The Witching on the Wall: A Cozy Mystery (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 1)

by Constance Barker

  When she got outside the Caves and looked up at the sky, she realized that it wasn’t merely getting late in the evening—the clear blue sky from the afternoon had clouded over with a surprise bank of thick, roiling clouds that looked darkly gray with the promise of a surprise deluge. The weather on the coast was finicky like that but… she’d recalled that the next week was due to be pretty clear. And come to think of it, she hadn’t noticed the clouds rolling in from the ocean. Normally you could see them miles off, unobstructed by the flat, featureless Pacific.

  The wind picked up quickly as Bailey began the trek back up to town, and when it bit at her face she turned a little to keep it from her eyes, her hand held up as her hair whipped around her head.

  That’s when she saw someone, out next to the great oak that had managed, somehow, to stay firmly attached to the earth above the steep, short cliffs down to the beach, an ancient sentinel to watch over the Seven Caves that wound through the rocky coastlines’ interior. She squinted. Was that Frances? What was Frances doing out here in this weather?

  She was doing something… odd. She had her arms up, and then she swayed them in the air one way, and then the other, and then dropped them. Then, like a conductor calling the orchestra to raise their instruments and play, she lifted her hands again. At that precise moment, coincidentally, the wind gusted again, and howled through the cliffs and whistled though the Seven Caves like a ghostly chorus.

  That sound… Bailey knew it well. You could hear it throughout Coven Grove when it stormed, and she’d often opened her window at home and leaned out to listen to it. Then, as now, it sounded like a call to her, personally. That was silly, she knew, as she had since she’d begun the process of growing up and letting go of her childish notions. But now, more than ever, she felt it call to her, deep down in some place she almost felt like she recognized. A place she had forgotten about when she grew up.

  As she watched, Frances threw something over the cliffs, and Bailey’s heart leapt. The murder weapon, perhaps? It was the first thought that sprang to mind, but instantly vanished as she saw that it seemed to be handfuls of something light enough to rise up on the wind and fly off into the sky over the ocean.

  Frances left the tree, and walked along the cliffs toward the Caves; but not to the front entrance. Bailey crouched, and scuttled off the path to watch from behind a thin bush—it didn’t seem like much in the way of a hiding spot, but Frances wasn’t looking her direction anyway—and then Bailey saw that Frances wasn’t alone.

  Chloe and Aria were with her.

  Bailey’s stomach turned, and her heart twisted. Avery had been right. The three of them… they all had something to do with Martha’s murder. But what were they doing here now? Cleaning up the evidence, Bailey supposed.

  The three women turned together, clutching their coats against the wind, and headed down the cliffs. As soon as they were out of sight, driven by some sudden burst of courage and anger, Bailey dashed out from behind her bush and down the path. She pressed against the outer rock of the Caves’ entrance, and peeked around the corner. When the coast seemed clear, she padded along the rocky outcrop, picking her way carefully to avoid dislodging any stones and making a clatter. Soon she was positioned over the three women who were holding hands in front of…

  Bailey blinked. It was like an optical illusion. She’d seen this patch of rock before. She knew the whole area by heart. Except… she could swear that was another cave entrance. It wouldn’t quite stay still for her, somehow—it slipped one way and the other, or her eyes did, and instead she had to focus on the three women; in this way, she could sort of see the gap in the rock face in her peripheral vision.

  What were they doing?

  Almost the moment she wondered, Chloe raised her head, eyebrows creased with concern until they slackened when she looked straight at Bailey, shock and dismay on her face. The two other women looked up at her next, and their mouths opened, but the wind was too loud to make out what they were saying.

  And Bailey didn’t stick around to find out. She turned on the rocks, stumbled a little as she scrabbled back up, toward the path to town, and then took off at a dead run.

  Chapter 9

  “Bailey!” Someone called after her as she ran. “Bailey, wait! You don’t understand!”

  Bailey heaved breaths into her lungs, fighting the wind for every foot of distance she gained up the path. It seemed almost like a living thing, intent on hindering her progress. The voice calling for her from behind—Chloe, she thought—seemed to get closer and closer though, unencumbered by the gale.

