Witch at Heart: A Jinx Hamilton Witch Mystery Book 1 (The Jinx Hamilton Mysteries) (6 page)

C
hase helped us all afternoon
, and I have to confess, those fudge brownies all disappeared. By the time he excused himself for the evening and went back to his own place, we really had managed to instill a kind of order in the store. In addition to my own tiny vegan soap discovery, I’d learned from Chase that the whole region was full of interesting artisans making everything from musical instruments to furniture.

How I had managed to pretty much ignore this fact my whole life I do not know, but thanks to him, I had a long list of potential new inventory. The day left me more enthused about being a shopkeeper and less worried about being a witch.

As soon as we were sure we were alone, Tori and I discussed the information Chase shared with us about Aunt Fiona and her real interest in Jane’s case. “So what do you think the deal was about the necklace?” Tori asked. “Is there some mojo associated with quartz?”

“You’re asking me?” I said. “I barely have my junior mojo membership card. Other than that story I told you about Aunt Fiona giving that widow a rose quartz necklace, I know nothing about the stuff.”

We were still downstairs, so Tori cleared her throat and said, “Uh, Myrtle? Would it be okay if I asked you a question?”

The store answered with a happy little three-note trill we took as a yes.

“Okay, thanks,” Tori said. “Uh, is there more quartz in the store?”

That same spotlight out of nowhere instantly highlighted one shelf in the little jewelry counter near the front window. We both leaned down to look and saw a pair of earrings, a necklace, and a ring all set with clear stones. Unfortunately, none of them obligingly stepped up to explain why we should think of them as anything but . . . rocks.

Since we’d worked up an appetite again, we thanked Myrtle for showing us the quartz and went upstairs to consult the Internet while chowing down on mac n’ cheese. Until that night, my previous experience with “paranormal research” amounted to watching
Charmed
and owning the DVD of
Practical Magic.
I was shocked to discover just how many websites are out there and how many of them are, dare I say, a little . . . disturbing.

Before we started reading about all the beliefs associated with crystals I hadn’t really thought about expanding my stock in that direction, but that attitude changed fast. Crystals are seriously popular, and pure quartz is the great grandma of them all, literally the universal crystal. Not only is quartz found pretty much everywhere, but it’s also more or less multi-purpose in the positive protection category.

We found plenty of references to rose quartz as well. Aunt Fiona gave it to the grieving woman because the stone is supposed to heal broken hearts. That night, my thoughts ran along the lines of, “Hey, if people want to buy rocks, I’m more than happy to sell them rocks.”

These days I don’t mock the rocks, but we’ll get to that.

What immediately caught our attention in relation to Jane and her post-mortem amnesia was the idea that quartz is kinda the writable DVD media of the crystal world, especially when it’s found in proximity to running water.

“You think that’s it?” Toris asked. “That Aunt Fiona figured the necklace recorded what happened to Jane?”

“Maybe,” I said. “That’s assuming Fiona knew how to hit the play button on the rock. Which I would ask her, if she’d freaking answer my calls.”

That last comment came out plenty annoyed and makes it sound like I was picking up my cell phone and speed dialing my dead aunt. Mainly I was looking up at the ceiling and begging her to come floating in.

When Tori and I had come upstairs, I had once again attempted to get Fiona to join the party. The effort did nothing but cause the cats to stare at me like I’d lost what little intelligence they ever thought I had in the first place. (Which, for you non-cat people, is precious little on a good day.)

“Aw, come on, lay off Aunt Fiona,” Tori said, uncorking a fresh bottle of red wine. “She obviously trusts you to figure this all out, including what happened to Janie. Why don’t we go up to the hiking trail in the morning and see if we can find anything?”

Like I didn’t see that one coming.

“Tori, Jane was killed 20 years ago,” I said, pointing out what should have been obvious to my overly enthusiastic BFF. “The cops have been all over that trail hundreds of times. Anything they were going to find, they found years ago. What do you think we’re going to see that they didn’t?”

“I don’t know,” Tori said, handing me a full wine glass. “But don’t we kind of owe it to Jane to see where she was found? It just seems kind of . . . respectful given her current situation. And besides, you don’t really know everything you can do yet. Maybe you will see something Fiona didn’t. Not all witches are alike, right?”

Truthfully, I had no idea if that was true or not, but the notion did make sense.

