Pretty Witches All in a Row (20 page)

Once everyone joined hands, Seraphine began again.  “Everyone please join me in a deep, cleansing breath.  Breathe in calming, soothing energy from Mother Earth, and exhale all of the negativity and hatred, send it far out into the universe, let it all go.” 

They collectively took a few deep breaths together, and Nick had to admit, he did feel calmer afterwards.  He thought maybe she was going to lead them in a prayer or something next, but after they shared those calming breaths, she opened her eyes and dismissed them.  “Thank you all for coming tonight.  Merry meet, merry part and merry meet again.”

“What’s with all the merry stuff?” Nick whispered to Annaliese, still holding onto her hand even though the crowd began to break up. 

“It’s a traditional closing.  It means she hopes we’ll be happy the next time we meet again,” Annaliese whispered back.  “So…. what are you up to next?”

“That sort of depends on you,” he replied, stepping out of the path of the mass exodus and releasing her hand now that he had no good reason to be holding it.

“Does it?”

“I’m your own personal watch dog for the night, remember?”

“That could be interesting; I’ve never had a dog before,” she remarked, packing up the remaining candles. 

“No?  You’ve never had a dog?  Not even as a kid?”  It seemed almost sacrilegious to him, even if he didn’t currently own a dog either. 

“Nope, never.  Why, do you have a dog?”

“No, I’ve got a teenager,” he quipped. 

“Nice,” she chuckled, picking up the box.

“Here, let me get that for you,” Nick offered, tucking it under his arm.

“Thanks.  I’ve actually always been more of a cat person.”

“Cat person, huh?  We’ll have to work on that.”

“Do you have something against cats?”

“Do you have a cat?  I haven’t seen one around the store before.”

“No, I have a bird.”

“A bird?  Seems like a strange animal for a witch’s familiar.”

“He’s not my familiar, he’s just a bird,” she laughed and he felt lighter.  “Would you like to meet him?”

“Are you asking me back to your place?” his smile widened.

“Aren’t you supposed to be watching me anyway?”

“Yeah, but that’s usually done from outside.”

“Is that a hard and fast rule?”

“Well… no...”  He’d still be protecting her, but he’d lose his vantage point from the street.  If anyone came to the house he wouldn’t be able to see it, there was a tactical disadvantage there.  But it probably couldn’t hurt to come in for a little while.  “I suppose it’s a good idea for me to meet your bird, see if he’s got any evidence to offer.” 

“He’s not a parrot, he doesn’t talk.”   

“Maybe not to you… but I have ways of making him talk,” Nick assured her, affecting a silly accent. 

“Good, then you birdbrains can bond while I relax.  It’s been a hell of a day,” she sighed. 

“And it’s not over yet…”  Nick held back from leaving the back yard, catching hold of her sleeve to keep her by him as the last of the stragglers headed off to their cars. 

“What’s up?” Anna asked in a whisper, her eyes large and luminous in the moonlight. 

“I was thinking, maybe you could take a quick peek inside with me, at Skye’s ritual room.  Maybe there’s something we missed that you might pick up on.”

“Are we allowed to do that?  I thought it was illegal to cross the tape.”  Annaliese’s gaze went to the yellow police tape that still covered each exit to the building. 

“Only if we get caught,” he gave her a playful wink.  “Besides,
I’m
allowed on the crime scene.  So if anybody asks… you were never here.” 

“Okay…” she replied a bit dubiously.  “Do we go in through the back door?” 

“That’s the plan.”  There were still people milling about and talking at the front of the house, so that seemed like the safest bet to him.  Kneeling in front of the rear door, he set the box of candles down on the patio and withdrew a credit card from his wallet.

“Does that really work?”

“Sometimes, if it’s the right kind of lock.  This is an older building, so I’m hoping it does.  Otherwise we go to plan B.”

“What’s plan B?”

“My not so fabulous talent with a set of lock picks.”  However it appeared that luck wasn’t on their side.  “Damn, it looks like this lock doesn’t accept Visa,” he muttered, pulling out a set of fancy lock picks from an inside pocket of his jacket. 

“Wow, those look positively larcenous,” she commented, sounding impressed.

