Witch on Third (A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 6) Read online

  Witch on Third

  Juliette Harper

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Juliette

  And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it. —

  Roald Dahl - The Minpins

  Prologue

  The storm boiled up out of the north at dusk, splitting the skies over Briar Hollow, North Carolina with crackling tendrils of lightning. Seemingly oblivious to the fury raging over their heads, four women stood in the center of the town square with hands clasped. As one, they sent their magic skyward, finding and harnessing a single bolt to do their bidding.

  In the intensity of that moment, they didn’t know that smaller bolts also answered the call, crashing to earth on the slopes of the neighboring mountains. One of those strikes angled toward a lonely corner of the local cemetery. It sought out the weathervane crowning a forgotten crypt. At impact, the electricity engulfed the crumbling structure in a static web that found and flowed through even the tiniest cracks.

  As quickly as the crescendo built, the weather stilled. The clouds parted revealing a full moon. A single beam of light falling through the high, round window atop the crypt wall illuminated a chessboard sitting on the floor.

  The pieces carved to represent musical notations, cast long, distorted shadows in the dust. One by one, they fell to the side until only the white king stood upright. Then, as if lifted by an unseen hand, the lone chessman rose six inches in the air, hanging suspended for several seconds before descending with a resounding thud.

  Miles away in Raleigh, a man looked up from the pages of his book and smiled. “Well,” he said, “there you are.”

  1

  Six weeks ago I made a promise to a dying man. I kept my word, even though he had no right to ask anything of me. Anton Ionescu cursed my mother, forced my infant brother into exile, and hired a hitman to go after me and everyone I love. Most folks would argue that I didn’t owe the man a blessed thing.

  They’d be wrong.

  Earlier that summer, thanks to an irresponsible bit of magic, I raised Anton’s daughter and niece from their graves — as vampires. Anton died thinking they’d been freed from that curse. I thought the same thing until the next night at the Halloween carnival when they came strolling by my table on the courthouse lawn.

  That appearance in itself created an obvious problem, but there’s more. The two girls were arm in arm with a Creavit wizard named Irenaeus Chesterfield who has been working against my family for thirty years.

  At the time, all I saw was a man in white tie and tails and two women dressed as Victorian hookers. I thought they were going for a kind of Jack the Ripper/Phantom of the Opera costume vibe.

  Then my costume had a violent reaction to the sighting.

  It may not have been the most creative decision, but I went to the carnival as a witch. My Barbie-sized friend, Glory Green, came with me the only way she could without being obvious — plastered flat on the crown of my pointy hat. That, and the ability to fly on her broom, are Glory’s only real powers.

  So, to be perfectly accurate, Glory was the one who reacted violently. She began to shake so hard I had to put my hand on the hat to keep it from tumbling to the ground.

  Chesterfield cursed Glory to live a miniature existence as a stereotypical green-faced witch. Then he sent her into the store I run with my best friend, Tori Andrews, to act as a spy. Glory is on our side now, but she lives in constant terror that Chesterfield will capture and punish her.

  That night, however, the wizard and the two women with him didn’t threaten Glory or me in any way. They were already past us when Glory told me the man was Chesterfield.

  As I watched, the trio crossed the street and paused long enough to look at me and remove their masks. That’s when I recognized Seraphina and Ioana. Before I could do much more than stare, the three of them disappeared into thin air.

  Speaking in a low, soothing tone, I said, “They’re gone, Glory. He’s not going to hurt us.”

  “Not now,” she croaked, “but he’ll be back.”

  “Yes,” I said, behind my hand. “He will.”

  For the record, if people catch you talking to your hat in public, they tend to believe you’ve lost your mind.

  “But after everything that happened yesterday, don’t you think we can let the others enjoy the rest of the carnival? Don’t we owe them that?”

  Who are “the others?”

  That’s quite a shopping list — my parents, Tori’s mother, a couple of agents with the Division for Grid Integrity, my ex-boyfriend/werecat protector, his father, a mostly solid ghost, a brownie, and a rat. Just stick with me here. If you don’t know them already, you’ll meet them pretty soon.

  As Glory considered my words, the witch’s hat grew still. “I owe you all everything,” Glory said in a calmer voice. “I’m okay now.”

  Neither one of us believed that. I certainly wasn’t “okay.” Before Chesterfield and the girls showed up, I’d been lost in thought trying to assimilate the events of the last 24 hours. The point was to act okay.

  From where I was sitting, I could see Mom and Gemma Andrews laughing together at the cake walk. Tori was volunteering in the face painting booth, and that ghost I mentioned, Colonel Beauregard T. Longworth, stood in the shadow of the Confederate monument talking to a group of tourists.

  I can’t even begin to tell you what a long week we’d had. Our most recent magic-related crisis coincided with the town’s first annual paranormal festival. The event proved to be a huge success. The carnival amounted to a victory lap for the organizing committee and offered up some badly needed relaxation for my people. I didn’t shatter that illusion until we all walked across the street to the store.