  When a hand grabbed her shoulder and tugged her to a stop, Bailey turned around, swinging. Chloe was every bit as wind-swept as Bailey was, and she cringed back when Bailey swung an arm at her.

  “It was you!” Bailey howled. “You killed Martha! How could you?”

  Bailey may as well have landed a blow; Chloe looked like she’d been kicked in the stomach. The wind died down, vanishing as though it had never been. “Bailey… of course I didn’t kill Martha. How could you think that about me? You know me.”

  Stay objective, Bailey tried to remind herself. Of course a murderer wouldn’t admit to being a murderer. At the same time… suddenly, all the pieces that had fit so neatly together seemed more jagged and mismatched than she’d thought just moments before. It wasn’t as though the women were going into the cave where Martha was actually killed… but that did raise other questions all the same, and Bailey’s suspicions simply found a new foothold.

  “What were you all doing back there, then?” She asked. Chloe took a step toward her, reaching out with one hand, but Bailey paced her, keeping distance between them.

  Chloe paused, and then lowered her hand, and ultimately clasped both of them together over her stomach. “We were looking for evidence of what happened to Martha,” she said. “A long time ago we… well we were all friends. We want to find out what happened to her, but we don’t think the Sheriff’s department is likely to be much help.”

  Funny, really. The three ladies on their little quest, and Bailey with her two friends. Two trios skulking around, trying to unearth the truth. Except, it seemed the bakery ladies had more practice.

  Bailey saw Aria and Frances come around the caves and pause at the bottom of the path. She looked carefully at Chloe. “Frances… before, at the tree she looked like she was…” The thought of saying it out loud almost made Bailey laugh. It was a ridiculous thought. That Frances had somehow summoned up a storm? “Never mind,” she said instead, waving it off. She ran her fingers through her hair, tugging handfuls of it to relieve that awful headache that was near to splitting her head in two.

  “It looks like she was controlling the weather,” Chloe said. She spoke tentatively, with hesitation and care, as though the words themselves might somehow do Bailey harm if they were spoken too quickly. She glanced back down the path at her friends. Then she took a step toward Bailey, closing a little distance.

  Bailey let her, confused, and in pain, and overcome with a sudden dizziness that made her regret having eaten before. “I don’t feel well,” she muttered.

  Chloe took her shoulders and held her steady. She ducked her head to meet Bailey’s eyes, and squinted at her. There was an odd feeling in Bailey’s head, like an itch she wouldn’t have been able to scratch had she been inclined to try. Some of the headache, however, receded.

  “Oh, dear,” Chloe said; softly, though, and compassionately. She sighed. “You’ve been hearing voices.”

  Bailey’s eyes snapped up. “Why would you think that? Oh, Lord… I’m crazy, aren’t I? You can tell just by looking at me. I knew it…”

  Chloe’s laugh was sympathetic if amused, and she shook her head slowly. “Oh, my dear… no. You’re not crazy, Bailey. You’re… gifted. Come back with me. Talk with the three of us. You probably have so many questions and we can answer them, sweetheart.” She raised a hand when Bailey began to argue. “We can stay in the open. We really don’t mean you any h
arm.”

  There was something. Some sense of belonging or connection that Bailey couldn’t quite put her finger on, and couldn’t quite discount either. She looked to where Aria and Frances waited. These women; she’d know them since she was small. They had always been kind to her, always patient. Their presence, and especially Chloe’s had been so important to her after Wendy passed. Didn’t she at least owe them a chance to explain, after all that?

  “Alright,” Bailey finally sighed.

  Chloe smiled, and put an arm around her shoulder as she guided Bailey back down to the other women.

  Once there, however, Frances fixed Chloe with a flinty look, and jerked her chin a bit. “A word?”

  “I won’t be long,” Chloe said.

  Aria went with them. Though they were only a few feet away, Bailey couldn’t hear what they were saying. The sound just didn’t carry. It seemed the strangest thing—like they were on mute. She found herself sticking a finger in either ear, but then, she could hear the ocean just fine. They spoke for a few minutes, and when they were done Aria and Frances gave Bailey polite smiles and good-byes, and went their own way.

