Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 1-3

by Mara Webb

  Something outside the living room window gave me instant comfort.

  ‘Miller, come in. Miller, we have a situation reported over at Sadie’s place, do you copy?’

  Miller was outside. The police knew that something was happening, and they were on the way and Miller was already here. I was safe, I felt it. The intruder nudged the living room door open and I regretted having not switched on the light before I came in here. The moonbeams seeping through into the room allowed me to see the size of the figure in front of me, not as tall as I had expected.

  Not tall, not human.

  This creature would have been larger than me if it reared up onto its back legs, but on all fours we were seeing eye-to-eye. I wasn’t scared now, I wondered if my body had gone into total shock or if I somehow knew that this thing wasn’t a threat to me. Something about the eyes was calming, almost familiar.

  Was it possible that there was no stalker, just this creature? The silhouette of a tall figure rushed past the window outside and the creature turned and bolted back out of the house. I couldn’t explain why, but I followed. By the time I had reached the hallway, the creature was bolting along the sand, running towards the base of the cliffs in the distance.

  I saw the tall man that had passed by my window, just for a second, then he was spooked by the arrival of the police and ran off in the same direction as the creature. The voices crackling through the police radio drew my attention to a discarded walkie talkie on the ground. Who did this belong to?

  Three police officers ran towards me and seemed to be more concerned with checking if I was harmed or not, than making any attempt to chase the tall man or the four legged beast that had just broken into my home.

  Ryder ran towards me and ushered the police away. They muttered something about monitoring the perimeter and I watched in silence as Ryder stepped around me and into the house, he gestured that I should follow him.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I heard your house was broken into,” he replied as if it was obvious.

  “From who? It all happened in the last ten minutes,” I said, the adrenaline of the moment wearing off and the trembling in my hands taking over.

  “You think a wolf was going to get in here without me knowing about it?”

  “Wolf? How could it be a wolf? Do mammals even live on islands like this? I thought it was always just birds.”

  “Do you know a lot of birds that size? With four legs? And fur?” Good point. “We haven’t had wolves here for a long time, that means something has changed and I have to lead the hunt.”

  “You kill wolves? Doesn’t it make more sense to just check the boats when they get here and make sure that no one is bringing animals here? They do that in Australia,” I said. His expression gave me the sense that once again I was the last person to know what was going on.

  “Sadie, no one brought that werewolf here.” My mouth fell open. In a world where magic and witchcraft was real, it had to be possible that other mythical stories were true, but I hadn’t had chance to catch my breath about all this since I arrived. It had been one bombshell after another.

  A werewolf had broken into my home to do what, kill me? Surely there was an easier meal on the island than me, a woman behind a locked door. Why would I be the target? I’d seen a glimpse of a tall man outside my home too. I’d seen his face for a second, but it was all I’d needed. At some point I would have to tell the police that Rosie’s ex-boyfriend, Simon, was outside my window and might be the one that killed Greta.

  13

  Would you find it relaxing to have your new house, a place you have spent exactly one entire night in, surrounded by police until sunrise? A patrol set up in case the stalker, the one that potentially killed your cousin and is frightening an employee, shows up to hurt you, would that be comforting? It wasn’t, in case you hadn’t guessed.

  Shortly after Ryder left, Effie had shown up with a new sim card for my phone, made a few calls to port my old number over and managed to do all that with only a handful of threats to customer service staff at the phone network.

  Effie said it would be useful for me to keep my number so that anyone from my old life that wanted to get in touch was able to, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it would hardly be blowing up with phone calls.

  Having a functional phone meant that I was able to leave a voicemail for Miller, then another. After my third attempt to call him I gave up. Effie had slept on the sofa downstairs and I had lay awake for hours trying to think about my childhood and if there had been any clues about the abilities of my bloodline.

  I hadn’t seen Greta and desperately wanted to grill her about the family tree on the dining room wall, but I had more pressing issues.

  “Sadie, are you ready to go?” Effie shouted. The police officers that had attended the scene last night requested that I go down to the station and provide a statement. I had agreed and, as I threw on a t-shirt, I hoped that I would see Miller there.

  I felt like the girl in class that was sending round the, ‘Do you like me? Yes or no?’ tick box notes. Yes, I actually did that back in school. It was probably just as likely to end in romance as leaving multiple voicemail messages on a hot guy’s cell phone.

  I had mentioned the werewolf incident to Effie and her eyes had widened only slightly. It was sort of an, oh really? response as if I’d told her that there was a shoe sale in town. She had remarked that a werewolf sighting was ‘due’ like it was a dormant volcano being closely monitored by the geography channel.

  “Do I mention the werewolf to the police?” I asked.

  “Up to you, peacekeeper,” Effie teased. “If you think a bunch of humans can handle that information without freaking out and setting fire to the island, then be my guest.”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘no’, shall I?”

  “Look, the humans know about magic and we’re all so very proud that they don’t pee their pants every day at the magnitude of our power, but this would probably tip them over the edge. Even just a regular wolf would frighten most people,” she explained.

