Page 9 of Woods of the Raven

“Why?” I groaned.

“Because people love this kind of shit.”

“I thought only women could be witches,” Chief MacBain said, putting his mug of tea down like it was poison.

“That’s ridiculous,” Pete told him. “Men can be witches too. Everybody knows that.”

“So what,” Amanda snapped at him, crossing her arms for good measure, “now the tea’s no good because Xander’s a witch? Really? Are we living in 1692?”

“I—what?”

“This isn’t Salem, Chief,” Amanda told him, her tone sharp and cutting. “Passing judgment about the way someone believes or practices their craft is honestly not the best look for a law-enforcement officer.”

“No, I—”

“Perhaps you should get on the horn to the Westfield Police Department, like I did, and figure out who the dead girl is. She had no ID, no purse, and no phone.”

He wanted to slug her; I could tell. Most people did after a couple of minutes in her company. But he breathed in through his nose, thanked me for the tea, took the muffin with him—I’d wrapped it in a cloth napkin—and he and Pete were out the door, with Pete reminding me he needed three Yule garlands. The fact that the chief took the muffin meant he didn’t think my being a witch equaled trying to poison him. At least, that was my best guess.

Once the door closed, I gave Amanda a stern look.

“What?”

“You had to tell him I was a witch?”

“Why wouldn’t I tell—oh!” Her eyes got big. “You like him.”

“I don’t like him,” I grumbled. “And from all our interactions before this, he’s not all that crazy about me either. But today, for whatever reason, I found him…interesting.”

“Well, I hope you being a witch put him off, because as far as I can tell, the man’s an ass,” she said in a tone that made it clear she was over discussing the chief. “Now. I came here to get my fall wreaths for the front door, back door, and the large one for the living room, because there will be God knows how many people coming in and out of my house—I’m hosting Thanksgiving this year, and I do not want any negative energy or anything anyone drags in staying longer than it’s supposed to.”

I smiled at her. They might look like wreaths, and we both called them that, but they were actually very powerful wards that wouldn’t let anything hurt her or her family. At least nothing of the spectral or demonic variety. I couldn’t speak for her mother-in-law.

She said, “You and I both know that Eddie’s family—”

“Your family,” I corrected her.

“They always visit their family cemetery on Thanksgiving before they come up here, and I do not want spirits, or whatever else, being tracked into my home.”

“Do you still have the candles I gave you for All Saints’ Day?”

“I have a few left, yes.”

“Well, burn those, put salt across the thresholds of the front and back doors, and the day after Thanksgiving, I’ll come by and clear the house.”

“You will?” She half whimpered, half sighed.

“Of course.”

She took hold of my hands. “I know you only do this for me because I pay your gas bill.”

I grinned at her. “That’s right. You pay, I send the spirits packing.”

Her smile was huge, since we both knew it was a lie. She paid for the gas in my cabin, or her estate did, because she loved me, and before she’d met and married her husband, Eddie Sterling, and got his family, she only had my grandfather and me.

We had started as enemies—she was horrible to me up until our sophomore year in high school—until the night she was assaulted by her boyfriend. The thing was, the guy who did it, Kip Lanyon, was one of the favorite sons of Osprey—captain of the lacrosse team, rich, handsome. And since he was her boyfriend, everyone thought she was just confused, or worse, crying wolf after willingly giving up her virginity. When she wouldn’t back down, insisted she’d been violated, and went to the police in Westfield, they had been ready to arrest him. But then her parents lied, saying it never happened. She was sixteen, they were the people who were supposed to love her most in the world, and they betrayed her trust in the worst way, taking a payment from the Lanyons to make it all go away. Once the charges were dropped, every friend she had turned their back on her. Kip spread horrible lies; said she was a whore anyone could screw if they had the money to pay. When she began taking her mother’s prescription painkillers, instead of getting her help, her parents threw her out.

That was where I came in.