“I couldn’t resist.  Of course, I’m still learning how to use them.  They don’t exactly teach this at the police academy.”  The trouble was, he couldn’t quite get one of the picks in deep enough, none of them was quite slender enough.  “Ooh hey… I wonder if this would work…”  Nick pulled out a ballpoint pen and unscrewed it while she watched, removing the little spring coiled around the ink and straightening it, but it proved to be too flexible.  “Damn… well, it was a good idea,” he sighed.  “I guess I could always go down and check out the keys and we could come back?”

“Or we could use the spare key…”  Annaliese bent swiftly, picking up a small terra cotta planter shaped like a mushroom, underneath was a single house key.

Nick stared up at her in amazement.  “For crying out loud, why didn’t you say you knew where the key was in the first place?” he demanded in exasperation. 

She gave him a little shrug, moving past him to slip the key into the lock.  “You were so cute down there going all MacGyver; I wanted you to feel like you were doing well.” 

“You wanted me to…”  Nick’s lips mashed together as he rose from his crouched position, nodding.  “That’s cute Annie, real cute.”  Once she had the door unlocked, he nudged her aside, in case there was something inside they hadn’t counted on.  Easing the door open, he peered inside, but the rear room seemed just as he’d seen it last, only very dark.  “Too bad we can’t turn on the lights.”   

“We can open up the window coverings, that’ll probably help quite a bit, there’s a lot of moonlight out tonight,” she suggested, moving to one of the decorative bedspreads that hung over the windows and draping it up on the rod, exposing most of the window.

“Good idea.”  Nick followed suit and soon they had all the windows uncovered and a decent amount of light to work with.  “So, one of the things I wanted to ask you about...  They found traces of this same dirt at Meiliyn’s place on the carpet where she was killed.  Only no pentagram, just traces of the dirt on the carpet and in the vacuum cleaner.”

“That’s odd,” Annaliese frowned, mulling that over.  “So she did the same kind of ritual that Skye did, but cleaned it up before she was killed?”

“No, the vacuuming was done after she was killed; there were traces of her blood mixed in with the dirt.”

“Oh.”  She fell silent then, digesting that as she looked around.  Suddenly she ducked her head to look out the window at the night sky.

“What is it?” Nick asked, watching her with interest. 

“I’m trying to work out which way is north.” 

“Ah… I have no clue.”

“It’s… that way,” she pointed, the frown becoming more pronounced on her face.

“Okay, north is that way… and that’s a bad thing because… why?”

“Because if north is that way, then the apex of this pentacle should be facing that way, instead it’s inverted, see these two points?”

“I repeat, that’s a bad thing because, why?”  It was all going over his head, did it really matter which way the star was drawn?  It must be from the way she was scowling. 

“Because an inverted pentacle or pentagram means something very different to witches.  Like an inverted cross might be the sign of the devil to Christians, the inverted pentagram means the witch was practicing something dark and dangerous.  And if this is dirt instead of black salt…”  She knelt and touched the dirt between her fingers before wiping her hand off on the carpet in disgust.  “Then it definitely wasn’t any kind of banishing or protection spell, it was something much worse.”

“Much worse like…”  Nick still wasn’t sure he believed in any of this, but she sure seemed upset by the idea.

“There’s no way of knowing.  If we can find her Book of Shadows… like a spellbook, then we might be able to tell what she was working on but… Nick, I don’t think Skye drew this pentacle.”

Now it was his turn to frown back at her.  “Why not?”

“I loved Skye, she was irresponsible and a little loopy sometimes, but that was part of her charm.  But one thing about her, she was as fluffy bunny pagan as they come.  There’s no way she would ever delve into the dark stuff, I’m sure of it.”

“So whoever drew this, might have been the one who killed her.”

“Exactly.  Especially if they took the trouble to clean it up at Mei’s place.”

They stared back at each other across the room, not quite sure what to say next.  This didn’t fit in at all with the theory that it could be Cahill or one of his followers responsible for the crimes.  He knew she had to be thinking the same thing, and his heart went out to her.  One of her closest friends might very well be a murderer.

“Let’s not jump to any conclusions yet.”  Nick finally spoke.  “Let’s see if we can find that shadow book and see if there are any clues in there.  What would it look like?”

