Witch on First: A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 4 (The Jinx Hamilton Novels) Read online

  Witch on First

  A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 4

  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

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Juliette Harper

  “My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage!” - Aunt Frances, Practical Magic

  By Juliette Harper

  Copyright 2016, Juliette Harper

  Skye House Publishing

  License Notes

  eBooks are not transferable. All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-943516-72-8

  Created with Vellum

  Prologue

  That summer, we didn’t know we were playing a game with all the bases loaded. The other team had a man on first, second, and third. One home run and they would have turned the whole thing into a grand slam.

  Let me tell you about the first time I ever played baseball. I was eight years old. The neighborhood kids got a game together in the Masterson’s backyard. Me and my best friend, Tori, were the youngest kids on the block. When the others asked us to join in, I was a little suspicious we were about to be used for batting practice.

  Tori, ever the optimist, accepted the invitation. Neither one of us knew how to play. Worse still, I was that loser kid who missed every ball thrown in her direction regardless of how big that ball might be.

  It takes a lot of talent not to catch a beach ball.

  When it was my turn up at bat, Mr. Masterson, who was the umpire, walked up beside me and gently moved my hands into something approximating a correct grip.

  “What do I do?” I whispered, looking up at him in a panic.

  “You just keep your eye on the ball and swing like you’re going to slice it right in two,” he said. “Got it?”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, but good little Southerner that I was, I said, “Yes, sir.”

  Davy, the oldest kid on our street, was pitching. Anybody else might have thrown me something easy, but I knew that evil glint in Davy’s eye. That baseball heading at me was a guided, eight-year-old-seeking ballistic missile.

  The reason I kept my eye on the ball like Mr. Masterson told me to was because I was positive that five-ounce chunk of rubber wrapped in cowhide might take my head clean off my shoulders.

  Acting out of pure, desperate, self-defense without a shred of athleticism attached, I levered the heavy, awkward club forward.

  With a resounding crack, wood hit leather. I watched in complete astonishment as the ball flew high over left field. I didn’t even think to run until I realized everyone in the backyard, including Mr. and Mrs. Masterson, was screaming at me to do just that.

  I made it as far as first base when I heard Mr. Masterson yell, “STOP!”

  As the umpire, I don’t think he was supposed to be coaching me, but I needed the help.

  In the story I’m about to tell you when it was our turn at bat, we made it to first base, too. We took down one of the three threats facing us, but it wasn’t because anyone coached us. We just got lucky.

  The whole mess started over a coffee cup and a chessboard.

  The cup seemed like nothing more than a clever homage to the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. I found it early one morning when I went out to sweep the sidewalk in front of our store in Briar Hollow, North Carolina.

  Tori and I had just added an espresso bar to the business I inherited from my Aunt Fiona. The card inside the box said the cup was a good luck gift from a satisfied customer. To me, the gesture seemed sweet, but from the beginning, something about that cup bothered Tori.

  Bothered her to the point that I thought she was unreasonable.

  For starters, Tori swore the little green-faced witch flying alongside the caption on her broom moved. Sometimes she appeared on the other side of the words, which cautioned that if the witch didn’t get her coffee, there would be trouble. I told Tori that was nuts.

  “Fine,” she declared, “you don’t believe me? I’ll prove it to you. I’ll start taking a picture every day until I catch her.”

  The little witch never moved again.

  Tori’s answer to that?

  “She heard me. I’m telling you that cup is possessed or haunted or something.”

  A haunting we should have been able to handle.

  The day my powers awakened, I saw Aunt Fiona’s ghost. The experience led me to go to the local cemetery that night and meet a whole herd of spooks, including Colonel Beauregard T. Longworth, who has become one of my closest friends.

  Ghosts I can do.

  I assured Tori that there were no spirits attached to the cup, and I even used my psychometry on the thing for good measure. That’s one of my powers. I can pick things up and “read” them for impressions of memories and associations. The cup gave me nothing but Elvis lyrics.

  “You don’t think that’s a little strange?” Tori said. “A cup that listens to the King?”

  “Whoever made the cup probably liked Elvis music,” I said. “Trust me; there’s nothing more sinister in this cup than some leftover notes of Heartbreak Hotel and Jailhouse Rock.”

  Then the chessboard showed up, and I do mean, “showed up.”

  One day we just found it sitting on a table in the espresso bar.

  We already owned two chessboards Tori ordered for our patrons. One features Civil War soldiers, the other opposing football teams. There’s no mistaking the musical chess set as something special, however, and likely expensive. The burled wood of the playing surface shines under a hand-rubbed finish. Whoever carved the intricate pieces achieved superb detail from the quarter note pawns to the ornate bass clef kings.

