Contents
Dedication
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chpater 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
About
Connect
To my sisters ~
A sister will always pick you up when you fall, as soon as she’s done laughing.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are a result of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner and any similarities to real life names, places, and events are strictly coincidental.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book infringes upon copyright laws and could subject the infringer to criminal or civil liability.
High Priestess
Wendy Hewlett
Copyright © 2019 Wendy Hewlett
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 9781999262617
ISBN: 9781999262600 (eBook)
CHAPTER 1
DETECTIVE CONSTABLE RAVEN Bowen slid her hand across the bed in search of her lover’s warmth and was met with cold, desolate sheets. With a groan she curled into the fetal position and pressed her face into the pillow. One of these days she’d stop reaching for Riley in the night. Wouldn’t she? She groaned again at the piercing ring of her cell phone and grabbed it off the nightstand.
“Bowen.”
The Ontario Provincial Police dispatch officer gave her an address, ordering her to report to the scene of a DB - dead body.
She didn’t think of only being in bed for a couple of hours, most of that time spent tossing and turning, thinking of Riley and trying to ignore the heat of desire flooding her veins. She just reacted, throwing off the duvet and jumping out of bed.
The drive to the crime scene took ten minutes and deposited her in the middle of nowhere – a little-used dirt road on the outskirts of the small town of Solstice in Central Ontario.
Raven parked her unmarked, a black Dodge Charger, on the shoulder behind two Ontario Provincial Police black and white squad cars with their red and blue lights beaming out over the snow covered expanse of farmers’ fields like a laser light show. She exited her vehicle and the wind sliced in from the north, the damp air cutting through her extra layers of clothing, seeping into her bones. Ducking her head, Raven made her way to the closest squad car.
The officer in the driver’s seat rolled down the window.
“Evening, DC,” he said. “Nice bed head.”
“Closer to morning, Tate,” she growled back, absently running a hand through her unruly short black hair. Probably should have glanced in the mirror before running out the door, she thought. “Want to show me where the body is?” She didn’t want to spend any more time with Constable Darren Tate than necessary. He was one of the most annoying people she’d ever met.
He pointed toward the ditch on the other side of the road. “Snowmobilers found her. Guy stopped to take a piss and nearly shit his pants.” Tate’s head rolled back with laughter.
Constable McHaela Warren, who sat in the passenger seat, no doubt enjoying the heat blasting out of the vents, leaned over Tate. “Sorry to hear about your mom, DC Bowen.”
“Yeah, thanks.” Raven wasn’t close to her mom. Losing her, making the funeral arrangements, and surviving the horrid day of the funeral hadn’t bothered her nearly as much as what her mother said to her from her death bed. And how she said it, because Raven hadn’t been anywhere near her mother’s death bed at the time.
Raven’s mom, Ena Amaris Bowen, was Wiccan, which is how Raven ended up with the embarrassing name Raven Sage. It was bad enough having to live her life as Raven Sage never mind the whole town knowing her mother was a witch. And not just any witch. Ena was High Priestess of the Solstice Coven. Or, as Raven like to call her, HWIC - head witch in charge. Raven had been rebelling against all of that hokey crap since her early teens.
On the night of Ena’s death, Raven had clearly heard her mother’s voice inside her head.
You have great powers, Rave. You’ve only to open yourself to them.
“Yeah, right,” she said to herself as she crouched down at the edge of the ditch, her flashlight illuminating the pale form below. This poor girl had been here for some time, preserved by the icy temperatures, her upper body revealed with the spring melt. She was face down, left arm extended up over her head. Long, red hair fanned out around her, tangled and matted. At a glance, it could have been Riley lying there and that thought chilled Raven to her already icy bones.
“I don’t know who you are,” Raven whispered. “Or who hurt you…” And threw you out like garbage, she thought with a shake of her head. “But I promise to do my damnedest to find out.”
At the sound of crunching gravel behind her, Raven glanced over her shoulder, surprised to see Constable Warren approaching in her dark blue uniform and shiny, black boots. She was relatively new to the Solstice Detachment. Probably her first murder scene. Warren’s curvy figure crouched next to Raven, her wavy blonde hair tucked up into a black toque. Her warm brown eyes saddened as she perused the scene in the ditch.
“No outstanding missing persons reported in Huntsville in the past six months.”
Raven smiled ever so slightly. It was the first thing she would have checked. “Tell me what you see here.”
“Appears to be naked and frozen solid.”
A low rumble of laughter quickly blew away in the arctic wind. “That’s it?”
“Ligature marks on the left wrist.”
“You’re only telling me what you see with your eyes.” Raven thought again of her mother’s words. Was the old bitch right? Had she been using her powers all along?
“She’s been there for a long time. Is that what you mean?” Constable Warren’s big brown eyes settled on Raven’s icy blues. At a nod from Raven, she continued. “This was just the dump site. She wasn’t murdered here. But, we need to see what’s beneath her, what’s buried in the snow.”
Raven looked over her shoulder again. Tate still sat on his butt, staying warm in his squad. “I don’t suppose he called in forensics?” Solstice had a small OPP Detachment, so the forensics unit came in from OPP Headquarters in Orillia when required.
