The Bewitching Hour

by Mallory Crowe

  Sure enough, her mother arrived exactly ten minutes after her phone call.

  “Hi, Mom.” Sam opened the door.

  “Traffic is just dreadful this time of day.” Abigail reached over to give Sam a tight hug.

  “It’s New York. Traffic is horrible every time of day.”

  Abigail let Sam go and stood back to look her up and down before she frowned. “You know I don’t like that lipstick on you.”

  There was the Abigail Sam had been waiting for. “I’m having a blue phase. I thought it was pretty.”

  “You know I think blue is a great color for you. But that shade has a warm tone to it. Considering you have the complexion of a vampire, you need to use cool tones. Trust me. Make that small switch and your entire look will change.” Abigail emphasized the words with a wave of her hands.

  Sam smiled. It was nice to have a mother who supported her more eccentric choices. If only she could convince Abigail that she was eccentric enough without embracing the darker urges of their bloodline.

  Maybe if she’d do that, she could calm down for once and stop obsessing over the little things like murderers.

  “So here are the leftovers I brought. Now I want to make sure that you actually eat these and don’t throw them straight in the trash, you hear me?”

  “Of course, Mom,” lied Sam with a sweet smile that was sure to calm her mother down.

  Even so, Abigail looked suspiciously behind Sam to the refrigerator in the kitchen, as though tempted to see whether there was any food stocked at all.

  “Did you want to try to go to lunch? Benditio’s has a standing reservation for our family, you know. You remember how good their goat cheese flatbread was?”

  Sam tried her damndest to try to keep the utter nausea at the mention of food from showing on her face. “Maybe another time. I just got home and I have a lot of things to get done....”

  Abigail nodded, but Sam knew her mother was aware of exactly how little she had to get done. The joys of not working or going to school.

  “Well, I suppose I’ll leave you to it then.”

  Abigail turned to leave and Sam stepped forward. “Wait, Mom.”

  She turned around, a hopeful glint in her eye. “Did you change your mind about lunch?”

  “No, actually I just thought of something I was meaning to ask you about those murders that have been happening.”

  Abigail waved a dismissive hand. “You know I don’t like to talk about those things.”

  “It’s just that... one of the news people was talking about them and I realized that the murders seemed to be connected to the elements.”

  “The elements?”

  “One for water, one for air, one for earth, and then fire and life. It seemed like more than a coincidence.”

  The normal cheer washed off her mother’s face. “You’re saying you think this is family business?”

  “I was just curious.”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about it.” Her words were harsh and final.

  Obviously Sam wasn’t going to learn anything else from her tonight. Even so, she couldn’t stop herself from asking one more thing. “If it was family business, would you tell me?”

  Abigail met Sam’s eyes, each a practically identical shade of green. Almost different enough that people on the street knew there was something off about them, but in this age of contacts, no one thought twice any more. But now, the way Abigail stared her down, there was no doubting that Abigail held a power that only few could comprehend. “You’ve made your opinion on family business abundantly clear, Samantha. If you don’t want to be involved, then you won’t be involved. The day that changes, you let me know.” She took a deep breath and suddenly her charming mask was right back in place. “Now you eat that food I brought and you enjoy it. I just want you to take care of yourself.”

  Sam nodded and gave her mother a quick hug before she walked her to the door. They said their normal good-byes and then Sam was alone in the apartment. Except now she was left with the painful knowledge that the captain was right. These murders were witch business, and chances were that Sam knew the killer.

  Hell, it was more than likely she was related to him.

  Derek cursed as he threw the photo across the room. The same photo he’d stared at a thousand times over the past month. The same photo that was a constant reminder of what he hadn’t accomplished yet.

  It was easy enough to blame outside factors for everything else. Blame the son of a bitch murdering women. Blame the college administration who had refused to cooperate for the first week of investigations. Blame the news crews hounding any friends and family of the victims to the point that no one wanted to talk to the police any more.

  But Derek had been brought on this case to close it. From the second the file had been dropped on his desk, it had been his responsibility to keep any more people from dying. Not only had he failed once, but he’d failed three times.

  He’d been a detective long enough to deal with the normal loss here and there. Sure, every once in a while, some perp would get away or pull off one scam too long. But this guy was called the Butcher for a reason.

  The sadistic and cold nature of the killings was too much for even Derek to handle. Realizing that he played some part in the son of a bitch still breathing the fresh air of freedom was the driving factor behind the twenty-hour workdays he’d been pulling for the past two weeks straight.

  He’d sure as hell feel better about those days if he’d gotten anything done.

  “What are you doing?” asked the low, commanding voice behind him.

  Derek swiveled around in his chair to see the captain in the open door to the conference room that had become home base for the investigation. “I’m brainstorming.” Derek got up to cross the room to where the picture had landed.

  “And it looks like it’s going well,” said the captain sarcastically.

  “Fucking fantastic,” muttered Derek.

