Witch at Last: A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 3 (The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries)

by Juliette Harper

  “Are you trying to tell me that werecats and witches can’t have children together?” I asked.

  “No one knows for sure,” he said quietly, “but other pairings haven’t worked out well, so there’s a tradition that werecats only marry werecats.”

  I took a minute to digest this new information. “We’re kind of not at the stage of talking about children,” I finally pointed out.

  He caught hold of my hands. “No,” he said, “but what if we were?”

  What if we were?

  For the record, I’m not a huge fan of hypotheticals. In general life gives you enough actual problems. No need to create your own custom mash up.

  Chase was watching me closely. In the moonlight, I could see the hope in his eyes . . . and the love.

  “If we were,” I said, “we’d get the best advice we could and then make a decision together.”

  He couldn’t keep from asking the question directly. “You’d give up the chance to have kids to be with me?” he said.

  To be real honest with you, I liked the idea of raising a child with Chase, but I wasn’t hung up on the whole DNA thing.

  “You’ve seen my family tree,” I said. “Surely you can understand why I’m totally good with adopting.”

  Chase tried to stifle a giggle, but it didn’t work. Then I got tickled, and then we were both laughing so hard we were crying.

  “Can you imagine Festus kitten-sitting?” he gasped. “We’d come home and find the litter stoned and shooting craps in the living room while Grandpa watched cat videos on National Geographic. He has his own copy of Mating Habits of Jungle Cats.”

  “Stop,” I begged, “I can’t breathe.”

  Chase patted me on the back. Then somehow I was in his arms, and I couldn’t breathe for an entirely different reason.

  When we did come up for air, I rested my head against his chest. I fit just under his chin.

  “I like Shevington,” I whispered, “and I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” he said, tightening his hold on me.

  Under my ear, a deep contented thrumming rose in volume.

  Chase was purring, and it was the most wonderful sound I’d ever heard.

  18

  On the square in Briar Hollow

  The old man in the John Deere tractor cap stared at the dark store windows. He’d knocked back so much of that expensive swill those little gals called coffee he wouldn’t sleep for a week, which was good. He had a job to do, and he’d like to get finished in time to get home for the 10 o’clock news.

  When Brenna Sinclair first approached him, Joseph “Fish” Pike, was sure he’d said no. But then he looked at the clock on the wall and realized he’d been talking to the woman for more than an hour. She was sitting right there in the parlor on Martha Louise’s good sofa, and danged if Fish wasn’t blabbing about how nice it was to be talking to a lady again now that his wife was gone.

  And Brenna knew things about him she couldn’t know, like how his grandpappy turned into a panther by the light of the moon. Nobody else ever believed Fish when he told that story, so he couldn’t imagine how Brenna found out. Fish hadn’t tried to talk about any of that for a long time because he didn’t like it when folks treated him like a crazy old man. But he knew what he saw when he was just 8 years old. Grandpa Jeremiah Pike turned into a mountain lion right there in front of the farmhouse.

  When Fish told his daddy about what he saw, Fish got a slap for his troubles. “What your grandpappy does with those high and mighty McGregors is none of your business, boy. Don’t you never say another word about it,” his daddy snarled. Rubbing the red mark on his face, Fish wasn’t about to ask again.

  But that didn’t keep him from hiding in the shadows still as a mouse and listening when the grownups talked. Not too many weeks passed before Fish had put some of the story together. What his daddy was really mad about was that grandmammy couldn’t turn into a mountain lion, which somehow meant her son couldn’t either. Unless daddy could turn into a painter, he couldn’t go to someplace called “The Valley” with grandpappy.

  As Fish got older, he started noticing other things, like them lights up around Brown Mountain and signs of the Little People the old Cherokees talked about. He knew there was more going on up in the hollers than people let on, but he never could get it all straight and finally he just quit talking about such as that. There was work to do and a family to raise. Stories of haints and spooks were just something to scare the young’uns and keep’em in bed at night where they belonged.

