Boxes were stacked up against the far wall and furniture littered the living room.
Who had unloaded the PODs?
And…had she missed the wagons that should have been out front? Had they been moved?
Tyler, Mandy, and Leah sat at the table playing a marble game called Aggravation. Leah looked aggravated. It was a well named game.
Leslie looked up from the cutting board and frowned, returning her glaring attention to the bell pepper she viciously stabbed.
“What did that bell pepper do to you?” Paige asked, setting the files on the kitchen island.
“I’m picturing Merry’s face on it.”
“Ah.” Well, at least the pepper would be finely chopped. Paige didn’t like big chunks of bell pepper. She didn’t really like bell peppers, but she wasn’t going to complain either. Seemed like suicide.
“What’s that?” Leslie gestured to the files with her knife.
“These?” Paige smiled. “Everything you could ever want to know about the Eastwoods and the Blackmans.”
“Wait.” Leslie paused. “What?”
“You’re not going to stop chopping those, are you?”
“Oh, shut up.” Leslie set down the knife and grabbed the top file. “Oliver Eastwood.” She opened it. “The man from last night. The one who paused so significantly before getting into the SUV.”
Paige nodded. “Oldest surviving son of Merry Eastwood.”
“That would make him over a century old.”
“I said oldest surviving son, Les.” Paige propped her hip against the island. It scooted, so she stood up again.
“We need to get it anchored.” Dexx took the next folder. “Eldora Blackman. What will we find out here?”
“Oliver was born in 1973.” Leslie looked up. “Pea. He’s our age.”
“I know.” Well, roughly, give or take eight or so years. Paige leafed through the stack of folders.
“How?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“How could a woman who’s almost two hundred years old have another kid?”
Dexx pointed at Leslie. “That’s a valid point. Wouldn’t those ovaries be covered in dust by now?”
“Well, apparently not.” Paige pulled out Merry’s folder and turned the first divider. “Look. This is her fourth set of children. The woman doesn’t age, but when her kids turn forty, they die and she starts over.”
Leslie flipped through the pictures. “They’re all boys.”
“Yeah.” Paige had noticed that. “Look. She gave birth to a few girls, but they never made it past their first year.”
Leslie frowned. “What bad luck is that?”
“The kind you perform yourself.” Alma waddled into the kitchen, her hand at her lower back. “She killed ‘em, most like.”
“Why?” Paige straightened. “Grandma, you haven’t been unloading everything, have you?”
“No, no.” Alma waved her granddaughter’s concern off. “Just set up the garden a little is all.”
“By yourself?”
“The kids helped.”
“A little,” Leslie said with a disgruntled groan. “We’re going to have to beat them.” She turned to the stove and dumped the cut-up peppers in the pan. “Or eat them.”
“You stopped chopping them.” Paige stared at the large pieces of bell pepper lying in the pan like corpses.
“You’ll get over it,” Leslie said in a voice that meant, “I’ll kill you slowly if you don’t stop whining right now.”
Paige glared at her sister.
Leslie smiled sweetly back. “Grandma, why would you think Merry killed her own daughters?” Leslie’s Texan drawl deepened. Was it because Alma was in the room? Because it had been barely noticeable earlier.
“Only women carry on the coven.” Alma’s tone implied any doofus should have known that.
Paige and Leslie exchanged confused looks.
Alma sank into a chair at the table. “Have you seen a male witch lead a coven before?”
Paige hadn’t really seen a coven before.
“I’m sure there are male witches out there.” Leslie shrugged deeply with one shoulder. “Who could lead a coven.”
“In communion with the All Mother?” Alma shook her head. “Someone who’s never birthed a child, never given life. He’d never make it through the cycles.”
By “cycles,” Alma meant the maiden, mother, and crone. The three cycles of womanhood. Well, if the woman chose to be a mother. Motherhood wasn’t for every woman.
“What’s for dinner?” Paige sniffed, smelling something burning.
“Was going to be meatloaf.” Leslie rested her chin in the palm of her hand, reading the file. “Then I got pissed off and now we’re having meat. There’ll be potatoes.”
“Maybe I should just cook.” Dexx closed the folder he’d been reading and stepped up to the stove.
Tru glanced up from his laptop, typed something quickly, then closed it. “I’ll help.”
“Hey, man. Thanks.”
“What do we got?”
Paige took her stack of files, smiling at Dexx on her way to the table. “You’re so sexy right now.”
He grabbed her hips and rubbed his scratchy chin along her cheek. “How about now?”
If felt like knives biting into her flesh. “I’ll kill you long time.”
He pulled back and waggled his eyebrows with a smile. He gave her a coquettish look. “Do you promise?”
“To kill you?” Paige chuckled. To anyone listening in, their talk probably made no sense.
“Long time,” he said, drawing out the first word and adding an accent that could have been…well, anything because it was horrible.
But she knew what was referencing. Some old nineties movie where an Asian woman—whose only role was to be a sex object—had one line. “I love you long time.” Or something. Paige couldn’t remember exactly because Paige and Dexx had butchered that line so much over the past few months.
