Witch Hearts (21 page)

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Authors: Liz Long

BOOK: Witch Hearts
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“Good thinking.” Michael took the time to look impressed as he got up. He returned with a large metal basin full of water and sat it on the table.
 

Ruby hunkered down onto the floor and got comfortable. She took several deep breaths, calmed her nerves before beginning. Concentrating on looking deep into the water, several minutes passed before she looked up. She gave them a blank look, tried to make sense of what she might’ve seen. She’d focused all her energy on Rebecca, but aside from a brief swoop of red hair in the vision, nothing appeared.
 

Michael looked stumped when she told them. Cooper, however, looked down at the floor as he spoke. He rubbed the back of his neck and Ruby picked up on his hesitation.
 

“I might know a way with fire scrying,” Cooper said.
 

“Do it,” Michael replied immediately. “Save Rebecca.”

“No,” Ruby said. Her hands went up in protest. “If it involves dark magic, no way.”

“It’s not dark magic,” Cooper said. “I’m just not crazy about doing magic with other people in the room. I don’t want anything weird to happen.”

“Nothing will happen. Do it!” Michael said.

“What do you mean, weird?” Ruby said at the same time. Cooper’s shoulder ticked upward in a slight shrug.
 

Michael looked directly at her, leaned in to her with a lowered voice. “You sure you want to save Rebecca?”

Ruby caught the ever-so-slightly smug tone in his voice. Was he really so pleased that his ex-girlfriend might be jealous over his possibly dead girlfriend? She scoffed. “Not at the expense of Cooper. We can find another way.”
 

“We don’t have any time,” Michael argued. “If she’s not dead already, she will be soon.”

None of them said the obvious: they might not be able to find Rebecca right now because she was already dead. They wouldn’t be able to search for her energy and find her through scrying.

Cooper sighed, pulled a lighter from his pocket and reached for the bowl of herbs. He looked at Michael. “I assume this is the usual? That’s all I need.”
 

Michael nodded and Cooper lowered the flame, caught the herbs on fire inside the small metal bowl. Instead of calling Rebecca’s name, he remained silent, instead focused his green eyes on the flickering orange and red light.
 

Thirty seconds later, Cooper seemed to be in a trance. No one spoke for several minutes; Ruby and Michael didn’t dare move or distract Cooper in any way. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, slowly dripped down the side of his face. After a while, his lips moved as he said something too low for them to hear.
 

Then Cooper’s arms jerked upward, knocked the flame-filled bowl off the table and onto the floor. For a heartbeat, Ruby feared the floor might catch fire and send them all ablaze, but Michael darted in to stamp out any lingering flames. She watched Cooper wake out of his daze, shake his head as he regained his senses. Finally, he looked up and found her again.

“1648 Charming Road.” His flat voice sent a chill up Ruby’s spine.
 

“That’s four blocks from here,” Michael said, astonished. “Come on, let’s go!”

Even as Michael moved to the door, Ruby bent down to touch Cooper’s elbow. “What’s the matter? What did you see?”

Cooper stood up in one swift movement, catching her off guard. “Fire magic is a little different, takes me a few minutes to get back to reality. Plus I think I’m having a fuckin’ heatstroke.”
 

“What did you see?”

Cooper gave a sideways glance to Michael, who stood by the door putting his jacket on. “Ruby, I don’t think Rebecca made it.”

Ruby’s heart dropped, reminded her that she still at least had one. “That means…”

“Yeah. X got his fifth heart.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The three of them raced downstairs to Michael’s sleek SUV, barely got the doors shut as he ripped out of the parking space and swung a wide right around the corner. Ruby called Officer Marshall and told them their intended location; he’d be there with units and sirens in eight to ten minutes. After she hung up, none of them spoke, until they arrived at 1648 Charming Road.
 

They piled out of the car and ran to the front door of the house. Ruby grabbed a vial from her bag, a potion meant to temporarily blind an enemy. When Michael tried to open the door, he found it locked. Cooper shoved him out of the way and kicked his boot into the door frame; it splintered and the front door swung open.

