Ground

by Kirsten Weiss

  Thinking hard, I wound my way up residential streets lined with cutesy Victorian-era cottages. I’d had to mail Matt a check once, so I had his address (though it had taken me some time to find it). He lived in an updated Victorian cottage. The gate to the Zana’s house stood open, and I walked into the garden, filled with lavender. The flowers had vanished for the winter, and the lavender bushes were gray spikes coated in frost.

  Nervous, I walked up the steps, my feet loud on the wood. Shifting the box to my hip, I knocked on the door.

  After a few moments, it opened.

  Melanie clung to the door. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and the scent of vodka wafted on the stale air from the house. The widow’s red hair was a tousled flame. Her peaches and cream skin had turned blotchy. She rubbed a thin hand across her cheek. “Yes?”

  Sympathy slowed my heartbeat. “Hi. I just wanted to see how you’re doing and how I can help.”

  “Oh.” She turned and walked inside, leaving the door open.

  Taking that as an invitation, I followed. The house was in chaos. In the green-carpeted living room, boxes were stacked on boxes and magazines stacked on top of them.

  The widow wandered into the kitchen and screwed the top onto a bottle of vodka. She set it in the freezer.

  I shifted a stack of unwashed plates on the green tile counter into the sink, and set my box on the counter. One of the overhead fluorescent lights was out, washing the kitchen in dull shadow.

  “I brought a coffee cake,” I said lamely. “I'm so sorry for your loss.”

  “Are you?” Melanie slouched to the counter and opened the box. She dug her hand into the cake and ripped off a slice, took a bite.

  My stomach fluttered. “Of course.”

  “Of course,” she said, her voice mocking.

  “Maybe this is a bad time.” And a really bad idea.

  She quirked a reddish brow. “When's there going to be a good time?”

  Good point. “Melanie, I—”

  “I know.”

  “You… know?”

  “I know.”

  I shifted my weight. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  “You were sleeping with him.”

  I gaped. “What?”

  “You. Were. Sleeping with him.” She jammed the rest of the piece of coffee cake into her mouth, chewed a couple of times and swallowed.

  Heat snuck across my cheeks. “With whom?”

  “Matt.”

  I reared away, shocked and angry. “Your husband? No!”

  No, and hell no. I had a strict no-married-men rule, and especially no to men who talked non-stop about themselves.

  “I know you're lying. Why else would you be here?”

  I fought my rising anger. Sure, I liked to have fun, but my reputation in Doyle had careened way out of line with my actual behavior.

  And none of that mattered now. Melanie was distraught. Bereaved. She deserved to be cut some slack. Besides, she couldn't seriously think I'd been fooling around with her husband. “Matt hung shelves for me. That was all there ever was between us. I came here because I wanted to see how you were doing, and let you know I'll help in any way I can.”

  “Sure.” Her mouth slackened, and she looked away, her pale face a careful blank.

  This had been such a bad idea. “I'll get out of your hair. But the offer stands.” I edged toward the kitchen door.

  “He knew things.”

  I stopped. “What?”

  “My husband knew things.” She dug out another piece of coffee cake, scattering cinnamon crumbles across the tile counter.

  “What sort of things?”

  “He knew things about you. Your sisters.”

  I froze, fear scorching my gut. This wasn't the dark ages. People didn't hang witches anymore, at least not in America. But there was witchcraft and there was witchcraft, and if Matt and his wife had somehow found out… “Melanie, what do you—?”

  The doorbell rang, and her head swiveled toward the sound.

  “Fantastic,” she said, eyes dull. “More visitors.” She wove from the kitchen, her shoulder banging into the doorframe.

  Matt — they — knew things? What did that mean?

  The sound of the door opening. Voices. Footsteps moving towards the kitchen.

  Melanie slouched into the room followed by a middle-aged couple — Eric and Rasha Gertner. Eric was a regular customer at Ground. I saw his wife less frequently.

