“County is going to let us handle the investigation,” Thorn said to Lincoln.
Since I hadn’t finished discussing going back to the cabin with Thorn, I didn’t want to just leave. I did back out of the conversation and wait near my car. I could still hear what they were saying, though, and I was baking in the sun. Considering, I thought about getting back into the car and sitting in the air conditioning. Still, I was frozen there like a deer in headlights.
It was something about the look of contempt borderlining on fury that came over Lincoln’s face when Thorn said they were taking over the case. His expression, and anger, were completely unexpected. I would have thought he’d have been happy to have the county sheriff trust them with the case.
“That’s completely ridiculous,” Lincoln sputtered.
“Excuse me?” Thorn asked. “If you have a problem with it, I can call in one of my other deputies to assist me.”
“No, what you need to do is recuse yourself from this case. You should let the county handle it.”
“What’s gotten into you?” Thorn asked him.
“What’s gotten into me? What’s gotten into you, Thorn? You and your girlfriend here found the body. Allegedly, anyway. How do we know that she doesn’t have anything to do with this?”
“What is wrong with you?” Thorn stood up straighter, and he instinctively puffed his chest out. A vein in his neck bulged as his protective side kicked into high gear.
“You know that things have gone sideways since she showed up in town, and the fact that you’re covering for her doesn’t look good for you either. You were out here alone in these woods last night. Why don’t I just go ahead and ask you for your whereabouts last night? Was the woman with you? Do either of you have alibis for the time of the murder?” Lincoln rapidly fired the questions at Thorn, who, in turn, start huffing out of his nose like a bull ready to charge.
“I’m tempted to relieve you of duty, Deputy,” Thorn said while miraculously not losing his temper completely. “You are out of line.”
“Thorn, I like you. I respect you, even. If you know what’s good for this department and for Coventry, you’ll recuse yourself from this case. Otherwise, I’m calling in the state police. The county might be fine just letting all of this drop, but I doubt the state will. Not once they find out that you were out here alone last night. You’re too close to this.”
Thorn’s nostril’s flared again, and his skin deepened to an even darker shade of red. I was about to send a small wave of calming magic to him, but I didn’t need to do it. He took a step back from Lincoln and took a deep breath.
“Fine, you’re in charge of the investigation, for now. You handle the rest of the deputies, and I’ll back off. Once I’ve completely cleared myself of any chance of a hint of an inkling of suspicion, I’ll be back. You better do this right,” Thorn said. “Oh, and when this is all said and done you and I will have a serious conversation.”
Thorn turned and walked around to the driver’s side of my car before Lincoln could say another word. I got into the passenger side as Thorn started the car.
“We’ve got plenty of time now, so I want to go back to the cabin and get my stuff and my truck,” he said. “Is that okay?”
Chapter Four
I took Thorn back to the cabin and fixed the tire. While I did that, he made sure everything was locked up, and then we drove back to Hangman’s House.
Lincoln glared at me as I passed the sheriff’s department cruisers on the way back by. I wondered if he glared at Thorn the same way. Probably not.
It seemed as though I was a suspect again, but I tried not to worry about it. That situation was as old hat as me finding bodies by that point. I knew I hadn’t killed Richard, and proof would come to light soon enough.
Thorn pulled his truck in behind me in the driveway and we went inside. “I need a shower if that’s okay,” Thorn said as I closed and locked the front door behind us.
“I’ll make us some food. I’m starving,” I said and headed to the kitchen.
“I can do that,” Thorn responded and followed behind me. “I can make you something to eat before I shower. What would you like?”
“It’s okay, babe. I can handle it. Go take your shower. You have fresh clothes in the guest bedroom dresser still,” I said. “Put your dirty laundry in the basket on the washer, and I’ll get to it after lunch.”
“I can do my laundry,” Thorn contended.
“Suit yourself,” I said with a shrug. “But I’ll do it if you want.”
“Hey, Kinsley?” Thorn asked.
“Yeah?”
Instead of saying anything, he pulled me into his arms and pressed his lips against mine. We stood that way for a long while. Locked together, and both of us seemingly afraid to let go.
When we finally did, Thorn said, “Sorry to get you all sweaty.” He laughed and had a mischievous twinkle in his sparkling blue eyes.
I swatted playfully with a dishtowel. “Go wash your stinky behind.”
He laughed and left the kitchen to take his shower. I felt like I’d played it all off casually, but the moment had actually taken my breath away. Relief like a tidal wave washed over me.
While he showered, I made chili and cornbread. I had to use a little magic to get the food done on time, but I figured that was okay because I was going to get to eat a ton of cornbread with lots of butter and a drizzle of honey.
By the time Thorn emerged from his shower, I’d already set the table and served up our food. I didn’t know if it was nervous energy or what, but I hadn’t been able to sit down since he went into the bathroom.
“That smells incredible,” Thorn said.
