But Chloe only shook her head slightly, maybe hearing Bailey’s thoughts.
So Bailey kept her mouth shut, her jaw clenched tight, and she and Chloe stayed there and watched Poppy until Sheriff Larson arrived to arrest her. Bailey showed him where the keys to the safe were. Inside, just like Bailey had seen in Poppy’s mind, was a rust-stained rock and a cell phone with the battery removed. Poor Martha hadn’t even been able to afford a smart phone. Justice was done. They’d caught the bad guy. And Bailey had her strange new gift to thank for it. Hooray, right?
Somehow, though, it didn’t feel like cause for celebration.
Epilogue
Bailey was, of course, detained for questioning. She hated having to lie, but understood that she couldn’t claim to have read Poppy’s mind. Instead, she followed with Chloe’s story. Poppy had been driven mad by guilt. She’d found Bailey and Chloe dropping off souvenirs that Bailey had made for the tour business to sell—that part held up, of course, because that was exactly what they’d been doing. So, the rest did as well.
Plus, the Sheriff’s department had heard Poppy’s confession at the end. The story that quickly circulated was that Bailey and Chloe had somehow deduced much of what happened, and confronted Poppy with it and she’d cracked. They were briefly celebrated as heroes of the town. Sheriff Larson even offered to make them honorary deputies. Both Bailey and Chloe declined, and kept their heads down about all of it. It was possibly a joke anyway.
Avery, however, was beside himself. “I can’t believe you went and caught the killer by yourself!” He wailed when she saw him later, at the bakery.
Piper was less surprised. “I knew the whole leaving town thing was just a ruse. You never could keep your nose out of a good mystery.”
“I wish you’d taken us,” Avery complained.
Bailey sighed. “It wasn’t the plan. We were just in the right place at the right time.”
No one quite seemed to believe that. Including Chloe. She was convinced that it was all tied together; that they’d been merely instruments of higher powers, who had wanted to serve justice to Martha’s killer. While Bailey wasn’t sure about that she had to admit… it all seemed strangely ordered.
“So, are you still leaving?” Avery asked.
That was possibly the worst part of the fall out—and also, Chloe claimed, part of some mysterious, mystical plan as well—Bailey was expected to testify. She was not leaving town any time soon.
“Is it okay that I don’t hate that for you very much?” Avery mused.
“Yeah,” Piper said. “I’m glad you’re sticking around, at least for a little while longer.”
Bailey dreaded it. Already, the two of them were constantly peering and watching—or at any rate it felt that way—and she hated having a secret from them. Still, she smiled and touched Piper’s hand, and smiled. “Me too.”
Gradually, the commotion died down. As much as it was going to, anyway. Gloria and Trevor stuck around, each claiming to be charmed by the quaintness of Coven Grove, although Bailey knew that what really had them interested was what Martha had never had the chance to tell them her secret about the Caves.
She took that concern to Chloe, but the older woman only shared a knowing look with Aria and Frances. “The Caves have a way of keeping their secrets to themselves,” Chloe explained.
“They don’t really care for outsiders,” Aria added.
“Those two are just two in a long line of curious interlopers,” Frances finished.
Bailey wasn’t certain of that. Gloria especially had a kind of wide-eyed zeal when she talked about the Caves, and about Martha. And Trevor continued to be polite and charming, but Bailey knew his interest was as keen as Gloria’s; he was just better at hiding it.
Poppy’s hearing set her on course for a trial. Bailey and Chloe both testified, and half the town packed into the courtroom galley to observe. The local news treated it almost like a red carpet event. Lost was the real memory of Martha Tells, it seemed, except to those that knew her and called her sister. In its place was the iconic image of a woman who was always almost famous but never quite made it. In a way, it was even more sad than the truth, and Bailey grew angry over the media’s focus on the insane Poppy Winters, who ranted about witches and magic caves, but was ultimately ruled sane and received a sentence of twenty five years.
And then, just like that, it was over. Justice had been served, the world moved on.
Bailey was once again ready to consider leaving town.
But there was one thing that, Chloe insisted, she had to undergo first. If, at that point, she decided she was going to leave, then she could and no one would try to talk her out of it.
It was, Bailey learned, her official initiation.
“The first initiation,” Chloe explained, “is like an introduction. You can still walk away at that point, if you want to. Well… you can always walk away, but there is no geas associated with the first cave.”
