The Hexed

  “I hope not,” she said, then looked at Rocky earnestly. “I’ll do my best to think of anything that might help. Not that we didn’t at the time, but...”

  “But you’re adults now. And you see the world a little differently with the passage of time,” Sam told them.

  “So...in the midst of this, a weird question, maybe,” Haley said. “But I did work really hard on dessert, so who’s still hungry?”

  Everyone laughed, clearly relieved for a chance to leave the past behind for a few minutes, and agreed that dessert was a great idea.

  Haley smiled, and Devin rose quickly. “Want some help?” she asked.

  “Sure, thank you.”

  “Want me to get the coffee?” Jack asked her.

  “That would be great,” Haley said with a smile for him.

  Dessert and coffee were served, and as if they’d made a silent agreement, everyone kept the conversation light. The locals all apologized to Devin for thinking that her aunt had been a real witch—a real spell-casting, broom-riding witch—when they’d been kids.

  “I’m actually surprised we never met,” Haley told Devin. “My mom went to see your aunt often, but not about...you know, spells or anything. My dad said your aunt should have had a degree, because she was the best therapist he’d ever met. He said she had a way of putting things into perspective for people, and that she told stories that were like parables, helping them figure out what to do.”

  “Thank you, Haley. It’s nice to hear she was thought of that way,” Devin said.

  “Unfortunately, the world is also full of idiots,” Jack said. “You should see the old reports I found on your house, Devin.”

  “Oh?” she asked.

  “People reporting weird lights and sounds—oh, and a ghost that walked in those woods next door. Some old guy—he’s dead now—complained to the police about your aunt conjuring up the dead. People get really crazy ideas. Sometimes it’s almost possible to understand how we hanged a pack of innocent people.”

  “It always seems sad to me that the ones who wouldn’t stoop to lie were the ones who wound up dead,” Haley said.

  “Thankfully, those days are over,” Devin murmured, then looked at Jack. “If they weren’t, Auntie Mina wouldn’t have made it to her ripe old age—she’d definitely have been hanged.”

  Haley laughed. “Well, since the practice of witchcraft was illegal and punishable by death, they would have hanged half the people living in Salem right now.”

  Soon it was time to leave. Despite the heated exchange when Rocky had first mentioned the athame to Vince, everyone parted on the best of terms. When Rocky and Devin started out, Haley stopped them.

  “Devin, even if this jerk goes away again, I hope you know you’re always welcome here,” Haley told her. “We’d love to see more of you.”

  Devin thanked her as Sam, getting into the rental with the others, called back to Rocky, “See you at the hotel.”

  “You got it,” Rocky said.

  Devin waved to them and then slipped into the passenger seat of Rocky’s car. They’d gone a mile or two before she spoke. “You really go right for the jugular, don’t you?”

  He turned to look at her briefly before returning his attention to the road. “I don’t actually see it that way. I see it as giving someone a chance to explain their actions before starting the whole pain-in-the-butt interrogation process.”

  “Interesting—and yet, with my friends, you’re willing to take long walks and schmooze forever without getting to the point.”

  He glanced her way again. She was smiling—not attacking him. She was truly curious.

  “Well, we all have our reasons,” he said. “Most of the time we have physical evidence to work with. This case...”

  “Apparently, what you did was right. You got your answer—and you got everyone to admit they feel the same as you about your friend Melissa’s death.”

  “At least I can track down the truth about Vince’s athame,” he said. He looked over at her again and realized that he wanted to pretend they were driving home from a date, that they had met and liked each other and had been out tonight for the sheer pleasure of being together.

  Instead, I met you over a dead body, he thought.

  It hadn’t taken him more than a few minutes earlier to appreciate the fact that she cleaned up nice, as the saying went. She was always stunning, but tonight she’d worn a blue halter dress with some kind of a wrap. The color emphasized the blue of her eyes, and the silky fabric clung to the curved length of her body. And her natural warmth had won everyone over. Whenever someone had complimented her books she had been modest and gracious, explaining that her aunt’s stories had enthralled her back when she was a lonely child.

  “So was he telling the truth?” Devin asked, breaking into his thoughts. “Vince said he can tell when people are lying. Do you have some kind of radar for that, too?”

  He laughed. “Yes, there are certain physical manifestations that go with lying,” he told her. “But those who know them can hide them. I don’t think Vince would have lied, though. He knows that even if I don’t verify his story myself, one of the Krewe will.”

  She turned to look out the window. “It’s strange. I knew some people talked about Auntie Mina, but I never realized just how...well, how ignorant and vicious they could be.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” he said quietly. “The world is filled with wonderful people. But there are also a lot of people who are ruled by their bone-deep prejudices, and some of them think the laws of this country deserve lip service and nothing more.”

  When they reached her house, he walked with her to the door, as always. And though Auntie Mina was there—watching reruns of Murder She Wrote―Rocky went through the place and checked things out, anyway.

  Thoroughly.

  Twice.

  Because he didn’t want to leave.

  He’d finished his sweep of the house—not wanting to offend Mina, he’d told her that he’d wanted to make sure no one had tampered with the doors or windows from the outside—when his eyes lit on the pentagram Devin had purchased from Beth’s store.

