So a couple of chapters ago, I completely spaced and did not give credit where credit was due. The passage Audrey reads about water witches came from a very handy little website called the Coven of Cythrawl that I found while researching the subject. The words are actually from a tome titled "The Conventicle at Ravenshaw Wood". Growing up in northern New England, my childhood was full of interesting folklore and water witches were one of my grandfather's favorite topics. He told stories of dowsers who saved whole towns with their abilities. Check it out - learn some stuff.
Thanks for all the amazing reviews! If my calculations are correct, we're winding down. Sad? Happy? Indifferent? Yeah...me, too.
Nathan glances at his watch for the hundredth time and frowns. It's half past eleven, which is half an hour later than when Audrey should have barreled through the door of his office and started talking incessantly. Instead, he's alone in his office surrounded by silence.
"I should have gone with her," he mumbles, stabbing keys haphazardly on his keyboard in an attempt to at least look like he's working. "I shouldn't have let her go off on her own with some crazy ass redhead running around drowning people." He growls at the computer screen when it doesn't tell him anything useful. No matter how many times he does it, Alice White's name brings up a blank screen when he types it into the system, which in itself is strange. Even the most law abiding citizen has, at the very least, a parking ticket somewhere. He grabs his phone, punches in Audrey's number, and slams it down when it goes straight to voicemail.
Audrey's nearly forty-five minutes late meeting him at the station, she isn't answering her phone, and the part of his brain that works strictly like a cop is envisioning a menagerie of terrible scenarios – all of which involve her horrible demise.
"Christ," he says, wiping his hands over his face, "I need to get a grip."
The door to his office bangs open, then, and startles him. He looks up from his palms to see Audrey standing in the doorway, hood still up and covered in a dusting of snow. There's a coffee tray in one hand and a white paper bag in the other. She holds them both out, the hood falling down over her eyes.
"A little help," she says.
He jumps up, takes the items from her hands, and steps back to give her room to unbundle. She flips the hood back and snow falls onto the floor. She looks at him while she unzips her jacket, her head cocked to the side.
"You okay?" she asks, pulling her arms out of the jacket. "You look…frazzled."
He nods, turns his back and composes his face while he sets the coffees and bag on his desk. When he turns back around to face her, his expression is less worried and more amused.
"You're nearly an hour late," he says.
"The line at Rosemary's was a mile long," she says, unwrapping her scarf. Static electricity leaves her hair standing on end, a fairy halo that flies out and away from the crown of her head. "And I brought you sustenance, so don't sound so grumpy."
"I'm not grumpy," he says, frowning. "Worried, maybe."
"Chocolate crullers are a cure for that." She grins and he finds himself at a momentary loss for words. Even with her hair a mess, wearing a wool sweater with a ridiculous snowflake pattern across her chest, and bright green socks poking out from underneath flannel lined jeans, she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
He shakes his head to cover his slip and half smiles. "Oh really?"
"Common New England folklore knowledge," she says. "I spent my morning reading about such things."
The half smile widens and he opens the bag, takes out a cruller, eats a bit. "I feel better already," he says.
"Told ya." She repeats his actions, snatches a coffee cup off the desk. Somehow, she ends up with sugar on her cheek.
"You've got…" He motions with his hand to her cheek and she swipes at it, but misses. He does it without thinking, reaches out and brushes the sugar away with his fingertips. They both go still at the sudden contact, his fingers lingering against her skin. The air in the room seems to stop moving, as does time itself. The moment is tender, intimate, and it's only broken by the sound of Laverne's voice over the intercom on Nathan's desk.
"Chief?"
He drops his hand to his side, his expression apologetic. "Yeah, Laverne?"
"Got a ten-ninety-one down at the shipyard," the dispatcher says, her voice extra gravely through the intercom speaker. "Drowning."
"On it, Laverne. Send a unit down there and get a hold of Julia Carr down at the ME's office."
"Roger that."
He looks at Audrey and she's already re-wrapping the scarf around her neck, disappearing into the layers of fleece and wool once again. He watches her for a minute, wonders what has her lost in her head.
"What did you find out from Vince?" Nathan asks, reaching for his jacket.
She pulls her own jacket on, zips it up as far as it'll go. "Do you know anything about water witches?" she asks.
He finds the flush on her cheeks intriguing, makes a note to ask about it later, when they're not on their way to a dead body and there's a moment of rest in the middle of this particularly chaotic case.
"Dowsers?" he asks, following her out the door of his office and into the bullpen.