  Then Miss Brenna Sinclair sat there on the good parlor sofa and told him how Chase McGregor’s people and that old busybody Fiona Ryan had stolen his heritage from him. But Miss Brenna said she could set it all right and promised to take Fish to The Valley if he’d just get into the store that night and put something down in the basement for her.

  It wasn’t that Fish thought there was anything up in that so-called valley that would be of any use to him, he just wanted to go up there because his daddy couldn’t. The idea of getting something over on that mean old varmint even though he was long dead and in his grave appealed to Fish.

  As for breaking into the store, that wouldn’t be hard. Fish had jimmied many a lock in his day, but he cackled with laughter when Breanna handed him an old dirty canvas miner’s cap with a leather brim. It was missing its light, but the bracket was there.

  “This is what you want me to put down in the basement?” he asked. “What in the Sam Hill for?”

  She fixed him with an icy glare and Fish felt the hairs on the back of his scrawny neck stand straight up.

  “Our dealings will be ever so much more pleasant, Mr. Pike, if you don’t ask impertinent questions,” she said. “I trust I won’t have to repeat myself on that point?”

  The stutter that had disappeared from his speech when he was a gangly teen crept back into Fish’s respond. ‘N-n-n-n-n-no, m-m-m-m-m-m’am.”

  “Good,” she said. “I knew you would see the wisdom of my suggestion.”

  So there he was, two nights later, skulking around in the dark, unaware that across the square, Brenna, safely hidden in the confines of the old hardware store, was, at that very moment, unlocking the door to her own basement and descending into the darkness below.

  She chose to purchase the building on the advice of the late, insufferable Howard McAlpin. In 1908, eleven years before a federal statute was passed making Prohibition the law of the land, the state of North Carolina outlawed the sale of alcoholic beverages. For their troubles, the pious legislators did little more than ensure the guaranteed profitability of illegal liquor manufacturing, popularly known as “bootlegging.”

  In Briar Hollow, the primary beneficiary of such activity was the Sheriff himself, Cletus Adams. In order to hide his illegal side-business, and to facilitate his operations, Adams had a tunnel dug from the basement of the courthouse to the basement of the hardware store, the site of a covert drinking club or “speakeasy.”

  When Brenna purchased the store, she found the tunnel intact, barred on the courthouse end by nothing more than a locked door. This access not only allowed her to move about the building at night and confer with McAlpin, but it also put Brenna in a direct line with the fairy mound, the target of the plan Irenaeus had so carefully crafted.

  While Fish Pike studied the store windows and worked up the courage to commit an act of breaking and entering, Brenna moved carefully, but swiftly through the long abandoned passageway, holding the old miner’s lamp in her hands. Although she would never have admitted it, her own initial reaction to the relic had been as disparaging as Mr. Pike’s. That is, until Irenaeus explained the story behind the object.

  The cap belonged to a member of a “sand hog” construction crew responsible for excavating the maze of tunnels beneath New York City in the 19th century. When a section of roof collapsed on him, the man’s panic and will to live burned so brightly that the energy infused the lamp, sending a searing glow through the debris. To the
amazement and relief of the trapped man, an escape route opened before him, which allowed him to clamber to safety.

  Now, when the pieces of the cap were separated, nothing but simply lighting the lamp was required to rekindle the energy of the miner’s desperation. If Fish Pike placed the cap in the store basement as directed, and Brenna lit the lamp in the courthouse, a new tunnel would open in a perfect line between them to reunite the two halves of the object.

  Rather than risk a direct confrontation with the aos sí, Irenaeus had put some sort of surveillance system in place inside the shop. Earlier in the evening, he contacted Brenna to tell her the building was empty, and she dispatched the ever-willing Mr. Pike. Now, she had only to wait for the new cellular telephone in the pocket of her cloak to receive a message from Pike, and she would light the lamp.

  While she waited, above her at street level, Fish Pike finally decided to make his move. He crept quietly down the alley, keeping to the shadows, and being careful not to trip over his own feet or run headlong into a trash can. When he reached the back of the shop, he was surprised to see the Hamilton girl’s red Prius parked under the newly erected carport.

