Death's Shroud

by Robbie Cox

  “Oh, honey, it’ll take time,” Wanda said, dusting off one of the statues on a shelf. “She’s been through a lot. We all have. Some will handle it differently, but that doesn’t mean they’re right or wrong.” She stopped, turning to face Jayden, a sympathetic smile on her face. “Just give her some space. Pain takes time to heal, but she will heal, and when she does, her family will be right here waiting.”

  “Yes, we will,” Tansy agreed, smiling. “We may be a small coven, but we’re close. We’ll have her back when she’s ready to turn to us again, and I agree with Wanda; Laci will be back. She just needs time.”

  Famallumi glanced up from the thick book he was studying. “Did Miss Buttercup go somewhere?” he asked, his brows pinched in confusion, head tilted to the side. “I know she moved out of the Warrior’s residence, but I assumed she just moved into her own domicile. Did she leave the city?”

  The others glanced over at the elf, smiling, Jayden even laughing as she shook her head. “Laci moved in with Mom and me,” she told him. “We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about her leaving the coven.”

  “Oh,” was all Famallumi said before turning his nose back to the book. Tansy didn’t even know what he was reading, but it had to be “Amazing” as he would say. She just chuckled, shaking her head as she turned back to her inventory.

  Jayden stared down into her tea, returning to her brooding.

  The bell over the door jingled as Melinda Tipton shoved her way into The Murky Cauldron, a paper bag in her hands. “Hello, my favorite downtown people,” her voice rang out, her bubbliness bringing a smile to Tansy’s lips. “We all cleaned up from that freak tornado that twirled through here last week? I swear that was the weirdest damn thing. I barely even remember seeing it come through. Just the damage it left behind.”

  Tansy nodded as she took the bag from Melinda. “Yeah, we got some dust, and a few shelves collapsed, but that was about it.” She lifted the bag a little. “Did you bring us something fun from the bakery?”

  “Hello, Melli,” Wanda greeted as she moved over and took the bag from Tansy’s hand. “Your visits always bring such delicious flavors.”

  Tansy just shook her head as she watched the other woman walk away with the goodies from Melinda’s Bakery a few doors down, the bakery Melli owned. Tansy turned back to the other woman. “How about you? Any damage?” A few days ago, the demons who possessed Kayla and Wanda practically destroyed the downtown area. Famallumi used his powers as Lore Master Apprentice to hide the attack from the more normal people in the area. They never saw what truly happened, just the destruction left behind in the two-lane street afterward. The news called it a freak tornado, but some doubted the truth of that since there was no proof on any satellite. It was the afternoon they lost Alex, the breaking point for Kayla.

  Melli leaned on the glass counter, smiling over at Tansy. “Marcus had his tires slashed, which seems weird for a tornado, but other than that, we escaped unscathed.”

  Tansy gave the other woman a smile. “I’m glad to hear that.” Too bad we all didn’t get out of it as easily. “So, what’s new in the bakery world?”

  Melinda leaned over the counter a little more, lowering her voice. “Nothing new in the bakery world, but…” She glanced around, making sure no one was listening. Jayden just cocked an eyebrow at her as she stared back. Melinda didn’t seem to care, recognizing the younger woman as a regular in the store. “However, not that I’m one to spread gossip or anything, mind you, but rumor has it Betty from Timely Treasures Antiques was seen coming out of the back room of Rick’s Trading Cards & Collectibles.” She pressed her lips together as she cocked her brows. “And from what the person saw, old Rick forgot to finish zipping up his pants.”

  Tansy laughed as she shook her head. “You are bad. Rick has a hard time keeping his zipper up on a regular basis. It’s because he only buys his pants from Kitty’s Thrift Shop at the other end of the street. I’m sure it had nothing to do with any hanky panky going on in the back of his store.” She chuckled again. If anyone could make something out of nothing, it was Melinda Tipton.

  “Besides, isn’t he like, what, a hundred or something?” Jayden asked, her brows pinched together. “Betty is only forty. That image is just…gross.”

