Halfway Hexed (41 page)

I woke up crying, but couldn��t remember my dream. I felt Merc’s fur against one arm and touched him, then rolled on my side. Bryn was next to me in the bed, an IV dripping in his arm. Dr. Suri was asleep in a nearby chair. Both of them had more than a day’s worth of stubble.

I looked around the small downstairs guest room.

Bryn opened his eyes. They were bloodshot, but back to their usual bright blue.

“We’re alive,” I said.

“Apparently,” he said in a raspy voice. “Against all odds.”

I smiled.
Against all odds.
“You’re probably not used to being the underdog. Lucky I was there to show you how it’s done.”

“Lucky you were there,” he agreed.

I turned my head, hearing children’s voices. “What’s going on? Who’s out there?”

“A lot of places flooded. This house didn’t.”

I sat up slowly, feeling a little woozy. “So?”

“People asked to stay here.”

“And you said yes?” I didn’t manage to keep the shock from my voice.

He nodded.

I smiled and kissed his cheek. “That is so sweet of you.”

The corner of his mouth curled up as his lids drifted shut. “I knew you would think so.”

My brows rose, but he didn’t open his eyes again. I climbed out of bed, letting out a hiss of pain when my foot hit the floor. The problem with wounded feet is sooner or later you have to walk on them.

Someone had dressed me in white flannel pajamas. I didn’t want to think about who, since I was sure Bryn would’ve been too weak to do it.

I shuffled out of the room. There were people scattered everywhere. On air mattresses and sleeping bags, sitting on couches and in chairs. The ladies from First Methodist were serving donuts and scones and coffee.

I heard agitated German and followed it to where Andre was arguing with Rollie the vampire, as Johnny tried to calm them down.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“Rollie bite Mr. Andre. Mr. Andre get mad.”

Since Andre was standing and shaking a fist at Rollie, I took it that Andre was okay despite the pincushion treatment.

“Rollie!” I said.

“What? I would’ve bitten your boyfriend, but he didn’t look like he could spare even a drop. What in the world did you do to him?” Rollie asked.

I shot him a harassed look. “Can’t you get blood from a blood bank?” I demanded. “Put some of those packets in a foam cooler in your trunk for when you travel?”

“I only drink organic.”

“This isn’t a Whole Foods! This is a house. Behave yourself.”

I marched back out into the hallway and smiled at all the people who were telling me good morning. I wandered into the kitchen.

Cookie and Mr. Jenson were at the countertop. Cookie poured brownie mix into a pan. Mr. Jenson poured steaming water into a teapot.

Aunt Mel and Lennox Lyons were sitting together at the kitchen table, but stopped talking when they saw me.

“Morning,” I said hesitantly.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Aunt Mel said, getting up to give me a hug.

“You’re not mad?” I asked.

“No. Whatever happens, we’ll figure it out.” She kissed me, and I smelled her black currant and flowers perfume, felt her hoop earring graze my jaw.
Home.
So great.

As she sat back down, I moved over to Mr. Jenson.

“Mr. Jenson, remember that
doll
you were keeping for me? What’d you do with her?” I whispered, thinking that the last thing I wanted was for anyone to discover the mini Jenna Reitgarten.

“I took her out of the glass case to let her clothes air out. She and her companion doll are in the locked library,” he said in a low voice.

“Oh, good. I’ll figure out how to get them back to their rightful owners after breakfast. Or if I’m too busy and Bryn’s too tired, maybe after dinner . . . or, you know, tomorrow.” I smiled. Just a little.

“Very good,” Mr. Jenson murmured, totally unfazed as he got warm scones out of the oven. When I get old, I plan to be as unflappable as Mr. Jenson.

I started to the door, but caught Lennox’s eye as I passed the table.

“Good morning,” I said. “Are you—How are you?”

“Better than I’ve been,” he said, his voice smooth. He poured coffee into a cup and nodded to the chair next to him. “You’re welcome to join us.”

The invitation shocked and warmed me.

“Um, maybe later? There are a lot of people around. I’m gonna get dressed.” I reached over and took the cup, having a swallow of the dark roast and snagging a warm brownie drizzled with caramel. I took a couple fast bites and set the rest on the saucer next to my cup. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I got as far as the door before I turned back. “I’m glad you’re better.”

