Strangetown Girl (Welcome To Witch County Book 1) Read online

  Luna had started dinner in time for it to be out of the oven and cooling when she loaded it into her car. Mom’s house was only five minutes down the road, but it had only taken one time of walking over with several serving dishes before Luna swore she’d never do it again. Asher lived a few streets over from her mother, and while she didn’t mind the closeness, her mother was careful with how often she took advantage of having Asher so close. She didn’t drop by unannounced or slip in through the open back door when her daughter wasn’t home to clean up. She said she wanted Asher to be an adult, and that meant that she was going to keep treating her like she was. Asher thought it was silly. Luna thought it was brilliant.

  Luna pulled her car into the driveway and hadn’t even killed the engine before Mom and Asher were out the front door.

  “I can already smell the yummy smells coming from your car,” Melody said, pulling Luna into a tight hug.

  “I do try and stick with what you like, Mom.” Luna giggled.

  Melody pulled back from the hug, looking highly offended. “My dear, I love everything that you’ve ever made for me, you know that.”

  “So, I could show up with a fully vegan meal and you’d be fine with that?” Luna asked. Asher snorted as she opened the passenger side door and began grabbing dishes.

  “Well, my dear, we are carnivores, you see,” Melody began.

  Luna started laughing before she could finish whatever yarn she’d been about to spin. “I wouldn’t do that to you, don’t worry.”

  “Good to know.” Melody gave Luna a playful push before walking around to help Asher with the food.

  Luna had made a hearty beef stew, along with homemade biscuits and a small salad. The salad was for her. Neither Melody nor Asher were salad eaters, though from time to time they would crave one. With meat.

  “So,” Melody began as the three women took seats on the back patio, fixed plates on the table. “I hear that horrid sheriff has been sniffing around you again.”

  “Wesley is always sniffing around me. It’s just that sometimes his actual job gets in the way,” Luna responded with an eye roll.

  “That man is terrible. And his poor wife. How does she deal with what a cheater her husband is?” Asher added.

  “I went to have tea with her the other day and attempted to ease into the subject of her husband and what he’s like when she’s not around. She immediately changed the subject, almost like she hadn’t heard a word that I’d said. Hard denial.” Melody shook her head sadly.

  “Then she knows. She just doesn’t want to talk about it,” Luna murmured.

  “Just like most of the town, I’d bet,” Mom replied.

  Asher sighed. “So, what do we do?”

  Melody and Luna shared a look. “Nothing,” they said in unison.

  “Nothing?” Asher repeated, shock clear in her voice.

  “There is nothing we can do if she refuses to admit that there’s a problem.” Luna shrugged.

  “But what about you? What about how he harasses you?”

  “I can take care of myself. You know that,” Luna said, grinning across the table at her best friend.

  “Luna probably has more tricks up her sleeve than we know about,” Melody said with a laugh. “By comparison, we only have one trick.”

  “It’s one hell of a trick though.” Luna giggled.

  And that was the end of that. The three of them made it a point not to spend too much time talking about stressful things when they were together. They were there for happiness and peace, and talking about the sheriff brought neither. The conversation moved on.

  By the time Luna packaged up what was left for Melody and Asher, gave her serving dishes a quick clean, and packed everything into the car again, it was late, and all three of them were yawning.

  Asher hopped into Luna’s car for a ride home, because big bad wolf in a small town or not, Luna didn’t want her walking alone. Once inside her house, Asher whispered a small incantation, which activated the home’s protection spell set up by Luna. Like all magic, the spell took wear and tear over time. Once every few months, Luna drove past the homes she’d chosen to protect and give them a little magic refresher. It wasn’t a complicated spell, just one that kept out people with malicious intent. One day, she’d make proper wards, but for now, this would have to do.

  Back home, the house was quiet, like it always seemed to be at night, even when it was full. Luna loved stepping through the door and feeling the warm darkness surround her. It wasn’t scary or unknown. It was peaceful. She thought that peace was why people stayed with her, even if they didn’t fully understand why they wanted to be there.

  She had worked hard to get that feeling into the house. It was magic, sure, but not the kind that involved spells and potions. It was the everyday magic that everyone had but most didn’t realize. It was what most humans thought of as making a house feel like a home, and it involved so much more than decorations and incense. It had to do with the souls who lived there, both past and present. It was something that had to be cultivated and nurtured, like a plant, until it grew to overtake the structure.

  The house hadn’t felt that way when she’d bought it. It had felt almost malevolent, though nothing there had ever attacked or tried to harm her. It was more of a feeling that kept people away. She’d never been able to pin down where it originated from, but she had been able to change it. Everywhere but one place.

  Luna turned and eyed the nondescript door to the basement. It was locked, but she hadn’t locked it. She’d tried the door for the hundredth time earlier that day while straightening. It wouldn’t budge. The door handle turned, and it sounded as if the latch came free, but it wouldn’t move. That cold, stay-away feeling the house had been steeped in when she’d first moved in radiated from the door. Like a cold breeze that made you shiver.

