Sister Witchcraft: Confessions of a Teenage Slayer
J.D. Winters
Dakota Kahn
Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Mailing List
Also by J.D. Winters
About the Authors
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental. All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Copyright © 2016 J.D. Winters and Dakota Kahn
Cover images from Shutterstock.com
First Edition November, 2016
Created with Vellum
Chapter 1
I was sitting on the tiled floor of the teashop, piecing together a brocaded wall hanging to brighten up the empty far wall, when intrepid newsman Max Ransom came crashing in through the glass front door. By “crashing”, I mean that he hit the glass as though on a run and shoved it open so hard, that he lost his balance, tripped on a piece of fabric I’d left there and ended up on his knees on the carpeting piece I used as a Florentine-style entry-mat.
I jumped up and went over to help him to his feet. Hey, I could have laughed at him, but I didn’t. I was kind.
“If you’re going to start arriving like a veritable wrecking ball,” I mentioned casually, “I’m going to have to put up rubber padding all around the foyer.”
Kashmir was just finishing up a small bowl of cream and he barely gave the newcomer a glance. Evidently, that stung the Max Ransom ego in some way. His first greeting was to the cat.
“Hey, Kashmir,” he said. “Good to see you enjoying the spoils of your mystical magical servitude, such as they are.”
I looked sideways at Kashmir. He looked sideways at me. I knew he wasn’t happy about the fact that an outsider knew about him being my familiar but it couldn’t be helped. When we’d solved the crime of who’d killed Lenny Brewer recently, Max had been right there seeing things through Kashmir’s eyes, just as I had. There was no getting around it, Max was in the know. Kashmir displayed his opinion on the matter by turning toward the storeroom, tail in the air, and sashaying out of sight.
“I’m sure he would like to stick around and chat longer, but it’s time for his afternoon nap,” I said. “You know how it is. It’s a cat’s life around here.”
Max’s eyes narrowed speculatively. “I really want to get into that cat’s brain and see what makes it tick,” he muttered, not even really to me, just to the cosmos.
“It’s a good thing you’re good looking,” I mentioned. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have many redeeming qualities and we’d probably keep you out. Just to be safe.”
Max turned and grinned at me. “Okay, Mimi my dear. I won’t be pushy. Not yet anyway.” He drew in a deep breath and sort of shook himself. “Hey, I stopped by because I thought you might be interested. There’s another dead body in town. Over at the Shady Tree Café this time. I’m covering it for the paper. You want to come along?”
I looked at him with what I thought of as sharp native intelligence. “I notice you don’t have your usual side kick,” I mentioned. “So I guess you’re soliciting a little help. Is that it?”
He gave a half shrug, his soft russet hair falling over his forehead in an attractive way. He had the look of a young Indiana Jones, ready to race out and meet his destiny. I found that rather appealing, actually.
“Well, it always is more efficient to have an assistant by my side.” He grinned at me again, his blue eyes sparkling. “And Johnny Cool hasn’t shown up today. So yeah, I guess I could use some help.”
“And I guess I could supply some of that,” I said, thinking about the dead body and how I’d really like to get in on the ground floor with this new investigation. The Lenny Brewer thing had opened my eyes to a certain need in this community. “I’ll go with you. I’ll hold cameras and run cables and all the rest. I’ll be your girl Friday. How’s that?”
“Great,” he said, his eyes sparkling even more.
I guess he was surprised to find me so amenable. I was usually a bit more argumentative, but I was looking for a way to get into the scene without incurring responsibilities that would tie me down in the future. Seemed a fair exchange to me.
“I picked up the info on the police band,” he said. “I monitor it most days.”
“Uh huh.”
“I want to beat the paramedics to the body. Let’s go.”
I turned toward the door, but caught sight of my older sister arriving just outside.
“Uh oh,” I said quickly. “Here comes Sybil. Don’t tell her.”
But she was already in the building and she’d heard that.
“Don’t tell me what?”
“Uh…nothing.”
She looked at us suspiciously. I felt bad. I did wish she hadn’t heard me say that. As my older sister—a lot older—she often seemed more like a mother to me, and I hadn’t reached a place yet where I could consider us contemporaries instead of adversaries.
She looked from Max to me and back again with a piercing glance. Dressed in a fashionable sweater set and beautifully tailored slacks, she looked as put together as the busy mother of two young girls possibly could. With her sleek dark hair and her exceptionally pretty face, she could have been a model for the ideal suburban housewife. “Where are you two going?”
“Down to the Shady Tree,” Max said.
“Oh, nowhere,” I said at the same time, only more loudly.
She frowned, beginning to look seriously annoyed. “Which is it, guys? Get your story straight.”
I shrugged and turned away. Max gave me an elbow to the ribs and spoke to Sybil in a whisper, as though telling a secret. “There’s a dead body over at the Shady Tree.”
“What?” Her eyes got big as saucers.
