Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume 1 by L.A. Jones Page A

mirror.
    After studying it for a
while longer, he said, "I need not explain myself to you any more
than to my servant Rome.” Whatever she
is, last witch or not, I’ll not act until I know how she will be
most useful to me. If I decide to crush her, my action will be
swift, decisive, and impossible to withstand .
     
    "Hey, did you hear?"
Everett asked as he sat down at the table a few days later with
excitement dripping from his voice.
    "You were talking? Yup,
I’m not deaf, I heard that," Aradia quipped.
    “My mom’s deaf,”
Everett replied quickly.
    “You’re not ever going
to let me live down that anti-depressant thing, are you?” Ever
since the medication comment, which she’d successfully kept from
becoming a disaster, whenever Aradia had said something even the
slightest bit sensitive, Everett had replied that either he, or a
parent, or a friend, or a pet, or somebody in his life had suffered
from it.
    “Nope!” Everett said
cheerfully. “But seriously everybody, did you hear?”
    When nobody bit, he
went on, “I’m talking about the unsolved murder. The hardware store
guy that was killed."
    "Oh yeah. No blood, two
puncture wounds on the neck. The Vampire Murderer. I read about it
in the paper."
    "Felix, you must be the
only person our age who still reads the newspaper," Calvin
grumbled.
    "Well, get me an iPad
like yours for my birthday and maybe I’ll think about switching to
something electronic," Felix replied.
    Calvin opened his mouth
to argue, but Everett cut him off. "Anyway," he said, dropping his
voice dramatically. "I heard on the news, the police are thinking
about declaring it a 'cold case file.'"
    Aradia's ears perked up
a bit. Rhonda asked Everett, "What is a cold case file?"
    "A case nobody can
solve," Calvin explained.
    Everett expanded, “The
odds are that they are never going to solve the case, which means
whoever killed that guy will probably get away with
murder!"
    “The odds are also
good,” Aradia contributed gravely, “that whoever committed the
crime lives right here in Salem.”
    "You mean there’s a
murderer among us?" asked Rhonda, voice shaking a bit. She hadn’t
really followed the story as it broke or considered the
implications until just then.
    Everett
nodded.
    Calvin said, "I don't
see how this is really such a big deal."
    "I do," said
Aradia.
    The others had not
heard Aradia sound so serious before. They’d also not seen her
directly contradict Calvin, which tended to lead to
arguments.
    Calvin raised an
eyebrow and said, "Yeah? By all means, please explain."
    "If someone got away
with murder, it will make them think they can kill
again.”
     
    Aradia usually liked to
do her homework right after school. It was only her second week,
and she was still working out her new routine. Salem High was only
a short detour on her dad’s drive home, so the timing seemed to
work pretty well so far.
    Her favorite place to
get her work done in Arizona had been underneath the basement
stairwell in the gymnasium. She generally didn’t have to face other
students and their ridicule there. Of course, her dusty, creepy
hideout had only given them more fodder for which to ridicule
her. Hindsight’s
twenty/twenty , Aradia thought with a
mental shrug.
    She figured she’d try a
more public setting this time around, and after wandering
aimlessly, she found herself at the football field. Bleachers to sit on, plenty of room to spread
out, and maybe some cute guys to stare at. This could
work .
    So there she was,
taking notes on her bio reading and listening to the football coach
as he yelled at the players. De Sylva coached Track and Field and
Cross Country, but not Football. Football was coached by a gruff
man in his early fifties named Stan Gardner.
    Coach Gardner was as
much a stereotype as Aradia had ever seen. Proud American good old
boy who had been the star quarterback when he had attended Salem
High, he’d gone on to play college football and do fairly well.
When he failed to