To Charm a Killer (Hollystone Mysteries Book 1)

by Wendy Louise Hawkin

  Maggie sucked the blood from her finger; then stood and took her father’s moist hand in her own thin wounded one.

  “Sit down while I sweep this up, Dad.” Leading him to his recliner, she eased him into the worn cushions.

  “It’s so beautiful,” he said, staring at the flames.

  “Yes, it’s beautiful.”

  She would never be free. How could she leave him to go to Europe for two weeks anyway? How could she ever leave him alone with her?

  ≈

  Estrada rolled his eyes as he and Sensara entered the clearing. “Oh, here we go.” After silencing him with a backhand to the gut, she stepped in front.

  Jeremy Jones was hunkered down with his back to one of the thick grey hemlocks; a garish, and undoubtedly original, silver sequined dragon bag lodged in his lap. He’d etched a circle around himself in the dirt with the jewelled athame he clutched in his left hand, and was smoking a cigarette with enough intensity to power a train.

  “Finally,” he said. Relief trickled off him in dull ripples. “Did you see that sign back there? Bears and cougars live in these woods. It’s dated September 20. That’s yesterday. I could have been killed.”

  “Did you sing?” taunted Estrada.

  “Sing?”

  “Yeah, you’re supposed to sing or shake bells to frighten the scary forest creatures.” He relished playing with Jones, found it energizing, like a wolf on a rat.

  “Funny, Houdini. You weren’t sitting here alone listening to branches crack. And these bloody crows! They’re the size of flamingos.” The birds croaked and garbled overhead, enticed by his metallic haze. He was lucky they hadn’t carried him off.

  “They’re ravens,” Sensara said, ignoring the nasty reprisal Jones shot her way. “The indigenous people of this coast revere them.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen the art. But did you know that cultures revere that which they most fear? Like the volcano gods?” Sensara rolled her eyes and bit her lip. She was a woman who picked her battles. Hearing no reply, he crushed his cigarette out in the dirt and stood up. “Whatever they are, they’re ugly and annoying. I wish they would just go away.”

  She cast a silencing glance at Estrada; was in no mood for shenanigans. “Pick up that butt,” she said. Sensara hated cigarettes. Especially hated that two members of her coven smoked.

  Although she was trying to keep the peace, Estrada knew that she had her own issues with Jeremy Jones. They hadn’t known him long and he’d just come off, what she termed, Wicca probation. He recalled how they had discussed Jones at length one evening over a bottle of Shiraz.

  Sensara believed that Jeremy was a catalyst who provoked contrasting situations to trigger others into personal realizations. However painful or irritating that seemed, people like him were necessary to stimulate growth and change. According to her, the world needed people like Jeremy. She admitted that her own issues of trust and tolerance escalated in his presence, but that was because she had work to do. Estrada had listened intently as Sensara revealed personal information that rarely made it past her protective shield, learning more about her that night than in five years of friendship.

  Estrada believed the world needed Shiraz more than people like Jones.

  If it was up to him, the man would be gone. But it wasn’t. Hollystone Coven was Sensara’s creation, so she made the rules. It was a microcosm of the world, in that no one who belonged was like anyone else. The small Wiccan group was strong in its diversity. People brought unique passions and skills; as well as, idiosyncrasies, irritation, and conflict.

  When she finally wound down that night, Estrada confessed: “I know it will stunt my spiritual growth, but I want to smack him just once.” She laughed and shook her head. She thought he was joking, but he meant it. It was his respect for her that stopped him. That, and his admiration for the self-made entrepreneur. He knew what it was like to create something from nothing, and Jones was an exceptional designer. Specializing in medieval clothing and ritual tools, he’d made a fortune through Regalia, his online shop, designing costumes and paraphernalia for film and theatre companies around the world. He’d even created two of the costumes Estrada wore when he performed his magic act at Club Pegasus. Jones frequented the club and liked to point that out to people.

  Estrada broke the awkward silence. “You do recall that we are a coven of nature-revering witches intent on saving the planet in its entirety? Not just the cute and cuddly creatures.” He produced an apple from his pocket, in the conventional way, and took a bite. “That’s why we choose these remote natural locales for our ceremonies.”

