To Charm a Killer (Hollystone Mysteries Book 1)

by Wendy Louise Hawkin

  “Uh, Jeremy made it.”

  “Jeremy?”

  “Jeremy Jones, the lad in orange.” She wondered if he always squinted and twitched when he spoke or if she just made him nervous.

  “Cool.”

  “Jeremy’s a good, uh—”

  “Costume designer?”

  “Aye, he has an online shop. It’s dead brilliant.”

  “What about the man in black? Who is he? What does he do?”

  “Estrada.” He blushed, embarrassed by what she’d witnessed. “He’s a magician.”

  “I’ll say. He’s amazing.”

  “He doesn’t…he doesn’t usually act like that.” He dabbed his face again with the cloth. “That’s what I wanted to explain to you.”

  “Oh.” He was more intriguing by the minute. She was used to Shannon slipping into mad Irish, but this guy sounded like a nervous Paolo Nutini.

  “See, what you saw there, uh, that wasn’t, uh, that wasn’t normal, like.”

  “There’s a normal?”

  “Aye, sure. We’re all just people. Like my friend, Dr. Black teaches at the university on the mountain. And Sensara, our high priestess…she’s a massage therapist. And Daphne’s a landscaper.”

  “And what are you?”

  “Ach, I’m just a student at the university.”

  “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “No. I was born in Nova Scotia.” Catching her inquisitive look he explained. “I went to Scotland to live with my grandad when I was ten.”

  “Right. You’re the piper.”

  “Aye. My name is Dylan McBride.” With a nod, he offered his hand and she grasped it. “So, you heard the tune? Is that what brought you to us?”

  “Yeah. My dog went crazy and took off. When I caught up to him he was just standing there watching you. I guess after a while he smelled the cakes.” She giggled. “I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I’ve lived here all my life and never heard bagpipes or seen anything like that in the park before.”

  Dylan grimaced, obviously embarrassed by what she’d witnessed.

  “Are you studying music at university?” she asked.

  “No. Archaeology.”

  “That’s cool.” When he grinned, she couldn’t help but giggle again. He was cute, nerdy, and painfully shy. “And you’re all witches.”

  “Wiccan.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “Not really. It’s—”

  “So, how do you get to be—” Maggie stopped speaking at the familiar sound of Father Grace’s SUV. “You gotta go.”

  “Where? Where should I—?” Stammering, he scrambled down the steps.

  “Hurry. He’s coming.”

  “Which way?” His voice trembled.

  “Pretend you’re a hiker. Walk down to the end of the lane.” She gestured. “Turn right and follow the road. You’ll end up back in the parking lot.”

  “Right.” He took a step, then stopped and stared at her. “Can I ask your name?”

  “It’s Maggie.”

  “Maggie.” He repeated it softly as if committing it to memory.

  She waved her hand to hurry him up, as the voices in the side drive grew louder. Thank God, her father was slow.

  He glanced at the lettering by the front door. “Maggie Taylor.”

  “Yes. Now go!”

  “Would you mind if I called you? On the phone?”

  “Jesus. No,” she said. Any second now Father Grace would appear on the porch. Dylan looked dejected. Didn’t understand. “No, I wouldn’t mind. Call me. Now, go.”

  ≈

  Estrada watched the priestess slip her fingers through her shimmering black hair—hair he had fondled seconds before and still ached to touch.

  “Wow! Now what?” Jones just loved the drama.

  “Whoever we invited into the circle needs to leave, and then we close the portal,” said Sensara.

  “Damage control?” quipped Jones, with a little too much cheek.

  “Sounds good to me,” said Daphne.

  “Close your eyes and visualize whoever you invited in, thank them, and ask them to depart.” She glared at Estrada. “Especially Dionysus.”

  “Hey, it wasn’t just me.” Still reeling with the feel of her flesh, he’d lost all interest in words and incantations.

  “I know.” She was trying to regain control. “Could you please just take Dylan’s place?”

  As he ambled off, she addressed them all. “Each of you should use the banishing pentagram while thanking the powers of your point. Sylvia, you start.”

