Outside the interrogation room, I squinted through the blinds to keep an eye on Teagan. She didn’t shy away from staring right back at me.
“It’s weird, right?” I said to Dominic.
He nodded, running a hand through his hair. He did that often, as if it cleared his mind. “It sure is. She’s either delusional, hallucinating, or a really good liar.”
“Or all three,” I said. “I suggested PTSD the first time I spoke to her.”
“What’d she say?”
“Not much of anything. It’s a possibility, right?”
Dominic peered through the blinds. Teagan had folded forward, resting her head on her hands, looking very much as if she’d fallen asleep. “Has she seen a psychiatrist? Is she taking any medications?” he asked.
“She sought therapy after Ronan died,” I said. After my meeting with Teagan yesterday, I’d spent the evening studying her case file, trying to glean whatever information I could from its contents. “No medication that I know of, though.”
“She seems lucid enough,” Dominic said, still observing Teagan through the window.
“Fool me once,” I muttered. Teagan could appear to be lucid all she wanted, but there was still no proof to her story.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move in the interrogation room. I peeked through the blinds, at first only aware of Teagan dozing on the table. Then, when I realized what the true trouble was, I panicked.
Ronan Riley had finally appeared—I recognized his hulking figure from the photos in Teagan’s file—and he was in the process of trying to tip over the large filing cabinet in the interrogation room onto Teagan’s head.
I ripped open the door to the room, shouting, “Teagan, move!”
As the filing cabinet swayed, Dominic sprinted past me and threw himself at Teagan. In one swift movement, he swept Teagan up in his arms and darted to the opposite side of the room. The filing cabinet ricocheted off the desk and onto the floor with an earsplitting bang. The drawers of the cabinet fell open, strewing papers and folders throughout the interrogation room.
“Get her out of here,” I ordered Dominic. Ronan looked pissed, and I didn’t want him to get any other ideas. I spread my arms wide, forming a barrier between Ronan and Teagan. Dominic shouldered the door open, carrying Teagan from the room.
The ruckus had drawn attention. Chief Torres and several other officers gathered at the door to the room, fighting to peek inside. It wasn’t much of a show for them; all they were able to see was Yew Hollow’s paranormal detective talking to what appeared to be thin air.
“What do you want, Ronan?” I asked, trying to keep the ghost’s attention so that he wouldn’t go after Teagan a second time. He glanced over my head as if trying to gauge where Dominic was taking his wife.
Ronan had been a beefy guy with short, dark hair cropped close to his head. He was stocky, built well from head to toe, and hardly taller than me, but his width made up for it. I knew that he was an elementary school gym teacher, but I wasn’t expecting the bulk of the man in front of me. He looked more like a prizefighter than a gym teacher. His square jaw and deep-set eyes were far too intimidating, and it didn’t seem likely that he was capable of interacting with any child who still thought monsters lived under beds. In any case, Ronan seemed surprised that I was staring right at him, so I assumed he wasn’t aware of my particular gift.
“You can see me?” he thundered, confirming my hunch.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I’m a witch. A psychic medium.”
“You’re one of those Summers girls.”
“Yes, I am,” I said, relieved that Ronan seemed more interested in my ability to communicate with him than his mission to kill his wife. My gut twisted with a sad realization. Teagan had been telling the truth, and all I had done was attempt to explain away Teagan’s strange story. How could I have been so closed-minded? This was Yew Hollow, after all, where the paranormal conducted every concert. I just wasn’t used to giving up my director’s baton and podium to a ghost.
“Summers?” Torres said from the doorway. “What’s going on?”
“Teagan wasn’t lying,” I said, keeping a sharp eye on Ronan. He paced from one end of the interrogation room to the other. “He’s here.”
“Ronan Riley?” Torres asked. At the mention of his name, Ronan’s beady eyes homed in on Chief Torres. “He really burned down the house?”
“Did you burn down your house?” I asked Ronan. “Did you try to kill your wife?”
Ronan stopped pacing and faced me. His whole body seemed to bunch up, the muscles in his shoulders evident beneath his Yew Hollow Elementary School T-shirt.
