by C. M. Cevis
“He got my parents fired from their jobs, turned friends against them, planted termites in the house… my mother’s car exploded,” Wesley said softly.
Luna didn’t move. That sounded like something her family would have done to get their way.
“I confronted the guy once, when I’d gone down to try and help my folks out, and he just laughed at me. Said that if we wanted things to go back to normal, all we had to do was sign and leave. He said that it wasn’t his doing. Like my parents were insane, thinking that some cocky jerk was ruining their lives because he wanted their house,” Wesley said, almost as if trying to explain what had happened.
“What was someone like that doing here?” Judge Hatcher asked, cutting in.
“I thought he was here for me at first, for some reason,” Wesley said with a shrug. “I had gone to Luna’s and found him outside, trying to look into windows. She wasn’t there, her car was gone. He turned around, and everything that happened to my parents just came flooding back. I asked if he remembered me, and he said that he did. Asked me how my parents were and laughed.”
Luna winced against what Wesley was saying. She’d never denied who her family was or what they did, but that didn’t mean she supported it.
“He said he was looking for his family, asked if I knew the person who lived there. When I didn’t answer, he said he wasn’t there for me so I needed to move on. I told him that he was snooping around a place that I knew didn’t belong to him, and that I was law enforcement. I couldn’t just leave him there. He laughed again and said something about me not being able to protect my parents, so how could I protect a bunch of strangers?”
“None of this explains how the guy ended up dead. Especially since you just admitted to us that the woman that you’re trying to pin his murder on wasn’t there at the time,” Graham said.
He had a point, though Luna wasn’t sure if this was the right time to point that out. The cracks of light were back, but this time they’d begun small in the corner of the room. They spidered their way up the walls as the pain spidered its way through Luna’s head.
Wesley’s words sounded far away. “He kept laughing at me, talking about how terrible of a son I’d been… I don’t know what happened, I just snapped. I swung on the guy, and when the first punch landed, it gave me some sort of… confidence or second wind or something. I hit him with everything I had.”
“Does everything you had include things that weren’t your fists? Things that were never intended to injure another human being?” Judge Hatcher asked.
Wesley winced, as if the question had hit him. “There was a tool. I’d seen Luna using it to put in lighting spikes a few days prior, and she’d left it by the stairs to the porch.”
“You came back to the house and said it was proof that I’d bashed his head in with it!” Luna almost squealed it.
He nodded. “I wiped it down, put it back where I’d found it, and pretended it find it a few days later saying it was evidence that she’d had something to do with the murder.”
“You little rat,” Luna mumbled.
“Look, Luna,” he started, turning to face her. “This got out of hand, okay? The guy crawled into your house, how could this not be your fault?”
Luna’s eyes widened. “So you were going to force this crime on me out of convenience?”
“I figured I could figure something out. But then you just kept… pushing me away and being so damn stubborn. I thought maybe I could scare you into running away. Then I wouldn’t have to follow through or deal with your attitude.”
Graham cleared his throat. “Does that mean that the bullet that burrowed itself into her home was yours?”
“I made sure she wasn’t in the room,” Wesley mumbled.
Luna wanted to scream. Why in the world was that supposed to make things better? It had gone through one room and into another, why wouldn’t he, of all people, have realized that would happen?
Asher piped up, adding, “We found his boot print in the mud where Luna was knocked out.”
That just made Luna’s wound itch.
“We found the same type and size of boot,” Graham corrected. “But considering everything else, that does seem suspect.”
“And he had wounds like he’s been in a fight, but we never have fights here.” Asher refused to not add in what she knew, and Luna would have hugged her if they weren’t both handcuffed.
Judge Hatcher squinted at Wesley. “I don’t see anything alarming, Miss Asher.”
“Make him turn around and lift up his hair.”
“Alright. You heard the young lady: Get up, turn around, and lift your hair.”
Wesley shot a look in Asher’s direction, but did as he was asked and slowly as possible. On the back of his neck were clear signs of what looked to be healing scratches.
“Turn, slowly, Sheriff,” the Judge commanded.
Luna watched Wesley as he did as he’d been asked. The scratches went down into the neckline of his shirt, peeking out at his chest. He’d kept them so well covered that you wouldn’t see if you weren’t looking for them.
“Did the body have DNA under the fingernails?” Judge Hatcher asked.
“Yes sir, it did. It matches the DNA on sunglasses,” Agent Honey answered from the phone speaker.
“What sunglasses?”
Graham pulled one last small plastic bag from his satchel and held it up. “Luna found these sunglasses behind a planter in her front yard. She stated that they aren’t hers, and they seemed to be splattered with a liquid.”
“Let me guess: Blood?” Judge Hatcher asked.
“You are correct. There were a few hairs in the hinge of the ear piece, which we had tested for DNA. Of course, as you know, this takes a few days. The results were ready just before I left the office to come here.”