We finished the evening playing a cutthroat game of Settlers of Catan, and turned in around midnight. The next morning, the smell of frying bacon awakened me. I walked into the kitchen to discover that Tori was fixing her to-die-for western omelettes.

“Hey,” I said, “where’d all this come from?”

“Irma and George are open on Sunday mornings,” she said. “I woke up early and slipped down to the corner. Coffee?”

“Lord, yes,” I said, taking the cup she held out. “And thanks. This is great. It’s a bribe to get me to go up to the trail, isn’t it?”

Uh, yeah. I saw right through the whole BFF breakfast thing the minute I smelled the bacon.

Tori laughed. “Okay, fine. Busted. Did it work?”

I sighed. “Yeah, okay, fine. We’ll take a field trip.”

Since Tori didn’t have to leave until late afternoon, we took our time and enjoyed our food. Props to my girl. Her skills with eggs and shredded cheese are awesome. By the time we’d both dressed and I’d cleaned up the kitchen, which was only fair, it was about 11 o’clock when we set out for Weber’s Gap.

As hiking trails go, this one was definitely a bunny slope. Tori and I strolled leisurely up the gentle grade enjoying the bright sunshine and the crisp, clean air. We weren’t exactly sure where Jane’s body was found, but when we rounded a bend in the trail and came on a simple, rough-hewn stone with the inscription, “Here an unknown soul was lost,” we knew we’d reached the spot.

“Wow,” Tori said, “maybe nobody knows Janie’s real name, but she’s sure hasn’t been forgotten.”

I leaned down to get a closer look at the marker, and that’s when I tripped on an exposed root and fell forward toward the stone. Putting out my hand to break my fall, everything around me turned into a confused, swirling mass of color. When my vision cleared, I was standing in a vast, empty space and something black and shiny was coming straight toward me. Pain shot through my left temple, and then I heard Tori’s voice calling to me.

Blinking and reaching for my head, I realized I was sitting on the ground with Tori crouched beside me. “Jinksy,” she asked in a worried voice, “are you okay? What the heck just happened?”

“Yeah,” I said slowly, still getting my bearings. “I’m okay.”

“Did you have a dizzy spell or something?” Tori asked. “God, I hope that ham I put in the omelettes wasn’t bad. I wasn’t trying to poison us.”

“You didn’t poison us,” I assured her. “I think I just had a vision of where Janie was killed, and it wasn’t here.”

“Get out!” Tori said excitedly. “A vision? What did you see? Where was she killed? Tell me everything!”

“I’m not sure exactly where it was. There was a lot of empty space around me and this . . . thing . . . coming at my head,” I answered, rubbing my forehead. “I actually felt it hit me, and then everything went black. It looked familiar. I should know what it was, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

From behind us a voice said, “It was a tri-pod, wasn’t it?”

Tori and I both swiveled around.

“Who said that?” Tori asked, swinging her head from side to side.

“She did,” I answered.

“She who?” Tori asked, perplexed.

“Left shoulder,” I directed.

Tori shifted and looked again. “Aw crud,” she said. “Jane wasn’t the only one.”

The ghost of a young girl was standing just at the edge of the forest. “Who is Jane?” she asked, frowning.

“Someone we know who is like you,” I said. “What’s your name, honey?”

The girl looked like she was about to cry. “I don’t know,” she said forlornly. “Every time I try to ask someone, they either don’t seem to hear me or they run away like I scared them or something.” She faltered for a second and then blurted out, “Am I dead?”

Trust me. This talking-to-dead-people thing is not all it’s cracked up to be. Dead or not, they have feelings and it is not fun to tell them what they don’t want to hear.

“Yes,” I said gently. “You are.”

The girl began to cry softly, “Do you think someone has told my mother?”

“I honestly don’t know,” I said. “Do you have any idea how long you’ve been here?”

The girl shook her head.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” I asked.

She made a face, “That awful new Coca Cola had just come out. I drank a can and it tasted so bad I thought I would throw up.”

Tori took out her phone and started typing. After a couple of minutes she looked up and said, “1985.”

Ten years before Jane was killed. Not good. Not good at all.

“
W
e have to report this
,” Tori said in a low voice as we both watched the nameless girl wander around the clearing.

“And say what?” I asked. “Yes, Officer? I’d like to report a 30-year-old haunting up by Weber’s Gap.”

