Witch Myth Super Boxset: A Yew Hollow Cozy Mystery Page 11

  Her nonchalance alarmed me, but I let it slide, hoping that it was only a coping mechanism. The abuse had not been documented in the Riley file, so this was obviously the first time Teagan had mentioned it to anyone within the force.

  “You never told anyone at all?” I asked.

  “No, but the other teachers at school more or less knew. Even some of the kids noticed.” She hugged herself tightly. “Makeup only covers so much.”

  I made a note in her file. “Do you think he committed suicide out of guilt?”

  Teagan scoffed and rolled her eyes. “I doubt it. Why are we talking about this? I thought you were Linda Blair.”

  I tried not to chuckle, collecting the photos and other notes and putting them back in the file. “Not quite. I’m just trying to get all the information.”

  “Well, you have it, so can you focus more on whatever demon tried to burn me alive, or shall I go hire a priest?”

  “No, don’t worry. I’ll look into it,” I said, standing up. “I need to do some research, but first, we need to find you a place to stay. I’ll walk you down to the inn in a few minutes. I just need to talk to the chief first.”

  I waited patiently as she stood and balanced herself on the one crutch. Then I held the door open as she hobbled through.

  “Wait for me outside,” I said to her as I flagged down Chief Torres. She made no indication that she had heard me, but I let her hop through the station anyway. For a woman who claimed to be continually abused by her husband, she came across as mightily independent. I had to admire her escape from the burning house. She was a fighter. That was certain.

  “Summers?” Chief Torres prompted.

  I handed him Teagan’s file. “I’m not convinced,” I said, keeping an eye on Teagan through the front windows of the station. “She says he used to abuse her, so I’d look into that. Question the other teachers at her school. See if she’s telling the truth.”

  “And the haunting?”

  “From what she’s described, it doesn’t seem likely,” I said with a shrug. “It doesn’t really sound like a ghost is hanging around. Besides, I didn’t see anything when I went out to the property.”

  “So she’s lying?”

  “Or confused,” I said, unwilling to put Teagan in such a small box. Terrible things had happened to her. If she was lying, she probably had a good reason. “Someone burnt down that house. We just have to figure out who.”

  “What are the odds she just left the oven on?” Torres said, eyeing Teagan through the window. She was testing her balance without the crutch, one hand pressed against the window of the station to steady herself.

  “Then how would you explain all the other crazy shit she said happened?” I asked. “Something weird is going on.”

  “Weird is your area, Summers.”

  “I know,” I said. “Give me some time to figure it out.”

  “Get to it.”

  3

  In Which I’m Considered Inept

  I spent the majority of the afternoon helping Teagan settle into a temporary life at the local inn. I had no idea how Teagan had ended up falling into my hands—she certainly didn’t seem to want or welcome my help—but I argued with the lobby assistant on her behalf anyway, flashing my Yew Hollow Police Force badge to boot a family of tourists from their suite so that Teagan could at least have a kitchenette at her disposal. Teagan had lost everything in the fire, so I asked for her sizes and swung by a few boutiques, picking out a few outfits that I hoped she wouldn’t hate. Then I passed by the market to grab some essentials—toothbrush, deodorant, shampoo—before making my way back to her motel room.

  When I knocked on the door to her suite, I got no answer. I dropped my haul in the hallway, knocked again, and called, “Teagan?”

  Silence. Hesitantly, I pushed the door open. Teagan lay on the bed, splayed out as if someone had shot her. Her eyes were wide open, staring blankly at the ceiling. I waved a hand in front of her face, and when she still made no reaction, I prodded her good shoulder.

  “Teagan!”

  She blinked, then her eyes focused on me. “God, what?”

  “You sleep with your eyes open?”

  She sat up, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hands. “Apparently. It used to really freak Ronan out.”

  “It’s pretty disturbing,” I agreed, wondering what other oddities Teagan was hiding. “I got you some stuff. It’s out in the hallway.”

