Seven-Year Witch, page 1
MURDER AND MAGIC
Unsurprisingly, Rodney appeared at my feet. He wound around my calves, letting his tail touch me, even as he settled at my ankles. If I wasn’t mistaken, he jingled his collar more than necessary and scratched at it, looking me straight in the eyes.
Not a light was on. Only moonlight through the stained-glass cupola three floors above gave the slightest illumination.
“Books,” I said. “Tell me. Which one?”
To my right, a faint glow, barely perceptible, came from fiction. I followed the light and found a volume buzzing with energy on a shelf close to the fireplace. I pulled the book from the shelf. It was warm in my hands.
A slender volume, a horror novella, I noted and had the sudden desire to cram it back into the shelf and leave. No. I’d asked for help, and this is what the books provided. It was my duty to follow up.
As my grandmother had taught me, I closed my eyes and prepared to let my fingers shuffle through the book’s pages. The book wouldn’t open. My finger stopped at its title.
I took the book, my finger still lying on its cover, to a table lamp and clicked it on.
“The Man in the Picture,” it read.
I opened to the title page. Although the novella had been written recently, it was set in the nineteenth century, the Wilfred family’s world when they first came to the region.
The man in the picture.
This was my clue . . .
Books by Angela M. Sanders
BAIT AND WITCH
SEVEN-YEAR WITCH
Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.
SevenYear Witch
Angela M. Sanders
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
MURDER AND MAGIC
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
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New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2021 by Angela M. Sanders
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To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
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ISBN: 978-1-4967-2876-0
ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2877-7 (ebook)
ISBN-10: 1-4967-2877-7 (ebook)
CHAPTER ONE
Still catching her breath, Mrs. Garlington plopped herself at a stool at the counter of Darla’s Café. She unsnapped the plastic rain bonnet from her blue-tinted hair. “I can see that none of you believe me.”
“Of course we believe you,” Darla said in a placating tone. “Soft-boiled egg?”
“I’m telling you, it’s why the retreat center hasn’t broken ground yet,” she said. “The land is cursed. That awful man I just saw is proof.”
The envelope I’d randomly selected from Grandma’s box that morning for my witchcraft lesson was on curses. I’d learned that these lessons had a way of reflecting real life. So, my ears perked up at Mrs. Garlington’s pronouncement.
“Cursed? Tell us again,” I said, earning a reproachful glance from Darla.
Mrs. Garlington faced me from a few stools down. “It was like this. I was taking a walk and letting the muse wash over me—feeding the muse is a vital part of being a poet—when a black SUV roared in, kicking up gravel.”
“You were at the old mill site, right?” I asked.
“Yes. The cursed site. The muse had demanded an especially long walk today. You see, I’m working on an epic poem, and—”
“What did the black SUV do?” I knew better than to let Mrs. Garlington be distracted.
She flinched at the memory. “The windows were tinted, and I couldn’t see inside. Then, the driver’s side window slid down. I jumped into the brush and hid behind a tree.”
“Maybe he was lost,” Duke said. Duke used to drive a forklift at the mill. When it closed, he’d repaired coin-operated telephones, which turned out to be a shortsighted career move. Lately, he was a jack-of-all-trades, and, contrary to the old saying, had mastered them all.
“Oh, but you should have seen him. Dark glasses, black jacket, tall and skinny, from what I could tell. And he had a shoulder holster.”
We all gasped. Our town, Wilfred, was rural, and guns weren’t unheard of, but holstered handguns were things of crime movies.
“One thing I appreciate about you, Helen, is your imagination,” Darla said. “Soft-boiled egg and an extra-large pot of tea on the house. You’ve had a rough morning.”
“I bet it was the retreat’s contractor,” Duke said. “He set up an office trailer beyond the millpond.”
Unwilling to let the drama go, Mrs. Garlington reluctantly sighed. “I suppose it’s possible. But I still insist the site is cursed. Everything on it is doomed to fail. I wrote a poem about it once.”
The few people at the counter near her, including Darla, chose that moment to busy themselves elsewhere. Mrs. Garlington’s poems tended to be long affairs larded with nineteenth-century turns of phrase and metaphors involving shipwrecks and orphans.
She’d closed her eyes and was about to launch into the first stanza, when the café’s front door opened, letting in spring air thick with Pacific Northwest drizzle. A man stood, door ajar, surveying the room.
“Or maybe this is him,” I whispered to Mrs. Garlington.
She glanced at the door. “Not him.”
