by Willow Mason
“Let me try again.”
I jumped out of the car before Genevieve could answer. On the next try, I found it easier to bring the building and the doorway into view. Moving closer to the door, I frowned at the scratches and dents surrounding the handle. It looked like someone had taken a crowbar to it. Considering how long the coven had been waiting to open the doors, perhaps they had.
This time, instead of reaching out with my hand, I tried visualising the success. The hand my brain conjured up opened the doorway, releasing the stale air from a room enclosed for a full twenty years.
Then, I tried for real. Keeping the imagined visuals clear in my mind, I turned the door handle. It twisted, let me push the door inward…
Back in the car.
I slammed my palms on the dashboard in frustration. “I nearly had it!”
“You and the rest of the coven,” Genevieve said, reversing in a three-point turn to point us down the drive. “Don’t worry, we can try again another day.”
I closed my eyes and saw the house I’d turned bright pink as a five-year-old. Now, I couldn’t even turn my nails pink.
“Could I meet the rest of the coven?” I asked the supreme as we drew up outside my house. “Do you have group meetings?”
“Not usually.” The supreme stared straight ahead. “It’s a dangerous proposition with hunters on the loose but if we’re careful, I could probably work out something.”
“Hunters?”
“Witch hunters.” She turned to me with an apology written across her face. “They’ve been active in this area for the last ten years, I’m afraid. We’ve lost two members even though we’ve taken them seriously. One of them was our previous supreme.”
“Ten years? So they might’ve stopped again?”
Genevieve turned sad eyes towards me. “Our leader died last year. They’re still here, and they’re getting better at hiding.”
The thought sent a shiver up my back and I remembered the man in the woods, his equipment beeping.
“How can you tell who they are?”
She gave a sad smile. “Because they try to kill you.”
While waiting for my lunch order to arrive, I paced the length of my front hall, rubbing my arms. Ever since Genevieve had mentioned witch hunters, a chill had seeped into my body that I couldn’t shake.
When the delivery man turned up, I paused for a long minute before opening the door, and then it was only because his hands were full. Once he piled the containers into mine, I realised how easily those tables had turned. Luckily, instead of killing me, he wished me a good day and ran back to his car.
Annalisa said as she stalked into the kitchen, shaking out her back legs one at a time.
Considering the panther had spent most of her time sleeping in the front room, where the sunlight was strongest, it seemed unlikely, but I didn’t bother to argue. “There’s some chicken chow mein or some Kung pow chicken. No steak.”
Annalisa sniffed at the few pieces of cooked meat I pulled out of the confusion of noodles, vegetables, and sauce, then hooked a lump into her mouth with a long, rough tongue.
Two delicate bites and it came straight back out again.
I looked up the local butchers online but couldn’t see any sign of a delivery option. With trepidation, I pulled my phone off the charger and made a call—my least favourite use of the device.
“They don’t deliver but they’ll package it up for me to collect later,” I told the cat. Despite the appearance of sleeping, her ears flicked in acknowledgement. “Once I’ve eaten, I’ll pop into town.”
With the phone out, I saw the text from my ex again and took a deep breath before clicking on it. So soz. Blah blah blah. My eyes scanned to the bottom. Do you want me to take it to the jewellers?
Say what? I scrolled back to the beginning of the impossibly long message and reread the whole thing. He’d found my mother’s locket and wanted to know if he could get it repaired.
About to type yes and drop a pin, I stopped and thought for a second. Did I really want to let him know where to forward the locket when it was back in one piece? After rearranging my entire life to get away from him, it would be foolish to reveal my location just to get back a necklace.
Take it to Iris, I typed instead. It would work out far better. Jared had always got along better with my foster mum than I had, and hopefully, she could be trusted to hold on to the secret of my new home base more securely than a random jeweller.
Happy with my plan, I sent Iris a quick email of the details, including my new address. Just before I hit send, a twinge of guilt hit me. I owed her a phone call. A real one. It must have been four months or more since the last time I’d spoken to her for more than two minutes.
Maybe when there’s less on my plate. Although it was an easy cop-out, I let myself away with it.
Since I was on a roll, I also searched the licence plate of the car parked outside. The results popped up for Pounamu Basin, a town located a few hours’ drive away.
No problem, if only I had a car. The broken-down coffin parked outside didn’t count.
In fact, even the trip to the butchers was straining the term ‘walking distance,’ so I pulled up the buy, sell, and exchange pages and scrolled through them for vehicles while I finished off my meal.