  “Your friend just called me. She said she’d be willing to help out. I want you to pick her up and take her to the first crime scene.”

  Derek respected the hell out of his captain, but he didn’t even try to hide the look of pure disgust at the idea. “There’s not a damn thing she can do to help me. She’s going to be as much of a distraction as those Baker frauds were.”

  “You really think she’s the same as them?”

  Well, there was almost nothing similar between Samantha Harris and the two “psychics” he’d had to deal with. Those two had been cocky, self-important, and utterly useless. Sam was... he had no idea what the hell she was.

  As far as he knew, she didn’t work. He barely ever saw her leave the apartment, so she was either an online student or not going to school at all. She didn’t go out with friends or bring any guys around. If she really did smoke a steady stream of pot as a way of self-medicating, maybe her sickness, whatever it was, kept her from doing all the things a normal twenty-something would do.

  Not that he’d call her normal. Her strange hair color and makeup choices would be enough to set her apart from the crowd normally, but he could tell that if she wore the more current trends and styles, she’d probably stop traffic. Where the Baker brothers tried to be as flashy as possible, Sam seemed to be trying to hide something.

  Except he had no idea what.

  “There’s nothing that woman can help us with. The only person she’ll be helping is the Butcher.”

  The captain didn’t look as though he was about to budge. “I have a hunch on this.”

  “You had a hunch about the last two and how did that work out for you?”

  “Considering it brought me someone ten times as talented and probably more ethical than those two, I think it worked fantastic. Now she’s waiting for you to pick her up. Take her to the crime scene and let me know what she has to say. I expect a full report as soon as you’re done.”

  “You want me to drop everything and pick her up right now?”

  Captain
Voss shook his head. “My mistake. She asked for you to come after dark.”

  After dark? He didn’t have any time for this hoodoo bullshit.

  Derek gave up on finding a space closer to his building and had to settle on an open spot a block away. Normally for just running back in for an hour or less, he could use the metered spaces in front of the building, but it was a Friday night, so the streets were crowded.

  Except in this neighborhood, crowded was a bad thing. Mostly people coming in to pick up their weekend dose of fun. As soon as they picked up from their dealers, they’d be back to their normal lives, leaving the block in the same state of disrepair that they’d found it.

  It sometimes relieved Derek that he was working homicide instead of narcotics. He could put a murderer behind bars and stop the killings. There was no stopping the steady flow of drugs making its way into the country and cities every day.

  He locked the doors to the Crown Vic and crossed the block to get to his apartment building.

  Sam was already outside and waiting for him as he approached. “Shit,” he muttered.

  She looked over and he knew she saw him as she ran whatever she was smoking against the side of the building they both lived in before sticking whatever was left into her pocket. A sure sign that whatever it was, it was illegal.

  “Do you really have to do that in front of me?” he asked.

  She shrugged unapologetically as she adjusted the backpack strap over her shoulder. “Do you really have to be an hour late?”

  “I thought sunset was a general description.”

  “No, sunset is at six twenty-one exactly. Considering you know city traffic better than anyone, you should’ve been here at least sometime close to that.”

  Now he had a surly psychic on his hands. Fucking fantastic. “Hey, it’s not like I want to be here. You know exactly how I feel about this psychic shit and I thought you felt the same. Apparently you were just trying to take out the competition.”

  Sam’s expression was measured... carefully blank, as though she was trying to keep him from seeing her true motivations, whatever the hell they were. “I’m not a psychic,” was all she said.

  Derek ran a hand through his hair and let out an exasperated sigh. “If you’re not psychic, what the hell are you doing to help the investigation? Please tell me, because I’m confused.”

  Sam pushed away from the wall and shoved her hands into the pockets of her blue leather jacket. “I probably won’t be able to help at all, but your boss talked me into at least trying. Why don’t we get going? We’re already late, and at this point I don’t think I want to be around you any more than you want to be around me.”

  He kept on expecting her to defend herself. To start talking like Nick and Travis had about their deep and utter connection to the spirit world. But he hadn’t heard a thing about any of that mumbo jumbo from her. “I parked down here. Follow me.” Derek turned and headed back to his car without looking back to see whether she was following. He could barely hear her following him either, her combat boots soft against the hard concrete sidewalk.

  He held the door open for her once they reached the car, and Sam slid inside in one fluid movement. Derek had been around a few people who could be called “goth” or “punk” in his time on the force. Both when he worked the streets and once he became a detective. For the most part, they were younger and any hard exterior shell fell away once he started questioning them.

  Sam was plenty nervous around him. Her trembling hands and unsteady gaze had been sign enough that she’d had something to hide. But even with the nerves, she carried herself with an air of confidence. The same way she gracefully slid into his car. Fluid motions that every once in a while would seem a tad too graceful.

  Maybe that was why she wore the heavy makeup and harsh clothes. So that when people did look close, they wouldn’t see anything besides what she wanted them to see. Or maybe she just liked playing dress up every day. What the fuck did he know?

