Before Sierra had a chance to call her an idiot, Krystal went on to explain how this bit of truth had to be exposed, how her dark magic made a lovely appearance in the fireplace and burned the beef she had been planning to make with her meat sauce.
When she explained it like that, Sierra seemed to calm down. “So, you didn’t have much of a choice.”
Krystal shook her head. “Nope, and it looks like I scared him off. He told me that he needed time to think.”
“He’s probably just digesting everything,” she said, seemingly pacified by her explanation. “It’s a lot to take in.”
She was right and that’s what Krystal had believed at first. But the way he looked at her in the police station, with such placid indifference, she couldn’t believe that he was anywhere close to making a decision.
“Don’t give up on him just yet,” Sierra continued. “I think he really likes you and I put a good word in for you when he was asking all those questions. I said you’d go against our mom any day just to get what you really want.”
Krystal glanced her way. She wasn’t entirely wrong. “How did he react?”
“Oh, you know,” Sierra shrugged. “He started babbling on and on about how he was so madly in love with you and hopes to make lots of half-magic babies with you.”
She laughed and shoved her sister’s shoulder. “Quit it. I’m being serious.”
“Well, he didn’t say it with his lips, but he said it in his eyes.” Sierra batted her own lashes in an exuberant, flirty way.
Krystal rolled her eyes and turned onto Johnson Avenue to head toward the coffee shop. “Well, until he says it with his mouth, I’m not holding out hope. You didn’t see the way he looked last night.”
“Maybe not, but I saw the way he looked this morning. He looked exhausted and lovesick, just like you do.” Sierra reached out and tucked some of Krystal’s ebony hair behind her ear. “At least know that he’s suffering as much as you are, even if he’s not saying anything. I could sense it.”
That was some consolation, but Krystal couldn’t get swoony over this tragedy for long. They had a mission. Now that they were given some license to go after this murderer, it was all hands on deck. All emotions set aside for one evening while they worked their magic and did what only they could do.
Chapter Sixteen
“Yes, Mr. Cleveland,” Krystal heard Amber say cheerfully from the front door of Rose House. “I can’t wait to see you next year too. Did you tell your grandson happy birthday for me?”
Krystal, her sister, Alexa, and Valerie all sat at the antique dining table, waiting for the remaining witch to see the last of her customers out the door. It was late evening and her other guests were out to dinner or visiting with family. Most had checked out of the bed and breakfast as soon as they read the morning paper headlines about the second murder.
Valerie tapped her black nails on the tabletop, the sound slightly muffled by the white cloth that was spread across it. She hadn’t seen the table so clear before. There was always at least a flowery centerpiece in the middle that dripped with plastic crystals or peacock feathers. Amber had it set aside on the sideboard table against the wall. The sun had already set outside, but their hostess only lit a few candles around the dining room to set the ambiance for what she needed to do.
From what Krystal understood, she needed minimal distractions in order to do her scrying. Krystal’s mother could scry at the drop of a hat, but Amber didn’t have her special magic so developed yet.
None of them spoke, but an anxious energy filled the air. They had told the others about what happened to Sierra the night before. They all knew, just like Krystal knew, that this meant war. They hated to see the non-magic folk suffer at the hands of this murderer, but it was another thing to have one of their own kind threatened in this way. They had to act and that meant sometime tonight, they would confront the killer. They were all young, inexperienced in combat, unlike the Warlock Enforcers. But they couldn’t pull them in without getting the council involved, which would put more pressure on Goldcrest Cove. Attention they didn’t want.
They listened to Amber bid the final farewell to Mr. Cleveland and his wife before shutting the door and locking it. She hurried into the dining room and straightened out her long, knitted shawl that draped over her shoulders. “That man doesn’t know when to shut it.”
Krystal smiled at the way her friend’s voice, both in tone and manner, changed so much compared to when she was talking to one of her guests. She called it her “customer service voice” and Krystal could see why. It was as if she had dropped a mask. Though, no one would ever second guess if she was sincere to her patrons.
She took a seat at the end of the table, Krystal on her right and Sierra to her left.
“All right, let’s get started,” she said with a little grin and wiggling in her seat. Alexa and Valerie stretched across the middle of the table to clasp their hands together, and also held the hands of the other two witches at the table.
Amber reached out to them both and closed her eyes. “Where exactly were you when this jerk face attacked you?”
The girls all smiled at her colorful, informal language. That was one thing they loved about Amber. She could break the tension with such ease that she didn’t even realize she was doing it. “Right in front of Mrs. Miller’s house on Sandy Lane.”
It took a moment, then Amber nodded as she pinpointed that part of the street. “Time?”
“I think it was around nine o’clock.”
Amber cracked an eye open to peer at Sierra. “You think, or you know?”
“Girl, I was a little drunk. I wasn’t paying attention to the time.”
“Drunk at only nine?” Amber clucked her tongue. “Naughty girl. Get drunk after midnight next time.”
“Why after midnight?” Valerie asked beside Krystal.
Amber shushed her. “I need silence.”
