Page 37 of Witch and Tell

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For the second time in a week, noises in the night woke me. I jolted upright in bed, my heart pounding. Images flew through my head of Ian’s inert body on the atrium floor.

I pinched my arm. Yes, I was awake. This was not a dream. I wasn’t imagining it.

“Josie!” Sam’s voice floated up through my open window.

Sam. Had he come for me at last? I hurried to the window, but the bay window below obscured my view. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, grabbed my robe, and made for the door. In seconds I was in the library’s kitchen.

Sam stood outside the kitchen door’s window. “Josie, I need to talk to you.”

His tone of voice stopped me halfway across the room. This was no lover’s rendezvous. Something serious was up.

I unlocked the door. “Please, come in.” It felt strange to be so formal.

He stood, stone-faced, with the mere trace of a smile—a sure sign he was unhappy. “Where were you tonight?” he asked.

“What?”

“Tonight. Where have you been?”

I stepped back and pulled my robe closer. “Sleeping. You woke me up.”

“Earlier. Where were you earlier tonight?”

“I visited Lalena,” I said. Sam nodded. “Then I went to the meeting at the retreat center.” I glanced up to see if he knew about it. He nodded again. “Lots of people saw me there.”

“Then what?”

“Come in, if you’d like.” I stepped aside to let him enter the kitchen. It gave me a moment to collect myself before relaying the rest of my evening. I didn’t want Sam to misunderstand. “I went to look for Tyrone Beaudrie.” Sam opened his mouth to reply, but I forged ahead. “Ian Penclosa is missing. Tyrone left me a note saying he had information about him.”

“Tyrone Beaudrie? Why would he know anything about Ian?”

“They’re both from Baltimore,” I said.

“Baltimore.”

I nodded.

“Do you have this note?”

Sam was asking me for proof? “You don’t believe me,” I said. “You think I’m lying.”

“I’d like to see the note, please.”

“Wait here.”

My face stung as I took the service staircase to my apartment. Sam’s stony expression hurt more than his flat-out ignoring of me. I checked my pants pockets, but Tyrone’s note wasn’t there. It wasn’t in my purse, either. It was as if it hadn’t existed. Slowly, I returned downstairs.

“I can’t find the note, but it was there. He stuck it in the door jamb. Ask him, if you don’t believe me.”

Sam examined my face under the kitchen’s bright lights. A stranger would have seen only its impenetrable façade, but I knew a thousand thoughts rushed through his head. He wanted to say something hard, and he didn’t know how.

“What is it, Sam?”

“You were seen a few nights ago going into the woods.”

The witch’s circle. Someone must have spotted me taking Babe Hamilton’s linens to be burned. I nodded, and my blood chilled. Something had happened. Something bad.