Page 39 of Witch and Tell

I would have a lot of time to think that night, because I certainly wouldn’t be sleeping. The hum of the jail’s ventilation system and the faraway moans of some other poor arrestee didn’t help.

Yes, I had been at the witch’s circle in the woods, and it was true I’d built a fire. However, I’d burned linens, not a body. I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain that I was destroying a spell set by another witch, but I’d have to think of some excuse.

I shifted on the hard mattress.

Even if I’d wanted to burn a body, how could I have hauled a man’s corpse through the woods? Unless they thought I’d somehow brought him there alive, then killed him.

And what about seeing Ian in the library’s atrium? Was that dream-addled sleep or something more real? Like magic? More specifically, Beata?

No matter what angle I took in thinking over the situation, I arrived at the same conclusion: it was impossible. It was impossible that I was out the night I’d found Ian’s body. In fact, finding Ian’s body in the atrium— then having it vanish—was also impossible. It was certainly impossible that I’d killed him, then attempted to burn his body.

I’d been a fool to underestimate Beata. In whatever form she took—Babe Hamilton or Lise Bloom or whomever—she wasn’t finished with me. Lise had known about the witch’s circle. She’d pointed it out when I’d met her on the trail. With Beata’s glamour, even in its current weaker form, she might have been able to make me see what she wanted me to see, including an innocent woman with whom I felt an unusual kinship.

I was being set up, and there was only one person who could have done it. A witch. And that witch had to be Aunt Beata.

Chapter Twenty-one

“You can be honest with me,” the man from the public defender’s office told me. “Attorneyclient privilege.”

I’d been woken that morning by a knock on my cell door just after I’d finally been able to fall asleep. The jail attendant had let in a tall, elderly man in a shiny double-breasted suit he must have bought in the 1980s. He’d paired it with black sneakers and white socks. Whatever his sartorial choices, I eagerly took the latte he handed me.

“George Norton, from the public defender’s office.” He followed up the coffee cup with a business card.

My experience in jail continued to challenge my expectations. I’d assumed a public defender would be young and inexperienced. I eyed my attorney. Maybe he hadn’t been able to get promoted.

Now, our coffee cups drained and my story told, he shook his head. “Why would you be burning a bunch of sheets? And why in the middle of the night? Doesn’t make sense. Why not just give them away if they bothered you so much?”

“I had reasons,” I said. How to be honest but not stray into magic? If I told him I was a witch, he’d refer me to the state mental hospital. “They came from someone I didn’t like.”

“So you took them to the woods. In the middle of the night.” He let out his breath in a half sigh, half snort. “No, that won’t fly. I can’t help you if you won’t tell me the truth.”

“That is the truth. I could make up some kind of story, but it would be just that—a story.”

“How about the murder weapon, then? Where’s that?”

Was this a trap? “I don’t know how he was killed. I’m just as puzzled as you.”

“If they find the murder weapon in your apartment, you’re in trouble.”

I was already in trouble. The case against me was nearly impenetrable. “What about Ian’s wheelchair?” I asked.

“Say what?”

“Ian Penclosa was paraplegic. He couldn’t get around without a wheelchair. Finding it might lead to . . . new evidence.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I feared any new evidence would only serve as another brick in the fortress-like case against me. A witch powerful enough to materialize this kind of case could manage a few fingerprints on a wheelchair.

The attorney swatted dismissively. “Could be at the bottom of the river by now. It hardly matters, given what they already have against you.”

I’d been an idiot to forget Babe Hamilton so easily, to think I’d driven her away simply by breaking her spell on the linens. She’d taken it as an opportunity to silence me for good.

The attorney leaned back. “We can’t say the death was an accident. Not with the fire, etcetera. Can we make a case for self-defense?”

“I didn’t kill him,” I said. “You have to believe me. I know it looks like I did, but, I tell you, I’ve only been trying to find him.”

“And why is that?”

“Because he’s my good friend’s boyfriend, and she was worried. She couldn’t get in touch with him. She wanted me to locate him and find out what was wrong.”