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Chapter 1
Amelia had a whole new respect for her mother. She’d been the grand witch of all witches when she’d been alive. Now that Mom was gone, she’d given her all to her. Having a monthly meeting with some of the coven would make a grown woman sob. But she was determined to make this work even if she had to kill the lot of them.
When someone nudged at her from a link, she paused in her nearly destroying the witch in front of her. Pausing, she thought, was a good thing too. Otherwise, she might well have enjoyed herself too much and taken out the entire room. Amelia knew that people would be mad about it, but she was just pissed off enough today to do it.
“You’re in a mood today.”She smiled when it was Jamie, mate to Mark, the oldest brother and king of the bears to the Cross bruin, who spoke to her.“My goodness, what is she going on about? Something about housing? I wouldn’t think you guys would have that much trouble with housing. Just poof, you have a house.”
“Yeah, but that’s a big no-no with being a witch. We can’t use our magic to make our lives easier. Not that everyone doesn’t do this already to a small degree, but there is a limit even on what I will approve. This one, in particular, is wholly aware of what the rule is but has been working on loopholes—that I must admit are pretty clever—to get her neighbor to turn over her house to her. It’s bigger, she says and just what she needs to hold her monthly meetings. But it’s the appliances, as well as the large master bedroom, that she wants more. Also, there is a large pool out back that she thinks her family will enjoy more than hers would. It’s not going to happen.”They both laughed at her, already knowing what she was going to say to the woman.What can I do for you, my dear friend?”
“You know what I did for the government, right?”She asked her if she was still working for them, finding people that needed to be found and dealt with.“When they beg and pay me a shit ton of money, I’ll work for them. In this one, Jamie is going to help me out as well. She has this freaky ability that allows her to change into the littlest things and get in and out without anyone being the wiser. Anyway, I digress. I need your help with the earth. I could have asked Frazier because he can do it too, but he’s having entirely too much fun, and you’re not. So I thought that I’d distract you with a project.”
“No, I’m not having fun. However, I do feel as if I’m missing something here. Like I’m being tested or something.”Jamie asked her to hold on, she’d look. After a few minutes of her asking questions to, Mable, the woman in front of her, Jamie, spoke to her again. “You’re kidding? I know you’re not, but I can see my mother doing this. Every day, I find things that I’d like to take her to task about. I wouldn’t, but there are days. So they want to piss me off with bogus requests so that I will get so fed up and tell them I didn’t care what they did. Slick work around if you can get them to make me pissy. Which I am, but now I’m going to be here all fucking day and hand out charges against them until this is finished. In the meantime, I can help you too. Whatever you need from me.”
“Great. There is a visitor in town who is making issues. Usually, I wouldn’t care, but when I had to go into town earlier this morning, he nearly knocked me down when he stomped by me. I got like a reading from him. He’s looking for his sister and her kid. I haven’t any idea why he’s pissy about that. His mind was too focused on finding them rather than why.”She asked Jamie if she had a visual of him.“I do. Frazier said you work better when you have something like that. When he turned around to cuss me out, I got a good look at his face and the gun he was packing. He’s not anymore, by the way. I had Sunny take it from him. She couldn’t get a read on him either. He is seriously pissed off right now. I just wanted to rape his mind, but I think it’s important to figure out what he’s doing rather than killing him off with my magic.”
“Okay. You think of him, and I’ll have a look. From there, I can trace him backward to—how far do you need me to go?”Jamie told her that at least until she found out what his anger was about.“If I see the face of his sister or her kid, I’ll go that route as well. If they’re not guilty of anything and he’s just a prick, I don’t want to allow them to be hurt. Can you…I don’t know, keep listening to this woman and hint at what I should be saying when she pauses?”
“Does she ever pause?”They both laughed, and she said that she’d do it.“Thanks for this. I hope you can at least find out something. You’ve helped me a great deal, and I want to return the favor.”
It only took her a few seconds to find the man. He was sitting in a restaurant having a cup of coffee. Amelia hated coffee with a passion. While she was drinking hot tea with Frazier nightly, she didn’t care all that much for the store-bought brand at all. It was his granny’s tea that she had fallen in love with. But since she and her mate, Frasier’s grandda, had died, Amelia had not asked for any of it, thinking that they’d want to keep it around, but she could go for some of her fall special right now.
