I shook my head. “Finn insists it wasn’t and I’m sure he’s right because after Roy came over, we found footprints on the ground outside Finn’s window.”

  Wanda stiffened. “Maybe it was the same guy. What did he look like?”

  “Finn said he was stout and his clothes were stained with red,” I started.

  “And he had a bald head,” Finn interrupted from behind me, nearly making me jump right out of my heels. I turned around to face him and found his expression narrowed on Wanda’s face.

  “Apparently, he had a comb-over,” I continued.

  Finn nodded. “And I’m pretty sure he hadn’t shaved in a long time.”

  “That’s him!” Astrid cried, nodding in swift succession as her gaze shifted from Wanda, to me to Finn. “It sounds like the exact same guy I saw.”

  “Do you mind if Astrid stays here tonight?” Wanda asked. “She doesn’t want to be alone and,” she paused, looking past me to Roy, where he sat on the couch. Her gaze settled on me again. “And, knowing Roy is here… well, that makes me feel even better.”

  “Can we stay here too, dollface?” Darla added. “This whole bizness is givin’ me the heebie jeebies an’ I ain’t in no big rush to get kicked off… again.”

  “Of course,” I answered, pleased they were asking because I didn’t want Astrid (or Darla and Libby) to be on their own if someone dangerous was lurking around.

  “Oh, thank you, Poppy,” Libby said as she looked at Finn and gave him a big smile. He gave her a queasy one in return. A few months ago, Libby had taken it upon herself to act as Finn’s “second mother” because he reminded her so much of her own son, who was now dead and gone.

  “Did you want me to read you another beddy-bye story tonight, honey?”

  Finn immediately shook his head as he started for the living room again, calling over his shoulder, “Actually, I’m um… I’m watching Stranger Things with Roy but you can watch it with us, if you want.” Then he stopped walking and looked over at Astrid. “Are you staying over all night?”

  Astrid looked at Wanda. “Am I?”

  Wanda shrugged. “I haven’t gotten that far yet.”

  “What’s this Stranger Thing flick all about?” Darla asked as she walked past me and started for the living room.

  “It’s a show,” Finn answered, while resuming his seat next to Roy on the couch. Darla flung herself between them both, causing each one to shift over to make room. Neither one appeared happy about it, but Darla just gave them each a big grin.

  “As long as your show’s got some hunkin’ cake-eater fella, I’m in!”

  “I don’t know about cake, but it’s good,” Finn answered as I turned to face Wanda again.

  “Finn and I were hoping you could do a tracking spell on the footprints so hopefully we can find out who this person is.”

  “I already tried,” Wanda replied with a shrug. “There were footprints outside Astrid’s room also, but I couldn’t get a trace on them or him.”

  I frowned. Any time Wanda’s magic didn’t work, it was cause for alarm—either because something was blocking her magic or her unpredictable power was about to go haywire.

  “That’s strange,” I said. “What would block your casting abilities?”

  Wanda shrugged again. “Either he’s a warlock, and the chances of that are slim to none, or he’s some other supernatural creature with camouflaging powers. I can’t think of any other explanation.”

  “We should report this to Taliyah and the police,” I said. “A strange guy looking through people’s windows is definitely cause for concern.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Wanda said as I realized she, Libby and Astrid were still standing in the foyer. Stepping aside, I closed the door behind them and they all walked in, heading for the living room.

  The hammering started up again in earnest.

  “What’s that?” Wanda asked as she shielded her ears.

  I waited to respond until Astrid walked into the living room and sat down in an armchair beside the couch, next to Finn.

  “The windows blew out during our potions class this afternoon,” I explained.

  “Well, send me the bill,” Wanda said with a sigh.

  I nodded because I didn’t want to get into a debate about it, but I had no plans to send her anything. Then, approaching the kitchen counter, I grabbed my phone and dialed the Haven Hollow Police Department, stepping back into the foyer to make my report.

  The officer I spoke with wasn’t Taliyah, but one of the men who worked for her. He promised to give the information to Taliyah for later investigation—something which didn’t inspire much confidence in me, but there it was.

