Pretty Witches All in a Row (24 page)

Her light laughter trailed back to him as she entered the master bedroom suite, turning on the light by the couch and illuminating the cozy sitting room.  “As promised, here is my pet bird, Mr. Bawkbagawk,” she introduced with great flourish, a little blue parakeet that chirped from an old fashioned birdcage in the corner of her sitting room. “As you can see, he’s clearly not a talker.”

“Mr. Bawk…”

“bagawk,” she nodded with a lopsided grin.  “It’s from a silly cartoon, but mostly I call him Bawky.  At least, I think it’s a him… I never stopped to check,” she considered aloud as she placed a fitted cover over the cage.  “G’nite Bawky,” she crooned to the animal. 

“Well of course not, that would be rude,” Nick deadpanned, watching her interact with the bird with a shake of the head.  Just when he thought he had her all figured out, she did something to surprise him.  He thought he was the only adult left who admitted to watching cartoons. 

“Okay, so here you go, one couch as requested.  Feel free to watch TV or help yourself to a book; I’m going to go slip into something more comfortable.”  Her voice dropped to a theatrically sultry purr.

Nick fixed her with a pointed look; she was definitely doing it on purpose now, taking advantage of his sense of duty to deliberately torture him.  Deliberately placed or not, the image came unbidden of her stripping down to whatever it was she slept in, perhaps nothing at all.

“Okay, okay, I’ll be good, I promise.”  Her hands came up in a gesture of supplication, though the smile remained fixed on her face.  “Seriously though, do make yourself at home.  Feel free to get up and make yourself a snack if you need one, or if you change your mind about getting a few hours of sleep, my old bed is surprisingly comfy.”

“Thanks, I will,” Nick promised, taking a seat on the couch, which was surprisingly comfortable too, given the older style. 

“Goodnight,” she bade him softly, disappearing behind a pair of mahogany pocket doors, set with frosted panes of glass. 

“Goodnight Annie, I’ll keep you safe.”  Once the doors were shut, Nick could see her indistinct silhouette moving through the bedroom, enough to track her movement, not her shape.  The time of night was such that he probably could get some shut eye.  They were almost at the point of the night where he might have gone home if he’d been watching her from outside in the car, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave her yet.  However irrational, he felt like the killer’s timetable was accelerating. 

There had been just over a month’s gap between the first two killings, but only a few days between Skye and Meilyn’s deaths.  If the rest of the coven was marked for death, he was willing to bet good money the killer wouldn’t wait as long between murders now.  The need to kill always escalated with serial killers. 

Nick listened to the sounds of the house, switching the light beside him off.  The sound of Annaliese climbing into bed reached his ears, and he tried not to imagine what state she was in behind those closed doors as she slipped beneath the covers.  Once he’d gotten used to the rhythm of the house, its little creaks and groans, he was able to relax.  Gradually, he slipped off to sleep, allowing himself the little rest, confident he would awaken should anyone breach the house. 

Chapter Thirteen

Prin lumina acestei lumânări

Conjur puterile întunericului

The words reverberated through her mind, indistinct; she couldn’t quite place the language, but the intent was clear…
she was in grave danger
.  The air grew oppressively hot, the scent of bitter herbs permeated the room, and her breathing came in shallow gasps as an unreasoning panic seized her limbs.  She was caught up in it again, somehow linked to the dark events transpiring in another part of town.

It was hauntingly familiar; even though the setting was completely different… the dream itself had the same mixture of reality and surrealism.  This time she saw herself wandering the beach on a cold, stormy morning, wearing a swath of white gauzy material wrapped around her body again and again.  The wind whipped her hair and caught at the ends of the gauze with greedy hands, eager to tear it from her body, but Annaliese felt no sting of a chill at the wind’s bite.  She realized with a sudden stab of panic, that her feet were trapped, buried and immovable beneath the pale sand. 

Eyes drawn down, she noticed the dark pentacle drawn around her, the black earth standing out starkly against the smooth, white sand. 