  “You don’t seem bothered by it,” I said, studying her face to see if she was faking bravery.

  “My great-grandfather was a werewolf. There are a couple of humans old enough to remember all that, but the younger generations think it’s all fairytales to make the past sound more exciting. I think we’re happy to keep it that way.”

  I stepped into the police station and audibly gasped with relief to see Miller in the reception area. He was safe. After seeing a discarded walkie talkie on the sand I feared that maybe he had been attacked by the creature. Looking into his eyes now, his tense forehead and tight lips, I feared that he was the creature.

  No. That was crazy, right? But everything here is crazy. Why was I even considering it? It felt something inside me was pulling me to this conclusion, like a gut instinct.

  It would be insane of me to ask him if he was a werewolf and it also wasn’t likely to come up naturally during my formal statement delivery for the incident report. It would have to wait.

  “I’m heading back to the café; does anyone want to place an order? If you’re lucky I can bring it over,” Effie asked the room. A number of people jumped up to rush at her with their requests, mostly police officers but one young man in handcuffs was also trying to ask for a Reuben.

  “Sadie, this way please,” Miller said, his voice hushed as if I was to be the sole recipient of his words. I followed him into a small room, and he sat down across a table from an empty chair. I felt as though we had been in the early stages of a friendship, or at least I had hoped, but now he was acting so business-like.

  If we were to defend the land, or whatever a peacekeeper was in charge of, then we needed to work together. Him keeping me at an icy distance was going to make this harder. Could he sense that I was having these bizarre werewolf thoughts? Ryder put the idea in my head and Effie had poured fuel on the fire, she had confirmed that werewolves existe
d. Miller was human though; I didn’t want to say something stupid and have him question my sanity.

  I sat down. He pulled out a notepad, a small tape recorder and a sketchbook from a drawer beneath the table. As he set up the recorder, I couldn’t help but stare at his face in search of a clue as to why he wasn’t the same as the guy I’d met in the storm shelter. Where was the back-and-forth? The light flirting?

  “You’re staring,” he said.

  “What have I done wrong?” I replied, the words had left my mouth before the logical part of my brain had applied a filter. He stopped pressing buttons and looked up at me. “Is it because I nearly drowned? Has that made you think less of me or something? Look, I’m just trying to figure out what happened to Greta and navigate this new, mind-blowing existence that I’ve been thrown into and I could do with you acknowledging me.”

  He smiled, it was a little crooked and effortlessly charming. All of my hostile thoughts seemed to dissolve as he disarmed me with a flash of his teeth and a moment of eye contact.

  “Sadie, you should know that Greta kept things strictly business with me. There was no hanging-out or friendly conversations really, she wanted to keep her job separate from the other aspects of her life. I had assumed that you would want the same thing, and, despite my own interests, I tried to adhere to it,” he said.

  “Your own interests?” I replied, echoing my favorite part of his response. He looked away again. “Okay, let’s just focus on the break-in and the stalker, then we can talk about your emotional blockade later.” He opened his mouth to respond but thought better of it. Hey, I’d been to a couple of counselling sessions and I knew enough buzzwords to give the vague sense that I knew what I was talking about.

  “Okay, so we deal with everything internally. This means that you can speak candidly on the record about anything normal, or paranormal, and it won’t be used against you in court. I suppose if you were back on the mainland discussing witches with the police you wouldn’t be taken seriously.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” I mumbled.

  “I will start the recording and we will get started,” he said. He pressed the button to start the tape recorder, stated the date and time, my name, his name and then he asked me to tell the story of the events that resulted in the police being called out last night. Despite my initial suspicions, Miller seemed unphased by my descriptions of a large wolf in my living room. He didn’t flinch or squirm.

  “By the time I got outside, I realized that the shadow outside my window was a tall, thin man. It was Simon Davick,” I stated. This caught his attention. He paused the tape.

  “Davick? Are you sure? If we start throwing accusations around about members of the Davick family then we are going to end up in hot water. You’re the peacekeeper, even you speaking to the police about an incident like this will have people talking.”

  “Surely part of keeping the peace involves making sure people are sticking to the rules. Rosie said she is being stalked by a tall man, a tall man was outside my window, a tall someone drove Greta’s car into a tree... do you see where I’m going with this?” I asked.

  Miller looked worried and was shifting in his seat, the reaction I had been expecting when I brought up the wolf.

  “Here’s the log you wanted,” an officer said, bursting through the door and dropping a book onto the desk between Miller and me.

  “Thanks,” Miller mumbled, already thumbing through the pages. The officer left and the only sound came from the paper creaking near the spine of the tattered book. “This is the log of boat travel to the main island. When we travelled together to Port Wayvern, the captain of our boat will have made a note in this book before we boarded because I had called ahead. There is another book at Port Wayvern, and our arrival was recorded there.”

  “Seems strange to track movement like that,” I said, squinting at the handwriting that I was trying to read upside down.

