The Witch and the Gentleman (12 page)

When the parade of polished cars and people were over, when most of the students had been picked up and as a smattering of teachers talked together, laughing, clearly relieved that another day had come and gone, I stepped out of my Accord, locked it with a
beep
, adjusted my sunglasses, and took a deep breath, And then, I went looking for Mr. Fletcher.

Thanks to the police summary, I knew just where to find him.

Chapter Twenty-five

“Hi, are you Mr. Fletcher?”

A man in his early thirties turned from the dry-erase board where he’d just written tomorrow’s date. Very efficient. He was also very handsome. He was not much bigger than my own 5’7”, although he had broad shoulders and clearly worked out. He was dressed in a light blue polo shirt and snug jeans. He wore designer Timberland boots that probably stopped somewhere at the ankle. He looked at once dashing and relaxed.

“You got him,” he said, recapping his dry-erase pen and setting it in the grooved metal slot at the base of the board. He next picked up an eraser. Had I not been standing in the doorway, he would have gone to town erasing various mathematical problems that looked, sad to say, too difficult even for me to puzzle out at first blush. Since when did kids get so damned smart? Instead, he waited for me with a pleasant smile on his handsome face. “How can I help you?”

“
Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

“
I do, if you don’t mind if I clean up a little while we speak.”

“
I don’t mind.”

“
Then fire away,” he said, and began quickly working his way down the dry-erase board, wiping it clean as if magically.

I didn’t know where to begin, so I said lamely, “Whatever happened to good old chalkboards?”

“They went the way of the dodo,” he said, looking at me over his shoulder as he wiped. He tried to grin, but it came out awkwardly. I sensed he didn’t smile much, and as I stood here in the classroom, I got a very strong sense that he was a severe teacher, a strict disciplinarian. I reached out psychically to the classroom itself and sensed real fear here. Yes, his students were afraid of him. The teacher that no one wanted to have, despite his good looks.

I said, “Well, we had chalkboards when I was a kid, and I turned out fine. Just ask my therapist.”

Now he did chuckle lightly, but, again, it seemed forced. “Same here, but that’s progress for you. I’ve never seen you before. Are you a parent?”

“
No,” I said, and now the nerves kicked in again, especially when I realized the significance of who he might be. “But I hope to be. You know, someday.”

He looked at me oddly as he returned the eraser to the metal tray at the base of the board. I would have looked at me oddly, too.

“So, what can I do for you?” He had moved over to his desk where he’d begun gathering paperwork and tucking it neatly into a file carrying case.

I took in a lot of air. And I mean
a lot
. I held it and suddenly wished I was anywhere else but here. My God, I was a psychic at the Psychic Hotline. A personal trainer. I was good at both jobs. I didn’t confront people. I didn’t, in fact, know what the hell I was doing.

So, I did the only thing I could think of. I plunged right in, perhaps stupidly or perhaps even bravely. I said, “I’m here about Penny Laurie.”

He didn’t miss a beat. He continued shoving papers into his file holder. Or was he shoving them in a little harder now? With a little more vigor, perhaps? Probably not, but after a few seconds of what I thought was him clearly thinking through the situation, he began shaking his head sadly.

“
A tragedy,” he said, still shaking his head. Still shoving papers in his file.

To me, his reaction wasn’t normal. Although not a trained investigator but a human who had seen her fair share of people on this planet, I felt that his reaction was
calculated
.

Or maybe I had convinced myself that this guy was bad news, and was looking for anything to validate that assumption.

Maybe.

Or perhaps, I was just frustrated that I wasn’t getting any help from Millicent. Hell, even from Penny herself. No, I wasn’t a medium, but that certainly hadn’t stopped Millicent from reaching out to me.

I needed help here. I was in over my head.

But I wasn’t getting it. It was just me and Mr. Fletcher, and my own psychic intuition. My specialty of remote viewing wouldn’t do me much good here. But my other, less reliable, skills were letting me know that there was something here to be wary of.

I could feel the latent buried within the classroom walls, the desks, the carpeted floor. Fear, I knew, had an energy signature that imprints deeply into the environment. So did love. So did death.

But it was fear that I was feeling now.

“Yes, a tragedy,” I said, heart racing.

“
I’m sorry,” said Mr. Fletcher, finally looking up from his folder. He idly held a stack of papers in his hand. “Who are you again?”

“
I’m a friend of the family,” I said. Yes, I had thought long and hard about just how to answer that very question. It was the best reply I had.

“
Like I said,” he said, shaking his head sadly, “it’s a tragedy, but I do need to get going soon.”

“
You were one of the last adults to see her alive, Mr. Fletcher, so do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“
Actually, I do. Her murder has troubled me deeply, and, quite frankly, I haven’t been the same since. I would rather not open old wounds.”

Now, he shoved the entire bulging file folder into a leather satchel, which he slung over one shoulder. He was leaving and he wasn’t talking. I knew I needed to say something that would keep him talking or get some kind of a reaction from him. “I’m sorry to open old wounds, Mr. Fletcher.”

Now he was coming toward me. His shoulders seemed broader now, and he certainly didn’t look like any teacher I would want my kids to have, if I had kids.

But I stood my ground, standing before the door and blocking it. “As it turned out, she didn’t go directly home after school.”

He said nothing, just continued coming toward me.

