by Delia James
Hey, it said “air” to me, and I had limited options here.
I stood in the center of the circle, clutching my nail file instead of the wand, and tried not to feel stupid. I tried to focus. I dug deep. I began to breathe, slowly, in and out. Alistair rubbed against my shins, his purr rumbling steadily. My thoughts started to settle. I reached, down to my center, down to where my Vibe waited, down to where the magic waited.
“In need, I call,” I whispered. “In hope, I ask. An’ it harm none. An’ it harm none. So mote it be.”
I made myself picture an open door, as if I was getting ready to draw it in the air. In fact, that wasn’t a bad idea. I lifted the nail file, and I moved my hand, sketching the lines, adding the shading. I tried to get my hand to feel not just the sketch, but the door itself. I imagined the knob turning, the click of the latch, the slow creak of the hinges as it swung open. I spoke my disjointed spell again. I made myself remember the other latches I’d jiggered with my nail file, at home, in college. Here, in Portsmouth.
I pictured the attic door in Dorothy’s house, my house. I remembered how it felt when it swung open at my touch.
Open.
Open sesame.
Open all night.
Open 24/7.
Open.
“In need, I call. In hope, I ask. An’ it harm none. So mote it be.”
I felt myself moving. It was distant, strange. I’m not even sure I opened my eyes, but I knew exactly what I was doing. One hand held the doorknob. One hand slipped the nail file into the big old-fashioned keyhole. It wriggled, scraped and twisted.
Click.
I felt the knob turning.
“Meow!”
My eyes snapped open and all my breath left me in a rush. My knees shook, but I turned the knob and pulled, and the door swung back.
Ellis Maitland was waiting on the other side.
42
ALISTAIR VANISHED. I felt him go. I was alone.
“Oh, good try, Anna,” said Ellis. “You’ve really gone native, haven’t you?”
I stumbled backward. I felt something snap against my back as I crossed the circle outline. Ellis stalked forward and scuffed at that same outline.
“Let me go, Ellis.”
“Seriously?” He laughed. He actually laughed. “That’s the best you can do? Well, we’re all making this up as we go, I guess. Get your purse.”
I didn’t move. “You’re not letting me go, are you?”
He sighed. “Oh, I’d like to. I really, really would. Maybe I’d do it, too, if there was some way I could believe you’d see sense. But then, I’d never know when you’d change your mind and go blabbing to your friend Officer Freeman. I can’t risk it.” He waved his hands helplessly. No. Not hands; hand. He kept one hand in his jacket pocket. I swallowed hard. I’d never seen a gun bulge in real life before, but I had the nasty suspicion I was seeing one now.
“You don’t want to do this either,” I said, surprised at how little my voice shook. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his pocket. “This isn’t you. I know it isn’t.”
“So, you’re saying no matter how far I’ve gone down the wrong road, I can still turn back? I’ve killed two people! I’ve got nowhere to turn back to!” The hand in the pocket twitched. “Get. Your. Purse. And get that junk into it. All of it.”
I got my purse. I gathered up the stuff left from my broken working, taking my time. My hands shook. Where was Alistair? Had he gone to get the others? He must have. Should I call him back? I wasn’t sure I could concentrate enough for that with Ellis pointing his gun at me. I considered trying to charge him with my nail file. If I couldn’t hurt him, I could startle him enough to get through the door. I considered making a running jump for the window and screaming for all I was worth. Maybe breaking the window.
And then what? Try defying gravity? I didn’t even have a broomstick. An involuntary giggle escaped me.
“Hurry up!” snapped Ellis. “I don’t want your body found here, but if that’s what has to happen, I can live with it.”
He pulled the gun out. It was silver and sleek. Kenisha would have been able to tell me what kind it was. All I knew was it was the kind with a barrel leveled at my belly and a desperate man on the wrong end.
“Okay.” I swallowed. I also slung my purse strap over my shoulder. “Okay. I’m done.”
“Your Jeep’s downstairs. You’re going to drive us back to Dorothy’s house.”
I am? But I didn’t argue. I just concentrated on keeping both my hands where Ellis could see them.
Ellis held the door open so I could walk in front of him down the creaking stairs and out into the driveway. Every nerve in my body buzzed with fear and adrenaline.
It was dark and the sodium lights turned the little gravel parking lot a sickly yellow. Ellis waited while I climbed into the driver’s seat and buckled my seat belt. He climbed into the passenger seat. He didn’t buckle up but he did hand me my keys.
“Drive,” he said.
I drove. It must have been really late. We had the streets to ourselves. There was no other car I could signal to for help, not even when we had to stop for the red light on Route 1.
I gripped the steering wheel. Where was Alistair? Had he gotten to Julia yet? Had he been able to make her understand?
I had to buy him time. I had to think of something.
“You’ve been careful, Ellis,” I made myself say as I shifted gears. “Dorothy and Brad could have died by accident. How are you going to explain m . . .” I couldn’t say it. “This one?”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as awful as Ellis Maitland’s smile at that moment. “I don’t have to explain it. The good cops of Portsmouth, they’ll do that, headed up by your friend Kenisha. They’ll find fraudulent documents with my dear mother’s signature all over them and they’ll know exactly who’s to blame for three tragic deaths.” He leaned closer. “And I will finally be free!”
