by Wendy Wang
Will sat up straight in his chair when it was his turn to speak. “Will Tucker. New here. Vampire hunter for the most part.” He slumped down in his chair again when he finished and folded his hands in front of him on the table.
“And a man of few words,” Ben quipped. Everyone laughed, even Will, but his pale face reddened.
“Yep,” Will added.
Ben turned his attention to Charlie. A thrill went through her when everyone turned their gaze on her and she forced a smile.
“Charlie Payne. Like Will, I’m new here. I’m psychic and a witch, but I don’t really have a specialty.”
“You see the dead, Charlie,” Ben reminded her. “And you also have outside investigative experience that’s pretty valuable.”
Charlie’s cheeks heated. “Thanks.”
He gave her a nod and a wink, then moved on to Tomeka.
“I’m Tomeka Fowler. I’m clairvoyant, and I read tarot, and um…” Tomeka’s dark eyes widened. Charlie sensed her anxiety at being under such intense scrutiny by these people she didn’t know.
“You practice hoodoo,” Darius chimed in.
“Right, hoodoo,” Tomeka said. “Which our grandmother taught us.” Tomeka sat back in her chair and looked to her brother.
“Thanks, Tomeka,” Ben said. He gave her a reassuring smile.
Darius lifted one of his hands from the table and gave a short wave. “I’m Darius Fowler, Tomeka’s brother. I’ll only be working with y’all part-time, but it seems like a good group, and I’m excited. I’m an acupuncturist and herbalist by trade. My specialty is necromancy. I’ve studied many different cultures, including Chinese, which I incorporate into my craft, as well as the traditional hoodoo my family practices.” He smiled, and a sense of calm spread across the room. Tomeka visibly relaxed, and the flutter in Charlie’s belly quelled. One of these days, she would have to ask him how he did that.
“Great, thanks. You all know who I am,” Ben started, “and, like you, I’m excited about this team. I think we’ve got a tremendous opportunity to do some real good in the world, and I’m really happy you all are here.”
Charlie chanced a peek at Will. His stoic angular face reminded Charlie of a general carved in marble. He didn’t give off much emotion that she could sense. And maybe that was a good thing.
Ben clapped his hands, then rubbed them together. “Now that we all know each other, who’s ready to hear about our first case?”
Everyone’s hand shot into the air.
“Great, let’s begin.”
Chapter 2
Ben opened the folder he’d brought with him and pulled out a photo, then passed it to Athena on his left.
“This is John and Allison Cochran and their three kids, Carter, Camille, and Clayton. They moved into this house six months ago.” He took another photo from his folder and passed it to Darius on his right.
“What happened to them?” Charlie asked, pulling a small notebook and pen from her purse.
“They disappeared into thin air,” Ben said. “John Cochran’s sister was supposed to visit them for Christmas, and they’d started talking about the details. When she tried calling her brother with her flight information, there was no answer. According to the missing person report she filed with the police, this went on for five days. She finally called the local police, and when they did a check, they found both family cars parked in the driveway and a kitchen table set for breakfast, including two frying pans on the stove. Ready to be used.”
“Did the police suspect foul play?” Athena glanced up from the photo of the house in her hand.
“The police didn’t know what to make of it. There was no sign of a struggle, and they did a cursory investigation based on the reports I read.” He pulled more papers from his folder and passed them around.
Will slid the photo of the family in front of Charlie and seemed to take care not to make her touch it. They exchanged glances, and she sensed unexpected empathy from him. It was as if he knew what it was like for her to hold a photo or even a report.
She carefully picked up the photo of the happy family posed outside under a tree. They all wore the same outfits. White shirts and blue jeans. The mother looked about Charlie’s age, and the oldest boy looked to be about Evan’s age, thirteen. The two younger children, a girl and a boy, looked to be ten and seven. All the children had their father’s doe-like brown eyes and the girl had her mother’s golden blonde hair. The boys looked like a miniature of their father. Charlie took a deep breath and touched the corners of the picture. Images flashed through her head of this moment. The family had gone to a local park one day last spring. The mother had wanted blooming azaleas in the picture. Wanted everything to be beautiful. Wanted everything perfect.
“John, you and Allison sit here and here,” Charlie heard the photographer’s voice echo through her head followed by John’s and Allison’s voices.
“How long is this going to take?” John grumbled. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“No. It’s Saturday, and besides, you wanted the big house and the fancy neighborhood and all the things that go with it,” Allison said through gritted teeth.
“Clayton, let’s put you next to your daddy. Camille, you next to your mommy, and Carter you on the other side of your mom, okay sweetie?”
Charlie turned the photo over and found a stamp of gold ink that read Marcie Holmes Photography. Why was this day so important? Why was she seeing something that happened more than eight months ago and not something more recent? Charlie scribbled down the name before she put the photo down and slid it over to Tomeka. Will slid the missing person report in front of her. She noticed Ben studying her.
She made a face. “I didn’t see anything useful. At least I don’t think so. But I’d like to interview the photographer about the family.”
“Sure. Just keep me informed,” he said.
