Wicked Witches of Coventry- The Collection

by Sara Bourgeois

  “Go ahead and finish,” he said.

  So I did. When I was done, I said, “All right, lay it on me.”

  “You probably already know this since you found the body, but Langoria appears to have died from blunt force trauma to the head.”

  “Actually, I didn’t notice that,” I said. “But I’m kind of glad that I didn’t. As soon as I realized I’d found a body, I turned away and didn’t really look again.”

  “That’s what the coroner is saying right now, but he cautioned me that he still needs more information. He did say that he found fibers in the head wound, and he thought they might be from a book. He’ll need to wait until the fiber tests come back from the forensics lab.”

  “Fibers from a book?” That sounded strange.

  “I thought it was weird too, but he said that they might have come from the cover of an antique book. Like the edges were frayed or something. The coroner said he wouldn’t have known what it was, but he’s got a few old books with frayed corners.”

  Antique books pointed at two people. One was me, and the other was Ralph Badersmith.

  “It wasn’t me,” I said. “I didn’t bludgeon her to death with a book.”

  “I didn’t think you had,” he said softly. “But you’ve had some break-ins and people have tried to steal books from you. So keep an eye out in case any of them are missing. I don’t want this to come back that it was your book and we’re caught unaware.”

  “I will, but as far as I know, none of mine have been stolen.”

  I had to wonder if I should say anything about Ralph. After the last murder, it was obvious that Thorn thought Ralph was capable of killing someone. He’d questioned him about Max Harkin’s death. I didn’t want to send Thorn on a wild goose chase, but he probably needed to know that Langoria had been attempting to remove Ralph as the head of the magical preservation society. Well, to Thorn it was the historical society.

  Ralph had given me the job and paid me, so I felt bad telling Thorn about his beef with Langoria. But I had to do it.

  “Thorn, I don’t want to be a gossip, but I feel like this is information you should have. Langoria was trying to remove Ralph as the president of the local historical society. He’s also got a store full of antique books, you know.”

  “I’d heard that rumor, but I’m not on the council. I didn’t have any confirmation of it. How did you hear about it?” Thorn asked.

  “I’m friends with some of the Skeenbauers,” I offered.

  “Remy,” he said and flattened his lips into a line.

  “I’m friends with Annika too,” I said.

  “I’ll look into it, but I’m not sure why you were even discussing the investigation with them. I hope you’re not planning on getting involved again, Brighton. You need to stay out of this. As much as I don’t think you did this, you’re still technically a suspect, and so is your friend Remy.”

  There was a sharp edge to his tone when he said Remy’s name. I didn’t get the feeling that he thought Remy did it, but perhaps it was jealousy.

  “What is your deal with Remy?” I asked the question before I could stop myself. “Why don’t you like him?”

  “I don’t have a deal with Remy,” he said flatly. “That’s you.”

  I took a deep breath. “Look, Thorn, if you think there is something wrong with Remy that I need to know, you should tell me. I mean, at least sometimes you act like you care about me. So why wouldn’t you want to protect me?”

  “Sometimes I act like I care about you?” he said and stood up abruptly. “I’m on duty, Brighton. I can’t get into little spats with you about feelings.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Just leave. That’s what you do, isn’t it? You just leave every time you think you might have to deal with your feelings. Well, what about my feelings, Thorn? You act like you like me or at least care about me, and then you disappear whenever it comes up. Don’t you think that hurts me? Is this some sort of game to you?”

  He looked like he was about to say something, but instead, he reached over and wrapped one strong arm around my waist before pulling me close to him. Thorn smelled like citrus and fresh linen, and when I looked up into his face, his lips crashed against mine.

  For a moment, I was floating in space. There were sunbursts behind my eyes, and my body was as light as a feather. But as soon as it began, it was over.

  Thorn drew back and let go of me. “I have to get back to work.”

  I didn’t want to reignite the argument, but I couldn’t help but let a frustrated sigh escape my lips. Thorn’s response was to turn my chin up with his middle and index fingers before planting another soft kiss on me.

  “You’re going to disappear again, aren’t you?” I asked when he was walking out.

  “I won’t, Brighton. You have thoroughly bewitched me,” he said over his shoulder with a smile. “Even with your… intense hair and looking like you spent the morning rolling around in a grave, you are the most captivating woman I have ever met.”

  Swoon.

  Chapter Six

  It was hard to go back to work after that, but I made myself. I should have made an excursion to the bank, but I felt like I needed to earn more of the money before I cashed the check. I really didn’t have a reason for feeling that way, but I did.

  So I left the check locked up in the attic library hidden in a book. Back at the cemetery, I’d set to work pulling weeds again. The work was far more physical than my last job. The most exercise that job had provided was typing notes and rolling my eyes at the customers who called to vent their frustrations at me and ask for random discounts.

  Working in the cemetery was probably going to help me get in shape more than any gym membership ever could, but I saw a lot of days full of sore muscles before I got to that point.

  As I was wrapping up for the day, I heard another car pull up on the street outside of the cemetery. For being a place that everyone had practically forgotten about, it sure had become a hub of activity. I figured I’d spend hours and hours alone out there, but I kept getting a steady stream of visitors.

