by Raven Snow
“That sounds about right.”
“She also seemed like the sort of person who liked attention. Any kind of positive attention or drama. She’d be really mad if someone murdered her. Once she almost fired me for not standing up when she left the room. Maybe you would have more luck contacting her. A séance or a spirit board or something.”
“That’s a good idea.” Rowen was sure it would have come to her if she had thought on the matter a little longer. “Do you have time to join us with that?”
Flint opened his mouth to answer but didn’t. He looked around his surroundings as if searching for an excuse and not quite finding one.
“You don’t have to, but I don’t see why not. Are you in a huge hurry to get back to the office? It doesn’t seem like you have a whole lot of work to do now. Besides, I have a feeling Ben is going to want you to stay in town for a few days.”
“It’s weird seeing Ben around here. And as the chief of police. It seems like just yesterday we were having a fist fight in the back lot of a grocery store.” Flint lowered his voice when Rowen gave him a look. “I’m not trying to be mean. It really is good to see him. I’m just surprised is all.”
“He’s engaged to Rose now.”
Flint really did look shocked at that. “Really?” he had to fight to keep his voice down. “Well, everyone’s just getting married to each other, aren’t they?”
“Something like that.” Rowen had never imagined herself marrying a straight-laced guy like Eric. She had certainly never pictured Rose with Ben. “Life can surprise you, I guess. Anyway, you in or out?”
“Might as well be in, shouldn’t I?” Flint shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit. “As you so aptly pointed out, I don’t really have anywhere else to go. Though, to be honest, I’m just more afraid of the reception from your family.”
“Oh, it’ll be fine.” At least, Rowen hoped it would be fine. She wasn’t all that convinced that it would be.
Chapter Six
It was worse than Rowen could have expected. The environment at home wasn’t just hostile. In fact, it wasn’t openly hostile at all. It was tense. Peony and Willow outright left. Margo sat in one corner of the supply closet and refused to draw any closer to the spirit board. Rose was pointedly ignoring Flint. Worst of all was Eric. He was sitting at the spirit board positioned between Flint and his wife. He looked from one to the other, his mouth opening and closing like he was a fish. “I hear you’re a lawyer now.”
Flint nodded. “I am. I hear you’re a private investigator? That must be interesting.”
“It is.” Eric looked down at the spirit board between them. “So, how are we going to do this?” he asked, even though he had participated in this sort of thing dozens of times before.
“Well,” Rose began. “We have quite a few people here. That’s good. That’s plenty of energy. You and I, Eric, don’t really have the skillset for this sort of thing. It shouldn’t matter, but one of us could switch with Margo.”
Rowen’s eyes were on Flint as Rose said that. He began to rise, but Rowen put a hand on his shoulder. “We’re fine like we are. You said it yourself; this is plenty of energy.”
“Okay,” Rose mumbled putting her hands on the planchette. She was joined by the others sitting around her. The room was already dark save for candlelight. They liked to use the storage rooms for this sort of thing. It was a nice intimate space. Granted, that intimacy had sort of turned against them with Flint there. “Rowen,” Rose whispered. “Do you want to lead this?”
In way of an answer, Rowen began. “We are gathered here to reach out to Seraphina Hawthorne—” Rowen hesitated. She turned to Flint. “Was her last name still Hawthorne? Was she changing it to anything?”
In the dark, Flint kind of bobbled his head to either shoulder like he was on the fence about it. “She was sort of in the process of changing it, I guess. She wasn’t going to go back to her maiden name. That was Derwin. She wanted to take a surname she’d made herself.”
“Which was?”
“Uhhh…I’m not sure. Celestia, maybe?”
Rowen resumed her spiel. “We’re here to make contact with Seraphina… Celestia, maybe…nee Hawthorne, nee Derwin.”
“That’s it, I’m changing my name,” Margo whispered.
Rose and Rowen both quietly shushed their cousin, even though Seraphina probably wouldn’t mind hearing something like that. “It’s moving,” said Eric, drawing their attention back to the board. Indeed, it was. That was a bit odd. Usually it took a bit longer for this sort of thing to get started. Maybe Seraphina was just eager for some attention. That would be like her.