Charlie glanced at Tomeka next to her. She had pulled her cards out of her bag and had done a quick three-two-one spread, laying out three cards at the top, two cards touching the line of three cards and one card touching the line of two cards forming a reversed triangle. Charlie had seen her cousin Lisa use this spread before, especially for a big event in her life.
“How does it look, Tomeka?” Ben asked.
“They were in a state of normal cycles — you can see that here.” She pointed to the row of three cards, her finger brushed over The Wheel of Fortune card. She sighed. “But there was this sense of being bound up. Restricted in some way,” she said, touching the second card, The Hanged Man. “Then you’ve got Temperance here, but it’s reversed, indicating a lack of long-term vision or purpose. Or it could be a sense of competition with others. Not sure which of them felt that way though. It could be the husband and he projected it onto the wife.”
“Or maybe it was the wife,” Charlie piped up. All eyes around the table turned to her and her cheeks burned from the sudden attention. “I just mean…” She sighed. “I saw them in the park, posing for that picture. I got the sense that she was trying to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak.”
Ben nodded. “Good to know. Their neighborhood is pretty swanky. I could see the competition between neighbors being an added pressure. What else do you see there, Tomeka?”
“It’s not good, that’s for sure.” Tomeka pointed her long nail first at The Lovers card and then the Death card. “The Lovers card usually represents some sort of choice to be made, but it’s reversed which means it was a bad choice, or a choice that someone didn’t want to take responsibility for. And then there’s Death.” Tomeka glanced around at their faces and tapped her palm on the table. “Which doesn’t mean actual death. It just means a transformation occurred.” The others nodded and Charlie watched Sabine and Marigold visibly relax. “This last card is worrisome though. This is where things are headed. The Tower.” Tomeka let out a shuddery breath. “This represents turmoil, death even, if the situation is right. Grief, anger, terror. Danger.” Her dark red-tipped finger
nail touched the single card at the bottom of the triangle of cards. “Darkness.”
“So they’re alive?” Ben asked.
Tomeka’s chest rose and fell with a deep sigh. “That’s not really clear. Possibly. If they are alive, they won’t be for long.”
Ben clenched his jaw, and his eyes darkened with the intensity of his gaze. “That just means we have to act fast. Athena, I need you and Sabine to look into any similar cases that may have occurred in the last year. If you find nothing, go out five years.”
Athena jotted down his instructions on a yellow legal pad.
“We should also look at the victims. Who they were. If they had any enemies. Or any big changes in their lives,” Charlie blurted out. She slapped her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“No, that’s great, Charlie. Your instincts are right,” Ben said.
“It’s not really my instincts as much as it is working cases with Jason. If Athena and Sabine find other victims, then we can look at their commonalities,” Charlie said. “Which could give us insight into whoever took them.”
“How do we know it’s not just ordinary kidnappers?” Will asked. “Why is the DOL involved?”
“That’s a good question and a simple one to answer. They’re witches.”
“You just said they were having Christmas,” Sabine said.
“Yes. It’s easy to pass off Yule as Christmas, especially if their extended family were not practicing witches,” Ben explained.
“True,” Athena said. “My mother still puts up a nativity scene for my grandmother’s sake.”
There were several nods around the table, and Charlie shifted in her chair. Jen always did the planning and decorating for all the holidays. With the beginning of Yule coming up next week, a pang of guilt filled her. She’d been ignoring Jen’s requests to help decorate this year. Making excuses about being too busy with the job change over.
“I did cursory scouting of the location and found these.” Ben took two more photos from his folder and passed them around. The images looked almost like a negative. Symbols drawn on the front door of the house, and on every window – sigils. Charlie had seen them used in witchcraft before.
“So, you think a witch did this?” Charlie studied one of the photos.
“Possibly,” Ben said.
“Why?” Charlie asked.
“As soon as we find him or her, I intend to ask. If not a witch, then possibly a demon, or even a ghost,” Ben said. “Marigold, I want you and Tomeka to work together on building out our case. We’ll use this room as our home base for now. So, tape up pictures and document everything we find.”
“You got it, sir,” Marigold said. “If you bring me back some personal effects of the family, I’ll start scrying.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” Tomeka said, sinking down in her seat a little.
“No worries,” Marigold chirped. “You use cards, right?”
Tomeka nodded. “It’s just another form of prognostication. I’m betting you’ll pick it up easily.”
“Okay,” Tomeka said in a breathy voice.
Darius nudged his sister with his elbow. She painted a smile on her face and nodded.
“Great,” Tomeka said. “You don’t use a crystal ball, do you?”
“No. I use water,” Marigold said. “And I’ll take precautions to ensure my safety, and yours, too.”
“Charlie and Will, that leaves you with me,” Ben said.
Charlie exchanged a glance with Will and gave him a perfunctory smile.
“Everybody clear on their assignments?”
A murmur of yeses went around the room.
“Let’s get to it then. The clock is ticking.”
Charlie and Will followed Ben to the fourth floor to an open space filled with identical workspaces. Each worktable reminded Charlie of a small kitchen island with a butcher block top and a tall, well-padded stool centered between two cabinet bases. On top of the surface sat a mortar and pestle, an electronic tablet with a cover that turned into a stand, and a Bluetooth keyboard.
