Under Suspicion, With Child. Elle James
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“Morning, Mr. Gibson. I’m looking for my mother. I don’t suppose you’ve seen her?”
“No, no. I haven’t.” He moved around her as though he was in a hurry and didn’t have time for casual conversation. As he rushed past, he darted a look back at her, his face reddening when he caught her staring.
Strange man. Somewhat attractive, but too reclusive. Dismissing Alex with a shake of her head, Jocelyne continued her search for her mother and the source of the stench.
“Mom?” Jocelyne wound her way through the elegant mansion, filled with antiques from a bygone era of opulence. Finding no sign of her mother in the meticulously clean modernized kitchen, she noted that the door to the cellar stood open, the stench wafting upward from the stairwell.
Jocelyne grabbed a paper towel and pressed it to her nose, fighting the rise of nausea, a band of annoyance tightening her gut. A tiny foot kicked the inside of her uterus in protest. With a hand pressed to the gentle swell of her belly, she moved down the steps into the basement. What was her mother up to now? “Mom?”
“Down here, dear,” Hazel Baker called out.
As she descended into the basement, the thought that someone creepy had slipped down here to steal leaves from the henbane plant sent shivers of fear over her. What had once been an exciting place to play hide-and-seek now gave her the heebie-jeebies with images of spiderwebs, monsters and shadowy creatures taunting her healthy imagination. Not until she reached the bottom of the stairs did she remember to breathe.
In the far corner, the fluorescent lighting glowed over long tables lined with every kind of herb and plant imaginable. Her mother carefully cultivated the herbs for her homeopathic remedies to common ailments. Jocelyne was familiar with most of them, but she preferred to do her herb gardening in the outside greenhouse, not the basement. She’d inventoried her own plants, but she wasn’t sure what her mother kept below the inn, besides the henbane.
The enormous old mansion had been converted to a boarding-house and inn over a half century ago, with a low-ceiling basement running the full length. Floor joists and massive timbers held the rest of the three-story structure aloft, with the structural beams breaking up the space every sixteen feet.
Dried herbs hung from nails on beams, baskets littered the floor and shelves lined the walls. Everywhere she looked were plastic containers, leather pouches and ceramic pots filled with things even Jocelyne didn’t dare to inquire about.
Her mother knew what was in each pot, pan, tub and sack. With the utmost care, she stored the herbs and ingredients she used in her decoctions for spells, potions and remedies.
“Back here. I’m in the middle of something.” Across the floor, Hazel Baker’s shimmering green-and-purple blouse and matching skirt reflected the light shining over an open book. Gold bangles dangled from her wrists, clinking with each movement of her arms and hands.
Her mother was most likely working on a potion or brew she planned to use on a member of the community, or worse, as a basis for a spell. Many of her vile-smelling concoctions managed to turn Jocelyne’s stomach. Not a good thing for a pregnant woman.
As she fought the bile rising in her she wondered why she’d thought her mother might have changed. For over four decades, Hazel Baker had been a firm believer in all things Wicca, practicing the ancient pagan religion for the good of her body and her community, even if it cost her daughter dearly. Jocelyne sighed. “Remedy or potion?”
“Potion.”
“Mom, I thought you said you’d quit making potions.”
“I can’t, honey.” She glanced at the page in the book and then added ingredients to a cauldron of murky liquid, bubbling over a small gas stove, set against the wall. “Raven’s Cliff needs me.”
“Why?”
Hazel turned back to the ancient book, passed down to her by her mother, and lifted a yellowed page, laying it over gently. The Book of Shadows had been lovingly cared for by generations of women from her mother’s family. “I know you don’t like it when I practice my faith, but you have to understand.” She gripped the corners of the book, her fingers turning white with the force, her normally happy face paling as she spoke. “There’s evil here. I can feel it in my bones, in my skin, in the air I breathe.” She faced her daughter, her dark-green eyes glowing with the intensity of her conviction.
A chill snaked across Jocelyne’s skin and the muscles in the back of her neck tightened. She understood evil and bad omens. She’d been cursed with them for as long as she could remember. That didn’t make it right to publicly acknowledge evil’s existence. Nor to get everyone in town up in arms over something that might be nonexistent.
She shook her head from side to side. “Mom, there’s evil everywhere, but there’s also good. You shouldn’t dwell on the bad.” How many times had she told herself the same thing? Did she really adhere to her own words, or was it just lip service?
“I know, I know. But I can’t let the evil continue to eat at the very foundation of Raven’s Cliff. Too many horrible things have happened already.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to whip up something incredibly nauseating to cure what ails this community.” Jocelyne pressed the paper towel to her nose and breathed, the stench finding its way through the layers of absorbent paper.
“I have to cure the curse.”
“Mom, you’re blowing this whole curse thing way out of proportion.”
“Then how do you explain the Seaside Strangler? After the lighthouse burned, he struck that very next day, taking poor Rebecca Johnson. He tried to kill his second victim, but she got away before he could. Then he killed Cora McDonald and Sofia Lagios. All of them strangled with a seashell necklace.”
The name hit Jocelyne full in the gut. “Did you say Lagios?” She laid a hand on her mother’s arm. “Was she any relation to Andrei Lagios?”
Her mother nodded, her eyes filling. “His little sister. She and her friend were murdered not too long ago on the night of their prom. Horrible tragedy.”
So that explained Andrei’s burning desire to catch the killer at all costs. Sorrow washed over Jocelyne, filling her chest with a deep ache. Andrei was still in mourning for his sister.
Being gone for ten years, she’d apparently missed more than the usual small town gossip.
“You see, I have to break this curse so that the town can finally live in peace.”
“Mom, one potion won’t cure a town of evil.”
“I’m pulling out the strongest potions and spells in my Book of Shadows. I’ll find the cure, if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Aren’t you worried the townspeople will just make fun of you? You know what they think about your beliefs.”
Her mother’s brows dipped deeper. “And what do you think?”
Jocelyne held her tongue. She’d only been back a few days, back to mend fences and find resolution with her past. Her purpose was not to accuse her mother of being a nutcase ready for a one-way ticket to the loony bin with her very own monogrammed straitjacket. No matter what her mother believed or what she did, at her core, she meant well and strove to help others find peace and contentment.
Contentment. An elusive state Jocelyne had yet to achieve. She’d run away from Raven’s Cliff in search of herself and peace of mind. That she was back spoke of her failure.
If Jocelyne had learned one thing in her hiatus from her hometown, she’d learned that when life took away everything, and you felt you had nothing left, you still had family. As if reminding her of the fact, a sharp pain jabbed her ribs. “I’ll tell you what I think, Mom. I love you and I don’t want to see you hurt.”
She rounded the worktable and picked her way over a hefty bag of potting soil, tamping