Cold Cases and Haunted Places

by Trixie Silvertale

  But a bead of sweat slithered down the back of my neck and beneath my berry-colored tank. I’d piled my hair on top of my head thinking it would be cooler. Now my skull felt like it was melting in the October heat.

  I swept a pile of coffee beans into a paper bag. “And don’t forget your coupon for half-off on coffee at Ground,” I called to the departing pagans. “It’s the best café in Doyle.” Also, the only café. “We have iced coffees.”

  A few people waved and grabbed my coupons off the table near the entrance.

  I slumped against the podium. I’d survived my first PaganCon as a speaker. I could finally relax and enjoy the other workshops. So why was I still on edge?

  After all, I’d set my protective bubble this morning, like always. Now I visualized earth energy streaming into my auric bubble, bolstering its protection. Because, hey, an extra boost couldn’t hurt. But it didn’t seem to help either. And even at the best of times, my protection was only good for keeping out minor magical annoyances.

  My growing unease could be because my husband, Brayden, was on another continent. A paramedic, he’d taken a two-week volunteer gig in Afghanistan to work with local first responders.

  It was totally the sort of thing Brayden would do, and I loved him for it. But it also kind of scared the hell out of me. Now I knew how he felt when I did something crazy.

  A movement—or lack of movement—near the exit caught my eye. A slender, middle-aged woman hung back from the crowd streaming outside. She had smooth, acorn-colored hair and wide, dark glasses that obscured much of her face.

  She glanced away. Electric fans buzzed and rattled in the tent’s corners.

  The last of the attendees wandered from the oversized tent. The woman bit her bottom lip, and her hands clenched and unclenched. She walked to the podium, where I gathered up leftover handouts. “You’re the Doyle Witch, aren’t you?”

  I tensed. Uh, oh. “I live in Doyle.” My sisters and I had learned the hard way that not everyone interested in witchery played for Team Good Guys. So I wasn’t admitting to anything.

  Though the coffee magic seminar I’d just finished was sort of a tip-off I practiced witchcraft.

  “But you know about the…” Her gaze darted around the tent. “…fey.”

  How the heck did she know that?

  A hot wind whipped through the tent, and its flaps smacked against the canvas. A few remaining flyers lifted into the air and fluttered across the ground.

  She stepped closer. Involuntarily, I took a step back.

  “You defeated them,” she said.

  Nuh, uh. I wasn’t falling for that one. “Defeated whom?” Heh. Whom. My writerly sisters had rubbed off on me.

  She tilted her chin down and looked up at me crossly over her sunglasses. “Don’t play games. Why do you think you’re at PaganCon? Word gets out to people in the know.”

  It did? Because I’d had to beg for this speaking spot. “What people, exactly?” I grabbed my macramé bag and slung it over my shoulder.

  The woman straightened. Her slender hands, spotted by the sun, clenched again. “Robert Darian.” She said the name like a dark incantation.

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He’s my…” Her mouth compressed, and she shook her head slightly. “My torturer,” she choked out. “We did things. Terrible things. He lured me in. I know that sounds like an excuse, but Darian has powers. Real powers. He’s a druid, like me. We’re in the same order, so I thought…”

  My stomach pitched. Order? In my experience, which was admittedly limited, gangs of magicians meant trouble. “You thought what?”

  “The others in the order don’t know what Darian’s really doing, what he’s really like. He offered to teach me, and I was flattered. He’s high level. And at first everything was fine but then…” She gulped. “It was my fault. He offered me things I wanted. Wanted bad. And I fell for it. I let him tempt me, and it was wrong, I know it was wrong, but now I can’t get out.”

  She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and stared past me.

  The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I looked over my shoulder and tracked her gaze.

  We were alone. The tent flap rippled.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s a terrible story, but I don’t think I can—”

  “Story?” Her voice jetted up an octave. “It’s no story. It’s real. He made a pact with the Far Darocha.”

  “The what now?”

  She pulled off her sunglasses, her oceanic eyes widening. “The Far Darocha, the dark man. The right hand of the fairy queen and a druid in his own right.”

