“Take a minute to collect yourself,” he said. “You’re okay. You’re safe. I promise.”
He waited.
Trish dropped a Styrofoam cup full of sludge next to him. It sloshed everywhere. Her silent protest. She leaned against the counter, not offering me anything.
“Let’s start with some basics. Your name is Constance, right?”
“Right.”
“Your license was from California, I believe. I was being nice yesterday. The state says you’re supposed to transfer your license. But with the state of our DMV, it’s unrealistic. And a new license is the last thing on anyone’s mind when they’re moving. Can you tell me how long you’ve lived here? How long you’ve worked at the grocery. And can you tell me where you live—your new address?”
I told him everything he wanted to know, including Gran’s address.
“Wait,” he made a face, “you live with Jezebel Young?”
“That’s right. I’m her granddaughter.”
The sheriff shot Trish a questioning look, asking without words if she was privy to this information. She was, I knew, because Trish was the one who’d helped Gran get me this job.
Trish rolled her eyes, nodding to him.
“Oh, well then, maybe you can help us.”
I didn’t know what he meant. I thought I was helping. I was doing the best I could. I didn’t know anything, only that I’d found a body.
I wondered why I was supposed to help when I was the victim here. Okay, not the victim. But I’d been through an ordeal. I found a dead body.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said. “Aren’t you the sheriff?”
“I am,” he said, shaking his head. “But I thought—Well, I thought…”
“He thought you were a witch,” Trish interjected.
Yesterday’s conversation with Gran—the assertion that I was a witch—had been overshadowed by the morning’s events. For a moment, I wondered if Gran had told them. Does the whole town know? And why are they bringing it up?
“Exactly that,” Dave confirmed.
“She’s not of age,” Trish explained, annoyed. “Not yet.”
The sheriff looked me up and down, probably thinking how much I did look of age. I hadn’t been carded to buy alcohol in years.
“How old are you, Miss Campbell?”
“I turn forty on Sunday.”
He raised his eyebrows at Trish as if confirming forty was the magic number.
She nodded, again annoyed. Maybe they’d had this conversation before.
“Sorry,” he said. “I never can remember the finer points about you lot. You can’t be easy like the rest of us. Not that mixing puberty with ‘the change,’” he made air quotes, “is easy. Far from it.”
I wasn’t following. He could tell and clarified, “I’ve got three pups at home.”
“Pups?” I was even more confused.
“Dave’s a werewolf,” Trish said.
“A werewolf,” I repeated slowly. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
They didn’t understand that not only was this stuff new to me, it also sounded like a joke. It shouldn’t be real. Gran had just told me the witch part. Now, they were adding werewolves to the craziness.
“And if you’re wondering what this has to do with what you saw in there,” Sheriff Marsters hooked his thumb at the office, “well, Eric—that is, Mr. Caulfield, was Creel Creek’s resident vampire.”
“We have a resident vampire?”
“Had a resident vampire,” the sheriff corrected.
“Among other things,” Trish added. “Willow, the deputy over there, she’s a psychic. And like you and your grandmother, I’m a witch.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “I wanted to tell you.”
I wanted to tell her that there was no definitive proof that I actually was a witch. Except this didn’t feel like a sympathetic crowd.
Dave spoke up for me. “She’s not a witch. Not yet. Remember? As of now, she’s a witness and nothing more.”
“I’m not even that,” I objected. “I didn’t see anything. Except for his body.”
“Weird, isn’t it?” Dave said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“You think I have?”
“I’d guess not.” He shook his head, then returned his attention to Trish. “Well, do you have anything for me? I won’t know much until the medical examiner gets here. And you know how he can be.”
“I do.” Trish winced. “I hate to tell you, but there wasn’t much in his office. Only a word.”
“That’s it?” Dave questioned. “A word. What word?”
“Daylight,” Trish whispered.
7
Bewitched Books
When they let us leave the scene, I expected the ordeal to be over. Done with—at least for the day. But the grocery parking lot had turned into a zoo. And not with people who wanted to buy groceries.
No one respects a chalkboard sign.
The lot was filled with rubberneckers. This was the worst of small town America.
In California, there was hardly a time I couldn’t hear a siren. And it was only during those times, when the eerie silence filled my ears, that I thought something bad might actually be happening—a spaceship hovering in the sky. Russia launching their nuclear arsenal.
The rare siren in Creel Creek, Virginia had called the locals from their hovels. Among them, a red-haired woman with a face like a duck and a microphone in her hand. The news van had parked close to the police barricades.
The reporter perked up when she saw us and trotted over. Her dumpy and disheveled cameraman hustled behind her, a camera on his out-of-shape shoulders.
“Who’s she?” I whispered to Trish.
“Summer Shields. Local reporter. Live on the scene,” Trish mocked. “Don’t tell her anything… Ever, if you can manage.”
Summer thrust her microphone in Nick’s direction, but the produce manager shook her off. She skipped over Hal, who seemed keen to talk with her. She shoved her microphone in Trish’s face instead. Trish shook her head vehemently. She pushed the microphone away. “I don’t think so.”
I was beginning to really like Trish.