"That's what they're called now," she says, "but when they first arrived on the shores of Haven, the locals called them witches because they had an odd command of the water." She pushes the front door open, holds it for him. "I read a handful of accounts in the town histories about these groups of women, always thirteen, who were rumored to have strange abilities."
"Witchcraft, though?" he asks, an eyebrow arched. They make their way down the stairs, already beginning to get slippery with the snow, which is picking up as the day goes on. "We're pretty far removed from Salem, Parker. At least two hundred miles, maybe more."
"You didn't let me finish," she says. They reach the Bronco and climb in quickly, Nathan turning over the engine and blasting the heat for Audrey's benefit. "There was a common theme with those entries, Nathan."
"Hallucinogenic drugs?" He puts the Bronco in gear, pulls out into the street. The tires slide in the slush.
Audrey looks at him, her jaw set. "Fear."
Julia frowns at the body on the dock, snow collecting on her shoulders. Nathan and Audrey arrive side by side and the hand Nathan keeps on the small of Audrey's back doesn't go unnoticed by the medical examiner. She keeps her comments to herself, though and hides a smirk behind her scarf.
"This keeps getting weirder and weirder," she says.
"No doubt," Nathan says. "Ask Audrey about her theory."
Julia looks at the officer in question and cocks an eyebrow. Audrey, in response, pulls her glove off and flicks Nathan's bare ear, eliciting a yelp. "Ignore him," she says.
"Oh-kay." Julia points to the body. "Male in his late twenties, no identification on him. He's different than the others, though."
"How so?" Nathan asks, rubbing his ear unconsciously.
"For starters, he isn't soaking wet, just damp in places where the snow has accumulated."
"But he drowned?"
She motions to one of the uniformed officers at the edge of the scene and he comes forward. "Tell the Chief what you told me," she says.
"I assessed the scene, sir, and attempted CPR upon realizing the deceased was no longer breathing. Brackish water came up out of his lungs."
"What was the state of the body?"
The officer looks uncomfortable, confused. "He was dry as a bone, sir."
Nathan nods and the officer hurries back to where he stood moments earlier. "Definitely weird."
Audrey rolls her eyes. "Julia, do you know anything about water witches?"
The medical examiner starts and she whirls on Audrey. "Water witches?" Audrey nods. "So you met the coven, then?"
Both of them look at her with wide eyes and startled expressions. She regards them for a moment, then sighs. "Let me get this guy back to the morgue. Meet me at my mom's house in an hour."
"I thought you were staying at the Inn," Audrey says.
"I am, but there's something up there you should both see." She crouches down, pulls the zipper closed on the body bag. The sound echoes in the stifled quiet of the shipyard.
It sounds final.
Alice watches the crime scene from the deck of Duke Crocker's ship. She was hoping to find the owner of the ship when she arrived twenty minutes earlier, fresh from her encounter with young Steven Miles on the dock, but it had soon become apparent that he was out of town at the moment. So instead, she had stayed onboard to watch the Chief of Police work his magic.
She tucks her recognizable curls up under a black knit cap and steps closer to the edge of the deck, hoping to get a better view of the proceedings. What she sees is Nathan's hand splayed against Audrey Parker's lower back. She feels a bubble of rage build up in her chest.
"You knew there was a chance this wouldn't work," Margaret says from beside her. Alice doesn't flinch, doesn't make any motion to indicate she's heard the old woman. Her grandmother has always had the ability to appear in the places she was least wanted. "Your mother's diary said as much."
"It said I needed to be precise." She reaches out, wraps her hands around the deck railing until her pale knuckles are bone white. "I was nothing if not precise."
"If I remember correctly," Margaret says, peering out at the scene on the docks, "it mentioned the Troubles and warned of a woman with no name."
"The dreams were meant for Nathan."
"And it would appear our Officer Parker intercepted the message along the way." With a strength neither woman knew she possessed, Margaret wraps her hand around her granddaughter's elbow and brings the younger woman to her knees with pain. "That boy, on the dock? The cute little young thing you just couldn't do without? He's the last, Alice." She brings her face in close to Alice's, her true age shining through, and the young woman feels her first real ripple of fear. "This ends."
Alice shuts her eyes and nods. The painful pressure on her elbow is released almost immediately and when she opens her eyes, Margaret – or whatever specter had visited her – is gone. She brings herself to her feet, her knees shaky, and makes her way off Crocker's ship. She strides with purpose towards a uniformed officer standing at the edge of the crime scene.
"This is a crime scene, ma'am," he says, holding out a gloved hand to halt her progress.
"I know. I'm looking for Officer Parker," she says, smiling sweetly. "I have information on the crime I'd like to share with her."