  Miss Brenna had assured him the building would be empty. Pike stood in the shadows for a minute, chewing at his lower lip. If he broke in and got caught, he’d have to face the law. If he didn’t break in, he’d have to face Brenna. Weighed in that light, dealing with the sheriff was a much better option than a redheaded woman who already scared the daylights out of Fish. Time to get at it.

  After putting his ear to the door and listening for any sound of activity inside, Fish removed a thin metal tool from his pocket, squinted at the lock, and deftly released the mechanism with a simple twist of his wrist. He stepped through the opening and quickly closed the door behind him, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light.

  Earlier that day, as he’d played chess with that imbecile Homer Ford, Fish had carefully mapped out the lay of the ground floor. He knew that the door to his immediate left opened into the apartment where the girl, Tori, lived. The second door on the right led to the basement.

  What Brenna wanted him to do didn’t make any sense, but Fish knew better than to say so. He was supposed to go down to the basement, put the cap on the floor right in front of the steps, and then just hit one button on the cell phone she’d insisted he carry with him.

  Fish didn’t have the slightest idea how to use one of the danged things, so Brenna put in her own message and told him he only had to hit the button marked “Send.” Once he did that, she said he could leave.

  Accomplishing all of that didn’t take 10 minutes, but on his way out the back of the store, Fish could have sworn something flew right by his head. He heard 3 little taps, followed by eight more in a pattern that triggered vague recognition in his head.

  Pausing with one foot over the threshold, he tapped the pattern on the doorframe, humming to himself, “I saw the light, I saw the light.” Now what in tarnation would put Hank Williams on his brain?

  Shaking his head at his own foolishness, Fish closed and locked the door behind himself and went home.

  Had he lingered a little longer, he might have felt the building shudder as Brenna Sinclair lit the miner’s lamp in her hand. As she watched, a large circle began to revolve on the brick wall in front of her as if an unseen hand scrubbed away at the surface with a rough cloth. With each rotation, the circle deepened, moving through the foundation and into the earth beyond.

  Brenna stepped into the opening, moving forward slowly with the lamp held out before her. She had expected something more spectacular than this gradual etching process, but she could not deny the inexorable progress no matter how tedious the pace. Finally, the foundation of a second structure appeared, and then the back of another brick wall. Without warning, the lamp flew from her hand, settling itself into the bracket attached to the filthy cap lying on the basement floor.

  The reflector, which was turned toward the ceiling, cast a dull glow around the cavernous space. There was just enough light for Brenna to see that she was not standing in the magical archive Irenaeus described. This was nothing but a filthy, cluttered basement full of skittering spiders and old cardboard boxes collapsing into themselves.

  Brenna felt anger and frustration boil up inside her. After all she had done, all she had survived, had she really come back to the place where she could once again be made the victim of a scheming man’s lies? She didn’t know what game Irenaeus Chesterfield was playing, but she intended to find out and end it.

  Brenna turned on her heel, intent on stalking back to the hardware store, when the sound of voices made her stop. At first she thought Jinx and Tori had returned, but these women sounded older and more . . . tentative.

  The doorknob above her on the rickety landing jiggled slightly and then the door creaked open. Curious, Brenna shrank into the shadows and waited.

  19

  Chase and I stayed in our secluded spot on the wall until the lights of the Brown Mountain Guard receded into the darkness. “Where do they go?” I asked, my head still resting against his chest.

  “The Fairy Barracks are on the far side of the city,” he said. “We’ll walk over there tomorrow so you can watch their aerial drills.”

  “That must be like watching dragonflies flying in formation,” I said.

  He laughed. I liked the sound under my ear. “A fairy can out-maneuver a dragonfly any day of the week,” he said, “and if you don’t believe it, ask a fairy. The only thing they like more than flying is bragging.”

  Leaning back a little, I gave him an evil grin.

  “Uh oh,” he said warily. “What’s that look for?”