“They’re on their way. They should be here within the hour.”
“You called them in?”
“Wasn’t I supposed to? I asked dispatch to call.”
“No, you did good, kid.” Raven rose to her full height, stretched her back. “I’m going to stay with our vic until she’s safely on her way to the morgue.” It wasn’t that she didn’t trust the forensics team to do their job, she just felt like she owed it to the victim. Plus, she wanted to be there to take notes for herself. “You up for a long, cold night, Constable, or are you going to sit on your ass in your squad staying all warm and toasty?”
The edge of Warren’s full mouth curled as she stood. “Oh, I’m up for it. I’m no pussy, like Tate.”
For the second time in the span of a few minutes, Raven laughed a deep, throaty laugh. It was the first time she’d laughed in weeks. Maybe, just maybe, she was beginning to get over losing Riley. “Well, at least he’s good for one thing. I’m sending him for coffee.” She grinned at Warren. “Can I buy you one, Constable?”
* * *
After hours under a makeshift tent while the forensics techs delicately extricated the body of the young woman from her icy tomb and collected what little evidence hid under the snow and the body, Raven drove to her mom’s house. It had been years since she stepped foot inside this house, yet it seemed like yesterday. Nothing had changed. Dried flowers, plants, and herbs hung above windows and down from the ceiling all over the kitchen emitting a spicy floral aroma. The morning light spearing into the room brought back a flood of before school memories of breakfasts gobbled down at the huge kitchen island, now littered with books, pestles, bottles, and pots as if her mom had been cooking. Except it wasn’t meals her mom cooked here - it was spells and potions.
What would she do with this place? A lot of work would be involved to get it ready to be sold. And time, which she didn’t have to spare.
It’s yours now, Rave. Please, don’t sell it.
Raven scanned the room, half expecting her mother to appear. Was her mother talking to her from beyond the grave? Creepy. She turned towards the door, intending to leave, but her curiosity got the best of her. What had Ena done with her old room? She padded up the creaking wooden steps that had made it impossible for her to sneak in late back in the day.
Peeking around the doorjamb, she found her room exactly as she left it some twelve years ago, right down to her grade ten math textbook sitting on the desk. The sick roiling in her belly reminded her why she despised this room. Why the hell didn’t Ena convert it into something else?
Oh, sweet angel. Because I love you.
“Stop doing that?” Raven spun around, looking up and down, fists clenched at her sides. She stood surrounded in the suffocating silence for a few minutes before she decided her imagination was running wild. People didn’t talk to you after they died. She plodded into her childhood room with its bubble gum pink walls and white canopy bed. It was like walking into a deranged fairy tale doused in Pepto-Bismol. The pink, princessy theme sickened her. Sports were her thing growing up, not tea parties and frilly dresses. She still couldn’t stand dresses.
She dragged a finger across her dresser and examined the tip. Not a speck of dust on it. Why would her mother still be cleaning this room?
Because I always hoped you’d come back.
“Stop that.” Raven slapped her hands over her ears like a bratty child.
You asked.
“I also asked you to stop it.” She must be stark raving mad talking to a ghost. Quick stepping to the stairs, she fled down them. Before she could get out the door, her mother’s voice rang in her head once more.
Check Orillia for missing persons.
* * *
Raven sat down at her desk to wait for her computer to boot up. Sleep. That was the problem. She’d put a few hours in at the office and then try to get a couple of hours of shut eye. She was just about to lean back in her chair and pop her boots up on her desk when Constable Warren’s head appeared in the doorway.
“Got a minute, DC?” Warren asked.
“Didn’t your shift end hours ago?”
“I wouldn’t have been able to sleep, so I figured I’d just keep checking missing persons.” She held up a file folder. “Seventeen year old Emily Kathryn McMurtrie. Reported missing last November. Out of Orillia.”
Told ya.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Warren raised her brows, perked up her ears.
Oh, sweet baby Jesus. Her mother was inside her head.
“You okay, DC Bowen? You’re looking a little pale.”
Raven rubbed her hands over her face then shoved them through her hair. “Yeah.” She sounded a little breathless even to herself. “Just need some sleep is all. Let’s take a look at that file.”
Warren brought the file over to Raven and took the seat next to her desk. Emily McMurtrie was last seen leaving her boyfriend’s house at 22:15 on November twenty-first. She was supposedly walking home, which was about two blocks from the boyfriend’s, to make her 22:30 curfew.
“Beautiful girl,” Raven said. “Even in her driver’s license photo.”
“She was a model, according to her file. She had a contract with some big agency in Toronto.”
And that could make for a multitude of leads to follow up on. Raven closed the file with a long sigh then tapped it on her desk as she got to her feet. She took the file to the Detective Sergeant’s office and talked him through what they had so far.
DS Grayson LaCroix’s dusty grey eyes stared up at her as he rubbed his thumb and forefinger back and forth along his jaw. He’d taken to shaving his head to hide his receding hairline, but he was one of those men who looked great bald.
“I want you to work with Constable Warren on this,” he said.
