Something to Witch About (Wicked Witches of the Midwest Book 5)

by Amanda M. Lee

  Landon must’ve read my mind because he reached over and linked his fingers with mine. “This could’ve happened to anyone.”

  “Really?”

  Landon couldn’t hide his laugh. “No. This would only happen to your family.”

  I blew out a sigh.

  “Look at it this way, things couldn’t have been going any worse in there,” Landon said.

  “I noticed.”

  Landon paused long enough to pull me to him. “It’s going to be okay.” He pressed a quick kiss to my forehead. “Things will settle down.”

  “We’re going to look at a body,” I reminded him.

  “No, we’re going to look at bones,” Landon corrected.

  “How is that different?”

  “It means the body has been out here for a while,” he said. “Trust me. Things could be worse.”

  I didn’t know how. When we reached the construction site we found the workers standing around a big hole in the earth, looking down. We moved to the lip and saw the point of interest immediately. About ten feet down, a skull was staring back at us from the dirt.

  Landon grimaced. “Yup. That’s a dead person.”

  “Did you think Dirk was lying?”

  “No,” Landon shook his head. “I was hoping he was mistaken. That it was an animal or something.”

  I turned to Dirk. “I’m guessing this is going to put a halt to the greenhouse construction for a while.”

  “I figured.”

  I shrugged helplessly. “I guess we’ll call you when you can come back.”

  “Wait,” Landon said. “Chief Terry is going to want to get a statement about how it was discovered.”

  “I’ll stay,” Dirk said. “It’s part of my job description.”

  “You have talk-to-the-cops-when-bones-are-found on your job description?” I was going for levity.

  “Yeah,” Dirk said, sighing. “I get all the cool jobs.”

  Dirk dismissed his crew and then headed up to the inn so my mother and aunts could stuff him with tea and cookies. Chief Terry arrived five minutes later.

  “Yup, that’s a dead body.”

  Cop humor is an acquired taste. “What’s it doing down there?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Chief Terry said. “I’m guessing it’s been there a while, though.”

  “You’re not going to go down there and look?”

  “I’ve already called the state forensic team,” Chief Terry replied. “The scene is compromised, but I’d rather do this by the book.”

  “You don’t seem too concerned,” I pointed out.

  “It’s obviously not a fresh body,” he said.

  “Does that somehow make it better?”

  Chief Terry shrugged. “It makes it less dire.”

  “How?”

  “He means that there’s not a murderer running around the property,” Landon supplied. “For that matter, we have no idea if this even is a murder.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “If it’s not a murder, how did someone end up buried on the property?”

  “Where is Aunt Tillie?” Landon asked, looking around the grounds.

  That was a pretty good question. “I don’t know. I thought she was out here.”

  “Was she out here when the body was discovered?” Landon asked.

  I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “Why wasn’t she inside?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, resenting his tone. “It’s not my day to watch her.”

  Landon’s eyes softened. “That’s not what I meant. It just seems to me that she would want to be out here if a body was found.”

  I realized what he was saying. So did Chief Terry. “Unless she already knew it was here,” he said.

  “No,” I protested. “That’s ridiculous.”

  Chief Terry patted my shoulder. “We’re not saying she killed someone, Bay.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “Just that … maybe … she knew it was out here,” Chief Terry said.

  “Absolutely not,” I argued. “If she knew there was a body out here she never would’ve let them build the greenhouse here.”

  What? I know Aunt Tillie is capable of a lot of things. I just don’t think she’s capable of outright stupidity.

  “She has a point,” Landon said, running his hand through his hair. “If she knew this body was out here, she’d have come up with a reason to move the greenhouse someplace else.”

  “Well, it’s nice to hear you all think I’m smart enough to hide a body.”

  I jumped when I heard her voice. You wouldn’t think an eighty-five-year-old woman would be capable of sneaking up on you. In Aunt Tillie’s case, you’d be wrong.

  I turned around slowly, meeting four feet, eleven inches of furious aunt with my most placating smile. “There you are.”

  Aunt Tillie ignored me, instead fixing her angry eyes on Landon and Chief Terry. “If you two have something you want to ask me, then just ask me.”

  Chief Terry took an involuntary step backward. “No.”

  “Okay,” Landon said. “Do you have any idea how this body got here?”

  “No,” Aunt Tillie said. “It probably got washed here by a flood or something.”

  “You live on a bluff,” Landon pointed out.

  “So?”

  “So, bluffs don’t flood.”

  “Are you a geologist now or something?” Aunt Tillie’s hands were on her hips. “Are you trading in your narc badge for a geologist’s hat?”

  Landon pursed his lips. “No.”

  “Then you really don’t know if this place floods or not, do you?”

  Landon shifted his gaze to me. “How about you? Do you know if this piece of land floods?”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Traitor,” Aunt Tillie huffed.

  Her attitude was worrisome. On any other day, she’d be interested in the body – interested in finding out who it was and how it got there. She was acting a little too blasé for my comfort level.