“Of course you are. You’ve taken it upon yourself to fix everything that’s wrong with the world.” His voice was dry, but the corner of his mouth edged up into a smile. Just like Bryn’s. “What’s on your agenda next week? Peace in the Middle East? Should take you what? Three or four days to clear that up?”

“Nah.” I laughed softly. “At least a week.”

He choked out a laugh.

I waved and left the kitchen, not able to wipe the smile from my face. I spotted Steve standing guard outside Bryn’s library door.

I nodded. “How’s the arm?” I asked.

“Still works,” he said, glancing at Georgia Sue who was taking a group of ladies on a tour of the hallway paintings.

“Now this one’s by that Pissarro. Isn’t that so pretty? Just like a museum. Oh here’s Tammy Jo,” Georgia said, rushing over to give me a hug. “People are talking about you! You saved that little Paige and her babysitter after you’d already rescued a carload of little lost girls. Some people are even saying you saved the town. And Bryn Lyons told everyone you convinced him to open up his house so people would have a roof over their heads while the town dries out.”

“People aren’t mad at me?” I asked, glancing around. No one seemed to be giving me dirty looks. “No one’s siding with the Reitgartens?”

“Haven’t you heard? The sheriff’s got proof that Mindy Glusky from Dyson is the one who arranged for those gunmen to come to the Fish-and-Fowl fund-raiser, and Mindy’s claiming that Jenna put her up to it. Sheriff Hobbs wants those Reitgartens for questioning, and where are they? Some folks are saying they took off to avoid getting interrogated.”

“Wow.” I tucked my hair behind my ears. “So when Jenna turns up—”

“
If
she turns up.”

“She’ll be in trouble? She’ll have a hard time convincing people to believe whatever wild explanations she has for her crazy behavior.”

Georgia Sue nodded.

“Well, I hope it all dies down real quick, so the town can get back to normal,” I said, extracting myself from them, feeling good that no one seemed to want to yell at me—or, you know, burn me at the stake. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. I have to get dressed.”

Craig Cuskin appeared in a doorway. I raised my eyebrows, surprised to see him.

“I snuck onto their computers and deleted the footage of you. I overwrote the disks with new stuff,” he said.

“So it’s gone?”

“Yeah, you forgive me?”

I nodded.

“Good, because you rock. We all think so. Maybe you’d let us do a calendar with pictures of you—regular pictures. Just swimsuits . . . to raise money for the Duvall rebuilding,” he said. “You know, for charity, Tammy Jo.”

“Aren’t there enough girls in bikinis on the Internet for you?” I said, flabbergasted.

“It’s not the same . . .” he said, but I didn’t hear the rest of his argument.

I limped up the stairs on my sore foot and went to the green guest room.

I pulled the door open and walked in, surprised to find John Barrett lying on the bed in a nightshirt with his leg bandaged and his arm shackled to the bed frame.

“Oh. Hi there,” I said. “Your leg okay?”

“Cracked tibia. Nice shot.”

“Um. Thanks,” I said hesitantly.

“I’m not angry about you shooting me. It was just business,” he said.

I thought in his place I’d have taken it personally, but didn’t say so. I perched on the chair next to the bed. “I guess you’ve lost your job now as president, huh?”

“You killed the president.”

“You mean she was secretly in charge of everything? You just pretended to be?”

He nodded. “She never had the title, but she didn’t need it.”

“How come you went along with that?”

His eyes twinkled. “A great many reasons.”

“Did you help her kill Bryn’s mom? Cassandra?”

“No, but I helped her cover it up,” he said with a sigh. “Lovely Cassie was the greatest spell-writer of her age, but she was going to expose Margaret for using her brilliant work. Spells that could wipe away any traces of dangerous or powerful magic. Spells that could wound from a distance. She’d written them as class assignments when she was in your grandmother Josephine’s courses. Margaret saw their potential. She saved thousands of lives by eliminating threats to our world. She was a patriot. And later, she was a great leader. There was only one problem. Cassandra recognized the spells and confronted Maggie. A serious mistake. Cassie’s death should’ve been the end of it, but then Cassie’s son grew up and would not stay quietly in America, away from politics. And he got involved with you.”

“What happened to Gwen?”

