What she asked appeared to sink in, and Jayne did a slow three sixty. “Okay.” She drew the single word out. “It’s a little quiet.”
“Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
“I’ve got to say it does.”
She’d seen this before and it rarely ended well. It was a wave of fear and panic that picked up speed and volume as it went along. It was residents barricading behind locked doors and armed with the most powerful weapons they had access to. “People are afraid.”
“No shit.” Jayne flinched. “Sorry. I don’t blame them for being scared. This kind of thing doesn’t happen around here. People don’t go missing and they don’t end up slaughtered. It’s not that we’re immune from murder. It’s more that in those instances when it happens, the circumstances are usually pretty textbook. Passion or drugs and not very original. They tend to be relatively easy to solve. This is unusual and frightening. I can see people around here reacting by holing up with their arsenal.”
That much was true too. She’d witnessed the same reaction in community after community. What she’d also seen happen was the erosion of faith in local law enforcement. She worried that reaction wasn’t far behind the seclusion that was clearing the streets.
“We need to talk about what follows this type of behavior.” Jayne wouldn’t have the experience she did when it came to this scenario.
“Way ahead of you.” Maybe not the experience Lily possessed but the smarts to see it through. Impressive.
Lily tilted her head and studied Jayne. “You’re no dummy, are you?”
“I think that’s a compliment but sort of hard to tell.”
“It’s a compliment.” She gave her a tiny nod. “Now we need to cut off the hard cores before they rally the rest of the town.”
As if their conversation had been monitored, Jayne’s assistant, Ralph, came toward them walking at a hurried clip. “Sheriff, I just got a text from my wife. Jeni is arranging a community meeting at the church at five. Thought you’d want to know.”
“I appreciate the heads-up. Thanks, Ralph.”
“You bet.” He turned around and jogged back into the building.
“Well, that’s not good news,” Jayne said as she slid a pair of sunglasses onto her face. “The last thing we need is the villagers storming the countryside.”
Lily put her hand on the passenger’s side door and pulled it open. Over the top of the car she looked at Jayne. “We’re running out of time.”
*
When they retraced their path to the spot where the first victim had been discovered, Kyle was pretty impressed with himself. It had been late, they’d been on the road all day, and emotions had been running high when they’d been here before. Remembering the path they took was pretty much a miracle.
In the late-afternoon light it was beautiful and peaceful. Sad to think someone’s body had been tossed away in such a wonderful place. Nobody should be treated like that, and to do it here was insulting to both the person and the place. Silently he made a promise to find who did this and stop them.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked Ava. She had a plan she hadn’t shared with him quite yet. He’d followed her out here based on pure faith.
She took a deep breath and looked around as if making sure they were alone. When she blew out the breath, her face was a touch pale. Whatever she had on her mind, it was weighing heavy. “I’ve never done this spell before. It’s difficult and not usually successful.”
That explained a lot but wasn’t exactly reassuring. “You think it will be this time?”
She nodded. “I do.”
“Why?”
“Because of you.”
He didn’t want to burst her bubble of enthusiasm and knew he had to. “I don’t do magic.” Apparently she had some misinformation when it came to his skill set.
She put her hands on either side of his face. “You do magic every day. It’s different from mine, but it’s magic just the same. The two of us together can open the veil and reach through.”
“The veil?” Now he was really lost. He wasn’t sure where she was going with this.
“You pass through each time you reach out to the departed. It is the veil that separates the living from the dead. I’m unable to do that, but with my magic and yours combined I’m certain we’ll be able to learn more. Perhaps enough to stop this madness.”
In a flash the possibilities opened up to him. If they were able, as she said, to combine their strengths, maybe they could communicate at an even deeper level. It could very well be the thing they needed to bring this all to an end before anyone else was harmed. She was a smart and talented woman.
“Let’s do this. Tell me what you need from me.”
She handed him her bag. “Right now I want you to just sit there.”
Okay, not exactly rocket science, but if that’s what she needed from him, that’s what he’d do. He sat cross-legged on the cold ground on the spot she pointed him to. Next to him she piled up a fair amount of pine needles before pulling the bottle of salt water that he’d watched her prepare back at the house out of the bag he held in his lap. She used it to sprinkle a circle around the two of them. Coming back to the pine needles, she laid them on top of the saltwater circle.
“Hand me the red candles, please.” He dug around until he found two and handed them up to her. She placed one in the north and one in the south. “Now the white.” Those were placed in the east and the west. When all four candles were lit, she sat on the ground across from him.
She completed the setup by taking a bowl from the bag and placing it on the ground between them. Into it she poured wine, milk, and honey. The surprise came when she pulled out a small knife and pricked her finger. Three drops of blood went into the bowl.
“I need your hand, Kyle.” Hell, no was his first thought, and then he decided he had nothing to lose. If she was tough enough to draw blood for this, so was he.
“Be gentle,” he said with a tiny smile.
She was. He hardly felt the prick that drew the blood that dropped into the bowl to join hers. Three drops. No more. No less. “We’re ready,” she told him and held out both hands to him.
