Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Haunted Hex

by

Sara Bourgeois

Chapter One

The screaming woke me from what had previously been a peaceful sleep. Probably the first restful night I’d had in a week.

The bed shaking wasn’t helping either.

But it wasn’t the bed shaking. It was Thorn shaking me. He had me by the shoulders and was rattling me down to my bones.

The screaming wasn’t him, though. It quickly became apparent who was responsible.

“Kinsley, you’re having some sort of nightmare,” he shouted. “You have to wake up, sweetie. Wake up!”

When I looked around the room, everything was floating. The bed was at least six inches off the floor as were the dressers, a desk and chair, and both night tables. Everything but the baby’s cradle.

As consciousness crept into my brain, the furniture all dropped to the floor with a thunderous clatter. Laney began to cry.

“I’ll get her,” Thorn said as he slid off the bed. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” I said. “I must have been having some sort of nightmare.”

The concern in Thorn’s eyes was evident even in the dark bedroom. Laney’s cradle was just a few feet from the bed, and Thorn quickly got her settled again. She was so young, but Laney was already a daddy’s girl. He felt the same way.

“I was really hoping you’d finally get some sleep,” Thorn said.

“I want to hold her,” I said and stretched out my arms.

“She’s fine,” Thorn said. “Please try to go back to sleep.”

It was true. Laney had been a good sleeper from day one. She wasn’t what kept me up at night.

“I just want to hold her for a while,” I persisted.

He crossed the room and gently handed Laney over to me. She snuggled against my chest, and Thorn got onto the bed next to us.

I’d spent every night since she’d come home from the hospital watching her sleep. I stayed up all night most nights, and if I did manage to fall asleep, I’d wake up with my heart pounding and my ears ringing. Sometimes I was soaked in sweat too.

There were no nightmares that I could remember, but it always felt like I’d woken up from a really bad one. That night was the first that I’d screamed. It was also the first night that the furniture had levitated. At least Laney hadn’t been hurt.

“Where’s Meri?” I whispered in a panic.

“I’m right here,” he said.

I looked over to see him perched on the windowsill watching us. “I could have hurt her,” I said to him.

“I managed to keep the cradle down,” Meri said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t hold the rest of it. You’re too strong in your sleep.”

“He did,” Thorn confirmed. “She’s fine. Probably a little startled is all.”

“I scared her,” I said and held Laney tighter. “I’m traumatizing my own baby.”

“That’s why you need to sleep, Kinsley,” Thorn said. “You’ve never had issues like this before, but you haven’t really slept in days.”

I hadn’t told him about the daymares. In addition to feeling like I had to stay awake and watch Laney, I was having these terrible intrusive thoughts during the day. Sometimes all I could think about was horrible things happening to us, and I’d have to rush over and confirm that she was okay.

It had started in the hospital. I’d had a horrible dream the night before we were discharged. A terrible plague had swept through the world, and I died without being able to say goodbye to my baby and husband.

My soul had floated out of my body, and I’d watched as Thorn took Laney away from Coventry to keep her safe. Except, he’d never come back. He took her away from her entire family, and they didn’t see her again.

The nightmare had taken root in my heart, and after that night, I couldn’t sleep without having an absolute panic attack. I felt guilty too because it was like I didn’t trust Thorn. I knew he’d never take Laney away from me, but the nightmare had put horrible ideas into my imagination.

Even without telling Thorn about the daymares, he knew something bad was going on with me. Meri sensed it too, but he stayed close to Laney.

“You know the cat is watching her,” Thorn said as if he could read my thoughts. “You don’t have to keep an eye on her all of the time. He sleeps in there with her, and he’s not going to let anything happen.”

“I know,” I said. “I’ll lay her down, and I’ll try to get some sleep.”

“Valerian tea,” Meri said before jumping down out of the window. “For you, not her.”

“That’s actually a good idea,” Thorn said. “Why don’t you rest here, and I’ll make it.”

“No, I’ll go. You need sleep too,” I said. “I’ll drink some tea, and I’ll come right back to bed.”

Thorn eyed me skeptically.

“I need to get up and move,” I said. The adrenaline from the nightmare I couldn’t remember was still coursing through my veins. The only way I was going to get any sleep was if I walked some of it off. “Sleep,” I said as I pulled the baby sling off the top of the dresser. “I’ll lay her down when I get back.”

Thorn looked exhausted, and it pulled at my heart. He wasn’t tired because of staying up with the baby. It was because of whatever was going on with me.

If I took Laney downstairs with me to make the tea, he’d have uninterrupted quiet to get back to sleep. Before I left the room, I took a package of silicone earplugs out of the nightstand and handed them to him.

“I want to be able to hear if you need me,” he protested.

“If we need you badly enough, these won’t stop it,” I said. “Please, Thorn. You have to go back to work soon. I don’t want you exhausted. It’s puts you and everyone else at risk.”

That got through to him. He took the earplugs and put them in his ears as I walked out of the bedroom.

Meri ran through the doorway just before I softly closed the door behind me. He padded down the stairs at my heels as we all made our way to the kitchen.

I got some valerian and chamomile out of the pantry. After putting some of the herbs in the metal tea strainer, I put the containers away. Meri didn’t ask, but I also grabbed a can of tuna.

While I waited for the water to boil, I forked the fish out onto a plate for him. “Thanks,” he said as I set it on the table.

“You’ve been a good sport,” I said and stretched.

“I’m worried about you,” he replied.

“Don’t,” I said. “It’s weird when you get all…not Meri… around me. It makes me feel like something is really wrong.”

“Something is really wrong,” Meri said.

“It’s just a little postpartum depression,” I said. “I’ll be all right.”

“You shouldn’t just suffer through it,” Meri groused. “That’s stupid.”

“There we go,” I said with a weary smile. I felt better when he called me stupid. When he was too nice, I got worried I was about to die or something.

“When are you going to tell Thorn about the daymares?” Meri said.

“What?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m always around, Kinsley. I see you struggling. We’re linked, remember?”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I looked it up on the internet, and it happens to a lot of women. It will get better.”

“You should talk to your mother,” Meri said.

“Did she go through this too?” I asked. I didn’t think she had. Surely, she would have told me. She would have prepared me.

“No, but she can brew up something to help you with the constant anxiety,” Meri said.

“I’m doing that now,” I countered.

“If that doesn’t help you sleep, please promise me you’ll talk to her,” Meri said.

“Okay,” I said.

The water boiled, and I carefully poured it into my cup. Meri ate his tuna, and I had time to wash the plate while my tea steeped.

I didn’t want to drink it over Laney’s head, so I took her out of the sling and put her in the bassinet in the living room. She didn’t stir at all when I laid her down.

Confident she wasn’t going to wake again, I went back into the kitchen and squirted a few generous globs of honey into the tea. Meri was waiting for me on the sofa when I went back into the living room.

Thorn had converted the fireplace to gas, so I flipped the switch. A gentle fire roared to life, and I sat on the sofa sipping my tea and watching the flames dance.

Meri curled up in my lap and stayed there until I’d polished off the tea. When I finished, he crawled down to the other and of the sofa and waited.

I hadn’t heard Thorn make any noises upstairs, so I knew he’d fallen back asleep. I could hear Laney’s gentle, slow breathing in the bassinet, and it seemed silly to disturb her again.

So, I set the empty mug down on the coffee table, stretched out on the couch, and pulled the blanket we kept on the back over me. I lay on my side with my head on one of the softest pillows watching the fire. Meri gingerly walked up my leg and curled up on my hip. He was small enough that he fit there without falling off.

“I should turn off the fireplace,” I whispered, “but it’s so pretty.”

“It’ll be fine,” Meri said. “You can leave it going for hours or whatever.”

“You’re right,” I said and yawned. It wasn’t like it was a wood fire where you had to worry about smoke.

The next thing I knew, sunlight from where I hadn’t pulled the curtains all the way shut was hitting me right in the eye. I stretched, and my heart dropped into my gut.

I couldn’t hear Laney’s breathing anymore. I jumped up off the couch so fast that I sent Meri flying. Fortunately, he landed on his feet on the coffee table.

“Laney!” I called out as I rushed over to her bassinet.

She wasn’t there.

“Kinsley, she’s with me,” Thorn answered from the kitchen.

I pushed my palm against my chest as if that could slow my heart rate. After a couple of deep breaths, I felt the panic subside.

“You were sleeping so peacefully, and she needed a diaper change and a bottle,” Thorn said when he appeared in the doorway between the dining room and living room. “We were making French toast casserole. It’s almost done.”

“Is there bacon?” Meri asked as he jumped down off the coffee table and sashayed past Thorn.

“Of course,” Thorn answered.

“I panicked,” I said, like it was a confession, “when she wasn’t there.”

“Sorry about that. I was about to come wake you up for some food,” Thorn said. “Do you want to take her? I need to get the casserole out of the oven.”

“Let me go to the bathroom really quick,” I said.

I sprinted into the bathroom, did my business, and washed my hands in record time. When I came back out, the oven timer was going off, so I took Laney from Thorn and followed him back into the kitchen.

The warm smells of cinnamon and vanilla filled my senses. The rich scent of freshly brewed coffee hung in the air as well.

“I just made a pot,” Thorn said as if he could read my mind. “I’ll get you some.”

Laney had a little tabletop bouncer thingy that we could put her in while we were eating. As soon as I had her buckled in, Meri jumped into it and lay down next to her. She cooed and grabbed a fistful of his fir. I watched him wince, but he just tenderly licked Laney’s hand and she relaxed her fingers.

I gently pushed the bouncer down a couple of times and Laney cooed again. Thorn set a cup of coffee down in front of me.

“It’s already got cream and sugar. The casserole needs to cool for a few minutes,” he said. “I thought you wanted bacon, cat?”

“I’ll wait a bit. I’m fine,” he said, not wanting to move from his spot next to Laney.

“You’re turning down bacon?” I asked before taking a sip of my coffee.

“I’m not turning it down. I’m just comfortable,” he said.

“You look good,” Thorn said when I turned my attention to him.

“Thanks,” I said. “Did I look like recycled dog food before?”

“No…” Thorn looked like he wasn’t quite sure how he was supposed to respond.

“I’m kidding,” I said with a chuckle. “I know what you mean. I feel better too.”

“That’s amazing,” Thorn said. He leaned over and gave me a kiss.

“Sorry I didn’t come back up to bed,” I said.

“Don’t be. I’m just glad you finally got some rest,” Thorn said. “Let me get you some casserole.”

“I can do that,” I said.

“One more day?” Thorn asked. “I have to go back to work tomorrow, so let me take care of you for one more day?”

“Tomorrow for sure?” I asked.

“Yeah. I got the call this morning. Jeremy didn’t want to say anything, but he’s getting super behind on paperwork. One of our deputies called in sick a couple of days last week too, and he’s got too much overtime now. Looks like I’ll have a mess to clean up when I go back,” Thorn said.

“That sucks…” I started to say.

“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry,” Thorn cut me off. “I wouldn’t have traded this for the world.”

“I wasn’t going to apologize,” I protested, but I was.

“I know you better than that,” Thorn said.

“Fine,” I relented. “But I do feel bad that you’ve got to go back to a mess at work.”

“I can handle it,” he said. “Now, about that casserole.”

Chapter Two

The next day, Thorn had to go back to work. I’d had two cups of valerian and chamomile tea the night before, and somehow managed to sleep through the night.

Laney had as well, but when Thorn woke me up to tell me he was going to work, he had her nestled in his arms. “I was going to let you guys sleep, but your mom is here.”

“Oh, okay,” I said and sat up.

“She said she’d take Laney if you want to sleep some more, but I wanted to ask you.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll get up.”

“You sure?” Thorn asked.

“Yeah, but can you take Laney back down to her,” I said and kissed her on the head softly. “I’d really like to shower and get dressed.”

“Sure,” Thorn said.

“Tell her I’ll be down in a few minutes,” I said.

“You can call me anytime if you need me,” Thorn said as he headed out of the room.

Before he got all the way in the hallway, Thorn turned around and came rushing back. He put his free arm around me and pulled me in for a kiss that made the butterflies in my stomach go crazy.

“Thank you,” he whispered and then kissed me on the forehead.

“For what?” I asked.

“For giving me everything I ever needed,” he said.

Thorn could be annoying and overprotective, but at other times, his love for me took my breath away. It reminded me of why he could be so overbearing. He was just trying to keep me safe, and that was a big job. I could be a handful.

Well, it had been a big job. Being a mother had changed my perspective on the situations I used to “find” myself in. There was no way I was going to do anything that would leave Laney without her mother. My days of investigation were over.

I took a long, hot shower that felt like a vacation. Knowing my mother was spending time with Laney meant I didn’t feel guilty about taking some time to take care of myself. I even left the conditioner she made for me on my hair for the full five minutes.

When the water started to go cold, a hint that the house had had enough of my lingering, I got out and dried off. After moisturizing thoroughly, I sprayed some of the hair tonic Lilith had made for me all over my damp hair. I wound the damp strands up and clipped them so they wouldn’t be stuck to my neck. I’d let them air dry that way, and it would give my fire-engine red tresses a nice bouncy wave.

I threw on fresh sweatpants and a t-shirt, my new mommy uniform, and headed downstairs. Mom was standing in front of the fireplace feeding Laney a bottle. She swayed back and forth while gently humming a tune. Meri had fallen asleep at her feet.

He was woken abruptly when she heard me coming down the stairs and turned around. “She’s a hungry one,” Mom said.

“She does have a good appetite,” I confirmed. “It means she sleeps a lot too.”

“That’s okay,” Mom said. “The business of growing is intense. Has she shown any signs of magic?”

“Nothing other than she has slept through the night since she was born,” I said. “That’s pretty magical, in my opinion.”

“I’m sure her powers will grow with her,” Mom said. “Whatever is going on with magic, maybe that’s what will happen rather than her having to learn to harness being born with so much power.”

“You mean like with me?” I asked.

“Yeah. It was great knowing that you were so powerful, but it was also scary sometimes. Especially when you would outgrow Amelda’s binding spells and we didn’t know it until you did something crazy.”

“What if she never has magic?” I asked. “What if she’s more like Thorn? She could be…I don’t want to say just a person because it makes it sound like people are less than us. But, what if she’s not a witch?”

“That’s impossible,” Mom said. “Even if her father isn’t a witch, there’s no way a child born to your bloodline could ever be anything but a witch.”

I didn’t say it to my mother, but there was a small part of me that hoped Laney was born without magic. I’d tried to have a normal life, but it never worked out. If Laney wasn’t a witch, she could have the boring, regular existence I’d always wanted.

“She’s going to get magic,” Mom said as if she could read my thoughts. “Someday, we’ll figure out what’s going on with all of our magic too. You will go back to being a powerful witch, and your daughter will become one too. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but you’d better accept it. You’ll be so much happier if you embrace who you are instead of wishing you were someone else.”

She was probably right, but I wasn’t ready to admit it. I just kept hoping that whatever had happened to our magic would hold.

I looked down and Meri and noticed something. “He’s getting bigger,” I said.

“Way to change the subject,” Mom said before putting Laney over her shoulder to burp her.

“Maybe it’s not really a subject change,” I said. “If the spell I did to grant his wish is wearing off…”

“Let’s not talk about that,” Mom said quickly.

At first, I didn’t understand why she would be so upset, but it dawned on me that we had a lot of standing spells. Many of them were anti-aging spells and the reason that so much of our Coven was still alive. If that magic began to wear off, then I would have to do something about it. I would do it with a happy heart too because I wasn’t just going to let my Aunties die.

Our conversation ended there, though. My phone rang, and I answered quickly when I saw it was Reggie. I hadn’t talked to her for a couple of days, and I missed her terribly. It was still early in the morning, and I figured she was trying to get a call in before she opened the shop.

“Long time no talk,” I said cheerfully when I picked up.

“Kinsley, I hate to do this, but you’ve got to come down to the shop,” she said.

“Oh, okay. Do you think it’s going to be busy today?”

It hadn’t been busy at any of the businesses around the square since the tornado. People were rebuilding as quickly as possible, but it hadn’t even been two weeks yet. It was slow enough that Reggie ran the shop by herself, and most of our business came from local witches.

The demand for supplies had only increased since the dip in magic. Witches were having to work harder and be more precise with their rituals in order to achieve any results. It meant that the shop was making a killing, and I could afford to pay Reggie a premium to keep things open throughout the chaos surrounding the store.

“It’s not that,” she said. “Someone broke into the store. We’ve been robbed.”

“Oh, no,” I said.

“I wasn’t going to call you about it, but Jeremy says that since you’re the owner, you need to come down here. I’m so sorry,” she said. “I tried to handle things myself.”

“Thank you for that,” I said, “but you don’t have to handle this yourself, Reggie. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“What is it?” Mom said as soon as I hung up.

“The store was burglarized,” I said. “I have to go down there. Reggie tried to handle things, but Jeremy says I have to come in. I feel so bad that she didn’t think she should call me.”

“Well, you did just have a baby, Kinsley,” Mom said. “I can understand why she didn’t want to call you.”

“I have to go,” I said. “Did you bring breakfast?” I hadn’t noticed the smell of fresh-baked biscuits and fried chicken until just then. Mom knew I loved a fried chicken breakfast biscuit.

“I did,” she said.

“And of course, I have to go,” I looked at Laney and felt my heart sink.

I was not ready to leave her yet. Not even with my mother. The thought of walking out the front door without her sent a wave of panic through me. Mom must have seen it written on my face.

“We’ll come with you,” she said. “We’ll bring the biscuits and chicken. I’m sure Reggie could use a meal, and whatever deputies are there will appreciate it.”

“Really, Mom?”

“I recognize that look,” she said. “It’s hard to leave them with someone else for the first time, and you’re nowhere near ready. It’s too soon anyway.”

