“And?” I prompted him to keep going.
“But there was just something about that place I didn’t like. There was something…there.”
“That book?”
“I don’t know.”
I licked my lips. “Was it evil?”
“No…” but he didn’t sound certain. “It was just there and I wanted to stay in the car. I saw him fight with this guy we met a week or so back.”
“Charles Willmington?”
Max arched a brow. “I don’t do names well, but I remember smells. I just remember he was loud and he smelled like tuna fish—which I don’t like, by the way.”
Oh.
“Then we went back to the place we were staying.”
“Where were you two staying?” No one had mentioned that Hardin had a hotel room. I think I assumed he’d been living in his car. Which made little sense because it was clean when David and I looked at it.
“It was a room somewhere. Not a hotel or motel.”
“A bed-and-breakfast?” We had a few of those in Castle Falls. People loved to come here to stay in one of the nicer ones when they visited the Falls.
“Yeah. I remember the window looked out over the water.”
The only bed-and-breakfast I knew on a lake was Silus Castle’s place, Castle Lake Bed & Breakfast. Yeah, original. Most things in Castle Falls were called Castle Falls something. We were happy with our town. “Do you remember what room?”
“Three. I don’t know where the key is.”
I frowned. “We looked in the car, and I’m pretty sure the police have gone over it by now. I doubt they found anything.”
He stared at me. “What? You want to check out our room?”
“Not sure,” I chewed on my thumb. Hardin believed that book was here, and his own familiar sensed something in the library. But I hadn’t sensed anything there and I’d always sort of believed my sensing powers were good. I’d had to work my magic since I practiced it without a Familiar. So I was going to assume the book wasn’t in the library anymore. Someone moved it. He accused the librarian, but I’d known Cassandra all my life. I trusted her.
So who moved it? Was it possible this Cerysera person was here, in Castle Falls? Was he the one killing off anyone who knew about the book? That didn’t make sense though, because that would put Cassandra, me, David, and Mama D in the line of sight. Not to mention Melody.
Melody. I needed to run to her shop and find out why she was off finding herself. The idea she took off because of a client’s Tarot reading was still bugging me. Melody might not be the most together of the four of us, but she was the most consistent.
The most together of us was my brother, Kevin.
“Hey…you haven’t given me a yes or no,” Max said.
I held out my finger and dialed Kevin’s number. I didn’t expect him to pick up, so when he did, I was at a loss for words.
“Hello?” he said again.
Kevin was the firstborn, and from the moment he was conceived, mom knew he wasn’t a Witch. But that didn’t change how much she loved him. He was just like our dad. Practical, sweet, caring, and very considerate. He designed beautiful buildings from the east coast to the west, and every Kevin Blackstone design was built with special needs in mind.
All of them.
“Hi, Kevin.”
“Hey, Ginger! What’s up? You caught me between meetings.”
Kevin lived with his wife in Atlanta. And as I mentioned before, she was a Witch. “Yeah look, have you talked to Melody?”
“No. Not since Mama Donahue said she’d taken off for a spiritual seminar or something.”
I looked at Max who now turned to grooming himself. “Doesn’t that sound weird?”
“We’re talking about Melody, right? Dresses like Stevie Nicks. Keeps her hair like Stevie Nicks. Only listens to Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac music? Decided to let her house go so she could live in a closet in her store?”
Yeah. That’s my sister.
“If she’s off on a seminar, then that’s what she’s doing. Have you talked to Carmine?”
Carmine Kyle was Melody’s partner at the antique store. Come to think of it, Mama D hadn’t even mentioned Carmine. Carmine was the one who always came to clean Mama D’s house, but the house I’d come home to had been a mess. “No. Maybe I should go see them.”
“Yeah. I can ask Evie to do one of her mojo things and find Melody.” Evie was an adept at finding people. The local law in Atlanta sometimes used her when they were out of clues for missing persons.
“Oh would you? I’ll love you to pieces. Just have her call me when she knows something. Okay, I should let you go.”
“Wait, are you in Castle Falls?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened in California?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Ciao!” I disconnected and looked out the window. The parking lot was nearly empty now, the morning rush over. “Let’s go have a talk with Mavis, and then we head out to Castle Lake Bed & Breakfast, hm?” I opened the door and the cool morning breeze blew my hair around.
Max jumped out beside me and followed closely as we walked to the door. “You’re not going to give me an answer, are you?”
“I need to know what happened to your Witch, Max. Because I don’t want the same thing happening to me.”
Mavis was in the back of the bakery when Max and I entered the store. No one complained about the black cat that followed me in. In fact, I was starting to wonder if anyone even saw Max. Three customers remained in front of the counter. The chairs and tables were still in disarray from the morning rush, littered with half-full coffee cups, napkins, plates and forks.
One of the customers turned and smiled at me. “Well hello, Miss Blackstone.”
“Hi Tad,” and we shook hands. I spotted the box in his hand. “Buying something for the library?”
He shook his head. “This is for Miss Walker and her father. It’s his birthday in two days and I wanted to have something ready for them. He doesn’t get many visitors…except for me sometimes. He’s been nice to me so I wanted him to at least have something good to eat.”
