Witching The Night Away

by Constance Barker

  “What about Gloria?” Avery asked.

  They watched her hold her phone out and shout at it. She looked like she might throw it, but instead she stuffed it into her pocket and stormed to her car. Her tires squealed and spun out, raising a cloud of smoke, as she pulled away and then rocketed away from the hotel.

  “There’s your answer,” Avery said. “Let’s move.”

  Once upstairs, Avery was posted on guard duty and told to stand perfectly still. Aiden muttered over him, made a complicated hand sign, and Avery felt a subtle weight of enchantment settle over him. “They won’t notice you unless you move,” Aiden said. “So if you see someone coming, just whistle and I’ll get us out of it.”

  Then he went inside. At the very least, Avery was able to look over his shoulder and watch. When he did, he almost wished he hadn’t. It was very clear that someone had died in that room. The mess would take a long time to clean up.

  Aiden began his work. It was quick, and efficient, all his movements precise. He worked his hands into complicated signs, doing things with his fingers that Avery knew would be months or even years before he could do so easily. Wizard magic involved a lot of hand movement paired with a lot of wand flicking and drawing. Some of those hand positions were murder, and there was a whole system of exercises meant to make the hands more supple and capable of performing them, along with forms for wand use. The Seventy-Seven forms, Aiden called them, and then ranged from drawing perfect circles to sketching platonic solids in the air, on the fly.

  If Aiden wasn’t a master of the wizardly craft, then Avery very much wanted to see what a master looked like; he guessed it was quite a sight.

  As it was, Aiden was at least adept at his craft. The spell took on form and life as he finished, and the room grew momentarily darker. Then, in the darkness, there was a shape. It was Professor Turner, but this was only clear because it seemed like the shape was sitting at the chair in the room (it was overturned, in reality, so that the fuzzy figure appeared to be sitting in mid-air). He was translucent, and out of focus, but had a somewhat pale, white-blue glow to him that faded if you looked at it directly too long. It was like a trick of the eye.

  Then, another shape appeared at the doorway. This one was almost entirely unfocused and instead of a blue-white glow, it was a deep purple that was difficult to see clearly in the darkness. After a moment, Avery realized why the room was dark. The light inside it had been co-opted to produce the phantoms.

  There was no sound, but the two phantom shapes approached one another and drifted around the room, a facsimile of two people having a tense conversation. Avery could almost imagine Professor Turner’s phantom telling the other he was done. He returned to his seat.

  That was when it happened. The darker phantom drifted to the dresser in the room, and then rushed at the lighter one. They swirled around one another momentarily, and then the lighter phantom was on the ground. The darker one moved away, and then plunged down. Aiden did something, and the images almost came into focus—instead of a rough blob of translucent color, you could almost make out arms, legs, and a head. The darker phantom appeared to be shoving or pulling or... maybe rifling through the lighter one’s pockets? It stood again, its head swiveling, and it reached down toward the lighter phantom’s head or neck and then stopped. It backed away... and then came rushing at Avery so quickly that he actually flinched.

  It never made it to him. Upon reaching the threshold of the room, it simply vanished, and then the blue-white phantom of Professor Turner faded, and the light in the room returned to normal. Aiden was standing there, staring down at the stain where the Professor had lain and taken his last breath.

  “Excuse me, sir,” someone said.

  Avery startled, and spun to see the deputies approaching. “I’m afraid this crime scene is under an active investigation,” the taller of the two said. “I’ll have to ask you to move along, please.”

  “Of course, Deputy,” Avery said. He whistled. “Looks like something pretty awful happened in there.”

  Neither deputy commented—probably they’d shut down after Gloria had taken a run at them about details. They stared Avery down for a few seconds before he finally turned, and moved along as they’d suggested. He didn’t see Aiden in the room anymore.

  When he got back to the car, however, Aiden opened the passenger door and slipped in beside him, giving Avery a third shock in just a few minutes. He gripped the steering wheel tight in both hands and shook off the sudden dose of adrenaline. “Good God,” he muttered, “couldn’t you have spoken up? Whispered? Knocked?”

