by Ruby Loren
“I’m more surprised that the vampire didn’t toss you to the demon. I wonder what his game is?” Jesse looked genuinely thoughtful.
“I’m not naive enough to think he did it for nothing. I’m wondering the same,” I told him. I may not have known about the existence of vampires for long, but I was a quick learner. I knew that they didn’t do anything without having a good reason to do it. The trick was getting them to tell you straight what that reason was. It was something Jesse had in common with vampires.
I looked at the man I was sitting next to. “I’m guessing you’re still not going to tell me anything I want to know about you, the mayor, and why you’re here in town?”
A light smile played on Jesse’s lips as the dawn’s first light reflected in his amber eyes. “That would be a good guess.”
“Then… can we talk about the case? You are working on it, aren’t you? Or was your fake relationship taking up all of your time?” I tilted my head and looked at him, my curling hair falling forwards over one shoulder.
The smile never went away. “Natalia knew what she was getting into.”
“Which was?”
“It was all for the case. I needed the cover of our relationship to check a few things.”
I waited, but that was apparently all that Jesse was going to say. “Did you check to see if your fake girlfriend was the killer whilst you were at it?” I didn’t really think she’d done it, not any more. Something Natalia had said had sparked an idea in me. Now more than ever, I thought Bridgette had died because of something she’d known - or had at least guessed. And I also thought that the detective was right to be focusing on those who’d visited recently. But all theories need to be proved. I wanted to see what Jesse had come up with.
“Natalia wouldn’t kill anyone herself. It crossed my mind that she’d paid or persuaded someone like Hellion to do the deed for her, but it soon became very clear that her ex was otherwise engaged in trying to curse me. Thanks for the heads-up, by the way.”
“You still haven’t told me why his curses didn’t work on you,” I reminded him.
“Haven’t I? That’s so weird of me to forget to do that. Anyway, as proved by his sudden and terrible death, I don’t think Hellion had the brains to pull off this murder. The stabbing in the back also felt personal. It was someone Bridgette knew and, going by what I’ve been hearing about her business practices, it was probably someone whose secret she’d worked out.”
“Who told you about her business practices?” I’d only heard that from Detective Admiral and there was no way he’d have told someone like Jesse.
“Do you really think I wouldn’t know exactly what our detective friend has been working on? It’s the sad state of reality we live in but a police officer’s salary does not inspire loyalty or silence. But enough about me and my investigation… who do you have pegged for the killer, Miss Marple?”
“That’s not how mysteries work, Detective Heathen. You’ll have to wait for the ending like everyone else,” I said, getting ready to stand up from the rock and leave. “By the way… I’m pretty certain that Hellion’s summoning circle was drawn with human blood,” I said as an afterthought.
Jesse looked pensive. “If anyone around here would have known how to drain a body of blood with a diabolical spell, it would have been Hellion. But you don’t think he murdered Bridgette?”
I considered. “Hellion liked to solve his problems with magic. I don’t think he’d ever have done something that actually got his hands dirty, even something like stabbing someone in the back. I don’t know why he was out in the forest that day, but I think he saw an opportunity. Perhaps he even saw who killed Bridgette and wanted to try some blackmail of his own. The blood would have been evidence of what he knew.”
Jesse smiled for a second. “I agree. The man was a coward.”
I reached out to take the silver coin I’d left for the devil to take, but Jesse stretched out a hand and stopped me. For one strange moment his hand touched mine. I felt a spark, like static electricity, run through me. There was a strange feeling, too. A feeling I would later be unable to describe beyond one word: destiny.
“Whatever devil it is that hangs out on these hills lost his payment the last time when the police took it as evidence. Are you going to deprive him again?” Jesse gave me a crooked smile.
“Payment is given for services rendered. I came here looking for answers, and I didn’t get any. No deals were made today,” I told him, pushing his hand away and taking my coin back.
If truth be told, the silver coin part of this was the biggest mystery of them all. Silver was not particularly cheap in this day and age and research had told me that to fit with the lore, I’d needed something equivalent to a silver crown minted prior to 1920. I wasn’t going to leave that much silver lying around on the hillside without getting anything back in return.
I was about to leave when something occurred to me. “I don’t suppose your sensors picked up anyone or anything else coming up here prior to tonight?”
Jesse looked at me with his unreadable gaze. “Sorry. No devils came this way.”
I looked down at the coin in my hand and gave a little snort of amusement. I thought that was still up for debate.
I didn’t wake up until late in the afternoon.
When I’d returned to the shop, I’d found the photocopy of the diary pages the detective had left me. I knew he’d wanted me to see the guilt of my aunts written in the pages, but there were other names, too. And now I thought I knew who I was looking for. I found it without much trouble. It was the only logical fit.
The one thing that stopped me from going to the police right there and then was that I didn’t know why… and that meant all of the evidence might not fit together. I didn’t like leaving anything to chance. I’d still been thinking about the possibilities and wondering what I was missing when I’d fallen asleep on top of my covers.
