Doyle Times Police Blotter, Saturday, May 25th
Assault: Two Doyle residents were arrested after being caught brawling outside one of the resident’s homes over barbecue smoke invading the other’s backyard on Friday, May 24th, at 7:16 PM.
Despairing, I rattled the cuffs chaining me to the chair. Sheriff McCourt had not dragged me into an interrogation room. My chair was not bolted to the floor, because that would be weird in her private office. And she’d left me alone instead of calling for a guard.
I’d like to say she was sending out mixed messages. But the handcuffs were pretty clear. Still, this didn’t seem right. Every suspicion I’d ever had about the sheriff spiraled through my mind.
Limbs tingling, my forearms strained against the chair arms. My nails dug into the cheap plastic cushions. I could cast a cloaking spell and try to make a run for it. But cloaking spells are even iffier when you’re handcuffed to a chair.
And the worst part was my sisters didn’t know I was here. Brayden did, but he was busy working and wouldn’t notice I wasn’t back at Ground, that things weren’t right.
My heart sped faster. All right, think. Locking me in her private office didn’t seem like normal police procedure. What was up? Was the sheriff under the ringmaster’s control?
I stared at the safe where she’d placed the book. Despite the humming air conditioner, a bead of sweat trickled down my back. I wasn’t getting that safe open with a paperclip.
The frosted glass door swung open, and Sheriff McCourt walked inside. She slammed the door and sat behind her metal desk. “So.” Her voice vibrated with anger.
“The Black Lodge has cast a control spell on you,” I blurted.
“I’m not under anyone’s control.”
“Well, of course you’d think that,” I said. “But the book’s dangerous for everyone, for Doyle.”
“But not for you?”
“I wasn’t planning on using it.” My thighs stuck to the seat. I lifted one leg, then the other, peeling myself free. “Are you?”
Her neck corded. “Were you working with Deputy Daley?”
I looked up. “Ben Daley? No. Did he try to steal the book?” Oh, it made so much sense. He’d worked in the evidence room and then had gotten pushed out. Now with Deputy Marsh dead, maybe he thought—
“Ben Daley’s dead.” A muscle worked in her jaw.
I stared, aghast. This wasn’t right. I hadn’t heard right. “Dead?” I whispered. “But I saw him last night!”
“Where?”
The handcuff clinked against the chair arm.
My hands fisted. “At Ground,” I said. “He came by for coffee just as we were closing. Darla was there. What happened?”
“He was stabbed to death two hours ago behind Antoine’s Bar.”
Stabbed? “But…” Two hours ago, I’d been getting ready to come here. Ben Daley couldn’t be dead. This was a trick.
“Two of my deputies are dead, murdered. Tell me about the door.”
I swallowed, and my throat throbbed with pain. “The door?”
“The one you tried to close, the one this damned book opens wider.”
And so, I told her. All of it. My whole freaking magical life story. About fairy queens and rose rabbits, about man-eating monsters and garden gnomes come to life, about a family curse and the power of triplets.
Because I had no other play. I was in her power, and we both knew it. Either she was the same grumpy sheriff I’d known and respected, or she’d been spelled. But she was tough. She might be able to fight the spell, and I had to believe she’d do the right thing.
“Where are your sisters now?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, surprised and suspicious. Of all the questions she could ask, that wasn’t one I’d expected. “Probably trying to figure out how to steal the book.”
“Without you?”
“Not without me...” My face heated. I looked toward the window and the pines beyond. Okay, so I was a hypocrite. But my self-analysis could wait.
Another person was dead.
“Look,” I said, “my solo act wasn’t a disaster. So, you caught me. I’m locked up in here, but they’re out there and can call a lawyer.” Hold on. “Don’t I get to call a lawyer?”
She didn’t respond.
“Or are you going to 5150 me?”
“You know the code for a mentally disturbed person?”
I slumped, my body heavy and numb. “It’s in a song.” The best stuff is. I had a feeling Ben Daley would have got that. His whole life had been a sad, country song. Ex-wife. Wrecked career. Murdered behind a western bar.
