Grave Mistake Page 17

  “Are you there?”

  Again that tug, this time forceful enough that I couldn’t help wincing.

  “Okay, good,” I said, trying to sound calm and reassuring. “Can you speak?”

  The wind whispered past my face. “Selena….”

  I’d always liked my name, even though the only reason my mother had picked it out for me was because she’d thought I’d be a Cancer — aka Moon Child, the sign whose ruling planet was the moon — since my projected arrival was supposed to be on June thirtieth. But I’d jumped the gun and come nine days early, and had turned out to be a Gemini instead. Since she didn’t have a backup name, she’d stuck with Selena.

  Anyway, I’d liked having a pretty, unusual name. Hearing it whispered on the wind like that, however, was enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  “I’m here to help,” I said. “Can you tell me what happened to you?”

  The same rage and fear I’d felt earlier returned, only tenfold. I shuddered and almost lost my balance. Damn it, even as a spirit, he was strong.

  “Something terrible, I know.” As I spoke, I tried to keep my voice calm, persuasive. “We all want to find justice for you, Lucien. We need to know who did this to you.”

  This time, the wind that blew past me was so fierce, it pulled the scrunchie from my hair and sent it spinning into the water. The loosened strands whipped around my face, bringing tears to my eyes. I blinked, doing my best to focus on the now-blurred scene in front of me.

  “Vile,” a voice whispered.

  Lucien’s voice.

  “Yes, it was vile,” I said. “But I need to know who did this to you.”

  A tree branch broke off with a sharp crack and fell to the ground. I winced, even though the bough had landed a few yards away from me and didn’t present any immediate danger.

  “Sheeeeee….” the voice said. Now it sounded like a low rumble, much deeper than Lucien’s voice when he’d still been alive. It reverberated in my eardrums, and I shook my head, even though that didn’t do much to clear the painful throbbing.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, even as I began to wonder whether this had been such a great idea after all. I could tell he was trying to communicate, but it just wasn’t getting through.

  “Vile!” the voice shouted, almost in my ear.

  “Yes, I got that the first time,” I snapped, although I knew that losing my temper wasn’t the best way to deal with the situation. So much could be lost in translation when spirits were trying to reach through the veil and communicate. This wasn’t the same as having a cozy chat with my grandmother’s ghost through the medium of a crystal ball. No, this was facing the raw power of an angry, vengeful spirit, one that couldn’t quite form the necessary words to give me the answers I needed.

  Still, I had to try.

  Then Lucien said, “Huge,” and I only frowned again.

  “What’s huge?” I asked. “Was there some kind of conspiracy going on? Was more than one person involved in your death?”

  “HUGE!” the spirit bellowed again, and I clapped my hands over my ears. That last blast had been so loud, I felt as though I was back in high school and standing too close to the speakers at one of my school dances.

  Not helping, I thought grimly. However, the additional decibels seemed to tell me that I might be on the right track. There had been an additional level of intensity in that last reply, as though I’d struck a nerve.

  My phone chose that inopportune time to start ringing. At once, the wild wind whistling across the little beach died away. Although he’d never manifested physically, and therefore I couldn’t see for sure that Lucien was gone, I somehow knew he’d disappeared.

  “Damn it,” I muttered under my breath. I pushed my hair out of my face and pulled the phone out of my pocket so I could look at the screen.

  Calvin.

  Under other circumstances, I would have been happy to have him calling me out of the blue. Right then, however, I was more irritated than anything else.

  “What?” I said as I swiped across the screen to accept the call.

  “Did I interrupt something?”

  I hesitated. Most likely, Calvin wouldn’t be too thrilled to learn I’d come back to the murder scene on my own…especially after what had happened to Athene the night before. “Not really,” I lied. “What’s up?”

  “I got your knives back from the lab, so I thought I’d bring them over.”

  Talk about timing. While I wanted my knives returned safely to their altar, I couldn’t quite help cursing the universe for causing such an interruption when I’d been so close to a breakthrough.

  Okay, maybe not that close. But I’d gotten Lucien talking, which was something.

  “Um…I’m running an errand right now. But I can meet you at my apartment in about twenty minutes.”

  Maybe a brief hesitation, as if he was attempting to figure out whether I was being entirely truthful. But then he said, “Sure, that’ll work. I’ll see you then.”

  He hung up, and I slipped my phone back into my pocket. No choice now except to head home and accept the return of my knives with as good grace as possible.

  Before I left, though, I closed my eyes and tried to reach out with that extra sense of mine, the one that had come to my aid so many times before.

  Nothing. Or at least, nothing beyond the vibrant life in the trees and the river, the slow strength of the earth beneath my feet. Lucien might have been here a few minutes earlier, but he was certainly gone now.

  I let out a sigh and began to trudge back to my car.

  15

  Spells and Stories

  I barely had time to take off my hiking boots and slide into a pair of flats — because one look at those boots, and Calvin would know I’d been up to no good — before the buzzer at the back entrance to the building sounded. A quick pass of a brush through my hair, and then I hurried downstairs to open the door.

  “Hi,” I said, trying not to sound too breathless. “Come on in.”