Să îmi dea puterea

Să îmi recapăt tinereţea şi să îmi dea viaţă de-a pururi

“
No… not again…!” she screamed, but the wind whipped away the words the instant they left her lips. She couldn’t move and she had no voice.  A figure loomed above her, shrouded in darkness.  Its tendrils reached for her and she screamed again as she felt their icy grip snake across her wrists, pushing her backwards, off balance.  Instead of toppling to the sand as expected, Annaliese was shocked as water closed over her head and she struggled to breach the surface and suck in a greedy breath.  Her head whipped from side to side as she tried to take in her surroundings, finding herself submerged in an old fashioned claw foot tub. 

The dark figure pressed its advantage, more tendrils emerging to take hold of her shoulders, firmly pushing her beneath the water once more, and this time there was no dislodging them.  Anna’s eyes flew wide as she stared at the figure through the veil of water, trying to find any recognizable factor at all, but she was fast losing her ability to focus as her body gave up its impotent struggle.  Unable to escape, a peculiar lassitude took hold of her, and what connection she had with her body faded along with the burning pain in her lungs.  Dispassionately she watched from above, divorcing herself from the terror her body faced.  Her breathing became slower and steadier.

Suddenly there was no air, no breath, no light; only a terrible sinking sensation, as though she was being sucked into a black hole.  But not before she was granted one last look at the body in the bathtub.  Losing that detached calm, a terrified scream ripped through her, drawing her out of the void, even as the final words hovered in the air.

Aşa cum am spus aşa sa fie

* * *

The first scream tore Nick out of his sleep with a start.  He blinked in the darkness, trying to place where he was, who was screaming and what he was supposed to do about it.  Annaliese’s next terrified scream brought him out of his stupor, and he was up off the couch like a shot, hurdling the coffee table as he made his way to the double doors and shoved them open.  “Annaliese?” he called out, rushing to her side as he spotted her thrashing on the bed, her body bathed in moonlight as she went still.  Too still.    For a long terrifying moment she didn’t respond to him, and he shook her by the shoulders, his heart clenching painfully with dread.  “Annie?”

Her eyes shot open, wide with panic as she drew in a long, labored breath.  “Nick?” she called out, clutching at his arms, her body covered in a fine sheen of sweat. 

“Shhh, it’s okay, honey.  Calm down, it was a dream.  Just a bad dream, you’re okay.”  Similar to the times he’d comforted Veronica over the years when she’d woken from a bad dream, Nick spoke in calm, soothing tones, stroking the hair back from her forehead.  Unlike those times, he wasn’t able to shake the feeling of dread that still wrapped itself around his heart.

Annaliese’s head shook back and forth against the pillow, her cheeks wet with tears.  “No, it wasn’t a dream… it was like before… someone else is dead, I know it,” she cried.  Sitting up, she clung to him, sobbing against his shoulders. 

Nick held her carefully, rubbing her back soothingly as he processed what it was she was saying.  Regardless of whether or not it was true, she believed it to be, that much was obvious.  “It might just have been a bad dream, especially after going to two crime scenes in one night; it makes sense that your mind would conjure another killing, Annaliese.  It doesn’t mean for sure that anyone else died.”

“No, you’re not listening to me,” she insisted, pulling back to look him in the eye.  “I heard the same thing again, the chanting… I saw the same dark figure… it was the same feeling as before, the same dark pentacle… I know what I saw, it wasn’t a dream.”

His expression softened, and Nick reached up to brush the tears from her face with his thumb.  “Why don’t you tell me about it then, we’ll analyze it together,” he offered, knowing she needed to get it out, even if it did turn out to be nothing.  “You saw yourself as the victim again?  Saw yourself get stabbed again?”

Annaliese took in a deep shuddering breath.  “No, not another stabbing, it was a drowning this time.  I was on the beach, but then I was being drowned in an old bathtub by the dark figure this time.”

“Drowning,” Nick frowned, that didn’t fit the M.O. for any of the other deaths, but he nodded encouragingly at her.  “Did you recognize where you were or was anything about the killer familiar this time?”

“No, like I said it was on the beach, only there was a tub out there with the pentacle drawn on the sand around it.  I didn’t recognize the beach but the sand was very white and clean, nothing like anything near here.  But… I saw who it was that was killed.” 

“You did?  Who was it?” 

