The Little Lies (The Great Hexpectations Series Book 1)

by Marie F. Crow

  I watch his car until there is nothing but the red haze of his taillights. Standing here in the night, with a corpse beside me, I feel raw. My life is no longer my own. It now belongs to those who ply me with riddles and hidden threats. To those whom I do not know, but whisper about me in some strange way I cannot comprehend. I’m Harper Buckland. I’m a simple witch, trying to make sense of what that means. I can’t possibly be what Jedrek wants me to be, or what GiGi hints I may be, but yet as I stare at this forsaken and discarded man, my fingers twitch with a foreign feeling.

  I gather the fragile flower wondering how something so simple could cause such a reaction as I once again sit behind the steering wheel.

  “Aren’t you the same as the flower?”

  I lift my eyes to the rearview mirror when I hear her familiar voice.

  “Such a simple thing, causing so much a reaction.”

  Her eyes bore into mine much the same way Regan’s had earlier. This time though, I understand completely.

  GiGi is waiting for me. She’s trying to look as if she hasn’t been. She wants me to believe she’s been sitting at the kitchen nook, sipping something warm, and no doubt laced, but the swinging, hanging plant she must have rushed past to make it to the table destroys the illusion, despite her best efforts to keep her face empty and her eyes glued to a magazine.

  “Go ahead,” I coax her, coming to lean on my normal spot. “Ask.”

  GiGi puts a false surprised look upon her face hearing my voice and entrance. “I didn’t hear-“

  The old woman moves from behind the table with speed I rarely see. The problem is that speed is heading right for me.

  With her eyes wide, she clutches the robe I still have draped around me. Her hands roughly search for something along its collar, and when she finds the artistic scroll work of a logo, her coloring makes me look tanned.

  “He took you there, didn’t he?” Her voice is a soft hiss, something a cat would make from a dark corner of a room before streaking across it to trip you.

  “He took me to a fancy spa, yes,” I tell her, pulling away from this woman who seems to have become possessed by demons I don’t have names for. “But that’s not even the best part of my day.”

  I sidestep her, walking to the fridge with my body suddenly remembering food hasn’t been a top priority today.

  “It gets better than going to a spa where the rich pay the supernatural for their powers?”

  I don’t have to turn from my foraging to know her arms are crossed and she’s five seconds from speaking rapid Italian.

  “Thought that place was weird,” I say in agreement around a mouthful of chicken cutlet.

  I still won’t look in her direction. I busy myself with the plate of leftovers like it’s my last meal. It may be with how she’s simmering, waiting for just one reason to go full warpath. When, without thinking, I place the crumpled flower on the counter beside me, I may as well have launched a grenade.

  “What is that?” I hear her feet moving before her questions dissolve into a rapid avalanche. “Where was this? Who gave it to you? Why do you have it?”

  “Which question do you want me to answer first? You threw out a few there.”

  GiGi Jo never struck me growing up. She had other ways of steering me back to the path she felt was correct. She strikes me now. Swatting the back of my head with her open hand before spilling forth the language I still haven’t fully decoded.

  “All of them!” she declares with an open palm hanging in the air.

  “It’s a flower. In a dead man’s hand. The dead man, technically. Not sure.” I tell her all of my answers between chewing, not caring about table etiquette.

  My answers intrigue and worry her, but at least the Italian has stopped, and she seems calmer. “Elaborate.”

  Sighing, I begin the retelling. “He was in the back seat of my car. I didn’t know he was dead, and that seems to really have pissed off Jedrek. The flower was in his hand and I’m supposed to ask you about it. I’m supposed to tell you, your little lies are going to be what gets us all killed. Well, mostly me it seems, but ‘she’ is coming, and I failed some grand test of hers.”

  GiGi’s eyes may be casted in my direction, but it’s not me she is seeing. It is not even this room.

  “Who is she?” I ask.

