Page 12 of Wicche Hunt

It’s exhausting, she thinks. They all know this is his mistress. Just buy her a ticket instead of all this dickering back and forth. She holds her ground. The event is sold out. She couldn’t possibly give away a seat that’s reserved and paid for. He stomps off in search of the headmaster, who will undoubtedly fold.

Dinner is complete. The dancing is in full swing. The table no longer needs two people, so she and her partner take turns getting some time away. They’ve shared this duty for years and have their rhythm down. Sitting for so long is difficult for Magdalena, so she always takes the first break. She usually walks around the pond a few times to work out the stiffness, hits the rest room, and then is back in time for her partner’s break.

It feels good to walk away from the noise and forced cheer. She’s looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow. She smiles, imagining a do-nothing weekend. It won’t happen. She’ll end up grading, but it’s nice to imagine, especially as she’s nearing the end of such a miserable couple of days.

The far side of the pond—no doubt a visual clue for golfers—grows a lovely patch of black sage. She enjoys rounding the pond and getting hit with the minty smell this type of sage produces.

She’s learned over the years which areas are often too wet to walk through. She’s ruined more than one pair of dress shoes accidentally sinking into a spot of mud. This year she’s wearing nice but sturdy shoes, ones that can take a good cleaning if she misjudges the ground in the dark. The parents, after all, don’t expect, don’t even want, the teachers to be dressed up as they are. They might respect the teachers—might— but they’re still viewed in the servant category. She learned that the hard way years ago.

As she’s passing behind the tall sage, she hears that high falsetto voice that had chased her in the hall. It whispers her name. Panicked, frozen, out of sight of the marquee, her feet sink into sopping grass. She’s covered in goose bumps and her breathing becomes shallow, unsure if the voice is in front of her or behind. She hears footsteps squelching in the wet grass and then that horrible high voice telling her to run.

Breaking through the fear, she surges forward, but one of her shoes is stuck. She pulls her foot out, is scrambling across a wet slope with one shoe, when she hears breathing right behind her. Terrified, she opens her mouth to scream but feels horrible pain in the back of her head. The vision goes dark and stays that way.

My eyes fluttered open, my head in horrible pain. I slumped to the side, but Declan kept one arm around my waist and the other over my shoulder to keep me mostly upright. He’d been careful to make sure he wasn’t touching my skin. How had I been so lucky to find someone willing to do whatever it took to ease my pain?

I patted the arm across my chest with my gloved hand. He immediately moved it but kept the one around my waist until I was steady enough to stand. I put my glove back on and leaned against his shoulder.

“Are you ready, Ms. Corey?” Detective Osso rolled the drawer back in and then took out his little notebook and pen.

“Yeah. She was killed by a hit to the back of her head. Which is why mine is killing me.”

“My wife always makes sure I have aspirin in the car. Would you like me to get you some tablets?” he asked.

I shook my head and then regretted it. “It’ll fade, usually before the pills kick in. Even so, I have a bottle in my backpack too. I’ll be okay.”

Osso nodded. “Can you tell us what you saw?”

Running it all through for them, I realized I’d been wrong. “When you asked me to come in and read your victim, I had an immediate jolt that the cases were connected, that this woman’s death was tied to Pearl’s. I agreed in spite of your ridiculous guilting skills—that shit stopped working on me when I was like five.” I rolled my eyes and regretted it at once. Not the childishness, but the additional pain it triggered.

“I thought knowing who killed Magdalena would help us identify Pearl’s killer, but I was wrong. These are two different killers. This guy wanted to menace her, to make her jump at shadows and change her routines. The thing is, though, he had to—”

“Know her routines in the first place.” Osso finished my sentence.

“Exactly.” I wrapped one of my hands around Declan’s wrist and felt him relax behind me. “How would he know? She used to arrive long before students started showing up for the day, before the rest of the faculty. He knew her car, but then he also knew her habit of walking around the pond at this once-a-year fundraiser.”

I started to shake my head again and then remembered. “He didn’t just want to kill her. He wanted to terrorize her first.”

“The cockroaches,” Declan said. “He got in before she got to work to release the cockroaches. Are there records somewhere of people buying those things?”

Hernández shook her head. “Pet stores sell them for feeding to reptiles.”

I felt Declan’shmmreverberate through my back. It made me feel unreasonably warm and comforted.

“They could have been put in her room the night before,” Osso said.

“After the night custodian but before the alarms and locks,” I added.

Hernández and Osso nodded, thinking.

“What do you know about Archie or the night custodians? The killer could be someone always in the background, someone people stop noticing.” It didn’t feel like that, but it was a possibility. “Honestly, I felt anger, vengeance, a need to scare her as he’d been scared. Maybe see if she’d ever reported someone. Teachers are mandatory reporters. Maybe she’d called CPS on someone’s parents. Or on another teacher.”

Osso nodded, still lost in thought. “We know how to investigate, Ms. Corey.”

I felt Declan tense.

“Then what am I doing here?” It was always the same. Desperate for my help when they needed it and then,Shut up and go away, freak girl.

Hernández smacked Osso’s arm. His usual annoyed look darkened. I could see him replaying the conversation in his head. His gaze snapped to me.

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