  “Maybe it’s a good thing it won’t open, hm?” Luna said to herself as she moved past the door and into the kitchen to put her dishes away.

  Dishes set down, she paused, the hairs on her arms lifting up. “Maybe I ought to check on my wards too, while we’re checking things,” Luna whispered, and it wasn’t until she made sure they were all in place that she could relax and get ready for bed.

  3

  THE WOODS AROUND CALIDITY WERE rich in plants that Luna needed as ingredients. Certain things she had to order—things that weren’t native to her part of the world, or things that originated in mythical places that she didn’t have ready access to—but everything else was accessible on a good forage, which she loved doing. Most of what she collected was kept in her closet, which was unreasonably large. She put in some additional shelving and voila, secret ingredient haven. The things that needed to be planted were settled in large pots on the back porch, for the mundane, and in a private sunroom off of her bedroom behind a locked door, for the things that would probably freak people out.

  She’d been out of the house since about ten in the morning, cruising through shops for a couple hours before securing everything in her car and wandering into the woods behind the main street strips. That was why she wasn’t home when it happened.

  Her wards let her know something was up before her phone did, the sound crashing around in her brain so loudly she almost missed the call from Asher. That meant that there was a lot of energy going through her home, which probably wasn’t good.

  “Luna, are you home?” Asher said, concern coloring her words.

  “I went downtown. Can you stop by my house? Something is wrong,” Luna said, stumbling back towards her car and trying not to look like she was insane as she tried to push away the wards’ clanging in her mind.

  “I’m already there. I was down the street and saw the police cars lined up.”

  Uh-oh. “Police cars? What in the hell is Wesley up to now?”

  “There’s blood up your front steps, Luna. It’s leading into the house, and if what I’m overhearing is correct, there’s a dead body in your front hall.”

  Luna stopped dea
d in her tracks. “I haven’t been gone long enough for someone to die in there.”

  “Wesley is looking for you. They’re going to start searching the house without you soon—”

  “No! Stop them. Tell them that you got hold of me and that I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “Alright. Hurry.” Asher ended the call.

  Luna took off at a run towards her car. This was one hundred percent the last thing she needed. Since coming to Calidity, she’d made sure to keep her distance from dead things in general. Who in the world was dead in her house? And how had no one seen whatever had resulted in blood on her front steps?

  “Later,” she said to herself and she turned the engine over and almost peeled out of the parking lot. Later when me and my home are out of danger.

  ~*~

  “ABOUT TIME,” WESLEY SAID, CASUALLY crossing his arms from her porch as Luna came tearing up the sidewalk. She ignored him.

  Asher was right. A dinner-plate-sized splat of blood on the concrete at the base of the porch stairs started a trail of both large and small drops of blood leading up onto the porch and to the front door.

  “What in the—”

  “Funny, that’s what we were wondering too,” Wesley said with a sick smile on his face.

  Luna turned, ignoring him again as she searched for her friend. “Asher,” she called.

  “Here!” came the response from around the side of the house. She headed in that direction. Wesley was worse than useless.

  “What happened?” Luna asked even before reaching where Asher stood with two officers. They were beside the shrubs bordering the shoulder-high fence that surrounded Luna’s backyard.

  “They can’t tell me,” she said. Luna looked from one officer to the other. One was the rookie she’d fed breakfast to yesterday morning. Neither gave off an air of anything negative.

  The rookie stepped forward, tipping his head apologetically. “We can’t tell her because the investigation is still going on. They’re searching the house now,” he explained.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Officer Bo, ma’am.”

  “Officer Bo, I understand that if there is a dead body in my house, there needs to be an investigation, and I won’t get in the way of that. My concern is that the investigation will trash my home, which in my case happens to be my livelihood. Especially because of who is in charge here, and how he treats me.” She gave Officer Bo a knowing look.

  He frowned and nodded. “Right. I’ll see what I can do. But I need you and Miss Asher to stay here with Officer Royal. The two of you attempting to get involved right now wouldn’t help.”

  Luna nodded. “I promise we’ll stay here.”

  Officer Bo took off at a trot around to the front of the house, and Luna sent a small bit of her hope after him. She didn’t know if he could do something or not, but she appreciated that he was willing to try.

  “So, what can you tell me?” Luna asked as she and Asher turned to face Officer Royal, a short man with a thin mustache. Both she and Asher towered over him, but they had practice not coming across as intimidating.

  “There isn’t much I can tell you as of now, ma’am. Other than the blood out front and the body on the floor, not much is known yet.”

  Luna cursed internally. That was probably an accurate statement, if everything had just gone sideways when Asher called her. Judging by when her wards started screaming, that was exactly what happened. But why hadn’t they gone off when the dead guy showed up?

  “No one knows how he got there?” Asher asked.

  Officer Royal shook his head. “Our call was a concern for your safety,” he said, indicating Luna, “because a neighbor saw the blood and thought that you were hurt.”

  “Luna!” Wesley barked from what sounded like the back of the house.

  “I can’t get back there, Sheriff. No gate.” She intentionally hadn’t put a gate in when she’d had the fence repaired, and while she could probably jump the fence, she didn’t want to. She wanted someone to let her see that body in her front hall.