He took her hands and listened as she softly began to speak. “We come on this night and ask that the veil between the worlds turn to mist. We join in spirit with the one who has gone before, as it was in the time of the beginning, so it is now, so shall it be.”
The wind whipped up, whirling around them and making the trees sway. Surprisingly, the pine needles that made up the circle around them didn’t move at all. Mist began to swirl, cloaking them in a translucent white fog. He found himself gripping Ava’s hands even tighter. Pressure pushed against his chest as though it was trying to force the air from his lungs. Whatever this magic was, it was pretty mighty.
“Why am I here?”
The sound of the man’s voice shocked Kyle so much he almost bolted out of the circle. He couldn’t, though, because Ava still sat across from him, her eyes closed, and her hands holding his in an iron grip. He had no intention of letting go, and as tight as she was holding on, he wasn’t so sure he could anyway.
“Clinton?” Didn’t the sheriff tell them this guy had been cremated? If so, something was messed up because he was standing just inside the circle very much a man.
“Who are you?” He blinked as if something stung his eyes.
“My name is Kyle Miller.”
“I don’t know you.”
“I’m here to help, Clinton.”
Tears filled the man’s eyes. “You can’t help me. She tore me apart. I remember how it felt to die.”
He wanted to tell him it was okay, except it wasn’t, and regardless of the dimension he was in, his choice was to not lie. “I’m sorry, and I would change it for you if I could.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I need you.”
“How?”
“You can help by telling me something that could possibly save someon
e else. Can you do that? Can you try?”
Clinton brought both hands up and rubbed at his eyes. “I can try. What do you need from me?”
“We can start by you telling me what happened that day.”
He closed his eyes and shuddered. Then he opened his eyes and his gaze met Kyle’s. “That’s the weird part. Nothing unusual happened. I’d decided to go out for a trail run, and I stopped at the grocery store for a sports drink first. I ran into Dana Landen and talked to her for a minute. No big deal, nothing strange until I was getting into my car, and then I noticed a woman I’d never seen before. Still didn’t think much of it. Figured she was new to town, and so I waved at her, said hello when she walked by my car. She just nodded.”
A stranger, just as they suspected. “Can you tell me more about the woman you said hello to?”
“Nothing much to tell. I only saw her for a minute. Not real tall and okay looking. I did notice one thing. She had a real nice necklace on. It was a ruby, I think. Pretty cool looking.”
“Her face?”
“Like I said, she was okay. Wasn’t a looker, if you know what I mean, or I’d have paid a whole lot more attention. I just said hey and went on my way.”
“Tell me about the attack when you were out running.”
Clouds passed over his face that was already very white. “I didn’t see or hear anything. Whatever it was just hit me like a hurricane in the middle of the back. I went flying, face-first, into the dirt, and then the pain hit. More than taking a face plant into rocky ground. This was pain brought on by teeth that went into my neck. It was like my body was on fire. I’ve never felt anything like it before.” Once more tears filled his eyes. “Everything went wrong and I knew I was dying. I was going to get married, you know.”
Kyle could feel Clinton’s pain as if it were his own. He couldn’t imagine losing Ava, and they weren’t engaged. “I’m really sorry, Clinton, I really am. I will do my best to get whoever did this to you. I give you my word.”
Clinton tilted his head and appeared to be looking around him. “Hey,” he said, and a note of hope crept into his voice. “Is that my grandma?”
Kyle didn’t need to turn around. “It is, Clinton. She’s been waiting for you so why don’t you go on and join her.”
And with that, Clinton Bearns was gone.
Chapter Twenty-one
Darkness was falling by the time they got back to Jayne’s house. The windows were dark, and she wondered where Ava and Kyle had gotten off to. Lily didn’t know either, and that seemed to bother her. Did her pretend girlfriend have control issues?
“Can I get you something to drink?”
Lily shook her head and stood on the porch staring out toward the road. “Where did they go?”
“They didn’t leave you a message?” What she’d seen since they’d been here was that Kyle and Ava didn’t make a move without Lily knowing about it. Approving it, actually. Tiny as she was, Lily was the clear leader. Seemed odd to her now that Kyle and Ava would take off without letting her know what, why, and where.
“My phone never…oh, crap,” she muttered as she dug the phone out of her pocket. “I turned the ringer off when we were out at the murder scene this morning and never turned it back on. Damn. Three missed calls and a voice mail.” She put the phone to her ear and nodded as she listened to the voice mail.
“Well?” Jayne was pretty confident, from the look on Lily’s face, that the message had been from either Kyle or Ava.
Lily kept watching the road in the distance. “Ava wanted to try a spell out where Clinton’s body was dumped. She thought if she and Kyle combined their energy they might be able to bring him back so Kyle could talk with him.”
That didn’t make sense. If she was understanding this necromancy thing right, Kyle needed a body. “He was cremated.”
This time Lily turned her head to look at her. “It’s magic, Jayne. Many things are possible.”
“I don’t think that’s possible. First, you ask me to believe a guy can talk with a dead body, and now you want me to buy that he can talk with their spirit, no body required.” She could only stretch belief so far.