“Thank you, Mom,” I said.

“But you get to change her diaper while I get breakfast packed up.”

Mom handed me Laney, and I changed her diaper at the changing table. I also put her in a fresh outfit and combed her wisps of curly blonde hair. By the time I had done that, Mom had the food packed up into a basket she found in the kitchen.

“I’m driving,” Mom said.

“That’s good because I’m not cleared to drive yet,” I said.

“Oh, honey,” Mom said. “I keep forgetting that you’re having to go through so much more than I did. We had enough healing magic that I was back to my old self the same day I had you.”

“That has not been my experience,” I said as I walked slowly out to her car.

Meri had managed to heal me enough at the hospital that I wasn’t in any pain once I came home, but I was still getting exhausted easily. I hadn’t had anything to eat yet that day, and the walk out to the car felt like a marathon.

I could have used a strong cup of coffee too and cursed myself for lingering in the shower for so long. When I finally made it to the car, Mom grabbed a sandwich from the basket and shoved it into my hands. She pulled a bottle of Coke out next and put it in the cupholder between us.

“I don’t care if you eat in the car,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said after she’d walked around and gotten behind the wheel. The car was self-driving, but she liked to be there just in case.

Since she didn’t have to drive, Mom ate a sandwich too. We shared the Coke since there wasn’t enough time for me to drink the whole thing before we got to the shop. Mom had strapped Laney into her car seat while I was getting myself situated, and my baby was snoozing quietly in the back seat.

Thorn was getting out of his cruiser when we pulled into one of the spaces outside of my shop. He reached back into the car and took out two coffees from the Brew Station.

He put them on top of his car and then helped me get out of my Mom’s. “For you,” he said and handed me a coffee. “I figured you didn’t have a chance to have much coffee.”

“I haven’t had any,” I said and drank about half of it in two gulps. “You are a god among men, Thorn Wilson.”

He actually blushed. “It’s just coffee,” he said. “I’m sorry about all of this. We’ll get what we need from you, and then you can go home.”

“I’m not going to just leave my shop like this,” I said.

I hadn’t been inside yet, but I could see that someone had smashed the front door in. At least they hadn’t taken out the windows. It would have sucked to have had the shop survive the tornado only to have all the glass broken by a thief. I’d had it all replaced with some sort of safety glass after the last burglary, but I was sure it could still be broken. Especially with all my protective wards weakened.

“No one was killed, right?” I asked Thorn as we walked up to the shop. “No dead bodies?”

“Thankfully, no,” he said. “That would have been a heck of a way to welcome me back to work. Unfortunately, we’re going to need an inventory of what’s missing, though.”

“Reggie has already started on that,” Jeremy said as we went inside.

“Be careful of the glass,” I told my mom. “You and Laney can hang out in the office. Would that be okay?”

“She could go upstairs too,” Reggie said. She was standing by a set of shelves with a clipboard in her hand counting candles. “But not before I get to give that baby a kiss.”

My mom took Laney over to Reggie. She gave the baby a kiss on the forehead and pinched on of her pink cheeks gently. Laney cooed and latched her little hand around Reggie’s finger.

“So strong,” Reggie said.

After a couple of minutes of Reggie fawning over Laney, my mom took the baby to the back. Reggie spread her arms wide. “Now, come over here so I can give the mama a kiss too,” she said.

I laughed, but I walked over and let her pull me into a tight hug. It would have been painful if my innards were still tender, but since they weren’t, a Reggie hug was nearly the best thing in the world. Of course, she kissed my head and pinched my cheek too. It made me laugh hard.

“Okay, ladies,” Jeremy said gravely. “Now, there’s been a burglary, so we’ll need to get the serious business out of the way. All right?”

“Oh, chill out,” Reggie said and stuck her tongue out. “Fine,” she said when he threw her a look. “I’ll keep taking inventory.”

“Kinsley, can you look around the shop and let me know if you see anything strange?” Thorn said. “We’ve got someone from the state police coming to dust for prints on and around the cash register. We’ll have them dust anywhere you see anything out of the ordinary too, but I’m not sure if it will do any good.”

“There are so many people in and out of the store every day,” I said.

“Exactly, but we’re going to try,” he confirmed.

“Have you found anything missing?” I asked as I began walking around.

“Nothing yet,” Reggie said. “It definitely wasn’t a smash and grab. It’s like they broke in to steal something specific, but I haven’t figure out what yet.”

“You said you were going to dust the cash register for prints. Did they steal the money?” I asked.

“The cash register doesn’t look like it was even touched,” Jeremy said.

“We keep the money in the safe anyway,” Reggie added.

“They didn’t even try to get into the cash register?” I asked.

“Doesn’t look that way,” Thorn said. “But we’re going to dust it for prints. Maybe they just didn’t try very hard.”

“That seems strange,” I said. “That they would bust the glass on the front door but not even try to pry the register open. Unless they weren’t here for money.”

“Or unless they looked around and saw the safe,” Jeremy added. “Maybe they knew there was no point in trying the register.”

“If whoever it was had shopped here before, there’s no telling what they knew,” I said.

“You think it might have been a customer?” Reggie asked.

“It’s always a possibility,” I said. “Or someone desperate for something.”

As I spoke the words, I noticed that a display of spell bags was knocked over. Could a witch have broken in to steal supplies? Were times so desperate that they would rob me if they couldn’t pay?

Why would anyone do that, though? I would have helped anyone who needed it. And taking a chance of angering my family Coven was a dumb move.

Or, it had been stupid at one time…

What could we really do now? Two horrible possibilities sprung to mind. The first was that without my Coven’s awesome powers, witches would begin to get out of line. The other was that, in our weakened state, someone would decide to try and get revenge.

For what, I didn’t know. We’d upset a lot of people throughout our history.

I crouched down to look at the spell bags, but I moved too quickly and had to put a knee on the floor to keep from keeling over completely. Thorn almost magically appeared at my side.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I answered. “Please don’t fuss over me.”

“I just…” he started to say, but I cut him off.

“Well, if you’re going to hover, could you hand me that basket?” I said and pointed to the one on the shelf that had previously contained the spell bags.

“What are those?” Thorn asked as I put them neatly back in the basket.

“Spell bags,” I said. “They do different things. You keep them in your pocket, in your purse, or tied to the loops on your pants. They’re very popular now that witches can’t just handwave their magic spells anymore. Tourists love them too, though they don’t do much for them.”

“They’re different colors,” he observed as I put a couple more of the little velvet bags in the basket.

“Red is for love, blue is for clarity, and green is for luck or money,” I said. “Basic stuff that most people are looking for. I think for most people, they really just make them feel better or more confident, but that can be its own kind of magic.”

“What’s that one for?” Thorn asked sharply.

“I told you…” I started to say because I thought I’d explained all of the little spell bags we had.

I hadn’t.

There, hidden under the others, was a black bag. It wasn’t one of ours. Well, the bag itself could have been. We sold black velvet bags and ingredients, but we did not sell them as ready-made spell bags for unwitting tourists. I would never sell a black magic spell that way.

“This isn’t…” I said and picked the bag up. “Someone put this here.”

I quickly slid the little sachet into my purse. Thorn’s eyes went wide with surprise.

“Kinsley, you can’t just take that. It’s evidence,” he said.

“I don’t want to file a report,” I said. “I’m sorry we wasted your time.”

“Kinsley, don’t,” Thorn said softly. “You can’t file a claim with the insurance company without a police report.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll pay for the damages myself. I don’t want to file a report. Thank you, gentlemen, for coming. Reggie, my mother and I will handle this.”

Thorn leaned over close to me. “Are you okay?”

“I am,” I whispered and patted his arm. “I just don’t want to have to explain any of this to Jeremy. I can feel from the bag that this is a witch matter, and the Coven will handle it.”

“All right,” he said. “Come on, Jeremy. Let’s go get started on that mountain of paperwork you left on my desk.”

“Boss?” Jeremy was thoroughly confused.

“You heard me. The business owner is declining to file a report, so our work here is done,” Thorn said.

Jeremy shot me a look, but I returned a smile. “Thank you for everything,” I said. “There’s nothing here for you to worry about, and we’ll handle it.”

The spell that kept non-witches from noticing us and our magic was weakening thanks to the magical reset, but thankfully, it wasn’t gone completely. Jeremy nodded his head and left with Thorn. He would accept whatever Thorn told him about the robbery or, thanks to the supernatural veil, his brain would just make something up.

“I’ll meet you back at the station,” Thorn said to Jeremy.

It was a dismissal, but Jeremy didn’t seem to take it harshly. He kissed Reggie and was on his way.

“You’re not going to stay here and try and solve this, are you?” Thorn asked.

“No. I’m going to call someone to come put in a new front door, and then I’ll go home,” I said.

“Good,” Thorn returned. “I’ll be home in time for dinner.”

“Oh, here, take these,” I said and handed Thorn the bag with the sandwiches in it. “Breakfast for the two of you.”

Once he was gone, I told Reggie to keep the store closed for the day. She could do the inventory if she wanted, but I had the strong feeling that the little spell bag I’d tucked into my purse was the reason for the break-in.

I called around and found a local handyman who could install a new door that afternoon, and once I had that lined up, I called the closest big box hardware store to see if they had a glass door in stock. They had what I needed, so I paid for it over the phone. One more call to the handyman to coordinate him picking up the door, since he had a truck, and the business of getting the door fixed was handled.

“Well, now I’m exhausted,” I said to Mom when I was off the phone. “That wiped me out.”

“What would make you feel better?” she said. Laney was asleep in her arms and didn’t stir at the sound of our voices.

“Coffee and one of Viv’s breakfast sandwiches,” I said with a sigh. “I’m hungry again and I gave away the sandwiches.”

“Well, let’s go over there,” Mom said. “Maybe Reggie would like to come too?”

“I will invite her,” I said and stood up.

Viv’s coffee shop and restaurant had survived the tornado unscathed. In fact, in the direct aftermath of the twister, she’d stepped up and provided the community with warmth and comfort.

You might have thought that the lack of tourism would have hurt her business, but the community had rallied around her. Even without tourists, the Brew Station was busy from the time it opened until it closed.

Reggie was more than eager to go grab a bite to eat. We left the car parked in front of the shop and walked across the square to get to Viv’s.

The ley line that run under the area pulsed as we walked across it, but it was nothing like it had been in the past. Back before magic had faded, you could concentrate on that ley line and draw a huge surge of power. Today it was nothing more than a tingle. You could have mistaken it for your foot falling asleep.

I looked up at the window where I used to see the terrifying apparition of a woman with black holes for her face and eyes. I hadn’t seen her since the tornado, and I didn’t see her now either. If my mother hadn’t witnessed her too, I would have sworn I imagined the whole thing.

Where had she gone? I couldn’t shake the memory of seeing her face up close and thinking that she looked like me. A harbinger of something that had never come to pass.

At least I hoped.

Chapter Three

After having second breakfast at the Brew Station, Mom and I went back home. She spent the day with me taking care of Laney so I could rest. Instead of resting, I did things around the house. Mom kept telling me to sit down, but there was a nervous energy buzzing through my veins. Vacuuming and dusting helped me release some of the tension even if Mom did keep giving me the side-eye.

A bad feeling had crept back into my gut. After a couple of days of respite, I was once again waiting for something awful to happen.

I’d told Mom my theories about the bag, but she’d told me to focus on Laney. “I’ll ask around,” Mom said. “You don’t worry about this.”

“But it was my shop, Mom,” I protested.

“Let your Coven handle this. It’s our job,” she said.

Since I didn’t have to worry about the black magic bag someone had broken into my store to leave me, I focused on food. It had been Thorn’s first day back at work, and I made him a feast.

Pasta was always a good choice, but I wanted to elevate it beyond cooked noodles drenched in sauce. Don’t get me wrong, there were definitely doused ziti noodles, but I put them into a baking dish. I added double concentrated tomato paste to deepen the flavor, and three generous dollops of cream cheese. Next was demi-glace and some grated parmesan cheese. Before it went into the oven, I crumbled some mild Italian sausage on top.

Once the pasta was done baking, I pulled the dish out of the oven and stirred in more parmesan cheese and some garlic and herb grass-fed butter.

For more flavor, you could add crumbled herb cheese and red pepper flakes, but I did not put those on the entire dish. Instead, I’d let Thorn, and my mom if she stayed for dinner, choose their toppings.

While the pasta was baking, I’d sliced up a loaf of Italian bread and brushed each slice with melted butter. While the entrée cooled a bit on top of the stove, I sprinkled the bread with garlic and salt before popping it in the oven for a few minutes.

My timing was perfect because Thorn walked through the front door just as I was pulling the bread out. “Dinner’s ready,” I called out.

“Smells delicious, sweetie, but I need to go,” Mom called back.

“What? I made plenty,” I said as I put the baking pan on the top of the oven next to the pasta.

I hurried into the living room. Mom had handed Laney over to Thorn. She was slipping her shoes on and grabbing her purse as Thorn rocked the baby.

“Mom, are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, I just need to go check on Lilith,” she said.

“Lilith? What’s wrong with Auntie Lilith?” My pulse kicked up.

Was this the bad thing I’d been waiting for since the break-in at the shop? Mom saying she needed to check in on Lilith caught me off guard. In my entire life, Lilith had never needed anyone to check in on her.

I swallowed a lump in my throat at the realization that the anti-aging spells over us might really be wearing off. Lilith and the Aunties were all closer to a hundred than most of the general population ever saw.

“She’s just a little confused,” Mom said. “She’s tired, sweetie. And she thinks someone has been hanging around outside of her house. I’m just going to go check it out.”

“Thorn, should you go with her?” I asked. “If someone…”

Mom cut me off. “Thorn’s been over there, sweetie. There’s nothing for the police to do. I’m going to go sit with her for a while.”

“Still, you shouldn’t go alone,” I said. “Even if she is just imagining it. Is that what you’re saying? What if she’s not? What if something is watching her, but it’s not a person?”

“Your dad is meeting me there, sweetie. Please don’t worry,” Mom said. “We’re going to have dinner with her and make sure she’s fine.”

I let my mom leave after that. I didn’t want her to keep Dad and Lilith waiting, but I had so many questions. Aunt Lilith had visited me in the hospital and come to see me after. She’d seemed fine. It was hard to fathom her going through such a steep decline so fast.

But what Mom was talking about sounded like dementia. I shook my head because there was no way. There was no way Lilith had gone from being… Lilith… to a terrified and confused old woman in less than two weeks.

Something was wrong.

“Whatever that is, it smells incredible,” Thorn said. “I’m starving.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “I made us a special dinner. I think you’re going to like it. Let me take Laney, and you go get changed.”

“Thank you,” Thorn said. “I’ll be right back.”

He handed Laney over to me and ran up the stairs. I hadn’t packed him a lunch because he always got up before me, and I wondered if he’d eaten at all to day. If he and Jeremy were buried in a mountain of paperwork, he probably hadn’t taken the time.

Laney began to fuss a little, so I took her over to the changing station and got her settled into a fresh diaper and pajamas. Thorn came down the steps just as I was picking her up again.

“Does she need to eat?” he asked. “I can feed her.”

“She’s already nodded off again,” I said. “Why don’t we eat, and I’m sure she’ll be ready for a bottle after dinner.”

He thought about it for a second. I knew Thorn was probably starving, but it hit me that he probably missed Laney. It was his first day back at work, and he hadn’t seen her all day.

“I was going to put her down in the bassinet while we ate, but I’ll put her in the bouncer on the table,” I said.

“That would be good,” Thorn agreed.

Once she was strapped in, I made Thorn sit down while I fixed him a plate. I got Meri some cooked bacon from the fridge and crumbled it up.

Everyone sat down to eat together. Well, except Laney. She was snoozing away in her bouncer while Thorn kept an eye on her. As soon as Meri was done eating, he hopped up onto the table and snuggled into her bouncer.

“You know, a lot of people don’t let their cat on the table,” Thorn said to Meri.

“How many of them have talking cats that can cast spells?” Meri snarked back.

“You have a point,” Thorn said.

“And as usual, you don’t,” Meri retorted.

Thorn just laughed at that and then turned his attention to me. “This is so delicious, sweetie,” he said. “You didn’t have to go through all this trouble.”

“It’s a fairly simple recipe,” I said. “Plus, my mom was here. Don’t be surprised if there are nights we eat frozen pizza or macaroni and cheese.”

“Good thing I love both of those,” Thorn said. “The house looks immaculate too. I thought when you left the shop, you were going to come home and rest.”

“That’s what my mom thought too,” I said. “But, I don’t know. I’ve got this nervous energy again. So I used it to get some things done. It was better than sitting around dwelling.”

“Dwelling on what?” Thorn asked. “Do you mean the break-in and the spell bag? Kinsley, you should let me investigate. File a report so I can do something official.”

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “Mom said she’d have the Coven look into it. I’m supposed to focus on being a mother and let the Coven focus on protecting me and Laney.”

“That sounds like an amazing idea,” Thorn said.

“But how are they going to do that if…” I trailed off.

“What?” Thorn asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t you think it was strange that my mom had to run off and check on Lilith?” I asked.

If I would have blinked, I would have missed it. A look flashed across Thorn’s face for a microsecond. Some of the color drained from his cheeks too. Just a hint, and if you didn’t know him as well as I did, you’d have completely missed it.

He was hiding something about Lilith. Mom had said he’d already been over to her house to check things out, so Mom was in on it.

“You better tell me right now, Thorn Wilson,” I said.

“Kinsley,” he said and put his hands out in front of him in a placating gesture.

“Don’t you Kinsley me,” I said. “Spit it out or we’re going to have a problem.” The last part I’d whisper-growled because Laney stirred a little when I said the first.

