by A. L. Tyler
I managed to keep my rude comment on the inside. “Very cute.”
“So, what is your deal?” she asked. “You’re here, you’re gone, you have a stroked-out aunt, you’re dating a hot Italian, you’re having a baby, you broke up... Do I look like a moron, Janet?”
Again, I managed to keep my rude comment to myself. “Marge, I promise, I will explain everything. Tomorrow.”
If I survived that long. And I most certainly wouldn’t be at work tomorrow, because I would either be dead, in custody of the Bleak, or on the run.
I opened the case file and switched to a chronological view, scrolling to the very top. Dispatch call came in. An officer was assigned. And my next solo interview was going to be with...
“Fuck my life.” I whined it under my breath, but Marge still sat up straight and turned to stare at me like a cartoon schoolmarm.
Officer Bailey Gosling had responded to the house for a welfare check after a neighbor reported seeing a suspected burglar in the yard.
Marge pulled a pen from behind her ear to point it at me. “I should report you for vulgarity.”
I ignored her. If I wasn’t dead or locked up, I was going to be hung over, because after this chat, I was going to need a drink. “I need to talk to Bailey. Is he in today?”
“He’s out,” she said with a small grin. “Jackass broke his wrist trying to move a friend’s piano. Why?”
She closed her eyes, nodding and saying it with me as I replied. “Tomorrow.”
I turned back to my computer. “Do we have his address in the computer?”
“Yes, but you’ll lose your job if you abuse your privileges to find it. And I will lose my job if I knowingly allow you to do that.”
I glared over my shoulder at her.
Marge shrugged. “You know it’s true. Everything gets recorded. But Charlene has the personnel files, and if you have a good reason I’m sure she could hook you up without abusing privileged access to a law enforcement database.”
Fuck. My life. I sighed through my gritted teeth, and then I got up and went across the hall.
And for the first time ever, Charlene ignored me completely.
I cleared my throat. “Charlene?”
She held up one electric blue, manicured claw finger. I waited.
She finally flashed me a saccharine smile. “Yes, Janet?”
I smiled, half-way between desperation and wanting to strangle her. “Hey... So, I had some questions related to a case that Bai...Officer Gosling was assigned to, and I need to follow up with him, so I was wondering if you could help me find his address.”
I could practically feel the daggers of sweet revenge shooting from her lined eyes. “I’m sure it can wait until he’s back from leave. After all, it isn’t a business requirement that I give you that information.”
I mirrored her smile. “It’s for a homicide. It really can’t wait.”
She cocked her head. “And why would you need his address and not just his number?”
Because I need to touch him in order to erase his memory after we speak you crazy ‘80s throwback. “I need him to sign a seal to maintain chain of custody. I’m trying to do him a favor, going to him instead of making him come here.”
Good old chain of custody.
“Hmm.” A small crease formed in her brow. “Sounds like you two are friends. Good friends. Hanging out outside of work friends.”
Her smile turned satisfied as she looked back at her computer screen. She went back to her work.
I scuttled around the side of her desk and got on my knees. Thank the gods it was getting late and everyone else had gone home.
Charlene’s surprised eyes looked all the larger framed by her massive fake eyelashes.
“Okay,” I started in a hyped whisper. I was literally begging her help. My plan had been to grab her arm and enchant her into submission, but memory spells tended to have side effects when used in close succession. I didn’t want to drive her insane. And, my fingers were starting to smoke. I didn’t want to turn her into a pillar of ash, either. “Okay. Charlene, I need a favor. A big one. I am having a hell of a day. People I need help from aren’t returning my phone calls. I’m trying to call in favors, and I’m realizing I have nothing to call in here, but if you do this for me right now, you will have my eternal gratitude. And I mean it. Name it, it’s yours. I just need Bailey Gosling’s address.”
Charlene’s expression moved from shock, to anger, to a slow satisfaction. Her hand landed on a stack of flyers on her desk, and I watched in horror as she waved it in front of my face.
The annual Start of Summer Potluck.
“You’re bringing macaroni salad. Handmade.”
I snatched the flyer from her hand. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“There’s this thing called Google and I’m sure it can help you out.”
“I don’t do this kind of stuff.”
“You are very good at that.” She pointed at me with a stray pen. “You make ambiguous excuses, you never share personal details about yourself, you don’t make small talk with the officers—”
“I’m a bitch. And?”
“And yet you’re always bringing everyone coffee, which you pay for yourself, so I know you can’t be a total bitch on the inside.”
I was talking to a grown woman who still used phrases like “on the inside” in regular conversation. “It’s a bribe. I’m bribing people.”
“Bribe them with macaroni salad.” She shook her head. There was an edge of sadness in her voice. “I get that you’ve had a loss recently, and it sounds like you’ve been moving from one disaster to another for a while now. But everyone needs a friend every so often. I don’t know why you don’t want to trust me, but I can be trusted, Janet. Marge can be trusted. And you know what? You really saved Marge today. She wants to thank you, but she knows you’ll brush her off. She just needs a friend, honey. Bring the macaroni salad.”
