If the Broom Fits (5 page)

He leaned back slightly. “I wouldn't have guessed Rhonda would be into
that
sort of thing.”

I rolled my eyes. “Exactly what do you think we do at Enchantment? It's hardly illicit.”

“Perhaps not, but I think you swindle people. Spells, fortunes, magic rocks. . . .” He gave me a dubious look. “You can't honestly tell me that stuff works. It's a gimmick for the desperate to cling to. But hey, a sucker is born every minute. Someone has to take advantage of them, right?”

I mentally counted to ten. I didn't need to fight with this man. I just needed the police reports. And it wasn't like there weren't charlatans out there, especially in this field. The difference was we weren't amongst their ranks and I didn't like being lobbed in with them. But he would never believe it. Trying to force someone to believe in magic was about as effective as tearing down a brick wall with a toothpick. “I'm not here to argue with you. I just wanted to see if you still had copies of the police reports. I wanted to do my own research into this today before I take it to the police in the morning.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You're taking this,” he held up the list, “to the police as evidence of what? They knew each other? They'll laugh you out of the station. Everyone knows each other here. It won't change the fact they consider the investigations closed.”

“You're the one who said you wanted answers and now you're mocking me for looking for them? But guess what, I don't need your permission.”

He silently tried to rally his patience, but obviously it was a struggle. “Exactly what sort of ‘research' are you going to do?”

I winked, because I knew it would drive him crazy. “Why don't you leave that up to us charlatans?”

His shoulders relaxed and he even cracked a small smile. “Fine. It's in the back. You want the nickel tour?”

I shrugged, following him past the front counter with two small desks and a tiny office that might have actually been a closet at one time.

“This is customer service and the classified department,” he said. We went through a door that opened into a much larger open room with machinery. “This is where the paper is printed.” He pointed to a cluster of desks. “That's where it's put to bed.” We wove between the machinery to an office in the very back of the building. “This is my office. I do about three quarters of the writing, the next office is my former college roommate and editor, and the last office belongs to our general manager who keeps everything running smoothly.”

The room was eerily quiet. “But it's just you here today.”

He nodded. “The paper was out by five and there was no reason for anyone to hang around in this weather. If conditions clear up, which doesn't look likely, we'll have a full house tonight. If not and we can't get on the road to deliver by tomorrow, the paper will have to be canceled.”

“Then why are you here?”

His office was big, but crammed full. There were shelves and stacks and clutter enough to make my shoulders tighten. How could he live like this? A change of clothes hung on the back of the door, a muted TV sat in one corner broadcasting the weather channel, and a wall-mounted monitor showed the street and front door. That's how he'd known I was coming.

“Security system?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Just a view to the outside. Mostly it's for the times when I'm here alone, which happens quite a bit.” He plopped down at his desk. “If I don't write tomorrow's edition, bad weather or not, there will be nothing to report,” he said. “Usually, I'm not here for the printing, but my GM's wife went into labor hence the all-nighter.”

He was like a one-man show. The paper wasn't huge or anything, but still big enough that keeping up a daily had to be borderline impossible. “What will be in tomorrow's paper?”

He smiled slightly. “You're the psychic. You tell me.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I never said I was psychic, but since you asked, I'm pretty sure you're going to lead with snow.”

He laughed. “Touché.” He held his hands over his desk for a moment as he thought. Then his face brightened and he lifted one of the stacks and pulled out two folders. “Organized chaos,” he said, checking the names on them before handing them to me.

“Can I make a copy of these somewhere or can I have them?”

He scratched the side of his face. “I guess that depends.”

Was he flirting with me? I looked at him in a new light. Katrina wasn't completely wrong. He was cute despite his curmudgeonly personality and disbelief in magic and tendency to piss me off. I smiled… but only a little because I really didn't have time for this shit. “On?”

“On whether or not you will give me a quote for the paper.”

“A quote about what?” Out of everything he could have said, that wasn't what I expected. Why would he possibly want a quote from me?

