by Tegan Maher
"I did."
"I wouldn't have done that for you."
I was so regretting not having made her wait for Jerry Jenkins.
"I'm aware. Believe me," I said as we pulled up to the curb. "Get out. And don't skip town or I'll hunt you down and do way worse than beat your ass."
She nodded once. "Fine.” She wrinkled her nose. “You're truck smells like a barn."
"You're welcome." I said as she swung the door shut. Ingrate.
I didn't even make it all the way back to town before Hunter called. I pulled off and answered.
"Did you seriously put up your building for Olivia Anderson's bail?" he bellowed as soon as I said hello.
"Yes."
"May I ask why? I put her in jail for trying to kill you, and you put up your business to get her out. That doesn't seem counterintuitive to you?"
My temper flared. Even though I suspected he was cursed that morning, I was about done with the whole overbearing-jerk thing. "Look, I told you she didn't try to kill me. I also told you I didn't want to press charges. What was I supposed to do? Leave an innocent person in jail, even if I can't stand her?"
"What you were supposed to do—"
I cut him off. "I think this conversation is probably over unless you want to tell me you figured out which one of the women it was that Angel saw coming toward Brew4U when she was leaving."
"I'd tell you if I could, but they're both denying being there."
"Of course they are. I'll talk to you later."
Rather than say something I'd regret later, I waited for him to say goodbye, then ended the call.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I made my way back into town, figuring I'd stop at Bobbie Sue's and grab a sandwich while I waited for Rae to finish up. It was Angel's day to close and we were going to get a pedicure. Rather than pull into Bobbies though, I kept driving until I pulled in front of the Cat.
A beer was sounding a whole lot better at that point than barbecue. On a whim, I called Camille and invited her to join me.
Monty already had my Big Wave in front of my customary bar stool by the time I slid onto it. I was grateful to see I was the only person in the bar. I wasn't in the mood to deal with loud jukeboxes or rabble-rousers.
"You look rough, kid. Bad day?"
"Bad week," I said, focusing on centering my beer on the coaster. "The good thing is that if I make it through, I should be good on crappy days for like ten years."
"Yeah, I heard about Rae, then I heard Olivia tried to plow you over with that boat of hers." He twisted his head down so he caught my attention, and I brought my eyes from the bar to meet his. "I also heard that you bailed her out, though the details were a little shaky on that because there was something about you putting up your business."
I pulled in a deep breath and puffed it out through my cheeks. "You've got better connections than Coralee does!"
He grinned and winked. "Don't let her hear you say that or she'll be openin' up her own bar and runnin' me out of business. But you're right. Bartenders and hairdressers know all."
My phone buzzed on the bar and I flipped it over to see who it was. It was Hunter. I flipped it back over.
"I did bail her out, Monty." I took a long drink of beer. "It was the right thing to do. She didn't try to kill me."
"Still—"
"Still, nothin'." I shook my head. "There's something goin' on around here, but damned if I can figure out what it is. I have an idea, and I have half a dozen cases to support my idea, but I can't manage to tie 'em together in any way that makes sense."
"Yeah, I've been payin' attention, too," he said. "Somethin' stinks. People do weird things all the time, but it's usually random, and there's some reason. Wife left 'em, they got into a bad batch of shine—somethin'. But at least the crazy is usually somewhat in character, and not clustered and random like it has been."
Monty looked up when the door swung open and I cast an apathetic glance toward it out of habit. Then I swiveled around and jumped off my stool.
The redhead held out her hand. "Hold fire," she said. "We need to talk. About a few things."
I narrowed my eyes at her. "You've been following me."
She dipped her head. "I have been. I had to make sure you were one of the good guys before I could approach you. May I?" she motioned to the stool beside me.
I slid back onto mine and gestured to the other. "Please do. Enlighten me."
She slid onto the stool and asked Monty for a glass of white wine, then hung her oversized purse on the hook under the bar. While he poured her wine, I examined her.
