Doyle Times Police Blotter, Saturday, May 25th
Suspicious Bread: On May 24th at 11:49 AM, a Doyle resident walked into the police station with a banana bread that a neighbor had given him the day before. He said he didn’t trust the neighbor, so he threw it into his compost pile. He said that during the night, a raccoon got into the bin, and he heard the animal coughing and crying. He found the half-eaten bread in his yard the next morning and was concerned it may have been poisoned.
I’d killed a man.
Professor Fager lay at the bottom of my stairs, his arms outflung, his body vulnerable.
And I’d killed him.
It had been self-defense. But I hadn’t meant to kill him.
Or maybe I had.
Woodenly, I half-crawled down the steps.
Thunder growled, black clouds darkening the sky. Still no rain fell.
The obsidian stone lay near a garbage bin. I stumbled to it and picked it up.
The binds on my muscles released. But my head didn’t clear. The power that numbed me now, that froze my blood, wasn’t magic. It was horror.
Smoke billowed down the alley.
I walked into it, my eyes stinging.
There was a dead man at the bottom of my stairs. I’d put him there. And self-defense was a perfectly good reason to do that. Even Owen had thought so. But there was something wrong with this emptiness inside me.
I turned the corner and walked to Main Street. Honking cars jammed the road. People stampeded past. A man in a tank top rammed my shoulder, jostling me. Somewhere, glass shattered.
Light shone between the batwing doors of Antoine’s Bar, music and laughter flowing from the wooden building. Dazed, I crossed the street.
A car honked, lurching toward me. Its bumper brushed my thigh.
I kept walking. I climbed the steps and pushed through the batwing doors. It seemed everyone from Ground was now in Antoine’s. And they were partying. A man was dead, and they were having a party.
Overhead fans stirred the air, thick, warm, laden with smoke.
Peg Woodstock grabbed my elbow. “It’s an end of the world party, Jayce! Have a drink on me.” She pulled me, unresisting, across the sawdust floor to the bar.
Antoine slapped a mug of beer in front of me. He hurried to the other end of the bar to take a cowboy’s order.
“Hey, if you can’t beat it, may as well have a party. Right?” Peg bobbed in time to the country song on the jukebox. Her arm jerked, and she splashed beer across my shoulder. I guess when you worked at a winery, you needed a change every now and again.
“I knew you’d be here,” she said. “Same old Jayce. You always know how to find a party.”
I stared at her. A tremor of irritation rippled through me. I wasn’t ashamed of the old Jayce. She had a lot of good qualities. But I’d grown. I’d learned and done things. I guessed people only saw their memories of a person though. At some point, we stopped looking at who was in front of us and only saw the image of the past. Maybe that worked for the most part. After all, change, as Mrs. Steinberg had said, was rare.
And murder had made me philosophical. Murder. The word tumbled through my head like clothes in a dryer. Over and over. Round and round. The repetition dulled the ache in my chest.
I turned, leaning one elbow on the bar, and scanned the room. The crowd’s eyes were desperate, as hollow as I felt. Their fear had turned frenetic, their shrieks of laughter edged with tension. And every face reminded me of Professor Fager’s.
Acid swam up my throat. I lurched from the bar and strode to the swinging doors.
“Don’t you want your beer?” Peg shouted after me.
Tilt-a-whirling, I pushed outside and onto the raised, plank sidewalk.
Lightning split the sky. After a few beats, thunder cracked, but no rain fell. A deputy shouted at drivers, directing them to the side of the road. The firetruck crawled through the morass of cars. I followed.
Clouds of smoke billowed from the town hall’s cupola. Flames licked the upper windows of the brick building. The flames and smoke moved like a living creature, and suddenly I wanted it all to burn. Town hall. Doyle. The magic.
And that wasn’t me. I wasn’t seeing things clearly. I’d fought Fager in self-defense. I loved this town. This wasn’t me. I shook myself, focusing on where I was, who I was, and the last of the ringmaster’s illusion disappeared.
Susan strode toward me. Susan, who’d kept popping in and out of this mess – at the circus, in my coffeeshop. Maybe, just maybe, she was a bigger part of the fate spell than we’d suspected.
She touched my arm.
