The lights began to flicker as I rolled the cookie dough into balls and put them on the pan to bake. I hoped the power wouldn’t go out.
After I closed the oven with the cookies inside, I turned to Samara and looked at her head-on. I’d been sort of watching her from my peripheral vision so that I didn’t spook her. Sometimes if the living looked too hard at the dead, then the ghost realized they had passed on. That could cause them to panic and disappear. I’d dealt with her standing over me while I made the cookies, and I wanted answers.
“Samara, I need you to tell me who might have wanted you dead,” I said.
I also wanted to ask her if she was responsible for the break-in at my shop, but I needed to take it slowly. Again, ghosts could spook easily, and it wasn’t like I’d summoned her inside of a controlled circle. She was there, in my presence, on her own accord. She opened her mouth to answer, but the voice that came out wasn’t hers.
Because it wasn’t her.
“Remy?” Thorn called from the entryway. “Kinsley, are you here too?”
Thorn had arrived, and of course he recognized Remy’s car. For a moment, I thought about running out the back door and hiding, but that would never work.
“I’m in here,” I called. “In the kitchen.”
Samara disappeared, and the temperature in the kitchen immediately began to warm up.
Thorn walked into the kitchen and stopped right after he’d crossed the threshold. He surveyed the room.
“Are you baking cookies in the dead woman’s house?” he asked. “With our baby? You brought the baby?”
I could see all of the earlier talk about embracing who I was about to fly out the window for Thorn. Then like some sort of Yuletide miracle, he slammed it shut.
His eyes narrowed and his jaw strained, but Thorn gave me an accepting nod. He walked across the kitchen, kissed me and then Laney’s head.
“I’m going to pull these cookies out of the oven, and you need to go,” he said. “Jeremy is on his way here, and we’re supposed to search the place. You and your father cannot be here for that.”
“Dad!” I called out. “We’ve gotta go!”
“I’ll go get him,” Meri said and then darted out of the kitchen.
I got Thorn an oven mitt, and he pulled the barely baked cookies out of the oven. “Pity,” he said. “These look amazing.”
“I’ll go home and make some for us,” I said. “If you’re planning on coming home, that is.”
“Why wouldn’t I be coming home?” Thorn asked with genuine confusion.
I waved my hand around the kitchen like a clumsy, drunken spokesmodel. “Because of all this…”
“I said what I said, Kinsley,” Thorn replied. “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”
“I saw the look in your eyes when you found me here,” I countered.
“I didn’t say it would always be easy, but I did mean it,” Thorn said.
“Come on,” Dad said. He’d appeared outside the kitchen.
I followed my father silently out to the car. After putting Laney in the car seat, I climbed into the passenger seat while Dad set the car to take us home the long way.
We couldn’t go back the way we came and risk passing Jeremy. So, we had to go the opposite way and then make our way back to Coventry.
“What did you find?” I asked once we were a mile away from the house. “I mean, did you find anything?”
“I got her grimoire, and I found this,” he said and pulled a little black spell bag out of his pocket.
I took it and looked inside. “So, she was the one who broke into my shop, and she somehow gave one of these to Lilith too. But Lilith didn’t kill her.”
“No,” Dad said. “But how many other witches was she tormenting? If she was hurting other witches, and one of them found out it was her, they might have taken her out.”
“So, that makes all of us a suspect,” I said. “Was that the only spell bag? If she had more of them, Jeremy might find it and put two and two together.”
“It was the only one,” Dad said. “She must have died before she could make more.”
“Well, that’s good. It will keep me from instantly becoming a suspect.”
“I need to go to the hospital and check on your mom and Lilith,” Dad said. “Are you going to be all right if I drop you off at home?”
“I should come with you,” I said.
“You don’t want to be there with the baby. It’s not going to be comfortable for either of you. Hopefully, they’ll be able to release Lilith soon. You can go visit her once we’ve taken her home,” Dad said.
“All right,” I relented. “Well, then I’ll start going through Samara’s grimoire. Perhaps I can figure out a way to counteract these spell bags. Well, first I have to figure out exactly what they are.”
“Call me if you need any help. I can come back later,” Dad said. “Actually, call me either way. Let me know if you do figure something out.”
Chapter Six
After I got home and got Laney settled, I started gathering ingredients for the chocolate chip cookies. I probably should have cracked the grimoire first and begun my research, but when the chocolate cravings hit, sometimes there’s no denying them.
That, and I was still trying to make my life as a wife and mother my priority. Most likely, it was a silly time to be worried about such a thing, but there I was.
And, I was without the chocolate chips I’d used at Samara’s house. I didn’t keep those kind on hand because we didn’t eat huge amounts of chocolate chips, but I’d hoped the house would gift them to me. Alas, Hangman’s House did not feel like indulging me.
But I was determined. Nothing but those particular gourmet morsels would do, so Laney and I were going to the grocery
