The Witching on the Wall: A Cozy Mystery (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 1) (8 page)

“
Focus on my fingers,” Chloe said softly, her voice easing into a neutral, rhythmic tone. “Count backward from ten. Each count brings you closer and closer to my voice, and to the sensation on your temples. Take long, deep breaths. Let yourself feel as though your feet are rooted in the Earth below you… sinking deep… drawing all those loud, noisy minds down, and down, into the ground…”

Chloe’s voice had a strange quality to it. It echoed inside Bailey’s head, lingering like the tingling leftovers of a light touch to the skin. “Now follow the touch of my fingers, and feel me here, in front of you. Feel the warmth coming from my presence… listen to where my voice is coming from… have you ever known you are not alone in a room? That nervous, subtle feeling of having someone nearby… focus on that feeling… open your eyes, Bailey.”

Bailey did.

“
Can you hear me?”

It was Chloe’s voice, and she had undoubtedly spoken the words—she even raised her eyebrows as if the body language was all there like normal, except… her lips hadn’t moved.

“
Ask me,” Chloe said, again without moving her lips. It wasn’t some clever trick, either; her lips were sealed, pressed tightly together and in tight grin of excitement when she saw Bailey’s eyes widen.

Bailey knew instinctively what she meant; what she wanted Bailey to ask. “Did you, or Aria or Frances, have anything to do with Martha’s death?”

“
No, Bailey,” Chloe said in her mind, which is what it had to be, “we didn’t kill Martha Tells. She was our elder sister, and precious to us even if she did lose her way.”

When she heard the words out loud, they were merely words. Spoken directly, however, mind to mind as it were, Bailey knew them to be true. They were not just words. They were impressions, concentrations of information that had texture and weight to them as they trickled into her mind.

Chloe hadn’t killed Martha. It was a relief. But, then, who had?

“
That’s the question,” Chloe’s voice said in Bailey’s mind. It was heavy and deep blue with the need to know the answer.

Bailey gazed into Chloe’s eyes, captivated by the moment, by this surreal exchange, and it seemed as though, for half a second, she might fall into them. She saw a glittering cave, and an old woman knitting something, and a baby and—

Chloe let her temples go, and all of it faded like a dream, and just as impossible to hold onto. The images became muddy, and distant, and mist, and then were gone.

“
What was that?” Bailey asked.

Chloe rubbed her forehead. She was sweating. “An indication that we already have quite a rapport. It’s not uncommon. You probably just got a little backwash. If you think about how busy your mind normally is, it makes sense. At any given time, people are focusing on one particular thought—that inner monologue we all run around with—but that’s just where our attention is. The reality of reading minds can be rather frustrating. You have to learn to sift through the extraneous chatter and focus on just what you want to hear. Not just what person, but what particular thought in each person.”

She smiled, looking suddenly a bit tired. “You’ll learn. And quickly, I imagine.”

Bailey’s body felt light. Whatever chore the connection had been for Chloe, it had imbued every inch of Bailey with sudden excitement. “Well this is perfect,” she said, feeling her earlier sense of purpose congeal into a white hot fire of immanent justice. “All we have to do is interview people in town one at a time and listen for some admission, some indication that they killed Martha. It must be the only thing whoever did it can think about, right? If they’re still in town. I know when I do something wrong—not that I do, of course; at least nothing really wrong—I feel just awful about it until I fess up. Surely the killer must—”

Chloe was laughing, the lines of her eyes showing as it reached them. “Don’t you think I might have thought about that, little one?” She shook her head. “For one, it isn’t as easy as you would think, and I’ve been doing it a lot longer than you. People’s need to guard a secret can mask their thoughts from us. If someone is guilty enough, and actually wants to be caught, then it’s possible but that’s not very likely.”

Bailey’s excitement did flounder a little bit. What was the point of reading minds if you couldn’t read minds when people didn’t want you to? It suddenly seemed a great deal less useful.

