Office Heretics (A Coffee & Crime Mystery Book 2)

by Nan Sampson

  When Ellie had finished telling him about the phone call she sat back, watching him. "I don't know what to do, Per. I don't see how I can help her. And I can think of a thousand reasons why I can't go to Chicago."

  He pursed his lips, then sat back and sighed. "I don't know what I can say to you, Ellie." His accent, normally so slight it was almost unnoticeable, was a little thicker today. "I don't know what you want me to say."

  "I don't want you to say anything in particular. I just want you--"

  "You want me to tell you whether to go or not -- and I can't do that." He pushed his soup bowl further from him and sat back in his chair, crossing one long leg over the other. "What I will do is ask you to ask yourself a question."

  "What's that?"

  "Why did you come to Horizon, Ellie?"

  And when she opened her mouth to answer, he held up his hand. "No, don't tell me. This is for you to think about. Really think. People abandon what is familiar to them for two basic reasons. They're either running away from something or they’re running towards something. Fear, loss, grief, all of these things are reasons people run away. Love, hope, fresh beginnings, these are all things people run toward. You need to ask yourself why you're here. And why you really left Chicago. Only then will you know what to do."

  "Per, this has nothing to do with why I left Chicago. This has to do with a crazy friend who's come out of the woodwork after over a decade with some lunatic notion that someone's trying to kill her."

  "You said she brought up a promise. Tell me about the promise."

  "It was nothing. One of those college kind of things you say when you're young and melodramatic." It was private and stupid and she wasn't going to go there, not even with Per. Besides, Lacey had tricked her into it anyway. She was like that. Intense, manipulative, jealous.

  It didn't mean anything. Even if it had been sealed with blood. Especially not now, so many years later.

  Per's stance didn't change. “Let’s put the promise to your friend aside and talk a bit about a promise you made to yourself. You haven’t been to the drumming circle in weeks you know - we miss your energy. I also hear from Laura that you missed both the Lughnassa and Samhain celebrations up at Circle.”

  He didn’t ask a question, but those were more than just statements of fact. She pressed her lips shut. She would not let him bait her.

  His gaze was even, uncritical, but still intense. “How is your medium practice going? Are you still working on being able to connect and disconnect with spirits at will?”

  Her gaze snapped up. Why had he asked that? He always had an uncanny ability to see inside her - had he sensed she had stopped? Had he sensed why? She felt a chill go through her as she thought about the last time she had practiced opening herself up to the spirit world, at the dark and malevolent energy that had rushed at her. She’d barely slammed her barriers up in time.

  The experience had left her shaken and afraid.

  Per was watching her, his brow slightly wrinkled in concern. “I am here for you, Ellie. You know that.”

  She swallowed, nodded. “I know.”

  He didn’t push harder - he wouldn’t. Nor did she open up - she wasn’t yet ready to talk about what she’d felt, the almost personal connection she’d sensed in that dark force. As though it had been seeking her out, targeting her. No. Not ready.

  Instead, she washed up her dishes and made a polite but hasty exit. She felt betrayed by his refusal to justify her desire not to go back to Chicago, to keep some long-forgotten vow. No matter that her reaction was petty and probably unfounded, it was how she felt. He had been supposed to make it all right and all he'd done was churn up the past and confuse her more.

  Damn, she would not be manipulated. Not by Lacey and not by her no doubt well-meaning friend. She made up her mind. She was not going to waste an evening dissecting the past. And she was not going to Chicago. Lacey needed to go to the cops, and Ellie needed to stay right where she was and deal with her own business. It was as simple as that.

  Chapter 4

  A barrier of curled brown oak leaves lay piled up against the screen door, frosted with crystalline flakes of snow, when she finally trudged up the worn gray porch steps of home a little after ten that night.

