by K. J. Emrick
“And the woman you said brought you to the body?” Kiera pressed. “She didn’t see you, either?”
“No. She was gone before I did the spell. I only used a little bit of powdered verbascum root,” she added hastily when she could still feel Willow’s doubt. “I was careful. No one could have felt that little bit of power unless they were standing right over my shoulder when I did it, and there wasn’t anyone there.”
“We believe you,” Kiera said, ending the issue. “Now, tell us what Esmerelda’s ghost said to you.”
Addie went through it quickly, the fact that Esmerelda had died somewhere else, and that she had been strangled, and that she didn’t have any idea who did it to her.
“It was probably done by a man,” she continued, “although I know that doesn’t narrow it down much. There were boot prints near the body that were too big to be a woman’s, and apparently most homicides are committed by men.”
Kiera quirked an eyebrow at that, and Addie felt warmth blossoming in her cheeks. “That’s what the police detective at the scene told me,” she explained. “I think he’s right, based on the size of the bruises on Esmerelda’s neck and how much force it probably took to kill her that way. In the absence of a magical attacker, this all points to a man as the killer.”
“A Typic, you mean,” Willow smirked.
Addie ignored her. “Whoever killed her laid her body out in a state of repose, with her hands folded over her chest.”
“Hmm,” Kiera mused. “Usually that’s a sign that a killer knew the person.”
“Great,” Willow muttered, staring at her perfectly manicured nails as she did. “So all we need to do is figure out what men in Shadow Lake knew her well enough to fold her arms after they killed her.”
Their older sister sent a wave of calm certainty through their link. “That’s exactly what we need to do, Willow. If a Typic has committed murder, it’s quite possible he will murder again. We must stop them before they do.”
Willow’s lips puckered. She didn’t like dealing with the affairs of Typics. She thought it was beneath her. Ah, Addie thought to herself, the impatience of youth.
In a huff, Willow stuck her tongue out at Addie. She realized her thoughts about Willow being young and naïve had travelled through the link, and she locked her opinions up tight.
“That’s enough, you two,” Kiera scolded them gently. “We protect Shadow Lake. We hold its secrets, and shield the people who live here from the dark things. Even when the danger is coming from the very people we have sworn to protect.”
“We protect Shadow Lake,” Addie and Willow echoed together. It was the truth that they lived by.
Addie took a breath. “There’s something else. The fact that her body was left on Luna Moth Trail… I don’t know. It feels like she was left there for someone to find.”
Kiera nodded. “Interesting. Very possible. Any thoughts as to who?”
“No. There’s just… something about the scene that bothers me.”
“You mean, other than the fact that a woman is dead?”
“Yes. Other than that.”
“And what of the police detective?” Kiera asked. “You’re sure he didn’t see anything you did?”
“No,” Addie promised, shaking her head. “Like I said, I was careful. The ghost drifted away before Lucian got there.”
“Lucian, hmm?” Willow said, the smile returning to her lips. “That’s a pretty name. Is he a pretty man?”
Before Addie could stop it, her reaction poured out through her Essence. Willow’s eyes got brighter.
“Ooh, so he is good looking.”
“He’s just a man,” Addie said a bit too quickly. “I have his business card. We can keep track of the investigation through him if we need to.”
“Did you give your number to him?” Willow teased. Before Addie could even answer the truth slipped out through their link. “Oh! You did! Ha, that is awesome. I knew you had it in you, sis.”
“It was just so he could reach me for an official statement later,” she argued. “That’s all.”
Willow’s smile grew the more Addie protested. “Uh-huh. I’m sure that’s all it was.”
Kiera pushed out with her Essence, quieting them again. “Sister Addie, tell us about this woman that came to your café,” she said, changing the subject. “I can feel she’s troubling you.”
“Yes, actually. She was so insistent that something needed to be done about the murder, but then she just disappeared.”
“Typics,” Willow scoffed. “Scared of their own shadows.”
“Maybe,” Addie admitted. “Either way, she wasn’t from around here. I doubt we’ll see her again.”
“Just the same,” Kiera said, “I’d like to get a look at her. Perhaps she’s someone I know by virtue of being older than both of you.”
“She was about my age,” Addie explained, “I think. Maybe. It was hard to tell because I was in such a rush to get to the hiking trail and the dead woman, but if she was that young I don’t think you’ll know her.”
“I’m not a hermit,” Kiera insisted, lifting her hands with her thumb touching her pinkies. “Let us try. Nothing will be lost by trying.”
“Except time I could be spending with Gary,” Willow whispered, lifting her hands into the same shapes as Kiera’s.
Addie could feel Willow’s annoyance. She actually had to push it away to concentrate on holding her part of the Circle, hands raised, thumbs to pinkies, opening up her mind to help her sisters fold back the hours to when Donna had arrived at her café.
Inside the circle, at the exact point of the center, the air began to shimmer. Into that disturbance in space and time each sister threaded a little bit of their Life Essence. It appeared as colored mist rising forth and coalescing from each of them, tendrils of smoke colored to match their innermost self. Kiera’s was a deep purple, like an aged wine. Willow’s was a sensuous pink streaked through with a shy yellow.