Annaliese let out a long exhalation.  “It could look like anything really, from a raggedy old notebook to a leather bound masterpiece.  Some witches even keep them online in their computers,” she replied, moving to look through the items on Skye’s altar, inspecting them carefully. 

Nick tried the short book case, pulling out every book he could find that didn’t have a title printed on the spine and setting them aside for her to look over.  “Can you tell anything?”

“It’s hard to say without doing some cross referencing.  The trouble is, a lot of spell components can be used for more than one thing, so nothing leaps out to mind when I smell rosemary or see stubs of orange candle wax in the holder.  Plus we don’t know how old these fragments are.”

“I’ve got an inventory of everything the Crime Scene Unit found in here when they swept the place, we can go over it later tonight and see what we missed,” he added, coming over to join her with a short stack of books.  “I found a few here, but I’m not really sure what I’m looking for.” 

“Oh great, thanks.”  Annaliese flipped through the first few but discarded them quickly.  She paused longer though over a large spiral bound notebook with a vinyl cover, decorated with stars in a holographic pattern.  “I think this is it,” she murmured, flipping through the pages.  “Can we take it with us?”

Nick paused over that one.  “Yeah, I just have to make sure it gets back where it belongs when we’re done with it.”  Technically he should sign it out, but it wasn’t like they were going to sell it or destroy it.  “I think we should take this back to your place, and look through it like you said.  See if there’s any indicator as to what she might have been working on, or if she had nothing to do with that final ritual,” he agreed, moving to replace the books back on the shelves and help cover the windows all up again.   “I’ll follow you back to your place.  So no driving like this is Le Mans.”

“I promise.”  Her teeth flashed bright against the darkness as the last window was set to rights. 

Chapter Twelve

Nick had to smile to himself as he drove along behind Annaliese’s dark green SUV; she drove like his eighty-five year old grandmother.  Finally, it felt like they were making some breakthroughs on the case.  Or maybe he was just jazzed at the prospect of spending more time with Anna?  If anything, all they had now was more questions, but at least they were new ones, things they could follow up on.  The worst part about an ongoing investigation was when there was nothing left to do but chew through old territory again and again while you waited for something to break, or even worse, for there to be another murder. 

It felt a little strange to be ascending the stairs to her shop with the street all dark.  There were dim lights on in the store but the place was deserted.  Nick caught up with Annaliese as she unlocked the front door and entered in the alarm code.

“Don’t you ever feel like you’re on display?”

“On display?  How do you mean?”  She threw him a puzzled look over her shoulder.

“Living here with all these windows facing the busy street?”

“Most of the time at night I’m upstairs with the shades drawn.  If I do come down it’s usually to my kitchen and you can’t see back there from the front.  But I do have to make some adjustments; I can’t walk around naked downstairs.”

“What a crime,” he murmured, following her in and setting down the box of candles on the counter. 

A smile curved her lips as she followed him towards the rear of the store.  “Would you like a cup of tea or coffee before we get started?”

“I’d love a cup of coffee,” Nick nodded, setting the other box with the spell book and some of the case files he’d grabbed from his car on the kitchen table.  Her kitchen had been updated a few years ago but still fit in with the Victorian feel of the house, the appliances camouflaged by wood work.  “This is nice.” 

“Thanks,” she smiled, snapping on the lights and moving to the sink to fill the carafe for the coffee maker.  “I love this house; it’s been in my family for generations.  I still can’t believe it’s mine sometimes.”

“Why is that?” Nick asked, taking a seat at the table in the middle of the kitchen on a high stool, watching her work.  At some point she’d slipped off her shoes without him noticing and she padded around the kitchen barefoot. 

“I’m not the oldest; technically the house should have gone to my sister, Jade when my mother left the area.”

“So what happened?  She didn’t want it?”

Annaliese tapped her nose.  “You guessed it.  It wasn’t modern enough for her.  You should see her place, it’s twice as big as this one and it’s just her and her husband rambling around in it.”

“They live up in Vancouver, right?”

“That’s right, how did you know that?” she blinked in surprise.

“Well, you know…” he tapped the box that had the case files in it.