Cursed In Love (The Adams' Witch Book 2)
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Authors: E. M. Moore
CURSED IN LOVE
E. M. Moore
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by E. M. Moore. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact E. M. Moore.
Cover design by
Paper & Sage Design
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition October 2015
Second Edition June 2016
For Mom and Dad
CHAPTER ONE
The cop at the desk stared at me. His eyebrow quirked, and I tried to make myself invisible in the rough, tweed-like fabric of the 1970’s chair I sat in with no luck. If only it could swallow me up into its own decade that would be nice. Adams Police Station was the last place I wanted to be and not just because it needed an extreme makeover.
The air was stuffy and dank and smelled like basement. The officers who worked here obviously didn’t believe in open windows, fresh air, or fans. I ignored the desk cop’s narrowed eyes and looked toward the door that another policeman had taken Jennie into earlier. I hoped she was holding up okay. We’d been inseparable since that day in the park when we fought the evil witch together. Sure, Jennie was one disconnected loop away from a complete chain, but she was my kind of disconnected loop. And what was that other saying? Misery loves company? Well, that fit, too.
What could they be asking her? And what was she saying? It wasn’t as if we talked this out ahead of time or planned what we were going to say. The police car showed up at school with no warning and they asked us to take a ride downtown to answer questions. We should’ve had a fallback story this whole time. Clearly, we would make terrible criminals.
I rubbed my temples. When I looked back at the desk, the cop still stared at me. I recognized him. He was one of the officers I’d freaked out in front of when Drake and I came here to ask for my dad’s file.
Drake…
My chest spasmed, a reaction my body reserved just for him. I clenched my teeth and vowed not to think about that right now. Instead, I smiled and waved at the cop. I didn’t have anything to hide. Not really.
Well, nothing to hide with what they were asking.
Courtney was missing.
Who knew lost High Priestesses were a thing? Didn’t they have powers to help them out in situations that warranted being found?
She’d gone missing the day the shit went down—the town turned crazy, Aunt Rose died, Drake lost his own mind, and I killed the Wicked Witch of the Fucking West.
I didn’t know what to think of Courtney’s disappearance. It was hard to muster any sympathy toward her after what she did. Not to mention that this could all be an intentional misdirection. Instead of missing, like kidnapped-missing, she could be hidden somewhere nearby spying on us and waiting to take us out. Or, she could still be under Mother Shipton’s mind control and hadn’t come out of it yet.
A little part of me wanted her to be so embarrassed by what she’d done, she was staying away on purpose. The townspeople, and that included Adams finest who worked in this basement, didn’t know what really happened that night or how close we all were to a mass murder at the hands of a psycho ancient witch with a terrible case of the revenge-sies. Popular belief was: aging Rose had a terrible accident when she was emceeing the festivities. She tripped, fell off the stage, and landed in the pyre lit for a witch-burning demonstration. Because of that fiasco, Drake’s grandfather had a massive heart attack. When everyone returned to their right minds, they saw the aftermath. Aunt Rose’s burnt body. The charred cross. Poor Drake’s grandfather unconscious in the grass. Crying teenagers.
They made assumptions and ignored the stench of “other” in the air—that sixth sense of intuition that made it clear something wasn’t right in the world. Sometimes it was easier to bury the truth. Hell, even my mom, who was awake for all of it, chose to blind herself from the reality of the situation. Her theory: Aunt Rose went nutso and tried to kill us. I’d somehow convinced her not to tell anyone, but only after she told the mailman and he called her a loony.
Maybe this pretend way was easier. I’d answered far less questions because of it so that was a tick in the plus column. The downside? I had a sinking suspicion it would come back and bite us all in the ass.
It didn’t take long for Drake’s amnesia to bite me in the ass. He was clueless. He remembered me. He remembered being with me, but everything that happened in the park was a total loss for him. He didn’t even remember the part where he woke from Mother Shipton’s spell and helped us. As soon as I recovered enough to leave his house and convince Mom to move into Aunt Rose’s, I sat across from him and watched him break up with me. He kept saying he realized he loved Marlene, and he was sorry for any hurt he caused me. Ouch. Talk about the worst breakup ever.
He only thought about Marlene now. He was so googly-eyed over her it made me sick. I didn’t get a lot of chances to see them together, but I got enough. Enough to know I didn’t want to spend more than a couple minutes around them. They’d most likely already gotten down to business and started making that baby Mother Shipton wanted to ensure her curse for the next few decades. Though, with her dead, the curse wouldn’t affect a baby or any baby-making business.
But it wasn’t right. What she did to Drake, not to mention the rest of his family was cruel. He didn’t know his own mind. He didn’t want Marlene. Not even a little. At least, I hoped that was still true somewhere deep inside. Deep, deep inside now.
The door Jennie was ushered through opened. I stood and ran my hands down the front of my jeans. She appeared in the entryway and smiled back at the policeman escorting her out. He smiled at her too and it didn’t look as bad as I pictured. It was possible I’d been freaking out over nothing.
