Bait & Switch (Driftwood Mystery Book 1)

by A. L. Tyler

  I tried to slow my breathing and my heart to listen more closely, but outside of the multiple signatures, I didn’t glean any other telling information.

  The basement was normal aside from traces of magic. There was a workbench on one side. It was cluttered with mismatched nuts and bolts, stray nails, and scraps of old DIY projects. Along one wall there were shelves littered with power tools, and next to them was a stack of old paint cans.

  Even though everything had the smell of a musty basement, nothing had collected any dust. I focused on the noise around me until I heard it: the sweeping, twittering chirp of a spell to keep the workspace clean.

  Yes, the Gregorys knew someone in the magic world. Someone who wasn’t Farrow. Someone who they had trusted in their home, and who had probably thanked them for their hospitality with murder.

  I crept up the stairs. The lights were out in the house, but I didn't want to take the chance that I was wrong about it being vacant.

  In and out. I didn't need more than ten minutes, and even that was generous.

  From the police report and the crime scene photos, I knew where to look.

  I stumbled past a half-empty food bowl and water dish on the floor at the basement door. I paused to look at them, but only for a moment. They were too small to be a for a dog, so I didn't pay too much attention. I didn't need a large dog chasing me on this adventure.

  I went down a hallway decked with family photos, all of them framed and showing the happy, smiling faces of the Gregorys and their beautiful daughter. In some of them she was holding a cat. I laughed under my breath, because I knew that cat.

  Mr. Jingles had been living a double life behind Mrs. Waller’s back. I hoped the cat would be reunited with the girl someday.

  If I ever found the girl.

  I tried to push the thought away. Worry was a wasted emotion. That's what my father always said.

  There were bare floor-boards where crime scene clean-up had ripped up the blood-soaked carpet.

  The landlord would have to replace it, and along with it, large sections of wall that had been removed due to blood splatter.

  And as I stood there, staring at the exposed bones of the house, I heard nothing different. It was the same magic I had heard from outside the house, and in the basement, and down the hallway.

  The same sickening energy, all the same, and consistent throughout the house. A calm. Almost a happiness. But there was fear in there, too. I turned around, trying to determine what kind of magic had happened here.

  Something that would involve an athame...

  But there was no dark magic here. As I approached the spot in the kitchen where the linoleum floor had been cut away, and I knew that was the spot where Travis had been murdered, I could hear the echoing violin shriek of the knife as it pierced human flesh.

  That was the only perversion here. Someone had used that knife against its family.

  But then, afterward... No magic. Why stab a dead man with an athame if it wasn’t for a spell?

  And if there was no spell, then why was there so much magic literally everywhere else?

  I felt panic rising in my chest and my hand started to itch. Oh, gods...

  This wasn’t what I’d thought. Not at all.

  I’d let my own fears lead me straight away from the truth, and now it was whispering right in my ear.

  Chapter 28

  I STEADIED MYSELF AGAINST the cool mirror of a ceramic cook top stove. Then I went to the sink and turned on the water, letting it run fast over my hands as I purged the magic that rose with my nerves.

  There was magic here. A lot of it. From more than one person.

  And a murder, using a magic knife, but with no magic intent.

  There were always rumors when I worked at the Bleak. Cases that were never quite solved or showed mysterious traces that were never quite explained. But they were always put at the back of the file, explained away, written off as being strange coincidences.

  A house with magic. A lot of magic users. And no threshold protections, because the child would be coming and going here. They didn’t want to accidentally hurt their child.

  I wasn't looking for a magical killer, because my killer wasn't a magic user.

  My victim was a magic user. The Gregorys were a family of witches. And the manner of Travis Gregory’s death suggested a human killer.

  Someone who knew that Travis would need to be heavily sedated so he couldn’t speak a spell or make any gesture to summon a magical defense.

  Someone who had perfected this technique to the point that they had used it without error on Joe and Farrow, too.

  The official position of the Bleak was that such killers didn’t exist. It was a story that people told their children to make them behave. Stuff like this didn't actually happen. This was why the Bleak were so careful. They liked to think that they were at the top of the social order. Untouchable. Invisible, even, to the billions that shared our planet.

  This murderer was someone who knew about magic, but possessed none of their own. And if the cautionary tales were true, someone who would kill another person for no other reason than the fact that they possessed and used magic.

  Hunter.

  Even thinking it made my skin break out in goosebumps. My fingers were literally on fire as the water poured over them.

  A real, true-to-gods hunter. He’d killed more than once now, and his method was effective.

  Gods, they’re real... How long has the Bleak known?

  But that thought was nothing compared to what occurred to me next, because Nick had made an excellent point about how I was the only connection between the murders. Whoever had killed Travis Gregory could only have known about Joe and Farrow through me.

  More water. Find more water.

  Each hand was engulfed in flames as I turned away from the sink. The hunter had been following me. Me, Nick, and Kane, because I hadn’t been alone since Nick had picked me up at the bar.

  The bar. Nick had helped me fend off some back-alley thugs. Hunters?