Valerie rolled her eyes and the others went deathly silent as Amber tried to drop into the meditative state. The house, though it was empty, creaked and the floor boards groaned above their heads. Amber claimed it was just the old Victorian house settling, but Krystal’s house never settled like that. She trusted that if the scrying witch didn’t think the house was haunted, then it probably wasn’t, but she had her doubts.
Amber hummed a long, flat tune and Krystal bit her lips together to keep from laughing. It was like something straight out of a cheesy séance scene from a movie, but if Amber needed it to focus, she wasn’t about to argue.
It was only when the tune began to waiver into something comical that the others had to hold in their laughter as well.
“Is that the Dr. Pepper jingle?” Alexa whispered.
Sierra, one of the eldest witches there, shushed her and Amber continued to summon whatever forces she needed to see into the past.
The humming stopped, and Amber’s shoulders went slack. Krystal half expected her to start acting possessed, but she only let out an aggravated sigh.
“Not this ass wipe,” she mumbled.
“You see him?” Sierra asked.
Amber made a face, but kept her eyes closed. “Yeah, I see him. He’s new to town. Just moved here from out of state after a divorce. His wife cheated on him. He came to stay here for a few days and he left without paying for his room. At least now I know what he was doing.”
Alexa leaned forward. “What’s his name?”
“One second…” Amber said, holding up one of her fingers. “I’m trying to see where he is right now.”
All four witches waited, their eyes fixed on Amber’s calm face. They had a name, a face, and a positive identity. They even had a possible motive. If this guy was obsessing over his wife’s affair, then it might have been safe to say that he was targeting other people who had sinned in a similar way. Or just sinned at all.
“Oh, shit!” Amber exclaimed before opening her eyes wide.
“Where is he?” Valerie demanded, banging her hand against the table
. Alexa winced when the back of her own fingers were slammed into the hardwood.
Amber turned to Krystal. “You need to call Devin. This is way out of our league.”
“We’re witches,” Sierra said. “How can this be out of our league?”
Amber turned a saucy look to her. “Do think you could stop a man from shooting up a bar with an automatic he stole from Mr. Voisin’s gun shed? I didn’t think so.”
“Gun?” cried Alexa. “He’s got a gun now?”
Knives were one thing, but Amber was right. Guns were harder to handle.
Amber nodded. “Yep, and he’s going all out with it. No holds barred, and he knows he’s not walking away from this one.” She looked back to Krystal. “Listen, I don’t care what angsty drama you two are going through, but you need to call Devin and Aaron right now. Get them to come to Torn Sails Bar. We don’t have a lot of time.” Then, she looked to the others with genuine concern in her eyes. “This guy isn’t going to come down easy,” she continued. “This isn’t just your normal psycho killer dude. He’s second-hand charmed.”
All four responded with a, “What?”
“Second-hand charmed,” she repeated. “It’s where – “ “We know what it means,” Sierra interrupted.
Alexa spoke up excitedly. “Wait, I don’t.”
Krystal turned to her friend. “It means whoever this guy is, he caught something like an aftershock from someone who was given too high of a charm dose. Some of it spilled over from the first receiver into this guy.”
What it really meant was that one of them screwed up. Someone came through the coffee shop with a problem, they solved it too well, and this killer was a prime candidate to catch the charm as if it were an airborne virus.
“That means someone’s been charming,” Sierra stated with a note of obvious displeasure. And her eyes went straight to the three younger witches. She might not have known about the coffee shop, but she could clearly guess who would be stupid enough to charm a non-magic, just like they weren’t supposed to.
“It also means that the only way to get this guy off his killing streak,” Amber added, “is if the caster of the initial charm retracts it onto themselves to negate it.”
As Krystal predicted, Alexa blinked in confusion. They had never been over this with her. She was still too inexperienced, too naïve in the craft to know anything about things so complex. Even Krystal wasn’t quite sure how to absorb and negate charms. Most of the time, they just wore off, but second-hand charms were different. Once they were caught, they were nearly impossible to shake, because the magic didn’t come directly from the witch, but from the non-magic it was first cast upon. Its energy signature was different.
“Do you know who cast the initial charm?” Valerie asked, her eyes brimming with anxiety that was so unlike her. She must have been wondering if this was her fault, but Krystal had her own suspicions.
Amber closed her eyes again. “It’s going to take me a minute, but I think I can find out.”
The witches joined hands once more and tension returned to suffocate each of them once more. Krystal could feel the tremor in Valerie’s hand and sense the unease from all the others. Even within herself, she wondered how this all would end. If only they could have called on her mother, or even her father for help. If they had time, they could have gotten the Warlock Enforcers to take care of this guy. But, none of them could negate the charm.
At the head of the table, Amber nodded. “I see it. The moment when he was charmed… At the church… Father Frank’s sermon…”
Krystal looked straight to Alexa and watched as the color drained from her face. The petite witch withdrew her hands from the others to cover her own mouth. It was her charm that overflowed. Krystal had thought Father Frank’s zeal was a little too strong that Saturday at the festival. Normal enthusiasm charms only lasted twenty-four hours and his lasted all the way to Sunday, maybe even Monday.