Addie watched her own Essence manifesting to combine with her sisters. Her color was a pearlescent teal, a mix of blues and greens. It was a strong Earth shade. Calm. Steady.
There had been times in the past when she’d joined the Circle while she was angry. When that happened, the color of her Essence became something darker. Almost black.
It scared her to know that side of her existed.
Today she was herself again, the Adair Kilorian she knew and recognized.
Their combined Essence swirled around, and around, spinning out flat from edge to edge of the Circle, waist high to the sisters. When it was smooth like glass a snap of blue electricity shot across its surface and disappeared an instant later.
In its place was an image.
The Vision had been cast.
Addie saw herself, standing behind the Hot Cauldron Café and talking to Doyle. She couldn’t hear what the cat was saying but she remembered it well enough. The Window only gave them a picture. There was never any sound. But Addie remembered, and her sisters shared her experience.
Is the crazy driver still out there? She nearly put my heart sideways, let me tell you that! It’s getting so a cat isn’t even safe in his own backyard anymore.
Her image knelt beside the cat. Doyle, I need you to do this. Head back to Stonecrest, and tell Kiera that I’m going out to Luna Moth Nature Trail, okay? Tell her someone died and I’m going to find out what happened.
I’ll do it, Doyle was agreeing reluctantly, but you better make sure Kiera cooks salmon next Thursday.
From her corner of the circle, Kiera raised an eyebrow.
“He needed some incentive,” Addie explained. “It wouldn’t hurt to mix things up at dinner just a little bit, Kiera.”
“Shh,” Willow admonished. “Here comes the image we wanted to see.”
The three sisters each raised one hand in unison to freeze this piece of time. Donna was finishing her phone call to the police in the Vision. Kiera leaned forward to study her face. Strikingly beautiful. Narrow chin, up
turned nose. Almond eyes. Midnight-black hair. Permanent scowl.
“Nobody I know,” Willow said with a shrug. “I told you. She’s probably just some Typic who got spooked. You sure you’ve never seen her before, Addie?”
“No, never.” She looked at the face again, and shook her head. “She isn’t anyone from Shadow Lake. She was probably just on her way to visit family like she said. Her car was gone from the café when I drove back through. I figure she just left, rather than get involved.”
Kiera moved her hand from side to side, turning the image to get a look at Donna from different angles. “I still have my doubts. I’ve never seen her before, either, but there is something so very familiar about… what’s this?”
The image in the Vision blurred, and came into focus, and then blurred again, and came into focus…
Only this time the image was of a lonely, dark stretch of highway.
Kiera looked at her sisters. “Which one of us is doing this?”
Willow sneered. “Not me. I thought we should be done already, remember?”
“It isn’t me, either,” Addie said. “I didn’t think a Vision could change an image on its own?”
“It can’t,” Kiera agreed. “Which means one of us is doing this, although we appear to be doing it subconsciously. One of us must have a connection to this new image.”
All three of them watched intently as a car came into view, driving down the highway. It was Lutherfud Road, Addie noticed now. The tires hummed on the pavement and there was just a glimpse of the driver and then—
The car swerved for no apparent reason, and headed for the shoulder, before flipping up onto its side and coming down hard again. The windshield shattered. The dash lights showed a faint glimpse of the man behind the wheel as the car careened closer to the Vision threshold.
“This is not what we need to see,” Kiera scowled. Raising both hands she pushed a little bit more of her essence into spell. “Show us the woman.”
Donna’s face swam into view again, staring up as if someone was taking her picture—
And the image shifted and blurred and reformed again on the broken car on the side of the highway.
“This is the car accident,” Addie realized. “The one that Lucian told me about.”
“Lucian?” Willow hummed the name, imbuing it with a little power all its own. “Are you on a first name basis with the policeman already?”
“Shush, Willow,” Kiera said before Addie could even think of a response. “We must see why the Vision is insisting on showing us this accident.”
When the car came to rest, they moved the image forward, zooming in on the driver’s face, at the panicked expression on the driver’s face.
Kiera gasped.
“What is it?” Addie asked her. “What did you see?”
With a single step backward, Kiera broke the Circle.
There were proper ways to end a conclave. Ways to let the energy placed into a Circle safely dissipate. Suddenly breaking off the flow of Essence was not one of them.
Addie and Willow both jumped in their robes as a sensation of pressure squeezed through their bodies from their toes up to their heads. For a moment, Addie was sure she was going to pop like an overinflated balloon.
“Ow,” Willow complained. “Hey. That hurt!”
Sucking on the inside of her cheek where her mouth had gone dry, Addie looked with concern at Kiera. “What’s wrong? What did you see?”
“Nothing,” her older sister said in a very unconvincing way. “It’s nothing. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, sure,” Willow said, flexing her fingers to work the circulation back into them. “You used to make me sweep out the cellar any time I did that.”
“You were six at the time,” Kiera reminded her. “I’m not.”
