Witching The Night Away: A Cozy Mystery (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 3)

by Constance Barker

  “We still have to run the bakery,” Chloe said. “It will take both of us to do it.”

  “Maybe Avery could—”

  “No,” Chloe said. “No, it will be better to keep Avery out of… this part of it. Please obey me in this. I promise to tell you everything you want to know when this is all resolved.”

  “I feel like I’ve heard that before,” Bailey said.

  Chloe put the spell book away, and locked the chest.

  “I know you have,” she said when she stood. “Things are a little different now. Now that you… know.”

  “Right,” Bailey said. “Well… maybe I can visit Ryan by now. See how he’s doing. Let me know when we’re ready.”

  “Of course,” Chloe said.

  Bailey began to leave but before she did, she turned back to Chloe. “One last thing… Professor Turner’s research. He said that he thought the Caves were somehow linked to Stonehenge. That they were part of a network of doors that had been locked, a long time ago. He said that he was looking for the key. He thought the doors led to another world. Was he right?”

  “Did he, now?” Chloe asked softly. She glanced around the room. “Then we’ll talk about that, too. Later.”

  Bailey sighed. “Can you just give it to me in six words or less? Just so it’s not eating me alive while I wait?”

  Chloe pursed her lips, and then nodded. “You’ll learn details later that I can’t tell you now. Not because I don’t want to, but because I am under a geas that… see? I can’t even talk about it sideways.” She sighed, and considered for a moment. Finally, when she did speak, she only said six words, taking Bailey’s request to heart.

  “He was trying to find Faery.”

  Chapter 14

  Bailey begged a ride from Avery, and he obliged by dropping her off at the sheriff’s department. He made no comment on being denied access to the Coven’s sanctum, but he did ask how it went.

  “I don’t know,” Bailey told him honestly. “But you were right. It was one of them. Chloe.”

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Bailey only shook her head.

  The rest of the drive was in silence, and Bailey preferred it that way at the time. Afterward, when Avery and Aiden left, she wished that she’d said more. The problem with that, though, was that if she had started talking she might not have stopped.

  Part of what she’d been taught about how to control her particular gift, and how to access and utilize her magic in general was a degree of emotional control. She fell back on those exercises now, seeking her calm center, trying to connect to the Earth beneath her feet, and feeling the vast ocean of power both within her and in the land, and in the actual ocean not half a mile away. It almost helped.

  The wait was short, or at least, it seemed that way. In truth, it was over an hour but all the things going on in her mind despite her best attempt to quiet them made the time pass quickly. She sat in the bench in the station, staring toward the floor but not really at it. She was looking inward, watching the flares and currents of emotion and speculation take place there.

  Chloe was her mother. It all came back to that. Again and again, like a record with a scratch on it, resetting every few turns to start the same thirty seconds over again.

  Already, of course, she had a second question. One that, for some reason, had never pressed her quite as hard. Maybe because she had always been closer to Wendy than to Ryan.

  Who was her real father? Did he know she’d been adopted? Or even that she’d been born? Chloe wasn’t married. She wasn’t even seeing anyone, as far as Bailey knew. Was her father also here in town? Or had he been passing through? Had Bailey been conceived in love or something else?

  Chasing these questions gave her no more answers than she expected them to, but she chased them anyway, compulsively, until a deputy tapped her on the shoulder. Seamus Jackson, again, his expression sympathetic. “You can visit with him now,” he said. “If you want to.”

  “Thank you,” Bailey said dully. She followed him through a door he had to have buzzed from the little stall nearby, and then through it to the plain cell where Ryan was kept. There was a guard, but he was at the end of the short hallway of cell doors, reading a paper.

  Bailey reached out to touch Ryan’s hands on the bars of the cell.

  Seamus stopped her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Rules. You can’t touch.”

  “It’s okay,” Ryan said when Bailey turned a baleful eye on Seamus. He took his hands away from the bars.

