Chapter 10

SAGE ADVICE

Dinner was quiet and passed mostly without incident, although Chloe announced that she wanted to go back to her Airbnb after this evening.

“I don’t want to keep imposing on you,” she told me. “I know you have a lot going on, and I can handle staying there by myself.”

Her parents didn’t look too pleased by the prospect. “What about the Speroses?” Heather asked. “After the way they acted today, I wouldn’t put it past them to pounce on you the second you’re alone.”

While I didn’t want to entertain thoughts of such an unsettling scenario, I had to agree inwardly that Chloe’s mother had a point. If nothing else, the Speroses didn’t seem to have a very good notion of how to respect other people’s boundaries.

However, Chloe only lifted her chin and said, “I don’t think they’d do that. They were upset at the hotel, but now they know they were out of line, and I think they’ll stay away.”

Jordan tapped his fingers against the side of his plate. Being out in the sun and the wind seemed to have done him some good; his face had picked up a little color, and he’d eaten the very basic meal of spaghetti with meat sauce, salad, and garlic bread with a good appetite. However, he couldn’t help frowning as he said, “I wish we could petition the judge to let you come back to California. I’d feel a lot better with you there.”

But Calvin shook his head, saying, “It’s better not to rock the boat. Chloe will be safe here.”

“Doubly safe,” I put in, “because I’ll go with her to the Airbnb tomorrow morning and help her cleanse the place and surround it with some protection energy. No one should bother her after that.”

Heather’s expression was dubious, to put it mildly. “Do you really think that will work?”

“Mom,” Chloe returned, wearing the kind of look that only a daughter thoroughly exasperated with her mother could manage, “Selena knows what she’s doing.”

She stopped there, but I could practically hear her adding mentally, Stop embarrassing me!

Somehow, I managed to keep myself from smiling.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Most people don’t have a lot of experience with this kind of thing.”

“We’ve always allowed Chloe to explore whatever she found interesting,” Jordan put in. He’d watched the exchange between mother and daughter without comment, probably because he’d heard that sort of back-and-forth multiple times before. “And it’s not that we doubt your talents. But this is our daughter’s safety we’re talking about here. I think it’s understandable that my wife might be concerned about trusting it to a few lit candles and some sage waved around.”

At his seat, Calvin shifted, and I could tell he didn’t much care for the other man’s dismissive tone. However, I’d encountered that kind of attitude plenty of times before in my life — and, no doubt, would meet it countless times in the future — and I wouldn’t allow myself to get too ruffled.

“It’s true that on the surface it might not seem like a lot,” I said. “But you’d be surprised by how changing the energies of a place can ward off people with negative intentions.”

“Don’t treat me like I’m a kid,” Chloe said. “Please.”

That last word, uttered quietly and simply, seemed to be what struck home with her parents, because neither of them offered any protests.

“If you think it will work,” was all Heather said, and I nodded.

“I’m sure it will.”

They left a little past seven, and Calvin and Chloe and I spent the rest of the evening watching a movie. None of us wanted to talk about Jack’s murder or all the tumult of the day, although Calvin got a text message midway through the film and smiled.

“Alec Scurlock will take the case,” he said. “He apologized for getting back to me so late, but he was out on the Navajo nation all day and didn’t have good cell service. He wants to meet with you tomorrow afternoon.”

Chloe sent me an uncertain glance. “Don’t you have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow?”

“I do,” I said. “We’ll just close the store for a few hours. It’s not the end of the world. It’s much more important for you to meet with the attorney.”

She seemed to see the wisdom in that, because she replied, “Okay,” and Calvin sent back a quick text. A moment later, his phone binged again.

“Tomorrow at two,” he said. “Alec is going to be here in Globe meeting with the tribal elders anyway, so he’ll see you after that. It saves you having to drive to Payson to meet with him, since his office is up there.”

Chloe’s bewildered expression might have been comical if the situation hadn’t been so serious. “Where’s Payson?”

“About an hour and a half north of Globe along Highway 188,” I said. “It’s a pretty drive. But still, much better for you to meet Alec here in town.”

With the matter apparently settled, Calvin picked up the remote and started the movie again.

I wanted to relax, but something inside wouldn’t quite let me. Yes, Chloe now had a lawyer.

However, I wanted to eliminate the reason for having one at all.

