Mind Games (7 page)

“The Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’” Riley said.

I’d seen it on the pamphlets before. It chilled me, though I never seriously thought anyone meant to kill me or my family. The murmur of agreement Riley received made me rethink that idea.

Angie pushed through the crowd, her father on her heels, sparing me for the moment.

“Girls, will you give me a minute with our new young friend?” Mr. Mueller asked.

They scattered to the other side of the converted gymnasium, though they continued to shoot glances our way.

“Did you enjoy the service?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you.” I latched onto the polite conversation, hoping the evening wouldn’t be a wash after all. “The band is very good.”

“They may get a recording deal,” Mr. Mueller said with evident pride.

“Cool.”

“I just want you to know that you are welcome here anytime you want to come.”

“Thank you.” I frowned and stared openly at the girls, who tried to look as if they hadn’t been watching. “I don’t think they want me here, though.”

“They’re nervous about the rumors surrounding your family,” Mr Mueller said. “But here you can be your own person. You’ve come here tonight, which tells me you have some doubts about following their evil ways.”

I opened my mouth, but closed it again without saying anything. Nothing I said could possibly help.

“You’re hurting inside,” Mr. Mueller said. “You’re craving acceptance.”

Looking away from the girls, I arched an inquiring eyebrow at him. “Are you an empath?”

He blinked and shook his head, the friendly expression dropping from his face. “How dare you accuse me of such a thing?”

“Sorry. I’m sure I was wrong.” I’d take the gift of empathy in a minute, even the mild form I suspected the preacher possessed. Or maybe he really didn’t have the gift. A lot of teenagers hurt inside and crave acceptance.

“Yes.” Mr. Mueller regained his composure. “You could find acceptance here. All you have to do is denounce your family and embrace Jesus.”

“Is that all? Just become someone completely different and conform?”

He didn’t miss the sarcasm. “If you ever change your mind, you know how to find me.”

I never went back to that church, though Angie asked me several more times. When I did attend mainstream religious services, I preferred Kaitlin’s Methodist Church or Madison’s Catholic Church. They weren’t perfect, but no one there ever suggested my family should die.

* * *

I didn’t relish the thought of having a chat with the pastor of the Gateway Christian Church of Eagle Rock, especially with a brand new deputy, one who didn’t believe in magic, by my side. I would have to be careful about what I said, lest I scare off yet another partner. Although if he could scare so easily, best to know sooner rather than later.

The church looked just as I remembered it from five years earlier – a nondescript square building with a single, unadorned cross as the only sign of its religious affiliation. I gave Wesley a brief rundown of the case on the way. To my surprise, he didn’t ask any questions.

“You’re not curious about anything?” I asked as we pulled into the nearly empty church parking lot.

“Lots of things, but I figure for today I’d be better off to sit back and watch.”

His sensible approach helped him rise a notch in my estimation. So far, while he had claimed not to believe in magic, he had made no snap judgments. That was a good start. We could work on the rest.

Once outside our squad car, I took the lead. I pushed through the glass doors heading into the church lobby, then took a sharp right into the office.

A middle-aged woman looked up at me when we entered. She took in my appearance and the brass tag on my shirt proclaiming my identity, frowning slightly. “Can I help you?”

“I need to have a word with Pastor Roberts.” When she raised her eyebrow I added. “Just a few routine questions.”

“Mark is in a counseling session right now, but he should be done in a few minutes, if you’d like to wait.”

Wesley and I sat in a pair of uncomfortable plastic chairs, but we didn’t have long to wait. A young couple, probably getting premarital counseling, shook hands with Pastor Roberts before leaving the office, hand in hand. They didn’t even look our way.

Mark Roberts, a short, balding man who had founded the church almost twenty years earlier, noticed us right away. His deeply lined face fell into a frown. “Deputy Scot? What can I do for you?”

“May we have a private word?”

He stepped aside and with a sweeping gesture, invited us into his office. He worked in a modest room, sparsely furnished with an oak desk, several padded chairs, and a bookshelf containing various Christian and inspirational books.

I didn’t waste time. Pulling out the evidence bag, I showed him the pamphlet cover. “Is this one of yours?”

His eyes lowered, then lifted again. “Yes.”

“Do you know when it was printed?” I asked.

“We modified the cover in June, so it was probably from either the June or July run. Can you tell me what this is about?”

I flipped the bag over to show him the writing on the other side. Roberts read the words, his lips moving slightly as he did. For a second I thought I saw a flicker of alarm, but it fled his face just as quickly. “Ms. Scot, I don’t know what this is about, but I do not advocate hate or violence. This literature is a plea for those who have rejected Christ to abandon their ways and find salvation.” He paused and arched a meaningful eyebrow at me. “Have you read the pamphlet?”

“Oh yes.” Many times, in fact, and I didn’t have any illusions about what he hoped to accomplish. What he saw as a charity case I saw as an attack, and I didn’t see a middle ground.

“So what is this about?” Pastor Roberts asked.

“Your cousin, David McClellan, was murdered last month.”

The pastor’s eyes went frosty and his lips thinned. “I heard. Do you think one of my parishioners did this?”

“This was found with the victim’s personal possessions.”

“I certainly didn’t advocate this kind of threat.”

I rolled my eyes, an almost involuntary reaction. “You quote Exodus and don’t think you advocated this kind of threat?”

Roberts pursed his lips. “If I recall correctly, the papers said McClellan died rather violently. The Eagle Rock Tribune openly questioned whether a human could have caused the damage that killed him.”

