by Evie Hart
“Yes, ma’am. She’s bound to the property until such time the Council remove the order on her.”
She briefly closed her eyes. “Would you mind casting the spell so we can make that official? My understudy is good, but I don’t think I’d trust her to bind a sausage before I trust her to do this. Then we can talk more.”
Damn it. I hated high-level spells.
“Of course.” I took a deep breath and, taking Betty Lou’s hand, said quietly, “Words have power, So do I, This is a promise, Let it fly.”
Magic fizzled around our clasped hands.
“Avery Thorn, do you swear under magical oath that you have bound the ghost of your grandmother, Cherry Louise Thorn, to the Thorn Farm?”
“I swear,” I said softly.
“Do you swear that you completed the spell in its entirety and that she will not be able to leave the property until the spell is lifted?”
“I swear.”
“Do you swear that you will not lift the spell until the Witch Council gives you permission?”
“I swear.”
“Let it be,” Betty Lou said.
“Let it be,” I echoed, watching as our magic intertwined in a burst of fuchsia and midnight blue, then dispersed.
Betty Lou sighed, once again closing her eyes for a second. “Thank you.”
“It was my pleasure.”
“What do you need to know?”
I swallowed hard. “You’re tired. I can come back.”
“Don’t even think of getting out of that chair. You already have more manners than that dang detective from yesterday.”
“He does lack in that department,” I agreed. “He’s not exactly tactful.”
She rolled her head and met my eyes, a smile on her lips. “He’s single, you know.”
I held up a finger. “Don’t start. He’s insufferable. I’m not here to discuss my relationships with you.”
She laughed softly, pushing hair from her face. “Go ahead. Do your worst. You found me—and Amelie. All I can do is thank you for having perfect timing.”
“Do you know what happened?”
Betty Lou shook her head. “Sorry, Avery. It’s real blurry right now. I remember drinking my morning tea, then everything going fuzzy. I know I stood up to get Amelie, but then everything went black.”
“You didn’t hear Amelie get shot?”
“If I did, I have absolutely zero recollection of the event, but my gut tells me I did not.”
I leaned back in the chair and tucked my hair behind my ear. Something about this didn’t add up. It never had for me, and now, I knew why.
The tea.
She was poisoned.
It was in the tea.
“Your tea. That was the last thing you remember?”
“Yes. Every morning when I get to the office, Amelie makes me a cup of your aunt’s special blend tea.” She linked her fingers and rested them on her stomach. “I don’t like to drink anything else.”
Huh. That was new information.
“Who had access to it?”
“Everyone who could get on the floor.” Her sigh was heavy, and she rested her head right back on the pillow with a wan smile. “Detective Sanders took the tea last night. There isn’t video footage, so it really could have been anyone. Although…”
I waited as she looked off into the distance. Her window overlooked the forest, and the sight of the morning sun casting shadows over the treetops was magical.
“You know,” she said softly, almost dreamily, as a flock of birds took flight. “I think he missed a big clue.”
“You do?”
Betty Lou turned back to me. “They poisoned me with belladonna.”
A chill ran down my spine. “Belladonna?”
She nodded. Once.
“How the hell are you alive?” The words exploded from me before I could stop them. “You should be dead!”
Again, she nodded, but this time, it was much more solemn. “I should be. You’re right. You get that dosage ever so slightly wrong, even in Herbology, and you kill your recipient.”
Her words hit their mark. I knew instantly what she was telling me.
“They didn’t put enough in the tea blend,” I said slowly. “It wasn’t strong enough to kill you.”
“Sure wasn’t.” Her eyes glittered despite how awful she obviously felt.
I rolled that around in my brain. It was so easy to kill someone with belladonna. It was the deadliest nightshade around, and even one touch of a root could put someone in literal mortal danger.
Betty Lou Harper should be deader than the ghosts that floated through this town.
Why wasn’t she?
Witches didn’t like to use belladonna. There were a few mixes where it was necessary, and we rarely made those alone. You needed more than one set of eyes to ensure you didn’t go an ounce over the measured ingredient.
Which meant—
“Oh, hell,” I breathed.
Betty Lou’s eyes shone with something warm, and she offered me a weak half-smile. “I assume you’ve reached the same conclusion I have.”
My heart thundered in my chest. If she was thinking what I was thinking, then yes, I had. And that meant things were about to get a whole lot more difficult.
And political.
I stood up, sinking my hands into my hair.
“Avery.”
“It wasn’t a witch.” I turned and met her tired eyes. “If a witch wanted to kill you with belladonna, you’d be dead right now.”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “Yes. Witches are well versed in the nightshade. Even if they wanted to do it over a period of time, a witch would know how much to put in to make it a slow poison.”
My stomach rolled. “A witch wouldn’t mess with belladonna. It’s too dangerous. Not even to torture anyone. We know how dangerous it is.”
“Exactly.” Her eyes were still closed. “Detective Sanders hasn’t figured it out yet, and I doubt he will.”
I swallowed. “I can tell him. He might listen to me.”
