Halfway Hexed (6 page)

Scarface picked the wrong chocolatier to mess with.

Chapter 6

It turned out I’d been about twenty miles from Duvall. Once I got back into town, I went straight to the police station. Inside, I found Smitty, my least favorite deputy, on duty. He looked me up and down.

“Hear from Zach?” he asked.

“Yep. He’s doing great.”

“Where’s he at?”

“I guess if he wanted you to know, he’d call you up and tell you,” I said in a deceptively sweet voice that wasn’t deceptive at all.

Smitty glared at me.

I ignored that and sat in the chair across from his desk. “I’d like to make a police report.” He didn’t move. I repeated what I’d said. He sighed heavily, got out his notebook, and dropped into his chair.

“What?” he asked.

“I was kidnapped.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Come again?”

“Kidnapped. I was working at Cookie’s Bakery—”

“Cookie fired you.”

“I was working at Cookie’s,” I repeated firmly, “and I was taken forcibly from there by four women. They knocked me down, duct-taped my wrists, ankles, and mouth, then put me in the trunk of a car. Their names are Sue Carfax, Lucy and Jenna Reitgarten, and Mindy whose last name I didn’t catch.”

“Get the hell out of here,” Smitty said incredulously.

“I’m totally serious,” I said.

With some hesitation, he jotted notes.

“I managed to get myself out of the duct tape and escape the trunk. I returned to the bakery, and a man I don’t know from Adam came in and shot me with a tranquilizer dart.”

His eyebrows shot up.

“I woke up hanging from the ceiling in his basement. There was no sign of any of the four women, and I don’t really think he was working with them. He seemed way more professional. Plus, his house was pretty far out of town. Gimme your pad. I’ll write down the address.”

Smitty stared at me.

I reached across and yanked the pad from his fingers. I wrote down the address and directions to Scarface’s place.

“You should go now. I left him chained up in the basement for you to arrest. You can scoop the FBI,” I said with an encouraging nod, pushing the pad back across the desk at him.

“Let me get this straight. You were kidnapped.
Twice
. In one day.” He shook his head. “Just how dumb do I look to you?”

I was sure tempted to answer that, but I managed to stop myself. “I’m a hundred percent serious. The guy’s truck is parked outside. He took the plates off. If that doesn’t smack of ‘seasoned criminal,’ I don’t know what does. I’m willing—and fired up—to press charges.” I glanced at the clock overhead. “Why don’t you go get him, and I’ll come back tonight to sign my statement?” I slapped a key on the desk. “This is for the shackles.”

Smitty narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re putting me on, right?”

“No, I’m not. You better go get him. By the way, he’s gonna tell you I hit him with a fireplace poker. I’m not going to lie to you. I did. I was a kidnap victim, and I deemed it necessary force. Pretty sure a judge is going to agree with me on that.”

I sucked in a breath and let it out. “There’s more to my statement, but I’ll tell it to you later. Can you drop me off at the bakery? I need to get my car since I assume you want the truck for evidence.”

Smitty wrote some more things in his notebook, then flipped the cover closed.

“This better not be bullshit,” he said, walking me outside.

I pointed to the truck. “Exhibit A.”

“Uh-huh,” he said skeptically. “I’ll drop you off, and I’ll take a couple of the boys to this address. We better find a kidnapper chained up in the basement, or, so help me, I’ll haul you in for making a false report.”

I rolled my eyes. We rode in silence to the bakery.

I realized that I didn’t have my keys, so I had to call Miss Cookie. She wasn’t very pleased, but she let me inside to get my tote bag. I didn’t tell her about the kidnappings. I decided that since I was already late getting back to Bryn’s, information would be given out on a need-to-know basis, and Miss Cookie didn’t need to know.

I went home and picked up Mercutio, who looked like he’d just woken up. I envied him his quiet day since most of my body ached at the moment.

On the drive over to Bryn’s, I said, “Wait until you hear what happened to me.”

He looked at me as he licked a paw.

“I’ll tell you and Bryn at the same time. It’ll be easier that way.” I ran a hand through my hair. “After the day I’ve had, I deserve to have
something
be easy.”

Bryn wasn’t at all skeptical about my story and neither was Mercutio. Bryn said I should stay the night at his house until the police had picked up the kidnapper. I didn’t agree to that, nor was I inclined to agree to what he suggested next. He was going out and wanted me to join him.

Since I was lying on my back, sucking down aspirin and whiskey-spiked tea provided by Mr. Jenson, I protested.

“I’ve been all over town neutralizing residual magic, but there’s one place I forgot about,” Bryn said.

“Where?”

“Tom Brick’s.”

I grimaced. “I don’t even want to go to Baskin Robbins, let alone to a murder victim’s house.”