  As I locked the front door, I glanced at my watch — just past midnight.

  Dad yawned and stretched, announcing his attention to head straight to bed. I hated to do it, but I shook my head. “You can’t,” I said. “We all need to get down to the lair. Glory and I saw Chesterfield and the Strigoi Sisters this evening.”

  That’s our nickname for Seraphina and Ioana. The Ionescu are a clan of transplanted Romanian Strigoi viu or, as I like to think of them, Vampires Lite. They feed on electricity, not blood. What happened to turn the girls into bloodsuckers? They weren’t buried correctly after dying in a car crash — and I’m the one who woke them up. Go me.

  My words froze everyone in place. All the air seemed to leave the room. Mom ultimately broke the silence. “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “Totally,” I said. “Glory recognized Chesterfield, and I saw Seraphina and Ioana.”

  “So what do we do now?” Gemma asked.

  “You all head
downstairs,” I said, taking out my phone. “I’m going to call Chase and Festus. I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Even though he’s my ex, Chase McGregor and I don’t actually get to be completely “off.” We still have to work together. He and his father, Festus, are werecats pledged to protect the witches in my family.

  Chase answered on the first ring. “What is it?” he asked. “Did something happen tonight?”

  When Chase told me he intended to skip the carnival, I understood. Attending the same function in a small town when we were no longer together was still too awkward for him. Honestly, the last few months had been hard on Chase. When he guarded my Aunt Fiona, the work amounted to eating chocolate chip cookies and lending a hand with minor repairs around the shop. Then I took over — without a clue how to be part of the magical world — and everything became much more complicated.

  Chase knows the hierarchy of things as well as anyone. Technically, he works for me, but in the first few months of my new life, I let him call a lot of the shots. As my confidence grew and I began to exercise my role as a leader, Chase wasn’t ready for the change. Frankly, he acted like a jerk.

  Finally, Festus set his son straight in front of everyone, a scene that made me feel genuinely bad for Chase. I know his heart is in the right place, and I know he’s in love with me.

  Unfortunately, there’s a taboo against werecats and witches getting together. The magics are incompatible, and during our short relationship, we even had to face a crazy werecat half-breed, Malcolm Ferguson, who tried to kill us. Granted, he was a claw for hire in the employ of Anton Ionescu, but Malcolm brought loads of personal enthusiasm to the assignment.

  Chase had been grappling with frustration, a wounded ego, and a hurting heart. But he made the decision about the breakup without even talking to me. I wanted to tackle those hurdles. He couldn’t take the pressure.

  The relationship drama coincided with major events that left me no time to sit around and moon over a broken heart, although there were plenty of crying nights. For whatever sympathy I might feel for him, Chase had to live with the consequences of his choices the same way I did and get on with life.

  Truthfully, I hadn’t even considered for me that might include another guy. Then Lucas Grayson showed up. And get this — he’s assigned to protect me, too. He and Chase were bound to butt heads anyway, but there is a pre-existing tension between them I still don’t understand.

  Lucas works for the Division of Grid Integrity, an agency which serves the network of Mother Trees. (Don’t worry if you don’t know what that means. At the time, my understanding about the Grid was pretty sketchy, too. Just keep reading, and you’ll learn at the same pace I did.)

  Along with his partner, Greer MacVicar, Lucas has been running primary interference for me of late — and it doesn’t take radar to see that the man is interested in me. If you’d asked me the night of the carnival, I would have said I thought I was interested in him, too, but that feeling came with a hearty dose of confusion.

  At the same time that I was intrigued and flattered, I still missed Chase. But there’s no sense in lying about it now. There is a real spark between Lucas and me.

  But none of that changed the bottom line. We all had to function as a single team. I made it clear to Chase that my personal life was none of his business. Chesterfield and the Strigoi Sisters, however, were his business, which is why I called. Chase and Festus joined us in the lair in less than 5 minutes.

  Chase’s cobbler shop next door connects to our basement via a small passageway. The whole store sits atop a fairy mound that appears to be endless. When we go to Shevington, the Fae community that is Briar Hollow’s direct counterpart in the magical Otherworld, the hike to the portal takes an hour. We’ve started using bikes to cut down on the travel time.

  I think there’s a similar passageway that runs next door to Amity Prescott’s pottery shop and art gallery. We need to take a second here and talk about Amity.

  She’s also a witch and one of the few survivors of the now-defunct Briar Hollow coven. Oddly enough, however, Amity absented herself by choice from everything that happened around the paranormal festival and its aftermath.

  At first her refusal to do more than help organize the event put me off. We needed all hands on deck. I said as much to Barnaby Shevington, the founder of the city that bears his name and its current (and only) lord high mayor. I recently discovered Barnaby is also my several times great-grandfather, but that’s not something we’d discussed yet.

  In response to my annoyance over Amity’s absence, Barnaby said, “When her participation is needed, she will be there. Trust Amity’s wisdom in this, and trust mine.”

