Curse the Dark (The Harstone Legacy Book 1)

Chapter 24

From the look I could see on Tilda's face in the rear-view mirror, that was not the most popular option.

When we pulled up at the sheriff's office Maude put her hand on my arm. "Let me do the talking."

I was completely fine with that. "What did you want me to do with the box?"

Maude stilled. "There's no way we can leave it in the car, it's too dangerous. You'll need to bring it in with you."

"You don't think that the sheriff is going to object to me lugging this thing through his office. For all he knows it could be a weapon."

"It is a weapon," Maude replied. "And we're going to be explaining what we were doing up in that cave anyway. We may as well make it a show and tell confession."

The three of us got out of the car and followed Sheriff Tolan into the building. Before long we found ourselves in an interrogation room with the three of us on one side of the desk and the sheriff and Karl on the other side, with the box of evil between us.

Sheriff Tolan spread out his hands. "Well, who would like to start?"

Maude leaned forward. "About two weeks ago, Flora Harstone was struck down with a curse. We are trying to work out how to break it. After hearing about a golem running around the forest we decided to investigate to see if the two situations were linked." Maude pointed to the box. "Inside that box is a curse tablet which we believe is targeting Flora."

"Two weeks. You have been sitting on this situation for two weeks, and nobody thought to notify me that there is a rogue witch in Walker Bay."

Maude drew herself up. "This is coven business. We were not obliged to bring this to the Sheriff's Department."

Tilda and I winced. Even I could see that was precisely the wrong thing to say.

Sheriff Tolan slammed a hand down on the table. "You have recklessly endangered this town. I should lock you up for that alone." He waited for a few moments as if pulling back his anger.

"Who is involved in this?"

I could tell that Maude didn't want to give him any more information, but the sooner the sheriff got what he wanted, the sooner we would get out of here. Hopefully.

"Margot, Isobel, Tilda and I have been researching ways to break the curse. We reached out to the rest of the coven a couple of days ago, hoping to get further information. Unfortunately, our search hasn't been very fruitful. The first real break we had was last night when Sadie came across the golem. We knew it had to be protecting something important, so we went up there to find what it was. That brought us to the curse tablet." She clasped her hands together and gave the sheriff her best grandmother look. "The sooner we can study that tablet, the sooner we can try to work out a way to break it."

"That would be great except I have a dead body on my hands. I'm guessing Helen Napier is involved in this somehow."

Maude shook her head. "We have no knowledge of that. Helen Napier was magically bound due to an attempt to cast a curse twenty years ago. We were simply trying to get information from her in the hopes she would help."

"From what I've heard it would be more likely that Helen would curse Flora, rather than help her," the sheriff mused.

"True, she would be one of our suspects, but her death means there was somebody else involved."

"Do you have any idea who?" Sheriff Tolan asked.

"No, but they put in place a dissipation spell which also destroyed Helen Napier's soul, so if you were planning on asking one of the coven members to try to communicate with her ghost, you're out of luck."