“A quote for my second headline after the snow. ‘Both victims of recent tragedies visited new occult shop.'”

My heart sputtered to a halting stop. Being demonized by the New Haven Chronicle wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I came over.

I
staggered
as the words clawed into me. My ears rang and I mentally flailed for an answer. Did it look like my parents knew they were going to die? No. But what did that mean? Were they stupid? The only thing every book on magic agrees on when it comes to necromancers is that dark witches give birth to them and always die afterwards. My mother had to know she was a dark witch. Hell, she left me a letter telling me how to bring her back. Orion was trying to confuse me.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“Perhaps I have an interest in all of this.”

I nodded slowly. Of course he did. There was no other reason for him to be here. Spirit guides were a bunch of bullshit. At least mine was. He wasn't here to help or guide me. He wanted something. We all had to walk through this world alone. “And what's that?”

He shrugged. “You'll have to stick around to find out.” He vanished into a gust of wind that went through me, sending chills down my spine.

I closed my eyes for a moment, collecting my thoughts, then turned toward the door. Leslie was still standing there, looking thoughtful—which was better than the sadness and pity I'd seen on her features moments ago. I straightened my shoulders, waiting for sympathy to spill out of her that I would shoot down as fast as she could speak. I didn't need more pointless words. I needed help finding the damn spell.

“Where do you want to start?” she asked.

“Bedroom closet,” I said just as softly.

She nodded. “Then let's get to it.” She turned abruptly and headed across the hall. She pulled the first box out of the closet and handed it to me. I put it down near the bed with a puff of dust. By the time I straightened up, she already had the second box out. Within twenty minutes we had everything cleared out of the surprisingly deep closet and scattered around the room.

Leslie sat cross-legged in the center of a group of boxes. “Anything in particular that you would like to see or keep?”

I shook my head, still thrown by the fact that she hadn't asked about what she heard. I knelt on the ground, sitting back against my feet. Leslie cracked open the first box and pulled out a wad of paper. She unwrapped it carefully. Inside was a Smurfs glass. If she thought it was at all strange, she didn't say anything. She merely sat the glass to one side and pulled out the next item.

Taking her lead, I opened the box closet to me. Inside was a collection of mismatched china. Some blue and white pieces, some with painted pink roses, and others with gold trim. One thing was glaringly obvious: why this stuff was packed away. It was all so normal, especially compared to what was displayed in the house. It didn't fit her dark witch shtick.

Neither of us spoke until the very last box had been emptied and we stood in the room staring at the piles of completely normal stuff all around us.

“Maybe when you become a dark witch you suddenly believe you should be living in the gothic romance novel you always aspired to.” Leslie raised an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth twitching upward. She bent down and picked up the Smurfs glass. “Sorry, Smurfette. Ain't nobody got time for your shit. We're waiting for Heathcliff to come knocking on our door. Plus, there's red velvet and gargoyles to hang.”

I smiled. She had a valid point. “But why would you replace your dishes? What's even in their place? Is there such thing as a witchy plate?”

She shrugged. “That's easy enough to find out.”

We ran downstairs and into the kitchen. The china cabinet was filled with jars of strangely colored liquids and containers of spices I couldn't quite place. The cabinets held similar items and most of the bowls, cups and plates were clunky red-glazed pottery. Leslie flipped over a plate. “The initials are FW. You have any idea who that is, by chance?”

“The inventor of ugly plates?”

“Obviously.” She put the plate back and frowned at the kitchen. “This is really strange though. Like, it's so over the top, it almost seems…” She waved a hand around her.

“Like it's for show?”

“Exactly. You don't think that maybe someone else decorated her house like this, do you?”

It was my turn to frown. “Why?”

She shrugged. “To perpetuate an image. Like I know you don't agree, but maybe Orion has a point. Maybe she wasn't as bad as someone wants the world to believe. Maybe you need to figure out her whole story.”