  “That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to, anyway. Not if we find this source and return it. She’ll have no use for you then.” GiGi says with her normal style of answering with a riddle she has taken to, as of late.

  “Why would I be of use to her when it comes to this source?” I ask, still eating from the plate of leftovers. I too can pretend to be calm and uninterested while inside being churned like an angry sea.

  “Because only one who can control the dead can use the magic inside it. The witch who is using it now, has stayed under the radar by manipulating humans to use it. I doubt she even really understands what she has done, or awakened, by her greed.”

  “You talk like you’ve figured out what it is. Last we talked it was just this mysterious source of magic.”

  GiGi pulls on the robe, stripping it from my body, and storms into the living room amid our conversation. I follow her, lost as to her sudden change in emotional lanes with her action. She has stormed into this room, tossing the robe of amazing fluffiness into the old brick fireplace the home was built around. I’m not shocked to see her dousing it with the lighter fluid she keeps on the hearth. Nor am I moved into action when she pulls the matches from behind a dust covered photo.

  When the robe becomes an inferno, I ask her, “Did you even open the flume first?”

  “Damn it,” she mutters.

  “I really liked that robe.”

  “You have others,” her voice tells me, but she’s watching the flames eat the fabric with a fascination.

  “Why was that even necessary?”

  “What did he tell you about that spa?” she asks me, still with her voice distant.

  “Nothing. We went to see a witch name Regan.”

  GiGi sighs, leaning her head against the wooden hearth. “I told you to stay away from them, didn’t I? I warned you about this.”

  Crossing my arms, I try to remember her ever mentioning Regan or the spa. “Pretty sure you’ve never talked about Regan or this spa.”

  “The Ripples, Harper. I warned you about the Ripples.”

  I feel as if I’ve been drinking cheap tequila for days. My head is swimming, lost and unable to connect the dots before me. Even when so many are placing them, I can’t figure out how they are connected.

  “Look, I’m going to need you, or Jedrek, or someone to just start at the beginning and then move to the ending. Right now, you two are in the middle of the book and I don’t even have chapter one, much less the prologue to read, to understand what the hell is going on.”

  “Sit,” she says motioning to the couch.

  It feels like story time and the book is going to be filled with ghosts who haunt her. Sitting beside her, I can see the flames reflected in her glasses. She doesn’t say anything. She just sits, staring into the fire of a robe which seems to be burning for an impossibly long time.

  “Should that still be on fire?” I ask her, putting a voice to my thoughts.

  GiGi shrugs. “Who knows what that thing is made of. I just know I hate them. I hate that place and I hate the Ripples. You didn’t work two cases that night, Harper. You worked one, the same one. I figured most of it out today while you were away. There’s only so many things on this plane which can wake the dead. Most are accounted for, as far as Charlotte can tell. Which means, the ones which aren’t, aren’t from this place.”

  “When Jedrek showed up, panting after you like a wolf in grand mom’s house, Charlotte did some asking on her end. The source we are after is a crossroads demon’s box.”

  I asked for chapter one. This doesn’t feel like chapter one. Listening to her, I think she’s still pretty far in
to the book of explanations.

  “You know you’re still speaking gibberish to me, right?”

  She lifts one eyebrow quickly as her answer. “If what Jedrek says is true, we don’t have the time to go fully into it like I should have years ago. I didn’t want this day to come. I thought I could keep you hidden, keep my promise to your mother, but even she didn’t fully understand what you would become.”

  “You say that like I’m going to grow horns or wings. Maybe a tail? Will it be a cute tail? Maybe with a little curl on the end?”

  “Enough with your jokes,” she turns to glare at me, “You must understand: the Ripples own the witches. Jedrek owns the Ripples. Jedrek owns everyone, and if Jedrek is scared or worried, we are as he says, fucked.”

  “GiGi, the Ripples own half of the town, and most likely other towns, but how does a family own a whole coven?” My hands are doing that annoying thing they do when I’m beyond frustrated. They move with each word, stretching outward, or flexing my fingers to add punctuation.