  Apparently, I wasn’t terribly convincing, because he cocked an eyebrow at me. To my relief, though, he only said, “Sure,” and followed me upstairs to the apartment.

  He carried a baggie with the two knives inside, and set it down on the dining room table once we were in my apartment. “Here you go,” he said. “Forensics didn’t find anything.”

  “I told you they wouldn’t.”

  “I know. But the ‘I’s have been dotted and the ‘T’s crossed, so now I can say I did my due diligence.”

  Meaning…what? That he now thought it was safe to date me, as he’d hinted the other evening?

  “Well, that’s something.” I glanced down at the baggie that held my knives, but I didn’t bother to pick it up. Before I could use them again, I’d have to make sure they were cleansed and recharged. The Goddess only knew what kind of weird energy they’d picked up at the police station.

  Calvin followed my gaze, and a small frown puckered his eyebrows. Maybe he was wondering why I hadn’t gone ahead and taken the knives back into the room that held my altar. His next question was one I’d halfway been expecting.

  “Are you going to tell me where you were when I called?”

  For someone who wasn’t psychic, he had good instincts. Too good, actually.

  I’d lied on the phone, but I didn’t have the guts to lie to his face.

  No, it was something more than that. I didn’t want to lie to him at all.

  “I was down at the river.”

  At once, his frown deepened. Voice full of warning, he began, “Selena — ”

  “I know,” I cut in. Maybe I’d earned a scolding, but I wasn’t in the mood for one. “It’s just — you cut me short the last time I was down there. I hoped I might be able to pick up something more if I was by myself.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “At least, at first. Lucien’s spirit is definitely hanging around there. He tried to communicate with me, but I couldn
’t understand what he was saying. Something about something vile and something huge.”

  Calvin rubbed his chin. Although it was late in the day, I didn’t notice much stubble. “Was he trying to describe the person who murdered him?”

  “Possibly. His spirit was very agitated, and so I think that was making it harder for him to get his point across.”

  That piece of information didn’t seem to sit very well. Alarm flickered in Calvin’s eyes, and he asked, “Agitated how?”

  I shrugged. “He was manifesting as a wind. It broke a branch off a tree and pulled the scrunchie out of my hair.”

  Remembering the scene, I frowned. That had been one of my favorite scrunchies.

  “You could have been hurt.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said quickly. Why I felt compelled to defend Lucien, I didn’t know. Most likely, I just didn’t want to upset Calvin. “The branch didn’t fall anywhere near me. But it doesn’t matter, because you called, and that interruption was enough to break up his energy. He disappeared, and we’re not any closer to figuring out who the suspect is than we were before.”

  His expression was still troubled, but to my relief, he didn’t give me any more grief over going down to the river. Was it possible he felt a little guilty about calling at exactly the wrong time?

  “You tried,” he said. “And we’re working the other angles.”

  “Like the medallion,” I replied. “Any news on that?”

  A pause, and I wondered if he was going to tell me for the umpteenth time that he couldn’t discuss the particulars of the case with me.

  It seemed he’d given that up as a lost cause, though, because he said, “We found a partial print on it, but so far that doesn’t seem to be much of a lead, since it’s not pinging any of our databases. Otherwise, there wasn’t anything else. No DNA or something that might give us a clue to who it belonged to.”

  I’d expected as much — even if it had been spattered with blood during the murder, spending more than twenty-four hours underwater in the riverbed would have pretty much wiped it clean.

  “That’s too bad,” I said.

  He gave a philosophical lift of his shoulders. “It happens. Not that I’ve worked many murder cases, but a lot of the time, it’s two steps forward, one step back. We’ll get to the bottom of it eventually.”

  I hoped he was right. Since he had a lot more experience in this sort of thing than I did, I’d have to take his word for it. “And Travis’s car?”

  Calvin shook his head. “Nothing. No mechanical failure, no signs of tampering. Chief Lewis wants to blame it on Travis driving under the influence, but he seemed sober enough. Shaken, but I didn’t see any sign of him being high.”

  I had to agree with that assessment. True, Travis seemed pretty loopy even when he was dead sober, but his eyes weren’t red or watery, and he hadn’t shown any other signs of having smoked a bowl — or however he partook — before heading out that night to drive Athene to the airport.

  “That’s what I was worried about,” I said, and Calvin lifted an eyebrow.

  “That Travis wasn’t smoking?”

  “No, that it was a hex that made him roll the car. Dark magic like that wouldn’t leave any sign behind — at least, not any sign that a regular person would be able to find.”

  He shot me a dubious glance. “Would you be able to find it?”

  “Probably not,” I admitted. “I mean, I sensed something off about it when we were out there that night. But a strong enough practitioner wouldn’t have to do something as obvious as writing a sigil on the car. They could have just set their intentions and performed a ritual from miles away.”

  “Well, that’s comforting.”

  I gave an uneasy chuckle. “I know, right? But it’s not as if even the people who practice that kind of dark magic are going around casting hexes right and left. That would take an enormous amount of energy…and it would attract way too much attention.”

