Hidden Magic

by Daniels, Wynter

  “What’s AFIS?”

  “Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Basically a database of fingerprints and criminal history.”

  She gripped the armrest. If he ran her fingerprints through the system, he’d know she wasn’t who she said. What if the New Orleans police had a warrant out for her arrest?

  No, she couldn’t chance being identified as Lauren. “Maybe you’re right. It’s too far to go for a longshot.” She watched his reaction but he didn’t seem disturbed or suspicious. “Can we go to the lake where her car was found? If she was there I might pick up on something.”

  He nodded. “It’s not like I have any pressing leads I’m chasing down.”

  She said a silent thank you that he’d let the AFIS thing drop.

  “I’d like to stop by my office first, though. I need to catch my boss up on my cases. Shouldn’t take but a few minutes.”

  “How many cases you have?”

  His laugh was part growl that sounded sexier than sin. “Four right now. For now I’m the only detective on the force so between me and the sheriff, we handle everything from credit card fraud to murder. Sheriff Van Horn was a detective for a few years before he got elected so he works with me on the most serious ones like Hannah Saxon.”

  Most of her experiences with police stations had to do with her mom. Once when her mother was busted for possession, her boyfriend-of-the-month had dragged Lauren with him to bail her out. She couldn’t have been more than twelve. Then there was that time when her teacher had reported her bruises to the state. The social worker had picked her up and brought her to the station to identify another of her mom’s men as the culprit.

  Suddenly her hands were clammy. She wiped them on the legs of her pants. “Mind if I wait in the car?”

  “I can’t leave you alone in my county issued vehicle, sorry. I’m a rule follower through and through.”

  She detected suspicion in his glance. She mentally smacked herself. If he didn’t start trusting her he might run a background check on her. The sooner she could figure out some way of helping him find Hannah, the sooner she could get the hell out of his life, although the prospect left her cold. But she had to think about her safety as well as Hannah’s.

  When they arrived at the county administration building, Zander took her inside. The entrance foyer was the size of her whole cottage. They crossed the marble floor to a set of double glass doors bearing the words, Gulf County Sheriff’s Office.

  Uncomfortable heat spread through her but she forced down her fears.

  “Want to meet the sheriff?” Zander asked as they passed a reception desk.

  “No.”

  “No?” His puzzled expression reminded her she had to attempt to make him trust her.

  She tried for a self-deprecating smile. “I need to use the facilities. Can you point me toward the nearest ladies’ room?”

  “Oh, sure. We just passed one. Back down the hall on your left.”

  “Great. I’ll meet you back here after your meeting.” Without waiting for his reply, she spun around and headed to the bathroom. She had half a mind to keep going right out of the building. Yeah, that’d work. Talk about raising suspicion.

  No, she had to stay. She was in this for Hannah and she had to see it through.

  After taking her time in the restroom then exploring the administration building, she returned to the reception area of the sheriff’s office and took a seat. She pretended to check her messages on her phone, anything to look busy in case Zander poked his head out of the office and asked her to come inside.

  She was being paranoid. Just because she was there didn’t mean he’d subject her to being fingerprinted or anything like that.

  Zander emerged from his meeting carrying a Styrofoam cup of coffee. “Ready to go?”

  She said a silent thank you to the Goddess. “Sure.”

  “Want some coffee before we leave?”

  “No thanks.” She would have loved some but the sooner they left, the better.

  He led her out of the building.

  “Detective Parsons, have you made any progress in the Hannah Saxon case?” The voice was female but it took Jilly a moment to register that it was a reporter. She hurried toward them from a white van marked with the local news affiliate’s logo. “Hannah’s been missing for almost three weeks now, Detective. Don’t you have any leads?”

  The blonde shoved a microphone in Zander’s face as a cameraman circled around him, blocking their path.

  Zander took Jilly’s hand and pulled her around the crew toward his car. “The investigation is ongoing, Ms. Templeton. As soon as we have news you’ll be the first to know.”

  But the woman wouldn’t be put off. “Do you have any suspects in her disappearance?”

  He yanked open his car door and practically shoved Jilly into the passenger seat. She immediately turned away from the window. Last thing she needed was her face on television. Thank the Goddess it would only be broadcast locally if at all.

  Zander got in and shut his door harder than necessary. Angry vibes rolled off him.

  Jilly buckled herself in. “I don’t think I like her.”

  “That makes two of us. Feel free to put a hex on her. She’d love to see me fail even though succeeding could mean bringing Hannah home.”

  “I don’t do hexes, sorry. Why would she want you to fail?”

  He pulled out of the lot, squealing his tires as he turned. “Because I’m the mayor’s grandson and Carla Templeton would do just about anything for a juicy story whether it’s true or not. She’ll dig and dig until she finds something even if she has to make that something out of nothing. A couple years ago she did a story on a case I was working and made me sound incompetent. Of course she had to bring up my relation to the mayor. Her implication was that my promotion from patrolman to detective was merely nepotism.”

  “Oh.” She glanced back at the news van and a shiver raced up her spine. “Will she put what they just filmed on the news?”

  He shrugged. “I guess that’s up to the producers.”