It was a word Bailey didn’t know. “Geesh?” She asked. “Like birds?”
Chloe tittered. “No, not a bird. A geas is a like a promise, but rooted in magic. The deeper you go into the mystery of our tradition, the more important the secrets you learn become.” She waved at Aria and Frances, who sat elsewhere in the wide attic above the bakery. Aria was knitting casually, while Frances appeared to be making some kind of doll out of an assortment of materials arrayed before her. Corn husk was among them; the rest Bailey couldn’t tell from a distance.
“But not for the first one?” She asked.
Chloe nodded, and assured here there was no risk at all.
Bailey believed her, because she was making an effort to trust the women despite their cryptic words and tendency to obfuscate even the simplest answers behind riddles and parables. “Alright. Then… I suppose I can stay another few days.”
A few days became a week—the night of the next full moon. Bailey began to believe that the last weeks had all been some elaborate ploy to simply delay her leaving until she had no choice.
But the night did come, and she went with Chloe and Aria and Frances to the entrance of the caves just as the full moon rose to its apex in the starry, clear sky. There, she changed into a simple linen robe and the women anointed her arms, and feet, and eyes, and temples with fragrant oils as they chanted and sang and called out to what they called the ‘genius loci’ of the caves—the elemental spirit of the place itself, a sort of primal intelligence that suffused the place.
When they were done, they ushered Bailey excitedly into the place, where she stood in the center of the first great cavern. Each of the women with her went to a different part of it, and together they raised their voice in a somber, haunting sort of song that seemed to bounce around the odd angles of the caves walls, blending together until the acoustics made it seem almost as if the cave itself were singing.
She watched the writing and the pictographs, just as she’d been instructed, patiently enduring the strange ritual and alert to any subtle changes in herself that she might miss. What she was supposed to experience was a mystery. The women weren’t able to tell her because, they said, it was different for everyone.
But, as Bailey listened to the rolling chant that seemed to so closely match the rhythm and call of the ocean after a time, she did notice something. Her eyes went wide as she saw it happening. In an instant, she realized that she couldn’t possibly leave Coven Grove. Not now. Not after this.
A smile crept onto Bailey’s lips as, finally, it all began to make sense. Of course she could never translate the nonsense words. They really were just mixed up letters. But not anymore. Before her eyes, the paintings on the cave wall moved.
*****
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A Witching Well of Magic
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These books are all from my Caesars Creek Series
A Frozen Scoop of Murder (Caesars Creek Mystery Series Book One)
Death by Chocolate Sundae (Caesars Creek Mystery Series Book Two)
Soft Serve Secrets (Caesars Creek Mystery Series Book Three)
Ice Cream You Scream (Caesars Creek Mystery Series Book Four)
Double Dip Dilemma (Caesars Creek Mystery Series Book Five)
Melted Memories (Caesars Creek Mystery Series Book Six)
Triple Dip Debacle(Caesars Creek Mystery Series Book Seven)
Whipped Wedding Woes(Caesars Creek Mystery Series Book Eight)
A Sprinkle of Tropical Trouble(Caesars Creek Mystery Series Book Nine)
A Drizzle of Deception(Caesars Creek Mystery Series Book Ten)
Sweet Home Mystery Series
Creamed at the Coffee Cabana (Sweet Home Mystery Series Book One)
A Caffeinated Crunch (Sweet Home Mystery Series Book Two)
A Frothy Fiasco (Sweet Home Mystery Series Book Three)
Punked by the Pumpkin(Sweet Home Mystery Series Book Four)
Peppermint Pandemonium(Sweet Home Mystery Series Book Five)
Expresso Messo(Sweet Home Mystery Series Book Six)
Whispering Pines Mystery Series
A Sinister Slice of Murder (Whispering Pines Mystery Series Book One)
Sanctum of Shadows (Whispering Pines Mystery Series Book Two)
Curse of the Bloodstone Arrow (Whispering Pines Mystery Series Book Three)
Mad River Mystery Series
A Wicked Whack
A Prickly Predicament
Eden Patterson: Ghost Whisper Series
The Mystery of the Courthouse Calamity
The Mystery of the Screaming Elms
The Mystery of the Morbid Moans
The Mystery of the Ominous Opera House
The Witching on the Wall: A Cozy Mystery (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 1) Page 10