"You look so familiar. I know I know you from somewhere."
I was usually good at remembering faces, and it was irritating me to no end that I couldn't place her.
"Well, to be fair, you've only seen me once, other than the times you've busted me watching you here, of course. And that time, I was wearing a ball cap and aviators."
I looked closer, then the pieces clicked together in my head. "Moira, right?"
She nodded. "Pleased to meet you, again."
My mind flashed back to the day we'd bought the door and table. She'd been the TJ's friend who pulled up in the hybrid.
"Well now that I know who's been stalking me, I'd like to know why."
Monty set her wine on a coaster in front of her and she took a sip.
"It's complicated."
"Break it down for me."
She grimaced. "I've been trying to figure out whether you're the one who's been causing all these problems, but people shut down anytime I ask about you. Girl, is everybody in this town so ... abrupt?"
"I wouldn't say that. I'd say we have a low tolerance for subterfuge and nosiness from outsiders. Other than that, we're a basket of peaches for the most part. Now, you were saying?"
"I came down with TJ when her aunt passed to help her move. We've been friends for a couple years and she didn't have anybody else she could ask. I'd never met the lady and had never been to Eagle Gap in my life, but as soon as I walked into that house, I felt some serious juju." She shivered.
"What kind of juju?" I asked, but before she responded, Camille pushed through the door. Remember part of Camille's mojo is mind magic, so imagine her surprise when she picked up not one, but two witches sitting in the bar. And any doubt in my mind that Moira was a witch had gone out the window the minute she walked through the door.
My little telekinetic gift, which is turning out to be not so little, as evidenced in the whole Max ordeal, sends warning bells out as soon as I'm within fifteen feet or so of another witch. So yeah, Moira the Mysterious was Moira the Magical. Now just to figure out what that had to do with me.
After an initial hitch in her step, Camille covered the space between the door and bar and held out her hand. She wasn't as reserved as I was about trolling other people, especially when they were a potential threat. And with the situation as it was, Moira fit smack dab in the middle of that category.
They introduced themselves. "Camille, Moira here is the witch who's been following me and asking questions about us. She was about to tell me why."
Monty brought Camille's usual beer and as soon as he was out of hearing range, Moira continued.
"We'd just gotten started, Camille, so your timing is perfect. I met Noelle in Eagle Gap when I was helping a friend clear out her departed aunt's house."
"The one where we got the door and table," I said.
Camille nodded.
"Mind you, I don't know TJ that well. I mean, we're work friends and we've been out a few times together, but we're not close other than that. We chat at work and like each other's funny dog memes on Facebook."
My phone buzzed again and it was Hunter. Again, I flipped it over. If it was important, he'd text.
"Anyway," Moira continued over the buzzing, "I figured, why not? A two-week vacation and a chance to explore a stranger's stuff sounded like a blast to me. But the minute I pulled up to Nora's house, something felt off."
> "Wait," Camille said. "Did you say Nora?"
"Yeah," Moira said. "Nora Shelton, why?"
Camille rolled her head back, then dropped it back forward again, pinching her lips into a flat line. "Noe, Nora Shelton is the witch who I told you figured out what was going on over there, but died before we got there."
"Oh," I said, frowning. "Another coincidence. We seem to be collecting a plethora of them and I don't like it."
"Me either," Camille said. "In my experience, coincidence equates to shenanigans that just haven't been pieced together yet, and that's rarely a good thing."
I couldn't have agreed more, and one look at Moira's face told me she felt the same way.
The problem we needed to figure out then, was how the pieces fit.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
"What exactly do you mean when you say it felt off, Moira?"
The other woman shook her head. "I can't put my finger on it. I'm an elemental witch, so I'm connected to my environment, but my gift is space manipulation. All I can tell you is there was some weird magical energy there, then when we were going through her things, TJ found a box of books filled with potions and spells."
