“What kind of weird feeling?”
“I can’t explain it,” I said. Laurel confiscated the wreath from me, frowning at the messy knots I’d tied into it. “I know something is strange about this case, but I can’t put my finger on it.”
Malia ruffled my hair. “You’ll figure it out. Besides, you have us. If you need anything, let us know.”
“I might take you up on that,” I said, combing my fingers through my hair to combat Malia’s windy touch. “I’m going to take a look around my client’s house again today, or what’s left of it anyway. It burned down. Maybe I’ll pick up something I missed the last time I was there.”
“Good luck,” said Laurel. A passing butterfly landed in her hair, pulsing its periwinkle wings like a living barrette.
“Thanks. I’ll see you all later.”
They chorused a farewell as I headed into town. There was no time for donuts or jokes today. As soon as I got to the station, I headed straight for my office. It was hilarious, really, that I even had an office, rather than a desk and a cubicle like all of the other officers. When I had been hired at the force, I had essentially replaced the town’s previous detective, who was a complete asshat, so I didn’t feel too terrible about throwing all of his shit into a box and leaving it out on the curb for the weekly trash truck to collect. Now my new office was rather barren. I wasn’t sure what the protocol was for personalizing a detective’s desk, so I’d settled for a tiny potted succulent, an antique globe, and as a joke, a large, ornate magnifying glass that I’d picked up at a thrift store.
“Summers!”
I backtracked, peeking into the adjacent office.
“You bellowed?” I said to Chief Torres. He beckoned me inside.
“Shut the door.”
I did so then sank into one of the leather chairs opposite Torres’s desk. “Are you firing me?” I joked. “Because you should probably reconsider. I mean, who else is going to help you keep all these creepy deaths and rebellious ghost stories under the radar?”
Torres rested his meaty hands on the wide expanse of his stomach. His chair strained and popped as he reclined. “I’ve got some good news for you, Summers.”
“I’m getting a pay raise?”
“You wish. No, I’ve hired another detective.”
For a second, I only stared at him, wondering if he was joking. As far as I knew, Yew Hollow had only ever had one detective in its small police force. Clearly, though, Torres wasn’t kidding.
“You what?”
“Now, don’t go and get yourself all worked up,” he said. He began to straighten a stack of business cards on his desk, as if to avoid making direct eye contact with me. “We got lucky with this guy. He practically fell into my lap. He comes highly recommended, and he’s not afraid of the Hollow’s quirks. You give him a chance, you hear me?”
“But I’m Yew Hollow’s detective.”
“You’re the paranormal detective,” Torres corrected, now very concerned with the dust between the keys of his computer keyboard. He blew at what appeared to be a donut crumb. “But let’s face it, Summers. You don’t have a whole lot of experience when it comes to actual detective work. You aren’t even a real cop.”
“Then teach me how to be a real cop,” I urged. “I’ll do whatever you need me to. You want me to get certified? To complete a training course? Come on, Torres. Cut me some slack.”
“I don’t have time to teach you,” said Torres wearily. “That’s why I hired this guy. You’ll work together on the Riley case. The faster we get this mess cleaned up, the better. Afterward, if you still want official training, we can have it arranged.”
I slumped down in the chair, crossing my arms like a petulant child in the principal’s office. “I can’t believe you don’t think I can do this on my own.”
“Summers, I have complete confidence in you.”
“Then why’d you hire someone else?” I demanded.
“Look, just meet the guy before you bite my head off, okay?”
“Where is he?”
Torres checked his watch, which looked as though it was cutting off the circulation in his sausage of a wrist. “He should be here any minute.”
“So he’s late? Great way to make a solid first impression.”
“Summers…”
“I know, I know. Don’t bite your head off.”
“I appreciate it,” Torres said, his shoulders sagging in relief at my reluctant cooperation. “By the way, I should warn you. Detective Dobbes doesn’t know about your, uh, speciality.”
“I thought you said he knew about Yew Hollow’s quirks.”