Just like the past couple of days, Calvin had to leave early to be at work at eight. Today, though, Chloe and I also needed to get an early start so we’d have plenty of time to get the Airbnb cleansed before heading over to the shop. We’d need to lock up a little before two, but that would still give us almost four hours of being open, and with the weekend approaching, business should be decent.

We’d driven to the house in separate cars, of course, since Chloe would be coming back here at the end of the day and not to Calvin’s and my place. As I parked at the curb, I found myself staring at the Airbnb, and its cheerful yellow paint and flowers just starting to come back to life in the garden beds.

It definitely didn’t look like the kind of place that had been the scene of a brutal murder only a couple of days before.

I pulled in a breath, then heaved myself out of the driver’s seat before going around to the cargo area of the Jeep so I could get out the bag of supplies I’d brought along. It wasn’t all that much, just some white candles and a few bundles of white sage that came directly from the San Ramon reservation, along with a couple of small bottles of moon water.

All I could do now was hope it would be enough.

Chloe met me on the front porch, her expression tense. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” she told me as she unlocked the door.

I tilted my head at her. “I thought you said you’d done cleansings for friends of yours.”

A dismissive hand wave, and she said, “That’s not the same. It’s not like I was dealing with a murder or something.”

Well, she had a point there.

“The principles are basically the same,” I said.

She still looked dubious, but rather than reply, she pushed the door inward and walked into the house, chin now up in the attitude I now recognized as her way of pushing herself forward even when she wasn’t sure of the outcome.

I followed her. Even though I hadn’t felt any residue of Jack Speros’s presence when I’d been here the night before last, I still tensed, wondering what I would do if he’d decided to take up residence in Hazel’s Airbnb after all.

But the space felt curiously neutral to me. Even without a lingering ghost, there still might have been some dregs of the violence enacted here left behind, part of the reason why I’d thought it would be a good idea to perform a thorough cleansing of the place.

However, I couldn’t sense a single thing. Henry’s deputies had been detailed but also careful, which was why I didn’t spy a single knickknack or other item out of place, not even some fingerprint powder left on a surface.

Chloe must have noticed the same things I had, because she said, sounding almost disappointed, “Maybe we don’t need to do this after all.”

“No, we still should, even if the house seems okay,” I replied. “It’s always better to take precautions, just in case.”

She was quiet for a moment, surveying the flowered couch, the prints that echoed the home’s bright colors of blue and green and yellow. Then she nodded, saying, “Well, I told you I wanted to learn from you, so this seems like it would be a good place to start.”

“This isn’t school,” I said, almost amused, and her shoulders lifted.

“Maybe not exactly, but it’s still better to work with someone who knows what they’re doing, right?”

I supposed she had a point there. While I’d never had any formal training myself, relying mostly on books and then later on, watching some YouTube videos from people who were respected members of the witchy community, I knew that not everyone had the same learning style. For Chloe, it might just be better for her to have an example right in front of her.

“Well,” I said, “the first thing we should do is get these white candles set out and lit, and then we can go from there.”

I was still holding the bag with all my ritual supplies, so I reached inside and handed one of the pillar candles to her, followed by the long-handled lighter I’d also brought. She set the candle down on the TV stand, which was placed against the eastern wall.

Soon enough, all the candles had been put in positions roughly corresponding to the four cardinal directions. She sent me a questioning look and I said, “Go ahead and light them. As you do so, imagine a sphere of white light surrounding this place and everything inside.”

A nod, and she went ahead and lit the candles one by one, even as I murmured, “Goddess, grant us peace and protection within this space.”

Once Chloe was done, she came back to me and set the long-tipped lighter down on the coffee table. “Do we smudge now?”

“We won’t be smudging at all,” I responded. “We’ll light the sage and carry it through the house, but that should be enough.”

Her expression was a little puzzled. “You don’t smudge the traditional way?”

“Sometimes,” I said. It seemed clear enough to me that most of what she’d learned had probably been gleaned from YouTube videos and maybe online articles and blogs, and she didn’t have a lot of real-life experience. So much of being a witch was about intuition, about going where your instincts and the universe guided you, rather than parroting rituals you’d learned from secondary sources. “I’ll do that when I’m moving into a new space, or sometimes if I feel a place’s energy has become stagnant. That’s not what I’m sensing here, though.” I paused there before adding, “Give yourself a moment to become still and absorb the energies of the space. I think you’ll see what I mean.”

Her brows drew together, and she gave a thoughtful nod. Then she closed her eyes and spread her arms wide, as though to drink in all the micro-currents in the air that surrounded us.

