The Hexed (Krewe of Hunters) (11 page)

“As time went on, some of the accusers became the accused themselves. A woman named Martha Corey was accused of witchcraft on March 12, and her husband, Giles, spoke against his own wife. Then he himself was accused on April 19. Today we see Giles Corey as a sad old man. But in fact, he was a strong old bugger. He knew that his property would stay in his family if he refused to plead either innocent or guilty, so Magistrate Corwin had him pressed in hopes of forcing him to either confess or claim innocence. Heavy stones were piled on his chest until finally he suffocated. A marker commemorating the event stands at the Howard Street Cemetery. But all Giles would say was...” She paused, smiling. “If you’ve spent time here in Salem, you know.”

“More weight!” a kid called out.

“Exactly,” Devin said. “He might not have been the kindest of men, but he did know the law, and by dying without giving a plea of guilty or not guilty, he kept his land. And in fact, his heirs are still there to this day.”

As she finished speaking, she looked over toward Bridget’s bench and frowned.

Rocky was gone.

* * *

He’d seen her standing slightly downhill by the entrance to the cemetery.

At first she had been nothing but a deeper shadow in the darkness. But then the shape of her shadow had resolved itself into a woman, and not a woman in regular summer tourist clothing. A long skirt had hugged her legs and moved in the breeze.

He’d quietly left the tour group and walked slowly in her direction. But by the time he reached the cemetery gate she had turned and was headed down to Derby Street.

He followed her, and when she reached the corner she turned back and saw him―and saw that he could see
her
.

He recognized her face. It was the face in the portrait Jane had drawn that afternoon. The face that Mina Lyle had seen in the window the night that Devin had heard the sobbing.

“Wait, please,” he called softly.

Her face seemed to whiten; for a minute, he could see her clearly in the combination of moonlight and illumination from the well-lit main street.

Then she turned and fled around the corner. He raced after her, but there was a crowd of people walking along Derby Street in search of restaurants and bars, or heading home after a long day of exploring the city.

He moved through the crowd, searching, studying every group he passed. He even walked into the brewery and a few restaurants, looking for her, but after a good forty-five minutes of fruitless effort he gave up and slowly walked back to the cemetery.

A fine mist had crept in. The kind that made the cemetery ethereal and sad. He waited, watched and considered jumping the fence, but he knew there would be no point.

She was gone.

Of course, she could disappear at will. She hadn’t even needed to turn that corner.

He could never catch her unless she allowed him to.

He could only speak to her if she wanted to speak to him.

The tour group had moved on. He wasn’t worried. He had a pretty good idea of the route they would follow, so he would catch up to them eventually.

He walked down by the site of the old jail, by the Anglican church, then on to a few of the other stops on most of the tours. They wouldn’t have wandered too far; the tours didn’t tend to go more than a few blocks in either direction off Essex Street.

He caught up with the tour in front of the Gardner-Pingree House. As he joined the crowd, he realized that Devin was still speaking.

“The house was built in 1804 by Samuel McIntire but was sold in 1814 to Captain Joseph White. Joseph White was the victim of a brutal murder—and his killer’s trial was presided over by Daniel Webster himself. Parker Brothers, a Salem company, bought the American rights to a British game called Cluedo and marketed it as Clue. This house served as a real-life basis for the game. Captain White was bludgeoned in the bedroom with a candlestick, as well as stabbed with a knife. Nearby houses and people involved in the arrest and trial were added to the pieces and characters. In addition, many people believe that both Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne used the trial in their works—including Poe’s classic tale of a guilty conscience, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ since one of the men hired to carry out the murder hanged himself in his jail cell.”

Brent Corbin stepped up to join her. “The trials and other grisly events in the history of Salem have been explored in numerous books, many of which I carry in my shop if you’re interested, so let’s move on and I’ll tell you the last story of the evening.”

Devin looked around as the group began to follow Brent, and Rocky knew the minute she’d spotted him. She walked over to where he stood, almost directly across the street from Crow Haven Corner, the city’s oldest witch shop.

She didn’t speak, but she did look at him questioningly.

“Good thing we came on the tour,” he told her. “Or, I should say, good thing
you
did.”

“Every time he tried to speak, he started coughing, poor guy,” Devin said. “So...where did you run off to?”

He didn’t get a chance to answer, because just then a woman ran up to her, trying to stuff a bill into her hands.

“Thanks! You were great. We learned so much.”

“Oh, uh, no...um, please, give this to Brent.”