  Super-model tall and with broad shoulders, Rasha looked her elegant self in black, wide-legged black slacks and a sweater. Her trademark red scarf looped around her neck. Rasha’s long ebony hair cascaded down her back, and her brown eyes glistened with sympathy.

  Her husband wore jeans. A house flipper, denim was his staple, no matter the occasion. Today though, he'd put on a blue-and-white checked shirt beneath his thick, wool coat rather than his usual tee. A jagged, white scar marred his forehead, and I tried not to stare at the mark.

  The kitchen’s fluorescent light buzzed in a last ditch attempt at life. It flickered, went gray.

  Eric stopped short in the entry. “Hi, Jayce. What are you doing here?”

  Rasha shot her husband a look. “She's paying condolences, like a good neighbor.”

  He scraped a hand through his thin, blond hair. “Sorry. It's just strange to see you outside your natural habitat.”

  “Matt did work for her,” Rasha said. “Of course Jayce would come.”

  “You heard about that?” I asked, surprised. The shelf installation hadn't been a big job, even though it had seemed to go on forever.

  One corner of her mouth edged upward. “It’s a small town. Matt worked for everyone.” She hugged Melanie. “What a terrible, terrible thing. What do you need us to do?”

  The widow sagged in her arms. “It's all so unreal,” she whispered. “I can't believe he's gone, that someone murdered…” Her voice hitched.

  “We don't know he was murdered,” Eric said.

  “He was hit in the head and left in the back of a stranger's truck,” the widow said.

  Crossing my arms, I gazed at the tips of my narrow-toed boots. So the police hadn't told her about my truck's role in the murder. Should I? Melanie would learn the truth eventually. Not telling her would make things weird. I glanced up.

  Eric shifted his weight, his arms crossed in unconscious imitation of me.

  I cleared my throat. “It wasn't a stranger's truck. It was mine.”

  Silent, they stared at me.

  “Someone stole my truck,” I said. “The police found it the next morning with Matt inside the bed. They called me out to see.”

  Melanie straightened, pulling away from Rasha. “You? They called you? He was my husband!”

  “I don't know why—”

  She blanched. “Get out! Just get out!”

  “Melanie,” Rasha said, “it isn't her fault.”

  I edged backwards, into the open doorway. “Melanie, I'm sorry—”

  “You were always around my husband,” she shrieked. “I always suspected you two. And now you've killed him. Get out!”

  I fled, stopping only when I was on the uneven sidewalk. Heart pounding in my ears, I stopped beside Eric's red Porsche. Heavy footsteps clomped down Melanie’s porch steps, and I turned.

  “Hey.” Eric walked down the wooden steps. His face reddened. “She didn't mean it.”

  But I was pretty sure she had. “It's okay,” I choked out. “She's upset.”

  His shoulders slumped. “Yeah. But she didn't mean it.” He shuffled his feet. “So the police called you to view the body?”

  “Yeah.”

  A frigid gust of wind rustled the dry lavender spears.

  “Did they say anything?”

  I shook my head. “Not really.” Not aside from don't leave town.

  His smile was sympathetic. “Violent death is rough on everyone.”

  I nodded. Eric would know. His first wife had died driving drunk fifteen years ago. The crash had nearly kil
led him too. All Doyle knew the story, a story that I imagined played out in his mind every morning and night when he saw that scar in his bathroom mirror.

  “Look,” he said, “don't worry about Melanie. Matt was a player. Everyone knew it, even her. But we know you two weren't involved.”

  Slovenly Matt was a player? It didn't seem possible. “Thanks,” I said, uncertain. “I didn't know he was...” I fumbled for the right words. A cheater? That didn't seem right to say out loud.

  Eric smiled, wry. “Good with the ladies?”

  “Plural?” My brows rose.

  “Hey, everyone knows you were way out of his league. Everyone except for maybe Melanie. I wouldn't worry about it.”

  “But who was he seeing?”

  “Ah, I really couldn't say.”

  “Do the police know?”

  He shrugged. “I'm not sticking my nose into their business. If you know what's good for you, you won't either.”

  “But who—?”

