Witching There's Another Way: A Cozy Mystery (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 4) (9 page)

Chapter 14

The news came to Avery in person. Piper showed up at the bakery where Avery was given a table in the back corner to himself where he could work. Moments before she came in, he felt his stomach drop. He stared at the door for half a minute before it opened, and when it did he stood, and met her halfway.

Piper clung to him desperately, and he didn’t have to ask what was wrong. There had been thirteen children all together, all of them being held in quarantine in a wing of Coven Grove General. There was talk of having them all transferred out, but the nearest hospital capable of handling mysterious illnesses was in Portland, more than three hours away.

“Come on,” Avery whispered to her, and waved down Chloe, who brought a cup of hot tea.

“What are you doing to fix it?” Piper asked, voice hoarse. “What can I do to help?”

“Piper… we’re working on it,” he told her. Though, so far there wasn’t much to report in the way of anything resembling a direction to go. He waved a hand over the papers. “I’m learning what I need to know.”

“Good,” she said. She looked around, and then upstairs. “What about Bailey? And Aiden? Where are they?”

He bit his lip. When he spoke, it was quiet enough no one else would hear. Not that the bakery was that busy. “Uh… they… this all started after they went after Isabelle.”

“Isabelle? Kendleston? Did they find her, then? Is that connected—”

“We don’t know for sure,” Avery said. “But they’re fairly certain they know at least where she went. Or, where she was taken. And they went there to get her.”

“Riley is here,” Piper said firmly. “He’s here and he’s sick or… under some spell. This isn’t natural, is it? Have you been up to the ward? It’s not contagious they think. The kids are all perfectly healthy. Parents are allowed in… Riley…” she choked back a sob, and closed her eyes to breathe through the distress. When she opened them, they were fierce. “Who did it?”

“We think it’s some kind of attack from Faerie,” Avery admitted. “We aren’t certain though—we don’t know if it’s intentional, or what the purpose is, or how it’s happening. That’s what I’m trying to find out. Frances is upstairs, doing her thing; I’m here doing mine.”

“What can I do to help?” Piper asked again. “There has to be something. I can even just take notes for you if you want.” She looked at the papers. “Is this just math?”

Avery shook his head, but then shrugged a shoulder, “Well… sort of. Not really. Or, it is but based on principles that… it’s complicated.”

She sipped the cup of tea, set it down, and put her face in her hands. “There has to be something.”

Avery pursed his lips and stared at the work ahead of him. It wasn’t making sense yet. Maybe it never would. This was all out of his depth. He had been thinking, though… “The children,” he asked Piper, “are they… all humming the same tune? When you were up there before?”

She shook her head. “No, not really. It’s all a jumble.”

“There may be something you can do for me, then.” Avery handed her his phone. “The code is six five six eight. I need you to go to the hospital ward where the kids are, and get a recording. Just hit record and go from bed to bed if you need to. Can you do that?”

Piper took the phone like he’d handed her Excalibur itself. She nodded, and put it in her purse. “I should go now, visiting hours will be over soon. They’re not letting us spend the night with them.”

“Okay,” Avery said. “Just come back when you’ve got it.”

She kissed his cheek and then left, accepting a brief embrace by Chloe on her way out. Chloe watched her go, and then came to join Avery for a moment. “Riley?” She asked.

He nodded, and picked his pencil back up. “She’s going to go get me samples of the music.”

“Why? Did you find something?” She asked.

Avery sighed, grimacing briefly before he underlined another part of the formula and began to break it into component pieces. “No. She needed something to do, and… it just felt like something that would make her feel useful. She’s barely holding herself together. I can’t blame her.” He realized he’d written the same simplified equation twice, and both times gotten a part wrong.

“And now I’m barely holding together either. I can’t focus.” He laid the pencil down, and rubbed his forehead.

Chloe rested a hand on his. “Remember what I said before. Calm, and focus. It’s just like setting aside fear, or anger, to think rationally. Right now, just pretend there’s nothing else happening around you. There’s no crisis. I know that’s difficult, but you have to be able to control your mind. Not just for this—though, it will help—but if you’re going to wield magic in general.”

“I know,” he sighed. “I know… do you think I could get a cup of coffee?”

“Of course,” Chloe said, and she left to get it for him.