  Jeremy rolled his eyes and mouthed the syllables, blah blah blah.

  Estrada continued, encouraged by the man’s irritation. “Our aim is to connect with the forest creatures in a positive way. Especially the elementals.”

  As they were all aware, Estrada dreamt of seeing faeries. He believed in their existence, had read a great deal about them, and tried several methods. One woman named Dora Van Gelder wrote of opening the pituitary gland to enable a different kind of seeing. Situated in the centre of the forehead, it was known in many cultures as the third eye. According to Van Gelder, this third eye could sense the subtle vibrations of faeries and enable humans to see them.

  It hadn’t worked. Nor had countless hallucinogens, or sleeping in the woods under the full moon, or doing both simultaneously—though perhaps that accounted for his passionate earthy connection. Regretfully, he was coming to terms with the fact that he might never see them.

  “Oh I know, Merlin. If the faeries appear, I’ll send them your way.”

  “Keep your faeries, Jones. I do fine on my own.”

  “So do I.” He lifted his robe and tucked the butt into the pocket of his jeans. “I did feel something watching me. And I’m not crazy…just a city kid that feels, you know, vulnerable, way out here.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Sensara said, as another shiver spun through her body. Most of them were city kids and wild places like Buntzen Lake were well out of their comfort zone.

  “Oh great. The priestess has confirmed my fears.”

  “Blesséd Mabon!” said Daphne. She stormed into the glade, followed by Dylan and Sylvia. All three were loaded down with supplies.

  “Blesséd Mabon,” they echoed.

  Dropping her backpack, Daphne crossed her arms over her chest to curb the jagged ginger waves that emanated from her upper body. “Have you heard? Another woman disappeared in Vancouver. Raine called just as we were leaving.”

  Estrada hoped to calm her down. “Women disappear all the time, for all kinds of reasons.”

  “This is the third this year,” said Sylvia. They’d obviously been discussing the news as they walked. “The first disappeared just before Yule last December. The second, just before Beltane at the end of April. Now, here’s the third, gone just before Mabon. It’s perplexing.” As she struck a match to light her cigarette, anxiety spread like silt over the glade.

  Sensara lit a bundle of dried sage. After smudging herself, she walked among the others, fanning and offering the aromatic herb, cleansing the negative energy and fighting fear with the comfort of familiarity.

  “I hope the police do a better job than they did with the Downtown Eastside women,” said Daphne. Her girlfriend, Raine, had loved a woman who disappeared and turned up later on the list. The mention of that horrific tragedy sickened them all. “It happened right over there.” She gestured east, toward the degraded pig farm where the DNA, and other horrific evidence of several missing women had been appropriated by forensic experts. Convicted on six counts of second degree murder, another twenty never made it to the courtroom and hovered in the air like vengeful ghosts. No one uttered his name. It was too fresh and too close, mere minutes away through the clouds.

  “Jesus,” said Jeremy. “Way to wreck the mood.”

  “That happened years ago, Daphne,” said Sensara. “Things have changed with all the publicity, the trial, and the missing women’s ta
sk force.”

  “Besides, those women were whores and drug addicts,” said Jeremy.

  Estrada clutched Sensara’s arm and snarled.

  “They were women,” declared Daphne.

  “Yes,” said Sylvia, “and these women are witches.”

  2: Peace, the Charm’s Wound Up

  MAGGIE STEPPED OFF THE PORCH just as Father Grace pulled up in his black SUV. Shiny and luxurious with tinted windows, it was the kind of vehicle police used to chase down thugs in the movies; and ironically, local gangsters drove in shootouts. She smiled and waved, then went to meet him.

  “Taking Remy for a hike?” Maggie’s black Labrador retriever circled the priest, wagging and grinning.

  “Yep. He needs exercise and I need a thesis. My Macbeth essay is due on Monday and I have to get an A.” She hoped to get back in her mother’s good graces. “Any ideas?”

  “Can’t help you there. Shakespeare’s tragedies are too dark for me.” He shrugged ingenuously. “All that blood and violence. It’s not good for the soul.”

  Shoving her slashed hands self-consciously in her jacket pockets, she nodded.