As much as I wanted to rally against what Leslie was saying for the sake of pure orneriness, I didn't. It was impossible to reconcile things I thought I knew with the things Orion told me—or with any of the house. First off, a truly dark witch wouldn't want her identity known by everyone. It wasn't like being evil got you anything special—other than torched by angry villagers. I would have thought she'd hide for as long as possible. Why display everything so openly?

Most of the human world didn't believe in magic anymore, but that didn't mean witches advertised. It wasn't like we wanted people to suddenly believe that witches had real magic. That didn't turn out so well the last time (Salem). Not only that, but people who deviated from the norm were often viewed as suspicious. “Maybe we should ask Jessica if she suddenly started feeling gothic while she was possessed.”

Leslie laughed lightly. “I think it's still too soon for her to joke about it.”

That was true. Jessica handled her situation well, but it didn't take an empath to see she still had things to work through. “What else is down here?”

Exploring the main floor didn't lead to much. Just more of the same Halloween props. I tore all the covers off the furniture and piled them by the door, then sat down next to the fireplace and stared into the flames. Leslie sat across from me. I didn't have to look at her. I could feel the tension in the air that she wanted to say something but wouldn't.

“Just ask,” I finally said. Even if the question was stupid or annoying or hit too close to home, it was better said and out there than it was hanging around us.

“Who found you when you were living on the street? Who recognized what you were? Are you still in contact with him or her?”

“Sy,” I said. “I think he had his eye on me for a while because he didn't look surprised the night I showed up, and he seemed to know everything right from the start. Well, not everything—but what I was and that I didn't know. I must have gone past the Office a hundred times without ever noticing it, then one day this…” How could I even begin to explain what I saw when I looked at Sy?

“God amongst men?” Leslie said, grinning. In their own way, everyone in the coven had a bit of a crush on him. Well, except Selene. He had sort of become our mascot.

I laughed. “I was thinking frat boy with Peter Pan Syndrome. But whatever. He found me and told me everything: why people can't touch me, what I was, what my mother had to be, how I could protect myself, and where I could fit into this world. He fed me, trained me, and gave me a job.”

Leslie smiled. “That sounds like Sy.”

I nodded. “He can't resist a stray.”

Leslie looked down at her lap, brow furrowed. “No one should think of themselves as a stray. We all have purpose; we all have a reason to be here.”

I ran my thumb over the straight cool lines of the key around my neck as I remembered that day so clearly. “I'd had a really bad night. Like one of the worst of my life. It was winter, it was Chicago, and I had nowhere to go. Out of desperation, I joined some other people under a bridge, but then…” I shook my head. “There were five of them coming toward me, surrounding me. I don't actually enjoy killing people, you know? It's not a power thing. If anything I feel more helpless after it happens. It just reminds me that no matter what I do, I really have no control over my life. The curse is in charge and it always will be.”

Leslie nodded. “You took your gloves off.”

I nodded. “It was me or them. If I were in the same position now, I wouldn't do anything different. But then I couldn't stay. There were five dead bodies and witnesses everywhere. I had to get out, so I ran, but it was so cold and I was so hungry. My muscles felt like they would snap in half. I heard sirens and in my mind they were coming for me. I ducked into the darkest alley I could find and hid. When I felt safe again, I came out and there Sy was, bathed in light. The Office looked like heaven behind him. He didn't ask questions. He just invited me inside and gave me food and made me hot chocolate. He said I was too young for coffee.” My eyes filled with tears. I stopped talking until they went away. No one had ever treated me gently or like I was young until he found me. “He let me stay in his apartment until I could afford to get my own. I don't know what my life would have been like if I hadn't gone down that alley. Well, I guess I do. I'd either still be out there surviving or I'd be dead or maybe something darker would have taken me in.”

Leslie wiped tears off her cheeks. “Does he know?”

I looked over at her. “Well, he was there.”

She shook her head. “Obviously he knows what happened, but does he know how you feel about what he did for you?”