  “What’s wrong with older people having a little fun?” Wanda asked, hands on her hips as she faced Jayden. “We’re not dead, you know?”

  “Wanda!” Jayden shouted, eyes wide. “I don’t need images like that in my head.”

  Wanda just grinned at her. “Images keep me going.” She winked at Jayden as she turned, giggling.

  Famallumi cocked an eyebrow at them. “Amazing.”

  “I know,” Wanda said as she wiggled back to the shelf she was cleaning.

  “Well, hello,” Melinda said as she turned, facing Famallumi. “Where did you come from?” She pushed herself off the counter with a bump of her ass and started toward the elf. “My name’s Melinda…”

  Oh, god. Tansy left her spot behind the counter, moving to run interference before Famallumi slipped and said something he shouldn’t, which knowing the elf’s history, could be anything and everything. “This is a friend from way back when,” she said as she reached Famallumi just before Melli reached out to take his arm. “We studied together. He came back to dig deeper into his, um, folklore and mythology.”

  “You like history, huh?” Melli asked. “I kind of live in the present, you know? Living for the moment, that’s me.”

  “Well, I, uh,” Famallumi shot furtive glances around at the others, his eyes wide with what Tansy would have sworn was fright. “I like all of time, really. I, uh,” he stood straighter, “did I hear Wanda say you brought something from your bakery. It wouldn’t be those little lemon tarts, would it? Absolutely amazing.”

  His compliment brought a bright smile to Melinda’s face, her eyes sparkling. “You’ve tried my lemon tarts? All natural ingredients, I’ll have you know. Nothing but the best for my customers. Not like that Caked Holes shop down the street.”

  Tansy laughed, noticing Wanda rolling her eyes behind Melinda. “Well, it shows,” Tansy said. “How did you get today off, anyway?”

  Melinda winked at her. “I had to take some quiche to Peter Rourke over at A Taste of Blarney.” She laughed as she turned. “But I should get back. Who knows what Marcus has given away in my absence. Take care, ladies.” She stopped and winked at Famallumi. “I’ll make sure to send some more lemon tarts over for you later.”

  “Um, yeah, well, thank you,” the elf stuttered, squirming where he stood.

  Tansy hid her laugh behind her hand. For once, Famallumi didn’t say, “Amazing.” It was good to see him flabbergasted for a change instead of fascinated, and all because of the attention of a woman. If Tansy remembered what Rhychard Bartlett told her about the elf, Famallumi was seventy-five years old, which in the Land Under was a teenager. Had the elf even reached puberty yet? Did he like women? She turned her gaze back to the elf, her brows pinched as she studied him. How did the faerie realm handle romance, love, and sex? She shook her head, running her hand over her dark hair as she turned back toward the glass counter, the bell jingling over the front door as Melinda stepped out into the late Harbor City morning.

  Jayden bit down into one of the pastries as she leaned on the counter. When she finished chewing, she said, “I miss the others being here.”

  Tansy nodded. She missed them being there, as well.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Mark Rochester stared at the M.E. as she stood over the body of Roger Sanders. “Scared to death?” Mark repeated. “That’s really a thing, and not just a cliché?”

  Tricia nodded and then brushed her sandy hair out of her light green eyes. “It’s an actual thing. Rare, but an actual thing.” She stood there, gripping the clipboard to her chest with her arms crossed over it.

  Mark shook his head. “How does that even work?”

  “When a person experiences a big enough shock, the body experie
nces a massive surge of adrenaline. It happens just like a heart attack, shortness of breath, sweating, pressure, tightness in their chest or arms.”

  “All right, but don’t they have to be close to having a heart attack already before something like that can happen?” He was seriously considering smacking the next person to jump out at him as a joke.

  Tricia shook her head. “No, even healthy people can be scared to death, but like I said, it’s rare. It basically starts with a person’s flight-or-fight response to some imagined threat. They’ll experience anxiety, increased blood glucose levels, increased heart rate, even sweating more than normal. The massive surge of adrenaline is more than the body can handle and brings about sudden death.”

  Mark glanced back at the body on the metal table. “So you’re saying someone jumped out at this guy while he was reading and it killed him.”

