Jeremy smiled at him. “Wild night, man?” he asked.
Ryan looked shocked and frowned at Jeremy. “What? No dude I’m just taking this really hard.”
“Taking what really hard?” Jeremy said.
“Didn’t you hear on the news? What happened to June?” he said.
Jeremy tensed and clenched his jaw, “I think it’s pretty clear that I haven’t heard anything about something happening to June. What the fuck happened?”
“She’s dead, Jeremy.”
“What do you mean she’s dead?” Jeremy’s face went pale. He was shocked. It couldn’t be true. He just talked to her last week.
“She was murdered in her place. Stabbed like 10 times.” He started crying. “I don’t think I can be here, man. I’m freaking out.”
“Um. Okay. Can you just sit at the counter for a minute while I make a phone call?”
He wiped the tears from his cheeks and tried to compose himself. “Okay.”
Jeremy rushed back to the office and closed the door. There is no way she could be dead. He googled her name and the top result was a headline about her being found stabbed to death. He felt numb. He called Claire.
“Jeremy?” she answered. Her voice was ragged and she sniffled.
“So you heard what happened?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Claire’s voice broke up and she struggled to speak. “What are we going to do, Jeremy?”
“We’re gonna be okay Claire. We’re gonna be fine,” he reassured her. The words were also an attempt to reassure himself. June had been a guiding light for him over the last few years, and even more so for Claire. He knew she wasn’t going to be able to handle this well and he didn’t know how he was going to take care of her through this when he was heartbroken about it too.
“She was like a mother to me,” Claire said as she started crying.
“Listen, I’m going to try and see if Ann can come in early and cover my shift. Ryan is here and he’s losing his shit, I think I’m going to have to send him home.” He paced the four feet back and forth in the small room, running his hand through his hair trying to think.
“Why would someone murder her, Jeremy?” she asked
“I don’t know,” he said.
“What are we going to do?” she repeated.
He stopped and switched the phone to his other ear, stiffening up and pushing down all of the terrifying thoughts that were racing through his head. “You’re going to make sure all the doors and windows are locked. You’re going to stay home and wait for me. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said and hung up.
He stood there in the room and stared at his phone. He was going to have to make some more calls.
Ryan was still behind the counter, and two customers were perusing the store when Jeremy came out of the office.
“You can head home, Ryan. I’ll be okay here solo for now,” he told him.
“Thanks man. I’m sorry,” he said. He picked up his bag and turned back to Jeremy right before he got to the door. “I know you and June were close. I’m really sorry.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry too,” he said.
Two employees were going to come in early to cover the rest of his shift. He needed to get home to Claire and he grew more anxious by the minute. It would be another hour before his coverage could come in. His knee bounced as he tapped his heel, and his thumb moved in unison with his leg- tapping on the counter.
“Hello? Can I buy this?” a customer asked.
Jeremy blinked and shook his head, and saw a woman standing at the counter. She had chin length brown hair and wore a yellow raincoat. She set a book down on the counter.
“Of course, I’m so sorry,” he said.
“You looked like you were somewhere else just now,” she said.
“I guess I was,” he replied. He looked at the book and entered the price in the register. “Your total is twenty two dollars and seventy nine cents.”
She put cash down on the counter, and Jeremy handed her the receipt with her change.
“Would you like a bag?” he asked.
“No thanks,” she said. She looked him up and down, smiled at him, and left. A male customer that was looking around on the store caught up with her as she was walking out, and they left together. The store was empty now and the music had stopped playing. Jeremy thought about June and expected to have to hold back tears, but he felt nothing. He was scared for Claire, and he was worried about the coven. He was confused about how this could have happened to her, but he felt no pain about her death. He was in shock, he thought. It was going to hit him somehow, and he needed to make sure that everyone else was okay so that when it did hit him, he could fall apart and not take anyone else down with him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CLAIRE PUT HER phone on the counter and stood in the kitchen. Her head ached from crying, and her face was red and swollen. She felt like she had no control over her tears and they kept flowing like a river. She had woken up an hour ago to a text from a mutual friend of June’s. It just said to call her. That’s how she got the news that June was dead.
June was the reason she was who she was. June had trained her, and Claire followed her from New York to the Midwest. Her work had been selling well enough that she felt like she could settle anywhere, and she had needed a break from the city. She wanted to live somewhere quieter, and when June told her she was leaving she knew she had to follow her. She knew she wanted to start a coven like she had in New York, but she didn’t want to do it without June. She didn’t think she could. She was too fresh and didn’t know enough. June introduced her to the community in Minnesota, and Claire fell in love. She felt like this is where she was meant to be, and she had no doubts about leaving New York. Before long she met Jeremy, and June helped them get the coven up and running. June began to focus on her readings, and before long running her shop took over her life. Claire fell into a sea of depression after her divorce and isolated herself from much of the community, including June. June was too busy running her new business to notice that her best student had drifted away. Claire now hated herself for not reaching out to June. She just assumed she’d always be there and when she was ready, they could talk and things would go back to how they were before. Now that chance was gone. Because some psychopath killed her. Claire remembered her conversation with Jeremy and began walking around the house, making sure all the doors and windows were locked. She had no reason to believe that she was in any danger. But she was almost certain that June wouldn’t have had any reason to find herself in danger either. She considered calling the coven, but she decided to wait for Jeremy to come home before she made any decisions. She wasn’t confident in her ability to think straight at the moment.