  “I suppose,” Aiden said.

  “How did you get out? I didn’t see you leave.”

  His teacher shrugged, and smiled mysteriously. “All in good time, apprentice.”

  Avery sighed. Naturally. “Alright, fine. What did we learn? Other than that someone died.”

  “We learned two things,” Aiden said. “Think about it. What did you see?”

  “Was it shoddy spell work that couldn’t make a clear picture?” Avery asked innocently.

  “Temporal phantoms fade quickly,” Aiden said, ignoring the tone. “Like an echo in the mountains. In the very first moments, it can be much sharper; but that window is exceedingly small. If the door to the room had faced east, we would have gotten even less than that. As it was, the east-facing window caused some degradation. We can discuss this at length, if you like; but I imagine Bailey would appreciate our report?”

  Avery’s cheeks heated. Of course. This wasn’t about magic; it was about Ryan. “Fine. I saw the killer search the Professor. So they were looking for something. I couldn’t tell if they found it.”

  “What else?” Aiden asked.

  Avery replayed the scene in his mind. There had been the moment at the end. The killer had reached for something but stopped. What had they been reaching for? “The murder weapon,” Avery realized aloud. “The killer looked like they were going to take it with them, but then didn’t.”

  “Why on earth would a person do such a thing?” Aiden asked.

  “They wouldn’t,” Avery said. “Unless it would benefit them somehow; help them get away with it. That’s got to be the only thing on a person’s mind after they kill someone, right?”

  “And they knew the weapon was still at the scene,” Aiden added.

  “So... they left it because they knew it would place suspicion on someone else,” Avery finished. “It wasn’t Ryan.”

  “I’m forced to agree,” Aiden said.

  “You thought it might have been before?” Avery asked, horrified.

  Aiden shrugged. “It was possible. The Professor was investigating the Caves. If he got too close to their secrets, it is possible they could have defended themselves.”

  That gave Avery a chill that raised the hair on the back of his neck. He almost told Aiden about what Bailey had learned from the professor... but now wasn’t the time, and he wasn’t sure it was his information to pass along.

  “Let’s get to the Sheriff’s station,” Avery said. “Bailey needs to know this.”

  They pulled away, and the deputies seemed to watch them as they did. Avery clocked them in the rear-view mirror as one turned to the other and moved his lips as he said something.

  “What did you do to them?” Avery asked again.

  Aiden chuckled. “Basic laxative spell. Low-level stuff. I’m happy to teach you, if you like.”

  Avery grimaced, and shook his head. “No, thank you. I don’t need to know everything after all.”

  Chapter 11

  “So... you’re with the paper?” The Coroner asked when Bailey presented him with her ‘credentials’ from the front desk.

  “Yes,” she said. She’d be gone before it mattered that she’d told a small fib. “Brand new. This is my first big story.”

  He looked at her with either sympathy or suspicion, Bailey couldn’t quite tell. Presumably, she was covering the story of her own father’s crime. That was understandably hard to
swallow.

  “I see,” he said. The coroner was technically on loan from the county. Coven Grove hadn’t had a coroner of its own in a very long time; there was usually no real need for one. Dr. Lansing had only been to Coven Grove a few times—the last visit had been for Martha Tells’ autopsy.

  “Believe me, Dr. Lansing,” Bailey said gravely, “I am only interested in the facts.” It sounded journalistic; like something Ryan might have said.

  Dr. Lansing pushed his round glasses up on the bridge of his nose and wrestled briefly with the wisdom of it, but eventually relented. “Of course. Well there’s no order not to speak to the paper, so... come this way, then.”

  She followed him into a room with an old metal table and several tall bays that were mostly empty and one desk whereupon sat Dr. Lansing’s tools that he’d brought with him.

  “The equipment here is woefully out of date,” he explained. “You’re welcome to print that. Maybe it’ll convince the county to update the department.”

  “I’ll be sure to mention it,” Bailey said.