  I returned to the living room, only to find just Wanda and Roy sitting there. “Where did everyone go?”

  “Finn and Astrid went upstairs,” Wanda answered on a shrug. “They said they had better things to do than spend their evening with the Walking Dead.” Then she jerked her thumb over her shoulders toward the kitchen, clearly pointing out the ‘walking dead’ in question. There, Darla and Libby were in the midst of playing Good Housekeeping again. I caught a snatch of conversation about Libby’s latest perfected chocolate chip cookie recipe.

  I laughed and was suddenly beyond grateful Finn had Astrid to keep him company and all under the watchful eye of Roy. Speaking of, I turned to face him. “Looks like you’re going to have to keep yourself company tonight.”

  He shrugged. “I’m fine with that.”

  “Well, I’m beyond happy to see you’re here,” Wanda said as she inspected her long fingernails, which were painted black. “Knowing a sasquatch is keeping watch over the place is about as comforting as comforting gets.”

  Roy chuckled. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  Wanda nodded, then turned to face me. “Should we get started researching Betanya’s friends?”

  “What—now?” I checked the clock on the wall again. “Wanda, we’re already late for dinner.”

  She shrugged and seemed less than concerned. “I texted the guys and asked to push it back an hour.”

  “The guys?” Roy repeated, looking at me with interest. I felt my stomach drop.

  “Oh,” I answered immediately. “Henner asked us to dinner.”

  “That’s a guy,” Roy responded. “And you said ‘guys’ in plural.”

  I swallowed hard. “Right.”

  “Will Marty be there too?” Roy asked, his pallor coloring.

  “Um,” I started.

  “I don’t think he’s going to make it tonight,” Wanda interrupted. “I think RJ is filling in for him.” I wasn’t sure if she was just covering for me or if Marty really wasn’t going to make it. Of course, it wasn’t as though Marty had anything else going on, so I was fairly sure Wanda was covering for me. I gave her a quick smile of gratitude. Clearly, the strained relationship between Roy and me was public news.

  “Anyway,” Wanda continued as she pulled one of Betanya’s journals from her handbag and handed it to me. “Let’s start with this one.” Then she took a breath as I opened the journal and flipped through to the pages at the end, marked with a red post-it note.

  “This journal is the one where the three mystery women first appear in Betanya’s life,” Wanda continued. “After this, with the way Betanya refers to them, it seems like they just become ordinary fixtures in her daily routine—almost like her closest friends. I also brought this.”

  She pulled out one of her notebooks in which she kept notes detailing her attempts to break the blood bond between herself and Lorcan. As of yet, they still hadn’t managed to break their bond, though they kept trying.

  Wanda opened the notebook and started flipping through the pages before she paused on one and flicked it with her fingers. “Here it is. The three women are Florence Wilson, Agnes Smith, and Imogen Flannigan.”

  I furrowed my brow. “Hmm, old-fashioned and bizarre sounding names.”

  “What do you mean?” Wanda asked, and I realized I’d just put my foot in my mouth since ‘Wandellmelia’, Wanda’s first name, was as bizarre as names got. “I just meant… you don’t hear those types of names anymore.”

  Wanda looked at me and frowned. “Of course you do!”

  “You do?” Roy asked.

  Wanda looked from him to me. “Are you telling me there’s no one around here named Florence?”

  “I’m just saying those names aren’t as common nowadays as they used to be.”

  “I don’t know anyone named Florence,” Roy said.

  Wanda shrugged. “Whatever.” Then she faced me. “So, what should we do first?”

  I gathered my laptop from the kitchen counter and carried it over to the sofa as Roy and Wanda sat down beside me. Then flipping the laptop open, I powered it on and entered ‘Florence Wilson’ into the browser. “Let’s see. There are only about fifty thousand Florence Wilsons on here.”

  Wanda looked over my shoulder and her expression reminded me of a nosy librarian. “You can narrow it down by searching for the Florence Wilson who worked at the Haven Hollow Humane Society from 1978 to1980.”

