Conri and I stood out in front of the Jenkins house. It was an ordinary brick cottage, with a rose garden in front and not one thing about it saying an evil black magic murderer dwelled within. Though they probably didn’t advertise the fact.
“I don’t like this one bit,” Conri said. “This is shattering like a hundred laws. You can’t just break into someone’s house.”
“It’s okay if you’re trying to catch a killer,” I said.
“That’s just not true,” he whispered. “Maybe I should’ve made sure you weren’t a criminal before I started getting involved with you.”
Criminal, werewolf—he could hardly judge me.
“Are we involved?”
“After this, we might be going to prison together, so, yeah, that’s involved.”
“They don’t send women and men to the same prisons.”
“Then we’d better not get caught so they won’t have to separate us,” he said with a wry grin I liked too much.
I waved my fingers across the front door, and the locks popped. I hid my relief they hadn’t erupted into flames.
“How did you learn to do that?” he said.
“Only figured it out then.”
Not long ago, I wouldn’t have even thought of trying to use magic like that. But with my powers as they were these days, it seemed like nothing was impossible. I didn’t even have to think that much about it.
“If anyone comes, we’ll say we’re looking for my cat,” I said.
“Why would your cat be inside the Jenkinses’ house?”
“Because he knows a murderer lives here?” I said. It was meant to lighten the mood. Conri didn’t smile. He placed his hand on my shoulder.
“This is really dangerous, Belinda.”
He was right. I flashed back to how I’d disarmed Jackfort, almost literally. I didn’t have to be scared of anything or anyone anymore.
“I’ll take care of you,” I whispered.
We went inside.
The Jenkins home looked like something that had recently stepped off the cover of a craft magazine. The place was covered in fabric and lace, and every second object was decoupaged. There was framed needlework on the walls and homemade curtains on every window. Even the couch was patchwork.
“Mrs. Jenkins has a lot of time on her hands,” I said. I thought of the rough poppet. Unless Helen had made it in a hurry with her eyes closed, I guessed it was Tom’s handiwork, which told me I was looking for evidence against him rather than his wife.
“What are we looking for exactly?” Conri said.
“Clues. Anything that would link Tom to Kenny, or show he’s using dark magic.”
We moved into the bedroom, Conri was following close behind me, as if he didn’t want me too far away. Whether that was for his safety or my own, I wasn’t sure.
If the living room was a country craft catalog, the bedroom looked as if a craft fair had exploded, covering every surface of every item in needlepoint and crochet.
I tiptoed about the room, the cream shag carpet so deep it swallowed my every step. I slid the top drawer of the bedside table open.
“You can’t look in there!” Conri gasped.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s private,” he hissed.
I flashed him an incredulous look. “That’s seriously your objection? In the middle of what we’re doing here?”
He didn’t reply, and I proceeded with the investigation while he tutted and huffed behind me.
The drawer contained nothing out of the ordinary. There were a few pens, nasal spray, a stray bookmark. A journal with a blue leather cover sat on the bottom of the drawer.
“It’s a diary,” I said, excited. What if there was written admission that he was a killer? I opened the book and flicked through a few pages. Most of it was blank, and the few scribbled notes were recipes and calculations. I closed it, disappointed. I went to return the book to its place, but something had rolled forward in the drawer and was blocking it. I opened the drawer further, and my stomach and heart both seized. There was the evidence.
A tiny babushka doll. It was black and red and white. The exact match to the set from Kenny Langdel’s mantelpiece.
“And there’s the personal item,” I said, too loudly, holding up the wooden doll like it almost too hot to handle.
“I don’t understand,” Conri said. “How does a toy link Tom as a killer?”
“I think a more important question,” came a man’s voice from behind us, “is what are you doing in my house?”
Tom Jenkins stood at the bedroom door with his hands on his hips. His eyes shot between Conri and me.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“You’re asking me?” he said, astounded. “This is my house! What are you doing? I’m calling the sheriff.”
“When you’re done, can I have the phone? I’d like to tell him I know who killed Kenny Langdel.”
The color drained from Jenkins’s face. He held tightly to the door frame.
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Get out of my house. I have a gun, you know. I’ll shoot you both.”
Conri put his hand on my shoulder, I thought as a way of telling me I’d better shut up. He was probably right, but a weird excited fear ran through me like a mad rabbit, and I couldn’t get control of my mouth. “Then you’re to be a triple murderer?” I said. It didn’t even sound like my voice coming out of my head. It was too confident, too bold.
I had expected Tom to run at us, attack, or leap for wherever he kept this gun of his. I was ready with my hands to do the same electric fire thing I’d done with Jackfort. If I could figure out how I’d done it.
Instead, Tom Jenkins did something completely unexpected. He slid down the door frame, deflated.
“I didn’t mean it,” he said in quiet teary words. “It was an accident.”
“Death curses don’t happen by accident, Tom,” I said.
Tom looked up at us. “It wasn’t meant to be a death curse. Something went wrong. I just wanted to make him sick, put him out of action until the maze festival was over.”
“Why?” I said.
“Because I’m going broke,” he stammered. “Because I couldn’t compete with that man’s food. I thought if I could just get some more business for a few weeks, and take his place doing the food at the festival, then I could scrape enough together and we’d be good, for the next little while at least. Everyone hated him. Why should that jerk have had all the success? When was it going to be my turn? Why do nice guys never get to win?”
“You’re not a witch, are you, Tom?” I said.
“No, my wife found a spell on the internet.”
That explained a lot. Nonsupernaturals could sometimes manage to perform spells, but the results were usually dangerously skewed as this one had been. It was one of the many reasons I’d wondered if I was even a real witch and had often been too scared to try a lot of magic.
“I’m just normal and about to be bankrupt if I didn’t do something to get Kenny out of the way, just for a short time. But it wasn’t supposed to go like that. I was sure I had everything just right.”
I thought back to something I’d seen in Adela’s book, a spell to infirm, a slight hex that was supposed to give a rash and a few mild repository symptoms, completely harmless. I had considered putting it on myself to get off the maze committee. I ran through the list of ingredients I could remember. They were all fairly standard curse materials: a personal item, the usual herbs and things stuffed into the poppet. At the time, I hadn’t even considered the names of the plants used in the spell. I slapped my forehead.
“How could I have missed that?” I said.
Conri and Tom both looked at me like I was nuts.
“It was the glasswood,” I said. “That’s what you messed up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Edie Jacques told us the common green glasswood—the plant needed for your illness spell—was often confused with the ivory glasswood. I’d bet my last dollar the ivory is used in the death curse, and because they look so much alike, and possibly because Edie is having a bit of trouble getting her inventory right these days, it was a mix-up that cost a man his life.”
Tom stopped crying and wiped his tears away with his sleeve. He pushed himself back into standing, still sniffing, using the wall as support.
“You’re a witch?” Tom said. His eyes were dark and puffy, but it was no less threatening the way he was suddenly looking at me.
“I am,” I said.
“Then how can you prove you didn’t do it, that you’re not in here planting evidence in my house? I’m not a witch. I can’t do magic.” His voice was nearing hysterical.
“What?” I said, shocked by the turn. “But you confessed to everything.”
“I confessed to being in way over my head, to trying to make a man sick. I never confessed to murder. You’re the one who just told me it was Edie’s fault. She did it.”
“You can’t blame Edie for your crime,” I said.
“At this point, I’ll blame whoever I need to. Now, get out of my house, or I’ll be putting in a call to Sheriff Bonney to report a break-in. He’ll be interested to hear about the witchcraft too, I bet.”
“But…” I started.
Conri put his hand around my shoulders. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We’ll straighten it out some other way.”