The Hexed

  Rocky said. “Look, I want to help you.”

  Brent leaned back, staring at him. “All I can do is keep telling you that I didn’t do it. I’m not a killer—I could never be a killer. You have to prove I didn’t do it and get me out of here.”

  “Let’s see what else we can find out,” Rocky said.

  “You promise you’ll look for the truth?” Brent asked him.

  “I promise I’ll look for the truth—wherever it leads,” Rocky told him. He stood and walked out of the room, pausing at the door. “For your own safety, stay here. If someone really is trying to frame you, you’re better off staying out of their reach.”

  Sam and Jack came out to the hall to meet him. “That’s it?” Jack asked.

  “We need more,” Rocky said.

  “More? What the damned hell more do you need? Barbara Benton, alive and well, says good night to her friends and goes back for her phone, only she never makes it. The phone turns up in Brent Corbin’s pocket, and the woman turns up dead,” Jack said.

  Sam was silent but he looked at Rocky, and Rocky knew what he was thinking. Brent Corbin had been living in Salem when Melissa Wilson was killed; he had a dark SUV; he had recently purchased an athame, even though he ran a store that carried Wiccan supplies—except for athames.

  “It’s not enough,” Rocky said. “We have to find something more, not to mention we need to compare his whereabouts to the times of the other murders. Have we gotten the search warrants for his home and business yet?”

  “Should be through any minute,” Jack said. “But it’s got to be him.”

  “We don’t know that for sure. And if we let ourselves believe he’s guilty without checking every possibility...well, that could make us convict an innocent man and leave the real killer to strike again,” Rocky said.

  * * *

  It was 3:00 a.m. but while Devin had dozed on and off, she hadn’t really fallen asleep.

  She was too restless and too upset. It just couldn’t be Brent. She was anxious to talk to Rocky again and tell him all the reasons why Brent couldn’t be the killer. She’d already explained everything to Jane, Jenna and Angela, who had driven her home from the station. Angela, she thought, had been open-minded. Jenna and Jane—well, they hadn’t argued. They’d humored her at least.

  It had been surreal, Rocky calmly explaining to Brent that he would have to come in for questioning, Brent protesting, Jack Grail arriving to take Brent to the station, Rocky trying to make her understand as they followed, while she argued with him the whole way, still in shock herself.

  The rest of the Krewe had met them there. Sam had stayed, and the women had convinced Devin to let them take her home, since there was nothing for her to do there.

  They hadn’t wanted to leave her alone, but even though she knew Rocky would be furious, she’d insisted they leave, promising that she’d lock herself in and not open the door to anyone who came by. She’d said that she was drained and tired and just needed to be alone to rest. Reluctantly, after making sure the house was clear and everything locked up tight, they’d gone. But now, even though she was exhausted, she couldn’t stop her mind from spinning.

  It didn’t seem possible that Brent had killed Barbara Benton and all those other women.

  Of course, having a murdered woman’s cell phone in his pocket was pretty damning, she knew. But what if he was being framed and someone had slipped it into his pocket to make him look guilty?

  She remembered that Auntie Mina had warned her once that she always needed to think things through; she couldn’t just rely on her heart. Too many people over too many years had been fooled by those they cared about. How well did she really know Brent?

  “It just—it just can’t be,” she said to herself.

  But when she woke up from another restless doze at 3:00 a.m., she knew she was wide-awake and there was no point trying to fight it. She got up and went out to the parlor.

  Poe ruffled his feathers and cawed in protest when she turned on a light.

  “Sorry, boy, can’t sleep,” she told him. “But I’ll get you an apple.”

  She chopped an apple into pieces for him and brewed a pot of coffee for herself.

  Brent had barely been fourteen at the time of the first murder. She simply couldn’t believe that the boy she’d known could have been a cold-blooded killer.

