by K. J. Emrick
The sweet, earthy smell of the spice grew stronger the longer Willow sucked on it, and in no time she was breathing easier, and her color had returned, and she loosened her grip on her stomach. Addie sighed in relief. Willow was going to be okay.
“Oh, that’s so much better,” she said with a grateful sigh. She shifted the stick from side of her moth to the other, the end of it jutting out like a lollipop. “Thanks, sis.”
Addie rounded on Darla. The expression on the older woman’s face could have been mistaken for disappointment, for just a second, but then she was all smiles again. “There,” she said sweetly to Addie. “She’s fine. Just like I told you. Still, to be sure you should bring her home and let her rest, don’t you think?”
Willow hopped off her stool now. “Nope. I’m good. Like Addie said, we’ve got things to do today. Um. Thanks for breakfast, I guess.”
She looked at what remained of the food on her plate, and then shoved it away. Obviously, she’d lost her appetite.
Addie knew she might have lost more than that. If she’d eaten more of those juniper-laced sausages she might have been laid up in bed for days. Or worse. Angrily, she stared Darla down until her smile slipped away. “My sisters and I have… an allergy to juniper,” she said. It was close enough to the truth, anyway. “You will not make changes to our recipes like that, ever again, without consulting with me first. Understand?”
Now Darla’s cheery demeanor disappeared altogether. “Oh, is that right? Is that right? Will let me tell you something, Miss High-and-Mighty Kilorian sister! It seems to me that you don’t trust me with anything. Not this kitchen, not this café, and not your dark little secret either!”
Those words echoed around the kitchen, leaving Addie and Willow both staring blankly at her. Dark little secret? She couldn’t mean…
She couldn’t know…
But Mac McDougal had known. Somehow, he knew. So could Darla know about them as well?
How…?
She didn’t give the sisters time to think about it. Stomping over to the stove she picked up a pan of sizzling sausages and tossed it upside down with a crash into the stainless steel sink. “You don’t like the way I cook? You don’t think you can trust me with anything? Well then, let’s just get rid of it all! How about that, ladies? Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
The electric warming tray full of pancakes was next. Darla picked it up with her bare hands, skin sizzling and blistering, and she yanked the electric cord out of the wall and threw the whole thing at the sisters. “Let’s get rid of it all!”
Addie and Willow ducked. The pancakes flew over their heads. A little bit of magic turned aside the ceramic dish just before it would have taken Willow in the side of the head. Darla keened with laughter.
“There it is!” she gloated. “There’s the secret you didn’t want to share! It’s mine now. Mine, mine, mine!”
Little things began to fit together in Addie’s mind. The way Darla had taken such an interest in her and her sisters. The little things that had started to go wrong here at the café over the past few days. The new reserve of energy that Darla seemed to have. The way she seemed to be growing younger.
The incident with the juniper berries here this morning, as if Darla knew full well what the Kilorian sisters were.
Like she wanted to hurt her and Willow.
Addie wasn’t sure what it added up to, but it couldn’t be anything good.
Now Darla was grabbing pots and pans and throwing them crazily around the room, picking up gobs of food with her burnt hands and stuffing huge bites of waffles and fried eggs and raw dough into her mouth, all of it dribbling down her chin while she shouted insults laced with obscenities at them.
“You think you can keep all this from me? You think you can tell me what to think and what I know! No more! This stops now! This… ends… now!”
Her voice grew deeper, and guttural, and completely inhuman.
When she turned on the sisters this time there was a dark, red light that shone behind her eyes.
Willow’s hands came up right away, and she was already calling on her magic. Addie had several spells in mind, the words of power working on her tongue, her Essence welling up and ready to use.
Not here, her mind screamed at her! Not with all those people out in the other room who will feel it and know what you are!
When the sisters didn’t attack, Darla crouched, and screamed at them, and beat her injured hands against the floor. The tiles cracked. Her hands bled.
She was going to attack them. Addie could see it in the corded lines of her muscles. There was no reason in those eyes. Nothing recognizable.
“Don’t do this,” she tried anyway. “Darla, we’re friends. Whatever’s going on, let us help you.”
“Oh now you want to help me!” Her voice was two registers too deep now. “It’s too late! It’s too late!”
She sprang at the sisters. There was no more time for talk. No more time to think. Both Addie and Willow lifted a hand, their magic sparking along their fingertips, ready to do what needed to be done regardless of the consequences.
In between the two of them stepped Mephistopheles Smith.
He stuck out his hand, catching Darla in the chest as she came down from her leap, and where his hand struck her body…
…something was pushed out from the other side.
Darla screamed one more time, and crumpled to the floor.
Behind her, a thing of shadow and flash flew across the room to smack into the wall and fall to the floor in the same position that Darla was lying in. It had the shape of a person, but it definitely wasn’t human.
Addie stared from Darla over to the thing that had been inside of her. “Oh,” she whispered, “curse my Irish eyes.”
“What?” Willow asked, out of breath and still with that cinnamon stick dangling from her lips. “What just happened here?”
“That’s the thing that I told you about in Stonecrest. The entity that got into our home and attacked me.”
