Witch on First: A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 4 (The Jinx Hamilton Novels)

by Juliette Harper

  We did have a bit of an argument over “cravats,” an article of male apparel of which I was blissfully ignorant until Beau pitched a fit about “appearing in the presence of ladies in an open-necked shirt.” You can still buy cravats — mainly at bridal shops — but rather than let Beau wander around looking like a lost groomsman, we updated him to ascots, which are just guy scarves, but we don’t say that.

  The one point on which Beau would not budge, however, were his boots. That’s where Chase came to the rescue. He made our stalwart Colonel an updated version of his worn and scarred cavalry boots. As I looked at Beau that morning, one long leg crossed over the other, I couldn’t help but appreciate the expanse of ebony leather. You want a good shine on your best boots? Hand the polish over to a 19th-century cavalry officer.

  “What’s with the ghostly appearance?” I asked him.

  “I surmised that you instructed me to remain downstairs because it might still be difficult to explain my presence in the store,” he said in his deep drawl, “especially to the local constabulary. Therefore, I removed the difficulty by reverting to spectral form. Darby was kind enough to hold the amulet for me. Now we are, as Miss Tori likes to say, ‘all on the same page’ regarding this most disturbing turn of events.”

  As I say frequently, Beau is big with the understatements, and he was right. Everyone, including Rodney, heard the “official” version of our discovery of Fish Pike’s body.

  Now it was time to get unofficial.

  “Okay,” I said, “so the gang’s all here. Festus, you said that I don’t know anything about werecat social structure. So talk. What does that have to do with Fish Pike’s murder?”

  “The Pikes stayed here after Jeremiah married a human because my father allowed it,” Festus said. “All this land up to the high reaches of the mountains is McGregor territory. No other werepanthers can be here without my permission.”

  Tori and I exchanged glances. “Your permission?” I asked.

  Chase shot his father a slightly exasperated look. “This is not like the old days in Scotland, Dad,” he said. “You don’t have to make yourself sound like the clan chieftain.”

  Festus puffed his chest out. “That’s exactly what I am,” he said.

  “Of a clan with two members unless you count grandaddy’s ghost,” Chase said. “I think you better let me tell this.”

  “Fine,” Festus said, picking up one paw and beginning to lick it with a bored expression on his face, “but I’d tell it with more flair.”

  “I have no doubt,” Chase said, “but I think we’ve had enough drama for one morning.” He turned back toward me. “Werepanthers, like the natural panthers in these hills, are solitary creatures when it comes to territory. There have only been four McGregor men in these mountains since the time of your ancestor, Knasgowa.”

  “Wait a minute,” Tori said, “Alexander Skea came over from Scotland and married Knasgowa in 1787. You’re telling us that in . . . ” She paused to do the math in her head, “Two hundred and twenty-eight years there have only been four of you?”

  “The old McGregor men came with the first Shevington settlers in in 1584,” Chase said. “My direct ancestors stayed in Scotland until our clan name was outlawed in 1750. Callum McGregor, my great-grandfather joined his kin in Shevington and, well, he did something terrible.”

  “Which was?” I asked.

  Chase looked down at the toes of his boots, then as if gathering his resolve, raised his head and looked at me directly. “He murdered Knasgowa’s first husband, Degataga.”

  Oh, great.

  The story was just getting better and better.

  “Go on,” I said.

  When Barnaby founded The Valley, he recognized the pure magic of the Cherokee and worked to build an alliance with them. The two communities existed in parallel realities, but there was significant interaction. Shortly after Callum McGregor arrived in Shevington, he ran into a Cherokee hunting party. Callum claimed the Cherokee attacked him without provocation. He shifted to protect himself and killed Degataga, leaving Knasgowa a widow with a baby girl named Awenasa from whom I am descended. Tori traces her family line to Duncan, the child Knasgowa had with Alexander Skea. Brenna Sinclair was Alexander’s great-grandmother. She was a Creavit witch, not a Hereditarium. Brenna gained her magic after striking a deal with a dark being that included sacrificing her ability to bear children.