You can trust me. How I wished that Nick could have trusted me a little more. I wouldn’t be on my knees in front of Charlene right now. Just like me, he had been moving from one tragedy to the next, though, and it was shit-storming in his world, too. He kept threatening to turn me in even as he gave me things to relieve the pain my mana burn caused.
I supposed he wasn’t a total bitch on the inside, either.
If only I had been half as good at delivering crappy emotional speeches as Charlene, I might not be hunting a killer alone right now.
I groaned. “Seriously?”
“You’re going. You’re going to talk to people, and have a good time—”
“That’s a contradictory sentence.”
“—and make some friends. Everyone around here remembers how great you were a few years ago in high school. You sound like a good person. Why are you so afraid of letting anyone in now?”
Because, just like Nick, anyone I let in would eventually get hurt. I was speeding down a fast road to hell on purpose.
And the person who was going to pay for that lifestyle choice—to have no friends—was an innocent child.
I sighed. It wasn’t like I was going to be around, anyway. “Fine. Macaroni salad. What’s his address?”
She glanced at her phone and smirked, tapping it a few times. “I have one more condition.”
I closed my eyes as my phone chimed from my hip. I knew without looking that Charlene had just snapped me.
Chapter 30
I WALKED BACK TO MY car at what was probably a suspiciously fast pace, but I couldn’t afford any more delays.
The sounds of magic in the world were changing. It wasn’t loud or obvious, but I could tell that the ambient backdrop of my life was getting busier.
More fretting.
More crowded.
The agents of the Bleak and probably half a dozen extra handlers were moving through or else squatting quietly, keeping a watchful eye on the city of Fowl Gulch as they looked for a magical assailant who didn’t exist.
I was
going to be the dolphin caught in their net if I wasn’t careful.
“Nick, it’s me, I’m going to talk to a possible witness. Please, I am begging you, just call me back.”
I slammed my car door shut and floored it down main street.
Bailey lived on acreage outside of the incorporated city. It was a long drive down old dirt roads, stopping in the cold, manure-scented night to check numbers on mailboxes and check my GPS.
When I finally found the right drive, I was cursing up a storm in my head and leaving one hand out the window to trail frost in the air. If Bailey didn’t come through for me on this and tell me there was someone claiming to be from a different county there that night, I was going to need something to blow up.
There was a rusting swing set in the small grass patch in front of the house, next to three well-maintained raised garden patches. The porch light was on. As I focused on my breathing and walked rigidly to the front door, I wondered if maybe I had misjudged him. The house had a sort of casual charm to it that reminded me of my old house in Maine, and it was quiet this far out in the country.
Had my memory spell done this? I hadn’t specified anything when I cast it, but through some nuance, it had selected Bailey as my resented ex. This house, and the garden, and the peacefulness... Even the weather vane atop the eaves. It all reminded me so much of the home I’d left behind.
The home the Bleak had destroyed.
Not even the rumble of passing traffic disturbed the silence. I stood alone with my thoughts, lost in my past. An owl hooted and flapped away into the night, bringing me back to my senses.
I rang the doorbell twice and rapped on his door with a closed fist. Please, Bailey, you’ve got to be home.
The silence was deafening, and somehow familiar. My heart started to race just as Bailey opened the door.
His work gun was holstered at his hip even though he was walking around in a tee-shirt and jeans. He was holding a shotgun.
And I had just realized why it was so quiet here. Too quiet.
No magic whatsoever.
“Janet,” Bailey said quietly. He was either very tired, or he had been drinking. Maybe both. “I knew you’d be coming to see me, sooner or later.”
I swallowed, taking a step back. Bailey took a step forward. He was holding the shot gun, but he wasn’t pointing it at me.
A quick check told me my magic was gone, and thanks to my mental distraction, I had no clue when that had happened. At some point between here and the car, which was a good fifty feet behind me.
I wasn’t going to outrun that shot gun. “Your house is warded.”
Bailey’s eyes wandered. He sighed as they landed back on me. “Yeah. It is.”
I was barely breathing. “Are you going to shoot me?”
He tensed a little. In the dim light on the porch, I saw a vein in his neck pop out. “Prefer not to, but that’s your choice. You could come inside and talk to me.”
Every instinct I had told me not to go inside the house. I was disarmed here, and I had no clue what was waiting for me inside.
Then I heard the banging. Someone was in there, kicking a wall.
I swallowed, because the bad feeling in my stomach only deepened. “You have company?”
Bailey’s eyes grew sad. “Yeah. She’s been here a while. Since... um, the Gregorys. What gave me up? Fingerprints on the knife?”
Travis Gregory’s daughter was inside that house. She was still alive.
“So, what’s it going to be, Janet? You want to talk?”
The only people who knew where I was were Marge and Charlene, and both of them knew that I was notoriously antisocial and had something weird going on that was causing me to miss a lot of work. Bailey was out on medical leave. How long before someone noticed I was missing? How long before someone called Bailey to ask, and he told them I’d never stopped by?
The banging continued. It was the only noise as I stared into Bailey’s watery eyes; the sound of a girl who refused to give up. She knew I was here. She was begging me for help. And gods help me, I couldn’t leave that porch without her.