  Tricia shook her head. Again. She did that a lot, Mark noticed, whenever he asked her questions. “No. What I’m saying is that something scared him to death. I’m not saying what that something was. That’s your job.” She shrugged. “However, from what I saw at the crime scene, I couldn’t begin to tell you what scared him. He seemed to be having a quiet night at home with a good book. You never did tell me what he was reading when he died.”

  Placing his hands on his hips, Mark shook his head this time. “A fantasy novel, if I remember correctly.” He made a note to look up the book and see what it was about. “So…would you say this was natural causes? I mean, how do I prove someone scared the hell out of him, causing him to keel over in his comfy recliner?”

  She nodded. “I’m listing it as natural circumstances, even though he was healthy. There was no obvious signs of struggle or attack, no poisons or other chemicals in his system.” She shrugged. “I don’t see how else I could classify it.”

  “All right,” Mark said, still staring at the body a moment longer. It just didn’t seem right. How could a man just die like that? Mark nodded, forcing himself to accept what Tricia said. “Thanks, Doc. I appreciate it.”

  “Anytime,” she said as he turned and left the morgue.

  He stepped out into the late-morning sun, his hands in his pockets, his brain still trying to make sense of it. Since he met Rhychard Bartlett and his friends, Mark had seen some crazy-ass things: dark elves, creatures that suck the life out of people, turning them into statues made out of the trunks of banana trees, demons and body possession. It all made him start to question every case that came his way, especially ones like this one.

  Turning back to the front door of the city morgue, he wondered if he should reach out to the Warrior and ask him about his take on this. Natural causes. Tricia said it was natural causes, even if he was scared to death. No sense borrowing trouble when there was none. There’s been enough trouble, lately. Pulling his keys out of his pockets, Mark started toward his car. There were other cases to solve, normal cases with human culprits. He had to stop looking for bogeymen behind every corner.

  He stepped off the curb, heading toward his car when a rush of wind swirled around him, pulling at his sports coat and mussing his hair. He covered his eyes from the dust kicked up by the windstorm, bracing against what felt like tornado-strength winds. The howling in his ears almost sounded like a mournful wail as it whipped around him, threatening to bring him down. Then, it stopped almost as fast as it started, almost knocking Mark off his feet from the abrupt disappearance of wind, just as it had almost knocked him on his backside when it first arrived.

  Mark glanced around, following the wind as it twirled down the street, kicking up debris and rocking parked cars, but only in a narrow path as opposed to what he thought a natural windstorm would act like. He straightened his coat as he stared at the fading sight, his heart pounding in his chest. Yeah, no such thing as bogeymen.

  Four

  Kayla Lewell sat in the middle of the park, staring at ducks floating in the pond off to the side of the Harbor City Public Library. The park set on the north side of the library, a small playground in one corner and benches along the lake’s edge with a couple of covered picnic tables spotting the edge. Most often, the homeless claimed one or two of the picnic tables, taking naps or killing time until it was their turn to hit the corner with their sign which read, “Will Work For Food.” Kayla ignored them most of the time, their presence sort of a white noise to the area’s ecosystem. Today was no different.

  The late-afternoon sun glimmered on the lake’s surface, the water rippling from where the ducks floated by on their way to nowhere. It was the same place Kayla headed. Nowhere.

  She sat cross-legged on the grass, her hands clasped in her lap as the afternoon breeze tugged at her wispy red hair, pulling it away from her ears and swishing it across her forehead. The October sun beat down on her shoulders as she faced toward the lake and out of the glare of the sizzling orb. She just sat there, like she had every day since she returned from the Summerlands, since the others released her from the demon’s hold, since she had to face the fact she killed the only person she truly loved and who loved her in return. She stared down at the photo of Alex resting on her legs, staring at his smiling face, his black hair that always seemed to need combing, his inky eyes as they stared at her through the photo. No tears fell from her eyes. She cried those out days ago until her entire body, her mind, was numb with the aftermath of what she did. She heard the others telling her it wasn’t her fault; she wasn’t in control of her actions at the time. Even Alex told her that just before he and Rose Tillery sacrificed themselves to heal the barrier of the Nether. Still, Kayla couldn’t force herself to believe it. Her hand held the power that killed him, her hand snapped Alex’s neck, her hand killed the best friend she ever had. She could never forgive herself for that, couldn’t forgive herself for not being strong enough to fight off the demon. She couldn’t even face Alex’s parents, knowing she was the one who caused his death. When she returned to the Land Above from the Summerlands, all she could do was wail.

