Page 25 of Witch Moon

He looked from one of them to the other. "You sure?''

"Yeah. We'll eat some junk food and talk it out."

He bit his lower lip. During the course of the investigation of her boyfriend, Shauna had been checked out, and there hadn't been any indication that she'd been involved in or even aware of Bryan's questionable activities. Hell, they never really found proof that he'd done anything more than be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And Jonathon reallydidwant to check on Bella.

And it wasonlya few blocks away.

"Okay." he said at last. "Okay, but don't go anywhere. And call if you need me. All right?"

"Sure," Rowan said.

"Thanks, Mr. Hawthorne," Shauna said in her hoarse-from-crying voice.

Jonathon left the girls and drove over to Mirabella's house. When he got there, though, he wished he'd come sooner.

A crowd had gathered outside. Angry locals and reporters. He couldn't have walked through them to the front door if he'd wanted to. But he didn't see Bella's car in the driveway anyway. She usually walked everywhere she went, if it was local. Probably, though, walking wasn't the safest prospect for her right at the moment.

His throat went a little dry.

He drove on past and tried to think where she might go, when she had every reason to doubt her welcome at any place in this town. Including his own.

Only one answer came to mind.

So he drove there. To that little shop that had been vandalized the night before. He'd heard about it at work.

And her car was there. But the place was dark as a dungeon.

Frowning Jonathon parked across the street, got out, and went over to the shop's front door. The town was dead tonight. Everyone was either shouting obscenities outside Bella's house or at the school gym for the town meeting that had been called to address the problem of Witchcraft in Ezra Township. He'd heard a rumor they'd located an old law on the books which made teaching Witchcraft to a minor a criminal act, with no maximum sentence. It had to have been left over from the seventeenth century when the town was first founded. Now some wanted to resurrect it, enforce it, and prosecute those who'd broken it.

He crossed the sidewalk and stared up at the old Victorian house. The front wall still smelled of new paint, and the window had been replaced. No lettering on it yet, though.

A soft sound drifted up from below, and something bunted his leg. He glanced down to see a black cat rubbing against him.

"Hey, you wouldn't be the missing Circe, would you?" He bent down. There was a tag dangling from the cat's collar, and he bet it had a name on it. He would like to be able to return one missing pet to its owner intact.

But when he reached for the cat, she dodged him, and trotted around the house. Frowning, he went after her. She didn't go far. In fact, after a few yards, she turned to look back and waited for him to catch up.

When he did, she didn't run off again. Just stood still and let him scoop her up. He glanced at the tag...then turned his head slowly.

The haunting sound of voices, chanting in an overlapping, ever changing cadence, caught his attention. He looked at the windows, where the sound seemed to come from, and saw the flickering dance of candlelight casting shadows. Shapes of women, moving.

And there was a door...and oddly, it was open.

He held the cat close, and silently, drawn in spite of himself, he went through the door into a back room of the house.

Chapter 8

Rowan and Shauna sat in Rowan's bedroom, nibbling ice cream out of the carton. They reclined side by side on the bed, and the stereo played Seether.

For an hour, Shauna had been pouring her heart out about Bryan. How much she'd loved him. How much she was going to miss him. And crying.

She'd been crying a lot.

Rowan just listened and didn't worry about saying the right thing, because as Bella had told her, there really was no right thing. And she thought Bella was right.

Talking it out did seem to be easing Shauna's mind a little bit. It made Rowan feel she was helping her, in some small way.

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