“Hmm.” Flint’s brow furrowed. Rowen nearly missed it in the dark. She wasn’t sure what he could be sensing. She would have to ask him later.
“No,” Rose read aloud. That hadn’t taken long. The planchette had moved right to it. “No,” she said again. “No, what?”
The planchette slid from what it was saying then slid right back. It seemed pretty adamant about what it had said. All the same, Rowen felt the need to try and get some sort of clarification. “Seraphina, is that you?”
“No.”
“Well, then who is it?” Rowen didn’t like this. She didn’t care for it when spirits showed up unannounced. That sort of thing could get dangerous.
“No.”
“May we speak with Seraphina?”
“No.”
Eric looked at everyone else around the spirit board. “Does it do this often? Should we try again later?”
“There’s something blocking Seraphina,” Flint said when Rowen faltered. He removed his hands from the planchette and stood. Margo rushed in like her being there would make a difference. “She might want to contact us, but she can’t. It’s like there’s a block on you. It’s not on me, but it’s on you.”
“Me?” Rowen indicated herself.
“All of you. The Greensmiths.” Flint glanced away as if he were thinking about how he might put this a bit more delicately. “Look, have you angered anything recently? Any spirits? Other ghosts?”
Everyone was silent for a while. Everyone knew what he was getting at but no one wanted to be the first to say anything about it. “It wasn’t my fault,” blurted Margo, going first.
“What?” Rose felt her cousin’s eyes on her. “I don’t even have any powers. It’s not like me being there changes a whole lot of anything.”
“That’s not true and you know it.” Rowen hadn’t meant to snap, but this had taken her by surprise. Had the Greensmith family guardians really abandoned them because they had dishonored them in recent rituals? Because they had gotten a little sloppy about keeping up traditions?
“I’ll go.” Flint had been taking steps backward toward the door. He turned to open it, but as soon as he had, Aunt Lydia burst through.
“There you are!” Aunt Lydia sounded relieved. “What are you kids doing in here? Is there a séance going on? Am I interrupting?”
If she hadn’t interrupted before, she had now. “You can go ahead and get the light.” It wasn’t like they were going to make any progress with the spirit board today.
Aunt Lydia switched on the light. “Oh, my,” she exclaimed. “Why all the long faces?” She was really one to talk. Her face wasn’t done up in the bright colors it usually was. Her eyes were rimmed with red. Even her bright green skirt and blouse were rumpled like she had slept in them. Her color grew even worse when she saw Flint. “Oh,” she said, the smile leaving her face as red colored it. Aunt Lydia was usually such a sweet and welcoming woman. It was instantly recognizable when she disliked someone. “Flint, right? You’ve grown up.”
Flint took a step away from the door, looking to the left and the right of Lydia’s body as he did so. He was probably looking for some way to escape. Which was looking unlikely at this point. He would have to wait until Aunt Lydia deigned to give him a shot at it. “Yes, ma’am. It’s been a while. You look well.”
Lydia preened a bit, standing up s
omewhat straighter and brushing back a loose strand of hair. “I’m sure I look like a mess today, but that’s nice of you to say.” She hesitated then. There was clearly one big question sitting heavily on her mind. “Is the rest of your family here?”
“Oh, no,” Flint said quickly. “It’s just me. Rowen asked if I could help with the spirit board.” He indicated behind himself, to the board still sitting on the floor.
Lydia’s brow furrowed. She stepped past him. “And it wouldn’t work? That’s unusual, unless… Who were you trying to contact, girls? Could they have already moved on?”
Rowen was still trying to come to terms with everything that was happening. There were a lot of thoughts spinning through her mind right then. Most of them involved assigning blame. “It was Seraphina,” she said, finally. “Mr. Hawthorne’s wife.”
Everyone rushed forward as Aunt Lydia swayed on her feet. They settled on Eric supporting her. “I’ll go get a chair,” Flint offered quickly. It was difficult to tell if he wanted to help or get out of there for a little while.