  He turned and strode up the steps. The door banged shut behind him.

  Matt? A player? I tried to reconcile that with the Matt I barely knew. He'd told me some salacious stories. They’d been inappropriate, but I’d put up with them. But if he’d cheated on his wife, that opened up an entire minefield of motives. Had Melanie killed him in revenge? Had one of his girlfriends gotten fed up when he wouldn't leave his wife?

  My fists clenched. If the police believed Melanie’s accusation, they might have real reason to suspect I’d killed the man.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I stalked down the road. I'd never been accused of cheating with another woman's husband before, and it stung.

  Sunlight glinted off a windshield, blinding me. I winced, slowing.

  Who cares what anyone thinks?

  But…

  I slowed for an SUV backing from its driveway on the steep hill. But if the police believed I’d been involved with Matt, would they think that gave Brayden a motive for murder? How had this happened? I'd done the right thing, dammit! Brayden and I both had.

  How many times had I taken the light, the easy, the wrong path? But the no-married-men rule was inviolate, and Brayden had been out of bounds.

  My nostrils flared. Okay. Think. Not everyone believed I'd been involved with Matt. His wife, who'd just lost her husband, had accused me, and she'd been drinking. But she’d seemed so certain. Had Matt said something about me to make her think...?

  I adjusted the blue shawl across my shoulders. I shouldn't have gone to Melanie's house. I wasn't a private investigator. I'd told Karin last summer I wasn't a detective, and I should stay out of the investigation then. So I should stay out of it now. I had a lawyer. Things had worked out before. They'd work out again. And my real problem wasn't the murder. The root of the problem was that damned curse and that damned unseelie, whoever it was.

  I turned down a looping road. Homes sat far from the street, their windows dead eyes. Skeletal oaks rustled, their branches bare in the winter's chill. A dirty red Honda sat in a rough parking lot beside the trailhead. I climbed over the fence’s rungs to the trail, and my skin tingled. This was the official forest boundary, and the woods knew it. I paused, mastering myself.

  “Hello,” I whispered to the spirits of the place. “I mean no harm. May I enter?”

  A breeze rippled the tops of the oaks.

  Taking that for approval, I stepped onto the narrow forest trail. Its beginnings paralleled a wooden fence that marked the boundary between woods and humans. I passed Karin's shingled, craftsman-style bungalow, its backyard dotted with sage. A single-path, lavender labyrinth spread across the center of her backyard.

  For a moment, I hesitated. The labyrinth was our power spot and would be a good place to meditate. But I needed to work off my energy first.

  I turned onto the trail weaving up the hill, toward the fairy spring.

  Frost laced the tips of the tall, dried grasses. A granite stone, covered in pumpkin-colored lichen, pointed like a finger to the soot-colored sky.

  I hiked onward, my anger dissipating. The forest was my place. Since last summer, my sisters and I had been avoiding it, and I’d resented our banishment.

  A squirrel loped past and vanished into the roots of a twisted oak. I scanned the ground with an eye for foraging, then remembered that I hadn't brought any containers or knives and grimaced. My self-imposed restriction from the forest ended today.

  I climbed higher, into the redwoods. The shadows deepened, and I pulled my shawl more tightly about me. In a gully to my left, a stream splashed. I passed a redwood stump, damp and broken and lined with moss. Chunks of bark littered the path. I continued up the hill. Patches of snow whitened the forest floor.

  A broken branch from a douglas fir lay across the path. I shifted it, noting its location. I’d grab it on my return trip so I could harvest its needles for tea.

  Pausing to catch my breath, I imagined roots flowing from my feet and into the earth, grounding me. I visualized branches flowing from the top of my head, reaching high above the forest canopy. Energy, white from the sky, red from the earth flowed into me, steadying, and my heart unfolded like a spring flower. Why had I kept myself away from this place?

  I ran my hands across the bark of a sugar pine. Its vanilla scent coiled around me.

  “Hello again, old friend.”

  I pressed my palm to its bark, feeling for the thrum of its energy and struck a sickening wall of ice.

