Witch I May, Witch I Might

by K. J. Emrick

  Her head snapped up as a few more things fell into place. She hadn’t even realized that she had these clues, until they completed the picture for her, and showed her just how wrong Philly Smith had been.

  And how wrong she had been, too.

  “August, can I ask you something?

  “Um. Sure. I guess. Corbin’s in his room still, he’s sleeping off the news about Autumn being killed and the murderer being arrested and such. It’s just been a really bad couple of days for him. You want to talk to me until he wakes up?”

  “You’re not as upset about all this?”

  He shrugged. “We all process things in different ways, you know? I’ll take a drive later and clear my head, maybe even just go back home. Can we go inside? It’s really cold out here.”

  “Well, that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. Your car.”

  “Huh?” His eyebrows pinched together in confusion. “What about my car?”

  “Where was it yesterday?”

  His head pivoted to the PT Cruiser, then back to Addie, and back again. “Uh. It must’ve been in a different parking space. That’s all.”

  Addie shook her head. “No. I don’t know a whole lot about cars, but a PT Cruiser is so identifiable that anyone can spot it. There was a single BMW in the lot yesterday. That’s your brother-in-law’s car, right there. The spot right next to it was empty. Your car wasn’t here. Now, today your car is in this spot, right where we found Autumn’s blood.” Addie turned and pointed. “It was that spot down there at the end, where someone would have put Autumn’s body into a car and then driven away. Your car has a hatchback trunk. Easy access. Easy to put a body inside, and then drive it away and put it in someone’s trunk later.”

  “That… that’s crazy,” August sputtered. “You’re crazy.”

  “You killed your sister.” Addie took another step closer to him. She was reading his emotions like a book. “You killed her, and you waited for nightfall, which comes pretty early up here in November. Under the cover of darkness, you put her body in your car, and drove her around town until you could dump her in someone else’s car. My sister’s car, as it turned out.”

  “What! No, no that’s a lie. You’re lying. You’re trying to cover for that Alan guy because he’s part of your family. The police told me all about it. He killed her. He put Autumn’s body into your sister’s trunk. You’re trying to cover for him, and you’re trying to cover up for your sister, too. What was her name? Willow? Yeah, that’s right. Willow. You don’t want your own family members to be blamed for this so you’re trying to pin it on me.”

  “No. See, I know it was you, and I know how you did it. My sister has a habit of leaving her car unlocked, because she just doesn’t want to be bothered.” She made sure to keep her back to Willow as she faced August. “The car she was in wasn’t hers but I’m willing to bet she left it unlocked out of habit.”

  “No, oh no. Uh-uh. You’re just trying to take the blame off your sister and your family. She had her doors locked.”

  “I don’t think so. She doesn’t lock her doors.”

  “Yes, she does!”

  “No, this is all on you, August. You just got caught, face it.”

  “The doors were locked! Go ahead, you tell her. Tell her now!” He pointed at Willow, practically commanding her to prove him right. “You tell her your doors were locked!”

  Addie smiled at him, although she only felt contempt and hatred in her heart.

  “What?” he demanded. “What are you smiling at? What’s so funny?”

  “Trust me,” Addie promised him. “There’s nothing amusing in any of this. Start to finish, my family has been caught up in this for no good reason. We’ve had our name dragged through the mud, and our freedom has been put in jeopardy—”

  “Some of us more than others,” Willow grumbled.

  “Like my sister,” Addie agreed, her smile showing teeth. “This is my sister Willow, not whoever I told you earlier. But you knew that already, didn’t you August? You were just pointing to her, telling her to answer you about the locks on her car. So you obviously knew this was Willow. Only, you couldn’t know who she was. She wasn’t here with us yesterday. Earlier, you said something about me being here yesterday with my ‘other’ sister. Of course, I have two, but you only met one of them when I was here. So how could you know this was my ‘other’ sister, Willow, unless you saw her yesterday when you were putting Autumn’s body in her trunk?”

