by Sharon Pape
“More worried than annoyed…maybe both. I’m worried that you’re not taking the situation seriously enough and I’m annoyed that you have a different standard when I’m the one taking risks. It implies that I’m the weaker sex, less able to take care of myself. You will never find a stronger woman than a Wilde and that’s before we even talk magick. Now shut up and let me get on with protecting you!” I started smiling in spite of myself and in seconds we were both laughing. “Okay, I admit that was a little over the top,” I said, wiping away tears of laughter. “It’s been a long day.”
I explained what I was doing as I passed each of the elements around him. “The sand represents earth, the sea water stands for water, and the candle is both air and fire. The words of the spell are deceptively simple. They derive their strength from the power of the one speaking them:
Earth and water, air and fire,
Protect this man against all harm
After I was finished protecting Travis, I walked through his apartment to place protective wards around it too.
“Why not spend the night?” he said, coming off the sofa when I was repacking the elements. He put his arms around my waist. “You don’t really want to drive back to New Camel, do you?”
“No, but I have to get up early tomorrow and start restocking my shelves. I’m out of so many products; my head spins just thinking about all the work. Besides, I don’t want to bother my aunt to run over to my house in the morning to feed the cats. She had a busy day too.”
Travis insisted on walking me down to my car. “I get it that you’re strong,” he said, “but I’m doing this so I can sleep tonight and if you have a beef with that, you’ll have to take it up with my mother. That’s how she raised me.”
“Touché,” I said. “But you might want to put on shoes first.” He’d followed me into the hallway wearing a parka, his feet bare. “You really must be tired.”
When we reached my car, he drew me into a crushing bear hug. “Thanks for worrying about me,” he said. “Would it be too much if I asked you to call when you get home, seeing as how there’s a killer on the loose and all?”
I said I was fine with calling him. Rapunzel-in-the-tower stuff is where I drew the line. As it happened, he had good reason to worry.
Chapter 40
I was moving along the road between Watkins Glen and New Camel at a good clip. There weren’t many other cars around. At roughly the midway point in my trip, there was only one other car I could see—a small SUV in the left lane. I was in the right. The SUV passed me, then pulled into my lane. I assumed the driver was turning off at the next side street. He slowed down as if that was his plan, but he didn’t turn. Maybe he wasn’t familiar with the area. The street signs were so small they were useless at night, unless you had a pair of binoculars handy. We drove for a while that way, with the other car slowing at every side street and never getting back up to a reasonable speed. I wondered if he was one of those people you read about who enjoys messing with other drivers. I thought about moving into the left lane to get away from him, but what if he took it as an escalation of the game he was playing and tried to crowd me off the road? I stayed where I was, the memory of our run-in with the snow plow still fresh in my mind.
I was bone-tired though and my patience was eroding. I gave myself the sensible lecture I might have received from family and friends. What was my hurry? Five minutes one way or the other was not going to matter in the long run. Better safe than sorry.
The driver of the other car must have been enjoying himself, because the car slowed to a crawl. That’s when the hatchback opened a few inches and a hand emerged holding a bagful of something, which it emptied onto the roadway directly in front of me. The hatchback was yanked back down and the car took off before I realized that the bag had been holding nails and spikes. They glinted in the headlights. It happened so fast I had no way to avoid them. That must have been why they dropped them when I was as close as possible. Even if I swerved into the left lane, I’d be driving over enough of them to put my tires out of commission. Just the kind of prank a carload of bored teenagers might try. I slowed and gripped the wheel hard in case the tires blew and sent the car into a tailspin. The wards held. But as I was congratulating myself, a light flashed on the dashboard with the words Low tire pressure. It showed that two tires were a problem, both on the passenger side. The wards had held, but not 100 percent.