She went downstairs to her studio in the basement, pulled the string to click the light on above her head, and watched light fill the room. The walls were covered in stacks of canvases that leaned up one over the other. A large shelf took up one entire wall, and it was filled with what could have been hundreds of containers of paint. The floor and the cement utility sink were covered in splatters of color and cups of paint brushes were scattered in various places around the room. She hadn’t created a steady stream of work in so long that she was beginning to worry that she was going to lose it all together. She picked up a canvas and placed it on the easel. She squirted colors into a palette and without thinking, her hand started painting furiously. Colors began to fill the board and the semblance of a face took shape. She wanted to see June. She wanted the world to see June. And so June appeared on the canvas, as tears slowly traveled down Claire’s cheeks.
The sun was getting low in the sky when Jeremy got home. He had already talked to Olivia, Tanner, and Allison, and they were going to be arriving in the next hour or so. He was expecting to find Claire in the kitchen or her room, and he started to panic when the house appeared empty.
“Claire?” he shouted. “Claire are you home?” He heard a muffled cry and went downstairs. The basement do
or was cracked open and the light downstairs was on. Of course, her studio , he thought. He was used to her spending most of her waking time down there, but she had been in a whole new groove lately. Or no groove at all.
Claire heard his steps come down the stairs and she put her paintbrush down. She had just finished.
“Wow, Claire,” he said. “It’s beautiful.” Jeremy stared in awe at June’s face stared back at him in every color.
Claire was silent. She turned around and walked over to him, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his chest. She started to cry again.
“The guys will be here in about an hour so we can all process this,” he said.
The thought of that set her off. “Tonight? Together? Can’t we process it alone first?” She glared at him and pulled away.
“Well, I thought they might want to talk, and that we should all be together right now,” he said, sounding confused.
“Well you could have asked me first, Jeremy. I didn’t realize you get to make all the decisions now.” Her sadness was boiling into anger and he could see the shift happening on her face.
“I’m sorry, but I thought it would be up to us to help them through this,” he said.
“Yes. Us being the key word there. You couldn’t run it by me first?” she asked.
He could sense that she was getting more and more irritated with him.
“I thought you wouldn’t want to make any decisions right now and I figured you would have felt the same way I felt. I’m sorry that I was wrong.” He hugged her tighter. “Can we please not fight right now?”
She wiggled out of his arms. “Fine,” she said. “We’ll fight about it later. Can you leave me alone please?”
He shook his head at her and threw his hands up in defeat. “Okay,” he said. “Whatever you say.” He went back upstairs and closed the door behind him.
The coven sat together in the living room. The atmosphere was heavy with sadness and layers of tension. They had all hugged and cried together as each person arrived, and then they sat in silence.
“June meant a lot to all of us,” Jeremy said. “And I know we are all feeling this right now. Obviously with her death being a homicide, we want more information, and I don’t know about you guys but I am feeling a little nervous.”
“I just don’t know how she didn’t see it coming,” Allison said.
“That is not fucking funny!” Claire screamed, glaring at her.
“Come on, Allison,” Jeremy said. “You really feel like it’s okay to make a joke right now?”
Allison looked at Claire and saw the tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Claire, I know she meant a lot to you.”
“Then why the fuck would you say something like that? What the fuck is wrong with you?” Claire asked, looking at Allison pleadingly with bloodshot eyes.
Olivia chimed in, trying to ease tensions. “We all deal with grief in our own way, and sometimes it doesn’t even make sense to us.” She got up and sat next to Claire on the couch. Claire laid her head on Olivia’s shoulder. She closed her eyes and felt Olivia’s energy soak into her. Her heart rate slowed down a bit and she felt herself let go of the tension in her shoulders.
“I’m really sorry, Claire. I’m an asshole,” Allison said.
Claire ignored her. She was far too lost in her own pain to realize that they might be in pain too.
Jeremy sensed that he was losing control of the room. He meant to bring them all together for support, and they were already fighting.
Tanner spoke up. “Did you hear anything from Sheff or anyone else about what happened? Does anyone know more than what they are reporting on the news?”
“No,” Jeremy said. “Sheff hadn’t heard anything more when I spoke to him. Her house and her storefront are a crime scene. Nobody but police can get access.”
“I’m sure it’s not guarded or anything,” Allison said. Maybe we can sneak in and see what we can find. If it was just normal foul play or something of the magical sort.”
“We aren’t detectives, Allison,” Jeremy said. “But Sheff did mention that he wants to get the security cameras in the store working again.”