  I retreated to bring the bags in and dumped them on the bed. As I tossed the toiletries into the drawers of the bathroom cabinet, Teagan rifled through the pastel-colored bags of clothes.

  “Everything okay?” I asked, watching Teagan in the mirror of the bathroom. She held up a pair of dark-wash jeans as if to inspect them.

  She relinquished the pants and examined a three-pack of solid-color underwear. “What’s with the grandma panties?”

  “Give me a break,” I said, going back into the bedroom. “I’ve never shopped for another woman before.”

  “Would you wear these?”

  “No.”

  “Then why would I?”

  I thought about it. “Touché.”

  Satisfied, she tossed the pack of panties across the room. Her expression darkened suddenly, as if a shadow had passed over the room.

  “What if he comes back?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Who?”

  “Ronan.”

  “Your husband?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “Do you really think that he’s the one who’s after you?”

  “Who else would it be?”

  “I don’t know. Someone alive.”

  She threw another set of underwear at me. She had good aim. They smacked me in the face and fell to the floor before I had a chance to react. “For someone who talks to dead people, you sure are a skeptical bitch,” she scolded.

  “I’m not—” I started but then thought better of it. I sighed. “Let’s put it this way, Teagan. If Ronan really is the one causing all this mayhem, it means a lot more trouble for me. Can you blame me for trying to figure out a different reason for all this?”

  “Why would it cause trouble for you?”

  “Because a ghost affecting the physical world is something I’ve never seen or heard of before,” I said. I picked up a few blouses from where Teagan had strewn them across the bed and began to hang them up in the room’s tiny closet. “It means something big is happening in Yew Hollow, something that I have no clue what to do about.”

  She seemed to think on this for a second, cocking her head to the side like a puppy hearing a strange noise for the first time. Then she said, “You know, you’re not a very good detective.”

  The observation sounded more like a challenge than anything else. With my back to Teagan, I gritted my teeth, pretending to be absorbed in the process of organizing her closet.

  By the time I’d finished getting Teagan settled in at the inn, the sun was already on its way back down to the horizon. As I strolled leisurely through town, enjoying the new pink-and-white blooms on the cherry blossoms that lined the sidewalks, I thought about Teagan’s case. In all honesty, I didn’t have much to go on. The only evidence of Teagan’s mistreatment was the state of her injuries, and that wasn’t enough to prove that one of Yew Hollow’s ghosts had up and grown corporeal hands. I would have to go back out to the ruins of Teagan’s house to investigate further.

  When I reached the Summers house, I caught sight of two figures lounging in the swinging bench on the front porch. One was clearly my mother—it was impossible to mistake her cerulean aura—but the other figure was a stranger with a dark aura of shadowy forest green. As I neared the porch, the figure defined itself. She was a tall, broad-shouldered teenaged girl with long dark hair, shadows under her eyes as if she hadn’t slept in several days, and an apathetic glare to complete a face that seemed too mature for her. Though I couldn’t place her—I’d never seen her in Yew Hollow before—she was vaguely familiar to me, as if maybe we’d known each othe
r in a past life. My mother flagged me down, so I hopped up the stairs onto the porch.

  “Hi,” I said, approaching them somewhat warily.

  My mother had supplied the teenager with a glass of lemonade, which she sipped through a pink straw with a judgmentally raised brow and an air of condescension. She was also wearing a faded grey T-shirt of mine, poked through with several ratty holes and a black-and-white picture of Dexys Midnight Runners on its front. As my mother stood, the teenager only eyed me over the lip of her cup. Oh boy.

  “Morgan, I want you to meet someone,” Cassandra said. She waved the teenager to her feet. With a great sigh, as if the movement expended her every effort, the teenager stood. Cassandra clasped an arm around the teenager’s shoulders and thrust her toward me. “This is Gwenlyn Bennett. She’s going to be staying with us for a while.”

  I extended a hand to shake the teenager’s. At first, it seemed as though she had no intention of meeting me halfway. Then she uncertainly reached out.