“He won’t. He’s stubborn and believes everything is linked to Amelie. I don’t know what happened to her, Avery, but I know one thing. Someone wants me dead. Someone who isn’t a witch wants me dead. And if I wait for Detective Sanders to figure that out, I may as well be dead.”
“Don’t—that won’t happen. We’ll protect you. You know that.”
“Magic doesn’t stop poison, now, does it, sugar? It doesn’t stop bullets or blades.” Her eyes snapped open. “Someone wants to kill me, and I want to know who that is. And I’m going to give you two choices.”
Oh, man.
“Much like your grandmother, you are a witch of immeasurable power, Avery Thorn. I can see it swirling around you even in my weakened state. It is dangerous and unpredictable, but you have absolute control over it, do you not?”
I looked down. “Grandma and Mom taught me as a young child to never let my magic consume me. I knew I was different when Dotty and Nicole exhibited specialties, but I never did.”
“Not having one is your specialty,” Betty Lou said firmly. “Your blood chose you for this power because you are the only one of your line who can control it, and that’s why I’m invoking my power as the Head of the Council to ask you to do something for me.”
I clasped my hands in front of me and met her eyes again. “Ask away.”
“I want you to find who tried to kill me.” She didn’t flinch. “As the Head of the Council of Witches, I will command you if I have to.”
Oh, Jesus.
I couldn’t solve an attempted murder, could I? I didn’t have access to the things the police did. DNA, special magic—none of that was mine.
Yet there was a fire inside me, a burning desire to do just that.
The rivalry my grandmother had with Betty Lou Harper was the stuff of legends, yet here she was, lying in front of me, trusting me with her life.
“I have one condition,” I said brazenly.
“State it.”
“Dotty will be allowed to access any establishment in Haven Lake to use her magic to see what happened. Your house. The government building. Your office. And any other place in the town an investigation might lead me to. She can use her given magic or any spells she deems necessary to see what the universe offers her.”
“Consider it done. Repeat the spell from earlier.”
I repeated it, and asked, “Do you give Dotty Thorn permission to accompany myself, Avery Thorn, to any establishment in the town of Haven Lake in order to work her Seer magic, both natural and spell-induced?”
“I give Dotty Thorn and Nicole Thorn permission to accompany Avery Thorn to any location within the town limits. They have absolute permission from the Head of the Council to use their magic as necessary,” Betty Lou stated firmly.
Spells. Bells.
“Let it be,” I whispered.
“Let it be,” she echoed. The magic dissipated, and she said, “A copy of this agreement will find its way to the Council records and the Sheriff’s office. All people working on this will be notified. Any witches will be informed that any actions designed to stop your investigation will result in them being penalized by the Council.”
This wasn’t commonplace. She had so much power, but to use it all on this…
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Avery, the spell is binding. I am aware of the repercussions of my actions, but almost dying puts some things in perspective. Find who did this to me. I have a feeling you’ll need your cousins to help you. You are a formidable team.” She paused. “Now leave me. I need to rest.”
I stepped back to the door and opened it a crack. “Take care, ma’am.”
And I left the hospital with the weight of the freakin’ world on my shoulders.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MY COUSINS LOOKED at me like I’d lost my mind.
In all honesty, I probably had. Not that I’d had a choice in the decision I’d had to make. If I didn’t agree, Betty Lou would have forced me to do it using her position.
The elder witches in this town had a way of always getting what they wanted.
If Betty Lou wanted me to solve her attempted murder, I’d solve it. At least, I’d do my best. I wasn’t exactly a female Sherlock Holmes. I wasn’t even a Miss Marple.
I had no idea how to do anything.
Something that my cousins apparently also knew.
“What the hell?” Nicole finally said. “She wants us to find out who tried to kill her? What about Amelie?”
“I don’t know, Nic. She only said about her.” I paused. “She didn’t even know Amelie had been killed until she was told.”
“It’s a good thing,” Dotty said, looking over us and out the window. The library, our favorite room, looked out over the peach orchard. “She knows what she’s doing.”
“Avery?” Nicole asked. “Since when has Aves ever known what she’s doing?”
“Betty Lou.” Dotty clicked her tongue and looked at us both. “She’s right. I can see it. We’re needed. The how is obvious, but the when and the where…” She trailed off.
I ran both my hands through my hair. This was a mess. “I just said me,” I said for what felt like the fiftieth time. “I asked for Dotty, but I never expected her to take all three of us. We couldn’t run a party in a bar.”
“Speak for yourself.” Nic flicked her hair over her shoulder. “I could run a party in a monastery.”
“That’s not always something to brag about.” Dotty’s tone was dry. “I need to go to the office building.”
We both jerked to look at her. “Now?” I asked.
She nodded in one harsh move. “Now. There’s something there I need to see. I can feel it.”
Her tone was so solemn and serious that a chill ran down my spine. We’d been taught many things as kids growing up with our level of power, and the one thing I’d learned was that if Dotty made me shiver, serious magic was about to be worked.
“Okay, but you’re taking hematite.” I stood and walked to the cabinet that held the precious stones we sometimes used to help our magic. “We’ll imbue it with the grounding spell so it’s twice as strong.”
Nicole stared at me. “You felt something?”
