Chapter 22
“She bit me!” Ambrosia shrieked, holding a hand to her neck.
Arthur scrambled to his feet and blinked, his vision sharpening as night well and truly fell.
The witch before them was not at all her usually primped and poised self.
She looked sweat-drenched from sitting there all day.
Her lips were chapped and her chest heaved.
Arthur imagined he might be similarly unkempt if he’d sat outside all day with no bathroom breaks.
She clutched at her neck and, though Arthur couldn’t see the wound, he could smell that she was bleeding.
“That’s our daughter!” Sal shouted, nearly clocking Arthur in the jaw as he raised his fist in triumph. “A little vampire girl. Maybe she will live for another fifty years.”
Chet stood frozen, mouth slightly agape as he stared at the black cat.
“It’s over, Ambrosia,” Arthur said loudly.
Sal’s feet left the ground as his powers engaged. “Citizen’s arrest!” he shouted before zipping forward and tackling Ambrosia. Served her right; after all, Chet had roughed them up in her name.
“Ow, ow, ow,” Sal said, springing off Ambrosia and holding his elbow. “That hurt!”
“You attacked me!” Ambrosia flipped her blond hair out of her eyes and got to her feet again.
“Yes, but the ground is so terribly hard. I wonder if one of those personal injury lawyers I’ve seen advertised on the highway billboards will take my case?”
“I should be the one pressing charges!”
“You’re both fine,” Arthur grumbled, gaze drifting to Brody, who still lay motionless on the forest floor.
Had Ambrosia drugged him with a potion? He could need medical intervention.
Not that Ambrosia would just let them carry him away at this point.
Even with her power diminished, Ambrosia and Chet still posed a threat to any sort of peaceful resolution to this mess.
“Maybe the spell will still work,” Ambrosia muttered to herself, voice growing whiny with panic. “I spent hours casting it. It has to work.” She sounded like a toddler—or Sal—on the verge of throwing a tantrum. She took a shaky step toward Brody.
Rumble hissed and let out a yowl, then raced to crouch between Ambrosia and Brody, poised to pounce. The cat’s hackles were raised, and it was enough to send Ambrosia reeling back.
“Call off your little monster,” Ambrosia snapped at Sal and Arthur. “This thing must be rabid or something!”
“She is a little monster, isn’t she?” Sal cooed.
“We don’t control her,” Arthur said as coolly as he could manage, though inside he was fighting off panic.
They really should’ve brought backup, even if it had meant trying to work with the sheriff.
Cornering a killer like this was dangerous—Arthur would know, having almost been killed by Trip Young a few months ago—but he’d been in too much of a hurry to think about what would happen after he stopped the spell.
If only they’d taken the time to tell someone where they were going, at least. He doubted very much that Sal’s cell phone would work out here.
“You’re vampires!” Ambrosia said, stomping her foot. “And that thing is a creature of the night. You have to be controlling her! You made her attack me.”
“That was before nightfall,” Arthur said slowly. Of course, he’d never been able to control Rumble. His powers hadn’t had much of an effect on her, even at night, though he didn’t relish the thought of admitting as much to Ambrosia.
Rumble backed away slowly, then turned and hopped onto Brody’s chest. She licked his face, as if trying to wake him.
It reminded him of the time she’d sat curled up on Brody when he was in a hospital bed, as if she were his little guard.
She’d helped fight off Trip that night, too.
Maybe she remembered Brody from that ordeal, correctly designating him an ally in this confrontation as well.
“Rumble is her own person,” Sal said, puffing himself up. “We don’t need or want to boss her around with our powers.”
“This is ridiculous!” Ambrosia threw up her hands, eyes beginning to water slightly. “Chet! Do something!”
Chet, who’d been oddly silent since the spell’s failure, stared at Rumble with wide eyes as if he was in a trance. Ambrosia’s outburst had no effect. Maybe he was allergic to cats.
“Surrender, Ambrosia. You’re outnumbered. Besides, we know what you did,” Arthur said in a commanding voice.
“What I did? You stopped me before I could do anything!” Ambrosia let out a very un-zen scream of frustration.
“I was so close to having all his power. You have no idea what it’s like.
To be a witch, but just barely…it’s torture.
No coven wants you, of course. All their talk of sisterhood doesn’t mean anything when you can’t cast even the simplest spells.