“Lilith called 911 today,” Thorn said. “She was scared that someone was walking around her house looking in the windows.”

“Since when is Lilith scared of anything?” I said. “My mother didn’t say anything about this.”

“She was here with you and didn’t want to leave,” Thorn said.

“You talked to my mom? How did I not know any of this?” I asked.

“Well, she was probably dealing with it on the phone with me while you were cleaning. I swear I probably heard the vacuum in the background at least one time while we were talking,” Thorn said.

“And she didn’t go to see Lilith right then?” I was more questioning the universe than Thorn, but he answered.

“Your father met me over at Lilith’s house,” he said. “Your mom thought it was important that she stay with you. She didn’t want to alarm you, and she wanted to be here and help you all day.”

“So, you all orchestrated this entire thing to keep me from finding out? What is this, Thorn?” I had stood up from the table without realizing it.

“What it is… is your family looking out for you and Laney. What would you do?” he asked. “How could you have helped? And what would Lilith want? Would she want you coming over there and dealing with it while you’re supposed to be recovering?”’

“Dealing with it?” I said. “She’s my family.”

“And so is Laney,” Thorn said. “Laney is your priority.”

“Don’t tell me what my priorities are,” I said, but all the fight went out of me. He was right. He was right about all of it. Not only was there nothing I could do to help Lilith, but she wouldn’t want me fussing over her when I was supposed to be caring for my new baby.

“What is going on?” I asked as I sat back down. “What could be happening to Lilith?”

“I don’t know,” Thorn said. “I think it looks like dementia. It’s coming on so fast, but…”

“But if the spells that were keeping us all young are wearing off…”

“You need to keep your head in the game,” Thorn said. “Your mother and father are going to worry about Lilith for now.”

I didn’t want to accept that, but it was the right thing to do. My mother and father could do just as much for my Auntie as I could.

But for the first time, the powerlessness of the magic shift had begun to get to me. I felt like an idiot for ignoring it.

I didn’t want to be normal. Not if this was the cost.

Something had to be done.

Chapter Four

The next morning, I woke up before dawn. It was so early that you probably couldn’t even consider it to be morning yet.

Thorn hadn’t gotten up for his run yet, and Laney slept quietly in her cradle at the end of our bed.

Only Meri was awake, but he wasn’t on the windowsill or in the cradle with Laney. I looked out in the hallway, and he was poised with his haunches up and all of his hair standing on end. His tail looked like a bottle brush.

“Meri, what is it?” I whispered as I got out of bed.

The sheriff was asleep next to me, but I didn’t even think to wake him. Instead, I hurried out into the hall to join Meri. My instincts were to put myself between whatever had set him off and my daughter.

As soon as I was in the hall, Meri took off down the steps. “What is going on?” I asked as I rushed down the stairs behind him.

“Something’s out front,” he said and then hissed.

I could only explain my action as being under the haze of sleepiness added to a huge spike of adrenaline. Because once again, instead of getting Thorn, I threw the front door open and rushed outside.

At first, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. The scene in front of me couldn’t possibly be real, and I convinced myself I was having a nightmare.

My thoughts felt like they were swimming through mud, and I just stood there stunned until Meri shouted my name. “Kinsley!”

And it all came into horrible focus.

There was a woman in a black dress lying face down on my front lawn underneath the old hanging tree. Another woman in a white nightgown paced up and down the street in front of the house with a large knife in her hand.

I ran down my steps and across the grass to get to the woman on the ground. My hope was that I could still save her.

But, she was long gone. As soon as it hit me that the woman had already passed, the danger I was in smacked me in the face.

I looked up at the woman walking towards me with a knife and let out a strangled cry as my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach.

“Lilith!” Meri screamed as he ran past me.

Auntie Lilith looked at us as if she were seeing us for the first time and dropped the knife. It hit the street with a clatter.

“Kinsley,” Thorn called from behind me.

I turned to see him running out of the house in his pajamas with his gun trained on Lilith. “Don’t,” I screamed. “She’s confused.”

He lowered his weapon but put himself between me and my aunt. “I need to call this in,” he said but seemed reluctant to move.

“I’ll call 911,” I said.

“Make sure they send an ambulance too,” he commanded.

“The woman’s dead,” I said as I turned to go back into the house.

“Not for her,” Thorn said. “Go call. Now, Kinsley.”

My eyes flicked over to Lilith one last time, and I saw what Thorn saw for the first time. Lilith was so pale. Her lips were blue too. Something was very wrong.

I called 911 and told them to send the deputies and an ambulance. The dispatcher wanted me to stay on the line, but I told her I was married to the town sheriff right before I clicked off the call.

On my way back out of the house, I instinctively grabbed the blanket off the back of the sofa and a pair of slippers that I’d kicked off over by the door.

By the time I got out of the house, Thorn was standing next to Lilith with one arm around her shoulders. She was sobbing nearly uncontrollably, and it twisted my guts. I’d never seen her like that before, and it was terrifying.

“She’s hypothermic,” Thorn said as I handed him the blanket. “This is good.”

I helped him put the slippers on her feet. “We should get her into the house,” I said.

“Kinsley,” he said cautiously.

“What?” I barked back. “Help me get her into the house.”

“She’s…”

“She’s what?” I demanded.

He looked over at the dead woman, and I understood. She was a suspect, and possibly dangerous. Thorn didn’t want to let her into the house.

“She’s my Auntie,” I said. “We can’t just let her stay out here, Thorn. Who knows how long she’s been out here.”

“But your baby is in the house,” Thorn said. “Our baby is in there, and if she’s a suspect, I don’t know what it will do to the investigation if we take her inside our house.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “I mean, I care about Laney, but Lilith isn’t a threat to anyone. You can feel how frail she is. She did not do anything to that woman.”

“You don’t…”

“Don’t say it, Thorn Wilson. I do know. I know how this looks, but I don’t believe for a second that she hurt that woman, and I’m taking her into the house.”

But it was a moot point because the ambulance turned onto our street before I even got her up the front steps. They loaded Lilith onto a stretcher and started an IV of warm fluids after covering her with a mylar sheet and a thick wool blanket.

I couldn’t leave Laney to go with her to the hospital, and Thorn couldn’t leave the scene because of the dead woman. So, I called my mom and told her briefly what had happened. She was in shock because she and Dad were sleeping in on of the guest rooms at Lilith’s house. She’d managed to sneak out past them.

“You have to meet them at the hospital,” I said.

“I will,” Mom said. “Dad and I will get dressed and go right now. I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

After I hung up, Thorn and I went back into the house. He just went in for a pair of shoes and his jacket.

“Stay inside,” he said. “It’s too chilly for you to be hanging around out there anyway.”

I was going to protest, but Laney started to cry. Guilt twisted my gut. It felt like I’d forgotten her for a second. Add another thing to the pile of stuff I’d beat myself up over when I was trying to fall asleep at night.

“I’m coming, baby,” I called up the stairs.

She quieted at the sound of my voice, and while I found her awake when I got upstairs, Laney wasn’t fussy. I scooped her out of the cradle and went to one of the second-floor windows that overlooked the front yard.

When I opened the curtain to look out, I jumped back and nearly fell on my butt. For the narrowest portion of a second, it looked like there was something in the hanging tree. I saw a black creature with red eyes peering back at me, but when I blinked, it was gone.

“Did you see that?” I asked Meri. He’d jumped up on the windowsill and was watching the scene below.

“See what?” he asked.

I relaxed a little. It must have been my imagination. There was still enough adrenaline running through me that my brain was making things out of shadows.

From what I could see out of the window, Jeremy was running the scene. Thorn stood back and watched, but Jeremy was conducting the investigation and calling the shots. It made sense since the crime scene was literally in our front yard.

Thorn looked up a couple of times and saw me in the window. I couldn’t read his expression. He wasn’t angry or anything like that, but he looked sort of perplexed.

After the coroner took the body away and he came back inside, I’d find out why. “She wasn’t stabbed,” Thorn said.

I felt my knees go weak. The knots in my stomach unclenched, and I took a deep breath. “So Lilith didn’t kill her,” I said it as a statement, not a question.

“I can’t say that for sure, but the victim wasn’t stabbed. Lilith isn’t under arrest, though, because we can’t even be sure that her being here had anything to do with the body,” Thorn said.

“You can say for sure that Lilith didn’t kill that woman, Thorn,” I said.

“Kinsley, please. I know this is hard, but I have to do this the right way. I cannot show any hint of being biased or I won’t be able to go anywhere near the case. I already can’t investigate it, but do you want the state or feds to step in and shut me out completely? How can I protect her then?” he asked.

“You’re right,” I said.

“I need to get ready for work. I need to get into the office,” Thorn said as he squeezed the bridge of his nose.

He started to leave the room and stopped. Thorn reached into his pajama pants pocket and pulled something out.

“Thorn, are you okay?” I asked because he’d begun to rub the back of his neck nervously with his other hand.

“I did something,” he said. “I did something I shouldn’t have done, but I had to.”

I crossed the room to where he stood in the doorway. When he opened his hand, Thorn revealed one of the little black spell bags. It was just like the one I’d found at the shop.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Where did you get that?”

“It must have been tied to Lilith somehow because it fell onto the road when I had my arm around her,” Thorn said. “It must have been tied to her nightclothes. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. It’s possibly evidence, Kinsley. I took it from the scene… but I figured it was the best thing to do. Given everything that’s going on, I didn’t think you’d want my deputies to find it.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I need to get ready for work,” Thorn replied. He kissed me again and then went to shower and get dressed.

I took the black magic spell bag and put it in the binding box where I’d kept the other one. Since I was up, I went down to the kitchen and started some coffee.

While Thorn finished getting ready for work, I made him a breakfast sandwich to go. I also packed him some leftovers for lunch. Given everything he had going on, I figured it was best if he ate well. Plus, it made me feel like I was helping.

“What’s all this?” he asked when he came into the kitchen and found two paper bags and a large Thermos of coffee waiting for him.

“Making sure you eat today,” I said. “Plus, as far as I know, the coffee at the station still sucks.”

“It does, thank you,” he said. “I’m not upset, by the way. You didn’t have to do all of this.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I thought maybe you felt guilty because I hid evidence and gave it to you,” he said.

“Why would I feel guilty about that?” I asked and then thought about it for a moment. “Oh… you’re doing things that are out of character on my behalf.”

“You’re corrupting me, Mrs. Wilson,” he said with a mischievous smile.

“It wasn’t my intention,” I said earnestly.

Thorn let out a hearty laugh. “I just bet it wasn’t,” he said, and I swore his eyes were twinkling. “I can’t be the husband of a witch and father to another while walking around with a stick up my butt. We have a talking cat. I think it’s beyond time for me to adapt.”

“You came up with all of this while you were in the shower?” I asked.

“It’s been coming on for a while, I guess. Ever since Laney was born, I realized that I was accepting who you are, but I never embraced it. And I walked around thinking and acting like I was doing you a favor for that. I was a jerk so many times, but the baby has made me see the light. It’s not enough for me to just accept it. I was always on the outside, but the Coven is my family now too. My daughter is going to be the leader someday. It’s time for me to fall in line. I think we’ll all be happier if I do,” he said. “So, if I find out anything about the murder or those spell bags that will help you guys out, I’ll call you.”

Then he kissed me, took his food and Thermos, and left for work. I stood there for a few minutes completely stunned.

“Did you hear all of that?” I asked Meri when he came sauntering into the kitchen.

“You did a number on that man,” Meri replied.

“It’s about time,” I said with a chuckle.

“You don’t even feel bad, do you?” Meri asked.

“Not nearly as much as I probably should,” I said. “It will do him good to lighten up, right? I mean, it’s not like I was ever going to be someone else. Even though I frustrated him, he always loved me for me. Now he’s just embracing that.”

“We’ll see,” Meri said.

Chapter Five

Thorn was off at work. Mom was at the hospital with Lilith. It was just me, Meri, and Laney at home.

I was bored.

Not only that, but I was worried about Lilith. Mom had texted to say that she was doing all right and that they had her sedated and resting comfortably.

While that was good news, it wasn’t good enough for me. I had to figure out what had happened to her and fix it. I knew my mom was busy, so I texted my father.

Are the other Aunties as bad as Lilith? I sent.

No, he texted back.

So, it was probably a direct attack? I asked.

Looks that way, he answered.

I need to talk to the dead woman. I held my breath before I sent the message, but I eventually found the courage to hit send.

I’ll be right there, was his response.

Good old Dad. Not many witches, other than Lilith, were as comfortable with darker magic like my father. He’d danced with it close enough that it had almost taken him in the past, so he had unique skills when it came to the left-hand path.

While I was waiting for my father to get to Hangman’s House, I strapped Laney into her baby sling and headed out into the front yard.

“What are you doing?” Meri asked as he followed me out the front door.

“Dad’s coming over to help me get in touch with this dead woman. I need something from her,” I said. “I need some of the dirt from where she died too.”

“Something from her?” Meri asked.

“She had to have lost a hair out here,” I said as I stood near where the woman’s body had lain. “Some blood in the dirt would be good too, but I don’t know if she bled. I still don’t exactly know how she died. I just know she wasn’t stabbed.”

“You’re going to need to know that,” Meri said.

“I’ll text Thorn,” I said. “Can you start looking for a hair?”

“You’re the worst,” Meri groused.

“I know, but I still need a hair,” I said.

“Fine,” he relented and trotted over to look around under the tree for a strand of the dead woman’s hair.

I need details on the murder, I texted to Thorn.

I slid the phone into my pocket and helped Meri look for hairs. It really wasn’t a fun task looking for hair in grass when the sun wasn’t totally up yet, but we found one.

Once we had that, I ran back into the house and grabbed a white candle and a silver coin. I took the candle back outside and lit it on the spot where she’d lain.

“Spirit, I need your help,” I said and placed the coin next to the candle. “I humbly ask for your assistance.”

Out of my other pocket, I took a small glass jar with a metal lid. It was only large enough to hold a couple of tablespoons of dirt, but that was all I needed.

My dad pulled into the driveway as I capped the jar and put it back in my pocket. “So, are we doing this in the cemetery?” I asked as dad got out of his car. “Maybe we can set up near the family crypt.”

“I have something else in mind,” Dad said. “I know that you’re used to seeing necromancy as something dark to be performed in basements and graveyards, but I’m going to let you in on some secrets.”

“Oh, okay,” I said.

“Go inside and get dressed,” Dad said. “Wear something colorful but dress the baby in all black.”

“Ooohkaaay,” I said.

“Trust me, Kinsley,” Dad said. “Do you trust me?”

“Of course,” I answered. “I’ll be back down in a few minutes.”

I rushed through getting dressed. My mind reeled at what my dad could be up to. He knew things I didn’t, though. Things I could have known if I’d taken witchcraft seriously when I was younger instead of insisting that the last thing I wanted to be was a witch.

But that was the past, and I had the chance to learn. Dad would teach me, and we would pass it all down to Laney. Because I figured out from the moment she was born that the reason I had been so important to the Coven was so that I would become her mother. I wasn’t some sort of chosen one, but I was chosen to be her mom. Laney was the one who was truly something special.

After putting on a yellow sundress and cornflower blue cardigan, I dressed Laney in a black onesie, sweatpants, and socks. She had several black outfits, thanks to the Aunties, so I tucked them into her diaper bag.

Then I chuckled. I was packing a diaper bag to go with my father and practice necromancy. What an odd place to find myself in life…

But it had to be done. It wasn’t just that I needed to prove that Lilith had nothing to do with the woman’s death. In the back of my mind, I wondered if the dead woman had something to do with the magic reset. Had she done some sort of ritual, cast a powerful ancient spell, or summoned a demon to destroy our powers? I had to find out, and if she had, I would undo the damage.

No amount of normalcy was worth what was happening to Lilith. Plus, did I even want that anymore? Thorn had accept who I was, so shouldn’t I?

I hurried down the stairs and outside to find Dad still waiting by his car. “You could have come inside,” I said.

“We need to go where we are going while her energy is still tied to this side of reality,” Dad said. “And before your husband goes there to search.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“The ley line is amplified in the town square because our ancestors used rituals to concentrate its power, but ley lines run all the way around the world,” Dad said. “For some witches, living near the lines is enough. Others go all the way and build a house on the line.”

“Are you saying the dead woman built her house on the ley line?”

“No, but she lived in a house that was. An old sanatorium built by the church. They probably detected the power of the ley line running underneath. Non-witches don’t always understand what they are feeling, but they can sense it. That’s why a lot of churches and other important buildings end up built on the lines.”

“We’re going to an old, abandoned sanatorium?” I asked. “Is that the secret? We could have gone to any secret or spooky place.”

“It’s not the fact that it’s an abandoned asylum that gives it the power,” Dad said.

“I was going to say, that’s not much of a secret,” I said as Dad drove us out of Coventry and into the countryside surrounding the town. “Also, that I probably should have worn pants.”

“You look beautiful, sweetie,” Dad said. “It’s perfect.”

“Are you going to tell me why it’s perfect?” I asked.

“Okay, so a lot of people associate necromancy and death work with dark and mysterious things. They practice it, like I said, in dark basements and graveyards. They light black candles and chant heavy, depressing dirges. Part of that is our fault. We want people to think that’s they way you work with the dead because it keeps them from accidently becoming powerful necromancers.”

“Accidently becoming powerful necromancers? So, that can happen?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s surprisingly easy to attract and interact with the dead once you know the secrets,” Dad said with a chuckle.

“So, we’ve misled people and witches?” I asked.

“It’s for their own good,” Dad said solemnly.

“I can see that…” I said. “But, you’re going to tell me, so tell me.”

