By Familiar Means (6 page)

“Jake, honey, I might owe you an apology,” murmured Miranda.

Because when I'd fallen, the dirt had shifted. Now, a pair of clouded white eyes stared at us from out of a human face.

A very dead human face.

6

“And you're certain you didn't recognize the deceased?” Detective Simmons asked Jake.

Jake, Miranda and I huddled together on the sidewalk out in front of the old drugstore. A barrier of police cruisers, sawhorses and yellow tape blocked both the street and the sidewalk. Men and women in blue uniforms filed in and out of the building, talking to one another or into their radios. Naturally, a crowd had gathered on the other side, craning necks and holding up cell phones, trying to get a look at what was going on, or at least take a picture of it.

“I didn't actually get a good look at . . . the body,” Jake was saying to Detective Simmons.

“That was my fault,” said Miranda. “I kind of freaked out.”

“You weren't the only one,” I added. It had gotten kind of loud down in that tunnel before the three of us had managed to get hold of ourselves, and the flashlight, so we could get back down the tunnel and up to where my cell phone had reception again and call 911.

Jake put his arm around Miranda, and I had my arms folded tight across my chest.

Kenisha Freeman moved away from the pair of EMTs she had been talking to and touched my arm. Kenisha is an officer on the Portsmouth police force. She's also a member of my coven. The only witch cop in New Hampshire, she says proudly. She has medium brown skin, and a spray of dark freckles decorates her cheeks. Her blue uniform covers a lean, athletic build and she wears her red-and-amber-streaked hair pulled back into a severe bun.

“You okay?” Kenisha asked, and I nodded, even though I was pretty sure I was lying. Finding a dead body tends to have a bad effect on a person. It was a beautiful, sunny day, but the wind off the river seemed to cut straight through my jacket. I could not stop shaking.

Kenisha respected my putting on a brave face, though, and just nodded back. She also jerked her chin toward the nearest police cruiser. I followed her glance and saw a (literally) familiar whiskered face peering out from behind the driver's side tire. Alistair. We blinked at each other for a minute and I let out the breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

“And you had no idea that tunnel was there?” Detective Simmons was asking.

“No.” Miranda glanced at me. So did Kenisha, with one raised eyebrow. “We only found it this afternoon, and we were trying to see where it went.”

Pete wrote this down, slowly and carefully. Pete Simmons is a short, permanently rumpled fireplug of a man. He was also endlessly patient and quietly, calmly, politely suspicious of absolutely everything. These are traits that make him very good at his job. It also makes watching him take his detailed notes surprisingly nerve-wracking.

Pete scratched behind his ear with the end of his pencil and turned toward me.

“Anna!” shouted another voice.

I spun around to face the street and the crowd. Grandma B.B. was squeezing between the bystanders with their phones, and she had Julia Parris and the dachshunds right behind her. All of them came up to the sawhorses with the crime scene tape wrapped around them and pushed straight
on through. Before I knew it, Grandma had hold of me in a very firm hug.

“What on earth happened!”

“What are you doing here?” I demanded, at least as soon as I could, gently, pull free and draw a full breath again.

Max and Leo both started yipping like their doggy lives depended on it and made a beeline, or at least a dog line, straight for the old drugstore's door, noses to the pavement.

“Hey!” shouted Detective Simmons, slashing his pencil through the air. “Miss Parris! We can't have those dogs in the crime scene!”

Julia thumped her walking stick on the pavement. “Max! Leo! Heel!”

The dogs stopped like they'd reached the ends of their leashes and trotted right back to her side.

Under the cruiser, Alistair rubbed a paw rapidly across his ear, in a
you guys are embarrassing
kind of gesture.

“Crime scene!”
exclaimed Grandma, as if she'd just noticed all the yellow tape, not to mention the cruisers and the uniforms. “What am
I
doing here? What are you doing here? Julia and I were finishing our tea when we saw the police cars and . . . are you all right?”

“I'm fine. Everything's fine.”

Grandma B.B. scrunched her face up at me, an expression indicating serious grandmotherly doubt. I couldn't blame her. The words “crime scene” did not exactly go with “everything's fine.”

Pete and Grandma B.B. both opened their mouths at the exact same moment. I braced myself, but a uniformed officer waved over the heads of the crowd. Pete looked at the officer, then looked at us and at his notebook with his list of unanswered questions.

“Wait here, please,” he said before he waved back to the other officer and made his way over to her, leaving us on our own for the moment.

“Now, Anna, what's
happened
?” demanded Grandma B.B. “And don't you even
think
about saying ‘nothing,' to your grandmother.”

“Or to me,” added Julia.

Kenisha muttered something under her breath that sounded a lot like “uh-oh.” I swallowed. I reminded myself I hadn't done anything wrong. Not really. I looked down to Alistair for some moral support, but my familiar just dodged behind the cruiser's tire. Coward.

But Julia didn't get a chance to ask the questions hovering behind her stern eyes.

