Doyle Times Police Blotter, Sunday, May 26th
Male Delivery: On May 25th at 9:50 PM, police assisted in the delivery of a healthy baby boy in a station wagon in the Doyle hospital parking lot.
Brayden and I curled on my tiny alcove sofa.
He yawned. “Are you sure it’s over?” Soot coated Brayden’s face and uniform. His curling hair was thick with grit. And I didn’t care.
“The spell is over,” I said, achy and exhausted, but happy. The fires had been put out, and most people had wandered home. Doyle was quiet. No horns. No sirens. Just our usual Sierra stillness. A pure, warm glow flowed through me. Love. That was the best sort of magic.
Even better, Connor was home with Lenore recovering from a broken arm. He’d be okay after some of the prisoners in the station had attempted to take advantage of the chaos and break out.
“At least the body’s gone.” Brayden angled his head toward the door.
The sheriff and her deputies had finally retrieved Professor Fager’s body. Amazingly, or maybe not so amazingly, no one had disturbed the corpse during the chaos.
“And the town’s calmed down,” he continued. “I only hope it stays that way.”
But what were the odds?
“Sheriff McCourt told me Tom’s recording another podcast,” I said. “He’s going to say the whole thing was a hoax.”
“How’d she get him to agree to that? He’s a true believer.”
Enjoying our cocoon of early AM peace, I laid my head on his shoulder. “I don’t want to know. But she’s convinced Susan Witsend to take point as well. Susan will explain her UFO investigation revealed it was all a circus prank.”
“Which isn’t far from the truth.” He ran a finger through a coil of hair on my forehead. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you earlier. If I had been, Fager wouldn’t have tried anything.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. He would have just waited until I was alone.”
“I still don’t understand what he was thinking,” he said.
“He was... insane, and made more so by the Wyrrd Systerr’ spell. They must have sent him over the edge.” He’d started his campaign against John Marsh before the Systerrs had cast their spell. Would he have crossed the line to murder without their influence? But he nearly had, with his swatting.
Was Fager a villain or a victim or both? None of us would know. If I hadn’t killed him… I swallowed.
“He didn’t like being frustrated,” I continued more quietly, “and he snapped. And I think once he’d crossed the line into murder, it got easier and easier.” Plus, he’d been really mad about that stink bomb.
I pressed closer to Brayden. “He lived right next to John and Gertrude,” I continued. “And he was always watching. So, he knew about John and Hermia — she’d come to the house to be with him more than once. And he knew John’s pattern of traveling to Angels Camp to see her. He also knew about Gertrude’s yoga. She frequently left the car doors unlocked. He filled two of the balls up at the college, brought them home, and stuck them in John’s trunk.”
But the Wyrrd Systerrs’ spell had triggered the murders, and that wasn’t good. Whether they’d been manipulated into casting that spell or not, they were dangerous. Someone would have to keep an eye on them, and I wasn’t counting on Mrs. Raven.
Picatrix wandered into the alcove. The cat leapt onto the arm of the couch and studied an ivy leaf, dangling from the brick wall.
“And Gertrude?” Brayden asked.
“The professor hated her too, and he was watching. He followed her on her jewelry delivery trip and killed her, then came home. It was his bad luck that I saw him return.”
If I hadn’t been with Karin when we’d encountered him at Gertrude’s cabin, he might have killed me then. The professor must have followed us to my apartment and waited until I’d returned outside.
The cat batted at the leaf.
“I need a shower,” Brayden said.
I smiled. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“Oh, weren’t you? You’re not exactly Ms. Clean either.”
“Am too.”
“Are not.” He grabbed my legs and tugged me sideways on the couch, then lay on top of me.
I struggled half-heartedly, laughing. “You stink!”
The cat leapt from the sofa and shot us an indignant look. Tail in the air, she stalked into the bedroom.
Brayden covered me in kisses, rubbing soot all over me. He finished with a long, lingering kiss. “I’ll see you in the shower.”
He strode into the bathroom.
I sat there for a long moment and listened to the sound of the water coming on. My heart swelled with the simple contentment of being here and alive.
Professor Fager wouldn’t hurt anyone else. The ringmaster was in the hospital and in custody. The DA was charging him with conspiracy and a host of other charges related to petty thefts at the circus.
And Brayden should be good and soapy by now. I smiled and stood. A shower wasn’t a bad idea.
Something rapped at the window.
I did a double take. The biggest crow I’d ever seen perched on the sill. I stared at it warily.
It rapped again on the glass.
That beastie would crack my window if it wasn’t careful. “Shoo!”
The bird fluttered off.
I turned.
Mrs. Raven stood before me in her green, forties-era suit.
I gasped and pressed a hand to my chest. “What are you doing in here?”
“Excellent job, Ms. Bonheim.” She touched her intricately waved hair. “Now. We’ll take that book.”
“No, you won’t.”
Mrs. Raven arched a brow. “I don’t think you mean that.”
“Forget it. My sisters and I aren’t your... cat’s paws.”
Picatrix meowed an agreement.
“Our lodge is extremely powerful—”
“Not powerful enough to stop the spell that sent Doyle into a tailspin. Or to capture the leader of a Black Lodge. Or to get the book away from him. You needed us for that. And you were zero help.”
“Weren’t we? How do you think all those suspects conveniently showed up just when you needed to interrogate them?”
I paused, taken aback. “You did that?”
“The Wyrrd Systerrs aren’t the only magicians who know a thing or two about fate.” Her eyes glittered. “Give us—”
“We destroyed it,” I lied. We would destroy it. Tomorrow. Or whenever we figured out how. But she didn’t need to know that.
She stepped back, paling. “You didn’t.”
“It was only going to cause more trouble. You know it would. People would keep chasing after it and eventually someone would get it who shouldn’t. I don’t know what the ringmaster meant about remaking the world, but it didn’t sound good.”
“Remaking...” She straightened. “We are very disappointed in you, Ms. Bonheim,” she said weakly.
She turned and vanished. Just disappeared as if she’d never been there.
My knees wobbled. I lowered myself into a kitchen chair. How had she gotten past my apartment’s wards? If she could just appear and disappear at will, and I hadn’t even felt her magic coming... She was powerful. Really powerful.
But not as powerful as my parents’ wards.
I straightened. Maybe I was only a newbie earth witch. But I had room to grow. My parents were a part of me, of us. And now I had something to work for.
“Jayce?” Brayden called. “The water’s getting cold.”
I shook myself and strode toward the bathroom. I’d worry about Mrs. Raven and the Wyrrd Systerrs later. Right now, I had more important things to do.