Undeterred, the reporter whipped the microphone in my direction.
“Ma’am,” she said, “do you work here? Can you tell our viewers what happened today? We understand there was a death.”
“Listening to the police scanner again, Summer?” Trish asked.
The reporter paid her no mind, her eyes and her microphone stayed fixed on me.
“It was the manager, Eric Caulfield, wasn’t it? Our viewers want to know.”
“Your viewers are all out here in the parking lot with you,” Trish pointed out.
The time Summer wasn’t so professional. “You had your chance for the spotlight. You can shove it, Trish.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’d like where I shoved it,” Trish retorted.
Summer jammed the microphone closer to my lips. I could take a bite out of it. “Ma’am, can you at least describe the scene? What’s it like in there? Were you the one who discovered the body?”
“I, uh—” She sensed my weakness—my reluctance to lie.
“And was it Eric Caulfield, the manager? Creel Creek wants to know.” This girl wasn’t letting up. She was going in for the kill. “Viewers, they want the picture painted for them.”
Trish intervened. “Sorry, Summer. We didn’t bring our paints. Come on, Constance, let’s go.” She took my arm again and gently pulled me away.
“Oh, it’s going to be like that, is it?” Summer asked her. “You know, most people like being on TV. They like being famous. Your friend here might want a few minutes in the limelight.”
“She doesn’t,” Trish said. “You’re the only one who wants to be famous.”
“That’s enough for now.” Sheriff Marsters stepped up to the barricade. “Give me a minute, and I’ll give you a brief statement. Is that good enough, Ms. Shields?”
“I guess so,”
Summer Shields conceded.
Trish continued to pull me through the parking lot but stopped by Mr. Caulfield’s Mustang. We waited there as the crowd gathered around the sheriff.
He outlined the situation, leaving out the word murder and much of what the three of us had discussed inside. There was no mention of werewolves, vampires, or witches. Finally, he uttered the words, “Caulfield Grocery is closed indefinitely.”
“Where are we supposed to get groceries?” a man in the crowd asked.
“Yeah, cause you’re here for groceries, Hank,” the sheriff scoffed. “I don’t care where you get them. Hidden Creek’s not too far Go to Lynchburg or Charlottesville. The Circle Q’s been serving me breakfast for almost twenty years. They’ve got milk and some produce.”
That caused a disgruntled murmur.
“Let’s get out of here,” Trish said in my ear.
“No,” I declined, “I’ve got to—”
“Come on.” She wasn’t taking no for an answer. And the truth was, I had nowhere to be. Gran wouldn’t be missing me for several hours, unless Summer’s coverage cut into The Price Is Right.
“Fine.”
Trish had parked right next to Mr. Caulfield. Reluctantly, I got into her car, a beat-up Volkswagen with a diesel engine that sputtered to life with a thick cloud of black smoke.
Trish drove a toward downtown Creel Creek, turning onto Main Street.
I wish I could say that this part of town was quaint and charming—or any of those other things that people usually associate with small towns. I wish it was revitalized and bustling. But it’s none of those things.
The only thing interesting on the main thoroughfare was the charred shell of what was once the Creek County Courthouse, sixty years before. After the fire, the county decided to move both the courthouse and the county seat twenty miles east, to Hidden Springs.
Trish angle-parked outside a row of storefronts, most of which were empty save a used bookstore, Bewitched Books, and a smoke shop.
I hoped she wasn’t going for a pack of cigarettes or one of those vape pens. But she went to the bookstore and unlocked the front door.
“Wait. You work here too?”
“I don’t work here. I own it.” Trish flipped the sign in the front window from CLOSED to OPEN. “It used to be my mom’s shop. Now it’s mine.”
“If you own this place, why do you work at the grocery store?”
“You’re joking, aren’t you?” Trish scoffed. “Look around. People don’t shop in used bookstores anymore. I’m lucky if this place makes enough to cover the rent. And the rent isn’t much. You see the competition.”
There was no competition.
“It’s still cool,” I said. “You grew up in a bookstore.”
“Like I said, a used bookstore,” she said as if the word itself was tainted. “And it’s mostly specialty used books at that.”
She was wrong. It was cool that she grew up in a bookstore. Even a dim, drab, and dusty bookstore was heaven in my mind. Her shop had the smell of old books, faintly musty but with a sweet undertone.
Like her, I’d grown up with books. Only for me, they’d been an escape. An escape from the fact that my mom was never coming back, that it was just me and my dad—who was also someone who always had a book in his hand.
This place reminded me of the bookstores hidden around San Francisco. The small shops where the coffee was only adequate, but the conversations were the best in town.
There were shelves for romance, mystery, and science fiction. But Trish hadn’t been kidding. More than half of the space was devoted to the supernatural—books on the occult, of pagan rituals, and Wiccan magic.
“We have a few regulars,” Trish said. “Your grandmother is one of them. But mostly this store survives by being an Amazon seller. I ship these books around the world. Books on magic—real magic—they’re hard to find. And I specialize in finding them. Or rather, Mom did.”
“How?” I asked.
