If the Broom Fits (6 page)

“Could you use assistance?” Orion asked, standing so close I could feel his body heat.

“A key?” I shivered beneath my layers. “Less wind would be great too.”

“Alas, I gave you the only key I have.” He placed his hands on my shoulders and heat poured from him into me. My knees threatened to give way. “And the wind is out of my control.”

“Why do I not believe you? Oh, that's right. I've seen you manipulate it.”

“Or perhaps you refuse to see that what is in your best interest might also be in someone else's best interest not to give you immediately. We always appreciate the things we earn more than those that are given to us. Don't you think?”

“I wouldn't know. Nothing is given to me. And no one is ever concerned about what's in my best interest.” Sure there had been one or two exceptions, but as a general rule it was true.

Orion nodded then looked down at his hand. “Will you look at that? A table for the pity party of one just opened up.”

I leaned into him, still enjoying the warmth despite the mockery. “You are the worst spirit guide to ever walk the face of the earth.”

“That may be true. I did lose track of you when you were small. It took me a long time to relocate you again, but when I did, I always kept an interested eye turned in your direction. I know more about you than you have allowed most to see.”

My spine stiffened and I pulled away from him. “But it didn't occur to you to help me out a little?” I wasn't going to be won over with something as simple as a little warmth.

He shook his head. “You weren't ready yet.”

“What does that even mean? When did you lose me?”

“When Fredericka died. Do you remember her?”

The first woman I could recall living with was tall with long raven hair that was always in a single braid down her back. I have no idea how long I was there, but she knew the rules when it came to me. Her long black gloves stuck in my memory like they were a part of who she was. She used to hum softly and rub my back until I fell asleep.

“Did she have long dark hair? She was pretty, I think?”

“That sounds right,” he said.

My last night with her there was a storm. Lightning and thunder crashed down around the trailer where we lived, shaking it as the walls seemed to suck in and out with pressure. I lay in bed trembling, too scared to move. Then sparks erupted outside my window and I screamed. She rushed into my room and took me in her arms. No gloves on. Dead instantly.

That moment set the course of my life. Frost became more than just a name that night. It was my approach to life. It was my salvation.

“I remember her,” I said, and I could feel his eyes drilling into me. I straightened my already straight shoulders. “Now I need to concentrate on getting this open. Stop distracting me with the past.”

He squatted in front of the padlock and touched it. Ice and cold poured from his finger. How could someone so warm put out something so cold? After a few minutes he stood up. “Give it a try.”

I stomped on the frozen padlock with my boot, and it shattered beneath the pressure. “Thank—”

But he was gone.

I opened the cellar doors and climbed into the darkness.

D
onavan raised a serious eyebrow
. “I can pour you a drink if it'd make it easier.”

It didn't matter if he dumped an entire bottle of scotch down my throat, I wasn't giving him a quote. “You can go to hell,” I said, standing up so fast I knocked the chair back. “How's that for a quote.”

His lips pursed and he tilted his head to the side. “Kind of cliché.”

If I still had my magic, I would have turned him into some sort of bug and stepped on him.

He broke out laughing. “You should see your face. Steam's practically pouring out of your ears. I'm joking. I'm not writing about you or any of my theories…yet. I just wanted to see you squirm.”

“Hilarious.” I didn't bother picking up the chair. I was still leaving. This man was impossible.

“Seriously,” he said, trying for sincere and falling completely short. “I don't have anything against your store. This is a small town. Public opinion matters and if I look like I'm trying to make trouble where there is none, I'll lose even more readers. But I would like to be a part of whatever investigation you do. As I said earlier, I have a feeling about this case and obviously I'm not the only one or you wouldn't be here glaring at me.” He came around his desk slowly and righted the chair behind me. “Please sit down.”

I shook my head. “I don't know that we have anything else to discuss. I'd like to look at the files, but you're right. What sort of investigation could someone like me actually do? I mean most of my time is spent sitting in my occult shop thinking about ways I can con stupid people out of their hard earned money. I couldn't possibly contribute to society in a meaningful way.”

“See, I knew it,” he teased, but I wasn't ready for teasing. I was still pissed off. “It really was a joke.”

“You wouldn't know anything about real magic if it bit you on the ass.”

“Is that right?” He sat on the edge of his desk. “I guess we do have something to talk about then. Educate me on real magic.” Though he didn't use them, I could hear the air quotes.

“I don't make a habit of wasting my time. Why would I try to explain anything to someone as closed minded and obtuse as you? I'm taking the files and I'm going back to my store. I don't care what you personally think of us, but if you print one slanderous word against me or my store I will own this paper.” I strode out of his office, shoulders straight and head high.