He winked at her. “Keep it under your hat.”
“I don’t have a hat.”
Ah yes, Sybil sometimes seemed to be a woman with no sense of humor. Or humor of any kind. But she was my sister and I loved her.
Max gave her a look of exasperation. “Then just pretend your lips are sealed.”
She made the pretend zipping move over her lips and pressed them together tightly.
“Okay then,” he said. “You can come along if you want to.”
She wanted to.
“I can hardly wait to see the look on those women’s faces now that they’ve got a death in their place, after all they put us through a few weeks ago.”
Max did the zipping motion to remind her and she clammed up, but she still looked excited. I knew what she meant. I was hoping for some revenge on the Jiggs sisters who ran the Shady Tree Café myself. They were a pair of mean old witches—and I mean real witches--who’d spent time making life miserable for our Grand-Mere when she ran this teashop. Now they seemed to be intent on making us just as uncomfortable.
We started off out the door and into the courtyard for our little cluster of businesses, including Martin Tanner’s game shop. Martin was the brother of Sybil’s husband Gary, a nice guy, if a bit nerdy. Glancing over, I noticed that his game shop was shuttered. There wa
s a big, hand-painted sign in the front that said: "CLOSED - GONE TO HUGECON!"
What in the world that meant I couldn't begin to guess, much less the other sign placed in front of that - "BEWARE: SHOP GUARDED BY DEMOGORGON." Not for the first time, I wondered how the heck we were going to get Martin a girlfriend.
But right now, we had an important event to bear witness to. We marched out onto the sidewalk that ran along the main street in town. There wasn’t room for all three of us, what with Max loaded down with multiple backpacks and cameras, so Sybil and I jockeyed for place the whole way. I was beginning to consider my big sister a big pain in the neck, when we finally arrived at the restaurant. There were two cop cars pulled up to the front and a crowd of onlookers growing rapidly outside, trying to look in through the big dark glass windows.
For a café, it’s a great looking place, with oil-rubbed redwood and dark shingles. Makes me jealous every time I look at it. And alongside, toward the back of the parking lot, you could see the little paneled van with a painted picture of Macy and Stacy Jiggs smiling happily on the side. It was parked in its usual place, constantly promoting the restaurant. Making them look absolutely welcoming. That was another thing that made me jealous. I only wished we had enough money to buy a nice little truck like that ourselves.
We reached the entrance and Sybil managed to beat me to the big front door, but Max pulled her back.
“Dignity, ladies,” he hissed at us in warning. “We don’t want to be mistaken for lookey-loos.”
“Indeed not,” said Sybil a bit haughtily. “Heaven forbid.”
I merely made a face at him. I mean, who was he to talk about dignity after the way he’d arrived in my teashop just a few minutes before? But I would wait to get him back.
Max handed me his extra camera and gave Sybil his backpack and a pad with a pen to hold in her hand as though ready to jot down notes. We went in. We got a few looks, but nobody challenged our right to be there. There was a small crowd around a table toward the back—obviously the location of the crime.
Or at least, the location of the victim.
As we got closer, I was beginning to feel a little queasy. Another few steps and I was beginning to wonder why I’d wanted to come in the first place. I suppose I could just wait and let Max tell me about it. I actually considered it. But by then I was being jostled by another bunch of officers coming in behind me and it was pretty much now or never. I dove in.
I looked around at the growing crowd and thought I saw Karl Ledger, the guy from the bank who I’d known in high school, watching with an anxious look on his face. What was he doing here? But I had no time to hail him. I took a deep breath and pushed my way into the scrum, holding my camera like a shield and the justification for my presence. If I was supposed to take pictures, I was darn well going to take pictures.
I glanced at Sybil. She looked almost scared. I felt a pang of sisterly compassion. “Maybe you’d rather….?”
“Unh-unh,” she said, shaking her head. “I have a feeling about this.”
I couldn’t imagine what her feeling could be about, but I ignored her and began helping Max with the picture taking. We got up close and I glanced at the victim just long enough to confirm that I didn’t know him. At first glance, he didn’t seem to be hurt in any visible way. Then I noticed the blood pooling beneath his body and the odd angle his right arm and leg were resting in. I looked away quickly, took a deep breath and returned to the business of covering the story for the news which is what I was there for.
I’d only just begun when I noticed Sybil. She was still pushing her way in and then she came close to the body, leaned to get a look at his face, and gasped, staring down at him in a way that I found really strange. I distinctly heard her breathe in and whisper, “Oh no! Richie!”
She was white as a sheet. She knew him.
I sidled closer. “Who’s Richie?” I said to her softly.
“What?” She looked at me wildly. “Who? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She turned away, looking a little woozy, looking a little green around the gills. I watched her, curious. She was usually a pretty cool customer. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her nonplussed like this before.
“Why don’t you go sit down?” I whispered to her. “We can handle this.”