Getting into his mind, she found that he was an angry sort of shit, pissed off about nearly everything that didn’t go his way—which was usual because he was an idiot of the first degree. While searching for the cause of his over-the-top anger, she looked around for his reason for wanting to find his sister. It could be nothing more than she was a bitch and had said something to him this morning, but she—just as she was making up stories that might have pissed the man off, she found the source of his anger. It wasn’t good. Nor were some of the other things that she’d been able to find out in the man’s mind.
“Jamie?”She said she was there.“There is a body in a gully near the entrance to the Pigeon Forge area. Not far from the mile marker that leads people back to Gatlinburg. He’s been there for a while, at least a couple of months. Decomposed and been shot three times. There won’t be an identification on him, but his name is Nathan Webb. He’s somehow connected to Dave Farley’s sister. By the way, he’s the angry shit. I can’t find where he killed his brother-in-law, but he does know where his body is. And if you have someone look at his body hard enough, you’ll find enough evidence on him to make a case that Shithead had done it, I believe.”
“That has him angry? Oh well, that’s the man that I was supposed to find any way that the Feds asked me to look for. Webb has been missing from his home for about that long, too. Since he’s an attorney representing some high-profile federal cases, the Feds want him found now rather than later. They’re not going to be happy with the news, I’m afraid.”Amelia said she was still looking.“You might want to tune into your meeting before you do that. Mabel is thinking that you’re agreeing with her proposal for her to take the house because you’ve not said anything in a while. She’s a cow, and you should lay down the law and tell her how it’s not going to happen. Even with magic, people are greedy fucks, aren’t they.”Amelia looked at Mabel while agreeing with Jamie.
“I think that you’ve gone on about this quite enough, Mabel. You knew when you got here that I wasn’t going to agree with you. You’ve been a waste of my time and that of the others here, and I don’t appreciate it. You will live in the house that belongs to you and leave your neighbor alone. If I hear that you are tormenting her again, I will have you pay a hefty fine for pestering her about anything at all. And I don’t mean materially, either. I will strip you of some of, if not all, of your magic.” She looked around the room. “If you think that I’m going to do what my mother has done in the past, then you are sadly mistaken about that. I will hear each and every case, and I will, good or bad, pass judgement on you. If you are here to waste my time, to piss me off so that I walk away? You don’t know me very well. I will be here until every appearance is heard. Do I make myself clear?”
Six of the witches gathered up their things and left. Two more were nodding like they were happy this was the way she was going to handle things from now on but left as well. As the eight remaining witches sat there, Amelia told them that she wasn’t going to be listening to anyone wanting to increase their wealth by means of magic that was against their bylaws. In the end, everyone in the room left, and she was finally able to concentrate on the man.
“Thanks for leading me right to Webb. Now, if you could find out where Farley’s sister is and if she and her child are all right, I’d feel a good deal better. I have no idea why, but I have a feeling that this isn’t going to bode well for her in the end. Not if he’s that angry still after a couple of months.”Amelia told her that she’d found the source of his anger. “I’m not going to like it, am I?”
“Probably not. Nathan, the man in the gully, was an attorney for Madeline Farley, Dave’s sister, in getting her child support for the kid. I hate it when people do that. If you can’t afford a kid or don’t want one, then don’t create them. There are methods of keeping that from happening. She goes by—hang on. She has three children, Jamie. They’re triplets. Two daughters and a son. Anyway, Maddy needs her child support. Baby Daddy is behind by about eight years now. Burney Archer, their father, just stopped working above board so that he’d not have to pay her for the kid’s needs. Nathan and Maddy had been friends since before they started kindergarten together. He was helping her pro bono. Sadly, it cost him his life.”She asked if she knew why her brother killed him.“Dave has never liked Webb. He was a brilliant attorney and a good friend of Maddy. Plus, he’d been helping her hide from the man. Why hiding? I don’t see it in his mind, but I’m assuming that it has something to do with the fact that he knows Archer from prison, and they’re working together on this. They were prison inmates together and, like minds, and all became good friends.”
“So this shit killed the attorney that is helping his sister get food on the table for his two nieces and nephew because he didn’t like him? You do know that is one of the stupidest reasons I’ve ever heard for a reason to kill someone, don’t you? Not to mention treating his own flesh and blood this way. Christ, I hate people.”Amelia laughed and said for as long as she’s been around, that one is way up on the top of her list, too.“Do you happen to know where Maddy and the kids are? I mean, is he even in the right area to find them?”