  “Well,” I said, “now that you’ve mentioned bragging, how about you take me to The Dirty Claw?”

  When his expression wilted a little around the edges, my grin expanded. “You thought I was going to forget about the bar, didn’t you?”

  “I hoped you were going to forget,” he said. “Just remember, this was your idea.”

  We turned around and went back in the direction we’d come. When we passed the stone staircase, Chase explained that we were behind the main business district and were heading toward the city’s main entrance.

  “When we get to the front gate,” he said, “we’ll go back down to street level. The bar is about two blocks down to the right.”

  Even if you didn’t know that The Dirty Claw is a werecat bar, anyone within a one-block radius could figure it out pretty quick from the singing alone. Or yowling, depending on how you choose to interpret the sound. As we got closer, I was shocked to hear lyrics I recognized.

  “Isn’t that ‘Stray Cat Strut?’” I asked.

  Chase groaned. “Oh,” he said, “that is not a good sign. If they break into the score from Cats, you can bet the whole place is stoned to the gills on nip.”

  Laughing, I said, “You make the place sound like some kind of opium den.”

  He shot me a sideways look. “Tell me how well that description fits after you see the hookah pipes in the back lounge.”

  “You mean like the caterpillar smoked in Alice in Wonderland?” I asked incredulously.

  “Note the role of the Cheshire Cat in that story,” Chase pointed out sardonically.

  Suppressing a giggle, I followed him down the street toward the raucous voices. From the outside, The Dirty Claw looks like any perfectly respectable pub. When we stepped into the vestibule, however, a huge framed photo of a seductive-looking lady Persian bearing the autograph, “To Snooky Paws with love, Fluffy Lamour,” greeted me.

  I turned to Chase. “Fluffy Lamour?”

  “Uh, yeah,” he said, “she was kind of a big deal back in the Forties. You may have heard of her sister, the actress, Dorothy . . .”

  “Stop!” I commanded. “I don’t think I’m ready to play a round of ‘out that werecat.”

  Chase held the door open for me and we stepped into a scene straight out of Animal House, except the frat brothers were actu
al animals. A thin-looking black leopard with a cigarette dangling from his mouth sat at the piano pounding out the driving beat of the music accompanied by a bored looking lion on bass, and cheetah in shades playing a sax.

  Shouting a little to be heard over the din, I said, “I thought all the werecats were mountain lions.”

  Leaning down to speak in my ear, Chase replied, “Just the ones from North Carolina. People come and go from all over the world in Shevington. About the only thing you can count on is that the big cats are still working and the house cats are all retired and living the good life. That’s Dad’s bunch over by the pool table.”

  He pointed toward the back of the bar where I saw a gang of about half a dozen house cats on top of a pool table engaged in a rousing game of what I assumed was Red Dot. A remote controlled laser pointer suspended from the ceiling randomly shot a burst of light into pockets on the table as contestants lurched over the felt and attempted to bat the next designated ball into the pocket.

  Festus was lounging on the far corner of the table beside a line of empty shot glasses.

  “It doesn’t look like he’s winning,” I said.

  “Big surprise there,” Chase answered, taking me by the elbow. “Come on, let’s go hear his excuse for missing dinner with the Lord High Mayor.”

  As we approached, Festus narrowed his eyes as if he was trying to focus on us. Then he jumped up and yelled, “Chase, my boy! Get furry and join the game.”

  Blushing a little, Chase, said, “Thanks, Dad, but I’ll pass. Hey guys, this is my friend Jinx. Jinx, that’s . . . ”

  As he made the introductions, I tried to place fur and faces to names.

  Leo was a large black and white domestic shorthair with a notch in his left ear engaged in a half-hearted game of patty cake with Maurice, a cross-eyed Siamese who kept missing his opponent’s paws. A Cornish Rex wearing a cable knit sweater barely looked up when Chase called his name.

  “That’s Aloysius,” Chase said. “He's the reigning Red Dot champ. Nothing shatters his focus.”