“The dead don’t like all that dark and spooky crap,” he said and turned down a dirt road lined on both sides by trees. “They like things that remind them of being alive. They’re already dead, so they don’t get all excited about stuff that reminds them of being dead. Because the ones that are still here want to be alive. Even if they can’t be alive, they want a taste of it again. Most of them will do anything.”

“Oh,” I said. I thought about it for a moment. “That makes perfect sense, though. That’s why people dress up in scary costumes for Halloween, right? So, the dead will leave them alone. No, that makes perfect sense, but I didn’t put that together.”

“Most people don’t,” Dad said. “We actively discourage people from putting it together because anybody can tempt them. You don’t even have to be a witch to become a necromancer. You just have to bake some cookies.”

“Bake cookies?” I asked.

“So, they love anything that reminds them of the best parts of being alive. Salt, sugar, bacon…” Dad said and looked over at Meri. Since Laney was in a car seat in the back, he was curled up on my lap. “But, it’s not just food. They love bright colors too, and emotions. Laughing, crying, fighting… and other things. It all attracts their attention.”

“But salt circles protect us,” I said.

“They do,” Dad said. “But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get their attention. And once you have that, you’re in business.”

“I don’t know how many times I have tried to summon spirits and it’s gone badly,” I said. “You never told me.”

“I would have,” Dad said. “I was waiting for you to be ready. Think of it as leveling up.”

“I’m not sure we should have brought Laney along for this,” I said as Dad pulled up in front of the sanatorium the dead woman used as her home. “What’s her name?” I asked. “I keep thinking of her as the dead woman. I texted Thorn to get the details, but I haven’t heard back.”

“Her name was Samara Delarosa. She was a witch, and a distant cousin of yours,” Dad said. “News of her death has already spread around Coventry.”

“Well, I’m sort of out of the loop,” I said. “Do you know how she died? I was hoping Thorn would tell me, but if it’s already out there.”

“Strangled,” Dad said, “with a length of silk ribbon. Probably a binding tool.”

“That sends a message,” I said. “So, were they trying to bind her, or did she tick off someone else?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Dad said. “And you should have Laney here. She’s safe with us. Or more like we’re safe with her.”

“We’re safe with her?” I asked.

“Just a theory I’m working on, nothing I can really talk about yet. It’s still a nebulous tangle in my brain, but either way, I’ve got a bone necklace to put on her. No dead will come anywhere near her.”

“Witch’s bone?” I asked.

“Probably better that you don’t know,” he said with a chuckle.

We got out of the car, and Dad tied the bone necklace around Laney’s waist. Once she was tucked into the baby sling, she couldn’t reach the artifact and potentially rip it off. With her secure against my chest, Meri at my feet, and my dad at my side, I turned my attention to the ancient building we’d come to explore.

“It still looks sort of abandoned,” I said. “Are you sure she lived here?”

“I think she wanted it to look that way on the outside,” Dad said. “Nice and scary to keep nosy people away.”

“Well, it’s not working on us,” I said. “Are you sure no one is here?”

“I think whoever killed her just left the lights on,” Dad said.

“That makes sense,” I said.

After all, what murderer would stop to shut the lights off on their way out? They had more important things to do like take Samara to my house and kill her. Or, if she was killed here, then transport her body to dump on my front lawn.

Several lights on the first floor and one on the second floor were left on, and the front door was open a crack. “At least we don’t have to break in,” Dad said as we made our way up the front steps.

The front porch of the house, if you could even call it that, was surrounded with tall pillars. A massive coach light hung from chains, and it was on too.

Dad stepped in front of me and pushed the front door open. He didn’t step through the threshold right away but instead we stood there listening for a moment.

When he was satisfied that one was inside, he stepped over the threshold. “There was some protection magic here, but someone broke the spell,” Dad said as I followed him inside.

“So, it was a witch,” I said.

“Unless she broke it herself for some reason,” Dad answered.

We were inside what could only be described as a grand entryway. Well, at one time, it had been grand. The marble floor was dull and dirty. The orange balustrade lining the stairs before us was the same.

There were still signs inside from when the place was a sanatorium. There was a large room off to our right that had a crumbling sign: Day Room

Samara must have been using the space as a living room because it was clean and showed signs of past remodeling. There were three newer-looking sofas placed around a wood coffee table in the middle of the room too.

“Should we split up?” I asked. “This place is pretty huge. If we need to hurry, we might have to do it separately.”

“Let’s stick together for a little while longer,” Dad said. “That appears to be her living room, so let’s see what’s the other way.”

We found our way down a hallway, past a decaying formal dining room, and ended up in a huge kitchen. It was an expansive space that had at one time been used to prepare meals for all of the patients at the sanatorium, but Samara had installed new appliances. They looked to be commercial grade, so she must have had some money.

I started poking through some of the cabinets. “Maybe I should make some cookies,” I said offhand. “You know what, I don’t know why I said that. That’s a silly idea.”

“It’s not, though,” Dad answered. “It’s actually a great idea. Can you find everything you need?”

I looked around some more in the cabinets and then checked the fridge. “I’ve got everything I need here,” I said. “You think baking cookies will draw her spirit here?”

“If she liked cookies,” Dad said. “And who doesn’t?”

I held out a bag of expensive gourmet chocolate chips. “I’m pretty sure she did. I don’t know who would buy these except a cookie connoisseur.”

“Either way, if her spirit is around, it will be drawn to the baking cookies,” Dad said. “So, it’s worth it.”

“I doubt she’s going to be able to tell us who killed her,” I said as I dragged a huge mixing bowl down from one of the cabinets.

“Here, let me get that for you,” Dad said. “Don’t want you dropping it on Laney’s head.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“She’s probably not going to be able to tell us who killed her, but she can at least tell us who might have wanted her dead,” Dad said.

“And why she broke into my shop,” I added. “And why she’s messing around with magic.”

“One thing at a time,” Dad said. “We don’t know if that’s all connected. I’m going to keep looking around, though. You’ll be all right down here? I’m going to look upstairs. See what’s in that room with the light on.”

“I’ve been in spookier places,” I said.

Dad left the kitchen and headed upstairs while I mixed all the cookie ingredients together in the bowl with a large silicone spatula. “I’m baking cookies,” I said. “We’re supposed to be communing with the dead, and I’m baking.”

“If it helps, think of them as necromancy cookies,” Meri said. “I’m going to go check out the rest of the first floor. Holler if you need me.”

“All right,” I said as I cracked the first egg into the bowl.

“Baking cookies,” I said to Laney. “This is what I’ve become.”

She cooed at me, and it made my heart constrict.

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s a good thing to become. It’s just weird to go from investigating murder and fighting the forces of evil to being left in the kitchen to make cookies. But like Meri said, it’s technically necromancy, so I can deal with it.”

“You shouldn’t be breaking the eggs right into the bowl,” the voice made me whirl around, and I nearly dropped the second egg onto the floor.

Behind me stood the mostly transparent specter of Samara Delarosa. She had her arms crossed over her chest, and her foot tapped silently, but with annoyance, on the floor.

“Samara?” I asked, but I’d seen her corpse. I knew it was her.

There was no mistaking the shock of platinum blonde hair, and high, pinched features. Her ghost was also wearing the same outfit she’d died in the night before.

“You can get shells in the batter if you break the eggs in the bowl. You need to break them into a separate bowl, and then dump them in,” she said and took a step closer.

All the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood up. The temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees in a matter of seconds. She was sucking all of the energy out of the room in order to manifest.

“Samara, I need to talk to you about who might have killed you,” I said.

“Crack the eggs into a separate bowl,” she barked at me.

Realizing that she was fixated on the cookies, and that I wasn’t going to get anything else out of her until I followed her directions, I got a smaller bowl and cracked the rest of the eggs into it.

Samara stood near me nodding her head and watching me finish the cookie dough. I shivered in the cold kitchen and hoped that my body heat kept Laney warm.

The lights began to flicker as I rolled the cookie dough into balls and put them on the pan to bake. I hoped the power wouldn’t go out.

After I closed the oven with the cookies inside, I turned to Samara and looked at her head-on. I’d been sort of watching her from my peripheral vision so that I didn’t spook her. Sometimes if the living looked too hard at the dead, then the ghost realized they had passed on. That could cause them to panic and disappear. I’d dealt with her standing over me while I made the cookies, and I wanted answers.

“Samara, I need you to tell me who might have wanted you dead,” I said.

I also wanted to ask her if she was responsible for the break-in at my shop, but I needed to take it slowly. Again, ghosts could spook easily, and it wasn’t like I’d summoned her inside of a controlled circle. She was there, in my presence, on her own accord. She opened her mouth to answer, but the voice that came out wasn’t hers.

Because it wasn’t her.

“Remy?” Thorn called from the entryway. “Kinsley, are you here too?”

Thorn had arrived, and of course he recognized Remy’s car. For a moment, I thought about running out the back door and hiding, but that would never work.

“I’m in here,” I called. “In the kitchen.”

Samara disappeared, and the temperature in the kitchen immediately began to warm up.

Thorn walked into the kitchen and stopped right after he’d crossed the threshold. He surveyed the room.

“Are you baking cookies in the dead woman’s house?” he asked. “With our baby? You brought the baby?”

I could see all of the earlier talk about embracing who I was about to fly out the window for Thorn. Then like some sort of Yuletide miracle, he slammed it shut.

His eyes narrowed and his jaw strained, but Thorn gave me an accepting nod. He walked across the kitchen, kissed me and then Laney’s head.

“I’m going to pull these cookies out of the oven, and you need to go,” he said. “Jeremy is on his way here, and we’re supposed to search the place. You and your father cannot be here for that.”

“Dad!” I called out. “We’ve gotta go!”

“I’ll go get him,” Meri said and then darted out of the kitchen.

I got Thorn an oven mitt, and he pulled the barely baked cookies out of the oven. “Pity,” he said. “These look amazing.”

“I’ll go home and make some for us,” I said. “If you’re planning on coming home, that is.”

“Why wouldn’t I be coming home?” Thorn asked with genuine confusion.

I waved my hand around the kitchen like a clumsy, drunken spokesmodel. “Because of all this…”

“I said what I said, Kinsley,” Thorn replied. “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”

“I saw the look in your eyes when you found me here,” I countered.

“I didn’t say it would always be easy, but I did mean it,” Thorn said.

“Come on,” Dad said. He’d appeared outside the kitchen.

I followed my father silently out to the car. After putting Laney in the car seat, I climbed into the passenger seat while Dad set the car to take us home the long way.

We couldn’t go back the way we came and risk passing Jeremy. So, we had to go the opposite way and then make our way back to Coventry.

“What did you find?” I asked once we were a mile away from the house. “I mean, did you find anything?”

“I got her grimoire, and I found this,” he said and pulled a little black spell bag out of his pocket.

I took it and looked inside. “So, she was the one who broke into my shop, and she somehow gave one of these to Lilith too. But Lilith didn’t kill her.”

“No,” Dad said. “But how many other witches was she tormenting? If she was hurting other witches, and one of them found out it was her, they might have taken her out.”

“So, that makes all of us a suspect,” I said. “Was that the only spell bag? If she had more of them, Jeremy might find it and put two and two together.”

“It was the only one,” Dad said. “She must have died before she could make more.”

“Well, that’s good. It will keep me from instantly becoming a suspect.”

“I need to go to the hospital and check on your mom and Lilith,” Dad said. “Are you going to be all right if I drop you off at home?”

“I should come with you,” I said.

“You don’t want to be there with the baby. It’s not going to be comfortable for either of you. Hopefully, they’ll be able to release Lilith soon. You can go visit her once we’ve taken her home,” Dad said.

“All right,” I relented. “Well, then I’ll start going through Samara’s grimoire. Perhaps I can figure out a way to counteract these spell bags. Well, first I have to figure out exactly what they are.”

“Call me if you need any help. I can come back later,” Dad said. “Actually, call me either way. Let me know if you do figure something out.”

Chapter Six

After I got home and got Laney settled, I started gathering ingredients for the chocolate chip cookies. I probably should have cracked the grimoire first and begun my research, but when the chocolate cravings hit, sometimes there’s no denying them.

That, and I was still trying to make my life as a wife and mother my priority. Most likely, it was a silly time to be worried about such a thing, but there I was.

And, I was without the chocolate chips I’d used at Samara’s house. I didn’t keep those kind on hand because we didn’t eat huge amounts of chocolate chips, but I’d hoped the house would gift them to me. Alas, Hangman’s House did not feel like indulging me.

But I was determined. Nothing but those particular gourmet morsels would do, so Laney and I were going to the grocery store. She was already fed and freshly changed, so all I had to do was grab my purse and slip into some shoes.

She cooed at me as I buckled her into the car seat. Rides seemed to be one of Laney’s favorite pastimes, if babies could have favorite hobbies. I’d read in a book that at that age, Laney wasn’t very aware and she was only beginning to show emotion, but I didn’t believe it. When I looked into her eyes, I saw something there.

Of course, sometimes, she would just spit up on me, but other times, I could swear there was a deep awareness there.

The drive to the grocery store was uneventful, and Laney was snoozing by the time we got there. The store had been slightly damaged by the tornado, but the owner’s insurance had already gotten contractors out there to fix everything.

Mann’s was a little oasis of normalcy, and because of that, they were busy. I parked far out in the lot and put Laney into her sling. She barely roused when I picked her up and was fast asleep again as we passed through the automatic doors into the store.

I was going to go right to the baking aisle and grab the chocolate chips, but there was a big sign right inside the doors advertising that Georgia peaches were on sale. I could not pass that up, so Laney and I were going to make a detour in the produce section.

For some reason, you could always count on the produce section to be reasonably empty no matter how busy the store was at the time. People did not eat enough fruits and vegetables.

It didn’t matter that I was probably going to slice those peaches and dip them in some of the melted chocolate chips. It was an amazing alternative to chocolate-covered strawberries, and at least I’d be eating a peach.

“I’ll eat one without chocolate too,” I said to Laney and kissed her head.

“Excuse me?” a man’s voice came from behind me to my right.

I turned around and, man, I was caught off guard by him at first. Thorn was one of the most gorgeous men I’d ever met, but the guy behind me at the grocery store was a close second. He was like everything beautiful about Azriel without all the dark and sinister vampire stuff.

The man smiled at me, and it lit up his ocean blue eyes. He swept his hand through a lock of dark hair that had fallen across his forehead.

“I was just talking to my baby about the peaches,” I said and felt my face turn red with scorching embarrassment.

“Oh,” he said with a self-conscious chuckle, and I could swear I saw his cheeks turn a little red too. “I’m so sorry, I thought you were saying something too me.”

“It’s okay,” I said and turned back to the peaches.

I started picking a few up and putting them into a plastic produce bag. I ended up with about twice as many as I’d intended on purchasing as I waited for him to walk away.

For whatever reason, I couldn’t look up again, so I kept cramming peaches into that thin plastic bag like they were the last ones on Earth. Finally, the man walked away, and I exhaled the breath I didn’t even know I’d been holding.

Well, that was crazy, I thought to myself and ran my hand over Laney’s soft, blonde curls.

I wrote the whole thing off as a surge of post-baby hormones, and shuffled off to the baking aisle. It was blissfully clear of the handsome stranger in his perfectly pressed navy slacks and tailored white button-down shirt. The one that fit his chest and abs like a glove, but he’d rolled up the sleeves to expose his chiseled biceps.

“Snap out of it, Kinsley,” I whispered to myself as I hurried over to the chocolate chip shelf.

The only other person in the aisle was a little old lady I recognized but didn’t know. She chuckled and smiled a huge, toothy grin at me. “I saw him too,” she said. “If he could get this old motor started, then no one would fault you for taking a second glance.”

That made me laugh too, and I instantly felt better. “Do you know who he is? I don’t recognize him at all.”

“Must be new in town,” the woman said. “Or perhaps he’s here for some of the construction.”

“He did look like he might have been an insurance type,” I said dismissively.

“Well, then I need to get my policy updated,” the woman laughed and pushed her cart out of the aisle.

I got the fancy chocolate chips, which were nine dollars a bag, and headed up to the checkout. The man did not materialize again between there and my car, and by the time I pulled into the driveway at home, I’d half convinced myself I’d imagined the entire thing. The only evidence of the exchange was the three pounds of peaches in the grocery bag with my chocolate chips.

Laney wasn’t ready to wake up yet, so I put her in the bassinet in the living room. Meri jumped in with her and snuggled against her side.

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” I said. “I might need you later, though.”

“For?” Meri asked.

“I need to go through Samara’s grimoire and see if I can find the recipe for those bags,” I said. “Seems like something you should be involved with.”

“I’ll see if there’s room in my calendar,” he snarked.

Meri closed his eyes and snuggled closer to Laney. The conversation was over, so I headed into the kitchen to make the chocolate chip cookies.

It didn’t occur to me until I saw her sitting at my kitchen table that making the cookies would summon Samara again. “You shouldn’t be here,” I said softly.

“Then why did you bring me?” she asked without getting up from the table.

“I just wanted the cookies,” I said.

“Yeah, right,” Samara’s ghost snarked at me.

“Did you do something to my Auntie?” I asked.

“If you’re going to take the time to summon the dead, you should ask better questions,” Samara said.

Freaking ghosts.

The ones still bound to the earth were usually confused, and they took way too much pleasure in doing the same to the living. Why couldn’t they just answer a question?

“Did you have something to do with the magic… issues?” I asked.

Samara laughed at me. “You’re supposed to be the most powerful witch in the world. Well, you were, anyway, and yet you think I had something to do with it? You really need to get it together, Kinsley.”

“What did you do to my aunt?” I demanded.

“Only what was asked of me,” Samara said. “The cookies are ready to go in.”

She vanished after that. When I looked down, I’d mixed the dough and dropped it into neat little rows on the baking sheet. The oven dinged to let me know it was preheated, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“You okay?” Meri asked as he sauntered into the kitchen.