  “Nice to meet you, Gwenlyn,” I said, squeezing her hand briefly before allowing her to reclaim the limb that she was so possessive of. “I’m Morgan.”

  “I know,” Gwenlyn said shortly. “You’re a medium, right? Apparently, I am too. I was just wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

  I exchanged a loaded look with my mother. A new medium in town, especially one from another coven, was a complete surprise. I had never met anyone else with my ability before. The gift wasn’t necessarily rare. I just never made a habit of reaching out to unfamiliar covens in order to connect with other mediums. I wasn’t really a people person. Even so, Gwenlyn’s sudden, inexplicable appearance at the Summers house seemed questionable.

  “Uh, sure… just one second,” I said to Gwenlyn. I took my mother’s arm and led her around to the side of the house. Then I asked, “Who is she? And why is she wearing my favorite T-shirt?”

  “If that’s your favorite T-shirt, why did you leave it here when you moved out to the barn?”

  “It’s not about the T-shirt, Mom.”

  “Morgan, relax,” Cassandra said, reaching up to smooth my hair. I resisted the temptation to bat her hand away. My mother had never grown out of the habit of babying her children. “You know how Yew Hollow made all kinds of headlines last year. She read about you. She just wants to get to know you.”

  “Why me? Where’s her coven?”

  “She doesn’t have one,” my mother said solemnly. “She’s been in foster care for years. She had no idea that she was a witch. What if you were forced to grow up with no knowledge of your heritage?”

  “She didn’t know she was a witch?”

  “No,” Cassandra said, glancing over her shoulder to check that Gwenlyn was still solidly entertained by her glass of lemonade. “The poor girl has been seeing ghosts her whole life without understanding why. How would you feel if you thought you were clinically insane?”

  “Pretty shitty,” I admitted and peered around my mother.

  Gwenlyn had abandoned her lemonade. With the pink straw between her teeth, she clambered up onto the porch rail, sat down, and swung her feet out over the holly bushes in the front yard. As if she could feel my gaze on her, she turned her head to observe me with a curious eye. It was the first moment since I’d seen her in which she didn’t appear totally hostile. In fact, a sense of fragility radiated from her shadowy eyes. She hopped down from the porch rail, hurdling the holly bushes with her long legs, and walked out toward the swing set. As Gwenlyn’s rounded shoulders slumped farther forward, I threw up my hands in defeat.

  “Fine,” I said, stepping down from the porch. “I’ll talk to her, but I’m not Yoda, okay?”

  “You don’t have to be.”

  I ignored Cassandra and strolled out across the backyard toward the swing set. The lightning bugs had started to come out, flickering in the tall grass like faulty matches. After such a long day, all I wanted was to go back to the loft and collapse into bed, but if it was my job to bond with Gwenlyn, I figured I might as well get the first attempt over with.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Gwenlyn said before I even had the chance to speak.

  “Do what?” I asked and claimed the swing next to hers.

  “I heard you talking to Cassandra,” she said. Her voice was heavy, as though it took her an inordinate amount of exertion to make conversation with me. “I’m not deaf. I’m also not a charity case. If you want me to leave, I’ll leave.”

  “I don’t think my mother would let that happen,” I said, kicking my feet back and forth to get the swing moving. Gwenlyn didn’t bother to swing, which to me seemed sad. It meant she’d already had the majority of her happiness beaten out of her and didn’t have enough left to enjoy the simple things anymore. “And I don’t think you’re a charity case.”

  She stared at the ground, digging into the dirt beneath the mulch with her bare toes. “I’ll give you back your T-shirt, if you want.”

  “Nah, keep it. I can’t fault you for your good taste.”

  A ghost of a smile crossed her features. I wondered how long it had been since she had last exercised those facial muscles. She didn’t strike me as a particularly cheerful or humorous human being.

  “Do your foster parents know where you are?” I asked. My mother hadn’t offered up any specifics on Gwenlyn’s past. For all I knew, she could be some kind of juvenile delinquent, devising a clever con to take advantage of the Summers coven. Or maybe I was just paranoid.

