Careful What You Witch For

by K. J. Emrick

  She couldn’t, though. The haze of Eileen’s Masquerade was too strong. It was keeping her from seeing anything else about the woman.

  That meant if they wanted to learn anything from her, this woman who was not Eileen, they would have to do it the old fashioned way. They were going to have to ask the right questions.

  “How long were you and Danny married?” she asked. That was as good a way to start as any.

  Not-Eileen clasped her small hands together in her lap to keep them from shaking as her eyes misted over. “We got married right after college. It was a whirlwind romance, as they say. We met, we fell in love, and we both knew that we were going to end up getting married. We were always meant to be together. I just wish…” She had to stop, and take a breath, and wipe at the tears in her eyes. “I just wish I could have known him before I had to leave everything behind.”

  Her eyes went wide, and she looked up sharply at Addie, as if she’d just accidentally let out some big secret.

  Addie knew all about secrets. Masquerade shroud or not, that was the look of a guilty conscience on this woman’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” she told not-Eileen, pretending not to have noticed the slip up so she could keep the conversation going. “It must be hard losing someone that you’ve known for that long.”

  A mix of emotions washed over the grieving woman’s face, ranging from relief that Addie wasn’t going to press her on what she was hiding, to mounting despair at the death of her husband. True emotions weren’t easily faked, but Addie had known some very good liars in her time. People who could make you believe almost anything.

  After a moment of silence between them, not-Eileen took a slow breath. “I just don’t understand who would want to do this to Danny. I mean, stab him to death with a knife? Who does that?”

  Who indeed, Addie thought to herself.

  She took a stool at the bar. “Did anyone have anything against your husband?” she asked. “Any reason to want to kill him?”

  “He works in an office,” Eileen answered helplessly. “He manages other people’s money but he never takes more than his fair percentage. We pay our taxes. We go out with our friends, sometimes, and then we go back home to our house. We’re about as boring as we can be. Who would want to hurt him?”

  “I see what you mean. What about the friends with you? Those two who I saw standing here with you are your friends, right?”

  Eileen shrugged. “Sort of. Really they’re friends of Eugene’s.”

  “Eugene was one of the people here with you?”

  “Yes. Him and his new girlfriend Rosemary. They’re upstairs… I think. I’m not sure. The two who were with me are Dahlia Black and Christine Roth.” She shrugged again. It seemed to be the best explanation he could come up with. “They only came because Eugene invited them. They seem nice. They sat with me and talked to me about Danny after that detective got done asking us questions. Just like you’re doing. They were asking me about Danny, and about Eugene, and just letting me talk.”

  So. Addie ran everything that Eileen had just said through her mind. Five suspects. The friend, Eugene. His girlfriend Rosemary. The two “sort of” friends of Eugene’s, Dahlia Black and Christine Roth. And yes, even the victim’s wife.

  Eugene.

  Rosemary.

  Dahlia.

  Christine.

  Eileen. Well. Not-Eileen, as Addie had started calling her in her mind.

  One of those five was a killer.

  Which brought up the question again of why Kiera hadn’t sensed all five of them…

  She could ask Kiera about that later. For right now, she was focusing on not-Eileen. She was the victim’s wife. She was obviously hiding something. Plus, there was this Masquerade shroud, proving that Eileen wasn’t who she said she was.

  Not-Eileen.

  So what was that about?

  The door opened, and Lucian came striding in with a severe expression on his face. He was finished with his phone call. It looked to Addie like she was about to find out the reason behind the Masquerade.

  “Step away from her,” he said to Addie. “Just step back. Eileen Bellinger, I’m placing you under arrest. Just stay calm, and do as I say, and there won’t be any problem. All right?”

  Eileen almost fell off her stool, stumbling back from Lucian’s advance. He reached in behind his suitcoat, to the back of his belt, and when he brought his hand out again there was a set of cuffs dangling from his fingers.

