Gus leaned down and pressed a kiss on her forehead and said, “I’m not a cipher, Scarlett. I’m not the child you knew. I’m not a pansy or a wuss or a non-person. But I am the man who knows you inside and out. I am the man who has loved you since forever.”
Scarlett’s breath caught because she had not expected that. Not at all. And she had no idea what to do. None at all. She wasn’t even capable of finding deep root thoughts or puffy cloud thoughts because he’d left her flabbergasted and blank-minded.
He pressed his finger to her lips, and he said, “Just because I’m giving you time, doesn't mean I don’t want something with you. And I won’t have Lex slide in here and steal you away because I was too afraid to say something.”
She took a breath, ready to defend herself, and Gus stopped her again.
“I know. I know you aren’t thinking that. I know you’re healing. But the scent of hurt is fading on you and don’t be confused—just because you haven’t gone there in your head, doesn’t mean Lex hasn’t. Believe me. He has.”
Lex started his sedan, backed it up, and pulled it up next to where Gus was towering over Scarlett. Lex rolled the window down, gaze lingering on Scarlett for a long minute before he finally said, “Wally was nasty. I haven’t gotten the car detailed yet, and even though the trash is out of the car doesn’t mean that it smells any less like old man sweat, stale french fries, and something rotten.”
She made a face as Gus opened the car door for her. She didn’t want to get in the car for a hundred reasons beyond Lex’s description, and there was definitely a scent of something wrong coming from the car. She got in anyway. The child needed her. Not Lex. Her.
“So…” She said as Lex drove away. “Where did you go?”
Chapter 4
The trees were rolling by in the distance. There was a storm coming in off of the ocean, or maybe that was just her druidic senses telling her to beware, but Scarlett felt a bit too much like a leaf on the wind propelled about by the deeds of others and fate.
Lex glanced over and back to the road. “Can we save that for later?”
Scarlett’s face said what she really thought of his sidestepping her question. It made her feel how he’d talked her into working with him when the mayor had been killed, he’d used her connections to the people of Mystic Cove to find out what was happening and worked with them to find the killer. It wasn’t altruistic on his part, he’d done it because the last sheriff was an utter idiot and Lex was in the sheriff’s sights.
But he’d become someone who’d weaseled his way into her life and maybe her heart, and then he’d just…disappeared, and she had feelings about that, but she wasn’t quite sure what they were.
She thought she’d have been ok with his choices if he’d said goodbye. It was a reasonable desire on her part, and she wanted to hear why he hadn’t.
She paused and then said, “We can.”
What had happened didn’t matter not in the face of a missing kid and a murdered young woman. Lex looked at Scarlett, nodded, and then said, “Let’s go. We’ll start at Bridget’s address.”
“Do we have that?”
“I called the dealership. We’ll try there to see if the little sister has been there. Then we’ll see what we can find. Bridget was renting one of those little cottages over off of Half-Moon Drive.”
“Those ones that should have been torn down 3 decades ago?”
Lex nodded once and she could see his jaw tighten with the fury of it. If Mystic Cove had a seedy area, it was Half-Moon Drive and Bridget was so young. Lex said she had been 18.
“I’ve already been there a few times,” Lex said. “Since I came back and took the job. I didn’t realize it existed when I was here before.”
“That’s because you weren’t looking for anything that would be found there,” Scarlett said. She’d caught what he’d said. How had she not heard that he’d been back and taken the job of sheriff? She’d been scattered and busy, but she wouldn’t have thought she’d miss that. Unless…unless people deliberately didn’t tell her. Oooh, that irritated her.
“Will Ella be ok?”
“Druids aren’t useless,” Scarlett said softly as she looked out the window and watched the ocean and trees roll by. It was so lovely here. Mystic Cove wasn’t the place for some young normal girl to end up given its nature. It sort of…appealed to normals for the tourist trade and repelled them when it came to moving there. Outside of that…it was lovely. If there was one thing that Mystic Cove wasn’t it was a place for a poor normal kid to end up dead.
