Witch I May, Witch I Might

by K. J. Emrick

  The shadows flooded back into his eyes again, and suddenly Addie was looking into a depthless abyss that would swallow her whole if she wasn’t careful. “If I were you,” he said, his voice low and gravelly, “I would watch what I say. You got the drop on me once, but don’t let that go to your head. It won’t happen again. I haven’t forgotten that you’re the reason my son is in jail.”

  “Not me,” Addie insisted, although she made sure not to raise her voice to him again. “If what you’re saying is right, there’s magic at play here. Whoever turned your son into a, um, a puppet is the one to blame. Right?”

  “Oh, don’t worry.” His grin showed teeth. “They’re next on my list.”

  “And I’m first?”

  He looked at her for the longest time while the room around them stayed perfectly still. Then the shadows in his eyes ebbed once more. “You know what, Addie Kilorian? There’s not that many people who can stand toe to toe with me. Not for any length of time. Especially not the ones who know what an angel like me can do. I fell in love with your sister, because she was something unique, but you’re pretty special yourself. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to know there’s an angel with his eye on you right now.”

  Addie tried to take that as a compliment. “Thanks, Philly, but no thanks. I don’t need a lover from Heaven or Hell. I already have a special man in my life. Lucian’s no angel, but he is perfect in his own way.”

  “Hmm. Pity. Not that our good Detective Lucian Knight isn’t a wonderful man, I’m sure, but a witch could do so much better. Don’t you think?”

  “No,” she said without hesitation. “I think a woman’s heart chooses for her, not her magic.”

  “Well said, sis,” Willow agreed. She rubbed her hands together and smirked at Philly. “Well, guess that makes me kind of special, too, doesn’t it? You know, because I’m a witch and a Kilorian and everything else, too. So, let me tell you something else. I don’t think that you—”

  With a wave of his hand, Willow was gone.

  Addie’s blood pressure spiked. She jumped back from the table and her hands came up, magic already flowing through her and coloring the air around her. “What did you do with my sister! You bring her back, right now!”

  “Relax, will you?” Philly tugged at his collar, totally unconcerned by her show of force. “I put her back in the kitchen. I find that your sister Willow can be so annoying sometimes. Did she get all of the mouthy genes in the family? Can’t stop talking to save her life?”

  Addie found herself chuckling in spite of herself, and she lowered her hands. “I guess you and I can agree on a few things, can’t we?”

  Philly gave her a very gallant bow from his waist, and with a flourish he turned to leave. Then he stopped. Halfway to the door he’d noticed Doyle under that one table, caught trying to steal some scraps of scrambled egg in this frozen moment of time.

  The angel’s lip twisted. “I’ve never been much of a cat person. Although, I suppose they have their uses.”

  With a snap of his fingers, the egg pieces were gone, and a plate of boiled fish had taken their place. Addie could smell it from here, and it smelled delicious. It was trout by the look of it. The head and the fins hadn’t been removed, either, which would be enough to make any cat drool.

  Then again, it had been prepared by a fallen angel who just admitted to not liking cats. For all Addie knew, it could be poisoned.

  When she looked up again, Philly was gone.

  Willow came rushing out from the kitchen, smacking the swinging door off the wall in her indignation. “Where is he? Where’d he go?”

  “He’s gone,” Addie said. “It’s just as well, too.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?”

  “Meaning, you really need to learn when to hold your temper. What were you going to do, challenge a fallen angel to a magic duel? Fifty paces and take your best shot?”

  “If I had to,” she muttered, folding her arms across her chest again. “I bet I could take him if I got in one good shot.”

  “Sure.” Addie shook her head. “You keep telling yourself that.”

  All around them, the café started to come back to life. Slowly, customers moved their forks on their plates. Conversation began as a low murmur of sound, like an audio file slowed right down to the speed of molasses. Jade’s pencil started to move on her pad one centimeter at a time. The spell was wearing off. It was just going to take a minute or two for time to catch up with everyone.