  I blinked.

  Frowning, I studied the tree. The needles on the lower branches had gone yellow.

  “What's happening to you?” I muttered, running my hands over the rough bark.

  Uneasy, I studied the surrounding trees. They all looked okay, but a cold stone weighted my stomach. Maybe I was misreading the symptoms. I wrapped my arms around the pine, hoping no hiker would see and think I was nuts. Pressing my ear to its trunk, I asked permission for my energy to mingle with its own.

  There was no resistance. I extended my aura, gently probing inside the tree.

  The vanilla scent turned bitter, sugar burnt black. My gorge rose.

  Stepping away, I muttered an incantation, a request for healing, and laid one palm against the tree. I visualized dark energy being sucked from the tree through my palm and then into a violet flame.

  I let my arm drift down the trunk, feeling for other spots of heaviness. Whenever my arm stopped, I repeated the magical clearing, until I found no more blocks. Then I laid my right hand on the trunk again, my left palm up, and asked my helping guides to send healing energy into the tree. Warmth flowed through me, and I sensed the tree warming as well.

  Unhooking a clear quartz pendant from my necklace, I buried it near the tree's roots. I patted the tree's side. “I'll come back later to see how you're doing.”

  The wind whispered in its branches, a soft sigh.

  Healing work always pumped me up before it drained me, and my heart lifted. I trotted down the narrow, earthen steps cut into the hillside and to the fairy spring. I’d reached it before I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be here. But I was only looking. No big deal.

  Water poured steadily through a break in the granite and into a crystalline pool. I averted my gaze. Karin had nearly drowned by magic after looking too close. I might be reckless but I could learn from others' mistakes.

  Barren branches arced above the spring. Browning ferns, coiled like snails, clustered about the pond. A creek tripped over stones and rambled along the valley floor.

  The spring had to be the source of our problems. Karin had told me when she’d been pulled inside the spring, she'd had a vision of another world. This spring might not be the fairy’s home, but maybe it was where it had come from or come through. If so, the nearby trees might be able to tell me something about our enemy. Trees had a long memory.

  So what if we’d agreed Karin and Lenore would take charge of the magical investigation? I was here, and what my sisters didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

  I knelt
between the roots of a redwood, moss and damp earth cushioning my knees. “Greetings, old one. I'm Jayce.”

  Above, the branches whispered their approval.

  Laying my palms on two thick roots, I extended my senses. I felt the rustling of the leaves. The footsteps of two hikers, a mile away, trembled through the root system. Down the valley, a crow landed heavily on a branch, setting it swaying. A far-off pinecone thudded to the ground, its seeds scattering. Heat and life and green flowed through my veins, and for a moment, I was unsure where I ended and the forest began.

  Something came through this spring. I asked the trees. Something powerful, something magic, walked into this world. Do you remember?

  Power flowed through me like a river, sweet and sensual, and I gasped, aching with desire. My lips parted, warmth radiating throughout my body. It was close to what I’d felt at the restaurant, and that should have frightened me. But I hadn’t tasted magic then. I’d never tasted magic before this. The energy now was like warm honey, carnal and decadent. I wanted more.

  In that instant, I was the forest. I was the stones and water. I was the earth and could sense its turning.

  This was true magic. Why had I been playing with spells and incantations and charms? My witchcraft was a pale shadow of this earth magic, and I half rose, excited, feverish, thinking to tell my sisters.

  But they wouldn't understand. How could they? Everything they'd been taught by our aunt — and how misguided she’d been — was child’s play. And I certainly couldn’t explain this power to Brayden. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered. Not our silly attempts at magic. Not...

  Why did you come here? The voice in my head was a masculine growl.

  Startled, I swayed.

  There was something... A reason... It had to do with my sisters — not that they mattered.

  Don’t they?

  And Brayden — not that he mattered.

  Doesn’t he?

  I shook my head. The energy flow was electrifying, lifting the hair on my arms. Lifting me. But I was in control—

  You are not.

  — and Brayden could...