Katrina may have been a great witch, but she had shitty taste in men. That should have been my first warning that Donavan would be nothing but trouble. By the time I got back to the store, my mood was worse than ever.

The door jingled when I entered, but Katrina didn't come to the front. Strange.

“Kat,” I called out.

“Oh good, it's you,” she yelled back. “We have a bit of a problem here.” Her voice was strained and slightly muffled.

All crabbiness disappeared. What was wrong? The strangler immediately came to mind. He'd already killed two people on the list. What if he came back? This could be trap. I grabbed the baseball bat we kept in case of emergencies. My legs moved slow as I crept forward, watching for an intruder and fully expecting to find Kat tied to a chair or something.

That wasn't what I found. Not even close.

The floor, couch, and coffee table were completely covered in debris and Katrina was darting around the room with a basket in her arms trying to catch the hair ties, bobby pins, and socks that were raining down from the ceiling.

She blew her hair out of her face. “A little help?” she said.

It looked like her spell worked after all, maybe a little too well. I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. Static was so thick in the air, my hair lifted. “Perhaps we should have been more specific about what we wanted back.”

“Ya think?” A sock hit her in the face and she spit it out. “I swear it's doing that on purpose. That's my fourth sock in the mouth.”

I laughed.

“Help me,” she said, somewhat more high pitched than before.

“Use your magic.”

“I tried,” she said miserably. “It made it worse. Things just came faster. I might have multiplied it.”

I reached out and caught a hair tie, using it to pull my staticy hair into a ponytail. “I don't think we can do anything other than let it run its course.”

Her eyes grew big and she shook her head. “I don't think you understand the gravity of our situation. Do you have any idea how many of these I've lost in my life time? We'll be buried alive. This basket is the fourth one already.”

Katrina's powers had grown so much after taking mine that she was still trying to get a handle on them. When she tried to stop the spell, I had no doubt that she made it worse than ever. “Perhaps we shouldn't cast any more spells for a while,” I said.

“That's not helping.” She stopped running and carried the full basket into the back office and I followed. I held open a trash bag as she poured everything in, once again blowing her hair out of her face. I held up a finger and reached into the bag, grabbing two bobby pins. Then I fastened her hair in place.

“Don't say I never did anything for you.”

She shook her head. “You could have at least tried to stop it.”

“How? I can get you an umbrella if that will help. I can't do anything.”

“You keep saying that, but you aren't testing it. What if the magic comes back to you? What if you just need practice? You can still cast, Jess. There is magic there. You just aren't giving it a chance.”

“You mean like that?” I gestured to the room.

“That doesn't count,” she said. “I was thinking bigger than the spell obviously.”

“Look, I don't mind if you want to try to get my magic back, but right now, I think it's a waste of time. We have something a lot more important to focus on. We need to figure out what happened to these women. If someone or something is attacking our customers, we have to put a stop to it.”

Her mouth settled into a line. “Fine, but I expect you to pick this up with more enthusiasm as soon as we figure this out. Deal?”

“Deal,” I said. “But you know, it wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen if I didn't get it back.”

“Don't even speak it. You will get it back. You will.”

I went back to the room that was still spitting out hair supplies from the ceiling and dug our books off of the table and took them into the office. I dumped them all at her feet and took the desk. “I'm going to text Leslie and Frost to let them know what's going on,” I said.

I sent them a quick message and opened the police reports, skipping right to the narrative. The scene details were completely different. Rhonda was found hanging by a green leather purse strap in her bathrobe several hours after her death. There was no sign of forced entry, all the doors and windows were locked, and she had no signs of defensive wounds. However, there was also no note and there was one other thing the officer noted that seemed a little weird. There was a small cut just under her left ear. Emaleigh was found on her bed, the window was open and there were signs of a struggle around her room. The neighbors said they had heard fighting between her and Jasper Hixson the night before. Hixson was questioned and could not provide a confirmable alibi. Emaleigh had the same small cut just below her left ear.

I started googling, next. I started with murders by strangulation and tried not to think about what sort of watch lists that put me on, not to mention the images I would never unsee. It didn't produce much. Too broad. I stretched my neck to the side and searched “unsolved strangulation murders” next. Slightly better results, but still not narrowing the way I needed it to.

I closed the laptop. “This isn't going to work. I need a police database.”

“What exactly are you looking for?” Katrina asked, looking up.

“Similar murders.” I showed her the police reports. “On the surface, they look completely different, but these marks. Those are strange. Those could connect the crimes and if the killer has a signature, I think the odds are good that he's killed before.”

