Wicked Witches of Coventry- The Collection

by Sara Bourgeois

  “I should be able to get to that in the next day or so. The newer section still needs some work, but I can plant them here.”

  “That’s good, then. If we leave them in the shade and you plant them soon, you shouldn’t need to worry about watering them.”

  “Thank you so much for this,” I said.

  “Well, it wasn’t just me. My ladies’ group at church pitched in too. We appreciate what you’re doing for the community,” Karen said. “I also wanted to ask you how the new computer is working out.”

  “Oh, it’s great. Thank you.”

  “Did you find anything in the pictures? I know you were so excited about being able to have a look.”

  “No, nothing yet. It might have just been my imagination after all.”

  “Well, that’s too bad, Brighton. I do hope they catch the person who killed her soon. It gave me quite a fright that she was murdered. It’s a tragedy when such a well-respected member of the community is cut down like that.”

  “I wouldn’t be scared,” I said and patted her on the arm. “I doubt you have anything to worry about.”

  “I mean it happened so close to home,” she said wistfully.

  “It did. For all of us.”

  “No, I mean for me. She was my next-door neighbor after all. Oh, but I guess you didn’t know that since you’re so new in town.”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “Were you two close?”

  “Not as close as I would have liked, but I tell you. We all started making sure our doors and windows were locked at night.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “It was good to see you, Brighton. My invitation to church on Sunday still stands, but I have to be going. I have to get to work, and I don’t want to be late.”

  “Thank you again,” I said and waved as Karen left for her shift at Nailed It.

  As soon as she was gone, my thoughts turned back to Remy and our strange encounter. I took my phone out of my pocket and dialed as I crossed the street back to my house.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I tried to call Thorn twice. I wanted to tell him that it was possible I’d been wrong about Remy the whole time, but I got his voicemail. Since telling him that someone I’d considered my friend might be a murderer wasn’t something I wanted to do over voicemail, I just asked him to call me back when I could.

  “I want salmon,” Meri said as soon as I hung up the phone.

  “We have tuna and hamburger.”

  “I would really like some salmon. Do you think we could get some?”

  “You’re in luck because I want ice cream,” I said. “I could probably just check the freezer for it, but some fresh air might be nice. Plus, if I stay here, only the universe knows how many more people are going to show up on my doorstep.”

  “I’m going to take a nap,” Meri said and retreated to the sofa.

  “You’re not coming with me?”

  “To the grocery store?” Meri asked before licking his paw and cleaning his ear. “I think you can handle that one on your own.”

  “You’re such a spoiled brat.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re a hussy with no class,” Meri said.

  “See you in about a half hour then,” I said and grabbed my purse.

  Mann’s Gas and Grocery wasn’t busy when I arrived, so I parked up front and made my way through the sliding glass entry doors. The ice cream was my priority, and then I’d grab a package of salmon from the cooler shelves next to the meat counter on my way out.

  While I was perusing the ice cream flavors in the freezer case, a man I’d seen around the store a few times approached me. While I hadn’t met him yet, I knew he was Bob Mann.

  “Mr. Mann,” I said and turned from the case.

  He stopped a few feet back from me. His distance wasn’t unexpected as I’d been informed he was a bit on the paranoid side.

  “Hello, Ms. Longfield. I hope you don’t think I’m rude, but I just read on the web that there is a new bird flu epidemic gripping South America. Better safe than sorry. But I did want to finally introduce myself.”

  “It’s nice to meet you. I hadn’t heard about the bird flu, so thank you for the heads-up.”

  My acknowledgement of the bird flu thing seemed to make him brighten. He smiled and took a half step closer to me.

  “It’s good to know there is someone else who cares in the community. Most people think my preparations are just paranoia.”

  “I don’t think that at all,” I said. “It’s always good to be prepared.”

  His talk of bird flu and preparations gave me the distinct feeling that Bob Mann was one of those prepper people. I wondered if he had a stash of food and guns under his store.

  “Anyway, I just wanted to introduce myself and say thank you,” he said.

  “Thank you?” I had no idea what Bob was thanking me for.

  “Word around town was that you might have killed Langoria. I don’t really think you murdered her.” He gave me a wink and a nod. “But I’d be mighty grateful to whoever did, ya see. She was trying to use some zoning law to get my shop closed down.”

  “Oh,” was all I could think to say.

  “Anyway, I’ve got to get back to what I was doing. You have a great day, Brighton.” And with that, he was gone.

  That had definitely been a strange exchange. Bob was a character for sure, and I was certain I’d only gotten a glimpse of his true personality.

  What made me pause was that he seemed to be hinting at something. Was he hinting that he’d killed Langoria?

  Chapter Nineteen

  I went home to find Thorn’s car parked in my driveway. He jumped out as soon as I pulled in.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as I stumbled out of the car and dropped my grocery bag.

  “What’s going on with you?” He rushed to me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you called me twice and didn’t leave much of a message. I tried to call back three times, but you didn’t answer. I thought something was wrong. I just had a bad feeling.”

  “I’m fine,” I said and retrieved my grocery bag from the ground. “You tried to call?”

