Hex Marks the Spot

by Madelyn Alt

  Only I had seen the strangeness in her eyes…and only I suspected that her final, forceful hex had been intended to kill.

  Hester had done nothing illegal that afternoon. But was she innocent of wrongdoing?

  Of one thing I was certain—I would never look at innocence in quite the same way ever again.

  When the story behind Luc Metzger’s murder was released to the public, it spread across town like wildfire, blazing trails along telephone wires and burning up the cellular airwaves. Some claimed to be shocked by the very nature of Louisa Murray’s admissions. It was too much for them to absorb—the knowledge that a respectable woman, a churchgoing woman, could have earthly needs that could consume her mind in such a way as to drive her to the greatest sin of all. The women of the Ladies Auxiliary of St. Catherine’s, of course, claimed to have suspected her true nature all along. After all, not a one had truly forgotten her previous fall from grace while her poor, sick husband had been rotting away in his bed. Lust was one thing. But even my mother could not forgive a woman who could present a saintly face to the world while pursuing a man who belonged to another woman.

  Community saints are held to higher standards than the rest of us. They should never admit to having…needs.

  But Louisa’s needs had been suppressed far too long. Was Luc’s death something that had been predestined? An event set into motion by the wheels of fate long ago? Some would blame the restrictive environment Louisa had been trying to escape when she left home at the age of seventeen to marry her much older husband. Could she ever have been happy with someone twice her age? And his illness must have been quite a blow, striking in the prime of her life.

  Because if she had had needs before, they most certainly didn’t die when he did.

  It must have seemed so innocent when the infatuation first hooked her. Luc’s was the kind of male beauty that’s rare, and rare equals precious to many people. Rare meant desirable. Prized. Something worth having. From the safety of the house, from the safety of the woods, Louisa had watched Luc while he worked, becoming more and more captivated. She followed him, trailed him, hunted him. And she persuaded herself that he had appeared in her life for a reason. He was there to make her forget all the disappointments and regrets of her past. He was brought there by God to make things better.

  Luc was meant to be hers.

  Eventually she had become so convinced of these things that nothing mattered, except being with him. She became a victim of the lies she told herself.

  Yes, I could feel sorry for Louisa. I could pity her. I could understand her.

  But forgiveness? That was another thing entirely.

  How could anyone forgive a woman who had relentlessly pursued a married man who innocently happened across her path? A man with a wife and small children, who did everything he could to gently turn away her embarrassing advances? A man with a history of temptation, though Louisa probably didn’t know that. She knew only that she needed, and she wanted, and didn’t she deserve some happiness in her life? And so she’d taken pictures of him as he’d worked on her barn, and she’d enticed, and she’d pursued. For months. And when it became clear that she could never have the beautiful, young, vital man that she wanted to fill the physical void she felt in her life, she lured him to her home under the pretense of another job that needed tending to. She tried one last time to seduce him, and failed. All the way back through the darkening woods she pleaded with him to see beyond their age difference, to see her for the pleasure she could give him. And when he refused her, his face hard with disgust, she snapped. She seized the hammer from the toolbox he held, and she swung it. She took his life in the torment and aching agony of her own desperation.

  So, no, forgiveness was too much to ask. I would leave that to Luc Metzger’s fellow Amish, who in the coming months would lobby the court for mercy to be shown to Louisa.

  They were much better at forgiveness than I was. I was going to have to work on that.

  Hester, of course, was not in attendance. Perhaps she needed to work on that, too.

  Epilogue

  It was two weeks since Louisa Murray had been taken into custody for the murder of Luc Metzger, and the mood in town had lightened considerably. People waved at passersby from their newly tidied lawns and smiled at each other at the grocery store. Even the sky looked bluer, and the sun was somehow brighter. Sunnier. And of course the weather had warmed even more as spring tightened its hold on the earth.

  Such short memories we all had.

  The weekend after Louisa’s arrest I’d gone to Easter Mass with my mother, knowing it would make her happy. But as I sat in the pew in my Sunday best, going through the motions while the priest talked about faith and rebirth and redemption, I could hear only the echoes of what had been stirred up in Stony Mill, and I was left to wonder why. Why here? Why now? What had we all done to deserve to be put through this? Three murders. Three murders in six months. Were they over? Was the thing that had brought this misery to us satisfied? Was it done?

  The sky was blue. The sun was bright. The world was still turning. We had to act as though nothing was wrong, pick up the pieces, and go on with our lives. Because that’s what we do, we who are left behind.

  We survive.

  None of that mattered today, on this Beltane Eve, as dozens of Liss’s friends from near and far gathered to celebrate the Maying, the quickening and blossoming of the Earth.

  “How do I look?” I asked Liss as I held my hands up to the wreath of flowers pinned atop my head. Ribbons dripped down my back to the waist of my plain white cotton dress. I felt like a girl again, fresh and untried, and not the young, quasi-sophisticated, semi-worldly woman I was supposed to be. A girl with daisies in her hair.

  Liss smiled at me, as beautiful as ever in a simple sheath of pure silver, a color that echoed the elegant streaks in her auburn hair. “Gorgeous, of course, ducks. Are you sure you don’t mind coming tonight?”

  Tonight was the celebration of May Day that Liss was holding in the beautiful sacred glen on her property, where she held her very personal outdoor rituals. May Day—Beltane, some call it still, a remnant of the Old Ways

  , the fifth Sabbat on the wheel of the year. Beltane, fire festival of fertility, of personal growth, of love and passion. This would be my first true experience of a real witchy ritual, something that went beyond Liss’s and Marcus’s N.I.G.H.T.S. meeting circles. I didn’t know quite what to expect, but I knew I wasn’t afraid. Not of Liss.