“Normally I would agree with you, because in my experience, necromancers need a body to actually talk to the dead. That said, what Kyle might be able to accomplish with Ava at his side remains to be seen. He’s one of a kind and can do things I’ve never seen another necromancer accomplish.”
“It’s a pretty big stretch.”
“We’ll know soon enough because here they come.”
Kyle’s car was just turning off the county road and onto Jayne’s long driveway. Lily hurried down the steps to meet them when the car came to a stop. Before they even got out she asked, “Any luck?”
Kyle put an arm around Ava. “Yes and no. Our witch here has some mad skills, let me tell you. She brought him back and we had quite the conversation. I’m shocked she was able to do it without a body.”
So was she, although the details weren’t the important thing at the moment. The fact they were able to do it all was amazing and, hopefully, helpful. “Anything we can use?”
This time a cloud crossed over his expression. “Not a lot. It was a pretty routine conversation as far as it goes with necromancy. All he could tell me was that he went to the grocery store, talked to Deputy Sheriff Landen for a minute, and said hello to a stranger. The stranger part was the only thing that felt like it had potential, except he didn’t pay much attention to her so couldn’t give me much. According to Clinton, she was just a regular-looking woman who happened to be wearing a pretty ruby necklace. It was the only thing that caught his attention about her.”
“Damn,” Lily muttered as she fingered her own necklace. “I was hoping for more. What did he say about the attack? You did ask him about that, right?”
Kyle looked offended. “Of course I did. I’m not that dense, and this isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this.”
“I’m sorry, Kyle. I didn’t mean it like that.”
He inclined his head slightly and his expression cleared. “Thanks. He didn’t have much about the attack because he said he was hit from behind and fangs sank into his neck. Sounded to me like that wound was quick and fatal. He never saw the wolf or anyone else when he was out in the woods. Sounds like he bled out pretty quick. All he’d wanted to do was go for a trail run.”
“At least that’s a little more than we had before. He ran into a woman he’d never seen around town, and we can ask around about her.” Jayne was already reaching for her cell phone. She was going to put the word out ASAP and find out who the woman was. In a place this size, she’d have an answer inside of an hour.
The four of them walked into the house, and Lily turned to Jayne. “You’ve probably already figured this one out, but one good way to stay under the radar is to not stand out. Clinton didn’t pay much attention to the woman because nothing about her was spectacular. She was a regular person doing a regular chore. Who would suspect danger in the body of a suburban soccer mom?”
Jayne nodded. More and more the two of them seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “That’s why I’m putting out the word. Trust me, Lily, there are people here who keep track of everything and everyone. They see it as their busybody duty to monitor the activities and the residents of their town. They know every car, every face, everything. Somebody is sure to know who this woman is and where she’s staying.”
“Unless,” Kyle interjected, “she just happened to be passing through and all she did was stop at the grocery store for snacks.”
Kyle was right. There was that possibility. Someone on their way to Canada could very easily have passed through town and made a quick stop. The tiny lead they were jumping on might turn out to be nothing. It was, however, all they had at the moment.
Lily started up toward the stairs and her room. “I need some time,” she said as she ascended without looking back.
Jayne followed, taking the stairs two at a time. “Are
you all right?” Something seemed off all of a sudden, and she wasn’t sure what caused the shift.
At the door to her bedroom, Lily turned. “I’ll be fine. I need to prepare myself.”
“What do you need? How can I help?” She felt like she should be doing something.
“Nothing.” She turned to close the door and paused. “No, wait, I could use a bite to eat. Protein, if you’ve got it.”
“I do. Give me fifteen minutes.” She hurried downstairs and threw a steak on the grill. Going with a hunch she went for rare. A couple of slices of garlic toast and a glass of wine. She was back at Lily’s door in the allotted fifteen minutes.
Lily opened the door when she knocked, and Jayne managed to catch the gasp before it passed her lips. Lily was dressed only in a flowing purple robe belted at the waist. Her dark hair tumbled down around her shoulders, and her dark eyes were intense. In short, she was breathtaking.
“This is wonderful.” Lily took the plate from Jayne. She didn’t take the wine.
Jayne stood and, in her opinion, dumbly watched as Lily made short work of the steak and toast. Finally she found her voice. “Do you want the wine?”
Shaking her head, Lily wiped her mouth with the napkin Jayne had placed on the tray. “It’s not that I dislike wine. On the contrary, I appreciate a good one. It’s just that I’ve found alcohol slows me down.”
That made sense when she thought about it. Setting the glass of wine on the dresser, Jayne moved farther into the room. It was interesting being here with Lily barely dressed. Intimate. She liked it.
“What else can I do for you?” Helplessness wasn’t a welcome emotion. She was accustomed to being in charge and knowing what to do in any situation. Of course, in the academy there were no classes on how to deal with preternatural hunters who changed into werewolves. No, not a single class. She was going to have to wing this one.
The clatter of silverware on the plate brought her head up. Her eyes met Lily’s. “It’s time,” Lily said quietly. She set the tray on the bed and stood.
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