Good old Roy, I thought, giving those kinds of gory details to the public. Our local paranormal reporter had seen the body and suspected what we all had at first – a werewolf attack. The fact that David had been dead before he was tossed into those woods and eaten by wolves was not public knowledge.

“It seems to me that his own evil deeds killed him, in the end,” Pastor Roberts continued. “Perhaps you should take it as a lesson.”

My face went red and I balled my hands into fists. “I’m not a witch.”

“Really?” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I pray so. Is there anything else you need?”

Before I could think up a fresh retort, Wesley put a steadying hand on my arm. I’d almost forgotten his presence, though I now found it oddly reassuring.

“Thank you for your time,” Wesley said. “I trust you’ll call if you think of anything that might help us?”

“Of course.”

Wesley and I walked in silence until we reached my squad car. Once we were inside, seat belts buckled and engine running, I turned to him and sighed. “Sorry about that. It’s hard not to lose your temper with a man who thinks your whole family should be burned at the stake.” I grinned. “Things too weird for you yet?”

He didn’t answer. “If we’re suspecting someone in the congregation, we’re going to need to get inside the church and mingle.”

I remembered my last experience with the church group and shuddered. “Somehow, I don’t think they’ll let their guard down around me.”

“I’m new in town,” Wesley said. “Maybe I need to find a new church home.”

My surprise must have registered on my face because he quickly added, “It doesn’t mean I believe in magic, but it doesn’t matter what I believe. That man does, and he wears his hatred on his sleeve. That makes him and anyone who believes in him a suspect.”

Maybe Sheriff Adams had finally found his Scully after all. It bothered me that Wesley’s plan left no room for me, but I couldn’t think of a way to join him at the church without ruining his efforts. Finally, I gave him a decisive nod. “Services are Sunday morning at nine and Wednesday evening at seven. We can spend the next couple of days brainstorming. Maybe Cormack will even get off my back for a week or so.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Wesley said.

Neither would I.

I
HAD A STANDING INVITATION TO EAT
dinner with my family any night of the week, but despite the fact that Kaitlin spent most evenings there, learning to tame her unborn baby’s wild magic, I rarely took them up on the offer. I did stop by after work sometimes to visit my brothers and sisters, offering them the assurance they needed that I had neither left nor forgotten them. Of course, Juliana and Isaac were too old to need that sort of thing, or claimed they were. Christina, Adam, and Elana, at least, were openly appreciative.

I even chatted with my mom, who I understood much better since living in her head for an hour or so. She didn’t have active magic any longer either, which meant we were far more similar than she would have had me believe. For nearly two decades, she had channeled magic through her children while pregnant or breastfeeding. But it was all borrowed magic, and she knew time was nearly up. The twins she now carried would be her last, and when they weaned, she would have to learn to live without. If she weren’t living in such staunch denial of that fact, we might have made more progress toward patching our relationship.

Declining dinner invitations wasn’t about her, though. It was about avoiding my father. I told him that living on my own meant cooking my own meals, and that was true enough, but Dad couldn’t string two sentences together without trying to get me to accept his hatred of the Blackwoods. He dredged up old battles and old wounds, none of which had anything to do with Evan, though the look in his eyes implored me to take some kind of hint.

I didn’t. At times it made me feel dense, but I simply couldn’t make sense of any of it. The more I tried, the more tears I shed over a man who had abandoned fifteen years of friendship and a brand new romance without so much as telling me why.

It could have been a spell. In my daydreams, I still found out it was a spell. Perhaps his father didn’t want to see us together after all, despite what he had said to the contrary.

But only the Blairs might know that sort of powerful mind magic, and some of the things Matthew had let slip recently made me think even they couldn’t have done it. At least, not so forcefully and permanently. Inconsistencies, as Matthew had said.

So I spent my evenings at home with Madison, teaching her to cook. She learned quickly, as with just about everything else – everything except self-confidence, perhaps.

Her confidence had taken a severe blow when her father had kicked her out, refusing to pay for her college tuition unless she agreed to teach math instead of music. In the same conversation he had also let slip that he had adopted her, something Madison hadn’t brought up again since.

She hadn’t started dating Nicolas for a few weeks after that, though he had pestered her, intrigued by her gift. She had given in to his pestering the day he had helped Kaitlin and me move into the house, two days after she herself had moved in. I figured her father must have said something to her on the way out, because her self-confidence had taken another huge blow, but she refused to say what it might have been.

“How was your first day of student teaching?” I asked Madison while we prepared the spaghetti sauce for dinner. She already had garlic and onions sautéing in olive oil, and the familiar aroma filled the kitchen.

“Good. For the most part.”

“For the most part?”

She looked at me askance before saying. “I had Elena in my class today. Actually, I’ll have Adam on Wednesday.”

“Was there a problem with Elena?” I worried for my nine-year-old sister, Elena, more stuck in the middle than any of the others. She had the gift of speaking to the dead, but she spent so much time speaking to them that some days it seemed like a curse. It was, perhaps, the one gift I would turn down.

“She gets teased,” Madison said.

“Oh?” I might have guessed, although I also wondered if Elena would notice.

“I found her in the music room during recess, crying.”

Clearly, she did notice. I took out my frustration on some innocent parsley, chopping it into tiny bits, while my big sister instincts went on overdrive.

“I sang to her,” Madison said. “To make her feel better. It’s not a permanent fix, though.”

“Who was teasing her?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. But Cassie, you know you can’t rescue her.”

“Why not?”

“She has to learn to stand up for herself.”