The price tags appeared reasonable until I compared them to the balance in my bank account. I needed to find a job, which reminded me I still hadn’t changed the water and electricity over to my name.
“All this and I’m expected to solve a murder by a creature I only heard of for the first time today,” I muttered, to myself since Annalisa appeared to be napping again. “What can Google tell me about sucklings, I wonder?”
Nothing. That’s what they could tell me.
I began to understand the annoyance of an arcane library whose front door wouldn’t budge. It would be so much easier if I could search for a spell to eliminate the culprit or a potion to track down their current hiding place.
In despair, I turned to Facebook to research the woman. Isabella Anson was her name, and it didn’t take long to find the right one from the list presented. With most of her posts set to public, I scrolled through the feed, feeling my chest grow hollow as I stared at her expressive face in tagged photos—eating meals, dancing, laughing with her friends.
The dried husk in the boot appeared a thousand years old but according to her profile, Isabella was only thirty. Not much older than me.
I pushed the last of my meal away, nausea swirling in my stomach. Even drinking a glass of water seemed impossible.
I rolled my eyes but didn’t dissuade her. Once out the door, the breeze on my face felt refreshing; much better than the stuffy house that still hadn’t lost its stale smell.
The walk didn’t take too long and soon I had a parcel of meat underneath my armpit. Annalisa began to growl, deep in the back of her throat. After a few repeats, I realised it was her purr.
We passed a movie theatre, advertising a blockbuster from the nineties, and I slowed, thinking of the stub from Isabella’s pocket. What were the chances there was another theatre in tiny Br
iarton? My maths skills returned an answer of approximately nil, and I pushed open the door, blinking in the dim light indoors until my eyes adjusted.
“The next screening isn’t until eight o’clock, love,” an elderly man called out from behind the concession counter. “Unless you fancy a spot of overpriced popcorn to tide you over.”
An avalanche of horror stories relating to the childhood treat would have wiped the appeal away, even if I hadn’t been recently fed. “I wondered if you remember this woman?” I showed him a group photograph on my phone, zooming in on Isabella’s face.
“Maybe.” He lifted one shoulder in a desultory shrug. “What’s she done?”
“Nothing. She’s gone missing.”
The man’s eyes widened, and he took another glance at the screen. “Yeah, I’ve seen her in here once or twice.” He clicked his fingers. “The last time was weird. She left at intermission, halfway through me dipping her icecream. Waste of a good cone if I hadn’t eaten it myself.” He tilted his head to one side, squinting at the ceiling. “That must’ve been a week ago, now, give or take a few days.”
“Was she on her own?”
“Yeah,” he said, then shook his head. “Nah. I thought a friend had come to join her but they both left. Humans are weird.”
I didn’t offer any argument to his opinion or bother to correct him as to Isabella’s witch status. “Could I grab a packet of Tangy Fruits?”
He handed over the pottle and I gave him far too much money in return. Did everyone in Briarton mark their prices up? If so, small town economy would soon leave me impoverished.
“Oh, what a sweet little kitty,” a voice cried out as I emerged into the bright sunlight. A woman just a step behind me clapped her hands and held them to her chest. “And it follows along beside you, just like a person would. He must be very well trained.”
“She,” I corrected automatically.
“Can she jump up on your shoulder? Wouldn’t that be fun to see?”
While I stared at the woman, wondering if there was some social cue I’d missed, Annalisa crouched down, wiggled her tail to adjust the trajectory, then launched herself at me.
The weight and momentum of her perfect landing were ruined when I staggered back three steps and dropped her lunch on the street. “Get down!” I ordered her, massaging my shoulder. She stalked away from me, tail and head held high.
Meanwhile, the woman who’d started the whole thing stared on in disbelief. “She must weigh a bit more than she looks,” she said hesitantly.
I flapped my hand. “Yeah. She’s well overweight. I’m thinking of putting her on a reducing diet, just for her health.”
Annalisa sniffed at the dropped package, then seized it between her jaws and ran away down the street while I grinned and followed more slowly. Our walk took me past the street where Isabella’s car had been abandoned, and as I ploughed into the woods, taking a shortcut to my back door, a glint of metal at the forest’s edge caught my eye.
Keeping a careful distance from the grumpy woman’s house, I edged closer to the thicket. My first guess of a shopping trolley gave my mind a garden path to stroll down until I was almost on top of the object. A wheelchair.
Just as good for transporting bodies but far less likely.
