Witch Hearts (11 page)

“Absolutely. There’s a good chance I’ll get most of my sweaters back.”

“Stole half your closet, huh? She’d just take the hard-earned cash right out of my wallet. She called it a “sister fee” but I knew it was usually for groceries. Like I’d stop her.” He smiled at a memory. “She’d always spend a little of it on my favorite beer and leave it in the fridge for me to find.”

“That
does
explain why she always had so many snack cakes,” Ruby said with a grin.
 

That Monday, Ruby spent the entire day with Cooper at Courtney’s apartment. She had planned to go back to work, but Miranda insisted she help Cooper with the apartment and not to worry. Ruby had never been so grateful that Miranda was her boss.
 

They separated and boxed up everything - all of Courtney’s clothes and most of the furniture would be donated. Ruby kept almost all of the personal things such as books and movies, her laptop and photo albums. Cooper only wanted a necklace that their mother had given Courtney before the car accident.

They didn’t talk much. Ruby had lots of memories here since she’d lived with Courtney for years before Michael. She tried her hardest to keep firmly focused on cleaning so as not to fall apart. She and Cooper had never spent this much time alone; Courtney was always with them and her absence that day was painfully obvious.
 

After movers came to take out everything, they cleaned from top to bottom, leaving no evidence of Courtney in the place. It was late when they finished; covered in grime, they put the last box in Ruby’s car and locked the apartment door behind them. Neither of them talked much on the way back to Ruby’s, but she knew she needed a break from the tension and said as much to Cooper.
 

“You’re right,” he said, almost sounding relieved. “Tell you what - we’ll get this stuff upstairs and I’ll pick up Chinese food and beer while you shower, since you described yourself earlier as being “covered in gross.” We’ll put in a movie and fall asleep from food comas.”

Ruby laughed. “Perfect.”

Half an hour later, they were in their sweats on Ruby’s couch, blissfully chowing down on eggrolls and lo mein. At one point, Ruby’s chopsticks failed her and rice went flying. She and Cooper cleaned it up, sharing a laugh while doing so, and Ruby realized she’d never been this comfortable with a guy, not even when living with Michael. He had such a rigorous routine, wanted to look his best at all times, even keeping his apartment spotless with everything in its place - in case anyone dropped in, she supposed - that she’d wanted to live up to his expectations. While Michael had never seen her in so much as a ratty t-shirt, Cooper and Courtney had both seen her at her best and worst, in more ways than one.

After putting away the leftovers, Ruby padded back into the living room where Cooper had sprawled out across the couch, leaving nowhere to sit but the chair. When she went past him to take a seat, however, he caught her by the wrist, his thumb and forefinger rubbing every so slightly on her skin. The rest of Ruby’s skin instantly craved his warm touch.
 

“Maybe we could lie here on the couch? I promise no funny business. I’ll probably fall asleep twenty minutes into the movie, anyway,” he said with a small smile.

Heart in her throat, Ruby nodded, lying down with her back to him. She prayed he couldn’t hear her racing heartbeat. He laid an arm over her, cradling her and she felt him breathe in her shampoo. Her breath caught in her throat and wordlessly she hit “play” on the remote.

“Thank you for everything today,” Cooper whispered. His breath tickled the hair by her ear and she bit her lip to prevent a sigh from escaping her.
 

“Of course,” she said. “I would never have let you do that alone.”

He squeezed her tight to him, brushed his lips against her ear in thanks before relaxing, arm still draped over her. They fell silent and watched the first half of the action movie Cooper had put in. True to his word, Cooper fell asleep somewhere after that and Ruby lay there, content to snooze in his arms. Her eyelids drooped a little and when she opened her eyes again, Courtney stood in front her her, hand on her hip and a grin that could’ve covered a small state.
 

“Ruby and Cooper, sittin’ in a tree,” she sang. Ruby shot her a dirty look as she continued, “k-i-s-s-i-n-g!”

“Stop it,” Ruby whispered. “What are you doing here?”

“Why, is it awkward?” Courtney smiled the grin of a little sister who’d caught her big brother doing something naughty. She plopped down in the reading chair by Ruby’s head, giggled at the blush on her best friend’s cheeks.

