Charmed to death: an Ophelia and Abby mystery (27 page)

I'd heard about pressing before, but when? Suddenly it came to me—Darci on the way to Iowa City had been telling me about an article she'd read.

I ran upstairs to the magazine rack and found the article. Taking it with me, I went back to my office and skimmed through it.

Exactly as Darci had told me. An old woman, thought odd by her neighbors, had disappeared from her cabin. Fifteen years later, her bones were found under a pile of rocks in the middle of the woods. It happened in Massachusetts.

Had someone tried to get the old woman to confess to witchcraft? What could've happened to make someone suspect her of being a witch? Did she have a squint, too, like Gus? I looked at a photo of her in the magazine; it didn't appear she had a squint. Had she been a witch?

I rubbed my eyes and took a deep breath. What about the people in Salem? Were they witches? One woman had cursed a judge as she stood on the gallows. She'd said, "May God give you blood to drink, for taking my life." Twenty-five years later, the judge died from a hemorrhage in the throat, literally drowning on his own blood. Coincidence?

Tired, I was getting nowhere. I rubbed my eyes again. Did the book mention the name of the judge? I was so exhausted, I couldn't remember. I'd look one more time and go home.

My finger skimmed down the page, looking for the judge's name, I didn't find it. But another name jumped out at me. A name I'd seen recently.

Oh my God! Follow the pattern Abby had told me and here it was: the pattern. How could I have missed it?

I grabbed the other book and searched until I found what I was looking for.

I read the word out loud. "
MalleusMaleficarum
."

"That's right, Ophelia," said a voice from the doorway, "
The Hammer of Witches
. An excellent guide on how to seek out witches and destroy them."

Charles.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Charles Thornton leaned carelessly against the door-jamb, one hand in his pocket. In his other he held a very shiny, very nasty knife. The one I'd seen the day I'd found Gus's body. If I'd had any doubts, they were gone at the sight of the knife.

The runes had told the truth. A hammer lying beneath a calm surface. Only it wasn't
Mjolnir
, the hammer of Thor, I sought. It was
The Hammer of Witches
and finding it would lead me to a killer beneath the calm surface of an ordinary man.

Too bad I was a little late figuring it out. I stared at the knife. Why couldn't the runes have given me his initials or something? Instead of clues couched in mystery.

Charles noticed my eyes fixed on the knife. He held it up in front of his face, turning it this way and that. "Like it? It's a replica of a medieval dagger. The knights carried them." He smiled, watching the way the fluorescent light flashed on the silver blade. "My mother told me stories of the men who carried daggers similar to this one." He pointed the knife toward me. "I used it to kill your friend, you know."

"You bastard!" I cried, springing to my feet.

He motioned, with the knife, for me to sit down. "Now, now," he said. "I'm not ready to end this yet, but if you don't behave, I will." He pursed his lips in a pout. "I have something special planned for you, but I want us to talk first."

"Okay," I said, sitting down and picking up a pen. The longer we talked, the longer I lived. I drew a doodle of a hammer on a piece of paper. "What do you want to talk about?"

"I didn't mean to kill your friend." He stopped and sighed. "I've always felt bad about him. It
was
his fault, though. He shouldn't have chased me."

"Brian chased you? When?" I asked, perplexed.

He pushed away from the door and took a step inside my office. "That night at your apartment. I was there, you know. In back. On the porch. I'd been watching you through the window." He smiled at the memory. "I'd watched you so many nights, Ophelia. Watched and waited for the perfect moment. And when the moment came, he spoiled it for me."

"How?"

"Oh, my foot hit a pop can when I was sneaking off your porch. He heard it and came running around the side of the house." Charles frowned. "He chased me all the way back to the van I'd stolen. We fought; he fell against the bumper and was knocked out. After that it was easy."

Charles walked over to the pictures of Abby and my parents. Picking them up, he looked the pictures over.

Yuck, he's touching my things
. My lip curled in disgust. If I lived through this, I'd have to disinfect everything in here.

He set the picture frames down in the same spot.

Studying their positions, he moved Abby's over a touch. Satisfied, he strolled back toward my desk.

"You said, 'After that it was easy'?" I reminded him.

"Oh yes," he said, remembering. "I threw him in the van, took him out in the woods, and killed him. I drove back to town and disposed of the body in the Dumpster. I was angry, though, and got carried away."

Carried away? He'd butchered Brian.

Running his finger down the side of the blade, he kept talking. "I thought the pentagram on his forehead was a nice touch." He threw his hands wide. "You see, if he hadn't chased me, he'd be alive today. You'd be dead, but your friend would've lived."

"Why me, Charles? I've done you no harm."

"No, but your kind harms everyone. Like the girl in the library. I saw what you did to her."

"I tried to help her—"

"No," he interrupted. "You made her have that fit, like that woman did to my mother. I know what witches do. Cousin Lucy told me all about witches, from the time I was a small child."

"But you said your mother had a heart problem?"

"That was a lie my father told to cover up what was happening to my mother. Cousin Lucy said he wanted her dead, so he let the witch curse her." He looked down at the knife in his hand. "I tried to help my mother, but my father beat me every time I did."

Peachy, I'm trapped in a room with a guy who'd had a sociopath for a nurse and a father who abused him.

