by Kate Krake
“But why—”
“Why am I trying to stop the change? Because I don’t like who I am. For one night of the month, I’m a literal monster, dangerous as hell. Even during the day, when I’m back to being a human, I’m not right. I’m angry, and I’m a miserable asshole. And it starts before the moon too, like my body knows the change is coming. It goes away pretty much instantly on the last cycle day, and I go back to normal, but that week or so is sheer hell. It’s getting better. Caileigh told me the longer I can stay a man during the full moon, the more the anger, the other transformations, will go away too.”
I did a quick calculation. When I had first encountered the vet, he had been a snarling mess, angry and irrational. That wasn’t long before the full moon.
“But what about yesterday? The moon had cycled, and you were still an asshole.”
“I guess I was embarrassed about what you’d seen me doing. You’ve seen me naked, after all, in more ways than one. Not to mention the fact you were trying to accuse me of being a murderer.”
Now it was my turn to feel embarrassed. “You have to admit, the clues were confusing.”
We stood in silence. I didn’t know what to do or say, and Conri looked just as awkward. What did this mean for us now?
“Thank you for telling me,” I said. “It means a lot that you’ve been so honest. Finally.”
He smiled, an action that transformed him entirely.
“Can I ask you a question that might seem a bit odd, considering what we’re talking about here?” I said.
“Sure,” he said, looking puzzled.
“Do Tom and Helen Jenkins live near you?”
“They live right behind me on the other side of the common,” Conri said. “Why?”
22
Conri and I stood out in front of the Jenkins house. It was an ordinary brick cottage, with a rose garden in front and not one thing about it saying an evil black magic murderer dwelled within. Though they probably didn’t advertise the fact.
“I don’t like this one bit,” Conri said. “This is shattering like a hundred laws. You can’t just break into someone’s house.”
“It’s okay if you’re trying to catch a killer,” I said.
“That’s just not true,” he whispered. “Maybe I should’ve made sure you weren’t a criminal before I started getting involved with you.”
Criminal, werewolf—he could hardly judge me.
“Are we involved?”
“After this, we might be going to prison together, so, yeah, that’s involved.”
“They don’t send women and men to the same prisons.”
“Then we’d better not get caught so they won’t have to separate us,” he said with a wry grin I liked too much.
I waved my fingers across the front door, and the locks popped. I hid my relief they hadn’t erupted into flames.
“How did you learn to do that?” he said.
“Only figured it out then.”
Not long ago, I wouldn’t have even thought of trying to use magic like that. But with my powers as they were these days, it seemed like nothing was impossible. I didn’t even have to think that much about it.
“If anyone comes, we’ll say we’re looking for my cat,” I said.
“Why would your cat be inside the Jenkinses’ house?”
“Because he knows a murderer lives here?” I said. It was meant to lighten the mood. Conri didn’t smile. He placed his hand on my shoulder.
“This is really dangerous, Belinda.”
He was right. I flashed back to how I’d disarmed Jackfort, almost literally. I didn’t have to be scared of anything or anyone anymore.
“I’ll take care of you,” I whispered.
We went inside.
The Jenkins home looked like something that had recently stepped off the cover of a craft magazine. The place was covered in fabric and lace, and every second object was decoupaged. There was framed needlework on the walls and homemade curtains on every window. Even the couch was patchwork.
“Mrs. Jenkins has a lot of time on her hands,” I said. I thought of the rough poppet. Unless Helen had made it in a hurry with her eyes closed, I guessed it was Tom’s handiwork, which told me I was looking for evidence against him rather than his wife.
“What are we looking for exactly?” Conri said.
“Clues. Anything that would link Tom to Kenny, or show he’s using dark magic.”
We moved into the bedroom, Conri was following close behind me, as if he didn’t want me too far away. Whether that was for his safety or my own, I wasn’t sure.
If the living room was a country craft catalog, the bedroom looked as if a craft fair had exploded, covering every surface of every item in needlepoint and crochet.
I tiptoed about the room, the cream shag carpet so deep it swallowed my every step. I slid the top drawer of the bedside table open.
“You can’t look in there!” Conri gasped.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s private,” he hissed.
I flashed him an incredulous look. “That’s seriously your objection? In the middle of what we’re doing here?”
He didn’t reply, and I proceeded with the investigation while he tutted and huffed behind me.
The drawer contained nothing out of the ordinary. There were a few pens, nasal spray, a stray bookmark. A journal with a blue leather cover sat on the bottom of the drawer.
“It’s a diary,” I said, excited. What if there was written admission that he was a killer? I opened the book and flicked through a few pages. Most of it was blank, and the few scribbled notes were recipes and calculations. I closed it, disappointed. I went to return the book to its place, but something had rolled forward in the drawer and was blocking it. I opened the drawer further, and my stomach and heart both seized. There was the evidence.
A tiny babushka doll. It was black and red and white. The exact match to the set from Kenny Langdel’s mantelpiece.
“And there’s the personal item,” I said, too loudly, holding up the wooden doll like it almost too hot to handle.
