by Amy Boyles
I released it when I realized the dead man wasn’t Jimmy.
It was Langdon Huggins. I nearly vomited when I saw what had killed him.
It looked like Langdon’s chest had been ripped to shreds.
In the time between Langdon’s outburst at the pavilion and now, something or someone had murdered him.
“We need to call the authorities,” I said. “And get the mayor back here. Now.”
Count Dracula showed up about five minutes after the mayor alerted him.
“And what made you come out to this field again?” he asked me, his voice dripping with contempt.
“Critter bugs,” I explained.
He quirked a brow. I sighed and shook my head in annoyance. “My aunt explained that critter bugs hover around dead bodies. I guess they eat the flesh, but you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
Thorne’s silvery eyes narrowed. “Then what happened?”
“Then we came out here and found Langdon dead, and me, being the responsible person I am, made sure someone contacted you, the local vampire, since you’re apparently in charge of murders and missing persons. How’re things going with finding Jimmy?”
He ignored my question. Oh, the cockiness of this man was so annoying.
Thorne knelt down. He washed a hand over the body. “The area around him has been trampled.” His eyes glittered with accusation. “Did you do this?”
I shook my head. “No, I didn’t walk all around him to see if he was dead.” I pointed toward Langdon’s lacerated body. “It’s pretty obvious.”
He whirled on me. “You didn’t see who?”
I shook my head. “If that had been the case, I would’ve given you their name, don’t you think?”
“Unless you were protecting them.”
I fumed. “I’m not protecting anyone. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not the person with a band of angry, sullen vampires at my heels.”
Just then the voice of Peek, the nasty vampire who’d threatened me before, rang out. “What have you discovered, Thorne?”
I scoffed. “See? A whole bunch of vampires doing witch’s business.”
Thorne rose. Flecks of anger filled his eyes. “For your information, those vampires help me. They help this town with crimes. All of them do, and the reason they were so particularly rude to you last night was maybe because you were fresh blood walking into a den of vampires doing business. Did you ever stop to think of that?”
“No, and I don’t want to. I want to find my friend—a friend who had contact with this dead man only a few days ago. Maybe there’s a connection.” I slapped my thigh in frustration. “Heck, half the town knew this guy was a drunk. In one day I watched him get thrown out of two places.”
Interest flared in Thorne's eyes. “Where was the first?”
“Air Town.”
Thorne's gaze flickered to his vampire cohorts. “Find out if anyone here is an air witch.”
The vampires quickly dispersed, and good riddance to them. One bloodsucker was bad enough. I didn’t need to be surrounded by a whole flurry of them.
I bent over Langdon’s body and stared at it. Something long and wiry stuck out of his shirt pocket.
I plucked it out. “What is this?”
“That could be evidence,” Thorne snarled. He bent down to see what I had taken.
I raised the wire into the moonlight and quickly realized it wasn’t a wire at all. “It’s a hair. A really long, kind of gross hair.”
It was gross—about six inches and thick, which was why I had originally thought it was a wire.
Thorne snapped open an evidence bag. “Would you please stop touching evidence?” He plucked the hair from my hand and dropped it in the bag.
“Thank you.”
“Wow. So polite.”
He bristled. Like literally, Thorne’s back bowed. “For your information, I’m generally very polite, but only to women who actually have charm as opposed to simply being named ‘charmed.’”
“Oh, haha.”
He rose. “I’ll be in touch if I find your man, Jimmy. Now it’s time you went home and left the investigating to the investigators.”
Thorne turned away from me, effectively dismissing me like I was a child.
I gritted my teeth and walked back to the car, where Rose was waiting.
“Did the vampire ask about me?” she said, fluffing her hair.
“No. But he certainly thinks he knows it all. Except when it comes to Jimmy. He isn’t helping.”
We slid into our seats. I stared through the windshield, irked that he’d dismissed me so easily.
After firing up the engine I turned to Rose. “I tell you what, there’s something I don’t trust about that vampire.”
“Oh, there is?”
“Yep, and I plan to find out what it is he’s hiding.”
When we reached the house that night, I went upstairs to my room and stared at the walls. “There has to be more about Jimmy that I’m missing. Is there something else? House, do you have anything else? Did Jimmy have a journal or leave a slip of paper somewhere?”
The house was still for a moment; then it coughed and churned, clanged and rattled.
The door flew open, and Rose stood there, cold cream covering her face and her hair tied up in a scarf.
“What in the devil is going on? Did you ask the house to change for you?”
I shook my head. “No, I didn’t. I only asked if Jimmy had left anything else.”
She clutched my vanity, trying to hang on while the structure rumbled. “Well, it sounds like the house is looking to cough up Jimmy along with half a lung.”
“Let’s hope not,” I murmured.
But it turned out Rose was closer to being right than I was. After what sounded like a coughing fit met with a bunch of burps, the transom above my door opened and something fell out, landing on the floor.
I shot Rose a confused look. “What in the world could that be?”
Rose quickly recovered the object. “It’s a shirt.”
