by K. J. Emrick
She wished that she had done like she was planning to do, and picked up a personal item of Esmerelda’s from the Norris house. It seemed like even though the case was closed and Connor was going to jail that casting a Vision and watching the last few hours of Esmerelda’s life might be useful after all. They hadn’t bothered, because it seemed like everything was settled.
It didn’t seem like that anymore.
“Now,” Misty said when Addie had been silent for a while, “do you mind if I ask you for a favor?”
“Sure, anything. Like I said, we want to help.”
Misty’s smile grew wider. “You should be careful what you wish for.”
Next to Addie, on his chair, the black cat made a meow that sounded for all the world like a little laugh.
“What I was wondering—” Misty started to say.
She stopped when Addie’s cellphone rang.
“Oh, sorry.” It hummed and vibrated in Addie’s back pocket, and she took it out now to find that it was Lucian calling. What could he want? “Um. I’m sorry, I have to take this.”
Misty looked annoyed, but she nodded and sat back while Addie got up from the table and walked through the swinging door to the kitchen. Not that she should need privacy for the call, but if he started asking her questions about Misty she wanted to be out of earshot.
“Hi, Lucian. Where are you?”
“I’m still at the Norris house.” His voice sounded rushed, like he’d been running, or was running, maybe. “Addie, I don’t have much time. I need to know if Misty is with you. Is she safe?”
“Well, sure. Actually she’s right here with me at the café. Why?”
“Oh, thank God. We thought maybe… Stay there, I’m coming to you.”
“Lucian?” She let her voice drop as she asked him again. “What’s going on?”
“We found Esmerelda’s parents, and her brother Lance, locked in a room down in the basement. The two kids as well. They’ve all been in there for a while by the looks of it. Days, at least. The kids were in pretty bad shape. I swear to you, Addie, it was like they were under some sort of spell and they only just woke up when we got to them. I can’t even… Look, just keep Misty there for me. I’ll only be a few minutes. We think Connor did this but if he didn’t, or if he had an accomplice, then we need to get to Misty first. Keep her there, and tell her that her husband is all right.”
Lance. Misty’s husband Lance.
But didn’t Misty just say that Lance had been in California for two weeks? With their children?
She also said that Lance and Esmerelda’s parents were okay with the deal between them and the Raithmores. How could they be okay with the deal, when they had been locked in the cellar of their house as a prisoner for days?
Addie’s eyes went wide as she ended the phone call. Wrong. She’d been wrong. About everything.
Connor didn’t kill Esmerelda. Connor didn’t kill Leo.
Misty killed them both.
Now the scene in the second floor sun room of the Norris house made a different kind of sense. Connor had attacked Misty in self defense, before she could kill him too.
“…don’t understand…” That was what he had said after they stripped him of his shifting abilities. “…don’t understand…”
At the time, Addie had thought he was talking about himself not understanding. Now she saw that what he really meant, was that she and her sisters didn’t understand.
He’d been trying to warn them, and they had missed it.
She looked at the door between the kitchen and the dining area, picturing Misty sitting out there, still pretending that she was a victim.
Lucian had asked her to keep Misty here. That was exactly what she was going to do. If Lucian didn’t figure out who the real killer was on his way to the café, then she would make things perfectly clear for him when he arrived.
Misty wasn’t going to get away with what she’d done.
Chapter 15
Putting on her best smile, Addie came out of the kitchen again. “Can I get you some tea, Misty? Something cold to drink?”
Misty just stared back at her. From his seat the cat was staring, too.
Then the cat blinked.
And he spoke.
“She knows.”
Addie’s jaw dropped. His accent was obviously Ukrainian. Not quite Russian, not quite Romanian, and definitely out of place in this little café of hers in this backwoods New England town. Even more so, because the accent belonged to a big black tomcat.
“Yes, Domovyk.” Misty stood up, talking to the cat as she placed her hands flat on the table and giving Addie a hateful glare. “I believe she does know. Well, well, well. Smarter than you look, aren’t you?”
The cat—Domovyk—sneered. “That is not hard.”
Addie looked from the cat to Misty. A familiar. The cat was her familiar, and that made her… “You’re a witch. That’s it! That’s how you were able to overpower Leo!”
Something Lucian had said in the phone call just now finally registered. The Norris family had looked like they were under a spell. He couldn’t have known how true those words were. How could a tiny woman like Misty have possibly overcome a family of shifters?
The answer was easy. She did it with magic.
“Of course,” she said with a relaxed shrug. “It’s also how I strangled poor dear Esmerelda to death.”
She held up her hands then, and as Addie watched they grew bigger, and thicker, until they were a man’s hands, strong and huge. She let them settle back into a woman’s but they still weren’t Misty’s hands. Addie saw the subtle differences. This wasn’t her real form, just like the man’s hands hadn’t really been hers. Some witches, the very powerful ones, were able to alter their physical body shape. Some could do it with a glamour but that wasn’t much different than a hologram. That was fakery. It wasn’t real.
This, what Misty was doing, was very much real. It was shapeshifting in its purest form.