  The monthly Chamber of Commerce meeting had run long, as merchants bickered back and forth about the new tourist bus parking lot the Mayor, Karl Howard, wanted to build in the plot of land where the old farmer’s market and garden center had been - the one the local big chain superstore had driven out of business. The Chief of Police, Bill Gruetzmacher, was there, one of the few voices of reason present, doing his best to keep everyone calm. A couple of times, Ellie thought he might actually have to stop someone going after Karl Howard's throat. Ellie stayed out of it. She was just too new to the town to take sides - too new to risk making enemies.

  She kicked open her cabin door, hands full of a huge Tupperware container of Halloween cookies Laura Lincoln, owner of the local bookstore, had baked her. Erik raced in ahead of her and pounced on Fuzzy Walter, his favorite toy. It had once been a sort of elephant-shaped stuffed animal made of a synthetic off-white fleece material. Now it was a misshapen thing, more gray than white and where there had once been a trunk, there was a hole where the stuffing was coming out – again. Ellie had patched it a couple of times – after learning the hard way Erik would never let her throw it out – but he loved to suck on the nose end, a sign the vet told her of being taken away from his mother too soon. As a result, the stitches were always coming undone.

  She secured the door behind her then set about starting a fire in the fireplace and putting the kettle on. Once the kindling was crackling and the first few logs had begun to catch, she made herself a cup of cocoa, sat down on the couch with a handful of the colorfully-iced cookies and sorted through the day's mail. Junk, junk, electric bill, Visa card offer, junk, junk, sales flyer, junk. She tossed the lot -- minus the electric bill -- into the fireplace then curled up and watched the flare of the flames, enjoying the sudden warmth.

  Erik jumped up on the dilapidated old leather couch and curled up next to her, head resting in the crook of her knee.

  "Nothing ever stays the same, does it?"

  Erik made a confirming sort of noise.

  She pushed away thoughts of a past she wasn't yet ready to confront and that Per had brought front and center to her consciousness at lunch. Sneaky Norwegian bastard. Instead, she got up and crossed the small room that served as both living and dining space to the ladder that led to the loft that was her bedroom and climbed up. Erik gave a snort at her abrupt departure and stared mournfully after her.

  "No, I'm not going to bed yet. I just want to get something. Just sit there for a minute."

  There was a makeshift closet, really just an alcove with an old Navajo blanket on some rings strung across it, and she rummaged around inside it until she came across the box she was looking for.

  She wrestled it down the ladder steps, then dragged it over to the couch. Sitting down cross-legged in front of the fire, she opened it up and started to pull out the contents one by one. Erik jumped off the couch and stuck his nose in the box as well, interested in the new smells. His thick tail thumped against her side as he wagged it back and forth.

  The past was a funny thing. It lived inside of you like a dormant cancer cell, just waiting for some trigger to bring it back to life again. Spurred by a smell, a sound, an object, it bloomed in a flash and suddenly you were there again, reliving that moment in time, and it was just as painful or sweet as it was when it first happened.

  The first thing she pulled out was a photograph album. The front and back cover were made of pine and had been beveled, like framing. On the front, burned into the wood were the words "Sisters Three".

  "Wow, Erik. How could I have forgotten about this?"

  Erik raised a quizzical eyebrow at her. Or at least that's the way it appeared.

  She opened the cover, found a large picture of the three of them, he
r, Kate and Lacey, standing in front of an enormous oak tree they'd named Merle in Rock Lake State Park, dressed in their black robes, each holding a staff. They looked like a trio of escapees from a Ren Faire. One of them should have been holding a lute or something, and there should have been a guy in doublet and tights. She laughed. They'd been so serious about this picture, wanting it to memorialize their dedication to the Craft.

  Where were they now, in that regard? Lacey probably couldn't even remember what the Wiccan Rede was, much less follow it. And Kate... well, Kate had gone a different way. She'd chosen the Suburban Path. From what Ellie could tell, it suited her. She still did her little mini-rituals on new and full moons, but it amounted to little more than lighting a candle and meditating then going to Mass at St. Thomas on Sunday with the family. But hey, if it helped her stay connected to the Goddess or God or whatever she now called Divinity, that was all that mattered.