  August’s eyes were wide. Sweat beaded from under his brown hair. “You can’t prove any of that.”

  “I think we can,” she told him. “All the police will need to do is get a search warrant for your car. They’ll find some sort of trace evidence. I have no doubt about that. You’ll have a murder of a time explaining how your sister’s DNA got into your trunk. Pardon the pun.”

  There really hadn’t been anything in her trunk after all, Addie realized. No DNA. No trace evidence. Unlike August’s PT Cruiser, her Jeep hadn’t been used to help facilitate that horrible crime. That was because she had been wrong all along, and Alan wasn’t the killer.

  August was.

  Hands shaking, August tugged at his belt, and loosened the knot, and tugged at it again as his mouth worked to form words that wouldn’t come.

  Then he slipped the knot entirely and reached under the robe.

  In the waistband of his pajama pants was a small caliber automatic pistol. It was illegal for him to possess it out in public like this. It would have been illegal to transport it across state lines, too. Somehow Addie doubted he cared about either of those issues.

  With his free hand he grabbed hold of Addie’s arm, and pulled her close, and put the gun up against her cheek. It was cold against her skin.

  Her blood ran hot through her veins.

  Willow caught her gaze. She smirked, knowing what was coming. With no need for alarm, she just casually stood there, watching.

  “You women,” August growled. “You Kilorian sisters. Do you always meddle in everything? Do you always shove your red heads in where they don’t belong? I was just trying to make it right! Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?”

  “Well,” Willow pointed out, “you did kind of put your dead sister in my trunk.”

  He snorted. “I had to put her somewhere when she was dead, and your car was there. Sorry to get you arrested, really I am, but if you had just gone along with it you would’ve gotten out of it. Maybe. Who knows.”

  “And Alan?” she asked him.

  “I felt bad about that too but look, you were bringing the police right to me! I already had the car hidden down the block until I could clean it out but if they found me with my sister’s phone it would be all over. So, I hid it in that guy’s pocket when he was here. Alan’s pocket, I mean. Just dropped it right in when he was trying to keep me and Corbin away from that parking space. He pushed me, and I slipped the phone in. He never even saw me do it.”

  Addie sighed. “The phone’s going to have your fingerprints on it. You know that, right?”

  He pulled her closer and pressed the gun harder. “I, uh, I didn’t think of that. I was hoping I’d be long gone before they realized what I’d done. I wanted her phone. It had pictures of us on it. Both of us together. I wanted to remember her. I wanted to remember all those times. I wanted to keep the phone, but I had to get rid of it because of you!”

  “Wow,” Willow said sarcastically. “Really thought this through, didn’t you?”

  “I wasn’t thinking. My sister came to me and said she couldn’t go through with it. We had a whole plan, and everything was set, and then it wasn’t because she broke my heart! She was supposed to marry Corbin, then divorce him, get all of his money and then we were going to—”

  Addie felt him tense up as he clamped his mouth shut. “You were going to go away,” she said, finishing his sentence for him. “You and she were still in love, and you were going to fleece Corbin for his money and run away, together.”

&
nbsp; “You don’t know!” he screamed, right there in her ear. “You can’t know what we meant to each other! When she came and told me that she couldn’t hurt Corbin, I lost it. I thought we had something special. We’ve loved each other all of our lives and now she didn’t want to be with me anymore? I mean, where did that come from? Huh? When she told me that I just went crazy. We had all gone out to dinner and I came back to the motel with some takeout to wait for Autumn. She’d gone to see her lawyer friend and then she was going to meet me here. Corbin thought we were still out exploring this mudhole of a town. So I had my food, and I had a knife, and I got so angry with her that I picked up the knife and I pushed it into her chest and then… and then… she was dead.”

  He paused for breath, his words ringing in Addie’s ears. That was exactly how she had pictured it happening. A crime of passion. A twisted expression of a forbidden love. The mystery was solved. Mostly.