  Father Grace was the only priest under thirty Maggie had ever met and that alone made him special. Moreover, he played rugby, worked out at the gym, and took the teens on camping trips over the summer holidays. Since his arrival at St. Mary’s nine months ago, women of all ages were congregating at mass, desperate for a sip of his charm along with their communion wine.

  “I think Macbeth is cool. The play I mean, not the man.” She twisted escaped tendrils from her ponytail. The priest’s eyes were bright green—not mossy like her own—and matched the emerald cross he wore on a gold chain around his neck. “Why are you here now? Did she—?”

  “Yes. Your mother called and asked me to sit with John for a while.” Maggie was glad that Father Grace had taken on a caregiver role. Her dad seemed as charmed by the priest as the rest of the world.

  “Bastian had to leave early and I don’t think my dad got his afternoon meds.” She hung her head, still shamefully aware of her error. “He’s had them now, of course. Did she tell you what happened?” When she glanced up her breath caught in her throat.

  He leaned casually against the truck. Wearing a black button-down shirt and blue jeans, with his wavy hair shining like chestnuts, he looked like an actor. Except for the white collar. No, even with the white collar. Glancing at his lips, she noticed the shadow of a moustache and grinned nervously. It was too much to imagine kissing him when he stood only a step away.

  “She did.” He narrowed his eyes. “Was it really you who dropped the clock?”

  She shook her head. “You know how it is.”

  “No, but I’d like to. Maybe one of these days, we can go somewhere alone and talk. You can tell me how you feel about this…and other things.” His voice, suddenly low and breathy sent a shiver through her belly. “The full confession.”

  Was he flirting? He was a priest! Still. Priests were just men, weren’t they?

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “I look forward to it, Maggie. It’s important to have people in your life you can trust.” He sighed, as if there had been a time when he had not, and she felt a sudden urge to comfort him.

  “I trust you, Father.”

  “Good. Your friend Macbeth trusted the wrong people and ended up with his head on a stick.”

  Guilt. It was a complex thing, especially considering Maggie’s personal situation. If a man was not responsible for his actions, was he still guilty of the crime? People must be held accountable. Without accountability, the world would be in a constant state of anarchy; however, sometimes there were complications—temporary insanity, demonic possession—and what if a man was under a spell?

  As Maggie hiked the trail to Buntzen Lake, one line from Macbeth resounded in her mind. She uttered it aloud. “Peace, the charm’s wound up.”

  Remy loped to her side and she tossed him a treat.

  “Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, and thrice again, to make up nine.” Chanting, she danced to the right, and left, and back again. She savoured the freedom of her forest. “That’s how the witches wind up their spell,” she explained to the lab. “They do it just before they greet Macbeth.”

  Obviously, the witches cast a spell on him; and if a man was under a spell, how could he be considered sane? Maggie reflected on this as Remy bounded toward the off-leash dog beach. It was Friday evening, so only a few folks were still there playing with their dogs. She dumped her books on a picnic bench and tossed his ball into the water. Skidding back, he dropped it at her feet. She threw it again and wiped her slobbery hand on her jeans.

  Despite her parents, Maggie knew that she was fortunate to live in this place. Their home perched between two bodies of water close enough to walk between: Buntzen Lake and the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes the inlet was rank with decaying sea creatures and slick fetid muck that could suck down small children and gumboots; while other times, the water flowed deep, charged by the invisible force of the tides. Bordered by beaches, boardwalks, and parks, it attracted boaters and paddlers, along with salmon-chasing harbour seals and bald eagles.

  Shadowed by the Coast Mountains and groves of giant red cedars, their yard was shaded, yet brilliant with blossoming rhododendrons, planted by Shannon in one of her gardening frenzies years before. Anchored by the log house that John had built for them with his own hands, the Taylor family lived in tenuous tranquility at the end of Hawk’s Claw Lane. Their lives were so well constructed that Maggie had told only two people—who absolutely required an explanation at the time—that her father suffered from a severe head injury and required medication and constant monitoring to keep up the façade.

  She had told no one that she was the cause of that injury. Once uttered, that truth was irrevocable and could unleash forces over which she had no control—forces that could change her life forever.

