The Hexed. Heather Graham
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black, but I have sugar and creamer inside.”
“Black is great.”
“Are you hungry?”
He didn’t get to answer the question, because a black SUV drove up behind him and parked.
Agent Rockwell got out, and she noticed details she’d missed the night before. His eyes were direct and green, and he kept his dark auburn hair short and well groomed. And he was impeccably dressed in a dark suit that fit him perfectly.
He walked over to them, displaying his badge for the officer in the car.
“I’m Officer Fitzpatrick,” the young man in the car said. “Glad to see you, sir. I’ve been told I could head home at nine, but I don’t know if I’m getting a replacement or not.”
“I don’t believe so,” Rockwell said, and looked at Devin. “Not enough manpower, and we don’t believe that Miss Lyle is in any danger—especially now that the night is over.” He smiled reassuringly at Devin. “We don’t actually believe you were ever in any danger, but I thought that after the trauma you went through, the reassurance of an officer out front might be welcome.” He stared at her assessingly. “It looks like you made it through the night quite well.”
Fitzpatrick handed back her mug with a thank-you, then turned his key in the ignition and drove off.
“Thank you for sending him.”
“Sure. May I ask you some questions?”
“I guess,” she said.
He was staring at her house curiously. Suddenly he looked at her and smiled. “I just realized...this is the Witch of the Woods House.”
Devin felt her muscles tightening at the reminder of the way some locals had mocked her aunt and the cottage.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said coldly.
“Sorry, just growing up so close—in Peabody—there were rumors about this place, that’s all. It was owned by an older lady, by all accounts a lovely woman, who was a Wiccan and grew herbs and...every girl I went to high school with wanted a love potion from her. I guess she passed away—she was quite elderly even then. Did you know her?”
“Yes. She was my great-aunt, Mina Lyle,” Devin said. She couldn’t help the chill in her tone.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. About those questions...?”
She shrugged. “Come in. The house doesn’t bite.”
“I didn’t think it did.”
She led the way in and offered him coffee, then went to get it, leaving him in the parlor, studying all her treasures.
When she returned, Poe was sitting on his shoulder.
She looked at the bird. Wretched traitor! she told him silently.
And yet...
She didn’t know what it was. She’d been so terrified after her discovery in the woods that she’d thought he was an idiot when he hadn’t immediately dialed 9-1-1.
Now...
Now she couldn’t help but note that he was extremely good-looking in a masculine but rather...federal way. He could have walked onto the set of a new Men in Black movie and fit right in.
“He’s great,” Rockwell said of the bird. “What’s his name?”
“Poe.”
“Of course. Well, let’s set you on your perch, Poe,” he said, and easily urged the bird back onto the white pine perch in his large cage. He looked over at Devin. “And thank you. For seeing me, speaking with me—and for the coffee.”
As he sipped, his eyes wandered, then lit on the marble bust of Madame Tussaud.
He walked over to it, and she realized that he was staring at the pentagram medallion.
He turned to her. He was tense. Hard. Everything about him had changed.
“Where did you get this?” he demanded.
And she realized that the icy stare that he was aiming her way was filled with...
Suspicion.
None of the pentagrams were the same. No one of the three was like either of the other two. Rocky had seen all three medallions, and they were firmly etched in his memory.
The first, the one he’d seen on Melissa Wilson’s body, had been a very clean design, with only a thin line of silver vines winding around the angles at each point of the star.
On the second—found on Carly Henderson—the points of the star were themselves formed by green-tinted vines.
The third—found on Jane Doe last night—had intricate little flowers at each point.
And now this...
It was probably one of the nicest pieces of jewelry he had ever seen. Enamel delicately decorated the silver to create slender elegant leaves around the points of the star, and there was a tiny stone at each point—a sapphire. There was something so fragile and beautiful about the piece that it was instantly arresting. In a city where there were probably thousands of similar pieces for sale, this one was exquisite.
And enough like the others that they all just might have been created by the same artist.
He stared at Devin Lyle, and she stared back at him. Maybe she thought he’d lost it. She hadn’t trusted him much from the get-go, he thought, even though she had flagged him down.
“Who are you—really?” she asked him.
“Agent Rockford. Really.” By rote, he produced his badge.
She looked at it, then at him, and said, “You do realize that badge doesn’t mean much these days. We—the innocent public—are conditioned to accept any kind of forgery because we’re accustomed to seeing official badges everywhere.”
“It’s real,” he told her, smiling.
“So I really flagged down an FBI agent—by accident—after stumbling across a body?”
He nodded, but he wasn’t about to get distracted from what really interested him. “Where did you get this piece?” he asked her again.
“My friend’s shop. She has a number of them. I’m not much for diamonds, but I do love colored stones.”
“Like rubies, emeralds and sapphires?” he queried. It wasn’t an attack, though he could tell from the way she looked at him that she had taken it as one. She seemed to believe that he suspected her—or her friends—to be guilty of something.
“Citrine, aquamarine, opals—fire opals are my favorite,” she said. She set his coffee on the natural-wood coffee table that stood between what Rocky was pretty sure was a grouping of eighteenth-century carved chairs and a love seat.
“Your questions can’t be about my likes and dislikes when it comes to jewelry,” she said, sitting down. “I don’t know what else I can tell you. I heard a noise outside. I grabbed my hockey stick and went out into the woods, and there she was. My first instinct was to get help—to get the police. I was closer to the road than I was to my house. Okay, I was panicked and afraid the killer might be around and follow me home, so maybe that’s why I ran to the road. I saw her, but I didn’t know her,” she added quietly.
He took a seat across from her.
“What did you hear?” he asked her. “The M.E. reckoned that the time of death was around five o’clock. You found her hours later. That’s why I’m asking.”
She shook her head. She was evading him, he