He was dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a navy blue t-shirt. His blond hair was still slightly damp as if he’d tried to dry it with a towel but had skipped the blow dryer. He’d used a rich lavender and pine soap that I’d made just for him. While Thorn didn’t live at the house with me, he’d had enough occasions to shower there that I’d either bought or made him some toiletries.
“You smell incredible,” I said and then felt a furious blush color my cheeks.
“That soap you made is really nice,” he said.
I was just standing in the kitchen wringing my hands like an idiot. Thorn being back in my house made me as nervous as when we’d first begun dating. I felt awkward too, because I wasn’t sure where to go from there. I wanted to rush over and kiss him until the food got cold and I had to use magic to warm it back up again, but I didn’t know if that was okay.
“Thorn…” I started to speak, but I stopped. I wasn’t sure how to express the thoughts on my mind without sounding like I was asking permission to kiss him, but I sort of was asking for just that.
“Kinsley, what’s on your mind?” he asked me gently. “I can see that you’re holding something back, babe. You don’t have to do that.”
“I just want… I mean… I just want to….”
“What, babe? What do you want?” For the first time, I noticed Thorn was holding back too. He seemed to be restraining himself as well. It gave me the courage I needed.
I crossed the room and threw my arms around him. “I missed you so much, and I’m so glad you’re here,” I said and held my breath.
He didn’t push me away. In fact, Thorn wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me closer. His lips met mine; I felt magic spread through me. Not like the magic I wielded as a witch, but something different. It was primal and natural. The magic I felt between us was the very stuff that made up the universe.
“You taste like strawberries,” Thorn said when he pulled back for a second.
“I haven’t been eating strawberries,” I responded.
“I mean, you always taste like strawberries. It’s the most remarkable thing, but it’s not the most remarkable thing about you.”
Before I could say anything else, his lips were pressed against mine again. We didn’t part again until my stomach growled so loudly that it made Thorn laugh.
“Okay, we’ll eat now. There’s plenty of time for kissing later,” he said.
“There is?” I asked tentatively.
“Yeah. We have our whole lives. Don’t we?” Thorn asked as he took a seat at the kitchen table.
“We do?” I didn’t want to get too excited.
It was exactly what I’d been hoping for, but it was more than I would’ve let myself expect. We were finding our way back to right where we’d left off.
Thorn looked like he was going to say something important, but right then my stomach growled. “We do,” he said with a chuckle. “Please sit down with me and eat.”
I knew that it was my elation over my reunion with Thorn, but still, the food never tasted so good. The honey on my cornbread had never been sweeter, and the butter never creamier.
We spent the rest of the day together just hanging out. Thorn helped me with some things around the house, and even though I could have used magic, he helped me move some of the furniture out of the room I intended to use for the nursery.
“When do you go to the doctor?” Thorn asked as we were settling down for dinner.
“I don’t,” I said.
He furrowed his brow. “Why not?”
“I’m a witch. I don’t need a doctor. Especially not for this.”
“I know I’ve heard your mother mention she saw a doctor when she was pregnant with you,” he said.
“It was a midwife,” I said. “That was decades ago, babe. We know now that we don’t really need checkups and all that. I will see one before the birth, though. Someone in the Coven.”
“What about a sonogram?” Thorn asked.
“I think at some point I’ll be able to see the baby in my mind’s eye. That’s the feeling I’m getting about it,” I said. “But, if you want a sonogram, we can do that. We’re still a few months away from it, though.”
“Right because it’s usually around five months,” Thorn said.
“You have experience with these things.”
“Not really,” he said. “The cabin didn’t have a phone signal, but it did get the internet. Slow internet, but internet just the same. I looked some things up.”
“Because you were deciding whether to be involved?” The question slipped out, and I instantly regretted it.
“No,” he said and shook his head for emphasis. “I doubt my staying with you and the baby was ever really in question. When I came back to you and said we’d work through anything, I meant it. I just needed some time to think. I think you believe that I’m not a jealous man at all, Kinsley, but that’s not true. I just didn’t want to show it around you. I had to get all of that out of my system so I could be a good man for you and a good father for the baby. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would,” he said with a shrug.
Thorn stayed in the guest room that night. He didn’t want to leave me, and I didn’t want him to go either. Unfortunately, I didn’t wake him when I left the house.
I woke up standing in front of a crappy little run-down house. The yard was overgrown with weeds, and paint was literally peeling off the siding. A big dog was barking loudly a few doors down, and I assumed that was what woke me up.
But why was I standing in front of that house? I looked around and confirmed I was in what would have been considered the wrong part of town. It was a former working-class neighborhood that was mostly dilapidated homes. I’d guess nearly half of them were abandoned entirely. It was the sort of thing the town council would have worked on having demolished if we still had one.
Not that I wanted there to be no housing for low-income folks in Coventry, but it felt like we as a community could do better. I made a mental note to start coming up with a plan. If civilian organizations couldn’t or wouldn’t handle it, then the Coven would.