“
More importantly,” Chloe went on, “reading thoughts isn’t something that’s exactly admissible in court. We need more than stray thoughts, and it’s very difficult to tell the difference between memory and imagination in any case. And if we allow the true killer to catch on that we might be able to pry out his or her secret, well… I’m afraid that would put us on a pretty short list of follow up victims, don’t you?”

Bailey hadn’t thought of that. Well… five minutes as a witch and already it was a great deal more complicated than she’d imagined such things would be when she was a little girl. Things are always simpler when you're little.

“
So,” she asked Chloe, her face screwed up with new frustration, “then what do we do next?”

“
Magic is a tool,” Chloe said, “not a solution. We do what anyone who wants to solve a murder does. We investigate the old fashioned way.”

Now that was disappointing. Still, as they walked up the path toward town in the failing evening light—now that the clouds had dispersed, it seemed that Bailey had in fact napped in the cave—it was hard to feel entirely let down, even if there was still a deep, nagging uncertainty about Chloe that Bailey just couldn’t seem to let go of. At least, not just yet.

Chapter 10

The walk back to town, and then through a fading evening that settled into night by the time they reached the bakery, was done in relative silence. Bailey had questions—hundreds of them, it seemed—but the closer they came to the heart of Coven Grove, the more insistent and distracting the cacophony of other people’s thoughts became.

“
You’ve got to focus on your own thoughts,” Chloe urged her when Bailey informed her of the noise in her head. “Try to hear them to the exclusion of all else. You’re observant; that’s why you keep tuning into everyone. It’s in your nature to pay attention to everything, so you need to learn to pay attention only to what you want.”

Bailey nodded, but that was no easy task. That Martha’s murder meant there was a killer on the loose was bad enough; now that she was considering the many reasons why keeping a secret like this was critically necessary, her paranoia had begun to grow and she found herself watching the world around them, looking for people who were watching a little too closely or paying them too much interest.

More than that, though, she was desperately worried about having to keep this secret from her father, and her best friends. “They would never tell anyone about me,” Bailey had said to Chloe, when the older witch categorically forbid her to tell them about herself. “They’re my friends. I don’t want to push them away.”

“
You won’t have to,” Chloe assured her.

But Bailey didn’t believe it. “I can’t name one person I’ve seen you in the company of other than Aria and Frances,” she said. “I love the three of you—I do, Chloe—but I need Avery and Piper in my life. They helped me through the most painful times of my life. They’ve given me so much, and been my support system; I can’t keep a secret from them like this.”

Chloe had sighed, and told her to at least give it some time before she made a decision. She might understand later, when she knew more about their collective past—the history of the witches.

Bailey was really only concerned about one particular element of that history. “This… gift, if that’s what it is; did I get it from my mother?”

Chloe was quiet for a moment, and then nodded once. “That’s usually how it works. There are exceptions. Not everyone inherits, and sometimes the magic just springs up from nowhere. But… you likely did, yes.”

It wasn’t a straight answer, any more than any of the other answers had been, but it was something to try and cling to as Bailey’s world changed. It was best to find the positive. This was something her mother had given her, like a heirloom. Whether it was the truth or not, she tried not to worry about. What mattered was that it made her feel a little better.

That was more or less how they left it. The walk, and the revelation, and the burden of realization had all sapped Bailey’s strength and although Chloe really wanted her to come in and speak with Aria and Frances, she couldn’t seem to convince herself to do so. Chloe hugged her, promised it would be alright, and then let her walk home.

Ryan was up when she arrived, pecking away on a laptop, his aged eyes squinting at the screen over his spectacles. He barely noticed when Bailey came in until she hugged him from behind. “I love you, Dad,” she muttered into his shoulder.

Her father touched her arms, and leaned his head into hers, chuckling. “Well I appreciate it, Red. I love you, too. You out running around with Ave and Pip?” When they were little, he’d called them his three chipmunks, always getting in and out of trouble together.

“
Yeah,” she lied, and felt awful for it. She wanted to tell him the truth but… there was no telling what he might think of it all.

