Witch I May Witch I Might Page 5

  Alan took the offered hand, and they shook.

  And a little red spark jumped between their hands.

  It was a toss up which of them looked more surprised, but Philly vanished in the next instant, leaving just a puff of smoke behind him that quickly trailed away to nothing.

  Kiera sighed. “The man always did know how to make an exit.”

  Addie was just about to remind her sister about all the trouble she had gone through to untangle herself from the great and powerful Mephistopheles Smith, when there was a rapping on the driver’s window that startled all of them.

  Addie had been turned in her seat to talk to Philly, and now she twisted back around to find Herman Bledsoe standing there, looking very smug in the halogen lights of the convenience store parking lot. He scratched at his long, scrawny neck as he motioned for her to roll her window down.

  “We could just drive away,” Addie muttered, keeping her voice low and her lips from moving.

  “Nonsense,” Kiera said, although she didn’t seem all that convinced herself. “He’s our town constable.”

  “So he keeps reminding me.” She pushed the button and waited as the window slid down. “Herman, we’re kind of in a hurry.”

  “Oh yeah? You going to pick up your sister Willow? Going to help her hide from the law? She’s a fugitive, you know.” He shook his head dramatically and leaned his forearms against the door. “You know, aiding and abetting an escaped felon is a major offense. I might have to take you into my custody, if I ever found out you were doing something like that.”

  Was he trying to be coy? If this was his idea of flirting, it was the absolute worst flirting she had ever seen. “Herman, are you all right? You haven’t been yourself today.”

  He made a dismissive noise, pushing his hands through his scruffy hair. “I’m fine. I’ve never felt more fine. In fact, Addie, I’d love to have you feel how fine I am. Why don’t I come over to Stonecrest tonight and you can… show me around?”

  “I really don’t think so,” she said, all of her patience gone now. His intentions toward her were completely inappropriate, and also entirely juvenile. She didn’t know who he thought he was, all of a sudden, but even if she wasn’t already with the greatest guy in the world she still wouldn’t ever be attracted to this man. “Herman, we’re only interested in proving our sister’s innocence. Who gave you that anonymous tip about Willow having a dead body in her trunk?”

  “Tsk, tsk, Addie. You know I can’t answer that. This is an ongoing investigation. Besides, I don’t even know who it was.” For a moment he seemed confused about his facts. “Whoever called in the tip didn’t leave their name. It was just, you know, some concerned citizen. I’m glad they called, though. Nice to know that some people in this world are still willing to do what’s right.”

  From the backseat, Alan grumbled a few words about showing Herman right from wrong. Addie agreed with the sentiment, but she also had to agree with Kiera. They had to show Herman respect, at least for his position, if they were going to get any answers from him.

  Addie just hoped he wouldn’t start asking her to trade certain favors for his information. In his current mood, she could picture it as a definite possibility. Then she might have to slap him, whether they needed him or not.

  He cleared his throat. “I could always help you figure this case out, you know. I mean, I can’t help you clear your sister’s name. She’s going to go to prison when we find her. Every family has its black sheep, you know. I always knew it was going to be Willow. So what do you say? I’ll come over later and we can, you know… talk. About things.”

  She reached down and pushed the button for the window again. It rolled up until it was closed, and that was her answer.

  Pulling away from the curb, Addie pointed the Jeep north toward Birch Hollow. If Herman wasn’t going to tell them anything, and since Lucian was too busy to talk, they were going to have to go hunting for answers themselves. She wondered for a moment if Lucian would be able to talk to her at all now that her sister Willow had quite literally disappeared on them. Since she was Willow’s sister, Lucian might have to keep his distance from her entirely or risk being taken off the case. That sucked. Just one more thing to thank her sister for. Well, they had the address where Autumn Lynch’s husband was staying with her brother.

  At the moment, it was their only clue.

  “Hey,” Alan said, as if a thought had just occurred to him. “I know that I’m new to this whole witches-protecting-the-town thing, and you two have probably already thought about this angle, but did Philly… I mean, did my father just say the victim was on her honeymoon?”

  Kiera’s face tightened when she heard her son refer to Philly as his father. True as it might be, Kiera had gone to extreme lengths to keep Alan away from Mephistopheles. Now all of that was for nothing. She had her son back, but she had his father back in her life, too. Addie could only imagine what was going on inside of her sister’s thoughts right now. Not to mention, inside of her heart.

  Clearing her throat with a visible effort, Kiera said, “Yes, Alan. He did say that Autumn was on her honeymoon with her husband. Corbin was his name.”

  “And with her brother August, too” Addie said thoughtfully. “Autumn and August. That’s cute, but I’m not sure if I would invite one of my siblings along for the ride if I was on my honeymoon. No offense, Kiera.”

  “None taken. None of us have been married before, so I suppose it would be hard for us to judge on that point. Who’s to say what is weird, or peculiar, when it comes to people expressing their love? Through marriage, I mean.”

  Her face flushed again, and Addie pretended not to notice. Autumn bringing her brother along on her honeymoon was definitely weird, no matter what Kiera might say. She thought of the sorts of things honeymooners did, and then thought of having her sister in the room next door… yeah. Definitely weird. Definitely peculiar. She might even call it icky.

