Chapter Sixteen #2
While her face was swollen from the broken neck and hanging herself, they were pretty sure it would be her.
Why?
There was witch shit all over the place, and this nut had a boner for killing some witches.
What a trait to pass down generation to generation. Someone needed a freaking new hobby.
Or jail.
“She was a practicing witch,” she stated. “And look what the cat is wearing,” Tori said.
Honor checked it out.
The second she did, she gasped.
“Oh, shit. Is that a pentacle? Like the others had? I thought there were only eight. Wynter would have been the eighth victim! Where the hell did that one come from?”
Shit.
That was when the two Littlemoons looked at each other. Both Julian and Tori remembered what Amethyst said at the shop. Honestly, it slipped both their minds with all the information regarding Wynter and the affair.
“Oops…”
Honor looked over suspiciously.
“What was that for?” she asked. “And why do I feel like I’m about to regret marrying into this family, Jules?”
He smiled.
“We didn’t get to update you with all the information we found out at the shop.”
Both cops stared at them.
Oh, if there was a way to make a cop twitchy, it was to leave them out of the loop.
“It wasn’t intentional,” Tori stated.
Bishop sighed.
“Guys, just tell us. Honor is about to go nuclear. That’s her ‘I’m going to arrest my own brother and sister-in-law’ look,” she admitted.
To prove she was right, Honor took her cuffs off the back of her pants and held them up.
Yeah, it was time to spill it.
“We all got distracted, but we found out that yesterday, when Wynter left the shop, an order was put in for more pentacles.”
Both cops stared at them like they’d lost their minds to let that one tidbit be forgotten.
It was HUGE.
“I don’t care if they’re my family,” Honor said. “We’re taking them in on some bunk charges, so they have to be beaten with rubber hoses for my entertainment.”
Honestly, no one was sure if she was kidding or not.
Bishop went there.
“That might have been a top priority, Julian,” Bishop said. “You know, since now we have a body.”
Well, excuse them.
“You were telling us about Wynter, and the doctor, and then we were texted this address. It wasn’t intentional,” Tori stated.
Honor sighed.
“I actually miss Trey now. He would run his mouth and haunt my goddamn car, but he’d not let anything slip that mind of his.”
Yeah, she had a point.
Instead of getting further worked up, they both let it go. Today was not the day to have a pair of strokes between them.
“Just tell us now,” Bishop said. “Before the ME gets here.”
Julian did just that.
“The delivery order came in, and Lucifer dropped them off at the person’s home on his way out of work.”
Both cops lifted a brow.
“Delivered? So we have a drop spot?”
Julian nodded and pulled the address out of his pocket to hand it to them.
“Yes, they were delivered to this address.”
When handed her the paper, both cops stared at it. Honestly, it hadn’t come up in the investigation so far, so neither recognized it.
Honor glanced over at her partner.
“Have you seen this address before? Because I’m at a loss. It’s in the nice part of town, over where Julian and Tori live—by the Captain’s house.”
Bishop shook her head.
“No. Let me look it up.”
As she did, both Julian and Tori were trying to get a look at the address.
“Not familiar to me,” Julian stated.
Yeah, Tori either.
Well, it was time to figure out who owned the house.
Could it be this easy where they caught this dude by some delivery of pentacles?
Well, that would be nice.
Going into her phone, Bishop put the address in to see if it was tied to an address with the DMV.
And it was.
On her phone, one single name popped up, and it was a very familiar one—especially to the cops in Salem.
Trenton James Stevens
Oh, boy.
The defense attorney who drove them all insane by getting criminals off the hook had the pentacles delivered to his home.
“Well, we either just got really lucky, or this is going to be one hell of a weird coincidence,” Bishop admitted.
Now, everyone was focused on her.
“What do you mean?” Tori asked.
She showed her the driver’s license tied to that address, and it was no other than the man who kicked this whole shitshow off.
The attorney.
“So, Trent Stevens, Lonnie Jackson’s attorney, who came to us, meaning Lianna, to hire us, owns the house where the pentacles were delivered? The same pentacles that we’ve found on every single body?” Tori asked.
Oh, that was bad.
For.
Him.
Instead of saying anything, Bishop just nodded.
Tori knew what they were doing next.
“Julian and I will head there. We’ll see what we can find out.”
Honor laughed.
And laughed.
And laughed.
“Oh, Littlemoon banes to my existence, if you think for one second, I’m letting you go do this alone…well, you’ve lost your goddamn minds! Oh, and I’ll be losing my goddamn badge!”
Well, no shock there.
Honor was NOT playing games.
“I don’t like that the attorney started this, and I certainly don’t like that you two want to go galivanting over there like you have a badge,” Honor stated.