  Apparently, something went wrong with the paperwork on that one.

  “So what was Callum’s punishment?” I asked.

  “The Clan had no proof that he was lying,” Chase said, “but they couldn’t risk harming relations with the Cherokee. Callum was ordered to swear fealty to the Daughters of Knasgowa into perpetuity. Callum’s act of murder was the beginning of the McGregors’ role as the protectors of your family.”

  Well, it was about time somebody explained that one to me.

  “Okay,” I said, “not the best way in the world to get a job, but what does that have to do with Fish Pike?”

  Festus snorted. “We went soft and took the half-breed’s family in.”

  “Dad!” Chase said. “That’s enough of that kind of talk.”

  The old cat stood his ground. “Say what you will, boy, but we made enemies of the Pikes by taking Jeremiah in, and you know it.”

  “Hold it,” Tori said. “Slow down and connect the dots here. What exactly did the McGregors do or not do for Jeremiah Pike?”

  Festus glared at his son. “Am I allowed to tell this part?”

  Chase sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Be my guest,” he groused.

  “These mountains used to be divided between two werecat families,” Festus explained. “The McGregors and the Pikes. When Jeremiah married a human, the Pikes threw him out, and we took him in. My grandmother, God rest her soul, said she’d have no part of an innocent girl being made to pay for violating a taboo she didn’t even understand. Fish Pike’s father was born under our roof.”

  “And I’m guessing the Pikes didn’t like that?” I asked.

  “Not one bit,” Festus said. “They attacked us, and we fought back. Barnaby intervened and brokered a peace.”

  He was talking about Barnaby Shevington, an English wizard who brought a group of Fae settlers to the New World in the 16th century under the pretext of founding a colony for Sir Walter Raleigh. Instead, the settlers disappeared from the pages of “normal history.” They slipped into another time stream that runs parallel to our own in the mountains of northwestern North Carolina and founded the community we just call “The Valley.”

  Barnaby still serves as Lord High Mayor.

  He’s seriously old, but understand, time moves slower in his world.

  “What were the terms of the peace Barnaby worked out?” I asked.

  “We were given all the territory here in the mountains because of our pledge to guard the Daughters of Knasgowa,” Festus replied. “The Pikes chose to move farther south. Jeremiah stayed here. He continued to go back and forth to The Valley, but none of his children or grandchildren could make the change.”

  “So they couldn’t go to Shevington?” Tori asked.

  “That’s right,” Festus said. “They didn’t have the magic they needed to open the portal.”

  “Couldn’t Jeremiah have opened it for them?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Festus said. “They were outcasts.”

  Something about that didn’t set right with me. “I thought Shevington was supposed to be a sanctuary,” I said.

  “It is,” Chase said quietly. “This is a werecat prejudice.”

  “I didn’t say I was proud of it,” Festus grumbled. “We might have let them into The Valley, but we’re not the only werecats in Shevington. Besides, the younger Pikes had bigger problems.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Jeremiah’s son was just meaner than a snake,” Festus said, narrowing his eyes in distaste. “He’s gotten more than one warning from me for
hitting his wife and son. Fish never was all that bright, and he was far too curious about his werecat heritage. We could never make him understand why he was an outcast. The fool got it in his head that if he could just get to The Valley, he’d be able to shift, and he’d be accepted by the werecat community. That’s how Brenna got to him.”

  Beau cleared his throat. “If I may?” he asked, pausing politely before he continued. “Is it your theory that one of the Pikes who left this area returned to murder Fish?”

  “That’s one possibility,” Festus said, “but I think it’s more likely that we have a transient on our hands.”

  I jumped back into the conversation. “You used that term earlier,” I said. “What does it mean?”

  “A transient is a werepanther with no territory of his own,” Chase said. “Any werecat in human form would have been able to sense what Fish was. Leaving the body here on our doorstep could be a message that the transient is going to make a move on this territory.”