“No thanks to you,” I said. “I guess until we get this magic thing fixed, any old ghost can just come sauntering into this house.”

“Maybe don’t summon them,” Meri said.

“I wasn’t summoning her. I wanted cookies,” I protested.

“You feeling all right?” Meri asked. “I find it hard to believe that it didn’t occur to you that baking her cookie recipe might summon her spirit. Especially after it did just that back at her house.”

“No,” I admitted. “I’m foggy and disoriented. I must be because I didn’t think these cookies were a summoning spell. I guess I just assumed that she appeared at her house because I was baking in her kitchen.”

“You going to put them in the oven?” he asked.

I was standing there holding the tray. “Yeah, I mean, she was already here and now she’s gone. Might as well get the cookies out of the deal.”

Cookies in the oven and timer set, I grabbed Samara’s grimoire and sat down at the kitchen table. Meri jumped up and joined me. He lay down on the table a couple of inches from the book, and I cracked it open.

The smell of dragon’s blood wafted off of the pages and filled the room around us. Whatever protection spell she’d cast on the book wasn’t enough to keep me out.

I flipped through the entire book, and while I found a bunch of spells, incantations, and cookie recipes… I didn’t find anything that correlated with the bags. “Who has a grimoire that has no spell bag recipes?” I asked.

“You don’t even have a grimoire,” Meri said.

“That’s true,” I said.

“And if you did, would you need to put spell bag recipes in there?” Meri asked.

“I mean, not really. Things mean things, so you toss them in a bag together. It’s pretty elementary, which is why I probably haven’t made a spell bag for personal use since I was a kid,” I said. “This was a bust.”

“Did you really think you were going to find something earth-shattering in there?” Meri asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I hoped so.”

“You really thought some witch you barely knew was powerful enough to blight magic?” Meri asked with a snort. “You need coffee.”

“I’m doing the best that I can,” I said and got up to make some coffee because he was right.

“What’s this?” Meri asked.

“What’s what?” I returned.

“Well, come look,” he groused.

I walked back over to the table and bent over to get a closer look at what Meri was talking about. He had his paw next to something on the last page of the grimoire.

It was a page of definitions Samara had written out for some reason. But, at the bottom in the middle were a few lines of writing that were not part of her personal glossary.

Four of the lines were scratched out with black ink so thoroughly that there was no way I could read them. The last line was as clear as day.

Mercy Cullen.

It was a name, but that wasn’t the most interesting part. Next to Mercy’s name was a doodle, but it wasn’t just any little pictograph. Samara had drawn a skull.

Chapter Seven

My phone rang as I took the cookies out of the oven. It was my mom, so I flung one of my oven mitts off, narrowly missing Meri’s head, and answered.

“Mom? How’s everything going,” I said when I put the phone up to my ear.

“They want to put Lilith in a nursing home,” she said. “Can you even imagine?”

“No, I can’t,” I said. “She can come here and stay with me. Please don’t do that.”

“We’re not going to, sweetie. And, you’re not taking her in either. You’ve got a new baby, but I’m sure she’d love you so much for offering,” Mom said.

“Then what?” I asked.

“Well, I’ve been dealing with this social worker all morning. She insists that I give the nursing home a shot and was completely unrelenting. Your father ran her out of the room,” Mom said. “We’re going to take her home, Kinsley. She needs to be somewhere familiar.”

“How is that going to work?” I asked.

“I’m going to stay with her,” Mom said. “Until we figure out how to bring her back from whatever this is, I’ll stay with her. Your father can help, and so can the other Aunties. Amelda is at the house now moving some stuff into one of the many spare rooms, so we’ll have her too.”

“You going to be okay living with Amelda?” I asked.

“I’ll be fine,” Mom said, but she took a deep, shuddering breath. “Your father will be there most of the time, so he’ll keep her entertained.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t get this figured out before it was time for her to come home,” I said.

“Kinsley, sweetie, nobody expected you to,” Mom said.

“I expected me to,” I said. “But that doesn’t matter now. I’ll meet you at her house and help you get her settled.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Mom said.

“I know that, but I want to. Plus, I think she’d like to see Laney,” I said. “Lilith was so happy when she was born, and maybe it will help. What time are you guys leaving the hospital?”

“We’re still waiting on her official discharge. I think the social worker is trying to get the doctor to agree to a conservatorship so that Lilith has to go into a home. If she doesn’t stop her meddling before Amelda gets here, I’m afraid she’s going to find out… what happens when you mess around with us,” Mom said.

“A conservatorship? Like through the courts?” I asked.

“Yeah, but it’s not going to happen. I think she’s annoying the doctor with it as much as she’s annoying me. He knows we’re capable of taking care of Lilith, but he needs to hurry up and get the paperwork done so we can get out of here,” Mom said.

“Okay, well, call or text me when I should head over that way, and Mom…”

“Yeah, honey?” For the first time I heard the weariness in Mom’s voice.

“Don’t hurt the social worker,” I said.

“I’ll try,” she said with a chuckle.

It was several hours before I heard from my mother again. Thorn was home from work. I’d spent the afternoon cleaning and making fried chicken.

“You didn’t rest at all, did you?” he asked as I put a plate of chicken and pasta salad in front of him.

“I have too much energy,” I said. “Waiting for my Mom to call about Lilith is killing me.”

“How about a movie after dinner?” Thorn asked. “We can get a new release and you can pick.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

Thorn gave Laney a bottle while I got online and rented the animated movie I’d been wanting to watch. Since I had a kid, I no longer felt silly about watching stuff like that. Even if Laney had no idea what was going on, she could still be my excuse. Plus, my nerves were too shot for anything more than some cartoon princess adventure action.

“Not a horror movie?” Thorn asked with a cocked eyebrow. “I thought you’d be all over that new zombie flick. You’ve been waiting years for a sequel, right?”

“I’m not in the right headspace for it,” I admitted. “Plus, I don’t know if I should watch that stuff with Laney around.”

“She has no idea,” Thorn said.

“We don’t know that for sure. Sometimes, I think she’s picking up on things she shouldn’t be aware of,” I said.

“I think all moms think that,” Thorn said.

“I’ll watch it myself sometime,” I said. “I can watch it on my laptop with headphones on while she’s napping. Then you don’t have to be subjected to it either.”

“I would watch it for you,” Thorn said.

“I know,” I answered, but before I could say anything else about it, my phone rang. “I’ve got to take this.” I practically jumped off the sofa.

“We’re on our way to Lilith’s place,” Mom said when I answered.

“I’ll meet you there,” I said.

When we disconnected, I went back into the living room to get Laney ready to go. I found that Thorn already had her dressed and in the sling which he helped me put over my shoulders.

“I could watch her while you go,” Thorn said.

“It’s okay,” I answered. “I think it would be good for Lilith. She’d probably like a visit.”

“I know, but I feel like I have to offer,” Thorn said.

“Well, thank you.”

“I guess I’ll just stay here and watch the rest of the movie,” Thorn said. “The cat and I can make a night of it.”

“I’m going with her,” Meri said and ran to the front door.

“I’ll watch it myself, then,” Thorn said.

“You’re really going to watch the rest of the movie?” I asked as I slipped my shoes on.

“I’m invested,” he said.

I laughed. “I didn’t think princesses were your thing.”

“Princesses are my favorite thing,” Thorn said before kissing me.

“We won’t be too late,” I said. “I just need to be there for a bit.”

“I understand,” Thorn said. “Now hurry up and get out of here so I can eat the rest of the fried chicken.”

Laney fussed a little on the drive over to Lilith’s house. I was worried that it was some sort of bad omen, but it turned out she was just hungry.

As soon as we got inside, I turned on all of the lights on the first floor. I’d intended to make it bright and cheery for Lilith when she arrived, but that was nearly impossible. Even with all of the lights on, there were still shadows everywhere.

It was a nice night, so I ended up sitting on the front porch and giving Laney a bottle while we waited. Meri kept himself busy down in the grass stalking something. Sometimes he could be such a cat.

Laney had just finished her bottle when my Mom’s car turned into the driveway. I went down the front steps and out to the car.

Mom took Laney and burped her while Dad and I got Lilith into the house. She immediately decided she was hungry too, and I took it as a good sign.

“I’ll make her something,” I said as Lilith sat down in her parlor.

“Some tea too,” Lilith called after me as I made my way to her kitchen. “Now, give me that baby,” she said to my mother.

“Coming right up,” I said.

I went into the kitchen and put a kettle of water on the stove. While it heated, I checked the pantry for tea. Lilith had about a million different varieties. Some of them were labeled with nothing more than little doodles.

If I made her a cup of the mental focus mushroom tea, she’d know. It would probably tick her off too. In the end, I went with a nice cup of honey vanilla chamomile. She probably needed to relax after such a harrowing experience. There was no way Lilith got enough rest in the hospital. No one ever does.

I plucked the bag from a lovely white box with a picture of a chamomile flower on it and set it next to a clean cup on the counter. The water would take a while longer to heat up, so I went to the fridge to grab sandwich makings.

As soon as I opened the door, my heart sank into my stomach. There on the top shelf was a huge plate full of chocolate chip cookies.

I grabbed the plate and took it into the parlor. “Where did you get these?” I asked Lilith.

She looked a little taken aback and I realized I’d sounded panicked. I needed to dial it back a notch because I didn’t want to get her agitated.

“Sorry,” I said and nervously straightened out the hem of my shirt. “It’s just that I know you don’t bake.”

Dad came through the door just then, and he saw the cookies in my hands. Our eyes locked, and he knew why I wore a mask of anxiety.

“I found them on the front porch,” Lilith said. “I’ve never been one to turn down chocolate.”

“Lilith, didn’t you think it was strange that someone left you cookies on your porch?” Mom asked her gently.

“Maybe, but there was a note,” Lilith said.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“I left it…” Lilith stopped to think. I could see some of the light retreating from her eyes. She was going back into the fugue state she’d been in before. “I left it on the dining room table.”

I rushed into the dining room and located the note. She’d placed it on top of a pile of unopened mail. Dad joined me, but I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to find.

It wasn’t as if Samara was going to use the cookies to cast a spell on Lilith and then leave a note outlining her plan. Plus, as far as I’d been able to figure, the cookies were a spell to summon the dead.

Thank you for stopping in the other day. I look forward to more fascinating conversations in the future.

“Stop in where?” I asked Dad.

He took the note from me and looked it over. Once he double-confirmed that it wasn’t signed, he took the piece of sky blue paper into Lilith.

“Lilith, who is this from?” Dad asked. “Who did you go see?”

“I...” she said before more of her awareness retreated from her eyes. “I don’t remember. I just know that when I saw the note, I knew it was fine to take the cookies. They were from a new friend.”

“We need you to remember,” Dad prodded.

“Remy,” Mom chastised.

“I know,” he said and gave her a pleading look. “But we have to know.”

“I need to lie down,” Lilith said, and she sounded utterly exhausted.

“Okay, Lilith. I’ll help you to bed,” Mom said.

“What about food and tea?” I asked.

“Could you bring the tea to my room?” Lilith asked my mother.

“I can,” she said and helped Lilith get back up from her chair.

“I’m not so hungry anymore,” Lilith said.

“I’ll finish making the tea,” I said.

Mom left the room with Lilith, and Dad took Laney. He and I went back into the kitchen where I pitched the cookies in the trash, just to be safe, and finished making the tea.

“You’re throwing them out?” Dad asked.

“I think it’s the safest thing to do. If she’s been eating them, that’s what could be causing this. She can’t eat any more, so they have to go,” I said.

“I agree,” Dad said. “But I was thinking… those cookies are a summoning spell, right?”

“I think so,” I said.

“So, why would they be causing what’s going on with her?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet,” I said. “But Amelda and the other Aunties are fine, right? So, it’s not the reduced magic that’s causing this in Lilith.”

“Unless it’s just hitting her harder for reasons we don’t understand yet,” Dad said.

“Still, the cookies need to go in the trash,” I said. Just then, Laney began to fuss a little. “I’ll take her.”

“And I’ll take the tea to Lilith and help your mom get her settled for the night. You take the baby home, Kinsley. Go home to your husband and enjoy your family,” Dad said.

“I don’t know how I can with all of this going on,” I said.

“You have to, sweetie. You only get this short time with your baby girl, and you’ll never get it back,” Dad said. “Lilith would not want you to waste it.”

“I’m not wasting it,” I said.

“It will be gone just the same,” Dad replied.

He was right. Thorn, Laney, and I would never get this time again. Plus, I was exhausted. I’d been tired before all of this started, but my fatigue had only grown.

“Will you call me if you need me?” I asked.

“Of course,” Dad said.

We finished saying our goodbyes, and I headed out to my car. On my way down the sidewalk, I could have sworn I heard someone rustling the branches in a huge lilac bush across the driveway.

I heard it again, and I looked between the car and the bush. I had to decide what to do. Everything in me wanted to go see what was making noise in the bush, but I knew I should put Laney in the car and leave. Or go back in the house.

Or call the police.

Anything but walk over to the bush and investigate. Fortunately, I didn’t have to investigate myself. Meri darted off in the direction of the bush.

After a minute, Meri returned. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry.

“There’s no one there,” Meri said when he trotted back.

“Oh, good. It must have been a raccoon or something,” I said.

“Not unless the raccoon is wearing boots,” Meri said.

“What?”

“There are boot prints on the other side of the bush,” Meri said. “They retreat off into the grass, so I can’t follow them.”

“Is the grass flattened? Maybe we could follow that,” I said.

“Kinsley, you have a baby in a sling. You’re exhausted. Oh, and you’re not some sort of tracker. You need to go home,” Meri said.

“We should at least call the police,” I said. “But we don’t know how long those footprints have been there. Someone was for sure out here before, so it could be from then. I mean, I thought I heard something…but…”

“Let’s go home, Kinsley,” Meri said.

“All right,” I relented.

I got Laney buckled in and got into the car. As soon as I did, Meri said, “Lock the doors and pull out of the driveway.”

“What?”

“Just do it, Kinsley,” Meri said.

“Okay, okay,” I said and did as he instructed.

As soon as we were halfway down the block, I pulled over. “What was that?” I asked.

“Call the police and tell them someone is outside of Lilith’s house,” Meri said.

“You said they were gone,” I said.

“Yeah, because they were listening,” Meri said. “He was hiding in the shadows next to the house. I wasn’t sure if you could make it back inside, but call the police. I was trying to hint to you that you were in danger without… I don’t know. I wanted to get you away. But, he’s really still there, and you need to call for help.”

So, I did. I called the dispatcher and told her that I thought I’d seen a prowler outside of Lilith’s house. I wanted to go back, but when I called my dad to tell him, he insisted I go home.

He said he would make sure all of the doors and windows were locked, and then while I drove, Dad called Thorn and told him to meet me outside when I got home.

Thorn came out the front door as I pulled into the driveway. “Do you need to go?” I asked.

“No, my deputies can handle it,” Thorn said. “I’m not leaving you.”

We went inside, and I told Thorn about hearing the rustling in the bush and about how Meri had lied to get me in the car. As I talked and paced in front of the fire, Thorn held Laney against his chest and rocked her to sleep.

“Smart thinking cat,” Thorn said. “Come on, sweetie. Laney’s out. Let’s go to bed.”

“I can’t go to bed right now. I have to know if my family is okay,” I said. “Plus, I’m too wound up.”

But even as I said the words, I felt myself slump. I hit a wall hard.

“You know that if anything happens, not only will your family call you, but my deputies will call me. I’m going to leave one of them patrolling Lilith’s neighborhood for the rest of the night. Now, come to bed,” Thorn said.

There was a time when the commanding edge in his voice would have ticked me off and made me want to do the exact opposite. That night it was a comfort. I could lean into his need to protect me, and maybe… just let him.

I woke up twice in the middle of the night. Once, Meri was on the windowsill watching outside with wide eyes. When I started to get up, he told me to go back to sleep. I didn’t want to, but I was so exhausted that my eyes closed on their own.

The next time I woke, Thorn and Meri were watching out the window. “I just needed to feed the baby,” Thorn said as he held Laney and patted her back.

“Then why are you watching out the window?” I asked as I raised myself up on my elbows.

“The stars are beautiful,” he said. “Go back to sleep, babe.”

I wanted to argue, but again, I could not. If you asked me, though, I would have sworn they were watching something, or someone, outside.

Chapter Eight

The next morning, Thorn was reluctant to go to work. It made me even more suspicious that he and Meri had seen someone outside the night before.

“I probably won’t stay here much today,” I said. “I want to go check on Reggie at the shop, and I’d like to go visit my parents and Lilith. So, I won’t be around at home. Why are you so worried about going into work?”

“You know why,” he said. “There was no one around by the time my deputies got to Lilith’s house last night, but I believe the cat. Someone was there. Someone is stalking your family.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Thorn asked in return, and I knew. His answering a question with a question was a clear deflection, and he knew as soon as he did it that I’d picked up on his attempt. “Fine, I did think I saw someone last night. Kinsley was fussy and needed a change. You were so tired, so I got up to feed her and change her diaper. When I did, I thought I saw something outside. The cat saw it too, and he’d been keeping watch. But, you already know all of this, don’t you?”

“You should have just told me last night,” I said.

“Why, so we could both sit up all night staring out the window?” Thorn asked. “Besides, Meri and I only thought we saw something. Shadows and bushes moving. Stuff that made me look twice, but it was never enough for me to call my deputy away from Lilith’s house. Maybe you should come with me this morning. I could drop you off somewhere. The shop or Lilith’s house?” Thorn asked.

I thought about it for a moment. “No, I can’t,” I said. “I have to be able to be at home, Thorn. I can be out and about most of the time, but I can’t keep Laney away from home all day. She’s so young, and it would be nearly impossible.”