  There was still the matter of the gun in her face.

  “So here’s what’s going to happen,” August insisted, taking a step and bringing Addie with him. “Willow, leave. Just go. Take off. Go away. Me and Addie are going to take a drive. I’ll drop her off somewhere safe and then I’m going to keep driving. If I see you, or anyone else from that crazy family of yours, or one single police officer coming after me, then I put a bullet in this one’s head. Understand me?”

  “We understand,” the sisters said together, at the same time.

  Addie lifted her one hand, and flicked her wrist with her pinky crooked, and the spell was cast. Electricity leeched from the air around her to dance along her skin. It travelled in coiling lines to the exact spot on her arm where August was holding on to her.

  The concentrated power of it jumped between them.

  His scream rose and broke on a high point. His eyes glowed from within. His hair stood out from his scalp. The gun smoked and dropped from his hand, while the rest of him just dropped to the ground.

  Addie wiped dismissively at the spot where his hand had been on her arm. She was glad that was over. The man deserved far worse than she had given him.

  She and Willow looked down on the twitching form of Autumn Lynch’s murderer. He would live. Addie had made sure of that. He just wasn’t going to be thinking straight for the next few hours. Bladder control was going to be a challenge for him as well… just like that. The front of his pajama pants were soaked.

  He also might never be able to have children either. Not something Addie was going to lose sleep over.

  Willow gave August a not-so-gentle kick in his hip. “Well, that was a lot of fun. I suppose we have to call your boyfriend now?”

  “You mean, my boyfriend the police detective?” Addie nodded. “Yes, it’s definitely time. After all, I did promise him I would call after I found you.”

  They waited with the insensate August Lynch while Addie made the call. She gave Lucian the basic facts, knowing that the whole story would take far too long to explain over the telephone. When she finally hung up they waited until they heard sirens coming from several streets over. It didn’t take long.

  “Addie?” Willow asked.

  “Yes?”

  “You know… I really did have the doors on the car locked. It was Gary’s car, and I didn’t want it to get broken into or anything.” She stared off into the distance, trying to figure that one out. “So how could August have gotten into the trunk to put a body there? How?”

  Addie folded her hands into the pockets of her coat. "I’m afraid I know how.”

  “Oh, really? Want to fill me in?”

  “Later,” she promised. “One thing at a time. Let’s make sure August finds his way to jail first.”

  Chapter 11

  Addie opened up another bottle of wine and refilled the glasses around the table. The Hot Cauldron Café had been closed to the general public for two hours, but it was always open for family. Especially when the occasion was a celebration.

  They had only turned on a few of the interior lights, lending the dining area a cozy, intimate feeling. There were chicken wings and mozzarella sticks cooking in the oven in the kitchen, and soon enough the place was filled with both laughter and the wonderful aromas of cooking.

  Willow passed a plate of blueberry muffins from the bakery case around to Kiera, who took one for herself, and handed the rest to Alan. He took one and tore a large piece off the top to pop it in his mouth. He’d only been in jail for one night, but the ordeal had certainly built up an appetite.

  Kiera, for her part, could hardly take her eyes off her son. She wasn’t letting him get more than ten feet away from her, and never out of her sight. She’d given him up once when he was a baby and now, just when they were getting to know each other, he’d very nearly gone to prison for the rest of his life thanks to a series of false clues. Now that she had him back, she wasn’t going to risk turning around to find him gone.

  Addie corked the wine bottle and set it aside on a different table to take her seat next to Willow. The zinfandel wasn’t the best, but it was all she had in the café. The four of them sat together, toasting to life, and to justice being done, and to family. It was a moment of happiness that they would remember for a long time to come.