  “But why?” I said.

  Chase looked uncomfortable. “Other more aggressive werecats would see us as weak for allowing halflings to live here,” he explained. “And then there . . . well, I have no heirs.Since Dad is lame and there’s no one to take my place in time, a young, opportunistic werepanther could see an opportunity to claim prime territory.”

  He’d put almost all the cards on the table, but he avoided the wild card.

  Me.

  I played it for him.

  “And you’re dating a human,” I said flatly. “So the chances that any children we might have could be your real heir are virtually nil.”

  “Yes,” Chase said, his voice going ragged. “That, too.”

  Beau looked at Chase. “This transient would go after those you love,” he asked quietly, “in the interest of forcing a confrontation with you while you were at an emotional disadvantage?”

  Chase nodded.

  “Would somebody mind translating that for me?” I said.

  “It is a rather simple but brilliant tactic,” Beau replied. “A sort of guerilla warfare. Rather than attack his primary objective — Chase — the transient would attack all his emotional resources in the hopes of making him angry and restless.”

  “He’s trying to make me hunt him,” Chase said bluntly. “He’s trying to make me mad enough to be stupid, so he started with someone on the periphery of my world. Someone weak who had a history with my family. Next time, he’ll be more direct.”

  I hated to ask the next question since I already knew the answer, but in for a dime, in for a dollar.

  “Who will he go after next?” I said.

  “You,” Chase answered. “You’re the closest thing I have to a mate. He’ll go after you.”

  4

  Chase’s words touched off a myriad of reactions in the room, ranging from Tori’s declaration of, “Oh, hell no,” to Rodney scampering off the shelf and settling on my shoulder like a 1.5-pound bodyguard. Beau said something about such an outrage never coming to pass, and I swear to you his hand went for the saber that no longer rested on his hip.

  Chase and I just looked at each other.

  “Uh, gang,” I said, “a minute here, please?”

  Everyone quieted down.

  “Chase,” I said, “please give Tori your phone so she can transfer the pictures of the body to her laptop. We’ll meet all of you down in the lair in just a few minutes to have a look at them. Chase and I need to talk in private.”

  After Chase had given her his phone, Tori held her hand out to Rodney, who dug his claws into the fabric of my t-shirt and shook his head stubbornly.

  “Little dude,” I said, “go with Tori. I’m fine.”

  The rat reluctantly stepped off onto Tori’s palm and ran up to her shoulder, but he was looking back at me, whiskers twitching worriedly, as they headed out the door.

  Without saying a word to each other, Chase and I both moved over to the loveseat. He put his arm around me, and I leaned back against him. We just sat there for a few minutes and then I said, “Okay, so the part about you losing your temper and doing something stupid? Not happening.”

  “I’ll do my best,” he said.

  “No,” I said, “you’ll do it.”

  “Dad told me about the talk the two of you had,” Chase said. “I didn’t know he has feelings for your mother.”

  “Do you think the two of them could be in danger, too?” I asked.

  Chase shook his head. “Nothing ever came of it,” he said. “People have seen us together here and in The Valley. We haven’t exactly been hiding.”

  We’d done just the opposite. Our growing affections were clear to anyone who was paying attention.

  Then I realized the implication of what Chase just said.

  Shifting to face him, I said, “Wait a minute. You can’t be serious. You think the killer could be from The Valley? That place is all unicorns and rainbows.”

  “Unicorns have horns,” Chase pointed out, “and you don’t want to meet the leprechauns that guard the end of the rainbow. They’re nasty, lying little brutes.’

  At first, I thought he was joking.

  Then I realized he was serious.

  Chase was watching my face.

  “Shevington might be full of beings this world regards as magical,” he said, “but magic and negative emotions make for dangerous stuff. Did you ever stop to consider how many of The Valley’s inhabitants are there because they asked for sanctuary? Nobody does that unless they need to get away from something or someone.”