  “Three times.”

  I pulled my phone from my purse and looked at it. “That’s weird. The battery is dead. I’m sorry, Thorn. I didn’t know you were trying to call. Are you all right? I don’t think I’ve seen you this rattled before.”

  “Let’s go inside.”

  “I’d offer you a beer, but it’s a little early,” I said. “How about some tea? Or coffee if you think your nerves are up for it?”

  “Iced tea would be better,” he said.

  “Let me check.”

  Sure enough, there was a pitcher of iced tea in the refrigerator. I took it out and poured some into a glass before taking a sip. It was sweet, but not too much so. The flavor was fresh and crisp with the barest hint of citrus.

  “The tea is sweetened, is that okay?” I called into the living room before pouring him a glass.

  “Yes, thank you,” he responded but did not join me in the kitchen.

  I brought the glasses out and set them on little cork coasters on the coffee table. Thorn took his and gulped half of it down before I’d even had a chance to sit. He set the glass back down with a satisfied sigh.

  “Sorry. I didn’t realize how parched I was. The tea is good. Do I have you or the house to thank for that?”

  “The house,” I said and took a drink. “It is good. So what’s going on? I assume more than you just being worried because I didn’t answer my phone. Something got you rattled?”

  “Well, the coroner called me. He found something, and I was hoping you could help. I know you haven’t lived here long, but you’re part of their community.”

  “You mean witches?” I cocked one eyebrow.

  “Yeah, witches.”

  “I’m not really a part of their community. See, I’m a Tuttlesmith witch, and most of the witches in Coventry are Skeenbauers. There’s a whole
feud thing. Never mind. That’s not important right now. What did the coroner find that you think might be tied to witches?”

  “He found a sting during the autopsy. That wouldn’t be much, but he’d seen that type of sting before in South America. It’s from a little scorpion. One of the few that are actually deadly on the continent. He had to send samples to another lab to be tested, but he was fairly confident.”

  “A scorpion sting?” I said. “That’s odd.”

  “Yep. But I know there is at least one person in town, Ruby, who grows poisonous plants. I thought that maybe you knew someone who raised venomous animals? Perhaps for potions or something like that?”

  “I don’t,” I said and he deflated. “But wouldn’t you be able to track that? Like, if they bought it at a pet store. There must be some record.”

  “Brighton, people don’t just buy venomous animals at pet stores. It’s illegal, I think. Or at the very least, a huge liability. They buy them at exotic animal trade shows. There are no records. Most of the sales occur without any kind of licenses, and they are not going to talk to me,” he said. “I tried asking around town, but most folks just looked at me like I was nuts. The most exotic pet around Coventry that I’ve found is the iguana in Mrs. Byrd’s fifth grade class.”

  “That’s kind of a dead end,” I said.

  “This whole case is a dead end.”

  “Wait, that gives me an idea,” I said. “We can use the dead to figure it out. I mean, she’s been trying to tell me something, I think. Either that or she’s been trying to exact her revenge from beyond the grave, but either way, perhaps if we control the situation, we can get answers.”

  “Bright, sweetie. What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Langoria. She’s appeared to me more than once. In fact, I saw her ghost here in my living room before I even knew she was dead. I thought she was astral projecting as a way to get to me, but it turned out she was dead. Her specter appeared with flowers in her hand. The same ones found with her body. Maybe she was trying to tell me something. Maybe if I figure it out, she’ll stop trying to attack me.”

  “You said she appears, but how are you going to control that?” Thorn asked. “I can’t believe I’m even asking this. Two days ago, I would have thought that you’re nuts, but now I’m…”

  “It’s okay. You’ll get used to it. I promise. I had no idea I was a witch when I came here,” I said. “Anyway, we’ll summon her spirit. Meri can help with that, I’m sure. We’ll summon her and ask her questions. Hopefully, she’ll tell us who killed her.”

  Thorn just stood there blinking at me. I could only guess that I’d crossed the line where he did think I was insane.

  “Brighton, I appreciate what you are, but I have to solve this case the old-fashioned way. I don’t know how I would even make an arrest if the evidence leading to that arrest came from summoning a spirit.” His tone told me his mind was made up.

  That was okay, my mind was made up too. Thorn stayed for a while and finished his tea, but he eventually had to leave. There was still work to be done at the station, and that gave me the opportunity to do the summoning before he came back over for dinner.

  “Meri, where is the best place for me to summon Langoria’s spirit?” I asked once Thorn was gone.

  “Her house, her grave, or the node on the ley line,” Meri answered.

  “I can’t do the node because people are still around. Same for her house. It would be a bad idea for me to try and break in now.”

  “You should be doing the summoning under the moonlight anyway,” Meri said.

  “I need to do it now. I guess I’ll use her grave. Where do you think she’s buried?”

  “In a cemetery.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I mean where. It’s not at the one I’m restoring. Is there another cemetery in Coventry?”

  “The Coventry Memorial Cemetery on the outskirts of town. There’s a Skeenbauer Mausoleum. She’s probably in there.”

  “That’s perfect. We can do the summoning and people won’t be able to see us.”