Tori made a face. “Very funny,” she said. “There could be more dead girls up here. What if this guy is a serial killer and this is his dumping ground?”

She said that like discovering such a gruesome truth would be a good thing. Personally, I was in favor of getting the heck out of there before any more ghosts showed up. Of course, I was far too responsible to do that, but I wanted to -- I really, really wanted to.

I sighed and gave in. “Do you have a bright idea about how to go about this?” I asked.

“It’s really not going to be all that hard, “Tori said confidently. “You hear about this kind of thing happening all the time. People just go out for a walk in the woods and stumble on a body, or a skeleton.”

“Note to self,” I muttered. “Stay out of the woods. That’s all well and good, Tori, but we didn’t find her body so what exactly do we report?”

“That’s the part of the plan she has to help us with,” Tori said, nodding toward the girl.

“Help us how?”

“We have to ask her.”

I had a sneaking suspicion Tori was being intentionally obtuse because she knew I wasn’t going to like what was coming next.

“Ask her what?” I said suspiciously.

“To show us what’s . . . left . . . of herself.”

Oh. Ouch. I was pretty confident not even Miss Manners had an etiquette rule to cover that conversation.

“And just how do you suggest we broach the subject of her mortal remains?” I hissed. “Not five minutes ago she was asking us for confirmation that she’s actually dead.”

“Exactly,” Tori said. “Confirmation. She knew, she just didn’t
want
to know.”

Which, when you think about it, was a perfectly reasonable reaction.

When I didn’t say anything, Tori went on. “We just ask her, or rather,
you
just ask her,” she said, hastily correcting herself. “You’re the official witch after all.”

And there it was, under the wheels of the bus I went.

“Okay, fine,” I shot back. “But you totally owe me.”

As we approached her, the young girl turned toward us. “I want to see my mom,” she said. “I need to know she’s okay about all this.”

A request that in no way was making my job easier. But it did give me an opening to wade in as delicately as I could manage.

“There’s no way we can take you to your mom until we figure out who you are,” I said. “We have to report your death to the police and we can’t do that unless we have . . . until you show us your . . . I mean where your . . . if there’s anything . . . ”

I had gotten off to a strong start, but the longer I talked the worse it got. My words took a wrong turn at the corner of Awkward and Embarrassing and jittered to a stop somewhere between Stutter and Tourette's.

The girl cocked her head to one side as if trying to decipher a foreign language and then her eyes brightened. “Oh,” she said. “You want to see my bones.”

That sounded way more ghoulish when someone finally said it out loud.

“We don’t
want
to see your bones,” I said emphatically, “but we have to so we can show the police where you are and they can start an investigation.”

“Okay,” the girl said, as if the request was the most normal thing in the world. “Follow me.”

We watched as she glided off toward the merrily tinkling trout stream that ran parallel to the trail. In the light of day the girl’s spirit was so transparent, she almost looked like a little wisp of fog floating over the landscape.

Tori and I both stared at the prominent “Stay on the Path” sign at the edge of the clearing for a minute, shrugged, and set off after our ghostly tour guide.

The stream was small enough that we both hopped over without missing a step. The bank sloped gently upward on the far side, ending at the tree line. The instant we moved into the cover of the forest, the temperature dropped a few degrees and a different kind of stillness settled around us.

For me, at least, there is no quiet so utterly peaceful as the deep woods. It’s a space that manages to be both alive with activity and utterly deserted at the same time. The soft soil naturally muted our footsteps, but Tori and I had both been taught by our mothers to walk quietly in nature. My mom is a birdwatcher and Gemma is an amateur photographer; both hobbies require a degree of stealth.

As we followed the nameless girl who walked -- or really glided -- farther into the trees, the birds continued to sing, the squirrels played in the branches over our heads, and I even caught sight of a deer far off to one side peering at us warily.

Can you say surreal?

After about five minutes, the girl came to a stop beside a fallen hickory so far gone into decay it was covered by a thick patch of lush ferns. What was left of the trunk still looked solid enough now, but in another year or so the felled tree would be just another lump of soft mulch on the forest floor. Mother Nature is the great-grandma of all-efficient recyclers. She uses every death as potential nourishment for new life.

“I’m in there,” the girl said simply, pointing to the exposed roots of the moldering tree.