“You could pack a bag and stay at Lilith’s all day,” he suggested.

“She needs to get better too,” I said. “I think having the baby there all day would be too much.”

He finally relented and went to work. I sent him off with a full Thermos of coffee and the chicken he hadn’t eaten the night before. There wasn’t much left after he’d had at it while I was gone, but it was enough with some biscuits for a decent breakfast.

After Meri and I had our morning meal, I got Laney’s diaper bag ready to go, and we headed out. Only, I didn’t go to Lilith’s house or the shop.

It wasn’t that I was lying to Thorn. I really did intend to go to both of those places, but I had somewhere else I needed to stop off first.

Mercy Cullen worked at one of the construction offices in the new section of town. I found that out fairly easily by looking her up on social media, and decided that I needed to drop in on her for a chat.

She was on the phone when I walked into the office, so I sat down in an uncomfortable metal chair and waited. Laney slept against my chest none the wiser to the fact that we were on an investigation.

“You’re Kinsley… Wilson,” Mercy said when she hung up the phone. “What brings you in today?” There was a bright smile painted on her face, but her voice cracked a little. She knew who I was, and it made her nervous for some reason.

Now, it could have just been because a woman had been found dead on my front lawn. I had no way of knowing if people suspected me, and I didn’t get out enough to hear any rumors.

“I wanted to talk to you about Samara,” I said.

“Oh,” Mercy said. She grabbed a can of Diet Coke from her desk and took a huge gulp. “I had hoped you were thinking of building a new house.”

The defeat in her voice was evident. Tears began to glisten in her eyes, and Mercy grabbed a tissue to dab them away.

“Is anyone around?” I asked.

“Why?” she asked and flinched. “I mean, no. It’s just me in the office most days.”

“Because I want to talk to you about Samara,” I said.

“If I’m being honest, I knew you’d come,” Mercy said.

“She had your name written in her grimoire,” I said. “In the back with other things, but I don’t know what they were. She’d scratched the rest of the list out, but your name was there. Oh, and she’d drawn a skull next to your name. Do you know what that’s about?”

Mercy took a deep breath. “Samara and I were very close,” she said. “I mean, we were at one point. We’d been best friends since high school, but she changed.”

“She changed?” I encouraged her after she got quiet and sort of spaced out.

“Yeah. It was pretty abrupt too,” Mercy said. “Before she was a happy person who was kinda into spooky stuff, but her obsession with ghosts and Halloween never made me think she was depressed.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” I said. Most of us were into spooky stuff.

“But it became something darker,” Mercy said. “She became… darker.”

“What do you think happened?” I asked. “What brought it on? Do you know?”

“When the magic went away,” Mercy said. “We’re both witches, but you already knew that. Anyway, I never realized how much of Samara was dependent on that. It became apparent when we could barely do spells anymore.”

“She didn’t take it well?” I asked.

“Not at all,” Mercy said. “It was like her whole identity was gone. Samara thought that her magical skills were the only thing that made her special. She was adrift and couldn’t seem to cope or adjust.”

“But you’re doing okay?” I asked.

“I have to be,” Mercy said with a shrug. “Samara’s death has hit me hard, but I know death isn’t the end. That helps. I’ll see her again.”

“So that was it?” I asked. It was a sad story, but it wasn’t particularly helpful.

“No. She got super depressed the first week, but then she withdrew completely. Honestly, when I heard she was dead, I thought she’d committed suicide,” Mercy said.

“Wow, really?” I asked. “And you have no idea what brought it all on?”

“I don’t,” she said. “One day she was… well, she wasn’t fine, but she was still taking my calls and answering my texts. Then she went to the grocery store to get more chocolate chips and some hamburgers, and everything changed. She wouldn’t talk to me for a couple of days, and then she pretty much told me to leave her alone.”

“I’m sorry,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say. “I wish there was some way of knowing what happened.”

“She kept all of her secrets close,” Mercy said. “Even I didn’t know everything about her, but she let me in more than most. I think that’s one of the reasons she loved that old house so much. It kept people away. Sure, kids would go out there at night and dare each other to break in, but none of them were ever brave enough. Everyone thought the place was haunted. Which it totally is, but where around here isn’t?”

“I assume you were brave enough to break in,” Mercy said, but there was no accusation in her voice. She apparently still respected my Coven’s authority.

“I did go in,” I said.

“So, did you find the grimoire in her chest?” Mercy asked. “I always wondered where she kept that thing. She’d never let me look.”

“Her chest?” I asked.

“It’s where she kept all the things she really wanted to keep a secret. I don’t think she knew I knew about it, but it was behind a false wall in her bedroom closet. I figured that’s where she’d keep the grimoire, but it wasn’t there?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I had someone with me when I went into her house. They are actually the one who found it.”

“Maybe the reason she changed so much is in that chest,” Mercy said. “I’d be willing to bet it is. If it’s anywhere, it’s there. I’d go look myself, but I doubt I could get away with it. I’m not connected like you.”

“I’d prefer it if you let me and my family handle this anyway,” I said.

“Understood,” Mercy said with a head nod. “I hope your aunt feels better soon. I’ve heard about… the trouble she’s having.”

“How did Samara feel about my family?” I asked.

“Wait, you don’t think Samara had something to do with what’s going on with your aunt?” Mercy asked.

“I’m pretty sure the whole town thinks that,” I said. “Either that or they think my aunt is the one who killed Samara.”

“So, it’s true then?” Mercy asked. “I’d heard that your aunt was found with a knife near the body, but someone put out the word that it wasn’t true. Someone’s been telling people that your aunt was found on the other side of town. Besides, Samara wasn’t stabbed.”

“I know,” I said.

“Right. You were the one who found her. Sorry,” Mercy said.

“It’s all right.” I actually hadn’t known until the next day how she died. “I should go,” I said when Laney started to fuss. “Thank you for your help.”

“You’re welcome, Kinsley. Please let me know if there’s anything your family needs,” Mercy said.

That seemed a little over the top, but she was grieving her best friend. There was also a good chance she wanted to join my family’s Coven. We did that sometimes, but not often. It would take a lot more than kissing my butt.

On my way out to my car, I began to formulate a plan. I needed to go back to Samara’s house and look for her hidden trunk. The plan, if you could call it that, was basically to blow off going into the shop and going to Lilith’s place and instead head straight over to Samara’s house.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but I told myself Lilith would approve. The last thing she would have wanted if she were in her right mind was all of us hanging around her house acting like she was dying.

My mother, father, and great-grandmother had the situation under control, so I pulled out of the parking lot and drove straight to Samara’s house. What I wasn’t prepared to find was another body.

Chapter Nine

That was the first time in my life that I’d had an entire conversation with a ghost and not known it. Mercy hadn’t known either because she gave no hint that she had any memory of being killed.

But as soon as I pulled up in front of Samara’s house, I found her. She was sprawled out on the front porch face down. It was obvious to me that she’d tried to get away.

Her car was around the side of the house with the driver’s side door open and the radio on. She’d only intended to run into the house and right back out.

My hand shook as I called Thorn. Meri sat on the dash looking out the front of the car for any sign of movement in the house.

“The doors are locked for sure?” he asked as I waited for Thorn to pick up his phone.

“They are,” I said.

“Maybe we should go somewhere else and make the call,” Meri said.

Thorn picked up before I could answer him. “What is it, sweetie?” he asked.

“I’m out in front of Samara’s house. Mercy Cullen is on the front porch, and she’s dead,” I said. “You have to come right now.”

“Are you there now?” Thorn asked.

“I am,” I said. “But I’m in the car with the doors locked. Please come quickly.”

“Kinsley, you need to get out of there,” Thorn said. “You know the killer could still be there.”

“I will,” I said. “I’ll drive down the road or something.”

“You’ll go home,” Thorn said. “Or to your aunt’s house where you’re supposed to be right now anyway. I want you around people. Kinsley, I mean it.”

“Okay,” I said. But then I saw it. “Oh, no.”

“What is it?” Thorn asked.

In a flash of fuzzy black fur, Meri was at the driver’s door pawing at the window trying to get me to open the door and let him out. He saw it too.

“Oh, gawd, Thorn. She moved. She’s still alive. I have to help her. I really thought she was dead.”

“Kinsley,” Thorn’s voice had a warning edge, but even he didn’t know what to say.

“Get here as fast as you can, and call an ambulance too,” I said and then hung up.

Whatever the danger, I couldn’t just let her lay there like that. I had to help. I left Laney in the car with the air conditioning and radio on and locked all the doors again as I ran up to the porch.

Was that why neither Mercy nor I had known she was a ghost? Could she have been so close to death that her spirit had left her body, but she was still tethered to this world somehow? It had to happen, right? Like when people die in the hospital and then see themselves on the table with doctors and nurses hovering over them. Except, Mercy’s spirit had gone into work.

That was a sad commentary on our lives. I hoped that when I passed on, I didn’t end up a confused spirit forever stuck at my job.

I shuddered as I knelt down next to Mercy. Her body twitched again, and then she turned her head toward me.

Her eyes were milky white, one of the reasons I’d believed she was dead when I drove up, but the haze faded out of them like she was coming back. Back from the dead? Back from the brink? I didn’t know. I just wanted to help her if I could.

“Mercy, where are you hurt?” I asked as Meri circled her, sniffing and pawing at her.

But that was obvious. There was an angry purple bruise encircling her neck.

“Kinsley, she’s dead,” Meri said as he backed away from her quickly.

“Obviously, she’s not,” I said.

“What is your problem, cat?” Mercy asked in a low, gravely voice that sounded nothing like her.

Just then, she sprang up. Like as in, she went from sprawled out on the porch to standing completely straight in one stiff movement.

“Oh, crap,” I said.

“Kinsley, get away from her,” Meri said.

But Mercy wasn’t looking at me. I followed her line of sight, and my blood turned to ice. She was staring at my car.

Mercy began to sniff the air. “Life, especially the new kind, has a particularly beautiful aroma,” she said and took a rigid step.

“You stay away from my baby,” I said and shoved past her.

It wasn’t lost on me that Mercy felt cold when my shoulder made contact with her. No living person should have felt that cold.

Meri ran behind me as I sprinted for the car. Well, in my mind I was sprinting with everything I had, but I’d just had a baby. Not only was I not moving as fast as I wanted, but I was so winded that I nearly puked when I reached the car.

I practically threw myself into the driver’s seat, and Meri jumped into my lap, as Mercy took plodding steps down the front stairs. She almost looked like a marionette doll being controlled by a hyper child.

“What do I do?” I asked.

“Get out of here,” Meri said.

I hit the home button on my car, and it began the process of turning around. All the while, Mercy was coming down the steps and making her way across the space between the porch and my car.

Instead of doing a three-point turn, the car executed a big arc that took us within inches of Mercy. She reached out and tried to grab on, but instead stumbled forward and fell to her knees.

She still appeared to be trying to right herself again as my car turned and drove off down the road. About halfway back to the highway, Thorn’s cruiser approached.

He slowed to a stop, and so did I. “You have to be careful,” I said. “She’s not dead, but there’s something… wrong with her.”

“Go home,” Thorn said. “Backup is coming, but you get out of here. I love you.”

He rolled up his window and sped off. I couldn’t go home, though. I was too frazzled, and I needed to think, or talk, through what had just happened. None of it made any sense.

So, I headed to Lilith’s.

When I got there, Mom, Dad, and Lilith were seated around her breakfast table having tea and raspberry scones. It was an incredibly normal scene that made me think for a moment that I was dreaming the whole time.

“Lilith?” I asked as I put Meri down on the floor. I’d carried him inside in my bag since I had Laney’s sling on. The baby was on one side and Meri in my purse on the other.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she demanded, and I felt the knot of tension in my chest I’d been living with the last couple of days release.

“What is going on?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Mom said. “A little while ago, she just… returned to us.”

“Really?” I asked Lilith. “You’re okay?”

“I’m fine, dear, but I’m not going to be if you keep on with that worried expression on your face. You’re going to give yourself wrinkles,” she said. “When you finally come to your senses and divorce that boring do-gooder, you’re going to need to look as young as possible. That shmexy vampire, who I cannot for the life of me figure out why you dumped, is going to look young forever.”

Lilith was back.

“Auntie Lilith, he tried to have me killed,” I said, and I almost laughed with relief.

She waved me off. “Have a scone, darling.”

“Who made them?” I was suspicious even though my father had just taken a huge bite of one of the pastries.

“I did,” Mom said. “Don’t worry.”

“I have to know what happened to you, Lilith,” I said. “How did you end up like that? Do you remember anything about the night Samara died? Why were you on my street with a knife?”

“Whoa,” Dad said. “Slow down, sweetie. Please sit down and at least have some coffee or tea. You look like you’ve been through some things yourself.”

He was right, but I’d completely forgotten about the incident with Mercy at Samara’s house as soon as I saw Lilith. “I went out to Samara’s house to look again, and Mercy Cullen was dead on her front porch,” I said as I sat down at the table and Lilith poured me a cup of tea. “Except she wasn’t. She got up looking all… weird… and came after me.”

“She didn’t go after you,” Meri said.

“You’re right. She actually wanted to go after the baby,” I said. “She acted like she wanted Laney.”

“You’re leaving something important out,” Meri said.

“Do you want to tell the story?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said and jumped into Lilith’s lap. “Just want to make sure you get all the important bits.”

So, I told them about how less than an hour before I’d discovered Mercy, I’d been at her work talking to her. My folks and Lilith thought it was unusual that I’d been speaking with a spirit and not known it, but it wasn’t completely unheard of either.

Chapter Ten

Ultimately, nobody knew what happened with Lilith, and for the time being, they were just glad to have her back. I stayed long enough to have a cup of tea and a scone, but I was exhausted.

Thorn hadn’t really wanted me to be home alone, but what could I do? I wasn’t up to hanging around with my family even though they were all in good spirits. As soon as it got out that Lilith was feeling better, Amelda had all the Aunties coming over for an impromptu party.

Mom whispered to me that no one would think badly of me if I took Laney home so we could both get some rest. Lilith promised to drop by with Mom in the next couple of days to spend some quiet time with the baby.

So, I went home. When I pulled into the driveway, Meri insisted that I sit in the car with the doors locked while he swept the perimeter. He even said it that way.

“I’m going to do a perimeter sweep,” he said as he pawed at my driver’s door. That was his way of telling me to open it.

“You’ve been watching too many action movies,” I said with a chuckle.

“You want me to do the perimeter sweep or not?” he snarked.

“Okay, fine,” I said as I opened the door for him to jump out. “Thank you,” I called after him before shutting and relocking the door.

The only acknowledgment I got was a flick of his little tail before he took off to walk around the house. It only took him about three minutes to walk all the way around the house and garage.

When he was done, Meri walked up onto the porch and plopped down at the top of the steps. I took that as his all-clear sign.

I took Laney out of her car seat, and we headed inside. After kicking off my shoes, I got the baby settled and went into the kitchen to make coffee. I fed Meri some precooked bacon and made myself a sandwich. I’d had a scone at Lilith’s, but I was tired, hungry, and needed something more substantial than pastries and tea.

“This isn’t as good as one of Viv’s sandwiches,” I said to Meri as I sat down to eat.

“That thick-cut bacon she makes is amazing too,” Meri said.

“I’ve been neglecting everything, haven’t I?” I asked.

“Kinsley, you just had a baby. If anything, you’re taking on too much,” Meri said in an unexpected moment of encouragement.

“I didn’t go into the shop today,” I said. “And when was the last time I saw Viv?”

“Reggie is fine,” Meri said. “Until the tourists come back, there’s not a ton for her to do. And Viv understands. Everybody knows you just had a baby, and they are dealing with their own stuff too.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I should call Dorian, though. He hasn’t dropped by since I had the baby. I need to make sure he knows he can.”

“With his husband finally home, he’s probably getting a lot of work done on his novel,” Meri said with a flick of his tail. “That and he’s been really good about keeping people updated on the post-tornado goings-on via the newspaper’s website. See, the world is not falling apart because you need to put yourself and your baby first,” Meri said.

“Wow, when you put it that way, it makes me sound like I think a little too highly of myself,” I said.

“That’s not what I meant,” Meri said. “But if that’s how you feel, then…”

“So, I guess our little bonding moment is over then,” I said with a sigh.

“Whatever,” Meri said and scampered off to the living room, presumably to check on or nap with Laney in her bassinet.

I texted Thorn for an update and he responded with a message that he was fine, he’d be home for dinner, and we’d talk about the Mercy thing then. I’d wanted way more information than that, but at least he was safe. Being home, safe at Hangman’s House, I started to feel guilty for leaving Thorn alone to deal with Mercy Cullen, but he was the sheriff.

The guilt and anxiety of the situation would have eaten away at me, but I channeled it into deep cleaning the kitchen. By the time Thorn got home from work, it smelled beautiful, and the floor was so clean that not only could you eat off of it, the wood planks practically sparkled.

“You didn’t rest, did you?” Thorn asked as he walked through the front door and took off his hat.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I can smell your favorite lemon oil kitchen cleaner,” he said.

“I have so much to tell you,” I said. “But first you have to tell me if Mercy is okay.”

“Let me order a pizza, and then we’ll talk,” Thorn said.

“Dinner! Oh, man. I got so into cleaning that I didn’t make anything,” I said.

“It’s fine,” Thorn replied. “I’m going to order a pizza and take a shower. I promise we’ll talk about everything.”

I wanted to push for information, but Thorn seemed like he needed some time to unwind. I also didn’t notice until he said he needed a shower that he was kind of stinky.

After he undressed, I put his uniform in the wash and tended to Laney. She woke up shortly after Thorn got home, and I used the time he was showering to get her a bottle and diaper change.

