“A reason for someone to want to kill her. She was left in the cold with a bucket of water poured over her to make sure she didn’t survive. Water kills witches, right?”
He shook his head. “Water doesn’t melt witches, not like in theOzbooks. Suzanne’s death might have been an accident.”
“Maybe, if not for the water. Someone lured her outthere, drugged her to keep her outside, and then poured water on her. That’s premeditated.” Mia paused for a minute. “Was she dating Brandon? He seemed very comfortable in her house.”
Damien laughed and shook his head. “Sorry, you’re going to have to ask someone else about the social lives of Magic Springs. I’ve been away, and I never really fell into that crowd anyway.”
The rest of the group soon arrived, and Levi watched for Cleo. When the clock struck eight, a knock sounded.
“Now that’s a little creepy,” Mia said as she watched Cleo enter. The woman was always dressed immaculately and today, she had on what Mia assumed was a fake fur coat that swept down to the top of her boots. Witches didn’t wear the skin of animals unless it was absolutely necessary. Cleo handed it to Levi, who put it on the coatrack. Muffy came up and sniffed it, then went back to lie by Grans.
When Cleo got closer, Mia stood. “Thank you for coming tonight.”
“Let’s get down to it, then. I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before, but we have been busy around here, right?” Cleo lifted her hands and placed them on both sides of Mia’s head. As she did, Mia felt woozy. Memories ran through her head like a slideshow: her buying the academy, her first catering event, finding Dorian’s body, laughing with Trent, it was all there and all mixed together. The vision of Trent with Sonja at the restaurant came into focus.
Cleo said, “Ah, here’s one.”
The vision faded away and the process started again. Over and over, Cleo extracted the false memories. Miacouldn’t tell if the memories that she put back were in the right place or not, but as Cleo replaced one for another, she heard a pop in her head.
Of all the things she’d done and seen since becoming a kitchen witch, this was the weirdest.
“I should have mentioned that you should try not to think while we’re doing this. Just relax, Mia. The weirdness will be over soon. I think there’s just one last memory.” As Cleo said that, a memory of eating lunch with Suzanne Parker and Cleo on testing day materialized at the front of Mia’s mind. Cleo brought in soup and a sandwich for Suzanne and the lunch that Abigail had packed for Mia, and then stayed and sipped coffee as they ate. Suzanne and Cleo talked about old times, and Cleo told Mia about how they both wanted to get involved in training young witches. Then Suzanne’s phone rang, and she turned bright red.
“I need to take this.”
As Mia felt Cleo’s fingers leave her skin, she looked up at the witch in front of her. “That memory is new.”
“It shouldn’t be, but I think they blocked it. Whoever called Suzanne Parker that day when we were having lunch is probably involved in her death. And in building your false memories.” Cleo stepped back and stumbled a little.
Levi took her arm and led her to a chair. “Can I get you something? Tea? Water?”
“A cup of tea on a cold night would be lovely.” She patted Levi’s arm. “You’re going to be such a good dad.”
Levi blushed as he followed Christina into the kitchen to make up a tea service.
Abigail took Mia by the arm and sat her back down as well. “Any idea who did this and when?”
Cleo closed her eyes as she sorted through what she’d found. “I can give you some impressions. I believe it’s a male. Suzanne wouldn’t have blushed so hard if the phone call was just business. And it had to have happened after Mia’s testing but before the coven reassigned the protection spell, which was Friday night.”
“What? I thought it would go on as soon as the testing results were announced.” Abigail met Grans’s gaze. “She was unprotected for three days after testing?”
“Her original test was to be on Friday, if you remember. Suzanne changed the testing but didn’t update the protection spell implementation time. It wasn’t part of her process. The coven should have updated that as soon as the new testing was announced.” Cleo smiled as Christina brought out the tea. “I’ll look into why that didn’t happen as soon as I get back to headquarters.”
Mia’s first thought was that Cleo spent a lot of time at coven headquarters. Her second thought was that she should have been thinking of all the people she’d talked to while she was unprotected. “Abigail, do we know when Cerby’s house training was set up?”
“I talked to Trent. He got the call the weekend before your test.” Abigail frowned as she thought about the timing. “He said he mentioned it to Sarah, and she called the training office to get Tempest in the session with Cerby. She didn’t realize they’d be locked up for six weeks. At least Tempest didn’t have to go to the camp. Em’s very attached to her puppy.”
Mia wanted to listen more but found herself drifting off, and when she awoke, she was upstairs in her bedwith Mr. Darcy curled next to her. She smiled as she rubbed his head. “Some level five witch I’m turning out to be. I can’t even stay up past nine.”
He reached out a paw and rubbed her hand. He knew she’d been through a tough event, and she was being hard on herself. The images he sent her made her smile. Her cat thought she was a warrior.
“I’m not sure that’s true, but I like the way you think.” She glanced at her watch. It was just after three. “Let’s sleep in tomorrow and make a huge breakfast.”
He curled closer, but it took Mia a few minutes to fall asleep. She hoped she was over the worst of the reactions from her memory wipe.
When she got up the next morning, she hadn’t kept her promise to sleep in. Instead, she was up at six, waiting for the rest of the crew to come to the kitchen. After she put a batch of muffins in the oven, she sat down with her coffee, her Suzanne Parker notebook, and her newly restored memories and made a time line from the weekend before the test to today.
When Damien had started remodeling, a lot of people were in and out of the academy. She needed to find out more about his contractor, Nathan Boyle. It would probably be an exercise in ruling someone out, but that had to be done in order to find a suspect you couldn’t find an alibi for.