Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

The problem is that there is no problem. Or at least there is no problem with her primary suspect.

Jane has been investigating Julian Durham for the last week under the pretence of an IRS investigation. All she has to show for it is the conclusion that his taxes are immaculate.

Durham is a prominent member of society in Archeville. He moved in as a young man and built up the logging business which has become the town’s main employer. He married a perfectly decent woman, Elinor, three years ago. She is an attractive but slightly vapid woman, distracted with a multitude of charity committees and causes, and not at all interested in the two teenagers she’d had with her late first husband who had died in a car accident.

Durham’s stepchildren are the reason why the Hunter Council is even investigating the man.

The oldest, Kate Hardy, a gangly young woman with a spiky mess of red hair and too solemn green eyes had tracked down them down through the local werewolf pack because she believes her stepfather has cursed her brother. Kate is beside herself with worry for her younger sibling. She’s practically living at the hospital and haunting her brother’s bedside.

Elliot Hardy had fallen into a coma on his sixteenth birthday for apparently no reason. He’s in the long-term care ward of Archeville’s Community Hospital. He breathes on his own. His heart beats. His brain shows signs of life. There is no reason why Elliot should be in the coma.

Magic is a reasonable extrapolation, Jane considers, as she ponders the case file again. Each page is placed carefully across the small table in the basic motel room she has rented.

Jane sits back in the uncomfortable plastic chair and pulls the hair tie away from her ponytail. She shakes her brown hair out for a long moment as her eyes scan over the pieces of paper again. She’s missing something. She has to be because there must be something which explains what has happened to Elliot and the role Julian Durham has played.

Her phone buzzes.

Jane picks up with a smile. “Hello, Wolf.”

Dylan Brown looks back at her through the camera, his tumble of light and dark curls falling around his head in an effortless style she admires. His amber eyes gleam with good humour.

“Hello, Hunter,” Dylan replies with a hint of a flirtatious smile which shows a hint of fangs, giving away the wolf which lives under his skin. “How’s it going with Kate’s problem?”

“Badly,” Jane states bluntly. She folds one arm over her chest, pulling the fuzzy blue sweater she’s wearing taut. She goes over what she knows with him. In the few months they’ve been friends, Dylan’s proven a good sounding board. “There’s just no evidence that Julian Durham is a witch except for Kate’s insistence that it’s his fault.”

Dylan hums. “Kid might be leaning too much into the evil stepparent trope.”

Jane takes a breath because that is all too possible. She’d only needed one conversation with Kate to understand that she hates her stepfather and resents him being a part of her family life.

“What about the mother?” asks Dylan. “Is it possible she’s a witch?”

“Definitely not,” Jane replies with certainty.

While many witches are women, Jane knows that not all are and it is dangerous to assume that the only woman in the picture is a witch. She understands the bias that a patriarchal society took care to seed in past centuries. Women had been wrongly labelled witches and persecuted to their deaths by men who feared losing their power and wanting to ensure the subjugation of them.

Also, Jane has investigated Elinor Durham and she’s not winning Mother of the Year, but she’s not a witch.

“If it’s not the stepdad and it’s not the mother…anyone else close to the kids?” asks Dylan.

Jane taps her finger on a photograph which sits in the centre of the others. “A paternal uncle.”

In the picture, he stands between Kate and Elliot, one of his arms slung around the latter. He looks like an older brother. He has the same auburn hair and mossy green eyes; the same smattering of freckles and wide toothy grin.

Kate had talked dismissively about her uncle, although she’d pointed out that Walker Hardy had confided his own concerns about Durham to his niece and nephew. She had said that Walker had been mostly absent, showing up after their father’s death. He was always there for her brother mostly, arranging special Hardy men bonding trips with Elliot, talking to him about their father…

Her mind flashes back to the overly familiar touch of her Uncle Peter at their family barbeque the summer she had turned fourteen. Too many accidental brushes of his hands as he sidled past her including patting her bottom once. When he’d moved to tuck her too tightly into his side, her older sister had pulled her away. Emilia had all but snarled at Peter in that moment. He’d left abruptly the next day and had never returned.

“Got to go,” Jane says grimly.

“Good hunting,” Dylan replies.

Jane ends the call.

She does her due diligence and deep dives into a background check. On the face of it, Walker is a model citizen. A nurse at the same community hospital which houses Elliot and yet…

She finds a trail of movement back through his childhood.

Articles in the local newspaper of his childhood town detail a spate of strange animal killings the year Walker turns seven; at fourteen, Walker’s school friend goes missing and is never found. She traces Walker through his training as a nurse and finds an obituary for a young nurse, Juan Garcia, the year Walker had turned twenty-one. Garcia had fallen into a coma and had never recovered, fading away over months until he was gone.