“You are such a prude,” Courtney scolded. “Thank god you aren’t naked or you might actually die of embarrassment.”
 

Careful not to wake Cooper, Ruby shifted his arm around her, positioned herself to sit up and look at Courtney. Her hair sat neatly on her shoulders; no shimmering appeared and for a moment, Ruby could’ve sworn Courtney was as real as the chair she sat in.

“So I was thinking,” Courtney said, her tone turning serious, “you should check with Cooper about some friends of his. Look into his old pals.”

“What makes you say that?”

She shrugged. “Seems the longer I’m hanging around, the more that’s coming back to me. Last time I saw you I could only think about my murder and
fuck
, that hurt. But now I remember that I got a note sometime before…ya know. Maybe two or three months ago.”

“From whom?”

Courtney shot her an annoyed look; she didn’t like to be interrupted. “The note mentioned my brother. Said that I should get Coop to come back and return the money or they’d make him pay. Guess someone took care of that, huh?”

The sarcasm and bark of laughter made Ruby’s heart hurt. Courtney wasn’t a cynical or angry person. Being a spirit didn’t seem to agree with her. Ruby’s face must have shown question because Courtney rolled her eyes, crossing her right leg over the left knee with an exaggerated kick. If she’d really been there, instead of in ghost form, her foot would’ve knocked into the coffee table but her leg went right through.

Ruby shook her head to refocus. “What else did the note say?”

Courtney tapped her chin thoughtfully. “What else, what else. Okay, so Dear Courtney, Your brother took something from us…we suggest you convince him to return and give us our money back…”

“Us? We?” Ruby interrupted again, this time ignoring Courtney’s dirty look. “That means there might be more than one guy involved with this?”

“If the two events are related at all,” Courtney said with a shrug.
 

Ruby found it hard to believe they weren’t, not when Courtney got a note right before she died, a note that sounded vaguely similar to the one left in the apartment. The writer for that note only spoke in first person, though. As she told Courtney this, she noticed Courtney begin to shimmer and her hair now swayed around her chin.

“I forgot to ask,” Ruby blurted out. “Did the ritual—”

“Murder,” Courtney corrected.

“—Involve water? They found you in the river, the other girls too. Do you know what any of that means?”

Courtney shrugged, a slow, languid movement that didn’t match the annoyance in her voice. “I was sort of
dead
at that point, so I have no idea.”

Ruby opened her mouth to speak, but even as Courtney shimmered out of existence, she managed to get the last word in. “Your theory would explain why I feel like I’m underwater, though.”

“Court, wait!” Ruby said, throwing her arm out to stop her best friend from disappearing. Her hands once again met air.
 

Ruby sat up on the couch with a start and scared Cooper out of his deep sleep. He popped up beside her, nearly knocking her off the couch.
 

“What’s the matter? Is he here?” he mumbled, rubbing his face to get a better look at the front door.

“Everything’s fine,” Ruby said. When he squinted at her and read the expression on her face, he seemed to wake up.

“You’re a shitty liar. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Cooper took one look at her grimace and sighed. “Courtney.”

“Yeah. And you’re not gonna like what she said.” Ruby repeated back her dream to him, every detail after Courtney’s initial teasing.

“And she’s mad, Coop,” Ruby finished, grabbing his arm. “She’s a really pissed off spirit and I’m afraid for her. What if she can’t move on?”

He shook his head. “She’s never been one to let things go. She won’t leave until she’s avenged.”

“You need to tell me everything,” she urged him. “If there’s any connection between the two, it might be our only lead.”

“I didn’t see any connection and I’ve considered all the angles, believe me,” he said, his tone a bit nervous.

“Now is not the time to keep secrets from one another. You need to tell me. Now.”

Cooper climbed over her, stretched out the kinks in his muscles before sitting back down opposite Ruby. She brought her knees up to her chest and waited. Cooper cleared his throat, this time meeting her eyes.

“I’m the reason Nate was killed. These guys we worked for, they wanted money. It was always about money,” he said, bitterness in his voice. “Just your average mix of angry adult witches, abusing their talents to get ahead in life.”
 

He gave her a sad look and she knew he included himself in that group.
 

