Williams Witch Mystery Omnibus 7-9 (Paperback)

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Wind buffeted the car, causing it to sway around me. I gritted my teeth as I forced myself to keep my eyes unfocused on the darkened street. Fighting back nausea, I concentrated on the green line in front of me. The tendril of magical energy had started at my house and crept its way into town, its path meandering back and forth like a stream. It had been caused by a spell cast by a malicious entity, a Fae creature known as the Outsider, that had taken over my daughter’s body. When I told the Retirees about the tendrils, they’d bickered back and forth over what it could mean. Sarah had suggested that it was a poisoning of something she called a ley line, which traveled under my house. She argued that we should focus on the corruption at the house instead of focusing on the lines. The tingling at the back of my neck told me she was wrong. Fortunately, Betty and Agnes had overruled her, and we had decided, as a group, to investigate where the lines went. However, they may have voted in my favor because they could tell I would refuse to believe the lines meant nothing. The shimmering green light emanating from my house and seeping into town was the only lead I had to rescue my daughter.
“Turn left,” I said.
Chris grunted in acknowledgement and turned at the next intersection.
Keeping my eyes unfocused made driving unsafe, and stopping and starting had proven to be time-consuming. Fortunately, Chris had volunteered to help. He couldn’t see the lines. They were something only a witch could find and only if she knew what to look for. But after I’d come clean to him about my witchly heritage, he hadn’t questioned me on the strange things I had to do. Showing up with a bag at one in the morning, claiming something had possessed my daughter, and I needed someplace to stay? Reasonable. Driving me around town, following an invisible line? He would do it. Warmth spread through my chest. He had more faith in me than my ex-husband ever had. I still wasn’t sure what I had done to deserve Chris.
The line in front of me swerved to the right, cutting straight through a house. I patted his leg and pointed. He took the next available turn. He slowed as my head swiveled back and forth as I tried to find the line again. It had exited the house at an odd angle and cut down an alleyway.
“There.” I pointed.
He slammed on his brakes to make a tight right turn, and my seat belt tightened around me. We slid into the alleyway, and he slowed his pace even further. We crawled forward at about ten miles an hour.
Motion caught my eye. I blinked and looked up in time to see a squirrel leap from one roof to another. The house cat that had been chasing it skidded to a halt and hissed. The squirrel scampered away into the darkness. I exhaled and shook myself. My seat belt wouldn’t let me move forward. I quickly unclipped it and let it slide back into place before rebuckling it.
Chris came to a stop at the end of the alley. The tendril didn’t continue to the other side of the street.
Chris looked both ways down the T-intersection. “Where now?”
I rolled my shoulders back and unfocused my eyes again. Let me see. The green line shimmered into view on my second long exhalation. It twisted to the left. I pointed.
Chris inched forward into the intersection and turned. We drove past the last of the suburbs. We were headed into the heart of downtown. Single-family homes were replaced by rows of brownstones and businesses. As we approached the pier, the green vein darted off to the right again.
“Turn here,” I said.
We followed the line, twisting and turning through the streets of downtown Point Pleasant. It was well past dusk, and the last of the dinnertime stragglers had returned to their cars hours before. I leaned forward in my seat and stared at the green sparkles as they dipped inside another building. It was the old sheriff’s station that had been abandoned years before, after a water leak forced them to evacuate.
“Circle the block. I don’t see which way it comes out,” I said.
Chris turned right. We coasted down and around the block, his foot barely on the gas. I followed the building with my neck as I kept my eyes unfocused. The green line plunged into the building through the front doors, and it didn’t come back out.
“Which way?” Chris asked as we pulled back up to the front.
“I didn’t see it come out.” I fidgeted in my seat. “Could you go around again? Just in case?”
The car slid forward. He drove even more slowly that time around. We were going so slowly that a pedestrian could have passed us. Even at that pace, I didn’t see the green tendril come back out. It had gone inside the old sheriff’s station and stopped.
“It ends in there.” I cocked my head toward the station.
Chris pulled into the parking lot. The concrete was cracked, and weeds poked out of the fissures. We came to a stop facing the doors. Even from there, I could see the white notice from the city, taped to the door to declare it temporarily condemned. The ink was faded. When the notice was posted five years before, they hadn’t planned on the relocation to the double-wides just outside town being a permanent solution. But as with all construction projects in the region, starting always took longer than anticipated—or getting the budget approved when the temporary solution worked well enough.
I leaned forward in my seat and craned my neck back. The three-story building loomed over me, its windows dark. The ones on the ground floor had been boarded up, the plywood slipped in between the glass and the metal bars. I grimaced. Why does the light have to end here?
“Now what?” Chris reached across the center console and squeezed my hand.
“I need to go in.” I unclipped my seat belt.
He held on to me. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
I glanced between him and the building. The green tendril of magical energy went there for a reason. I had to know why. “No… but do I have a choice?”
“Putting aside that it’s breaking and entering,” Chris said as he held my gaze, “you don’t have any protective gear on you. It was condemned for a reason. Mold.”
I slumped in my seat.
“But—”
My head snapped up toward him.
He held up a finger. “The renovation project is scheduled to start tomorrow.”
I blinked. I had almost forgotten about the project. Only a few days had passed since I promised Olivia I would help out with that. Her father, the mayor of Point Pleasant, wanted someone he trusted to represent the city with the various contractors, not only to make sure the project stayed reasonably close to the budget and on track but to make sure it was done right the first time. While I wasn’t a contractor, all my years as a property claims adjuster had taught me a thing or two about keeping restoration projects moving. Step one was the mold remediation work. Tomorrow, they would begin gutting the building.
“And I can go inside then,” I whispered. A smile spread across my face.
He nodded.
My phone dinged in my pocket. I fished it out.