Suddenly all the pieces fell together and Addie knew who she had standing with her in her café. Not Misty, the unfaithful wife of Lance Norris. She was someone else entirely.
“Why don’t you drop the mask,” she suggested. “We both know it’s not the real you, right Donna?”
“Oh, my,” Misty chuckled. She clapped her hands together, slowly. “Wonderful. You do not disappoint, Addie Kilorian. I really thought I had you. I really thought I was going to be able to get you and your sisters to let me into your home just by asking. You would have let poor Misty stay with you for a night or two, wouldn’t you? That was what my little favor was going to be, by the way.”
Addie was afraid she already knew the answer to her next question. “Why would you want to get inside Stonecrest?”
“Why? So I could steal the power of Stonecrest for myself. Obviously.”
She stood up straighter.
“Goody-two-shoes witches like you can never resist helping out a helpless victim, now can you?”
Darker color seeped into her blonde hair from root to tip, until it was blacker than night.
“With that magical barrier you and your sisters put in place, there’s no hope of me getting inside any other way. My heart, I’m afraid, is much too dark.”
She shook her hair out all around. She grew taller by half a foot. Even her face changed, until there was the narrow chin and upturned nose that Addie remembered. She would have been a perfect beauty, if not for that scowl on her pert lips.
Alluring almond eyes regarded her sharply.
“I want that power, Addie Kilorian.” Her hands came up, bathed in purple flame. “Give me access to that power, now, or I will burn this place to the ground with you in it.”
The cat looked up at Donna, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. “That is a little bit extreme, is it not?”
“Shush, cat. This is my show. I haven’t been pretending to be Misty Norris for nearly a month now just to be thwarted by this upstart witch and her petty spells. I didn�
�t set all this up—the murder, the love affairs, the ruining of the Norris fortune—just to listen to your pointless blather!”
Domovyk lowered his head to his paws, grumbling to himself in another language.
Addie thought back to when she had first met Donna, when this mystery had first started. She thought about being on Luna Moth Trail, and the thing that had bothered her even then. Donna’s knees had been torn up, supposedly from a fall on the path where Esmerelda body had been found. Only, Addie had knelt in that dirt. It was soft, rich soil, with no rocks to speak of. Certainly nothing that would have torn up someone’s knees in a fall.
It had been theater, meant to make Addie believe her story. Just like leaving Esmerelda there in the first place. Just like coming specifically to Addie’s café to ask for help. Theater. All theater. Obviously, she’d been right to assume Esmerelda’s body had been left on the Trail for someone specific to find.
She’d been left there for Addie.
Now she knew the truth. Everything was clear.
She took a step forward. One corner of her lips curled into a smile and she met Donna’s glare with one of her own. “You’re powerful. You were strong enough to mask your Essence from me and my sisters. Strong enough to overcome a wereleopard. I’m guessing either Connor got the drop on you in his werewolf state, or you wanted him to get caught?”
Donna nodded. She wiggled her fingers, making the fires dance. “A little performance, to keep me in the clear and get me one step closer to the insides of Stonecrest. It was the endgame, you see. I had to play it to the hilt.”
“Well done,” Addie had to admit.
“Thank you. Now. Give me what I want, or—”
“See, you’re strong,” Addie interrupted her, “but you’re stupid.”
Domovyk lifted his head up again, managing to register surprise even on his cat features.
Donna’s scowl deepened. “You dare!”
Addie took another step closer. “Do you really think that I would own and operate a café in the town of Shadow Lake without putting magical defenses in place throughout the building? Go ahead. Throw your spell. You’ll be dead the next second after.”
The two women stared each other down. Addie counted her heartbeats, feeling like time had slowed down around them.
“You’re bluffing,” Donna finally said. “You wouldn’t dare use spells like that here, where they might attract creatures that could hurt the pitiful Typics living all around you.”
“The defenses have been armed since you walked in. They’re motion activated. You can’t sense them because I have them shielded, and you can’t disarm them for the same reason.” Addie was right up to the table now. “Go ahead. Give me your best shot, and I’ll make sure your ashes get scattered across the lake out there. Do you have any next of kin you want notified?”
The cat studied Addie intently before whispering loudly to Donna out of the corner of his mouth. “I do not think she’s bluffing.”
“Shush, I said.” Donna’s voice was strained now.
“I just think we have overplayed our hand, perhaps.”
“I said shut up!”
“Actually,” Addie said to both of them, “overplaying your hand was killing Esmerelda in the first place. You wanted to get us involved and off our guard. Instead, you exposed yourself to us.”
“I thought it was a nice touch,” Donna pouted, “leaving her in the woods with her hands crossed, after forming myself into a man to kill her. All I had to do after that was play the helpless fool and come running to Adair Kilorian for help. ‘Oh, oh, I just can’t stand the sight of that dead woman. Oh, I can’t be here, I just can’t!’ Bah. It should have worked, you know.”
“But it didn’t,” Addie pointed out. “Now we know you’re here, Donna. Now you’ll have the full wrath of the Kilorian sisters crashing down on your head if you don’t leave this town. This is the only chance I’ll give you.”
“I think this witch is talking sense,” Domovyk whispered. “This is a good deal. We should take this deal.”
