A Ghost and a Hard Place (A Reaper Witch Mystery Book 3)

by Elle Adams

  My heart gave another skip. “Sure. That sounds good.”

  “You don’t sound all that enthused,” he remarked.

  “I’ve had a trying day,” I said. “Carey’s already mad at me because of the thing with her classmates.”

  “I’m sure she isn’t,” he said. “Maybe go and talk to her?”

  “If she’ll let me.” I rose to my feet and walked with him to the door. “See you tomorrow?”

  “Sure.” He waved goodbye to me as well as to Allie, who was watching from behind the bar, and left the restaurant.

  As for me, I would have stayed downstairs to grab something to eat, but Carey was notably absent, and I hadn’t checked on Mart, either. I headed up to my room, hoping he wasn’t freaking out too badly because of the missing ghost. My room was empty, but the instant I called his name, he appeared.

  “There you are,” he said. “Aren’t you going on a date with the detective?”

  “He’s busy tonight,” I said. “Pack thing. No, you can’t go and crash the party. Anyway, I have an update on our ghost.”

  I told him about my encounter with the academy students and then my visit to Debora Lowe and the articles she’d given me on Lara’s and Eric’s deaths.

  “You’re saying she’s the one who sent those students here?” he said.

  “Nah, they came here of their own accord,” I said. “I think they were more interested in bothering Carey than ghost hunting, so I sent them packing.”

  “They’d better not come back,” he said. “If they do, I’ll chase them off myself.”

  “You’re welcome to chase them out of the inn if they do anything else to Carey,” I said. “But she doesn’t want us interfering on her behalf, so I have another idea.”

  “Oh, boy,” he said. “No, I am not following that Reaper again.”

  “You didn’t think I’d ask you to risk your neck, did you?” I said. “No, it’s not about that. Carey is pretty upset over those kids picking on her, and I don’t think I helped the situation much.”

  “No, you didn’t,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I wondered if you wanted to help me cheer her up. I was going to grab some food from downstairs and put a movie on, and you can play some ghostly tricks for her camera.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I’m not a performance artist.”

  “I’m not asking you to do it for an audience,” I said. “Just Carey, who might end up quitting her ghost-hunting blog if those kids keep interfering, and then you won’t be able to show off for the cameras at all. Besides, I thought it would be more fun for you to watch a movie with us rather than hanging around on your own.”

  “All right,” he said. “Can I pick the movie?”

  “I’ll see what Carey says,” I said. “Look, just… try to be nice. I know Carey can’t hear you, but I can, and she can read my face. I don’t want her coming out of this feeling even worse than she did already.”

  “I’ll be on my best behaviour,” he promised.

  Mart followed me out of the room and down the corridor to the suite where Carey and her mother lived. I knocked on the door, but Carey didn’t answer.

  Without preamble, Mart floated through the door’s wooden surface and into the room.

  “Mart, don’t do that,” I said to the door. “Come on, at least wait to be invited in first.”

  The sounds of footsteps came from inside the room, and Carey’s muffled voice sounded behind the door. “Is your brother in here?”

  “He came to cheer you up,” I answered. “I forgot he can’t follow instructions.”

  Carey opened the door, her eyes slightly red. “Where is he now?”

  I peered over her shoulder into the living room of her shared suite. The door to her bedroom lay open at the back. Her room had papers scattered all over the floor, along with her ghost goggles and several other half-built contraptions. Casper was curled up on her bed, snoozing, while Mart danced around in the background.

  “He’s doing the Macarena, I think,” I said. “He’s a terrible dancer.”

  “You’re worse,” Mart retaliated.

  A smile tugged at her mouth. “He came to see me?”

  “Sure,” I said. “We wanted to know if you’d be up for watching a movie tonight. I’ll grab some food from downstairs first, and the three of us can watch something fun. Sounds good?”

  “I thought you were going out with the detective,” she said.

  “He’s busy tonight,” I said. “Pack thing.”

  “That’s a shame,” she said. “I thought you two were hitting it off. You had a nice first date, didn’t you?”

  “We did.” I sought a change of subject before Mart started making unwanted comments about Drew again. “We’re planning on another date soon, but we’re both busy.”

  “Or running away,” Mart said. “You always do this. You have one good date with a guy, and then you get cold feet and run off.”

  I shot him a glare, which he ignored. “We’re doing something this weekend, I think, assuming our grumpy Reaper friend doesn’t barge in on us this time.”

  “Old Harold interrupted your date?” said Carey.

  Ack. This was why I didn’t get people involved in my personal life. It complicated everything. It’d also slipped my mind that I hadn’t updated her on the new Reaper situation. “Not Harold. There’s another Reaper visiting town, and he isn’t my biggest fan.”

  “Why?” she said. “Who is he?”

  “He got annoyed because I sent my brother to spy on him to figure out what he was doing here,” I explained. “Honestly, I’m still not sure what he’s doing here, but Mart’s not taking the risk and spying on him again.”

  “I should bloody well hope not,” said Mart. “His threats took ten years off my afterlife.”

  “Why were you interested in where the Reaper is staying?” asked Carey.