  Poor Sylvia was ashen over Dylan’s disappearance; still she followed Sensara’s instructions. Jones followed, and then Estrada, and finally Daphne. Each was brief and specific, focussing less on ceremony than on getting the job done. Then, from the altar, Sensara took a jar containing a black candle.

  Beginning in the East, she walked slowly widdershins around the circle three times. On her final round she stopped, picked up Sylvia’s yellow candle and blew it out, then chanted the familiar closing lines: “Fire, seal this circle; let it seep into the ground. Spirits shall return and all shall be as it was found.”

  Continuing her journey, she snuffed out each candle while asking its element to seal the circle. Estrada watched mesmerized, as she revolved around them like a lithe ballerina in her white gossamer gown. He had never seen her like this before. Radiant violet rays stretched far beyond her body while golden light burst from the crown of her head.

  In all the years they’d been working together, he’d never seen her as a woman, only as a friend, a kind of kid sister. He’d teased her and played with her, and now all he wanted to do was throw her to the ground and make love to her. It was wickedly wrong; delighted and unnerved him.

  At last, she returned to the altar. “Our circle is sealed underground. Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again.”

  “Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again.” They echoed the reply, but an air of vexing uncertainty shifted through each of them in the mounting dusk that was not merry in the least.

  As they packed up, Sylvia fretted. “What should we do about Dylan?”

  “It’s a dark moon tonight and the light’s almost gone. Let’s pack up our things and get out of these woods,” said Daphne. “We can wait for him in the parking lot.”

  “Will he know to go there? What if he gets lost? I have a bad feeling—”

  “Dylan’s a big boy,” said Jones. “He’ll turn up.” Loathing his callousness, Estrada repressed the urge to throttle him.

  “We can call Search and Rescue if he doesn’t appear within the hour,” said Daphne. “I’m sure he will though. He’s probably just trying to calm that girl down.”

  “I’ll take his bagpipes,” said Sylvia.

  “He’ll be fine,” Estrada said, as much to allay his own fears as hers. Somehow, he felt responsible, and it bothered him that Sensara refused to make eye contact. As the downcast group staggered back through the woods, silence swelled around them like the lichen that encased the trees. Gasping, he hunched forward as if he’d taken a fist to the gut. He knew it for what it was—had felt it before. Fear. It smashed into his solar plexus, stole his power, and left him staggering, wounded, and helpless. And with it came awareness. No matter what Sensara said, all would not be as it was found. Things would never be the same again.

  Indeed. By the time they reached the parking lot, things were decidedly worse.

  “Look, what happened during the circle was my fault,” said Sensara. They were loitering beside the cars, waiting for Dylan. “My intuition must be off. I should never have suggested an open invocation. I apologize.”

  Estrada wondered why she would say such a thing. She was a gifted psychic and her voices never lied. If they advised her to hold an open circle and invite in whatever was needed, then it—no matter how odd or frightening—was necessary. Walking on the edge of uncertainty energizes some people, but he knew it would drain her. Ha
ving always relied on her inner guidance to deliver the truth, self-doubt would be paralyzing. If she couldn’t trust her intuition, she couldn’t trust herself to do readings, to lead the coven, to do anything.

  “We’re a coven. That means we’re all in this together,” said Daphne. “You shouldn’t take on the responsibility for something going awry, Sensara. It might not have been that at all.”

  “I agree,” said Sylvia. “When we perform rituals it’s our responsibility as a group to make sure we don’t do something that results in harm to anyone or anything. If we inadvertently created a situation, it’s up to us to determine what occurred and why.”

  “And fix it,” added Daphne. Sylvia nodded.

  “Nothing bad happened,” Jeremy said. “Sensara and Estrada made out, a dog ate the cakes, and Dylan took off after some girl.”

  “Shut up,” said Sensara. “Save your insecure bullshit for your boyfriends!”

  A communal shudder reverberated through the group. She had never exploded and the realization of her recklessness sent the blood rushing to her cheeks.

