“You look like you’re trying too hard,” Meri snarked.
“You’re kind of a jerk,” I retorted. “But do I really look like I’m trying too hard? I don’t want to give that impression.”
“I was just being a jerk,” Meri said. “You look beautiful.”
“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. Thank you.”
“Whatever,” Meri said and disappeared into one of his holes in the wall.
“Whatever,” I called out after him.
Thorn arrived right on time. When I opened the door for him, his jaw dropped.
“You look beautiful,” he said as I stepped outside.
“That’s what Meri said too.”
“Your cat?”
“I’m kidding.” I would have to be more careful.
“If nothing else, you certainly know how to keep me on my toes,” Thorn said as he took my hand.
When we got to his car, he opened the door for me. “That’s kind of old-fashioned,” I said, but I had to try and hide my smile.
“If it’s old-fashioned to treat a lady like a lady, then I’m old-fashioned,” he said with a wink and shut the door.
“I like it,” I said as he slid into the driver’s seat.
“I hope you don’t mind if we drive a couple of towns over. There’s a little Italian place I like in Winterfield. They have the best fettuccine.”
“I don’t mind at all,” I said. “I’m not from around here, though. How far is Winterfield?”
“Ah, about twenty minutes or so,” he said.
The restaurant was nice. The lights were dim, and there were candles on every table. The rich scent of garlic hung in the air and made my stomach rumble.
“You recommend the fettucine?” I asked as we looked over our menus.
“I do. It’s good with chicken or shrimp,” he said. “Oh, it looks like you can get it with steak and gorgonzola too. I think that’s what I’ll have.”
“I’ll have the same,” I said and handed him the menu.
When the waitress came, Thorn gave her our orders. When she was gone, he turned his attention back to me.
“Have you heard from Remy?”
“Not today,” I said. “But that’s okay.”
“It’s okay?”
“I just don’t want you worrying about him,” I said. “I’m here with you. I want to be with you.”
“You want to be with me?”
“I guess that sounds more forward than I intended,” I said and blushed. “It’s not like you’re asking me to be your girlfriend or anything. You just asked me out on a date.”
“What if I did?” he asked.
“What if you did what?” I kinda thought I knew what he was hinting at, but I wanted him to come out and say it.
“What if I wanted you to be my girlfriend?”
“You don’t think that’s moving too fast?” I asked and took a sip of the soda the waitress had set down on the table.
“I think I waited to long to ask, actually.”
Logically, I thought that I should tell him to slow down. We should get to know each other more before we made any kind of commitment. But then there was that other part of me. My heart had skipped a beat when he asked. The way he looked at me made butterflies dance like crazy in my stomach. If I didn’t know he was a human, I’d have thought he put a spell on me.
“Yes,” I said and tried not to sound too enthusiastic. “Yes, I think I will be your girlfriend, Thorn Wilson.”
After that we chatted about our day. It was mostly me listening to Thorn talk about traffic stops and helping a little old lady who’d called him because she’d dropped her wedding ring down the garbage disposal. He didn’t have the heart to tell her he wasn’t a plumber, so he’d spend a couple of hours getting the ring out of the disposal. She rewarded him with a homemade pie.
“You’re going to eat a whole pie yourself?”
“I was actually going to ask you if you wanted to come over and watch a movie after this? We could have a slice of the pie.”
“Now that doesn’t sound very old-fashioned, Thorn,” I teased.
“No, I really mean Netflix and pie, Brighton. Scout’s honor.”
“Well, all right,” I said. “As long as you can assure me that my reputation will not be soiled, I’ll come over for a movie and pie.”
About halfway back to Coventry, my curiosity got stupid. I’d been wanting to ask Thorn about the case, and I had relaxed so much that I let a dumb questions slip.
“Thorn?”
“Yes?”
We were holding hands while he drove, and he kissed the back of my knuckles. It was a sweet gesture, and I almost held back from spoiling things by asking about Langoria’s murder.
“I was just wondering if you’d considered Maximillian as a suspect in Langoria’s murder.”
“Brighton.” His voice had that edge again.
“I just want to know.”
“Of course we’d considered it, but we don’t have any evidence it was him. Why?”
“No reason.”
“You brought it up.” There was more irritation in his voice.
“Okay, fine. I ran into him at the bank. He was especially gleeful about being able to buy a new barbecue grill and a new truck. I’m guessing he could buy those things because she’d dead and he doesn’t have to pay alimony anymore.”
“I’ll look into it,” he said gruffly.
“Can I come along when you do?”
“Brighton, stop. I’ve told you that you need to stay out of this. I don’t know why you can’t. I really don’t know why you had to do this tonight.”
Neither of us said anything for a while. My heart sank when I realized he was taking me home instead of over to his house for a movie and pie.
“I thought we were going to go watch a movie,” I said as he pulled into my driveway.
“I think it’s best if we call it a night for now,” he said and got out.
Thorn came around and opened my door for me. “I’m sorry,” I said as I got out.
