Feverfew and False Friends

  Feverfew and False Friends

  The Witches of Wormwood Mysteries

  Ruby Loren

  Contents

  Books in the Series

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  1. Bobble Hats and Brains

  2. The Poison Pen

  3. Sidekicks and Sleuths

  4. The Devil you Know

  5. Vengeful Spirits

  6. Rising Stars

  7. Coven Catastrophe

  8. Hidden in Plain Sight

  9. Hecate

  10. Jailbreak

  11. The Not-So-Great Escape

  12. Spyders

  13. Between the Pages

  14. The Small Print

  15. Picking Sides

  16. Hellhound on my Trail

  17. Erebus

  18. A Watertight Case

  19. One for all, and all for One

  Epilogue

  Books in the Series

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  Also by Ruby Loren

  Books in the Series

  Mandrake and a Murder

  Vervain and a Victim

  Feverfew and False Friends

  Belladonna and a Body

  Aconite and Accusations

  Prequel: Hemlock and Hedge

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  Grab your FREE copy of the exciting prequel, Hemlock and Hedge, and find out how the story began.

  Click here and let me know where to send it!

  1

  Bobble Hats and Brains

  It was almost Easter when death returned to Wormwood.

  April brought blue skies and a breeze that carried the promise of a warm English summer, but it also brought a new mystery. On this beautiful spring day, I was on my way to make a home delivery to one of the apothecary’s customers. Things were hectic in the shop at the moment. I was working overtime to make sure that all of our obligations were fulfilled on time.

  Today, I was delivering feverfew tea to a client whose migraines were so terrible, she couldn’t get out of bed. We’d discovered that tea made with the dried plant was providing as much effective relief as conventional medicines, but without any of the less desirable side-effects.

  I was a bit of a tea specialist by now. I’d added a blend of mint and valerian to both help with the migraines and, in the case of the mint, make it a bit more palatable. Medicine is seldom nice to take, but I always thought tea should be an enjoyable experience. It was probably a symptom of being English.

  I’d just turned off the High Street when I practically bumped into Jesse Heathen coming the other way. After a brief scramble, I managed to keep hold of my delivery bags.

  “Hazel! I’ve been looking for you,” Jesse said, smiling easily at me as if the last time we’d spoken had been yesterday.

  I hadn’t seen Jesse for a month.

  When we’d last met, I’d discovered that he was allegedly a devil (something which I still didn’t fully understand) and that he’d been using one of my two pet cats to spy on me. To say he wasn’t flavour of the month with me was an understatement.

  “Where have you been?” I asked, knowing I probably wouldn’t get a decent answer if I enquired about anything more complicated.

  “Around,” Jesse replied, running a hand through his dark hair, where it was longer on the top. Apparently I wouldn’t even get a decent response to the easiest of questions.

  “I’m glad we had this conversation. I’m late for my deliveries, so if you’ll excuse me…” I attempted to toss my loose, golden-brown curls and walk off.

  “I’ll come with you,” Jesse said, with no consideration as to whether or not I wanted his company. I considered telling him to go away, but I knew that if I did that now, he’d only come back… and probably at a far more inconvenient time.

  We walked in silence for a bit, with Jesse casting sideways looks at me with his amber gaze. We must have made quite a striking pair with our matching eyes… eyes that I still didn’t fully understand - like so many other things about Jesse.

  “No questions?” he said, finally breaking the silence when we were only a few hundred metres away from the house where I was due to make my delivery.

  “Would you answer any of them? You promised to tell me about your deal with the mayor last time we spoke. Is there any chance you’re going to honour that promise?”

  Jesse’s smile was the only answer I really needed. “I said I’d tell you about it… I just didn’t say when.” He shook his head at how foolish I’d been to not nail it down. “The mayor is up to something. I’ve been doing everything I can to find out more, but the man is acting far too ordinary. It can only mean that he’s on the brink of something big.”

  “Or maybe he got whatever he wanted and everything has gone back to normal,” I said, but I didn’t really believe it. I just wanted to antagonise the man I was walking with.

  “I think he’s still trying to get even with me. By rights, things should be the other way around. There are only so many chances I can give before…”

  I looked at him with my eyebrows raised.

  “Never mind,” he finished, not surprising me in the slightest. “I still can’t believe he sent a bounty hunter after me. The nerve of the man!”

  I walked a little faster, wanting to show him that I was serious about being busy… and also serious about not speaking to him if he was going to keep avoiding the truths that I wanted to know.

  “Has anyone been asking about me?” Jesse asked, matching my pace.

  “Sorry to break it to you, but I think Wormwood is officially over being obsessed with you.”

  A slanting smile appeared on his lips. “I doubt it,” was all he said in return.

  Honestly! He was the most infuriating, egoistical, big-headed, lying son-of-a…

  “Hi Hazel! Lovely day, isn’t it?” a voice said.

