That Olde White Magick

by Sharon Pape

  “He’s bluffing, Kailyn,” Travis said, breathless with pain. I knew Patrick wasn’t bluffing. A man who already committed murder once, and possibly twice, had little to lose by killing again. Travis was just playing the odds, hoping that if I ran, I might have a chance. I think we both knew that staying was an absolute death sentence.

  “She’s stupid but loyal,” Patrick said when I stayed where I was. “I’ve got to give her that. Chris, bring her back in here.”

  “Dad, please,” he begged as he took my arm and led me in. When I first heard the boy’s reluctance to be involved, I entertained the slim hope that we might be able to coax him over to our side. Now it seemed that objecting was as far as he would go.

  Patrick ordered Travis to get up. I watched his face crumple in pain. He must have wanted to scream, but he didn’t make a sound. I couldn’t stand there and watch him struggle on his own. Patrick be damned. I went to Travis and draped his arm over my shoulder to take the weight off his injured foot.

  “You’re a regular Florence Nightingale,” Patrick said with a nasty curl to his upper lip. “Not to worry. He won’t be in pain much longer. Both of you, over to that wall.”

  He was pointing at the wall opposite the door, the wall farthest from the front of the shop and the people walking by. I helped Travis walk haltingly across to it. It was slow-going, which gave me a chance to think. In spite of our dismal circumstances, my brain was working furiously, unwilling to accept defeat. Telekinesis was out until I had a chance to rest and recharge my energy. I didn’t know any spells that could actually change someone’s mind. The one I’d used on Devon worked for mere seconds. With Travis’s injury, we wouldn’t even make it to the door.

  I once asked Bronwen about spells that can more permanently change a person’s mind. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that such a spell would be black magick and she never wanted to hear me speak of such things again. My grandmother was rarely stern with me, which made her reply that much more powerful. If that kind of spell was out of bounds, I had no doubt that causing someone to have a stroke or heart attack, suffer blindness, or become paralyzed were black magick of the darkest kind. All I had left to work with were words.

  “I don’t want to do this,” Patrick said reasonably. “Kailyn, why did you have to start meddling in things that don’t involve you? I enjoyed our lunchtime conversations. Of course, now I see that you were just trying to build a case against me. Look, I’ll do you a favor and make this quick. No point in prolonging the inevitable.”

  Travis leaned back against the wall and put his other arm around my waist to draw me closer. At least we’d go down together. Patrick raised the gun and sighted down the barrel. I watched his finger move to the trigger.

  “No more! It ends now.” Chris screamed, his voice shrill and shaking as he jumped in front of the gun. His injured knee buckled under him, but he shifted his weight and managed to stay upright.

  Patrick’s face was white. “Idiot! I could have killed you.”

  Chris burst into tears. “Maybe that would have been better. This was all my fault anyway.”

  “Don’t you ever say those words again. You were heroic. You saved your mother.”

  “Why couldn’t you just call the police and let it go then and there?”

  “You think it would have been that easy?” Patrick said. “You’re so young and naive. Let me teach you about the law. If someone breaks into your house and threatens you or your family, you are within your rights to shoot him, even kill him. But if that person is running away, he’s no longer a threat to you. If you shoot him, then you’re guilty of manslaughter or possibly murder. And if you shoot him in the back, like you did, you can’t even claim he was coming back at you.” Patrick was so focused on his son he seemed to have forgotten about us. If he hadn’t been blocking the path to the door, I might have made a run for it. But who was I kidding? I would never have left Travis to die alone.

  “So you got home around that time and decided to get rid of the body by throwing it in the marsh,” Travis said, summing up for him,

  Patrick sneered. “Brilliant deduction, Sherlock.”

  “It wasn’t a bad idea,” Travis said equitably, “until Waverly came along to drain the marsh.”

  I figured he was trying to draw out the time before our execution in the hope the cavalry might still arrive. Although I’d run out of optimism, a talking Patrick was preferable to a shooting Patrick, so I dove right in. “What I don’t understand is that the bullet didn’t come from your gun.”

