Be Careful What You Witch For (A Family Fortune Mystery) (13 page)

I sat and waited.

“You think you can fool me, but I’m your mother and I know you better than you think I do.”

I took a deep breath and prepared to tell her about Mac. But she wasn’t done.

“I don’t think Seth came out here for the festival. And I doubt Grace would let him ditch school for a week to come to Michigan when he just spent the whole summer here.”

I felt a little dizzy as the conversation took this unexpected turn. I wasn’t sure which topic was more uncomfortable.

I nodded. “You’re right. Seth came here without telling Grace. But I called her the morning after he arrived and she’s agreed to let him stay for a little while.”

Mom blew out a gust of air. “I was worried about this. The cards have been telling me for months that there is something wrong in New York. I thought it had more to do with Grace than with Seth.”

She played with her amulet and stared past me toward the street.

“Mom? I don’t get the impression that Seth is in any trouble. I think he’s just trying to figure out where he fits in, and he doesn’t feel as comfortable in the city as he does here.”

Mom turned and put her hand over mine. “Do you really think that’s all it is?”

I nodded, feeling guilty at reassuring her when I was worried myself.

“I hope so,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much I worry about you girls, and now I find I’m worrying about Seth, too. I’d do anything to protect you kids.”

“I’ll talk to Seth and try to figure out what’s bothering him. But, he’s safe here with us. Nothing is going to happen to him.”

Mom smiled and patted my hand. We walked back inside together to face the rest of the cleanup.

21

After a couple of hours with everyone pitching in, the kitchen was clean. Seth had gone to my mom’s house with the dogs because she’d promised him brownies. Alex and Tom had departed for work. Alone in the house for the first time in days, I sat on the couch clutching a cup of coffee as I replayed the dream I’d had the night before.

It had seemed so real, climbing to the top of the tower and searching for Seth. Just thinking about it I felt the familiar spinning sensation I got whenever I stood too close to the edge of a balcony, or even a window in a tall building. I tried to deny that it felt like one of those dreams that foretold the future, but I gave up and decided I needed to face it and figure out what it had been trying to tell me.

Seth was in the vision, but unharmed. I felt my shoulders relax a bit as I examined the sequence of events in the light of day. In the past, if I’d envisioned a death or injury, it had been more obvious. In the most recent dream, I felt I needed to help him but I couldn’t be sure he was in real danger. This was one of those times I wished my grandmother were still alive. She would help me interpret the dreams because I so often jumped to the worst conclusion.

I sat up quickly and almost spilled my coffee. Neila Whittle. She could help. She’d practically
insisted
on helping. I downed the last of the coffee and grabbed my keys.

The drive to her place was less spooky this time. The house still appeared abandoned, but this time I knew what lay inside. My knock echoed within and I heard shufflings and scrapings on the other side of the door. It finally creaked open and Neila stood there, wearing what looked like the same pile of shawls and rags as last time.

“Clytemnestra, this is a surprise,” she said. She didn’t open the door farther.

“Ms. Whittle, I’ve been thinking about what you said last time I was here. I need your help.” I looked over her head into the entryway. I thought I saw a shadow move on the opposite wall.

“Oh my. You’ve had a scare?” She stepped back from the doorway and motioned me inside.

I glanced around the hallway and the hair on my arms stood up. Something wasn’t right. I sensed we weren’t alone.

“Let’s head back to the kitchen for a cup of tea,” Neila said a bit loudly. She pointed toward the back of the house and I walked down the dark hallway again toward the relative light of the kitchen.

When I got there, I saw that the cauldron was steaming again and my stomach rumbled. I turned to ask what she was cooking but the hallway was empty.

“Ms. Whittle?” I took a step back toward the front door and she appeared in front of me.

“Let’s get settled and we can have a nice chat,” she said. “Do you want some stew? I still have some left from last time.”

I started to decline, when my stomach chimed in again. I felt my face get hot and nodded. She smiled and took a bowl out of the fridge. She bent down and placed it in a microwave I hadn’t noticed before. It seemed out of place in this rustic room.

“What are you cooking today?” I pointed at the cauldron.

“Oh, nothing much. Not something you can eat, anyway. Just mixing up a bit of this and that.” She waved her hand to deflect any further inquiry.

She placed the bowl of stew in front of me and when the tea was ready she sat down with her own thick brown mug and a delicate teacup for me.

“What’s got you spooked?” she asked.

I didn’t love her choice of words but I told her about the dream, the vertigo, and the anxious rush down the hall to check on Seth.

“Hmm. That is a tough one. You didn’t recognize the stairwell?”

I shook my head, and spooned up some stew.

“Have you always been afraid of heights?” she asked.

“For as long as I can remember,” I said. “I know I used to climb trees as a kid but somewhere along the line I developed this spinning sensation whenever I got too high.”

“What happens when you travel in an airplane?”

“I don’t like to take plane trips, but if I do, I sit on the aisle so I don’t have to look out the window.”

She nodded. “From what you’ve described, since it feels so real, like other premonitory dreams, I’d have to say this is a prediction.” She wrapped her hands around the mug. “You’ll likely recognize this place when you see it. I can’t tell if Seth is in danger or not. It sounds like you thought he was and were trying to save him even though you had to climb up high to do it.”

“What about the woman I heard laughing?”

“You’re trying to figure out who killed Rafe Godwin, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“Maybe the dream is trying to tell you something about that.”

“Trying to tell me what? That a woman did it and Seth is in danger?” I pushed the bowl of stew aside, no longer hungry.

“It’s always difficult to tease out the warning or the message in a dream. It really depends on how you, the dreamer, interpret it.”