  Her mind screamed at her as tears flowed down her cheeks. It didn’t matter how much she swiped them away, the tears just kept falling, smearing across her cheeks, dripping from her chin, blurring her vision. Wanda and Tansy had slipped her into their car, Tansy driving while Wanda just cradled Kayla in the backseat, cooing soft words meant to encourage the young witch. Pointless. For Kayla, there would be no solace, no consolation to ease the pain that ripped through her chest, breaking her heart.

  Still, she laid her head on Wanda’s chest, her arms dangling down at her sides and continued to cry.

  Tansy spoke to her from the front seat, telling her how brave she was, that she would make it through this, that Alex fought—and even died—for her.

  That wasn’t the truth, and Kayla knew it. Alex died because she was too weak to keep a demon from stealing her body. She wasn’t a witch, not a powerful one like Tansy and Wanda or even Jayden. Or like Alex. He knew what he did as a witch. He believed and had the power to back up that belief. Not Kayla. She finally admitted to Alex that she had joined the coven just to have a place to belong, that she didn’t really believe she had the magic or that magic even existed. That is, until the Cauldron Coven joined the Warrior of the Way at Feather Lakes to take out Bertram Leary. That night, power flowed through her as she defended the residents of the tiny neighborhood, standing beside Alex, both shooting bolts of magic into the dark elves and gargoyles who threatened to kill them all. She couldn’t do anything but believe then.

  Yet, while magic opened her life to new things, it also stole the very person she needed. “I killed him,” she whined, her hands clenched into tight fists as Tansy drove through the neighborhood. “I killed him.”

  “Oh, no, dearie,” Wanda said. “You didn’t kill anyone. How could you? You would never raise your hand to harm a flea, you wouldn’t. No, those demons are the ones who made us do those nasty things. They controlled us. They did those atrocities, not us.”

  Kayla shook her head. “It was my hand that he
ld the knife.”

  “But it wasn’t your mind that made the decision to use it,” Tansy said, looking at her through the rearview mirror. “We know who really did this, Kayla. Alex knows it, too.”

  Kayla felt Wanda stroking her hair as she held her. “Sweetie, the truth is, it could have been any of us who was either killed or did the killing. Demons don’t exactly play fair.”

  That was an understatement.

  The older witches took Kayla back to The Murky Cauldron, Tansy’s shop downtown, and helped her lie down on a giant red bean bag they usually sat on as they invaded Tansy’s store. Wanda made tea, of course, and even put a small plate of cookies together, which she set on the floor beside Kayla. Then they just left her alone for a while with her misery.

  Kayla laid there, her arms wrapped over her stomach as she curled into a fetal position, tears streaming down her cheeks as she prayed it was all a mistake, that at any time Alex would walk through the doorway separating the front and back rooms.

  He never did, though.

  He never would again.

  Kayla cried harder.

  Kayla ran a hand through her red hair as she took a deep breath. How would she manage without Alex? How could she face another day, knowing what she did to the only person who never gave up on her?

  She glanced up, noticing another girl walking around the far edge of the lake, her arms wrapped around a stack of thick books, probably college textbooks from the size of them, her head downcast as she studied her feet as she walked. Kayla stared, watching the slump of the girl’s shoulders, the dip of her head. Even from where she sat, Kayla could see the perpetual frown on the girl’s pale face that not even the cool afternoon breeze caressing at her light brown hair could lighten. Everything Kayla saw in the other girl matched her own sour mood. So much so, that Kayla could not take her eyes off the other girl, a kindred spirit in misery.