  “Not just a coven. All the covens in the area. Every witch which answers to a house answers to the Ripples. All except for one. They are the last true house of unbound magic.” GiGi corrects me.

  “How is that even possible?”

  “Because it’s the deal they made with the vampires long ago.”

  “Wait,” I almost shout, standing to pace the room. “There’s vampires? Here? In town? Don’t tell me they sparkle in the sun or chase after teenage girls filled with hormones and daddy issues?”

  “You with the jokes again.”

  “If I don’t joke, my head will explode. Basically, what you’re skipping over is everything is real? These things just blend in and walk around?”

  GiGi laughs dryly. “You’re a witch who had her dead parents ringing the doorbell one night after staying up too late to watch a horror movie and you’re shocked vampires are real? It’s going to be a long year for you then.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because the Ripples are werewolves, and now they have your scent. There’s nowhere you could go and they wouldn’t find you. Nor is there any place you could hide from them. You didn’t raise their father for them to ask questions. You raised their father for them to ask about you. At best, it’s one of their witches who has the box.”

  “At worst?”

  “They think you’re the witch with it.”

  “Who is ‘she’?”

  “The collector.”

  “What does she collect?” I ask fearing I already know her answer.

  “Witches, Harper. She collects witches. She sleeps until something stirs her. Something so powerful, she leaves her world of dreams and nightmares to torment us in life. She’s the reason we sleep with a dream catcher woven from hair of every generation, to confuse her and keep her eyes from us. She’s the reason we craft our poppets, stuffing them with cloth holding our blood so she will search for them and not for us. She’s our boogey man.”

  “But who is she?” I ask, pushing harder for something more than just old tales and whispered rumors.

  “Enough, Harper. To speak of her is to summon her. Leave it be. Focus on what is before us, and with any luck, she’ll go back to sleep.”

  “Jedrek said I failed her test.”

  “Good,” GiGi says in her sigh. “Then maybe she will think she was mistaken and lose interest.”

  “I have to visit the Ripples then?”

  “You have to visit the Ripples then,” GiGi repeats. “Preferably before Jedrek does.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you find the box first, Charlotte can hide it, keep it from doing any more harm. If he finds the box first, he will kill every witch who dared to use it and return it to the demon it belongs to, to further collect souls.”

  “No pressure,” I tell her with my own sigh as I collapse back to the couch.

  “None at all,” she says, still watching the robe burn.

  “Seriously, how is that thing still on fire?”

  “You don’t want to know,” GiGi says, and maybe I don’t.

  Her voice is heavy with ghosts haunting her. She’s lost in the memories of some past I never asked about and one she never spoke about, either. Watching her, hearing her, she’s right. I really don’t want to know.

  Parking my poor Honda along the rows of cars with more vowels to their names than should be allowed, she’s a blaring contrast. Her paint isn’t the high gloss of what’s around her. Her color isn’t as dark, but she’s paid for and sometimes that little fact can make a car the prettiest of the lot.

  It took me hours to find my outfit for today’s little meeting. What does one wear to the house of the richest people in the town who just happen to be werewolves? Toss in the fact they also seem to own a couple of covens and suddenly you have the most interesting game of monopoly ever played. I’m about to try to pass go, but I doubt I’ll collect my two hundred. After hearing more of GiGi’s stories over breakfast, I’ll be lucky to keep my head.

  Standing on the obnoxious porch, which I’m pretty sure is made from some style of swirling granite, I regret picking the mauve dress. I should have gone with the slacks. Slacks are easier to run away in, or recover when tripping in the forest, or whatever it is you do when being chased by rich werewolves.

  While standing here, preparing a speech consisting of balanced proportions of questioning instead of accusation, the door opens, ruining any imagined perception of any authority I thought I may have, having been caught talking to myself. The woman stares at me, reading my startled face perfectly. She’s the perfect platinum blonde the Ripples boast of with the matching body and bright eyes. The town jokes of them being vampires with their time evading beauty. I guess no one thinks of werewolves. I hadn’t.