But the woman was already gone, racing to rejoin the rest of the group. Devin winced and looked at him. For a moment, with her wry smile, the light in her eyes and the scent of her so powerful, he was tempted simply to touch her...to draw her into his arms.

Luckily she spoke, and the spell was broken.

“Looks like I got a twenty. Buy you a drink, Agent Rockwell?”

“Sure,” he told her.

They walked across the street to a restaurant that was still open for a few hours. Luckily it wasn’t very full, and they were given a curved table near the window to the street and no one seated near them. There were menus already lying on the table, and they both ordered shepherd’s pie, as if they’d realized simultaneously that they were starving.

When the waitress had left them, Devin turned to him and demanded, “Where the hell did you go?”

“I saw her,” he said.

“Who?”

“The woman your aunt saw at your window the night our Jane Doe was killed.”

“You
saw
her?”

He nodded.

“And you chased her?”

He nodded again, then waited as the waitress delivered their drinks.

“And you...spoke with her?”

“No. She disappeared.”

“Well, that’s not really helpful. But...are you sure it was her?”

“I’m sure. I think I scared her, but she didn’t disappear right away. She let me follow her down to Derby Street first, which makes me think she wants to talk.”

Her eyes were on his, glinting like sapphires in the light of the little candle that burned on their table.

“Then why did she disappear?” Devin asked.

“Because,” he said softly, lifting his beer in a salute, “I think she wants to talk to
you.
”

7

D
inner was actually nice.

Almost like two people who liked each other being out on a...

A date.

They talked about things that had nothing to do with ghosts and murder. He told her he’d lost his dad, who he’d adored, and had always wanted to go into law enforcement because of him. His mom, who he saw as often as his schedule allowed, was happily remarried and living in Arizona.

“Doesn’t she worry about you—about your job?” Devin asked.

“She married an ex-sheriff and then a retired cop. She’s accustomed to it. She’d probably be more worried if I worked in a convenience store. What about you?”

So she told him about her parents, that they were happily retired and she saw them several times a year—sadly, the last time being not so long ago, for her aunt’s funeral.

As they talked, Rocky said that there were times when he really missed the area. When she asked him if he would ever move back, he shook his head slowly. “Not in the near future. I’ve just gotten where I really want to be, and that’s based in Virginia.”

“Another state with a lot of interesting history,” she said with a smile. “Jamestown, Williamsburg, revolutionaries, pirates, the Civil War...”

He laughed. “Yep.”

Eventually they left the restaurant. She had a feeling they were both sorry to go.

“Are you still planning to meet up with your friends?” she asked him. “Now that your ‘people’ are here?”

He paused at that. Essex Street was quiet. Most of the ghost tour guests had headed back to their lodgings. A few late-night bars were still open, but at that hour Essex Street wasn’t the hotbed of activity it was by day.

Until Haunted Happenings, of course, but that would come with the fall.

He nodded, looking around. “Not a creature is stirring,” he murmured, then smiled at her. “But do you think they’re watching?”

“Ghosts?” she asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Probably,” she said softly.

“And yet most people never even know they exist—or think about it on a daily basis. Anyway, back to your question,” he said, walking again in the direction of the car. “Yes. My ‘people’ are all nice, and two of them are from the area—assigned to the case for precisely that reason. They’ll have fun with my old crowd. You liked Jane and Angela, didn’t you?”

“Very much,” she told him, getting into the car.

“Good. That’s two people you’ll already know,” he said, and moved around to the driver’s side. “And Jack, of course.”

“Jack?”

“Detective Grail.”

“Oh! That’s right,” she said, remembering. “You two are old friends.”

“Yep. Never thought he’d be a cop. Another of our friends—the biggest slacker of us all—went to law school, and now he’s a successful attorney.”

Devin laughed. “All my friends, it seems, embraced the history of this town and opened stores or became guides. Or both.”

“You could certainly be a guide if you wanted to.”

“I love what I do, but who knows what the future will hold?”

As they drove back toward her cottage, Devin looked out at the streets of Salem. Yes, it was commercial. Yes, it was a tourist town. But people here also remembered their real history. And they honored it.

When they reached the house, he walked her up the path without asking.

Devin opened the door and looked in. “Auntie Mina?” she called.

There was no reply from her aunt, so she stepped in, and Rocky followed her.

“I’ll do the check-out-the-house thing,” he said.

As he’d done before, he went through every room, looking in closets and under the beds. When he finished and rejoined her by the door, he said, “I don’t want to make you paranoid, but it’s always a good idea to be careful. I just wish you weren’t out here alone.”