“I was already moving away from the body fast, but I think… I think it was Seraphine.”

* * *

Barely fifteen minutes later they sped through the night on the way to Seraphine’s house, an upscale modern home in the fashionable Pearl District.  There had been no answer to Anna’s frantic calls to Sera’s home number or cell phone, and it was late enough that Willis and Nelson should have already gone home for the night.  Neither one of them would have been able to get back to sleep again without checking on Seraphine to make sure she was alright. 

The house was of modern design, a split level with the living rooms and kitchen on the upper levels and the bedrooms on the lower levels.  Annaliese mentioned that she’d been there many times before, as Sera did like to host a good party. 

Sure enough, there was no sign of the two detectives when they pulled up, and Nick parked the car across the street from the darkened house.  “Stay in the car, I’m gonna go check things out,” he ordered automatically, opening the glove compartment and showing her the small automatic pistol inside.  “Just in case.”

“There’s no way I’m staying in here while you go in there by yourself,” Annaliese scoffed. 

“There’s no way I’m taking you in there where I might not be able to protect you.”

“Why don’t you call for backup or something?  Go in like commandoes or the SWAT team or whatever it is you guys do?”

“Because I don’t know that there’s anything wrong in there.  We don’t even have probable cause to go in there with guns blazing.”

“What do you mean you don’t know that there’s anything wrong in there?” she cried out in frustration.  “What are you doing here if you don’t believe me?”

Nick mashed his lips together, taking a calming breath before responding.  “Annie, I do believe you, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.  But that’s not something I can put on a police report, that you had a prophetic dream.  My Captain would laugh me right off the force.  I have laws I have to abide by, rules I have to work under.”

“Well I don’t.”  Her lips set into a mutinous line as she hopped out of the car, marching across the street towards Sera’s house.

“Annaliese!”  Nick swore under his breath as he climbed out of the car, chasing after her.  “Get back here!” he demanded, but she was either pretending not to hear him or too intent on her task to pay him any mind.  She was already behind the high hedges surrounding the driveway by the time he caught up with her, grabbing her by the arm and swinging her around.  “You do too have to abide by the laws,” he insisted, his voice low and urgent. 

“I know I do, but not in the same way that you do.  If I go up to the door and she’s alright, she’ll forgive me, we’ve been friends for years.  And if she doesn’t answer… well then I’ll say I was really worried about her and used her spare key to let myself in.  Then you don’t have to worry about your probable cause.”

“What is it with everyone having a spare key outside, doesn’t anyone worry about crime?” he muttered.  Still, she had a point, having Annaliese there did give him an excuse to enter the house that he couldn’t use on his own.  Then again, he didn’t relish the idea of explaining her presence in his report either. 

Annaliese didn’t seem inclined to wait for his permission, she resumed her trek up to the front door, but Nick caught her hand before she reached for the doorbell.  “Wait…” he whispered, tugging her back behind him by the wrist and holding a finger to his lips before pointing to the door which was resting shut, not latched.

She nodded, her eyes wide, and Nick withdrew his gun, nudging the door open slowly with his elbow, not wanting to affect any prints if possible.  “Stay right behind me…” he breathed, barely above a whisper, hating the idea of bringing her into danger, but not daring to leave her unprotected on the doorstep once he ventured inside. 

Annaliese nodded again at his back, even though he couldn’t see her, hand touching his back lightly as he ventured into the darkened home.   His heart hammered, the blood singing through his veins as he forced himself to move as slowly and silently as possible, in case there was someone still in the house.  As they wandered through the upper floor, they found the living room, dining room and kitchen completely deserted, and made the descent onto the lower floor.

“Holy shit…”  Nick paused at a spare bedroom that served as a sewing room/ritual room, the contents completely trashed.  Similar to the scene in Meiliyn’s apartment, the altar table was overturned, witchy looking things strewn all over the floor, but this time the killer had taken it a step farther.  All of the books in the book cases had been tipped out, and many had their pages ripped out and thrown around the room.  Several glass potion bottles had been hurled with enough force to shatter against the wall, leaving a sickly sweet scent that permeated the room.  There was no doubt in his mind now that the killer had been there and they were likely too late.