“
I suspect she went to a nearby park, perhaps even the park she was dumped in. You see, she was mad at her mom, and didn’t want to go home. Maybe she thought she would be punished if she went home. I believe she was at this park when she met her killer, a man.”

He stopped before me. He was shaking and doing all he could to control himself. His nostrils flared out. That he had anger issues was an understatement. “And you know this how?”

“I’m a psychic, Mr. Fletcher.”

He didn’t laugh. He didn’t shrug it off. He didn’t do anything that one might expect.

Instead, his eyes darkened and he seemed to lower his shoulders a little more. He wanted to attack, I sensed it, could feel it, see it. And if he did, I knew there was nothing I could do to protect myself. Or, mostly nothing. I still had a knee, and he still had a groin.

Instead, after a moment of staring me down with nothing but hate, he said, “Watch your back.”

Then he brushed past me, and was gone.

Chapter Twenty-six

I was shaking.

Shaking and shaken.
Jesus,
I thought, as I headed back to my car.
Had I just confronted a killer? A real killer?

I had; I was certain of it.

My legs were still feeling a bit wobbly as I passed teachers and other staff walking the various hallways, and passed the occasional errant kid who was, I suspected, here for some after-school program or other. The parking lot was mostly empty, too, although there was a smattering of cars and some kids hanging out near the front entrance with a stern-looking woman. Late parents, I suspected. The woman, who had a very vice-principally feel to her, wasn’t pleased.

Where Mr. Fletcher had gone off to, I didn’t know, but as I drew closer to the parking lot, and as the stern-looking woman turned to glance at me, a cold wind blasted over me. And I mean
blasted
. I shivered violently. The stern woman frowned at me. Apparently, shivering was frowned upon at Clover Field Elementary.

I’d experienced such sensations before, and many of my psychic friends would tell me that such unexpected blasts of cold air were spirit activity. I didn’t know, but I appeared to be the only one affected. I smiled weakly at the woman and slipped past her and the kids and into the parking lot.

Samantha Moon had told me that she possessed a sort of inner warning system. A warning system that actually sounded in her head when danger was near. I suspected that all vampires had this, as, according to her, it was the earliest indicator that she had any psychic abilities. I didn’t have such an audible warning system. But something was going on with me now. Most notably, the hair on my arms was standing on end.

‘
Watch your back,’ Mr. Fletcher had said.

As I moved through the parking lot, aware that something was happening around me, aware that the very air around me seemed to be crackling with electrical energy—spirit energy—I shoved my hands in my pockets, hunched my shoulders and headed for my Accord.

Something’s going to happen,
I suddenly thought.

I was on high alert, reaching out with all the psychic skills I had. Most curious was that I was feeling a buildup in energy around me. A different kind of energy. Nature energy. Universal energy. It was gathering around me, swarming around, filling me.

What the hell is happening?

Somewhere nearby, I heard a car’s engine rev loudly. Wait, not nearby.

Directly behind me.

I spun in time to see a Ford Mustang peel around a turn in the parking lot. Although the windows were tinted, I could still see Mr. Fletcher behind the wheel.

The car came at me shockingly fast, bounding, veritably leaping forward. I could dive to the side, yes, but he could turn the steering wheel, too.

I had seconds to decide, and, really, it wasn’t much of a decision.

I did what came to me naturally.

What had come to me naturally throughout time and space, throughout lifetimes and incarnations. I gathered the surrounding energy that had been building around me, waiting to be used, ready to be used.

I gathered it and stood my ground, and as the car approached, and as the driver’s eyes widened with both alarm and pleasure, I threw my hands forward and released the energy.

*  *  *

I wasn’t prepared for what was to come.

Yes, I was a witch. Yes, I had developed those skills in past lives, over the centuries. But that didn’t mean I knew what was going to happen in
this
life.

And boy, did it happen.

Raw power blasted from me like a cannon shot. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. I saw it as a shield in my mind, and that’s exactly what it was.

An invisible shield.

The Mustang slammed into it, or rather, it slammed into the Mustang—I was never sure which—but either way, the front end of the vehicle crumpled completely. The back end lifted up...and Mr. Fletcher, who wasn’t wearing his seat belt, went flying through the front windshield.

Chapter Twenty-seven

I was in the back of Detective Smithy’s squad car.

William Fletcher’s body still lay on the concrete, in exactly the position I’d left him in after I’d rolled him over, after I tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the blood that pumped from the gash in his neck. He had gone through the window face-first. The windshield had won. The blood pooled instantly, and he was dead within minutes, bleeding out, despite my best efforts.

I wept throughout, as did the other teachers nearby, some of whom were shrieking and doing all they could to keep the remaining students away.

The squad car door opened and Detective Smithy slid in next to me. He pulled the door shut gently and looked at me. I was staring down at my hands, at the blood under my now-broken index fingernail. I absently picked under it, flicking the congealed hemoglobin away as Smithy silently watched me.

“
You okay?” He’d already asked me that a dozen times, and so had the paramedics. No one, apparently, could believe I wasn’t hurt.

“
I’m fine.”

Again, he didn’t believe me. No one believed me. “What happened out there?”

“He tried to run me down.”

“
Fletcher?”

“
He’s the one who’s dead, isn’t he?”

Smithy nodded. Homicide detectives, I figured, rarely got their feelings hurt. “Why?”