“Do you want me to talk to him?” Annika asked.
“No, he said he needed some time. I’ll give him that,” I said. “I just wish I had some idea of who might have killed Langoria. I’ve got no idea, and that makes solving the murder an issue. Do you have any idea who might have killed her? You said lots of people didn’t like her, but do you know of any of them who might have hated her enough to murder her?”
“Before you moved here, I wouldn’t have thought anyone in Coventry was capable of murder,” Annika said. “She upset a lot of people.”
“Anyone recently?”
“Well, she was trying to get Ralph Badersmith removed as the head of the historical slash magical preservation society. Langoria told the witches that a Skeenbauer should be in the position, and she’d told the humans that he was irresponsible with his allotted budget. It’s why I was surprised you got that contract to restore the cemetery. But maybe he did it to stick it to her.”
“Maybe he stuck it to her in more ways than one.”
“Oh, was she stabbed to death?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t really see how she died. I walked away from the body too fast.”
“That’s understandable. I’m sure Thorn will tell you since you’re involved… again…” she said. “You’ll have to let me know what he says.”
When she left, I heard a scratching noise coming from one of upstairs bedrooms. I started up the stairs figuring that Meri had managed to get himself shut into one of the rooms accidently. The thought that he had tunnels in the walls and couldn’t get stuck in a room never even crossed my mind.
“I’m coming,” I called out when the scratching got more insistent. “I’ll let you out in a second.”
“Who are you letting out?” Meri said as he ran up the stairs and cut me off at the landing.
“Meri?”
The scratching grew more frenzied. “Let’s go downstairs,” he said. “Slumber party in the living room tonight?”
“That sounds good…”
I was cut off when the scratching stopped but the sound of someone scurrying across the living room floor took its place. Meri and I froze. I was just far enough up the stairs that I couldn’t see what was making the noise.
“You really seem to attract some crazy stuff,” Meri said.
“That’s not helping,” I retorted. “What should we do?”
Before he could answer, the scurrying headed toward the kitchen and a moment later, the basement door slammed shut. Whatever it was had gone into the basement, and my first instinct was to just barricade the door.
“We could just push something in front of the door,” I said. “That would keep it in, right?”
“It went from the spare bedroom to the living room without using the stairs,” Meri said. “I don’t think pushing the kitchen table in front of the door is going to help.”
“What about a sealing or protection spell? If we hurry, we could trap it down there,” I said. “Ugh, but the washer and dryer are down there. I need those.”
“We’ll go down, figure out what it is, and cast it out,” Meri said. “I’m tired and I don’t want to mess around anymore.”
“Are you crazy?” I asked. “You want me to go down in the dark creepy basement looking for the scratchy, skittering entity? Maybe I should just seal the door with a spell and buy a new washer and dryer. I could get a cheap set with some of the book money. I still have some left, and I wouldn’t even need to tap into the graveyard restoration money.”
“Brighton, listen to me carefully,” Meri said. “You are a witch from an ancient family of powerful witches. When you find your true power, you will be scarier than anything you’d find in the dark.”
“Nice pep talk, but I haven’t found my true power yet and whatever that thing is, it’s way scarier than me right now.”
“Well, I’m going down. You’ve either got my back, or you can just let the boogeyman get to me.”
“Meri, wait,” I said as he shot down the stairs and into the kitchen.
I got there just in time to see him wiggle his nose and make the basement door open. Meri darted down the steps into the dark before I could stop him.
“Fine,” I said.
I was thankful that I had my phone in my pocket. Each step down toward the cold, damp basement made me feel more and more like I was being buried in darkness. I got to the bottom and flipped on the bare bulb that lit the laundry area, but it did almost nothing to illuminate the rest of the basement. Meri wasn’t near the washer and dryer so that meant he’d gone into the part that I usually just pretended didn’t exist.
After a deep breath that filled my lungs with clammy and dusty air, I turned on the phone’s flashlight app and prepared myself to walk into the abyss.
Before I could take a step, Meri streaked past me from the darkness. “Back upstairs now,” he called out as he sailed up the steps and over the threshold.
“What?” I asked, but I heard something skittering toward me in the dark.
It was growling, and I felt the air charge with malevolence. My heart began to pound, and I was frozen with fear for half a second. Then my adrenaline kicked in and I turned and ran up the steps two at a time.
I didn’t even get the chance to turn around and see what had chased me before Meri used his nose wiggle to slam the door shut again.
“I thought you said that couldn’t keep it in,” I said. “What are we going to do?” I pleaded as the growling thing thumped up the steps.
“We’re going to wait,” Meri said. “Three.” Thump. “Two.” Thump.
It was there on the other side of the door. I could hear it growling and hissing. The smell of putrid rot and sulphur leaked under the door and made my eyes water.
“One,” Meri said and took a step back from the door.
Instinctively, I did the same as a loud boom shook the house. White light poured under the door, and the thing shrieked. And just like that, it was gone. You could feel that the air in the house was lighter. The stench was gone.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I made it go away,” Meri said.