“She betrayed us. She was Maggie’s apprentice. That girl could’ve been the first female president of the association. That’s what Maggie was grooming her for. But Gwen found the brooch and recognized it, and her ridiculous obsession with Bryn Lyons made her take it. Gwen couldn’t keep it on her person or in her things, not while she was traveling with us. Maggie would’ve been drawn to her own magic, the power coating the brooch. But Gwen didn’t want to simply mail it to Bryn. She wanted to present it to him. She didn’t realize Maggie hadn’t bought the brooch, hadn’t found it.

“She’d killed Cassie and trapped her soul inside it to keep Cassie from appearing to her family and telling them who had really murdered her. You see, Margaret lined up a scapegoat and planted clues that led to him. When she killed him, the family was grateful to her for exacting justice. We did such a good job of framing him, no one ever suspected he was innocent.”

I clucked my tongue. “That’s awful!”

He shrugged. “Maggie was a brilliant and talented operative.”

“Did my grandma know what really happened?”

“No.”

“Why did Gwen send me the brooch?”

“Gwen was investigating you. She saw that you didn’t use wards, didn’t seem to know how to safeguard your things. She mailed it to you, knowing she could easily retrieve it later. As she did.”

“But Mrs. Thornton realized she took it?”

“Oh yes. Maggie had very powerful magic wrapped around that brooch, to prevent anyone, especially Cassie’s family, from drawing her spirit out. But your family has such a strong affinity for ghosts, and your magic was too like Maggie’s own. The brooch mistook you for her. The spell, you see, had an opening that Maggie had left so that she could speak to Cassie if she wanted to.”

“Why?”

“Because Cassie was a stunning talent, and Maggie always hated to see a young woman’s potential squandered. She had killed Cassie in an act of self-preservation, and that was a terrible and difficult thing for her to do. Maggie thought she could still immortalize Cassie in the world of magic, by keeping her spells alive. In fact, Maggie has a book of Cassie’s spells. One that she intended to have published after we retired from politics. She wanted Cassie to have a great and enduring legacy.”

“Wow, what a great humanitarian Mrs. Thornton was,” I snapped. “Making Miss Cassandra famous and revered
after
she killed her. Not to mention planning to destroy Cassandra’s best and most important legacy. Her son.”

“Only the magic matters,” Barrett said wistfully. “That’s what she always said.”

“How could you stand to be around her?” I demanded.

“Easily. She was remarkable. Years ago, the association was crumbling. Witches were being burned and beheaded, being preyed upon by every other preternatural creature. Maggie Thornton changed everything.”

I shook my head. That didn’t justify anything, but I knew I wouldn’t convince him of that. He’d been drinking the Conclave’s crazy Kool-Aid.

“And you just go around killing whoever you want to cover things up? You killed Gwen?”

“Operative Lambert killed her. Under orders.”

“Operative Lambert? Scarface?”

He nodded. “He was here to get you out of the way, so we could deal definitively with Lyons, but you proved harder to contain than expected.”

“He painted Gwen’s walls with antiwitch stuff?”

“Yes, we thought we’d frame the town’s religious extremists. Get some of them jailed and out of the way, but Maggie said the investigation would be too time-consuming. So Operative Lambert went back and got rid of the body and the evidence.”

“How did you expect to get away with it?”

“Do you see anyone arresting us for Gwen’s murder? We did get away with it, my dear. That and so much more over the years.”

I shook my head. Certifiable, the whole group of them. “What do you think will happen to you now?”

“I’ll stand trial, and then I’ll be executed.”

I raised my brows. “You don’t sound scared.”

He shrugged. “Maggie and I were lovers and partners for many decades. I shouldn’t think this world will be at all interesting for me without Margaret. Better to join her on the other side.”

What could I say to that? I got up and went to the walk-in closet.

“What about you? What will you do?” he asked.

“Get dressed. Have breakfast.”

“I meant with your life.”

“I knew what you meant,” I said, closing the closet door with me inside. I put on jeans and a sweater, warm socks and turquoise cowboy boots.

“I hope that ring doesn’t mean that you’ll let him enslave you,” he called. “A witch of your lineage has a responsibility to rise with the cream.”

That ring? I looked at my hands, stared at them. One moment my fingers seemed bare, then a gold ring appeared on my right middle finger. My jaw dropped.
Magically hidden.

The bright yellow gold was etched with a moon and stars and three blue-violet sapphires in a row.
Orion’s belt.