Avery closed his eyes, and tried to do as she’d instructed. She wasn’t the first—Aiden had discussed the importance of focus as well. It was fine to practice it when there was nothing truly at stake. Ignoring the fact that there were thirteen catatonic children, even if it was to help them, was a great deal harder than meditating.

None the less, he tried to walk the day backwards, and the day before, back to the moments before he learned Isabelle had gone missing, before the children had gotten sick, or ensorcelled, and find the moments when he’d been calmer, more confident in himself.

At least, when he found himself remembering being across the table from Thomas at Sandbar, he was able to set that distraction aside more easily.

Avery picked his pencil, and got back to work.

Just after visiting hours ended, Piper returned. She didn’t look like the task had raised her spirits much, but she did look grimly determined to deliver Avery’s phone.

For his part, three hours had yielded a number of advancements. Most of the core principles at work were things that Avery was familiar with, they were just in combinations that he hadn’t seen before and didn’t realize were possible. To say that his brain was fried was an understatement.

“Will it help?” Piper asked when she put the phone on the table. “I got almost an hour before your phone ran out of space.”

“I think it will,” he lied. He hated to do it, but when Piper seemed to relax, just a fraction, he didn’t regret it.

“So,” she said. “What now? What next?”

“Now,” Avery said unsteadily, sliding the phone toward him, “I should analyze it and… see how it all fits.”

Piper nodded, and then sat down as though waiting for him to do that.

“Piper… this could take a little while,” he told her. “You should really be at home with William and Gavin.”

“They’re with his mother, out of town,” Piper said. “I wasn’t about to risk William, too.”

That was fair. Children anywhere from two to ten had been affected. But, it did seem like the children had to be old enough to make a tune intentionally. Why it was only children was anyone’s guess.

“Of course,” Avery said. “Um… well, let’s see…”

He hated wasting time, but Piper would be furious if he told her the truth—that he’d sent her on a quest to keep her busy and, frankly, out of his hair. He played the first of several recordings, and started making nonsense notes on the back of the paper he’d been using.

By the time he’d listened to the first five recordings, however, he felt his heart skip a beat.

“I need to hear these all together,” he muttered. A trip to the app store yielded an audio mixing utility that cost him twenty bucks, but if he was on the right track it was worth a lot more than that.

It took another twenty minutes to figure out both how to use the app, as well as get the audio clips loaded. When he played them all together…

Originally, the music hummed by each of the children that Avery had heard sounded unique, and unrepeating. No matter how long you listened, the tune was different from one measure to the next. It was only music in the sense that it was tonal and rhythmic.

It was possible this was because each of the children was humming a different part of the overall music. Played together, it was an orchestra of children’s voices, a droning tune that made Avery’s spine tingle.

Piper stared at the phone as well, and for a moment she almost seemed to slip into the same trance as the children, her eyes distant until Avery touched her hand. When he did she gasped, blinking away the daze.

“That… that music,” she breathed, “it’s… what is it?”

He stopped the playback. “I don’t know. What did you feel just then? Anything? You zoned out.”

“I felt sad,” Piper said. “Crushing sadness. I didn’t feel it in the ward, though, and they’re all humming together in there.”

“They weren’t quite in sync,” Avery told her. “I adjusted the different parts to be timed.”

“So… what does it mean?”

A better question to answer that might have been why it affected Piper that way and not Avery. “It means something,” he told her, “I just don’t know what yet. I need time to… pick it apart, see how it works. Music is just math. There’s a pattern… I just have to find it.”

She nodded slowly and looked up when Chloe approached them.

“Frances is resting,” Chloe said when she was near. “Whatever she was trying, I don’t think it worked. Banishments and dispell rituals didn’t manage to make any difference. It’s safe to say whatever this is, it’s operating on a different level than we know how to work.”

“If you all can’t do anything,” Piper asked, “then what help is Avery going to be?”

“Piper—” Chloe started, chidingly.

“No,” Avery said. “She’s right. The three of you have been doing this for decades, right? Why aren’t we asking… you know, the other ladies to help?”

Chloe shook her head, “It doesn’t work like that for them. The caves keep them going but… there’s a cost. And after helping get Bailey and Aiden across, they may not be able to do much more. They have to recover.”

“It didn’t look like it affected them that much,” Avery said.