“A spell. Essentially, when a spell book loses an owner, it finds its way here. I can’t even explain it myself.”
“Is that like what you did this morning?”
“Sort of. That was a summoning spell too. I can teach you how to do one if you like.”
“Sure,” I said without meaning it. Then something else clicked. “If it’s that easy, why couldn’t you just summon the murderer or their name or whatever? Like why can’t you just say ‘Who killed Mister Caulfield?’”
“For one, that’s not a rhyme. And two, it’s not that easy. Summoning spells have to be precise. Extremely precise. They either won’t work or they’ll blow up in your face otherwise.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
“Magic doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.” Trish shrugged. “Think about it. Death is inevitable. We’re all going to die, eventually. And, is it the knife or the murderer who really kills a person? What makes this death even more complex is that our victim was technically already dead.”
“That’s true?” I asked her. “About vampires, I mean. That they’re dead.”
Trish nodded. “In most senses of the word, yes.” She clarified. “But not in all. Here, I have a book for you. We’ll call it an early birthday present. It’ll help you figure out some of this witch stuff.”
“No, you don’t have to do that,” I said. “Or at least let me pay for it.”
“Definitely not.”
“Why not?”
She shook her head. “Listen. I’ve been rude to you since the day we met. I’m sorry about that, by the way. It’s just, since my mother died, well, your Gran, she’s been—she’s been really kind to me. When you got here, I sort of felt like you were in my territory. But it wasn’t even mine to begin with. She’s your grandmother. And I didn’t realize how complicated your situation really was. Now, if I can find that book… Give me a second.”
She perused the center aisle and came back with a thin book. It wasn’t exactly the grimoire or the spell book I expected.
“Sorry, what do you mean, my situation?” I asked her.
“I mean, you didn’t even know you were a witch. At least I don’t think you did. Not until—”
“Yesterday,” I confirmed with a nod.
“That’s what I thought. That’s insane. I knew I was a witch, or that I was going to be a witch, since I was five, I think. I had to wait thirty-five years to get my powers. And when I did, two years ago, my mother wasn’t there to help me learn to use them. I guess we have that in common.”
“What happened to your mom?” I asked.
“My dad happened.”
“He found out she was a witch?”
“If only it were that simple.” Trish sighed. “Maybe you’ve figured it out by now, but things around Creel Creek aren’t exactly normal. See, he—my husband—was a wielder of magick too. The kind with a K at the end. It’s an important distinction.”
She saw I wasn’t following, rolled her eyes, and said, “It’ll be in the book. The book explains it muck better than I can.”
“They always do.”
She handed it to me. So, I Guess You’re A Witch looked like it was meant for girls in elementary school.
Trish continued her story. “Warlocks aren’t like us. Our magic comes from the Earth. From the spirit.”
“And theirs?”
“See, you’ve got me trying to explain. Read the book.” She rolled her eyes. “Okay. Fine. Some say that long ago a magician made a deal with the devil, trading his soul for power. I don’t exactly buy that. But I do think their power comes from death.
“My father killed my mother. He stole her powers. He probably would’ve done the same to me eventually, had Willow not seen it in a vision and Sheriff Marsters not acted in time. I owe them both my life.”
“It sounds like it,” I said. “What about your brother? Is he warlock too?”
She smiled. “No. He’s the smart one in the family. My brother made something of himself. He lives
in Florida with three kids and a non-witch wife. He left all of this behind. He doesn’t want power.”
“Speaking of powers,” I said, changing the subject, if only a little. “Willow—I mean Deputy Brown—how do her powers work?”
“Call her Willow. Call Dave, Dave. Trust me, they’ll be mad at you if you don’t. I think it’s a lot like being a witch, except Willow can’t really control her visions. Granted, that doesn’t stop her from trying. But they just happen. She tried hard today, I’m sure.”
“And we can control our powers.” It was phrased as a statement, one I hoped was correct.
Trish sighed. “Sort of. Every witch’s powers are different. Some are better at divination than others. It’s not really my strong suit.”
“What is?”
“Read the book! You’ll figure it out.”
“How is the book going to—”
“Stop being stubborn and read it. You’re worse than—”
A rustling from behind her caused me to jump. A mouse scurried from behind a stack of books. Instinctively, I looked for the closest broom. There wasn’t one.
Calmly, Trish reached down and scooped the mouse up with both hands and cradled it to her chest.
Then I realized it must be Trish’s familiar. The mouse was huffing and puffing. It had to be the fattest mouse I’d ever seen. Not that I hung around many mice.
“It’s just Twinkie,” Trish said. “He hates to be left out.”
“Crossing the store never gets any easier, ya know,” the deep growl of a familiar chided her. “And I was trying to figure out what you were doing here so early. And talking witchy business on top of that.”
“This is Constance,” Trish told him.
“Ah, yes. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“That not true,” Trish denied. “I’ve hardly said a thing. Your grandmother is tightlipped. She’s only mentioned you and your mother a few times in passing.”
“Up until yesterday, I thought my mother died in a plane crash.”
“And now?”
“I don’t even know if she’s dead.”
Trish shook her head. “Wow.”
Midlife Curses Page 5