She paused, giving us time to chew on that. "Anyway, she was on a deadline since we only had a week, so she wrote them off as cookbooks and stuffed them in a box. She's a good egg, but is ... worth monitoring."
I was catching on. "TJ was adopted," I explained to Camille. "She never met her aunt or even knew anything about her. She'd planned a visit, but Nora died before she could arrange it."
Realization set onto Camille's face. "You're telling me she's a witch?"
Moira nodded. "Or at least I know her aunt was. I don't have the same sensitivity you two seem to have, so I can't read her."
"And you never noticed anything odd about her?" I asked.
"No, other than small things. She has a knack for persuasion. She saved one girl's job when our jerk of a boss was going to fire her because he was in a snit one morning. She gets us into the best clubs when we go out even though there's a line around the block."
She paused to take a sip of her wine. "I don't even think she knows she's doing it. I just wrote it off as great people skills, but now I'm starting to wonder."
Camille messed with her napkin, folding it, then folding it again, with a thoughtful expression on her face. "We—the local chapter of the Magical Oversight Committee—were over there for almost three months because there were weird things happening in Eagle Gap. Petty thefts and oddball behavior mostly, but they escalated and shifted to the witch community, though nobody died. We suspected somebody was trying to steal their gifts."
"That makes no sense," Moira said. "It can't be done."
"I know," Camille said, "Yet that's the only thing we could figure was happening."
That made me curious. "Why did you think that?"
She shrugged. "It was like all the energy was pulled from them. They regained it with rest and food, but it was still odd, and potentially lethal."
Moira's brow was crinkled. "That's strange, because I found a recipe card with a suspicious spell underneath one of the benches in her greenhouse. As a matter of fact, I stuck it in my purse because I didn't want anybody else to get their hands on it."
She dug through her bag, then handed Camille a piece of smudged stationary. "It looks almost like a binding spell, but it's off by a couple of ingredients, and the incantation’s not quite right. I know because I've worked freelance with the Virginia branch of the council when they've needed a set of invisible eyes or a bodyguard."
"A set of invisible eyes?" I asked. "What does that even mean?"
She smiled. "I told you my gift was space manipulation. I can manipulate the space in my bubble, so to speak, to refract and reflect light. As long as I stand still, it makes me all but invisible unless somebody looks closely."
My jaw about hit the ground. "I didn't even know that was a thing."
She tipped up one corner of her mouth. "Not many people do. It made me really good at hide-and-seek when I was a kid."
"We can compare childhood memories when people aren't being messed with," Camille said. "My daughter Emma texted me on the way over here. Apparently, she got an A on her trig test."
"That's great!" I said. Emma's teacher had been tutoring her because she struggled with math.
Camille arched a brow. "Yeah, except for she didn't even get to the last four problems. When she asked around, she wasn't the only one. Apparently everybody got an A."
"Oh," I said. "Well in the scheme of things, at least he didn't rob the church kitty, punch out his neighbor, or try to run somebody over with his car."
She snapped her gaze to me. "You think Olivia was hexed?"
I nodded. "Can you think of another logical reason the toughest teacher in the school would just hand out blanket As?"
I raised my glass to drain the last of my beer. When I set it down, Camille snatched my hand. "You have one, too."
"One what?" I asked, pulling my hand back. Her acrylics were sharp.
"A spoon ring," she said. "Emma's wearing one, too."
"Yeah," I said, rubbing the half-moons her nails had left in my hands. "We all got one when we got the—oh crap." A cold finger of realization slid down my spine.
"Oh crap, what?" Camille asked, examining the piece of paper.
"We found them in the table we got from Nora's."
"Gimme it," she said, holding out her hand.
I pulled it off my thumb and dropped it in her palm.
She closed her eyes, then popped them open. "It's made of silver, the most conducive metal there is. Nora said she'd give us a ring when she sorted it out. We thought she meant she'd call us back, but what if she said she'd give us the rings? The reception wasn’t good."