“If we had something belonging to the victims, or better yet, something the killer might have touched…”

Of course. I hadn't thought of it, but that would work. “You're a genius. We could use a magic energy spell. It would, at the very least, tell us if we are looking for a human or an other.”

She nodded. “And if it isn't human, then what?”

“Then we'll hunt it down and take care of it.”

The bells on the door jingled. “Hello,” Donavan called.

Katrina and I met each other's eyes. Oh—the hair ties! We ran at the same time.

“Hello. Coming,” I shouted, wading through the knee-deep debris. Luckily the ceiling had mostly stopped spitting objects. “I thought I told you we were finished,” I yelled.

He stepped around the bookcase and his eyes bulged. “What the—”

Katrina and I finally made it to him, doing our best to block his view and corral him away from the mess.

“What in the hell happened here?” he asked.

“Cleaning,” Katrina said. “We've been cleaning.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I think you're doing it wrong.”

There was a thump as a book dropped from the ceiling.

“What was that?” he asked, trying to look around me.

“What gives you any right to be so nosy? Have you ever heard of minding your own business?” His eyebrows pulled together. “You can't call my store names, then come in here and stick your nose into our business. Why are you here?”

He drew a deep breath. “You're a very strange person. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“No,” I said. “Answer the question.”

“Which one?” he asked.

Katrina and I had backed him almost to the door. “Why are you here?”

“I told you, I want to be kept in the loop on anything you find. I had the impression our last conversation didn't end on a good note so—”

“We haven't found anything,” I said. “I'll let you know if I find anything worthwhile.”

He leaned in close. “I don't believe you,” he said. “First and foremost, I'm a journalist. In my profession, yes even in a town like this, you develop a pretty good bullshit meter. Like I know you meant it when you said I wouldn't recognize real magic and I know you mean it when you say you aren't swindling people. But I also know you are lying to me now. You've found something. What is it?”

“The marks on the neck.”

He nodded. “I noticed those too.”

I held up my hands. “That's it. That's all I have to go on right now.”

His eyes narrowed. “But that isn't exactly the truth either, is it? You have some sort of plan. I want in.”

I huffed.

“It's annoying, isn't it?” Katrina said. “You used to do this to us all the time.”

I felt a momentary grief for what I used to have. I used to be a human lie detector. I could sense the truth as easily as a vampire could hear a pulse. But now it was gone. One thing about nonbelievers was that when you wanted them to go, all you had to do is talk about what they deemed impossible. “It's magic and I know how you feel about magic.”

He glanced over our shoulders toward the chaos, doubt lining his face. “Try me.”

Katrina looked at me and I shrugged. He didn't mean it. Besides, I wasn't actually going to expose us all.

“If we can find something that maybe the killer and the victim both touched, there's a spell that we could do that might help us track the energy of the items,” Katrina said slowly, looking uncomfortable about sharing this with a human reporter.

“Energy of the item,” Donavan echoed. “And what would that do?”

“Make it easier to find other victims. If this is the same killer, the mark means something. It might mean these two aren't the first. A signature might not show up right away.”

“And what are you basing that on?”

“I don't know. About a million horror movies? Serial killer documentaries at Halloween. Countless fiction book. Absolutely nothing substantial. What should I be basing it on?”

He smiled. “Let's say, for a moment, that I'm willing to go with you on this. What exactly do you need?”

“It depends what's still there. Something both people would have touched.”

He nodded. “Well, the paper has officially been canceled for tomorrow. The snow doesn't look like it's going to let up until late tonight if you can believe forecasts. My day is suddenly wide open. Emaleigh's house may not have what you're looking for—”

“But Rhonda's would.”

He tilted his head. “It's not that far from here. Interested in a little breaking and entering?”

I glanced at Katrina.

“Will it end up in the newspaper?” she asked.

“I'm not likely to tell on myself,” he said. “Look, I don't know what to think about this magical energy crap, but at this point you two are the only other people in all of New Haven interested in saving an innocent man. I'll take whatever help you can give me.”

I nodded. “It couldn't hurt.”

Kat raised an eyebrow. “Don't look at me. Someone has to be here to bail you two out. Also any help we give better stay between us and anonymous,” she said with a grin. “You guys go and have fun. I'll be here…er… cleaning.”

I made a face at her, but glanced back at Donavan. “I guess it's just me and you,” I said.

“I'm ready when you are.”

We went outside for the third time too many today. We didn't talk much on the walk there. The cold and the wind made it nearly impossible to say anything even if we wanted to. Not that I knew what to say. I'd met him less than a couple hours ago and already we were committing a felony together. I had to wonder if that was my influence or his. Or maybe we just brought out the worst in each other.