I only wished I could have gone to Samara’s funeral, but she didn’t have one. Her body had been cremated, and the funeral home had shipped her ashes out of state. I knew that because when I’d called about attending her funeral, the funeral director had told me.
A couple of cars were already parked on the side of the road that ran through the cemetery. A handful of people sat in the metal chairs the funeral home had put out for the service. The staff from the funeral home was busy arranging flowers and getting the casket in place.
Strong gusts kept blowing through and knocking the flowers over until they just brought them all back inside the blue tent over the casket. There would only be room inside the tent for a few people if the sky opened up and a real downpour started.
I didn’t want to get caught out there, so I stayed in the car and contemplated just watching the whole thing from the safety and comfort of my vehicle. But, after a few more people arrived, someone saw me. Betty Harker started to wave at me furiously, and she didn’t stop until I got out of the car. I had Laney’s stroller in the trunk of the car because I didn’t intend to carry her around in the sling for the entire service. I wouldn’t have minded at all, but I figured the canopy over the stroller would keep her dry if it did begin to rain.
Plus, if I had her in the sling against my chest, any conversations I had might keep her awake. In the stroller, she could sleep uninterrupted since the funeral would be a quiet affair.
It wasn’t a packed service, but a few more people showed up. Some of them must have been family from out of town because I didn’t recognize them.
The funeral was a short one. The funeral director gave a standard eulogy, and none of Mercy’s family stepped up to speak. The casket was open, and once the director finished his speech, he invited people up to say goodbye before they closed it.
I stayed back as a short line of people walked up and said their goodbyes. One or two of them kissed her cheek or touched her hand. An older woman that I guessed was Mercy’s mother or a close aunt put flowers in her hands.
The last person to step up to the casket was a man. I wouldn’t have taken much notice of him, but he kept looking around. Instead of focusing on Mercy, he was scanning.
Hairs on the back of my neck stood up. While I could have been wrong, I would have sworn he was making sure no one was watching him.
Just before he stepped away, I watched him slide his hand into the casket. He appeared to reach in between the side of the coffin and Mercy’s body as if he were grabbing something, but when he pulled his hand back out, it was empty.
It was strange.
Then it dawned on me. He might have put something in there with her. Something he couldn’t put on top where others could see. Obviously, that wouldn’t be jewelry, flowers, or a photograph. That was all stuff people normally placed with the deceased.
He looked around again, and then hurried off. I’d only caught the briefest glimpse of his profile as he’d turned his head from side to side, and while the man seemed somewhat familiar, I couldn’t place him.
But as suspicious as he was acting, I had to know what he’d put in the casket with Mercy. Unfortunately, as soon as he, the last person in the line of mourners, stepped away, the funeral home staff began to close the casket.
So, I did what any sane, rational person would do. I yelled, “Hey!” and started running toward them.
Everyone turned and looked at me. Someone got out their phone and started recording as I tried to run up and stop them from closing the casket while I was pushing Laney’s stroller.
Oh, and Meri was in the stroller too. At least most of the people there were probably witches.
Not the one recording my tomfoolery.
Not the one who called the police either.
The funeral home staff looked horrified by my actions, but they quickly backed away. Someone gasped as I began rooting around in the casket looking for whatever the man had dropped.
Someone else began to cry, and I felt horrible, but I also knew that I needed to find the mystery object. My intuition was pinging like crazy, and of course it would never lie to me.
Jeremy must have been nearby, because about the time that I pulled the key out of the casket, his cruiser turned into the cemetery. For whatever reason, law enforcement neve seem to get out of their car right away when there’s no emergency. So, by the time Jeremy was getting out of his cruiser, I’d pushed Laney’s stroller back over to my car and was putting her in her car seat.
“What on earth are you doing, Kinsley?” he asked me as I folded Laney’s stroller and stuffed it in the trunk. “I got a call that someone, whose description matches you, was tampering with the deceased at this funeral.”
I couldn’t tell him about the key. If I did, he’d take it and probably arrest me.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said as I closed the trunk. “Why would someone be messing around with the body at a funeral? That’s just weird.”
“Kinsley, I need to talk to you about this,” Jeremy said as I opened the driver’s door and started to get in.
“There’s nothing to talk about. Hey, tell Thorn to meet me at Samara’s house,” I said before shutting the door and driving off.
“What?” Jeremy called after me. “He’s already…”
But I was too far away to hear the rest of it. At the very least, I figured that if Jeremy didn’t call Thorn, he’d get in his car and follow me to Samara’s house. Which normally I wouldn’t want, but I knew at that point, I shouldn’t go there alone.
