I barely slept. Hemlock eventually grew irritated by my tossing and turning and went to sleep in the armchair in the living room, leaving me alone, staring at the ceiling in the dark.
The Bloodfire Mortis Curse. That wasn’t what it was actually called, but that’s the way I thought of it since it was Quentin’s own coven that had made him use it. But that was in Loreton. The Bloodfire coven couldn’t be in Blackthorn, could they? If it wasn’t Bloodfire, then it had to be someone equally evil. Both possibilities turned my blood to ice.
Of course, the authorities wouldn’t believe me. The cops were the same in Loreton too, though I knew well enough they at least acknowledged the reality of magic, even if they chose or were otherwise convinced to look the other way whenever it got anyone into trouble. Could the same thing be happening with the Blackthorn sheriff’s department? But if they knew there was even a possibility Kenny was murdered, how could they not investigate? Where was the justice? The basic morality?
I lay on my back, scrunching my eyes tight. Evil curses, trouble with the law—this was the type of life I had run from, and it would be stupid to turn around and step right back into it now.
I rolled onto my right side. It wasn’t my business, had never been my business.
I rolled onto my left side. I had to ignore it and get back to my peaceful, ordinary, safe world. It was a meaningless coincidence. Nothing to do with me.
I rolled onto my back again. Coincidences had never sat well with me. If the Bloodfire was in town, did they know I was too? Was Jackfort after me again?
When I finally did fall into a light sleep, hours later in the predawn gray, I dreamt of Quentin and twisted corpses and falling through deep dark tunnels filled with my own screams.
It was a blessedly slow morning. I sat behind the counter, petting Hemlock on my lap, resting my eyes.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Lila asked me for about the three hundredth time.
“I told you, I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just shaken by what happened yesterday, and I didn’t sleep very well.”
At around ten o’clock, a delivery driver, not our usual local man, entered holding a flower arrangement half as tall as I was.
“Belinda Drake?” the man said. I nodded. Who on earth would be sending me flowers?
I signed the electronic pad, and the man hefted the massive bouquet into my arms. It was done up with pink and red star lilies and white calla lilies, a flower that always reminded me of funerals.
“Wow!” Lila said. “Who’s your secret admirer?”
“I have no idea.”
I set it down on the counter, plucking the card and tearing open the envelope while Hemlock sniffed at the flowers curiously, climbing in and out of the greenery as if he thought he was a jungle cat on the prowl.
My chest tightened as if an invisible force had locked around me. I swallowed, suddenly faint.
The note was written in the loopy scrawl of a young woman’s handwriting, someone who worked at the florist and not the person who had sent the bouquet or the dark message it contained.
Greetings, my Belladonna,
I hope the mountain air is treating you well.
See you soon.
R.J.
“Well? Who’s it from?” Lila said.
I scrunched up the note in my fist, so tight as if I could squeeze the terrifying words off the card.
“Someone from my past,” I said, not looking at Lila. “Someone I don’t want to see again. Ever.”
“Ex-boyfriend?” Lila said.
“Not in a million years.” I lifted Hemlock out of the flowers, bundled them up and took them to the trash can outside.
Slamming down the lid, my hands trembled, my stomach lurched and I might have thrown up at any second.
The Bloodfire coven was in Blackthorn Springs, and its high witch, Rowan Jackfort, knew I was too.
I’d kept a low profile. I avoided all social media stuff, not wanting to broadcast where I was or what I was doing, but I wasn’t officially in hiding. I had taken over a business, obviously left a paper trail. Was that how Jackfort had tracked me?
Should I have changed my name? But then Quentin would have had no chance of finding out where I was if he ever came back for me.
I should have been more careful. How stupid to think I could run away. Maybe I should have taken a page out of Quentin’s book and disappeared, out of the world without a trace. A ghost.
I looked over to Kenny’s place, quiet and closed up tight. This message had turned up the day after someone in town, who lived right next door to me, had been murdered by a Bloodfire curse. Like I said, I’ve never believed in coincidences. But what did Kenny have to do with the whole mess?
Back inside, Hemlock rubbed against my legs as I sat behind the counter trying to breathe away the anxiety wrenching at my every cell.
“I know I keep asking you this, but are you alright?” Lila said.
“Yes!” I lied. “You can stop asking me that anytime now.”
“Geez, sorry.”
I felt guilty for snapping, and Lila’s worried frown told me she could see right through my lies. I stared at the two now-empty chocolate boxes as if they held some kind of answer as to what I should do. The cat sank to his belly and rolled into sleep. Lila knitted at a furious speed, her needles clicking together as they spun out another scarf, lengthening by the second.