  “They are expecting you,” she tells me with a playful smirk of a warning.

  “They?” I ask hoping to be given the rundown of names waiting at my execution.

  “Yes. They. He said you would be coming,” she tells me, stepping away to allow me to enter. “I guess he was right.”

  “Jedrek?” I ask, saying the name like the curse he’s become.

  She nods, still flashing her smirk. “Are the rumors true?”

  “There’s just so many of them to know which ones you are asking about.”

  She leans in to not be overheard with her question. “That he’s amazing in bed.”

  My face reacts like a preteen being told what happens between adults. My stomach answers differently. “No,” I tell her. “That one is not true, or at least I don’t know if it’s true,” I quickly add, floundering with embarrassment.

  “Pity,” she says, answering other rumors she has heard about us.

  She’s all hips and sways while I follow her through the house. The walls are covered in wood paneling, casting a warm feel to the grand mansion. It’s the only warmth. Everything from the tall oil paintings of past relations to the furniture feels cold, empty of the joy such furnishings should provide. All this finery and not a single smiling face amid it. The holidays must be draining.

  “Through there,” she motions at set of sliding doors.

  I wish I was wearing the same smile as she. I wish I felt even an ounce of her confidence. Taking one last breath, I nod for her to slide them open, like a curtain of a play, I convince myself of my role I will play.

  “Littlest witch!” Jedrek shouts with mirth when I enter. “You’re only slightly late.”

  Jedrek makes a show of checking an invisible watch upon his wrist, before looking at me again. His eyes are dancing with blue mischief. He’s wearing his normal black on black ensemble with black pressed shirt and slacks. His shoes almost glow as deeply as his car’s paint, which I somehow managed to miss among the many outside.

  “I wasn’t aware there was a meeting time,” I reply.

  “It’s generally understood one arrives before noon.” Deon is sitting in an oversized chair, wat
ching me like I’m a small animal she may toy with if motivated. “But it is also generally understood witches answer to a coven, and I’ve been told you don’t understand any of the rules we have among us.”

  “You mean answer to you?” I hide my nervousness behind a voice stuffed falsely with steel. I’m strolling the large room with its fireplace empty and black with soot, doing all I can to avoid Deon’s eyes which keep pace with me.

  Her hair is pulled high into a bun upon her head. The blonde shades of her hair almost glow, absorbing the light from the room. She balances her cigarette between her fingers. It smokes like incense, filling the room with its heavy scent.

  “In time,” she tells me, “you will. They always do.”

  She says this with such off-handed certainty, all I can do is lift my eyebrow with a silent mocking.

  “Now, ladies,” Jedrek interrupts the mounting ego game. “We are all here for the same reason.”

  “I doubt that,” I sigh, knowing the reason we are here may be the same, but the many options after the reason are not.

  Deon says nothing. She sits as if the chair is a throne. The only movement she makes is that of her foot, slightly swaying in her black leather pump. The red bottom flashes like an underbelly of warning before a serpent strikes.

  “Well, at any rate,” Jedrek aimlessly walks to where I have come to sit on a wooden desk, “it’s not here.”

  “Here, as in this house, or here as in the possession of this family?” I ask him, matching his calm exterior.

  He purses his lips, lifting his eyebrows before slowly casting his eyes to where Deon sits. “Both.”

  “But it was here,” I loudly whisper to the room.

  My strolling wasn’t simply something to do. I had spent the little tour sending out my magic, pushing it through the walls and into the grounds saturated in the blood of witches which surround this home. In the midst of all the horrors I discovered, of all the secrets buried under rocks of lies, there was also a tickling, a soft tugging of something heavy, something foreign. It was an old magic, dark and tasting earthy, like a decadent dish.