When I woke up it was as if the pieces had slotted together whilst I’d been dreaming. I’d figured out who the culprit was last night, but now I thought I knew their motive for murder. It was a crazy theory, but was I right?
I rolled out of bed and grabbed the research folder I’d put together for the case, which included the things that Sean Admiral had let me have. Now, I reopened the folder and looked at it with fresh eyes and fresh knowledge. My eyes scanned pictures of long lost - and presumably long dead - witches and magicians, and then I saw it. I flicked the photograph with my fingers. “I suppose it was only a matter of time before Bridgette tried to blackmail the wrong person.”
I shut my eyes for a moment and wondered why the guilty party hadn’t ditched the clues that tied them to the truth after Bridgette had died. If I were the killer, I’d have been afraid that Bridgette had left insurance in the case of her death - something that might point the finger at me. But there was a problem with that theory. Bridgette had been blackmailing a lot of people for a long time… and there was no way that she’d have been able to predict who was going to kill her. Or at least - the killer had made the gamble that she wouldn’t. Perhaps their dirty laundry would be aired when she died, but it would be along with the rest of Wormwood’s… and so long as the killer wasn’t caught for the most recent murder, I was willing to bet that they were gambling that their wrongdoing wasn’t any worse than any other secrets that people had been willing to pay to keep hidden.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised that the killer had planned the murder carefully, leaving red herrings and false trails in their wake. It was another killing that was supposed to point investigators in all of the wrong directions.
I considered everything I had and realised it wasn’t enough. Even though Detective Admiral believed in the supernatural, a court of law would never be able to understand some of the stranger details of the case… and its relation to a much older crime. I needed something more.
I shut my eyes and pulled out my phone. Then I made a call that would decide whether the killer was caught or
continued to walk free.
17
A Gathering of Suspects
No one questioned why I was calling the coven meeting that very evening. As the high priestess it was my right to gather the thirteen whenever I chose. When you added that power to the intrigue that I knew surrounded my witch trial, I wasn’t surprised when I was promised full attendance at such short notice. Then it had simply been a matter of setting the scene and waiting for the killer and the coven to arrive.
I waited for everyone to be sitting around the kitchen table before I introduced that night’s main topic of discussion.
“Witches of Wormwood Coven, I have gathered you here because we have a killer in our midst.”
A ripple of alarm spread through the group. I almost felt like asking how many witches here had deadly secrets to hide, but I was only here for one killer tonight.
“No witch should kill another. That is witch law. But someone has broken it, both recently and in the past. I’m going to give that person a chance to explain her actions, before we decide her fate.” I let the implications of my words sink in.
A second ripple of alarm spread through the group.
“Witch justice? No one’s practiced that for decades,” Aurelia hissed, but she couldn’t hide the fact that she was impressed.
I smiled thinly at the group. “We’ll take a vote on it when the truth is out, but first, I want Zoe to explain why she murdered Bridgette Spellsworth.”
I turned to face the witch with the streak of pink in her hair.
She looked back at me with blank eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
As she said it, I saw the way her left hand moved to cover the bracelets on her opposite wrist - the bracelets with their silver occult and animal charms.
I walked over to her and lifted the hand, moving the charms until I found the ones I was looking for. “A smart killer would have got rid of this right after Bridgette found you out, but you got overconfident. You thought that the worst that could happen would be that every single one of Wormwood’s secrets kept by the fortuneteller would be revealed. If you went down, so did everyone else.”
Zoe frowned. “They’re just charms.”
“You’re wearing a hare charm that belonged to Giselle Lee, the witch who tried to take over the last time there was a power struggle in this coven. She was wearing it in a photo I saw in a file of missing persons. It just took me a while to realise where I’d heard her name before, and where I’d seen the charm.” I reached out and gently nudged a different charm, making eye contact with Zoe when I did it. Alarm flashed in her eyes.
There was muttering as the rest of the group tried to figure out what I was saying.
It was time to turn up the temperature. “You definitely had a motive to want to get even with Giselle. You lost your fiancé to a curse. I’m sure no one would blame you for wanting revenge.”
“I found this charm in Wormwood Forest. I had no idea it belonged to Giselle. If it even did belong to her…” Zoe countered. She wasn’t going down without a fight, but I’d expected it.
“I found her body. It was in the same place that you concealed the knife you used to stab Bridgette in the back.”
There it was. The flicker of uncertainty I’d been looking for.
“What body… and what knife?” she asked.
I kept my smile to myself. Like prey stalked in the forest by a hunter, she’d fallen into my trap. “The body of Giselle Lee in her second form - which was a hare. What better place to hide a murder victim than in amongst the other stuffed animals in the cabin?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Zoe protested.
Heather quietly cleared her throat. Everyone looked her way. “I knew the Lee family for years before Giselle was even born. Some witch families are proud of their two-natured heritage. It dates back a long time and is one of the reasons why families like that don’t tend to search too far beyond their own gene pool when producing future generations.” Her mouth twisted with displeasure at the thought. I didn’t feel too great myself, knowing that the Salem family allegedly had similar ideals. “However, the exact nature of their second form was not something that was put about. The old folklore about villagers hunting animals and witches turning up with the same wounds the next day has its foundation in the truth. There are always those who will exploit any weakness, if they think they can get away with it.” She looked thoughtfully at Zoe.