Heather: Everyone else is back. Are you done tracking down your lines?
Dani: Just finished. Heading over now.

I snapped a picture of the old sheriff’s station and slid my phone back into place. Chris backed out of the parking lot. I stared at the building as we drove away. It lay at the end of one of the eight tendrils that emanated from my home. The Retirees had taken three, Megan Miller had taken another two, and I had taken the last three. And Heather was quarterbacking the operation from her apartment over the Bizzy Bean. This was the last tendril. My heart clenched as we pulled up in front of the cafe.
“Thank you for driving me around today,” I said.
Chris squeezed my hand. “Anytime. I hope one of you found what you were looking for.”
“Me too.” I kissed him. “Don’t wait up. I might be a while. See you when I get home.”
I flushed when he smiled at the word home. It had slipped out. I had spent only one night at his house, but I already felt more comfortable there than I did at my place. To be fair, my home was under a magical spell that made anyone inside feel impatient and moody. Feeling comfortable somewhere else wasn’t difficult. But to call Chris’s place home felt right. Have we really taken that much of a next step?
“I’ll keep the light on for you,” he murmured.
I ducked my head and slipped out of the car. He chuckled as I closed the car door. I hunched my shoulders and shoved my hands into my pockets. I fingered his house key in my pocket as I trudged up to the Bizzy Bean.
Chris backed out of the parking space as I pulled the front door open. Warmth flooded over me, chasing away the midnight chill. The other women had already arrived and were crowded around one of the round tables in the plexiglass cat enclosure to the left. I pulled the door closed behind me and made my way to their table.
A large map of the town, fastened to a corkboard, sat in the middle of the table. The Retirees sat on one side of the table, and Megan stood a few feet away, reading from a piece of paper as Heather pushed a pin into place on the map.
“And the other one ended at 1482 Eddison Avenue. It’s three blocks north, two blocks east from the other one.” Megan dropped her notepad into her purse.
“Another home?” Betty asked.
“All occupied too.” Megan flopped into a chair. “I got some weird looks when one of the neighbors saw me staring at the place, but that’s no surprise. One of you ladies might have better luck getting an invitation inside.”
Other than Heather, all the women at the table were witches. And we had all descended from the same cursed coven. Megan’s curse was probably the worst of the bunch. Betty couldn’t cast magic without something going wrong. Agnes couldn’t leave Point Pleasant without getting deathly ill. Sarah could cast spells only on the full moon. I had prophetic dreams of the future, which I had no control over. But Megan was instantly distrusted by anyone she met or even heard her name. Hers was a lonely life. Until recently, she hadn’t had any friends.
“My first two were homes as well but not the last one.” I stepped up next to Heather and grabbed the push pins from her. I shoved them quickly into place. “The last place I checked, the line ended at the old sheriff’s station.”
“That has to mean something, right?” Betty asked.
Sarah shrugged. “Not necessarily. It’s not uncommon for ley lines to go through buildings with history.”
I grabbed a seat from a nearby table and sat down with the group. We stared down at the map. Several of the points were clustered in the same neighborhood. But the others were spread out over the town. I could see no rhyme or reason to any of it.
“The only way to know is to go inside,” Agnes said.
Betty shuddered. “Abandoned buildings always creeped me out.”
“It’s not going to be abandoned for long,” Sarah said.
I nodded. “I think I have an in for that.”
The group turned and looked at me.
“It’s part of Steven Bishop’s revitalization project.”
He was the new town mayor. He’d hit the ground running with his plans to rebuild the downtown.
“I volunteered to help him with it. Demo work starts tomorrow.”
“What’s the plan once you get inside?” Betty asked.
I shrugged, for I was in uncharted territory. Being a witch still felt new to me. Only seven months had passed since I found out. And every month, I learned something new that turned my world upside down again. Planning was hard when I didn’t know what would change on me next.
The Retirees exchanged a glance. This was new territory for them as well. They’d been cursed for so long that they’d accepted it. Taking it into account was no different to them than grocery shopping or scheduling a hair appointment. Our discovery of the origins of the curse—and my daughter’s subsequent possession by one of the entities responsible—had turned their lives inside out as well. We were all floundering.
The clock over the door ticked away the seconds as we sat in silence, staring at the map. The sound was a constant reminder of how little time we had left. A Warden of the West, one of the secret police of the witching world, would arrive in two days. We’d spent a whole day tracking down the lines. We had a little over a day to figure things out.
Heather cleared her throat. “What are we going to do about Grace?”
The question was like a bomb going off. I flinched. The Retirees grimaced, and Megan pulled away from us, her arms wrapping around her stomach. She had been the one to call the Wardens. She had to. She was under a mind-compulsion spell to report information to them. That probably didn’t make her feel any less guilty.
“Ask me again tomorrow,” I said.

• Potions and the Pleasantly Poisoned
• Tomes and the Tangled Trail
• Divinations and the Disappearing Dead
• Hexes and the Haunted House
• Spells and the Suspiciously Silent
• Grimoires and the Ghostly Guest
• Enchantments and the Eerily Ensnared
• Rituals and the Restless Remains
• Charms and the Cursed Coven