Chapter 30

After lunch, Tierney walked outside with Cathy and me.

“Hey, if Cath will take me home, I’ll leave you my car,” I told Tierney as I tossed my satchel over my shoulder. “Then you can come home for dinner instead of eating diner food yet again. I was thinking about making veggie lasagna.”

“That’s a grand idea,” Tierney said thankfully. He lowered his voice. “It’s not that I don’t enjoy the food, it’s just I often find myself picking grease from my teeth…”

I laughed. “I don’t use grease in my cookin’, so you’re safe. Would that be too much to ask, Cath?”

She jingled her keys. “Sure, you know I don’t mind.”

Tierney stepped closer and leaned over to kiss me. It was a brief meeting of lips, but I felt it in the roots of my hair. “I’ll see you this evening, Mena McGinty.”

As the door swung shut behind him, Cathy smirked at me. “Huh. Just a friend?”

I rolled my eyes. “Shut your mouth and take me home.”

*

Coming home to Witchwood felt like a celebration every time I did it. If I had my way, I’d never leave the cottage, with its overflowing raised garden beds and the way sunlight filtered through the windows, casting dusty rays on the stone floors. I pushed open the screen door and went straight to the kitchen to throw together that night’s lasagna.

I layered eggplant, peppers, onions, and big chunks of tomatoes in between lasagna noodles, adding copious amounts of cheese to every layer. After I covered the dish, I shoved it in the fridge. I’d pop it in the oven later.

I grabbed a basket from the closet and headed to the chicken coop. The girls were pretty low-maintenance with their five-gallon feeders and waterers that only needed filling once or twice a week, but with fifteen of them, I sometimes checked for eggs three times a day.

A dozen speckled eggs waited for me in the coop. I filled one half-empty water barrel, and topped off one of the feeders.

For the next hour, I weeded my vegetable patch and harvested some herbs: mugwort, chamomile, echinacea, basil, and oregano. I kept a small shed in the backyard where I could hang the herbs to dry by clipping them to a clothesline inside.

It felt nice to do something as normal as care for my farm. With everything that had been happening, from Tierney’s arrival to the murders, I felt disconnected from my chores in a way I never had before.

Hot and dirty, I grabbed a shower before I left for Sarah’s.

J.J. barked his head off at Officer Portham the minute he opened the door.

“Is he… friendly?” the officer asked over the cacophony, his hand hovering near his taser.

I shrugged, hiding a smile. “I don’t know, Officer. Do you feel lucky?”

“Not right now,” he responded without a pause. Ah, a cop with a sense of humor. Maybe Chief Koenig wasn’t incapable in his choice of men, after all.

“Nah, he’s nice,” I assured the man. “Just kneel and hold your hand out.”

Officer Portham did as I’d told him as Sarah appeared in the doorway behind him. “He really doesn’t like men,” she addressed me, shaking her head.

“Except for your husband,” I agreed. “And Tierney, strangely enough.”

Officer Portham finally managed to make friends with J.J., who was putty in his hands as soon as he discovered J.J.’s sweet spot. Then the polite officer bid us “good day” and left.

“We were having tea on the back porch,” Sarah told me as she shut and locked the door behind me. “Do you want some?”

“Is the sky blue?”

I helped myself to the still-steaming kettle, and then joined Sarah and Emily on the screened porch. Em looked like an entirely different person. Her arm was in a cast from shoulder to hand, and I knew under her oversized gray sweatshirt, she was still bandaged for her broken ribs. But she looked better, healthier.

I leaned over to kiss her cheek. “How you feeling?”

“Cracked,” she said with a chuckle. “All over. Sarah told me the doc said you broke bones?”

Emily still hadn’t rolled out of bed by the time I’d left for lunch, so she’d yet to see my fancy temporary brace. “Meh, just a few small ones. Who needs ‘em?”

“Don’t do that,” Sarah admonished me. “It was incredible how you stood up for Em.”

Heat rose in my face. “It was nothing.”

“I’m sorry you might need surgery,” Emily said quietly.

Shrugging, I settled in a large, white wicker chair and sipped my tea. “I’m keeping positive. There’s still a fifty percent chance I won’t.”

In the silence following, I steeled myself for delivering yet more bad news to my best friend. I didn’t know for sure Chloe Neill was dead in the graveyard, but all the evidence pointed that way, and Sarah didn’t need to be blindsided by it. But before I even opened my mouth, she beat me to it.

“Chloe was found today. In Waterford Cemetery.”

“Information travels at the speed of light here,” I muttered.

“Aaron called Larsen.” Sarah looked like a tiny pregnant angel in the spot of sunshine coming through the window behind her. Cradling her mug with her legs tucked beneath her, she seemed so fragile. “Mena, I feel useless. I’ve lost three friends in as many days, and now I’m going to lose Tina, too.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t need to know. There’s no doubt in my mind that Justine and Molly and Chloe were killed by The Mother.”

“Goddess, I hate that name,” I groaned.

“Aaron told Larsen they think this person is incredibly unstable,” Sarah went on, staring down into her tea. “They think she’s doing some kind of ritualistic work. They still don’t know why she’s after…” Sarah couldn’t finish the sentence. She put her mug down and gently hugged her belly.

Beside me, Emily set a hand on her own abdomen.

“They’ll find the person responsible,” I told them firmly. “In the meantime, we hide out here on the Koenig compound where we’re safe. Capiche?”

Sarah nodded. “Capiche.”