“She knows what you’re doing.”
“Oh, she knows, and she’s not going to do a damn thing about it. See, this is her mistake.” He laughed again. “This was always her mistake. She assumes I care about the family name. She doesn’t want a scandal, and she thinks I don’t either.”
“But your reputation . . .”
“Oh, who gives a crap! I’ve got enough money now to start over anywhere I want.”
“So why . . .”
“Why bother framing my mother?”
“Well . . . yes.” We were almost home. Two more turns and we’d be there. There weren’t even any more traffic lights, just stop signs.
“Because I want to see the look in her eye when they haul her away,” he said softly. “I want her to know that no matter what she tried to keep from me—my father, her magic—she never controlled me. I want to watch when the whole world she built so carefully comes crashing down, and for her to know it was me that finally beat her.”
I pulled into the driveway. I turned the keys. I couldn’t speak. What was it like to hate your family so badly? But I knew the answer. It was like insanity.
“Don’t do this, Ellis. It’ll come back on you. Dorothy’s death came back on you, and you had to kill Brad. Who are you going to have to kill after me?”
“Probably that damn cat.” Ellis laughed, a nasty hiccoughing giggle as he motioned for me to get out of the Jeep. “Probably should have started with him anyway.”
I clenched my fists. Keep calm, I ordered myself. You have to keep calm. Everything depends on it.
Oh, Alistair, please hurry up.
I walked up the path. I could feel Ellis’s breath on the back of my neck.
“Open the door and leave it open,” he ordered.
“Okay. You’re the boss.” I turned the knob. It was unlocked. Had I left it open? I couldn’t remember.
“Front roo
m,” said Ellis. “Go.”
I went. And I all but screamed.
My living room was trashed. Everything was turned over; all the drawers were pulled out and tossed on the floor. One of the candlesticks was gone.
“What . . .” My hands and jaw dropped.
“You discovered a break-in,” he said. “Surprised the perpetrator. The place has been ransacked before, hasn’t it? They must have come back. So sad.”
“This is what you did with Dorothy, isn’t it? You killed her at your mother’s house and you brought her here to be found?”
“She’d come over to try to convince me to turn myself in.” He clicked his tongue at such naïveté. “For my mother’s sake. She actually said that! I pushed her, and she did fall. I thought she was dead. I never would have moved her if I’d thought she’d been alive, or . . . or it would have been somewhere different, something. I don’t know. But I thought she was dead. It couldn’t be at the house. So, I brought her here. I put her at the top of the stairs.” He glanced sideways. “I’d already pushed her down one flight. One more wasn’t such a big deal.”
Which was why the police hadn’t thought Dorothy’s death was murder. She’d been alive when she fell down her basement stairs. Of course it looked like an accident.
“What about Brad? What did Brad do?”
“He listened to her.” Ellis’s hand was shaking. It was almost too much for him. Almost, but not quite. I stood in the dark ruin of my living room and faced the man with the gun. I had to keep him talking. It was the only the hope I had. “Like some kind of sad little mama’s boy. He listened to an old lady blathering on about honesty. In real estate!” Ellis barked out another harsh laugh. “It’s not like we were hurting anybody! The only ones shelling out were the banks! After all the money they stole during the boom, you’d think I’d get a freakin’ medal for getting some of it back!” His gun wobbled again. My heart was going to explode. Be calm, be calm, be calm, I told myself. Just keep him talking. Help’s on the way. Believe it.
“It was fraud.”
“It was nothing! Stupid fed regulations. Can’t buy this property with that loan, can’t buy that property with this kind of name or that kind of credit. Who the hell cares!” he screamed.
“So that’s why you were using your mother’s name?” I asked him. “Because the purchasing regulations are different for individuals than they are for corporations? But she refused to play along, so you forged her name?”
“Who was being hurt? Huh? The feds? The banks? You tell me! Who was I hurting?”
Yourself. I felt a moment’s pity and worked very hard to keep it off my face.
There was a gleam in the darkness. A blue spark. My eyes jerked sideways. Alistair, a faint round blur in the dark, hunched on the window seat.
“Was Brad was helping you?”
“I thought he was. After all the trouble he’d been through, you’d think he’d have been grateful, but oh, noooo . . . Along comes saintly Dorothy Hawthorne and he discovers he’s got some kind of conscience left.”
And there it was. The last piece. “Dorothy convinced Brad to help turn you in. He’d been passing her evidence. But when she died, he lost his nerve.”
Ellis snickered. “He figured it out. Too late. See, he really had been helping me. He’d been selecting the properties, preparing the documents for deals he knew were fakes.” He grinned. “I had at least as much on him as he had on me, and if it all came out, he was going to jail too. Then who would take care of his poor widdle family?”
Alistair flowed down off the seat, as silent as the shadows around him.
“And that’s why he didn’t just tell Frank,” I said. “He was afraid Frank wouldn’t believe he’d been helping Dorothy in the end, or that he’d just publish the whole thing as a scoop for the paper and Brad’s name would be dragged through the mud.”