“The town’s, yes. Your quirks, on the other hand, I left for you to explain.” He leaned over his beefy arm, staring me down from across the desk. “Listen here, Summers. You better go easy on him. I don’t think he’s quite convinced that our town’s a little different from the beats he’s worked before.”
I pushed myself out of the chair and, taking a leaf out of Gwenlyn’s book, gave Chief Torres a little fake salute. “Don’t worry, Chief. I’ll break it to him gently.”
“Get rid of that evil grin before you do, Summers.”
“Yes, sir.”
I left his office, hoping to hide away in my own before the new detective showed up. Maybe, if I got lucky, I could avoid him long enough to prove that I could work the Riley case on my own. Yew Hollow didn’t need another detective, and I was determined to eliminate the competition before Chief Torres got any other ideas.
But when I swung through the door of my office, I found that someone was already sitting in my rolling chair, his feet propped up on my desk near the potted succulent. He was tall, lean, and offensively good-looking, and had a royal-purple aura that would have romanced even the most misandrist of witches. His jawline was so square and his hair so coiffed, he could have been a comic book superhero. Like me, he didn’t seem to adhere to the standard detective dress code. He wore a pair of fitted jeans, a white Oxford shirt, and a skinny black tie. When he looked up to see who was in the doorway, I couldn’t help but notice his eyes. They were the clearest blue I’d ever seen, but that didn’t stop me from marching in, shoving his feet off my desk, and demanding:
“Who the hell are you?”
I already knew, of course, and I didn’t care if it seemed as though I was pissing on my territory. This guy sure as hell didn’t belong behind my desk. Despite this, I still felt a twinge of professional jealousy as he stood—and my goodness, was he tall—reached out a large, calloused hand and said, “Detective Dominic Dobbes. You must be Morgan.”
4
In Which Ghosts Have Hands
“It’s Detective Summers,” I said shortly, though no one had ever addressed me as Detective Summers in my entire time at the force. For a moment, I considered not shaking his hand, but I was trying to prove to Chief Torres that I was a professional. I grudgingly placed my hand in his, which he squeezed tightly. That was a good sign. I hated when men gave women a dainty little handshake, as if we weren’t solid enough to withstand the strength of their fingers.
He dipped his head in apology. “Detective Summers. It’s really nice to meet you. I’m looking forward to working on this case with you. It definitely seems… interesting.”
“Uh-huh. Listen, how much did Chief Torres tell you, Detective Dobbes?” I asked. My office seemed to have shrunk in size to accommodate Dobbes’s ridiculous height. I waved him into the spare chair opposite my desk, eager for him to reduce his presence in the room. As we switched places and sat down across from each other, Dobbes spoke in a languid voice tinged with the tiniest hint of a Brooklyn accent.
“You can call me Dominic,” he said. “Chief Torres filled me in on a few things. I have to admit that I’m a little confused.”
“That’s the general reaction,” I said, moving the succulent back into place from where Dobbes’s foot had shifted it. “Yew Hollow is pretty unusual.”
“I hear you have a ghost problem?”
There was no hint of laughter in his voice, which was impressive. Most people were skeptical of Yew Hollow’s paranormal history, and when you mixed police work with things that weren’t supposed to exist, the lines got a little blurred.
“Yes, we’ve been dealing with a number of deaths lately, all of which are somehow involved with witchcraft,” I said, watching his face for a reaction.
“Witchcraft.”
“Yes, witchcraft,” I repeated. “I thought you said that Chief Torres filled you in.”
“Sorry, I’m still wondering if this is all just a funny prank that you guys play on the new guy,” Dobbes said, leaning forward in his chair and resting his elbows on his knees.
“Brace yourself, because Chief Torres left out a couple of things.”
“Such as?”
I looked him up and down, wondering how best to deliver my next piece of news. To his credit, he maintained steady eye contact with a confidence that I couldn’t help but admire. Then again, when you looked like an underwear model, confidence wasn’t something you needed to bolster.
“I’m Yew Hollow’s paranormal detective,” I said. “I’m a psychic medium, so it’s my job to deal with the cases that go over the other officers’ heads.”
It was clear that Detective Dobbes was not expecting this. He hid it well, though. His blue eyes narrowed only slightly before he asked, “A psychic medium?”