“I don’t understand,” Conri said. “How does a toy link Tom as a killer?”
“I think a more important question,” came a man’s voice from behind us, “is what are you doing in my house?”
Tom Jenkins stood at the bedroom door with his hands on his hips. His eyes shot between Conri and me.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“You’re asking me?” he said, astounded. “This is my house! What are you doing? I’m calling the sheriff.”
“When you’re done, can I have the phone? I’d like to tell him I know who killed Kenny Langdel.”
The color drained from Jenkins’s face. He held tightly to the door frame.
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Get out of my house. I have a gun, you know. I’ll shoot you both.”
Conri put his hand on my shoulder, I thought as a way of telling me I’d better shut up. He was probably right, but a weird excited fear ran through me like a mad rabbit, and I couldn’t get control of my mouth. “Then you’re to be a triple murderer?” I said. It didn’t even sound like my voice coming out of my head. It was too confident, too bold.
I had expected Tom to run at us, attack, or leap for wherever he kept this gun of his. I was ready with my hands to do the same electric fire thing I’d done with Jackfort. If I could figure out how I’d done it.
Instead, Tom Jenkins did something completely unexpected. He slid down the door frame, deflated.
“I didn’t mean it,” he said in quiet teary words. “It was an accident.”
“Death curses don’t happen by accident, Tom,” I said.
Tom looked up at us. “It wasn’t meant to be a death curse. Something went wrong. I just wanted to make him sick, put him out of action until the maze festival was over.”
“Why?” I said.
“Because I’m going broke,” he stammered. “Because I c
ouldn’t compete with that man’s food. I thought if I could just get some more business for a few weeks, and take his place doing the food at the festival, then I could scrape enough together and we’d be good, for the next little while at least. Everyone hated him. Why should that jerk have had all the success? When was it going to be my turn? Why do nice guys never get to win?”
“You’re not a witch, are you, Tom?” I said.
“No, my wife found a spell on the internet.”
That explained a lot. Nonsupernaturals could sometimes manage to perform spells, but the results were usually dangerously skewed as this one had been. It was one of the many reasons I’d wondered if I was even a real witch and had often been too scared to try a lot of magic.
“I’m just normal and about to be bankrupt if I didn’t do something to get Kenny out of the way, just for a short time. But it wasn’t supposed to go like that. I was sure I had everything just right.”
I thought back to something I’d seen in Adela’s book, a spell to infirm, a slight hex that was supposed to give a rash and a few mild repository symptoms, completely harmless. I had considered putting it on myself to get off the maze committee. I ran through the list of ingredients I could remember. They were all fairly standard curse materials: a personal item, the usual herbs and things stuffed into the poppet. At the time, I hadn’t even considered the names of the plants used in the spell. I slapped my forehead.
“How could I have missed that?” I said.
Conri and Tom both looked at me like I was nuts.
“It was the glasswood,” I said. “That’s what you messed up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Edie Jacques told us the common green glasswood—the plant needed for your illness spell—was often confused with the ivory glasswood. I’d bet my last dollar the ivory is used in the death curse, and because they look so much alike, and possibly because Edie is having a bit of trouble getting her inventory right these days, it was a mix-up that cost a man his life.”
Tom stopped crying and wiped his tears away with his sleeve. He pushed himself back into standing, still sniffing, using the wall as support.
“You’re a witch?” Tom said. His eyes were dark and puffy, but it was no less threatening the way he was suddenly looking at me.
“I am,” I said.
“Then how can you prove you didn’t do it, that you’re not in here planting evidence in my house? I’m not a witch. I can’t do magic.” His voice was nearing hysterical.
“What?” I said, shocked by the turn. “But you confessed to everything.”
“I confessed to being in way over my head, to trying to make a man sick. I never confessed to murder. You’re the one who just told me it was Edie’s fault. She did it.”
“You can’t blame Edie for your crime,” I said.
“At this point, I’ll blame whoever I need to. Now, get out of my house, or I’ll be putting in a call to Sheriff Bonney to report a break-in. He’ll be interested to hear about the witchcraft too, I bet.”
“But…” I started.
Conri put his hand around my shoulders. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We’ll straighten it out some other way.”
23
“Okay, thank you, Sheriff.” I hung up the phone in my store.
“What did he say?” Lila said, literally sitting on the edge of her seat. Conri leaned against the wall, his arms folded grimly.
“He said the autopsy had already shown Kenny to have died of a stroke and they couldn’t reopen a closed case based on superstition and nonsense accusations of curses and witchcraft.”
“And that got your polite thank-you voice? This is outrageous,” Lila fumed.
It was outrageous. It was all kinds of unjust and unfair and unquestionably the most heinous thing anyone could have ever done. It was somehow even worse than if Tom Jenkins had intentionally murdered Kenny.
* * *
We walked up the street to the Bar Armadillo. Until BrewHaHa reopened, if it ever did open again, Blackthorn’s only bar was the only place we could buy lunch unless we wanted to support that loathsome killer’s business.
