by Elle Adams
“I thought the town’s ghosts didn’t mind you now,” she said.
“As long as I don’t start waving shadows around,” I said. “Other than that, it’s hard to summon a specific spirit if it isn’t someone you personally know. Or if they didn’t die recently.”
“Still worth trying,” she said. “What’s up with you? You seem kinda… mopey.”
“Mopey? Me?” I frowned. “I guess I’ve had a frustrating week.”
“Is that ghost still bothering you?”
“What ghost?” asked Hayley, passing by with a tray of drinks.
“My new next-door neighbour.” I gave an eye-roll. “As everyone knows, I’m a magnet for unwanted spirits.”
“You mean the one that kept screaming?” she said.
“You’ve got it,” I said. “Lucky me. And no, I wasn’t thinking about her.”
“The detective, then?” put in Carey. “Because it sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time with him this week.”
“No.” I absently picked up a glass and started polishing it. “I was thinking about how Mina Devlin keeps getting in my way. Two members of her coven are dead, and you’d think she’d want to help the police, not take the case off their hands and refuse to share anything.”
Mart’s claim that Mandy’s death had been treated in a similar manner set alarm bells ringing in my skull, but how could I make an open accusation against her without proof? The case of Amanda Dawson’s death had been closed long ago, if there’d ever been one. I’d need to tell the detective everything that’d since been revealed, but he had enough to handle without me dumping another bombshell on him.
“Not if it threatens the stability of the coven,” Hayley said. “That’s Mina’s priority, above all else. Who’s this ghost, anyway?”
“A witch who used to be in the coven,” I said, not wanting to drag her into this mess as well. “She tried out for the position of healer a few years ago… which seems to be a great way to end up dead.”
“Seriously?” Her eyes rounded. “When?”
“I don’t know… maybe four or five years ago, I think,” I said. “Sounds like our esteemed coven leader shut down that case, too.”
“Sounds like her.” Hayley frowned at Carey. “Have you spoken to this ghost?”
“Nope,” she said. “I can’t hear them. The microphone on my ghost goggles isn’t on the right frequency yet.”
Yet. Magical technology wasn’t my strong point, but it seemed to be Carey’s. I was actually pretty impressed at some of the things she’d come up with, including a key that opened any door, and I had no doubt that she’d perfect her ghost-recording gear eventually.
“Well, try not to get into a feud with Mina,” Hayley said. “My mum argued with her from her deathbed and I doubt that improved things for anyone.”
I could imagine, but Mina was hellbent on getting in our way. She’d even confiscated Harriet’s notes which she’d left in Angie’s shop, which ought to count as evidence, even if the police hadn’t been able to find any clues in them. She’d also taken Harriet’s body to the coven without noting the marks on it, which was downright suspicious no matter how I looked at it.
Maybe it was time to take the investigation into my own hands.
Once my shift finished, I told Carey I was going to get an early night and left the restaurant. Then, instead of my room, I made for the door leading outside.
Mart appeared behind me and floated into step with me. “Where are you going?”
“To nose around the coven leader’s office and steal back the notes she confiscated from the police.” I tilted my head at him. “Did you follow those wizards? Learn anything?”
“Nope,” he said. “Their conversation is as dull as a wart potion, and if any of them committed murder, I’m a pixie.”
“Definitely innocent, then?”
“Regrettably so,” he said. “Are you sure you want to antagonise Her Grumpiness? What if it turns out she sleeps in her office?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me, but it’s worth a look around. Coming?”
“Of course.”
I also intended to return the pilfered bottles of ghost-banishing concoction where they belonged, so I’d take a detour to Angie’s shop, preferably without the coven’s leader interrupting me this time around. Next time, she might not let me off so easily.
Mina already thought I was a troublemaker, but then again, I felt the exact same about her. And she’d thrown up too many red flags for me to ignore them any longer. I just needed to make sure she didn’t hurt anyone else while I prepared to take her down.
The two of us crossed the bridge over the river, Mart floating at my side.
“I’m heading to Angie’s shop first,” I told him. “Might have another look around while I’m at it.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” he said. “How about I go and have a snoop around Mina’s office to make sure there aren’t any traps first? So you don’t get yourself into trouble. It’s not like she can see me even if she’s there.”
My mouth parted. “Not a bad idea. She can’t see ghosts, but she might have other defences up.”
“Relax,” said Mart. “She won’t know I’m there, Maura. Don’t worry.”
“If you see the Reaper, get out,” I told him.
He snorted. “The Reaper? I doubt he’s ever set foot in her office.”
He probably wasn’t wrong, but the last time we’d split up to investigate separately, he’d wound up locked in the Reaper’s house and was lucky not to have ended up banished into the afterlife. Mart was more resilient than most spirits, but whoever was behind the killings had already got rid of one ghost. Maybe two, if Angie had even shown up. We barely knew what we were messing with here.
“All right, but if you see anything dangerous, check in with me,” I said.
“Likewise,” he said. “You’re the one with a pulse, remember?”
Didn’t I know it. But Reapers were resilient. We had to be.
I walked out into the dark, crossed over the river, then headed for the witches’ area of town. There, Mart and I parted ways outside Angie’s shop.