  All charges against Alan had been dropped. A little bit of extra spellcasting before the police arrived at the Nash Palms Motel had ensured that August confessed to everything as soon as the handcuffs were in place around his wrists. He couldn’t stop himself even after the police told him he should have a lawyer present. He just kept going on and on and on. In the end they just arrested him and put him in the back of a patrol car, still giving his full and complete and exquisitely detailed confession. Addie smiled now as she remembered it. Ah, magic.

  She loved being a witch.

  The Life Essence required to make him spill his story like that was considerable, but it had so been worth it. That man had nearly ruined Alan’s life. Willow’s too. All to cover his own sins. Addie had a very low opinion of people like that. Things had worked out in the end, thankfully, and Alan had been returned to them. The police had dropped the arrest warrant for Willow, too. For now, it was over. The mystery was solved.

  There was just one more detail to worry about.

  “Come now, Sister Addie,” Kiera said, raising her newly filled glass. “Let us toast to our good fortune and to better days ahead.”

  “Sláinte,” Addie added, the Irish toast rolling smoothly off her tongue. If she drank much more of this, however, her tongue was going to be anything but smooth. Maybe she’d walk home to Stonecrest tonight. It was snowing again, and the world outside was almost magical.

  Pun intended.

  “I’ll drink to that,” Alan said around a mouthful of muffin. “Cheers.”

  Willow lifted her glass higher. “May the skin of your bum never cover a drum!”

  Alan burst out laughing, and Willow along with him, and it was contagious enough that Addie joined in with them.

  Kiera, on the other hand, set her lips in a prim line and levelled a glare at their youngest sister. “I hardly think that is appropriate, Sister Willow.”

  Addie laughed even harder. She couldn’t help it.

  When they had calmed down, Alan set his half-eaten muffin aside. “Mom, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Why do you call her ‘Sister Addie’ and her ‘Sister Willow?’ It seems a little, you know, formal when it’s just family. It makes you sound like you’re an old maid.”

  Kiera touched a hand to the graying curls of hair around her ear. “Oh, but I really am old. Didn’t you know that about your dear mother?”

  “Come on, sis,” Willow teased. “You’re only as old as you feel.”

  “Oh, well, in that case I truly am ancient.”

  “Hardly. You have a son my age, after all,” Alan said light-heartedly. “Seriously, though. Why call them ‘sister’ like it’s some kind of title? You’re a witch, not a nun.”

  “Because a title is exactly what it is,” Kiera explained. “In a cove
n, each woman is a sister whether they are related by birth or by a strong bond of friendship. Each witch in the group is a sister. For us it means something even deeper because we really are sisters. I honor Addie and Willow by calling them my sisters, just as I am honored to be their sister.”

  “One for all,” Willow said, raising her glass again.

  “And all for each other,” Addie finished, summing up the sentiment they each felt.

  If it weren’t for the bond that they shared, then Shadow Lake would be left defenseless. Addie remembered how she and Kiera had tried to use the Family Circle to cast a Viewing spell to look for Willow and failed. They were stronger together. Always. Kiera, old soul that she was, liked to remember the old ways. Honor. Loyalty. Love. These were traditions that reached back into the time of the Druids and before. To the Irish, tradition meant everything.

  To a witch, it meant even more than that.

  And Alan seemed to understand.

  The oven started beeping. Addie got up from the table to go check on the food. “It’s all right, guys. I can handle this part by myself. You three stay here and enjoy yourselves.”

  They protested that they could help, but she insisted she could do it alone. They didn’t seem to mind too much, and Addie stepped through the swinging door into the kitchen.

  Only, she wasn’t alone.

  She nearly stumbled over her own feet when she found Mephistopheles Smith sitting right there at the kitchen island counter, drinking a steaming cup of coffee, and eating a slice of pumpkin pie.

  “You know,” he said, “a lesser being might be insulted that he wasn’t invited to this little family gathering.”

  Addie collected herself, and slowly let out the breath that had gotten stuck in her lungs. “I see you’re here anyway.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m being polite and staying back here, out of the way.”