  He took Eileen’s wrists, one at a time, and put the metal bracelets in place on each of them. There were tears in the woman’s eyes, but she didn’t resist.

  Addie stepped back, like she’d been asked to do, giving Lucian room to work. “Did you find out who she really is?”

  “No. It isn’t that simple.” Lucian made sure to hold onto his prisoner’s arm as he explained what he meant. “As it turns out, Eileen Crisp, her maiden name, died thirty years ago. When she was only six months old.”

  Addie stared at the woman in her handcuffs, still crying silent tears. Eileen Bellinger didn’t exist.

  Then who was this?

  Chapter 5

  Addie stood with her sisters outside the room at the far end of the first floor hall, just off the common area. It was a huge storage closet, and after they’d removed brooms and mops and cleaning supplies, it made a passable jail cell.

  Lucian was in there with not-Eileen. The reason for the Masquerade shroud had become obvious now. She hadn’t just been pretending to be someone else.

  She didn’t exist. She was dead.

  Maybe it was both.

  Or, it could be something else entirely.

  “There are many ways,” Kiera said, not for the first time, “that a woman could be dead, but still walking around. Reincarnation, for one. Ghostly possession. Necromancy.”

  “Zombies,” Willow added sarcastically.

  “All right,” Addie said, “while… most of those are true, I was leaning more towards witness protection. This doesn’t have to be anything paranormal, you know. Didn’t we already decide there was nothing paranormal about this murder?”

  Kiera arched a graying eyebrow. “That does not mean there won’t be paranormal beings here in this building. They may not have been involved, but they may be witnesses. Or even victims themselves. We have to accept that possibility.”

  It was a good point. After all, wasn’t Addie herself a witch walking around and living an apparently normal life? Also, now that she thought about it, if Eileen was some sort of dead woman brought back to life, then that might explain why Kiera had only felt four living people here.

  The door to the storage closet opened. Lucian stepped out, rubbing a hand across his forehead. “Well. This case just got impossibly weird.”

  “Actually,” Addie said to him with a little smile, “I’m impressed with how well you’ve been taking everything. Most people freak out the first time they see a ghost.”

  He snorted. “Well, after I found out that you three are witches using your magic to protect the town of Shadow Lake, I don’t see how anything else can ever surprise me.”

  Willow rolled her eyes. “Wait until you see two trolls making love in the moonlight.”

  Despite her sister’s crass example, Addie laughed to see Lucian’s eyes pop like that. He had control of himself again quickly, but it was obvious that there were lots of things about the world of the Kilorian Sisters that were going to surprise the living daylights out of him.

  “That will be enough of that talk,” Kiera insisted, looking purposefully at Willow. “Lucian, what did you find out from Eileen?”

  “I found out she isn’t Eileen. And, I sort of understand why.” He led them a little down the hallway, leaving the door to the storage closet open. “It’s all right, the windows in that room don’t open. She can’t get out. I handcuffed her to a shelving unit that’s bolted to the wall just in case.”

  “Kinky,” Willow muttered. Addie shot her a glance. Willow gave her a wi
nk.

  “Anyway,” Lucian said. “It turns out, if I can believe her, that she’s been hiding under the name of Eileen since she was fourteen years old.”

  “How?” Addie asked.

  “Why?” Willow asked at the same time.

  “Uh, well, that’s the thing of it.” He leaned his back against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “Neither question is that easy to explain. She says her father abused her and her mother when she was younger, until her mother finally had enough of it and left him. They packed everything they could into their Volvo and never looked back. They went on the run to save their lives. That’s the why of it.”

  Addie tried to picture it. Leaving your entire life behind, because the monster you were living with was your own father. It was very brave of Eileen and her mother to do something like that. They must have been scared, just the two of them.

  “So then, how?” Addie asked again. “How did they do it?”