“They hide it well,” Chloe sighed. “But doing big magic isn’t much different than running a marathon. And they are both over a century old.”

Piper seemed to only at that moment notice who was missing. “Where’s Thomas?”

“He… left,” Avery said. “For now. While all this is going on. Not town, just…”

“Just… you?” Piper wondered.

Avery nodded. “It’s fine. Better, even. I need to be able to focus. Um… look, why don’t you hang with Chloe. I need some space to keep my head clear. I’ll do everything I can, okay? But, this is all pretty—”

“Complicated,” Piper sighed. “I know. It always is.” She sounded frustrated, but she leaned toward him anyway and kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry about what I said. I’m just worried. I believe in you. Okay?”

He wasn’t sure what good that would do, but he took it. When she left, he got back to work, and didn’t look up from it until well after the Bakery closed.

Chapter 15

It was Faerie-Aria that had screamed. When Bailey, Aiden, and the vast majority of the fair goers reached her, there were other screams as well.

She was in the bakery, standing over a prone form. The front of the bakery was a mess, and the glass on the pastry case had been cracked where something struck it.

It was Chloe. Well, it was the Faerie equivalent, Bailey reminded herself when her stomach turned at the sight. It took a moment to recover from the sight; though the bakery ladies here didn’t look as much like their real-world counterparts as the rest of the town, Faerie-Chloe lay face down near the front counter and from this angle it looked very much like Bailey’s mother lying there.

Once she reminded herself where they were, however, she was able to take a step back from it all. She looked at Aiden, who wore a deeply concerned look on his face as he surveyed not just the scene, but the surrounding crowd.

The Sheriff arrived, pushing through the crowd with a deputy in tow, waving his badge around for all to see. “Alright, let’s all just make some space. This is a crime scene, ladies and gentlemen, we need to keep it as clean as possible. If everyone could please wait outside…”

People began to do that, slipping out through the bakery door to pass on news to those who hadn’t been fast enough to make it inside or to the windows. Bailey and Aiden hung around the door, watching.

The Sheriff turned toward them, sighed, and then waved a deputy in their direction.

A faerie deputy approached them. “Sorry folks. Gonna have to ask you to step outside, please.”

“Of course, Deputy,” Aiden said.

Bailey put a hand on Aiden’s arm to forestall him. “Very quickly, Deputy… we heard that Chloe and the other two owners were just recently talking about selling the bakery. Do you think that—”

“If you could move along, please,” the deputy repeated. “Leave this to the professionals, little lady.”

At that, Bailey held her tongue, and let Aiden lead her away from the door. People were still gathered outside, muttering amongst themselves and pointing—some at the bakery, others at Bailey and Aiden.

“What are you thinking?” Aiden asked.

She sighed, and tried to make sense of the scene in front of her. “Doesn’t it seem… weird? I mean, all the stories make Faeries seem more or less immortal. They put on this whole song and dance, wear these… costumes, throw this party and then someone gets murdered?”

“Faeries undoubtedly have crime,” Aiden mused. “Maybe this was an example of it. Maybe she was killed by a rival who wanted to play her part.”

“Does that really sit right with you?” Bailey asked. “Because it doesn’t with me. And it violates this whole idea of… immersion or distraction or whatever this is all supposed to be.”

“So,” Aiden reasoned, “we don’t know all the rules yet. What does this tell us about the rules?”

“I’m not sure it says anything about the rules,” Bailey said slowly. “I think this still has more to do with the game itself—the board, the pieces…”

“It’s still all a show,” Aiden finished.

“Exactly.” Bailey peered through the door to where the Sheriff was knelt by the body with a duster, seemingly dusting for prints but in no particular order or method. She turned to Aiden, and shook her head in bewilderment. “I… think this is a murder mystery. And I think we’re supposed to solve it.”

She had to admit it was thin, but nonetheless it was something to grasp onto, a goal to point them toward. What exactly was at stake was a question they hadn’t gotten answered—but it wasn’t as though the Faeriess didn’t know why they were here. Whether Isabelle’s return was taken as a given for winning the ‘game’, though, or would have to be named later—or was something else entirely—it was impossible to say without more information.

The same was true of Faerie-Chloe’s murder. When Faerie-Aria was done with the Sheriff, Bailey tugged Aiden toward her, and they approached when she was alone.