  Willow sighed and gave up trying to convince Addie of how tough she was. “Whatever. He’s gone, and now it’s up to us again. He said that someone had put their magic into Alan and was pulling his strings like a puppet. Do you believe him?”

  “I don’t know,” Addie said honestly. “I mean, I want to. It would be nice to know that it really wasn’t Alan’s fault, and someone else was to blame.”

  “Well, you know who that someone else has to be, right? If someone was controlling Alan by magic, it could only mean one person.”

  That had actually been Addie’s first thought, too. “Yes. If what Philly was telling us is true, it can only mean Belladonna Nightshade is up to her old tricks again.”

  “Old tricks,” Willow scoffed. “I guess that’s one way of putting it.”

  “Right. She wants the Essence under Stonecrest and she obviously won’t stop at anything to get it. Only this time, she’s put our family in danger. She used Alan and got him sent to jail. She got you involved. She’s trying to tear us apart.”

  “No duh, sis.”

  Addie was in no mood to be spoken down to by Willow, especially after the part she had played in all of this mess. The room around them was waking up from its magical nap, however, and there was no time to snap at each other. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Go? Go where? In case you’ve forgotten, I’m kind of a wanted fugitive.”

  “Don’t remind me. I’m supposed to be calling Lucian right now to turn you over to the police.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Willow gasped.

  Forks scraped on plates as things started to move again.

  “I would dare, actually,” Addie promised. “Just not right now.”

  Conversation rose around them.

  “So then,” Willow asked, “what’s the plan for right now?”

  Doyle blinked at the platter of fish that had miraculously appeared in front of him.

  Addie pulled the keys to Kiera’s car out of her pocket. “For now, we’re going back up to Birch Hollow. If there’s a trace of Belladonna’s magic left behind, I want to find it. I’ll trace it right back to whatever hole she’s hiding in and then I’ll rip her throat out through her ears.”

  Doyle licked his lips.

  “All right!” Willow beamed. “Now that’s a plan I can get behind. Let’s go.”

  Doyle put out a paw toward the steaming trout’s head.

  Willow and Addie both saw his mouth watering for the fish and rushed at him at the same time. “No, Doyle! Don’t eat that. You don’t know where it’s been!”

  Chapter 10

  Remnants of yellow police tape flapped in the breeze of early morning at the Nash Palms Motel, tied off to a pole. The snow still hadn’t found its way into the parking lot inside the protective shelter of the horseshoe shaped building. Addie easily located the parking space that had been empty yesterday, where Autumn’s shoes had left drag marks, and her blood had stained the pavement.

  There was a car parked in it now, and nothing close by, so Addie ended up parking on the other side of the lot. That was fine with her. The fact that a car was in the space now wasn’t going to keep her magic from working.

  “This is where she died?” Willow asked, wrinkling her nose as she scanned the single row of rooms, the rundown siding and the obvious repairs to everything that needed to be done sooner rather than later. “This place is kind of a dump. What woman in their right mind would come here as part of a honeymoon trip?”

  “I think Autumn convinced Corbin t
o stay here because it was quiet and out of the way. It was better for her that way.” Addie had been wondering about that, too. Autumn had married a man of means. She had money to burn, so why put them in the Nash Palm Motel? “She was going to a divorce attorney here in Birch Hollow to see what her options were. She wanted to take Corbin for everything she could, and she didn’t want anyone to remember her ever being here.”

  “Makes sense when you put it that way. So. To sum up the plan, we find traces of Belladonna’s magic, we let that lead us to Belladonna, and then we put her in witch’s prison?”

  Addie felt herself shudder. There really was such a place, although it wasn’t actually called witch’s prison. It was called Perdition. It was just to the left of Purgatory, and a few steps north of Oblivion.

  It was not a nice place. Witches and other magic users who were sent there very rarely came back. Mostly because they didn’t live long enough to try.

  She couldn’t think of a better place to send Belladonna Nightshade, once they found her.