“Very high tech,” Will said. He picked up the tablet at the workstation with a nameplate that read William J. Tucker.
“That’s mainly for reports, expenses, and any digital research we need to do on the road,” Ben said.
“I’ve got a laptop I use for my vamp stuff,” Will said.
“You mean your hacking?” Ben said with a wry expression.
“Maybe,” Will smirked. “Maybe it just holds all my porn.”
The two men laughed, and Charlie tried to ignore them. She didn’t want to know if Ben also had a computer with porn on it.
“Charlie, you okay with a tablet?” Ben asked.
“Sure,” Charlie said. “I’m okay with computer stuff, I guess.”
“Good,” Will said. “I know some witches are more likely to fry something electronic.”
“My aunt Evangeline does. It’s why she doesn’t like smartphones.”
“I don’t blame her,” Ben said.
“So where do you want to start, boss?” Will tucked the tablet into the leather bag he had slung across his body. Charlie spotted the hilt of a large knife before he closed the flap and fastened the buckle.
“I want us to head over to the house,” Ben said. “Take a look around. See what we find.”
“Have the cops already been there?” Will asked.
“They have, but they’re not looking for the same things we are. “
“Right,” Will said dryly. “All the witchy things.”
Charlie suppressed a snicker and grabbed her bag. “We’ve got a two-hour drive, and I want to talk to that photographer today, too, if possible.”
“We better get a move on then,” Ben said.
Chapter 3
The house on Mulberry Lane looked perfect from the outside. Tall, straight lines of brick Georgian façade, the manicured yard complete with thick borders of pansies, and hedges of carved balls of boxwood suggested wealth. But it was a wealthy neighborhood full of similar houses on wooded one-acre lots. More than anything, Charlie sensed anxiety in this neighborhood. It pervaded everything. What did rich people have to be so anxious about? But she already knew the answer to that question, didn’t she? Scott, her ex-husband, came from wealth, and she sometimes sensed the same anxiety from his family, from his neighbors. Everybody wanting to impress everybody else. She’d felt it when they were married, and she felt it now from every single house they passed. Her life might be simpler now, and she still had to count her pennies, even with this new job and increased pay, but she wouldn’t trade any of it for that constant, low-level thrum of anxiety that permeated her life before she’d left Scott.
Ben drove up the circular driveway and parked in front. The yellow police tape across the double black front doors had come loose and now flapped in the slight breeze. The three of them hopped out of Ben’s restored FJ50, and Ben opened the front door with a simple unlocking spell after he sliced through the secondary tape the police had installed between the double front doors.
The smell of brimstone stung Charlie’s nostrils when she entered the foyer. A sparkly yellow dust hung in the air.
“Oh, hell,” Ben muttered.
“Demons,” Will said pushing past Charlie and Ben. He reached into his bag and pulled out a small flask with a cross on it.
Charlie caught up to him. She held her wand in her hand, gripping the hilt of the carved wood tightly. “Holy water?”
“Yep,” he said. He walked into the living room and glanced around. Something in the fireplace seemed to catch his attention, and he approached it with caution. He knelt on the carpet next to the stone hearth. A black smudge darkened the brick lining of the firebox, which was strange because there were gas logs. The family had never burned wood in the fireplace that Charlie could tell.
“What do you think that is?” Charlie asked.
Will reached inside his bag and took out a small glass vial and a buck kni
fe. He unfolded the blade and scraped the sooty layer, leaving a clean line through it. He brought the knife to his nose and sniffed it before he carefully scraped it into the vial.
“What are you going to do with that?” Charlie asked, intrigued by his methods.
“He’s going to test it for different residues,” Ben said.
“It could be paper,” Will said, corking the top of the vial and tucking it back into his bag. He closed the blade of the knife and slipped it into his front pocket. “But it could be something a little more hellish, too.”
“How very forensic of you,” Charlie quipped.
“Girl, I got skillz,” Will said with a glint in his eyes.
Charlie laughed. “Goddess help us all.”
“Are you sensing anything, Charlie?” Ben asked.
She glanced around and found more of the family photos like the ones Ben had shown them in the conference room. She picked up one of the frames and touched the faces of the family. The voices of a man and woman echoed through her head.
“You’re kidding me, right,” he said, his voice full of derision and disgust. “You can’t seriously be thinking about paying five hundred dollars for photos.”
“We can’t live in this house and not have family photos like everyone else. Margot Baxter already noticed that we didn’t have any,” she countered. “You’re the one who wanted to be here. We have to do what everyone else does. Otherwise, Carter, Clayton, and Camille will never fit in. We’re doing this for them, remember?”
Money — it could make things better when you had it or way, way worse when you didn’t. Bunny, Charlie’s grandmother, always said that money was a mindset. “If you want, want, want, then you’ll be blessed (or cursed in Charlie’s opinion) with lack, lack, lack because nothing’s ever enough to fill up that hole. If you thank, thank, thank the goddess, you’ll be blessed with more of what you’re thankful for, Charlie girl.”