  “The kid never had time—” Patrick stopped abruptly. “That’s it. We’re not doing a Q and A here.”

  “How about a last request?” Travis tried. “You have nothing to lose. If you’re going to kill us, we won’t be able to tell anyone else.”

  To my surprise, he seemed to be considering the request.

  “Yeah, why not? Dead men tell no tales. Besides, venting is supposed to be cathartic. That day, when Chris came home from school, he found the front door wide open. We never leave the door open, so he got suspicious. He went around the house, looking in the windows to see what was going on. When he got to the kitchen window, he saw this bum, this vagrant, holding a gun to his mother’s head. He was so furious he came through the back door like gangbusters and rushed the creep. They struggled over the gun, and Chris got it away from him.”

  “The guy ran,” Travis said, filling in the blanks, “and Chris was so stoked on adrenaline that he went after him and shot him with his own gun.”

  “But I didn’t kill Mrs. Boswell,” Chris piped up. “She was one of my favorite teachers.”

  “No,” I said as all the pieces fell into place in my mind, “your father did. Amanda was going to vote in favor of the hotel, which meant the body would be dredged up. Your father pretended to be in favor of the hotel, too, so he could take her place on the board. Once he was there, he had a convenient epiphany about conserving wetlands and voted against it.”

  “All that effort,” Travis said, “and the proposal passed anyway. It must have made you nuts, Patrick.”

  I knew immediately he’d pushed Patrick too far. Like Jekyll morphing into Hyde, a storm gathered in his face. His jaw clenched, and his brow lowered, casting his eyes into deep shadows.

  “Nuts enough to do what needs to be done here,” he said. “I should have taken care of you two sooner, when you first started snooping around.” He turned to Chris. “Go home. Get out of here. I’ll deal with you later.”

  If there was any chance of getting the boy’s help, it was now. “Chris,” I called out as he limped to the doorway. “You know this is wrong. We’ve never done anything to you or your family. My nephew Zach is your friend.” Zach wasn’t technically my nephew, but this was not the time to worry about semantics. “How will you be able to look him in the eye again? How will you ever forgive yourself or your father if you don’t stand up for what you know is right?”

  “Shut your trap!” Patrick shouted at me. “One more peep out of either of you, just one, and I’ll drag out your deaths until you beg me to end it.”

  Chris was crying, tears streaming down his face. “No more killing,” he pleaded.

  “Home,” Patrick ordered him. “Your mother must be wondering where we are. Don’t you ever forget that you owe your allegiance to your family and only your family.”

  Chris avoided looking at Travis and me as he shambled out of the room. Moments later I heard the rear door open and slam closed, extinguishing my last hope.

  Patrick looked rattled. He paced the width of the office, back and forth, back and forth. Having Chris break ranks with him seemed to be eroding his confidence, maybe pushing him to question what he was doing. He stopped across from us. “No more stalling,” he muttered as if giving himself a pep talk. He assumed a shooting stance again, legs apart for stability, both hands on the gun to steady his aim.

 
; “How does your wife feel about what’s happened?” Travis asked. He didn’t give up easily.

  “I told you before, no more questions.” The James Bond theme erupted, making all of us jump. Patrick pulled his phone out of his shirt pocket. “What is it?” he asked tightly.

  I could only hear his side of the conversation, but that was enough to make me sure the caller was his wife.

  “No, nothing’s wrong,” he said, glaring at us like we were to blame for all his troubles. “He’s not home yet?” Patrick looked at his watch. “He should be there any minute. He was helping me finish up. Stop nagging me. I’ll be home as soon as I take care of a few things.” He clicked off the call and shoved the phone back in his pocket. Had it been an old landline, he probably would have slammed the receiver down.

  I figured his wife had to know about John Doe. But did she also know Patrick had murdered Amanda? Had she condoned it to protect her son?