“We’ll meet up back at the inn,” I said. “Give it half an hour. I won’t be long.”
“Sure.” He waved, then vanished down the road towards the coven’s headquarters.
I, meanwhile, turned to the apothecary. It was locked, which I should have expected, and a quick check confirmed the lock spell was more complicated than the usual type. But nothing and nowhere was Reaper-proofed.
Shadows floated from my hands, coalesced in front of the door, and I stepped through them, emerging on the other side as though I’d stepped straight through the wooden surface. The dark shop remained shadowed, but no soul was inside it. Living or dead.
Maybe the shop wasn’t where Angie’s spirit had appeared after all, but there must be something. I walked into the back room and conjured up a light with my wand before returning the jars I’d borrowed to a dark corner in the back. Then I searched for an object which might have been important to Angie, which I could use in my Reaper tracking to pinpoint her ghost.
If any evidence which led to her killer had been here, though, it’d been removed by now. What had I expected, really? The coven leader had already been in here and taken everything of note. I’d been looking in the wrong place.
Despite myself, I crouched down to search behind the desk. My gaze snagged on a book lying on the floor. A notebook with Angie’s handwriting on it, which she’d been writing in when I’d first come here. Impulsively, I grabbed it and put it into my pocket. I didn’t particularly want to do my Reaper tracking spell here in the shop in case Mina Devlin interrupted me, so I left the shop the same way I’d come in.
I headed back to the inn, my hands in my pockets and my head in the clouds. What had I really been thinking I’d find, anyway? The evidence would have to be pretty major to implicate the coven leader, and she was too clever to leave anything obvious lying around. I’d hav
e to wait and see what Mart said when he came out of her office. I hoped he’d had better luck than I had.
I was halfway across the bridge when something crashed into me from behind, sending me stumbling over the edge and towards the dark currents of water below.
Shadows spilled out, breaking my fall like a sheet of dark glass. I landed, breathless, suspended in mid-air. My head spun with vertigo. Even for a Reaper, that’d been a close one. I hovered, eyes on the bridge, and spotted a dark figure disappear into the distance. How had my attacker got so close without me spotting them? I’d been lost in thought, and I hadn’t been cautious enough at all.
Now I stood suspended in the air, one wrong step from falling to my doom. This was a fine mess I’d wound up in. I shuffled forward, willing the shadows to stay intact until I set foot back on the bridge again. Then I halted, my heart sinking. Someone was walking across the bridge. Someone like… Drew Gardener.
The detective looked down at me. “How in the world did you get down there?”
“Reaper trick,” I responded. “Hang on. Just let me walk back to the bridge.”
“Let me help you.” He reached out a hand, and I closed the short distance between us to grasp his hand and stepped back onto the bridge. The shadows folded back in when I touched down on solid ground.
“Thanks.” I released his hand, with more reluctance than I’d have preferred. My heart was still hammering a mile a minute. Someone tried to kill me. In the darkness, the only person I could see was the detective. Whoever had knocked me off the bridge had long since disappeared into the surrounding streets.
“What happened?” he asked. “Did you go down to the river looking for clues?”
“Nope,” I said. “Someone pushed me in.”
His eyes widened. “Who?”
“No idea. They got me from behind. Lucky my Reaper powers kicked in, otherwise I’d be going for an unplanned swim.” Shivers ran down my arms. I hadn’t been in any danger of drowning, but the person who’d pushed me couldn’t have known that. Or hadn’t cared.
“What were you doing out here alone anyway?” he asked.
I weighed the odds. “I decided to have another look around Angie’s shop. Then I walked back, and someone ambushed me. I didn’t see their face. They disappeared before I could get a good look.”
His eyebrows rose. “You went back to Angie’s shop? Alone?”
“I took Mart with me, but we split up.”
That was probably a mistake, too, but Mina was aware of my Reaper abilities and she might have caught me if she was lurking around her office at night. Then I’d have had difficulty defending myself without winding up in deeper trouble.
The detective frowned. “I wish you’d told me you were leaving the inn. It’s not safe for you to wander around alone at night.”
“I assumed you were back at the office,” I said. “Besides, I didn’t want you to become a target.”
“This is my job,” he said. “Investigating Angie’s murder. What were you going to do, then? Summon her ghost in your room?”
I bristled at his tone, which echoed the annoying detective I’d first met rather than the man I’d come to know over the past few weeks. “There’s no reason to make fun. I know this isn’t my job. As everyone keeps reminding me, I’m not even qualified to join the coven.”
“That’s not what I—” He broke off. “Look, I wouldn’t normally have involved you in the investigation as long as I did, but I assumed you’d tell me everything.”
“So I’m being dismissed.” My voice came out brittle, my hands shaking from my brush with death. “Look, I’m a Reaper. You needn’t fear for my safety. You, however, are human, and two people have died this week already.”
“That came out wrong,” he said. “Maura, I—”
The sound of drunken singing interrupted us. A group of wizards came out of the inn, pursued by an irritated-looking Hayley, and began weaving their way across the bridge. I really didn’t want to go for another swim, so I muttered a goodbye and dodged my way through the crowd.