“I’m so sorry,” Rowen said quickly, guilt weighing down on her chest. Somehow, she had forgotten how well Lydia had known Seraphina over this past year or so. She had been one of the key witnesses in the case against her husband. Well, not a witness, really. She had just handed over that scandalous sex tape of hers. That had been enough to strike up an awkward friendship of sorts between the two women. No one had really been sure why. They hadn’t questioned it either. They were both exceedingly odd women.
“It’s not official news or anything yet.” Rose rushed to her mother’s side. Lydia could be quite a gossip. “Please don’t tell anyone else. It might hurt the investigation if too much gets out there too fast, but yeah, they found her this morning. It looks like she was murdered.”
“Murdered?” Aunt Lydia exclaimed and Eric had to redouble his efforts to hold her up.
Rowen looked at her cousin. Was she sure telling her mother all of this was the best course of action? Rose returned the look with a knowing one of her own. Lydia had a flair for the dramatic. This clearly hurt her, but it was better to get it all out now. “We tried to contact Seraphina. We thought maybe she could point us toward her own killer.”
Aunt Lydia’s eyes widened at that. “She would do that. I know she would. She’s not the sort who would rest until her killer was found.”
“Yeah,” Margo edged her way into the conversation, seething through her teeth like it pained her to say this. “Turns out that the family guardians are mad at us.”
“What?” Lydia demanded.
“I brought a chair,” Flint announced, sitting one of the office chairs on the concrete floor of the storage room.
Aunt Lydia turned on him. “It’s because you and your family are here!”
Flint jumped and took a step away. He opened his mouth to say something but ended up just looking at Rowen helplessly. She motioned for him to go. There was no reason for him to stick around here. Eric watched him go wistfully before turning back to his family.
Aunt Lydia gave a sigh, her anger draining from her. “That was cruel of me. Of course it’s not his fault. It’s ours. We have been neglecting our duties as Greensmiths.”
“I haven’t,” Margo muttered, unable to resist. After all, she had been at the last ritual. Rose and Lydia both frowned at her. Now was hardly the time to point that out.
“I didn’t either.” Rowen couldn’t resist. She didn’t want to shoulder the blame for something that wasn’t her fault. She was still a little mad at her family over what had happened. All glares turned to her, and suddenly, she wasn’t so glad she had.
“Need I remind the two of you that you were both missing from the family for some time?” Lydia asked, not waiting for an answer, just putting the girls in their place. “During that time, Rose and I both dutifully took place in traditional proceedings. We’re all to blame.”
“Not me, though.” It seemed not even Eric could resist. “I mean, I was just in the house. I wasn’t even invited, so technically—”
“You were invited!” Rowen hissed at her husband. “You’re a Greensmith now, and you did sort of loudly interrupt the whole thing.”
“So, it’s everyone’s fault,” Lydia said firmly.
“Except Aunt Nadine and her kids,” Rowen mumbled. Credit where it was due, those three had been dutiful after all.
Lydia’s face turned suddenly hopeful. “Do you think the board would work for them?” she asked. But the planchette on the spirit board was already sliding to a resounding, “No.”
Everyone looked down at it. Rowen sighed. “We’ll just have to try to make this right.”
“Or we could do it the old-fashioned way,” Eric offered. Everyone ignored him.
Chapter Seven
“I really didn’t know anything about this,” Aunt Lydia swore up and down for the umpteenth time. She was hugging the corners of her robe and looking helplessly at the television in the Greensmith den. “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. She was looking forward to all the things she was going to do as a single lady.”
“Wasn’t she already basically single?” asked Rowen, which didn’t get much of a response from Lydia.
“Obviously, she was. Not technically, though. There’s a difference.”
“I’m surprised she’s on television for this,” said Rose, pointing to Julia Martinez. With how broken up she was about Hawthorne, seeing her front and center for something like this was more than Rowen had certainly expected.
“She seems like a resilient girl,” Aunt Lydia said, giving the face on the screen a critical look followed by a curt, approving nod. “She knows when to set all the nonsense aside and do her job.”