  “Grab my kit from the glove compartment, please,” she asked Willow as they got out.

  Willow grumbled, but she did as she was asked. “When did I become your gopher?”

  “When you decided to pull your little disappearing stunt. That’s when.” Addie locked the doors on Kiera’s Buick. “The least you can do now is help me clear Alan’s name.”

  “Why do you think I’m here?” Willow asked, managing to sound offended whether a large part of this mess was her fault or not. “I just want to get to Belladonna and make her pay.”

  “You mean, find Belladonna and get her to confess so we can get Alan out of this jam. Isn’t that what you meant?”

  “Of course it is, sis, but have you thought about that? Even after we prove that Belladonna is behind the murder, and that she was pulling Alan’s strings, what good is that going to do Alan?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, we can’t exactly walk into the police station and say, okay, let Alan go now because the evil witch made him do it. ‘The Devil made me do it’ doesn’t work as a defense anymore. Magic isn’t exactly accepted as evidence in a court of law.”

  Addie frowned until she felt her forehead crease. She actually hadn’t thought of that. She was only focused on finding the truth. It never occurred to her that the truth wouldn’t be enough to set Alan free.

  What was it Philly had said to her? The truth, dear Addie, can be a very cruel mistress.

  She supposed even fallen angels could be right now and then.

  “One thing at a time,” she finally said, since there was nothing else to say. “Let’s go trap a wicked witch.”

  The car parked in the spot where Autumn’s blood had been found was an older PT Cruiser. The ones made to look like a style of car common in the nineteen-fifties, with the sloping hood and the hatchback trunk. Addie was surprised there was any of these still on the road. Then again, her Jeep Cherokee was getting up there in age, but it was still dependable and that was what really mattered in a car. Flash and luxury would never be as important as knowing your car was always going to start, get you where you were going, and then get you back again.

  The PT Cruiser was tucked in tight next to Corbin Reif’s BMW. Addie glanced down the row to the door to number eight, Corbin’s room. Was he in there now? He must be, she figured, because where else would the grieving widower be? Just married, not even really to their honeymoon yet, and now his wife was dead. It was tragic, and it was awful, and her own nephew was the killer whether he’d been played like a puppet or not. Addie was never going to forgive Belladonna for dragging her family into this.

  Putting down the felt bundle of magic herbs and powders on the trunk of Corbin’s BMW, Willow undid the string and started to unroll it for her sister. Addie had already extended her senses out toward the pavement, looking and feeling for signs of magical residue. It had only been a day since the murder. If there had been magic at play here, she would still be able to feel it. She figured this would be the best place to pick up any trace of Belladonna’s influence because the victim’s body had been here, bleeding out, leaking her life’s blood onto the pavement even as she gave up her ghost and died. The connection to the magic would be strongest here.

  Addie bent down and was moving her hand parallel to the ground extending her senses out farther and farther for a few moments and then she stopped. She felt something…

  “What are you two doing there?” The angry voice interrupted her concentration. “Oh, hey, it’s you. Addie, right? Killdear? Kilgore? Something?”

  “Kilorian,” Addie supplied for August Lynch. He must have seen them from the window of his motel room and wondered what they were doing around his brother’s BMW. From the corner of her eye, Addie saw Willow folding the felt pouch of spell powders away and sliding it into her pocket out of sight. “It’s Addie Kilorian. This is, um, my friend Roseanne.”

  Willow shot her a look. Addie gave her one in return, tipping her head ever so slightly at August. This was not the time to announce that her sister, the wanted fugitive Willow Kilorian, was standing right here. That revelation could wait until they had first settled matters with Belladonna.

  “I wasn’t expecting to see you again,” August told her. “Uh, be careful there, will you? I’ve got some rust starting on my Cruiser. I don’t want you to make it worse.”

  Addie looked at the car next to Corbin’s BMW. “Oh, so this is your car?”

  “It is, yeah. So what are you doing here? It’s a little too cold to just be standing outside, isn’t it?”

