Heists and Homicides

by Lily Webb

  “That’s not possible,” I mumbled. Half of Heath’s mouth raised in a smile and he rested one of his hands on mine.

  “It is.”

  “But what about my grandma? Did she know about this all along?” I asked. Heath shook his head, scattering the strands of his neatly-combed salt-and-pepper hair.

  “No, we were very careful not to tell anyone who didn’t absolutely need to know,” he said.

  “We? You mean you were in on this too?”

  “I was. It was my decision to entrust the necklace to your mother. After she learned she was pregnant, she and your father decided they wanted to be closer to your father’s family for the sake of helping raise you once you were born, and to let you experience a non-magical life,” he said.

  “But I was born here. Raina found the birth records to prove it, right?” I asked and Raina nodded. None of it made any sense; from the necklace right on down to my mother wanting to shield me from magic, nothing fit.

  “That’s true. You were born here, right in our very own Willowvale Hospital,” he said. “But after your birth, your parents moved back to Lumberton.”

  “So my father was a warlock then?” I asked.

  “No, as a matter of fact, your father was an everyday human,” he said.

  “Then how did he end up in Moon Grove? I thought there was a strict policy forbidding anyone non-magical from coming inside?”

  “That policy was suspended for a time — until after your parents went missing,” Heath said. He raked a hand through his hair to straighten it back into place and let out a sigh. “It’s a long story.”

  “Well, I’ve got all evening. I’ve spent my whole life believing a lie about my parents — or, evidently, several of them — so I think it’s past time for the story to be told,” I demanded. My chest echoed with the sound of my heart hammering against my rib cage.

  After sixteen years of believing the lie that my parents had died in a car crash, was I finally about to learn the truth? What if I didn’t like it? Maybe Grandma was right to have kept this from me. I wasn’t sure I could handle it now, so I definitely couldn’t have when I was younger.

  “You’re right, you deserve that much. As I said, after your mother discovered she was pregnant, she knew your grandmother would want to play a role in her only grandchild’s life, so for the sake of her and your father, Ember decided to move back to the non-magical world and raise you there,” Heath said.

  “Why would she want to shield me from magic? Especially if our family tree is as exceptional as everyone seems to think it is?” I asked.

  “She wasn’t shielding you from magic so much as she was shielding you from magicians,” Heath said.

  “I don’t understand the difference.”

  “I’m getting to that. Of course, when Ember came to the Council to seek permission to leave, we granted it without question. No one is forced to live in Moon Grove if they don’t wish to stay. However, it occurred to me that an opportunity had arisen. At that time, the bank of Moon Grove wasn’t nearly as secure as it is now.”

  “It’s been robbed, I would hardly call that secure,” I said.

  “Actually, it hasn’t,” Heath said, his eyes twinkling. “But we’ll come back to that. Fifteen or so years ago, the Council was dealing with a resurgent group — one that had learned of the existence of Merlin’s Heart and sought to use it for their own gain. So, for most of my adult life, I kept the necklace locked in a chamber of spells in my home, but I knew it was only a matter of time before someone found out and tried to force me to open it, or worse.”

  “So you shipped the necklace off with my parents?”

  “Exactly. Being as your father was a human, and your mother had spent so much time in the non-magical world with him, I knew they would blend in easily. No one would suspect them of being anything other than a normal, everyday family with a brand-new baby,” he said.

  “And Lumberton, North Carolina is about as isolated as you can get. No one would think to look for a powerful magical necklace in a middle-of-nowhere town,” I said, filling in the blanks.

  “This is why you’re a journalist. Your mind works fast,” he said.

  “It does, which brings me to my next question. How did the necklace make its way back here again if you sent it away with them?”

  “As foolproof as I thought the plan was, unfortunately, I was wrong in the end,” Heath said, avoiding my gaze. “The group I mentioned earlier followed your parents and kept a constant eye on them for more than five years without ever showing themselves. Of course, I kept in contact with your parents after they left, and for years we truly thought we’d thrown the group off the necklace’s trail.”

  Dread swelled in my stomach. Had my parents been killed because of Merlin’s Heart? It was ironic in the worst way.

  “So that night, when they went on their last date together, were they attacked by one of the group’s members?” I asked, afraid to know the answer.

  Heath nodded somberly and squeezed my hand. I’d forgotten he’d taken it in the first place, but it was a good thing because everything seemed to spin away from me, and had it not been for his hand anchoring me in reality, I might have drifted away.

  “Yes. By that point, we’d learned the group was tailing your parents in secret and we feared they were preparing to make a move for the necklace. I instructed your mother and father to bring it back here to Moon Grove, but it was complicated because you were still a child and they were worried for your life,” Heath said.

  “So they left me with Grandma Elle,” I said, hearing my voice as if I were outside myself. It echoed off the walls, repeated itself in my head like a mantra, and threatened to bore into the deepest corners of my brain.

  “They did. It was the best option for everyone. You may not know this, but magic use is strictly forbidden outside approved areas, so your parents left in their car, armed with nothing more than your mother’s wand and broomstick — self-defense is an exception permitted by magical law — heading for Moon Grove with the necklace.”