  “Mind if I borrow this?” he asked her.

  She looked at him with a slightly ironic smile. “You think a retired schoolteacher who works as a medium and creates jewelry might be a serial killer?”

  “No need to get defensive,” he said. “Although we all get defensive sometimes, don’t we? No, I don’t really see Gayle as a murderer. But if we can trace the medallions, at least we’ll have something concrete to work with.”

  “But when she first started making them, they were sold in dozens of venues,” Devin said.

  “We follow leads,” he told her. “That’s what we do. Some of them go somewhere, some don’t. If this turns out to be a lead, we’ll follow it.”

  Devin lowered her head for a moment. “Of course, feel free to take it.”

  “Thank you. I’ll get it back to you,” he promised.

  He really couldn’t stay any longer.

  When he finally bade Mina good-night and headed to the door, Devin followed to lock it behind him. “Tomorrow...well, I know you’re busy with the case, but...”

  “Yes?” he urged her.

  “Did you mean it earlier when you talked about checking out Perley’s theory on Gallows Hill?” she asked.

  “Of course. I’m not the only one working the murders, you know—it really is a task force.”

  Hell, yes, I meant it, he thought. Anything to be with you.

  The thought of feeling that strongly about someone was disturbing. But he couldn’t forget the fear that had raced through him like wildfire when he’d arrived earlier that evening and seen her door standing open.

  When he’d rushed into the woods, following the shrieking cry of the raven carried on the wind.

  “And,” he added a little too harshly, “no running into the woods by night. I don’t care if you see our Puritan ghost and she asks you out to tea. No leaving the
house like that.”

  “No, I think I’ll stay in. Sorry,” she said when she saw the thunderous look on his face. “I was teasing. I promise.”

  They were close again. So close he could feel her heartbeat, feel her breath. The compulsion to simply reach out and pull her to him, press his mouth to hers, was almost overwhelming.

  He really needed to leave; he didn’t know her feelings for him. He needed time himself—away from the temptation of being with her.

  He stepped back. “I’ll get here around nine-ish, okay?”

  “Perfect. Thank you,” she told him.

  She closed the door between them. He waited until he heard the bolt slide, and then he headed to his car.

  * * *

  That night, sleeping—though perhaps not exactly sleeping—Devin found herself on Gallows Hill again.

  She was part of the air, there in her mind but not in the flesh. It was the end of summer, she thought. Right when the nip of autumn hinted now and then that fall would be brief and the warm days of summer would quickly give way to winter’s bitter chill.

  She heard the sound of the death cart that brought the condemned to the hanging tree.

  As the cart drew closer she heard sobbing. Any conversation was whispered, but sobbing was allowed. One could cry for the fact that the devil had come to Massachusetts and targeted the vulnerable among them.

  This time she caught only fragments of conversation.

  “...must be done.”

  “She’ll be the death of all of us.”

  “What difference...legal or illegal?”

  “If she is gone... no mockery in court.”

  Devin couldn’t see the speakers, couldn’t even tell their sex, though she thought there were only two of them. She tried to hear more than the brief snatches of conversation that hung on the air, but she couldn’t.

  The sound of the cart grew louder.

  That...and the weeping.

  She awoke with a start.

  This time she was shaking, though she didn’t feel frightened. She ran out to the parlor. The television was still on, showing reruns of Perry Mason.

  “Devin! What is it, dear?” Auntie Mina asked.

  Devin was already busy at the bookcase, searching through all the titles. Auntie Mina had loved a good mystery. There were shelves of fiction. There were also numerous books on herbs, on witchcraft, on the history of religion and on just about every other topic that dealt with spirituality.

  There were also history books. She was looking for one that Aunt Mina had purchased forever ago—a reprint of a work that had first been published in the early 1800s, as she recalled. It had been written by an author named Michael Smith, who’d claimed to be a descendant of Hattie Smith, who had been arrested for witchcraft, confessed and then rotted in jail for almost a year after the last hangings. His conclusions had been hotly disputed, if she remembered correctly.

  “Devin?” Aunt Mina said worriedly.

  “I’m all right, Auntie Mina. I’m looking for the Smith book on Salem.”

  Aunt Mina looked at her curiously. “The Smith book? Really? It’s never been considered one of the better histories of the area. Why that book in particular?”

  “He wrote about a young woman from Salem Village who had been accused. She was never arrested because she simply disappeared.”

  “Yes,” Auntie Mina said. “I remember reading about her.”

  Devin found the book at last. She looked at the copyright page and saw that the first printing had been in 1804. It had been reprinted once in 1886 and then again in 1964.

  “You found it,” Auntie Mina said. “You’re going to want the last few chapters. The first half deals with the situation here in Salem in the context of the witchcraft panic across the Christian world at the time. But the second half is specifically about the people here in Salem. I was particularly touched by the story of little Dorcas Good. Only four and half years old when she was arrested. Poor thing. She confessed to the magistrates that her own mother was a witch, and that she must have been, too. But who knows what those so-called ‘examiners’ put into her head. She was in jail for over ten months and came out of it completely insane.”