  “We don’t think he’s supposed to be here,” I said, opting for an honest approach. “We also think he might have banished one of the two ghosts Cris and her friends were looking for.”

  She paled. “What? You’re looking for them, too?”

  “No, but I already spoke to Eric a few times this week,” I said. “He’s worried because Lara disappeared. I think the Reaper is to blame, but the guy’s being cagey about why he’s really in town.”

  Her expression cleared. “You think another Reaper is attacking the town’s ghosts?”

  “I hope he isn’t, but he’s the most likely culprit,” I said. “I think Lara might have been targeted by accident, but it seems weird that her name came up again. I didn’t realise she and Eric were students at the academy.”

  “I don’t know anything about them,” she said. “I didn’t even know the names of the ghosts Cris and her friends were searching for here.”

  “If she was telling the truth.” Glad we’d steered the topic away from the detective, I got out the plastic folder of articles Debora Lowe had given me. “Granted, Eric himself might have hidden some of the details about his death, according to these articles.”’

  She looked at them in puzzlement. “Where’d you get those?”

  “The library,” I said. “Debora Lowe gave them to me.”

  She winced. “You went to the library?”

  “Yeah, I did,” I said. “I wanted to see if there was anything else I needed to consider if I’m to find Lara’s missing spirit. Want to look at them?”

  “I can’t read those,” she said quietly. “If I do, Cris and the others will think I’m investigating their ghost for my blog. They’ll make me stop.”

  “You don’t have to read them,” I said, “but if they try anything more, then I’ll make it clear that they’ll have to go through me if they have an issue with what you decide to write on your blog.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “It’ll make things worse.”

  She was probably right. I’d been intending to drive Mart’s attention away from the detective by bringing it up, but I hadn’t me
ant to upset her again in the process.

  “I’ll chase them off,” said Mart. “Maybe give one of them a push into the river…”

  He would, too, but we’d have to tread carefully when it came to those students. I didn’t think they were the ones who’d banished the ghost—and her death had occurred before most of them had been born—but they were drawing my suspicions all the same.

  “If you really don’t want us to, then I won’t show you articles,” I said to Carey. “I doubt the students have met the Reaper, anyway. It’s him I’m interested in, not them. I won’t say a word to them.”

  “Thanks, Maura,” she said.

  “Hey, I’m not going to make anyone’s life harder than it already is,” I said. “Living or dead.”

  As for the ghosts? They’d have to wait for our movie night to be over before pestering me again.

  7

  The following morning, I gave a quick read of the articles Debora had given me, since Carey had flat-out refused to get involved. I didn’t blame her for that, but the articles themselves were less helpful than I’d hoped. They mostly consisted of rumour and speculation about the two teenagers’ deaths, littered with claims from their grieving parents that they hadn’t been skiving off school and had been set up.

  “This sounds downright accusatory, to tell you the truth,” I remarked to Mart. “Like they wanted to blame someone.”

  “As opposed to admitting their own kids were making out in a shed when the town was flooding?” Mart said. “Nah, I reckon it was a tragic accident.”

  “Maybe.” I flipped to the next article. I wasn’t supposed to be working that morning, but I’d woken up early, and Carey was already at school, giving me little else to do with my time. “But there was something odd about Eric’s account of his death. He doesn’t remember much of it.”

  “Which is unusual… how?” he said. “I don’t like thinking about my death either.”

  “He doesn’t even remember the flood, though.” I shook my head. “If he was telling the truth, that is. It’s not like I can ask Lara to confirm his story.”

  “Because she’s gone,” said Mart. “Please tell me you’re not going to provoke that Reaper again.”

  “I’m not going to provoke him. I’m going to ask a few pointed questions about his reasons for being in town.” I put the articles aside. “I don’t think I’m going to get any useful information out of these, anyway. The detective and I are going to track down our elusive Reaper later.”

  Mart scoffed. “I swear, if he Reaps my soul, I’ll send every ghost in the afterlife to haunt you.”

  Then he floated through the wall to his room and disappeared.

  “No need to be dramatic,” I said to the wall, but he didn’t return.

  Rolling my eyes, I headed downstairs. After breakfast, I took it upon myself to do some cleaning and other chores in the restaurant despite Allie’s objections. It wasn’t like I had much else to do with my time, since Mart had taken my comments about the ghost banishment to heart and refused to come out of his room. Anyway, cleaning gave my mind space to wander and think more about the articles I’d borrowed from the library while I waited for Drew to show up. He’d promised to visit old Harold with me, but despite that unappealing prospect, my heart lifted when the detective walked into the restaurant. “Hey, Maura.”

  “Good, you’re here,” said Allie, interrupting my own greeting. “Take her away before she starts sweeping the floors, too. Not being able to find a replacement bartender doesn’t mean you have to do everything yourself, Maura.”

  “Maybe not, but I’d rather sweep the floors than visit the Reaper,” I said. “Is that the plan, Drew?”

  “If you mean old Harold, he refused to even open the door to me when I dropped by this morning,” he said. “But I do have more information on those two teenage ghosts, too.”