The pizza arrived, and I tipped the driver. He handed me the pizza, breadsticks, and a manila envelope. “Coupons?” I asked.

“Yeah, coupons,” the obviously oblivious and unconcerned teenager said with a shrug. “Guess it’s a thing we’re doing now.”

He left and I set the envelope aside. It felt like a cozy night by the fire kind of evening, so I put the pizza and breadsticks down on the coffee table and set Laney’s bouncer up on the floor between the sofa and the fireplace.

“Beer or wine?” I called up to Thorn when I heard him leave the bathroom and walk around our bedroom.

“Beer, if you don’t mind,” he called back down.

I retrieved a beer from the fridge for Thorn and debated about whether I wanted a glass of wine. On one hand, wine and pizza did go together nicely, but on the other, what if something happened to Laney? In the end, I was too nervous about potential emergencies and both of us drinking. So, I grabbed myself a Coke.

“No wine?” Thorn asked. He was coming down the stairs while I put our drinks on the coffee table with the food.

“No, Coke’s good for me tonight,” I said. “Let me grab some napkins and we’re ready to roll.”

“I’ll grab the napkins,” Thorn said. “Please sit down and rest.”

“You worked all day,” I protested.

“And so did you,” Thorn said. “Not at the shop, though. Do I even want to ask what you were doing out at Samara Delarosa’s house?”

“I went to talk to Mercy Cullen at her work today,” I said as we sat down on the sofa. “She said Samara kept a chest full of secrets there, and I couldn’t resist. Mercy didn’t know why her name was in Samara’s grimoire with a skull drawn next to it, but I’d hoped to find answers at Samara’s place.”

“Okay, wait,” Thorn said. “Samara’s grimoire? Where did you get that? And also, Mercy Cullen was dead at Samara’s house, so how did you talk to her at her job?”

“She wasn’t dead, though,” I protested. “She was hurt very badly, but she wasn’t dead.”

“Kinsley, she was,” Thorn said. “She was as dead as a doornail and had been since sometime last night.”

I could feel the color drain from my face. “Then what was that?” I asked more as a rhetorical question. “She came to life. She was going to go after Laney, but I had her locked securely in the car.”

“That’s more your department than mine,” Thorn said, but his voice was soft. He took my hand and squeezed. “And the grimoire?”

“Stole it from Samara’s house the day you found me and Dad there,” I said and held my breath in anticipation of his inevitable displeasure.

“You stole it from a potential crime scene,” he said, but his tone was still gentle, and his hand still holding mine.

“I did,” I said.

“Do you want to start with pepperoni or Hawaiian?” he asked before opening the pizza boxes.

“Wait? You’re not going to get mad?” I asked. “You don’t have anything to say?”

“What would I say?” he asked. “My department isn’t going to treat that grimoire as actual evidence. No one would take it seriously enough because they won’t understand its meaning or significance. We’ve got little chance of solving this thing, so what can I do? I’m trying to stay out of your way and keep my deputies clear too.”

“You’re not going to get mad at me for taking Laney?” I asked.

“Should I?” Thorn returned.

“I’m safer when she’s with me,” I said.

“I gathered that,” Thorn said.

“But you’re not mad because you think I’m putting her in danger?” I asked.

“I think that’s more your feeling than mine,” he said. “If you’re safer with her, then she’s safer with you. Plus, whoever killed Samara isn’t just in one particular location. Heck, they’ve been to Lilith’s and I think they’ve been here. I may only be a small-town cop, but I know enough to know that you take a risk every time you step out your front door. However, the criminals are responsible for their crimes, not you. I’m not going to wrap you in bubble wrap and lock you away here. So, do you want to start with pepperoni or Hawaiian?”

“Pepperoni,” I said.

“I want ham,” Meri pipped in.

“You don’t eat pizza, cat,” Thorn retorted.

“Whatever,” was Meri’s reply.

He got some ham.

Chapter Eleven

It was a lovely night, so Thorn took Laney out for a stroller ride. I would have gone with them, but fatigue was pulling at me like quicksand.

I’d spent too much energy deep cleaning the kitchen, and I desperately needed rest. At least I felt like I could finally get some. A few days before, I was so tired but also constantly wired.

Actual danger seemed to be the thing that did it for me. Instead of all of the imaginary things that could go wrong, I had something to focus on. It did wonders for my mental health.

Since I wasn’t going along, Thorn took the jogging stroller. He didn’t get to run every morning anymore because he’d get up with Laney and let me sleep a few extra minutes.

I appreciated it, but I could tell he was itching to run. “See, it’s a good thing you’re going without me. If you ever catch me running, you’d better look behind me for a bear,” I said on his way out the door.

As much as I wanted a hot shower and to collapse into bed, I needed to put the leftovers away first. I combined the slices into one box, and put it in the fridge. The other box went into the garbage bin, and I was almost ready to go upstairs.

But that envelope of coupons was still on the coffee table. The pizza place had done coupons before, but it had been a colorful, glossy advertisement they taped to the box.

Anxiety prickled the back of my brain. Why would they put coupons in a manila envelope?

I grabbed the envelope off the coffee table and opened it. Inside was a sheet of white paper and not one coupon.

It was a letter.

Dear Meddling Witch,

I’d say that I hope this letter finds you well, but that would be a lie. What I do hope is that you understand what this means.

I can get to you.

I folded up the paper, put it back in the envelope, and waited by the front door for Thorn to return.

“What is it?” Meri asked when he noticed me still standing there after five minutes.

He’d been asleep on the hearth and hadn’t asked me what the letter was about. I wondered if it was because he was drowsy or because Thorn hadn’t taken him along on the jog.

I told him what the letter said, and he joined me by the door. “I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t go with them,” Meri groused. “What is he thinking going out jogging in the dark when there is a maniac on the loose?”

I shot him a look.

“You should call him,” Meri said. “Maybe he’ll run back faster.”

“I don’t want to panic him,” I said. “I’m sure it’s fine. The letter has to be to mess with me. Otherwise, why have it delivered with the pizza? Why not just leave it on the porch? Or knock on the door and hand it to me?”

“Dude, I don’t know,” Meri said. “Maybe you’ve just got the world’s dumbest stalker.”

Thorn was gone for around twenty minutes, during which time I took the letter out of the envelope and reread it several times. What bothered me the most was why they had sent it with the pizza? It didn’t make any sense to go through all of that trouble when they could have just left it on the porch or on the windshield of my car.

Why leave another witness?

A witness.

I needed to talk to that kid and find out who gave him the envelope. Obviously, it wasn’t coupons and he didn’t get it from the pizza place, so he’d seen the person.

Thorn came back through the front door and practically made me jump out of my skin. “What? What is it?”

I handed him the letter. “It came with the pizza,” I said. “The delivery driver said it was coupons, but obviously it’s not.”

“I’m going to go ask him about this,” Thorn said. “I want you to come with me. You guys can stay in the car while I go into the restaurant and speak to the kid.”

“You can’t, Thorn,” I replied. “It says I’m a witch.”

“It could just be a derogatory slur. Certainly, doesn’t prove you’re a witch,” he said. “Besides, the veil still works at least somewhat, right?”

He was referring to the veil of magic that kept the nonmagical residents of Coventry from seeing the paranormal things going on around them. It was still partially intact, so Thorn was right. The kid would never suspect that I was really a witch.

The trip to the pizza place was a bust other than the manager felt bad and gave Thorn a couple of actual coupons for free pizza. I sat in the car with Meri and Laney while Thorn went inside and talked to the delivery kid first followed by the manager.

Apparently, the kid had no idea who gave him the envelope because nobody really gave it to him. There was a staging counter where they got their deliveries ready, and when he picked up the pizzas to bring to our house, the envelope was on top of them. When I’d asked if they were coupons, the kid didn’t so much as lie as he just didn’t care enough to even think about it. I said they were coupons, and he just wanted to get to the next delivery.

The manager took Thorn in the back to review security footage, but the camera that watched that part of the store was over the entry door. The man who left the envelope was wearing a black hoodie. He came into the pizza place, waited until one of the workers called out our order, reached over the counter and put the envelope on our stack of pizzas, and then left without showing his face to the camera.

“How did he know that we were ordering pizza from there?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Thorn said. “I wonder if security cameras would work at our house now that the magic has chilled out.”

You would have thought that we’d have security cameras at Hangman’s House, but every time Thorn tried, and he’d been trying since we were dating, the magical energy around the house would fry them.

“You could try,” I said. “Do you want me to go to the store tomorrow and get some?”

“That would be great,” he said and kissed my knuckles.

The next day, I did exactly as I promised. I went to the electronics store in the city and got enough security cameras to watch the entire exterior of the house, the garage, and the yard.

Thorn had wanted to install them himself, but I was bored. So, I put Laney in her stroller, got a ladder, and spent the rest of the day attaching them in the suggested locations included in the directions.

Once they were installed, I set up the app on my phone and laptop, and started looking at all the feeds. When I was satisfied that I’d done it all correctly, I sent the link for the app and our camera feeds to Thorn’s phone.

It meant that we could both watch the cameras from inside the house or anywhere using our phones. After a few hours, I checked them again, and they still worked.

Since I was fairly certain that my magic, and the house’s powers, weren’t going to kill the cameras, I called my dad.

“I got some security cameras to actually work,” I said. “The reduction in magic means they don’t die. I’ve had mine installed for a while, and they are still going strong.”

Relieved at the news, my father disconnected so he could go into the city and get cameras for his house and Lilith’s as well. Pretty soon, we’d be able to surveil our homes and maybe catch the stalker.

Thorn checked all of the camera feeds and watched the footage from the day as soon as he got home. We had leftover pizza for dinner, so he sat at the kitchen table and reviewed all of the footage while eating a couple of slices and having a beer.

“Maybe he was around and saw you installing these,” he said. “It could be enough.”

Enough to keep the creep away is what he meant. I doubted it because the stalker had already proved they could get to me without stepping foot on our property, but it did make me feel a little safer at home.

What would be even better is if I could figure out how to fix whatever was wrong with magic. I still thought the two might be related, so the best thing to do was keep pushing forward on finding Samara’s killer.

Chapter Twelve

The morning of Mercy’s funeral, Thorn went off to work, and I got dressed in my funeral dress. It was considered customary for me to attend the funerals of witches in Coventry, so I didn’t even need an excuse to go. Though I did not attend them all, no one would question my presence.

I talked to my mom that morning, and while she was still staying at Lilith’s house, she and my father were making plans for her to move back home. Lilith had been fine since the day I found Mercy on Samara’s porch, and she hadn’t shown any signs of relapse. She was also itching to get everyone out of her house and had already sent Amelda away.

Laney had been a bit restless that morning. She’d actually cried for a couple of minutes when I’d started to do my makeup. It startled me so much that I nearly called an ambulance. I mean, she’d barely cried since we brought her home. A little fussing now and then that was easily soothed by a bottle or a cuddle, but full-on crying was a strange event.

Fortunately, Meri told me how stupid I was being, and I did not actually call an ambulance because my baby was crying. I gave her a bottle, changed her diaper, and then rocked her to sleep.

In fact, she still snoozed away when I put her in the car to drive to the cemetery. It must have been an exhausting event for her as well, and I nearly backed out of going to the funeral. It would have meant that my mother needed to go in my place, though, and I knew she didn’t want to leave Lilith. And for whatever reason, Lilith hadn’t wanted to go to Mercy’s service.

I thought that was a little strange. It was a gray day, and the clouds were fat with rain. You would have thought that Lilith would jump at the chance to spend a gloomy, wet morning at the cemetery.

“I think she’s still tired,” Mom said. “She wants us to believe she’s back to one hundred percent so we’ll leave her alone, but Lilith definitely needs more rest.”

“I understand,” I said. And I did. If not for the relative quiet of the past couple of days, I wouldn’t have felt much like attending the funeral either.

That morning, I’d had a huge breakfast and three cups of coffee to prepare. I was shocked when my stomach was a little bloated and I had some trouble zipping up my dress. I just patted my stomach with a laugh and tugged harder. Would I get all fat and sassy if I didn’t have magic to keep me thin?

I was not going to diet. Nope. Not happening. Thorn would just have to love my big butt.

“Why are you laughing?” Meri asked and I realized I’d been chuckling at my own thoughts.

At that point, we were driving to the graveyard, and I was lost in thought about food. That happened to me a lot.

“It’s nothing,” I said. “I’m just thinking about getting fat.”

“Why is that funny?” Meri asked. He licked his little paw and ran it over his ear.

“It just is,” I said.

“We’ll see if you can keep a husband then,” he snarked.

“You really think Thorn is that shallow?” I asked.

“Whatever,” Meri said.

After that, he hopped into the back and shared the car seat with Laney. He seemed to like her company better than mine most of the time which was hilarious considering he hadn’t wanted a baby around.

I got to the cemetery early because I wanted to watch people before and after the service. That and I was itching to get out of the house.

Given that my family and Coven were sort of wrapped up in the mystery surrounding Mercy’s and Samara’s deaths, no one else from my family would be there. It meant I probably wouldn’t have anyone to talk to, but people watching was fine by me.

I only wished I could have gone to Samara’s funeral, but she didn’t have one. Her body had been cremated, and the funeral home had shipped her ashes out of state. I knew that because when I’d called about attending her funeral, the funeral director had told me.

A couple of cars were already parked on the side of the road that ran through the cemetery. A handful of people sat in the metal chairs the funeral home had put out for the service. The staff from the funeral home was busy arranging flowers and getting the casket in place.

Strong gusts kept blowing through and knocking the flowers over until they just brought them all back inside the blue tent over the casket. There would only be room inside the tent for a few people if the sky opened up and a real downpour started.

I didn’t want to get caught out there, so I stayed in the car and contemplated just watching the whole thing from the safety and comfort of my vehicle. But, after a few more people arrived, someone saw me. Betty Harker started to wave at me furiously, and she didn’t stop until I got out of the car. I had Laney’s stroller in the trunk of the car because I didn’t intend to carry her around in the sling for the entire service. I wouldn’t have minded at all, but I figured the canopy over the stroller would keep her dry if it did begin to rain.

Plus, if I had her in the sling against my chest, any conversations I had might keep her awake. In the stroller, she could sleep uninterrupted since the funeral would be a quiet affair.

It wasn’t a packed service, but a few more people showed up. Some of them must have been family from out of town because I didn’t recognize them.

The funeral was a short one. The funeral director gave a standard eulogy, and none of Mercy’s family stepped up to speak. The casket was open, and once the director finished his speech, he invited people up to say goodbye before they closed it.

I stayed back as a short line of people walked up and said their goodbyes. One or two of them kissed her cheek or touched her hand. An older woman that I guessed was Mercy’s mother or a close aunt put flowers in her hands.

The last person to step up to the casket was a man. I wouldn’t have taken much notice of him, but he kept looking around. Instead of focusing on Mercy, he was scanning.

Hairs on the back of my neck stood up. While I could have been wrong, I would have sworn he was making sure no one was watching him.

Just before he stepped away, I watched him slide his hand into the casket. He appeared to reach in between the side of the coffin and Mercy’s body as if he were grabbing something, but when he pulled his hand back out, it was empty.

It was strange.

Then it dawned on me. He might have put something in there with her. Something he couldn’t put on top where others could see. Obviously, that wouldn’t be jewelry, flowers, or a photograph. That was all stuff people normally placed with the deceased.

He looked around again, and then hurried off. I’d only caught the briefest glimpse of his profile as he’d turned his head from side to side, and while the man seemed somewhat familiar, I couldn’t place him.

But as suspicious as he was acting, I had to know what he’d put in the casket with Mercy. Unfortunately, as soon as he, the last person in the line of mourners, stepped away, the funeral home staff began to close the casket.

So, I did what any sane, rational person would do. I yelled, “Hey!” and started running toward them.

Everyone turned and looked at me. Someone got out their phone and started recording as I tried to run up and stop them from closing the casket while I was pushing Laney’s stroller.

Oh, and Meri was in the stroller too. At least most of the people there were probably witches.

Not the one recording my tomfoolery.

Not the one who called the police either.

The funeral home staff looked horrified by my actions, but they quickly backed away. Someone gasped as I began rooting around in the casket looking for whatever the man had dropped.

Someone else began to cry, and I felt horrible, but I also knew that I needed to find the mystery object. My intuition was pinging like crazy, and of course it would never lie to me.

Jeremy must have been nearby, because about the time that I pulled the key out of the casket, his cruiser turned into the cemetery. For whatever reason, law enforcement neve seem to get out of their car right away when there’s no emergency. So, by the time Jeremy was getting out of his cruiser, I’d pushed Laney’s stroller back over to my car and was putting her in her car seat.

“What on earth are you doing, Kinsley?” he asked me as I folded Laney’s stroller and stuffed it in the trunk. “I got a call that someone, whose description matches you, was tampering with the deceased at this funeral.”

I couldn’t tell him about the key. If I did, he’d take it and probably arrest me.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said as I closed the trunk. “Why would someone be messing around with the body at a funeral? That’s just weird.”

“Kinsley, I need to talk to you about this,” Jeremy said as I opened the driver’s door and started to get in.

“There’s nothing to talk about. Hey, tell Thorn to meet me at Samara’s house,” I said before shutting the door and driving off.

“What?” Jeremy called after me. “He’s already…”

But I was too far away to hear the rest of it. At the very least, I figured that if Jeremy didn’t call Thorn, he’d get in his car and follow me to Samara’s house. Which normally I wouldn’t want, but I knew at that point, I shouldn’t go there alone.

You see, the thing the man had dropped into Mercy’s casket was a small key, like maybe for a chest or trunk, with an address tag on it. Samara’s address. The man had wanted the key to be buried with Mercy, and I needed to know why.

Chapter Thirteen

There.