She claimed his lips, latching onto them for as long as their brief moment lasted…in a kitchen full of people. She pulled back and said softly, “Long time.”
He giggled like a girl, shivering as he walked away. “Oh, good.” He kicked his heel up and batted his eyelashes at her over his shoulder. “Tehe.”
Paige shook her head and chuckled, finally making it all the way to the dining room table.
Leslie grabbed another folder while their two men talked food. “I love my man.”
Paige grabbed a folder from the middle. “Mine, too.”
“Look at this,” Leslie leaned forward. “Merry is suspected of murder.”
“Several, in fact.” But the folder in Leslie’s hands seemed small if all the details of those murders were included. So, where were those files?
Alma sat down and leaned back in her chair, resting her head on the spoke. “Blood magick requires one thing. Blood. Usually death blood.”
Paige gave her grandmother a quizzical frown. “How do you know so much about it?”
“I served in the war, Punkin.”
Which didn’t explain anything. Paige wasn’t in the mood to battle with her grandmother to unearth more of her secrets. That woman loved her secrets. “Whatever. The FBI has a pretty impressive intel on both the witch families, but they’re lacking in some details.”
“Only two?” Alma asked.
“Like?” Leslie asked at the same time.
Something in Alma’s tone, or maybe it was in her expression—though, no. That couldn’t be it because her eyes were closed and her expression slack. Paige narrowed her eyes. She was jumping at too many conclusions and didn’t know what she was thinking.
But for a moment Paige got the feeling that Alma knew how and why Lovejoy had the files on the witches. And it felt like Alma knew about their files on the Whiskeys.
Paranoia?
“Oh.” Leslie had grabbed another folder, this one thicker, while Paige had been in her head. “Like what their
magicks are.” Leslie glanced at Leah.
Paige looked at Leah, then back to Leslie.
Leah had been having troubles with her magicks for the past few months and Paige hadn’t been able to help like she’d hoped. What Leah did wasn’t similar enough to what Paige did. The door was different somehow. She could probably use some help instructing her own daughter on the use of her abilities.
Leslie leaned in and whispered. “Eastwoods use blood magick. At least, that’s what they have here in the file. And the Blackmans use death magick.”
“How,” Paige leaned and continued just as low, “would they know that?”
Unless they’d had a witch helping them?
A which who had said Merry Eastwood used blood magick? Who seemed to know that Merry Eastwood had killed all her daughters?
“Grandma?” Paige turned her gaze to her grandmother.
Alma snored softly.
A few more things clicked into place. If each family had a different type of magick, then keeping track of the bloodlines made sense. The family trees in the grimoires.
Whoa. Paige’s father was a Blackman. Her magick was…death magick?
Paige stared at her hand, her heart stilling.
And her daughter, Leah, had death and blood magick rolling through her?
What did that all mean?
Leslie sighed, glancing at the kids playing on the other end of the table. “I’m so lucky I married a civilian.”
“Well,” Paige said, closing the file on Oliver and opening the next one. Ian Blackman. One of her brothers. “We know their addresses, how much they make, where they work—or don’t—where they went to school, and who they’re sleeping with.”
“We almost know how many rolls of toilet paper they use to wipe their butts.”
“How charming,” Alma groaned.
Had she been pretending to be asleep? Or was she really tired? Could be a combination of them both. Alma was getting upward in years and she wasn’t taking it easy. “Grandma, you’ve got to slow down.”
“I am.”
“You’re not.”
She raised a beefy shoulder, but didn’t open her eyes.
“I haven’t gone outside, but I’m willing to bet you set up the garden all by yourself.”
“Who else was going to do it?” Alma’s white eyes flared before she blinked, visibly miffed. She resituated in her chair, leaned her head back again and resumed her nap. “Both you girls are busy. I just did what I could. Them plants weren’t gonna survive forever in them pots.”
Paige could be upset at her grandmother for keeping her secrets all she liked, but at the end of the day, she was just one old woman. And a crotchety old woman Paige happened to love dearly. “But by yourself?”
“I’m not a damned invalid.”
“But you aren’t as young as you used to be either.”
“Somethin’ I know all too well, thank you very much.”
“Just—” What an infuriating woman. “Ask for help.”
“From who? Them kids don’t do nothin’ but complain.”
“Then make them do something other than complain.”
“When was the last time you actually mothered your children?”
Paige reeled from the verbal slap. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, child, you come in here and dote on that poor girl like she was some damned lost puppy, not a girl who needs a good beating.”
“Well, I really couldn’t beat her, now could I?” First, she didn’t believe in beating children. Second, Rachel had been watching her like a hawk in Texas. One wrong move and social services would have been called—the real social services, not Becky the angel who’d helped them by pretending to be a social worker. Leah would have been taken away for child abuse.
Child abuse. Children had more power in the house than the parents did. Kind of. It felt like it sometimes anyway.
Chuck knocked on the glass back door.
Paige waved him in.
“You could knock her on the head now and again,” Alma said, her tone tired. “You could paddle her on the butt.”
“She’s past butt paddlin’ age, Grandma.”
“Ain’t none of you past the paddlin’ age, Pea.” Alma sighed heavily and nodded at Chuck.