A light came on inside the house, and I ducked behind a huge, poorly trimmed bush at the edge of the yard. When I peeked my head around the corner to look, I saw Esadora through the house’s big, but slightly cracked, glass front window. She was dressed in a red kimono type robe with her hair tied up in a matching red scarf. It looked as though she was coming out of the kitchen and into the living room with a steaming cup of coffee or tea in her hand.
“Why am I in front of Esadora’s house?” I whispered to myself. “Doesn’t matter.”
It might have mattered, but at that moment I was standing out in front of a stranger’s house in my pajamas. What I needed to do was get home before dawn. At some point, I needed to figure out how to stop the sleepwalking, but as I walked back I wondered if it was just a quirk of pregnancy.
Maybe there was nothing I could do about it other than put alarms on my doors. If the dog woke me up, the door alarm would too. It was quickly beginning to look like the alarms would be a necessity.
I felt unsettled as I walked home. Again, it felt like something was behind me, but every time I’d look there’d be nothing there.
It was the first time I really had the time to think about what I’d seen in the woods when I found Richard’s body. The murder scene had a tremendous amount of symbolism, and it hadn’t been lost on me. Thoughts about what it could all mean had been dancing around the periphery of my brain all day, but it took that walk under the moonlight for me to finally admit what I’d seen.
It was satanic. The pentagram made of black stones had to have been upside down. There was no way any witch would have made a regular pentagram and then killed someone inside it. Even in the darkest of our days, we didn’t do that. The incense had been the kind they used in church services.
We didn’t use anything like that in our magic, but Satanists did to mock the church. The candles had been all black. While that in itself hadn’t been any indication of Satanism, the Baphomet statue indicating the bottom of the pentagram had been. My mind had glossed over seeing it until I was alone with my thoughts.
When I got home, I didn’t bother going back upstairs. I was still pretty exhausted, so I plopped down on the sofa and pulled the throw I kept over the back down on me. A couple of minutes after I rested my head on one of the velvet pillows, I was asleep.
I woke up again to Meri swatting my face with his paw. “What are you doing down here. Did you take off again?” he whispered.
“I did,” I said. “Why are you whispering?”
“Thorn’s in the kitchen making coffee and toast. I told him you probably just came down here because you got hot or your back was hurting. He was talking about buying you a new mattress.”
“That’s sweet,” I said and sat up. “Why didn’t you tell him the truth?”
“I wasn’t sure when you wanted to tell him about the book. You guys seemed to be having such a good day yesterday, I didn’t want to ruin it by telling him someone left an evil book on the porch and now you keep escaping the house at night.”
“I’m starting to wonder if that book had something to do with the murder,” I said as I stretched.
“I thought about that too, but if we tell him that we’ll have to turn that book over to the police. We might never know what it’s about, and who knows what will happen if it gets into the hands of non-witches.”
“So, I’m just supposed to keep the whole thing from him?” I asked. “I don’t know that I’m comfortable with that. Not given everything we just went through.”
“Just for a little while until we can figure out the book?” Meri pleaded. “Think of it as being for his own protection. Do you really want to give that book to him considering what it’s done to you?”
“Not really, but…”
“Just think about it for a day, okay? Give me a day to figure it out. You go to work, and I’ll spend the day up in the attic library looking for any reference to the book I can find. Between the library and the internet, if I don’t find anything, we’ll tell him tonight. Or tomorrow… this is witch business.”
“Alright,” I said. “I’m sure he’s got to get back to work today anyway. He’s got another murder, and he’ll have to deal with Lincoln
.”
“Now that’s cleared up, what about breakfast?” Meri said. “I was thinking…”
“Let me guess. Bacon?”
“Already on it,” Thorn said when he appeared in the living room doorway.
He hadn’t heard what we were talking about. Thorn wasn’t the kind to linger hidden on the other side of the doorframe eavesdropping.
“Thank you,” I said as I folded the throw in half and replaced it.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve already eaten. I’ve got to get down to the station and deal with Lincoln. It’s important that I get back to working on Richard’s murder,” he said. “But, I can come over after work. If you want?”
“That would be great,” I said. “I can make dinner.”
“No, babe. I’ll bring takeout. Do you want sandwiches or pasta?” he asked.
“Both,” I said. “But I can pay.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s my treat. We have at least a few dates to make up for. I can pick up subs and pasta for dinner.”
“They have those hoagies at Bella Vita,” I said. “They have the hot Italian sub and Italian beef. You can get both at one place.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“Yes. Please add mozzarella and pepperoncini to my Italian beef,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said and reached out a hand for me. “Until then, let me make you some eggs to go with your toast, and then I have to go.”
When I got to work, I set my purse down on my desk. It flopped over, and the book slid out.
“What?” I asked the empty room.
I’d picked it up and put it in my bag without even realizing it. Without really thinking about it, I sat down at my desk and started going through the book.
The next thing I knew, someone was knocking on my office door. “I’ll be out in a minute,” I called back without taking my eyes off the book.
“Kinsley, I’m coming in.” It was my mother.
“Mom?” I said, and finally closed the book. “Hey, come in. What are you doing here?” I asked as she walked into the office.
Book of Dark Magic Page 5