“I don’t want you to be sorry, Brighton. I just want you to let me do my job, and I need you to stay out of it.”
We stood there for a moment, and I hoped that he’d change his mind about ending the date. After a minute, he leaned in and planted a hasty kiss on my lips.
I could still feel the tingle of where his mouth had touched mine as I watched him get back in the car and drive away. I waved, and he slowed down for a second. But in the end, he left.
After I changed into my pajamas, I poured myself a glass of wine from the bottle of Riesling I found in the fridge. My phone buzzed a few minutes after I’d settled in on the sofa with Meri.
The text was from Thorn. I’m sorry I cut our date short. I need to learn to be more flexible. Please check your front porch.
I opened the door and found a plate with a piece of pie on it wrapped in plastic. There was a note taped to the top.
Brighton, I hope that you’ll give me another chance to take you out soon. You really did look beautiful tonight, and kissing you is always the highlight of my day. Even if I am being a big, dumb ogre. Do you still like me? Please check one.
_ yes
_no
I saved the note, but I did text Thorn back. We’ll figure this out. And for the record, kissing you is the highlight of my days too. Thank you for a lovely dinner, and I look forward to going out again.
He texted back a minute later. – Good night, beautiful.
Good night, butt face. – was my response.
:-) – was his last text.
Chapter Thirteen
“I need to get back to work,” I told Meri the next morning over breakfast. “So we need to figure out something.”
“Well, I had a look at your protection amulet, and it didn’t seem that Langoria had a chance to tamper with it before she died. So that’s a start. We can also put a salt circle and some iron around the edge of the graveyard. Though the
salt will have to be refreshed frequently.”
“Is there anything else?”
“We could carve sigils into the fence around it and use them as protection wards.”
“I’m supposed to be restoring the cemetery. I don’t know if carving stuff into the fence is a good idea.”
“You’re right,” he said. “We’ll just do magic symbols. Get the dragon’s blood oil.”
After breakfast we went across to the cemetery and spent the entire morning putting a salt circle around the fence line. Then we hammered iron stakes into the ground at the gates, and last, Meri showed me how to paint the sigils onto the fence posts with the dragon’s blood oil.
“The rain won’t wash these away?” I asked as I finished the last one.
“The oil will stain the wood, but it will be invisible. Plus, the magic will make them stay.”
“What magic?”
“This.”
Meri wiggled his nose, and all of the sigils lit up in a blazing shade of red. They stayed that way for a minute and then faded until you could no longer see them, but I could feel them around us.
“You think that’ll do the trick?” I asked.
“No way to find out but to try it,” he said.
I finished cutting the grass and took the mower back to my garden shed. After wedging it inside, I briefly fantasized about how nice it would be to have a garage. On the whole, the mowing work was uneventful, so I felt emboldened to get some more work done.
With the grass cut and most of the weeds pulled, I decided it was time to start work on the headstones. Meri assured me that I could use magic to put the broken ones back together, but I thought it would be better to start with cleaning the ones that weren’t broken. Reassembly and repair could wait until I had a little more experience.
It wasn’t easy for me to choose a headstone to begin cleaning. At first, I thought that perhaps I should pick one of the stones in the newer section because the ones in the old section were more historically significant, but then I realized that was an awful way to think. They were all significant. Each one was a monument to someone who had passed. They were all important.
When I still wasn’t able to pick one, I did the most logical thing I could think of at the time. I let Meri choose.
“That one,” he said and flicked his tail in the direction of a stone shaped like a fallen log.
At its base was a small square of stone that was too weathered to read. I studied it for a moment before responding.
“You answered too quickly. Meri, you didn’t even think about your decision.”
“I know,” he said. “Because that’s why you couldn’t choose one. So I did things differently.”
I couldn’t really argue with that. “Fine. What do I do, then?”
“Imagine what you want the marker to look like when it’s clean and restored. Wave your hands over it to direct your magical intentions. That should just about do it.”
“That seems too simple.”
“It’s cleaning magic, Brighton. It’s not brain surgery. You’re stalling because you feel unsure of yourself. Just do it confidently.”
“Okay,” I said.
After taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and held my head high. I could do this. I was descended from a long line of powerful witches, and I just had to believe in myself.
In my mind’s eye, I pictured the stone new and gleaming in the sun. While I had no idea what the headstone said, in my imagination, I could read it again.
My hands waved slowly over the marker as this vision became stronger and stronger, until I was sure my task was complete.
Meri’s gasping let me know that something had gone wrong. My whole body deflated when I opened my eyes. Not only had I not cleaned the tombstone, but I’d turned it to dust.
“Oh, no.”
“Yeah,” Meri said. “That is not what I expected.”
“What am I going to do now?” I asked.
But before Meri could answer, the ground around us began to shake. At first it started out as nothing more than a bit of a rumble, but within a minute, the ground underneath us rolled.
I was knocked off my feet and landed on my butt. Pain shot from my tailbone up my spine, and oddly, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Meri jumped into my lap just as the ground before us fissured and then split open. Even as the ground stopped quaking, a rumble from somewhere deep in the earth filled my ears.