A pair of headlights lit up my rear-view mirror while I was debating what to do next. The new car was quickly gaining on me now that I was limping along. Instead of switching lanes to pass me, the driver slowed to match my speed. If I sped up, he sped up. If I slowed, he slowed. After the attack on my tires, there was only one reason he would be doing that and it wasn’t to strike up a friendship. He had to be in league with the people who dropped the nails. He was waiting for my tires to fail, so I would have to pull over. I wondered if the same person who’d planned the snowplow attack and the attack on Crawford had orchestrated this plan too. If he had, he was probably hungry for success after failing to kill any of us.
I pulled my phone out of my purse. I punched in 911, hoping either Hobart or Curtis would catch the call in the New Camel precinct. Hobart picked up and I gave him a quick rundown on the situation, adding that I couldn’t be certain of my suspicions. Better to cover myself in the unlikely event that my fears proved groundless. If he arrived before the tires forced me off the road, the car following me would surely sail on by as if they’d never meant me any harm. Hobart couldn’t arrest the driver for spooking me.
The uneven tire pressure was causing the car to list to one side. I debated the merits of pulling over before Hobart arrived, to see if the driver was really out to kill me. But it would be foolhardy to test the wards that way when they’d already proved to be faltering. Travis would never forgive me if I did something stupid and wound up dead. The silly thought should have made me giggle, but it didn’t.
By the time Hobart arrived, siren blaring, the tires were making an unhealthy wubba-wubba sound. Another minute and I would have been riding on the rims. I pulled over with a sigh of relief and a knot of frustration in my gut. The other car drove by as the police cruiser joined me on the shoulder. “That the car you told me about?” Hobart asked, after making sure I was unharmed.
I nodded. “I memorized the plate number.”
He grabbed a mini iPad from his car and took it down. “I’ll run it as soon as I get back to the station. Okay if I call a flatbed for your car?”
“I don’t think I have a choice. I only have one spare.”
“You’re shivering, Kailyn. You should go wait in my patrol car. I’ll be there in a minute.” I didn’t argue. I was cold from the inside out. My phone rang as I was snapping in my seatbelt. Travis. He had to be wondering why I hadn’t kept my promise to call when I got home. I took a deep breath, before calmly explaining what happened.
“That was no carload of teenagers,” he said when I finished.
“Yes, in retrospect I realize that too. Officer Hobart is driving me home. Let me call you back when I get there.”
“The moment you get inside,” he said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll talk to you in about fifteen.”
Chapter 41
Hobart got me home in twelve. On the way, he fielded a call from an elderly woman who was almost incoherent with fear, because she was hearing noises in her attic. Hobart was clearly torn between seeing me inside and rushing over to the woman before she had a heart attack. I assured him I was fine and sent him on his way. I climbed the steps to the porch, never so happy to be home. I groped around in my purse for the keys. Where the heck were they? My fingers finally closed around them. I unlocked the door and was turning the knob to open it when a large, gloved hand came from behind and clamped over my mouth. I was shoved inside, my assailant immediately slamming the door shut and relocking it. I felt the bite of a knife pressing i
nto my back, right through my coat. How had he breached the wards around my house? I definitely needed to strengthen them.
“Screaming is only going to make me angry,” he warned me as he withdrew his hand from my mouth. I was not by nature a screamer and this didn’t seem like the best time to change course. The houses on my block were far enough apart that with windows and doors shuttered tightly against the cold, no one would hear me anyway. But my attacker wasn’t the only one who was angry. I’d had enough for one night. I spun around to face him, the blade slicing across the back of my coat. I was not at all surprised to be looking at a black ski mask. He was a big guy. I’m five-seven and he was a good six inches taller. There was no way I could win a fair fight with him, let alone when he was armed with that knife. I reached up to unmask him, but his fist came down on my arm so hard I thought it might be fractured. “What do you want from me?” The question was a reflex; I knew what he wanted.
He laughed. It was an ugly sound I never wanted to hear again. “Your investigation stops now! If it was up to me, you’d already be dead, so don’t tempt me.”