  “Whoa, sister. Where did that come from?” Jones smirked. “Looks like we know whose button got pushed tonight.”

  “Fuck off.” Glaring through slanted eyes, she slithered back a step. For a moment, Estrada wished for storybook power, the kind that could transform a jerk into a frog, but then, distracted by this new Sensara, he let it go.

  “That’s enough,” said Daphne. She was the rock among them and the only one to whom even Jones would acquiesce.

  “A black dog is an evil omen to be running through a sacred circle,” said Sylvia.

  “Oh, come on. A black dog?” Jones sniggered. “Hey, maybe it was Sirius Black?” Sensara’s outburst had no effect on his infantile mind. “At least we know he’s one of the good guys.”

  Ignoring Jones, Estrada stole a glance at Sensara. His toes twitched. Then the tingling surged up the inside of his legs. Was she feeling it too? Is that why she refused to meet his gaze? He remembered touching her cheek, the taste of her breath in his mouth. Raising his musky fingers to his lips he inhaled her scent. God, he wanted her. But why? Was it love, or some kind of magic? It could be a charm that revealed and amplified their true feelings for each other, making the concealed obvious. The only thing he knew for certain was that if he ventured anywhere close to her, anywhere his aura would brush even slightly against hers, he would be sucked down like a leaf in a vortex.

  Sylvia was lecturing. “The black dog is one form of the pooka, a Celtic solitary faerie that can shapeshift. It can be a real nightmare according to the legends.”

  “A pooka! Are you serious? That was no faerie. That was a Labrador retriever.” Jeremy laughed.

  “That remains to be seen,” said Sylvia.

  “Honestly. Can nothing ever happen without it being some big friggin phenomenon?”

  “Well, Jeremy, it might not be a big friggin phenomenon,” Sensara said, “but if it is, I hope it goes after you first.”

  “Sensara!” said Sylvia. “You are our high priestess. Can you please exert some control?”

  She shrugged. “I’m sorry, everyone. I don’t know what’s come over me. I apologize Jeremy. You’re right. If people will share, I think we should talk about what entities we called into the circle, and why. Maybe we can determine what’s happened. What do you all think?”

  “True confessions,” teased Jones.

  “Enough.” This time it was Sylvia. “Do not exacerbate the situation.”

  “We’re not here to judge anyone, but I really don’t know what else to do,” Sensara confessed. “Who wants to go first?”

  “I will,” said Sylvia. “I invoked the Celtic fertility god, Cernunnos. I am beginning a new book about Celtic shamanism and asked for help with its creation.”

  “Thank you,” said Sensara. “As for myself, I invoked Aphrodite. I thought a visit from the love goddess would benefit us a group.”

  Jeremy sniggered.

  “That remains to be seen,” said Estrada. Sensara cast him a wicked look. “Hey, I’m just—”

  “What about you, Jeremy?” she asked, cutting him off mid-sentence.

  “Oh relax, people. I’m just trying to lighten things up. I invoked Demeter and Dionysus. You know me. I’m always looking for the same things: cash and a date.”

  They all turned to Estrada, who had hoisted himself to the roof of the car and sat wrapped in his cape like a drowsing raven. Really, it was to cover the erection that would not recede and which he hoped would not require medical intervention.

  “Dionysus,” he said. “Mabon is his sabbat. I thought we could use a visit from our lord of frivolity.”

  “All right then. We don’t know who or what Dylan conjured, but we’ve got love, fertility, prosperity, and amusement. I suppose that accounts for some of it,” Sensara said. She eyed Estrada venomously. Why was she so angry? She had fully opened her body to him. “But what about the girl? Why did she appear?”

  “It must have been me.” They had forgotten Daphne. She sat slouched against a cement curb behind the car. As she rose, a grey balloon of sadness enveloped her.

  “What do you mean, Daphne?”

  “I just kept thinking about those witches, the ones that disappeared. I couldn’t get them out of my mind. I mean, they’re just like us. You didn’t see Raine when she lost her friend. They’d been like sisters since they were kids. And I kept wondering: what if one of us disappeared? What would we do? Would we just say, oh well, women disappear all the time?”