Henry and Adela were inside, finishing their meal at the table along the front window. Lila, Conri, and I took our seats with them.
We watched Tom Jenkins go about his business across the street, the oblivious customers filing in and out. Every cup of coffee he sold was like he was getting away with murder.
I noticed Henry and Adela exchange knowing looks.
“Something tells me you both know a lot more about Tom Jenkins and Kenny Langdel than you’re letting on,” I said.
Henry glanced at Adela, and she nodded, folding her hands on the table.
“Adela was able to divine a vision,” Henry said. “You in Tom Jenkins’s house earlier. We know what he did.”
“A vision?” I said. “Is that how you found me at the…” I stopped, remembering myself and not wanting to let the others in on what had gone down at the maze.
Henry shook his head. “Different.”
The two hundred other questions I wanted to ask fell immediately out of my mind as the front door swung open and Rowan Jackfort stepped into the bar.
My bowels clenched, and my heart did a triple backflip. I sank into my chair, hoping to be invisible. He strode over to the table, his face twisted in fury.
“You,” he hissed, pointing a long finger at me. If he had yelled, it would have been less threatening. “What have you done to me?”
His arms were obviously working again, and I couldn’t see anything wrong with him besides a cut on the top of his nose thanks to the lucky strike from my boot.
I sat up straight, reminding myself I didn’t need to be afraid. I never needed to be frightened of this man again. But my chest was still light and tight, my body ready to run; that affirmation of fearlessness might have needed some time to sink in.
He leaned over my chair, reeking of spirits. “You’ve stolen my magic,” he whispered in a viper’s voice.
It took a moment for what Jackfort had said to really make sense. In that time, my fear dissolved and a chuckle rose inside me.
“Pardon?” I said, trying to suppress the laugh. “Did you just say—”
“You heard me, bitch.”
Conri straightened his back in the chair beside me, swiveling to face Rowan. “You’d better back down there, pal,” he said.
Rowan sized up Conri. “Stay out of it, dog man. This isn’t your business.”
Dog man? That was the second reference Jackfort had made to Conri and dogs. At first, I’d thought it was just an insult. Had he known Conri’s secret before I had?
“Not another word, you hear me?” Conri said. “Get the hell out of here.”
“It’s okay, Conri,” I said, half-scared he was going to stand up and tear Jackfort in two, and half wanting to see exactly that happen. “Rowan, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t done anything.”
“I can’t conjure a single spell. You did it, with that thing you did to me at the maze. You’ve stolen my magic.”
“I haven’t done—”
Rowan’s hand shot out and grabbed me by the neck. In the same second, Conri was up and twisting Jackfort into something resembling a paper clip. Lila, Henry and Adela were on their feet too. They all stood between Rowan and me, the look on each of their faces as if they were all about to rip him to shreds.
I rose and moved in front of my friends. I stood close to Jackfort, still held by Conri. I smiled warmly. Everyone else in the bar was watching the scene. Here’s a good show for town gossip.
“I really have no idea what could have happened to you, Rowan, but I hope, beyond all hope , that it really was me who did it to you. I guess now you really are the impotent cretin I’ve always known you to be.”
“I told you I was going to make you pay, Drake. You and your guard dog, and everyone else. You’re all dead.”
Conri twisted Jackfort’s arms harder. “Time
to go, buddy,” he said. He hustled Jackfort to the door and pushed him out into the street. Through the window, I watched him crumple onto the sidewalk. I couldn’t help but laugh. Werewolf or not, Conri might be a handy guy to have around.
“Oh, Belinda,” Lila gushed. “What on earth was all that? Are you alright?”
Conri came to stand beside me, so close I could feel the warmth radiating off him like the comforting glow of a fire. I turned from the window where I’d watched Jackfort disappear from view, and I beheld each of my new friends—the fairy, the werewolf, the wizard, and the demon—and smiled. My new family.
“I’m fine,” I said, still grinning. “Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever been better.”
The black SUV with the mirrored windows double-parked outside the diner. The man in the black suit I had seen in the street got out of the driver’s seat, and another man in an identical outfit climbed out of the passenger side.
“Oh my goodness, it’s Samir!” Lila squealed. “He didn’t tell me he was coming to visit!” Lila ran across the street. We watched Lila and Samir hug. The way he was pointing at the diner suggested they were talking about Tom. Lila kept nodding, now hugging herself tightly. The two men moved into the diner and Lila stayed on the sidewalk. She waved frantically for us to join her.
“That’s your brother? I thought you said he was a lawyer,” I said.
“He is,” she said, sounding confused.
“So why is he here interested in Tom Jenkins?” I said.
“I don’t really understand it. He just told me he’s here on business involving the Jenkinses.”
“About the curse?” Conri asked.
Lila shrugged. “All I know is the vague stuff he just said. He seemed to be in a hurry. It’s a bit strange, though, that he would come up here without telling me first.”
Moments later, the two suited men came marching out of the cafe on either side of Tom. The way his head was held, low and guilty, he might as well have been marching out in handcuffs.