He nodded back at her. “Next time, you ask for help.”
She waved him off with a gnarled hand.
Paige shook her head at him. “What’s up?”
He gestured in question to the chair opposite her.
Paige shrugged. “Stayin’ for supper?”
“It depends on what’s burning?”
“Who knows? The boys are cooking.”
“I could have Faith stop by.”
Paige grimaced through a smile. “We survived long before you.”
Chuck raised his chin, then lowered it. “Right. I came because I heard about what happened today.”
“What did happen?” Alma quirked her lips, but sat up, leaning her elbows on the table. “Leslie’s fit to be tied, Dexx tried to kill m’ damned table, and you ain’t so chipper either.”
Paige scratched her chin. “Looks like Merry’s making good on her threat, is all. Les couldn’t get a loan and there aren’t any realtors who’ll work with her. Same thing with Dexx. And I don’t have a job.”
“Then where’d the folders come from?”
“The FBI.” Paige shook her head, fanning the folders out. “Captain Banes wants my help, but won’t hire me. Same goes for Director Lovejoy.”
Chuck smiled. “So you did meet with her.”
“I did. Friend of yours?”
His smile widened minutely.
Apparently, yes. “Anyway, we all struck out. So, tomorrow, we’ll have to try a different approach.”
“Right.” Leslie smacked the folder in her hand. “And what would that be?”
Paige didn’t quite know. She’d tossed several ideas around on the drive, but hadn’t found any viable solutions. Murder was still on the table, but then there’d be a body. Now, as a homicide detective, she did know what to do with said body, but…
…that was exactly the sort of thing that could get her into trouble. The real kind.
“There are other police stations.” Paige shrugged. “I’ll just apply to all of them.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Chuck folded his hands on the table in front of him. “We have a vacancy.”
“We who?” Paige asked.
“The pack…task force.”
“You say that like you don’t know what to call it.”
“We—I don’t. We’re not really police, but when things pop up, we research it and bring the situation to a proper end.”
Paige shook her head. “I can’t be tied to the pack.”
“You’re afraid of what Merry Eastwood will do to you and your family. You would be under my protection.”
“And I appreciate that.” She did. “But I need the freedom to be fair and unbiased.” Captain Banes had a good idea. She just didn’t agree that his approach was right.
“What do you want?”
Want? “If I could have any wish?”
He shrugged.
Leslie looked up at her with a pursed lip frown.
Alma closed her eyes.
Time to bait a hook. “I’d like to set up my own task force.” She didn’t know how that would work, though. How would they get paid? What kind of badges could they get? How could she make it legal? Where would they work? You know, the little details. But it was what she wanted.
“What do you mean?” Chuck asked.
“Get a few paranormals. Me. Maybe Les, when she has time. Dexx.”
“Hmm?” he asked over his shoulder. “Me, what?”
“Nothing.”
“Yeah. Okay.” He went back to talking to Tru.
“We’d need a lab tech, a couple of detectives. We could borrow Jack when we needed to.”
“How?” Leslie asked. “You left him in Denver.”
“I did, but Lovejoy is going to transfer him up here if we can find a way to stop moving.”
“What?” Leslie closed her folder and pulled back. “Really?”
Paige nodded.
“Why?”
“Because I’m a witch with an animal spirit and I can do what no other witch has done before?”
Leslie snorted. “Boloney. What is it?”
Paige gave her a sister a cocky grin. “Be the ring that unites them all.”
“Right. You.”
Paige shrugged. “Apparently, there’s a Council of Elders, or whatever, and if I can bring the witches back within the paranormal fold, they could be a ruling force.”
“That…sounds creepy.” Leslie looked out the side of her narrowed eyes for a moment. “And bad.”
Paige held up her hands. “That’s the reason for the files, actually. Lovejoy wants me to help her build a case to take them so they can put Merry Eastwood in their prison.”
“Huh—what?”
Chuck nodded. “Yes. The Council of Elders are quite just and it would be beneficial to the entire community if we could make witches follow the same laws we ourselves must follow.”
Leslie frowned deeply at Paige.
She shrugged. “You asked me what I wanted. Having my own team would help me put together a case like this.”
“But you don’t know how to make it work financially,” Leslie said, glancing at Chuck through her eyelashes.
Paige widened her eyes.
“I wish you would accept my help in this,” Chuck said.
Fish hooked. Now, to see what she could get from him. How would he demand she repay all this debt?
“I already have a budget for this set up.”
Surprise, surprise, surprise. “What?” she asked, playing along.
He flicked her a look that said he saw right through her. “This is exactly what this community has needed for a very long time.” He emphasized his words with his hands. “Captain Banes does an exceptional job of keeping everything fair, but there are things he doesn’t understand because he’s not of this world. We need a paranormal police force.”
Pieces fell into place. Not all of them. The arena felt way too big for her to understand all the pieces just yet.
Could it be that all of the maneuvering and posturing, the lavish job offer that Tru had been given, his pack offering to rebuild their house, had been to lure her to Troutdale? To be police chief of a paranormal police force? She stared at him for a long, dark moment. “Me.”
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