I lifted the arm. “And not just that. It’s been torn. Ripped.”
Sure enough, Jimmy's favorite striped shirt was ripped in the back. It looked like someone had pushed the thing through a cheese grater.
“Does Jimmy normally rip his clothes?” Rose asked. “As sort of a way to punish himself?”
I had no idea what she was talking about. “What?”
“You know. Like self-flagellation. When people whip themselves. I mean, come on. That’s what it looks like. That your friend likes to rip his clothing.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think Jimmy would’ve done that. Those look either like knife marks or claw marks.”
At the mention of claws, Rose and I exchanged a charged look.
“You don’t think—” I started.
“That we could be dealing with more than a disappearance?”
“Why else would his clothes have been ripped?”
Rose poked the air with authority. “Unless someone wanted us to find this—his ripped shirt.” She shook her head. “Charming, I don’t know, but it looks like we’re dealing with more than a simple disappearance. It looks like either Jimmy ripped right out of his shirt or someone ripped it off him.”
I grimaced. “It’s too bad this house can’t talk.”
“Oh, I know.” Rose nodded in understanding. “Think of all the mice it would tell us run around at night. Not something I want to have on my mind when I’m trying to go to bed.”
I nearly slapped my forehead. “That’s not what I mean.”
Rose couldn’t hide her surprise. “It isn’t?”
“No. What I mean is, whatever happened to Jimmy started here. His disappearance. All of it. It started in this house.” I balled up the shirt into my fist. “That’s why it gave us this. But what we need to know is who could’ve caused this, and the one person who knows everyone in town has an office half a block away.”
“Who?” Rose asked.
TEN
“I need to know who could’ve done this.” I lifted the shredded shirt over the mayor’s desk.
Winnifred Dixon’s eyes widened in surprise. “What is that?”
“It’s my employee Jimmy's shirt. It’s been ripped to shreds.”
Fear shone in her eyes. “Is there…is there blood on it?”
“No blood.”
She sighed with relief. “Thank goodness. This town has enough problems. We don’t need another possible murder investigation.”
I dropped the shirt onto her desk. “Listen, Mayor. You invited me and my people into your town. Now my man is missing and his shirt is shredded. This looks like the work of a creature that’s not a witch.”
“You mean a vampire,” Emily, the mayor’s assistant, offered.
“Emily,” Mayor Dixon reprimanded. “That’s unnecessary.”
“But it’s true,” I said. “What other creature could leave claw marks like that?”
“But there’s no blood,” the mayor argued. “If Jimmy had been wearing the shirt when he was attacked, then surely he would’ve been scratched.”
“Unless he wriggled out of it in time,” I argued. “Now. You’ve got a vampire running around who thinks he owns the place. He’s the only creature around here who could’ve done it.”
“Done what?”
I hadn’t heard the door open. But the voice that asked the question was new. It was just my luck that I’d be caught talking about the one creature in town who could walk soundlessly into a room.
But I wasn’t intimidated by Thorne with those razor-sharp eyes, high cheekbones and pecs that probably meant he could bench press a whale. I had nothing to fear from a vampire in a Podunk town.
I turned, brandishing the shirt. The flash of his silvery eyes caught me off guard, but I shoved my visceral response aside. “Could’ve done this.”
His brow quirked in mock surprise. “And you think I got angry and shredded a shirt? You seem to think I don’t have anything else to do.”
My jaw dropped. Why was he being so difficult? “This is Jimmy's shirt. I found it in the courthouse. Jimmy wouldn’t have destroyed it, and I didn’t. I don’t know many witches with claws that could shred something like this.” I poked his chest. “But you could. Ouch. You’re really hard.”
He shot me a smirk of superiority that I wanted to smack right off his face. “With my fangs, I suppose. Shred it, I mean.”
“Absolutely.”
He crossed his arms and leaned his slim hips on the lip of the mayor’s desk. “So let me get this straight—I went into a bloodthirsty rage and tore into your friend’s shirt, obviously without him in it because if I had managed to rip it while your friend was wearing it, there would’ve been blood everywhere.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
He cocked his head. “I’m suggesting you keep to what you know best—matchmaking—and let me do my job.”
“What? Lord over a town of defenseless witches?”
“You’re hardly defenseless. And my job is none of your business.” His gaze shifted to the mayor. Clearly he was done with me and our frivolous conversation. “I’m going to bring in a suspect today. I want you to be there for questioning.”
“For the murder last night?” I said, butting in.
He dragged his gaze from Mayor Dixon and glared at me with disdain. “This is none of your business. I would appreciate it if you excused yourself and went about your matchmaking.”
I gritted my teeth. “There’s no need to concern yourself with my missing friend, Mr. Thorne. I’ll find him myself.”
With that, I turned and stormed from the office. Jimmy's shirt slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor, right in front of Thorne.
I moved to snatch it, but the vampire was faster.
Of course he was.
He held the shirt for me to take. I stared at him, not making one move.
He leaned over and whispered in my ear. “What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll bite?” In that moment I was acutely aware of his breath tickling my ear. That he smelled of grass after a rain with a touch of vanilla and musk.
