That’s all he said when he answered the phone. Why add more? The person on the other end knew who they were calling. Since he was a homicide detective, they also had a specific reason for calling. There was no need to be all fancy with his greetings. He got to the point, and he expected the person on the other end to do the same.

“I got a call from downstairs,” his captain started, which was never a good thing.

Downstairs meant the uniformed officer division. The cops that handled the petty shit. Things he didn’t want to be hassled with. Dead bodies were his forte and he liked staying in his little box. When a call came from downstairs, it meant someone wanted to open his box further than he liked. Nothing good ever came from expanding his box. He had learned that early on in life.

“Not my problem.”

“Well, Holstrom, it is now.” His captain sighed, knowing he wouldn’t give in easily. He never did. “It’s Kade Duran’s old house. Someone broke into it. Thought you might want to know.”

He sat up straighter, which tweaked the already painful part of his back giving him problems today. He managed to suppress a groan because he didn’t need his captain thinking he was groaning at him. Of all the calls he’d gotten from downstairs, this one he didn’t mind.

That house had been on his radar since…well, since they had done that weird spell in it.

“Who took the call?”

There was a moment of silence while he assumed his captain looked for the information. “Officer Pine. Are you interested?”

“Yeah. Appreciate the heads-up.”

Then he hung up before his captain could add anything else to his plate. He didn’t fear being reprimanded. His captain was used to his abrupt, stern ways. So was everyone else in the department.

In the beginning, when he first started as a beat cop, he’d been friendly, open to suggestions and help from others. As the years drew on, moving up the ladder, seeing the things he saw daily, he changed. He morphed into someone who liked to work alone, who didn’t want any help, and who trusted no one. Not even his co-workers. He couldn’t even pinpoint a moment in time when his attitude started to shift. It just had.

He stood up, grabbed his black wool jacket from behind his chair, and put it on gingerly. Maybe it was his mattress. Maybe it was the asshole he had to chase yesterday and tackle. Maybe it was as simple as he was getting old. But his back hurt from the moment he crawled out of bed today. Nothing he had done made it better.

But he did what he did with everything in life: he sucked it up and ignored it.

After meeting with Officer Pine and getting the lowdown on what occurred, he headed to Kade’s old house. He sent a quick call to Kade himself to meet him there. No explanation, and Kade knew him well enough not to argue for one.

A neighbor had seen the front door wide open this morning. When Officer Pine arrived, the entire place was in disarray. Officer Pine had thought it prudent to contact Holstrom first instead of Kade. Holstrom had asked to be informed about anything—and he meant any kind of disturbance—with the house. He appreciated the call and that the officer had followed directions. Not everyone liked to play nice with him, especially when he had a hard time playing nice in return.

Ever since that day with the spell Kade and his weird friends had done, Holstrom had one eye on the house at all times. He didn’t like the unknown. Things he couldn’t see. Until he knew everything was back to normal with the house, he wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

When he arrived, the front door was closed but unlocked. Forensics had been called but hadn’t made it to the house yet. An unoccupied house broken into wasn’t as high on the list as the armed robbery, two assaults, and one carjacking that had happened this morning. That Holstrom knew about anyway. The city had too much crime, it was hard to keep up with it all.

He let himself in, wincing at the destruction. The paintings on the walls were slashed, some even lying on the ground. The dishes in the kitchen were everywhere, broken pieces littering the floor. The upstairs showed the same level of destruction in each room.

Twenty minutes or so after touring the house, he walked back outside and waited a few more minutes before Kade pulled into the driveway.

“Detective Holstrom, it’s been a while. I enjoyed the peace and quiet.”

Holstrom chuckled, knowing Kade wasn’t joking. He’d been on his ass every day when he’d been a suspect in his wife’s murder. Kade had seemed like the perfect suspect. He’d been the last to see her alive. Too much time had lapsed between him leaving work and arriving home when he found her body that made it suspicious.