She had to concentrate perpetually to keep from reading his thoughts, and there was still a dull, distant whisper of them in the back of her mind. It seemed wrong. Reading the thoughts of a murderer to bring him or her to justice was a gift. Inadvertently violating the privacy of those around her, her friends and family that she loved and trusted to simply tell her what they thought—that was a burden. A heavy one that she wasn’t sure she could handle.

She climbed the stairs to her room, and opened her window to listen to the ocean for a while to think things over. All of this seemed too good to be real, which meant that it probably was; while at the same time laying something thick and smothering over her that felt all too real. It was difficult not to feel somehow trapped by it all. Dueling urges took over her thoughts—the urge to dive headlong into a new world, and the urge to tip-toe carefully around it and quickly make a break before it got its hooks in her and refused to let go.

Funny. She’d often dreamed about this very thing as a girl. Now that it was here, impossibly, she wasn’t sure she wanted it to be real anymore. It was this thought of concern that carried her to sleep, slowly congealing into a decision just before she drifted off.

Tomorrow, Bailey would leave Coven Grove.

Wendy had always said that people don’t make good decisions when they were stressed. “Never make rash decisions,” she said, “always sleep on it, especially when you feel pressed—a good night’s sleep often clarifies things just enough to know what you need to do.”

Bailey had done that. In the morning, the whole event with Chloe seemed somewhat more distant, less threatening. Still, she came to the same conclusion. Already her head was pounding, and keeping them from getting too loud was like balancing a tea cup on her head while she showered, and brushed her teeth, and dressed, and by the time she descended the stairs to have breakfast with Ryan she was already frazzled and she hadn’t even been awake for an hour. Her dreams had been nonsensical and disturbing, and she didn’t feel rested.

She couldn’t live like this. And she couldn’t shake the sense of impending doom that seemed inexorably attached to being a witch. It felt dangerous, and somehow wrong; like she was breaking a law somewhere and that soon someone would come for her. Maybe they already had come for Martha, after all.

It took all of the morning for her to work up the nerve to tell her father, and by then Avery was with them in the library. Eager for another crack at the mystery, Piper showed up just before lunch, dressed somewhat more for walking and chomping at the bit to find out what Avery had discovered. She apparently had some fascinating bits of history about the town and the murders that had happened in the earlier part of the twentieth century.

All the tension, the need to gossip and discuss and to keep playing this silly game of Private Eye, only served to make Bailey more and more nervous and stressed until, finally, she made the announcement. It had no preamble, no lead-in, and no context.

“
I’m leaving,” she announced, standing at the end of the table where Piper, Avery, and Ryan were gathered to eat lunch and discuss theories.

All three faces turned on her, silent and confused.

“
Okay,” Piper said slowly. “Where to?” It was obvious she was thinking maybe somewhere in town, or the bathroom. Bailey slumped forward, leaning heavily on one of the worn wooden chairs around the library table. “I mean that I’m leaving Coven Grove,” she said, watching the table instead of their eyes in order to maintain her nerve.

After a heartbeat of shocked silence, Avery and Piper began speaking at once. Ryan was conspicuously silent.

“
You can’t leave in the middle of this,” Avery said, eyes wide.

“
What are you thinking, Bee? You can’t just leave!” Piper cried.

Bailey raised a hand for silence. She addressed Avery first. “This whole… murder—it’s not something we can help with. We should leave it to the Sheriff’s department. It’s dangerous, for one thing. You think whoever killed Martha Tells won’t think twice about killing one of us if we go poking around where we don’t belong?”

She looked at Piper, and wished that it was her business to simply tell her friend that she knew everything wasn’t ‘alright’ at home and that she desperately wanted to be there for her friend but… Piper’s jaw was already set, the beginning of her process of convincing herself and everyone else that she was fine with it. “I’ll stay in touch,” Bailey said to her. “I’ll even come back and visit. There are just… things out there that I need to find for myself. Answers. And… other things I don’t know what they are yet.”

Piper understood. “It’s got to do with your mother, right? Not Wendy, I mean but your birth mother.”

Avery clenched his jaw, and exhaled sharply but didn’t say anything.

