Dangerous Lover (3 page)

“Afraid so, Selene. This is a crime scene.”

“It's not, really. I told you, he was stabbed somewhere else. He just stumbled in here.”

“Still—”

“Yeah, I know.” She stared at the statues on the altar. “These things are…they're sacred objects, Chief. This spot is as holy to me as a church is to other folks. I don't expect you to understand that, but—”

“So then, this
was
some kind of…occult ceremony.”

She licked her lips. “I'm just asking you to take care with my things, is all. Maybe…maybe you could have Jimmy take charge of collecting the evidence? As a favor to my family?”

“That would put him in an awful position, Selene, him being your brother-in-law. Suppose he finds something incriminating?”

“You know Jimmy Corona, Chief. He's a good cop. He wouldn't tamper with evidence—not even for me.”

“No, I don't suppose he would. All right, out of respect for your family, Selene, I'll have Jimmy oversee things here. He's off duty so I'll call him in. And….” the chief thinned his lips, sighed, “while I'm at it, I'll have him tell Caleb to meet us at the station.”

“Thanks, Chief Wheatly.”

He harrumphed, taking her gently by one arm, and leading her toward his black-and-white SUV. “I've known your mamma a long time,” he said. “It's not her fault if you've fallen into some kind of satanic cult, girl.”

“I have not fallen into any—”

“She's done the best she could by you girls. It can't have been easy raising five kids all alone. I just hope we can find a way to get you back on the straight and narrow. Vidalia Brand is a good woman. She doesn't deserve this.” He opened the door, eased her into the passenger seat, closed the door and then got behind the wheel. He took his radio mike from the dashboard, and put in a call. “Sally, I need you to put in a call to Jimmy Corona. Tell him to meet me at the station and to bring Caleb Montgomery with him. Tell them Selene Brand is being brought in for questioning in relation to an attempted murder with…ties to the occult. And uh, maybe you'd best put in a call to Reverend Jackson, as well.”

Selene shot him a look. “You ever hear of separation of church and state, Chief?”

“Aw, c'mon, Selene. Your mamma would want him there.”

She pursed her lips, folded her arms across her chest, and leaned back in the seat. This was going to be a hell of a long night.

S
elene sat in the small room alone, waiting for the ax to fall. She knew her mother was in the next room. She didn't know about anyone else in the family, but she could feel her mother's presence. Goddess, what must Vidalia be thinking right now? To get a phone call from the police in the middle of the night, to be told her youngest daughter had been brought in for questioning regarding a stabbing with Chief Wheatly's so-called “occult ties.” Poor Mamma.

She could deal with her mother, though, and she would. At least that was something she
could
deal with. That poor man in the hospital, that was something almost entirely out of her hands.

Almost.

She could still send magic. She whispered charms and sent healing energy to him on the web of the night. But she wished she could do more. All night she'd been thinking about him. She wondered if he was all right, if he was in pain, if he had remembered what had really happened. She wondered if he really thought she had been the one who'd hurt him.

That bothered her, knowing he thought that. It was no way to start out a lifetime together, that was for sure.

She tensed when the door opened, then relaxed when she saw it was only Caleb, her brother-in-law. One thing about it, she had a family made for getting a girl out of trouble. Of her four brothers-in-law, one was a cop, one was a PI and one was a lawyer. The fourth was a mechanic, but in most circumstances, his kind of help was all she needed. Tonight was certainly different.

Caleb smiled, but it didn't meet his worried eyes. “Hi, Selene. You okay?”

She closed her eyes, nodded slowly. “Thanks for coming, Cal.”

“Not a problem. Uh, Vidalia's here, too. Chomping at the bit to get in here.”

“Thanks for making her wait.”

“It wasn't easy.” Caleb pulled out a chair and sat down. “It's just you and me here. No one's listening in. So uh, you wanna tell me what happened out by the falls tonight, Selene?”

She watched his eyes, looking for any sign that he no longer trusted her. She half expected the entire family to turn on her once they knew the truth. But she saw nothing to tell her that was the case with him. “What's the chief saying?”

He lifted his brows. “Some pretty farfetched stuff. Says it looks as if there was some kind of satanic ritual going on out there, with you right smack in the middle of it.”

She said nothing. He stared at her, waiting.

Finally she sighed. “There was a ritual. But there was nothing satanic about it, Caleb. Just because something is different doesn't mean it's evil. Just because someone has a different way of worshipping, that doesn't make them satanic.”