  “We?”

  “You’re my familiar. I’m going to do some magic.”

  “Fine,” he said. “But this is probably a really stupid idea.”

  We took the car to the Coventry Memorial Cemetery. It wasn’t hard to find with Meri’s help, but I wasn’t so sure about the new part.

  I’d expected something more modern than the gravel roads and iron entry gates. In fact, the new cemetery was a bit creepier than the old graveyard.

  In the center of the graveyard was the Skeenbauer section, and smack dab in the middle of that was the massive marble Skeenbauer Mausoleum. I parked the car on the gravel road in front of it.

  We made our way to the entry doorway. It was secured with an iron gate-like door. Fortunately, the lock was ancient. A little coaxing magic was all it took and the door popped open.

  “That was easy,” I said.

  “That’s because no one would be stupid enough to break in here,” Meri said. “No one but us.”

  “Hey, maybe if I solve Langoria’s murder, it will go a long way to repairing the relationship between the covens,” I said.

  “Keep dreaming,” Meri said as I set him down inside.

  The mausoleum didn’t look any different than the regular ones I’d been in before. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but I guess I’d expected something more witchy. The witchiest thing about the place was that there were pentagrams in the places where you’d expect to see crosses in a human mausoleum. There was one on the wall over a marble shelf that served as an altar and smaller ones on some of the graves. The altar had some candles on it, but there were no herbs or crystals.

  “It looks like the crypts near the door are the oldest,” I said. “That means we’re going to have to go deeper in to find Langoria’s.”

  “Awesome,” was Meri’s response.

  We walked down the dim, cool corridor until we found Langoria’s tomb. There was some light coming in from small exterior windows, but they were covered with frosted glass and metal bars that prevented much light from penetrating them.

  “We’ll cast the circle right here in front of her vault,” I said.

  “Have I mentioned that this was a bad idea?” Meri said.

  “You have. I think more than once. But let’s just do this. It will be good for everyone, and we’ll be safe within the circle.”

  “Look at you all acting like you’re a magic expert now,” Meri countered.

  “Are you going to help me cast the circle or not?” I said as I took my backpack of supplies off my shoulders.

  “Fine.”

  We cast a circle of white salt around us first for protection, and then a circle of black salt inside of that for extra protection from the dead. I lit candles while Meri walked around the inside edge of the circle mumbling some sort of familiar incantation. I couldn’t really understand what he was saying, but he said that didn’t matter. I didn’t need to be able to understand familiar magic because I’d never be able to use it.

  “All right,” I said when the circle was ready. “Let’s raise the dead.”

  “That’s not funny,” Meri responded.

  “It’s a little funny,” I said with a shrug.

  Before we’d left Hangman’s House, I’d written a summoning spell on a little piece of paper. The incantation came from one of the books upstairs in the library. Not the Tuttlesmith Family Grimoire, but an important family book of shadows none the less. I’d wanted to just bring the book, but Meri had advised against it. He said it wasn’t a good idea to bring a powerful Tuttlesmith spell book into a Skeenbauer sacred space. I’d thought that was a little paranoid, but suddenly, I found myself grateful.

  I hadn’t even begun to read the spell when the ground began to shake beneath our feet. “It’s working. I think it’s working,” I said enthusiastically.

  “Brighton, how can it be working? You haven’t even started the incantation. This is bad. This i
s really bad.”

  “What? What’s going on?”

  Suddenly, the marble front on one of the crypts closer to the entrance blew open, and a woman dressed in all black crawled out of the grave. She moved like a spider first as she emerged from the tomb, and then even more so as she crept across the ground toward us. Her back hunched, head jutting out, and her body propped up on her fingers and the tips of her toes.

  “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no,” Meri babbled.

  “She’s freaky,” I said and took a step back.

  “Brighton, don’t break the circle,” Meri shrieked.

  I looked back and saw that my heel had almost breached the salt barrier. When I took a step to the middle of the circle, Meri began to run around the edge chanting his spell faster and far louder than before.

  When the woman was almost to us, she stopped and stood up. Her face morphed from the wrinkled visage of the crone into that of a young, beautiful woman. Her long, gray hair began to turn ebony at the roots, and the color worked its way down to now soft curls that rested over her shoulders.

  “We have to find a way out of here,” Meri said. “Maybe there is another door if we keep going down the corridor.”

  “You want to leave the circle. You just said not to break the circle. Make up your mind.”

  “It’s not going to protect us for long, Brighton. That’s Isobella Skeenbauer. They called her The Black Widow. She doesn’t like me very much.”

  “Why doesn’t she like you, and how dangerous is she?”

  “You know how I’m cursed to serve the Tuttlesmith family for eternity? Yeah, she helped with that. As far as how dangerous she is… If she gets any closer, we’re going to die. I can feel her draining my magic.”

  “But we’re in the circle. The circle is supposed to protect us.” At that point, I was in complete denial about our predicament.

  “Brighton, even together we can’t cast a circle strong enough to keep her out. We need to run.”

  “What if there isn’t another door that way?”

  “Run!” Meri said as Isobella opened her mouth and took another step toward us.