Murder Above the Fold Read online

  Tossing the sample on the counter, she spotted the display of oatmeal-based products and, jean-clad legs flashing, flung herself in that direction.

  “Oh, there’s soap, too?” She gathered up three bars and threw them at Jinx who, though stunned, caught them and laid them on the counter beside the register. “And this, and one of these.” More products flew across the room—a tube of mask bounced off an urn that probably should have been in a museum, and that was when Mag hit her limit.

  “Stop.” Enough raw power infused the command that the pixie chick froze on tiptoe, midway through reaching for a cellophane-wrapped bath bomb. A flick of Mag’s wrist sent a tingling lash of magic across the room, stripped Hagatha’s influence off the woman like peeling the skin off a banana. “That’s enough now.”

  Gentle despite the rising desire to inflict bodily harm on the old witch who was to blame, Mag pulled her energy back.

  The woman’s face pinked and she looked down. “Maybe just one of the bars of soap. I don’t know what I was thinking for a minute there.”

  “We all get carried away sometimes,” Mag said. Jinx and Mag exchanged a look. “The bath bomb is on the house. Unadvertised special, today only.”

  The minute the door closed behind Hagatha’s latest victim, Mag broke into a tirade, but the wail of first one siren, then another, cut it short. The shrill sound raised the hairs on the back of her neck.

  “Mind the shop.” Curiosity yanked Mag out the door. She stuck her head back in just long enough to issue a second order to Jinx. “And call Clara.”

  Great gouts of dark smoke cursed the air over the tiny town of Harmony, and Mag wasn’t the only person drawn to the source. She fell in with the handful of curious souls headed toward the short block of downtown storefronts.

  “It’s the newspaper office,” several voices chattered.

  “Gonna lose the whole block,” someone said. “You wait and see. All those buildings are too close together.” Others muttered in agreement.

  There was a sense of excitement behind the dire predictions—a there-but-for-the-grace way of thinking. Mag ignored all of it and wondered if Clara would find her in the crowd. Being Balefire witches, magic flames fell under the sisters’ control so there might be a way they could help. If they wanted to break every coven rule Penelope had penned.

  Mag didn’t give a flat fig for the rules. Better to save the town than cower like rabbits in the bushes, and any witch worth her ritual salt knew how to work magic in public without being seen. After all, her kind had been hiding in plain sight for practically ever. It was only the random nuts like Hagatha that set out to call attention to themselves and their covens by extension.

  Back in Port Harbor, fire engines ran through the city almost every day without causing a mass exodus. Not so in the hamlet of Harmony, where half the town turned up to watch flames dance around the interior of the newspaper office.

  Only one person bucked the crowd—Clara caught Mag’s eye and hurried over.

  “I was headed back to the shop to get you, but I guess you already heard about the fire. Convenient, no?”

  “Were you thinking what I’m thinking? Maybe we should…” Mag wiggled her nose and nodded toward the fire. “Looks like the local FD could use a little assistance.”

  Before Clara had a chance to answer, shouts rang out, and a figure appeared like a specter through the smoke with a body draped over his shoulders in the standard carry position. A flurry of activity near the ambulance blocked their view as the unconscious victim was lowered onto a wheeled stretcher and the med techs took over.

  Bryer Mack let the EMT nudge him away from the woman whose life he might have just saved.

  “Leanne. It’s Leanne Snow. She wasn’t supposed to be working today. How could this have happened?” His face looked pale under the streaks of soot as he raised his voice to deliver the grave news. He slumped onto the tailgate of the ambulance and let the attendant strap an oxygen mask over his face, but shook off further assistance.

  Lifting the mask off again briefly, he announced, “I’m fine. I’m okay. See to Leanne.”

  Something brushed against Mag’s intuition, a niggling sense that she was needed and right now. Amid such chaos, tuning into the source of the feeling wouldn’t be easy, but she knew she had to try. One by one, she shut out the distractions. The hungry crackle of flames as they ate through the building. The tinkle of glass breaking in the heat. The smoke that choked whenever the wind sent it in her direction. The grinding of the pump and rush of water through the hoses, and finally, the shouts of those working to contain the blaze. Above all that, now that she was listening, she heard the plaintive howl of a cat.