He held up a hand. “Hey, you don't have to convince me. I believe you.”

“You do?”

“Come on, Selene. You've been messing with herbs and spells for as long as I've been in this family. I'm not ignorant.”

She was stunned. “You…you knew?”

He nodded. “I figured if you weren't ready to talk about it out loud, then that was your business. So I never brought it up. But look, that's me. The chief and the rest of the good folks of Big Falls aren't necessarily as familiar with alternative belief systems. And—well, a stranger was stabbed tonight. People are muttering about a botched human sacrifice.”

She shot to her feet. “That's insane!”

“Well, sure it is, hon. I know that. Everyone else will, too, as soon as you fill us in. What happened, Selene?”

“Bring my mother in.” He just looked at her, unsure. “Bring her in, Cal. I don't want to have to go through this more times than I absolutely have to.”

He nodded, got up and left the room. A second later, he returned with her mother and Chief Wheatly. She paced away from them, trying to form words in her mind to explain herself. But she could have spent all night planning her words and still not got them quite right. So she just started talking.

“You all know me, right? You know I'm always brewing herbal teas and making charms and reading cards, right?”

“Yes,” Caleb said. “We love those things about you, don't we Vidalia?”

“It's always made me nervous. You know that, child.”

“Those things are…well, they're…they're folk magic. They're what a lot of people call…witchcraft.” She turned and looked her mother dead in the eye. “I'm a Witch.”

She'd thought Vidalia would faint dead away. Instead she folded her hands around her tiny silver cross pendant and closed her eyes.

Caleb nodded slowly. “What, exactly, does that mean? To you, I mean?” he asked. And she knew he was asking only to give her the chance to explain things to her mom and to the chief.

“Well, I'll tell you what it
doesn't
mean. It doesn't mean I worship the devil and it doesn't mean I would ever hurt anyone or anything. The only commandment in the Craft is ‘Harm none.'”

Caleb sat calmly in the chair, his eyes following her agitated pacing. The chief stood, his gaze shifting from Cal and Vi to Selene and back again. Vidalia just sat there, head bowed, eyes closed, muttering what might have been a prayer under her breath.

“Wicca is about empowering the divine within ourselves and respecting it in others. It's about attuning to the cycles and seasons of nature. It's about finding the magic in everything around us. It's about—” She stopped there, turned to stare at her mother. “We were just observing the full moon, Mom, just relishing the fact that we're alive and in such a beautiful place, enjoying God's creation. We were just laughing and talking and casting a few positive spells—which is just like praying, only a little more proactive and a little less dependent. We were doing nothing wrong.”

Caleb nodded as if he fully understood. The chief said, “We, huh?”

She bit her lip and turned away from him.

“Look, Selene, the chief knows there were others out there with you tonight. If you'd just tell him who else was with you, and one of them could vouch for your story—”

“It's not a story, Caleb, it's the truth. And I'm sorry, but I won't tell anyone who was out there with me.”

“You most certainly will, young lady!” Vidalia's outburst shocked them all. She'd jumped to her feet as she spoke, and Caleb got up, too, and put a calming hand on her shoulder.

“Vidalia,” the chief said. “Now I told you, if you want to be here for this, you're going to need stay calm, all right?”

She pursed her lips, lowered her head and slowly sank back into her seat.

“Now, Selene,” Chief Wheatly said, “those others who were out there with you, they were witnesses to a crime.”

“There was no crime. No one witnessed any crime. We witnessed a man stumble bleeding from the woods and collapse on the ground. I tried to stop his bleeding and called for help. I didn't see anyone or anything else. No one did.”

The chief nodded and glanced at Vidalia. “There is a blood trail leading from the woods to the spot where the fellow ended up, Vi. I tend to believe your daughter is telling the truth, if that helps you any.” Then he focused on Selene again. “Selene, will you at least tell me why it is you won't give me their names so they can tell me this for themselves?”

She met his eyes, held them steadily. “Because they don't want it known. They don't want their friends and relatives and employers thinking the same things about them that this entire police department, not to mention my own mother, are thinking about me right now.” She lowered her head, closed her eyes. “Hell, given the efficiency of the Big Falls grapevine, half the town is probably thinking those things about me by now.”