“He hasn’t fixed those yet?” Claire asked nervously.
“It’s okay, Claire,” Jeremy tried to reassure her. “He’s working on it. He’s also going to get me info on her memorial. We are going to be working on wards for the shop, and I’d like us to each make our own as well. We’ll each need at least three, maybe four.” The group nodded in agreement. “We have been pretty lax lately when it comes to personal defense,” he continued. “We’ve been focusing on other things, but until we know why June was murdered we really need to shift our focus on protecting ourselves.”
“Has anyone checked on the witch bottles we made last spring?” Olivia asked. Everyone shook their heads no.
“Well either way, they need to be replaced,” Jeremy said. “You can all make your wards on your own time, or we can get together here and make them.”
“We need to do a protection spell during our next full moon circle.” Claire said. Everyone looked at her. Jeremy was relieved she was chiming in. He was hoping he wouldn’t have to steer through all of this alone. It was her coven, after all. “I think we have covered enough for tonight,” she said. It was clear that she was ready to be alone.
Jeremy took a deep breath. “I think Claire is right. We should call it a night.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
EMILY SLUGGED THROUGH work all week. She was distracted, she couldn’t focus, and she was making mistakes left and right.
“Marketing wanted these on matte paper?” Dave asked her. He knew the answer, but he wanted to see if she noticed her mistake.
“What?” Emily asked. “Oh, shoot. I’m sorry I’ll fix it right away.”
Dave seemed concerned about her. He was never one to pry, but Emily had never been like this in the three years they had worked together. “Everything going okay outside of work?” he asked her.
“Yeah. I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I’ve been messing up a lot. I’m just distracted about some things and I’m letting it get to me here I guess.”
“Maybe you should take a few days off,” he suggested. “You haven’t had a vacation in almost two years.”
“You’re one to talk,” she quipped back. “Have you ever taken a vacation?”
“Have I ever messed up five orders in three days?” he said, teasing her.
“Ouch, man,” she said. “Touché.” She grabbed the reprinted order, now corrected on glossy paper, and replaced it on the counter. She threw the incorrect pages in the recycling. “I’m going to do the one o’clock mail run.”
“Are you going to think about taking a vacation?” he asked.
“Yes, I’ll think about it,” she said. She grabbed the mail cart and pushed it through the door. This part of her job was mindless, and she liked to use it as an opportunity to think. A lot of parts of her job were mindless, she thought. But she had been messing up even the simplest things this week. First she had been distracted by her dreams and losing sleep. Constantly tired at work. And now, her real life was colliding with her dreams and becoming more distracting than the dreams were. She couldn’t stop thinking about Claire. She couldn’t shake the feeling that meeting her was more than a coincidence. She also worried that meeting with Jeremy at all had been a mistake. She went to try and shed some light on the matter. To learn a bit more, and get the dreams out of her head. But it seemed to have made things worse. Everything got weirder that day. Her thoughts shifted. She should call Jeremy. Just go all in. Maybe she needed to jump down the rabbit hole and see where it would take her. What did she have to lose? It couldn’t get much worse. “It can only get better from here,” she said out loud.
“What?” A woman turned around in her cubicle looking confused.
“Oh, nothing, I’m sorry.” She smiled and started walking faster, not realizing she had spoken out loud. She walked right past a mail stop, missi
ng an urgent inter-office mail, and bringing her mindless mistake total for the week to six.
Emily powered down all of the printers and computers, turned off the lights, and closed the print center. Walking through the building on her way out for the day, she couldn’t decide if she should call Jeremy or just go to the shop. Driving to The Cottage wasn’t very far out of her way. There was a chance he might not be working. But if that were the case, she could at least browse through the books and find one to take home. She drove to The Cottage, and had to drive a bit farther down the street before she was able to find a parking spot. The bells jingled when she opened the door, and she was surprised at what she saw. The store was bustling with people. There was a temporary table set up near the front counter, and it was covered in food. The music was a bit louder than she remembered it being when she visited the store the first time, and the sound of people speaking added a hum above the sound of the music. She weaved through the people, trying to keep an eye out for Jeremy. She really hoped he was here, because this wasn’t what she had in mind when she imagined browsing through the store. A hand touched her shoulder.
“Hi Emily,” he said.
Emily turned around and Jeremy was standing there. She was so relieved she wanted to hug him, and the urge surprised her. Rabbit hole. She thought, and she hugged him, resting her head on his chest like an old friend.
“Woah,” he said. “Are you okay?”
She pulled back. “Yes I’m fine, I’m sorry. That was weird. I just felt like hugging you so I went for it.” She put her hands in her coat pockets. “I guess I am relieved to see you is all. What’s going on here? Why is it so busy?”
“Well, a beloved figure in our community has died. She was murdered actually,” he said.
She tilted her head and her face turned into a frown, “Oh God I am so sorry.”
“Yeah. Her name was June, and she ran a small Tarot reading business out of her home. She meant a lot to a lot of people around our city,” he said.
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