  Several days had passed before we noticed that no one played chess on the new board, yet every morning, the major pieces sat on the table with the pawns arranged in strange patterns across the squares.

  That bugged Tori so much she asked Myrtle to examine the board for a haunting.

  I have to admit that at this stage of things, I was getting a little concerned that my BFF was snorting too many espresso fumes. Her preoccupation with “haunted” inanimate objec
ts was threatening to get out of hand. If anyone could settle her down it was Myrtle, the ancient Fae spirit that inhabits the fairy mound on which our store sits.

  Myrtle is our mentor and friend, charged with helping me to hone my witchcraft and facilitating Tori’s study of alchemy. We’re both descended from the children of a Cherokee witch named Knasgowa and her two husbands. The women on my side of the family are witches, and our “cousins” in Tori’s line are Alchemists.

  That’s a Southern catchall term for a relative you’re willing to claim but can’t explain.

  Unfortunately, instead of providing us with an answer, Myrtle’s examination of the chess set turned into one of the strangest interactions we’d ever had with her.

  Although Myrtle is an ageless creature of ethereal beauty, for some reason she chooses to show herself to us in the store as an elderly librarian complete with a gray bun held in place by a yellow No. 2 pencil.

  Myrtle did as Tori asked, walking around the chessboard to look it over from all angles and bending low to peer at the pieces through the thick glasses she doesn’t need. She picked up the chessmen, running her fingers over the smooth, curved surfaces and shook her head.

  “I don’t feel anything unusual,” Myrtle said. “If there is a ghost attached to this board, it is likely nothing more than a residual haunting.”

  Residual hauntings are energy recordings playing on an endless loop. Some supercharged event leaves an imprint on the stream of time. It’s like a persistent coffee stain on a linen tablecloth. No matter how many times you wash it, that faint brown circle stays there. Residual hauntings have no awareness. They just play over and over and over again.

  When Myrtle finished speaking, Tori and I exchanged a look.

  I wasn’t in on Tori’s broader suspicions yet, but even I thought Myrtle’s explanation sounded more like an episode of Ghost Hunters than a real answer to our problem.

  Summoning all my diplomacy, I said, “Uh, Myrtle, you’re an all-powerful ancient Fae. Are you telling us you can’t make out the details of a residual haunting?”

  Myrtle smiled at me tolerantly. “I hear and feel life in all its forms, Jinx,” she said, “even its residue but some imprints are so tiny and faint they do not register in my awareness unless I direct all my focus on locating them. For instance, there is a rather large water bug under the display shelf by the counter right now.”

  At that, Tori and I both jumped a foot.

  Unless you’re from the south, you may not know what a water bug is. Rough translation, “cockroach big enough to saddle” — and they freaking fly.

  “I knew it,” I said, shuddering, “I told you I’ve been seeing something flying around down here at night.”

  Several times over the last few weeks, when I paused at the top of the stairs to switch off the downstairs lights, I’d caught sight of something whizzing by in the shadows. Even after I set out roach traps, the sightings continued.

  “What are we going to do?” Tori said, moving behind me. “Can we shoot it?”

  Laugh all you want to; water bugs are almost big enough to shoot.

  Making a clucking sound in her throat, Myrtle said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She held out her hand, and to our horror, an enormous water bug came sliding out from under the case. Myrtle lifted it in the air and levitated it toward us.

  “Myrtle!” I cried, backing away. “What are you doing?”

  She brought the bug to a stop a few inches from her face. Its antenna twitched nervously while multiple legs struggled against thin air.

  “Calm down,” Myrtle commanded quietly.

  The insect grew completely still.

  “I know you are expecting to die,” she said to the bug, “but I am not going to do that. I do not find you horrifying, but my friends are a different matter. I am going to send you outdoors where you belong, so long as you will promise me that you will not return. Do we have an agreement?”

  In spite of the fact that my skin was crawling, I was fascinated. The damn bug nodded. Myrtle levitated the insect toward the back door, which opened of its own accord. When the roach was out of sight, the door closed again, and Myrtle turned back toward us.

  “Now,” she said calmly, “back to our conversation. If there is any spark of life in this board, it is infinitesimal in comparison to that which animates the insect I just evicted.”

  Still eyeing the back door as if she half expected the water bug to break it down and come charging back inside, Tori said, “So you’re telling us the chess set isn’t haunted?”

  “I’m telling you I do not know,” Myrtle said, “but I don’t feel anything from the board, and I have no better explanation for why the pieces move around.”