I stared past her, toward the fire, and felt for the magical bands around her with my non-seeing senses. She was saying something, but I wasn’t listening. My auric hands touched the snares wrapped around her and turned to ice. Find the end, I thought. Numbed, they felt their way at the speed of magic along an icy path until I hit something hard and determined and authority-filled. My invisible hands reached up and patted curly ringlets.
The sheriff.
Susan was part of the Wyrrd Systerrs’ spell on the sheriff. Connor had said she drove the sheriff nuts – she was the perfect person to nudge the sheriff into something she wouldn’t normally do. But… she hadn’t. I’d swear the sheriff was still one of the good guys. She’d given me the book.
Which Owen now had.
Lightning whitened the sky. Thunder rumbled.
I let Susan maneuver me to a sidewalk. There were things I needed to do and fast. Owen had the Necronomicon. That had to be the sisters’ spell at work. I had to find him. Track down Lenore. If Connor was really hurt, she’d need me.
I sat beside Susan on a wrought-iron bench and answered her with only half my attention on the conversation. But something, a feeling, told me Susan was important in this too. What if the spell that affected the sheriff hadn’t happened yet? What if Susan’s role was still to come?
I shot to my feet. “I’ve got to...” Go. I strode down the sidewalk toward Ground.
Susan didn’t follow.
I unlocked Ground’s front door. Running upstairs to my apartment, I called Lenore.
No answer.
I called Karin.
No answer.
Picatrix stared at me, her emerald eyes sparking with irritation.
Anxiety spurted through my veins. “I know, I know. I’ve got to—”
My phone rang. Lenore.
“Lenore, Owen told me—”
“Connor’s hurt,” she said, her voice tight. “He’s at the hospital.”
“Is he okay?”
“They say he’ll be fine, but they don’t take people who are fine to the hospital.”
“Lenore, this is part of the spell.”
“I don’t care! He’s hurt. It’s bad, Karin. I can feel it. I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll meet you—”
She hung up.
Another, more distant, boom echoed. My muscles tensed. Thunder? Or something worse?
I opened the door to the exterior stairs. My slouchy purse still lay on the landing, crystals and other magical tools scattered nearby.
Professor Fager still lay below.
I swallowed.
Looking away from his dulling eyes, I stuffed my things into the bag. If I was right — and I knew I was right — things were coming to a head. The fire. The panic. Owen taking the book. I’d need salt... Wait. Where was the damn salt?
I rummaged through my purse. It wasn’t there. I leaned over the stair landing and peered at the garbage bins and bags beneath. My salt cannister must have fallen somewhere in that mess.
The professor stared upward, accusing.
I shuddered. Grabbing my bag, I hurried inside and ran downstairs to Ground’s kitchen. I jerked open the supply cupboard and grabbed a box of salt.
Someone pounded on Ground’s front door.
Warily, I stuffed the salt in my bag and walked into the café.
Susan Witsend peered through the red-paned window.
What now? I hurried to let her in. “Susan? What’s wrong?”
In the street, a woman cried out. I started and looked past the B&B owner. Greenish lightning crackled through the roiling clouds.
We drew back against the brick wall. Susan’s face paled.
The lightning was eerie. Unnatural, and I realized I was gripping her hand.
The crowd in the street gasped. A crash of thunder followed the light display.
“They’re coming!” someone shouted.
People shrieked, ran. Horns blared.
A Honda swerved around a pedestrian and crashed into a planter. Impatiens and potting soil shot across the brick walk toward us.
I shouted a curse, and Susan and I leapt away.
From somewhere came the sound of shattering glass. A dog barked frantically, and other dogs responded. The smoke thickened.
“Oh, no,” Susan said in a low voice
Hair fell into my eyes. I swiped it away. “Look, I’ve got to get to the hospital–”
“So do I,” she said. “Can I hitch a ride?” Her face pinked. “Sorry. Is everything all right?” She flushed again, because obviously, nothing was all right.
“It’s– It’s fine. I’m meeting Lenore there.”
Dry thunder rumbled. We glanced at the mountains to the east. Greenish light flickered atop the highest peak. A chill slowed my pulse. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good.
Then the lights on Main Street flickered and went out.