You see, the thing the man had dropped into Mercy’s casket was a small key, like maybe for a chest or trunk, with an address tag on it. Samara’s address. The man had wanted the key to be buried with Mercy, and I needed to know why.
Chapter Thirteen
There.
That’s the part I’d missed. Jeremy was trying to tell me that Thorn was already at Samara’s house. I saw his cruiser parked out front as soon as I pulled up.
He must have had some sort of break in the case, and I felt my heart leap with excitement. We could find the chest, open it up, and all of Samara’s secrets would come pouring out. The reason she died had to be there.
I took Laney out of her car seat and got her quickly settled in her sling. She began to fuss a little as we walked up to the house, so I quietly sang her a song.
“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” did the trick, and I could have sworn I heard her let out a tiny laugh as I hummed the tune a second time. That would have to be impossible, though, because she was far too young to laugh.
Samara’s front door was wide open, and I called out to Thorn as I walked through. “Sweetie, are you in here?”
That was the first time I picked up the faint scent of smoke. It was just enough that I knew something was burning somewhere but not enough to make me think the house was on fire.
For some reason, I pictured a fire going in the fireplace. “Thorn,” I called out again.
Laney fussed just as I heard a car pull up outside. Jeremy had followed me after all.
But when I went outside, it wasn’t Jeremy’s cruiser. My stomach clenched as the man from the produce section at the store, and later from the funeral, got out of a gray sedan.
“Just the people I wanted to see,” he said with an overzealous smile that didn’t reach his eyes. It was almost maniacal, and it made my blood run cold.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I have many names,” he said and stepped toward me.
“So, you’re a demon?” I asked.
“No,” he said with a chuckle. “Nothing like that. You can call me… Zane. Yeah, that will work. I like it.”
“Okay, Zane,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
Laney let out a loud wail, and Zane flinched.
“Well, looks like I chose correctly, but we’re going to have to move fast. She’s got a set of lungs on her,” Zane said.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Isn’t it obvious by now? You really must be tired if you haven’t put it all together yet.”
Meri had been standing quietly at my feet. He charged at Zane, but the man just kicked him and sent him flying off to the side. I knew Meri couldn’t die, but dang, if people could stop hurting him, that would have been great.
Meri got up and shook it off. He circled the man like a shark but kept his distance.
“What do you want?” I asked. “Why are you… why are we here?”
“Fine, I’ll explain it,” he said. “You keep waiting for your husband to appear, but he’s tied up inside. He’s not going to help you, Kinsley. So, I guess we have time for a monologue.”
I rolled my eyes, but if he noticed, it didn’t stop him.
“I’m going to sacrifice your child to get to her lifeforce and then I’m going to use your body to bring back my dead lover,” Zane said with a shrug.
“Excuse me, what?” I snarled.
You would have thought that I would have shrunk back, but I felt something stir inside of me. There was a distinct tickle at the base of my spine like something had woken up. That prickling energy spread from my lower back to my limbs first and then my head.
“My dead lover. I’m going to bring her back from the grave. It’s cliché, I know, but I miss her. I’ve had lots of practice, and with the baby’s energy, I should be able to get it to stick this time.”
“That’s what happened to them?” I asked.
My mind reeled back to Samara dead under the hanging tree, Lilith walking around with a knife confused, and then Mercy coming back to “life” in front of me.
“You killed Samara and left her body in front of my house. Why?” I asked.
Zane sighed. “I didn’t kill her and leave her in front of your house. Samara’s spirit is strong. She fought off the spell, and she was going to your house to get help. I had to kill her before she reached your front door.”
“And Lilith? What happened to her?” I asked.
“She was chasing after me. Samara made it to Lilith’s house and knocked on the door. I chased after her, Lilith saw it happening and tried to come after us. She was kind of slow, though. By the time she caught up, I’d taken care of Samara. Of course, Arietta jumped to Lilith’s body. She always was a little too impetuous.”
“That’s what was wrong with Lilith? Your dead girlfriend had possessed her?” I asked the question, but it all sort of made sense.
“Except that your aunt is way stronger than Samara. So, you know, that all went well. I couldn’t get to your aunt because she was in the hospital and then surrounded by your family. Eventually the old hag kicked Arietta out on her own,” Zane said.
“Or she left when you killed Mercy,” I said. “Because that’s what you did, right? You killed Mercy to give Arietta another body.”
“See, now you’re catching on,” Zane said with a smile.
“The thing I don’t understand is why Samara wanted to hurt Mercy? Was she originally in on this with you or something?”
Zane snorted. “I don’t know why those cows were fighting with each other. It doesn’t matter. Has nothing to do with any of this,” he said.