  “That settles it; we have to do something.” Mag practically dragged Clara around the corner of the nearest building where they wouldn’t be seen. “Perry’s cat is still in the apartment upstairs. We need to save Max.”

  “And how do you propose we do that without giving anything away? I mean, people are going to notice if we march right up in front and conjure up a storm.”

  “Listen, I know Hagatha has the coven so cowed they wouldn’t risk a spell to stop a sneeze, but this is our town now, and I’m not about to let it burn just because a bunch of weeping weenies can’t tell where the line is when it comes to overreacting.”

  “Fine, but you’re in charge of memory charms if this goes bad. I hate messing in people’s heads. What did you have in mind? Weather spell? Make it rain? Or we could enchant the fire hoses to pump harder.”

  The grin that spread across Mag’s features pushed back some of the ravages there.

  “Balefire.” It was her name, her birthright, and a summoning all rolled into one. Balefire flickered between Mag’s outstretched hands.

  “Ooh, that’s genius.” Clara picked right up on her sister’s intentions. Infecting the raging fire with their namesake would give them the ability not only to walk through the fire unharmed but to put them in control of the hungry flames.

  “Not bad if I say so myself. Help me with the sending.”

  Clara called up her power, laid her hands over Mag’s and fed her intention to the ball of flame. Sparks showered them as the fireball sped on the wind of their desire and arrowed toward the newspaper office.

  “I’ll get the cat, you take care of the rest.” With barely a flicker, Mag was gone.

  “Sure, take the easy part,” Clara said to the empty space where her sister had been. Still, the chance to do magic in a way that counted for something important sent a thrill through her as she rounded the corner and made her way back toward the burning building.

  The din of the battle made her pop tab silencing charm useless. An elephant could pass through the crowd on feet rendered silent by the sheer volume of noise, but Clara needed to get close to the newspaper office, so she chose a different charm from her arsenal.

  When she rounded the corner, Clara looked exactly like the rest of the firefighters in soot-covered gear, at least to the human eye. Any witch in the crowd would see right past her chameleon charm, but she couldn’t be bothered about that as she walked into the inferno, and what looked like certain death.

  Flame sprites danced across the floor and slithered up the walls, but from the moment, the magical Balefire had taken over the hungry flames. They ate no more of the newspaper office.

  There would be no better time to snoop through the wreckage than right now while the fire held authorities at bay.

  “See anything useful?” Mag popped into the room. Angry claws tore their way up her arms, and Max curled around her shoulders, hissing and yowling. “I reckon we have a few minutes to look before we put on the show.”

  “I don’t see anything,” Clara said, “but the whole place reeks of charcoal starter, and you know what that means.”

  “It means someone knows we’re on the trail and tried to hide evidence. Or worse, kill Leanne Snow. You figure out where it started yet?”

  Between the smoke and water damage, there wasn’
t a lot left to sift through. Both file cabinets had been reduced to twisted, smoldering wrecks, and the desktop computer was a melted ruin. Following her nose, Clara trusted the now-harmless fire to shield her from being visible through the opening that had once held the front window. Bits of safety glass glittered—washed clean by the water still spurting though the building courtesy of the fire department, who had no idea the danger was over.

  “The strongest smell is coming from the storeroom. There’s probably not much left.” Mag followed Clara toward the rear of the office. She was right; piles of ash were all that remained of what she assumed had been boxes of newsprint.

  “We’ll have to ask Leanne what was in here, but whatever it was, someone wanted it gone.”

  “If she lives.” Grim lines bracketed Mag’s mouth, darkened as much by sorrow as soot. “You don’t think any of this is our fault, do you? For prying, I mean.”