  Marcus, on the other hand…

  Forcing Marcus from my thoughts for the time being, I shook my head, smiling at Liss. “I’m so glad you invited me.”

  “Good.” Liss paused, considering me. A twinkle appeared in her eyes. “You know, Maggie, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while now.”

  “Is there?” I stuck another pin into the wreath of flowers, determined that it would stay in place through the night. It was too pretty not to.

  “Mmm. There really isn’t a good way to say this, so I suppose the best way is simply to come right out and ask you. Maggie, how are things between you and Tom? Settled? Or no?”

  I blinked into the eyes that were peering so inquisitively into mine in the mirror. “Uh…well…I don’t know quite how to answer that.”

  “In situations like this, brutal honesty is the only sensible approach.”

  She was asking me to be sensible when I could hardly make out my own feelings. I thought about Tom, about how much closer he had come to trusting me—and how much farther we still had to go. “The truth is…they’re not settled. Not really. Oh, I think he might like them to be, and sometimes, so would I…and yet there’s always something there, holding us back,” I confided, feeling a rush of relief in the doing. “Bothof us. Even when I think we’ve worked beyond things.” Case in point, the Easter dinner with my family that Tom had skipped out on, much to my mother’s disappointment. Something else had come up to claim Tom’s attention, which left me wondering just
how ready he was for any serious relationship. Maybe being single was too new for him. Maybe he was clueless to a woman’s needs. Maybe he was already married to his job as a cop and didn’t have the guts to tell me.

  Sigh.

  I straightened my spine, determined not to let ghosts, even those haunting relationships, ruin my evening. “Anyway, there you have it,” I said. “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  “So help you Goddess?” she said, twinkling again.

  “So mote it be,” I answered, more at ease now with the solemn plea than ever before. I paused a moment, then cocked my head in her direction. “As long as we’re in the mood for an honest exchange…”

  “Aye?”

  “How are things between you and Marcus? Settled? Or no?”

  She gazed at me for several moments, surprise in her wise blue eyes. Just when I was sure I had overstepped my bounds, she threw her head back and let loose a great long peal of laughter. “Oh, my dear,” she said at last, wiping the tears from her eyes, “I’m very sorry, but…what on earth ever made you think that?”

  My mouth fell open. “You mean…?”

  “Never. Not once. Oh, Marcus is a wonderful friend whom I would trust with my life, but good Goddess, he’s young enough to be my son.” She chuckled again, long enough that my cheeks started to burn.

  We sat in silence for a few minutes, each absorbed in her own thoughts. I had no idea what Liss was thinking, but I was surfing back through wave after wave of memory, going back over all the times I had ever seen Liss and Marcus together, trying to determine how I had become so certain that they were seeing each other.

  Liss cleared her throat. “So. Would the question you asked have a motive behind it? Oh, I might as well come straight out and say this, too. Maggie, are you by any chance attracted to Marcus?”

  “No!” I bit my lip. “No, no. Well, I mean, he’s a wonderful friend, and I would trust him with my life, but…”

  But what? He was too scary? Too forbidden?

  Too much everything.

  I swallowed hard. “Nope, not me.”

  Liss smiled at me and went back to tidying her hair. “Oh. That’s too bad.”

  I couldn’t let that just pass, could I? “Why? Why is that too bad?” I asked, trying not to sound too curious.

  She just shrugged and went about her business. I figured that if she could, I should be able to do the same.

  Of course I hadn’t seen Marcus yet, so I had no idea that the sight of him garbed in nothing more than narrow leather breeches was going to affect me so strongly.

  My heartbeat caught in my throat as he stalked up to the altar as Liss’s high priest. He had an almost animalistic grace and power. His dark hair was loose around his shoulders, shining in the golden light of the May fire. His naked chest, dusted lightly with dark hair, was drawn with spirals that led into twisting vines that traversed the length of his abdomen and (steady now) even lower. His cheek had the bewitching mark of a dragon, breathing the fire of life. His eyes glittered like blue topaz in the firelight as he met my gaze over the altar. I couldn’t breathe, but felt no need to. It was enough to be swept along on the eddies and gusts of the breath of life that was being celebrated with the night’s ritual.

  The earth tonight was blooming anew. Stony Mill was blooming anew as well. In time, perhaps, so would I.

  When the ritual was done, someone broke out a set of Celtic pipes; someone else, a deep-timbred drum. Lilting music soon filled the air, and with it came dancing. And laughter. Lots of laughter.

  I wasn’t surprised when Marcus appeared beside me, as silent as a panther approaching his prey. “Hey,” I said softly.

  “Hey back.”

  “You’ve been away.”

  “Duty calls sometimes.”

  I nodded.

  “Dance?”

  I glanced up in surprise and found his hand extended in offer.

  His teeth flashed wolfishly in the muted light. “I’m not going to bite you, you know.”

  Embarrassed that he had caught the gist of my thoughts, I made a face but accepted his hand. It felt warm and hard beneath mine.

  It was just a dance…

  “Unless you want me to.”

  Uhhhh…

  I cleared my throat. “I’m not really sure how to dance to music like this.”

  He spun me around into his arms and locked me into place. His eyes bored into mine. “Just move your feet to the music…and enjoy.”

  I could do that.

  So on this warm spring night, while most of Stony Mill was asleep in their beds or finishing a beer to the chatter of late-night comedians, a few of us celebrated in the Old Ways, the way people had done for eons. Embracing the new and chasing away the old shadows with music and fire and laughter.

  It was a survivor’s way.

  It was the only way.