  Lucian rubbed at the side of his neck. “There are ways to change your identity. In this case, they borrowed the social security numbers of two babies who never made it out of the hospital. The government doesn’t have the resources to check on every single social number. Do it right, and no one ever gets suspicious.”

  Kiera frowned. “Until your husband gets murdered in a cabin in the woods of Shadow Lake.”

  “Exactly,” Lucian agreed. “So here we are.”

  “What about her husband?” Addie asked. “Did our victim know that his wife had been lying to him all these years?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  Ah. Addie could see a motive building against Eileen—or whatever she should be called. If her husband had found out that she’d been lying to him, she might have killed him to keep her real identity secret. To keep him from telling anyone else. She could have been afraid of going to prison. Or losing the life her mother had given up everything to give her. For all Addie knew, Eileen’s father might still be out there somewhere.

  Could she have been so scared that her father would find her again, that she would murder the man she loved, just to stay hidden?

  As Kiera had said earlier, people killed people all the time, and for their own reasons.

  Addie frowned to herself. It was bad enough that the Kilorian sisters had to protect their home from supernatural threats. Did they really need to save people from themselves as well?

  Maybe she should carry a cape with her if she was going to try being Wonder Woman, instead of a pouch full of magic spices.

  No. Magic was much more useful than an invisible plane or a lasso. Although, she might look cute in that skimpy outfit and high heels.

  Willow stretched her arms wide. “So, she killed her husband.” She sounded almost happy about it. “Great. That was easy. So now Detective Goodnight here—”

  “Detective Knight,” Lucian corrected her.

  “Right. That’s what I said.” She winked at him, but didn’t apologize. “You get to arrest her for murder and for impersonating a baby, and we get to go home. Easy as that.”

  “No, I’m afraid it’s not.”

  Willow practically stamped her foot when he said that. “Oh, saints preserve us, why not? This is Typic business. You Typics should handle it.”

  Lucian turned to Addie, his eyebrows up. “Typic?”

  “It means non-magic users,” she told him, pushing strands of her red hair back behind her ear. She spared a glare for Willow for even using that word here. “It’s short for ‘typical.’ As in, a typical person.”

  That explanation didn’t seem to sit well with him. “You mean, like someone who’s boring?”

  “No,” Addie started to say.

  “Yes,” Willow said. “He’s a pretty smart one, isn’t he?”

  “Hey,” he said to both of them, “I’m standing right here. Listen, I don’t care. You can call me a freaking Muggle if you want, I really don’t care. It doesn’t matter. My point is, we don’t have any proof to arrest Eileen. Not for the murder. Identity theft, yes, and I’ve already called the station for backup. They’re sending a medical transport for Danny’s body, plus a couple of cars. One of them will bring Eileen to the station. She’s a criminal, even if she had very good reasons for it, but that doesn’t mean she’s a murderer.”

  “That is true,” Kiera said, finally breaking her silent contemplation. “Our job is not yet done, Willow, Addie. We must help Lucian discover who really committed this murder.”

  “Thank you, Kiera,” he said, mangling her traditional Irish name but not too badly. “So tell me this. When you and Willow were talking to Dahlia Black and Christine Roth, did they say anything important?”

  “Nothing at all,” Willow said dismissively. “They just kept going on and on and on about how this was just such a tragedy. I tell you what, though, if I had a girlfriend who treated me the way Dahlia did I’d be dumping her in a hot Dublin minute. Did you see the way she kept talking over Christine Roth? Shutting her down every time she opened her mouth? No way would any girlfriend of mine talk to me like that.”

  Addie knew that was true for Willow. She was into men, for one thing, but the men she chose to be with hardly ever spoke back to her. Some of them hardly spoke at all. That was more her sister’s type.

  “We saw the knife set,” Willow continued. “Only one missing, just like you said. Are you sure we can’t arrest her now?”

  He shook his head. “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “There was one other thing,” Kiera said. “Dahlia mentioned seeing someone running through the backyard just before Eileen began screaming that her husband was dead… are we still calling her Eileen?”

