by Neely Powell
Fred could be subtle, but not today.
“I’m taking all of this very seriously. We’ve stepped up patrols. We have officers working overtime. We’re doing all we can with the manpower and budget we have.”
The pastor kicked at a couple of the sign’s letters on the ground. “I hope you find the miscreants who did this and make the punishment fit the crime.” He grabbed the canvas and began putting it back over the sign.
Jake reached to help him. “It’s graffiti, Fred, not breaking and entering.”
“Nevertheless, this is God’s house and I expect it to be respected as such,” Fred said. “If you don’t make an example of these delinquents, it could happen again.”
Resting his hands on his hips, Jake said, “I’m sure you’re just like me and want to do what’s right. I’ll call you later, Fred.”
Brian said little during the ride back into town. Behind the courthouse, Jake pulled into his space. He turned to the deputy before they went into headquarters on the second floor. “Please don’t take what Ginny Williams said too personally.”
“I know better, but it’s hard to take that shit when you know your family has done nothing but try to protect this county.”
“Garth’s death stirred up a lot of worry. Then, with the other troubles—”
“Which could be from the new people moving into the county,” Brian interjected. “But of course Mrs. Williams would never think her friends in their big houses with their big checkbooks could have anyone who wanted to stir things up. This could all be political, you know. Everything planned to prove how much we need a private police force out at The Enclave.”
Jake nodded. “It could, but that explanation doesn’t cover everything. You know what happened yesterday to Brenna at Frances’s place?”
“My cousin Maggie says it’s the Woman in White. Maggie’s really scared. The whole family is.”
“It could be the Woman.” More and more, Jake was sure the Connelly family’s curse fit into everything else that was happening in his county.
“What else could it be?”
“Does the Woman in White always create this much chaos before she comes for one of the witches?”
Brian shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Beside them another cruiser slid into place. A passenger was in the back seat. Jake and Brian got out of their vehicle and greeted their fellow deputy.
“What’s up?” Jake said, nodding to the passenger.
The deputy said, “A farmer who lives out south. He wrung the necks of his wife’s eight prized laying hens. His wife said he went out to the barn right after church to check on an ailing mule. He was washing off at the water hose beside the back door and he threw the hose down, went to the chicken coop and started killing chickens. His wife’s upset. Those were her hens, and she uses the money for her yarn so she can knit baby blankets for all the newborns at the hospital.”
“What does he say?” Brian asked.
“He said he felt like he had to kill something and he figured the hens were better targets than his wife and boys. The wife says her husband wouldn’t normally hurt a fly, but she’s still scared, so I decided to bring him in.”
“Get him processed,” Jake instructed. “We’ll need to make sure he’s not a danger to himself or others before we let him go.”
Shaking his head, the deputy took the farmer out of his cruiser and headed into the office.
Brian sighed. “This doesn’t make sense. I know that family, and they’ve never had a lick of trouble.”
Jake agreed. The incidents all over the county ran the gamut. From the egging of the front door of a couple who ran a retreat, to the number of church-going people who walked out of the local convenience store with pockets full of stolen candy bars. A hunter who’d never broken any rules killed three deer and the ducks in the park pond. People who never had a problem were locked up for assault.
The common factor was confusion. No one knew what they’d done or why they did it.
Jake stopped Brian before he reached the door. “Do me a favor. Put together a report for me. I want a summary of every call we’ve been on, every incident that’s been reported since Garth died.”
“I can do that.”
“And I’m going to go through the old records and see what was happening around here the last few times the Woman in White was due.”
Brian grimaced. “You know, of course, that the old records are buried in the basement of the courthouse in about an inch of dust and cobwebs.”
“I’m not afraid of spiders.”
“But you’ll need some help.”
With his deputies already stretched to the max, Jake felt he couldn’t ask one of them. There was someone, however, who had the same interest he did in getting to bottom of all of this.
He pulled out his cell. He wasn’t sure if calling Brenna to help was a good or bad thing. He only knew he felt instant warmth when she answered.
“I need you,” he said.
There was a short pause. “I’ve had some interesting offers in my time, but this is a little abrupt.”
He rubbed a hand over his face, aware of Brian’s speculative gaze. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.” But he did, of course.
“Then what can I do for you?”
“Can you get to the courthouse? We need to do some research.”
“I would love to get out of the house this afternoon. I’ll have Fiona take me to get my car and then I’ll be right there.”
Jake was grinning as he hung up the phone. He looked up to find Brian studying him. “Something you need, deputy?”
Brian just smiled and walked up the steps to the department.
Hours later, Jake stared at Brenna across a table set up in a far corner of the dusty courthouse basement. “Your Woman in White is apparently one mean bitch.”
Brenna swiped at a streak of dirt on her cheek. Her green eyes were somber. “Every time she’s come for one of us, she has punished the town as well.”
Around them on the table and floor were incident logs, dispatch records and arrest files. They began their search with files dated in the months before her Aunt Celia’s death more than twenty-eight years ago. Then they moved twenty-two years before that to the death of Rose Connelly. So far, they had located archives from four generations of deaths in the Connelly family attributed to the Woman in White. This was all the history Brenna knew as fact since she still hadn’t been allowed to study The Connelly Book of Magic. But it was enough evidence to prove the Connelly’s tragedy always came with a sharp spike in crime.