“I’m going to need some more yarn,” Lila said. “Do you mind if I dash up to Elsie’s, just for a sec?”
“I’ll come with you,” I said. “I could use the walk and fresh air to clear my head.”
Hemlock meowed, curling closer to my feet, unusually affectionate for my cantankerous old familiar.
“It’s alright, darling,” I said, scratching him behind the ear. “I won’t be long.”
He gave me a look suggesting he would drag in a dead mouse as punishment for my leaving. With a quiet, slightly croaky meow, he closed his eyes.
We headed up the street in silence. Some days, it seemed as if Lila could talk until my ears might bleed, but the girl also knew when a moment didn’t need words.
Walking up Main Street as I had done a hundred times before, it was like I was being watched by unseen eyes. I pushed my hands into my pockets and walked closer to Lila.
Jackfort wouldn’t try anything on a crowded street. Not even he was that brazen. But what did he want from me? I’d told him a dozen times already I didn’t know where Quentin was. I guess he still didn’t believe me.
I waited outside Bobbins and Ribbons while Lila went inside. I tried to look casual and inconspicuous, picking idly through a box of offcuts and sale items. I brushed my fingers over a blue cloth woven with a raised white diamond checkered pattern.
I took a cautious look up and down the street, looking for any signs of Jackfort or anyone else I had to hide from. Standing out in front of Neville Norton’s wife’s shop was probably not a great idea, for more than a few reasons. The street seemed safe from everything that was chasing me, though. For now, at least.
“All done,” Lila said, bounding out of the craft shop with a bag bulging with colorful yarn. The retail therapy had certainly perked her up, but I was going to need more than a little shopping to lift the darkness around me.
Back in the shop, Lila resumed her knitting. She buzzed with an anxious intensity I put down to post-traumatic nerves after seeing Kenny. People do all sorts of strange things under stress. Hemlock was still sleeping on the floor where I had left him.
I leaned against the counter, cupping a mug of tea, trying to warm the cold place in my core. I should be doing something productive, like updating the website, dusting the shelves, reading—anything to get me busy and keep my mind off murder and curses and evil witches. But I just stared.
“Can I tell you something?” Lila asked. Her knitting didn’t skip a beat, and the sound of the needles was hypnotizing.
I nodded without saying anything.
“I don’t want you to be offended or anything.”
“Okay,” I said, interested now.
“I know.”
“Know what?” I took a sip of tea.
“I know you’re a witch.”
I had to force myself to stop spitting tea all over the counter. “Pardon me?”
Lila put down her knitting. “I know. That’s all. I’m not trying to pry into your private life. I get not wanting to talk about it. But I just thought, after yesterday, you might want someone to talk about it with. You keep saying you’re okay, but you’re obviously not really. Is it because of Kenny, the way he was killed?”
“You know?” I was flabbergasted. “How?”
Lila nodded and smiled sweetly. A dark thought crossed my mind. Was Lila a witch? Could she be responsible for the death curse?
Don’t be ridiculous, Belinda, I thought. Lila might be a bit odd sometimes, but she’s not a murderer.
“I don’t know much about medicine or science or anything, but I’m sure whatever killed Kenny had more to do with spells and curses than plain old heart failure or whatever else they’re going to say it was.”
I nodded, still waiting for my mind to catch up with what Lila was saying.
“How did you know about me? I’ve never told…”
“I’ve noticed you do a couple of spells here and there when you thought I couldn’t see. Plus”—she gave the sleeping cat an affectionate nudge with her shoe—“Hemlock told me.”
“He spoke?” I gasped. Was I really jealous at the thought that the little familiar I had owned since he was a kitten had chosen to have a chat with Lila and not me? Yes.
“Not exactly, but I can read him. We talk all the time, through our thoughts.”
I was astounded. “You’re a w—”
“I’m a fairy,” Lila said.
I looked at her blankly.
“Fairy,” Lila repeated. “Well, not fully. But I have fae blood, and it lets me see things about people’s minds. And some cats’ too, apparently. Maybe that’s normal for all fairies, I’m not sure, but I do seem to be getting better at it these last few months.”
“Fairy,” I said slowly as if I was trying to taste the word.
I placed my mug on the counter. Yes, I knew fairies were real. No, I had never met one and didn’t know the first thing about them except that they were nothing like Tinkerbell.
“I actually thought you knew,” Lila continued casually, as if she’d just told me she was a Gemini or something equally weightless. “I thought that’s why you let me keep working here when you obviously don’t need an assistant. Brian and Susan, they were witches too. You knew that, right?”
