Mind Over Magic by Lindsay Buroker
6
“You thinksomeone tampered with the motorcycle?” Morgen asked.
“Yes. That was under a housing before.” The werewolf pointed at the bone clip. “It would not have been visible to Gwen. I am surprised she did not sense it, but I do not know how witch magic works.” He squinted at her. “Do you sense it?”
“Sense it? No, but I’m not a witch.” Nor did she believe in witches, magic, hexes, potions, wands, or werewolves, for that matter. “I’m a database programmer. I also enjoy reading, organizing, cooking, hiking with my dog, and music with lyrics that mean something. As you can see from my list, I have no witchy hobbies.”
“You felt its magic.”
“I felt… something.” Morgen rubbed the finger that had been zapped. “Like electricity.”
“Magic can feel like many things. Often, it is painful.” He grimaced, as if remembering some specific incident. “You will research this device.” He removed it from the motorcycle with a faint snap. If it buzzed him, he gave no indication of it. “You will learn who made it and tell me their name.”
“You like to give orders, don’t you?”
“Gwen allowed me to take the fallen trees from Wolf Wood for my work and to live on this land. I owe her. You will find out who murdered her.” He held out the clip.
Morgen hadn’t the foggiest idea how to research a magical item, nor did she want to get zapped again by taking hold of the thing. “The sheriff’s report said my grandmother died in an accident, that it was late, the roads were wet, and she went around a curve too quickly.”
“She was murdered.” He stepped closer to her. His height and prominently displayed muscles would have made him intimidating even if she hadn’t seen him transform from a wolf into a man. “You will find out who did it so I can kill them.”
“How about if you want my help, you offer me something or at least ask politely instead of being a big bully?” The words came out braver than she felt. After the day—and night—she’d had so far, she wanted to run and hide somewhere, not deal with this guy.
“I am not a bully.”
“You haven’t given me your name, you’re ordering me around, and you’re about to knock my face in with your prodigious pecs. What would you call that?”
He squinted down at her for several long seconds, and she didn’t know if he was debating whether his actions—and his pecs—were or weren’t bullying, or if he was contemplating throwing her over his shoulder and locking her and the clip in the root cellar until she solved his mystery.
Finally, he stepped back. She realized she was gripping the handle of the knife so hard that her knuckles ached.
“My name is Amar Guerrero. If you research this item, find out who put it on the motorcycle, and tell me, I will…” He looked around the barn for inspiration. “Make you a table.”
“A table?” She appreciated that he was taking her advice and offering her something, but what was she supposed to do with a table? Especially a giant table made out of slabs of wood hauled in from the wilds? She didn’t even have a house these days, unless one counted the small apartment she’d rented in Shoreline. If the chunky furnishings in the barn were indicative of his typical work, she wouldn’t be able to get anything he made through the door.
“Or a bench,” he said.
“You could just buy me dinner.” Morgen meant it as a practical suggestion, especially since she hadn’t yet had time to grocery shop, but belatedly realized it sounded like she was fishing for a date.
No, she was not looking for that, not from any guy, and especially not from the werewolf who’d threatened to rip her throat out. Besides, what did he eat that a vegetarian could have? Deer was not on her menu, especially not freshly eviscerated deer. She shuddered.
Fortunately, he seemed more puzzled by than interested in this suggestion. Apparently, she wasn’t his type. That was fine with her. She shuddered again.
“A bench would be fine,” she said. “I’ll fend for myself for food. I’ve got a bag of cauliflower puffs in the car.”
Maybe she could put his bench on the front porch here. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about transporting it, and the people who came to look at the house could sit aghast on it after seeing the pale blue icebox and the lack of towel warmers.
Though it occurred to her that selling the house, the original and only plan she’d had when driving up to Bellrock, might not be a good idea. What if everyone wanted to develop the property instead of living on it? No, she wouldn’t let that happen. As long as there were multiple offers, she could be selective. Maybe she could find a nice family that wanted a fixer house with room for the kids to run. Though small children might not be appropriate for a property with a werewolf living in the barn.