Another abandoned house in a poor neighborhood, the empty structure was almost as creepy as the one Ruby had been lured to, though less rotted out. Dust coated the insides and plastic covered what little furniture that still remained. The floor complained underneath their weight as they all looked at each other.

“Now what?” Cooper asked.

“Basement,” Ruby replied without hesitation. She stepped forward to search for the right door that would lead them down. Cooper went in the opposite direction and when Ruby paused in the hallway to look around, she found Michael had followed her.

“Try searching for a basement door,” she hissed at him.

“I’m making sure no one pops out to surprise us and grab you, actually,” he replied.

“That’s very nice of you, but seeing as how it’s your girlfriend we’re trying to save, maybe you put in a little more effort.”
 

“Trust me, I’m pretty sure a basement is the last thing I want to see if what we’re expecting is down there. I’m not stupid, Ruby, I know what we’re in for - and I’m absolutely terrified.”

She spared a second to look at him, saw the fear in his eyes. Her stomach tightened; she didn’t want him in this kind of pain anymore than he did for her when Courtney died. Michael opened his mouth to speak and she shook her head, instead took several steps forward and found a door on her left. Swinging it open, they saw steps leading downstairs. She yelled for Cooper, who rushed back to them, a vial in his hand at the ready.

“I’ll go down first,” Michael said. He sucked in a deep breath and took a few steps down.

“Big of you,” Ruby muttered, rolling her eyes at Cooper. They followed him down to the pitch-black basement, where they all whispered Ruby’s incantation for a light.

The second the glow emanated from their palms, however, that creepy feeling Ruby had gotten before came back over her. The hair on her neck stood straight up and she braced herself for what might come next. She wasn’t disappointed.
 

The lights cut on, brighter than an airport runway, and that strange dark cloud of magic rushed at them. Michael almost fell back in fright, but Ruby ignored it, impatiently looked around until—

“Oh, shit.”

“What? What is it? Is it Rebecca?” Michael asked, his hand over his heart as he tried to get his breathing under control.

“Um…it’s a lot more than that.”

Rebecca lay on the ground in the corner, unclothed and heartless as the victim Ruby found the other day. Gorgeous red hair spilled around her head on the floor, matched the blood surrounding her body. Her blank green eyes seemed to stare at Ruby, accuse her of being a part of her murder. But that wasn’t all. Laying next to her on the ground were Gary and Alec, the same men who’d come to collect on Cooper and Ruby only hours earlier.

Some sort of fight had gone down between them - Alec had black soot over his chest, as though a fire spell had been thrown at him. His pained face told Ruby he’d been charred alive. Gary lay a few feet away, gun in his hand and a pool of blood next to his head.
 

Michael wailed, cursed at the sight of Rebecca’s body, threw himself on to the ground next to her. He ripped off his jacket, tucking it gently around her naked skin. He didn’t let go of her, instead remained on the ground, holding his bloody murdered girlfriend.
 

Cooper dared to step towards them and saw something on the ground next to Gary. “It’s a note,” he said.

“Don’t touch it,” Ruby warned him. “Can you make out what it says?”

He leaned forward, took a moment to read the messy handwriting scrawled across the page. He came back to stand next to Ruby, his voice cold and flat.
 

“It says he’s sorry for what he’s done, that he never meant to get this far but he loved the power too much. His friend got in the way and he regrets his decision to hurt innocent women. He took his own life.”

Police sirens wailed somewhere nearby and the next few minutes seemed to stand still as they waited for Officer Marshall and Detective Phillips to arrive. Ruby watched Michael as he cradled Rebecca in his arms, tears of grief streaming down his face. When he looked up, she saw the regret in his smokey gray eyes.

“This is my fault,” he said. “I should’ve known…done something…”

He continued to babble like that so much that Ruby felt sorry for him. Sure, he was an asshole and Rebecca had never been anyone’s favorite person, but what an awful way to go. As much as she couldn’t stand Rebecca, she hadn’t wished anything like this for her, or for Michael to suffer this way. Sympathy flooded through her.
 

“No one should have to go through this,” she whispered to Cooper, who’d remained oddly quiet. Perhaps he was in shock from the gruesome sight of Rebecca, maybe even comparing it to Courtney’s death. Ruby, unfortunately quite familiar with the mutilated handiwork, nudged him.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He shook his head, seemed to snap out of it though with a frown on his face. “Sorry? Oh, yeah. I’m fine. Just…sorry for them, I guess.”