Raven narrowed her eyes at him. “I work alone.”
LaCroix laughed. “Come on, Rave. Warren needs the training and there’s a lot you can teach her.”
Raven liked Warren, but that didn’t mean she wanted to take her under her wing and she thought she had an understanding with LaCroix. “I’m not a freaking training officer, Gray.”
“Look at it this way, you’ll have someone to do the grunt work.”
“No.”
LaCroix stared at her for a moment, tenting his fingers and tapping them against his chin. “It wasn’t a request. You’ve got Constable Warren for a week and then we’ll reassess.” He spun in his chair, giving Raven his back.
Raven stomped back over to her desk and sent Warren home to get some sleep with orders to report back to the detachment at fifteen hundred hours. She filed her report and then headed home to get a few hours of sleep herself.
Letting herself into her little cottage, she headed straight to her bedroom, stripping off two layers of clothes as she went. She didn’t even stop to take in the view of Fairy Lake from the living room window. She hadn’t heard Ena’s voice for a while and she was praying it would stay that way. She didn’t want to talk to her in life, what made Ena think she wanted to talk to her now?
Did you really hate me so much?
Raven stopped undressing with one foot pulled out of her long underwear and one foot still stuck in the leg. “Why are you doing this? Can’t you just go on to wherever dead people go and leave me alone?”
Do you want rid of me that bad, Rave? Do you still hate me, even after all these years?
“Gah.” Raven flopped down onto the edge of her bed and fisted her hands in her short hair. She couldn’t tell her mother that she hated her. That wasn’t the right word for what she felt.
What is the right word?
“Stop it already. What do I have to do to get you the heck out of my head?” She pulled the long underwear from her leg and threw them across the room. Then she literally heard Ena sigh in frustration. She could picture her frowning down at her with her hands on her hips.
I will leave you alone on one condition.
Raven narrowed her eyes. “What condition?”
Find my killer.
Whoa. Totally didn’t see that one coming. “I thought you died of cancer.”
I didn’t have cancer, Rave. I was poisoned. Please. Look into it, find out who killed me and then I’ll leave you be.
This couldn’t be happening. She must be having hallucinations from severe sleep deprivation. A few hours in the sack and she would be laughing about this. Except she couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned, her mind reeling, asking herself if cancer could be mistakenly diagnosed. Ena hadn’t gone to the doctor until she was hours away from death. Did they just give her that diagnosis to explain her quick decline from healthy to dead? If she was poisoned, wouldn’t the coroner have caught it? It wouldn’t be difficult to run a toxicology report. Raven flipped from one side to the other then kicked and punched her duvet until it was on the floor. She sat up, huffing.
“You couldn’t have waited to lay that on me until after I got some sleep?” she yelled.
The silence mocked her. “Yeah, great. Don’t answer.
” Raven got out of bed, kicked her duvet and stomped into the bathroom to turn on the shower. “The bitch is probably having a nice nap somewhere.”
CHAPTER 2
IT WAS SHORTLY after noon when Raven pulled her Charger into Adara Kirby’s driveway. Adara had been Ena’s best friend until she took Raven in when she’d left home at the age of fifteen. She’d taken care of Raven and become her closest friend. But, Adara hadn’t left Ena’s coven and that made her the best place to start asking questions about Ena’s passing.
You can’t tell Adara what you’re doing. You can’t tell anyone.
“Are you crazy?” Jesus. I’m talking to a dead person and I’m asking if she’s crazy?
Everyone in the coven had reason to kill me, including Adara.
“Again, are you crazy? Adara wouldn’t hurt a flea. And why would every coven member have reason to kill you?”
There are those who covet the High Priestess title.
“If that’s why you think someone killed you, why now? You’ve been High Priestess for as long as I can remember.”
I don’t know. Someone sent me a gift a few weeks ago. Along with the flowers there was a beautiful silver chalice. I was using it daily for my rituals at home. I think the poison was in that chalice. If indeed that was the source of the poison, it would have to be someone in the Wiccan community.
Not necessarily. Anyone could look up Wiccan rituals online and learn the tools of the trade so to speak. It wasn’t a secret Ena was Wiccan. The entire community knew. Raven had suffered through ridicule and bullying throughout her school years because her mother was a witch. It was one of the reasons Raven had suppressed her own powers. But, would someone outside the coven want her dead for it?
“Was there a card with these flowers? Do you know what florist sent them?”
There was a card with a poem on it and it was signed from an admirer. It will be in the left drawer in my desk. The chalice is on the kitchen island.
Raven put the car in reverse. If she couldn’t talk to Adara about what she was doing, there was no sense being there. She drove to her mother’s place for the second time that day, entering through the side door into the kitchen again. The sun wasn’t streaming through the window at this time of day, shrouding the room in shadows. She scanned the island, but saw no chalice. There was a white marble mortar; a black-handled athame with a wavy silver blade polished to a shine, a triple moon at the hilt and a pentagram at the base of the handle; Ena’s massive leather-bound Book of Shadows which contained all of her spells and what-not; jars and bottles containing God only knew. But no chalice.
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