  “Just locally, right?”

  “Probably. Hannah’s case was picked up by one of the wire services. I think they ran the story on the CNN website. Why?”

  All the blood seemed to drain from her face. “I-I was wondering if I was going to be on television, that’s all.” She could barely manage to get a breath in. But she was being ridiculous. Why would they run such a short clip with nothing new on the case? But if they did…

  I’m a dead woman.

  Chapter Three

  Checking his rearview one more time to be positive the news crew hadn’t followed them, Zander steered onto the unmarked dirt road that led to Gideon’s Pond. It was a densely forested area that Freedom Bay’s teenagers had been using as a lover’s lane for as far back as he could remember.

  Last time he’d been there—aside from the day they’d pulled Hannah’s car out of the pond—he’d been seventeen or eighteen and horny as all get-out. Kind of like he was right now. No, this was very different. This wasn’t just about sex. He was fascinated by everything about Jilly. Although he couldn’t quite keep the lurid images from his dream out of his mind. Every time he thought about it his whole body tensed with need.

  Stealing a sideways glimpse of her, he wished he knew what the hell was going on in her head. She’d hardly uttered a word since they’d left his office and she’d spent the last twenty minutes either biting her nails or tapping her fingers on the armrest. But damn, she looked pretty. She wore tight-fitting black jeans with a purple lacy tank top and a sheer black sweater. Purple beaded earrings grazed her shoulders and made a jingly sound when she moved her head.

  Damn it. He was concentrating way too much on Jilly and not enough on his case. Maybe she’d hit on something here, something more useful than she had at the Saxon’s home.

  God, he was actually starting to believe what she did was real. The idea warred with everything he’d ever taken as fact about the world.
There was a certain comfort in knowing the universe had definite laws like gravity and…attraction. He counted on the black and white of it, almost as much as he did the right and wrong of the laws that were his job to uphold.

  Laws his father broke.

  He shook off the thought as he reached the clearing near the edge of the pond and parked under the shade of a pine tree. “Sure you’re up for this?”

  “I’m fine. Sometimes places—just like objects—hold on to strong energies for a while. Maybe I’ll pick up on Hannah’s emotions or those of whoever was with her.” She clambered out of the car the second he turned off the motor.

  After he took off his jacket, he joined her at the shore a few feet from his front bumper. The lake was murky and green. Two egrets stood watch from a patch of tall grass on the south shore. “This is the spot where Hannah’s car entered the water.”

  Jilly crouched and took an audible breath. She patted the ground then held perfectly still, apparently getting herself into some meditative-like state. After several long minutes, she stood up and furrowed her brow. “There’s still a lot of bad energy here. Intense regret, sadness and…” She rubbed her arms as if she’d caught a chill despite the almost oppressive heat. “Rage.”

  Interesting as this was, it gave him nothing for the case. He could stare at her all day long, but he shouldn’t be wasting time chasing down false hopes for new leads. He was about to tell her he’d take her home when she touched the trunk of an oak tree and gasped.

  “There were two men here with her when…” She fisted her other hand at her side. “He was going to kill them both.”

  He stepped closer and damned if he didn’t believe she was actually seeing something. It was weird to admit to himself, but she had an otherworldly presence about her. “Who was going to kill them?”

  She squeezed her eyes tighter. “I don’t know. But both are important to her.” Suddenly it was as if an unseen force released her. She stumbled forward and he caught her in his arms.

  He held on longer than he should have. Why did he want to protect her? And from what?

  She opened her eyes and stepped out of his embrace, leaving him cold.

  The case, damn it. Concentrate on the case.

  “You saw Hannah here? And two men? What did they look like?”

  She shook her head. “One was in the shadows. It was so dark. Hannah was terrified.”

  He’d questioned her family and her friends yet no one had told him anything about her having a boyfriend but he wondered if she did. Or both men could have been working together to hurt her or rape her. But Jilly had said both were important to Hannah. And someone was going to hurt them both. “Did you get any sort of feeling for who these men were to her?”

  “No. Just that she knew them and she was afraid.” She shivered and he yearned to take her into his arms again, but he couldn’t.

  He had no business mixing work with his personal life. But he believed her, in her. When had he gotten on board and started accepting anything supernatural as legit? He took a moment to digest the notion.

  “Two men. Interesting.” There was no way of confirming that any of them were at the scene since it had rained the entire week prior to them finding Hannah’s car. All the tire tracks and footprints and God knew what other evidence had been washed away. “Can you give me any details on who these men could have been?”

  She gingerly touched the tree again and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she shook her head. “I think she knew them both because like I said, I got the impression they both meant a lot to her.”

  “Could they have been rivals for her affection?”

  Her forehead creased. “Maybe.”

  “Someone has to know something about the men. Hannah’s school friends say she didn’t have a boyfriend and her parents confirm that.” He kicked the dirt. What was he missing? If she had a secret relationship—or more than one—she wouldn’t be the first teenage girl to keep that information from her parents. But none of her girlfriends had known much of anything about Hannah. Maybe she had a friend he didn’t know about.

