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Ordinary household rubbish. Gabi wasn’t sure if that was supposed to mean something. Was it a metaphor for the girl being trash? An anti-witch agenda perhaps?
Rick blinked, processing the information. “The killer wants you to delve into her secrets—the victim’s. That much is clear. Do you have anything on the killer?”
“Just a gender. Female. And she has painted fingernails if that helps.”
Rick tapped his lip, thinking. “To carve a label like that … it’s strange she didn’t write what the girl’s actual crime was. That she’d classify her as naughty, leave that message for the world to see, but not tell the world what the girl had done…”
“What are you thinking?”
Rick sighed. “That this girl may not be the last. Your killer is angry—and righteous. She’s passing judgement, maybe sees it as her duty to pass that judgement for one reason or another—maybe she’s cleansing the girl in death, maybe purifying the world by ridding it of this ‘naughty’ girl. If thatisthe case, she could easily find others that don’t meet her standards.”
“That doesn’t help me.” Gabi pushed back the urge to sigh. “I need to know what I’m looking for.”
“Someone hiding in plain sight.” Rick removed his glasses to rub his eyes, reminding Gabi of the fact he’d probably been teaching all day only to come home and have her throw this on him. “She’d need to be around people, somewhere she can keep an eye on them, watch them for signs of being ‘naughty’. You can rule out loners and people who keep to themselves.”
“So, she’d be involved in everything?” Every gossiper in Agedale ran through Gabi’s head, but there were too many of those to narrow down.
“She’d certainly be involved in most things. And she’d be watching people closely—keep an eye out for that.”
“So, in other words, this doesn’t help me.”
Rick sighed. “With what you’ve given me, this is the best I can do. I’m sorry, Gabriella.”
Gabi shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you with this, it’s not your job.”
“I told you to come to me if you needed help. This qualifies.”
Gabi smiled despite herself. “Thank you.”
Rick shrugged, a smile teasing his face. “No problem. Call me again if you find more information, I might be able to narrow down your pool of suspects.”
“I’ll do that.”
Gabi ended the call, drawing in a long breath and letting the information absorb. The chances were she’d already met the killer. She could have spoken to her today while she walked down the high street—if Rick was right that she’d want to be involved, she’d have heard Gabi was asking questions and come to see for herself.
Gabi flipped open her notebook, running down the list of names, but no obvious suspect jumped out. She’d have to dig deeper into every one of these people.
Tomorrow, after she interviewed Paulina’s miraculous witness. Right now, she had a coven meeting to get to, and she was already late.
FIFTEEN
JOY
From the outside, Agedale might seem like any other town in England. It was the size of a village but awarded town status in the seventies because of the rarity of a purely supernatural community. Quaint, narrow terraces filled the centre, with tidy pavements and window boxes on every sill, and each door was painted a bright jewel tone. Among them were shops with thoughtful window displays, a bakery with woven baskets of biscuits and pasties, and a pharmacy with a dish of clean water outside for passing dogs. There were larger houses for the wealthy closer to the sea, with big driveways and expensive cars, vast herb gardens, and even an ice sculpture maintained by a natural witch with an affinity for water.
And right at the end, Joy’s house. Closest to the sea, the small stone house had been painted a rich sky blue. An earth witch’s garden sat at its front—blooming roses, fat sunflowers, delicate bluebells—and in a narrow strip down the side of the house, a bed of rosemary and bettony and foxglove lived. In the back garden, almost visible, a variety of trees grew, each one possessing a different magic quality, used in wands and love spells and charms for good health and protection.
Joy stood on her front step with her wand in hand, breathing in the scents of the sea and the smells of all those flowers and herbs vying for space in her garden. She fixed her stare on the sloping road, scanning every pair of headlights that swung over the top before inevitably turning off before they came close.
Gabi was late, and Joy was worried.
She wrapped her arms around her middle, her heart sinking with every minute that passed without Gabi’s appearance, and the urge to walk into the centre of town and search for her was growing. She didn’t want to—didn’t want to goanywherealone—but her paranoia and jumpy fear had shifted to fear for Gabi, and somehow this was worse.
All Joy wanted for days was for everything to settle back to normal, for coven life to get her through the week, but right now Joy couldn’t think of anything she wanted more than to see the headlights of Gabi’s car make their way down the road to Joy’s house.
Today was a bad day. Unwilling to let her week be unsettled any more, Joy had gone into work. She’d opened up the conservation centre fine and had been okay recording the numbers of three kinds of bird. But she’d flinched at the sudden rush of the sea, and when she’d set out to check on two rogue familiars who’d let themselves loose in the sandy grasses, she fell apart.
When her shoes crunched through the sand, it hit her that no matter how hard she tried nothing would go back to normal. Not ever.