I looked back at the fire. None of that mattered. He knew. He was there. He didn't need a pat on the back for it. Sy was smart. He could figure it out.

“Frost, you can't just assume that other people understand how you feel. We have to share with others. If I changed someone's life like that, I'd want to know.”

“I'll keep that in mind,” I said to the flames. Sy was a big boy. Besides, our story didn't exactly end there. Saving a young impressionable necromancer was all fine and dandy, but when you're a tall, good looking half-elf doing it, not letting the girl fall in love with you is imperative. Not that I blame Sy for it, but he was also my first real heartbreak. I spent a long time wishing he'd look at me with anything other than friendship in his eyes, but he never did. I wanted too much to be loved and he couldn't be that person—deep down I knew that. One touch from me was death to him. I never hated what I was more than the day I understood that some odds would never be overcome.

Leslie was quiet for a long while, staring into the fire, her chin resting on her knees. “Have you figured out what the key goes to?”

I lifted it out of my shirt and held it up. “The door, I assumed. This house is pretty old. It could still have skeleton keys, right?”

Leslie shook her head, eyes flickering toward the door. “The doorknob is too new, I think. I imagine it takes a regular house key.”

I got up to check. She was right. There was no way this key worked on the outside doors, but maybe one inside? But none of them fit the skeleton key either. Orion probably knew, but it wasn't like he'd tell me anything—or not for free anyway. Information always came on his terms and normally it was to lead me to whatever conclusion he wanted me to make. Basically, super annoying. “Is there a basement?”

“If there is, I don't think we can access it from inside. There aren't any stairs, at least none that I've seen. Maybe there's a hatch or something in the floor. Or maybe the entrance is outside like a cellar or something. Bundle up if you decide to go out,” she said, squishing down into the corner of the couch.

“You aren't coming.”

“No, I've been cold enough for one day. You'll be fine. I believe in you.” She covered herself up with her own coat. “I'll be here, warm by the fire.”

I zipped my coat and pulled my hat down securely over my ears. The icy gust hit me as soon as I opened the door. Obviously, Orion was in a mood that matched my own. I tucked my face into my scarf and began the search for a cellar door or any indication that there was another level to the house. The snow was easily past my ankles and drifts against the house that were even higher.

“Who are you?” A strange voice made me look up. “You're trespassing.” A woman with long straight dark brown hair and almond shaped eyes glared at me as I rounded the corner to the back of the house.

“Who
are
you?” I shot back with a glare of my own. “This is my property.”

She shook her head. “That's impossible. And I asked you first.”

I rolled my eyes. “What are you going to do if I don't tell you? You're the one who is trespassing.”

Her hand sparked with magical green light and she smiled without humor. “Well, it's not going to involve calling the police. Now I repeat, why have you come to the winter witch's home? What do you seek? Anyone who takes anything from inside will be cursed and death will come quickly after.”

“The winter witch? Do you mean Winter Darkmore?”

Her eyes widened. “You dare speak her name. Insolence!”

I took off my glove one finger at a time and held it out to her. “Well, curses are something I know a little bit about.
Frost
Darkmore.” Speaking my last name made my chest squeeze, but I powered through it. No one was going to intimidate me. Not today, not ever.

The woman moved to shake my hand, but I pulled back and put my glove back on. “Get out of here. This place definitely isn't for tourists.” This woman knew nothing about magic. The green light was probably little more than a trick meant to scare regular people. “I think you should get off my land before I actually do let you touch me.”

“The coven will hear about this,” she said, like that was a threat. If they were half as dumb as her, then I was safe.

“I look forward to it,” I said. “Leave.” I waved my hand in a shooing manner.

“I'll be back,” she said, trudging through the snow into what looked like a field behind the house.

“I'll be here,” I said.

I glanced at the snow along the rear of the house. One area appeared to be raised from the rest. Either there was something under it or that drift was higher than everything else. I went over and pushed the snow away until I came to a padlocked wooden cellar door. The skeleton key didn't fit into it.