  I heard a car door, and then someone called out my name. “Brighton?” It was Remy.

  “I’m in here,” I said. “But I’m on my way out.”

  With that, I heard the car door again. As I emerged from the wooded area surrounding the graveyard, I saw that Remy was pulling his car into my driveway.

  “You’re welcome to come in and wait, but I’ve got to take a shower,” I said. “I’ve been pulling weeds all day.”

  He was only halfway out of the car. “I’ll go pick up a pizza then,” Remy said and got back in the driver’s seat.

  “I’ll leave it open for you,” I said as he closed the car door.

  As far as peace offerings went, pizza was a good one. Though I wasn’t really mad at Remy, I was upset that he’d just left without saying goodbye. I was even more stressed about the fact that he hadn’t bothered to make sure that I was all right. It either meant that we weren’t as close as I’d thought or that something was really wrong.

  I showered and towel dried my hair. Even though it was still damp, I could clearly see that more of it had turned green. Soon, it would be half and half. There was no way for me to hide the change by tucking the errant jade strands under the purple. They were all going to be errant green strands soon. Some were lighter than others. The rainbow ranged from lime green to the shade of an avocado skin.

  “I wonder if it’s because you’re growing,” Meri said as he jumped onto the counter. “Green might be growth.”

  “Are you saying I’m getting fat?” I teased.

  “No, I’m saying that you’re coming into your magic.”

  “If that’s what green means, then what did the purple mean?” I asked.

  “Beats me,” he said and jumped down. “Can I have a can of that white tuna for dinner?” Meri asked as he sauntered into the hall.

  When I came downstairs, Remy was waiting in the living room with two pizzas from t
he local pizzeria and a bottle of wine.

  “It’s chocolate dessert wine,” he said when he caught me eyeing the bottle.

  “You’re trying to butter me up,” I said and joined him on the sofa. “Where did you get chocolate wine?”

  “Yeah,” he said and then looked down at the floor. “But it’s probably too late for that. Oh, and I got the wine at Mann’s. It’s a winery in the southern part of the state that makes it, so Mann stocks it in his store.”

  “You think it’s too late for you to get back on my good side?” I asked.

  “I screwed up by taking off and ignoring you,” he said without looking up. “I missed my chance, and Thorn Wilson took it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He kissed you today,” Remy said. “And you liked it. I mean, you didn’t reject him. I understand that, though.”

  “What? How do you know that?” I unconsciously scooted away from him a little.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t want to know that, Brighton. I wasn’t spying on you or anything. I had a vision, and I was certain that it was real. I was hoping I wasn’t, but I can tell by your reaction that it was.”

  “I’m not sure what to say,” I said, and I wasn’t.

  “Say that you’ll have some pizza and chocolate wine with me. We need to talk.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Good,” Remy’s voice sounded deeper and surer than I’d ever heard it when he responded. “I’ll get some wine glasses and plates from the kitchen. I got so wrapped up in my thoughts that I forgot to do that.”

  While he was gone, I couldn’t help but contemplate what he’d told me. Why had he had a vision of Thorn kissing me? Were we that connected already? Did the universe have some reason for showing him?

  “I don’t know why we are so connected, Brighton,” he said as he walked back into the living room.

  “Did you just hear what I said in my head?”

  “Not so much. I could just feel what you were thinking.”

  “Are you using some sort of spell to do this?” I asked.

  “No, and I wouldn’t do that. I used magic to teach you the witch language, but I would never use it to interfere with your free will,” he said and sat down on the sofa next to me. “But I saw something else, and I feel like I have to tell you.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’re going to choose him, Brighton. I missed my chance to stop that by abandoning you the other day. You’re going to choose to be with him, but it’s not going to go well. You won’t believe me. You already don’t, but I’ll be here for you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I saw you coming home one night in tears. I was sitting on your front steps waiting for you.”

  “That’s a pretty big leap to go from that to I’m going to choose Thorn and he’s going to break my heart. Is that what you came here to talk to me about?”

  “No. I came here to talk to you about Langoria,” he said. “I have a secret, and I need to share it with someone. You’re the only one I feel like I can talk to about this.”

  Thoughts that he had killed her flooded my mind, and I grabbed a glass of the chocolate wine and moved to one of the wingback chairs. Is that why he’d looked so stricken when we found her? Perhaps he had some sort of serious remorse for killing her. But why would he have murdered his aunt?

  “I don’t blame you for being startled. I guess what I said did sound pretty cryptic, but, Brighton, I’d hope you know me better than to think I killed her.”

  “If the secret isn’t that you killed her, then what is it?”

  “Brighton,” He took a deep breath which he exhaled through his nose. “Langoria wasn’t my aunt. She was my biological mother.”

  “Oh, my,” I said and took a huge gulp of the chocolatey wine. “Oh, my.”

  The rest of the story went that Langoria had never wanted a child, so she’d given Remy to her sister when he was born. Remy’s adoptive mother had loved him from the start, and the rest of the family approved of the adoption since it was within the family.