  “Can we speak in private?” Bailey asked, not looking at Seamus.

  “Sure,” he said. “I have to stay, but I can wait at the door.”

  He left when she nodded that this was fine, and when he was far away, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “We’re going to fix all of this,” she said. “We’ve already figured out part of it. The Coven ladies are going to help, and so is Aiden.”

  Ryan didn’t look quite as excited about it as Bailey would have expected. How much brighter could things look than having a small platoon of magic wielders on your case?

  “I’ve been thinking,” Ryan said, matching her volume. “The thing of it is… about half of those old cases I was investigating? They involved… some degree of memory loss.” It was obviously hard for him to even say the words. “In three cases, the suspects that were ultimately convicted claimed not to even remember committing the crimes.”

  “So?” Bailey asked. “They were still crimes of passion, you said—right?”

  “All but the one, yes,” Ryan admitted. “But even so. If I were discounting entirely the involvement of magic and this strange force you say inhabits the caves, I would be inclined to think that all of this must be wrong. And I do,” he added quickly when Bailey began to argue, “but I have to consider a wider view none the less.”

  “Don’t say anything else,” Bailey told him. “Please, Dad.”

  He shook his head sadly. “You can’t do me any good by being biased,” Ryan told her, firmly. “The facts. That is the only thing that matters.”

  “How can I not be biased?” She asked, incredulous. “I know, for a fact, that you didn’t do this. I’ve seen inside your head, Dad. Just for a moment. You were shocked and confused when they arrested you; I was there.”

  “And yet,” Ryan told her, “If I didn’t remember having done it, wouldn’t I react the same way? The facts of this situation are… arguably more complicated, perhaps, but the possibility remains. I cannot say, with final authority, that some force did not compel me to act.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Bailey asked warily. She nearly took a step back from the cell door.

  “Because,” Ryan said, “if I am… susceptible to some kind of influence then I…” His voice tightened, and he had to clear his throat. “I need to be able to be sure that you are safe from me.”

  Bailey, horrified that he could think such a thing, ignored the rules and reached through the bars to take Ryan’s hand. “Never say that,” she said. “Never again. I know that you would never hurt me. And if you had been under some kind of influence then I would know.”

  “Would you?” He asked.

  Bailey almost repeated herself—of course she would—but paused. Surely, there was a way to know but if there was, she had to admit she didn’t know it.

  Ryan sighed. “If you can exonerate me,” he said, “then you will. But if not, Red—if the evidence just isn’t there—then you need to be able to accept that I might have done it. I might have killed Professor Turner.”

  Bailey fumed on her walk back from the station, but those fumes managed to wear themselves out by the time she made it to downtown Coven Grove. She sat on a bench near the small park at the center of town. The library, bakery, and tour office were all on one side of Coven Grove, and as a consequence, she rarely had a reason to come here.

  It was bustling with activity, with parents and their children, with young lovers, with the day-to-day traffic that passed through it in its way t
o the opposite side of Coven Grove. All if it moved right along, just like it always did, either unaware or uncaring that the whole world was wrong.

  She hadn’t been there long when someone laid a hand on her shoulder. Bailey looked up to see Piper giving her a sad smile. She came around the bench and lowered herself carefully on to it. Riley was with her. He jumped up from Bailey’s other side, roaring like a tiny would-be lion. He grinned when Bailey managed to feign shock and fear.

  “Go play,” Piper told her son. He toddled off, but not far, and Piper watched him as she spoke. “I heard about Ryan.”

  “He didn’t do it,” Bailey said.

  Piper looked hurt. “What? Of course he didn’t, Bails. I know that.”

  “Sorry,” Bailey said. “Lately it seems everyone has a doubt. Even him.”

  “Ryan’s not sure he didn’t do it?” Piper asked.

  Bailey caught her up, and in response, Piper visibly shivered.

  “Is it possible?” She asked. “Not that he did it—I’m certain he didn’t—but that someone could be… you know, compelled?”