Tom Brick had been a wizard from Austin with ties to Duvall and the tor. A couple weeks earlier, he’d refused to help the WAM wizards, so Incendio, the fire warlock, had killed him. Mercutio had seen the whole thing. A few days later, Mercutio and I had had a standoff at that house with Incendio, and Bryn and I had nearly died trying to escape.

“Did we cast any spells there?” Bryn asked. “You know my memory’s fuzzy from that time.”

“You definitely didn’t. You spent most of that visit in a coma. I don’t think I did either. But you know me, sometimes I throw magic around without even realizing it.”

Bryn nodded, walking over to the couch. “It’ll be one of the primary locations for the Conclave’s investigation. I want to be sure there are no traces of your magic there, Tamara, and I’m not sure I remember how to get to Brick’s.”

I rubbed my eyes, but mumbled, “Okay, but if I’m leaving the house, I want a gun. I’m tired, and I’m not fixing to get kidnapped anymore today.”

Bryn chuckled and leaned down. He brushed his lips over mine, making them tingle with his magic.

“Hey. We’re not supposed to kiss,” I said.

“I don’t remember that being the promise you made to Sutton.”

I cocked my eyebrow up.

“All you promised was that you’d wait to choose between us until he came back.”

Just like a lawyer to instantly find the flaws in a normal person’s plan. “Well, yes, but things should be fair,” I said.

“You were with him for years. If anyone needs to make up for lost time, it’s me,” he said with a wicked smile. He stole another kiss before I could protest.

When he moved away, I sat up dizzily. My voice was slightly breathless as I said, “I want a gun. I need it to protect myself.”

He only grinned wider.

We went out the back door, and I gaped at the black sports car parked there. It was low to the ground and compact, the kind where about half of it is engine.

“What’s this?”

“My new car.”

The week before we’d had to park Bryn’s Mercedes on the bottom of the Amanos River. I’d also dented his limo up pretty good.

The passenger door of the new car opened vertically, like an alien spaceship.

“They put the doors on wrong,” I said.

“Yeah, I’ll have to let them know about that.”

There were only two seats, so Mercutio had to sit on my lap. “Mind your claws, Merc. These seats probably cost more than our house.”

Once we got off Bryn’s property and onto the open road, he pressed his foot down, and the car roared forward with so much force that I was pinned to my seat.

“Well, it’s sure a nice little car. Who’d you buy it from? NASA?”

He chuckled. “After last week, I decided I wanted a car that could outpace anything that wasn’t powered by jet fuel.”

“Is the undercarriage equipped with inflatable inner tubes in case of a water landing? ’Cause that would’ve come in handy.”

Bryn laughed softly. “I’ll check the owner’s manual.”

I gave him directions, and several miles outside Duvall, we reached the dusty road to Tom Brick’s. The road was lined by wildflowers and unmown grass. Bryn got out and opened the property’s gate. I smelled soot.

The car’s tires crunched over the gravel as we rolled slowly to the side of the brick house. The scent of charred wood grew stronger as we parked. Mercutio banged a paw against the passenger window, looking out.

“I smell it,” I said. Climbing out, I set Merc on the passenger seat. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I know how much bad stuff you’ve seen here. First the murder. Then the body when it was dinner for the bugs.” I wrinkled my nose, feeling slightly sick at the memory.

Merc cocked his head thoughtfully, then hopped down.

“Is he all right?” Bryn asked, coming around the car.

“He’s fine. Like always. Me, I could’ve lived one or two lifetimes without coming back here and remembering the state of that body.”

Bryn gave my arm a squeeze. “You can wait here, if you want.”

“If I can wait here, why the heck did I have to come?” I grumbled, suddenly realizing that I could’ve drawn Bryn a map to the place. Bryn had known most of the route already. I wondered if claiming he needed me to navigate had just been an excuse to keep me with him.

I followed him through the field. The cool breeze carried the smell of the river, which helped. When we came to the clearing, I stared at the empty space. There wasn’t a single piece of wood left upright. It appeared that Incendio had completely burned the barn down, leaving behind only a black rectangle of ash.

“Nothing left,” I said.

Bryn held out a hand, frowning. “You’re more right about that than you know.”

“How’s that?”

“You’re sure that Incendio used magic to burn this place down?”

“Positive. I saw him start the fire.”

“With this kind of destruction, there should be plenty of residual magic.” Bryn went down on one knee and picked up a handful of soot. “There’s barely any here. Definitely not enough to use to identify it as Incendio’s.”

“So he covered it up?”

“No,” Bryn said. “Grounding magic so completely, that’s complex spell-casting.”

“Jordan?” I asked, referring to the wizard who’d been travelingwith Incendio.

“Not in a million years.”

“So who then?”

Bryn blew out a slow breath and shook his head. “I don’t know the exact witch or wizard who cast the spell, but I certainly know who sent him.”

I cocked my head. “Uh-oh.”

“Yeah. The Conclave’s already here.”

Chapter 7