  She thought of her and Lucian on their honeymoon together, behind closed doors, slipping into bed together after stripping off her pure white dress and his stunning tuxedo. It was a very, very nice image. She found herself biting her lip at some of the finer details her mind supplied for her.

  Then she thought of Willow knocking on the door and asking if they were decent and the whole thing evaporated in a puff of smoke as quick as Philly’s vanishing act.

  Speaking of Willow. She desperately wanted to find her sister. More than that, she wanted to shake Willow until some sense got knocked loose inside of that pretty head of hers. How could she do this! Escaping from custody, and using her magic to do it? That went against everything the Kilorian sisters stood for. This was chaos, not justice. This was self-preservation, not safeguarding the helpless. And their magic was never, ever supposed to be used for personal gain. Well, casting a spell to get you away from the cops certainly qualified for the most selfish use of magic ever!

  However, talking to Willow was going to have to wait until they could find her. And that was probably going to have to wait for them to get back to Stonecrest, where they could use the Family Circle to look for her. When Addie got her hands on Willow, oh, was she going to get a piece of her mind!

  She pushed the accelerator down harder. The gas gauge told her they had plenty enough to get them to their destination. Which was good, considering the only gas station in Shadow Lake was now the subject of an active manhunt. She took a quick stock of the rest of the gauges, too, and noticed how much her odometer had jumped up since she had checked on it last. Her good old reliable Jeep was going to need a tune up soon. For now, it was off to Birch Hollow.

  Beside her, Kiera began fanning herself with her hand. Her eyes were still distant, her thoughts still on a time years ago when she’d had a whirlwind romance with a fallen angel. When she saw Addie watching her she sat up straighter, turning to watch the night passing by outside the car window. “I know you must think I’m weak,” she said, speaking both to Addie and to the faint reflection of her own face in the glass. “I can’t help it. Whenever I’m around Philly I just lose myself. I forget where I end, and where he starts. Everything I feel and believe becomes a muddle. Now you know why I had to stay away from him. When I’m around him I lose any semblance of self-control.”

  Addie could tell those words were meant for Alan, and not her. She and her sister had already had this conversation more than once. Kiera’s ex-lover was bad news, in many ways. The effect he had on her sister was just one of the problems with the angel Mephistopheles Smith.

  In Addie’s mind, it was one of the biggest.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Alan said to her now, reaching forward to put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m getting the chance to know both of my parents. I’ll make my own decisions from there, and I’d rather have loving over ‘accommodating’ any day.”

  He was turning Philly’s own words around, and it earned him a little smile of appreciation from Kiera.

  Addie drove just above the posted speed limit on Old Lutherfud Road. No doubt all of the police officers in the area, probably even the State Police by now, were busy looking for their sister the escaped murder suspect, but she didn’t want to risk getting stopped and ticketed. The ten minutes it would take to accept the summons would be ten minutes longer that it took them to get to the heart of this mystery.

  It would be nice if there was some magic spell that let you transport yourself bodily across long distances, but there simply wasn’t. Addie might have to wait for real life to catch up to Star Trek for that one.

  In the meantime, she would just have to settle for her trusty Jeep to get them there.

  CHAPTER 4

  A few houses that were scattered along Old Lutherfud Road quickly became more, and then more, and soon businesses started appearing too. Birch Hollow was the biggest town within half a day’s drive from Shadow Lake. It was practically a small city centered around a timber processing plant. There was a school and a hospital and even a movie theater. They drove by all of those without giving them a second glance.

  It was a nice place, Addie supposed, just a bit too much for her. She preferred the slow pace of her hometown. She liked the people there and the lifestyle, and she liked being their protector. She was just a country girl at heart.

  Addie knew the layout of the streets here pretty well. A right turn, and two lefts, and they were at the address on Bradley Avenue that Philly had given them. Half way up on the left was the motel. The sign for the Nash Palms Motel was brightly lit against the night sky with the neon letters at the bottom spelling out NO VACANCY. The single story red building had three sides, like a horseshoe, with five rooms on each side. The unattached office was situated at the entrance to the driveway.

  “Which room is it?” Kiera asked.

  “Eight. That’s it right there.”

  She pointed to the room in the middle of the back section with the black number 8 screwed into it. Lights were on behind the closed curtains. There were too many cars in the lot to tell if any of them belonged to that particular room, but it looked like someone was there. Addie found a spot a few rooms down and shut the Jeep’s engine off.

  “Wouldn’t you expect them to be missing Autumn by now?” she wondered out loud. “I mean, if this is their honeymoon, why is her husband just sitting in the motel room without her?”

  “And why here?” Kiera asked. She wasn’t able to keep her face from wrinkling in a look of distaste. “This place is so… not fancy.”

  “It’s a dump,” Alan said more plainly. “You can tell by the way the roof needs to be re-patched and the way the sidewalk is all cracked, and stuff like that.”

  Addie leaned up in her seat to look down at the sidewalk and found that Alan was right. The sidewalk wasn’t just cracked, it was crumbling in some spots. “Maybe it’s just a pitstop on the way to wherever they’re really spending their honeymoon,” she suggested.