Jennie turned. When she found me, her eyes widened like inflating balloons. My gut clenched. Shit, shit, shit. What did he ask her? The whole town was going crazy over Courtney’s disappearance. Young girls didn’t go missing in small towns like Adams, but, what did we have to do with it? Why were we called out of school to meet with the police?
When the police officer waved me in, Jennie walked past without acknowledgment. The room was small and cramped—barely bigger than a janitor’s closet. I sat on one side of a square table and Officer Clampton sat on the other. A lined notebook pad lay in front of him with messy scrawls filling half a sheet. He flipped to an empty page and then eyed me.
“I’m going to get right down to business with you, Miss Perkins.”
Sitting up straighter in my chair, I tried to appear meek and innocent. “I appreciate that, Sir. It’s been a tough time for my family and I lately.”
The reminder of my aunt’s recent death didn’t faze him. “We have several people who remember you, Jennie Shaw, and Courtney James around each other a lot the day we believe Miss James to have gone missing. We also have a witness stating you and Miss James argued at the festival the day before she went missing.”
He cocked an eyebrow, but I stayed quiet. I didn’t know much about police tactics but I was positive admitting an argument the day before a missing person vanished didn’t sound good. He narrowed his eyes, “Well, Miss Perkins?”
I cleared my throat. “Well…? Was there a question in there somewhere?”
The corner of his lip quirked. “You’re not in any trouble. Last time I checked getting into an argument with someone isn’t a crime. If it helps you figure out what I’m doing, I’m just trying to piece together the day’s events leading up to Courtney’s disappearance. I think we can all agree that weird things have occurred in Adams recently. Your aunt’s tragic accident among them.”
My insides coiled tight. The familiar pain of longing hit. I wished I’d had the chance to know my real aunt instead of the fake one who inhabited her body. “Like I said, it’s been tough. I don’t remember very much, but I can try to remember as much as I can.”
He nodded as if we came to an understanding. “Do you remember seeing Courtney the day before she went missing…at the park?”
“Yes.”
“We have a witness saying you got into an argument. Again, not saying that’s a bad thing, but it might help us figure out what happened to her. You have no idea the weird things that lead us to information.”
I swallowed the desire to keep quiet. He was right. An argument wasn’t evidence against me. “I did speak to Courtney. She was manning her family’s booth at the park for the Settler’s Days Festival. I’d just gone to one of her Wiccan meetings and I had a question about something I saw there. It was a strange symbol. She got mad at me for asking about it and honestly, I still don’t understand why.”
Lie. I’d asked her about Mother Shipton’s symbol and that was why she freaked out on me. Officer Clampton didn’t give two craps about Mother Shipton though. Well, maybe he would, but it wasn’t as if he’d believe me if I told him.
“And that was it?”
“That was it for that day. I’m sure I saw her the following day at the park when Aunt…” My words got stuck in my throat. Not for the horrid creature I killed, but for the aunt I never get to know. “My aunt passed away. I, um…I can’t say if she was there or not.”
She was there. She was involved with it all. Jennie believed the High Priestess and Mother Shipton were a team. I wasn’t so convinced. If the witch could make a whole town go into a coma, she could pull Courtney’s strings, too.
The officer smiled. “That’s understandable.”
I rubbed my hands together in front of me as a chill came in the air. “Do you um… have any leads? Any at all? I hate that so many terrible things happened that day.”
Truth.
His brows furrowed as he ran a hand over the notebook in front of him. “Unfortunately, Miss Perkins, we don’t. It seems as if she vanished into thin air.”
“That’s terrible.”
He shook his head, his gaze full of questions that couldn’t be answered. “You don’t even know the half of it,” he said, turning back toward me. “Another young girl went missing in Lovelace.”
I gasped. Another missing person? Another missing
girl
? They couldn’t be related, right? Courtney was a witch for crying out loud and her disappearance, whatever it meant or however it happened, must have had something to do with Mother Shipton. But this?
“Lovelace?” I asked.
He pointed toward the tiny window behind him. “A small town just east of here. She was a little younger than Courtney. Fifteen.”
“Do you think the disappearances are…related?”
Officer Clampton smiled humorlessly. “Missing persons are very unusual around here. We can assume they are somehow related. In what ways? We don’t know yet. But it’s safe to say everyone should be extra careful around here.”
The way his stare burned into me spurred me to speak. A tingle of unease made the hair on the back of my neck stand. “Of course,” I said. “Always am.”
Regardless of the circumstances, I hated to think of anyone being missing. It was troubling to think someone could be there one day and not the next. But to add to that the helplessness of not knowing why? Scary.
With this new information, a weight pressed down on my shoulders. I needed to talk to Courtney. She was Mother Shipton’s henchman and if we were going to find out how to break the binding spell on Drake, we needed to find her.
Officer Clampton opened the door for me and I walked through. Jennie stood, followed by her parents. I searched the small waiting room, but knew even before my gaze landed on every available seat it was a lost cause.
The officer at the desk leaned back in his chair and put his arms behind his head. He had major pit stains that were impossible to ignore. “Your mother isn’t answering her phone.”
Mrs. Shaw walked forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll take Sarah home.”