  The rear door creaked open and slammed shut again. For a moment, I entertained the hope that the police had figured things out and come to our rescue. I would have paid good money to see Duggan’s bulldog face appear in the office doorway. But the police wouldn’t have announced themselves by letting the door slam behind them. So I wasn’t surprised when Chris hobbled back into the office. He’d stopped crying, but the tracks of his tears had dried on his cheeks like scars.

  “I see you’ve come to your senses.” Patrick sounded vindicated and relieved.

  “I have,” he said firmly. “I’m tired of the secrets and the lies. You said it had to be this way if we wanted to keep our family from being destroyed. Well guess what, Dad? My life’s become a living hell. So have yours and Mom’s. You never used to fight, but you fight all the time now. You’re just too proud and stubborn to admit I’m right.”

  Patrick’s eyes burned like a fever. He strode over to his son and slapped him hard across the cheek, leaving a hand-shaped welt. “I did what I had to do—for all our sakes.”

  Chris stood his ground, his voice strong, his eyes leveled at his father. “Why can’t you see that everything you were afraid would happen has happened anyway? I can’t be part of this anymore. You raised me to be a good person. How can you expect me to change just like that? From now on, I’m doing things my way, and maybe I’ll be able to sleep again.”

  “And exactly what is your way? Patrick asked. “Turning yourself over to the police so they can lock you away in some hellhole until you’re an old man?” He batted away a yellow jacket that was circling his head. “Because that’s what the justice system is going to do with you.”

  “That’s my choice to make.”

  “You’re fifteen. You’re not old enough to have a choice.”

  “Then stop me. You go ahead and try to stop me.”

  I didn’t know how this father/son confrontation was going to end, but for the moment Travis and I weren’t the focus. Travis shook his head and put his finger to his lips—a reminder to stay out of it. Patrick was still holding the gun.

  “Okay, Son,” the antiques dealer said condescendingly, “tell me what you want to do.”

  I didn’t know if he was regrouping to fight anew or had suddenly decided to follow his son’s lead. From what I’d seen so far, I wasn’t betting on a new and improved Patrick.

  “I’m going down to the police station to turn myself in,” Chris said. “But first I want you to release these two.”

  “If I do that, they’ll also go straight to the police to press charges against me.”

  “Yeah,” Chris said, “I’d be shocked if they didn’t. But that’s the least of your problems.”

  Patrick stood there, staring into the distance like he was working things out in his mind. “All right,” he said. He turned calmly to his son and slammed the hilt of his gun into the boy’s head. The impact resounded in the room like a crack of thunder. Chris’s eyes widened in surprise before he wilted and went down in a heap.

  I was so stunned I gasped. Beside me, Travis groaned and slid down the wall onto the floor. If a father could inflict that kind of pain on his son, we didn’t stand a chance.

  Patrick turned to us and ordered Travis back on his feet to die like a man. I was trying to help him up when Patrick screamed in pain, slapping at his neck. The wasp must have finally struck. I couldn’t work up any sympathy. In fact, I was glad it was a yellow jacket. They didn’t die after stinging, a fact soon corroborated by Patrick’s encore of screams. A second wasp had entered the fray. Patrick dropped his gun in a frantic attempt to cover his head with his arms, only to have them stung repeatedly too.

  I whispered to Travis to sit very still. Wasps are aggressive. Any sudden movement could make us the next targets.

  Unable to take the insect’s assault, Patrick finally turned tail and ran out of the office and then the building, judging by the sound of the door slamming after him. Unfortunately, the wasps stayed behind with us. I suggested we crawl slowly to the door. It seemed like the most practical solution since Travis couldn’t walk anyway. We had gone no more than six feet when we heard the implausible sound of giggling behind us. Bewildered, we turned around to find Tilly and Merlin, flushed with victory, grinning back at us.