  He was wrapped in a blue terrycloth bathrobe, pajama bottoms sticking out underneath and his feet in sneakers without socks. He must have just gotten up, Addie decided, when he saw them here. She cursed her Irish luck, because if he’d only waited two minutes longer she was sure that she could have found Belladonna’s trail and this whole mystery could be over, just like that.

  Now, it was going to take longer.

  “Sorry to bother you,” she said to him, with a smile that she hoped was disarming. “I thought I dropped something when I was here yesterday.”

  He studied her, obviously not buying the hastily constructed lie. “You were here helping the police. You and your other sister, the older one. You practically accused my brother-in-law Corbin of killing his wife.”

  “That would be your sister. Well, your step-sister, right? Autumn and you had different parents?”

  His face twitched, surprise registering in his eyes. “How did you know that?”

  “Why? Is it a secret?”

  He quickly waved the question away. “No, no. Not a secret. I mean, not really. Autumn and I just don’t tell that to people, so it surprised me to hear you say that.”

  “We heard it from Percy Pokins. Autumn’s attorney. I guess he didn’t think it was a secret, either.”

  Of course, there had been a little magical encouragement involved at the time, but if it wasn’t a secret then August shouldn’t care that anyone had told them about it.

  Unless…

  “August,” she asked, coming around from the back of his PT Cruiser, “did Corbin know that you and Autumn aren’t really brother and sister?”

  He began fiddling with his robe, avoiding eye contact with them. “I don’t know if she told him or not. He wasn’t marrying me. He was marrying her. What did that matter anyway?”

  His cheeks flushed red in the cold. Addie felt a little tremor in the air around him as she got closer. His emotions were rippling across her witchy senses. They were jagged, and jumbled, and he was trying his best to hide them even as they pressed up against his surface, wanting to be revealed, wanting her to find them out, wanting her to know…

  Curse her Irish eyes.

  She made sure to step very close to him and lower her voice so nobody could eavesdrop from any of the motel rooms right next to the little sidewalk. “August. You and Autumn weren’t really related. You went to live with her family when you were
both teenagers. Sometimes when a boy and a girl that age spend a lot of time together, feelings develop. I’m sensing that maybe that happened between you and her?”

  His flush deepened and his jaw muscles tightened. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  The words broke apart in the air between them, and Addie could see the truth.

  “You loved her,” she stated, knowing it as a fact even though August was trying so hard to cover it up. “Teenage romance developed into… what? Adult love? It must have killed you to know she was going to marry Corbin Reif.”

  His hands fisted into the bathrobe’s belt, twisting the soft fabric mercilessly. “Not as much as it killed her. It actually, literally killed my sister, remember? That’s what keeps bringing you here, isn’t it?”

  That was true, Addie said to herself.

  Before the visit from Mephistopheles Smith, before she had found such conclusive evidence that Alan had committed this horrible crime, she had been building up a theory about Corbin Reif. A theory about how the woman he had just married was going to divorce him for a huge paycheck. About how she had never really loved him. About how she was a gold digger using her contacts with an attorney friend to rake Corbin over the coals.

  What if, she wondered, she added in another piece to that picture? What if Autumn had never loved Corbin… and instead she had loved August.

  That would explain why she insisted on bringing her brother along on her honeymoon. He would be her ride back after dropping the bomb on Corbin. He would be there for her, maybe with open arms and a love that had been burning between them since they were teenagers.

  What if Corbin found out about all of that? What if he saw Autumn and August kissing or hugging or otherwise being inappropriate with each other? The money. The love for a man who wasn’t really her brother. The betrayal. It all fit.

  Addie turned to Willow, still standing at the trunk of August’s car. “We should go talk to Corbin.”

  She rolled her eyes, and Addie wanted to say something sarcastic to her about how much of an inconvenience it must be to help solve a murder and clear your family name, but she didn’t want August to catch on that they were in fact sisters. Real siblings, unlike August and Autumn. They were the Kilorian sisters, her and Willow and Kiera.