  I looked to my left and discovered Sarah May, an older witch, who was a member of the Wormwood Coven, sitting on a bench under a tree. She’d swapped crochet for knitting today, but her subject matter was no less unusual. She appeared to be constructing a human brain bobble hat.

  “It’s wonderful. I almost feel like I’m not working at all!” I said, shooting some serious side-eye at Jesse. I didn’t know why I even bothered. Jesse wouldn’t know a hint if it were written on a billboard in ten-foot tall letters.

  “Are you on your way to Helen’s house?”

  Helen Regal was another member of the coven I looked after as their high priestess. “I am. She’s been suffering from migraines again.” The witch had called me earlier that morning to tell me she could feel one starting. She’d asked if I could come over to drop off some tea, because she didn’t think she’d be able to make it into the shop.

  “Poor thing. At least it’s in the school holidays, so she doesn’t have to miss work. But she is missing her holidays, so there is that. Is her daughter looking after her?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t think so. Helen mentioned that she was camping locally with her friends. She also told me that her partner, Daryl, had to work today. I think she didn’t want me to think that her family had abandoned her.”

  “Typical, isn’t it? I guarantee she’ll have spent half her life looking after that partner of hers and Hannah, but when she needs some TLC, they’re all too darned busy. That’s a mother’s burden!” She glanced down at her knitting. “Bother! Never knit when you’re annoyed.” She shook her head. “I think Helen brought this upon herself by entering into a civil partnership when they introduced it, rather than getting properly married. Some feminist idea about keeping your own name and having equal everything.”

  The ghost of a smile crossed my lips
. Helen could be very stubborn on the topic of equal rights. When it came to marriage or alternative arrangements, I thought everyone was entitled to their own opinion.

  “I’ll be sure to check and make sure everything is okay,” I reassured the other witch.

  “You’re too good to us,” Sarah said, throwing a cutting look Jesse’s way. We were all hinting today. And judging by Jesse’s faraway look, we were all missing the mark.

  “I’d better check that Helen’s still with us,” I joked, before waving goodbye and walking towards the witch’s quaint detached cottage.

  I had no idea how much I would come to regret my choice of words.

  Jesse reached out to press the doorbell mounted on the wall next to the emerald green door. I slapped his hand down. “She’s got a migraine!” I hissed, majorly peeved that he’d nearly upset a customer and that he was still - for some unknown reason - hanging around.

  I was so incensed that I tried the door and discovered it was unlocked - probably left that way by Helen. I pulled a face at Jesse and walked in to a crime scene.

  My foot was the first thing I noticed when I made the transition from the bright outdoors to the dim interior. It had slipped a little on something that was on the floor. The second thing that hit me was the smell - that coppery tang which only comes from one thing.

  Blood.

  Jesse flicked on the light switch in the dark hallway before I could say a word of warning, but I sensed he already knew something terrible had happened. As soon as we’d walked into the house there had been a palpable feeling, so heavy, it almost physically pressed down on me. There was nothing supernatural about it. This was something primal that let you know danger was all around and reminded you that life is a fragile thing, ready to be shattered at any time.

  For Helen Regal, that time had come.

  “Wow, this puts Texas Chainsaw to shame,” Jesse commented.

  I glared at him, but some part of me knew he’d said it in a vain attempt to lighten the mood. Anything was better than contemplating the scene laid out before us and what it surely indicated.

  “There’s no body,” I muttered.

  Jesse tilted his head, taking in the copious amounts of blood and the gouge marks in the hardwood floor. “There’s no body here,” he corrected, walking down the hallway, being careful to avoid stepping in any more blood.

  I thought about telling him to stop corrupting what had to be a crime scene, but if there was even a chance that Helen was still alive…

  I followed him, treading as carefully as he had done. I knew I was leaving a trail of bloody footprints in my wake, but even though I was aware of what I might discover, I had to know for sure. I needed to find out what had happened to Helen Regal.

  “Was Helen the only one in the house?” Jesse asked, hesitating before turning into the kitchen, still following the gory trail.

  “I… I think so,” I said, internally telling myself to get my thoughts straight. This was important. I needed to see every detail. There was still a possibility that this wasn’t what it seemed…

  “It looks like a wild animal got in here and dragged her out of the back door.” Jesse was kneeling in front of a kitchen unit that had been gouged by the same claw marks we’d noticed in the hall floor.

  I averted my eyes for a second.

  That’s when I saw it.

  Lying on the kitchen counter was a handwritten message on a torn scrap of lined notepaper.

  made a mistake

  “Ominous,” Jesse commented, standing up and looking over my shoulder.

  “You think that’s ominous when we’re standing in a kitchen that looks like someone was butchered in it?”