“Let me have a search around. She’s a pretty little thing, by the way.”Amelia found the woman easily enough, but finding the kids was a little more difficult. Each time the woman bounced from hiding place to hiding place, she didn’t have the children with her. Being ten, she figured that they’d have a good handle on being able to care for themselves, but she really didn’t know that many children. “She’s good at hiding them away, that’s for sure. And she is in town. She works three jobs right now, each of them a restaurant—to which there are an incredible amount of them around here that is forever hiring. Dishwasher for two of them, and she cleans rooms for a bed and breakfast just up the road from where her brother is enjoying coffee. Right now, she’s at one of the restaurants washing dishes. She’ll be getting off soon. And it’s payday for her. Poor woman. She isn’t making much. When this is over, I’m going to find her and help her out.”
“I have him now. One of the officers who is helping me today is going to be watching him for the next few hours. By tonight he won’t be able to take a shit without the Feds knowing the weight, size and what it consisted of. He’s staying at one of the larger hotels just off the main drag in Gatlinburg.”Amelia said she’d not known that she had that much pull.“Neither did I, to be honest, but once I told them that he killed Webb, a high-profile attorney, they stepped right in and took over. Fine by me. I would have just killed Dave right off the bat, and that would be the end of it.”
Still looking for the kids, she found four other hiding places that they’d been using over the last month. Each time they moved, it was as if they knew that Dave was close on their tail. They’d leave quickly and quietly. Sometimes, the kids would simply bug out of a hiding place before their uncle showed up an hour later. Never any less than that, either. Just as she was moving to the next place, she hit paydirt.
“Found them. Christ, Jamie. They’re behind the Gatlinburg Crockett’s Breakfast Camp in one of the empty buildings. It has electricity and heat but nothing else. It’s on Parkway. They’re going to be caught if—never mind, they’re on the move again. They heard some kid taking the trash out or something and have hidden again. They’re all right, but I’d really like it if you were to pop there and get them. Take Mark with you. I don’t want any of you hurt because they’re digging in the dumpsters.”She watched as the kids seemed to know just what they were looking for.“They’re smart as tacks, those three. Or their mother taught them well. Either way, they’re not just eating people’s leftovers from their plates, thankfully. They’ve found some pancake mixes that are expired. Also, they’ve found a bag of apples, some other spices and some kind of canned meat. I think it’s ham. Now they have some syrup that they’re putting in their backpacks. They’re resourceful. I’ll give them that.”
“Do you know where they are headed?”She told her that they’d been staying in one of the many empty shops long that lane and would more than likely hit another empty building before nightfall.“Okay. I’m going to go up Parkway and pop into the first empty building I come to, hopefully ahead of them. This might turn out badly if they scream or something. What are you going to do?”
“Get their mom. I’ll get her and then bring her with me to meet up with you guys. I just realized that one of the girls is hurt. I don’t know how or anything. I’m focusing more on keeping up with Maddy for now.”Jamie said that sounded like a good idea.“I’ll see you soon. But please be careful. I don’t want anything to happen to you either.”
Amelia used her considerable magic to close up the building that she was in as she made her way to the restaurant where Maddy was working. Just as she was ready to come out of the bathroom where she had popped, there was a shot fired in her direction.
It took her a few minutes to find out where the shots had come from. Then too much time for her to find Maddy. Just as she feared, it was she who had been shot. And it was bad, too.
She couldn’t leave with Maddy, not with her wounds the way that they were. Her life blood was pouring out of her even as Amelia was trying to save her. Maddy had been shot by someone coming from the dining area, looking for her, no doubt. There were people screaming and running around like they’d never seen blood before. Having enough, she entered the room and looked around to see what she had to work with.
It looked like she was going to bleed out if someone didn’t get their heads out of their asses, so Amelia entered the brouhaha and started barking orders. No one seemed to understand that she didn’t work there but did what she told them. Telling Jamie what was going on, she gave her just enough magic to keep her alive. That was the best she could do with all the witnesses running around.
“Maddy has been shot twice. It’s going to be touch and go here for a little bit. She was shot once in the head and then in the chest. Get the kids, and I’ll meet you at the hospital. I can’t tell who shot her as I’ve never been close enough to the fucking bastard that’s her brother to tell. But I have his scent now. He’s mine.”Jamie asked if she thought she’d be a while.“Not on my end. But there is…Oh damn, Jamie. I found your officer. He’s dead. And it looks like Dave boy shot and killed him. I can see his trail now, and it was him. Dave shot his sister, too. I’m so sorry. I can’t save him. He was already gone when I found him. But I’m working on Maddy.”