  “We have to keep a log of people travelling by water in case someone goes missing. I think it was introduced during prohibition to catch bootleggers and deter them from shipping alcohol from one dock to another. Doubt it worked, but it seemed like a sensible system to keep,” Miller said, scanning the book with his eyes mere inches from the page. “The handwriting gets worse by the day,” he moaned.

  “I may as well elaborate on my Simon theory then, because you didn’t ask a lot of follow up questions,” I huffed. “Greta’s car didn’t crash. With a bullet through her chest it is obvious that the cause of death wasn’t related to a tree collision, unless the tree had a gun...” I joked. He wasn’t paying enough attention to laugh, just continued to nod so that I would continue as he read.

  “The car wasn’t dented around the trunk; it clearly didn’t hit that tree at speed. The drink in the cup holder hadn’t spilled and the driver’s seat was moved back as if someone tall had done the driving. Rosie said she had been stalked by a tall man and I think it’s the same person. Rosie could be in danger, and so could I. If this mystery man is coming after people at the café then... hang on,” I interrupted myself. Miller looked up to watch my one-man-conversation.

  “Rosie said that she and Simon broke up a week or so before the stalking started, so it would make sense if Simon was the one following her, right?” I said.

  “Why would that make sense?” Miller asked.

  “You don’t watch a lot of junk TV, do you? It’s a classic strategy to trick your partner to coming back, I’ve seen it in more soap operas than I can count. Simon follows her, makes sure that she knows someone is lurking in the shadows, make her feel scared. Who would she turn to if she got frightened?” I said, waiting for him to shout the answer. He didn’t. “Simon! She would run back into his arms for protection and one thing would lead to another and suddenly they are in love again!”

  “That’s super manipulative, right? Who would do that?”

  “I’ve seen in on Forensic Files too, actually. It’s real,” I smiled, thrilled to be putting puzzle pieces together in my mind. “She wasn’t scared enough, so he upped the ante and killed Greta!”

  “As fascinating as this theory is, there is a major flaw that you are overlooking. The log doesn’t show Simon travelling to the main island at any point during the last few days, so there is no way that he was standing outside your window last night,” he said.

  I was stunned. I had seen him with my own eyes, I was sure of it. There must be some other way to travel between islands.

  14

  Effie had brought a huge paper bag of café food to the police station and was clearly winning all sorts of popularity contests with the officers behind desks that were almost glowing at the sight of her. Miller didn’t look at her like that though, he wasn’t looking at anyone. His head was still buried in the boat logbook, but he was sat in his own office now, I had been dismissed.

  I didn’t feel like it had gone well, our conversation about last night, but it hadn’t covered all the topics that I wanted to discuss. Miller hadn’t asked many questions about the wolf; he was focused on the man that had been lurking outside my window. I supposed that, if we set the ‘werewolf’ option aside, it was just a story about a wild animal coming into my home. It happens all the time in some states, bears or racoons or snakes.

  “Did lover-boy give you much to go on then?” Effie teased.

  “No, he didn’t,” I replied, not acknowledging her mockery. “I was so sure I saw Simon on the beach last night, but he said that the boat logs don’t have him on record as travelling here any time over the past couple of days.”

  “Boat logs, shmoat logs,” she scoffed. “You do realize the islands are close enough to swim between, right? I mean, I know what dwells in that water so you wouldn’t catch me dead in there, but other folks might be willing to risk it. For real, if you see me kicking off my shoes and wading into the shallows then just shoot me because I’ve clearly been taken over by aliens.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was still joking, and considering my house
was right on the beach I felt like it would be stupid of me to ask for her to elaborate as I would never sleep again.

  “You think he could have swum across just to spy on me?” I asked.

  “Was he dripping wet?” she asked.

  “No,” I replied.

  “Ah, probably not then. Come get some lunch in the café, I can show you around the kitchen, explain our ordering system, introduce you to the chefs and, well I can’t think of anything else right now but I’m sure there’s more to it.”

  We walked back down the main street, waved to Kate through the window of Pete’s Za and smiled encouragingly at the folks scrubbing graffiti from their store front. It wasn’t in the same place that I had seen it the day of the storm, there had been more vandalism since then. It was likely under my remit to deal with that too.

  The cafe was swarmed with the lunch rush and I spotted Oliver again, waving wildly as he saw us enter. I wondered if he was here to harass me for a statement about the stalker. Effie ushered me into the kitchen and whistled to bring the activity there to a halt.

  “Guys, this is Sadie, she is the new owner and you’ve probably seen her already,” Effie announced. “Sadie, this is Tara and Fern.” The two women waved in response to their names and I tried to make a quick note of physical attributes that would help me distinguish between them, as, in their uniforms, they looked strikingly similar.

  “Hello,” I smiled. Tara, or at least I thought it was Tara, brought a meat clever swinging down onto a chunk of butcher board and I gulped nervously.

  “I liked Greta,” she stated. Ah. I had expected some hostility given that I had bought a business as an outsider and requested that the staff stay on, people generally don’t like change. That seemed to ring true for the magical island community too.

  “Now, Fern, we talked about the importance of being polite to the new boss,” Effie advised.