  Estrada pulled his hood up over his head.

  “No, of course not.”

  “Well, it is one of us. The woman was a witch.”

  “I agree,” Sylvia said. “Too often people do nothing until it touches them directly. You’re right, Daphne. What did you do?”

  “I summoned Hecate. It seemed appropriate to invite the goddess of justice.”

  “Hmmm, that’s interesting,” said Sylvia. “Because Hecate roams at night, she is associated with dogs.”

  “Oh please. Let sleeping dogs lie,” muttered Jones.

  Sylvia squinted down her nose at him. “And wolves.”

  “Anything else?” Sensara asked.

  “The Morrigan,” Daphne said. She bit her bottom lip. “I know. The Celtic goddess of war was probably too much, and…I did something else.” They all stared, wondering what that could mean.

  “What did you do?” whispered Sensara.

  “I cast a charm. It felt right at the time, but now, with the way you two were acting and the girl running into the middle of it all…I’m afraid I might have conjured something beyond our control.”

  “What kind of charm?”

  “Well, when women disappear they rarely return alive, right? So, my thought was to catch this man before he could do any more harm.”

  “So you—?”

  “I charmed the killer.”

  A palpable silence settled around the witches, who, knowing the risks of spellcasting, pondered the depth and intensity of a spell such as this: a spell that could radiate unfathomable ripples before reaching its intended mark.

  To charm a killer exposed them all to peril.

  Finally, after several moments the silence was shattered by Sensara’s incredulity. “What have we done?”

  “Where the hell is Dylan?” exclaimed Sylvia.

  ≈

  “Who was that, Maggie?” Father Grace rounded the corner of the wooden porch, another darkling shadow in the drowsing dusk.

  She didn’t like his tone and ignored the intrusion; desperate to remain in her reverie, where the words of Macbeth mingled with the images of the witches she’d just encountered. Perched on the top step, she wondered what effect opening this new Wiccan doorway would have on her old boring life. There were kids at school…kids who wore long black trench coats, blackened lips and eyes and tattooed pentagrams; whose pale skin attested to long nights and sequestered days. They claimed to be into Wicca and the
y were just kids like her. Weren’t they? Did they have powers, perform spells, chant and dance in the woods, have sex on altars? She shivered with the first stirrings of rebellious power. What could Shannon do if she discarded her Catholic upbringing and embraced Wicca? Surely by the time a girl was eighteen, she had the right to choose her own religion?

  “Maggie,” repeated Father Grace.

  “Hmmm?” She took a deep breath and sighed.

  “Who was that you were talking to?” The casual disparity in his tone was possessive, jealous even.

  “Just a hiker.” Noting his suspicion, she continued with a cursory explanation. “He got lost in the trails and ended up here. It happens sometimes. I told him how to get back to the park.” It was a glimmer of truth in an otherwise murky story.

  “And gave him a drink?” He gestured to the half empty blue bottles on the steps. He wasn’t going to give up. What was this? The Inquisition?

  “Well, that’s the Christian thing to do, isn’t it, Father?” Her sarcasm left him puzzled, so she softened her tone. “Look. He was lost and thirsty. What’s the big deal anyway? I’m nearly old enough to vote.”

  He sat down next to her on the step. “I know that. But I worry about you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a young woman and you spend all your time either studying or looking after your father. You take life too seriously.”

  “Too seriously?”

  “It’s not normal. You’ve got to get out and play sometimes.”

  “I do gymnastics,” she said, but sensed there was something else on his mind.

  “You’re often here alone in this house. It’s a dead end street right next to a massive forest. I don’t want to scare you, but this could be a setting for a horror movie.”

  In all the years she’d lived at the end of Hawk’s Claw Lane, the thought of being frightened in her own home had never crossed her mind.

  “Think about it. Your mom often works double shifts at the hospital, and we both know that John would be no help if something happened. I mean, you just never know who or what might come out of those woods.” He gestured to the dark trees beside the house. Until today, she would have argued that point, but now—