  “Did they make it? They must have, otherwise how would you have gotten the necklace back?” I asked.

  “Only one of them did,” Heath said and I choked as my throat closed and tears flooded my eyes.

  “Does that mean…?” I couldn’t finish the question.

  “We still don’t know, and we may never. I’m so sorry, Zoe,” he said. I tried to speak but only a hoarse whisper whistled through my teeth. I’d thought my parents were dead for most of my life so it shouldn’t have been a shock to learn they really were, but I couldn’t process it. I’d lost them twice over. I gulped down my grief, determined to get all the answers now that they were in reach.

  “But one of them must have made it back with the necklace, right?”

  “Yes. Your mother did, on broomstick,” Heath said. “Though her story was mixed up at best, which wasn’t a surprise given what she’d been through, the way she told me was that she and your father were pulled over by a police officer. But when your mother realized it was a member of the group that’d been following them, it was too late. There was a scuffle between your father and the attacker, and in the fray, your mother escaped on her broomstick.”

  “So she left her wand behind out of necessity. That’s why the police found it in the glovebox,” I said. I didn’t want to believe what Heath was telling me, but the pieces fit together perfectly.

  “She had no choice, nor did she have a choice about leaving your father, though I’m sure it was agonizing for her to make the decision. She loved him dearly, but she knew that the most important thing for her to do was to get the necklace back here,” Heath said. “Of course, we immediately dispatched a team of witches and warlocks to search for your father, but he was never found.”

  “So he could still be alive somewhere?” I asked.

  “It’s not likely, but yes, it’s possible,” Heath said. “We stopped searching years ago.” It was disappointing to hear, but it wasn’t
surprising.

  “Then what happened to my mother? Obviously, she made it here, but she’s not here now,” I said. Heath fell silent and stared down at the table and our linked hands.

  “She passed away,” he said at last.

  “How?”

  “When she arrived with the necklace, she was injured. They weren’t serious, scrapes and bruises and the like, but we sent her to the hospital anyway, not least of all because we were worried about someone coming after her to finish what they started,” he said. ”Unfortunately, that was exactly what happened. A member of the group chasing Merlin’s Heart found her in the hospital.”

  “But how did they get to her? Didn’t you have all kinds of security set up so she would be safe?” I demanded.

  “We did, but it was imperfect. We didn’t account for everything, and that’s one of my biggest regrets in all my time as Head Warlock. The attacker used an advanced form of magic to change his appearance, a type of magic that’s been outlawed here for hundreds of years,” Heath said and the breath ejected from my lungs as violently as a body through a windshield in a car crash.

  “Blood magic,” I muttered. Heath’s eyes snapped to mine, stunned.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s the Black Brotherhood, isn’t it?” I asked. “The group you keep talking about, the ones who killed my parents?”

  “It is.”

  My vision blurred as the pieces fell into place in my mind: the murderer in their faceless mask and black leather robes, Merlin’s Heart, the bank, everything. Blood magic, as I’d learned while solving the murder of Professor Delia Frost, corrupted the user from the inside out, using their own blood as fuel for their magic.

  Whoever it was in the mask, they were dying — and that’s why they wanted Merlin’s Heart. They couldn’t go on living much longer without it, which made them desperate and inordinately dangerous. That’s why they’d killed Victor in broad daylight on the steps of the bank; after their first attempt failed, they were running out of options.

  And now they had Victor’s wand, one of the only two keys to the vault, which meant they were that much closer to making a second attempt on the bank.

  “Is it the Brotherhood who’s after the necklace now?” I asked, my synapses firing.

  “I’m not supposed to say this, but yes, we suspect so,” Heath said.

  “Earlier you said the robbery wasn’t a success. Does that mean the necklace is still in the vaults?” I asked.

  “It is, for now. We’re making alternative arrangements to move the necklace somewhere more secure, and without anyone knowing that it’s leaving, but it’s taking longer than I’d like. It’s a delicate process,” Heath said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this sooner? I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you see? We couldn’t. Believe me, Zoe, if I could take it all back and do everything differently now, I would. But you have to understand, we’d spent so long guarding the secret of the necklace, and when you came to town, everyone was already talking about you. If I told you the truth, I couldn’t guarantee you wouldn’t share it, accidentally or otherwise,” he said.

  “Does everyone in this town know my story except for me?” I asked.

  “Not exactly. While very few residents know your mother was murdered and your father went missing, no one outside the Council and the FBI knows the full truth,” he said.

  “Is that why everyone knew who I was when I got here? People made it sound like they’d heard about me because it was so controversial for an outsider to come to town, but that wasn’t true, was it?”

  “I’m afraid not. But to be clear, it was a controversial decision to allow you entrance. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, either. We had to be very careful not to let slip anything to the general public during the debate,” Heath said.

  “Who came to you to ask permission?”