  Clara hoped not. Working in tandem, the sisters knocked the fire down by half, set it to subside in a natural-looking way, and heard the firefighters outside shout in triumph. They conjured damp towels from home, wiped off as best they could, and sent the sooty mess back to the laundry room before heading outside to mingle with the crowd.

  “Keep a sharp eye out for anyone who smells like fire starter.”

  “Don’t you mean a sharp nose?” Clara’s quip, meant to diffuse tension, only netted her a snort from Mag.

  In the few minutes it had taken to tame the flames, save the cat—and the town, come to that—whispers of arson were already circulating.

  “If there’s one thing I hate about small towns, it’s the rumor mill,” Mag muttered to Clara. “Grinds exceedingly fast, and chews up every grain of truth.”

  The whispers turned to audible speculation before they were even a block away from the charred remains of the building.

  All that paper in an old building? Should have gone up like a torch long before now.

  Did you hear? Bryer Mack is a hero. A popular sentiment that spread almost as quickly as the fire had.

  Marsha probably set the fire. That theory stopped Clara in her tracks long enough to listen to the cockamamie reasoning behind how Marsha might have accomplished such a feat from beyond the grave. Some kind of device, set up on a timer to burn evidence and throw off suspicion.

  “Evidence of what?” She couldn’t help but ask the snobbish woman who’d said it.

  “Er,” and a confused look was all she got for an answer. She rolled her eyes and kept walking, keeping an ear out as she went.

  You know the building was insured to the hilt. Maybe Perry was trying to scare up funds to pay for his divorce.

  Or maybe, Mag thought, Leanne stumbled on the same piece of information that led to Marsha’s murder. With all evidence either burned or water damaged beyond repair, the only way to find out would be to talk to Leanne herself—if and when she pulled through.

  Chapter Twelve

  Harmony certainly wasn’t big enough to warrant an entire hospital to serve its residents, so Leanne was rushed fifteen miles north to the county facility with what seemed like half the town trailing behind. Mag and Clara hopped into the old VW bus they’d acquired when they decided to leave the city. It didn’t have an engine per se, but who needs an engine when you have a world of magic at your disposal?

  “So what are your spidey senses telling you, Maggie?” Clara asked when they were almost there. “Because I can see it going one of two ways. Either Leanne was an unintended victim, which means the office itself was targeted; or Leanne hasn’t been as forthcoming as she’d like us to believe.”

  “Or she knows something but doesn’t realize its significance. Or, we could be encountering that elusive creature known as a coincidence.”

  Clara snorted, “Rarer than a polka-dotted unicorn, that one. No, I smell the distinct scent of desperation.”

  “Me too, and it smells oddly like Paco Rabanne. The trouble is, Perry was right. It’s a best seller at the local five and dime. You should start manufacturing some alternatives, Clarie. We could make a fortune.”

  “I’ll get right on that after we catch a killer and foil whatever plot Hagatha’s been hatching up when she thinks we’re not looking. Slow down, there’s the hospital entrance.”

  As indicated by the cast of characters assembled in the waiting room, it was clear that even though Harmony was home to a powerful coven of witches who made every attempt to fit into “normal” society, there was still a separation between the two groups. Not one coven member had made the short trip, leaving Mag and Clara the only representatives of the magical community in attendance. Not that anyone else noticed.

  Leanne’s husband, Dylan, managed a grim nod in their direction but spent his time pacing back and forth in front of the formidable double doors marked with a large red stop sign to indicate anyone without an employee badge was unwelcome unless accompanied by someone in scrubs or a white coat.

  Several women around Leanne’s age were also present, one of whom identified herself as Mary Mountain-Farber, the friend whose wedding Leanne had mentioned previously. Mrs. Green, whose given name was still unknown to the Balefire sisters, cluck-clucked about how she’d been Leanne’s babysitter once upon a time, and wasn’t it such a terrible tragedy for a fire like that to have occurred in their sleepy little town?