In the end, he’d been cleared, and the real killer had been apprehended. While he never apologized for his in-your-face behavior, they’d ended on decent terms. Walked away from each other with…well, not a lot of hard feelings between them. He was only doing his job, and he wasn’t about to apologize for that.

“Sorry to interrupt it.”

Kade nodded, yet his brows rose as if saying, “Yeah right.” Then he tossed a hand at the house. “So, why are we here? Don’t tell me the city is on the police’s ass that I sell this place or something? Neighbors complaining? What’s going on?”

“Well, someone broke into your house and destroyed everything.”

Kade frowned.

“How about you take a look around and tell me if anything is missing?”

Kade nodded and followed Holstrom inside, pausing in the foyer when his gaze met the destruction. “Why would someone do this?”

“I was hoping you’d have an answer for that.”

A chuckle fell past Kade’s lips. “You always want answers from me that I don’t have.”

“You work with Detective Stewart now. Doing…” Holstrom still had a hard time accepting the things he saw a few months ago. “Odd jobs.”

“Paranormal investigations.” Kade gave him a shit-eating grin as if saying, “Don’t be a pussy, you can say it!”

“You saw for yourself that things that go bump at night exist. Why pretend now that they don’t?”

He wasn’t necessarily pretending. But sometimes saying it out loud made it more real.

“Anyway, maybe someone you worked for didn’t like the job you did.”

Kade rolled his eyes, walking around him toward the kitchen. “Of course, it’s my fault again. It never changes with you. You thought I killed my wife. Now it’s my fault someone broke into my house.”

Holstrom didn’t know how to respond to that, so he remained silent. He did that a lot when the right words wouldn’t come to mind. Most people found he was being purposely rude, refusing to respond. In essence, it was more along the lines of thinking before speaking. He’d always been that way, even as a child. Now in his late thirties, it was impossible to change a habit that had formed early on.

Kade walked through the house, slowly yet thoroughly. Shaking his head at times, groaning at other times. After venturing to every room, they convened in the foyer.

“It’s hard to say if anything is gone. I left a lot here. Susana’s stuff. I didn’t pay complete attention to everything she brought into the marriage.”

Holstrom pulled out his notebook from the inside of his jacket pocket. “Try harder to think.”

Boisterous laughter filled the space. “You say that like it’s going to help my memory. It’s not.”

Holstrom sighed. “I can’t help you if you don’t help me.”

“I wasn’t too concerned about anything in this place before I left, so I can’t say that I’m that concerned it’s gone. If anything is even gone.” Kade sighed. “Good riddance. One less thing I have to deal with.”

Holstrom pocketed his notebook. “So you don’t even care that your house was broken into?”

“I want to forget this part of my life. This house is nothing but a stain on my memory. I can’t sell it yet because…”

Kade looked away as his words died off. Holstrom knew the reason why. Because Mona, the weird witch, never closed whatever portal she had opened the day they tried to contact his dead wife to see who had killed her. Just thinking it sounded insane. He’d never actually voice any of it.

“Yes, when is she going to fix that little problem?”

Kade shrugged. “I don’t think she knows how to yet. Every time Mason asks her about it, she says she’s still working on it.”

“I do hope you haven’t done that…” He would not say the word spell. He wouldn’t! “That thing she did again, have you?”

“No, we haven’t. Mason won’t let her.”

Well, that was a positive in a horrible situation.

“Now what?” Kade asked as if Holstrom had the answers. Which was so far from the truth.

“That’s up to you. It’s your house.”

Kade looked around again, wincing. “I guess I’ll get someone here to clean it up. I mean, do what you have to do, but I’m not going to stress if you don’t find who did this.”

Holstrom nodded, not liking the answer, but who was he to argue. It wasn’t his house, his stuff.

“Why don’t you have your…friend…figure out that…” Nope, he would not say the word spell, or hell, even the word witch out loud. “How to make this place safe. I think it’s been long enough.”

By the look Kade gave him, he agreed wholeheartedly. There was no argument on his end.

Copyright © 2024 Amanda Siegrist.

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