  Ellie had gone the full blown coven route for a few years, when she lived in the city then when coven politics got too hairy, she went solitary. When she moved up here, she'd gotten involved in Round Hill Mound, a large private nature sanctuary run by a Wiccan Priestess. It satisfied her need for large gatherings with grand energy for festivals, but for moons, she typically stayed at home, made her own simple observances. If she was feeling sociable, which wasn’t often, she joined Per and some of his Druid cronies for his monthly drumming circles.

  Did Marg have it right? Was it because of their bond as sisters in the Craft that Lacey wanted her help, because Ellie had stayed on her spiritual path?

  Slowly, she flipped the pages of the album, laughing a little at the things they thought important enough to take pictures of -- their altar and each piece of their altar equipment; the antique trunk they used to store it all in; their Book of Shadows, the denim covered three ring binder they kept all their spells and prayers in.

  Then there were the silly pictures. Pictures of the three of them at the park, being goofy, doing the sorts of crazy things people that age did – hanging from trees, making silly faces at the camera, doing cartwheels. It was all so sophomoric. Stuff you'd expect from high schoolers. Then again, most of this had been taken freshman year, so they weren't far from it.

  It seemed a lifetime ago. So much water under the bridge since then. An ocean of water.

  Her old coven priestess used to tell her that the number one lesson Ellie had to learn in this life was Don't Push the River. Well, it seemed most times, she didn't have to push it. It just barreled on by regardless of anything Ellie might try to do to stop it.

  She put the album aside for a moment and reached into the box again. When her fingers encountered a cool, smooth, flat surface, she was puzzled. She reached for an edge, something she could grab hold of, then pulled the object out, surprised again at the heaviness of it.

  "Ah. I'd almost forgotten this too." Until her conversation with Per this afternoon, anyway.

  Erik snuffled it, but for him at least, it didn't warrant further attention. He stretched out again in front of the fire, big head between his paws.

  Ellie turned the obsidian puzzle box over in her hands, examining the four sides. Could she remember how to open it after so many years?

  The box had been a present from Lacey, just before they'd graduated. A present with a catch – almost everything from Lacey came with a catch.

  She fumbled around with the box for a few minutes, using kinesthetic memory and intuition to guide her through the movements necessary to open the box, remembering the night Lacey had given it to her. It was Ellie's twenty-first birthday, and the party guests had long gone. Lacey had lingered until Kate, the early-to-rise one of the group, had toddled off to bed.

  "I've got a special present for you, Ellie."

  They'd been sitting on the couch and Ellie wondered if Lacey was finally going to make her move on Ellie. She and Kate had been convinced for years that despite Lacey's engagement, Lacey was a closet lesbian. She braced herself, preparing herself to let Lacey down gently.

  Lacey got up and retrieved her tapestry bag purse from the kitchen counter. She pulled out a velvet drawstring bag and handed it to Ellie.

  "I had it specially made."

  Ellie opened the bag a little nervously, not knowing what to expect and pulled out the rectangular, obsidian box. It was breathtaking. Smooth, cool to the touch, with rounded edges, it begged to be caressed. The thing must have cost a fortune - but money was never an object to Lacey. Her family was loaded and Lacey never went without.

  "Lacey! It's beautiful. But I can't. It's... it's too much."

  Lacey laughed, a deep throaty sound. "Well, you have to keep it because I can't take it back. I had it specially designed. It's just the right size to hold your tarot deck."

  Ellie tried to open it, but found she couldn't. Lacey chuckled again. "It's a puzzle box. There's a secret to it. Here, let me show you."

  Ellie watched as Lacey manipulated the box. After a moment, there was a barely audible click and Lacey was able to slide open the top. She passed it back to Ellie.

  Ellie examined the box again, saw there was a little slip of paper in the cavity. With a glance up at Lacey, she reached inside to pull it out.

  "Ow!" Something inside had pricked her finger and she nearly dropped the box as she pulled her hand back. Blood pooled quickly and dripped down on to her jeans. "Damn!" She set the box on the couch and ran into the kitchen to run her finger under cold water.