  She gave Poe his apple and left the cage open in case he wanted to come visit, then sat down at her computer and pulled up her latest manuscript. She was at the point where Auntie Pim had invited the gnome into her kitchen and was giving him hot chocolate and sugar cookies—and a lesson in morality.

  She tried to write, but she just wasn’t in the right frame of mind to think about magic and sugar cookies and happy children.

  Instead, she went online and began researching murders that had been committed by children.

  She was upset to discover just how many there had been.

  Far too many.

  The cases she found went well back in history. Often, older boys attacked younger girls, even toddlers. Some started out with a penchant for tormenting animals. Others were bullied and then turned around and became violent themselves.

  As she sat there, Poe suddenly let out a long caw.

  That startled Devin. She almost jumped out of her chair.

  Poe was clearly distressed. He flapped his wings and cawed loudly again.

  “What? I gave you an apple,” she said.

  He flew out of his cage, but he didn’t light on her shoulder or on the old secretary where she worked. First he landed on the curtain rod, but after flapping around he finally settled on the back of the sofa.

  His behavior was unsettling.

  “Auntie Mina?” Devin said.

  But the ghost of her aunt was nowhere to be seen.

  Suddenly something banged against the rear of the house. She jumped up from the desk, her heart in her throat.

  It was nothing, she told herself. Maybe a tree branch had fallen. Maybe there was a coyote prowling around.

  Or maybe a man was out there, intent on murder.

  But they had Brent in custody.

  Except she didn’t believe he was a murderer.

  For long moments she stood, terrified and frozen, listening to the thunder of her heart.

  She heard nothing more.

  Maybe it had all been her imagination. Maybe it wasn’t such a good thing to wake up at 3:00 a.m. and start reading about homicidal children.

  She looked at the clock. Now it was almost 4:00 a.m. Soon it would start getting light.

  Not soon enough.

  “Okay, Poe, maybe there’s a lost dog out there or something. Rambunctious squirrels. A cat in heat. Who knows? I’ll go grab the pepper spray.”

  As she walked into her bedroom to get the pepper spray and her cell phone, she heard another noise—out front this time.

  She swore softly, her fingers curling around the spray can. She slipped back into the parlor and turned off the light. No point broadcasting her whereabouts. She walked to the door and looked out through the peephole, but she didn’t see a thing.

  Backing into the corner between the door and the wall, she called Rocky, glad she’d decided to put him on speed dial earlier.

  Despite the time, he picked up almost immediately. “Devin?” he said anxiously.

  “Rocky, I think there’s someone outside my house,” she whispered.

  “I’m almost there,” he told her.

  “What?” He was almost at her house at 4:00 a.m.?

  “I just left the station,” he said briefly. “Stay inside and don’t hang up. I can be there before the cops. I’ll keep the line open,” he told her. “All right?”

  “All right,” she murmured.

  She kept her back to the wall, staring into the darkened house.

  There was someone out there.

  She heard movement all around the house now. Or was she only imagining the rustling, the furtive noises?

  Someo
ne was out there in the night.

  Stalking her.

  It could be the breeze, she told herself. The rustle of crisp leaves as the wind moved through ancient and gnarled trees.

  It could be her mind, betraying her.

  Then she heard someone twisting the back door knob and caught her breath.

  It was real.

  Her fingers curled tightly around her pepper spray. She didn’t know whether to freeze or run back and look, but at least her pepper spray was aimed and ready.

  There were two locks, she reminded herself: the lock on the knob and a dead bolt above. No one was getting in that way.

  But there was a small glass-paned window in the rear door, too. If the intruder smashed it in, then reached through for the knob and the dead bolt...

  “Devin, you there? Devin?”

  She jumped at the sound of Rocky’s voice on her phone. “Yes,” she whispered. “He’s at the back door.”

  “It’s locked, right?”

  “Yes. But...”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t hear anything. I think he moved,” she said.