  A sliver of ice raced up my spine. I didn’t know who this Far Darocha dude was. But the fairy queen was seriously bad news. She’d murdered our parents, and my sisters and I had barely survived our own encounter with the queen.

  If she was back, or if one of her minions was in Doyle, we were all in trouble. Big trouble.

  A woman’s high laughter penetrated the tent walls.

  “Darian invoked him,” she said. “The Far Darocha’s power is growing inside him. I’ll show you.”

  My hands went clammy. “This Far Whatsit—”

  “Far Darocha.”

  “Whatever. It’s here? Now?” It had taken centuries to boot the fairy queen out of Doyle. During those centuries, she’d played with Doyle citizens like a sociopathic child pulling wings off flies. If one of her henchmen was lurking… I swallowed. I had to know.

  The woman nodded eagerly. “I’ll show you.” She hurried through the tent’s exit and vanished from view.

  “Wait.” I stuffed the leftover flyers inside my bag, and followed her outside.

  She paced ahead of me, through the costumed crowd. Tomorrow was Halloween—Samhain to us witches—and normally my fav day of the year. But with Brayden in a war zone… Don’t think about it.

  I trotted to catch up on the wide, curving road that wound through the grounds of a winery. “What’s your name?” I asked her.

  “Nancy. Nancy Mullen.”

  I frowned. The name sounded familiar.

  We wove past a smithy, billowing heat, iron clanging on iron. We dodged past women with flowers in their hair. We strode past tents with orange and black ribbons above their entrances.

  Nancy stopped short at the top of a hollow, thick with browning oaks. She pulled back and ducked behind a kombucha stand. “He’s there,” she whispered. “The dark man.”

  I peered around the stand, swagged with autumnal leaves. A creature, seven-foot tall, its limbs like burnt and blackened branches, hunched beneath an oak. Its clawed hands were dug into the leaf-strewn ground.

  I gasped, flinching backward.

  Its grinning pumpkin head was unmoving. The whole thing was unmoving. My shoulders relaxed. It was only more Samhain décor.

  I looked again.

  A dark-haired man stood behind the pumpkin man, beneath the same massive oak. He placed his palm against its trunk and closed his eyes. The man nodded, as if in response.

  I closed my own eyes and felt outward with my senses. In my internal vision, the golden edge of my protective aura expanded to encompass the hollow.

  Cold blades of magic, dark and powerful, icy and sensual, danced against my aura’s edge.

  I shuddered and pulled my aura close. The man hadn’t reacted to my probing, and I released a slow, shaky breath. He hadn’t noticed me.

  I turned to Nancy. “You said he knows about me?” I asked in a low voice.

  She stepped backward, paling. “He’s seen us. He’ll kill me. He knows I’ve betrayed him.” She bolted into the crowd.

  “Wait,” I hissed, but she’d vanished amidst the pagans.

  Wary, I turned toward Darian. His hand was still pressed against the oak, his eyes closed. He smiled and nodded again.

  Sweat beaded my forehead, and not because it was another hot October in the Sierra foothills.

  I sat on a bench beside the kombucha stand, where I could keep the man in sight
. Wrenching my phone from the pocket of my shorts, I called my sister, Lenore.

  “Hey, witch,” she said.

  “Lenore, have you ever heard of a fairy named the Far Darocha?”

  “Yes, I’m fine thanks. And how are you?”

  “Well, there’s this evil druid—”

  “Oh, boy. Hold on.”

  Lenore was the best folktale researcher I knew. She’d also actually been to fairyland. So even though I’d tangled with my share of fey folk, she was sort of the expert.

  Over the phone, I heard the sound of typing, Lenore at her computer.

  A couple pushed a stroller decorated like a sun chariot past my bench. The toddler inside squealed with laughter, face paint running in streaks down her cheeks.

  “Far Darocha,” Lenore muttered. “Okay. It’s one of those mixed-up fairy tales. Some say he was a druid, some the fairy who did all the queen’s dirty work kidnapping humans. Some think he’s an evil trickster. Why? What’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. Just because some rando woman told me someone’d infected himself with a dark fairy didn’t mean it was true.