  Bailey considered that she’d just recently compelled someone on accident to act against his or her own wishes. Or at least, against the rules. Maybe there were limits to what she could make a person do, even if she did know how to control it. “I can’t say for sure,” she said. “Maybe. But even if that were the case, even if someone could be compelled to kill someone else, that isn’t the case here.”

  “So, what do you think happened?” Piper sighed, and shouted at her son, “Riley, that’s not food. Take that out of your mouth.” He’d picked up a bit of bark to chew on. Riley gave the bit of bark a curious look, and then stuffed it in his pocket.

  “What I think,” Bailey said when Piper seemed satisfied her son was not going to pick up another piece to chew on, “is that someone killed the professor for his research. They took something from him. A little notebook.”

  “Any idea who?” Piper asked.

  “No one that I feel I’m properly objective enough to evaluate,” Bailey said. She rubbed her eyes. She was tired, and thinking clearly was hard enough under the circumstances before adding fatigue to the mix. “I know Aiden’s been examining the caves. But it seems to me he wouldn’t help us solve the crime if he’d done it; and besides that, I think Turner would have just talked to him about it. One of the… geeze. I forgot, I haven’t told you.” Bailey groaned.

  “Told me what?” Piper asked.

  “I’m not the only witch in town,” Bailey said. “There’s a coven. The ladies at the bakery. Oh, and one of them is my real mother. Chloe Minds. Surprise.”

  Piper’s mouth dropped, and she took her eyes off Riley for a long moment to stare at Bailey. She recovered quickly enough, though. Riley was the sort of kid you couldn’t take your eyes off for very long.

  She didn’t say anything in response, though. Bailey almost went on about how each of the coven ladies had a potential reason to kill Turner if it meant protecting the caves, even though, again, she just didn’t think any of them would have.

  But there was an elephant in the space between them that seemed, for the moment, more important. “You know, Avery talked to me,” Bailey said. “About what’s been bothering you.”

  “I figured he did,” Piper said, her voice flat; not angry, not relieved.

  “I know there probably isn’t much I can do about it,” Bailey went on, “but I want you to know that I do love you. And Riley, and Gavin. And this little guy or gal.” Piper and Gavin hadn’t known if Riley would be a boy or a girl, purposefully keeping the secret from themselves. They were doing the same with their second child. “That hasn’t changed.”

  “I don’t expect it to,” Piper said. “But you have to admit that I’m seeming a little less than… I don’t know, useful?”

  “You don’t have to be useful to be a friend,” Bailey said. She almost winced when the words came out.

  “Thanks,” Piper said dryly.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Bailey told her. “I mean that… what do I mean?” She thought about it this time, careful with her words. When she continued, it was slowly. “Magic doesn’t make you special. Not really. It just means your life is significantly more complicated. New frustrations, new worries, and new disasters you have to constantly watch out for.”

  “So if you could,” Piper said, “you’d give it up? Hand it back to whatever twist of fate gave it to you?”

  “No,” Bailey had to admit, if she was going to be honest about it with her friend. “No, I wouldn’t. Parts of it are amazing. But you have a family, Piper. What if having magic meant you had to give them up? Or worse, it put them in danger? What if being a mother and being a witch, for instance, are mutually exclusive?”

  Watching Riley play, Bailey had a moment of strange, deep longing and dread, all mixed together with unexpected sympathy for Chloe. What if that was the case? What if that was why Chloe had given her up? What did it mean for her, for Bailey? She was a long way from wanting children—a long, long way away as far as she knew—but what if that changed?

  Piper glanced at her sideways, her mouth a thin line, her eyebrows rumpled into a crease. “You shouldn’t think things like that,” she said.

  “Can you read thoughts now?” Bailey asked wryly.

  “Not everyone’s,” Piper said. “Just yours. I can’t help how I feel. I’ve tried not to, really; I have. I’m trying right now. I think maybe there’s a reason people like me—people without magic—aren’t supposed to know that it exists, if that’s the reason it’s kept a secret. Knowing it is torture if you don’t have it.”