  Lucian nodded. “For now, yes. Until I know what her real name is. I’m not even sure she remembers what that is anymore.”

  “Well. Dahlia said there was someone there, in the backyard, although she couldn’t make out who it was. Then they heard Eileen screaming. They came downstairs to find Danny was dead.”

  “That’s interesting.” He pursed his lips, one hand rubbing at his jaw. Addie wondered what he was thinking behind those deep blue eyes of his.

  Kiera was watching the man’s expression as well. “I take it we should go back and talk to Dahlia and Christine, Detective?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Their room is upstairs, but it’s on the other side of the lodge, facing the front. When I talked to them before they said they were in their room when all of this happened. Kind of hard for them to have seen anything in the backyard if they were in their room. It had to be one or the other, but not both.”

  “Ah, I see.” Kiera sighed. “So, we’ve caught the two of them in a lie, and the investigation just became more complicated.”

  “As they usually do.” Lucian pushed away from the wall and started for the stairs leading to the rooms on the upper level of the lodge, but then he stopped, and looked back down the hall. “I’ll need one of you to stay and watch over Eileen. I doubt she could escape from those handcuffs but that’s not my only worry. The murder weapon came from the kitchen knives here in Pendulum Lodge, remember. If Eileen isn’t our killer then one of the other people in here is, and I don’t want them coming after Eileen when we aren’t looking.”

  “I’ll stay,” Willow offered. “I’ll just use a sleeping spell on her.”

  “Willow…” Addie cautioned.

  “What? It’s just a sleeping spell. Oh, come on. Yes, I want to be back home but I’m not going to do anything to the woman. She’ll just sleep. I’ll watch over her until you guys get back and then I’ll wake her up. Deal?”

  Kiera seemed satisfied with that. “Very good, Sister Willow. We leave her in your care. Call to us if there’s any trouble.”

  Willow made a dismissive noise. “Like I can’t handle one sleeping Typic.”

  Lucian frowned at her using that word again. He didn’t say anything, but Addie knew she was going to have a lot more explaining to do for Lucian if they were going to have a future together. She didn’t know if they woul
d ever be anything more than the police officer and the witch protector of Shadow Lake, but she was very much looking forward to finding out.

  Upstairs, the central hallway curved around the L shape of the building, paneled in dark wood and softly lit with bulbs in wall sconces at regular intervals. Doors to rooms led off to the left and the right.

  “This place,” Addie said in appreciation, “could give Stonecrest a run for its money.”

  “There’s no history here,” Kiera pointed out. “Nothing but dead trees cobbled together into a woodland paradise for people who have no appreciation of what was once a living forest.”

  Lucian looked at her. “Uh. Right. I watched that Lorax movie about the trees, too. Anyway, the two occupied rooms are down this way.”

  He took them to the far end of the hall, to the room on the right, and then knocked. The door was opened a few seconds later by a short woman with hair too black to be her natural color. She was all of five feet nothing but she radiated a confidence that gave her a much bigger presence. Addie recognized her from downstairs. Dahlia Black.

  “Well,” she said, shaking her head so that her shoulder-length hair swung back and forth. “Back for more questions, Detective Knight? You and your two… advisors, was it?”

  “Yes. Dahlia Black, this is Kiera. You met her downstairs. This is Addie. They consult with the department on murder cases.”

  She obviously didn’t believe it, but she didn’t argue it either. “Well. Come on in, then. Have you found the murderer yet?”

  “No. Actually, I was hoping you could help us with that. You and Christine here.”

  Inside the room Addie saw a woman splayed out on the bed. She was the blonde from downstairs, her hair long and curly and just as falsely colored as Dahlia’s. Both women were in bathrobes just like not-Eileen had been.

  “Hello, Detective,” Christine Roth said, leaning back on her elbow. “And friends, too. I have to say, I feel safer knowing you’re here.”