“Nothing evil gets into our house,” Willow pointed out. “Not without being invited in by one of us.”
“I’m telling you, that’s the same thing. We couldn’t figure out how it got in… or where it went.” She looked down at Darla again, breathing and twitching but unconscious now that the entity was out of her. “I guess now we know where it went, even if we don’t know how it happened.”
The entity was all shimmer and blurred lines and shadow. Now that it wasn’t hiding in one of her friends Addie could sense the evil rolling off it in waves. She stepped closer, trying to make her eyes focus on the edges of the thing.
Like a snake, it coiled and sprung right at her.
Addie dropped to the floor, and raised her hands, but the spells that had been ready on her lips before were all the way at the back of her mind now and calling them up again was going to take longer than she had before the entity was on her.
Philly was there again, and he took hold of the thing, and squeezed.
The sound of a thunderclap echoed as the thing burst into fragmented colors that faded like dying sparks. The entity was gone.
“So,” Philly said to Addie, rubbing a dusty residue from between his fingers. “Can I ask you to put that good word in for me now?”
Chapter 8
“I can’t believe you told him no.”
They were back in the Jeep Cherokee again, driving away from the mess that they’d left in the café. People had finally caught on that something was wrong and had started filtering into the kitchen. Addie could see their wide-eyed expressions and could already imagine the rumors that would start flying around town.
She’d made up a story about a gas leak and a flameout. Everyone nodded, as if that made perfect sense, and went back to their food.
Faced with everything Addie had decided to close the Hot Cauldron for the next few days. Everyone had been given their food to go at no charge. The kitchen was a complete write-off, and it was hard to tell what ne
eded to be cleaned up and what needed to be repaired. She didn’t even bother trying. Tomorrow would be soon enough for cleaning up.
Darla had come around long enough to agree to go to the hospital with one of their regular customers. Her hands needed tending to. As for what damage that thing might have done inside of her, it was hard to say what the hospital might find. She didn’t seem to remember anything. All she wanted to do was sleep. Addie had told her that was a good idea, and promised to check in on her tomorrow or the next day.
She took that promise seriously. The thing with evil entities was that once they’d nestled into a human soul, they liked to keep coming back to them again and again. Addie didn’t want that to happen to Darla. Not until they had time to sit down and talk about what she knew, and what she did or didn’t remember.
What, exactly, Mephistopheles had done to the entity was a question mark. It might be dead and gone, or it might only be dispersed and waiting to return when it had gathered enough of itself back together. Addie gave it a fifty-fifty chance and it wasn’t like they could ask Philly which it was. He hadn’t been in much of a talking mood after Addie had said no, for a second time, to his suggestion that she go to bat for him with Kiera.
“I told him no,” she explained to Willow, “because that whole matter is between Kiera and him.”
“Yeah,” she said sarcastically, “except you banished him from the house.”
“There’s phones at the house. He can call her if he wants to.”
“He wasn’t happy.”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“I wouldn’t want to be on a fallen angel’s bad side.”
“I’m not.”
She knew, even before Willow gave her that look, that what she had just said was wishful thinking. Of course she was on Philly’s bad side. He’d done her a huge favor in the kitchen by dispersing that evil entity from her friend, and now she’d turned him down for a simple favor twice. The Fallen weren’t exactly known for their forgiving natures. There was a reason they didn’t reside in Heaven anymore.
Willow crunched the last of her cinnamon stick between her teeth. “You’re a dangerous woman, Addie Kilorian.”
“It’s the Irish blood in me.”
“Me too,” her sister said with a smile. “I just think you should have given him more of a chance. He did save our lives.”
“Ha. For all I know, he put that thing inside of Darla in the first place. He could have set the whole thing up as a way to get closer to us, and to Kiera.”
“Maybe,” Willow said after a moment. She didn’t sound convinced. “All I know is he was there when we needed his help. And he’s seriously hot.”
“Well. Then that makes all the difference in the world.”
“Only to people with eyes.”
Addie gave her a sideways glance, and left it at that.
The town hall was just up the street now, and they parked at the curb not far from the big brick building. Besides the stage area where the debate was going to happen last night, this was also where Shadow Lake’s government offices were. One office for the First Selectman, and one for the town manager. That had been Seth Hunter’s office. For a moment Addie considered stopping in there to see what she could find, but then she told herself to forget about it. That was something that Lucian Knight and his officers would have already thought of.
Let the cops go through the boring paperwork on his desk and the files in his drawers. Addie was only going to make a quick stop to talk to Maria Stiles, before she and Willow went out to the Raithmore estate to talk to Cavallo. For all the good that would do.
Just inside the front door of the building they were almost knocked over by a short woman carrying a cardboard box full of odds and ends, framed photographs and binders, a snow globe and a desk plaque with the name Irma Franklin on it.
“Irma?” The short brunette finally saw them through her tears when Addie said her name. “What’s wrong?”
She blinked at Addie and Willow, and juggled the box in her hands. “I was fired. I’ve been Maria Stiles’ secretary for over ten years, and I just got fired. I came into work this morning and… this.”