So the skull next to Mercy’s name in the grimoire had been a red herring. I knew then that I’d probably never know what happened between the two, and that it most likely didn’t matter. But that wasn’t true. Something prickled at the back of my mind.
“How did you get close enough to Samara to get your dead girlfriend into her body?” I asked. “Did you just kidnap her or what?”
He clapped his hands together once, and it made me jump. “There you go! So, maybe I wined and dined her until she trusted me,” he said with a shrug.
There it was. Mercy had said that Samara had changed. It might have been because she was possessed by Arietta, but I would have bet it started before that. It started when she met this psychopath necromancer that had manipulated her.
“So, what’s in Samara’s secret trunk that is so incriminating you had to hide the key in Mercy’s casket?”
“That was just to get you here,” he said. “I’ve been following you for a while, but you knew that. You fancy yourself a real life Nancy Drew, so I planted a clue for you to find. You’re actually pretty easy to manipulate.”
“So, the pizza thing was all part of that?” I asked. “How did you know that we were ordering pizza? Were you standing outside my window with a glass up to your ear?”
“There’s a listening device in your purse,” Zane said smugly. “I slipped it in while you were flirting with me at the grocery store. Outside pocket so it wouldn’t disturb the cat.”
“I wasn’t flirting with you,” I protested.
“Really not what’s important right now,” Zane said.
The smell of the smoke was getting stronger. I turned to see if the house was actually on fire, but it wasn’t. Then, I started to feel weird.
“Ah, there it is,” Zane said. “I can tell you’re starting to feel it. It’s just bay leaves. Lots and lots of bay leaves. They are mildly hallucinogenic when you burn them. Makes the transition easier.”
“What makes you think that your girlfriend is going to stick in me?” I asked. “I’m stronger than any witch you’ve tried so far.”
But was I?
Maybe at one time.
“Because I’m going to kill you, and right as you take your last breath, that’s when Arietta will take your body. It’s got to be just the right time, so I’ll have to kill you slowly. I’m sure after you watch your baby die, it will be a sweet relief.”
“I don’t understand how this is happening,” I said, but my head was getting foggy. Meri was no longer circling around Zane. Instead he’d begun to chase and bat at something I couldn’t see. He was probably hallucinating. “Magic isn’t really working anymore. How are you doing all of this?”
Zane let out a peal of mocking laugher. “You’re funny. It’s cute that you think all magic was affected by that little brat. If you would truly embrace the darkness, you’d find out that most of it is working just fine.”
“That little brat?” I asked, but my tongue felt thick.
Just then, someone appeared behind him. Laney let out that laugh again, and she yanked a lock of my hair that had fallen into her sling. The searing pain that can only come from a baby pulling your hair brought the world back into focus.
But the woman was still there. She was creeping up behind Zane. For a second, I thought she was a ghost, but while the woman was slightly transparent, she had a strange golden, shimmering aura around her.
Her long, curly blonde hair lay like a halo around her shoulders, like a lion’s mane. Her blue eyes were piercing and wholly familiar.
Laney laughed again, and the woman lunged at Zane. Her hands disappeared into him and ripped out something dark.
I heard a disembodied screeching just before the woman, and the darkness she’d yanked out, disappeared.
Thorn came running out of the house behind me. His hands still had ropes semi tied to them. Zane may have been a talented necromancer, but he wasn’t very good at tying ropes, apparently.
My husband started down the steps with his handcuffs out and ready to arrest the man, but I stopped him. “It’s not him” I said. “He’s not actually the one who did it.”
“What?” Thorn asked.
“I promise I’ll explain later, but we need to get out of here. That smell is bay leaves. The more of it we stand here and breathe in, the more we’re going to hallucinate,” I said.
But just then, Jeremy pulled up. We had to let him arrest the guy. Thorn told his deputy we needed to go, and they could come back and investigate the scene later, after the hallucinogenic herb pile in the back yard stopped burning.
The man was hollering the whole time about how he didn’t do anything wrong and he didn’t know why he was there? Jeremy just rolled his eyes at the guy and put him in the cruiser anyway.
What he didn’t know was that
the man’s words were the truth. It was okay, though. We knew we’d figure it out. We always did.
Once we had Jeremy back in Coventry, the magical veil would take over again. It was weaker, but it still worked. Thorn would tell Jeremy to cut the guy loose, and Jeremy would make up an excuse in his head about why Thorn was right.
Everything would be fine…
Epilogue
The following morning, Lilith showed up on my doorstep with a basket of fresh oatmeal raisin muffins. She had on a floor-length, black lace dress with a collar that came up to her chin. Her face was bare other than a huge smile painted blood red with her favorite lipstick.
Haunted Hex (Familiar Kitten Mysteries Book 10) Page 10