  “Sometimes having it is torture, too,” Bailey muttered. “Makes you wonder what good it is.”

  “Maybe,” Piper conceded. She blew out a long breath, and rubbed her stomach slowly, a pained look on her face.

  Bailey’s adrenaline dropped, and she sat bolt upright. “What is it?” She asked.

  Piper laughed at her a little, quietly, and waved a hand. “Brackston Hicks contractions,” she said. “Nothing serious. I got them with Riley for months before he was born.”

  Though she relaxed, Bailey didn’t take her eyes off Piper.

  “I suppose,” Piper said, “I’m sorry that magic isn’t more… good, or something. I guess in a way it’s like having a child. From the outside it looks magical and beautiful and like your days are filled with endless wonder.”

  “Are they not?” Bailey wondered, watching as Riley took his precious sliver of bark out of the pocket of his little pants and traded it to another child for a leaf.

  “Oh they are,” Piper said. “They absolutely are. But they’re also stressful, and messy—so, so messy—and you never really sleep again, you only doze while you keep one ear open for any sound of distress. And it consumes your entire life, almost, and makes you feel like your destiny is no longer yours, and that you’re no longer even sexy because now you’re a mom, and mom’s aren’t sexy, they’re maternal. Life becomes an endless river of pee and poo and you can’t even call them piss and shit anymore because little ears are listening now. There is a force greater than you that now rules your life and it is so small, so tiny, that it seems impossible that it can wield that sort of power. But it does.”

  Bailey pulled Piper to her and hugged her tight. “You know,” she said, “other than the pee and poo, magic is pretty much like that.”

  “Well then,” Piper said, “you can keep it, I guess. I only have room for one destiny. Maybe once this one is out of the house.” She rubbed her pregnant belly thoughtfully.

  “So,” she said a moment later, “Ryan. Is there anything I can do?”

  Bailey shook her head. “And not because you don’t have magic. I’m just not even sure what to do next.”

  “And your mom—Chloe, geeze; I should have known, she’s adored you for ages—are things…” she hunted for the word, “…good?”

  “Not yet,” Bailey said.

  “Can I offer some u
nsolicited advice that’s going to seem really pushy and like I’m putting my nose where it doesn’t belong?”

  Bailey chuckled, and then nodded. “Please do.”

  “The only reason I would every give Riley up, or this one,” Piper said, “is if I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone else would give them not just a better life, but the only chance at life they had.

  “Chloe’s not an addict, or a drunk,” she said, “but if she’s a witch, like you, then maybe she had some other reason I can’t imagine. I didn’t know her twenty years ago, obviously, but she couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen herself and believe me—I know about being pregnant at that age. If I’d been, I don’t know, tangled up in something as serious as the sorts of things you deal with, well… maybe I would have made the same decision. Who knows?”

  “I hear you,” Bailey said. “I do. It’s just hard not to be angry.”

  “Of course it is, Bails,” Piper said. “That’s probably part of the process. But you can be angry and open minded, if you try. Find out why, and try to imagine being in her shoes. That’s all I’m saying. I wouldn’t expect Riley to understand the reasons I made a decision like that, if I had to. He’s just a kid; still too innocent to know what it would mean.”

  “I’m an adult,” Bailey pointed out.

  Piper shook her head. “Not all of you. When something like that happens, there’s a part that stays a little kid. It’s in all the best parenting books and believe me, I have read them all.”

  “Well, if it’s in a book,” Bailey said.

  “Go play with Riley,” Piper said. “It’ll make you feel better. Trust me. Kids have magic all their own.”

  “Maybe,” Bailey said. “If so, maybe he can teach me the spell. That’d be real useful to have in my pocket.”

  “Ask him,” Piper said. “He’s talking, sort of. You might be surprised at what he has to say.”