  But it didn’t mean it was not true either. “There’s a druid here with a bad smell about him.”

  “A druid at a pagan con?” she said dryly. “Who would have thought?”

  I made a face. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Then what do you mean?”

  “I sensed dark magic.”

  “There have got to be hundreds of witches and druids there. How do you know what you’re sensing is from him?”

  “I got a tip. I’m going to check this guy out. His name is Robert Darian. Someone told me he knows all about us and has got a direct line to this Far Darocha character.”

  “He knows about us?” Her voice rose with alarm. “I’ll be right there.”

  “No,” I said quickly. “This is all pretty vague. You’ll be more help on the research end. Is that cool?”

  She sighed. “I guess. You never liked research.”

  “Damn skippy I don’t like it. Research is boring.”

  “It’s fascin— Never mind. Be careful.”

  “Aren’t I always?”

  Lenore choked back a laugh. “Right. Call me as soon as you know something.”

  “Ditto.”

  We hung up.

  Robert Darian strode from the shady hollow.

  I held my breath.

  He walked past my bench, and I relaxed. He hadn’t noticed us. Nancy had been panicking.

  Heart hammering, I stood and followed.

  I followed him to a lecture on binding runes. I followed him to a witch yoga session (which I’d wanted to attend anyway). I followed him from panel to panel, down hot and dusty trails.

  Darian spoke to no one, sat apart from everyone.

  Darkness had fallen when he finally exited the con grounds. He trekked past rows of twisting grapevines to a wide field filled with trailers and tents.

  I hung back, trying to keep him in sight. A woman at a campfire shot me a quizzical look.

  I smiled. “S’mores tonight?” I hurried on.

  Robert Darian ducked inside a large camping tent. A light flickered on inside.

  I collapsed onto a nearby log.

  The panels had been great, but my tail of Robert Darian hadn’t enlightened me. What had I expected though? The dude couldn’t exactly conjure a fairy in the middle of PaganCon.

  I glanced up at the new moon, the dark moon, a shadow in the sky that meant potential, the unformed. It was a good night for magic.

  But was the new moon a good night for druids? I looked sidelong at the glowing tent. All I knew about Druidry was the Celtic nature religion was rooted in magical practice.

  I glanced again at the tent then checked my texts. Brayden had texted from Afghanistan, and my heart jumped. I read then re-read his message, then texted him back that I was at the con and safe, and I pocketed my phone.

  And I waited.

  The air cooled. The breeze flowing over the Sierras turned chill. I pulled a sweater from my bag and slipped it on.

  FYI, watching a tent isn’t super exciting. There were all sorts of better things I could be doing this Halloween Eve. Like spell work. Or dragging Lenore to Antoine’s bar. But I settled in and expanded my senses.

  The trick to not being bored is to pay attention. Really pay attention. To the sounds of the night animals, scuffling through the high grasses. To the sight of the wheeling bats and glowing tents. To the scent of pines and dry earth. To the feel of my own pulse. Because when you’re truly aware and non-judging, the universe opens.

  Something shifted inside me. My heart flooded with the joy of existence and I just was.

  And then something cold and hard pierced my awareness. My eyes blinked open, and the universe fell away. It was just me and the tents and the Sierra stars, blazing like spotlights.

  I stood, and my muscles twinged.

  The night had gone silent. No animals rustled in the tall grasses. No night hunters winged above me. No breeze rustled the branches. The flesh on my arms pebbled.

  Something was wrong.

  I crept toward Robert’s glowing tent. I’d just pretend I was lost, ask him for directions, and see what was up. I stopped outside the closed flaps and cleared my throat.

  “Hello?” I called.

  No one answered.

  I extended my senses toward the tent and felt… Nothing. No magic. No human presence at all.

  Robert was gone, so I guess I hadn’t been paying attention to him, and I should have been. My neck stiffened. How had he gotten past me?

  Using the back of my hand, I brushed open the tent flap.