  At the time, that was good enough for me.

  It wasn’t until several hours later that it dawned on me that Myrtle didn’t seem to care that we had an unexplained phenomenon right in the middle of our home base.

  But before I could talk to Tori about that, and before she could tell me about her doubts, somebody threw a dead man into the mix.

  1

  On a crisp Sunday morning in late summer I went downstairs to get the morning paper. When I opened the door, I found my werecat boyfriend Chase McGregor standing on the sidewalk outside his cobbler shop, which isn’t strange since our businesses sit side by side on the Briar Hollow town square.

  Here’s the strange part.

  He had his smartphone out and was snapping pictures of someone sitting on the bench by the front door. Neither one of them were saying a word. I was holding a coffee cup in one hand, but I hadn’t taken more than a sip, so my brain wasn’t fully engaged. It took several seconds to process what I was seeing — a knife sticking out of the front of the man’s shirt pinning a note against blood-stained denim.

  That’s when things really went bad.

  I dropped my coffee.

  Chase must have heard me open the door, but he didn’t turn toward me until the cup shattered on the concrete.

  Quickly pocketing the phone, he said gravely, “I think someone just sent us a message.”

  For as much as I didn’t want to get a closer look at the body, I did want to read that note.

  I stepped up beside Chase and gasped. I knew the dead man. Fish Pike, the half-mad old coot the sorceress Brenna Sinclair hired to break into the shop just weeks before. Deep claw marks raked the length of his torso. The crimson strips of torn flesh revealed shocking flashes of white bone and his throat . . . well, let’s just say the knife didn’t kill him.

  Even as my mind scrambled to make sense of these details, I did notice one important thing. There was no blood on the bench or the sidewalk underneath the body. Fish was killed somewhere else and put on display for our benefit.

  “I . . . I . . . can’t make out the note,” I said, the quiver in my voice making it hard to get the words out.

  “It says, ‘the cat’s out of the bag,’” Chase replied, staring at the body.

  “What the heck is that supposed to mean?” I asked, but a kind of cold dread crept over me. Sometimes you just know something before it’s explained to you.

  “It means,” he said, “that someone doesn’t like me seeing you.”

  Even as my mouth launched a protest, my mind knew he was right.

  “Aren’t you jumping to conclusions?” I stammered. “Maybe it has something to do with Brenna.”

  Looking hopefully up into Chase’s face, I noticed he hadn’t shaved yet. The morning sun threw his profile into relief, making the dark stubble stand out along his jaw where clenched muscles worked restlessly under the tanned skin.

  “That dagger,” he said, pointing at the knife, “is a sgian-dubh.”

  Gotta tell you, when the people in my world start using Gaelic? We’re in for trouble.

  “I don’t know what that means,” I said.

  Chase turned, fixing me with the full force of his attention. When he spoke, the words came out in a harsh whisper so intense, I almost took a st
ep back.

  “A sgian-dubh is a Scottish dress dagger,” he said. “I’ve already called Sheriff Johnson. He’ll be here any minute. I need you to say you just stepped out to get the paper and saw me standing here looking at Pike’s body. Nothing else. Do you understand?”

  “I did just step out and find you standing here,” I replied with growing confusion. “What else would I say to the Sheriff? Chase, tell me what’s going on.”

  “There’s no time,” he answered, “It’s too complicated. Just do this my way. No extra details. Please, just trust me.”

  “Of course, I trust you,” I said. “But I don’t understand why you’re acting this way when you’re not even asking me to lie.”

  “No,” Chase said, “I’m not asking you to lie now, but if Sheriff Johnson wants to know if we have any information that might explain why Pike would be left here, that’s when the lying needs to start.”

  Good grief! He was acting like I would just conversationally mention to the Sheriff that the dead man had been in the employ of a centuries-old sorceress we killed in the basement earlier that month. I opened my mouth to say something to that effect when the sound of a car door slamming stopped me.

  “What in the hell is going on here, Chase?” a man’s voice demanded, the words punctuated by heavy steps.

  “Good morning, John,” Chase said, his voice now perfectly normal. “I have no idea what’s going on. I came out to get the morning paper and found the body.”

  Sheriff John Johnson is a big man with close-cropped graying hair he keeps hidden under Stetson hats. He must have been getting ready for church because he was wearing dress pants and a clean white shirt, his badge haphazardly pinned to the pocket. He stopped beside Chase, swiveling his head back and forth taking in the scene, including my broken cup and the splatter of coffee on the sidewalk.

  “Morning, Jinx,” the Sheriff said. “Mind if I ask you what you’re doing here?”