“Galivanting? What are you? Ninety? Do you want us to come sit on the davenport in your parlor next?”
She pointed at her.
“Listen! You leave my Scrabble kink out of this. What Booth and I do in our downtime is not your business.”
Tori laughed because that was not what she was expecting.
“I said what I said,” Honor stated. “It’s worth a lot of points.”
Then, she looked at her partner.
“You deal with these two. I’m one minute from losing my mind. I hope you have a plan,” she said to Bishop. “Because our boss is going to be so far up our asses, both of our husbands are going to be offended for us.”
Oh, she was aware.
Bishop had an idea.
“Tori and Julian, can you go do research in your car on the man, and while you do, we’ll handle the crime scene?”
They went to protest, but she stopped them.
“It’s only to get you off the scene before the ME gets here.
Then, I need to get Lucian’s attention so that I can tell him about Ridge.
After that, we can divide up, and Honor can escort you to your client’s house to talk to him.
Sound good, everyone?” she asked, mediating and covering all of their bases.
Well, that sounded fair.
“We can do that.”
Tori was to the point.
“We’ll also work on Thomas Vanderbilt. Remember, Oracle brought that up that this whole thing stems back centuries to a mess that happened here. I doubt that’s not going to play into this somehow. You said she was rarely wrong.”
She nodded.
“She isn’t.”
Well, then, they had to keep digging on that, too.
“Thanks for being proactive,” Bishop stated.
They didn’t mind.
Honor went there.
“We’ll work the actual scene to find the killer, because the day I start saying ‘maybe it’s a witch hater from the sixteen hundreds when the witches were burned’, I want someone to punch me in the face. Repeatedly.”
Both Tori and Bishop raised their hands as if she was offering that up.
HAR.
HAR.
HAR.
They were funny.
“Go.”
As they headed out, Bishop pulled the necklace off of the cat.
“We’re going to buy some time,” she stated. “If there’s no pentacle, we can pretend this isn’t tied to our case.”
Holy shit.
They were now fucking with the crime scene.
Honor’s eye was twitching.
“I know,” Bishop said. “Only, do you want to do that dance for our boss? Which is absolutely going to make you miserable, and this is only going to annoy you?”
Okay, her partner had a point.
“Fine,” she stated. “But I’m not joking about a vacation. I’m definitely taking one. Me, and Booth half naked on a beach…”
“Who is a witch. Doesn’t he have a pentacle tattooed on his chest?”
She stared at her.
“Why do you hate me?”
It made her laugh.
As she pet the cat, it curled into her body and was purring up a storm.
“You’re keeping it, aren’t you?” Honor asked.
Bishop shrugged.
“I mean, unless you want dibs. If my husband gets a boyfriend, I get a cat. Those are the rules,” she joked.
Honor laughed again.
“Pass. I am not bringing a black cat home to my witch husband. That’s not happening. He’d be way too happy about that. Then, I have to hear the whole history of familiars and why witches needed them. Absolutely not. In this case, knowledge is NOT power.”
Bishop read the tag on the cat’s neck.
“I mean, this is Luna. It fits for this town. What else are you naming a cat?”
NOPE.
Not happening.
“All yours. Don’t get too attached. If Destiny had family, you’re going to have to give that cat up. I’m sure they’ll want it.”
She was aware.
Still...
She couldn’t leave it here alone. Until the family came forward, they were going to have a cat.
As they heard cars in the driveway, Bishop placed Luna in the carrier by the door.
It was time to play homicide cop.
Hopefully, Destiny would be the last one.
This nut was having a little too much fun.
At their expense.
* * * L I T T L E M O O N * * *
Not far away
Watching
Oh, but he was enjoying the show.
Little did they know, he was following them, and he was making sure to check in on them to see if they were getting any closer.
They weren’t.
At some point, Lucian and Oracle would take Genesis into the static, and that was when he’d be able to get closer to her.
Because that’s exactly what he wanted.
He wanted her to know that he was there, and like his ancestors before him, they would be what did her in.
It was a shame, too. She was incredibly beautiful, and she could have made a perfect mate.
Had she not been born who she was.
Blood mattered, and he knew what her family had done to his all of those years ago. That was something that couldn’t be forgotten.
There was a price to pay, and he would enact it from her, and only her.
The last of her line.
Thankfully, he would get to her before she could get married or have a life. It was best to nip it in the bud.
EARLY.
On top of that, imagine his glee when he felt HER arrive here. Oh, not Genesis.
The big dog in the static.
Oracle was in the building—so to speak, and after he took care of Genesis, he would get all the power he craved.
Lucian was no longer a problem.