At the inn, I found Mart hovering in the lobby.
“There you are,” said Mart. “Where were you?”
“Drowning in the river,” I said. “Thanks for checking up on me.”
“Hey, don’t look at me,” he said. “You told me to meet back here. I didn’t know I was supposed to be your bodyguard. Who tried to drown you?”
“Sorry,” I murmured. “I don’t know who it was. I didn’t see them up close. I didn’t find anything in Angie’s shop that would implicate anyone in her death, so I grabbed something of hers and then left.”
The near-death experience had rattled me more than I’d expected, and now I felt guilty for snapping at Drew on top of it all. How had I expected him to react to me nearly falling to my death from a bridge?
“Now probably isn’t a good time to tell you I couldn’t get into Mina’s office, is it?” Mart said.
I groaned. “Why not?
“I couldn’t get past the door,” he responded. “It’s ghost-proofed. She put herbs all over the place, I think. No spirit could get in.”
“Seriously?” She couldn’t possibly have known I was going to send Mart there, right? But maybe she wanted to keep Angie’s ghost out… or Harriet’s.
Fishy. Definitely fishy.
“Unfortunately,” he said. “It’s a shame, given the ominous-looking book she left open on the desk.”
“A book?” I asked. ‘What did it say?”
“No idea,” he said. “I couldn’t read the title from that far off, but it looked pretty dodgy to me. Weird symbols all over the pages.”
Weird symbols. Like the ones on Harriet’s body? If I couldn’t get my hands on the book, though, there was no proof within reach. “I wish you’d come back the same way as me. Then you might have caught the person who tried to kill me.”
“Yes, I would have,” he said. “Who’d have tried to do you in?”
“You think I know?” I said. “Good job I got my shadows out in time. It’s too cold to swim.”
He pulled a face. “Maybe I should have gone alone.”
“Don’t forget the person doing this is as dangerous to ghosts, too.” They’d probably only avoided hurting him because they couldn’t see him, but they could see me, and now I’d put a neon target on my head.
“Yes, I know,” he said. “You don’t need to lecture me, not after you almost got yourself drowned. Didn’t the detective come to help you out?”
“He did.” I suppressed a sigh. “But I couldn’t deal with him being condescending, so I left him. I don’t understand why he got me involved to begin with if he was only going to get under my feet.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Mart. “He likes you, and he was looking for excuses to spend time with you.”
“Until I wrecked his investigation.”
“I wouldn’t say you wrecked it. You just destroyed it a little.”
“Not helping.”
“You also nearly died,” he added. “Don’t do that.”
“I’m more resilient than you know,” I said. “I can’t actually drown. I just panicked.”
“I know you can’t drown,” he said. “You should have told the detective that.”
I groaned. “He’d have still found a way to reprimand me for going off alone. I don’t need you getting on my case as well as him.”
“You’ll see.” He floated away through the wall, leaving me alone in the lobby.
Great job there, Maura.
I made for the stairs, debating whether to talk to Mandy again or not. At the rate I was going, I’d scare her off, so I was better off waiting until morning.
I trudged up to the first-floor corridor, where Carey ambushed me on the way to my room, snapping me out of my thoughts.
“Maura,” she said. “Come, quickly.”
“What is it?”
I hurried after her, down the corridor. The door to my room lay open, as did the neighbouring one.
My suitcase lay open, my possessions scattered around the floor. The room next door was in a similar state. As though they knew someone else was in there—
Oh, no.
I took it back. Things most definitely could get worse.
The ghost had gone.
13
I sat alone at a table in the restaurant the following morning, nursing a mug of coffee and trying not to feel like the universe was crashing down on my head.
“What’s up?” Allie joined me. “I’m sorry about your room.”
“That’s the least of the problems I’ve had this week,” I said. “Whoever trashed my room also got rid of the ghost, and to be honest, I’m more annoyed about that than the room.”
“They got rid of her, but not by banishing her,” said Allie. “I looked around the room, and there weren’t any herbs in there. Whoever broke into the room only scared her off. She might still be around.”
“They might as well have banished her,” I said. “I haven’t seen her since, and besides, she was already terrified of people. She probably won’t be able to speak at all if I ever find her again, much less tell me anything about her death.”
“Maybe Drew can help you,” she said. “How’re things with the detective, anyway?”
I groaned. “I think I insulted him when I didn’t let him come with me to nose around Angie’s shop yesterday, and then nearly got myself thrown in the river.”
Her eyes widened. “Thrown in the river?”
Oops. Why couldn’t I seem to stop running my mouth off lately?
“I didn’t want to worry you or Carey,” I said, “but it was when I was on my way back here. Someone pushed me off the bridge.”
Her forehead creased. “Maura, you should have reported it to the police.”
Yes. I should have. “I got back here and then everything went to hell again. Besides, it’s not like I saw who did it. The detective caught me there and I assume he reported it, but I took off before we could get to that point.”
“Someone tried to hurt you, Maura,” she said reproachfully. “Someone who deserves to be held to account.”
“Did anyone from here leave the restaurant around the time it happened?” I asked. “Because they must have been within walking distance.”