  The answer didn’t leave me much room to complain, but I will say for now that Barnaby was right. He usually is.

  When Chase and Festus arrived in the lair, we all settled around the fire. The space, which serves as equal parts family room and command center, lies in a layer of reality known as the In Between that separates the realm of the humans and the Otherworld.

  Festus headed straight for his favorite spot on the hearth, which also happened to be right by Greer’s chair. Because he has a lame hip, Festus lives his life primarily as a yellow house cat, but that doesn’t dim his appreciation for a beautiful red-haired Scotswoman.

  As we watched, Festus turned in three tight circles, put his back to the fire, cleared his throat, and proceeded to drop a bombshell. Earlier that evening, from his perch in the cobbler shop window, Festus watched everything that happened with Chesterfield and the Strigoi Sisters.

  “Dad!” Chase protested. “Did it ever enter your mind to call me?”

  Festus fixed his son with a perfectly impassive feline glare. “No, it did not,” he said. “The Creavit scum didn’t do anything. After the week we’ve had, I thought it could wait, and apparently so did Jinx.”

  “Hold on,” I said, “you recognized Chesterfield?”

  Festus turned his eyes toward me. An old anger stirred in their amber depths. “Of course, I recognized him,” he growled. “It’s because of him I’ve been limping since 1936.”

  From one of the couches across the room, Gemma said, “You’re certain you saw Seraphina and Ioana with Chesterfield?” She managed to stay calm, but the strained quality of the words and the pallor of her skin betrayed the depths of her fear.

  “Yes,” I said. “It was them.”

  “What if they go after Scrap again?” she asked.

  A few days earlier Greer showed up at Andrews Lumber in neighboring Cotterville just in time to keep the Strigoi Sisters from snacking on Tori’s father, Howard “Scrap” Andrews.

  Beside me, Tori started to her feet. “We have to find out if Dad is okay,” she said, fighting to keep from sounding as panicked as she must have felt.

  “Slow down,” Greer said. “The GNATS drone is still watching your father. We would have known by now if anything had happened.”

  GNATS stands for “Group Network Aerial Transmission System.” The tiny drones, each powered by a single grain of fairy dust, create the perfect juncture of magic and technology. No larger than the insect they’re named after, the drones, under the command of Major Aspid “Ironweed” Istra of the Brown Mountain Fairy Guard, are our remote eyes.

  “Can you show us?” Gemma asked, sounding a little steadier. “I’d be happier if I could see with my own eyes that Scrap is safe.”

  “Sure,” Chase said, hitting the button to lower the big screen TV from its recessed niche in the ceiling above the fireplace. As the set came into place, he punched commands into his iPad to transfer the drone’s video feed to the larger display.

  Gemma instantly sat up. “That’s not our house,” she said. “There must be some mistake.”

  Chase studied the tablet in his hands. “There’s no mistake,” he said gently. “Scrap moved his things out of your house this afternoon. He’s staying at Mrs. Llewellyn’s Boarding House on Oak Street in Cotterville.”

  No one sai
d anything. Gemma deflated, sinking back into the sofa. Mom put an arm around her shoulder. They’d gone to the carnival dressed as Lucy and Ethel. Mom wore a blue dress with big white polka dots and colored her dark hair flaming red with washout dye. Gemma engineered a credible imitation of Ethel’s blonde permanent with my curling iron. Like their television idols, the two women had been best friends for as long as I could remember

  “At least he’s safe, Gem,” Mom said. “You two will get this all sorted out.”

  The “all this” she referred to was the state of the Andrews’ marriage. Mom had the good sense to tell my Dad about the magical world before they married. Even though Fae politics forced them to send their only son into exile as an infant, Dad accepted that part of my mother’s identity because he loves her. For years she turned her back on magic, but now that she’s back in the game — largely because of me — he supports that choice, too.

  Gemma, on the other hand, never told her husband about her life as a witch and alchemist. When he found out, he didn’t take the news well — and then pretty much lost his mind after a face-to-face counter with the Strigoi Sisters. Scrap’s rejection extended to his daughter, which had left Tori, a true Southern daddy’s girl, devastated. Mother and daughter were holding it together in the name of taking care of business, but barely.

  Blinking back tears, Gemma said, “I’d still like to see for myself that Scrap is safe. Can the drone do that?”

  Chase typed in a request to GNATS Ops Command. As we watched, the image of the boarding house grew larger. When the porch loomed into view, the pilot maneuvered along the left side of the house. He reached a cracked window, slipped through, and brought the surveillance craft near the ceiling.

  The camera trained on Scrap sound asleep in bed. From the way his mouth opened and closed rhythmically, we could tell he was snoring. That put a tremulous smile on Gemma’s face.

  “I don’t even need sound to know he’s raising the roof,” she said in a choked voice. “I’ve been listening to that man snore for 35 years. Will the drone keep watching him?”