When she looked up again, it was to find the chief staring at her almost as if he felt a bit sorry for her. Meanwhile, her mother was staring, too—looking at her as if she'd never seen her before. That look hurt. It hurt deeply.

There was a knock at the door, and then it opened, and Jimmy Corona came in. He wore his uniform, but didn't hesitate to cross straight to Selene and give her a bear hug that squeezed the breath out of her. She held on and he picked her right up off the floor for a moment, then set her down again with a peck on the cheek. “All your stuff is safe, Selene. Don't give it another thought.”

“Thanks, Jimmy.”

“How's the victim, Corona?” the chief asked.

Selene searched Jimmy's eyes, hoping he'd say the man was fine. All he needed to do was get over the shock and recover a little, and he would be able to tell the police what had happened, that she hadn't been the one to try to hurt him tonight.

“He's gonna recover from the knife wound. It's his head that has them worried, Chief.”

“He has a head injury?”

“He was apparently drugged. Had a bad reaction to it, and right now, he can't remember a damn thing.”

“What do you mean?”

Jimmy shook his head. “Amnesia, Chief. The doc actually used that word.
Amnesia.
This guy doesn't know his own name, much less what happened out there tonight.”

Selene looked from one face to the next, and felt as if her hopes were dying a slow, painful death. “Amnesia,” she whispered..

Jimmy cleared his throat. “He only remembers being chased through the woods, bleeding. Beyond that, all he's been able to tell us so far is that he wound up on the ground with you standing over him holding a dagger, looking for all the world like you were about to use it to gut him.”

She closed her eyes slowly. “I imagine that's about what it did look like, to him. But it wasn't the case. Not that I expect any of you to take my word for that.”

“Your word's good enough for me, Selene,” Caleb said.

“And me,” Jimmy added.

Vidalia was still silent. Selene felt as if a dagger were being driven into her own belly. “Aside from the lack of memory—is he all right?”

“He will be,” Jimmy promised.

“Look, Chief.” Caleb walked to her side and stood there, shoulder to shoulder, facing the chief. “You took her dagger, right? Surely you've given it the once-over with some Luminol by now. Was there any trace of blood on the blade?”

“No,” the chief said. “And from the photos of the wound, it looks like a single-edged blade made it. Probably a hunting knife. Selene's knife was double-edged. Now, that doesn't mean there wasn't another weapon. A prosecutor would say she ditched it somewhere.”

“Maybe so,” Caleb said. “But aside from her being on the scene, there's no evidence against Selene. She tried to give aid. She called for help and then stayed with the victim until it arrived, when she could have taken off to keep her secrets intact. Are those the actions of someone who'd just knifed a man?”

“Caleb, we're just trying to get to the bottom of this.”

“The bottom of this is that a stranger was attacked in the woods by the falls by an unknown assailant, and that he probably would have died without Selene's help.”

“And the real criminal is probably getting away while you waste time grilling my daughter,” Vidalia said softly. She got to her feet, her eyes raking Selene, then hardening before she turned back to the chief. “I don't know what all is going on here, Chief, but I do know Selene. If she finds a spider in her room she carries it outside and turns it loose. She doesn't eat meat, and argues against cutting down live Christmas trees every year. She won't even swat a fly. There's no way she harmed that man.”

“Well, now if she'd just give me the names of the other witnesses, they could vouch for that and I could let her go,” he said. Then he looked at Selene.

“One woman could lose her kids in court if this comes out,” Selene said softly. “Another could lose her job. Giving their names could make trouble for them, a lot of trouble. I can't betray them that way.”

The chief sighed. “Selene, darlin', will you tell me if I have the others leave the room?”

She met his eyes, shook her head. “I'll only tell you this. There was nothing dark, nothing satanic. It was a group of women honoring nature and communing with the divine, a group of women who've made two very solemn vows—never to betray each other's secrets, and never to harm any living thing. That's all.”

He nodded slowly. “So, for the record, it was a group of women practicing what you might call…Witchcraft?”

She lifted her head, held his gaze. “Yes.”

Vidalia's eyes filled and she closed them tightly.

Caleb seemed ready climb the walls, but he kept his cool. “Chief, this family has a lot to work through tonight. You know Selene. You've known her all her life. You know she's not going anywhere. You've got no evidence to hold her. So why not let her go home and get some rest, huh?”

Caleb was good. He was eloquent and he was on her side. Thank the Goddess someone was.

The chief nodded. “You have anything you want to add, Selene?”