“That’s a lesson you’ve already taught me,” Lex’s voice—his calmness, his steady reply. His utter lack of arrogance had Scarlett feeling guilty for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” she said and then was mad at herself for apologizing. She struggled to finish her thought in the face of the competing emotions and then said, “I just…my mom and I accessed our link to nature and dulled the experience in Ella’s mind. Feeling what happened from her perspective has made me…want to use all the curse words. She’s a steady little thing, right?”
Her parenting worry pounded against her head. The needs of the missing sister of the victim against the needs of Scarlett’s daughter. Scarlett knew that Ella was tough and felt a little more comfortable as she said, “Ella probably would have recovered pretty quickly. Mom and I just…sped it up. Being up at our property and running around the family grove will finish up what we started.”
Lex pulled onto Half-Moon Drive. It was a narrow, gravel thing with trees crowding close to the lane preventing easy passage for two cars. The second to last cottage, with a hole in the roof, and a broken window was where that poor kid and her sibling had lived.
“Do we know how old the little sister is?”
“Johnny didn’t know. Her name is Maeve.”
Scarlett paused for a moment. As she got out of the car, she felt a tickle of something. She paused again, her head tilted, and she took a deep breath letting her senses range. And then she said, “Oh. Ohhhhh…”
She didn’t go inside the little shack instead walking around to the back of the run-down cottage and paused. It was riotous, overgrown, and seeped with druidic magic.
“Scarlett?” Lex had followed, letting her lead, and she turned back to him.
“Do you feel that?” Her head cocked as she stared around. She leaned down and touched the grass and then placed both hands directly into the earth.
“I feel something…maybe,” Lex said.
She glanced up and those wide shoulders shrugged.
“I’m feeling druidic magic. Are we sure that Bridget was normal?”
“I…I don’t know. Can you tell?”
Scarlett pulled out her phone and called Gram.
“Scarlett.”
“Hey Gram,” Scarlett said, “Did you know of a young couple of druids living on Half-Moon?”
“We wouldn’t leave our kind out there,” Gram said. She sounded disgusted at the very idea of it.
“What if they didn’t know what they were?”
Gram didn’t reply for a moment. Scarlett was sure Gram was considering the possibility.
“It’s possible. It’s not like we’re flashy like witches or warlocks. It’s so much easier to not know what you are and think you have a green thumb and a predilection for good instincts or meditation.”
“Keep your instincts on the alert for a missing druid kid, Gram. She’s in trouble. Dangerous trouble. We need to find her before someone else does.”
“Someone else who?”
“Whoever killed her sister. We’ve lost one, Gram. And we didn’t even know she was ours.”
Lex’s face was passive, but his gaze was fixed on hers and there was something in it. Finally, he said, “Warlocks aren’t like druids.”
“All of the races have their strengths,” Scarlett said.
He shook his head as she said it. “I’m not talking about strengths or weaknesses. I’m certainly not talking about power. I can tell
you right now the name of about 5 warlocks in this town who know me. Does your Gram know all the druids?”
Scarlett nodded.
“And you guys would have helped Bridget and Maeve if you’d known about them?”
Scarlett paused, kind of shocked at the idea that they wouldn’t. Surely he would have helped a warlock kid? But she just nodded instead of asking further questions.
He shook his head and the look on his face was a little baffled. “Do you think you can get information from the trees or animal or whatever?”
Scarlett shrugged, glancing around at the overgrown yard. It would all depend on the relationship the girls had with the trees here and the awareness of the trees.
He waited, but when she didn’t explain, he asked, “Would you try?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll go inside. If you sense the kid…” He paused and then said, “Try to talk to her without me. I don’t want to spook her.”
“I’ll find her if she’s around as long as the trees will trust me.”
He nodded, simply accepting that trees weren’t automatically loyal to whatever bypassing druid might want to snuggle up to them.