He turned and sauntered over to his food bowl. I knew what he wanted.
“You already had dinner,” I said.
“I made it go away,” was his only response before he looked down at his bowl expectantly.
“Are you going to tell me how?”
“It’s a familiar trick. I protected you, didn’t I? Now it’s made me very hungry. So, please could I have some of that smoked salmon? I think I’ve earned it.”
“I guess you have,” I said. “Thank you.”
I gave him a double portion of the smoked salmon which Meri wolfed down like he hadn’t eaten in days. Whatever he’d done must have taken a lot out of him, so I made sure to give him some extra deep head scritches before we went to sleep.
Chapter Four
The next morning, I sat up in bed and immediately checked my phone for a text from Remy. There wasn’t one, and I debated going to the archives to see him but decided against it. He would let me know when he was ready to talk, but I hoped that wouldn’t be too long.
There wasn’t any reason to put off working on the cemetery if Thorn’s investigation was done. Remy most likely wouldn’t be joining me after work, and I didn’t feel right delaying the restoration. Instead, I asked Meri to go with me.
“I want to go over to the cemetery and make sure they didn’t destroy anything while they were investigating the murder scene,” I told Meri. “Would you come with me? I need to get started working over there too, and I don’t want to go alone.”
The memory of seeing Langoria’s specter had stuck with me, and I kept expecting her to pop up at any time. More than that, I was afraid she could still hurt me even from beyond the grave.
Plus, there was the thing from last night. Meri had gotten rid of it, but for how long? Specters kept popping up in Hangman’s House, and sooner rather than later, I’d have to
figure out why. Maude had never mentioned that the place was infested with spirits. Something new was going on, and I’d have to find out what.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Meri asked. “Maybe you shouldn’t take the job. I’m afraid that you spending too much time there is going to change things for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, witches change when they come into their power, right?” Meri asked. “You get that, don’t you?”
“I totally do. It’s why my hair turned purple.”
“Well, now it’s turning green. It has been since you found Langoria’s body.”
“What?” I asked and rushed into the downstairs bathroom to check the mirror.
Sure enough, a green streak had worked its way in with the purple. I tried to tuck it under the purple to no avail. If my hair kept changing, I’d soon have that mermaid effect everyone was going for a couple of years back. Except I wasn’t trying.
“You’re going to ask me what it means, and I don’t know,” Meri said when I came back into the room. “I’ve seen witchcraft affect witches all kinds of ways, but I’ve never seen it turn their hair psychedelic.”
“Awesome,” I said. “Now I’m going to stand out even more. Okay, so let’s go work on the cemetery. If you’ll come with me, that is.”
“Yeah, I’ll come with you,” Meri responded. “But I want smoked salmon for breakfast first.”
After breakfast, we made our way across the street to the cemetery. Thankfully, the sheriff’s office and the coroner hadn’t done any real damage beyond leaving up some crime scene tape after they were gone. None of it was still blocking the cemetery. They’d left stray ends tied to the trees here and there after they’d cut through it.
I tore it down and shoved it into a garbage bag I’d brought along before making my way over to where we’d found the body. My blood ran cold when I looked down at the grave where the killer had left her body.
There was a bouquet of wilting flowers that looked exactly like the one her apparition had been holding when it manifested in my living room. I bent down to pick it up and found that the flowers were mostly dried out, but not entirely.
“I wonder why they just left these behind,” I said to Meri. “They must have thought they weren’t evidence.”
“How are they evidence?” Meri asked.
“Because they’re flowers left with the body,” I said.
“We’re in a graveyard, Brighton. People leave flowers. They probably thought they were left on the grave and had nothing to do with Langoria’s death,” Meri said, and then it was like the lightbulb came on in his brain. He jumped down from the headstone he’d been perched on. “Oh, right. These graves are really old. No one would have left flowers on any of them.”
“Exactly. But more importantly, when the specter of Langoria appeared in the house, she was holding these. They must mean something,” I said and set them aside so they wouldn’t get trampled.
I was picking up any litter I found when a car pulled up on my street near where we always climbed the fence into the graveyard. The engine shut off, and I heard a car door open and shut.
My spirits lifted a little because I thought for sure it was Remy, so I was shocked when Ralph Badersmith walked into the clearing where I’d been picking up garbage and pulling weeds.
“Hello, Ralph,” I said and set down the trash bag in my hand. “What brings you out here?”
In my head, I hoped that he wasn’t there to pester me about my books, but I had to be nice. He was part of the reason I even had the job restoring the cemetery, but I didn’t like the idea of being cornered when I was alone. Or of being guilt-tripped while I was on the job. It would have been the perfect time for him to do it, though.
“I’ve got your check for the job,” he said and pulled out his wallet.
From that he plucked a check signed by the head of the town council. It was for the entire ten thousand dollars plus the two thousand for materials and supplies, and I was a bit shocked. I didn’t know how I thought they’d pay me, but I hadn’t anticipated them giving me the whole thing at once.
“Thank you,” I said and tucked the check into my pocket. “I appreciate the job.”