  “I suppose that’s a good thing, but it still leaves us without any clues we can work with.” He stuck his thumbs in his belt loops and rocked back slightly on his heels, now looking almost uncomfortable. “About dinner last night — ”

  “Don’t,” I cut in, and he sent me a surprised look. “That is,” I went on, realizing I’d already put my foot in it and now had no choice but to continue, “things are kind of crazy right now. We don’t have to make it be anything more than dinner. My way of saying thanks for keeping me in the loop on your investigation.”

  His expression was now puzzled, and I wondered if I’d made a bigger hash of things than I’d thought. But he only said, “Sure. I need to get back to the station, so — ”

  “Right,” I said, even as disappointment stabbed through me. It had been too much to hope that he’d stick around this time, especially since we’d had dinner the night before. “Thanks for bringing me my knives. I could have gone to the station to pick them up, you know.”

  “I know,” he replied, “but I was in Globe to talk to Chief Lewis about Travis’s car anyway. If anything else comes up, I’ll let you know.”

  That was probably the most I could hope for. At least it sounded as if he planned to keep me in the loop and wasn’t going to disappear forever.

  I walked Calvin to the door, and we made our goodbyes. As I shut it behind him, I wondered if I’d somehow blown my opportunity with him, if we’d ever get a second chance to make a connection.

  The rest of the evening felt curiously flat. I fed Archie and made myself a spinach salad topped with bits of shredded leftover chicken from my dinner with Calvin the night before, but as a meal, it was less than satisfying. It seemed as if the more times he visited my apartment, the emptier it felt when he wasn’t there.

  Reason told me that was a foolish way to look at the situation. We’d had a near miss, that was all. These sorts of things didn’t automatically fall into place, no matter what books and movies might want to tell you otherwise. Honestly, I should probably be glad he’d paid me as much attention as he had, considering the way Josie had described him as a man who didn’t seem inclined to get involved with anyone.

  Despite all those inner reassurances, I still found myself struggling with an overwhelming sense of anticlimax. Usually when I got that way, I sat down and did a few Tarot spreads, or meditated, or went for a walk to clear my head. With all the weirdness going on, though, I guessed that wandering around in downtown Globe, which would be mostly deserted by that point, probably wasn’t a very good idea.

  I didn’t have cable, but I had plenty of entertainment at my fingertips, thanks to my Apple TV and all the streaming services I was subscribed to. Watching television was usually my last resort, but I decided that was the best thing to do with myself when I felt so jangly and not in tune with much of anything.

  Resolutely ignoring the pint of rocky road ice cream in the freezer, I settled down on the couch and started flicking through the offerings. Nothing looked all that exciting, but I decided on a British baking show just because I knew I could depend on it to be relatively free of angst. I had enough of that in my personal life.

  However, I only got about fifteen minutes into the first episode before my phone rang. I frowned, wondering if I should ignore it. I’d already seen Calvin that day, and I doubted he would be calling again so soon after our last meeting.

  The call could be from my mother. We’d talked the day before the shop opening, and she’d promised to call again in a few days to see how everything went.

  I reached for the phone and looked down at the screen. The call was coming from a number in the 818 area code, but I didn’t recognize it.

  My fingers hovered over the phone for a second before something compelled me to pick it up and raise it to my ear. “Hello?”

  “S-Selena Marx?”

  A woman’s voice, very young-sounding. “This is Selena. Who’s this?”

  She pulled in a gasp that sounded halfway like a sob. “It — it’s Violet Clarke.”
<
br />   Holy crap. I sat up straighter on the sofa, phone clenched against my ear. “Violet! Are you okay?”

  “Y-yes. I mean, I’m okay for now. I need to talk to you.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In Globe. I’m in the Walmart parking lot.”

  Her voice continued to shake, as if she was just on the verge of breaking into tears but had somehow managed to hold it together so far. I remembered how young she was, and wondered if I would have been able to maintain even that shaky a level of composure if I’d been put in the same situation when I was just nineteen.

  “Do you need me to come get you?”

  “N-no,” she said. “Can I come to your place?”

  “Sure,” I replied. Reason kicked in a moment later, and I wondered if that was such a good idea. Wouldn’t it be smarter to take her to see Calvin?

  But I’d already said yes, and as upset as she sounded, I doubted she wanted to talk to any cops right away. Maybe later, after I’d gotten her calmed down….

  “Th-thanks so much,” she said. “You’re in the apartment above the shop, right?”

  “Yes,” I said, wondering how she knew that. Then I remembered that she’d been with Lucien the night of the store opening, even if she hadn’t gone with him. Probably, he’d told her all about it.

  “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

  The call ended, and I sat there, staring down at the phone in my hand. Once again, I wondered if I should call Calvin. Not to have him come over and grill the kid, but just so he would know she was back in town.

  Where had she gone…and why had she returned?

  I reassured myself that those answers would be forthcoming soon enough. At least, I hoped they would. I told myself that I couldn’t press her too hard. I’d just do my best to be supportive, and, with any luck, she’d tell me what had happened the night of Lucien’s death. As to why she’d reached out to me…well, if nothing else, I was the only person in the area with any connection to Lucien, now that Athene was dead. In times of crisis, it was human nature to grasp for something that felt even halfway normal.