  I entered the updated search parameter and was faced with a list of information. Scrolling down the page, I paused at the bottom.

  “Here’s something we might be interested in,” I said as I started reading. “Florence Constance Wilson at the Humane Society of Haven Hollow.” I looked up at Wanda. “There’s even a picture of her,” I continued as I turned the computer so Wanda could better see it. “She’s attractive.” The picture looked like it was fairly old—maybe from the late seventies, owing to Florence’s Farrah Fawcett hairdo.

  “Don’t you think that’s odd?” Wanda asked, looking from the computer screen to me.

  “Which part—that Florence was attractive or that she worked at the Humane Society?”

  Wanda pointed at my computer. “Neither. It’s odd her middle name was ‘Constance’.”

  “Why is that odd?”

  She shrugged. “Because I bet there aren’t many ‘Florence Constance Wilsons’ on the internet.”

  “So?”

  “So, do a search on her full name and see if you can find any records.” I was about to do just that when she placed her hand over mine, stopping me. “I’ll save you the effort—you won’t find any.”

  I frowned up at her. “So, what you’re trying to tell me is that you already got this far?”

  “Well, I did some research, Poppy, jeez.”

  “You could have told me what you already knew!”

  She smiled down at me. “I already knew that. Now, keep searching.”

  I spent the next fifteen minutes proving Wanda right. Florence Constance Wilson had no records that I could find at all—no birth certificate, no driver’s license, no marriage license and no death record.

  Wanda and I stared at the picture of the pretty woman with black hair as I sighed and Wanda shook her head. Roy, meanwhile, had resurrected his interest in Stranger Things.

  “We have a name and a face and that’s it,” Wanda said.

  I swallowed hard. “Let’s check the others.”

  We looked up Agnes Smith next, and the results were equally lackluster. Like Florence, Agnes had spent years volunteering, this time at a soup kitchen in town, and that was the only information we could find about her. Something else I thought strange—both women didn’t appear to have home addresses or phone numbers listed in their yellow page records. That was definitely out of the ordinary considering that, by the late 1970s, everyone had home phones.

  For all intents and purposes, these women didn’t exist. And it was the same regarding Imogen Flannigan. Only, in her case, I couldn’t even find a picture of her.

  Wanda and I exchanged a frustrated glance. “Any ideas?” she asked.

  “Let’s assume,” I started, “based on the picture of Florence, that she and probably the others were Baby Boomers.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then they would have been the same age as Betanya.”

  “But, as a witch, Betanya was actually much older,” Wanda said as she snatched up Betanya’s journal and frowned at it.

  “Okay, but Betanya probably looked around the same age as Florence, right? At least in the 70s or 80s?”

  Wanda cocked her head to the side before she nodded. “I could see that.” Then she opened the journal. “Regardless, Betanya talks about these women like they were her best friends.”

  “Is it possible they were Blood Witches like Betanya?” I asked. “Could that be why they just appeared out of nowhere—because they got expelled from their covens like you did?”

  Wanda shook her head. “Not possible. Blood Witches are rare. Almost as rare as warlocks and possibly as rare as wizards.”

  At the mention of ‘wizards’, Wanda crossed herself. Wizards dealt purely in black magic, thus they weren’t exactly law-abiding.

  “Not to mention,” Wanda continued. “Even though I’m a Blood Witch, I still have a birth certificate and Social Security number.”

  “Okay, then they probably weren’t Blood Witches. So, what do we know about them?” I paused but Wanda didn’t respond, so I answered my own question. “We know they were friends of Betanya’s after she became a Blood Witch, right?”

  Wanda nodded.

  “Okay, so she friended them after she came to live in Haven Hollow, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that could mean Florence, Agnes and Imogen probably lived in Haven Hollow, too?” Wanda nodded, so I turned to face Roy. “Hey, Roy, did you ever know anyone or know of anyone named Florence Wilson, Agnes Smith or Imogen Flannigan?”