Addie looked into the middle of the circle, where the beeswax candle had gone out. “I kind of wanted to see the rest of it. Lucian said the driver disappeared from the scene. Maybe if we could find out what happened to him, it might relate to poor Esmerelda Norris and her death…”
“No,” Kiera said firmly. Then she tried for a smile and said more gently, “I mean, not tonight. I… I’m afraid I don’t feel well. Our meeting is finished for the night.”
“About time,” Willow muttered. She was already tugging off her robe.
Addie wasn’t as easily convinced. Kiera was a stickler for tradition and they should have done the whole ending recitation where each sister invoked good favor on their family from God and his creation. Sure, Addie thought Kiera was silly for sticking so closely to the old ways, but those ways had served their family well for generations and Addie had never seen Kiera just skip out on any part of their Thursday night conclave.
She wondered what her sister had really seen in that image. And, why it had been called up in the first place.
“Well,” Willow said cheerfully, still peeling off her robe as she rushed out the door. “I’m off to see Gary. Don’t wait up!”
She was gone in the next second, her feet rapping out a staccato rhythm as she nearly skipped down the stairs.
“You certainly made her night,” Addie said. “Kiera, are you sure…?”
“I’m fine, Sister Adair. You shouldn’t worry for me so.”
It had been a very long time since Kiera called her by her complete first name. Now she was sure something was wrong.
Slowly, Kiera began to take her robe off as well. “It’s my responsibility to look out for the two of you, remember? I’m the oldest.”
“I thought we always looked out for each other,” Addie pointed out.
Kiera tossed her robe over her shoulder, and hugged her sister tightly. “So true. So very, very true. Goodnight, Adair.”
She left the tower room without another word, leaving Addie to put out the candles, and to wonder what secrets Kiera was keeping from her.
Chapter 6
When Addie woke up the next morning she was determined to corner Kiera and ask her about the abrupt ending to the conclave last night. She stretched in her nightgown, and she ruffled her long hair, and rolled over to the side of the bed tossing the blankets as she went.
“Umph!” blurted a muffled voice. “Imf stilf n hur!”
Addie jumped, and brought her hands up, already drawing her Essence into her fingertips to cast a spell of defense…
Until she realized that she recognized the voice of the wriggling little lump struggling to get out from under her comforter.
Doyle’s head poked itself out from the folds and he drew in a long, dramatic breath. “I’m still in here! Watch what you’re doing!”
“Me?” she asked in exasperation. “Doyle, we’ve talked about this. You have your own bed to sleep in downstairs in the living room. You have your own bed in here too, by the way, as well as your own bed in Willow’s room. I doubt seriously that Willow came home last night so you would’ve had the entire room to yourself.”
“Hmph. I doubt seriously that Willow came up for air.” He stretched languidly, his back and his white-tipped tail arching with the motion, as his front toes spread out and clawed into the crisp white sheets.
“You aren’t supposed to be up on my bed, Doyle,” she reminded him for the millionth time.
His ears drooped. “But you’re always so warm. I swear to you, it’s like my own personal furnace. I have the best dreams when I’m up on your bed. Before you woke me up I was dreaming about chasing this horde of mice in a chariot pulled by six slobbering mutts who all called me Lord and Master Doyle. I was so happy out in that dream.”
He smiled a cat smile, full of mischief and cunning.
There had been dreams for Addie as well. A dream about danger and dark, evil things chasing her sisters to the end of a rocky gorge, where a wall suddenly sprang up out of nowhere to block their path. It was not a good dream.
She must have been sleeping on her left side again.
Addie shook her head as she got out of the bed, knowing it was no use to argue with Doyl
e. “Fine. Besides, I don’t even want to know how you got into my room this time.”
With a very self-satisfied purr, he lowered his eyelids at her. “Every cat has his secrets.”
“Some more than most. I’m going to shower now, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. I’ll just close my eyes and go back to sleep.”
“Doyle!”
He twitched his whiskers. “Well, I guess I’ll just be off, then. I’ll get the rest of my nap in Willow’s room, I suppose.”
“Yes, you do that.” She took clothes out of her drawers, mindful that she was dressing for work. “Just be ready to go in an hour if you expect me to give you a ride to the café. After I shower I’m going to talk to Kiera for a bit, then we’re off.”
At the door to her room, he stopped, waiting for her to open it for him. “You aren’t going to talk to Kiera this morning,” he informed her.
“Oh? And why is that?”
He didn’t answer right away. Staring pointedly at the closed door, he waited for Addie to roll her eyes and graciously work the doorknob for him. It creaked as she opened it. Everything in the house was getting old now. Once or twice, Addie thought she might even have seen a ghost wandering the third floor hall.
“There you go, Old Man. Now. Tell me why you don’t think I’ll get to talk to Kiera this morning.”
“Because,” he said, enjoying the luxury of knowing something she didn’t, “she’s already gone up to the tower. Locked the door and everything.”
“What? When?”
He sat in the hallway, curling his tail around his front feet. “Just after midnight. She had that look on her face that she gets when she doesn’t want to be disturbed. You know the one.”
Addie definitely did. In times past, she’d learned to stay away from Kiera when she got like that. Her big sister fell into moods of melancholy sometimes that only she could get herself out of. Addie didn’t know why. Maybe if Kiera had a good man in her life to make her laugh…