  Devin took the book to the sofa and sat down. Her ghostly aunt followed her. Somewhat disturbed by the very late—or very early—hour, Poe let out a few squawks of protest to let Devin know that they should both still be sleeping.

  But she had found what she wanted and ignored his complaints.

  “‘Chapter thirty-three,’” she read aloud. “‘Margaret Nottingham, nee Myles, was young, just nineteen, lovely and well-liked within the community. Shy and sweet, she was married just a year and had an infant daughter the year the winter of discontent came upon Salem. Despite her humility and kindness, she answered truthfully when spoken to. She felt strongly that they were overpaying Reverend Parris and that they would be a more closely knit community if they were to maintain only one house of worship. She was equally vocal against the first arrests and was heard to say the girls themselves were witches to accuse one as goodly and pious as Rebecca Nurse. A day before she was to be arrested and taken to her own examination, Margaret disappeared. It is to be hoped that Margaret escaped the area entirely and perhaps made her way to New York, but letters and diaries of the time suggest that she met with a different end, possibly murdered by a member of her own family lest others should be accused due to their association with her.’”

  “You believe she’s the woman at our window,” Auntie Mina said.

  “When I was a little girl, you told me that dreams can be memories. Maybe, in my dreams, I remembered that I’d read about Margaret,” Devin said, smiling. “The woman who comes here is obviously a ghost—and I believe she’s a ghost from the time of the trials, not a reenactor. Yes. I believe that we’ve found the identity of our mystery woman. I think that Margaret Nottingham comes to our window in hopes that we’ll discover her truth.”

  “And what does that have to do with the recent murders?” her aunt asked. “While a killer might have been in the neighborhood now and thirteen years ago, he couldn’t possibly have been here in 1692. So what is the connection?”

  Devin smiled grimly. “That, Auntie Mina, is what we must find out.”

  10

  When Rocky arrived in the morning, Devin had the parlor strewn with books and papers and maps. Auntie Mina was nowhere to be seen. Devin explained that she didn’t yet have the necessary strength to remain visible at all times.

  “What is all this?” he asked, gesturing at the mess.

  “Research. Did you know that the last witch to be executed was a woman named Temperance Lloyd, killed in England in 1682? Lord Chief Justice Sir Francis North was disgusted by the proceedings, saying that the poor woman was condemned on ‘fancy and imagination.’ She confessed, but of course you can get anyone to say anything if you torture them.”

  “I’m sure the confessions here in Salem were coerced, as well,” Rocky said.

  “Well, naturally. Tituba must have been scared out of her wits with everything going on—ready to say anything to make the men ‘examining’ her happy. But they were only falling back on a long history of torture and interrogation in Europe, where tens of thousands of supposed witches were burned on the Continent and in Scotland, and hanged in England.”

  “You’ve certainly been busy,” Rocky said, looking around at the amount of material surrounding her. “What brought this on?”

  “Another dream,” she admitted, then hesitated, looking at him. “The ghost of our Puritan woman has been around awhile. And we know that,” she added quickly, “because I found reports that people have claimed for years that they’ve seen her at this house. Think about it. Less than thirty years ago people—including your friends―thought my aunt was scary just because she was Wiccan. Even though a lot of things started changing in the sixties and seventies, when Laurie Cabot arrived and was declared the Official Witch of Salem by the governor, and tourists started coming i
n droves, some people are still afraid, and people who are afraid strike out at others.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Rocky said. At the same time, he realized that if he had a cause, a passion in life, he would certainly want her on his side. Feeling off balance, he moved away to say hello to the bird.

  He wanted to touch her.

  He couldn’t let himself.

  “Okay, I think this murderer is killing because of whatever happened to a Puritan woman named Margaret Nottingham all those years ago.”

  “Why?” Rocky asked her.

  “I don’t know, exactly. But somehow, I feel like it has to do with old practices and the past.”

  “You think that somehow this woman was a practicing witch in the middle of a Puritan colony in 1692?”

  “No, I think she was murdered because her family were afraid she was going to accuse them to save her own life. I think Margaret Nottingham was murdered by someone close to her.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask her about it when you talked to her?”

  “I never talked to her.”

  “Then how do you know her name?” he asked.

  Devin shook her head. “I found a book that talked about her. It’s mostly theory and conjecture, of course, but his argument that she was murdered makes sense. And since so many ghosts are murder victims condemned to walk the earth until justice is done, it makes sense that she’s the Puritan woman.”

  “Okay, let’s say you’re right, and that’s her and she was murdered. So are you saying someone wants to avenge her death now—over three hundred years later? And they’re trying to do so by pinning the murders on today’s Wiccans?”

  Devin stared back at him, obviously frustrated. “No, I just think there’s a connection. Maybe some rite was going on when she was killed. Maybe someone is just picking up again where her murder began because they’re crazy or something. I don’t know. But...” She hesitated momentarily. “What happened when you—how did you find Melissa Wilson that night?”

  He stared back at her and let out a long breath. “She called me.”

  “On the phone?”

  “No.”