  Or a coincidence. I didn’t know anymore. I found my way to a shower down the hall. The eerie sounds of a broken family’s previous life buzzed around me like so many dying flies, and I couldn’t bring myself to shut the bathroom door or turn my back on it as the water sprayed down on me.

  They had been following me all along. And now, I was all alone.

  The flames were nipping at my sleeves and I wasn’t going to hear anyone sneaking up on me over the roar of my own crashing magic and the shower. I shut off the latter and focused with everything I had. Slowly, slowly—I brought it back to my core.

  They wouldn’t attack me. Not now. Their opening act was poison.

  And Kane was ordering a lot of takeout recently. Shit.

  I had to make Nick listen. I wiped my hand on a towel before pulling out my cell phone and dialing. It went to voice mail three times before I gave up and left a message.

  “Nick, it’s me. I am begging you. Please call me back. It’s not a warlock. Our killer is a hunter. You have to believe me. He’s using poison to subdue his targets. He’s pretending to be a cop. Don’t eat anything you didn’t prepare yourself, and don’t let any cops in, because I think that’s how he got in to slip poison into Travis Gregory’s dinner. Warn Kane. Warn anyone else you’ve been to see since you met me.”

  I hung up and climbed out of the shower. I couldn’t wait for Nick when he was in a self-induced stupor after the death of a friend. If the Bleak were here, they wouldn’t believe me when I told them. I would pay for these murders and the real culprit would go free.

  More people would die.

  Why kill Travis Gregory? He was a simple father and family man. I had been inside this house less than ten minutes and I could tell the family meant no harm to anyone.

  I took several deep breaths and tried to keep my magic quiet. I was turning the house into a sauna with all the water steaming off of me.

  When the stinging, prickling sensation of m
agic worked itself out of my being, I took one more pass through the main level and upstairs.

  There was nothing strange or sinister here. If anything, this family had gone to great lengths to make sure that nobody pegged them as magic users.

  That wasn’t unusual. The Bleak demanded that anyone under their purview kept a low profile living with humans.

  What was strange was that the Bleak didn’t know the Gregorys were here. They kept a census on everyone and they knew where their people were. Witches didn't have a right to privacy in their eyes.

  I kept looking.

  The Gregorys had herbs in the garden. There was an ambiguous ritual altar in the dining room, and while it was a little dated, religion was nothing that the Bleak cared about.

  That was, unless it was the wrong religion.

  I waved my hand over the altar cloth spread over the dining room table like a runner. The runes immediately shimmered and sang to life and I inwardly cringed, because I had only seen about a hundred of these in my former career.

  A ceremonial shawl. This one was ancient, probably passed down for generations, and an unmistakable relic of the Rite of Athena.

  Supporters of the Rite had been out of favor with the Bleak for the last two hundred years, ever since Marcella Light had allegedly attempted to remove Lycan Caste from his seat on the Bleak using a poisoned chalice that killed nearly fifty others before its exact nature was ascertained.

  Witches don’t like the term ‘witch hunt’, but it exactly described where the Rite was now. They were hunted. Persecuted. Even being distantly related to supporters of the Rite was cause to be taken in for questioning and never seen again.

  It explained why Farrow had kept quiet, even when he was accused of murdering this man. He’d been helping fugitives.

  It explained why Mrs. Gregory had left town in a hurry after her husband’s murder. Now she was running from hunters and agents of the Bleak.

  It explained why I thought I was the only witch in town. The Gregorys were in hiding from the Bleak. My information came from the Bleak’s census, which obviously didn’t account for witches running from the Bleak.

  And as such, when I saw magic at a murder scene, I immediately assumed it couldn’t have belonged to the nice, normal family in that house.

  Worthless desk rider. I had let my own fears of being discovered guide my assumptions. Had I been looking with an objective eye, I would have figured out where the magic came from first. Joe and Farrow might still be alive if I hadn’t been so paranoid and concerned with covering my own ass.

  I closed my eyes, trying to quiet my breathing, because my paranoia told me that there was certainly someone else in the house with me right now. The low, soft humming of magic around me became an annoyance as I tried to listen for any real noise of someone creeping up on me.

  Crash!

  My heart leapt into my throat as I spun on my heel. A fireball launched from my open hand and straight across the room into a wall. Orange flames licked up towards the ceiling, and Mr. Jingles shrieked and hissed at me from next to the vase that she had knocked from a side table after her leash had caught on a claw-foot leg.

  “Here kitty, kitty, kitty!”

  The house was burning. There was a witness right outside this house. I was trapped inside.

  I should have stayed behind the desk.

  The flames spread from the wall to the ceiling and floor. I fired another spell at the cat to freeze it in place. As I bent to pick the cat up, my eyes landed on something strange next to the broken vase.

  A power cord with a frayed end plugged in to a vacation timer. Had my fireball just shot a lamp right off of its cord...?

  No time.

  With the paralyzed cat in my arms, I raced back down to the basement. The front door probably would have been faster. Nick would have used the front, but hell—this was my first time breaking into a crime scene and setting the place on fire. I kicked over a stack of boxes in my haste to escape my self-inflicted doom, and the contents—hundreds of tea light candles—went sprawling across the floor. The scent of lavender and mint fill the air.