  Bailey was left alone with Chloe. For a long moment, they stood there, near one another but quiet.

  Just as Bailey was about to break the silence with a question, Chloe spoke.

  “You know, this town is very old. Older, in fact, than the country itself is. Before it was Coven Grove, it was a little settlement with no name. Before that it was a kind of village. Before even that, it was just a meeting place, but there was always someone here.” She glanced at the nearby caves, and waved a finger at them. “Those Caves… they’ve been calling people to this place for a long, long time.”

  She watched Bailey’s face for a moment, and then looked out over the sea. “You’ve always been drawn to them,” she said. It was no secret, of course—everyone in town knew how much Bailey loved the caves, especially after she took over the tours. But Chloe knew more than just that. “When you were just a girl, you thought they were magic. You hoped, anyway. And sometimes, when you were in them, you thought you heard whispers coming from the paintings; like they were alive. Am I right?”

  Stunned, Bailey could only nod slowly. She’d never told anyone that. How did Chloe know?

  “Not everyone can hear those whispers. I haven’t even heard them in… oh, more than twenty years now. You won’t hear them forever, you see. Just when you’re very young. No one’s quite sure why. There was a time, though, when someone would have noticed, and they would have known that it was time.” She sighed, sad. “I suppose, given that your mother wasn’t around for you, there was no one to notice.”

  Bailey’s heart sped up a bit. She straightened, and suddenly the urgency that filled her pushed away all other concerns. “Chloe… did you know my mother? My birth mother, I mean?”

  Chloe smiled, a distant, fond memory, but maybe one laced with old hurt, too. “I wish I could say I did,” she said. “It was a long time ago, though.”

  Just as quickly as she’d gotten excited, she felt her hopes fall and crumble. “Well, what do you mean about the whispers, and being noticed? Lately… well I’m hearing whispers again. Only louder and not in the Caves. If anything, being in there gives me a little peace. Up in town, though, and wherever there are people, it gets so loud. My head has been killing me for days now. I’m losing my mind, Chloe.”

  “Not exactly,” Chloe said. She smiled slightly, not a happy smile exactly, but not entirely sad either. Conciliatory. “You’re just finding other minds, and you don’t quite know where to put them yet.”

  Bailey stared, and then looked at the ground, and finally turned her gaze out over the sea. Well… she’d somehow thought Chloe might be able to help. It turned out she was crazy, too. Maybe it was in the water…

  Chloe chuckled, and put her hand on Bailey’s shoulder. “You’re not far off,” she said. “But it’s not in the water. It’s in the caves. From way back. Old, old magic. Primal, from when the earth was new, and it sort of collects in a few places. These caves are one of those places. I’m not crazy, Bailey and neither are you. The magic here, in these caves—the magic you always believed in as a girl—you were touched with it when you were born. A single seed that took root and grew with you and is finally blossoming.”

  Twenty two. Bailey chanted the number in her mind over and over again.

  Chloe sighed. “Alright. Twenty two.”

  Fourteen.

  “Fourteen.”

  One thousand two hundred and seventy…

  “One thousand, two hundred and seventy…”

  Six.

  “…Six. Is that enough?”

  Bailey staggered away. “You… but then you… how…”

  Chloe sighed heavily, and wandered toward the outcropping that was the outer shell of the first cave. She turned when she came close to it, and leaned back against it, her arms folded over her chest. “The gift you have, the gift of Reading, and probably Glimpsing, later on, is the same as mine. Or very similar. It’s a little different for each of us. And for all anyone knows it’s just the beginning; the first of many such gifts. There’s no way to predict it. Especially with you.”

  “Why especially me? And who is ‘anyone’?”

  The first question, Chloe only saved away with dismissive fingers, but the second she answered with a quiet smile. “Anyone who’s a witch.”

  Bailey glanced up the path, toward town, where Frances and Aria had gone. “So you… and Frances… and Aria, you’re all… you’re witches?”

  “And you, it seems,” Chloe said. “Yes.”

  “Are there others?” Bailey asked.