Tad looked so forlorn and I wondered if he was thinking of his own family, now gone. “Ooh. What kind of cake?”
“It’s a carrot cake,” He frowned. “I know. Not many people like carrot cake.”
“My sister and brother do,” But I made a face. Carrots are a vegetable and not intended to enter the creamy, delectable world of cake. “If you see Cass, will you tell her ‘hi’ for me?”
“I sure will. She’ll enjoy that,” he nodded to me and then it looked like he did a double-take at Max, sitting on the counter before he left the shop. Did he see the cat?
I asked to see Mavis and the look the two employees gave each other alarmed me. “Is she okay?”
“Well,” the young woman said with a wince. “She had a rough morning. Got some bad news.”
I glanced at the cork board. “Was it about Charles Willmington?”
Both of them nodded but the young man left the counter and stepped through the door to the back. Mavis came through that same door a few minutes later. One look at her face and I realized my hunch about she and Willmington was right.
“Oh, it’s you,” Mavis muttered as she came around the counter and stood in front of me. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her face blotchy. Mavis had been making the ugly cry. And for good reason.
She and Charles Willmington were romantically involved.
Had been…romantically involved.
I felt compelled to hug her. So I did. She didn’t return the hug at first, just stood there with her arms down at her sides. But eventually she put her arms around me and not long after that, started to cry. She clung to me as she balled and I stood there as the employees finished with the customers, and the customers, feeling a bit awkward, left the bakery in a hurry.
“I’m sorry, Mavis.”
“I figured…y-you would know we w-were lovers,” she said
in a soft voice. She needed to catch her breath, so I took her to one of the tables and helped her sit down. I sat in a chair facing her and Max jumped up on the table. She didn’t even look at him. I grabbed a few napkins out of the dispenser and handed them to her. “You two been seeing each other long?”
She wiped her face and blew her nose. “About six months. We met at his store. I-I was looking for a book.”
I nodded.
“He had it in the back and he knew immediately I was a witch.” She looked at me. “Ginger he knew what I was and cared about me anyway.”
“Geez, Mavis, you make it sound like Witches can’t be loved. Of course he could care about you.”
She smiled through the red blotches. “I see Mama’s not been telling you about me.”
“No. But then she and I haven’t really kept up. So did you want to tell me before Mama D does?” I leaned in. “Did you do something?” It did occur to me, for a split second, that maybe Mavis might have done something that would put her name in that book. But I dismissed it right away.
“No. I would never. It’s just…” She sniffed. “I have a group. Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t.” Group was code for a mini-Coven. A group of Witches. Most of the time Coven brings up images of black robed people in a circle around a fire with lots of smoke and incantations. Honestly, that was so far from the truth. Covens these days were mostly reading groups, knitting groups, baking groups, etc. Any gathering of like-minded people who happened to be witches.
“We talk about baking, mostly. And some of the others have talents like candle-making. Your sister comes by sometimes and teaches Tarot. Gives readings too.”
I wasn’t sure why she was bringing this up. “Did something happen in your group?”
She hesitated. “No. But Melody gave me a protection spell. Said I might need it for someone soon.” She sniffed again. “And then last night when Charles said he was gonna meet with you and the doctor, I got a really bad feeling, in here,” She pressed her hand to her chest. “He came back safely and we watched a movie and spent some time together. Then about two o’clock or so he got a phone call and took it into the bathroom. Whoever it was had to meet him about something very important.” Her face screwed up as she sobbed. “He never came back. And it’s my fault.”
My internal thinking was so busy trying to put a timeline together with Charles’ message and Mavis’ new info that I nearly missed that last part. “Wait…how is any of this your fault?”
“I-I did the protection spell, but I did it too late,” Mavis’ wiped her nose. “He was already gone.”
“If she put a protection spell on him, what did she use?” Max said. I looked at him and he continued. “Protections have to have a focus or foci. She had to have had something physical of his.”
Right! “Mavis, what did you use for his focus?”
She got up, went to the back of the bakery. I faced Max. “Can she not see you?”
“Not yet. No one but you, the vampire, Mama D and a few others can see me for now. Once you accept me, everyone can see me.”
I see.
Mavis came back and to my surprise, had a briefcase in her hand. She set it on the table. “This is Charles’ case. He left it with me when he went back out to meet this person.”
I stared at the briefcase. “Did you open it?”
“I don’t have the key. I don’t want to open it. I just…can you take it? Right now it’s a reminder I failed.” Her shoulders shook and she put her hands over her face. “I couldn’t save him.”
I continued consoling Mavis until two of her employees stepped into the front of the bakery and coaxed her up.
“We’ll take care of her,” the young man said.
“Are you two part of her group?”
“Yes,” the girl said as the man helped Mavis to the back. “I’m sorry. I mean, some of us didn’t like Charles. He was loud and sloppy and he annoyed the hell out of me. But he made Mavis happy. And since she’s such a good teacher, we all put up with him.”
“Teacher?”
“She teaches us stuff, just like Melody Blackstone does. You know, like magic and the world.” She held up her hand. “Don’t worry. Nothing bad. Mavis believes in the Three Fold Law.”
