White Witch, Black Curse. Ким Харрисон

cold, but why not?

      Hands on my hips, I used a boot tip to unwedge the informal closure on the nearest box. It popped open to show a mishmash of stuff that looked like classic post-yard-sale clutter: books, knickknacks, photo albums, and several cameras. Expensive ones.

      “Photo albums?” I questioned, looking at the silent walls. Who keeps their photo albums in the garage? Maybe it was temporary, for Christmas, to make room for all the baby toys.

      I moved to the next box, slipping on my gloves for warmth as I opened it to find more books and clothes from the seventies—explaining their living room, perhaps. Under it was another box that contained last year’s styles. I held up the first—a dress that I might find in my mother’s closet—thinking that Mrs. Tilson must have been heavy once. The dress was way bigger than me, but not a maternity cut. It didn’t match Matt’s description. It didn’t match what I’d seen in the open closet, either.

      Frowning, I put the dress back, digging to the bottom to find a stack of yearbooks. “Bingo,” I whispered, kneeling to feel the cold cement go right through my jeans. I didn’t have to wait until Edden’s office dug up a photo of them. I could see for myself.

      My knees were cramping, so I pulled the kiddie sled over and sat on it, knees almost to my ears as I leafed through a yearbook with Clair Smith penciled on the front flap. Clair had graduated from a high school a few hundred miles upstate, and was apparently popular if the overwhelming number of signatures meant anything. Lots of promises to write. Apparently she toured Europe before going to college.

      There was another yearbook from a local college where she’d gotten her four-year journalism degree, majoring in photography, and had met Joshua, according to the hearts and flowers around his signature. My gaze slid to the box of albums. So maybe it was school stuff. It might explain the cameras, too.

      She was a member of the photography club in high school, and had graduated in ‘82. I stared at the picture of the young woman standing on the bleachers surrounded by awkward teenagers, my finger resting on her name. Unless there was a misprint, Clair was a rather round young woman with a cheerful smile, not the slight, mild woman Matt had described. She wasn’t fat, but she wasn’t my size either. And if she’d graduated in ‘82, that would make her…over forty now?

      I felt my face lose its expression, and I turned to look at the wall of the house as if I could pull Ivy out here with my thoughts. Over forty with one kid and wanting five more? Spacing them five years apart?

      She had to be an Inderlander. Witches lived a hundred and sixty years and could have kids the entire span, apart from twenty years on either side. Maybe that was the source of strife? Mr. Tilson found out his wife was a witch? But it didn’t smell like a witch lived here. Or a vampire. Or a Were.

      I exhaled, setting the book aside and shuffling until I found one with Joshua Tilson printed on the front cover. His school had splurged for real fake-leather bindings. Nice.

      Joshua had graduated from Kentucky State the same year as Clair. I thumbed through the pages, looking for him. My lips parted, and a chill tightened my muscles. Slowly I brought the page closer to my nose, wishing the light were brighter out here. Joshua didn’t look anything like the photo Edden had shown me.

      My eyes went to the surrounding stuff, then remembered Edden’s comments about Mr. Tilson retiring. Then Matt’s complaint that the same man ought to be able to mow his own lawn, the rage Mr. Tilson had fallen into, how young his family was, and how they were going to have lots more kids. Stuff in the garage they didn’t want in the house but couldn’t risk throwing away.

      I didn’t think Mr. and Mrs. Tilson were the people who lived here. They were someone else and couldn’t risk being found out by calling the ambulance, so they had fled.

      I shivered, the motion reaching all the way to my fingertips. “I-i-i-i-i-vy-y-y-y-y!” I shouted. “Ivy! Come see this!”

      I listened to the silence for a moment. She wasn’t coming. Annoyed, I got up, book in hand. My knees were stiff from the cold, and I almost fell, jerking myself straight when Ivy poked her head out.

      “Find something?” she said, amusement in her dark eyes.

      Not “Are you still here?” or “I thought you left,” but “Find something?” And her amusement wasn’t at my expense, but Edden’s, who was now behind her.

      I smiled, telling her I had indeed found something. “Glenn wasn’t beaten up by Mr. Tilson,” I said smugly.

      “Rachel…,” Edden started, and I triumphantly held up the yearbook and came forward.

      “Have you gotten your fingerprints back yet?” I asked.

      “No. It’s going to be almost a week—”

      “Be sure to check them against known Inderland criminal offenders,” I said, shoving the book at him, but Ivy took it. “You won’t find them matching up to Mr. Tilson’s record, and that’s assuming he has one. I think the Tilsons are dead, and whoever is living here took their names along with their lives.”

       Five

      Thanks, Alex!” I shouted, waving to the FIB officer as he drove down the shadowy, snow-quiet street to leave me standing on the sidewalk outside our church. Ivy was already halfway up the walk, anxious to be on her own turf where she had her ironclad ways of coping. She’d been quiet all the way home, and I didn’t think it was from us needing a ride because I was too chicken to open my car door and see if I exploded.

      Alex’s taillights flashed as he rolled through a stop sign at the end of the road, and I turned away. The church that Ivy, Jenks, and I lived in was lit up and serene, the colors bleeding out of the stained-glass windows and onto the untouched snow in a fabulous swirl. I studied the roofline to try to spot Bis, our resident gargoyle, but there was nothing between the white puffs of my breath. The church was pretty with its Christmas and solstice decorations of live garlands and cheerful bows, and I smiled, glad to live in such a unique place.

      This last fall, Jenks had finally fixed the spotlights angling onto the steeple, and it added to the beauty. The building hadn’t been used as a church for years, but it was sanctified-—again. Ivy had originally chosen the church to operate our runner firm from to tick off her undead mother, and we’d never moved to more professional digs when the opportunity had arisen. I felt safe here. So did Ivy. And Jenks needed the garden out back to feed his almost four dozen kids.

      “Hurry up, Rache,” Jenks complained from under my hat. “I’ve got icicles hanging.”

      Smirking, I followed Ivy up the walk to the worn front steps. Jenks had been silent on the ride home, too, and I’d have almost been willing to find out what happened on the ninth day of Christmas just so I wouldn’t have had to keep the conversation going with Alex all by myself. I couldn’t tell if my roommates, Ivy especially, had been thinking or just mad.

      Maybe she thought I’d shown her up by discovering that the Tilsons were impostors before she had. Or maybe she was upset that I wanted her to go out to Kisten’s boat. She’d loved him, too. Loved him more deeply than me, and longer. I’d have thought she’d be eager for the chance to find his killer and the vampire who had tried to turn me into a blood toy.

      Ivy’s pace ground to a stop on the salted steps, and my head came up when a soft curse slipped from her. Halting, I sent my gaze to follow hers to our business sign, over the door. “Damn it all to the Turn and back,” I whispered, seeing the spray-painted Black Wit and a half-scripted c trailing down the brass plaque to drip onto the twin oak doors.

      “What is it?” Jenks shrilled, unable to see and tugging on my hair.

      “Someone redecorated the sign,” Ivy said blandly, but I could tell she was mad. “We need to start leaving some lights on,” she muttered, yanking open the door and going inside.

      “Lights?”