Page 23 of The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Spite & Spellwork

Yes, Avery was certain Luna would have needed something to help her along the way if she’d truly done it herself. Despite humanity’s inevitable journey to the grave, their bodies possessed a natural compulsion to resist it.

Avery lifted the tablecloth beside the body and found small crystal shards from where the ball had made impact on the floor. Had it fallen and then been used as a weapon? With the thick velvet lifted, she also could see a broken glass talisman that consisted of four concentric circles of dark blue, white, light blue, and black tied to a leather cord. “A broken nazar,”18 Avery informed. “Could be from the fall to the tile.”

“Could be from failing to protect against a nasty hex,” Lahiri offered.

“Are you rescinding your previous implication that our victim was a fraudulent witch?”

“Stores like this are supplied from all over. It’s possible the amulet was crafted by someone who can actually create protective charms.”

At least he was keeping a more open mind. Avery became distracted by an odd contraption she saw beneath the table and reached forward, flipping a lever. A light turned on from below, projecting a beam up through the stand that would have held the crystal ball. She raised an eyebrow and pressed a button, and the table itself began to lightly vibrate.

“What are you doing?” asked Lahiri.

“Confirming your theory,” Avery answered, turning off the vibration. “It would appear modern con artists have fancier gadgets, but their methods are much the same. In my day, they just had someone pull a wire attached to a table leg.” She picked up the crystal ball and placed it back on the stand, which diffused the light, giving it an otherworldly glow.

“Are those handprints?”

“Yes,” Avery confirmed, frowning. “Which suggests our victim used it to bludgeon herself.” She looked past the blood into the crystal ball itself. She slid a hand against the underside of the table, stretching to reach just beneath the crystal ball. Her arm wasn’t long enough to both look and reach.

“Bludgeon herself?” Lahiri repeated.

Avery dropped to the floor, crawling beneath the table for a better look. “Potentially directly after she clawed out her own eyes.” In the center of the table was a circular window. The lights, it seemed, were not coming from beneath the table but rather from the base of the stand itself.

“How could someone… A hex? Some sort of possessive magic?”

“The cause remains to be seen,” said Avery. Why would a window be needed here if the lights were above it? “Are you able to see me through the ball?”

Lahiri tentatively took a few steps toward her and peered at the blood-painted crystal ball. “Sort of. Even in the non-bloody parts, you’re a bit fuzzy.”

Avery ran her finger over a long, unbroken scratch in the glass. “I think she used this to give the illusion of movement or pictures. Slide things against the glass, have a hazy version of it projected above.”

“Why does that matter?”

Avery slid out from under the table. “Because a con artist has been potentially murdered in the very lair where she duped people. Understanding how she did it may lead us to someone else who understood how she did it and who might have been offended enough to retaliate.”

She produced a bay leaf and held it out in front of her. “Be a good chap and stand back, would you?” With a snap of her fingers, the leaf ignited. She mouthed the words ansuz, kenaz, and raidho as each rune sparked off the flame. Smoke rose to the ceiling, twisting above her like a storm cloud; it formed a ring that churned and drew the shadows from the room, causing the tea candle to clatter to the floor and snuff out, as well as the curtain to fall back over the doorway. The air thinned as the divination spell reached its culmination, and the sensation of holding one’s breath just a second too long choked her before the tension released, leaving them in the darkness.

Lahiri carefully pulled back the curtain once more, casting a dim light into the room. “I don’t see anything. Is there a light switch in there?”

Avery frowned and slid her hand along the side of the wall, flipping the switch as she found it.

The small room illuminated fully, but it was unchanged. The spell divined any objects used in spells or creatures that had recently cast magic and depicted them in shadow, but nothing had taken shape around the room.

“Unexpected,” Avery admitted.

“Does that mean magic didn’t do this?” Lahiri asked incredulously.

“It means magic wasn’t cast here.” She turned to the detective. “Have you checked the back office, or her home?”

“Office was undisturbed and locked. The victim doesn’t live far from here, but we don’t have a warrant to search her home. Do you have reason to believe something happened there?”

The man was just doing his job, with all the procedures and protocols Mundane policemen did their jobs, but to Avery it felt like he was inhibiting her investigation on purpose. “There is a suspicious lack of evidence at this crime scene, which suggests if magic was cast, it was cast elsewhere. The next logical location to check, as we have no suspects yet, would be her home. Though it’s improbable that the cause of Ms. Ravenwood’s death is Mundane, I would recommend ordering tests to see if she imbibed anything questionable recently. I cannot speculate on a drug-induced psychosis, but a medical examiner might be able to shed light on those possibilities.” Would it be inappropriate to ask Lahiri for his niece to consult on the case again? Yes. Of course it would be. Avery scowled and reminded herself again why she had not seen Saga in the past month. Her absence was starting to prove distracting.

“I’ll call the judge about the warrant.” Lahiri’s resolve brought the case back into focus.

“Good.” Avery pointed to the large storefront windows. “Was the boy the last to see our victim alive?”

Lahiri double-checked his notes. “According to his initial statement, Blake left around five p.m. The store remains open until approximately seven, but Luna did occasionally take appointments after hours. Until we have an exact time of death, that is probably our best way to narrow our window.”