Luna heard Wesley make a small noise, as if everything inside of him had simply given up. She turned and watched as his head dropped to his chest, and he waited for the last bit of evidence to drop.
“The hair belonged to your sheriff, your honor.”
“Of course it did,” Judge Hatcher said, motioning for Graham to bring him the evidence bag.
“So, Luna is free to go?” Graham asked as Luna turned back to the front of the courtroom.
There was another crack, this one large and just behind the bench. How could no one else see these cracks? They were almost blinding, but no one else seemed to care. Luna had begun to slow her breath, giving her mind something to focus on other than the pain in her head. All she had to do was hold on just a little longer.
“It seems I have no choice,” Judge Hatcher replied, the clap of his gavel ricocheting around inside of Luna’s head. “Case against Miss Luna is dismissed, but the sheriff is under arrest.”
“Of course he is,” Graham said, his voice steeped in a smug grin that Luna couldn’t see.
Luna closed her eyes for a moment. That was all she needed, just a moment to get herself together, and then she, Graham, and Asher could leave the courthouse together and get back to living.
When her eyes opened again, she wasn’t in the courtroom. She lay on a small, overstuffed lounge chair in a dark room. The floor-to-ceiling windows in front of her had thick drapes parted just enough to let in some moonlight.
Luna sat up and frowned at what she could see through the window. The night skies in Calidity were always remarkably clear, especially to someone who was used to city life, but the sky she saw now wasn’t… right. There were too many stars, and she could see them too clearly. She felt as if she could reach out and touch them.
“I know.”
The whisper brought her attention to a dark corner of the room as her heart leaped into her throat. The shadow of what looked to be a man. He sat calmly in an armchair, his legs crossed, and his fingers tented before him. He didn’t move.
“You know what?” Luna asked, her voice shaking more than she’d wanted it to.
“Everything.”
The floor bel
ow her gave way, and she dropped into the darkness below.
33
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND ANY OF this. How did a concoction that she made in a dream actually do what it was made to do? How was she fighting me the entire time when I could see her there, in the dream, completely oblivious to the fact that none of it was real? How did nothing turn out the way I’d planned when I was in complete control?” the man asked.
“Clearly, you weren’t as in control as you thought.” The deep voice seemed to come from everywhere.
“That’s impossible. This spell has worked for hundreds of years. It’s foolproof.”
“Then you are the first fool to come along and attempt it.”
The man bristled. “I didn’t do anything incorrectly. She escaped because she is different.”
“You picked her, not I.”
The man was starting to get annoyed now. “The fact that she escaped was not my fault. Do not take your irritation out on my family.”
The ever-present voice sighed. “I will give you a reprieve, only because her escape means that she will be looking for what happened. Considering that you don’t know what’s different about her, you should concentrate on not being discovered.”
“I could just allow the woman to discover you and what you do,” the man snapped.
“You could, if you’d like your entire family to be wiped from the earth.” The voice ended the sentence with a chuckle, and an unnatural wind tore through the darkened room, throwing papers, opening doors and cabinets, and knocking things from shelves.
The man sighed and massaged his temples for a moment, before beginning to clean up.
34
LUNA’S EYES POPPED OPEN. SHE took a deep breath, and her lungs ached in her chest as if they hadn’t taken a good, deep breath in a long while. A face appeared almost nose to nose with her, the eyes wide with concern. It was her face, except one of the eyes was solid white and she could just barely see through the image.
“Liza,” she whispered, thankful her sister was the first person she saw.
“Good, you’re awake. I don’t know who put you in that coma, but the magic was strong enough that I couldn’t break through it to get you out,” Liza said. There was no point in her lowering her voice; no one but Luna could hear her anyway.
“Where am I?” Luna asked, slowly stretching, and taking stock of herself.
“The hospital. You’ve been in a coma for almost three weeks,” Liza said, stepping back and motioning to the corner of the small hospital room. Asher was curled up in a chair, a blanket thrown over herself, sound asleep. “She hasn’t left for more than thirty minutes at a time since you got here.”
Luna smiled at her sleeping bestie. Asher really was her best friend, the best one that she’d ever had.
“Back up,” Luna said, shaking her head all of a sudden.
Liza laughed. “Yeah, I figured you’d come back around to that. Yes, magic kept you in that coma. Yes, three weeks. And no, I have no idea who it was holding it over you.”
“You’re psychic, Liza. How in the world couldn’t you tell?”
Liza frowned. “Yeah, that’s what scares me.”
“This would be one of those times it would have been super convenient for Asher to be able to see you,” Luna mumbled to herself as she finally sat all the way up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She was pretty sure that she could handle herself, now that most of her had woken up.