She rubbed her face, wondering if she would wake up to find out this bizarre day had been a dream.
“Cauliflower what?” he—Amar—asked.
“Puffs. They’re a snack food. A mix of cauliflower and sorghum.”
“Sore gum?”
“Sorghum, yeah. It’s an ancient grain. And an environmentally responsible sustainable crop. No need to feel guilty about your snacking pleasure.” Morgen stopped short of telling him about the fiber content. As her husband—ex-husband—had been quick to point out, nobody wanted the details of her hippy health kick, as he’d called it.
She couldn’t help it that her doctor had traumatized her with ominous threats and stern lectures about her questionable health and how her body would only decline further in her forties if she didn’t change something. At first, she’d been reluctant to give up her diet of fast food to learn to cook vegetable-based meals at home, but she’d gradually gotten used to it. These days, cauliflower puffs didn’t even seem that odd. They were handy for car trips—and prompting strange conversations with werewolves.
A werewolf whose brow remained furrowed and unenlightened.
“I’m a vegetarian,” she explained. That tended to clear things up—or at least helped people to categorize her crazy. “I like animals,” she added, wondering if he’d been the one to put the deer head on the doorstep. Who else could it have been?
Maybe she was crazier for standing here and talking to him than for her food choices.
“Huh,” was all he said.
“A bench would be great.”
“Yes. Good.” Amar held out the clip again, looking more exasperated than pleased by her acceptance. Or maybe he was just exasperated with her. She probably should have told him she liked deer puffs.
She tugged her sleeve down, hoping a fabric barrier would keep the clip from zapping her again, and accepted it. He folded his arms over his chest and stood like a statue, as if he meant to wait there until she finished her research and brought him the answers he wanted.
How likely it was that she could, she didn’t know, but if Grandma had been murdered, Morgen wanted answers too.
She walked back outside, and Lucky bounded over. He jumped up on his hind legs, planted his paws on her shoulders, and licked her face.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, nudging him back down. They’d gone to obedience classes for months to work on the jumping thing, and she’d thought he’d grown out of it, but maybe this was an extenuating circumstance. She had, after all, just walked out of a werewolf’s lair.
As Morgen headed toward the root cellar, figuring a witch’s laboratory—or whatever it was called—was the appropriate place to research a magical bone clip, she pulled out her phone to take a picture of it. Maybe an image search on the internet would be enlightening.
She didn’t find anything exactly like the clip, just a lot of sites ensuring her that working with skulls, bones, and animal remains was typical in modern witchcraft, shamanic practices, and folk magic.
“That’s a relief. I was hoping my day would turn typical.”
Lucky bounded along at her side and sniffed at the clip.
“No buzzy bones for you,” she said, even though that sounded like the name of a product for her treat pocket. “And if you’re coming into the root cellar with me, you have to keep your nose out of things.”
Lucky ran off to sniff at the side of the barn again. Maybe he couldn’t be constrained by such rules.
Morgen descended the stairs, the strong scents making her dread the idea of spending hours down there, and headed straight for the bookcase. She ducked her head to avoid hitting twists of strange dried things dangling from the ceiling beams.
The collection of paraphernalia gathered down here wasn’t any less daunting the second time. If she needed to find any specific item, she wouldn’t know where to start. If this had been her workshop, she would have tagged everything with RFID and entered the items into a database before sorting and storing everything in a logical manner. Her fingers groped at the air with longing as she imagined instilling such order on the place.
When she reached the bookcase, she was relieved that most of the titles were in English, though the fancy calligraphic script on the bindings made the texts seem just as old as she’d guessed. Some were even handwritten.
“Grimoire of Sacred Knowledge,” she read on one as she scanned the titles, hoping something would pop out at her as possibly relevant.
The part of her that had read numerous detective stories believed it might be a better use of her time to wander around town and speak to people who’d known her grandmother—such as that smarmy real-estate agent who’d apparently been talking to her about selling the property—but the introvert in her cringed at the idea of starting conversations with strangers. She would rather spend days in a library—or a cellar full of grimoires—than wander around asking people questions.