Scarlett walked the perimeter of the yard before finding a chestnut tree that was a little more friendly that the others. She sat down, leaning her spine into the tree, but assuming the lotus position outside of the tree’s support.
She closed her eyes, letting her mind trip among the trees and flowers murmuring a sort of sweet nonsense to them as they got a feel for her. They weren’t so much communicating with words as they were with sense, sensations. It was the sense of knowing, of discernment that druids possessed that allowed them to feel out the personality of trees.
“Hello,” she said, talking to the trees and trying to ignore the way that Lex was eavesdropping from the doorway to the shack that could only be called a cottage with great generosity. He’d done something because even though he went inside to search the cottage, she was sure he was aware of her. Some warlock something. She wasn’t sure what it was, but even as he searched the house, he was keeping an ear on her. Maybe he was concerned for her, here on Half-Moon Drive, or maybe he wanted to know more about druids. They weren’t exactly common outside of the locations of their groves. She bet he hadn’t known all that many before he came to Mystic Cove.
Or maybe it was her. Which both made her pause and think of herself and made her upset. They’d had…a nothing that was something. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it had been more than taking off in the middle of the night without a word.
* * * * *
“Who are you?”
The question snapped Scarlett out of communing with the trees. She opened her eyes and rose in one breath to face off with the person in front of her. The speaker was a youngish man with a slim frame and wide eyes. He was pale with wide dark eyes, and there was something utterly childish about his face. He looked as if he wanted someone to save him.
“My name is Scarlett Oaken, I’m looking for Maeve.”
“Why?”
“We’re worried about her,” Scarlett said, not wanting to mention the police or the murder. She wasn’t sure who this kid was, but she was sure that they needed to tread gently to get anything out of him. He must know Bridget and Maeve if he was here.
His mouth gaped a bit like a fish, opening and closing his mouth, as he tried to find words to say whatever it was that was bothering him.
“Is it true?” His eyes were shiny—he looked on the edge of tears, and she realized that he must have heard something. Had Johnny passed on the news? Perhaps he’d been in contact with Maeve?
“Is what true?” She glanced around and saw Lex just inside the open doorway of the back of the cottage. He waved his hand, and she bet that he wanted her to question this kid rather than to scare him off himself. Or at least to start questioning the kid first.
“Is it true that Bridget is dead?” The kid—he was really just a boy—his face crumpled and he started crying. “Where’s Maeve? What happened?”
“Who are you?” Scarlett wrapped her arm around the kid’s shoulder and led him over to a tree stump to sit next to him. She hummed in the back of her throat the same comforting melody she’d used with her daughter Ella earlier that afternoon.
“Jay…”
Scarlett gave him her mom look and he finished, “Jay Malone.”
“How do you know Bridget and Maeve?”
Jay’s lips trembled and he said, almost into his knees, “We’re dating. We live together.”
Lex moved and Scarlett shook her head. She rubbed her hand over Jay’s back. He was so slim he seemed more like a boy than man. And the loose white t-shirt only emphasized his near frailness.
“Is she dead?” Another tear rolled down his face. “Please say no. Please say this isn’t happening.”
Scarlett didn’t answer the question at all, she sidestepped to gently inquire, “When did you last see her?”
“Um…” Jay looked away from Scarlett, and her knowing told her that he was trying to hide something.
“It’s ok,” she said soothingly. “It’s all right.”
“We fought,” Jay said, and then he looked over at Scarlett with wide, sad, cow’s eyes. There was something about him that showed him as particularly bright or talented if you could even see that in a few minutes. And yet—if he was talented or capable—he was wasting that talent horrifically. “I…I…was mad at her. She worked all the time. And she wasn’t any fun. She was so focused on…getting ahead. Making money. I took off for a few days and was couch surfing at a couple different places for the last week. I…I…figured we’d make up. Things would go back to how they were. I didn’t know…”
“It must have been hard for her,” Scarlett said soothingly, “With a little sister.”
