Behind the door the girls gathered in the centre, each one holding a candle and staring intently at the flame, except for Rosie, she stood out of place, holding a candle and looking directly ahead at us with a large grin on her face.
“Looks a little spooky,” she said.
“Take your coat off, love,” I said, gently squeezing her arm. “I did put the heating on so it should be getting a little warmer.” The heat I was referring to was the heat of fury from the depths of hell—but only if she was guilty.
She pulled her arms while staring around the room, her eyes wide, glowing in the reflection of the flames. “Do you always do this kind of stuff?”
I took the coat from her. “Stand in the circle, hon.”
Caroline edged over, partly waddling from the way her belly sat and her legs were parted like a cowboy who’d spent at least six hours straddling a horse. It was a walk I’d known well while I was pregnant.
Once she was in the circle, Allegra, Eva, and Tana broke out into a hum, followed by the mismatched pitch of Rosie along beside them.
“Oh, that tingles,” Caroline said, rubbing at the back of her neck. “What’s this supposed to do again?”
It wasn’t technically a truth spell, it was a circle which when activated, the person inside could only speak the truth. It wasn’t practical, not something you could do off the cuff with a couple of minutes prep.
“Caroline Coleman,” I said. “I have a few questions.”
Smiling, she pulled at her sleeves. “Okay.”
“Did you kill Marissa?”
She looked toward me, her face pinched into a frown. “What?”
Rosie gasped from behind the others. I turned slightly to see her face seemingly hovering in the darkness and only revealed from the candlelight.
“Answer the question, did you kill Marissa?”
“No, no, no I didn’t.”
The humming dropped.
“You didn’t?” I asked, glancing to her feet as they shuffled on the spot. The circle was drawn correctly, everything in alignment. It worked. “Then why did you try and poison me with these?” I asked, grabbing the plastic box of biscuits.
Caroline’s bottom lip trembled. “I—I—I didn’t make them, I was told to give them to you. I don’t even know what’s in them.”
“Who?” I asked, approaching her.
“Who?” she responded.
Rattling the container of biscuits, it was obvious. “Who asked you to give me these?”
“There was a note!” She said, holding her hands up.
Tana immediately fell from formation. “Note?” She dipped to Caroline’s side and reached for her hand. “Let me see.”
I joined her other side. “Do you remember anything?”
The image in Caroline’s mind was clear. This was a note very similar to the one I’d received. All in block letters. GIVE TO GWEN OR LOSE. DO NOT EAT.
“Hemlock grows everywhere,” Allegra said. “It could’ve been anyone.”
“What else does it mean or lose?” I asked her.
She burst out into a blubber of tears. “I don’t know.”
Tana ushered her to a chair while I gathered beside Eva, Allegra, and Rosie. There had to be more to it than someone leaving notes laying around for people.
“You said hemlock, right?” Rosie asked, squeezing her eyes. “I remember a few weeks ago, Ellyn’s youngest got into a bush. He had to have his stomach pumped to get the stuff out.”
“Wait.” I paused them and grabbed hold of Rosie’s arm. “Ellyn?” my mind flickered back to being in her house. There were plants on her counter, they looked familiar, hemlock wasn’t used in many potions, so I wouldn’t notice it at first glance.
“Yes, Ellyn,” Rosie said.
“You know something?” Eva asked.
Slowly nodding my head, I blinked a couple times before finally regaling my consciousness. “She had some on her kitchen counter,” I said. “She threw them in the bin, but I could’ve sworn she was baking.”
Allegra took the plastic container of biscuits and shook them around. “Baking. I bet she thought we’d all be sharing them.”
Caroline sucked back a couple of breaths, trying to catch a word in. “It can’t be Ellyn,” she said. “She’s always so busy and sweet, she even walks my dog.”
Ellyn did appear awfully busy during our encounter. “She was walking your dog?”
She nodded, accepting the tea Tana offered. “I can’t get out while I’m pregnant, she pulls me everywhere.”
“You know something?” Allegra asked. “Something in your eye there.”
There was something. “A dog has been digging up the gravel at the front door of my house,” I said. “I didn’t think anything of it, but it makes sense.”
“It can’t be,” Caroline said in a gasp. “She relied on Marissa just as much.”
“Then who?” I asked.
“Bridget,” Caroline said. “She doesn’t like you, I think she’d want to kill you.”
“And you have evidence to support this?” I asked.
It confirmed some of the other theories in the group, but there was nothing connecting Bridget to the poison. The only thing connecting Bridget was her meeting with Marissa, and even though Bridget appeared to be the exact type of person; the motivation, the attitude.
She shook her head. “No.”
“It’s settled, we’re going to Ellyn’s house,” I said, taking a hard gulp in my throat. “I won’t accuse her, but I’ll make sure to ask about the hemlock.”
“On your own?” Allegra asked.
“We’re coming,” Eva said.
Tana hummed. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay with Caroline and see if there’s something I can whip up for her nerves.”
Rosie nodded along. “I’ll stay here as well, you know, help out opening and everything.”
“Opening!” My jaw clenched. “I need to get ready to open.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Rosie waved a hand. “Doctor Raymond will have to wait for me, I’ll tell him I had an emergency.”