  He was right. I had never thought about it that way. When Myrtle described The Valley as a “sanctuary,” my mind went more to “enchanted resort,” not “witness protection.”

  “Do you know why Barnaby left Europe in the first place?” Chase asked.

  “Because the Creavit practitioners were getting too much power on the Council of Elders and threatened to obliterate pure magic,” I answered.

  Yeah, well, so much for thinking I’d paid attention in Magical History 101 and so much for believing anything an evil sorceress says. That night in the basement, Brenna Sinclair told the moms she killed Barnaby Shevington’s wife, and he fled Europe to escape her wrath.

  That morning, Chase told me the real story.

  On April 6, 1580, a magnitude six earthquake hit the Dover Strait.

  That’s the narrowest part of the English Channel where just a little more than 20 miles separate Great Britain from the European continent. The quake toppled chimneys and some of the high parts of Westminster Abbey in London. A couple of people died, and out on the coast, a new section of the famous White Cliffs opened up.

  If it happened today? Think disaster-movie with massive CGI special effects.

  Ask a geologist about the earthquake and he’ll start rattling off a bunch of stuff about tectonic plates and the depth of the epicenter. Mechanically, that might be true, but the force that moved those plates plunged deep into the earth borne on the agonized scream of one man’s grief.

  At the exact moment, the rock under the cold waters of the Channel shifted in geologic agony, a wizard named Barnaby Shevington fell to his knees on the floor of his country home in Kent, wailing in rage and pain over the broken body of his murdered wife, Adeline.

  Ever seen the movie Tombstone?

  Kurt Russell plays Wyatt Earp.

  He delivers a nice little speech about calling down the thunder, looking down a double-barreled shotgun pointed at a sniveling outlaw.

  “You tell’em I’m coming, and hell’s coming with me.”

  From what Chase told me that morning, Barnaby Shevington did call down the thunder as he searched throughout the British Isles and Europe for his wife’s killer.

  “Why did Brenna lie?” I asked.

  “To enhance her reputation,” Chase said. “Barnaby conducted his hunt in disguise. He has the power of transmogrify.”

  The ability to assume different forms. Now that’s some serious undercover work.

&nb
sp; “How did Brenna use that against him?” I asked.

  “Originally, he just wanted to be able to track his wife’s killer without warning the murderer he was coming,” Chase said, “but then Barnaby almost went too far. He thought he’d found someone in service to the wizard who killed Adeline. Things got out of hand.”

  Chase described a scene straight out of a movie. Barnaby wrapped his hand around the throat of a young apprentice wizard with an iron grip. He promised to squeeze the truth or the life out of him — the apprentice could pick. Moira stood to Barnaby’s right, speaking in low tones, reminding him of his principles and ethics. Brenna stood on his left, feeding his anger and grief, taunting Barnaby to kill the terrified boy no matter what answer he gave.

  “Why didn’t they just use their magic?” I asked.

  “Because even in the presence of magic,” Chase explained, “we are all creatures of free will. Barnaby had to make a choice as a man, not a wizard. His decision would determine the fate of his soul. If he released the apprentice, he could walk away and make amends for the things he’d done. If he killed him, Barnaby’s heart would blacken in his chest, and he would become like Brenna.”

  “And he chose to walk away,” I said.

  “Yes,” Chase replied, “but his actions had already created a terrible dilemma. If Barnaby wanted to remain a leader, he could never confess the ways he’d used magic to hunt Adeline’s killer. He needed the trust of those first Shevington settlers. The situation allowed Brenna to claim responsibility for the murder in a way that aggrandized her with the Creavit. It looked as if she’d made one of the greatest wizards in Europe turn tail and run like a craven coward. She told the story so many times; she probably believed that’s how it all happened. Brenna got what she deserved when Duncan Skea sealed her up in that cave in the Orkneys in 1679.”

  “And then she got out,” I said.

  “Yes,” Chase said, “but Knasgowa took care of that. She was protecting Alexander and Barnaby when she banished Brenna to limbo.”