“We’re going to have to work on that, once you explain to her that your twin sister who died at birth still hangs around and has a different set of abilities than you do, so isn’t really just a simple ghost.”
Luna snickered. “Yeah, that’s going to be a fun conversation. But it’s one that she and I need to have.”
“Are you going to tell her how you ended up in Calidity too?”
Luna hesitated, glancing up at her sister as she settled on the hospital bed beside her. “That’s different,” she whispered.
Liza nodded. “It is. But I don’t think it’ll make her run away from you, Lu.”
Luna wasn’t so sure. But Liza was right, there were some things that she needed to tell Asher. Especially in light of… whatever the heck had just happened.
“We’ll talk about it later. Right now, we need to get out of here. We don’t know who put you in that coma or why, but we need to get back home, where we can defend ourselves,” Liza said.
Luna nodded, Liza was right. “Pretty sure alarms will go off if I take off these diodes.”
“Leave it to me,” Liza said with a smirk. “Count to five, then pull them off and get dressed as fast as you can. We’re going to have to move.”
“What about—” Luna glanced over at Asher.
“She’ll be fine, and she can tell them that she has no idea where you went and not be lying. You know she’ll come to the house as soon as possible. We can talk to her then.”
“We—” Luna whispered.
“Later,” Liza hissed.
“Right. I’m ready.”
Liza disappeared through the wall, and Luna started counting. Once she reached five, she pulled off the monitoring devices, crossed the room and grabbed her bag, pulled on a pair of shorts and her shoes, and ducked into the hallway with the rest of her things over her shoulder.
“This way,” Liza said, motioning for Luna to follow her.
They took a rather long, winding way around to the elevators, but Liza made sure that they didn’t run into anyone. They hit the ground floor, ducked out of a side entrance, and started running. Luna had no idea where her car was, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t there.
Come to think of it, she wasn’t sure how she’d gotten to the hospital or when she’d passed out. Good thing she had a ghost sister who could tell her these things.
Later, of course. After this jog home.
~*~
THE BED AND BREAKFAST WAS the same way Luna had left it, she was pretty sure. The doors and windows were secured, and none of her wards showed signs of being tampered with or set off. That was a good sign.
“It’s weird. In the coma dream, this door was locked,” Luna said, easily pulling open the door to the basement.
“Maybe that means whoever was working the dream doesn’t know what’s down here?” Liza asked as they made their way down the dimly lit stairs.
“Probably not. I don’t think most people know what’s down here, really.”
“For good reason,” Liza replied as Luna hit the light switch at the bottom of the stairs.
Luna had moved her alchemy plants and their lights down to the basement once she’d run out of room in her closet, something else the dream had gotten wrong. She’d done that months ago, but she hadn’t remembered that while stuck.
The basement had been partially sealed off when Luna had moved in, and she hadn’t been sure why until she had figured out how to get past the doors. She hadn’t expected to find doors that required magical locks in the basement of a random house in the middle of a peaceful country town, but that’s what had happened. It had taken her months to figure out what the key was. And when she had, what was on the other side had only given her more questions.
Luna and Liza walked through the old door that reeked of dust and old magic, and looked around at the three large stone arches. Each had slight differences carved into them, which Liza had surmised were probably clues as to where they led. Of course, they were both just guessing. They might have simply been there purely for decoration.
“Nothing looks out of place,” Luna sighed.
“So it wasn’t someone getting you out of the way to get in here,” Liza said.
“What would they do if it had been? Whatever these are when they’re active, they’re nothing now.”
Liza sighed and looked around, crossing her arms. “I still think they’re gates of some sort.”
“Hey, I agree with you. But since I don’t know to what or where, I’m perfectly okay with them staying dead, just like they a
re now.”
Liza chuckled. “Either way, we need to find out who put you in that coma. That was some pretty powerful magic at work. If nothing else, we need to make sure they didn’t find out anything important while they were messing with your brain.”
The dream that Luna had been thrown out of just before waking up came flooding back into her mind, and Liza made a face.
“What? I hate that feeling when it comes from you,” she asked.
“Someone knows something, but I don’t know what.”
“How do you know?”
Luna shook her head. She wanted a little bit more time to mull over what she’d seen before she talked about it. “Remind me to tell you about the last part of the coma dream. Tomorrow, when I’ve had some time to process it all.”
Liza nodded. “We also need to find out how they kept out someone who’s already in your head. That’s concerning.”
A bell rang from somewhere. A soft bell, like the small handheld ones used to summon someone.
“You hear that, right?” Liza whispered, looking around.
“Yeah, but where is it coming from?” Luna responded.
As if to answer their question, one of the arches chose that exact moment to light up. The stone doorway shown like some sort of blue-light vortex, confined to the stone by some sort of magic that Luna had no idea how to control.
“That’s probably not good,” Luna whispered.
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