I went inside.
Chapter 31
THE INTERIOR OF THE house was softly lit and very clean. There were old, framed oil paintings on the walls and a display of old family photos leading up the stairs. Well-worn runners had given up protecting the hardwood floors, which bore all the comfortable soft scratches and wear that life brought over the years.
“Please. Sit.”
Bailey directed me to the left, and I sat down on a large blue sofa in a formal living room. Bailey stayed standing between me and the front door.
“I did this for you.”
These wards, whatever they were, behaved just like Nick’s magic cuffs. It stripped me of all magic ability and left me as weak as any human. I had never figured out how to escape those damn cuffs, either.
Except to talk fast.
“You did this for me?” I asked, trying to keep the judgment out of my voice. “You killed Travis Gregory?”
“I’m the reason he’s dead.” Bailey peered out of the window by the door one last time before turning to me. He came over and sat in the chair across from me. A dainty coffee table separated us. The shotgun rested across his knees. “The girl’s supposed to be dead, too, but I know potential when I see it.”
Could I grab the shotgun in time? Am I seriously going to try to outdraw a cop?
No. That wasn’t the way. I needed a plan, and I needed it fast. How did humans get out of these situations?
In body bags. Not helpful, Marge.
“Potential?” I asked.
I wished there was more light in the house. The dark corners and previous-generation decor were freaking me out. If this were a horror movie, his wacked-out mother could be hiding anywhere, ready to pounce and claw my eyes from their sockets. Or maybe his wacked-out mother was dead in the basement these last ten years, all while he continued to talk to her.
In any case, I needed to see everything I had at my disposal.
Make a grab for the gun.
Flip the coffee table and run.
Break something and attack him with it.
“I know what you are.” Bailey leaned forward. His bloodshot eyes wandered over me. “I’ve known since we first met, Janet. Back in high school. I’ve been on the look-out for your type for a long time, because you’re not normal. Witchcraft isn’t natural, whatever they teach you growing up. It isn’t natural to kill other people for your own benefit.”
What did they teach you, growing up?
He was speaking to a very, very small set of witches. And when we caught them—when the Bleak caught them—they were executed. The Bleak believed in the protective power of remaining unknown, and they were willing to prune anyone from the community who disagreed.
And, it was no comfort at all that my spell apparently had caused this, because he still believed we’d met in high school. He must have been protected when I tried to put the memory spell on him, or else he had a very strong pre-existing defined hated of witches, and that was what made things go sour here.
This was your spell, Driftwood. Don’t go making excuses.
“I’ve never killed,” I said quietly. The ever-present banging that gave a macabre background to our conversation was beginning to wane. “But you’ve killed.”
His hand gripped the handle of the shotgun a little tighter, but he didn’t answer.
“Tell me what happened,” I said quietly. “Why Travis Gregory?”
A vein in his neck strained as he analyzed me. “They told me I couldn’t trust you. They say everyone from the Dark are dishonest to the core, and they poison their children with it from a young age.”
I barely contained the low whine in my throat. Gods, there are more of them. He didn’t act alone.
“We keep a close eye on the families that home-school for that reason.” He flashed a smile at my surprised expression. “Don’t worry, we don’t act until we have proof. The G
regorys were a tough nut to crack, but we eventually got the evidence we needed.”
“And you killed him. Just because they’re witches.”
Bailey frowned. His words came out as more of a growl. “I saved lives by removing him from the picture, and if his wife had kept to the routine we would’ve had her, too.”
“So you killed him.”
He shrugged indifferently. “Well. Not me specifically, but it doesn’t matter.”
“And you followed me that night. When we picked up Farrow and went to Joe’s.”
“We have eyes everywhere.”
“You need to let the girl go, Bailey. She hasn’t hurt anyone.”
Bailey’s eyes filled with sadness. “I know, Janet. That’s why I never turned you in. You go around trying to be like the rest of us. There’s still hope for you. There’s still hope for her. And I can help you both.”
Bailey picked up the shotgun and I panicked, shooting to my feet. He set the shotgun on the coffee table and grabbed my shoulders.
I stared into his eyes as he smiled. He almost laughed at me. But when I’d risen, something hard in my jacket pocket had smacked against my thigh.
My phone!
“Did you think I was going to shoot you?” Bailey chuckled. “Jesus, Janet, we’re inside the house. You’ve seen what a mess that makes.”
He was joking. Ha. Haha.
His expression became more serious as he gave my shoulders a squeeze. “I’ve regretted our breakup every day since it happened. I know I said it back then, but it’s still true now. You’re my soul mate. We were meant to be together. I can’t explain it, but it’s like this invisible force that’s drawing us back together. It’s like fate sent me here to save your life, because I should just kill you and be done with it. Anyone else would have killed you.”
It’s magic, you idiot. Not fate. It’s the spell I put on the whole town that you’ve apparently had an adverse reaction to.
“Thank you. Thank you for sparing my life.” I needed to discretely put my hand in my pocket. I had to dial anyone. “What are the others going to do when they find out about me and the girl?”