Sierra and Amber looked right to the young, half-magic witch with scathing glares.
“You were charming?” Sierra exclaimed.
Krystal jumped to her friend’s rescue. “Only because I asked her to.”
Her elder sister turned to her in disbelief, her eyes full of hurt as if Krystal had betrayed the entire magical world. “I could expect this from a witch who doesn’t know better, but from you?”
“We don’t have time to get into this right now,” Krystal growled as she pulled out her phone. Against every irrational, emotional thought she had about what she and Devin could have been, she kept his number in her contacts.
There was no denying that this might be the end of everything they had set out to do with the coffee shop. When this was all over, Sierra would know the truth and no doubt, she would tell their mother. Their mother would tell their father, and then the Warlock Enforcers would be after them. The coffee shop would be nothing but a distant memory and an empty shell of a building by the end of the week if the council had their way after they found out the girls had broken the cardinal rule. And where would that leave them?
Krystal’s hands couldn’t stop shaking as she scrolled through her long contact list and she wondered how long it would take for this crushing ache in her chest to go away. Weeks? Months? Never? She was losing Devin, and now she was going to lose the coffee shop. Everything she ever truly loved, everything she worked so hard for, would be gone. And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to stop it. At least they could do one thing and right the wrong they had done to this town by letting a second-hand charm leak through.
Valerie added, “She’s right. We need to find this guy and take him out before he hurts anyone else.”
Even in the dim light of the dining room, tears glistened in Alexa’s pretty blue eyes. “I don’t know how to negate a charm,” she whimpered.
Sierra, despite the roiling storm of anger in her, turned to Alexa and nodded. “I’ll be with you three when you take him on. I’ll show you how.”
Amber stood from the table with a sigh. “And when you do, he owes me four hundred and seventy-five dollars and some change… I need a drink.” She walked away from the table and through the swinging door to the kitchen beyond.
Krystal also stood from her place at the table as the phone began to ring.
“I’m insane, aren’t I?” Devin asked his partner, smiling to himself while they sat in the patrol car.
Aaron was busy checking his phone and not watching the house of their only suspect in this case. They didn’t want to be sitting outside of Father Frank’s home, but after Chief Nickels looked at everything in the case file, evaluating the evidence and Sierra’s testimony, there was no arguing with their boss’s decision to stake out the priest.
“What?” Aaron asked.
Devin couldn’t force his lips to rest from the wide grin that split his face. “I’m insane. Every bit of logic tells me that I should leave Krystal, but I just can’t.”
Aaron threw his cellphone into one of the empty cupholders that divided their seats. “Whoa! When did you start debating on dumping Krystal?”
There was so much that he could say, but Devin had made a promise to the witch that he wouldn’t tell her secret. And he was determined to keep it. “We just got into a long talk last night and she told me some things.”
That’s all he said, but Aaron wasn’t going to leave it alone.
“Okay? What kind of things?”
Devin shook his head. “Stuff that would make any sane man turn tail and run, but I just can’t shake her.”
“What?” he asked. “Does she have a kid hiding somewhere?”
He chuckled. If only that were it. That might have been easier to deal with than the fact that she could use magic. She could turn him into a frog, make his tongue turn blue, or probably flip this entire town upside down. If Krystal had all this power and magic, there was nothing she couldn’t do.
That thought had him thinking. If she was telling the truth, if he was still this torn about being with her, she could ha
ve cast a spell to make him forget what she had told him. She could have used her magic to force him to love her. But she didn’t.
How could she anyway? Devin was attracted to her long before she ever spoke a word to him.
How could she have cast a spell just by standing there and looking beautiful?
“No, she doesn’t have a kid,” Devin replied, leaning his elbow on the passenger side window as he stroked at his chin and lips.
“Is it something we need to arrest her for?”
Devin laughed again and shook his head, his eyes fixed on Father Frank’s front door illuminated by porch light. “No, nothing illegal.”
A few beats of silence passed before he said, “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“Not a chance.”
This revelation, this sudden epiphany that he wasn’t going to be able to live without Krystal had shaken his entire world. The tiny, fractured pieces of his childhood and former life in Boston came loose, leaving behind a whole and complete man again. Nothing, in all of his post-traumatic stress therapy, could have readied him for the healing that he hadn’t been expecting.
His life in Boston, though far from perfect, had been ruined by the very thing that Krystal could control. Fire had burned away a part of him that he never thought he would get back. Sure, the skin was healed, but he knew a piece of him had burned to cinders that day. Krystal reclaimed that lost piece and gave it back to him, unblemished.
Devin caught himself laughing at the absurdity of it all.
Beside him, Aaron squinted. “Are you feeling all right, buddy?”
“I’ve never felt better, to be honest.”
That final insight set him free somehow. He was about to open up and tell Aaron all about his former partner and everything that he had neglected to tell a single soul. How Krystal played into this grand scheme of recovery, when his cellphone buzzed in his pocket.
After thinking about her all day and letting her walk out the station without a word, finally, she was calling him. He answered quickly.
Bewitching Fire Page 24