She rubbed her bare wedding finger. “Are you so sure your act, as you call it, worked?”
“I do get a lawyer, right?” I couldn’t get justice for Ben locked in here.
“In the normal course of things, you would. But this isn’t exactly normal, is it?”
Oh.
Hell.
That saying about your blood freezing? I understood it now. Everything seemed to stop. The sway of the pine branches outside the window. My pulse. Time. Don’t be under a spell. Don’t be under a spell.
“You’ve always been reckless, Jayce. I thought it was just youth and stupidity.”
I swallowed the nausea rising in my throat. “It was.” Once. Not anymore.
“You’re no better than the crooks in that circus. Stink bombs. Trying to crack my safe, steal that book. Lying.”
“I’m not the enemy.”
“You’re sure acting like it.” She walked around the desk and sat on its corner. “I don’t appreciate these stupid tricks. I’m the damned sheriff of Doyle.”
“I’m sorry,” I said in a small voice.
“And this Black Lodge at the circus?” she demanded. “What else do you know about it?”
“The ringmaster seems to be in charge,” I said. Didn’t the cops take it easier on criminals who cooperated? “He’s an illusionist, which seems to mean he can make people see things that aren’t there, or see things the wrong way, or just screw with any magic based on visualizing. The Wyrrd Systerrs are in it too. They cast something called fate magic, which sets things into motion – like getting their hands on that book. Their spell is infecting all of Doyle. I think that’s why everyone’s been acting so nuts.”
She scraped her hands through her curly hair. “That makes sense. Here’s what I know. Since Black Lodges are offshoots of different, and benign, occult societies, they don’t practice just one type of magic. Their common thread is they use magic to control people. They build themselves up magically at the expense of others, for harm. And frequently, they’re involved in criminal activities as well. There are white lodges too, organized to fight the bad guys. How am I doing?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“The 20th century occultist Aleister Crowley said they enslave their members,” she said. “They mentally break them down, like cults do.”
I rubbed my wrist along the chair arm, jangling the cuff. “The Wyrrd Systerrs don’t seem particularly enslaved.”
“Brainwashing is a tricky thing.” The sheriff rose and went to the window. A squirrel darted along the ledge. “The FBI is interested in that circus.”
“The FBI?”
“Where the circus goes,” she said, “some rather remarkable thefts follow. Bank robberies, art thefts, jewelry heists. The only common theme is that circus is in town.”
“So why doesn’t the FBI do anything?”
“Didn’t you hear me? There’s only one thing they have in common — the circus. The MO’s vary. Each crime is utterly unique, some might say even accidental.”
“Accidental?”
“A door that wouldn’t lock right. A security guard down with the flu. A bank manager getting in a car accident—”
“Like Deputy Marsh.”
She turned swiftly. “No. That was old-fashioned murder, no magic involved.”
I hesitated. “Like I said, they’re using fate magic. They magically line things up so that whatever they want to happen, happens. I found the symbol for the Wyrrd Systerrs at Deputy Marsh’s accident scene.” But why hadn’t she?
“We examined that scene thoroughly. We didn’t find any odd symbols.”
“It was carved into the tree he’d hit. Three interlocking triangles. I took a picture on my cell.” I widened my peripheral vision, looking for a means of escape. There was nothing, and a bead of sweat trickled down my neck.
She unlocked her desk drawer and pulled my cell from it, slid it across the desk. “Show me.”
I called up the picture.
She studied the image. “That wasn’t there when he was killed.”
“But—”
She opened another drawer and pulled out a manila folder. The sheriff slapped it on the desk, opened the file. The sheriff riffled through the papers and photos. “Here.” She shoved an eight-by-ten photo across the desk, and I picked it up with my free hand.
The deputy’s car sat canted at an angle on the hill, its bumper wrapped around the pine. The back of the pine was unblemished.
“It’s not there.” I lowered the photo to my lap. “That’s because the sister in yellow carved it into the tree after Marsh died, not before.”