“I’m so sorry about your loss,” Bailey told the woman when she was in earshot. “You and Chloe must have been very close.”

“Chloe?” Faerie-Aria asked, confused. “You mean Cleo?”

Bailey paused, and then gave a short nod. “Um… yes, I apologize. I must not have heard her name clearly before. And you are…?”

“Ara,” she said. “Our partner is Fran. I don’t see how we can keep on without Cleo, though.”

“I heard you all talking about a man named Carson, before,” Bailey said. “Would that be Marcus Carson?”

“Yes,” Ara said bitterly. “He’s been trying to get us to sell the bakery for weeks. It’s… not really doing that well. The three of us just have so much else going on, and no one seems that interesting in coming in anymore. We’re trying to come up with new ideas but… honestly within a few months we’ll have to foreclose anyway. Cleo was keeping us motivated. Now…”

“Hang in there,” Bailey said. “I trust the Sheriff will get to the bottom of it all. Get justice.”

Ara snorted. “Not likely. With Cleo out of the way, Carson might as well write a check. And the Sheriff is one of Carson’s long time gambling buddies. I doubt he wants anyone to get too close to this.”

“Right,” Bailey said quietly.

“Is there anyone else new in town?” Aiden asked. “Someone that might have… I don’t know, wanted to rob the place?”

“Robbery? Here?” Ara shook her head. “Nothing like that happens in Coven Grove. But… well there is someone new in town. Besides the two of you, I mean.”

“Oh?” Bailey raised an eyebrow, and glanced at Aiden. “Who is that?”

Ara sighed, and looked warily at the crowd. “Well… it’s something of a secret. And I can’t imagine it has anything to do with what happened to Cleo but… her ex is in town. There’s a lot of history there and she dropped kind of a bomb on him. He stormed off. His name is Nackolas. I think he’s still in town, probably staying at the hotel.”

Cleo’s ex husband. Nackolas. Bailey didn’t respond right away, so Aiden did it for her. “Thank you for talking with us, Ara. Again, we’re so sorry for your loss. I hope that the killer is brought to justice swiftly.”

Ara blew her nose into a tissue, and nodded sadly as Aiden drew Bailey away.

“Cleo’s ex,” she whispered. “What kind of a name is Nackolas?”

“Possibly the same kind of name as Ara, Fran, or Cleo—close enough but not the same. You’re thinking it might be their… long lost twin of your father?”

They walked some distance from the crowd—which was beginning to disperse, the fair all but forgotten in the wake of the tragedy—before Bailey answered. “There’s no way for me to know. Chloe didn’t tell me my father’s name. When we get back I can ask her. Right now we have to stay focused.”

“It’s not lost on you, is it?” Aiden asked. “That this seems tailored a little bit?”

“Chloe? My father?” Bailey asked archly. “Yes. I noticed.”

“They’re trying to get to you,” he said. “It’s what they do. Just don’t take anything to heart here, okay?”

She almost snapped at him that she knew that, but the truth was that she already felt off balance. Seeing Cleo there, looking so like Chloe, when she was so obviously meant to look like Chloe, had upset her and the sting of it was still there, pumping venomous anger into her veins. “Keep reminding me of that, and I will.”

The hotel in question was, of course, in the same place as the single hotel in Coven Grove was. The front desk clerk was remarkably helpful, pointing them to the second floor, and immediately adjacent to the room that, in the real world, Professor Turner had been murdered in.

Bailey stared at that door for a long moment before Aiden took her hand and squeezed it. She nodded to him, and knocked on Nackolas’ door.

Ara, Fran, and Cleo only looked roughly like their real-world counterparts, so there was no telling how close a facsimile to his counterpart Nackolas actually was, but he had red hair. It was the first thing she noticed about him. Then his green eyes, and the general shape of him. He was tall, well over six feet, square shoulders and a strong jawline, though it was tainted with fae sharpness, like his nose and ears were. It probably didn’t look anything like Bailey’s real father—it was possible he looked nothing like him at all, and this was all just part of the game.

Still, Bailey opened her mouth to introduce herself and couldn’t.

Aiden, again, came to her rescue. He extended a hand. “Hello. I’m Aiden Faire, this is my… friend, Bailey Robinson. You must be Nackolas?”