  Chapter 36

  It was past closing time when Tilly, Merlin and I returned to our shops. I knew the cats were waiting for dinner. I walked in, expecting a cool welcome from Sashkatu, but he must have known on a primal level about my brush with death. He immediately leaped from his windowsill onto the desk, from there to the counter, and almost into my arms. His internal compass wasn’t as accurate these days. I had to pluck him out of the air before he overshot me and came in for a bone-jarring landing on the hardwood. Safe in my arms, he gave the tip of my nose a lick. He’d never been much of a licker, so I was pretty sure it was a thank-you for having his back. He planted his front paws on my chest and stared into my eyes for several seconds as if to satisfy himself that I hadn’t sustained any serious injuries of either the physical or metaphysical kind.

  I took him home, where I was greeted by an angry chorus of yowls for my tardiness. Sashkatu gave me a look that seemed to say, “Peasants, what can you do?” Tilly called later that evening to invite me to tea at noon the next day to celebrate the fact that Travis and I were alive and mostly well. I could tell from her voice that she was still beaming with pride over the part she and Merlin played in our rescue. At the time, it had taken me a few seconds to wrap my traumatized head around the fact that they were the wasps who’d zeroed in on Patrick and saved the day. I suspected Travis would be grappling with the idea for a lot longer, given that his acceptance of even basic magick was a work in progress.

  After Patrick had run out of his shop, I’d called 911 to tell the police that Amanda’s and John Doe’s killers could most likely be found at home or at the hospital. I also requested an ambulance for Travis, who needed to be seen by an orthopedist, and Chris, who was still unconscious on the floor.

  Duggan caught up with Patrick in the ER and arrested him. He called me back with grudging thanks for the tip and to demand an interview with me. I played the trauma card, asking him to give me until the next morning. To my surprise, he agreed. I must have sounded even worse than I felt.

  I crawled into bed early and fell asleep the second my head hit the pillow. But I must have been fighting Patrick all night. The next morning I was hopelessly tangled in the sheets, and there wasn’t a cat in sight. Even Sashkatu had abandoned me for more serene sleeping quarters.

  I decided to give myself the whole day off. I was due to meet Duggan at the local precinct at ten, after which there was Tilly’s tea. My aunt had closed her shop for the day as well. Pumped from her adventure, she hadn’t been able to sleep. After tossing and turning, she finally gave up and started baking at 4 a.m., first at home and later in the shop. When Sashki and I walked in through the connecting door, the air was so heavy with the layered smells of
her baking that I could almost taste it. In fact, Sashkatu kept sticking his tiny pink tongue out as if he were tasting it.

  The tea tables were small, accommodating two people comfortably or squeezing three. For this event, Tilly clustered three of the tables together so there would be plenty of room for the five of us and all the goodies she’d whipped up. Merlin was already seated, waiting eagerly for the starting gun.

  “Not a morsel, until everyone’s here,” Tilly reminded him in a lilting tone, clearly too happy to scold him.

  When she turned away from him to greet me, I saw him filch a chocolate truffle and pop it into his mouth. I gave him a conspiratorial wink.

  I offered to help Tilly if there was more to be done, but she insisted she had it under control, so I sat down beside Merlin. Sashkatu staked out a spot at his feet, because he was Merlin, after all, as well as the person most likely to drop food. Elise arrived five minutes later. She told me not to get up. Instead, she gave my shoulder a loving squeeze and kissed the top of my head. Since Merlin was next to me, she kissed his head as well, causing him to blush, which embarrassed him more.

  According to Tilly, when she invited Elise, she simply said that Travis and I had found the killer. With a teaser like that how could anyone resist? Couple it with one of Tilly’s elaborate teas and most people would clear their calendars in an instant.

  Tilly came out of the kitchen, holding two piping-hot ornate English teapots and set them on their trivets before embracing her. At that moment, Travis knocked on the door. Elise ran to let him in. He had a soft cast on his left foot and crutches under his arms. He greeted everyone with a general “Hey” because making the rounds to deliver personal hellos was clearly more than he could manage. He had some difficulty maneuvering into the chair on the other side of me. When he finally made it, he dropped the crutches with a grunt of relief.