“In or out,” Darla said to the man in the doorway. “Pick one.”
The man let the door close behind him. Judging from his meticulously crafted sideburns and angular glasses, he was from a big city hipster neighborhood.
“Charming,” he said and ambled to the counter, taking the seat next to Mrs. Garlington that we locals avoided. Aside from regular outbursts of her own poetry, Mrs. Garlington taught organ lessons and liked to hum snatches between bites, sometimes shooting sprays of egg yolk or toast crumbs.
“Coffee, please,” the stranger said, and Darla served him with the coffee pot that seemed to be permanently affixed to her hand. After a sip, he set his mug down in surprise. “This is good.”
“Uh-huh,” Darla said.
“I don’t suppose you have anything that isn’t, um, made from a mix?”
“We mix everything that needs it,” she said.
Darla didn’t go for being condescended to. Someone passing through Wilfred—although most people didn’t make it this far off the main highway unless they had a reason—might have mistaken Darla for your typical middle-aged, no-nonsense waitress with a taste for animal prints and snappy comebacks. In fact, she was Wilfred’s de facto mayor.
“Try the shrimp and grits,” I said. Despite being a native Oregonian, Darla had a way with Southern food.
“Thank you.” His gaze took me in, clogs to mess of red curls, and he must have decided I was okay. “Lewis Cruikshank. Architect for the new retreat center.”
“Josie Way, librarian.” We shook hands.
He set a leather bag by his feet, and I heard his copy of Finnegan’s Wake grumbling inside. Books talked to me. The novel was unhappy being lugged around and only having a page or two read every few weeks to impress onlookers. Thomas Pynchon’s work often had similar complaints.
“Architect, you say?” Mrs. Garlington asked. “We were just talking about the retreat
“It’s been a wet spring, but soon.”
“What’s planned?” I asked. “Anything you can show us?”
“Not much. I have a few ideas jotted down.”
Just then, the door opened again, and Thor and Buffy burst in, Thor wearing a cape and Buffy carrying a sparkly pink purse. They must have been watching from across the street, and when they saw a stranger’s car in the lot, they made a beeline.
Thor stopped in front of the architect. At eight years old, he was barely taller than the counter. “I am Thor the Fluoridator, and—”
“Fluoridator?” Cruikshank said.
“Yes,” he said firmly.
I’d tried to convince Thor he might want to give “magnificent” or “mighty” or even “the all-seeing” a try, but he liked the sound of “fluoridator,” and there was no changing his mind.
Thor threw his cape over his shoulders. “For a small fee, I will mystify you with my magical skill. Buffy?”
Buffy extracted from her purse a worn deck of cards with the Taj Mahal printed on the back. Buffy was a few years younger than her brother. Despite her wide-eyed resemblance to a doll, reinforced by her love of pink and purple, she was the brains of the operation.
“Thor,” Darla said. “You’re interrupting. Besides, I’ve already told you not to bother my customers with your magic tricks.”
“But I—”
“Do I have to call your grandma?”
“Come on, Thor,” Buffy said. “Mrs. Esperanza just went into the PO Grocery. She hasn’t seen our trick yet.” They scrambled from the café almost as quickly as they’d come in.
“Use the door handle, not the glass,” Darla yelled after them. She turned to the architect. “Sorry. My sister’s grandchildren. I’d love to see the drawings.”
“I don’t have much yet—just sketches. The only solid plans so far are for preparing the site.” He reached into his bag, earning a groan from the novel, and flattened a sketch pad on the counter. “I’m here for inspiration and to meet with the owners and contractor.” He tapped a page. “Here’s one idea. Notice the reference to tribal dwellings.”
We crowded around him. The drawings showed a building with conical protrusions that made it look like a ceramic hedgehog.
“Tribal?” Mrs. Garlington said, squinting. “What tribe is that?”
The architect rolled up his sleeves, revealing the edge of a blue-black tattoo. “In this one, the main hall has a thirty-foot ceiling with skylights.” He pointed to a long, lower building in the rear. “Those would be the residences for people who come for longer retreats. In this sketch, the center faces the river and the millpond.”
“It’s damp out there,” Duke said.
“Oh, I know. Wilfred is on a flood plain,” Lewis Cruikshank said. “We’re going to rebuild the levee. First step.”
His shrimp and grits arrived, and after replacing the sketch pad in his satchel, he tucked in. We slowly returned to our seats. Between bites, he examined the diner, casting a glance toward the attached tavern, then the parking lot.