“What’s the matter?” she pressed.

“It’s too clean,” he abruptly replied. “It’s too perfectly wrapped up.”

“What are you talking about? It all fits. Those guys were waiting for you to come back so they could get their money. They took Courtney to get your attention, stalked and threatened me to make sure you came out of hiding. Consider it a lucky break, Coop. Now I might actually sleep again.”

“Does Alec look like he’d be the angry giant in the room?”

Ruby knew he referred to the spell that had given her Courtney’s killer. She glanced back at Alec, shrugging a little. “He’s a pretty big guy, maybe he was magically enhanced or something. He might be big enough. Does it matter? I mean, we have the killer.”

“I don’t know…”

His angry, confused tone clued her in. He didn’t want to accept what it meant, to have his past revisit in such an ugly way. Something inside Ruby snapped. “I get that you’re feeling guilty right now since this means you
did
have a hand in it, but if it looks and acts like a witch killer, it probably is one.”

His face turned from shocked to angry in a millisecond. “That’s not fair—”

He never got to finish his argument, however, since Officer Marshall barged down the stairs with what seemed like the rest of the police department behind him. Marshall went straight to Ruby.

“You okay?”

Ruby nodded, relief flooding through her as the cops assessed the scene. Marshall gave her a sharp nod.
 

“Phillips and I will take your statements. Go wait outside; I’ll be there soon.”

Without another word, Ruby turned and went up the stairs, leaving Cooper and Michael down there with the cops and bodies. Exhaustion threatened to creep over her, the emotions of tonight’s events finally hitting her. She collapsed into a ball on the front porch, drew her knees up to her chest to prevent the cold from seeping into her bones.
 

Footsteps sounded behind her and she waited for Cooper to speak. Instead, the person sat down next to her in silence - Michael, who looked as though he’d aged ten years in the last hour.

“I’m sorry,” Ruby said.

He barely looked at her, his red, wet eyes not leaving the sidewalk. “Are you?”

She shrugged. “We both know how I felt about Rebecca, but that’s not exactly the way to go. I’m sorry you have to deal with this.”

“You’ve been dealing with it for the last week. You and Cooper both.” Michael sighed, stretched his long legs out in front of him and leaned back on his palms. “I knew when we got here what the chances were of her being alive. I thought I was prepared. Seeing her like that…I hadn’t really expected it to be that awful.”

Restless, he sat back up, gripped the end of the porch with his hands. Sympathy flooded through her at the sad look on his face. Ruby hesitated, then put one of her hands on his. He relaxed slightly at her touch.

“Believe me, I know more than anyone how terrible it is to be a part of this, to find a body this way,” she said. He leaned in, cocked his ear to hear her better as she spoke in a low tone. “But at least you’ll be able to move on; we all will, now that the killers are found and dead.”

“Shame they handled it that way. I was rather hoping to kill them myself.”
 

“You sound like Cooper.”

“I don’t blame him. When I heard what he did to you, how he stalked you and lured you into that house to find Denise…I almost lost my mind. And now this. Rebecca didn’t deserve it.”

Ruby looked up at him, bit back a comment about Rebecca since now didn’t seem the be the time to shake him. Cloudy gray met blue as their eyes locked and Ruby felt torn; she didn’t even flinch as Michael flipped his hand over to interlock their fingers together.
 

“Thank you for helping me tonight, to find her. You’re an incredibly good person to do what you’ve done for me. And I don’t only mean today, but for the last few years.”

Ruby said nothing, bit her lip as she looked down at her lap.
 

“I didn’t deserve you,” he continued. “And I still don’t. But I want to spend the rest of my life trying.”

They looked at their intertwined hands. Just as Ruby decided this was a bad idea to encourage him, to pull her hand away, someone behind them cleared his throat. Ruby broke their hold, pulled away to find Cooper standing behind them. His tight jaw and pained expression were enough to tell Ruby he’d heard everything. More importantly, he’d heard her say nothing, which, when it came to Ruby and Michael, was saying a lot.

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