Petulantly, like a child, Donna kicked the chair out from under the black cat, sending him hissing and mrowling off to the floor. “I will not be denied!” she roared, her voice amplified by her building Essence. “I will have what I want! You will know the name of Belladonna Nightshade, and you will learn to fear me!”
Flames shot from her fingers making Addie jump backwards. She felt like everything was going in slow motion, like the world was slowing down.
Alarm etched Donna’s face as she waved her hands frantically to douse the flames. In a few seconds the flames were gone and Donna stood as still as a statue, head cocked to the side like she was listening for something. Addie watched as Donna’s hair lightened and she took on the features of Misty Norris once again. What was she up to?
At that moment, the front door was thrown open wide, and Lucian came rushing in. Addie knew then what it was all about. Before she could say a word, Donna pulled a small black stone from her pocket that Addie recognized as a Sliding Stone. Donna wasn’t going to risk using her magic in here after all. She would use a talisman of power instead. One that would transport her miles away in the blink of an eye, where she would be safe if any of the traps Addie had mentioned went off with destructive power.
Domovyk leapt away into a corner of the room as the stone left Donna’s hand, aimed at a spot on the floor between her legs.
The feeling of the world slowing down around Addie was gone. Now everything was happening all at once.
Just as Addie was about to leap in front of Lucian to protect him, he was there, wrapping his arms around her instead, hurling them both to the floor.
The Sliding Stone hit the floor with a flash and a subaudible whump that made Addie’s ears pop. The force of it pushed tables and chairs aside. Something fell, somewhere, and she barely heard it clatter to the floor over the ringing in her ears.
Lucian sat up with her, still holding her close. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I am. Thanks to you, I think. Why did you do that?”
He shrugged, staring all around the café. “It seemed like the thing to do at the time. Where’d she go?”
“Um.” Addie liked having him still tangled up with her, but why did he have to ask the hardest questions at the worst possible moments? “That’s a little hard to explain.”
“We need to find her,” he said, sliding his legs out from hers. “I figured it out on the way over here.”
“Connor wasn’t the killer,” Addie said before he could.
“Right. Misty was.”
Which was true, as far as the Typic authorities would ever know. Addie had a feeling that the real Misty Norris was long dead. Donna had been impersonating her for weeks, and if she wasn’t in the basement room with the rest of the Norris family, then there wasn’t much hope of her still being alive.
But on the official reports, the killer would be listed as Misty Norris.
“I’m glad you’re safe,” he said to her. “I was… I was worried.”
“Me too,” Addie had to admit. Donna was a powerful witch. Probably more powerful than her. Maybe, even stronger than Kiera. “I’m glad you got here when you did.”
“You two are so cute.” From under a table in the far side of the café, Domovyk the cat came striding. He walked over to the door that Lucian had left wide open in his rush to get to Addie. Just before disappearing into the night, he turned to look back at her, one of his ears twitching. “There was no spells, was there?”
Addie couldn’t help but smile. Her bluff had worked. “No, there wasn’t. But you can believe there will be after today. Make sure your mistress knows that.”
He laughed a wheezing cat laugh. “I will tell her. Belladonna will not be happy.”
“You tell her she’s not welcome in Shadow Lake. You tell her to stay away, and I won’t have any reason to hunt her down.”
Domovyk shook himself from nose to tail. “I think that perhaps I am wit
h the wrong witch. Yes. Maybe.”
Then he slipped out through the door, blending into the darkness outside.
When Addie looked back at Lucian, he was staring at her. “Did that cat just talk? And call you… a witch?”
She took his hand, and helped him up. “We’re going to have a lot to talk about. How about that cup of coffee that I promised you earlier?”
“A witch,” he repeated. “Like, a real witch?”
“Is there any other kind? Come on. I make really good coffee.”
“Um. All right,” he said, surprising her once again. “I’m game. But, maybe you should make a whole pot of coffee. I have a feeling this might take a while.”
Still holding his hand, she looked up into his amazing eyes.
“Yes. I think it might.”
Epilogue
Darla was tired.
The news had been all about the murder investigation for the past three days. Connor Raithmore’s arrest and release from custody. The arrest warrant issued for a missing Misty Norris. Statements from the lawyers of both families denying involvement and expressing shock and sadness over the events surrounding Esmerelda Norris’s death.
All of that press coverage had mentioned Shadow Lake over and over. The tourists flooding into the town had doubled the business at the Hot Cauldron Café. Addie had finally put up a help wanted sign in the window, and Darla was going to be happy when someone applied for the job to help out around here.
It had been a long day, and a busy one of serving food and cleaning tables, but she was used to that. Darla actually kind of enjoyed the work. She liked this town, too. Shadow Lake was a nice place. She had friends here. No family, but friends. All of her family had passed away, leaving only her to carry on the bloodline. Which wasn’t likely to happen. Not at her age.
She was tired, and that was the reason for it right there. One day she’d woken up to find she was in her forties. She was old, and getting older.
Oh, she might have another forty years or so before she passed away from this mortal coil, but she felt old now. She didn’t like to feel old. She wanted to feel young again.