I had no cards up my sleeve. But even if I’d had some, I was too mentally and physically exhausted to play them. It would have been helpful to have six big, overprotective dogs at that moment, but Merlin wasn’t around to transmute my kitties. I knew Sashkatu would have come to my defense if he wasn’t sound asleep and well on his way to becoming deaf. But I would never choose to put him in harm’s way. I was on my own. The wards had prevented my tires from blowing out, I reminded myself. Maybe they could prevent the knife from killing me. At that moment two clouds popped out of the air, startling both me and my assailant.
“Oh,” Morgana said, “pardon us. We didn’t know you had company, dear.” I’d never been so happy to see them.
“For goodness sakes,” Bronwen snapped, “sometimes I think Matilda has more wits about her than you do. Can’t you see that this man intends to murder your daughter?”
Morgana’s cloud turned a bristling red. I wasn’t sure if it was anger at Bronwen or at the knife-wielding masked man. Both their clouds crackled with lightning, jagged bolts of it shooting out in his direction. At first he’d been frozen in place as if he’d seen a ghost, which of course he had. But when the lightning hit his hand, he shrieked and dropped the knife. I immediately grabbed it. I’d seen too many movies in which the good guy doesn’t pick up the weapon, and two minutes later he pays the price. But my assailant had no interest in his knife. He was at the door, trying frantically to open it. He finally remembered that he’d locked it and he threw the door open and fled. I thought about chasing after him to see where he’d hidden his car, but I didn’t have it in me. Besides, odds were this was the same guy who’d been hoping to attack me when I pulled off the road, and Hobart already had his plate number.
I locked the door and went into the living room to collapse on the sofa. My mother and grandmother joined me, bouncing triumphantly through the air, their clouds a vibrant blue. I told them I was fine and thanked them for their timely help that may have saved my life. Scarlet smudges rose in the blue. I’d never seen either of them blush before. Maybe death was starting to have a salutary effect on them.
When the phone rang, I knew it had to be Travis. My mother and grandmother bowed out, Morgana reminding me to eat and get some rest—forever my mother. It tugged at my heart, this whole having her and yet not having her anymore.
“I know, I know,” I said, answering the call. “I’m late getting back to you.”
“Again! A guy could wind up with a complex.” The words were light, but not the tone. I gave him a condensed version of the masked intruder, leaning more on the comic relief provided by Morgana and Bronwen than on the knife and threats.
“I don’t like this,” Travis said, choosing not to be amused. “You’re going to call Hobart, right?” Despite the uptick in his voice, it was less a question than a demand.
“I will, although I wish I didn’t have to. You know Duggan will have to open an investigation of his own now and he’ll demand all the information we’ve worked so hard to come by. And if we don’t comply, he’ll charge us with obstruction of justice.”
“After what almost happened tonight, that’s the least of our worries,” Travis said. “It seems we owe Crawford a thank you for the heads-up, even if it didn’t help.”
“Fine, you take care of that. I’ll call Hobart. But we are not walking away from this case—not when we’re finally making headway.”
“I never said anything about giving up, even though I wish you would take a back seat.”
“Good night, Travis.”
“You’ll call Hobart tonight? The sooner the police are aware this guy was at your house, the sooner they can start tracking him. If you delay, you could be putting other lives in danger.”
“I said I would.” But first I needed some comfort food. I grabbed an unopened pint of chocolate chip ice cream and a spoon and sat down at the kitchen table to make the call.
I told Hobart I had another crime to report. I offered to give him the details over the phone. He explained that as an officer of the law, he had to follow proper procedure. He couldn’t make side deals with individuals. He had to take my report in person as soon as possible.
He arrived ten minutes later. We sat on the living room couch and I answered his questions the best I could. He seemed thrilled that I had the knife as evidence, even after I told him the assailant was wearing gloves. He explained that the ME would try to lift prints from it anyway. There was a good chance my assailant had handled it at some point without gloves. I told him my prints were already on file for purposes of exclusion. Duggan had taken them during the investigation into Jim Harken’s death. Hard to believe that was two cases ago. Harder yet to believe there’d been so many murders in my little hometown.