But she wouldn’t be able to find anything in this disorganized mess. After again eyeing the books, the jars, the bottles, the crocks, and bags of what had to be ingredients for potions or creams or who knew what, Morgen ran to her car to grab her laptop. Sadly, she didn’t have RFID tags along, but she could improvise some labels and at least get a thorough inventory of everything. Maybe in the process, she would come across something identical or similar to the bone clip—and instructions telling her all about it and who made them.
She’d been working for two hours, thankfully finding a chain to turn on a naked light bulb mounted in a socket between ceiling beams, when the phone rang. Zoe’s name popped up.
“Hey,” Morgen answered. “Thanks for calling back.”
“No problem, coz. And have I mentioned that you’re my favorite cousin? And that I’m a brilliant real-estate agent who will gladly lower my commission if you let me sell that house for you?”
“Since I’ve already inventoried the root cellar and know there isn’t a stash of gold bars down here, I’m going to assume it’s on more land than we all thought.” Morgen could have guessed that based on Christian’s comment about hundreds of houses fitting on the property. She knew developers crammed a lot of houses into small areas these days, but nobody would put a hundred on an acre.
“Good guess,” Zoe said. “The house itself is on a two-acre tax lot, but here’s what Grandma never mentioned. She owned it and the six tax lots surrounding it. The easternmost one does back up to state land that stretches over to the interstate, but everything you can see from the house all the way down to the water was hers. Is yours now, I guess. There’s over five hundred acres.”
Morgen swore, far more daunted than excited. “How did the lawyer notmention that? There’s going to be a huge estate tax due at the end of the year, right?”
Morgen would have to sell the land to pay that. Even though it was what she’d planned to do after hearing she’d been left the property, the idea of being forced to do it was distressing.
“Uhm, not necessarily. Grandma—actually, I think this was her grandmother—had it designated as forest land a long time ago. Looks like that comes with an agreement to sustainably manage the forest. More importantly, it means the maximum assessed value of the land is a lot lower than it would be if you put it on the market and sold it to someone who was going to try to get it rezoned for residential development.”
Exactly what Amar didn’t want to happen. Even if she didn’t like him, Morgen couldn’t blame him for not wanting to see the forest destroyed. What had he called it? Wolf Wood.
“She also had a veteran’s exemption on her taxes—that must be because Grandpa served—and a senior citizen exemption too. It looks like she wasn’t paying for anything more than the property the house is on. Are you sure the lawyer didn’t tell you all about this? That’s odd.”
Morgen sighed. “I don’t know. I never talked with her over the phone. These last couple of weeks have been tough.” The last couple of months had been tough. “And I don’t like talking with strangers under any circumstances.”
“Even strangers who are giving you things?”
“Yeah. She ended up sending a big packet along with the keys to the house. It’s all in the car. I was going to look everything over this week.”
“Well, she probably would have warned you about the estate tax if the property value meant it crossed the threshold and you had to pay it, butyou will definitely have to pay it if you sell the land and make millions. It’s not that big a deal, since you’d make F-U money out of the deal, even after paying the taxes. Like I said, I’m happy to take care of it for you.”
Yes, everybody would be happy to sell the property for her. Morgen could think of worse problems to have, but she was starting to wish Grandma had left the place to her sister.
“And if I don’t want to sell it, what then? I just have to worry about the property taxes?”
“Essentially, but they’re going to go up a ton because you don’t have any exemptions.”
“Can you define a ton?”
“Uh, not really. There aren’t any comps around for me to look at it, but it might be a lot. And you said you’re not working, right? Morgen, you have to sell it. You can’t afford to move up there. There aren’t any programming jobs in Bellrock. There’s a fudge store, three tchotchke shops, the woo woo place that sells crystals and weird powders, and two hotels that probably don’t even have computer systems. Just sell the place. We barely went up there as kids. It can’t mean that much to you. And don’t you want to be a millionaire?”
“I don’t know what I want yet.”
No, that wasn’t true. Morgen eyed the bone clip lying on a counter next to a mortar and pestle. She wanted to find out if the werewolf was right, if someone had killed Grandma.