  “Oh?” I joined him, waving goodbye to Allie as we left the restaurant. “What do you have?”

  “I found the case files for those two students’ deaths,” he said. “Things were so chaotic at the time that a lot of files got misplaced, so there isn’t much information available.”

  “I read over the newspaper articles Debora gave me,” I said. “There wasn’t much in there, either. It looks like their parents didn’t want the whole world knowing their kids were skipping school when they died, so they tried to pin the blame on the last person who saw them alive. In fairness, it also seemed like the newspapers were fishing for a story to be sensational for the sake of it.”

  “You know the basics already, then,” he said. “I don’t think there’s much more in the police reports except for one suspect who was questioned and then released without being charged with anything.”

  “Same guy mentioned in the articles, by any chance?” I said. “Is he still around these days?”

  “Ed James,” he said. “He’s living here in Hawkwood Hollow, but he’ll be in his thirties now, I think. He and the victims were classmates. I have his address, so we can pay him a visit.”

  “You want to go and talk to him now?” I asked.

  “Sure, if you’re up for it,” he said. “I’m off duty, technically speaking. Can’t have everyone thinking I opened up an old case.”

  “Better not let word get back to those academy kids, then. Otherwise they’ll think we’re probing into the town’s history to stop them from going ghost hunting,” I said.

  He raised a brow. “Aren’t most of them fifteen? They weren’t even born when the floods took place.”

  “You don’t know how mean teenage girls can be, do you?”

  “I have an inkling,” he said. “I know Carey doesn’t want us to intervene, but I’m not certain that ignoring the problem will make it disappear.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “She doesn’t have any friends her own age, and I’m starting to think those kids are the reason. They’re screwing with her confidence in a major way, and now she’s finally started making headway with this ghost blog thing, and they’re trying to sabotage that, too.”

  “You’re saying this Debora Lowe from the library is the one who told the students where the ghosts were hiding?” he said.

  “No, but Cris and her friends figured out that Eric and Lara were hiding in a shack near the inn when they died, so they decided to come there to bother Carey,” I said. “Debora said they weren’t that interested in the details of the actual deaths, so she gave me the articles rather than handing them over to those students.”

  “The police department was frankly a mess at the time,” Drew said. “I’m not supposed to say that, but they were inefficient and completely ill-equipped to deal with a situation as serious as the floods. They were also used to stepping aside and letting the coven leader do as she wanted. I gather she had a fair bit of input when it came to the response to incidents like that.”

  “You mean she might’ve doctored the newspapers’ focus?” I’d already disliked Mina Devlin enough already, but pinning a double murder on a stranger struck me as exactly the kind of thing she’d do. She’d certainly covered up a fair number of crimes during her tenure as coven leader during the short time I’d been in town. “I don’t know this Ed James, but with all the ghosts around, the truth was bound to come to the surface eventually. Whether he did it or not.”

  Since the town hadn’t been flooded with ghosts before the Reaper’s retirement, I could understand why people might’ve thought they could get away with murder, but now, not so much. Had the case resurfaced because someone had wanted to get rid of the evidence by any means possible, even this long after the crime had been committed? And how did the other Reaper connect to a long-ago crime that had never been solved? The two seemed to have nothing to do with one another—unless this wasn’t Shelton’s first visit to Hawkwood Hollow.

  “Want to come and speak to him now, then?” he said. “You can tell Carey if you like, but I’m not sure she’ll be keen on the idea.”

  “She won’t mind us speaking to him as l
ong as we don’t let anything slip in front of those other kids,” I said. “They shouldn’t come back to the inn if they’re sensible, though. Anyway, I’d like to hear what Ed James has to say.”

  We left the inn and headed over the bridge towards the high street.

  “How’s work going?” Drew asked.

  “Not too bad,” I said. “We might need to put out another ad if we don’t find another bartender soon. It really shouldn’t be this difficult to find someone.”

  I couldn’t help wondering if someone had been spreading stories about us outside of the coven as well, because we hadn’t had any applications from non-witches and -wizards either. That or the fact that Hayley had been a murderer had put most people off applying, which was a possibility.

  “I did ask some of the pack members last night,” he said. “You might get some interest there.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I said. “It’s appreciated.”

  “We’re almost there.” He led the way down one of the cul-de-sacs in the witches’ area of town. “How much do you want to tell Ed James about why the case has come to the surface again?”

  “I think I should avoid mentioning that Lara’s ghost has gone missing,” I said. “If he did murder both teenagers, then the best way to get a confession is to pretend the ghosts and I have been chatting with one another.”

  “Unless he knows the ghost is gone already, even if he didn’t do it,” he said. “Not that I’m supposed to jump to conclusions, mind.”

  “I’m more interested to hear what he has to say about Mina Devlin,” I added. “I wonder how much input she had in him taking the blame for their deaths.”

  Drew led the way to a terraced house and knocked on the door. A tall guy with thinning dark hair, presumably Ed James, answered.

  “Detective Drew Gardener, right?” he said, blinking in surprise. “Can I help you with something?”

  “Yes,” said Drew. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about an incident a few years ago involving the deaths of two of your classmates at the local academy.”