Tori and I both walked around to the back of the hickory. You couldn’t tell from the front, but the trunk was hollowed out down to the mass of roots. I leaned over and peered inside, but I couldn’t see anything.

Tori took out her phone and switched the flashlight app on. When she shined the beam into the interior, a yellowed skull looked back at us.

“How did she get in there?” I said in a low voice.

“I was under the tree,” the girl said helpfully. “Then it fell down. So now I’m inside.”

“Loose translation,” Tori said, “the killer buried her at the base of the tree, which continued to grow. When the tree fell over, the skeleton was tangled up in the roots.”

“Right,” I agreed, “that makes sense, but how are we going to sell the cops on the idea that we stumbled on a skeleton
inside
a hollowed-out tree trunk?”

“We use iPhone-ography,” Tori said triumphantly.

“Excuse me?”

“I enter contests online with photos I take on my iPhone,” she said. “And that’s exactly the kind of thing I’d take a picture of for the ‘Signs of Decay’ contest this month.”

She pointed at an uneven row of mushrooms growing along the top of the hickory’s trunk.

“Watch this,” Tori said, maneuvering to get an angle with her phone’s camera. Even though it was broad daylight, she forced the flash to fire.

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

“If anybody asks me,” Tori said, “I’m going to say I was using a fill flash to compensate for sunlight behind the mushrooms that would make my picture dark. But the real reason I used the flash was so we could see this.”

She held out her phone. When I looked at the screen, she pinched the image to enlarge it. The skull practically glowed in the dark.

“Good one,” I said admiringly. “Gemma would be proud of you. So what’s the story?”

Did I mention Tori is always in charge of the alibis? She’s the fast thinker.

“We wandered off the path, totally breaking the rules because I’m dying to win the photo contest, which I am, by the way,” she explained. “I took some pictures of the mushrooms and when we got back to the trail, I sat down to look at them, and I saw the skull.”

This would be why we’ve always been able to get away with pretty much anything. Tori keeps her stories simple and just close enough to the truth that we’re not so much lying as slightly bending the facts.

“That should work,” I said. “But we have to wait a while before we go to the sheriff. Those picture files will have a date and time stamp.”

Now it was her turn to be proud of me. “Listen to you, all in secret agent mode!” she said. “Double O Jinksy.”

From the other side of the hickory, the girl said plaintively, “Excuse me for interrupting, but what about me? What am I going to do now?”

How could I tell her that she was never actually going to
do
anything again?

Tori and I both looked at the girl and then at one another. I saw it coming in Tori’s eyes before she even said a word. Both of my hands went up to fend off the bad idea barreling straight at me.

“No,” I said firmly. “She is
not
coming home with us.”

The girl spoke again before Tori could start wheedling to convince me.

“Please don’t leave me here,” the ghost said, her voice cracking. “I’ve been alone so long. You’re the first people I’ve talked to who have answered me since I woke up in this place.”

God. This is how strays of all kinds get adopted on the spot. It’s bad enough when a dog or a cat gives you the please-don’t-leave-me eyes. But how do you turn down the the spirit of a murdered teenager turned middle-aged haunt? There’s no walking away from that kind of sadness and living with yourself afterwards.

The sigh I let out was equal parts resignation and genuine sympathy. “Okay,” I said, “you can come with us . . . ”

Looking back on that moment now, I realize I should have said, “try to come with us” because there was a lot about this whole situation I hadn’t thought through yet. At the time, however, there was only one thing that made me stop in mid-sentence, and in retrospect, it was the least of our worries. What the heck was I supposed to call this girl? We already had one Jane Doe.

“Grace,” Tori said, understanding my hesitation and filling in the gap. “We’ll call her Grace.”

“Why Grace?” I asked.

“Because once she was lost,” Tori answered softly, “and now she’s found.”

Are you starting to understand why Tori is my best friend?

“What do you think?” I asked the dead girl. “Do you like the name Grace?”

The girl nodded. “It’s pretty.” Then she said uncertainly. “I think I was pretty once, too.”

“Oh, honey,” Tori said, “you still are. It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna make this right for you.”

Make it right? She was murdered and buried in an unmarked grave in the woods for 30 years. Is making that right even remotely possible? Probably not, but I was with Tori. We had to try for Grace -- the same way we had to try for Jane. We were all they had now.