“Yeah, I lit the whole damn place up.”
My stomach clenched. With Ronan’s confession came the confirmation of what I had hoped wasn’t true. Ronan, for whatever reason, could hurt Teagan. He had all the qualities of a normal ghost—he had materialized in the interrogation room out of nowhere, his body was slightly translucent, he walked through the filing cabinet with every pass across the room—but somehow, he had managed to hone his strength and focus it on manipulating the physical world. He wanted to kill his wife, for whatever reason, and I had absolutely no idea how to stop him.
“It was him,” I told Torres.
In an incredulous voice, Torres only responded with an emphatic, “Shit.”
“Ronan,” I said in a soft voice, trying not to rile him up any further. “Why are you trying to kill your wife?”
He planted one foot on the filing cabinet and looked me straight in the eye.
“Because that bitch murdered me.”
Chapter Five
In Which I’m Reluctantly Wooed
“Excuse me?”
I stood in shock for a moment, waiting for some kind of further explanation from Ronan. I’d considered the possibility of Teagan’s involvement with Ronan’s death but dismissed it on the account of Teagan’s instability. It seemed more likely that she was simply suffering from the aftermath of a tragedy. If it was all an act, it sure was a good one.
“She. Murdered. Me.” Ronan enunciated each word as if to drill them into my brain. “She waited until I fell asleep and then dragged me out to the woods and strangled me.”
I rolled my eyes. Already, Ronan’s story sounded fabricated. “How on earth would she be able to do that?” I asked Ronan. “Teagan’s a toothpick, and you must weigh at least two hundred pounds. Besides, don’t you think you probably would’ve woken up during the whole dragging process?”
He kicked the filing cabinet so hard that it rotated and fell to its other side. “I don’t know! She must have drugged me first! You’re the cop. You figure it out.”
“It’d be a whole lot easier if you weren’t continuously trying to kill your wife!” I argued, wondering how I had ended up in a conversation about ethics with a dead guy. “What was your plan there, Ronan? To terrify her to death?”
“It seemed only fair.”
“Fair?” I burst out, incredulous. Dominic had reappeared in the doorway, having pushed his way through the crowd of officers outside the interrogation room. “Revenge isn’t fair. It’s barbaric. And from what I hear, you beat the crap out of Teagan while she was still alive. Why the hell should I believe that she killed you?”
“Because it’s true,” Ronan said with a nonchalant shrug of his massive shoulders. “I never hurt her. She was accident prone and bruised easily, but I guess she needed a convincing reason to trick the police into thinking she was innocent.”
Something in Ronan’s casual tone of voice made me doubt his side of the story. At this point, though, I wasn’t sure whom to believe. We only had Teagan’s word against Ronan’s, and I didn’t know either of them well enough to formulate a theory about the case.
“Look, Ronan, I understand why you’re upset,” I began, waving Dominic off as he crept up behind me.
“You don’t understand anything,” the ghost said. His eyes tracked Dominic
’s every movement.
“Morgan, we should get you out of here,” Dominic muttered in my ear. “There’s nothing stopping him from injuring you next. We should figure out a way to detain him and regroup.”
“Listen to your boyfriend, Summers,” Ronan said with a cold laugh. “Mind your own business, and you won’t get hurt. Good luck with my detainment, though. I doubt there’s a pair of handcuffs that would work on me.”
“Teagan is my business,” I declared. I pushed Dominic toward the door, hoping he would get the hint. I had the advantage of being able to see Ronan should he make a move, but Dominic was basically blind in this situation. If anything, I was the least likely out of everyone to get injured in this situation.
Ronan hurdled the table to stand inches from my face. I took a step back, bumping into Dominic, who held his ground. With my back against Dominic’s chest and Ronan’s face so close to my own, I felt a claustrophobic surge of panic. Dominic’s hands settled on my shoulders, as if he planned to pick me up, just as he had with Teagan, and evacuate me from the room as soon as the situation called for it.