  Wesley appeared at the fence and frowned. “Well, why don’t you have a gate like every other house in this neighborhood?”

  She met his small eyes. “Because I’m a single woman who lives alone. Limiting the points of entry to the house seemed like a good idea.”

  Partially.

  Wesley looked annoyed. “I’ve got three officers trying to get through that door between the bathroom and the kitchen. Where is the key?” he asked, holding his hand out.

  Luna shrugged. “I’ve never been able to get through that door. The real estate agent said this place has a basement, so I assume that’s where it leads, but I’ve never seen it. If your guys manage to get through, can you let me know what’s behind it?”

  Wesley narrowed his eyes suspiciously, then nodded and trudged back around the corner of the house.

  “I don’t think he believes you,” Asher said softly.

  “Probably not. But it’s the truth, and I can’t give him more than that.”

  “I can’t let you leave, Miss Luna, but you can at least sit down if you want,” Officer Royal said, motioning to a small stone bench next to the house. It had been there when Luna bought the place, and now, as she sat, she wondered briefly if it had been put there as a sort of naughty chair. The thought almost made her chuckle.

  She held her hand out to Asher, who took it and sat beside her. Asher wouldn’t mind the contact, since she was always a bit more touchy-feely than Luna was. Luna needed the comfort.

  “Oop, what’s this?” Asher said, stepping back and looking down at her feet.

  “Sunglasses?” Luna asked.

  “Broken, bloody sunglasses,” Asher said, squatting down.

  “Hang on, Ms. Asher, don’t touch those,” Officer Bo said, putting on a rubber glove that he’d pulled from somewhere. The glasses were gingerly removed from the patch of grass they’d rested in and slipped into a plastic bag parked Evidence. “I’ll make sure those get tested.”

  “Are those yours?” Asher asked softly as she sat down beside Luna.

  Luna shrugged, answering honestly. She couldn’t really tell from the broken half-frames. “No idea.”

  Asher sighed softly, concern naked on her face.

  “Can Asher leave if she needs to?” Luna asked, glancing up at Officer Bo. That was something that she could control to some degree, unlike the unknown sunglasses situation. The last thing she wanted to do was drag Asher into something that looked like it was turning ugly and that had nothing to do with her.

  “I haven’t been told that she can’t.” Which meant that until he was told otherwise, the answer was yes.

  4

  IT WAS ALMOST TWO HOURS later when Luna was finally allowed into the house, and only then because someone had asked if she recognized the body and none of the officers knew the answer. No one had bothered to let her in to ask.

  “Alright, Luna. You are, by default, the primary suspect on this, so don’t get any stupid ideas. Regardless, we need to know if you know who the stiff is.” Wesley gestured for her to enter.

  Luna made a face. He was so crass. She stepped through the doorway to her home, the usual calm she felt there replaced by anxiety as she waited for someone to lift the sheet from the body. The sheet, she realized, they’d pulled from her linen closet.

  Officer Royal gently revealed the body. Shock overtook her as she filed away each injury. Bruises on neck and abdomen. Cuts on neck and scalp. One eye socket nearly caved in.

  She closed her eyes and looked away, not because of the injuries, but because she knew who it was, and this wasn’t how she wanted to see him.

  “It’s my father,” she whispered.

  “Pardon?” Wesley said, leaning in.

  “I said, it’s my father.” The last word was nearly a yell. Now he wouldn’t ask her to repeat herself. It hadn’t been something she’d wanted to say even once.

  “Your father? I don’t believe I’ve ev
er heard you mention either of your parents. Bad relationship?” Wesley had a forced sympathetic turn to his mouth that Luna wanted to smack off.

  She just glared at him. “I don’t have to tell you anything. My family is none of business.”

  She hadn’t talked about her family to anyone in Calidity because she was in the witness protection program. She wasn’t supposed to talk about anyone from her past. And yet there she was, looking down on the bloody and beaten body of most of what she wasn’t supposed to be talking about. Graham was going to love this.

  “What about Asher? You girls talk about things, right? She’d know what kind of relationship you and your father had. We’ll just bring her down to the station and ask her.”

  Jaw clenched, she didn’t bother to answer. Asher wouldn’t be able to help with that either, which Wesley likely knew. He was just looking for something to pick at, something that would annoy her, and picking on someone she cared about fit the bill.

  “No answer? That’s fine. You have the right to remain silent. You probably should, given that you killed someone in the front hallway of your own house and then left it here for us to find.”

  Luna rolled her eyes. The last thing she’d have done was leave a bloody trail right to her door. She was a lot of things, but stupid was not one of them.

  “You know that you’re under arrest, right?” Wesley said, smiling as he pulled Luna’s arms behind her and began putting on the handcuffs.

  Though his hands on her made her cringe, she made herself relax. “I wasn’t even at home,” she protested. She didn’t fight against him. That would just make things worse.

  “I don’t know how long you’d been gone nor how long your father had been dead. Until someone can tell me that you have an airtight alibi, you stay where we can watch you.”