Caroline smiled. “At least he won’t offer you full-time hours.”
Rosie chuckled. “I couldn’t do that full-time anyway,” she said. “Plus, it means I don’t get to bake here if I’m there all the time.”
“Good, because with my baby on the way, I’m going to need the job,” she said, wiping at her cheeks.
“And I’m good with babies,” Tana said. “The nursery is always more than happy to help.”
Eva rapped her knuckles against the door. “Are we gonna go?” She looked at her watch. “If I’m right, she should be back from dropping her kids off at school.”
“I hope so,” I said. “It’s time to clear this up.”
CHAPTER 20
In Cowan Bay there was a primary school and a nursery school, the high school was in the town of Belsy, and if I remembered rightly from when my son was there, school started at 8:45 A.M. but there was a bus which collected the students from the village. It was 8:50 A.M. now, so undoubtedly she would be home at least in the tranquil peace without children.
The three of us marched over, each clutching our adorned pieces of crystal jewellery for protection. I stormed ahead of the group, my hard stomp splashing into the puddles made by yesterday’s weather.
Ellyn was already at the door.
“Gwen,” she said, her eyes widening at the sight of me. “And guests.” Her fingers clutching to the cup of coffee in her hands. “It’s a beautiful morning.” She inhaled the fresh sea air deep inside.
“Ellyn,” I said, reciprocating the large smile on her face. “We figured, as Marissa has passed, we’d see if there was something we could do to help.”
“Help?” She winced her face and bit her lips. “I think I have it covered now with the new doctor.”
“Nonsense,” Eva said, hooking her arm around Ellyn’s arm. “Let’s go in and we’ll see what we can do.”
Ellyn turned and
we followed her in, closing the door behind us. “I can make us some tea,” Ellyn said, walking directly for the kitchen. She placed her coffee on the counter and smiled at us.
“What kind of tea do you have?” Allegra asked.
I noticed it, the same plastic bag. “Have you been gardening?” I asked.
“It’s a homebrew,” she said. “And yes, I have.” With a huge smile on her face she nodded at me. “Creating my own tea actually.”
We spread ourselves out in the kitchen as I itched closer to it. I’d watched her throw the waste into it only a day ago. “What do you put in it?” I asked, taking the bag and tearing it open. There it was, the white flower spores branching off. “Hemlock?”
“No, don’t be so—” she glanced around at us as we stood in a circle. “Yes,” she said sharply behind her teeth and tongue. “Marissa deserved it. You all deserve it.” She snatched the bag from my fingers and pulled out the flower.
“Ellyn, put it away,” Eva said. “We want to know what happened.”
“What happened?” she scoffed.
I outstretched a hand to try and take it from her again. “Is your husband home? Someone we could talk to.”
“He’s coming for you all. He’s coming for all of you. He won’t stop you know.”
“Your husband?” I asked.
The tense stance Ellyn had taken so she could have a visual over all of us loosened. A single eye twitched and a drop of blood fell from her nose. “He’s—coming.” She collapsed to the side as Eva and Allegra caught her.
I pulled the bag from her hands. It was full of the plant, but within it all, there was a piece of paper rolled up. I knew the paper immediately, the off-white almost yellow pages were the exact same colouring from Marissa’s book of shadows.
“She did it,” I said. I unravelled the paper to see the pages torn were for a tea, a delicate blend for concentration. A small piece of white paper fell from the bottom to the floor.
“What’s that?” Eva asked, gently lowering Ellyn to the ground. “Is it?”
I nodded. “From her book, I figured it might’ve taken us to someone else, but nope, I think Ellyn did it.” Kneeling to pick the piece of paper up, I noticed something written on the back in pencil. The word, master. I flipped the image to see the face. The eyes had been scrubbed out with black pen, but the face. “Bless the Goddess!” I dropped everything else but the picture. “Please tell me this isn’t—”
Allegra stole the image. “Doctor Raymond.”
“It says master on the back,” I said.
Eva took a glance at it. “Is he the person she was talking about?”
“Or is he next?” I asked, shaking my head. “No, he’s behind all of this.”
Allegra placed both arms across her chest. “How do you come to that?”
“They were both seeing the doctor, right?” I said. “Ellyn for her boys, and Caroline worked there and she’s having a baby, but why?” I tapped a finger to my head. “Marissa was also treating them, doing a better job at it as well by the looks of things.”
Eva pressed the picture closer to her face. “It doesn’t add up, if everything in Marissa’s apartment had been dying, that’s not exactly something a man of science could do.”
“I know what you’re saying, Eva,” I said. “I don’t think this a man at all.”
“A demon.”
We swept Ellyn’s house only to find Marissa’s client log book in the bedside drawer of the master bedroom. Eva rushed through the house to share it with everyone.
“She knew everyone Marissa was seeing,” Eva said, opening it up to show the names. “She should probably find a better place to hide it if she didn’t want to be caught.”
I stroked a hand across the final page. “Put it back, it needs to be exactly where you found it.”
“Why?” she asked.
“We’ll have to call into Detective Hodge,” I said.