“Teagan’s my wife, not yours,” Ronan said. He jabbed a finger into my chest, hard enough to leave a bruise, as if to prove that he could touch me as well. The contact sent a jolt of fear and anger through me, and I shook Dominic off to confront Ronan.
“Until death do you part,” I said back, refusing to let my expression betray the tumble of emotions inside me. I balled my hands into fists to keep them from trembling. “I hate to break it to you, Ronan, but you’re dead. You’re parted. Get over it, and move on.”
In a flash, Ronan swept one muscled arm across the surface of the interrogation table, sending the spot lamp crashing to the floor. As the light bulb shattered against the upset file cabinet, Ronan disappeared. Behind me, the officers broke out in babbling conversation. Most of them had never seen a ghost in action before. I wondered how strange it must be to watch file cabinets overturn themselves and light bulbs explode for no reason. Even more, I wondered how demented I had appeared to my coworkers whilst furiously arguing with someone invisible to them. I turned to Dominic, who had remained stalwart and steady throughout the incident despite his inability to predict Ronan’s next move.
“Where’s Teagan?” I asked him, trying to slow my breathing.
“I took her to the holding cell,” Dominic said. “She’s not pleased. What now?”
I thought about it for a second. Teagan’s safety was my first priority, at least until we could figure out if Ronan’s accusation had any merit to it or not.
“I need to call my mother,” I said.
Dominic looked confused. “I’m sorry. What?”
Twenty minutes later, I met my mother and sisters outside Teagan’s room at the inn. Dominic stood at the door with his arms crossed, looking more like a bodyguard than a detective. As my family approached, he watched them warily. They were an eclectic foursome, so I could understand his trepidation, but I was more worried about Ronan’s next attempt on Teagan’s life than what Detective Dobbes thought of my strange family. However, I was a little surprised to see Gwenlyn emerge from behind Laurel’s tall figure. Why my mother had decided to bring her along wasn’t exactly a mystery. She was a medium in need of practice, and I had a rebellious ghost on my hands. Still, I disapproved of putting an unknowing teenager in the path of a vindictive spirit.
“Why did you bring her?” I demanded of my mother. Gwenlyn’s face fell as the words left my mouth. “It’s not you, Gwenlyn,” I added hastily. “But this is dangerous stuff. My mother shouldn’t have involved you.”
“She can handle it,” my mother said, reaching up to pat Gwenlyn’s shoulder. “I thought this could be a learning experience.”
“Mom, this isn’t some kind of elementary school field trip,” I said in a low voice, trying hard to not offend Gwenlyn. “This guy is not joking around. He wants to kill Teagan, and he won’t let anyone stop him.”
Gwenlyn stepped in front of Cassandra. “I can handle myself.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “It’s just that—”
Dominic cleared his throat. “Excuse me, ladies, I don’t mean to interrupt,” he said as he leaned over my shoulder. I felt his breath tickle my ear. “But we should probably get started. We wouldn’t want Ronan to get another chance at Teagan before we can pull this off.”
I’d enlisted my mother and sisters to spell Teagan’s room. The Summerses were now experts at protection wards, having had to use them more often since I returned to town the previous autumn. Unfortunately, we couldn’t protect Teagan twenty-four, seven, so she would be under a quasi house arrest until we managed to figure out how to get Ronan to move on.
“And you are?” Cassandra asked Dominic.
“Detective Dominic Dobbes, ma’am.” He shook my mother’s hand with a little bow. “I’m working with Morgan on this case.”
My mother, her hand still in Dominic’s, shifted her gaze toward me, one eyebrow inclined. I could practically see the gears turning in her head. She already thought well of Dominic. It was hard not to, what with his handsome cordiality, but my mother’s approval was the last thing on my mind.
“Dom’s right,” I said, strategically stepping between my mother and Dominic so that she was forced to drop his hand. “We need to do this now.”
I opened the door to Teagan’s room. She sat at the desk, her gaze trained on the television screen. It was playing a series of infomercials, advertising some kind of shoe organizer for the closet, but Teagan’s eyes had glazed over as though she wasn’t really watching. She glanced up as we all filed into her room.