  My attention was momentarily drawn from her, though, when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. In his effort to keep distance between himself and Aunt Tillie, Chief Terry had stepped too close to the hole. The ground beneath him gave way, and he tumbled down the embankment, landing on top of the bones.

  “Chief!”

  I slid down into the hole, shifting loose dirt as I followed him.

  “Sonuvabitch!” Chief Terry got to his feet gingerly, testing his ankles to make sure nothing was broken. He brushed dirt off himself irritably.

  “So much for not contaminating the crime scene,” Landon said, still standing where I’d left him seconds before.

  “Way to help,” I grumbled.

  “It was a ten-foot drop into the dirt,” Landon said. “I figured you’d be fine. Plus, I’m not done talking to Aunt Tillie.”

  “Well, I’m done talking to you,” Aunt Tillie replied, turning on her heel and stalking toward the house.

  “This isn’t over,” Landon said.

  I couldn’t see her retreating back, but I knew from Landon’s scowl that he was at his limit. I helped brush Chief Terry’s back off and then knelt down so I could get a better look at the skull.

  “Don’t touch that,” Landon ordered.

  “I’m not touching it.”

  Chief Terry crouched beside me. “Its definitely been here a while.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “The bones,” he said. “They’re all bleached out.”

  “And that means?”

  “It means they’ve been here for a while.”

  “How long is a while?”

  Chief Terry shrugged. “I have no idea. I’m guessing at least ten years, though, probably more. Maybe a lot more.”

  Something was poking out of the dirt to my right. Without thinking, I pinched it with my fingers and tried to pull it out. I was concentrating so hard, I tumbled backward when my fingers slipped fro
m it.

  “I told you not to touch anything,” Landon said.

  “I just wanted to see,” I said. Pulling my hand back sharply when I felt an odd tingling in the air.

  “Give me your hand,” Landon said to Chief Terry. “I’ll pull you out. You, don’t touch anything else.”

  I ignored him, keeping my focus on the ground next to the object I’d tried to free from the soil. I instinctively stood up, but I didn’t move away. Something was happening. It was as though a mist was pooling a few inches above the ground – and it was getting bigger by the second.

  Landon grunted behind me as he pulled Chief Terry out of the hole. I remained where I was, staring at the mist, while they talked gibberish a few feet above.

  “How long will it take the state boys to get here?”

  “I don’t know. It shouldn’t be long, though.”

  “I guess we should tape off the construction site,” Landon said.

  “Do they have anything here that will work?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The mist was taking shape now – and the shape was human. I couldn’t make out any features, but the white cloud looked like a detached shadow.

  “Bay.”

  Landon was trying to get my attention. I couldn’t force myself to face him, though. I couldn’t force myself to do anything but stand there.

  “Holy crap,” Chief Terry said. “What is that?”

  “Get her out,” Landon said. “Get her out.”

  “Bay,” Chief Terry said. “Bay, get over here.”

  I remained rooted to my spot.

  Landon’s voice was desperate. “Bay, look at me. Bay!”

  The mist was moving now, standing – for lack of a better term. Once I was face-to-face with it, I realized that it was taller than me by at least six inches. And, while I couldn’t put a face with the entity – or a name – it felt decidedly male.

  “Bay!”

  The entity moved fast, like a flash of lightning, pushing through me and forcing me against the hard wall of the excavation. I lost my footing, ice water suddenly slogging through my veins, and slumped to the ground.

  I could hear screaming – only it wasn’t Landon or Chief Terry. It was a memory. Someone else’s. I screwed my eyes shut to force the memory out. I didn’t want to see this. It wasn’t my hell, after all. It was someone else’s hell.

  Oh, Goddess, stop the screaming.

  Four

  “Bay, look at me.”

  I wrenched my eyes open and found Landon’s worried face inches from mine.

  “There you are.” He ran his hands behind my neck, forcing my head up so I could meet his gaze evenly. He searched my face for an answer that I couldn’t give. At least not now.

  “What … ?”

  Landon glanced at Chief Terry. He was back in the hole, kneeling beside me, his face equally drawn. “We’re not sure what happened,” Chief Terry said. “We thought you might be able to tell us that.”

  “I don’t … I … .” Memories were rushing through my mind. Some were my own, consisting of the minutes before the entity struck. Others, though, belonged to someone else. I shuddered.

  Landon pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around me. I shivered when I felt the warmth of his body. It was a sunny, spring day. Why was I so cold? “You scared the life out of me,” he said, rubbing my back.

  I sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “Something ran through you,” Landon said. “It looked like … .”

  “It looked like a ghost,” Chief Terry interjected.

  “That wasn’t a ghost,” I said, my voice shaky. “That was something else.”

  “What?”

  I shook my head, trying to dislodge the echoing screams from my mind. “I don’t know.”

  “Would your mother or aunts know?” Chief Terry asked.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  Landon pulled away so he could look at me again. “Can you stand up?”

  “Yeah.”

  Landon kept his hand wrapped around my wrist as he got to his feet and then carefully pulled me up beside him. Once I was standing, he wrapped his arm around my waist to offer support.

  I glanced up. “Um, how are we going to get out of here?”