“Get her a chair,” Max said. So he’d noticed too. “She’s going to faint.”
I found a chair and made sure she sat. She was clutching Max’s backpack to her chest as though it were a life preserver and she was in heavy current. I felt a pang of sympathy for her, but I couldn’t help but wonder why she was insisting she didn’t know the victim. It was only too obvious that she’d been stricken by the sight of his injuries.
By the time I got back to Max he was pretty much done with the picture taking.
“Is he…?” I gestured toward the man on the counter.
Max nodded. “Dead,” he mouthed to me, then turned and began to try to mingle with the cops to pick up any info he could use for his news story. I gathered up his equipment and packed it away in the backpack, trying to look busy to give him a little more time.
I hadn’t seen either Stacy or Macy, the notorious Jiggs sisters, and when I asked the little waitress who worked there—Beanie, whose brother Todd did the nightly sweep up at our teashop--where they were, she said, “Oh no, they’re never here on Thursday afternoon. They go to the movies.”
“The movies?” That was a surprise. “Someone should call them, maybe.”
“Oh no. We can’t call them. They leave strict orders not to be disturbed.”
“But…”
“No. Not even in an emergency.” She looked so earnest. Or maybe she was just terrified of those two crazy ladies.
I sighed. “I’d send someone over to tell them if I were you. Once they find out, I think they will consider this an emergency that needs their attention.”
I didn’t want to hang around to see what would happen when the Jiggs gals showed up—no doubt loaded for bear like they always were. And I was pretty sure they would try to pin this on us in some way. Why we seemed destined to be lifelong enemies, I wasn’t sure. I thought it had something to do with how they’d hated my grandmother when she’d been here to run things. But maybe there was more to it than that. Time would tell.
I glanced back down at the dead person. “Richie,” she’d called him. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember anyone named Richie in her life. But then, I’d hardly known her in those far away times, whether it was those crazy, hazy days of her high school career, or the more structured days of her college years, she’d been so much older, so sophisticated seeming, so above it all, that I’d hardly paid any attention to her, much less to her friends.
He looked like a nice enough young man now. But that was hardly relative to anything sensible. He was gone and that was that. But what on earth could have affected my sister so deeply?
Chapter 2
The paramedics were wrapping things up, covering the body and preparing to take him to the morgue. I looked for Max. He was shmoozing with the cops. I’d done all the pretending I could get away with by now. It was time for him to come back and rescue me. And he seemed to know it. Finally he gave me a wink and came out of the scrum.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said huskily near my ear.
I nodded and turned to go, then stopped.
“Wait. Where’s Sybil?”
He looked around. “I guess she left already.”
That didn’t seem right, but it did seem to be true. I sighed. We shouldered our equipment and started out.
“I think she knew him,” I said softly to Max as we walked out, side by side.
“Oh yeah? You mean Sybil?”
I nodded. “She called him Richie.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Did you?” I asked him. “Know him, I mean.”
He shook his head. “No. I’d never seen him before.”
We stopped to readjust some straps and I whispered to him,
figuring anything he’d managed to glean from the officers was probably embargoed information. “Did you get a lead on the cause of death?”
He looked at me wisely and nodded. “From what I could make out, it seems he was hit by some kind of vehicle in the alley behind the cafe. He staggered in through the back door, into the kitchen, then collapsed and they laid him out on one of the counters while they tried to save him. To no avail.”
I grimaced, feeling a rush of sympathy for the man. “That’s not a nice way to go,” I murmured.
Max agreed. “Hey,” he said suddenly, looking through the backpack. “I think your sister took off with my camera with the telephoto lens. What’s the deal with that?”
Good question. He looked distressed and I didn’t blame him. Huh. That didn’t seem like Sybil.
“Can you see that I get it back?”
“Oh, sure. Don’t worry.”
He nodded, obviously somewhat relieved. “I’m due back at the office. I’ve got to write this stuff up. If I hear any more, I’ll call you.” He winked at me as he left me off. “Hey, you make a pretty good assistant.”
I puffed up a bit. “I’m glad you feel that way. Let me in on all your big breaks, okay?”
He shook his head and grinned at me. “Nah. Next thing I know, you’ll be starting up a rival newspaper. Then where will I be?”
“Out gunned, of course.” I flexed my right bicep in a particularly obnoxious way, but he laughed.
“We’ll see.” And he was gone.
It was a quiet afternoon tea. Most tea patrons hadn’t heard about the death at the Shady Tree yet, and I didn’t start any chatter. Somehow it didn’t seem fair to hash it out with anyone before I knew more.
Once everyone was gone, I closed things down at the teashop, said goodnight to Kashmir, and started on my trek home. I liked to walk back past the park and past the lake, watching the ducks and hearing the children playing. But tonight, I had my mind on other things. I went over what had happened at the Shady Tree.
Confessions of a Teenage Slayer (Sister Witchcraft Book 2) Page 1