“Teagan, this is Cassandra, Laurel, Malia, Karma, and Gwenlyn,” I said, pointing to each corresponding head in turn. “Everyone, this is Teagan.”
“Nice to meet you all,” Teagan said as she rose from the desk. “Am I in the way?”
I shook my head. “No, it’s a pretty simple spell. It just takes a while to get it set up.”
Cassandra waved a hand, instructing my three sisters to each corner of the room. She passed by Teagan on the way to the fourth corner and took the young woman’s hand in her own.
“I’m so sorry for your loss, dear,” my mother said. Teagan’s breath hitched, and it occurred to me that I had never said anything similar to Teagan. She and her husband may not have been on the best of terms, but she had still lost someone close to her. Apparently, I needed to work on my bedside manner.
As my mother and sisters began setting up the protection ward, I felt the familiar tickle of working witchcraft at the back of my neck. It must’ve translated to the mortals in the room, because Teagan retreated to sit in the kitchenette and Dominic returned to his guard post outside the door. Gwenlyn, however, looked on in earnest interest. My mother sprinkled a black grainy substance around the perimeter of the room.
“What’s she doing?” Gwenlyn asked me.
“It’s black salt,” I said, pulling Gwenlyn away from the wall as my mother continued her path around the room. “A mixture of yew ash and sea salt. It helps set the ward.”
“Oh.”
As soon as the black-salt border was complete, the room fell suddenly quiet, as if it had sealed itself off from the outside world. I couldn’t hear the cars passing by outside anymore, or Dominic’s pacing footsteps beyond the door. It was a good sign. It meant that the protection ward would hold well in Teagan’s room. In tandem, my mother and sisters began to draw symbols in the air. Craft appeared at the end of their fingers, like miniature fireworks, a different color to match each witch’s independent aura. Teagan watched in awe, following the movement of Laurel’s golden craft, which was closest to her.
“Why aren’t you helping?” Gwenlyn asked me. She leaned against the wall, careful not to step in the line of black salt.
“I’m out of practice,” I admitted, watching as Laurel’s craft joined with Karma’s lilac essence. For several years, the only kinds of witchcraft I had used were related to my abilit
ies as a medium. Other than that, I had abandoned the practice of rituals and spells. It occurred to me that I should probably brush up on the other aspects of my magic. It seemed that, more and more often, a comprehensive knowledge of my family’s power would come in handy during my time with Yew Hollow’s police force. “Protection wards aren’t really my thing anyway. I can work wonders with a Ouija board, though.”
“Cassandra told me you conjured a protection ward so big that you saved the entire town last fall,” she said. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that she had turned to face me, rather than observing the magic around her.
“That was a fluke,” I said, crossing my arms. “I channeled that ward through the yew tree. That huge one in the town square? I wouldn’t have been able to do that without the yew tree’s help.”
“How can a tree channel power?”
I shrugged. Explaining how witchcraft worked had never been my forte. I hardly understood it myself. It was far from an exact science. So much of it depended on the witch’s own personality, interpretation of symbols, the objects a witch chose to channel her craft through, and a myriad of other things.
“Nature is one of the strongest powers out there,” I said. “Yew trees especially have a lot of impact on our craft, particularly in this town. They’re said to afford us protection and everlasting life.”
“Do you believe in that?”
“Well, I’ve only been back here for about six months, and I’ve already seen enough death to last me a lifetime,” I said. A whirlwind of purple, blue, and gold craft breezed by my face, sweeping my hair away from my neck. Beside me, Gwenlyn swayed and took a deep breath, as if she could inhale the soothing effects of the protection ward.
With everyone distracted, I glanced over at Teagan. She too seemed enthralled by the magic in the room, watching wide eyed as my family’s craft spread through the room like a spider’s web. I nudged Gwenlyn. An idea had popped into my head.
“Would you be willing to do something for me?” I asked her.
Witch Myth Omnibus: A Yew Hollow Cozy Mystery Page 5