  Landon rubbed his jaw. “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking about that when I jumped in here.”

  “Oh, well, good,” I said. “With your family and my family inside, I think we can just live out here now. We’ll build the bedroom over there.”

  Landon barked out a laugh. “I don’t suppose you have your phone on you?”

  I felt for the pocket of my jeans, handing him the phone wordlessly. Landon paused before dialing.

  “What are you waiting for?” Chief Terry asked.

  “I’m trying to decide who to call,” Landon admitted.

  “Call Thistle,” I suggested. “Tell her to keep it quiet.”

  “Do you think Thistle has the strength to pull me and Chief Terry out of here?”

  I bit my lip. “No.”

  Landon sighed. “I guess I’m going to have to call my father and brothers.”

  “How long will it take them to get here?” Chief Terry asked.

  “They’re at the inn,” I said.

  Chief Terry’s eyebrows shot up. “Your family is staying at the inn?”

  “Yeah,” Landon said, punching a number into the phone.

  “Oh, this will end well,” Chief Terry said, not bothering to hide his sarcasm.

  AN HOUR later, I was showered, changed and hiding in the big kitchen at The Overlook again. Landon and I returned to the guesthouse long enough to get cleaned up. He’d watched me carefully after the incident, but he hadn’t brought it up again. I couldn’t decide whether he was giving me time or whether he really didn’t want to know what new evil I’d managed to dig up.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” Thistle had slipped into the kitchen while I was lost in thought.

  “What’s going on out there?” I asked, inclining my head in the direction of the dining room.

  “Not a lot,” Thistle said. “Connie is making fun of the centerpiece, Earl is looking through the books in the library, Daryl and Denny are playing pool in the game room, and Blanche is bitching about everything.”

  “Oh, well, good.”

  “What’s up with you?”

  I glanced around, making sure we were alone, and then I told her what occurred in the hole, leaving out the part about the screaming dream. I still wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  “Holy crap.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think it was?”

  I shook my head, absentmindedly stirring the sauce on the stove to give myself something to do with my hands. “I don’t know.”

  “And you’re sure it wasn’t a ghost?”

  I can actually see ghosts. It’s my “gift.” All of the Winchester witches have one. My mothers are all accomplished kitchen witches, and Clove and Thistle have varying degrees of precognitive and post-cognitive recognition. Unfortunately, I was the one who inherited the ability to see and hear ghosts from Aunt Tillie. It had deemed me the weird-girl-with-invisible-friends when I was a child. Yeah, I’m still a little bitter.

  “No, it wasn’t a ghost. This was something else.”

  Thistle shrugged. “Maybe, whatever it is, it’s gone now.”

  “Maybe.” Or maybe we were about to be haunted by something wholly terrible. I rubbed my head worriedly. “This couldn’t have happened at a worse time.”

  “Look at it this way,” Thistle said. “It’s a distraction.”

  “There’s something else,” I hedged.

  “What?”

  “Aunt Tillie.”

  “What about her? She might actually be able to help in a situation like this.”

  “There’s something going on,” I admitted. “She wasn’t out there when the bones were discovered or, at
least if she was, she disappeared afterward and then reappeared when I was out there with Landon and Chief Terry.”

  “So? The woman is like an evil cat,” Thistle said. “She slinks around wherever she wants to. We should get her a bell.”

  “I know,” I said. “She said that the body had probably been washed there by a flood, though. And she didn’t seem interested in it at all.”

  Thistle stilled. “That doesn’t sound like her.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “You don’t think … ?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  I heard footsteps on the stairs and pressed a finger to my lips to quiet Thistle. There were two sets of stairs in the inn. The front set led up to the guest bedrooms. The back set led to the family living quarters, which were only accessible through the back of the house. While The Overlook was technically a modified Victorian, the family quarters at the back were still strictly off limits to guests and only accessible through the kitchen, which no guests dared enter.

  I glanced at the stairs, not surprised to find Aunt Tillie standing there. She didn’t look thrilled to see us. “I heard you fell into the hole.”

  “Chief Terry fell into the hole,” I corrected. “I jumped in to make sure he was all right.”

  Aunt Tillie snorted. “He’s out there flirting with your mothers,” she replied. “He seems fine.”

  I motioned to the door that led to the dining room and Thistle took the hint. She positioned herself next to it so she could hear if someone approached. Aunt Tillie watched her warily. “What’s going on?”

  “Something happened out in the hole,” I said.

  “Terry fell in,” Aunt Tillie said. “You already told me.”

  “Something else happened.”

  Aunt Tillie’s face was blank. “What?”

  I told her about the white shadow and pooling mist. I told her about it rushing through me. I didn’t tell her about the screaming, though. I wanted to wait.

  “Crap.”

  That wasn’t the response I was expecting. Aunt Tillie is cool under pressure. The big things never get to her. It’s the little things that send her careening off a cliff. This wasn’t good.

  “Crap? All you can say is crap?”

  “What is it?” Thistle asked.

  “It’s a poltergeist,” Aunt Tillie replied, glancing over her shoulder worriedly. “You set loose a poltergeist.”