“I can’t believe someone isn’t missing this,” I mused to Annalisa, who used the opportunity of my distraction to tear another bite from her mutilated steak. “It looks modern, so it must be expensive.”
Good point if a tad macabre. “I’m not sure someone on a disability allowance can afford to be that picky.”
There weren’t any identifying marks on the device, but I snapped a few quick photos before cutting through the woods to reach my home. The map of Briarton was fleshing out in my head and I felt proud to reach my back door unscathed.
After polishing off my second stab at lunch, the allure of a nap called me, and I lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, steadfastly failing to not think about my ex and how nice it would be if Jared’s arms were wrapped around me right now.
Minus the claws, of course.
Just as I was about to head downstairs in search of food or entertainment, a noise caught my attention, and I pressed my face to the window. With the setting sun staining the sky with a myriad of colours, the concrete footpath below took on an orange hue.
I couldn’t see anything moving and was about to withdraw when I heard a unique sound. One I’d recognise anywhere.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The man who’d been in the forest earlier, trying to find the corpse.
How had he found me again? What did he want?
With thoughts of witch hunters and killers pounding in my mind, I fled downstairs and out the back door.
It wouldn’t do for him to see me, so I crept around the corner of the house, making as little noise as possible. When I heard dried leaves crunch behind me, I turned and let out a grateful exhalation when I saw Annalisa on my trail.
The man crouched by Isabella’s car boot—his body nearly hidden by the angle. With stealthy thoughts on my mind, I tiptoed around the side of my front porch, holding my breath as I drew nearer.
As he came into view, I stopped, staring. The machine was pressed up against the seal of the boot, an earpiece cord connecting him.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I inched closer, my vision swimming as my blood pressure shot sky-high. What should I do now? I needed a weapon.
With inward curses at my stupidity, I bent down and felt around for any stray knives or guns that might have been dropped. Even a frying pan would do.
My fingers tingled, and I stared in astonishment at the cast iron pan now resting in my hand.
Did I do that?
With Annalisa’s words roaring in my mind, I straightened up and yelled out, “What do you think you’re doing?”
The man jerked around, constrained by the cord. He reached for his inside pocket and my mind yelled Gun! He’s going for a gun!
I slammed the frying pan into the side of his head. My arms shuddered from the force of the impact.
The man’s eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped onto the road.
Witch hunter, nil. Me, one.
Chapter Seven
“For the thousandth time, I’m not a witch hunter. I’m a paranormal investigator working for the district of North Canterbury. You can check my badge. Check my wallet. Look me up online, for goodness’ sake!”
“What’s the difference?” I asked with open suspicion in my voice. “If you find something paranormal, who do you report it to?”
“To whoever hired me!”
The man sagged forward, his arms straining as he tried to lift them. Luckily, someone had enough forethought to bind him tightly with a pair of ruined pantyhose. Good luck getting free of those confounded things.
“Right. I’m going to reach into your pocket to get your wallet,” I explained to my hostage. “And I don’t want any funny business, understood?”
“Yes. That’s what I’ve been telling you to do.”
His exasperation made me hesitate again. In movies, this was the bit where
the hero would be lulled into a false sense of security while the villain took advantage and got free.
Well, not this witch!
“Annalisa, can you get his wallet out?”
The panther looked up at me as though I’d grown another head.
“Pretty please?”
With a long blink of her glowing eyes, the cat stood up again and nuzzled into the man’s side. His face turned very still and very pale. Even the large bruise forming on the side of his head changed to greyscale.
After the panther withdrew, wallet in mouth, the captive didn’t move or bloom back into colour. As Annalisa passed the goods to me, I raised my eyebrows.
I opened the wallet, careful not to pull faces at the cat saliva coating most of it. A driver’s licence with a photograph taken by someone who must have hated him. A white swipe card with only a return address rather than any sign of where it would work. Ah!
“Paranormal investigator, licence number 357.” I tapped it against my bottom lip, then remembered whose mouth it had just been in and abruptly stopped. “There’s not many of you, then?”
“There’s enough.”
I shrugged dismissively, then stared at the card again. “Patrick Walsham, aged twenty-nine. Funny line of work for someone to go into. Why’d you become an investigator?”
“None of your business is why.” His skin filled with colour again, flushing his cheeks. “Now, let me go immediately.”
Annalisa had a good point. If Patrick had been outside, investigating because someone hired him to, his current predicament wouldn’t look great for me. Even the slackest definitions of self-protection didn’t involve sneaking up behind someone on a public street and banging them on the head.