Allegra scoffed. “Will we?”
“Yes. She’s human. She did this.”
“A demon made her,” Eva added. “But you’re right. She did it, and she even tried to kill more of us.”
There was a succinct nod of understanding. We placed everything back and left. Once back in the café, I decided to call into Detective Hodge.
“Hello,” I said.
“Gwen, I—I—I didn’t expect to hear from you,” he responded.
“Listen, Hodge,” I said. “I don’t have time to explain, but I have reason to believe that Ellyn is behind Marissa’s death.”
“Oh? Compelling evidence?”
“Marissa died from poisoning, correct.”
“Well, at this time we can’t—”
“She tried to do the same to me,” I said. “I believe it was hemlock, and if you look, you’ll see that her son was in hospital a few weeks ago. I’m sure they’re growing it on their property, plus, Marissa was seeing Ellyn, going to her house.”
He hummed, a clear tapping on his desk. “Do you have any proof of this?”
“You can find the proof,” I said. “I have biscuits she baked, she was trying to kill me. Send them away, get tests done. Ellyn killed Marissa.” My voice pitching off a little louder as I spoke from the kitchen bakery in the café.
“All we can do at this point is look into these claims, but if this is some petty feud you’re having, please keep it to yourselves, we have our hands full with a murder investigation.”
I hung up, stabbing my forefinger into the red button. If this had been ten years ago or I was using the landline, I’d have slammed the phone down in the receiver. I’d sent everyone out of the room while I made the call. Looking around in the emptiness, I took a deep breath and sat at my baking stool.
The door creaked as Allegra popped her head inside. “How did it go?”
“I don’t know if he believes me, but he’s going to look,” I said. “Hopefully she confesses.”
“Well, I mean we left everything how it was,” Allegra said. “All the evidence is there.”
“Yeah,” I said, digging a hand into my pocket. I pulled out the image of the doctor with his eyes scratched out. “I think we need to go to mine and put wards up. If he’s really a demon, he went after Marissa, I’m next, I live the closest.”
“I’ll call the others,” Allegra said, leaving again.
I wasn’t sure how well a ward would protect the house, given that Marissa still suffered, but there was more to it. There was poison. There were people she’d trusted.
“I’ll be gone an hour,” I called out to Abi and Ralph as I walked onto the café floor.
“You’re in a hurry, love,” Ethel said, catching me as I bundled up my jacket in my arms.
“Yes,” I chuckled. “I need to get home, think my cat’s gone missing.”
She clasped at her string necklace. “That’s awful, well hope you have better luck finding him than you do have finding yourself a nice man.”
“That’s—uh—nice of you to say.”
Eva caught me as she walked out of the backroom with my handbag and book, heavy in her arms. “Allegra and Tana are waiting outside.”
“Perfect,” I said. “Is Caroline still back there?”
She hummed. “Yeah, but I’ve told her not to touch anything, more than anything she’s just worried about what’s going to happen with Ellyn.”
I didn’t have time to worry about who or what was happening in the backroom. The safety of my home was more important, especially August.
Tana and Allegra sat in the back seats of the car, both taking deep breaths; in through the nose and out through the mouth. Once I was in the driving seat I immediately started the engine and set off.
“We need wards putting up,” I said. “If you could each take a crystal.” I pointed to the glovebox of the car for Eva to open and distribute. They were hexagonal, a mixture of different crystals from smoky quartz to amethyst, and black obsidian. They were a permanent fixture of the car, for luck and protection on the road.
“Gwen,” Tana screamed. “Gwen!”
I turned and as I turned again, a man stood with his back toward the front of the car.
He turned slowly, revealing the face of the doctor. His red eyes glared outwardly, glowering. “You’re all next,” he said, his voice deep and distorted.
“There’s only four of us,” Allegra said. “We only have crystals, we can’t do anything.”
“We can,” I said. “He’s on my land, this is protected land, we have power here.”
Eva was the first to open her door. “We’ll see.”
I followed her. “As a four, we’re strong, we’re powerful.”
The red beady eyes of Doctor Raymond stared. There were no pupils or irises, just complete redness. His form was demonic, not even sure if it was possession or purely demonic. I’d never come across one before, only read about them in my mother’s books.
“We have to hold hands,” I said.
He laughed. “What for? There’s nothing you can do.”
We bundled together to hold hands, collecting in a line.
“He’s right,” Tana said, softly, the nerves prickling at the side of my neck. “We’re only four.”
“Only four?” Noelia called from behind the car breathless. She bent inward, resting her hands on her knees to collect her breath. “I’m here now.”
“What? How?”
“I’ll explain after,” she said. “The real doctor is passed out on the front garden at mine.” She grabbed a hold of Allegra’s hand.
“You’re not the doctor,” I said.
He laughed. “I’m the reason you’ll all be—”
The first hum came from the back of my throat. It was deep. There was only one vanquishing spell I knew, it was a simple fix, a simple spell.
Bless the Goddess,
Bless your soul,
Be gone demon,
Back to your hole.
I said it once. I said it twice. The group followed. In harmony we matched each other, repeating it over and over.
Muffins, Magic, and Murder Page 12