“Zoe figured it out because she and Giselle had this special talent in common, isn’t that right?” I tilted my head at the guilty witch, before looking down at the silver bear charm I’d touched earlier. “An analysis of hair left at the scene of the crime after Bridgette was savaged post mortem was shown to belong to a grizzly bear. I think Bridgette’s death was supposed to push the police into hunting for a dangerous escaped zoo animal loose in the forest, but when you returned to the scene of the crime and found that someone had stolen her blood, it was that much harder to cover up the true cause of death. I think you’d hoped to send the police on a wild goose chase and potentially stir up trouble for the Witchwood shifters.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Zoe said, looking around the room. “You can’t just make accusations and not back them up with actual evidence. I could accuse you of the same crimes!”
“The knife is being examined by the police as we speak. How careful were you to make sure there were no fingerprints on it when you threw it through the window?” I raised my eyebrows at her. We both knew she’d put the knife somewhere protected by magic so that it would stay hidden.
“It would have been a simple matter for you to have made sure you were the first one into the cabin when the coven went back for a future retreat. A rinse of the knife and the evidence would have been gone forever. You even suggested we take our next retreat in Wormwood Forest instead of Ireland… and now I know why.”
She didn’t speak.
“Forgive me for asking, but how do you know that you saw Giselle’s body in the cabin? We’ve all been there and there are loads of creepy taxidermies on display,” Ally said, nervously raising her hand when she spoke.
“She had a witch’s mark on her shoulder. I recognised it from the description in the folklore I found. When I read about it initially, I thought it was just a story, but like so much of the lore around here, it turned out to be true,” I explained.
Zoe had turned pale.
“It will be better if you tell us the rest. Honesty might get you a lighter judgement,” I told her. Inside, I was holding my breath.
After a few moments more of silence, she sighed. “I did go to see Bridgette to ask her something personal, but that doesn’t mean I killed her. A lot of people in this town went to see her for readings.”
It looked like I needed to twist the knife. “A lot of people in this town were paying her, but not for readings. I think that’s one secret that we all know wasn’t really a secret. People knew Bridgette’s game, but I think that her knowledge of other people’s secrets also meant that, even though she wasn’t really psychic, she sometimes was able to provide a fresh perspective on a problem because she knew so many truths that lurk beneath the still waters on the surface. If you paid her, she wouldn’t betray your confidence, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t use her knowledge to help other people realise their own truths.” I paused to let that sink in.
“But there was always the risk she’d do more than just help you out. I’m guessing she saw the charm you were wearing and remembered who it belonged to. Either she’d already figured out what had happened to Giselle, or she guessed the rest, and you believed she knew more than she did. You wouldn’t have been the first to make that mistake.” I levelled my gaze at her before continuing.
“With your hunting and tracking skills I bet it was easy to keep watch on Bridgette and wait for her to walk into the forest alone. Perhaps you even suggested the trick with the silver coin and the cauldron. Everyone in this coven had heard of it and it would have been a good
way to persuade her to go into the forest alone, where you would be waiting for her. You were probably hoping that the body wouldn’t be found so fast, and you definitely didn’t expect the missing blood and the implications it might bring.” I tilted my head at her. “Did Hellion try to blackmail you over that? I bet that was annoying. You stopped one person from extorting you, only to gain a fresh secret keeper.” I smiled. “How easy was it to push Hellion into using that summoning spell after you blocked his attempts to curse Jesse by planting that protection charm on him?”
Zoe looked around at the other witches, her eyes wide and nervous, like a rabbit caught in headlights. She didn’t speak.
“Jesse still has the charm,” I pressed.” I don’t know what colour your magic is, but I’m sure we can find out,” I said, hoping I’d finally nailed her against the wall.
“I was just trying to help him out,” she said weakly, before trailing off into silence.
“It was just another manipulation,” I told her.
She took a deep breath, considering everything that had been said.
“Couldn’t you have just sprung for the blackmail?” Aurelia contributed, looking delighted by the drama that had played out before her. “I guess now we know that you’re not really better than any of us. You just like to act as though you are.”
I would never have imagined that I’d be grateful to Aurelia for anything, but her goading was what tipped Zoe over the edge.
“Both of those witches deserved exactly what was coming to them. Giselle ruined my life, and Bridgette was going to capitalise on it. I’m just surprised no one did what I did sooner. But that figures. Most of you are completely spineless,” Zoe hissed, directing her venom at Aurelia. “She threatened to report what I’d done to the coven and use her influence over certain members to ensure that I received the witch justice penalty. I did us all a favour by doing what I did. You should be thanking me!”
She looked at me. “I admit it. I killed Bridgette Spellsworth. I shot Giselle in her second form. I even pushed Hellion towards doing something I hoped would end badly for him.” A nasty smile pulled up her lips. “I’m guessing it worked?”