"My father won in the end. The witch cursed her and she drowned in her own blood, like our ancestor. The one my father forbade Cousin Lucy to talk about," he said, pouting again.

Ancestor?

"Ah, this ancestor, he wouldn't have happened to have been a judge at the Salem Witch Trials, would he?"

"Yes," he said, his face brightening. "Have you heard of him? Judge Thorntun, spelled with a
u
. Cousin Lucy said my great-great-grandfather changed the spelling of our last name because he was ashamed." Charles shook his head in disbelief. "Can you imagine? Ashamed of a man who fought evil. Cousin Lucy said we should be proud of the judge."

I was beginning
not
to like this Cousin Lucy.

I looked down at the paper and noticed I'd drawn "frowny" faces all over it. Charles gazed at the paper and smiled.

When he raised his eyes to my face, he looked sad. "I'd hoped you were different, that maybe I could convince you to forsake your evil ways." Charles shook his head slowly. "I saw you crying at the hospital. And when the witch bottle didn't kill you—"

I broke in. "What are you talking about? Crying and a witch bottle?"

"Witches can't cry. You know that." Charles rolled his eyes as if he were talking to an idiot. "You must've faked it somehow.
The Hammer of Witches
cautions to be alert for trickery when you see a witch cry."

"The witch bottle?"

"Oh, a bottle with nine nails, urine, and hair from the witch you want to kill. I know you found it; I went back to the ditch and looked for it. When you didn't die, I thought maybe it was a sign you could be saved. I even tried to warn you to abandon your ways by sending you the flowers. Red and white flowers are a sign of death, you know," Charles said in a rambling voice. "I thought maybe receiving them would scare you. Scare you enough to change, but I was wrong."

"Whoa, forget the flowers and back up a second—hair of the witch? That bottle Comacho and I found had my hair in it?" I was astonished. "How did you get any of my hair?"

"From your hairbrush. I picked it up when you spilled your bag at the restaurant."

I shut my eyes. The lab would come back with a positive DNA match when they compared my hair sample to what they found in the bottle. Comacho would see the report as proof I lied to him. By then, I'd be dead, but… I shook my head and opened my eyes.

Charles looked over his shoulder at the clock. "It's time to go," he said sadly.

I picked up the pen and doodled again. "Where are we going, Charles?" I asked. My voice sounded calm, but inside I was shaking.

"I told you I have something special for you. I thought about burning. I'd planned burning for the old man, the witch I buried in the ditch, but he died first." Charles lifted one shoulder. "But I remembered the judge hanged witches." His eyes lit up with excitement. "We're going back to where you dumped poor Beasley. Oh, don't look surprised," he chided.

I ignored him and continued to doodle.

"People in small towns talk. Your fight with him was all over town, and I know the sheriff suspects you killed him." He licked his lips in satisfaction. "You're going to hang yourself out of remorse. They're going to find your dead body swinging from the rafters."

I put the pencil down. "I didn't kill Beasley."

Charles smiled. "I know. I did."

Charles walked me out the back door of the library to where he'd parked his car in the alley. The whole time he held the sharp tip of his dagger in the middle of my back. Once at the car, he forced me to the ground, on my back. While he held me down with a knee to my chest, he tied my wrists with tape.

I thought about kicking him, but I remembered what he'd done out of anger to Brian. Screaming wouldn't do any good; the alley was empty and all the businesses were closed. I'd wait till we reached PP International. Lots of places to run and hide there. And who knows, maybe someone would find the clues I'd left on my desk in time to save me.

"The tape might leave residue," he explained while he wrapped my wrists. "I'll have to clean your wrists with alcohol later. I was afraid a rope would cause bruising and the sheriff might wonder if you went willingly. Can't have that." He pulled me to my feet and smiled into my face.

The trip to PP International was silent. It was as if Charles had used up all his words in the library.

I hadn't. I had a few questions. Why had he killed Beasley? And how? I thought about using the standard line "You won't get away with this," but he already had. While the police had been trying to tie Brian's murder to the Harvester, Charles Thornton had been living his life, safe in his paranoia. And was Brian his first murder or had there been others?

When we reached PP International, Charles kept my door locked and got out on his side. Moving around the front of the car, he unlocked mine and pulled me out of the car. With his knife pointed at a spot between my shoulder blades, he marched me to one of the abandoned buildings.

As we walked, we were close enough to the sewage lagoon that the smell of hydrogen sulfide burned my nose and made my eyes water. I looked to my left and saw the lagoon. To the right of the lagoon was the old trailer the manager had lived in.

Tilting my head back, I looked at the night sky. It reminded me of the vision I'd had the night I worked with the runes. A full moon shone and the sky was covered with stars. Their reflection floated on the dark surface, as they had in the vision. But the water in the lagoon wasn't clean and cool, like the pool; it was oily and dank. And I didn't see a dark warrior to help me tonight. Tonight I was on my own.

A slight jab in the back quickened my steps.

We approached a building that was open on one side. In the bright moonlight I saw the empty hog crates where the animals had spent their entire lives. What a place to die.

No, I stopped the thought before it had formed. I wasn't going to die. I'd fight with all I had. All I had to do was get away from Charles and his knife.