“Why?” Devin murmured.
“I don’t know,” Rocky said. “Jack, can you get your men searching the woods for anything they can find? And maybe try to get some prints off her back door—that’s where he was trying to get in, right?” he asked Devin.
She nodded.
“Of course,” Jack said.
While Jack gave his men directions, Rocky put a call through to the Krewe. Sam answered on the first ring; he sounded damned sharp for someone who, like Rocky himself, had been up all night.
“We’ll be right there,” Sam promised.
Jack returned, and he, Rocky and Devin went inside to talk.
Her raven cawed in protest and instantly flew over to settle on her shoulder. She apologized to Jack, who told her not to worry—he liked birds.
Devin “wore” the bird well, Rocky thought. Her hair was as shimmering and dark as Poe’s blue-black feathers.
“I have coffee on,” she said.
They headed to the kitchen. Neither of them asked her anything; she simply began calmly relating what had happened in chronological order.
“I wasn’t sleeping well,” she said, almost apologetically. “I decided to get up and try to work. And then...well, honestly, first Poe started acting strangely. And I realized I was hearing something move outside the house. But it’s an old house and old houses creak. So do the trees, and there are a couple of old oaks growing very close to the house, so I thought maybe it was just the branches scraping against the walls. But then I distinctly heard someone trying the back door,” she said.
“What did you do?” Jack asked.
“I grabbed my pepper spray and called Rocky,” she said. “And as we were talking, I saw the glow of the fire behind the drapes and started smelling smoke.”
“You got here quickly,” Jack told Rocky.
“I was on my way, anyway,” Rocky said.
“Why?” Jack asked him, then looked at Devin. “Have you been getting threats?”
“No, no, not at all,” she told him.
“Are you Wiccan?” he asked her.
“No,” she said.
“And we haven’t released the detail about the pentagrams on the bodies,” Rocky said.
“Yeah, but stuff leaks. Cops talk,” Jack said, shaking his head. “You know, you tell your wife, she tells her sister...no matter how hard we try, information gets out there.” He looked at Devin again. “Do you think this was an actual threat or just a warning to get out?”
Devin shook her head. “Jack, I swear, I have no idea.”
“I don’t think you’re safe here,” he said.
“Where can I go?” she asked. “Besides, you don’t know any more than I do whether this guy wanted to hurt me or just scare me. At least you know Brent Corbin wasn’t the one trying to break into my house tonight.”
“True, and also true—though not likely—that this might just be some kid getting up to mischief and not connected to the murders at all,” Jack said. He cleared his throat. “Your great-aunt was Wiccan, right?”
“Yes.”
Jack looked at Rocky. “The Witch in the Woods,” he said softly.
“What?” Devin demanded.
Jack said, “I’m sorry, Devin. I know she was a really nice woman. When we were kids, though...she was the Witch in the Woods. A lot of our moms came to see her.”
Devin’s jaw tightened. “She read palms, tea leaves and the tarot,” she said. “Mostly she read people. She didn’t tell them their fortunes—she made them think about their situations and what they could do to change them.”
“I understand that,” Jack said. “Once we grew up, most of us got that. I’m just telling you what we thought as kids. And now here you are, living in her house and writing stories about witches. Maybe someone thinks you’re Wiccan, too, and that somehow your return caused Melissa’s killer to start up again.”
Or even that you’re the murderer, Devin.
Jack didn’t say the words out loud. They were there nonetheless.
Rocky felt his muscles tighten. “Jack—”
“Hell, Rocky,” Jack cut in. “Don’t go getting mad at me. I’m just throwing out theories.”
Rocky knew that; he might have come up with the same theory himself.
“Let’s just get to the real point,” Devin said accusingly. “You think I could be the murderer, don’t you?”
“Just calm down,” Jack said. “I know you’re not, it’s just that right now none of us have any real idea what tonight’s events mean.”
“I just—I just can’t understand why anyone would come after me,” she said.
“Give it some time, and then, if you think of anything that might help us...” Jack said.
She smiled dryly. “I know the drill. I’ll call you. And I’ll think,” she promised.
Jack let out a sigh. “All right. I’m going to go home and get a few hours of sleep. But if anything comes up, call me.”
“I think we should try to get some sleep, too,” Rocky said.
“Sleep?” Devin asked skeptically.
Rocky smiled. “You’re coming with me.”
“To sleep?” she asked.