The man looked from one to the other of them and then nodded nervously. “I am. Should I… know you?”

“No,” Bailey said. “We came to introduce ourselves and talk a little. Heard you were in town. Um… were you at the fair?”

“I wasn’t,” Nackolas said cautiously. “I was here. In my room. I have been all day, I didn’t have anything going on until tonight… May I ask what this is about?”

“You haven’t heard then, I take it.” Aiden said.

Nackolas shook his head, “Nothing so significant that I know what you mean. Heard what?”

“I hate to be the one to tell you this,” Bailey said softly. “But I’m afraid we just came from the fair. Cleo, the woman from the bakery, she…”

“She’s passed away,” Aiden finished. “Not more than an hour ago. It looks as though it might have been murder.”

It took half an hour to help Nackolas calm down from the news. He’d been inconsolable from just seconds after hearing it until he finally paused to take a deep breath—and that only after a great deal of gentle urging from Bailey and Aiden both. Mostly, it was Aiden’s doing.

Bailey only lasted a few minutes before she felt herself start to slip. It was too real, all of this. Even if she knew it wasn’t, there was some part of it that felt that way, and the longer they were here the more real it seemed.

It had been a subtle, slow change. Now that she recognized it, though, the world did have a more solid feeling than before. Not just a memory of a dream, but a very convincing dream. The kind she couldn’t just wake up from. She was very aware of Rita and Anita’s story about their former coven sister, Esme. How long had it taken for her to go mad in Faerie? Weeks? Days? Hours?

At length, Nackolas was able to talk. He went from inconsolable, to distraught, and finally to numb. By the time he was staring and speaking dully, she was pretty sure he’d had nothing to do with the murder. Still, he might have had something else useful to say.

“I came back just a week ago,” He said quietly. “I wanted to reconnect. I’ve been traveling for twenty years looking for… well, I’m sort of an archaeologist, you see. But it never fulfilled me—not like being with Cleo did. I should never have left her. I was just so wrapped up in my own dreams that I thought it was best if I let her live her own life.”

“And, did you get the chance?” Bailey asked.

He smiled at her, the first time she’d seen the expression on him, and nodded quickly. “I saw her a few days after I got into town. I had to work up the nerve. That’s when she told me.”

“Told you what?” Aiden asked.

“That he has a daughter,” Bailey said.

Nackolas nodded, though he shot her a warning frown. “Yes,” he said. “Braley. She has red hair… just like mine. All these years, and I had no idea. If I’d know, I would have come back. Would have been here for her. Cleo didn’t tell me. I guess she probably couldn’t have… it wasn’t like I was taking letters where I was. But, oh… she’s so beautiful. She looks just like her grandmother. I never imagined I would have a daughter…”

He was staring at Bailey, and she shifted her feet a bit, folding her arms over her chest. “Congratulations,” she said. “At least you found out while you had the chance.”

“I suppose that is something,” Nackolas said.

“I’m sure there will be a service of some sort,” Aiden said gently as he stood. “And I expect that we’ll see you there when that happens. In the meantime, I’m afraid Bailey and I must beg your leave. We have some… other people here to visit.”

“Oh, certainly,” Nackolas said. “Thank you for coming by, for letting me know. No one else has come… they might not even know about me, I suppose, so it makes sense. If you hadn’t told me, well… I would have heard about it in the paper, or when I went to see her. It’s better to be told these things when you have company with you, you know?”

“We do,” Bailey said. She shook Nackolas’ hand when he offered it, and Aiden did the same, before they left him there.

They were quiet until they reached the parking lot, where Bailey turned and looked back up at the closed door to the man’s room. “How much do you suppose they know?” She asked.

“It’s impossible to say,” Aiden told her firmly. “And we can’t operate on unknowns just now. We have to play the game, and not think too much about how true any of this is, alright?”

“Right,” Bailey said. She forced her shoulders to relax. “Well… if this were a real murder, and we didn’t think it was the former lover then… the next thing to do is follow the money, right?”

“I believe that’s a good course of action,” Aiden said. “We know Carson wanted to buy the place.”

“Yes,” Bailey said. “But killing Cleo for it seems a bit extreme. You heard what Fran said—he could have just waited for it to go out of business. At that point, he could have bought it for a steal. So why  rush things and risk getting caught?”