  She was shaking, she realized, but then something snapped inside her and she realized she was angry even more than she was afraid. She moved quickly across the room, phone in one hand, pepper spray in the other. She wasn’t going to crouch like a cornered rabbit by the wall. If someone came in, she was going to get them first.

  Light suddenly flared out front, quickly growing until it sent an amber glow through the drapes and into the parlor.

  “He’s out front and something...something’s happening,” she whispered.

  “I’m on your street. Stay where you are.”

  Devin hugged the wall, silent, watching the mysterious glow.

  And then she smelled the smoke.

  “Fire,” she said. “He’s trying to burn me out.”

  * * *

  Rocky jerked his car onto Devin’s lawn, shocked to see that the lawn on the left side of the house was ablaze.

  He slammed the car into Park and jumped out, pulling his gun. Racing to the front door, he shouted her name. He could feel the heat of the fire ripping through the slight chill of the night, but despite his fear for Devin he realized that it hadn’t been set where it would ignite the house.

  The front door flew open. Devin was there, a fierce light in her eyes along with the fear, her dark hair spilling over the long white T-shirt she wore. Unharmed and well, pepper spray clutched tightly in her fingers.

  Not a typical damsel in distress, he thought wryly. She might welcome help, but she was also ready to fight to her dying breath. “It’s all right,” he told her, reaching her and lowering her hand. “It’s me.”

  “The yard’s on fire.”

  “Yes,” he said. He had his phone out as he scanned the yard and dialed 9-1-1—and then Jack Grail.

  “A fire?” Jack demanded. “Someone set a fire in her yard?”

  “Yes, it seems to be in a circular pattern,” Rocky said, then turned to Devin.

  “Get back inside and lock the door,” he told her.

  “Like hell! Everyone knows not to split up,” she said.

  “Devin—get in and lock the door. No one’s in there, and you’ll be safer inside.”

  And there wasn’t going to be anyone in back, either. Whoever had been here had escaped into the woods and was probably long gone by now.

  They’d come to torment Devin, not to hurt her.

  But why?

  Even though he knew he wouldn’t find anyone, he wasn’t about to take chances with Devin’s safety. He moved carefully around the house, circling toward the back.

  As he suspected, he didn’t find anyone. And though he scanned for footprints, he didn’t find any of those, either, because the ground was too hard.

  By the time he circled back to the front door, he could hear the sirens of the fire truck and police cars that were on the way.

  The fire had already died down, though, which meant that with the moonlight, he could see the pattern burned into the lawn.

  It was a pentagram—a pentacle, actually. A five-pointed star surrounded by a circle.

  He headed back to the front door, where she’d been watching for him, and she opened it as he reached it.

  “Gone?” she asked.

  “Yes, we’ll get men searching the woods, but...yeah, long gone. I’m betting he took off the minute he lit the fire.”

  A fire engine arrived then. Men started working on what remained of the blaze, and the chief approached Devin and Rocky.

  “Chief Lindy,” he said. “Anyone hurt?”

  “No, we’re fine,” Rocky said.

  “What happened?” the chief asked.

  Rocky presented his ID and told Lindy, “Someone was walking around her house—apparently trying to break in. But I believe his real intent was to set that fire.”

  Devin looked at him, then to the place where the firemen had already put out the blaze.

  Chief Lindy followed her gaze. “Looks like he used an accelerant to draw a pattern. We’ll get our experts on it,” he said grimly.

  “Thank you,” Rocky told him.

  Police cars were already pulling onto the grass. Several officers got out, but Jack was the first one to reach them. He looked haggard.

  “You all right?” he asked. Frowning, he, too, studied the burned pattern on the lawn. He turned to Rocky. “So...someone came here to burn a pentagram into Devin’s lawn?”

  “Looks that way,” Rocky said.

  “Why?” Devin murmured.

  “I don’t know,” Rocky said. “Jack, can you get your men searching the woods for anything they can find? And maybe try to get some prints off her back door—that’s where he was trying to get in, right?” he asked Devin.

  She nodded.