I pressed my lips together. Neila was giving me the party line. Focus more, jump to conclusions less. But I wanted to know
now
whether Seth was in danger and how to get Dylan out of jail.

“Did you know they’ve arrested Dylan Ward?”

She looked down at her tea and took a long sip. “I heard. I think they’re wrong and he’ll be out of jail soon. But from what I’ve heard, someone set up the situation so that Rafe would succumb to his allergy.”

“What have you heard?”

“Just that he was very careful about what he ate and that his medicine didn’t work.”

I wondered how a recluse could be so tapped into the town gossip, but after years of listening to Vi quote cats and horses, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know her sources.

Neila interrupted my thoughts. “Can you tell the police about your dream?”

I snorted. Her face fell and I apologized.

“I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at the thought that Mac would put any stock in what I tell him based on a dream.”

“Phillip McKenzie? Lucille’s boy?”

“That’s the one. He goes by Mac and he doesn’t believe in anything.”

“Everyone believes in something. What would be the point otherwise?”

I looked into her gentle gray eyes and knew why she had been my grandmother’s friend.

“You’re right. He believes in things that can be measured and quantified. Fingerprints, ballistics, tire tracks, autopsies . . .”

“You must be wrong. Any child of Lucille McKenzie would believe in things beyond our understanding.”

I didn’t want to insult her by explaining that it was Mac’s mother’s blind faith in all things psychic that had turned him into such a skeptic. After his father’s death she’d spent a huge chunk of her life savings trying to contact him. She never succeeded, as far as Mac was concerned. Lucille would say she’d seen glimpses and hints that he was trying to make contact. It was a sad story in the end. She never really moved on and Mac blamed the mediums in town for her single-minded pursuit of her dead husband.

“I don’t think they see eye to eye on the subject of psychics.”

“Hmm.”

“Anyway, I need help figuring out what the dream might mean. I don’t want to just wait until I find myself in a stone stairway running to rescue Seth. Maybe I can keep him safe beforehand if I can understand what it means.”

Ms. Whittle was already shaking her head. “You don’t know enough yet. Have you discovered any techniques that help the dreams to come?”

I looked down at the table. I’d spent the last fifteen years or more trying to learn techniques that
stopped
the dreams. I shook my head. “The only thing I’ve noticed is that when my friend Diana does a spell, it seems to trigger the dreams.”

Neila nodded. “If you are truly open-minded to your friend’s spell-casting that could be enough to invite information.”

“I need to learn witchcraft?”

“Oh my, no. I don’t get the sense that it would be a good fit for you. You need to become more open-minded to the idea of receiving information. If we’re lucky, you’ll get a more specific message if you are open to it.”

I nodded and finished my tea. The moment I set down the cup, Neila stood.

“I don’t want to rush you, dear, but this . . . potion is at a delicate stage.”

She steered me back to the front door and I found myself on the front porch, with more questions than answers.

*   *   *

After my abrupt
dismissal from Neila’s house, I felt unsettled. Seth texted to say he was back at my house. I drove slowly back home, thinking. So much had happened in the five days since Rafe had died. I felt like my life had been upended. Diana was frantic about Dylan, I had hardly seen Mac, I was in the middle of a murder investigation again, and Seth had appeared and was apparently planning to stick around.

Seth. I had been avoiding thinking about why he might have run all the way from New York to here. He seemed to be doing just fine, but no kid just picks up and travels cross-country on a whim. Do they? I was feeling a good amount of auntly guilt for not pursuing this earlier. I told myself I would have if it hadn’t been for everything else that had been going on, but I wasn’t buying it. I was a coward. I didn’t want to pry into Seth’s life and I almost didn’t want to know what the problem was because then I would feel compelled to fix it. But after that dream I knew I had to find out what was bothering him. If he was in danger, I had to know why and I had to help.

I found him in what I considered to be his room. He thought of it that way as well, if the detritus on the floor and every flat surface was any indication. The dogs were watching him in rapt attention as he ate popcorn and clicked away on his computer.

“Working on homework?” I said from the door.

“What? Oh, yeah.”

I entered the room and he flipped his laptop shut. Hmmm.

“Should we take the guys for a walk?”

Both dogs jumped up at the word “walk,” and they seemed to struggle with whether to focus on the popcorn or the possible adventure outside.

“Sure.” Seth hopped up and the dogs got in line behind him.

One of the officers I’d worked with in the past had two teenagers. He had always said the best way to talk to a teen is to do something else to distract them from the fact that you are actually conversing. Driving in the car, doing the dishes, and for Seth and me it was the dogs—either walking them or playing with them.

Once we were a block or so from the house I began my interrogation.

“Have they sent you much homework from school?” I asked. Grace had texted me that the school would be e-mailing assignments on a regular basis.

Seth lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “Not too much.”

“Heard from any of your friends from school?”

He shook his head. “Not really.”

I threw all the advice out the window and went for the straightforward approach.

“What’s going on, Seth?”

He gave me a startled look.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why did you appear out of the blue on my front porch?”

“I thought you were cool with it. Should I go to Nana Rose’s house?”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I like having you at the house. It’s just . . . shouldn’t you be in school and hanging out with your friends?”

He exhaled. “I like it better here. I wish I could just stay—”

My phone buzzed. It was Diana’s ringtone.

“Sorry, just a sec,” I said and answered.

“Clyde, can you come right over? Please?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just . . . come. If you can.”

I put the phone back in my pocket.

“Something’s up with Diana. I need to get over there.”

“I’ll deal with the dogs. They aren’t going to want to go home yet.”

I nodded and walked back toward the house, sure I hadn’t imagined Seth’s relief at his temporary reprieve from questioning.