  As she watched a float plane climb over the mountains, she thought again of escape. She was a fraud. Her life a fake, from which she was desperate to flee. Yet, she could not. Such was her penance. Like Macbeth, Maggie was trapped in guilt, sunk in so far, she could go neither back, nor forward. Perhaps erasing Macbeth’s guilt could lessen her own.

  She decided that Macbeth was not guilty of his murderous actions because he was under the witches’ spell. It was their fault; not his, and that meant the theme had something to do with the evil power of witchcraft.

  Scanning the footnotes, she searched for evidence. Shakespeare wrote the play in 1603, for King James VI of Scotland, who had recently been crowned King James I of England. The King had been victimized by a coven of witches in 1590. The North Berwick Coven was charged with having raised a tempest to destroy the fleet that escorted him back to Scotland with Queen Anne, his young Danish bride. The source said that over two hundred witches gathered in an old haunted church at Anchor Green on All Hallows Eve to consult the devil. Whether it was true or not, that was the story revealed under torture. The women named names, were tried, and swiftly executed.

  Imagine belonging to a coven that would attempt such a thing. What power. What audacity.

  Apparently, King James attended witch trials and wrote a text entitled Daemonologie, in which he argued that a witch should be severely punished for being in league with Satan. Witches obviously scared the hell out of him.

  She wondered if Father Grace knew any of this. He was a priest, and hadn’t the Catholic Church administered the witch craze—trials, torture, burnings, and all? Of course, that was four hundred years ago, in a very different time. Still.

  Shakespeare wrote Macbeth for his patron, King James, to illustrate the political ramifications of witchcraft. To charm a king was reprehensible, but to kill a king was treason—punishable by nothing less than a gruesome death.

  According to the footnotes, the Weird Sisters, like the Three Fates in Classical Mythology, had the power to affect human destiny. As diviners, they could foretell the future, com
mand nature and conjure storms, just as the North Berwick coven had allegedly done to King James. They could shapeshift, and did, appearing and disappearing in view of both Macbeth and Banquo. Possessing a supernatural power that no human could resist, the Weird Sisters transformed a brave soldier into a ruthless killer. Obviously, the play affirmed and justified the king’s support of the witch burnings.

  Sighing, she closed the book. Everyone was gone from the beach and Remy was digging a massive hole in the sand. Looking skyward, she realized just how much time had passed. Icy leaden clouds caught in the cracks of mountain peaks, drew the darkness inward, and pierced to the bone. She slipped off the picnic bench and was just zipping up her jacket when she heard the music.

  Remy stopped digging and sprung from the hole. Hackles rigid, he pivoted to face the forested mountain at their backs. Bagpipes? Scottish bagpipes? The music of Macbeth? Here? In the forest above Buntzen Lake?

  A shiver struck Maggie as her dog bolted. In his haste, he leapt off a stump, cleared the chain link fence, and disappeared through the trees.

  Chasing after him, she hit the top bar with both hands, vaulted over the fence and raced into the forest. “Remy!”

  ≈

  Estrada smiled as he watched Dylan drop a gourd, dust it off and hand it to Sylvia, who placed it on the altar. It was his first Mabon ceremony and he was nervous, his innocence enviable.

  Perhaps because he couldn’t ever remember feeling innocent himself, Estrada was drawn to the shy kid with the Trainspotting accent. Over the summer, they’d gone hiking and shared stories. Both he and Dylan had been fatherless boys, whose crossing of miles and cultures had led to discoveries about the complexity of the world and themselves.

  Dylan was obsessed with stone lore. His grandfather introduced him to megaliths in Scotland when he was ten and sent there by his sluttish mother (his adjective). He carried their photographs in his wallet like they were his family: magnificent stones carved with cup and ring marks; some set in circles five thousand years ago, the work of prehistoric artisans. Dylan’s grandfather lived near a place called Kilmartin Glen—a cemetery rife with the spirits of ancient clansmen and their kin. It was there that medieval grave slabs and burial cists first spoke to him. Estrada asked him what they said. It’s hard to explain. Sometimes it’s just feelings and images. Other times I hear voices. Estrada had heard of stone mages and believed he had much to learn from the boy who devoted his life to communing with stones.