“What happened to make the assailant leave?” Hobart asked.
I was tempted to tell him the truth, but I’d probably be carted off to a padded cell in a place with a name like Happy Acres. “I think he was only here to issue a warning,” I said, which was also true and a lot less likely to breed consequences. Of course, Hobart wanted specifics about the warning. I admitted Travis and I were trying to find his brother’s killer. I was treated to a lecture on why it wasn’t safe to play detective.
When we finally moved on, Hobart asked if I remembered any identifying details about the man beyond his approximate height and weight. I reminded him that Ski Mask Guy, I was tired of referring to him as my attacker or assailant, had been covered from head to toe.
“But what about the color of his eyes? Or maybe you caught a glimpse of his hair?”
I shook my head. I tend to be detail-oriented, but when facing death, my first thought isn’t generally, Oh what beautiful baby blues the killer has.
“Was his voice at all familiar?”
“No…maybe, I don’t know. My head is spinning with everything that happened tonight.”
“Okay,” Hobart said. “I want you to close your eyes and try to recreate the encounter in your mind. Sometimes the subconscious remembers more than we’re aware of.” I did as requested and promptly fell asleep.
I woke to him saying my name. “I’m sorry,” I said as a yawn ambushed me.
He got to his feet, smiling. “You did warn me you were tired. Look, I hated to wake you, but I want to be sure you lock up after me.” I walked him to the door, covering another yawn with my hand. My brain felt foggy, as if part of it was still firmly ensconced in dreamland and had no intentions of making an appearance.
“Almost forgot,” he said, turning back to me with one foot already out the door. “I ran the plate you gave me and as I suspected, it was reported stolen earlier today.”
I nodded. I hadn’t entertained much hope of a different outcome. No one clever enough to plan and carry out six homicides without being caught, and in some cases with
out even being pursued, would ever have used a car registered in their own name.
I went upstairs to my bedroom and found the cats splayed across the bed, a living pattern on the dove gray quilt. I didn’t bother changing into a nightgown or brushing my teeth. I kicked off my shoes and crawled under the covers, doing my best not to disturb anyone. Sashkatu was lying on his private pillow that was pushed up against mine. When I laid my head down, he opened one eye and I swear he smiled to see me there.
Chapter 42
In spite of my fatigue, my eyes popped open at two a.m. I felt like I’d forgotten something important, but the harder I tried to retrieve it, the further away it slipped. After a frustrating hour of staring at the ceiling, I recalled the gentle spell my grandmother had taught me as a child when I was anxious before a test in school or a visit to the dentist. I hadn’t used it in twenty years, but it came back to me in its entirety.
Oh sleep, sweet sleep, come nigh to me,
Make all my worries cease to be,
From now until the break of day
Bring only peaceful dreams my way.
The spell must have worked, because the next time I awoke the room was bathed in sunlight, a little too much sunlight for my recently shuttered eyes. That’s what happens when you forget to close the blinds before falling into bed. Everyone else was awake too, stretching the sleep from their limbs.
Sashkatu led the parade down to the kitchen. I was dying for a cup of coffee, but I gave the cats their breakfast before putting it up to brew. I’d tried it the other way around, but found myself tripping over one cat after another as they milled about waiting for service. We all fared better when I saw to their needs first. Once their tummies were full, they left the kitchen for softer, cozier spots in which to nap or play. I sat at the kitchen table, sipping my coffee and craving a Danish or muffin from the Breakfast Bar. Cereal or eggs weren’t going to cut it. After all I’d been through, I deserved something full of fat and sugar. Last night’s ice cream binge didn’t count. This was a brand-new day. I realized I was sounding a lot like Tilly. I tried to envision myself in one of her muumuus and vowed I’d get back to healthy eating at lunchtime.