“I’m not alone. I have Poe and Aunt Mina,” she told him.

He gave a halfhearted smile. “You were pretty amazing tonight.”

“Pardon?”

“You know your history—the people, the victims, the accusers, the social climate of the time. And the more recent history, too, of course.”

She stood in the doorway smiling. “There’s so much about the people who lived here that’s so fascinating. Take the gray house that borders the cemetery. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s in-laws lived there, and he wrote a story about a house next to a cemetery that was filled with spiders. And wondering about his in-laws makes me wonder about
him.
What does our background have to do with the way we live our lives? Do we embrace it? Run from it?”

He laughed softly. “I know. From the area, remember? Where the girls first became ‘afflicted’ is actually Danvers today, and where Giles Corey had his property is Peabody now. But it was all Salem back then.”

Devin laughed. “Okay, so you did grow up around here. And I certainly don’t want to escape the area. It’s just that sometimes I feel I know it
too
well. Still, for better or worse, this is home.” She hesitated, looking at him. “You really think that Salem’s history is relevant to the case?”

“For some reason, yes. A hunch—maybe the way the victims’ bodies were arranged. Definitely the pentagrams.”

“I know I sound like a broken record, but the Wiccans here today have absolutely nothing to do with what happened in the past.”

“No—and yes. Don’t you think maybe the Wiccan community here has thrived because of history?”

“I suppose.”

He exhaled thoughtfully. “Here’s the thing—they used witchcraft in 1692 to spread terror and
kill people. Whoever is doing this is using modern Wicca in some way, apparently for the same reason.”

“And does that help you?”

“Right now it’s about all we’ve got, even if it doesn’t lead anywhere yet. We have nothing physical. No trace evidence is almost unheard of. We have no hairs, no fibers, no blood from the attacker—nothing to go on forensically.”

“They haven’t found
anything?
”

“Not yet. But we
will
catch him—or her. This time.”

“You think a woman could be doing this?”

“Yes. There’s no reason a woman can’t wield a knife.”

“True.”

“You all right?” he asked her. “I can...well, I can stay on the sofa or in your aunt’s old room—I think she’d let me.”

She smiled. “I’m fine,” she told him.

They were standing so close together there in the doorway. For a moment she wondered how someone she found so seductive and attractive had come into her life—and why he’d had to enter as a consequence of a tragic murder. And yet, despite the circumstances, there was something chemical between them, she thought. Or maybe the bond was more cerebral.

Apparently they both spoke to the dead.

No, it wasn’t that. She smiled slightly.

As in her
Auntie Pim
books, maybe it was slightly magical.

She thought they were going to touch. Their lips were close.... They would touch, and then...

He cleared his throat and stepped back.

“Please tell me that you have me on speed dial,” he said.

She nodded and smiled, and stepped into the house. “Don’t worry. I’m not taking any chances. I’m young. I like living.”

“So do I,” he said softly. “Lock—”

“The door.”

He took another step back. “I’ll be listening for the bolt.”

She shut and locked the door, then leaned against it and closed her eyes, listening as his footsteps took him down the path to his car.

“Dearest girl, you should have kissed the boy.”

Her eyes flew open. “Auntie Mina!”

Well, she thought dryly, she wouldn’t be having any wild affairs in this house, that much was for certain.

Not when it came with a chaperone.

Aunt Mina wagged a finger at Devin.

“Men like him don’t come along often in life, my girl. Trust me. I lived long, and saw much. You shouldn’t throw away such a rare opportunity.”

* * *

Rocky returned to the hotel room to find the rest of the Krewe already set up in the suite that Sam Hall had taken; it had two bedrooms, one for him and Jenna, and one for Angela and Jane to share. There was also a good-size kitchen/dining area.

There were papers all over the table.

“There’s coffee in the pot,” Sam told Rocky.

“And a bottle of Jack if you need something stronger,” Angela offered dryly.

He poured himself coffee.

“All right, here’s where we are,” Jenna said when he’d taken a seat at the table. “First, still no answers on our Jane Doe in the morgue. I tried missing persons across the country and couldn’t come up with our woman. I also showed her picture to everyone I could think of. No one remembers her.”

“I went over the bulletins from agencies across the country. Came close a few times, but the best we had was a woman with horrible teeth,” Jane told him. “Not our vic, I’m afraid.”

“How does a woman just disappear and die—and no one even misses her?” Rocky asked.

“I don’t know,” Angela said. “Sad. But it happens all too often.”