  My companion lifted his shoulders a little, but kept his eyes fixed on the counter. “What’s this?” He reached for a crumpled ball of paper that looked like it had been tossed away into a dark corner in disgust. It was certainly out of place in the otherwise surprisingly spotless kitchen (if you didn’t count the blood and the smashed things on the floor). The only thing not put away in its proper place was a teacup that had been left in the drying rack.

  Helen had definitely not struck me as a woman who would have a passion for neatness. She was a school teacher at the local primary and appeared both scatterbrained and slightly loopy when it came to the way she spoke about the kids in her charge. Perhaps tidying was her way of dealing with children who sent her around the bend. It was certainly better than hexing them.

  “Jesse…” I’d been about to say something about fingerprints, but we were well past that stage.

  He unfolded the paper and turned it towards me, so that I could see.

  The paper itself was ordinary enough, but someone had stuck letters cut out from a magazine all over it. Together, they formed words.

  I know what you did to Timmy Primrose. Annul your daughter’s adoption, or I’ll tell everyone the truth.

  - B

  “That’s nasty,” I said, stating the obvious.

  Jesse placed the letter back down on the counter. “I guess someone was blackmailing our victim.”

  “We don’t know that she’s a victim yet. Or if anyone’s a victim! There could be a simple explanation,” I said, but the more I looked at the amount of blood and those horrible claw marks - not to mention the broken plates and glass that littered the floor, where someone had grabbed for cupboard doors whilst being dragged past. It painted an all too vivid picture.

  I was fed up with speculation. I slipped past Jesse and walked over to the partially ajar kitchen door that led out onto the garden. First I pushed on the door, and then I compressed the handle and pulled it open, surprised to find it opened inwards. The trails indicated that this had been the way that something had exited the house. I could only assume that the breeze had closed the door since it had happened.

  I don’t know how long I stood in the entrance to the kitchen, looking out across the garden at the way the tracks in the wet grass indicated something had been dragged through the garden and into the first outlying trees where Wormwood Forest began, but it seemed like an age before I felt Jesse’s warm hand on my shoulder.

  I looked up at him. “She went into the forest. Something took her there.”

  “Helen!” Jesse suddenly shouted, nearly making me jump out of my skin.

  We both held our breath, listening for any kind of response. No sound came, either from inside the house or outside. The last few vestiges of hope slipped away, like grains of sand through an hourglass.

  “Do you think she knew something bad was going to happen to her?” I said, thinking about the screwed up letter with its nasty threat and the scrap of paper, left like a note of confession. What was the mistake she’d been referring to? Was it the accusation within the nasty letter that had been on the counter, or had Helen known that something else would be coming for her?

  “We should call the police,” Jesse said.

  I turned and looked at him in surprise.

  “Don’t look at me like that! I can contribute sensible ideas from time to time. It keeps you on your toes.”

  I shook my head and was just reaching into my pocket for my phone, when Jesse pulled his own one out and dialled. He flashed me a grin as he did it. For some reason, I felt like I’d lost a race.

  I brought my hand back down to my side and discovered that there was a fine white-ish dust on the black jersey top I was wearing. I checked my hand and discovered it was from my fingers. A quick look around revealed that the dust had been on the door handle. I wondered if it was some trace of whatever had dragged Helen into the forest. Or perhaps it was supposed to act as protection, I thought, briefly considering voodoo practitioners and their predilection for graveyard dust. I knew it could be used to ward against evil, and there was no question in my mind that something very evil indeed had happened here.

  It didn’t take long for Detective Admiral to arrive.

  We’d retreated to the outside of the property, once it had become abundantly clear that th
ere was no one left alive inside the house. The detective walked straight past us without even saying hello. As soon as he was in the hallway, he turned around with the look of a man who’s been caught in an unexpected torrential downpour without an umbrella. “Why is it always you two?” he muttered before immediately looking like he regretted his words.

  All things considered, I decided to cut him some slack. “There’s a really nasty letter in the kitchen and something that looks like a confession note on the counter.” I’d nearly said ‘suicide note’, but this hardly fit the criteria for that.

  “Helen was supposed to be here. I was delivering feverfew tea for the migraine she was suffering with,” I explained, before frowning when something didn’t quite make sense. “I’m surprised she was able to go around writing notes. She told me she couldn’t even get out of bed when she called me.”

  The detective nodded. “Do you know who her next of kin is?”

  “Her partner’s Daryl Hex. He’s an odd job man. I don’t know where he is today,” I said, unable to aid beyond that. “Helen also has a daughter that she mentioned was on a camping trip.” I felt my mouth dry up when I remembered the content of the letter on the counter. It was no secret that Hannah Regal was adopted, but what the letter had asked to be done was terrible.

  “This is a crime scene. I’m calling for backup. You two… stay put,” the detective said, looking at us like we’d been the ones to drag poor Helen Regal out of the backdoor and into the woods.