  There was a body on the table, covered with a blue sheet but still very obviously a body. Professor Turner.

  Bailey had been the one to find Martha Tells in the caves. It had made her sick to see it. Before that, the only time she’d seen anyone’s body after death was when she saw Wendy at the funeral service. She’d seemed peaceful, though it had been, at the time, acutely obvious that Wendy was no longer there.

  Seeing Martha had been different. She hadn’t died peacefully, and there had been something about it that Bailey hadn’t really known how to put into words until just this moment.

  Wendy had died of natural causes. Early, true. She’d been only sixty-four and there had been so much life still ahead of her. But she had lived a full life, raised a daughter that she loved, married a man that was her best friend despite some of their ongoing problems. She’d seen thousands upon thousands of babies brought into the world and her life was full of joy. When she’d died, she’d left.

  When the coroner pulled back the sheet to show Professor Turner’s pallid face and the cleaned but obvious wound in his neck—it was no more than a tear in his skin, now and hardly looked fatal at all, though it was the artery underneath that had been the problem—Bailey realized something. As with Martha, Professor Turner—Owen—didn’t seem gone. It was a subtle, distant, abstract sort of presence, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps because of the lack of a peaceful passage he had somehow missed the bus. Or, he couldn’t quite leave it all behind as long as his death wasn’t truly resolved.

  “Are you alright, Miss?” Dr. Lansing asked, peering over his spectacles at her with some concern. “Is this your first time?”

  “No,” Bailey said. That, at least, was true. Tentatively, she tried to read Owen’s mind. She got nothing, of course. Maybe it was just a feeling; not an actual sensation of his presence. “No, it isn’t my first time. But its horrible regardless, isn’t it?”

  Dr. Lansing shrugged as if to say, “you get used to it”, and pointed at the small tear in Owen’s neck. “This was the fatal wound. Split the artery. He would have been dead very quickly. The murder weapon is in evidence, of course, but it was a fountain pen. I suppose the pen might actually be mightier than the sword.”

  Bailey didn’t find it funny. “Did Professor Turner have a sword?” She asked coolly.

  Dr. Lansing cleared his throat. “There are contusions along the left collar bone,” he said, “and a contusion on the posterior cranial tissues. He fell backwards”—he tapped the back of his own head—“hit the ground. He saw... uh, whoever did it. They fought a little before hand, we think, although it was brief. Are you... going to write any of this down?”

  She nearly blushed, but pulled her phone out of her pocket and waved it at him. “I’m recording. It’s two thousand sixteen; I don’t carry around a notepad.”

  “Ah, of course,” Dr. Lansing said.

  It did remind her of something.

  “Are Professor Turner’s effects available, or are they in evidence already?” She asked.

  “They’ve been checked in already,” the coroner said apologetically. “There wasn’t much there, but of course we’re testing it for any blood or hair that might match... someone.”

  Bailey sighed. “I understand you all have to investigate,” she said quietly. “You don’t have to tip toe around it, Dr. Lansing. Do you remember what was on him when he was found?”

  “Oh, sure,” Dr. Lansing said. “I have the carbon copy of the inventory.”

  “May I see it?” She asked.

  “I can’t see what use it would be for a story,” he said suspiciously.

  She thought quickly. What would Ryan have written about it? He always focused on people in his stories, who they were, what motivated them, what was special about them. “I want to build a character portrait,” she said. “Professor Turner was more than just a body. What was on him could give me a sense of how to convey to readers who he really was. What was close to him, you might say—the things he kept on his person. Was there a wedding ring, for instance? Or a necklace? All these things tell a story, and that’s what I do—I get the story.”

  This seemed impressive enough. Dr. Lansing nodded, and finally gave her a sympathetic smile. “That’s a nice way of approaching it, I think. I’ve read many homicide stories; they’re normally a little distant. Maybe you’re on to something.”

  Maybe she was, Bailey thought. She’d never considered life as a writer before. She wasn’t really considering it now, but it did make her feel strangely close to Ryan. As though he were here, helping her, guiding her.

