,” Val began, but Melissa kicked her, and Val had to grab that one very wiggly foot and give it a gentle shake.
Kristen set the mug down, carefully, like she was afraid of breaking something. “You’re always asking why Cheryl and I stopped talking? I’ll tell you.” She was breathing hard, like she’d been running. Her face flushed bright pink. “She was trying to get me to steal for her.”
“What?” shouted Val.
“She knew, about you and me and our racket, and she was trying to get me to fork some of the takings over to her. For her. But I’d gone straight by then, just like you did, and she knew it. I’d been stayin
g with her because I thought maybe I could talk her into getting her act cleaned up. I thought I had,” she added in a whisper. “But that night she came to me, and she said that she needed money and that I owed her. I only found out later what she was really up to.”
“What?”
“She was informing on . . . people to Michael Blanchard.”
That’s what she meant. I sucked in a long breath. When she said, “It’s not my job to make Blanchard’s life easy for him. Not anymore.”
“He was paying her, and she was feeding him information. She was trying to set me up so she could get more money so she could leave town.” Kristen rounded on me. “That’s why you can’t believe her. She uses people and she doesn’t care who she hurts, as long as she gets what she wants.”
Val picked Melissa up and cuddled her close. “Oh, Kris.”
I felt a patch of warmth at my side, and I looked down. Alistair was crouched next to me, his tail lashing back and forth. He was staring so hard at Kristen, his whiskers quivered.
My mouth went dry. This was not something I was looking forward to.
“Kristen,” I said, or croaked, really. “This doesn’t explain why you’ve been lying to the police, and us.”
Kris swiveled in her seat so she was staring right at Val. “You told her?”
“You can trust her, Kris,” said Val. “Anna just wants to help, like I do.”
“Why’d you go to New York, Kristen?” I asked. “Why’d you lie about it?”
“You can tell us anything,” Val added.
“I can’t,” choked Kristen. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“You know me, Kris. After everything, would I try and pull a fast one on you?”
Kris shook her head. Val got up and went to wrap her friend in a warm hug. They leaned together for a long time, not saying anything. Melissa looked up at Val with a slightly confused expression on her round face and made a concerted grab for her chin.
“Am-oo?”
“Merow,” said Alistair, and I swear for a minute it sounded like he was answering the baby.