  “Mitch Harris, the editor-in-chief of the Moon Grove Messenger,” Heath said. “He’d seen your application and knew you were perfect for the job based on what he knew of your history, but also couldn’t bring you here without approval for the same reason.”

  Even my own boss knew more about my life story than I did. It was a difficult truth to swallow, but at least everything was clear.

  “Is that why you took a personal interest in me, Raina?” I asked as I turned to her.

  “It is, though it’s not the sole reason. You’ve never disappointed me — aside from sneaking your grandmother into town recently,” Raina said and I blushed. It wasn’t one of my brightest ideas, but it worked out well in the end.

  “Sorry about that,” I said.

  “It’s okay, dear. We all make mistakes,” Raina said and patted my shoulder, which brought some of the first words she’d ever said to me rushing back.

  “That reminds me, the first time I met you, you said something to me I haven’t been able to forget. You said, ‘after death, life.’ Were you referring to my mother?” I asked and Raina nodded.

  “Your mother and my niece,” Raina said, meaning Harper Woods, the journalist at the Moon Grove Messenger I’d been hired to replace after she was murdered by a rogue vampire.

  “Your appearance in Moon Grove felt to me as if everything had finally come full circle. I knew you’d find your way home eventually — and make no mistake, this is your home — but seeing you there on the street being assaulted by a political attack ad still caught me by surprise,” she continued.

  “You were always destined to be here, Zoe,” Heath said. “Again, I’m so sorry for everything, including not being honest with you sooner. But now felt like the best time to tell you these uncomfortable truths and I’m glad you know.”

  As difficult as it was to sit with, I was grateful to the two of them for coming clean. So many questions I’d wondered about for so long were now answered, and though they obviously weren’t the answers I wanted, they would have to do.

  “So now what?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” Heath asked.

  “What are we going to do about the necklace and the Brotherhood? They have to be stopped. I mean, they’ve already proven they’ll stop at nothing to get their hands on that necklace, and we can’t let that happen. My parents didn’t die for that to happen,” I said.

  Heath beamed at me, his eyes sparkling with tears, and squeezed my hand.

  “You’re amazing, you know that?” he asked. “Your mother and father would burst with pride if they could see you now, I’m sure of it.”

  “I agree,” Raina said.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked.

  “I’ve never met a witch who, after receiving such troubling news, would spring to action like this,” Heath said.

  “I guess it’s in my blood,” I said, thinking about my parents who’d given their lives for the sake of the greater good. Despite years of believing they’d died in a car crash, I never fully believed it — and now I knew the truth.

  “It is. Your grandmother is another perfect example,” Raina said.

  “Yeah, wait a second, that reminds me. If my father was a human, how can Grandma have magical abilities?” I asked.

  “That’s a terrific question, one I’ve been wondering about myself,” Raina said. “Though there are a few cases known to us, it’s exceedingly rare for the gift of magic to skip a generation.”

  “Is it possible my father wasn’t a human after all?”

  “Absolutely, though I would think one of us would’ve noticed after all the time he spent here,” Raina said. “It’s more likely than not that he was human, or his levels of magic were so low they were practically undetectable.”

  “Can that happen?”

  “Yes, more often than you’d think,” Raina said.

  “Interesting. On another note, how do you think the Brotherhood found out about the necklace being in the bank? I’m sure no one on the Council let that secret leak out,” I said. “Could the Brotherhood have infiltrated the bank?”

  “It’s sti
ll under investigation, and like I said, I’m not allowed to share any details,” Heath said. “However, that doesn’t mean you can’t find answers of your own.”

  “Are you saying what I think you are?” I asked. Heath winked at me.

  “All I’m saying is you’ve proven repeatedly that there’s no one in this town who’s as effective at getting answers as you,” he said. “I don’t doubt this case is any different, and I’m sure the police and the FBI would appreciate the help — even if they don’t know they need it yet.”

  He was right. Though the news of my parents and their history was troubling at best and crushing at worst, I couldn’t afford to let it consume me. That was the past, and I lived in the present — a present in which two brothers had been murdered by a cult member for a magical necklace that granted its owner unlimited life.

  I had to find them and stop them, and I’d do it for my parents. It was the only way to make things right.

  “I guess I’d better get started with Giovanni,” I said.

  “This is your case now as much as it is mine. Who would I be to try to stop you?” Heath asked. I gathered up my things and my pride, and stood from the table, determined to get to the bottom of everything before it was too late.

  “Thank you both, for this and for everything you’ve done for me since I got here. I wouldn’t be half the witch I am today if it weren’t for either of you,” I said.

  “It’s us who should be thanking you, Zoe,” Heath said.

  “Hold that thought until I get the killer in cuffs,” I said.

  “I don’t doubt you will.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  My palms turned slick as I stood outside Stubbe’s Palace and peered up at the twenty-fifth floor. Somewhere high above, Giovanni was probably enjoying the world’s finest liquor without a worry in the world.

  But one thing I’d learned in my time as a journalist was that the people who seemed like they had nothing to hide often had more skeletons in their closet than most. Despite his laid-back attitude and gift of gab, Giovanni seemed like the type.