Alistair slid forward, climbing carefully onto the overturned chair.
“And Anna Britton gets a gold star on her forehead! You know, I really didn’t want to have to kill you.” His regret was genuine, and I felt very, very sick. “I was sure you were going to accuse Mother and hand over the evidence and I could be all shocked.” His eyes went wide. “Oh, Mother, what have you done? Don’t worry, Mother. We’ll get you the best lawyer there is. Don’t say anything else, Mother.” He grinned again. “Whaddaya think? Oscar-worthy?”
Alistair perched on the chair. His eyes glittered silver and blue as he watched Ellis Maitland like he was a very big, very bad kind of bird.
I put my hands up. “This can end now, Ellis,” I said. I meant it. I willed it. “Just put the gun down and . . .”
“Sorry.” He raised the barrel and pointed it at me.
Alistair jumped. With a howl fit to wake the dead, he launched himself right at the back of Ellis Maitland’s skull.
Ellis screamed, a sound I hope I never hear again.
I ducked low and ran for the front door. Next thing I knew I was grabbed and shoved out onto the porch into the arms of a couple of burly strangers in police uniforms who dragged me stumbling across the lawn.
“Police!” shouted Kenisha from inside the house. “Police! Ellis Maitland, drop your weapon! Now!”
Arms enfolded me. A big sphere pressed hard against my belly, and it took me a minute to realize I was being hugged by Valerie. And Julia. And barked at by the dachshunds. I buried my face in Valerie’s shoulder, and I waited for the bang. There had to be a bang. A big one. Somebody was going to die. There had to be a bang. I clenched myself tight to hear it. It didn’t come. Instead, it was Kenisha yelling again.
“Clear!”
I crumpled to my knees, and for the second time that day, the world went away.
43
IN THE END, Ellis Maitland was charged with the murders of Dorothy Hawthorne and Bradley Thompson. There were also charges of forgery, document fraud, mail fraud, and several different kinds of real estate fraud and intent to defraud yet more people and organizations fraudulently, or something like that. There was also assault, and kidnapping with intent.
Throughout the investigation and the trial, Elizabeth Maitland stuck to her story that she knew nothing about anything. I told Detective Simmons that she was there when Ellis kidnapped me. But she said Ellis had knocked her out after I fainted and she didn’t wake up until after it was all over.
It might have been true, but I doubted it. It did get another assault charge added to Ellis’s list.
I had to do a certain amount of editing when it came to my testimony, but Pete Simmons was more than ready to believe that the reason some of the details of the evening remained a little fuzzy was stress. The prosecuting attorney coached me expertly through the rough patches.
Subscriptions to the Seacoast Times, which carried the full story of Ellis’s criminal doings and his trial, soared. I wished it had been for a happier reason and told Frank so. He agreed. He also banked the money and started paying down the paper’s debts.
Alistair, as befitting his status as a noble hero, ate tuna for a week. I think we both regretted that decision, but not too much.
Didi, Shannon and Trisha, backed up by Julia, declared they would take turns sleeping on my couch until after the trial so I wouldn’t be alone at night. Just in case. I didn’t complain, too much.
Val and Roger brought breakfast over every morning. Martine insisted I show up at the Pale Ale for dinner every night so she’d know I was okay. I didn’t complain at all.
Laurie Thompson sent four paintings to Nadia, and all of them sold. Colin worked out a deal with his high school so he could go part-time and take online classes part-time, which would let him keep working through the school year to help his mom make ends meet. He also apologized for yelling at me. I told him not to worry about it. It had been a very bad time for everybody.
Which really left only one major question.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was Elizabeth’s familiar who was following me when I first got to town?”
I was sitting in the kitchen with Julia and Val. Alistair was curled up on the windowsill, absorbing sun and purring like a motorboat. The dachshunds were doing the same, only in a sunbeam on the floor, and they were snoring rather than purring.
Julia sighed and looked into her cup. I had dried some mint from the garden and used it to make tea. The results were not bad, for a beginner. “I didn’t tell you because, despite everything, Elizabeth was my friend,” Julia said. “And even if she hadn’t been, I didn’t want to be the one to accuse a fellow practitioner in public, not while there was any chance at all she was innocent. Or that she might see reason.”
I nodded, and so did Val, only a little reluctantly.
“And I didn’t want to scare you,” she added softly.
“Scare me? With murder and magic going on around me, you thought the bird was going to scare me?”
Julia smiled, just a little. “It was the family quarrels that made your grandmother leave town. I didn’t want to reignite them.” She paused. “I do still miss her, you know.”
“Yeah, and I think she misses you, and Portsmouth.”
“What about you?” asked Val. “Now that you’re back and you’ve seen . . . all that you have seen. What do you think of us?”
“I think I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I’m going to need some time.”
“Of course,” said Julia. “Well, if you do decide to stay and continue your practice, I for one will be more than happy to welcome you into our coven.” She held out her hand. “Thank you, Anna Britton, for all you have done.”
I shook her hand and tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound too awkward. Thankfully, I was saved by the bell, or at least the knock. Martine stood at the back door with a ceramic dish covered in aluminum foil in both hands.