  Well, I thought sarcastically. At least the neighborhood will get some aromatherapy out of this disaster.

  A speechless Mrs. Waller saw me climb out of the window well. I stood up as calmly as I could and handed her the animal. She sputtered and babbled as she pointed at me and then at the window well and then at the black smoke that was rising from the house.

  Figuring that the place was already going up, I let loose a blast like a flamethrower back through the window that I had just climbed through to purge my power. The screams of the fire alarms mixed with the rolling thunder of my fireball.

  Mrs. Waller clutched her cat and emitted a high-pitched squeak as I turned back to her. I put one hand on her shoulder as she stood frozen in terror.

  “You had a lovely walk with Mr. Jingles today,” I said. “You never saw me. You didn’t see the house catch fire, but you’ll probably lie and tell people you did.” I paused. “And cats don’t belong on leashes. No more leashes.” I patted her on the shoulder. “Go home, Mrs. Waller.”

  Mrs. Waller turned to go. I ran back to my car.

  As I peeled out of the neighborhood, I passed the arriving fire engine as it barreled down the road.

  Chapter 29

  I CONTEMPLATED A LOT of things about my life as I tried not to look suspicious, fleeing a burning building and getting into my car.

  How I had gone from a good kid to a criminal. From someone who preserved criminal evidence to someone who destroyed it. From someone who worked to save lives to someone who was literally dangerous to everyone.

  How had it come to this? I drove around Fallvale, afraid to stop and knowing I would have to. The Bleak were standing outside my door, and the only thing I had to save myself and a missing child was a bogeyman story.

  I needed more.

  There was no way I had shot a lamp clean off its cord. I saw that fireball smack straight into a wall, barely missing a China cabinet. Even if I had hit a lamp, there was no explanation for the frayed cord and timer to be sitting on the floor.

  I pulled over and dialed my phone, grateful to have a conspiracy theorist in my contacts.

  “Janet! Oh my god, I have great news. You’re a genius. It worked!”

  I cracked a smile even though I wanted to throw up. “That’s awesome, Marge. I take it you’re still employed?”

  The loud squeak on the other end of the line made me pull the phone a few inches from my ear.

  “I totally am! And listen, there’re going to be some big changes around here so that—”

  I didn’t have time. I wished I did, though. “Marge, I need to ask you something, no questions asked.”

  “Except the one you’re about to ask. Go ahead.” She loved this game. I’d learned about butterfly knives, drug paraphernalia, and sexual innuendo this way.

  “So, I was watching this movie, and a guy was plugging in a vacation timer with a frayed cord.” I only hoped I was actually setting up the scenario right. “Does that actually work?”

  “To blow up a house? Yeah, it totally works. You just turn on the gas, like from the stove, and plug in your outlet with a damaged cord. Set the timer to go off a little later when you’re on camera eating dinner elsewhere and bam—instant alibi. The cord sparks when it turns on and the gas blows the house. What movie were you watching?”

  “Sorry, hot Italian, gotta go.” I hung up the phone, heart racing as I gripped the wheel.

  The crime was interrupted. That explained all of the inconsistencies.

  The suspect murdered Travis and planned to cover it up with a gas leak, but I clearly remembered the Gregorys didn’t have a gas stove. Theirs was ceramic. He tried to move the body but realized it would be too much work. He must have returned the next night, dressed as a cop, planning something else, and panicked when he saw Mrs. Waller coming into the backyard. The vase had been a convenient hiding spot when he panicked.


  The killer had been on there the night the murder was discovered.

  I needed to speak to whoever had been first on the scene that night.

  I drove straight back to the police station.

  I WALKED BRISKLY DOWN the hallway, trying not to act too weird about the hours I was keeping this week. It felt like every officer was giving me suspicious looks for it, but I didn’t care.

  I turned into the evidence room and stopped in shock. “Marge. What—?”

  She had forgone her usual pigtails in favor of a beehive hairstyle that must have been held up by at least five cans of hair spray.

  “You like?” She used one hand to delicately touch it. “Gives me six inches in height. I think people are already respecting me more.”

  “It’s...intimidating. Listen, I need to know who was first on the scene at the Gregory murder.”

  Marge leaned back in her chair. “Well, I’m sorry, but policy dictates that I can’t tell you that. Thanks for trying. This is the part where I would normally tell you to go freak yourself, but since I’m turning over a new leaf, I won’t.” She smiled sarcastically as she picked up a small bowl of candy from her desk. “And please, have a mint and enjoy your day.”

  I had been gone three hours. Maybe four. And as cute as Marge was when she was taking a victory lap for something, I wasn’t in the mood. “Policy dictates that hair needs to be pulled back—”

  “—or netted while handling evidence.” Marge pulled a hair net from her pen cup. “I’m not handling evidence, but nice try. Also, Beech approved it.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You’re really going to make me log in and look it up, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She turned back to her monitor and started typing away in an email.

  I gritted my teeth as I booted up my computer. My cell phone rang loudly and I yanked it from my pocket, praying it was Nick.

  It was the social network app that Marge had installed. She was “snapping” me a selfie of her ‘50s inspired hairdo.