My specialty was folk history, but I tried to keep up on national news, and Cruikshank’s name sounded familiar. A museum in Baltimore, that was it. Cruikshank had designed it. Plus an airport in Amsterdam. Wilfred was so small it wasn’t even a proper town. It had lost its incorporation years ago. Why had he even taken a job here?
The architect cleared his throat.
“Pardon?” Mrs. Garlington said.
“Great layout. You ever think about adding a patio?”
“Where?” Darla said.
“You could punch in a door there,” he said, pointing his fork toward the café’s northern wall, “and orient the patio away from the road. It would be a fairly inexpensive job and would double your seating in the summer.” He set down his fork and flipped over the paper place mat next to him. “Do you mind?”
“Go ahead,” Darla said, elbows on the counter.
He sketched an aerial view of the café, including the gravel parking lot out front, then, more slowly, outlined a patio that connected with the corner of the café closest to the kitchen. “That way you can run food straight outside.” He finished the drawing with a striped awning and a potted tree.
“Not bad,” Darla said. “May I keep it?”
He slid the place mat to her. “With my compliments.”
“How long will you be in Wilfred?” she asked.
“A few days. Just long enough for the meeting and to get a good sense of the area. Maybe do some hiking. In fact, can you recommend a place to stay? I didn’t realize Wilfred was so far from Portland.”
“No hotel here,” I said. Besides Darla’s diner-slash-tavern, Wilfred boasted only the library, a church, the PO Grocery, and Patty’s This-N-That, which was getting a lot of attention thanks to the karaoke lounge she’d recently installed in the basement.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ve got an empty home at the Magnolia,” Darla said. Behind the diner was the Magnolia Rolling Estates, the modest trailer court where Duke and a handful of others lived. “I’ll make you a good price. Or we could talk design for a patio.”
“Sold,” he said, cleaning his plate. He turned to me. “Maybe you could point me toward some resources on local history.”
“I’d be happy to show you our collection,” I said. “Stop by anytime. The library’s up the hill. You can’t miss it.”
“If we do this right, it will be a spectacular retreat center,” he said. “Artistically engaging, useful—something people will come from all over to see.”
“Just watch out for gangsters driving black SUVs,” Darla said with a wink.
Mrs. Garlington rapped her knife against the shell of her soft-boiled egg, and it gave with a crack. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. That land is cursed.”
* * *
As I walked back up the hill, I pondered Mrs. Garlington’s warning. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised that the morning’s witchcraft lesson was about curses. This kind of synchronicity didn’t even raise an eyebrow anymore. I planned to read the lesson tonight.
I took the bridge up the sleepy two-lane highway over the Kirby River and cut right toward the old Thurston Wilfred mansion, now the library. I couldn’t help but cast a wistful glance at Big House as I approached. It had been six months since Sam had left, but my memory of him was too sticky to shed. Now the house stood empty.
As I rounded the corner, I stopped short. Parked in front of Big House was a moving van. Was it taking things in or out? In, I noted. Two men hustled boxes, one marked “stereo” and the other “books.”
“Hey,” I shouted to one of the movers. “Someone’s moving in?”
The older mover, the one who looked like he was in charge, paused with his hand truck and grunted. “Yeah, I’d say someone is moving in.”
When Sam had left town, he’d told me he wanted to return to Wilfred. He’d also mentioned a wife and had shown no particular interest in me besides brotherly affection. However, Wilfred’s grapevine had said he was in the middle of a divorce. Despite myself, I felt my hopes rise.
“Who?” I said.
“Don’t know,” the man said, resuming the push of his hand truck. “We move, we don’t interview.”
“Sam,” the books told me as they jostled in their crate. “Sam Wilfred.”
Well, well, I thought. He’s come home.
CHAPTER TWO
I opened the library for the day and tried not to dwell on Sam’s return. After all, I had plenty to take care of here. The library was in a Victorian mansion built by Wilfred’s founder and converted into a library by his youngest daughter, Marilyn Wilfred. At best, the library was unconventional. At worst, alarmingly eccentric. The pipe organ in the former dressing room on the mansion’s second floor was home to Mrs. Garlington’s music lessons and impromptu concerts. The old house’s kitchen was an informal town gathering spot, dispensing nearly as much coffee as Darla’s Café down the hill. The conservatory was a classroom space, as well as Roz’s—the assistant librarian—office, where she wrote romance novels when she wasn’t on duty.