“So it didn’t cause Marsh’s death. I mean, magic does have to follow some cause and effect, before and after rules, right?”
“Usually.”
She threw up her hands. “Oh, for Pete’s sake—”
“The Wyrrd Systerrs were responsible. Their magic prodded the killer into action. Deputy Marsh’s death is all part of them getting hold of this book.”
“And his wife’s murder? Ben Daley’s?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Why do you think I’m under some spell?”
“Aside from overhearing the Lodge talk about casting it, I heard you talking to the ringmaster in his trailer.”
She snorted. “He called me there. The man had the audacity to demand I keep riffraff away from his circus. He said thieves and miscreants were disrupting his plans. He actually threatened to complain to the mayor about me. But that wasn’t the real reason he’d called me.”
Complained to the mayor… That explained the comment about both of them answering to higher authorities. Could I believe her? I desperately wanted to. But all I could say was, “Oh?”
She laced her hands in her lap. “Fortunately, I ran into one of my off-duty deputies and shanghaied him into coming with me. I didn’t trust our ringmaster not to try something.”
I raised a brow.
“Size isn’t everything,” she said dryly. “After my deputy left… to chase after you, I’m guessing, the ringmaster tried to bribe me.”
I looked up, startled. “What?”
“Oh, he didn’t make the offer flat out, he was too careful. It was all innuendo, nothing usable in court. But he tried.” She eyed me. “Someone walloped my deputy on the head that night. Was it you?”
My stomach hardened. “No,” I said truthfully, because Brayden had done the walloping.
My muscles released a bit. This all fit. She could be telling the truth. “The ringmaster said he was going to take things into his own hands,” I said slowly. “He said their magic wasn’t working quickly enough.”
“You were snooping.”
“Apparently, it’s my job. According to Mrs. Steinberg, at least.”
“As a White Lodge member?”
“I’m not.” Unless three sisters and an erratic old lady could make up a lodge.
“The circus leaves town Monday morning. If they’re going to make something happen—”
“It will happen soon, maybe Sunday, when things are quiet.” Doyle was depressingly dead on Sundays.
“Or tonight, when I’m at that charity function,” she agreed. “In the meantime...” She walked to the safe and laid her palm against its screen. The door swung open. She pulled out the thick, leather-bound book. “I’d like you to keep this for now.”
“You— what?”
“They’re coming for that book. I thought I was keeping my deputies safe by holding it myself. I was wrong. Ben Daley...” Briefly, she closed her eyes. Her mouth trembled, then firmed. “I’m responsible for my deputies’ safety.”
“But what if this is all part of their plan, you giving it to me? I mean, the station is warded. Maybe they want me to walk out of the station with the book.”
“Don’t you have wards at your apartment?”
“Of course, but—”
“We can’t live our lives worrying about how they may or may not be manipulating us.” She smiled icily. “And I’ve got a feeling this belongs with you.” She tossed the plastic-wrapped book onto the desk.
The sheriff unlocked the cuffs.
“You’re letting me go?” I rubbed my wrist.
“It wouldn’t make much sense giving you the book if I kept you here.”
I shuffled my feet, embarrassed. “No, I guess it wouldn’t.”
“Tension in town’s been building all week. It’s like all of Doyle’s got PTSD.”
“It’s the Systerrs’ spell.”
“Whatever it is, the town’s jumping at shadows—”
Her door burst open, and Owen Denton wavered in the doorway. “There’s a fight at the supermarket.”
Her jaw set. “Looting?”
He nodded. “You said to tell you—”
“You did the right thing.” She grabbed her hat off a metal filing cabinet. “Wait here, Ms. Bonheim. A deputy will return shortly to show you out.” She followed Owen out the door, shutting it behind her.
I stared at the death-black book atop her desk. Hastily, I gathered my things and jammed the book into my slouchy purse. There was a knock at the door, and a young, beefy deputy stuck his head in. “You ready?”
No. Not for what was coming.
I nodded. “Yes.”