  “They would have lived in Haven Hollow around the 70s or 80s,” Wanda added.

  Roy paused Stranger Things and looked over at us. “Um, can’t say that I do.”

  “Okay, nevermind,” I answered as I faced Wanda again. “Moving on.” I took a breath. “So these women were close friends with Betanya and yet we know nothing about them.”

  “So what?”

  “Maybe Betanya had something to do with erasing their identities?”

  “Hmm,” Wanda said as she chewed her lower lip. “Maybe, but, why would Betanya want to erase their identities?”

  “Who knows?” I answered on a shrug. “I mean, if we play devil’s advocate for a minute, and assume Betanya did change their identities or erase them, then it follows there would be no record of…” I stopped. Something suddenly made sense.

  “No record of what? Why do you look like you just figured something out?”

  I turned back to my computer. “Why didn’t I think of this before?”

  “What?”

  “We’ve been going about this all wrong.”

  “We have?”

  I nodded as I typed in a new search parameter, this time searching the archives for a much later time period—pre 1900. Wanda frowned over my shoulder as she watched me type and then hit enter.

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Bingo!” I crowed.

  “Bingo?”

  “According to the archives in the Haven Hollow library, which are available online, there was an Imogen Flannigan born in Ireland in 1811. She traveled to New York in 1831 and settled in Charleston, North Carolina, before moving further West, to Oregon in 1856.”

  “1856!” Wanda countered, shaking her head. “We don’t know if that’s the same Imogen. And there must have been Imogen Flannigans born every other week in Ireland back then.”

  I held up my index finger. “Just go with it for a second. Let’s search Florence Constance Wilson.” My hands flew over the keyboard as I entered the search. “Here she is. Florence Constance Wilson was born in White River, Ontario, in 1886. She moved to the Midwest when she was fifteen and then her family migrated to Oregon. They were homesteaders near Dorena Lake. She married, had three children, and died in 1920. She died in Dorena except...”

  “Except what?” Wanda croaked.

  “Except,” I started as I read.

  “You’re going to give me an apoplexy with all these pauses. Except what?”

  “Florence... died when a smallpox epidemic swept the area,” I answered as I continued to scan the information on the page. “The bodies weren’t buried in the Dorena graveyard, though. They were transported out of town and buried in a mass grave here.” I looked up at Wanda then. “In Hollow Cemetery.”

  Wanda cleared her throat with difficulty. “Hmm, that could be… coincidence?”

  I frowned at her, but did some more navigating. “Here’s another picture of Florence. Take a look.”

  I plunked the laptop on Wanda’s lap, and we both stared at the screen in blank silence. The woman in the image had the same dark hair, except this time, back in 1915, Florence wore it in a neat bob around her rosy face. I pulled up the earlier image of Florence I’d found and then placed the two pictures side by side on the screen. No one could doubt it was the same woman.

  “This is impossible!” Wanda whispered. “If Florence died in 1920, how did she wind up alive in the eighties and volunteering in Haven Hollow?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  Wanda made a face at me. “No, Poppy, it isn’t obvious.”

  I gave her an apologetic smile. “Who else do we know that died decades ago and is now going around spreading sunshine and good cheer to anyone she meets?”

  “Libby,” Wanda answered immediately.

  “Yes.”

  I faced the images of Florence on screen again. “Florence was a zombie. All three of them were.”

  Wanda nodded. “Betanya must have raised them the same way I raised Libby, and that explains why there isn’t any information about them. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, they died when they died.”

  “Right.”

  Wanda looked at me then with a question in her eyes. “So what happened to them?”

  I shrugged. “For all we know, they could be dead—again.” I gazed at the pictures of Florence still on the screen. “It’s too bad we can’t find them. They might have been able to tell us what happened to Betanya.”

  Chapter Four

  Wanda and I pulled into the parking lot in front of the Half-Moon Bar and Grill. Once Wanda parked the Escalade, I spotted Marty and Henner waiting for us on the sidewalk outside—they were standing close together and clearly discussing something.