You’re stuck reading magical theory and hoping and hoping for a way to get stronger. ”
The idea of reading theory didn’t sound so bad to Arthur, but that wasn’t really the point. “You’re right,” he said. “I have no idea what it’s like to be a witch at all. But do you really think taking another witch’s power is better?”
“He doesn’t deserve it. I do!” Tears streamed down her face. “I’ve spent my whole adult life building this coven up from nothing. I’ve helped countless witches get their businesses started. I inspire them! I encourage them! People love me!”
Arthur sighed, exasperated. “If they knew you were a murderer, they might feel differently.”
“Ambrosia.” Chet finally spoke, voice flat and lacking his usual gym-bro energy. He still didn’t tear his gaze from Rumble. “Maybe we should stop talking to them. They think you killed Lola.”
“We know you did. Come on, tell us what happened! You know you want to.” Sal shimmied, for some reason. Maybe he thought he could use his wiles to entice them into a confession.
“Did she find out what happened to Wilhelmina?” Arthur asked. “Or did she discover you were planning to steal someone else’s magic? I can’t imagine another witch would take kindly to that.”
Ambrosia glanced at Chet, who didn’t look back. “I had nothing to do with…whatever happened to Wil.”
“I’m sure when the police thoroughly investigate, they’ll find ample evidence to the contrary,” Arthur said.
“Lola’s last journal entry was her name, of all things.
We know there’s a connection. They’ll figure it out, too.
” Arthur doubted that was true, since they’d taken Lola’s journal themselves, but Ambrosia didn’t need to know that.
“I didn’t kill her.” Ambrosia’s gaze drifted to Chet like she was thinking about pushing him off the overlook or under a bus.
Arthur and Sal turned to Chet, who finally seemed to rejoin the conversation fully.
“Don’t look at me! I didn’t kill Wil. I would never.” Chet pointed at Ambrosia. “She told me Wil found out about the ritual.”
“That’s a lie!” Ambrosia shrieked. “I might’ve complained about her to you, but that’s not the same as killing her.
You did that on your own. I just said I wish someone would silence her before she ran her mouth to the wrong people.
” Ambrosia pushed her hands through her hair, as if trying to compose herself.
“You told Chet to silence Wilhelmina?” Sal exclaimed. “How very covert of you!”
Arthur narrowed his eyes as his gaze snagged on Rumble. She was still doting on Brody, purring incessantly on his chest as if he were her very own giant, hairless kitten.
“You did silence her, didn’t you, Chet?” Arthur asked, holding up his hands as Chet opened his mouth to argue. “You didn’t kill her, I know. But you don’t have to kill someone to stop them from talking, especially if you’re a witch who specializes in alteration magic.”
“There’s, uh…” Chet swallowed audibly. “There’s nothing quieter than a cat, right? They can’t talk or write.”
“He obviously isn’t a cat owner himself,” Sal said, shaking his head. “If he thinks they’re quiet.”
Arthur nodded in agreement. The number of times Rumble had knocked over a platter of scones was far from zero.
“You didn’t kill her?” Ambrosia’s mouth slackened as she stared at her right-hand coven witch. “You turned her into a cat?”
“I was just following your orders,” Chet insisted. “And it worked, right? I dealt with the problem.”
“Did this happen in New Mexico?” Arthur asked.
“Yeah.”
“Chet, shut up!” Ambrosia snapped.
“Hardly makes sense to keep playing innocent now,” Arthur said. “We caught you doing forbidden magic on a minor. And we don’t need you to answer questions. I’ve worked it all out.”
“I knew you would!” Sal said, taking Arthur’s hand.
“Wilhelmina discovered you’d stolen magic before and planned to do it again.
She confronted you about it, and you convinced her you’d change your ways.
Then you told Chet to kill her, only he misunderstood your euphemistic language and turned her into a cat, then released her into the wilds of New Mexico.
He probably thought that would be the last of her. ”
“I did, yeah.” Chet shrugged.
“But Wilhelmina didn’t give up. She made her way northwest, to Trident Falls.
Probably arrived just in time to witness her ex-husband kill the mayor.
She hitched a ride with the body, and stayed at the inn to make sure we found him in our garden.
” As he spoke, the full truth of it hit him.
They’d been treating a human trapped in a cat’s body like their own pet.
It must’ve been so difficult for Wilhelmina, to know who’d killed Mayor Roth but be unable to say it aloud.