She traces the rest of Walker’s life through his IRS data and employment records. At twenty-eight he’d worked at a hospital in Utah which had issued a press statement about the death of a teenage boy after a long coma. Thirty-five and another hospital; another boy. Walker had moved after his brother’s death from a hospital in Seattle to Archeville.

Walker had turned forty-two two months before Elliot’s sixteenth birthday, and now Elliot is in a coma.

There is enough of a pattern for Jane to be convinced that Walker is a witch. He’d clearly found some kind of ritual, likely involving a male virgin.

Jane changes into the grey pantsuit which is her usual work outfit. She refills her water bottle from the special supply Emilia sends her. She packs up her motel room and checks the address she has on Walker’s IRS file before she heads out in her trusty sedan to the other side of town.

Walker lives in a small apartment not far from the hospital.

Jane presses the buzzer at the front entrance. Walker doesn’t even ask who she is, he opens the security door. She makes her way up the stairs and along the corridor to his apartment door. She raps on it sharply.

She holds her water bottle ready in one hand and her IRS id in the other, her large handbag hangs from her left shoulder by its wide strap.

The door is yanked open and Walker stares out at her for a second before a grin overtakes his surprise.

“You’re not the pizza guy,” Walker states, his eyes sweeping over her in a way that makes her skin crawl.

“I’m afraid not,” Jane raises her left hand with her ID. “IRS, Mister Walker, I’d like to talk with you about…”

His eyes are already glazing over, a grimace falling into place…

She throws her water into his face.

There is momentary shock and for a fleeting horrifying moment Jane thinks she’s gotten it very wrong and Walker isn’t a witch after all…

He melts in a sudden whoosh, leaving nothing but a heap of clothes in the doorway and a small pool of water.

Jane gingerly steps over the pile of clothes and into the apartment. She closes the door. She pulls on thin medical gloves and scouts around quickly to see if she can find anything Walker might have kept about the ritual.

She ignores the buzzer when it sounds. It is likely the pizza delivery and she cannot make her presence known.

She finally finds an old grimoire pushed under a stack of others in Walker’s cramped den. The ritual is bookmarked by a turned down corner of a page. She tucks it into her handbag.

Jane pulls out her phone and texts the number Kate had given her asking her to call urgently. She leaves the apartment.

Her car feels like a sanctuary.

Jane breathes. She takes in deep even breaths, in and out to settle her nerves. Her fingers clutch at the steering wheel.

Her phone vibrates and she picks up the call.

“Kate,” Jane greets her, hoping she conveys calm. “The witch who cursed your brother is dead but you will need to kiss your brother to wake him up.”

“What do you mean kiss my brother?!” Kate splutters.

“A platonic kiss,” Jane says hurriedly. “A kiss on the forehead or cheek. It just needs to be one done with the sisterly love you have for him. Think Frozen and the sisters.”

“Right, right,” Kate says, relief resonating through her voice. “And you’re sure this will work?”

“If the witch who did the ritual is dead and there is a kiss from a loved one, the cursed one should wake,” Jane says.

Kate sighs. “Julian’s here with my mother. Are you sure it isn’t him?”

“You might not like your stepfather but he isn’t a witch,” Jane offers gently. “Go and wake your brother.”

Kate drops the call on her end without another word.

Jane rolls her eyes at the teen’s dramatics. She’s done her job and it’s time for her to drive home. She’s stopped at the midway point for gas when Kate’s text arrives.

‘Elliot woke up. The last thing he remembers is Uncle Walker giving him something horrid to drink. Thank you for saving my brother.’

Jane smiles at the text. She heads inside to the shop to pay her bill and gets back into her car with a warm sense of satisfaction.

The witch is dead and Elliot is awake.

A sudden impulse has her picking up her phone again. She taps out a quick text to Emilia.

‘Job is over. Elliot safe. I never thanked you for getting rid of Peter.’

She puts her seatbelt on and adjusts the rear mirror to check her appearance. She looks tired but her brown eyes shine with the inner pride she feels in saving Elliot’s life. It’s the first time she’s properly saved someone as a witch hunter and not just removed a witch who was a threat.

It feels good.

Her phone buzzes sharply with an incoming text.

‘Just doing my job as your big sis, and I’m very proud of the job you did with this hunt.’

Emilia’s response makes her smile. Jane sets her phone aside.

Maybe, Jane considers as she puts the car into gear and drives forward to the exit which will take her home, it’s time for her to start doing this hunting gig full time.

fin.

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