That’s the part I’d missed. Jeremy was trying to tell me that Thorn was already at Samara’s house. I saw his cruiser parked out front as soon as I pulled up.

He must have had some sort of break in the case, and I felt my heart leap with excitement. We could find the chest, open it up, and all of Samara’s secrets would come pouring out. The reason she died had to be there.

I took Laney out of her car seat and got her quickly settled in her sling. She began to fuss a little as we walked up to the house, so I quietly sang her a song.

“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” did the trick, and I could have sworn I heard her let out a tiny laugh as I hummed the tune a second time. That would have to be impossible, though, because she was far too young to laugh.

Samara’s front door was wide open, and I called out to Thorn as I walked through. “Sweetie, are you in here?”

That was the first time I picked up the faint scent of smoke. It was just enough that I knew something was burning somewhere but not enough to make me think the house was on fire.

For some reason, I pictured a fire going in the fireplace. “Thorn,” I called out again.

Laney fussed just as I heard a car pull up outside. Jeremy had followed me after all.

But when I went outside, it wasn’t Jeremy’s cruiser. My stomach clenched as the man from the produce section at the store, and later from the funeral, got out of a gray sedan.

“Just the people I wanted to see,” he said with an overzealous smile that didn’t reach his eyes. It was almost maniacal, and it made my blood run cold.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I have many names,” he said and stepped toward me.

“So, you’re a demon?” I asked.

“No,” he said with a chuckle. “Nothing like that. You can call me… Zane. Yeah, that will work. I like it.”

“Okay, Zane,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

Laney let out a loud wail, and Zane flinched.

“Well, looks like I chose correctly, but we’re going to have to move fast. She’s got a set of lungs on her,” Zane said.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Isn’t it obvious by now? You really must be tired if you haven’t put it all together yet.”

Meri had been standing quietly at my feet. He charged at Zane, but the man just kicked him and sent him flying off to the side. I knew Meri couldn’t die, but dang, if people could stop hurting him, that would have been great.

Meri got up and shook it off. He circled the man like a shark but kept his distance.

“What do you want?” I asked. “Why are you… why are we here?”

“Fine, I’ll explain it,” he said. “You keep waiting for your husband to appear, but he’s tied up inside. He’s not going to help you, Kinsley. So, I guess we have time for a monologue.”

I rolled my eyes, but if he noticed, it didn’t stop him.

“I’m going to sacrifice your child to get to her lifeforce and then I’m going to use your body to bring back my dead lover,” Zane said with a shrug.

“Excuse me, what?” I snarled.

You would have thought that I would have shrunk back, but I felt something stir inside of me. There was a distinct tickle at the base of my spine like something had woken up. That prickling energy spread from my lower back to my limbs first and then my head.

“My dead lover. I’m going to bring her back from the grave. It’s cliché, I know, but I miss her. I’ve had lots of practice, and with the baby’s energy, I should be able to get it to stick this time.”

“That’s what happened to them?” I asked.

My mind reeled back to Samara dead under the hanging tree, Lilith walking around with a knife confused, and then Mercy coming back to “life” in front of me.

“You killed Samara and left her body in front of my house. Why?” I asked.

Zane sighed. “I didn’t kill her and leave her in front of your house. Samara’s spirit is strong. She fought off the spell, and she was going to your house to get help. I had to kill her before she reached your front door.”

“And Lilith? What happened to her?” I asked.

“She was chasing after me. Samara made it to Lilith’s house and knocked on the door. I chased after her, Lilith saw it happening and tried to come after us. She was kind of slow, though. By the time she caught up, I’d taken care of Samara. Of course, Arietta jumped to Lilith’s body. She always was a little too impetuous.”

“That’s what was wrong with Lilith? Your dead girlfriend had possessed her?” I asked the question, but it all sort of made sense.

“Except that your aunt is way stronger than Samara. So, you know, that all went well. I couldn’t get to your aunt because she was in the hospital and then surrounded by your family. Eventually the old hag kicked Arietta out on her own,” Zane said.

“Or she left when you killed Mercy,” I said. “Because that’s what you did, right? You killed Mercy to give Arietta another body.”

“See, now you’re catching on,” Zane said with a smile.

“The thing I don’t understand is why Samara wanted to hurt Mercy? Was she originally in on this with you or something?”

Zane snorted. “I don’t know why those cows were fighting with each other. It doesn’t matter. Has nothing to do with any of this,” he said.

So the skull next to Mercy’s name in the grimoire had been a red herring. I knew then that I’d probably never know what happened between the two, and that it most likely didn’t matter. But that wasn’t true. Something prickled at the back of my mind.

“How did you get close enough to Samara to get your dead girlfriend into her body?” I asked. “Did you just kidnap her or what?”

He clapped his hands together once, and it made me jump. “There you go! So, maybe I wined and dined her until she trusted me,” he said with a shrug.

There it was. Mercy had said that Samara had changed. It might have been because she was possessed by Arietta, but I would have bet it started before that. It started when she met this psychopath necromancer that had manipulated her.

“So, what’s in Samara’s secret trunk that is so incriminating you had to hide the key in Mercy’s casket?”

“That was just to get you here,” he said. “I’ve been following you for a while, but you knew that. You fancy yourself a real life Nancy Drew, so I planted a clue for you to find. You’re actually pretty easy to manipulate.”

“So, the pizza thing was all part of that?” I asked. “How did you know that we were ordering pizza? Were you standing outside my window with a glass up to your ear?”

“There’s a listening device in your purse,” Zane said smugly. “I slipped it in while you were flirting with me at the grocery store. Outside pocket so it wouldn’t disturb the cat.”

“I wasn’t flirting with you,” I protested.

“Really not what’s important right now,” Zane said.

The smell of the smoke was getting stronger. I turned to see if the house was actually on fire, but it wasn’t. Then, I started to feel weird.

“Ah, there it is,” Zane said. “I can tell you’re starting to feel it. It’s just bay leaves. Lots and lots of bay leaves. They are mildly hallucinogenic when you burn them. Makes the transition easier.”

“What makes you think that your girlfriend is going to stick in me?” I asked. “I’m stronger than any witch you’ve tried so far.”

But was I?

Maybe at one time.

“Because I’m going to kill you, and right as you take your last breath, that’s when Arietta will take your body. It’s got to be just the right time, so I’ll have to kill you slowly. I’m sure after you watch your baby die, it will be a sweet relief.”

“I don’t understand how this is happening,” I said, but my head was getting foggy. Meri was no longer circling around Zane. Instead he’d begun to chase and bat at something I couldn’t see. He was probably hallucinating. “Magic isn’t really working anymore. How are you doing all of this?”

Zane let out a peal of mocking laugher. “You’re funny. It’s cute that you think all magic was affected by that little brat. If you would truly embrace the darkness, you’d find out that most of it is working just fine.”

“That little brat?” I asked, but my tongue felt thick.

Just then, someone appeared behind him. Laney let out that laugh again, and she yanked a lock of my hair that had fallen into her sling. The searing pain that can only come from a baby pulling your hair brought the world back into focus.

But the woman was still there. She was creeping up behind Zane. For a second, I thought she was a ghost, but while the woman was slightly transparent, she had a strange golden, shimmering aura around her.

Her long, curly blonde hair lay like a halo around her shoulders, like a lion’s mane. Her blue eyes were piercing and wholly familiar.

Laney laughed again, and the woman lunged at Zane. Her hands disappeared into him and ripped out something dark.

I heard a disembodied screeching just before the woman, and the darkness she’d yanked out, disappeared.

Thorn came running out of the house behind me. His hands still had ropes semi tied to them. Zane may have been a talented necromancer, but he wasn’t very good at tying ropes, apparently.

My husband started down the steps with his handcuffs out and ready to arrest the man, but I stopped him. “It’s not him” I said. “He’s not actually the one who did it.”

“What?” Thorn asked.

“I promise I’ll explain later, but we need to get out of here. That smell is bay leaves. The more of it we stand here and breathe in, the more we’re going to hallucinate,” I said.

But just then, Jeremy pulled up. We had to let him arrest the guy. Thorn told his deputy we needed to go, and they could come back and investigate the scene later, after the hallucinogenic herb pile in the back yard stopped burning.

The man was hollering the whole time about how he didn’t do anything wrong and he didn’t know why he was there? Jeremy just rolled his eyes at the guy and put him in the cruiser anyway.

What he didn’t know was that the man’s words were the truth. It was okay, though. We knew we’d figure it out. We always did.

Once we had Jeremy back in Coventry, the magical veil would take over again. It was weaker, but it still worked. Thorn would tell Jeremy to cut the guy loose, and Jeremy would make up an excuse in his head about why Thorn was right.

Everything would be fine…

Epilogue

The following morning, Lilith showed up on my doorstep with a basket of fresh oatmeal raisin muffins. She had on a floor-length, black lace dress with a collar that came up to her chin. Her face was bare other than a huge smile painted blood red with her favorite lipstick.

“I brought breakfast,” she chirped.

“You don’t bake,” I said and stepped back from the threshold so she could come inside.

“I wanted to learn,” she said. “Never too old to learn new things, dear.”

“Thorn, Lilith’s here. She brought breakfast, and they smell divine,” I called out.

He’d slept in and was just getting out of bed. I’d had Laney up for a couple of hours, and we’d even taken a walk down the street and back. I just wanted to be up and out of the house until Lilith got there. I’d slept on the sofa after spending most of the night in the kitchen. While I’d only had a few hours of sleep, I was energized by the task before me. Or I was terrified. Either worked.

“Oh, those smell incredible,” Thorn said as he descended the stairs with a massive smirk on his face. “I’m starving.”

That might have had something to do with the hunger dust I’d sprinkled in his bathroom cup that morning. The only time I’d gone upstairs was to sneak into our bathroom while he slept and put the powder in the bottom of the cup. It ensured that he’d ingest it when he brushed his teeth that morning. I wanted to take no chances that Thorn would skip the muffins.

“I made coffee,” I said. “Let me pour you a cup. Lilith, would you like some as well?”

“I would, dear. Thank you,” Lilith replied.

We made our way into the kitchen. Laney slept in the bassinette in the living room with Meri snuggled against her. He hadn’t left her side since we’d returned home the day before.

Lilith put the basket of muffins in the center of the kitchen table and took a seat. Thorn plopped down too and took a muffin.

“Would you like a plate?” I asked as he began to peel the paper away from the muffin and get crumbs all over the table and floor.

“No need,” he said.

I poured his cup of coffee and set it in front of him. The sooner he ate the muffin, the better. He took his first bite while I got Lilith and myself coffee.

Nothing happened.

He downed half of his coffee in one gulp and took two more large bites of the muffin. “You two going to have any?” He asked with his mouth full. More crumbs fell on the table.

I stayed at the kitchen counter and retrieved the mason jar I’d stashed in one of the cabinets. “I’ll be there in just a moment,” I said. “I want to go check on Laney real quick.”

“That baby will be just fine. Why don’t you come eat with us?” Thorn said with a mouth still full of muffin.

That was the moment his face changed. All the color drained out, and he dropped the muffin on the table where it rolled off onto the floor. Lilith scooped it up and threw it in the trash.

“You feeling okay, sweetie?” I asked as I unscrewed the lid from the mason jar. I hadn’t left the room to check on Laney. It had only been an excuse to keep him eating. Not that he’d needed one.

The pungent smell from the black potion inside made me wince. I swirled it gently, so the foul brew coated the inside of the bottom of the jar. Who knew if it needed to be spread out like that, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I’d made the concoction the night before while Thorn and Laney slept. Meri had wanted to help, but he was afraid to leave Laney’s side.

I wanted to pull her bassinette into the kitchen with me while I worked on the potion, but on the chance that Thorn woke up, everything had to look normal. It had to appear that I didn’t know. Lilith had said that was the best way.

How anyone could have not known that man wasn’t Thorn is the real mystery. I knew as soon as we walked into the house after the showdown with Zane. “Get me a beer, babe,” he’d demanded. Something about it just made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I felt stupid for not realizing it back at Samara’s house. But at that time, tensions were high, others were around, and we didn’t have much interaction.

The dead giveaway was that he hadn’t held or so much as looked at Laney. So, I’d quietly enlisted Lilith to help me pull that thing out of my husband.

I hadn’t wanted to ask my parents for assistance because they would have shown up with the entire Coven and surrounded the house. The matter required a more subtle approach, and Lilith was always willing to keep a secret… and yank souls from bodies.

So, that’s what we were doing.

“Chocolate chips,” Thorn barely spat out as he watched Lilith throw the rest of the muffin in the garbage.

“Yep,” I said and stepped closer to him with the jar. “The cookie recipe was easy enough to modify. So easy, even an inexperienced baker could do it. We just said they were oatmeal raisin because you might have suspected if I’d come out and said we made you chocolate chip muffins. Couldn’t take that chance.”

“You can’t do this,” he whispered.

“Oh, but I can,” I said. “We can. You said yourself that dark magic still worked. I hate to tell you but ripping souls out of bodies and storing them in jars is… pretty dark.”

“You can’t do this,” he said again. “You can’t put me in a jar.”

“I can, and I will,” I said. “Unless you tell me what’s in those little black spell bags. If you tell me how to make them, we’ll consider it a fair bargain. I’ll let you go.”

“You’re making a witch’s bargain?” He asked, but I saw his eyes light up.

“I am,” I said. “Tell me how to make the bags, and I won’t put you in this jar.”

He rattled off a list of common ingredients. It was stuff like belladonna and bark from a hangman’s tree. Things that were readily available in Coventry.

“You see,” he said when he finished the ingredients, “It’s not really about the bags. It’s about getting under your skin. I was priming you with anxiety.”

“I know that,” I said with a snort. “I’m not stupid. I opened the bag and looked inside. What I didn’t know was what they were for, but we cleared all of that up yesterday.”

“Then why did you ask? You have to let me go now,” he demanded, but his face betrayed his concern.

“That’s true. I have to let you go,” I said. “But the reason I asked was to give my Auntie Lilith time to finish casting a circle. See, she doesn’t have to let you go.”

Lilith walked over to me, and I handed her the jar.

“I’ll go into the child,” he hissed. “You wouldn’t dare risk this kind of magic with her.”

“Do you really think I would bring my child into dangerous situations unprotected?” I asked. “Sure, it makes me nervous when you and your… friend kept talking about her like she’s a side of beef at the market, but you can’t harm her. Not really. Laney is wearing a witch’s bone amulet,” I said, and Zane… Thorn’s face fell. “My father procured it for her when all of this began, and apparently, if you even try to possess her, you’ll be destroyed. It’s powerful enough to protect her from many forms of magic and good old human violence too. And, since it’s technically necromancy and made with the bone of a dead witch, it still works too.”

“It’s always good to know a few witches who are familiar with the dark arts,” Lilith said.

“It is indeed,” I agreed.

“Now, let’s put him in the jar. I really am hungry,” Lilith said. “That’s my third batch of those muffins. I didn’t have time for breakfast.”

“Alright, what do I do?” I asked.

“Spit in the jar,” Lilith said.

“What?” I asked.

“You and Deputy Do-right have a baby together. You are of one flesh. So, spit in the jar. Unless you want to pee in it. That would work too,” Lilith said with a chuckle.

“I think… I’m just going to spit in it. We can discuss some of this magic you know later,” I said.

“That magic is saving your boring husband, and don’t you forget it,” Lilith said.

It had protected my daughter too. So, I spit in the jar.

A second later, the magic in the jar sucked that inky blackness out of Thorn. Zane, the dark smokey presence, funneled into the jar, and it had ripped every drop from Thorn’s body. Lilith put the lid on.

“Let me see that,” I said. “I want to make sure that lid is on good and tight.”

“You can’t,” Lilith said. “You made the bargain, remember?”

“I’m not the one putting him in the jar. Hey, wait a minute. How am I not the one who put him in the jar? I spit in it, and that activated the magic?”

“I was holding it, and I gave you the instructions. You were simply adding an ingredient. It’s all very technical and archaic. You’re right. I’m sure it’s fine,” she said and handed me the jar.

“As long as he doesn’t get out,” I said.

“He won’t,” Lilith said.

After I made sure the lid was tight, we sealed the jar with wax and a dark sigil. Black magic could bind the dead too, and while I felt strange using so much of it in my house, I’d done what I had to do.

I put it on the fireplace mantle next to another jar. I’d started quite the collection. Then, it was time for breakfast.

Thorn, who’d been sitting in a kitchen chair staring out the window while we sealed the jar, started to come around.

“Kinsley,” he called out to me like someone lost in a fog. He technically had been but in his body. I could only hope that it had been like sleeping while Zane was inside of him. I wished for him that he wouldn’t remember any of it.

By then, Lilith and I were back in the kitchen. I made another pot of coffee, and she was busy getting a bottle ready for when Laney woke.

“I’m over here, dear. Making some coffee,” I said. “Would you like a cup?”

“Sure,” he said. “What happened?”

“Coffee first,” I said. “I promise I’ll tell you all about it.”

“These muffins smell delicious; can I have one?” Thorn asked.

I looked over at Lilith, and she responded. “Sure, why not. As long as you don’t have any extra souls rattling around in your body, they’re just chocolate chip oatmeal muffins. Do you like cinnamon?”

“Love it,” Thorn said and rubbed the back of his neck. He still looked confused but reached out for a muffin. “What do you mean as long as I don’t have any other souls rattling around in my body? Somebody, please tell me what happened. How did we get home?”

“Go ahead then,” I said. “They smell delicious. I think I’ll have one too, and then Lilith and I will explain everything.”

“Bacon for me!” Meri announced as he sashayed into the kitchen.

“Is he getting bigger?” Lilith asked. “He really looks like he’s getting bigger.”

Thank you for reading!

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© Sara Bourgeois 2021

This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons alive or dead is a coincidence.