  Robert Darian lay spread-eagled beside a sleeping bag on the tent floor, a dagger in his chest.

  2

  “So, let me get this straight.” Sheriff McCourt shoved back the wide brim of her hat, releasing a spill of Shirley Temple curls. She was a small woman, with cornflower blue eyes, and a lot of people didn’t take her seriously because of it.

  A lot of people regretted that.

  “You admit to following the victim around all day,” she said. “You lurked outside his tent.”

  “Yes,” I said, “and I didn’t see anything. But that knife hilt has a Celtic knot design. It’s ritual. It’s not necessarily Druid, but it’s Celtic, and the Druids were Celts.”

  Dawn streaked above the eastern Sierras in a blaze of pinks and golds. But the morning’s usual symphony of birds was drowned out by the chatter of sheriff’s deputies and crime scene techs. Campers watched the action from tents and from the steps of RVs.

  “No kidding,” the sheriff said. “The murder weapon appears to be a knife for magical ritual. And you…”

  And I was a witch, and the sheriff knew it. I hoped she also knew I wasn’t a killer. I squeezed my purse against my side.

  “You stalked him for hours.” She stepped closer, close enough to have to thumb up the brim of her hat to glare at me. “You must realize how this looks.”

  My muscles tightened. I forced myself not to edge backward and out of handcuffing range. “That witch set me up.”

  The sheriff raised a brow.

  “Okay,” I amended, “that druid set me up.” And I could kick myself. I’d been such a sucker, I’m not sure how Nancy had managed not to laugh while she’d told me her sad story.

  “You stalked the murder victim. You found the body.”

  “You know me,” I pleaded. The sheriff and I hadn’t always seen eye to eye, and she may have arrested me once, but come on. “I didn’t do this.”

  “You called in the body at eleven-twenty. I spoke with Nancy Mullen. She was at the…” She checked her notepad. “Healing with the Ancient Vibrations of Chant workshop from eight to midnight.” She coughed.

  “I’m super impressed you got that out without rolling your eyes.”

  “The point is, Nancy has an alibi,” she said, expression unreadable. “You don’t.”
/>   I turned and paced beneath the lightening sky. “She could have left the chant early.” I hugged my arms. “Those big tents have lots of exits. In a crowd, no one might have noticed her.”

  “She also denies ever having spoken with you or knowing who you are.”

  Nancy had totally set me up. I rubbed my wedding ring. The sheriff might believe me, but there was evidence McCourt would have to present, and a prosecutor… My jaw clenched. “She’s lying.”

  Sheriff McCourt rubbed the back of her neck. The movement rustled the fabric of her uniform jacket. “I got that impression too.”

  Wait. What? “You believe me?”

  “No. But I don’t believe Mullen either. She’s a politician, so lying goes with the territory.”

  “A politician?” Bold of her to show up at PaganCon. But this was California, where being a pagan wasn’t a deal killer for officeholders.

  “She’s a local.” The sheriff named a nearby town.

  “You said she actually had an alibi. Who?”

  “Her assistant was with her.” The sheriff eyed me. “When it leaks that you were caught standing over the victim’s body with the murder weapon—”

  “I didn’t touch that knife.”

  “—and this being a small town, it will get out,” she plowed on, “I’ll have to bring you in.”

  “Wait. Will have to, future tense? You’re not bringing me in now?”

  “Use your freedom wisely.”

  My mouth went dry. “I will. Um, can I go?”

  “For now.”

  I nodded, turned on the heel of my sandals, and strode toward the PaganCon tents, gray in the dim light.

  Heat flushed through my veins. Nancy had lied. Nancy had set me onto Robert Darian right before he was murdered. She couldn’t have known I’d follow him so diligently, but…

  Had she known? I’d gotten involved in solving crimes before. My name had been in the local news. I grimaced. It wouldn’t have been hard to guess I’d take things a leap too far. And I’d go too far again.

  I had to if I was going to break Nancy’s alibi.

  3

  There’s no amount of coffee that will keep you fresh and chipper after staying up all night. But I’d spiked mine from a tent café at the con with a dose of magical energy.