That explained why he couldn’t communicate with her, as well.
She wasn’t actually a cat, so of course his vampiric powers wouldn’t work on her.
“She trusted us to solve that murder, and we did. And now—”
Sal let out a horrified gasp. “The pet psychic wasn’t a fraud! She told me Rumble was going to live another fifty years. I thought she was trying to swindle me—”
“She wasn’t,” Arthur said. “She realized Rumble was Wilhelmina, and wrote it down in her journal. Then she went to you, didn’t she, Ambrosia?”
Ambrosia stepped back, hands raised in surrender. “Okay, that looks super bad, I know. She did call me. Said she’d figured out what happened to Wil but would only tell me in person—”
“Giving you motive and opportunity to kill her.” Arthur loved this moment, when everything came together.
“No, I was going to talk her down,” Ambrosia said.
“I knew there would be no evidence of what Chet had done, months ago and states away. I was going to give her a calming potion and convince her she was wrong. Come on, why would I have asked you two to look into her murder if I was the one who’d killed her? ”
“Probably to mislead the investigation,” Arthur muttered.
“Believe whatever you want, but I cared about Lola. I wanted you to catch her killer, and prove it wasn’t me.”
“Well, you can try that lie with the FPI, but I doubt they’ll buy it,” Sal scoffed.
“Oh, the FPI will never catch us.” Ambrosia turned to give Rumble a once-over. “This is really Wil, huh? Nice spellwork, Chet.”
“Thanks,” Chet said proudly, finally sounding like himself again.
“Ready to do some more?” she asked, rolling her shoulders back.
Chet cracked his knuckles, then moved to stand beside Ambrosia. So much for their fight over who would take the blame for Wilhelmina’s disappearance. Now they seemed to be united, and their goal was clear. They meant to evade arrest.
“Vampires versus witches,” Sal said, giddy. “I haven’t seen the like in decades. This will be fun.”
Arthur didn’t share his husband’s optimism or enthusiasm. He didn’t want things to come to violence. There’d been enough death and suffering already.
Slowly, he and Sal circled the clearing until they were between Rumble and Brody and the murderous witches. Now that Arthur and Sal had their vampiric powers, things would go quite differently for Chet. He wouldn’t be able to use pure strength to overpower them, at least.
“Magic won’t work on them,” Chet said to Ambrosia.
“Well, we have to do something. I’m not going to prison.”
“Maybe I could cast a spell to turn us into big tigers or something. Tigers beat vampires, right?”
“Why is your solution always to turn someone into a feline!” Ambrosia hissed.
Arthur suspected they didn’t realize that, with their heightened senses, Arthur and Sal could hear every word of their whispered argument about how best to defeat them.
“Tigers are cool,” Chet said, wilting.
“Just make us stronger and faster. This is a forest, so we can find wooden stakes and drive them off or kill them.”
“That’s rather cold-blooded,” Sal said to Arthur as they waited for their enemies to actually do something.
“Should we rush them?” Arthur suggested.
“I’ve only got one pair of handcuffs, I’m afraid.”
Before Arthur could ask Sal why the two things he’d brought were cilantro soap and a single pair of handcuffs, Chet and Ambrosia seemed to come to a decision.
They squared off against Arthur and Sal.
“Cast the performance enhancement spell,” Ambrosia commanded.
Sal began to cackle. “Should we call a doctor if it lasts more than four hours?”
But neither Ambrosia nor Chet got the opportunity to take advantage of Sal’s temporary laughing attack.
Two people burst into the clearing, both of them sweaty and surrounded by a cloud of happily feasting mosquitoes.
“If you cast anything, I’ll cast gun.” McMartin had his weapon out and pointed at Ambrosia and Chet. Behind him stood Other Arthur Miller, still wearing his tourist disguise and, from the smell of it, citronella spray that wasn’t at all working to stop the insects.
As far as one-liners went, the sheriff’s left something to be desired, but at least it distracted their adversaries.
Arthur’s shoulders loosened in relief. They’d caught the murderer, and now she would be taken into custody.
They’d found both Rumble and Brody’s mother—who just so happened to be the same person.
He’d actually done it, as Sal always believed he could.
“Put your hands where I can see them,” McMartin growled.
Ambrosia raised her arms into the air. “God, I hate this town!”