  He scratched his head. “Let’s go. I’ll drop you at Mind’s Eye or at your place if you want. I’m going back to square one. I’ll interview everyone Hannah knew all over again if I have to. If she had a boyfriend—or two, someone had to have known.”

  * * * * *

  Hours later Jilly slapped a mosquito from her arm as the coven’s Beltane ritual practice wound down. Her mother had always said she had sweet blood, which was why the bugs loved her so much. It was always worse during rituals since they were usually held on the beach bordering the woods in the early evening, right when mosquitos fed.

  Eloise stepped into the middle of the circle. “That was terrific, folks. Thank you—most of you—all for memorizing your parts. We’ll get the maypole out of storage tomorrow then we’ll be all set.” As the group dispersed, she headed straight for Jilly.

  “See you tomorrow.” Taryn waved then joined their friend Haley who waited for her near the entrance to the south path into the camp.

  “Night.” Jilly just knew Eloise was going to reprimand her again for leaving with Zander today. Or maybe she just wanted to scold her for now have her part of the ritual completely down. She drew a steadying breath.

  “Someone came in the store this afternoon asking about you,” Eloise said.

  People came asking for her all the time, usually referrals. “Did they make an appointment?”

  Eloise shook her head. “Not a client, at least I don’t think that was what she wanted. She asked for you by name, and wanted to know if you worked there. When I said you did, she thanked me and left.”

  “Hmm. Maybe she’ll come in tomorrow.”

  “I don’t think so. She didn’t seem to be in the market for a reading or anything else we have to offer.”

  Eloise was trying to tell her something, but she didn’t understand what.

  They started walking toward the north path to the camp. “What did she look like?” Jilly asked.

  “Thin, blond, very put together, you know, very professional looking.”

  The back of Jilly’s neck prickled. Could Hannah’s mother have come searching for her? Maybe Mrs. Saxon wanted her help without her husband knowing. Unless the blond was that awful reporter. Why would she have been digging into Jilly’s life? That was exactly the sort of thing she’d feared when she’d embarked on her quest to help the police find Hannah Saxon.

  She forced herself to breathe. “D-did she look familiar?”

  Eloise narrowed her eyes at her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before.”

  Jilly allowed herself a modicum of relief. If the woman had been the reporter, Eloise would have recognized her from TV, wouldn’t she? Still, she’d have to watch the news tonight and hope that if they did use the clip of her and Zander that she wasn’t recognizable.

  I look nothing like Lauren anymore. No one will ever find out.

  “She could be someone I met at that psychic fair in Gainesville last month.” Although she knew that wasn’t true, hopefully it would convince Eloise.

  They strode the path together until the fork, then parted ways. When she arrived at her cottage, Jilly retrieved her tarot cards from her purse then sat at her kitchen table to do a reading for Hannah. Although she’d never done one for someone who wasn’t sitting in front of her, what could it hurt to try?

  Keeping Hannah in mind, she shuffled the deck as she imagined herself surrounded with yellow light, the best color for spiritual communication. When she laid out the cards she tried to piece together a very complicated fortune. She turned over several cards then stopped to mull over the meanings. The past and present were filled with cards of the major arcana—the World, the Lovers, the Devil. Hannah must have made an important decision recently, perhaps dealing with love. Maybe a choice between lovers. Could they be the two men Jilly had sensed in her vision at Gideon’s Pond?

  The next card she revea
led was the Tower. She swallowed hard. It was one of the clearest cards in the deck. Hannah’s beliefs or some major aspects of her life had come crashing down around her feet. Nothing built on lies could remain standing.

  She grabbed a notepad and wrote down her thoughts on the reading so she could share it with Zander later. Then she headed to her room for a shower.

  The heat and steam conspired to strip away the layers of stress the day had brought—the pressure to psychically connect with Hannah, the subtle tension between her and Eloise, and her almost constant state of arousal when she was anywhere around Zander. She did her best to fight her body’s instinctive reaction to him and the emptiness in her soul she longed to have filled, but the effort was taking a toll on her.

  After her shower she slipped into a silky nightgown then settled on the couch in front of the television to watch the eleven o’clock news. The show led with a story about a forest fire in a neighboring rural county. Then Carla Templeton stood in front of the county administration building talking about the number of days Hannah Saxon had been missing. She inferred the local police weren’t capable of solving the case.

  Then the screen switched to a shot of Zander and her leaving the building.

  Damn it. She was clearly visible but at least she no longer looked anything like Lauren Piccard.

  The reporter came back on, now standing next to the sign at the entrance to the camp. “Police are so baffled by this case that they’ve brought in a psychic from the Freedom Moon Spiritualist Camp. Sheriff Van Horn refused comment on the matter but it’s clear that the lead detective on the case, Sergeant Zander Parsons—grandson of Mayor Gene Parsons—is using the clairvoyant’s help. Back to you, Don.”

  Jilly released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She had no cause to panic. It was only local news.

  Zander’s words came back to her.

  Hannah’s case was picked up by one of the wire services. I think they ran the story on the CNN website.

  What if they put tonight’s clip on a national news site and someone from her old life happened to catch it? If Jamal saw it he might see through her attempts to disguise herself and he’d know exactly where to find her.