“They used my dreams, made me interpret what I could in their favor, even for an afternoon at the dog track. When I told you “we” both got into dark magic, I really mean me. They pushed dark magic on me to better focus the dreams; Nate disagreed but knew he couldn’t stop me. So my dreams became realer, to the point where I could interpret them with no problem. It was easy. At first it was lottery numbers or sports games and I gave them up willingly. With all the dark magic pumping through my system, it was like a drug high, better than any stimulant I’ve ever done.”

Ruby bit her tongue, knowing this was neither the time nor the place for an admonishment of his past crimes. He paused to take a sip of water, sat back and rubbed his hands over his face again. For a split second, Ruby saw all the guilt he had and regretted the conversation. Courtney’s revelation might lead Cooper into an even deeper pit of despair if he had anything to do with her death.
 

 
“Anyway, the further we went, the deeper it got. Pretty soon they were asking for bank vault numbers, security codes. They figured with me, they couldn’t lose. Then they started using dark magic on innocent people, hurting them if they got in the way, threatened them to get what they wanted. Maybe they were always doing that and we didn’t notice before, I don’t know. Nate and I, we didn’t sign up for that, so we decided to get out.”

“I’m guessing that didn’t go over well.” Ruby arched an eyebrow at him as he shook his head.

“It gets worse,” he warned. “I only wanted out, but Nate, he wanted to get back at them, to pay for using us and hurting people. They had around two million. I told him not to do it, but he took their money.”

Ruby’s jaw dropped. “He
took
it? How much?”

He looked at her with a puzzled expression, as though the answer were obvious. “All of it.”

“How?”
 

Cooper’s shoulders went up to his ears in a shrug. “He never told me and I never asked. We split the bills down the middle and stashed it, but as you can figure, they caught up to us.”

She didn’t want to hear this part of the story, but knew it was coming. She told herself not to flinch at Cooper’s hard expression. When he spoke, she heard a thick wall of tears in his rough voice. His hand went to his throat, his fingers running over the scar there.
 

“They slit Nate’s throat because he stole from them. Then they took a slice out of me - didn’t mind if I lived, they said, since I was a talented witch they might want to borrow later. All the same, they left me for dead in that garage. I
wanted
to die; they killed my friend because I failed him. Because I was weak, got so caught up in my own obsession for dark magic that I could hardly see straight.”

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, his pained look bringing more tears to Ruby’s eyes. She blinked them back, hadn’t realized she’d come so close to crying. It seemed as though she was always on the edge of tears these days. Seeing Cooper this way was a new experience for her and not one she particularly enjoyed.
 

“How did you live through that?” she asked.
 

“Some couple parking their car found us and called an ambulance. After they sewed me up, I skipped out, grabbed my shit and left town.”

“They knew about Courtney, though. Why did she get that note?” Ruby heard the suspicion in her tone, dreaded the answer that she didn’t want to believe.

He blinked hard, hesitated long enough for Ruby to understand. “I gave the money to Courtney. She hid it.”

Ruby deflated, her breath whooshing out of her in a sudden release. “That’s why you searched her apartment. Is her spell book even really gone?”

Her question hit a nerve, because the look he gave her was ice cold. “What, you think I took it for dark magic purposes? I would have my book for that, genius. Yes, it’s gone. And yeah, I tried to find the money while I searched for her book.”

If Michael had talked to her like that a year ago, she would’ve cowed down and apologized. She’d known Cooper far too long and well to take his crap, however, so instead she jutted her chin out and crossed her arms over her chest.
 

“That’s not exactly how I meant it. But how could you
not
have mentioned this a little earlier? Like, as soon as you got back?”

His gaze went somewhere over her left shoulder as he spoke, muscles twitching under his throat. “I don’t know. I didn’t want it to be related. It’s all I could think about on the way here…what if I’m the reason she’s dead?”
 

He ran a hand through his hair, gripped it against his skull for a second. Ruby made to speak, but Cooper’s breath exhaled in a rush as he waved her off. “After the detectives told me about the other murders, about the witch hearts, I figured it had to be something else. The ritual stuff isn’t exactly their style; they’re more…physical. They’d beat their heads in and be done with it, ya know?”