I shook my head, rubbing my neck, dumbfounded.
“Anyway,” she continued, “that was what I think it was, wasn’t it? With Kenny? A hex?”
“I think so.” I suddenly needed to lie down.
I had started yesterday morning regular as anything. Too much coffee, my usual debates with myself about the amount of chocolate I was eating, fluking a simple little secret spell to keep a customer satisfied. A day later, here I was talking about Bloodfire death curses and getting messages from Rowan Jackfort. Not to mention finding out one of the few friends I had was actually a fairy and had known my secret for who knew how long. Plus she had a psychic link to my cat. My head had every right to spin at this point.
“They can’t get away with it, can they?” Lila continued. “I mean, the sheriff isn’t going to do anything about it. The law never does when anything magical is involved. But something needs to happen.”
“Anything magical is involved?” I said. “You mean other stuff like this happens here?”
“Well, no one has ever been killed by magic here before. Not that I know of, at least. But stuff happens, and when it does, the sheriff’s department and a lot of other folk in town are always conveniently looking the other way.”
I nodded. I filled Lila in on my brief meeting with Deputy Margie the day before.
“Figures. I like Margie well enough, but when it comes to us supernaturals, she’s as bad as the rest of them.”
“How many other witches are there here?” I said, still amazed, but starting to understand why this town felt like it did.
“A few,” Lila said. “And there are others too. Not all supernaturals are witches, obviously.” She pointed to herself.
“Who else?”
“I don’t know them all, and I’m sure some are keeping their supernatural side a secret—some people in town aren’t exactly accepting of alternative lifestyles of any kind. But I do know Phil Yarrow, the guy who sells the honey at the markets on Sundays. He and his wife, Molly, are witches.”
I didn’t know who she was referring to, but that wasn’t surprising since I hardly knew anyone. I thought back to the encounter I’d had with Henry the day before.
“What about Henry Walton?” I said.
Lila shrugged. “No idea. He’s odd, so maybe.”
“Anyone else?”
“There’s Becca White and the women on the school PTA. I don’t know them personally, but you hear things about those awesome bake sales they pull together so quickly. And then there’s Adela Kristos, the librarian,” Lila continued.
I knew the librarian by sight, though we had never spoken. “She’s a witch?”
“Naarin,” Lila said as if it explained everything.
I shook my head and shrugged.
“You’ve never heard of a Naarin before?”
I hadn’t.
“When I say demon, don’t freak out. Not all demons are fire and brimstone. But you probably knew that already.”
I knew as much about demons as I did about fairies. And, if I was honest, witches too.
“I should totally introduce you to Adela,” Lila said. “You’ll love her.”
Prospective supernatural friends, random boyfriends—was there anyone in town Lila wasn’t trying to set me up with on some level?
“Anyone you know capable of murder?” I said, trying to get the conversation back on track.
Lila shook her head. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? I mean, death curses don’t just happen by accident. Do they?”
I had asked myself that same question on so many long nights, haunted by the memory of Quentin, standing above that body in that park. I was never even sure who the victim was. Quentin had left before he’d given me any real explanation, breaking my heart into a thousand irreparable fragments in the process.
I had been sure Quentin was under a puppet spell—his body and soul in Jackfort’s complete control. I’d researched puppet spells, trying to learn as much as possible to prove my brother’s innocence, but found very little, or at least very little I could understand.
“And is there only one death curse?” Lila continued. “Or can different curses kill people in different ways?”
“I have no idea,” I said, totally lying. After I’d tried and failed to piece together exactly what had happened with Quentin, death curses were the only spell I did have any kind of good knowledge about. There were different kinds with different physical effects depending on who put it all together. The bleeding eyes of the Mortis Curse seemed to be a Bloodfire signature.
“I don’t know much about spells,” I said. “I’ve never really studied, just made stuff up as I went along.” That last part was the truth.
Lila nodded. “That explains a lot.”
I flushed, instantly embarrassed at my novice status, which was weird since I really didn’t want to get any more powerful than I was.
I was about to ask the fairy if she knew any spells and start fishing for local links to the Bloodfire coven, but something in Lila’s expression stopped me. She put down her knitting and stared down at Hemlock.
“I don’t think your cat is very well,” Lila said.
He looked perfectly normal to me, sleeping belly-sprawled and quiet.
“He’s trying to tell me something,” Lila said. She hopped off her stool and knelt beside the cat, stroking his side. I noticed then that he was breathing very fast.
“Hemlock? Darling, what’s wrong?” I said.
Lila looked up at me, her eyes wide. “He says he’s dying.”