Witches are taught that law from birth. It was simple, but it was hard to follow. It states that whatever you put out into the world, you will reap back three fold. So if you put out negativity, you’ll get back negativity. If you put out love and light and all that, you’ll get that back. The three-fold part has been debated a lot. No one knows for sure if it means what comes back is three times as bad, or as good.
Or, did it mean it would back to you on the three planes of existence? Physical, mental, and spiritual.
I didn’t really think about it that much.
“I’m sure you’ve got a good group.”
“We do. But every barrel always has one bad apple.” The girl looked around. “Well, I need to get ready for the lunch crowd.” She smiled and ducked behind the door the young man and Mavis had disappeared through.
I stared at the briefcase.
“What?” Max said.
“That last thing she just said. That every barrel has a bad apple. Somebody in Mavis’ group wasn’t exactly a nice person.” I looked at the empty counter. I doubted I’d be able to get that young lady back out to explain herself.
I stood and took the briefcase with me and left Magpies & Muffins. “I think an old-fashioned lock picking kit will work. Melody has one, which is another reason we should go to her place.” I unlocked my trunk and put the briefcase inside and slammed it shut.
Once back in the car Max said, “You wanna go there first or the lake?”
“Oh, that’s right.” I put the car in reverse. “I say we go to the lake before the Sheriff or anyone else learns about the bed-and-breakfast.”
Max settled into the passenger seat. “Just don’t forget the groceries. I want spaghetti. No more tuna. If I have to eat another can of that crap I’m throwing it up in your bed.”
TEN
David stepped back from the body and yanked the latex gloves from his hands. He tossed them into the bin by the autopsy table and motioned for Dr. Helena to hand him his phone. He checked his messages. Nothing. It was afternoon now and he had no idea what Ginger was up to.
Dr. Maggie Helena removed her own gloves and covered the body of Charles Willmington. “I’ll write this up and forward you a copy.”
“Thanks,” David smiled at her, though he didn’t feel any joy. Charles’ corpse showed nothing new. The man had some serious health issues due to his weight and habits that he probably didn’t know about. But those weren’t the cause of death.
Again, this man stopped breathing, same as Manchester. But he couldn’t find any clear reason why. Nothing medically wrong. But his vampire intuition screamed at him that Willmington’s, and Manchester’s deaths, were wrong. Very wrong. But he was stumped as to how to find out why.
“You ever come across cases like these?” Dr. Helena asked.
“No. But I rarely deal with the back end,” he smiled at Dr. Helena. “I do know that people don’t stop breathing for no reason. There has to be something.”
“There is probably an explanation, but given Castle Falls’ proclivity for the weird,” She held her phone she’d been recording notes on and shrugged. “I think the causes might be out of my purview.”
“And more into mine?” David ran his tongue over his teeth. Dr. Helena was what he called a Weird-Sensitive. She knew the weird was there. Accepted it was there. Knew it was standing in front of her, wearing a white doctor’s coat.
He’d also become aware of Dr. Helena’s crush on the good Sheriff of Castle Falls because she complained about Mavis Mulroney’s crush on the Sheriff. It seemed someone had a crush on someone in this town—and he was no exception. He hadn’t stopped thinking about Ginger since he arrived at the hospital minutes after Willmington’s body arrived. Evidence was
his constant need to check his phone.
“Maybe,” She gave him a small laugh. “Why don’t you go call whoever it is you’ve been silently stalking on your phone this whole time?”
“I don’t stalk.” David paused. Well, he hadn’t stalked in a very long time.
“Go call her, David. I’ll get this done.” She waved her phone at him, grabbed the folder for Willmington, and left the room.
David looked at the two bodies, then looked at his schedule on his phone. It synced to the one his secretary, Ty Gervase, kept and pinged when it was updated. He had two appointments back to back in a half hour. Yesterday’s empty day had been a fluke, though Mr. Gervase had manned the office while he was out with Ginger. He called Ginger and it went straight to voicemail.
“Hi, it’s Ginger! Leave a message!”
David hesitated after the beep, then said, “It’s David. Just checking in on you. Finished the autopsy. Same as Manchester…so…I’ve got two appointments this afternoon. Call me when you can. I don’t have a list of what Willmington had on him.” He winced at the sound of his voice and disconnected. I sound like an idiot. But how long had it been since he’d been this interested in someone? Ten years? Fifty? David had always been cautious because of what he was. Trusting wasn’t something that came naturally to him.
But Ginger Blackstone…made it seem so normal to him. He felt he could be himself regardless of what he was.
There seemed to be a change in the air as well. He’d seen magic in the Donahue home. He sensed it around Mama D, and he was sensing it now around Ginger where he hadn’t when they met. Was that just yesterday? The past twenty-four hours felt like a lifetime to him.
Was Ginger’s magic getting stronger?
Was it that cat?
Thoughts of Max brought on the realization that the Hunters’ book could be in the town of Castle Falls. That was just unheard of. But if it was, how did the Hunters lose it?
Dr. Helena came to the door. “Oh sorry, you were deep in thought.”
The Book Of Ill Deeds: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery (Witches Of Castle Falls 1) Page 8