“A chill,” I confirmed, pulling out the suede bag that housed the hematite.
“Yes.” Dotty’s voice was dreamy again. “Hematite. I need that.”
I met Nicole’s eyes.
Whatever the government building had in store for her was no joke.
Dotty had only ever needed hematite once. Usually, we were enough. The last time she’d needed the stone was when she’d looked back at the battle for the police to see who was responsible for the murders of our parents.
If she was going to head that deep, I was terrified.
• • •
Thirty minutes later, Dotty clutched the hematite in the palm of her hand as we approached the government building. Police tape was everywhere, and a uniformed officer stood at the edge of it.
“You can’t be here,” Tommy Forsyth said. “You’re not police.”
“But, we can.” I handed him the envelope that had been waiting on my bed when I’d arrived home. “Signed and authorized by Head Councilwoman Betty Lou Harper.”
He took the thick envelope and pulled out the obnoxiously official letter. His eyes scanned it behind his nerdy glasses, but his expression didn’t change. “I’ll have to call Detective Sanders. He needs to authorize this.”
“He doesn’t need to authorize a dang thing,” Nicole snapped, stepping forward. “You’re looking at a letter from the Head of the Witch Council.”
“It’s his crime scene,” Tommy said gently.
Cerulean sparks fired off Nicole’s fingers. “What did I just say?”
Dotty reached out, wrapping her fingers around Nicole’s wrist. She tugged her back without a word.
“Call him,” she said simply, flashing him a sweet yet dreamy smile. “He’ll let us in.”
He gave her an uncertain look but walked a few feet away from us to make the call. In less than sixty seconds, he returned with a grim look on his face. “He’s on his way over. He said he’ll be here in five minutes.”
It wouldn’t take him five minutes to get here. He struck me as the kind of man who wasn’t going to let three powerful witches traipse all over his crime scene without full supervision.
He could supervise if he wanted. We weren’t obliged to give him any information. If Dotty could even see anything.
We decided to move away from Tommy so he didn’t feel as though we were hovering over him. We took a seat on the wooden bench that was dedicated to Harmony Haven, the daughter of the town’s founder who drowned in the lake.
“This place is chilling,” Dotty said quietly, staring at the building. “There’s a darkness in it. It’s buried, but there’s a spot here that’s pure evil.”
“Do you think it’s Harmony?” Nicole asked, looking behind us to the shimmering lake.
“No. That was an accident. Accidental deaths don’t hold animosity,” she replied. “There’s a deep-rooted evil in there. I don’t know if I can try to read anything without a circle.”
“Well, in that case…” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of salt sachets. “I can make one.”
Dotty smiled gratefully at me, and we sat in silence until a police cruiser pulled up on the side of the road and Detective Sanders stepped out.
He ignored us completely as he went to Tommy. They held a very stoic and controlled conversation until Sanders looked over at us. A darkness passed over his face, and the feeling that I wasn’t entirely forgiven for my little trick yesterday coiled in my stomach.
Oh well.
I didn’t care if he didn’t want to see me. I didn’t much want to see him either.
With a nod to Tommy, he came over to us. “Ladies. What are you doing here?”
“You know full well what we’re doing here,” Nicol
e snapped. “Unless y’all’s conversation was about the weather.”
His lips twitched as he glanced her way. “I did, but I want to hear it from you.”
I handed him the envelope without a word. “Betty Lou Harper trumps you.”
He didn’t bother to open it. “You can have this back, Avery. I know she holds more power than I do. I got the same letter this afternoon.” He tossed it back onto my lap. “However, there ain’t a chance on this Earth that I’m letting you into my crime scene without supervision.”
“I don’t want any fighting,” Dotty said firmly, taming her hair as she tucked it behind her ear. “I want to get this done with.”
Sanders looked at her for a second. “You need access to her office?”
Dotty nodded.
“Is it…clean?” I bit the inside of my cheek.
“It’s clean,” he replied. “We just aren’t willing to release the building to the public just yet. Come on.”
I folded the envelope and tucked it into the back pocket of my jeans. We followed behind him in a perfect line, one by one, in complete silence. If Dotty didn’t feel good being here, then neither did I.
I trusted her intuitions more than I trusted anything at all. She was never wrong. If she said there was evil in this building, then there was evil in this building.
We took the elevator up to the Witch Council’s floor. I swallowed as the doors opened, and I almost wanted to close my eyes. The vision of Amelie’s body on the floor would always haunt me, and as we stepped out of the elevator, it was all I could see.
“Don’t touch anything,” Detective Sanders said. “I don’t want to have to haul you down to the station to take your prints to rule you out as murderers.”
“We’re not children, Detective,” Nicole drawled.
I glanced over at Dotty. She was silent, her eyes closed. The light pink that usually tinged her cheeks was missing, and I looked at Sanders. “We need to get this done.”
He nodded. “I have the key for her office. I need to remove the wards.”
“You didn’t ward the floor?”
“Of course. I removed them when we were in the elevator, but we added extra protection to Betty Lou’s office.” He waved his hand and produced a key from his pocket. “Again, the same rules apply, don’t touch—”