“It’s the same kind of thing we’re dealing with now.” Jake was careful as he stacked fragile papers from early in the twentieth century back into a box. “People with no criminal record were suddenly shooting each other.”
“Or stabbing their mothers to death,” Brenna said with a shudder.
Jake nodded. One crime from near the time of Rose’s death had disturbed them both. A young man killed his mother with a butcher knife. He never denied the murder. He just said he couldn’t remember what happened. He didn’t know why he stabbed his mother to death. Declared insane, he was sent to the state hospital for the criminally insane in Milledgeville, Georgia.
The next time his name came up was more than twenty years later. His doctors and a crusading attorney managed to get him released. In his forties, he came home to Mourne County and lived for several years with his sister’s family, working on his brother-in-law’s dairy farm.
Just days before Celia Connelly was claimed by the Woman in White, the man hung himself from a tree in the New Mourne town park.
“According to the officer that interviewed the family, he lived a quiet life after his release. He was never any trouble. The report says he sang like an angel in the church choir.” Jake ran a hand through his hair. “There was no reason for him to kill himself.”
“Just like there was no reason for a peaceful farmer to kill his wife’s hens today,” Brenna added.
She’d been stunned when Jake related what happened earlier.
Other similarities between the two men chilled Jake. The farmer brought in today sang in the choir at the Methodist church this morning. “I guess it’s a good thing he was able to get his murderous impulse out on chickens.”
“You know what’s weird?” Brenna frowned down at the files in front of her. “No one talks about this in New Mourne. I’ve never heard about the man who killed his mother and hung himself.”
“You’d think a known murderer hanging himself in public would be something kids would tell around the campfire,” Jake agreed.
“We all like to pretend this is just a peaceful, wonderful place to live.”
“That’s how Garth described it to me when we met. He said it was a place where everyone was accepted, and that’s how it’s been for me.”
“But once a generation, there’s violence and death. No one warns you. It’s like no one wants to face it until it’s upon us again.”
“But you Connellys know about the Woman in White. You’re all warned.”
“True, but we aren’t prepared to fight. Neither is the town. Maybe we should talk to the people affected during the past week, tell them the Woman in White may not be finished.”
Jake frowned. Warning Fred Williams and the wealthy residents of the Enclave about paranormal warfare would get him fired immediately.
Garth had taught Jake that there was a delicate line between the humans and the supers in New Mourne. Unlike Ginny Williams, most of the older residents accepted the supernaturals as part of living here. That would not be the case with the newer people and the older residents who shared Ginny’s view that supernaturals were evil.
“And Sarah’s only answer is to call my parents in to help. What a joke.” Brenna stood with a huff, hurriedly stacking files and shoving them into boxes.
Jake watched her for a minute. “Okay, I get that your parents left you to be raised by Sarah and you’re not too fond of them. But why wouldn’t you want their help right now?”
“After all of these years I don’t see why they’re suddenly Sarah’s answer.”
“Fiona says they’re experts in this kind of thing.”
Her laugh was short. “Oh, yes. My father has a doctorate and my mother has a Master’s Degree. He is a bestselling author of books on magic. They’ve studied sorcerers, witches and wizards from all corners of the world. But if they know so much why haven’t they done something before?”
“Because the Woman in White didn’t show up until now?” The second the words were out of Jake’s mouth he regretted them.
Brenna’s temper bubbled over and she slammed a box of files onto the floor. “Why not do something before we reach a crisis point?”
He held his counsel as she started a rant. “The whole lot of them are reactionaries. The elder aunts and Sarah should have been searching for answers from the moment their sister was taken. Instead, they wait around and Eva Grace’s mother is killed, too. And then my mother is so upset by the death of her twin she decides she can’t live here. Which is fine, except what about me? What about Eva Grace? We both needed parents. Why not take us away too?”
“Wasn’t Sarah good to you?” Jake ventured.
“That’s not the point,” Brenna snapped. “When you have a child, you don’t just leave her with someone else. You also don’t have a second child and leave her as well. I understand that I was probably an accident. My parents married when my mother was just nineteen. He was her professor in college. But why have Fiona?”
“It’s hard to say why people have children sometimes.” Jake was thinking of his own parents. His father had never cared if Jake lived or died, but he knew his mother wanted him. She loved him until the moment her life ended in bloody torment.
Brenna picked up another box. “All Sarah did was make it easy for my parents to abandon their children. All my parents did was provide two potential sacrifices for the Woman in White. Their studies and each other are all they’ve ever cared about.”
“Maybe they want to make up for what they’ve done in the past.”
Brenna dismissed that with a toss of her head. “It’s more likely that my father wants to write a book about it.”
“That’s pretty harsh.”
“But that’s how I feel about them. I hope you’re not another person who thinks I should be grateful they’re rich and successful or that they left me here where there was lots of family to help me.”