  “Of course,” Jack said.

  While Jack gave his men directions, Rocky put a call through to the Krewe. Sam answered on the first ring; he sounded damned sharp for someone who, like Rocky himself, had been up all night.

  “We’ll be right there,” Sam promised.

  Jack returned, and he, Rocky and Devin went inside to talk.

  Her raven cawed in protest and instantly flew over to settle on her shoulder. She apologized to Jack, who told her not to worry—he liked birds.

  Devin “wore” the bird well, Rocky thought. Her hair was as shimmering and dark as Poe’s blue-black feathers.

  “I have coffee on,” she said.

  They headed to the kitchen. Neither of them asked her anything; she simply began calmly relating what had happened in chronological order.

  “I wasn’t sleeping well,” she said, almost apologetically. “I decided to get up and try to work. And then...well, honestly, first Poe started acting strangely. And I realized I was hearing something move outside the house. But it’s an old house and old houses creak. So do the trees, and there are a couple of old oaks growing very close to the house, so I thought maybe it was just the branches scraping against the walls. But then I distinctly heard someone trying the back door,” she said.

  “What did you do?” Jack asked.

  “I grabbed my pepper spray and called Rocky,” she said. “And as we were talking, I saw the glow of the fire behind the drapes and started smelling smoke.”

  “You got here quickly,” Jack told Rocky.

  “I was on my way, anyway,” Rocky said.

  “Why?” Jack asked him, then looked at Devin. “Have you been getting threats?”

  “No, no, not at all,” she told him.

  “Are you Wiccan?” he asked her.

  “No,” she said.

  “And we haven’t released the detail about the pentagrams on the bodies,” Rocky said.

  “Yeah, but stuff leaks. Cops talk,” Jack said, shaking his head. “You know, you tell your wife, she tells her sister...no matter how hard we try, information gets out there.” He looked at Devin again. “Do you think this was an actual threat or just a warning to g
et out?”

  Devin shook her head. “Jack, I swear, I have no idea.”

  “I don’t think you’re safe here,” he said.

  “Where can I go?” she asked. “Besides, you don’t know any more than I do whether this guy wanted to hurt me or just scare me. At least you know Brent Corbin wasn’t the one trying to break into my house tonight.”

  “True, and also true—though not likely—that this might just be some kid getting up to mischief and not connected to the murders at all,” Jack said. He cleared his throat. “Your great-aunt was Wiccan, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Jack looked at Rocky. “The Witch in the Woods,” he said softly.

  “What?” Devin demanded.

  Jack said, “I’m sorry, Devin. I know she was a really nice woman. When we were kids, though...she was the Witch in the Woods. A lot of our moms came to see her.”

  Devin’s jaw tightened. “She read palms, tea leaves and the tarot,” she said. “Mostly she read people. She didn’t tell them their fortunes—she made them think about their situations and what they could do to change them.”

  “I understand that,” Jack said. “Once we grew up, most of us got that. I’m just telling you what we thought as kids. And now here you are, living in her house and writing stories about witches. Maybe someone thinks you’re Wiccan, too, and that somehow your return caused Melissa’s killer to start up again.”

  Or even that you’re the murderer, Devin.

  Jack didn’t say the words out loud. They were there nonetheless.

  Rocky felt his muscles tighten. “Jack—”

  “Hell, Rocky,” Jack cut in. “Don’t go getting mad at me. I’m just throwing out theories.”

  Rocky knew that; he might have come up with the same theory himself.

  “Let’s just get to the real point,” Devin said accusingly. “You think I could be the murderer, don’t you?”

  “Just calm down,” Jack said. “I know you’re not, it’s just that right now none of us have any real idea what tonight’s events mean.”

  “I just—I just can’t understand why anyone would come after me,” she said.

  “Give it some time, and then, if you think of anything that might help us...” Jack said.

  She smiled dryly. “I know the drill. I’ll call you. And I’ll think,” she promised.