  Dr. Lansing produced a pinkish slip of paper, and Bailey read it quietly to herself. Then, remembering she was ‘recording’ this, she read it aloud. “One pair of pants, khaki, dungarees,” she said, “one undershirt, white, fruit of the loom...” It was a very uninspiring list. Nothing that really stood out, just the sorts of things anyone might have on them if they died unexpectedly. There was no wedding ring mentioned, nor was there any particular jewelry or items of note other than a few mechanical pencils and a pen.

  There was no mention of the little notebook he’d kept in his inside coat pocket, though the coat itself was listed. Perhaps it hadn’t been on him when he died. If it were in the room, someone would have collected it.

  Still, it was a thin, frayed edge of a thread she could pull. If someone were going to kill Professor Turner, it would most likely have been because of his research, or for his research. Did he have any rivals? She’d have to look into that. Gloria had called him first. Much as Bailey hated the idea of speaking to the woman, she might be the one to ask about it. Presumably, she knew enough about his career to know who his competitors and colleagues would have been.

  Bailey handed the list back to Dr. Lansing. “Thank you for speaking with me. Um... any other comments you’d like to make?” It seemed like what a real journalist would ask.

  Dr. Lansing seemed to give this more thought than Bailey would have imagined it required. “I’ve been a coroner for thirty three years,” he said at length. “Maybe mention that I’ve been working with the county for twenty of that. I went to Harvard medical, you know. I was going to be a surgeon at first, but I interned at a medical examiner’s office for the FBI, in DC. Changed my life forever.” He smiled. “You can quote me on that.”

  Bailey gave him a polite nod and tapped her phone. “Great. Well, I think I have what I needed. Again, thanks so much for speaking with me, Dr. Lansing.”

  “Any time,” he said cheerfully.

  Bailey considered leaving then, but very much wanted to speak with someone who’d been in the room. It was Sheriff Larson himself that had picked Ryan up, along with Seamus Jackson. She tapped the nearest deputy on the shoulder. “Do you happen to know if Deputy Jackson is here?” She asked.

  The woman glanced around the room looking, and then pointed. “If he is, he’ll be filling out paperwork. He had a big a
rrest this morning, a homicide.”

  Bailey gritted her teeth, but thanked the deputy and made her way to the back offices. There were desks arranged in neat pairs, six all together. Seamus was at one of them, bent over a computer.

  Bailey sat down in the chair beside his desk without announcing herself, and Seamus’ eyes snapped up in surprise. He winced when he saw her. “Bailey, you can’t be here—”

  “I’m not here to argue Ryan’s innocence,” she assured him. “Not yet; not without proof.”

  That didn’t seem to reassure him. If anything, he got even more incensed. “Now listen, Bailey,” he said, “you got no right to go digging around. Leave all this to us; this is our job, you know. My job. To collect evidence and investigate. As a member of law enforcement.”

  “I completely agree,” Bailey said. “I just had a question or two, that’s all. I’ve got the media lanyard; look.” She held it up for him.

  Seamus frowned. “I know good and well you’re not supposed to have that,” he whispered.

  “Well I’m here anyway,” Bailey said. “And I just have two questions.”

  “I can’t promise I’ll answer them,” he said.

  “Okay. First, were you on the scene first?” she asked.

  Seamus nodded. “Sheriff Larson went in first, but I was with him. We got the call from the housekeeping staff.”

  “Right; second, then—did you see a little black notebook in the room? It wasn’t on Professor Turner’s list of effects.”

  “How do you know what was on his list of—never mind, don’t tell me. The less I know the better.” He sighed. “You know you could get into a lot of trouble.”

  “Just try and remember,” Bailey said. “Did you see the notebook or not?”

  Seamus gave her a long, hard look, but finally looked away from her and closed his eyes. His brow furrowed, and she could see movement under his eyelids. After a minute, he shook his head. “I don’t think so. We took a thorough inventory before we picked anything up. Sheriff Larson did most of the looking around, I pretty much just wrote down what he said. But I don’t think he said anything about a black notebook.”