“This is not good,” Meri said.
“We should get out of here.”
I wrapped my arms around him and tried to stand, but a gale force wind blew from the hole and knocked me back down.
The rumbling stopped and it was replaced by a moan. At first it sounded sad, but as the cry rose to a crescendo, it became at first angry and then furious.
A woman in white rose from the crack in the earth. She wailed at the sight of her gravestone and then turned her burning, wrathful eyes on me.
“Why? Why would you?” Her voice was so loud that I thought my ears would bleed.
I squeezed my eyes shut as if that would help and covered Meri’s ears protectively with my hands. The sound caused my brain to thud with pain, but I was also able to grab onto something.
It was as if the power emanating from the ghost was frayed at the ends. In my mind I was able to grasp one of those threads and unravel it just a little.
Clutching at her power and taking a bit of it into myself, I thought of Annika. Please help me.
I’d thought that the spirit would kill us, but she just moved around Meri and I in circles like a shark. Every time I stood up, she’d knock me back down, but she hadn’t hurt us yet. It was as if she were trying to decided what to do with me.
Minutes later, a car pulled up outside of the cemetery. The door slammed shut, and Annika called out. “I’m coming, Brighton. I’m here.”
Annika ran through the brush but stopped dead in her tracks when the ghost turned her icy glare in my friend’s direction. Annika turned her attention to the crumbled gravestone next to us.
“What did you do?”
“I was trying to clean it. I didn’t mean to do this. This ghost appeared after. She split a hole in the ground,” I said and waved my hand in the direction of the crevice.
“I think that’s Constance Skeenbauer. She’s like my great-great-great… I don’t know how many greats… Grandmother. She was killed during the Coventry Witch Trials.”
“Wait, there really were witch trials in Coventry?”
“Yes. Where do you think your house got the name Hangman’s House?” Annika asked. “But don’t answer that. We’ve got to fix this.”
Just as Annika said that, a blast of icy wind threatened to take down the trees around us. My teeth chattered as it chilled me to my core.
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Take my hand,” she said and offered me help up. “Please let us fix this, Constance.”
The spirit didn’t knock me down again as I’d expected. She allowed Annika to help me to my feet. Once I was up, we joined hands.
“I’m going to just take the lead on this one,” she said. “Meri, I know you’re Brighton’s familiar, but can you help me out?”
“I’ve got you guys,” Meri said. “I’ll keep you safe and enhance your magic.”
As Annika chanted a spell I’d never heard, Meri ran around us in circles. Constance’s spirit watched from a distance, and it seemed that our efforts had lessened her fury.
I channeled my magical energy through my hands and into Annika, and when I closed my eyes, I found that the thread I’d borrowed from Constance was still there. When I took a chance at passing it through me to Annika, it paid off.
The icy wind died down, and the birds began to sing again. When Annika was finished, not only was the gravestone restored, but the hole in the ground was healed. Green grass grew over it once again.
Constance drifted over to us, and her expression had
softened. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her mouth didn’t move but I could hear her speak all the same. “I thought that because you were a Tuttlesmith witch, you’d destroyed the gravestone on purpose. I was wrong. I hope you can forgive me.”
“I can, and I’m sorry that I messed up so badly.”
“You’ll learn,” she said with a smile. “You have so much potential.” Constance’s spirit turned to Annika, “As do you, Annika Skeenbauer. It would be a shame if you spent your entire life ignoring your gifts.” With that, Constance disappeared.
“So when you called out for help, I sort of stole my grandmother’s car,” Annika said. “I should get it back.”
“You seem to have an affinity for grand theft auto,” I said with a chuckle.
“Hey, I do it to help a friend. You should come back with me. I think you’ve had enough excitement in this old graveyard for one day.”
I wanted to argue, but she was right. “All right. I’ll come with you. Meri, are you coming with us or going home?”
“I think I’m going to go nap,” he said. “Looking after you is exhausting.”
“Fine, see you later.”
“Try not to get dead,” he said as he streaked off through the trees.
Annika and I returned her grandmother’s car to its parking space, and Amelda was none the wiser. We went back into her shop, and I perused for a while. She was busy doing something with invoices and making a few calls.
“Hey, if you’ll run over to the coffee shop and get us some lattes, I’ll buy.”
“Sure, but I’ve got the coffees. You can buy next time,” I said and brought the dress and skirts I’d picked out up to the counter. “I’d also like to purchase these.”
“I’ll have them ready for you when you get back.”
As I walked across the town square, I started to get frustrated by the fact that Langoria’s murder wasn’t solved yet. The courthouse looming in my peripheral vision was a constant reminder that I was still a suspect too. I hadn’t gotten anything in the mail yet about the taxes, but I imagined it was coming any day. The responsible thing to do would have been to go in and check with whoever handled the taxes, but I vowed to do that another day.
Wicked Witches of Coventry- The Collection Page 18