I held myself as still as I could, even though my feet were already beginning to hurt and I would much rather have made my way over to the couch and sat down. Doing so would have disturbed Chloe’s meditation, though, so I told myself this shouldn’t take very long and that I needed to be mindful of her process.

To my relief, she opened her eyes a moment later, her face now reflecting a sort of wonder. “You’re right,” she said. “Why didn’t I notice that before?”

“Probably because you haven’t had a lot of practice letting yourself simply be,” I replied. “Being a witch isn’t always about doing. Sometimes it’s about stillness.”

“Like meditation?”

I tilted my head, considering the question. “Sort of,” I said. “And I do meditate, but that’s a little different from what you just did now. In this particular situation, it’s more a case of letting yourself be open to whatever energies might exist in a space.”

“I definitely don’t think Jack is here,” she told me.

“Neither do I. But it’s still good to make sure the place is clear and neutral, and that protections are set up so you don’t have to worry about anything hostile coming near the house.”

Now her slate-gray eyes were wide, reflecting real fear. “You think whoever killed Jack might come back to get me, too?”

“Not exactly,” I replied quickly, since the last thing I wanted was for her to be in a fearful state when we cast the protection spells. It was very important to be in a calm and mindful place when working any kind of magic. “Honestly, I don’t really know what we’re dealing with here. If it was a personal grudge, then there would be no reason for the murderer to come anywhere close to the scene of the crime. But at the same time, I just think it’s smarter to put as much protection in place as possible.”

My words seemed to calm her, because the worried look left her eyes, and now she seemed more thoughtful than anything else. “I can see that.”

“Good,” I said. “Because I think it’s important for you to do the protection work.”

Once again, her eyes flared with concern. “I don’t know how to do that!”

Although I’d never imagined myself as a teacher of the magical arts, I knew I needed to provide some guidance without sounding too pedantic. “This isn’t like Harry Potter,” I told her, making sure my tone was gentle, calm. “It’s not about learning specific spells and repeating them without any thought as to what the words actually mean. This kind of magic is all about intention. We both already know you have the gift, so it’s just a matter of channeling it in the direction you choose.”

Her expression turned skeptical. “But what about all those people who claim they have spell books and stuff to work their magic?”

Personally — although there were a few gems to be found here and there — I thought that most supposed practitioners of magic on social media were doing it for clicks and views, and not because they had any true talent. In those cases, reciting flashy spells made it seem as if they were accomplishing more than they actually were. Most of the time, I considered them harmless —even annoying specimens like Instagram star and sometime witch Lilith Black, who’d definitely bitten off a lot more than she could chew when she came to Globe to celebrate the solstice and had ended up murdered by one of her assistants — but when someone with an actual gift, like Chloe, tried to emulate them, the results were never good.

“Some people find they work better that way,” I replied, doing my best to be diplomatic. “But if both our magic came from the same source — and there’s no reason to think it didn’t — then it just stands to reason that you’d have more success following my method, right?”

Chloe mulled that possibility for a moment. “I suppose so,” she said, and even produced a half-hearted smile. “Maybe I’ve been making this harder than it needs to be.”

“Exactly,” I said, knowing I should leave things there and see what happened. “So, take a moment to think about when you’ve felt the safest, when you knew everything was going to be fine and absolutely nothing bad was going to happen. Then take that feeling and hold it in your mind as you send that same energy to protect this house and everything — and everyone — in it.”

She inclined her head toward me, acknowledging those instructions, and then she closed her eyes, face blank with concentration. I held myself still again, knowing that even a small movement might be enough to interrupt her thought processes.

Of course, the baby chose that moment to kick, but I wouldn’t let myself react. After all, I’d been putting up with the internal drumbeat for the past five months or so.

Chloe’s lips moved, although I couldn’t tell exactly what she was saying. Not that it mattered. What mattered was she believed those words were the necessary ones to conjure a blanket of protection that would keep her safe for as long as she stayed in this house.

And even though it was her spell and I had no real hand in it other than giving her some words of advice, I could somehow feel the atmosphere in the room shift, become even calmer, warm in a way that had everything to do with spirit and nothing at all to do with the actual temperature the thermostat was set at.

Then her eyes opened, and her mouth curved in a smile. “It worked.”

The word ended on the slightest of upward inflections, as though she was mostly sure she’d gotten the charm of protection right but still needed outside confirmation.