  “Yeah,” Alan chuckled. “A pitstop with leaky faucets and threadbare sheets.”

  “Regardless of how it looks,” Kiera said, gathering her coat as she opened her door, “we need to speak with these men if we are going to solve this mystery.”

  “Maybe I should stay here?”

  Addie and Kiera both turned to look at him, surprised at the suggestion.

  “Well, actually,” Addie said, “that might be best. We don’t want to scare these two. The news that Autumn is dead will be hard enough to take without a room full of people they don’t know.”

  “I suppose,” Kiera agreed hesitantly. She was obviously uncomfortable with leaving him here by himself.

  “Mom, don’t worry,” Alan told her, leaning back into his seat and getting comfortable. “I’ll be right here when you get back.”

  She still regarded him closely, setting her lips in a thin line. “You aren’t who I was worrying about,” she said as she stepped out of the car.

  Addie hurried to follow her on the way to room 8. It was Philly who worried Kiera, even if she wouldn’t say it out loud. What if Philly took this as another opportunity to come peek in on his son, this time without any interruptions from the meddlesome Kilorian sisters? If that happened, what sorts of things might he say to Alan? Things about his mother that Kiera would have to explain. Evil, whisper things that only fallen angels knew about.

  That was what was troubling Kiera’s mind.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Addie advised. “Philly promised that he wouldn’t see Alan again until Friday, like they planned.”

  “And how can I know that I can trust him?” Kiera kept her eyes facing forward, her hands fisted into the front of her coat. “I couldn’t trust him when Alan was born, how can I trust him now?”

  “He made a deal. Fallen angels are all about deals.”

  Kiera frowned at that. “Tell that to Philly.”

  She said it with as much contempt as Addie had ever heard her sister use for anyone, while in her eyes, Addie still saw the light of distant love burning for him. “Can I ask you something? Honestly, how do you take him seriously with a name like Philly? That name is just so, I don’t know… juvenile.”

  Oddly, that turned Kiera’s frown into a tiny smile. “I gave him that nickname, actually. It made him seem more human.”

  They were standing in front of the door to room 8, and Addie left the conversation at that. Obviously, there was still a lot to their story, and their feelings for each other were still very strong. A woman’s heart was a fickle thing at the best of times, as Addie knew very well. Who you loved was a personal, emotional choice. Kiera had made hers a long time ago and obviously she had never forsaken that choice, not really, even though Philly was potentially one of the most evil and powerful beings walking the face of the Earth. That was a combination that could only spell trouble.

  Or, she supposed, it could potentially spell love.

  It was like wishing on a star. Wish I may, wish I might, have the love I wish tonight.

  She smiled a secret smile at her sister and knocked on the door to the room.

  “No room service, please,” said the man’s voice from inside.

  Addie knocked again. “We’re not here for your towels,” she said. “Are you Corbin Reif?”

  After a silence, they heard footsteps coming up to the other side of the door. “That’s me. Who’s there?”

  This was where having a police badge to flash at the peephole would come in handy, Addie thought to herself. “My name is Addie Kilorian, and this is my sister Kiera. We have news about Autumn. Can we come in?”

  The locks were undone with a quick metal rattling before the door opened. The man on the other side was tall and lean, in blue silk pajama bottoms and a brand name sweater. Obviously, he was planning on staying in for the night. He was all of thirty or thirty-five years old, maybe, with a few gray hairs just starting to peek through at his temples. His murky brown eyes were wide now, surprised to find two strangers coming to him, mentioning his new wife.

  “Can we come in?” Addie asked again as he stood there waiting for them to explain themselves. This time, she threaded a little bit of her Life Essence through the words to influence his decision. Just a gentle push to get him to let them inside so the conversation would be private. He already wanted to know what they had to say about Autumn. Addie was just giving him a little nudge.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” he said to them in a rush, stepping aside for them. “Listen, I haven’t heard from Autumn in a few hours now. Is something wrong?”

  The room was small, with a double bed with threadbare sheets like Alan had mentioned. The wallpaper was peeling at the seams. The door at the back opened into an even smaller bathroom where the faucet was dripping. A bare desk and a chair were the only places to sit. Addie and Kiera chose to stand.

  “Corbin,” Addie started, easing into the ghastly facts, “when did you hear from Autumn last?”

  He blinked, looking at the clock over on the bedside table. “It was just after dinner. We ate at five, so… six o’clock or so? Something like that. We all went to the diner just up the road before going our separate ways.”

  “We?” Kiera asked.

  “Uh, yeah. Me and Autumn and her brother August. We ate our food, which was terrible, by the way, and then we all decided to go exploring Birch Hollow by ourselves and meet up back here tonight. What… what’s going on?”

  “You all split up?” Addie was really having trouble understanding this. “You and Autumn are here on your honeymoon, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, we are. How did you know that?”

  Addie ignored his question for one of her own. “Why would you split up to do things alone on your honeymoon?”

  “Well we just got married, sure, but that doesn’t mean we’re glued to each other’s hips. She has her interests, I have mine, August… well, I don’t really know what August likes but that’s not really the point, is it? Why are you here? What’s wrong?”