  Langoria moved on as if she’d never had a child, and in fact, had always treated Remy with a sort of aloof contempt. She married when Remy was in elementary school, he remembered being forced to attend the wedding, but never had any more children.

  “They think I don’t know, Brighton,” Remy said as he ran his hands through his thick mop of chestnut hair. “I do know, though. I found the letter giving my mother legal guardianship of me when she accidently left it out in a stack of papers. She was registering me for high school and had to show it again. I tucked it back away and never said anything about it. No one knows that I know.”

  “You’ve carried that around with you since high school?” I asked softly. “You never told anyone? Not even Annika?”

  “I didn’t want to cause any trouble. I feel like it would cause a rift between Annika and her mother and Amelda if she knew. She wouldn’t like that they’d kept it a secret. She really wouldn’t like it that they’d just let Langoria give me away like an unwanted puppy. My mother was amazing to me even if she is kind of the black sheep of the family now. She doesn’t support the feud or keeping other witches out of Coventry, and because of that, I think I’m a better person. I can’t imagine what I’d be like if I was raised by Langoria.”

  “You know that you’re not, right?”

  “Not what?”

  “Just an unwanted puppy,” I said. “I feel like you probably think that even though the mother that raised you loved you very much.”

  “I guess you’re probably right. I mean, I know on an intellectual level that it’s not true, but it has shaped who I am. It’s probably why I took the job hidden away in the archives, and why I left when we found her dead.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Part of it was that it hit me like a train that she was never going to come apologize for just giving me away. She never cared about me even a little bit. That much was obvious. I guess I’d always thought she’d at least try to make amends for that. Maybe she’d come to me one day and say it was her weakness that caused her to abandon me and not mine. When we found her, I knew that was never going to happen. That was only half of it, though. The other half was the terror I felt that it would come out she was my mother. You’d know, and you’d see me as someone disposable. You’d know that I wasn’t worth all the time and affection you’ve given me.”

  “Remy,” I said.

  I stood up from my seat and crossed back to the sofa. After I’d set my wine glass down, I took him by the hands and pulled him off the sofa and into my arms.

  It was just a hug, but we stood there in that embrace. He cried for a few minutes, and I just kept my arms around him until he quieted again. I listened to his heart beating while his arms stayed wrapped around my shoulders.

  After a while, he took a step back and looked into my eyes. “Thank you for that, Brighton.”

  “You know that I could never think that about you? I would never see you as disposable. You are worth all of the time and affection I’ve had to give.”

  “You’re amazing,” he said and tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear. “If Langoria’s death hadn’t happened, I would have fought so hard for you. But I hope that you’ll understand someday that this has put me in a place where I’m not ready for what you need. I need some time.”

  “Who says I can’t give you time?” I asked, and he took a half step back.

  “I say,” he said. “I don’t know how long it will take me to recover from this, and you are ready for love now. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “But you said I was going to get my heart broken.”

  “I’ll always be here for you,” he said and kissed my forehead.

  Chapter Seven

  I just blinked my eyes, and when I opened them, it was morning and I was in bed. I’d have thought the whole thing was a dream, but there were pizza boxes in the fridge. All the pizza was still in
them, and the bottle of wine sat on the shelf too. Only the two glasses we’d drunk while we were talking were gone. So I hadn’t drunk myself into a stupor or anything like that. It was as if he said what he’d said, and then I’d drifted off to sleep.

  Instead of dwelling on what he’d told me, I decided to go pick up supplies from Nailed It. That was the hardware store in Coventry. I needed plastic bins for trash and weeds, and I needed a pair of gardening gloves. I’d seen a pair out in the shed behind the house, but they looked ancient. I imagined they’d fall apart with one use, but fortunately for me, I hadn’t gotten any blisters yet.

  Nailed It was on the other side of town past the courthouse, but I’d seen it on my way into Coventry. It was a small place, but my list was simple. I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to drive over to the next town, but I doubted I would.

  “I’m going to the hardware store,” I said to Meri after breakfast. “You want to go?”

  “To the hardware store?”

  “I see videos of people who take their dogs to the big box places, so I figured you might be welcome.”

  “I’m not super popular around here, Brighton. Remember that I’m a banished Skeenbauer familiar. Plus, the hardware store sounds boring. I’ll just rest here and digest my breakfast.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said.

  “Someone’s got to keep the demons at bay,” he retorted.

  I shuddered thinking about the thing in the basement and hastily made my way out the front door. The sunshine instantly made me feel better. It felt like it was far less likely that some creature from hell was going to pop out and try to devour my soul in the daylight.

  After the short drive, I pulled my car into one of the spaces in the Nailed It parking lot. From the looks of it, the place wasn’t very busy on weekday mornings. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. Perhaps I thought there’d be more contractors or something, but that meant I’d have the store mostly to myself.

  When I walked through the automatic doors, the woman manning the one open cash register let out a gasp like she couldn’t believe I’d dared enter her store. I tried to give her a friendly wave and say hello, but she just clucked her tongue at me.