  Derek shut the door for her before he made his way around to the driver’s side. After starting the car and pulling into the road, he pulled up his mental map of the city. “You wanted to go to the site of the first murder?”

  Sam adjusted her backpack on her lap. He would’ve offered to let her set it in the back, but considering her death grip on the thing, he was willing to bet she didn’t want to let it go.

  “Captain Voss suggested we go to the first one tonight. I just need to go to one of the places a murder occurred.”

  Well, the urban garden was closest. “So are you going to try to get a hold of the spirits or something?”

  Her face squinched in disgust and she repeated, “I’m not a psychic.”

  “Then please tell me what the hell you’re doing? Considering this is my investigation, I have a right to know.”

  Sam held her bag closer as she looked down. “I didn’t mean to get you sucked up in all this, Derek. I didn’t want to do it, and to be honest I don’t even know if what I’m going to try will work at all. So just bear with me for the next hour and we’ll go from there.”

  “That’s the long way of saying you’re not telling me anything.”

  She was quiet for so long that he thought she’d just decided to ignore him. Then her soft words cut through the quiet car. “If this does work, it’s going to hurt me. A lot. I’m just trying to prepare myself.”

  Derek gripped the steering wheel tighter but decided to let it go. He’d take her where she wanted to go, she wouldn’t be able to give him any useful information, and then they’d be back to neighbors who ignored each other.

  He pulled into the one spot reserved for the students who maintained the urban garden. It was supposed to be a bright spot in a shitty neighborhood. A spot of home in an area with no access to fresh fruits or vegetables.

  Now it was the spot they had to warn their children about. The spot crawling with news media for weeks now. Luckily, it looked clear enough for the moment.

  Sam was out of the car before he could get her door, and he opened the gate for her to lead her inside.

  “You have a key?” she asked as she stepped inside.

  “They gave me one to use for my investigation. Follow me. There are new plants that they don’t want people trampling over.” He wasn’t sure he’d be willing to eat out of a garden where such a brutal act had happened, but he wasn’t going to go out of his way to hurt the plants either.

  Sam followed him until they reached the large, and pretty rancid, compost heap.

  “She was found here by one of the college students on a Monday. Estimated to be about two days after she was actually murdered. Apparently no one works here on Sundays.”

  Sam nodded as she glanced around the garden.

  “I have a flashlight if you’re looking for anything in particular.”

  She shook her head. “Just looking for somewhere to sit,” she said absentmindedly. She crossed over to a grassy area against the stone wall that separated the garden from the crumbling home on the east side. The west side was open to the street, only blocked off by a rusting iron fence and some chicken wire put up by the students to keep bunnies out.

  Sam sat cross-legged on the grassy area in the corner and set her backpack in front of her. One by one, she pulled out about ten small Tupperware containers and an empty glass water bottle.

  “Are we cooking something?”

  “You could say that.” She poured out a mixture of dry powders and a few liquids into the water bottle.

  “I’m assuming that’s not a protein shake.”

  She poured the last of the Tupperware containers into the bottle and screwed on the cap before she gave the bottle a vigorous shake. “I wish. This thing needs some flavor.”

  “So this is what’s going to allow you to talk to the dead?”

  “For the last time, I’m not talking to any dead people,” she snapped.

  “Then stop fucking with me and tell me exactly what you are doing.”

 
She finally stopped shaking the bottle and glared at him with about as much hostility as he felt toward her at the moment. “I didn’t want to tell you because I know you’re not going to believe me. But, since you insist, I’m making a potion that might possibly help me figure out what happened here.”

  “A potion?” Derek didn’t know what he expected to hear, but that sounded about right. “So you’re telling me you’re not a psychic. You’re a witch.”

  “Not a practicing one, so I have no idea if this will even work.”

  “Great. Now I’ve got the worst fucking witch about to trip out on some hallucinogenic drug and tell me her spell worked.”

  She tilted her head and glared at him. “This isn’t hallucinogenic, asshole. If you drank it, all it would do is act as a laxative.”

  “But your mystical witch genes make you immune to the laxative effects, right?”

  “I wish,” she muttered as she opened the bottle and took a sniff. If her face was a good indication, the stuff smelled nasty. “But that will come later and my schedule is blank for tomorrow.” Then, after taking a deep, steadying breath, she threw her head back and drank the entire contents in a few deep gulps.

  “Ugh,” she groaned as she set down the empty bottle and started to collect the empty containers and set them back in her bag. She set the backpack aside and stood, looking around the garden with a pained look on her face.

  Derek hoped like hell that this girl didn’t overdose on whatever she just drank. This whole situation was already bad enough. “What do we do now? Sit and wait for something to happen?” She winced again and Derek wondered how much pain the girl was really in. She did say it would hurt....

  “I don’t think we’ll have to wait long.” She tentatively sat down back on the grass, a bit closer to the center than she had been before, and lay back with her legs straight and her arms perpendicular to her body so she was shaped like a cross.