  Each well-wisher carried the same expression of concern and anticipation, including Bryer Mack, who arrived last and made a point of aggressively shaking Dylan’s hand while uttering the sort of platitudes expected in a dire situation such as this. Dylan, overcome with appreciation for the man who saved his wife’s life, wrapped Bryer in a hug. If Bryer’s incredulous expression was any indication—was not in keeping with his usual, reserved personality.

  “You’re welcome,” Bryer patted Dylan’s back stiffly, “I just did what anyone else would do.”

  When Dylan was finally ushered into the no trespassing zone amid reassurances that Leanne would make a full recovery, the level of conversational restraint—along with any sense of dignity—took a nose dive directly into the floor.

  “That old building probably hasn’t had an electrical system update in decades. Dimes to dollars, that’s what caused the fire.” Mrs. Green nodded knowingly, as though she’d been a licensed electrician in a former life.

  “Unless someone else started it. You know, on purpose.” Mary whispered the last two words.

  Mag and Clara opted to listen intently from the very edges of their lightly-padded, tweed-covered chairs. Bryer, the last of the town group to put forth a theory, opened his mouth to speak just as Perry Weatherall burst through the doors.

  “Is Leanne all right? Evelyn said she was inside the office when the fire broke out.”

  Mag nodded, and Clara stood to pat Perry on the arm, “Yes, she’s fine. And we made sure Max got out safely, too.”

  “Thank you,” He leaned in close to keep from broadcasting his next statement to the entire waiting room, “I didn’t want to admit to being worried about an animal while a human life hangs in the balance, but I’m grateful.”

  “Any word on how the fire started?” If the answer was anything other than arson, Clara knew someone was lying.

  “Set.” Perry pushed the word out between clenched teeth. “In the storage room. They tell me Bryer went in and saved Leanne. Stand-up guy, that one.”

  Dylan reemerged from the no-fly zone a few minutes later and began a detailed update on Leanne’s condition, which included the joyous statement that she was awake and talking. Mag and Clara took full advantage of the distraction to slip into the hallway under another forbidden, heavy glamour.

  “Might as well go straight to the top of the coven’s naughty list. We’ve never been ones to do things halfway.” Mag grinned with zero remorse as the pair hurried to Leanne’s room, visiting hours and restrictions duly ignored.

  “We’re so sorry to barge in here like this, Leanne, but we’re worried about you.”

  “If you’re here
, that means the fire was connected to Marsha’s death, doesn’t it?” Talking might have been a slight exaggeration. Leanne could hardly manage a croaking whisper.

  “Well, dear,” Clara’s grandmotherly tone didn’t match her youthful exterior but, since she actually was a grandmother, it smacked of authenticity when she said, “even if that weren’t the case, we still would have checked in on you.”

  Thankfully, Leanne was so out of it, she probably wouldn’t have batted an eyelash if Clara waved her wand and rode a broomstick around the room.

  “Whoever started that fire could have killed you. Even if that wasn’t the intention, this guy is obviously willing to go to the ends of the earth to hide something, and he doesn’t care who gets caught in the crossfire. The hospital is secure”—Mag didn’t mention that her confidence in that fact was due to the protective charm she’d surreptitiously placed on Leanne’s room—“so you’re not in danger here, but if you are a target, we need to act quickly.”

  “Why would I be a target?” she asked, plucking at the gleaming white sheet. “I have no idea why Marsha was killed.”

  “No, but it’s possible you know something, even if you don’t realize it. I know your throat is sore, but we need you to tell us what happened. Every detail you can remember, whether it seems significant or not.”

  Leanne attempted to shift into a more upright position, but in the process tugged on the line running from the crook of her arm into a bag of fluids hanging overhead. Clara helped her get situated, and was grateful that the woman was distracted enough not to notice that she was nearly naked with two practical strangers.

  “Well, I couldn’t sleep last night, so I decided to go into the office and clean up some details. We’d finalized and sent the commemorative edition out to the printers on Friday, and decided we’d skip the regular edition for this week. Everything was running so far behind, and I figured I could use the new printer and work up an insert.” She paused, her lips tightening.