Ghost Mortem (Ghost Detective #1) - Jane Hinchey Page 0,66

looks at me with this stunned expression on his face." She was silent for a moment, remembering. "But then I had a thought. I could fix him. There had to be a spell that would heal him. But he was losing a lot of blood and then I remembered I'd watched something on one of those hospital shows on television that you shouldn't take the knife out? When you have an injury with a foreign body, you should leave the object in as it could be stopping the blood flow. So I put the knife back."

I blinked. Twice. That would explain the two stab wounds. "Only that didn't go so well and blood started coming out of his mouth. I thought if I could get him to my clearing in the woods where I practice moon magic, he'd be okay, the moon would help heal him while I ran back to get my spell book. I helped him outside, he was fine, doing well actually, and we got across the lawn and then he just went down like a ton of bricks. I had to drag him the rest of the way. But we got there, and I lit the candle I keep hidden in some undergrowth and made sure a ray of moonlight was touching him and then I came back here to get my spell book." She twisted her pearls. "I don't know what went wrong." Her voice had dropped to a whisper. "Maybe I took too long? It did take me awhile to find a healing spell for such an injury. Most are spells for illnesses, not for..." She drifted off, then blinked and visibly shook. "When I went back to the clearing...he was dead."

I wanted to rant at her. I wanted to rave. Why didn't she just call him an ambulance? Why didn't she try and stop the bleeding with the tea towel and not shove the knife back into him? She could have saved him! My eyes filled with tears and I blinked hard to dispel them. It was pointless. His death was pointless.

Mrs. Hill pulled herself together and narrowed her eyes at me. "Anyway," she said with a sniff, "what's done is done and it cannot be undone."

You got that right, lady. My eyes darted around the room looking for something, anything, that I could use as a weapon. Slim pickings. The numbness was slowly leaving my body, and in its wake, the worst case of pins and needles known to mankind. I wanted to twitch and rub at my skin so badly but didn't want to give away the fact I could move. Well, parts of me could, pretty sure my legs were still numb. Then Mrs. Hill began some sort of chant about earth, wind, and fire. I wasn't paying too much attention until she was standing over me, straddling me with a foot either side of my hips. She could move fast for a senior citizen. What had me really concerned though was the carving knife clutched in her hands and the crazed expression on her face. She was going to do this, she was going to plunge that knife into my chest. I vaguely wondered what the rest of her plan was. Chop me up and use me as compost in her garden? Actually that wouldn't be a bad way to get rid of a body, I supposed.

Thankfully Mrs. Hill had one weakness. Arthritic knees. It took her a bit to lower herself so she was sitting on my abdomen, and when she did, it was her full weight. I made a small woof as she squashed the air out of me. I'm not sure, I may have peed a little too, with her weight right on my bladder and my body still battling the numbing agent she'd slipped me it was hard to say.

Her chanting continued, something about the moon goddess—I wasn't sure if whatever spell she was trying to cast was kosher since we were actually indoors beneath a ceiling of fake stars and not a moon in sight. She held the knife in both hands above her head, then it was swinging down, aiming for my heart. My hands shot up and grabbed her wrists, holding her off. Her face registered her surprise. Oh yeah, Crazy Pants, weren't expecting that, were you? Ordinarily, it wouldn't have been a fair fight. I'm young, fit, healthy and strong. She's an old lady with arthritis—although it didn't seem to slow