Scarlett didn’t ask a question, but she put on her most soothing, big sister tone and just made statements. It seemed that Jay was almost compelled to finish the thoughts, but she felt it might be guilt that drove him, but he also seemed just a little…naive. He clearly had no idea that the police would be focusing on Jay to start. Of course, Lex would. Any kid who had seen a crime TV show or movie should know that. But Jay didn't seem to be making the connection.
“Yeah,” Jay looked towards the cottage but didn’t see Lex in the shadows and then back at Scarlett, “I should have helped more. She was mad at me. Bridget. She got so angry with me. I don’t have a job and…she was tired of carrying me too. That’s what she said. Like we weren’t in love. Like I wasn’t enough.”
Jay really did lean into his knees now like a puppet who’s master had let go. He slumped down and wept, murmuring into his legs, but Scarlett couldn’t make out what he was saying.
Her eyes narrowed on the crying back. She had caught what he’d said, and it infuriated her. He was perfectly healthy, unemployed, and mad at his girlfriend for not wanting to support him and her little sister. Scarlett shook her head at his back. He was strong enough, healthy enough. He could have had a job. Yet he was living off a girl barely out of school? Scarlett wanted to slap the back of his head and scold him that his mama would have expected better.
Maybe not, though. Maybe, if she were his parent, she’d just be glad he wasn’t in her basement? Maybe she’d just be glad that he was out of the house and apparently living his own life, however, a big mooch he might be on other people.
“What do you do, Jay?”
“Well…I….I helped with Maeve. She’s only 11. Just a kid. Shouldn’t be left home alone all the time while Bridget was at work. And I…” Jay stopped and Scarlett was sure he was holding something back, but he didn’t say what.
She patted his back again, humming to him, but it didn’t work. He kept crying and he stopped talking. The ability to soothe statement from him seemed to have been leaving.
“When did you last see Bridget and Maeve?”
Jay sat up and was finally suspicious. “Why do you care? You’re not Wally.”
&nbs
p; He said Wally’s name like he’d known the old sheriff a little too well.
“Wally is the mayor now,” Lex said from the doorway, pulling back his jacket to flash a badge, “Scarlett is asking because she’s helping me look for Maeve. Answer her questions.”
To Scarlett’s utter shock, Lex crossed his arms over his chest, leaned against the shack, and let her carry on the interrogation. She felt, for a moment, that he might trust her but then she realized—he was still trading on her being a Mystic Cove native and a druid. All appealing and soft and supposedly weak. Someone you could trust with your baby or your granny. This Jay—he’d know some member of her family, he’d have gone to school with other druids, he’d….it didn’t matter right now.
Jay looked back to Scarlett and the begging expression was back on his face. “I…”
“When did you last see Bridget and Maeve?” She used the Mom voice again, hoping it would work.
Jay’s mouth trembled, but he answered. “Saturday Night. I wanted to go to a party, and Bridget said she had to work. She wanted me to stay with Maeve, so she wouldn’t be alone. I…I didn’t want Maeve hanging around at the party and I didn’t want to stay behind. We got in a fight. I…it was bad.”
“So you didn’t come back?”
He started crying again, but he shook his head as he said, “I didn’t see her again. I came back when I knew Maeve would be at school and Bridget at work, and I got some of my stuff. I thought…I thought she’d miss me after a while and I could come back. But…man, she wasn’t as nice anymore. Mr. Day told her I needed to get a job. He said I was holding her back like I didn’t do anything. He…he…this never would have happened if he hadn’t interfered. Filling her head with crap. Probably sleeping with her.”
Scarlett’s brows rose at that last bit. Was he talking about the elder Mr. Day or Brad Day? Either way, she was sure what Jay said wasn’t true—or at least that he didn’t believe really believe it. He just wanted her to be at fault instead of him.
Runes and Roller Skates Page 3