  “A few,” Chloe admitted. “You’ll meet them, eventually. And there are others, elsewhere in the world, far and wide. Not a great many; there never have been. This world is full of wonders you only ever dreamed of, my love.”

  For a moment, Bailey was small again. “Here’s a special treat just for you, my love.” It had been what Chloe always said to her when Wendy first took her to Grovey Goodies, just days after it had opened.

  What was she so afraid of? This was Chloe. It was Frances, and Aria. Witches or no—she wasn’t sold on that—she knew these women. They were her friends.

  “What did you think you could find here?” Bailey asked her. “You said you knew Martha from before. Before what? Do you know something about why she died?”

  Chloe stood up from the rock, and shook her head. “That’s what we hoped to find out tonight. The chances of finding anything were extremely small to begin with. The Caves don’t often like to talk, even under dire circumstances.”

  “They talk?” Bailey asked, skeptical of the claim.

  “As I said,” Chloe replied, “not often. They’re stubborn, most of the time. That’s the way of very old things. As to Martha… she was one of us. Years ago, before she left.”

  Chloe shook her head sadly. “She used her gifts to gain some degree of fame. When it grew, she believed she might fare better out there. In the wider world.

  “We told her it wouldn’t work,” Chloe said. “Our magic, our craft, is tied to the Caves. Here, we’re strong. Out there, it wanes. Martha didn’t believe it. Worse, she became… petulant. She came here to expose the truth about the caves, and about us.”

  Bailey frowned. Keeping a secret seemed to her like a rather classic, even cliche, motive for murder to her. “Alright,” Bailey said, hesitantly and aware that she was walking on slippery ground. “So, Martha came back to expose… you all, as witches? And then she died…”

  “We had nothing to do with that,” Chloe said again, more firmly. “We couldn’t have. The magic of the caves it… well, suffice it to say that none of us could have killed Martha. Not even because we wouldn’t have done such a thing—which we wouldn’t have, none of us—but because we could not physically accomplish such a thing inside the Caves. You have to believe me, Bailey.” She seemed calm, almost more instructive than desperate.

&nbs
p; Perhaps that was because of her next suggestion. Chloe closed the distance between them again, and pursed her lips. “I can prove it to you,” she said. “If you want, you’re welcome to read my mind. I can show you how. It won’t be so easy with everyone, but our gift is similar. It will come more easily with me, with guidance.”

  What if it was true, Bailey wondered. What if she really had been right all along. What if there was magic, and she had it? What if Chloe was just what she claimed to be? Some part of it was terrifying, of course; it raised all kinds of questions. If magic and witches were real, then what else was real? Not all fairy tales were happy, after all.

  Bailey had grown from an imaginative little girl, full of wonder and faith in the unseen part of the world, to a young woman who preferred cold, hard facts and evidence. Accepting the idea of magic seemed somehow immature. Like she was being gullible. But at the same time, if Chloe claimed to be able to offer her proof…

  “Alright,” Bailey said. “What do I do?”

  Chloe smiled again. The clouds were beginning to clear. A shaft of sunlight fell on them, and Bailey had the thought that it seemed almost unreasonably portentous. Chloe didn’t seem to notice. “Just close your eyes,” she said, “and listen to my voice. I’ll guide you to your gift. I’m going to touch your temples just so.” She did, a light, airy touch as Bailey’s eyes fluttered closed.

  “Focus on my fingers,” Chloe said softly, her voice easing into a neutral, rhythmic tone. “Count backward from ten. Each count brings you closer and closer to my voice, and to the sensation on your temples. Take long, deep breaths. Let yourself feel as though your feet are rooted in the Earth below you… sinking deep… drawing all those loud, noisy minds down, and down, into the ground…”

  Chloe’s voice had a strange quality to it. It echoed inside Bailey’s head, lingering like the tingling leftovers of a light touch to the skin. “Now follow the touch of my fingers, and feel me here, in front of you. Feel the warmth coming from my presence… listen to where my voice is coming from… have you ever known you are not alone in a room? That nervous, subtle feeling of having someone nearby… focus on that feeling… open your eyes, Bailey.”