“Poor thing,” Jane murmured. “But I was noticing, as I’m sure you did, that there are only a couple of general similarities between the dead women. Age doesn’t seem to factor in―Melissa Wilson was seventeen, Carly Henderson was thirty-two and the M.E. says our Jane Doe was somewhere in between—but they all had the same approximate size and build.” She paused and produced a copy of the drawing she had done earlier, only enhanced with color and shading. “Take a look. This is the woman Mina Lyle saw—a spirit trying to help, though whether she was an actress or a genuine Puritan, who knows. But if you compare all four women, there’s something similar in their faces. Not eye color, obviously, but the fine-boned structure. They all have a slightly fragile appearance—an innocent appearance.”

She was right. They didn’t look like sisters, but there was a similar quality about them.

“I saw her again tonight,” Rocky said, nodding at the drawing.

“Where?” Sam asked. “Did she speak to you?”

Rocky shook his head. “She was watching the tour. Devin wound up giving most of it—her friend was sick. Kept coughing. I think she was watching Devin.”

“If so,” Sam said, “we just have to hope Devin will communicate with her.”

“She will,” Rocky said.

“And we’d better hope we’re not putting her in danger,” Angela said.

Rocky tensed, heat flushing through him.

He should have stayed away from her. He should have told her to call Jack Grail for reports, if she wanted updates. He shouldn’t have gone to her house.

Or maybe he was berating himself for nothing. Maybe she wouldn’t have been as careful if he hadn’t insisted that she stay in, that she keep her doors locked. She might have gone off for a walk in the woods....

Bur the killer wasn’t just biding his time in the woods. He was going about his daily life; he was blending in with the crowd.

A crowd that just might include people Devin knew. People she considered friends.

“There are five of us. We’ll keep an eye on her,” Sam assured Rocky. “And if we need more manpower, you can call your buddy on the force.”

“I’ve got those numbers you were looking for,” Jenna told Rocky.

“And?”

“Dark SUVs? There are hundreds. People who own a dark SUV and fit the age range? Over half the group. But that dwindled down a lot when I looked for people who were here thirteen years ago and within the age range then as well as now. Then I took those names and looked into who we know has an athame.”

“And?” he asked again.

She looked over at him. “Down to eighteen people.”

Startled, Rocky got up to stand behind Jenna and look over her shoulder at the computer screen. Most of the names she pulled up meant nothing to him.

But there were several that did.

Jack Grail himself was on the list—along with their old buddy Vince Steward.

And Renee.

But they weren’t the only ones.

Theo Hastings was also on the list.

As was Devin’s old friend, the intrepid tour guide Brent Corbin.

* * *

“Ghosts appear in many different ways. There’s no way to fight it. Sometimes ghosts are the remnants, the souls, of those who’ve passed on. Sometimes they’re the remnants of knowledge in our minds. They’re there, but we can’t quite connect with them.”

Aunt Mina was talking to Devin. Except she wasn’t, not really—not even her ghost. She couldn’t be, because Devin was asleep. She knew she was asleep, and she even knew she was dreaming. But the dream was so much like life. It flowed, and she was trapped within it, unable to stop time or step outside it.

They were standing on a hill. Gallows Hill. But it wasn’t the Gallows Hill of the witchcraft trials, because no one knew exactly where the executions had taken place. The town fathers had stipulated that the hangings were done outside of Salem proper. It wasn’t the Gallows Hill of today, either. What the city had designated as Gallows Hill was a recreational area.

But none of that mattered in the dream. She simply knew she was on Gallows Hill on a long ago day. There was a cart track that led to the hill, winding through heavy trees. She saw that a path had been created to lead the condemned to the heavy branch of a certain old oak.

Panic seized her. She was floating in the air and still some distance away, but she could see what was happening. And she didn’t want to see. She didn’t want to see people dying horribly by strangulation or a snapped neck. She didn’t want to hear the tears—or the silence of those who had come to see their loved ones’ passing and yet dared not protest.

People were arriving by cart. Five, she thought. She tried to turn away. And then she heard the whispers. She didn’t know where they came from, couldn’t tell if they were male or female. But there were two of them.

“She’ll be the death of us all.”

“We must do something. When one is accused, it seems all around them, all who support them, are accused, as well.”

“You have children. Many children have been accused and now rot in jail.”

“I know.”

“What will we do?”

Devin heard something. A prayer...and then something like a choked-off sob. She turned and saw the body of a woman swinging beneath the heavy branch of the old oak. Head bowed, neck broken...