“
Some of it,” Bailey admitted. “Yes.” It would be so much easier if she could just tell them…

“
I understand,” Ryan said. He looked older, suddenly, and more tired than he usually was. He took his spectacles off and set them down on the table, and then rubbed his eyes briefly. “You’ve been here your whole life, and it’s been comfortable but all this,” he waved at the papers and books on the table, and the situation at large, “it has you wondering what else is out there, what else you don’t know. I get it. I’d say you got it from me, but—”

Bailey sighed, and rounded the table to hug her father. “Of course I got it from you,” she muttered.

Ryan hugged her back until she let him go, and then pursed his lips. “Your mother never told me who you were born to,” he said after a moment. “But… if you’re going to go looking for her, maybe you could start with Wendy’s old files. They’re in the basement here. You can take them with you. I don’t know if there are any answers there, she was tight lipped about everything that needed it, but maybe there are enough pieces for you to follow. I understand needing to see other places, ask new questions, and get answers.” He looked around the table at Avery and Piper before he settled on Bailey again. “Maybe better than most.”

It was just enough of a reprimand that her two friends crumpled a little under the weight of it.

Bailey did understand. It was sudden. It had to be. If she spend too long thinking about it, she’d change her mind.

“
Are you sure about this?” Avery asked. “I mean… why all of a sudden? Did something happen? I feel like I’m missing pieces here.”

He was, of course. That was Avery’s intuition; his gut wasn’t often wrong about things. This time, though, Bailey had to hope he’d at least doubt himself a little. “Someone was killed,” she said. “Isn’t that enough? The tours are going to shut down, and I love the library but I can’t stay sequestered in it forever.”

“
Then go,” Piper sighed. But she managed to summon up a weak smile. “There are definitely times I wished I had gotten out while I had the chance. Even for a little while.”

Avery was the only one unwilling to concede. “Bailey… Bee… you know I want what’s best for you. But… I can’t shake this feeling that you’re supposed to be here. That whatever you’re looking for is here, in Coven Grove. Just like whoever killed Martha and—”

“
Ave,” Piper hissed.

He bit off whatever else he was going to say and looked momentarily ashamed of whatever card he was about to play.

“
I guess… I’ll just miss you. God, this town is so white bread already; how will I survive without my Bee? No one else understands me like you do.” He looked genuinely devastated.

Maybe, Bailey thought… maybe Avery could come with her. She could tell him everything, Chloe and her paranoia be damned. Avery would understand, wouldn’t he?

But… what if he didn’t? What if he was constantly worried that Bailey was in his head, reading his thoughts? What if he was just terrified of the supernatural once he was confronted with it? There was just no way to know. After all, Bailey was the one who was supposedly a witch, and she was already terrified of the implications. Bailey pulled him from his chair to embrace him. “I promise I’ll come back for you,” she whispered. God, just hours before she’d been absolutely sure she needed to do this. She’d known it would be painful, but the reality was something else entirely.

They could have claimed that she had an obligation to stay here. They could have told her that they’d been the ones to get her through Wendy’s death, the ones whose shoulders she’d cried on, the people who had put her almost back together after it happened. And if they had, it would have convinced her that she had to stay.

They didn’t, though, because they were her friends. That was almost somehow worse.

Avery let her go. Bailey heard his thoughts when he did. It was an accident, and she pulled away from them like they had burned her, instantly ashamed of having listened even inadvertently.

“
Whatever she’s hiding, she’ll tell me when she’s ready.”

Bailey wanted to cry. There was nothing but warm, compassionate worry and hope on his mind, tinged with a little bit of the sting of it all.

She was so stricken by it that she pulled him close again, and whispered to him, “I promise I’ll tell you everything one day.”

He nodded, unsurprised—they just knew each other that well, she supposed—and then let her go to stuff his hands in his pockets. “So… in case the tour business doesn’t shut down, I guess I’ll probably take over… maybe you should drop off all your junk at the tour office before you go. I could probably figure out some way to make it all work. Especially if Poppy isn’t coming back.”

Bailey frowned. “She isn’t back yet?”

“
Not as far as anyone can tell,” Piper said.