Something stirred in my gut.
I narrowed my eyes and threw my head back so that he faced me. “The last thing I am is afraid of you.”
I snatched the shirt from him and left the office, stomping out to my car.
I stood in the middle of the street, unsure of what to do next. Rose was back at the house, probably cooking breakfast for us.
I had a shredded shirt but no idea what to do with it. I also had two witches from very different backgrounds to somehow get together, but I was still working on a plan for that. All these things were drifting through my head when a semi-familiar voice rang out.
“Is that you, Charming?”
I turned around to see Kimberly Peterson waving her pink-painted nails at me. She smiled brightly, and I had the feeling this woman might be more trouble than she was worth.
But on the other hand, I was supposed to bring all the soul mates in Witch's Forge together, so I might as well set about doing it.
I smiled brightly. “Hey, Kimberly.”
“Hey.” She beamed. “I was just wondering if you had time to find my soul mate because I just know he’s out there somewhere. I know that once we’re together and he makes my dreams come true, I’ll be the happiest woman in the world. I just know it.”
“Come with me.”
“Where to?”
“I don’t have any of my papers here. I have them at the place I’m staying. We’ll do it there.”
Kimberly clapped her hands with glee. “Oh, goody. Now I’m not crazy about going into the old courthouse, what with the fact that the place has a mind of its own, but I really want to know my future.”
She grabbed my arm as if panic had taken hold of her. “When you do a match, is it forever? Does it last for all eternity? Until death and all that?”
I nodded. “So far.”
I opened the courthouse door and stepped inside. Kudzu had started creeping onto the walls. They hadn’t bitten me yet, but I wasn’t putting anything past them. I shuddered. The last thing I wanted to be living in was a building filled with bugs and vines.
“Charming, are you back?” Rose called from the kitchen. “I’ve got fresh sausage and biscuits.”
“Yes, I’ll be there in few minutes.”
Rose stuck her head out of the kitchen door. She spotted Kimberly. “Oh, we have a visitor.”
“You don’t mind me,” Kimberly said. “I’m going to have my soul mate found. I won’t be but just a minute.”
Rose waved a spatula. “You take all the time you need. I’ll keep breakfast warm.”
I led Kimberly to my room.
“Wow,” she said. “This is like a princess’s palace.”
I laughed. “I know. I was waiting for the silver hairbrush to start talking, but it hasn’t yet.”
Kimberly smirked. “You never know. Give it a few minutes and maybe it’ll at least dance.”
That was when I realized that even though Kimberly was boy crazy, I liked her. She was funny and seemed to be nice. It couldn’t hurt to have a friend in town.
“Now, tell me about my true love. He’ll make all my problems go away.”
Okay, so maybe I needed a friend who was a touch less delusional. Meeting a man wasn’t going to make any of your problems disappear. In fact, it might make them worse.
Sure, if you were dating a serial killer.
But I didn’t match serial killers. My magic didn’t work that way.
I pulled a slip of paper out from my briefcase. “This is my magical matching questionnaire.”
Kimberly stared at it, a blank expression on her face. “I don’t see any questions.”
I smiled mischievously. “It doesn’t have any. All the questions are magically built in. When you press your hand
to it, that’s when the magic starts to work. Are you ready?”
She looked hesitant. It was strange, I knew. I wasn’t using any sort of mind tricks to find matches, I was using plain and simple magical math—the best kind of magic, if you asked me.
A second later Kimberly flattened her hand on the page. Tendrils of magic curled up from her hand. Sparkles flared on the paper.
I clapped. I couldn’t help it. I always got excited when someone had a match.
“You have a soul mate! You can take your hand away.”
Kimberly pulled it away. Words dappled the page. The questionnaire, as I called it, wasn’t exactly a questionnaire; it was more of a sponge that soaked up the person’s personality and displayed it in words and phrases.
Words like courageous and loyal dotted the sheet in all different sizes and scripts. Some of the words were written from left to right, while others were written top to bottom, like a crossword.
But at the very bottom squatted four little words that made all the difference. “You have been matched.”
“Is his name on there?”
I hid the sheet from her because I wasn’t trusting the names that were appearing—Langdon Huggins was case and point. I wanted to see for myself.
I closed my eyes. That was when I saw him.
“He’s tall, dark and handsome.”
Kimberly clapped. “I knew it.”
I let the image fill my mind. “He looks rugged yet refined.”
“I’m loving this more and more. What’s his name?”
I hedged. “I don’t have a name.”
Kimberly stuck out her bottom lip and pouted. “That’s too bad.”
But smoke filled the image behind the man I saw. It rose high, billowing up. When it cleared, I noticed a wheel and steel.
“Witch's Forge has a train station, right?”
Kimberly stared at me. “Yes, but like I said, it hasn’t run in years.”
“That’s where he’s going to come from. The train.”
Kimberly hooked her purse onto her shoulder. “Well then, what am I doing around here? I have to make sure I get that train station up and running.”