Addie shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry to hear that, Irma. We’ve known you for all that time and we didn’t realize there was any problems between you and Maria.”
Irma sniffed, and set her jaw, and then walked out of the town hall without another word.
“What do you think that was about?” Willow asked Addie.
“Politics,” Addie guessed. “And, like Doyle says, we don’t have time for politics.”
Willow snorted. “You’re listening to the cats now?”
“Only when they make sense.”
The day to day running of the town didn’t interest Addie. Maria Stiles could hire anyone, or fire anyone, that she pleased. She felt bad for Irma, sure. It was terrible that she was out of a job just like that, but this was the way of the world. That wasn’t her concern.
The murder of Seth Hunter was.
When Addie knocked on the office door Maria called for them to come in. She was at her desk, leaning over a pile of paperwork, and she looked like she hadn’t slept all night. Her blouse was untucked and her usually perfect brown hair had several strands out of place. The bags under her eyes were a good tip off, too.
“Tell me,” she said to Addie, “that you’re coming here with good news. I’ve fielded about a dozen different phone calls just in the last hour about this death. Are we calling it a murder yet? Is it official? I can’t get any kind of straight answer from that boyfriend of yours or anyone else at the Birch Hollow police, for that matter.”
“Lucian is not my boyfriend,” Addie said. “We’re… friends.”
“Whatever. Call him your soulmate, for all I care, just get me the answers I need. Was this a murder?”
Addie had no qualms about revealing that bit of information, regardless of what rules Lucian had to follow. “Yes, Maria, it was a murder. But, I wouldn’t start telling people that unless you want to start a panic. This is the third murder in Shadow Lake in as many weeks. That’s not something you want to advertise.”
Willow hummed in agreement. “It might drive the tourists away if you start announcing that.”
Maria pursed her lips. “True. That’s true. Well. Then we’ll keep it under wraps. For now. I suppose you’re out looking for the killer? What have you found?”
A fallen angel and an evil entity possessing one of our friends, Addie thought to herself. Other than that…? “Not much yet. We’re still working on it. I just wanted you to know.”
“Well, that’s fantastic. I’m so glad the vaunted Kilorian sisters are on the case, since all they’ve found so far is ‘not much.’ I can’t seem to depend on anyone. Mac McDougal was supposed to help me set up the debate last night, and he was nowhere to be found. My husband was supposed to cook dinner last night but somehow he forgot. Now you guys are here empty handed. I even had to fire Irma. I suppose I’ll just start running the whole town by myself, won’t I?”
Willow’s eyes narrowed. “We’ve never let you down before, Maria. Be patient.”
“I don’t have time to be patient. The whole town is up in arms about this one.”
Addie folded her arms across her chest. “You had time enough to fire Irma.”
Sitting back in her chair, Maria glared at them. “What’s your point?”
“My point is, I don’t like the attitude you’re giving me.”
“Neither do I,” Willow agreed. “We protect this town. We protect the people. I won’t stand here and let you insult me and my sisters like this.”
Maria raised an eyebrow. “You protect the town? Well, you’re doing a really lousy job of it, then. Three murders in three weeks, remember?”
Addie saw Willow’s fingers twitch, and a little arc of pink light jumped along her skin. As much as it might do Maria Stiles some good to be knocked down a few pegs, Addie couldn’t let her little sister cast a spell on the
First Selectman, in her own office. There might be too many questions to answer afterward.
“Maria,” she said in an attempt to calm things down, “we’ll let you know when we have something to tell you. We’re going to talk to Cavallo Raithmore right now. He had some land deal that Seth Hunter was blocking, and I want to know what it was. Now that Seth is dead he seems pretty confident that the board of selectmen are going to okay his deal. Unless you can tell us what it is and save us a trip?”
She blinked back at Addie. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m the First Selectman. If there was some land deal or purchase that was in the offing I’m sure I would have heard about it. Huh. Unless it was something that Seth didn’t want to bring to us. That opens up some interesting possibilities.”
“Such as?” Willow asked.
Maria twisted her hand through the air. “Well, Seth might have thought it wasn’t worth bothering the selectmen with. That’s one possibility, sure. It could have been something that would never happen, or something that was so minor that it didn’t make our agenda. On the other hand…”
“On the other hand, what?” Addie prompted.
“Well, I was just thinking that maybe this deal was something Seth was keeping from us on purpose, hoping to get more money out of Cavallo.”
Addie was surprised. “Extortion? Are you saying that Seth was trying to extort money out of Cavallo Raithmore?”
Spreading her hands, the First Selectman eased back in her chair. “I knew Seth. I would never suggest such a thing about him, but the facts are the facts, aren’t they?”
“I knew Seth too,” Addie said. “I can’t imagine he would use his position for his own advantage. Ever.”
Maria looked very smug. “Yes. Well. You don’t seem to know anything right now, so it shouldn’t be too hard for you to get at least a little clue. Seth wasn’t what he let everyone believe he was. He wasn’t the plucky, hard working bloke championing the people of Shadow Lake. He liked his job, and he liked to take a little extra whenever he could.”