Rose made a torn, high-pitched sound from over the top of her laptop. “You guys might not like how she’s doing her job.”
The Lainswich Inquirer already had an article up. Their article was about what you would expect. It gave the facts. There was a lot that was too soon to say or speculate on, so they left it at that. The Channel 2 Lainswich news had been considerably less reluctant in their coverage of proceedings. Aunt Lydia had to wrest the laptop from her daughter. “That little lying witch!” she swore as soon as she had.
Curious, Rowen leaned in to see what all the fuss was about. She was entirely unsurprised to see mention of Aunt Lydia as one of Mr. Hawthorne’s lovers. They would try to get an interview with her soon, it read. They would see if she didn’t have any wisdom to cast on all of this.
“It wasn’t me,” Aunt Lydia said firmly.
“No one is saying it was.” Rose pulled her laptop away from all of them. “It’s not like you had been spending much time around either of them…Well, Seraphina, maybe. You two were kinda close, right?”
Lydia gave a noncommittal “humph” and glared back at the television. Rowen got a sudden idea. She was shocked it hadn’t occurred to her before. “Oh, Aunt Lydia, you didn’t!”
Aunt Lydia didn't say anything. Rose looked from Rowen to her mother then back again. “What?” she demanded, her voice wavering a bit. Was this something she really needed to know? Probably not.
“I’d started seeing Hawthorne again,” Aunt Lydia blurted.
Everyone groaned—well, everyone but Eric. He was staring determinedly at the television. He wasn’t going to be a part of this conversation if he could help it, though his face had gone a bit red.
“Mo-om.” Rose looked disappointed. Rowen wasn’t quite sure why. This seemed like some pretty believable behavior from her. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I find him attractive, honey. One day, you’ll understand.”
“I have Ben.”
“Then you should understand, shouldn’t you? Mr. Hawthorne is a good-looking fellow. He’s wealthy and knows how to treat a lady. Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because he’s in the middle of divorce proceedings?” Rose ventured. “They kind of seem like a big deal.”
“Seraphina was a
ll right with it.”
“You told Seraphina?” Rowen had planned to keep out of Rose’s little spat with her mother, but she couldn’t help it. She sighed and sank down on the sofa.
Lydia bristled a bit. She hugged her robe even tighter around herself and stood. “Well, I am feeling awfully attacked right now. If anyone wants to talk to me civilly, I’ll be in my room writing down things I should say to the news.”
“Don’t talk to the news without me, please!” Rose called after her mother. She wasn’t sure if she had been ignored or not. With a sigh, she looked back to Rowen. “I have to give Julia a call, don’t I?”
“It might be a good idea before this gets any further out of hand.” Rowen wasn’t sure how it could, but she didn’t want to challenge it to. “Do you want me to help? We can use your laptop to call her.”
Rose relaxed a bit at the idea of that. “Would you mind? I’m not really sure what to say to her. We’d been on such good terms until now and then this? I thought we were past things like this.”
“It’s always business.” Rowen watched while Rose set up the computer for a call on the webcam. She noticed when her husband began to stand. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t even know,” he admitted. “Away? I’d rather not be caught on the webcam, myself.” He indicated his robe. “I’m already feeling more than a little nervous about these upcoming…rituals.”
Rowen stood. She lowered her voice so that it was clear she wasn’t including Rose in this conversation. “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”
“No, of course not.” Eric signed heavily. “If it’s what you need me to do, it’s what I’ll do. But, I mean, if having second thoughts is an option…”
“Just help them set up outside or something. Please?” She gave her husband a quick kiss, hoping that did enough to indicate how thankful she was for him helping with this. “We won’t be long.”
Eric headed outside. Rowen watched him go, hoping she wasn’t pushing him too far. This was a lot to ask of someone. He had been willing when she had initially asked this time, but part of her worried that was just because he felt threatened by Flint. Flint would do something like this without question, but he wasn’t allowed here. Eric was. That didn’t mean he had to do all the things that Flint would do. She hoped he knew that. Maybe Rowen should have actually said it out loud.