“Yes, it did,” I said, smiling as well.

However, she didn’t seem quite as at ease as I’d expected, considering how effective the cleansing had turned out to be. Her brows pulled together as she looked around the living room, and she said, “I’ve been thinking and thinking. You know, about who could have done it.”

She stopped there, expression still troubled, and I sent her an inquiring look. “You thought of someone?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But when I told you that Jack didn’t have any enemies, I might have been wrong. I mean, it all happened before Jack and I even started dating, so….”

“What happened?” I asked.

Chloe fiddled with a fold of her skirt. “I guess during his freshman year at Cal State Northridge, Jack got caught up in some kind of cheating scandal. He didn’t do it,” she added hastily. “And the school totally exonerated him. But the other kid got kicked out. I heard he ended up having to go to a private college on the East Coast, someplace where his parents could kind of buy his way in.”

I wanted to think this was a promising development, but I couldn’t be sure. Would someone really hold a grudge that long over an incident that, while embarrassing and inconvenient, might not have turned out to be terribly detrimental in the long run?

Maybe so. For all I knew, the boy who’d been forced to move across the country to escape his shame had discovered his bad reputation had followed him, and that even after several years had passed, he might find it hard to find a job once he graduated.

This was all pure speculation, though.

“Do you remember the other kid’s name?” Because even though I guessed this was probably a long shot, it still bore some looking into.

Chloe’s small white teeth caught at her lip. “Um…Bryce something.”

Well, that wasn’t very helpful. “Could you narrow it down a little?”

Despite the tension in her face, she couldn’t seem to help flashing a smile. “It was kind of an unusual last name. Bryce…Bryce….” The words trailed off, and then her grin broadened. “Bryce Arsenault.”

That name sounded like something out of a historical romance novel. But I had to admit it was a lot more unusual than “John Smith,” so I had to hope it wouldn’t be too hard to track Bryce down, wherever he’d ended up.

“Perfect,” I told my little sister. “I’ll have Calvin look into it. And now, we can go to work.”

There were no worries about the two of us being at the store, since I did much the same kind of cleansing in my shop every few months or so, just to be safe. True, those precautions couldn’t protect me from all mischief — like the rock Kurt Vonn had thrown through my window a few months earlier in an attempt to distract me from discovering who’d killed Trent Reynolds during the holiday brewing competition — but even in that case, the vandalism had occurred in the dead of night while I was miles away at home and safely away from the shattering glass.

And although I’d had a couple of items shoplifted over the years I’d been operating Once in a Blue Moon, I knew that sort of petty crime would have occurred much more often if I hadn’t done my best to make the store a safe space.

I settled myself on the stool behind the counter while Chloe went around and tidied up the few books and crystals that needed to be put back in their proper places. She seemed cheerful enough, and I was glad for that. It couldn’t be good to have a murder charge hanging over her head, but at the same time, she’d taken a proactive step toward protecting herself back at the Airbnb, and she had her meeting with Alec Scurlock this afternoon to look forward to.

Earlier this morning, while I was in the shower, she’d talked to her parents, and they’d agreed to go back to California on Saturday. As Chloe had already pointed out, it wasn’t as if they could stay in Globe indefinitely, and at least by waiting until the weekend, they’d have a chance to sit down with their daughter and her lawyer and get a better idea of where things stood. It sounded as though neither Jordan nor Heather was entirely happy about the prospect but had realized they simply weren’t in a position to remain here for months. True, the docket in Gila County moved a lot faster than it did in the Phoenix area because of our much smaller population, but still, if this ended up going to trial, it would take a while.

I couldn’t quite ignore the feeling of relief that came over me when I heard those plans. Yes, we’d all gotten along together better than I’d thought we would, but it was still a little awkward to be around my biological father and his wife.

And things improved even more when I got a text from Josie a few minutes after Chloe unlocked the shop’s front door.

I heard that the Speroses are leaving tomorrow. They just wanted to be here to handle having their son’s body sent home.

If I hadn’t lived in Globe for almost three years by that point, I might have asked Josie how she’d managed to acquire that particular piece of information. However, I knew my friend’s data-gathering skills were second only to those of an NSA operative, so I didn’t bother. The most likely explanation was that she’d talked to someone in the police department, or maybe someone who worked at the local funeral home, and they’d given her the skinny.