  She shook her head. “I’m pretty good at making a quick, unnoticed exit,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

  “Won’t they be worried?”

  Gwenlyn shrugged. “They’re probably relieved.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay.” If Gwenlyn didn’t want to open up about her situation, I wasn’t going to make her. My mother had good instincts, so even if Gwenlyn was a troubled delinquent, I didn’t doubt my mother’s ability to turn her around. “So you never knew that you were a witch?”

  She laughed outright. It wasn’t an amused laugh though. It was a cynical one, and it didn’t reach her eyes. “Witches aren’t real.”

  “Except we are.”

  “Yeah, well, how the hell was I supposed to know that?”

  “I guess I figured the whole seeing-ghosts thing would clue you in,” I said. I dragged my heels against the ground, stopping my swing to look at Gwenlyn. She avoided making eye contact with me, instead finding great interest in scratching a bit of rust off the chain of her swing.

  “I thought I was crazy,” she finally said.

  “I know the feeling.”

  “No, you don’t. Not really.”

  We fell silent. Gwenlyn wasn’t forthcoming with any further details about her life, and I really wasn’t all that dedicated to removing the chip from her shoulder. Teenagers would be teenagers. They always thought they had it harder than everyone else. It was the “anywhere but here” feeling. I knew it well. Hell, I had only just abandoned my own wanderlust the previous fall. Gwenlyn could have her angst. I’d learned that human beings grew through things, not out of them.

  The stars started to glimmer as the last of the sun disappeared beneath the tree line. The air had cooled off with its absence, and as a breeze drifted through the backyard, Gwenlyn shivered in my holey T-shirt.

  “You should head inside,” I said, pushing myself up from the swing. “I’m sure my mother has dinner waiting for you.”

  Surprisingly, she didn’t argue. She simply hopped down from her unmoving swing and set off toward the house. I walked in the opposite direction, toward the woods, before turning around once more.

  “Gwenlyn?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  I considered that for a second, remembering my own feelings of isolation and confusion when I was that age, and said, “Everything sucks at sixteen. Push through it.”
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  She straightened, raised her hand to her head in a mock salute, then executed an abrupt about-face and goose-stepped back to the house. I shook my head, laughing, and headed home.

  The next day, as per usual, I met my sisters at the swing set for what seemed to be evolving into a regular morning meeting. A light drizzle coated my skin with misty raindrops and settled on the grass in shiny jewels of dew.

  “You didn’t come by last night,” Karma accused. She and Laurel were busy weaving flower wreaths with the daisies that grew around the swing set. Laurel stood, placed a finished daisy crown on my head, and smiled at her handiwork.

  “Sorry,” I said, squinting into the pale sun that peeked through the gauzy clouds. “Mom distracted me. Have you guys met Gwenlyn yet?”

  “Yes,” Laurel said. She sat down again in the grass beyond the mulch, kneading a pinecone between her palms as if contemplating ways to incorporate the cone in her artwork.

  “What do you think of her?” I asked. The stem of a daisy poked at my scalp, so I adjusted the crown until it sat comfortably.

  “She reminds me of you when you were her age,” Malia said.

  “Well, she was wearing my T-shirt.”

  “It’s not the T-shirt,” said Malia with a light chuckle. “She’s all sharp edges and attitude.”

  I took that with a grain of salt. In my opinion, the only thing Gwenlyn and I had in common was the whole sixth-sense thing. Just because I had also been a moody teenager didn’t mean that we were kindred spirits.

  “What happened at the station yesterday?” Karma asked.

  “I have a client who thinks her dead husband is still abusing her,” I said. Talking about it made me eager to head in to work. I needed to get started on debunking Teagan’s theory. The longer I waited, the longer the matter went unattended, and the idea of ghosts with hands festered in my head.

  “Are you buying that?” Laurel asked, handing me a partially completed wreath.

  “I wasn’t at first,” I admitted, accepting the wreath and clumsily attempting to continue weaving another flower into its steady pattern. “But I have this weird feeling about it.”