“Well, I’m not sure how I let Remy talk me into hiring you for it. I was already on the chopping block as the head of the paranormal preservation society. If Langoria had lived, I’m sure she would have had me removed by the end of the month.”
“That’s unfortunate.” I wasn’t sure what else to say.
“I’m sure it was in no small part because I couldn’t obtain the Tuttlesmith books for the society’s collection. Moreover because I didn’t even know they were there until you moved in and brought them to my shop. It was an egregious oversight on my part, and if you screw up this cemetery restoration, I’m sure the council and the Skeenbauer Coven will still find a way to have me removed.”
He turned and left after that, but his ominous tone hung in the air like a bad smell. He hadn’t come out and threatened me directly, but I caught the warning in his voice. The worst part was that he hadn’t mentioned why he’d brought the check and not Remy. I’d resisted the urge to ask because I doubted he knew anyway.
Chapter Five
There hadn’t been much to clean up behind Thorn and the investigators. But I had the check as payment and I didn’t want to go home and stew about Remy, so I stayed in the cemetery with Meri and pulled weeds until my stomach began to grumble loudly in the late afternoon.
“I’m going to need some fuel if I’m going to keep working,” I said.
“I’m famished,” Meri said dramatically. “I thought I was going to have to resort to hunting bugs or mice. Behavior not becoming of a familiar such as myself.”
“Well, don’t worry, great hunter, we can go home and get something to eat,” I said and picked up a bag of trash and the wilted flower bouquet.
“You can’t take those home,” Meri said. “Her spirit is obviously tied to them, and she didn’t like you.”
“Well, I don’t want to leave them here. I still feel like they might be evidence. They could get trampled or something if looky-loos come around because she died here. Plus, I don’t want to have to worry about finding Langoria’s specter here every time I come to work. The ghosts, or spirits, or whatever, keep popping up like gophers as it is.”
“I don’t think getting rid of those flowers is going to give you that kind of assurance,” Meri said. “She showed up at the house without those, remember?”
“Then it doesn’t matter,” I said and started for the fence. “I’ll keep them in the garden shed out back if it makes you feel better.”
Back at the house, I put the garbage and the flowers in the shed. I was going to need a couple of those big plastic garbage bins to keep critters out. But first, I needed lunch.
I went into the house and got Meri some salmon before I set to making myself a grilled cheese sandwich. Without really thinking about it, I made two. As I was putting them on plates with pickle spears, someone rang my doorbell.
A smile crossed my lips as I looked down at the two plates in my hands. I’d acted out of intuition without even realizing it. That had to mean that my powers were growing. I set the plates down on the counter and went to answer the front door.
“I liked the purple. I’m not so sure about this,” Thorn said as he reached out and gave a lock of my hair that had escaped from my bun a playful tug. “And you look like something the cat dragged in.”
“Did you show up at my door just to insult me?” I said as I tucked the lock of green hair back into the mess on my head. “Because I made lunch if you’d like to come in.”
“How did you know I was coming?”
“Just a feeling,” I said with a shrug as I turned away from the door. “Besides, if you hadn’t, I’d have just eaten both sandwiches myself.”
Thorn joined me in the kitchen, and I poured two glasses of ice tea. I drained mine in a few huge gulps after setting
Thorn’s down on the table in front of his plate.
“I was thirsty,” I said as I returned to the refrigerator to pour another glass from the pitcher.
“You were out working in the cemetery?”
“Yep. I got paid for the job today, so I should probably do the work.”
“Sorry if we left a mess behind,” Thorn said before taking a bite of his grilled cheese. After he chewed and swallowed, he said, “This is good. Thank you.”
“Always could make a mean grilled cheese,” I said as I sat down next to him. “But you couldn’t have just come here to make fun of my hair and eat a free sandwich.”
“I think I’ve explained why your hair makes me nervous.”
“Because you think it means I’m the kind of person who could never be happy in a small town like Coventry, but Thorn, I’m telling you that’s not what it means. I like it here. I like the company too,” I said as nonchalantly as possible.
I could convince myself that I didn’t have strong feelings for Thorn when he wasn’t around, but whenever he was there, I couldn’t deny them. It was strange, though. I didn’t know him as well as I knew Remy, but there was some sort of gravity between us. Maybe it was just because he was so devastatingly handsome. Perhaps he just had that effect on women, and I was reading too much into it.
He looked at me for a long moment. Thorn’s eyes studied my face thoroughly as if he were trying to parse the meaning of what I’d just said.
“I actually came to talk to you about the case. The sandwich and the company are just a happy surprise.”
He was being cryptic too. It felt like neither one of us was saying what we really meant. As much as I wanted to enjoy our little dance around our feelings, I was too curious about the case to continue the game of do Thorn and Brighton like each other?
“Oh, yeah, what about the case?”
“Well, I have some preliminary information on how Langoria died, and I wanted to know if it meant anything to you.”
“Okay,” I said. “As long as it’s not too gory. I want to eat my grilled cheese while it’s still warm.”
Wicked Witches of Coventry- The Collection Page 13