“Annie-Bell?” Miranda let go of Jake's hand and made her way over to us or, rather, to Grandma B.B. “Oh, my gosh, is that you?”

My grandmother turned her head to see who was talking and promptly did a double take.

“Miranda?”

In the next second, Miranda and Grandma B.B. were hugging each other and exclaiming, their words tumbling over one another.

“I heard you were back in town but . . . !”

“Had
no
idea you were still . . .”

“Can't believe it's you!”

“
I
can't believe it's
you
!”

I stood back, thinking,
Annie-Bell?
I looked to Julia. She just pressed her mouth into a thin, tight line. She was radiating a kind of high-frequency disapproval, and although she stared at the old drugstore, the police and the crowd, I had the distinct feeling that extra-special tension in the air around my mentor wasn't for any of them.

“Julia . . .” I began, but she just shook her head.

“We cannot have this conversation here.” Julia nodded toward Pete, who was standing listening to the uniformed cop but was watching all of us with real interest. “But we will have it.”

Suddenly, answering questions for Detective Simmons seemed like it was going to be a walk in the park.

“Come meet my husband!” Miranda grabbed Grandma's hand and pulled her over to Jake. “Jake! This is Annie-Bell Blessingsound! She used to babysit me!”

“Oh, hey.” Jake held out his hand. Grandma took both of his and shook them warmly.

“So
wonderful
to meet you, Jake,” said Grandma. “Is this your shop? I was so excited to hear that you and Miranda thought of my granddaughter for your decorations!”

Miranda slapped her forehead. “Your granddaughter! Of course, Anna
Britton
. I didn't put the two together. Fate!” she called toward the sky. “It's fate!”

“Yeah, problem is, it ain't the good kind,” muttered Jake.

Grandma took both of Miranda's hands. “What's the matter, dear? Why are the police here?”

“Yes,” said Julia tartly. “Why
are
the police here, Anna?”

Miranda hesitated, but Grandma shook her hands encouragingly. “Oh, come along, Miranda; you can tell Annie-Bell.”

Something was wrong. Something was shifting underneath the surface, and it wasn't just that sweet and innocent Grandma routine, which I never trusted. I felt a distinct prickling on the back of my neck and up my hands, and, yes, in both my thumbs.

Magic.

My little old white-haired grandmother was working a spell on Miranda.

“Gosh, Grandma, you know, I'm really sorry about all this!” I said loudly. “Maybe you can go and wait somewhere until the police say it's okay for us to go! Have you ever been to Joe King's Chowder Shack? It's right around the corner this way . . .”

Unsubtly and unashamedly, I grabbed my grandmother and started pulling her back toward the fence of cars and sawhorses. I didn't make it very far. My grandmother has always been stronger than she looks.

“Annabelle Amelia.” She shook me off. “What on earth is this about?”

“That was about you working some kind of spell on Miranda,” I whispered harshly. “
Without
her permission!”

“Oh, good heavens, Anna,” she murmured. “You are
entirely
overreacting.”

“I am not overreacting! We're the good witches! We're not supposed to do that.” I looked back toward Julia for confirmation, and what I got in return was a glare that reached right down inside me and turned me from a grown woman to a badly behaved toddler.

“May I remind you, young lady, I've been practicing far longer than you've been alive,” said Grandma, softly but very firmly. “
I
know the rules. Perhaps you'd care to tell
me
what you were doing that got poor Alistair so upset he had to come get us?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again.

“We found a dead body,” I said.

“Oh,
dear
.” Just like that, the lecture was over and I was being hugged by my grandma. I held on, hard, and for a long time.

“'Scuse me,” called Pete Simmons. He'd come back from his other conversation and was waving his pencil to try to attract our attention. “I know this is tough on everybody, but the sooner we're done, the sooner you can get home.”

“Sorry, Detective,” I muttered and went back over to stand with Jake and Miranda. Naturally, Julia and Grandma followed.

“Now, Mr. and Mrs. Luce.” Pete flipped his notebook open. “We were talking about . . .” He turned over another page. “The tunnel. Who found it? Was it the two of you?” Pete sort of waggled his pencil at the pair of them. “Or were all three of you together?” The pencil, and Pete's attention, now pointed at me.

I glanced back at Alistair, looking for a little moral support. He had come out from behind the tire, but he had also hunkered down on the pavement with a calm
you got yourself into this one, human
, air.

“I found the tunnel,” I told the detective. “Miranda and Jake were giving me a tour of the space. I'm going to be painting some murals for them—”

“On the basement floor?” asked Pete with perfect calm. He'd probably heard stranger things.

“I tripped over a brick,” I lied. “It was loose.”

I looked at Pete. Pete looked at me. I was not going to be able to keep this up for long. You cannot win a stare down with a cat—or a cop.

“How long has he . . . the body . . . been there?” I asked, hoping to sort of, kind of change the subject.