She squeezed her hand around the ring. "I've felt this energy before." She crinkled her brow. "It's the same as the low hum I felt when we examined Shelby.”
She dug her phone out of her purse, then motioned toward mine. "I'm texting Emma. You get ahold of Rae and Shelby. Tell 'em to get over here right now, and for the love of God, don't touch anybody on the way."
"Emma and Shelby are in school," I said.
Camille and Moira both cocked brows at me, and I got the gist. They were typical high schoolers; sometimes there were better things to do than go to school, and they knew how to get out if they wanted to. "Oh yeah," I said, tapping out a 911 text to Shelby, then Rae.
All three of them responded back within seconds. The high school was about fifteen minutes away, but Rae was only five minutes up the street. She rushed in and Monty set her beer in front of her, which was a good thing, because as soon as we explained our theory, she downed half of it in one swig.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
While we waited for the girls, we tossed ideas back and forth.
"Go over the exact message Nora left you," Rae said, holding her finger in the air to catch Morty's attention.
Camille shrugged. "Just something about cats and that she'd figured it out and would give us a ring when sorted it out."
"Okay then," Moira said. “We have nothing besides—"
"Cats," Camille said, cutting her off. "Kat. Suzette, the witch who found the items under her bed ... her grandmother's name is Katherine. She goes by Kat. But she's ancient. When we tested her, she only had residual traces of her magic left."
"Well then, I suggest we start with her," Moira said as the girls walked in. We made the introductions, then Camille demanded the rings and dropped them into one of those purple bags Crown Royal comes in, courtesy of Monty.
“Wait,” I said. “I want Addy in on this. She may be dead, but she still has connections.” After making sure the place was still empty, I called her, and when she popped in, we gave her a run-down.
"Now, let's figure out this mess," Camille said. "We have Kirsten, Roberta, Gene, Gabriel, Hunter, and Olivia. Oh, and Mr. Oxton, the trig teacher, who have all temporarily lost their inhibitions. Who c
ame into contact with whom?"
"Hunter was definitely me, at least the first time." I said. "When he went off his rocker and refused to give Rae special treatment, I’d reached across the desk and held his hand just a few minutes earlier."
"I was why he arrested Olivia, then," Rae said, squinting. "He came in for coffee this morning. He brushed my hand, and thus the ring, when I handed him his coffee."
"Okay then," Camille said. "And we know his struggle is that he wants to make sure the department is run tip-top because he's trying to change the bad taste everybody has in their mouths about our cops post-Hank. Now, from the beginning. Kirsten?"
Shelby held her hand up. "She touched the ring when she gave me back my bracelet."
"Next. Roberta," Raeann said. "That one's on me, too. She commented on the ring at the salon when I was getting my nails done. It wasn't an hour later she was caught with the kitty."
She picked at the label on her bottle. "I'm responsible for the revver, too. He came to visit me while I was in jail."
"Don't go gettin' your tail in a twist," Camille said when Raeann's shoulders sagged. "It's not like you did it on purpose, and Noelle fixed it. Gene?" Camille looked around the table.
"That would be me again," Shelby said. "He brought his dog into the clinic to get his nails clipped. I have no doubt he probably touched the ring when I handed Frito back to him. It wasn't even an hour later that he decked the mayor."
"And Mr. Oxton is obviously me," Emma said. I'd touched him when I handed him my test because I dropped it and we reached down at the same time to get it. He graded the papers in class and handed them straight back to us, so there was only a few minutes."
"Then that only leaves Olivia," I said, "And that one's on me. I was being catty and patted her hand when I was in her office. It was only a half hour or so later that I about wore that pink atrocity as a backpack."
"Well then, it seems to be a no-harm-no-foul situation since Noelle got with Coralee and cleaned up the messes with Roberta and the preacher."
"What about the girl who tried to run Noelle over?" Moira asked, draining the last of her wine.