The important thing was that we wouldn’t have to worry about encountering the justifiably angry and grieving parents of Chloe’s former boyfriend. While my heart ached for them and what they were going through, I also knew they were directing their anger toward the wrong people. Chloe was family — and Jordan and Heather as well, in a slightly uncomfortable sort of way — and I didn’t want anyone making their lives any more difficult than they already were.

And if the medical examiner had released Jack’s body to be taken back to California, that meant he must have concluded his investigation. I hadn’t heard anything about that, but I wasn’t exactly on Henry Lewis’s email list.

I’d asked Josie what the coroner had found, and even her reply text had sounded slightly annoyed.

I don’t know. I’ve been trying to find out, but no one else in the department seems to know anything, either.

Under other circumstances, this all might have seemed somewhat suspicious, but I had a feeling the reality was much more mundane. Henry wasn’t talking because the medical examiner hadn’t found anything that didn’t line up with the obvious cause of death.

I had to believe that could only be good news for Chloe. If they’d found something incriminating — her fingerprints on the wooden handles of the garrote, or her DNA under Jack’s fingernails — then I had to believe Henry would have been in contact with her. Now, though, the evidence was looking more and more circumstantial.

And if that was the case, then it seemed to me the chances were good that her lawyer might be able to make the entire thing go away.

To my surprise, the first person through the shop’s doors that morning was Hazel. We’d been communicating by text so she had something of an idea of what was going on, but it seemed she wanted to talk in person just to reassure herself.

“How are you?” she asked Chloe, who also seemed somewhat startled to have her sort-of landlady show up out of the blue.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Selena’s been taking good care of me.”

“That sounds about right,” Hazel replied, a corner of her mouth lifting, as though she hadn’t expected to hear anything different. “I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything else I could do to help you out. I can understand why you might not want to stay at the house after what happened, so I checked with Mavis Jones to see if any of her Airbnbs are available. She’s got one free for the rest of this week and next week, too.”

At once, Chloe shook her head. “I appreciate you doing that for me, but I’m fine with staying at your place. Selena and I did a cleansing there this morning, and I know it’s totally safe.”

Only three years of being my best friend probably prevented Hazel from lifting an eyebrow at that comment. While she’d never gotten on board with all the woo-woo stuff, she knew it was important to me…and that, although she had her doubts, she couldn’t argue that my methods were pretty effective.

“If you’re sure — ” Hazel ventured.

“Oh, I’m sure,” Chloe said firmly. “It’s a darling house, and just because something awful happened there, that doesn’t mean I should leave. Besides, I think moving to a different Airbnb would make it seem as if I was feeling guilty about Jack’s murder, you know?”

I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I could see why Chloe might believe such a thing. Yes, she’d come to stay with Calvin and me for a couple of days to get over the shock of her ex-boyfriend’s death, but going away indefinitely might have signaled to some people that she was avoiding the Airbnb because she couldn’t bear to be continually reminded of the place where she’d killed him.

Hazel looked somewhat more skeptical, but it seemed she realized she shouldn’t argue the point, not when it already appeared as though Chloe had her mind made up.

“Well, I’m glad you decided to stay,” Hazel said, her tone studiously neutral. “And you just let me know if there’s anything else you need.”

“I will,” Chloe promised her.

After that, Hazel headed out, saying she needed to stop in the Sundowner Gallery down the street to check on the placement of a new painting she’d dropped off the day before. Once she was gone, I looked back over at my little sister.

“So…you really are going to stay at the Airbnb.”

“Well, yeah,” she replied. “It would have been kind of silly to go to all that work cleansing and protecting the place if I wasn’t going to actually sleep there. Like I said, I don’t want to intrude on you and Calvin any more than I already have. It’ll be fine.”

She looked so confident that I didn’t dare contradict her. Besides, she was right — there was absolutely nothing in the house that could hurt her, and all signs seemed to point to this being an isolated incident. I had to believe that Henry was following up on any possible leads, doing his best to discover who in Jack Speros’s circle of friends and acquaintances would have been motivated enough to come to tiny Globe, Arizona, to seek his revenge.

Well, except for the part where Chloe had already told me that Jack didn’t have any real enemies, except possibly Mr. Bryce Arsenault, erstwhile cheater of tests. I thought then of the card reading I’d done the afternoon before.

The Devil. The Seven of Swords. The Emperor.

Temptation and weakness. Betrayal. A controlling outside force.

What was it supposed to mean?

Right then, I didn’t have a clue.