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Chapter Twenty-Five
Rowan
After the ceremony, we spend the rest of the night remembering Sybil. Telling tales, sharing memories. Like the time she messed up a potion and lost all her pubic hair for a month. Or when she enchanted a whole herd of deer to march down the center of Raven’s Roost wearing jingle bells. We drink and we eat, we laugh and we cry, until halfway to dawn.
I soak up every bit of the witches’ stories, because I had missed that side of her all these years. I’d managed to somehow remain oblivious to it all. It’s so bittersweet hearing the women of the Raven Society talk of Sybil. Ven holds my hand when I get weepy, but it’s hard to cry for long listening to so many joyous recounts of her life. It had been a splendid one, of that there is no doubt.
When I finally head upstairs around four AM, there are witches draped over every piece of furniture in the house, and plenty sprawled out on the floor with sleeping bags and pillows. My heart is full: this place that is now my home is really our home. A place of magic, and of cats, and of women.
The moon shines down as I crawl into bed with Circe and Minerva, and sleep tugs at me before I even pull the covers up.
My phone rings around ten AM. I jerk out of a deep, cottony slumber. My mouth is as dry as sandpaper, and my head is pounding. I am hungover as shit.
I fumble for my cell and answer it sleepily. “Hello?”
“Ms. Stonecroft?” asks a female voice.
“Yes?”
“It’s Lacey, at the sheriff’s office. There’s been a development in your aunt’s case. Sheriff Johnson wants you to come in as soon as you can.”
That wakes me up pretty quickly. “Okay. I’ll be there soon.”
I force myself out of bed, take several Ibuprofen, and jump in the shower before changing. It might turn some heads if I show up at the police department wearing a golden cloak. When I get out, I throw on jeans and a T-shirt, ballet flats, and sunglasses. No way am I letting the sun hit my eyes with this headache.
A half hour later, I pull into the small parking lot in front of the police station. When I head in the front door, the deputy at the front desk waves me down the hall. When I reach Johnson’s office, I pause in the doorway. He looks up from some photos on his desk, his expression stern.
“Rowan. Please come in.”
He gets up and ushers me into the chair across from his desk, then shuts the door behind us. I feel a shiver of apprehension move up my spine. I catch a glimpse of the photos on his desk before he sits down and closes the folder. They reveal something black and burned. I know what he’s about to tell me.
“We found more bodies,” the sheriff says, shaking his head.
I feel tears prick at the corners of my eyes, and my heart pounds in my chest. “Bodies, as in plural? Do you know who yet?”
“Two bodies. We’re still working on their identities.” His sharp blue eyes burn into mine. “We don’t have any reports of missing locals, so it’s possible they came in from out of town.”
My stomach lurches, and bile burns my throat. Witches that had come into town for Sybil’s funeral. The killer had used our gathering to their advantage. No one had left the house last night that I was aware of, but maybe some had never made it there at all. I remember now hearing snippets of conversation, mentions of people who had said they were trying to come but hadn’t shown. Everyone had assumed travel delays of some sort.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I groan, clutching my stomach as the coffee I’d chugged on the way here starts to come back up.
The sheriff grabs his trash can and rushes around the side of his desk just in time to shove it beneath me. He holds my hair back as I heave over the receptacle. When I straighten back up a couple minutes later, he hands me a few tissues.
“Thanks,” I say weakly.
“I’m sorry to have to share such bad news,” he says. “But there’s more.”
My eyes widen. “More?”
“We have a suspect in custody. Found him at one of the crime scenes. Both happened late last night.” The sheriff pauses and fixes me in that piercing gaze again. “It’s Xander Cole.”
The world tips sideways. For a moment, I think I’m going to be ill again. I shake my head, my blood racing too quickly in my veins. It can’t be Xander. It can’t be. Because the way I feel about him…
“Are you sure?” I ask. “I mean, maybe it was just a coincidence.” I can hear how silly my words sound as they come out of my mouth.
The sheriff shakes his head again, this time in a different way. “Technically everyone is innocent until proven guilty. But it doesn’t look good for him.”
I can’t breathe. My chest is so tight I can feel myself start to hyperventilate. How could I have been so fucking stupid?
“I know closure is important with this kind of tragedy,” Johnson continues. “And it’s not full closure yet, but I thought with the killer behind bars, you could begin to heal.”
I can feel myself nodding, a robotic action not of my own volition. “Excuse me, I’m going to freshen up a moment in the ladies’ room.”
My legs tremble as I stand and make my way back down the hall. When the door of the bathroom closes behind me, I walk past the stalls, over to the sink, and turn on the faucet. I look at myself in the bank of mirrors, taking slow breaths in and out. After a moment, I scoop some of the cold water into my mouth to rinse out the taste of bile, and splash some on my cheeks before patting my skin dry with a paper towel.
I listen to the sound of the running water for another thirty seconds while I try to calm down, then turn it off and close my eyes. My head fills with images of Xander in my bedroom. Xander touching me, kissing me, his hands everywhere. Is this really happening? It doesn’t feel real. It can’t be.
With a final deep breath, I open my eyes.
That’s when I see the huge black beast reflected in the mirror behind me. I don’t even have time to scream before the horned monster claps his clawed hand over my mouth and we vanish from the police station.