Jake swallowed. The witch was also a mind reader. When his parents were gone, he ended up alone and on the streets. He was thinking how much luckier Brenna was than him.
“Nothing my parents ever did was for love of me or Fiona,” Brenna continued. “And if my mother really cared about her sister, she would have raised her niece as well. My parents are coming here now because they’re between projects or because suddenly this is interesting again. I can assure you they don’t care what happens to me or anyone else in the family.”
With that final statement her temper left her. She sat down and pushed her hair away from her face. “I guess it’s better that Fiona came into our lives. She’s always given me something to focus on besides my resentment toward my parents. Fiona and Eva Grace are my touchstones.”
“I used to think it’d be easier if I had a brother.” The thought reminded Jake so sharply of Garth that he pushed himself to his feet. “Let’s get out of here,” he told Brenna. “I’ll put all of this back tomorrow.”
Her gaze was steady on his. “You need to shift.”
He shrugged, unsettled by how well she read him.
“How long has it been?” she asked. “Two days? More?” Her laugh was deep and throaty when he held up four fingers. “Now you know you can’t do that. Magic demands that it be used or you lose it.”
“Fine words from a witch who ran away from her heritage for several years.”
“You’re right. I’ve realized I need to practice.” Brenna snapped her fingers at the stacks of papers still on the table. “As you were,” she said with a flick of her wrists.
The papers flew back into their boxes. Lids closed. Dust settled.
Jake was impressed by her economy of words and motion. Brenna had some serious power. “You didn’t put anything back on the shelves,” he pointed out.
“You have to do something,” she teased.
He laughed and gestured for her to precede him out of the basement. He snapped off the lights and they emerged into the June twilight. “Whoa. I didn’t realize it was so late. Can I buy you something to eat?”
Brenna shook her head. “You need more than food.”
The sparkle of her eyes and the curve of her lips set off a serious ache inside him. Damn, she was tempting. What would she do if he stepped forward, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her? Did she remember their kiss from last night or had she been too tired and too under the influence of Sarah’s magic to be aware?
Her gaze lingered on his, and then moved away. “You need to shift,” she said again as she fumbled in her handbag for her car keys.
The keys jangled to the ground. Jake stooped and reached for them at the same moment Brenna did. A blue arc of light shot out when their fingers touched. His skin tingled and Brenna jerked up. His mouth was inches from hers. It seemed natural to kiss her, so he did.
Oh, she remembered their kiss from last night. He was sure of that now as she gave herself briefly to the same longing he felt.
But she pulled back before the kiss could deepen. “This is not a good idea.”
“Absolutely not,” Jake agreed as he moved away. He straightened and held out her keys, careful not to touch her again. It was an effort, however, because he was picturing her as she’d been in the moonlight last weekend. Proud and naked. Glowing with her power. How would it feel to be inside that magic?
Brenna backed away. “You’ve had an intense few days. You just need to shift and run. You can forget about this…us. I mean, there can’t be an us. I do
n’t do…”
He held up a hand to silence her. “It’s okay, Brenna. You’re right about this not being a good idea. I’m the sheriff, and we have to get to the bottom of what’s happening in town. I need to know why Garth was taken. We can’t let anything cloud that.”
Did he see a flicker of disappointment in her eyes? It was fleeting and was maybe just his imagination. “Go on,” she urged him. “Go run.”
He stepped back, too, both eager and reluctant to leave her. “Okay, I’m going to shift. You might warn your housecats to stay out of the woods while I do.”
She stepped toward her car. “Do white tigers howl at the moon?”
“Sometimes.”
“Let me know when you pass the house.”
Aching with need, he watched her drive away.
Later, when he was chasing deer through the woods near the Connelly home place, he roared.
Somehow, he knew Brenna heard him.
Chapter Twelve
Brenna slept fitfully Sunday night and woke late to full sunshine and the cat named Tasmin purring in her face. Stroking the gray feline, Brenna said, “Well, you’re not the cat I wish I was waking up with, but I guess you’ll have to do.”
Intelligent feline eyes held a trace of disdain as Tasmin flipped her tail and jumped out of bed. The cat, spayed after her first litter of kittens, had no use for males.
Clearly reading the kitty’s thoughts, Brenna replied, “But I do.”
Tasmin left the room and Brenna sat up to survey her tumbled sheets. She blamed her uneasy night on the many fantasies she had entertained about Jake. In her dreams, his smooth skin kept morphing into warm, white fur. Late in the night, she was sure she’d heard him roar outside her window.
She was frustrated with herself for allowing her attraction to him grow. That kiss last night was foolish. Nothing was going to happen between them. His protective instincts were too highly developed to suit her independent streak. And if she just used him for sex—which was tempting, how awkward would that be? He was close to Eva Grace, so he would be part of Brenna’s life once the sex was over. That would not do.
She had rules about such things. The only males she hooked up with were those with no possibility of involvement. She had too much on her mind to indulge in the kind of all-consuming passion that people like her parents had. She had a curse to break. She had to save herself or one of her cousins. She couldn’t be worrying about her feelings for some sexy, silver-eyed shifter.