  Lacey came to stand beside her in a minute, ready with an adhesive bandage. "Sorry, didn't think it would cut that deep."

  "You knew I'd get cut? What the hell?"

  "I had them leave a little tiny piece of obsidian sticking up. I've got a file, I'll get rid of it now."

  "Good Goddess, Lacey, why on earth would you do that? Are you nuts?"

  "No. But I needed the blood to bind the spell."

  Ellie shut off the water and stared at Lacey. "You what?"

  "It's a binding spell. Binding you and me. We're graduating next year. I'll be moving out to San Francisco with Benjamin, and you'll be, well, wherever it is you'll be. I don't want us to lose touch. I want us to promise that no matter what, when we really need each other, we'll be there."

  Ellie let Lacey put the bandage on her finger then dried her hands on a dish towel. With shaking hands, she took Lacey by the elbow and led her into the living room, so as not to wake Kate. "Lacey, sit down. Listen to me."

  "What?"

  "You don't need a binding spell to ensure that we'll always be friends. First off, a binding spell is black magic. We don't do black magic. You know better than that. And second of all, I'll always be your friend. If there's ever anything you need, all you have to do is call. I'll be there."

  "People always say that. But they don't mean it."

  "Well, I do." She picked up the box and handed it to Lacey, smiling now. "So file this thing down, or whatever. If I'm going to use it for my tarot cards, I can't be slicing my finger open every time I want to do a reading."

  Lacey looked away, and Ellie was sure there were tears in her eyes, something she'd never seen before. But a moment later they were gone. "So you like the box?"

  "It's stunning. I've never seen anything like it. And it's perfect for my tarot deck. Thank you."

  Lacey smiled broadly, another thing she didn't do often. "You're welcome. Just remember me when you use it."

  "Believe me, I won't be able to not think of you."

  Those words echoed now as Ellie handled the box. She heard the click and slid the lid open, revealing – an empty box. Somehow she half-expected there to be something in it, something unexpected that she hadn't put there herself.

  But the box was empty.

  As empty as her promise to Lacey?

  She sighed, realized she'd been doing that a lot lately.

  She set the box aside and stretched out next to Erik. The fire would need a couple more logs soon and then she'd head up to bed. But for now, it was nice just to lay
here and bask in the coziness. Erik rolled onto his back, the better for her to rub his belly then gave her a big slurpy kiss.

  "Yes, yes, I love you too, you big baby."

  Then she sat up abruptly. She'd promised she'd call Lacey back tonight, to let her know. Now she knew there was no way she could tell her no.

  "Damn. Damn, damn and damn again. Erik, I'm gonna have to go to Chicago, and that just sucks."

  Erik sat up with a disgruntled snort as she got to her feet.

  She grabbed her cell phone out of her purse, ready to redial Lacey's number when she was startled by her phone ringing.

  She answered, expecting it to be Lacey. Instead, it was another voice from the much more recent past.

  "Ellie? It's Kate. I hope I didn't wake you. I know how early you have to get up to open the shop."

  Ellie sighed in relief at the voice of her best friend, Kate McCallum. "Kate. Man, am I glad it's you."

  Kate laughed. "Why? You need an update from the suburban front to remind you why you're living up there in the great white north?"

  "No, just...just spending an evening letting the past haunt me."

  There was a pause – unusual in a conversation with Kate. "Yeah, it's kinda come back and bit me on the butt too. You won't believe who I got a phone call from tonight."

  "Lacey Silberson."

  Another pause. "How did you know?! Jeez, Ellie, sometimes you're creepy. Guess that's why you're the real witch."

  "No, that wasn't anything witchy, just common sense. She called me too. This morning."

  "Get out."

  "Yup. Wants me to come down there. Help her with something."

  "She said someone's trying to kill her. She wants us to help her."

  "Yeah, but Kate, help her how? The best thing we could do for her is to get her to go to the police. If she really is in danger – and I'm not saying I really think she is – then I don't see what the two of us can do."