Page 46 of Justice & Liberty

And facing the murder, the witch, and the ghost, she was calmly pulling a bowl of soup out of the takeout bag, offering it to me along with a spoon.

“Marry me,” I said.

She still didn’t run for the hills, just smiled, pressed the soup into my hands, and winked. “That depends, do you have some more of that tea in the fridge?”

24

The only realconclusion the three of us came to, other than that it sucked to be able to see but not eat the pad Thai, was that we didn’t have a lot to go on.

Ephraim Collins had been poisoned with antifreeze, which didn’t really narrow the suspect pool at all, since there was no one who couldn’t get their hands on that. Anyone could walk into an auto parts store with twenty bucks and walk out with a gallon of the stuff, and especially in Iowa, lots of people did.

Hunter didn’t leave till almost midnight, and we had agreed to go see Sabrina’s cousin Abigail the next day. Not because either of us thought it was likely she’d killed her grandfather, but because if anyone knew his movements the day he died, it would have been her.

On the other hand, we’d made those plans for the afternoon, because as I had explained to Hunter, I had other plans in the morning.

Namely, there was an eight a.m. knock on my door, and whether it was Ryan or Gabby, it was time. Time for building a chicken coop.

It was Ryan, and weirdly, he was carrying not one, but two chickens. I recognized the orange one as Laverne from our short time together, but he was carrying a second white chicken, and frankly, looking confused.

“Hey Jaycie,” he said, awkward as hell. “I’m, uh, this is weird, but...Gran said she’d like some of this stuff your mom used to sell at the shop for, um, getting rid of spiders?”

Peppermint oil, my brain instantly offered.

I looked at the white chicken in his arms.

So did he.

“For a chicken,” I said.

He winced. “I, um, I guess? Or we can just trade me helping you build the coop for?—”

“It’s fine, Ryan. Apparently some people in South Liberty paid my mom with chickens. I just really hope there are no other livestock involved. If someone brings me a goat, we’re gonna have a problem.”

He rolled his lips under his teeth to try to hold back laughter, but it was a losing battle, and a moment later, much to the chickens’ consternation, he was roaring with it.

I sighed and shook my head. “Can Laverne and Shirley wait in the yard until we have the coop put together?”

“Sure,” he agreed. “Though, um, maybe we should put them on the west side of the house. Not that they’ll stay there, but trying to keep them away from Mom seems like a good idea.”

I snorted a laugh, then shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not sure what I did to piss your mom off, but I remember she hated Mom, too.”

“She used to call her a witch. I guess because she didn’t go to church? So I guess she thinks you must be a witch too.” He shrugged apologetically, and went to set the chickens in the yard on the west side of the house, where maybe his mother wouldn’t see them.

I winced, because, well...Iwasa witch. And Mom had been one too.

What was so wrong with that, though? We weren’t living in the dark ages when church people murdered women for being different than them. Hell, most of the women they had murdered had been exactly the same kind of Christians as themselves anyway.

I went to open the garage door so that we could bring out the chicken coop stuff, and met Ryan in the garage door just as Gabby was pulling up in her car.

I decided to bite the bullet and just give it to him. I was going to lie about it, after all. “I am a witch,” I told him. “Obviously that’s an issue for your mom. I get it if you?—”

“Like a Wiccan?” he asked, more interested than scandalized.

I frowned at that, because I wasn’t going to claim a religion I wasn’t a part of, but also...I didn’t know that much about Wicca, to know if it was related to what Mom had passed to me. Mom had never mentioned it, though, which meant it probably wasn’t related. “Honestly, Ryan, no, probably not Wicca. I hardly know anything about Wicca. I’m not really religious at all. Just a witch. You know, healing herbal teas and essential oils to keep the spiders away, that kind of thing.”

“Since when are you a witch?” Gabby asked, coming up the drive, looking bemused.

I thought of her hyper-Catholic mother and worried for a moment, but I still wasn’t going to lie. “I got it from Mom. I mean, you know she sold tea and stuff at the shop. It’s just...what it is. She was a witch, and so am I.”

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