“Yeah, yeah. ‘I see dead people’ and all that.”
“How does that—?”
I heaved a sigh. Obviously, Torres had not done a bang-up job of explaining Yew Hollow’s inner workings. “Look, all you need to know is that my family, the Summerses, are a coven of witches. I’m a witch too. I can see ghosts, which may or may not be relevant to the case that you and I have been assigned to.”
“Teagan Riley.”
“Yes,” I said, relieved that he’d finally caught on to the fact that he was going to have to accept my odd occupation in order to work on the case. “She was attacked at home. She says her husband did it, but he committed suicide two weeks ago. We have to figure out if she’s being haunted or not.”
He ran a hand through his hair, which stood up for a moment before settling back into its original position. “And how exactly am I supposed to help with that? I don’t know anything about ghosts. Or witches, for that matter.”
“Since my expertise is focused on the paranormal aspect of things, I’ll handle that. What I need from you is to back me up with the actual detective work.” I extracted Teagan’s file from my desk drawer and handed it to Dobbes. As he shuffled through it, his brow furrowed in concentration, I explained, “Ghosts aren’t able to physically interact with mortals. In any case, I haven’t seen Teagan’s husband hanging around, so I can’t help but wonder if she’s using the ghost story as a cover for something else.”
“Like what?”
I shrugged. I only had theories, not facts. “Teagan says her husband was abusive. Maybe there’s more to his suicide than we originally thought.”
“Do you think she orchestrated his death?”
“She doesn’t seem capable of murder, but I have a feeling that she isn’t telling us the whole story,” I said, thinking back to my meeting with Teagan. Though obviously upset about her home-life situation, I couldn’t see her taking it out on her husband. Not to mention, Teagan was a rather small woman. It was unlikely that she could have overpowered Ronan. From the pictures I’d seen of him, he was too bulky of a man for Teagan to take out on her own.
Dobbes flipped through the photos of Teagan’s house, destroyed by the fire. He held one up and asked, “What happened here?”
“The house burned down the same night Teagan was attacked,” I explained, clicking through an electronic version of Teagan’s file on my computer screen to see if there was any other essential information I had neglected to inform Dobbes of. “Again, she says that Ronan was responsible for it. I want to visit the property today, just to see if we missed anything the first time around. Witchcraft leaves traces, and ghosts tend to linger in the areas they frequented while they were still alive. If Ronan’s out there, I should be able to find him.”
Dominic gave me a quizzical look. “If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly is the process for that?”
There was no describing what it felt like to interact with a ghost. It was instinctive for mediums, like breathing or blinking. Spirits were drawn to our witchcraft, usually because their souls were desperate to pass over. As a medium, it fell to me to help them do so. Unfortunately, some ghosts denied themselves the opportunity to move on to the next life, out of fear or anger or some other unfinished business. Those spirits were always tricky to handle, and I’d experienced my fair share of frustration over their reluctance to pass over.
“It’s not so much a process,” I began, searching for a way to explain my abilities in layman’s terms. “It’s more of a feeling. Vibes, almost. I’ve spent my whole life locating and interacting with the dead. They know when I’m around and vice versa. Does that make any sense?”
“Not really.”
I made a face. “I don’t know how else to explain it. Do you want to go out to the Riley property with me or not?”
“Absolutely,” Dobbes said. Though he didn’t understand it, he seemed to have accepted the eccentricity of my employment. “I’d also like to speak with Teagan today if we can manage that.”
“It shouldn’t be an issue. I’ll ask Torres to arrange it for when we get back. You ready?”
He glanced up from the file. “Right now?”
“Yup.”
I may have been throwing Dobbes into the deep end, but if Torres thought that he was the right man to help me with this case, Dobbes needed to get used to the idea of rooting around in the afterlife. To his credit, he made no objections. Dobbes closed the file, tucked it under his arm, and stood. Then he pulled the office door open and gestured me through it.
I dropped by Chief Torres’s office, knocking on the doorframe to announce myself. “Chief? Dobbes and I are heading out to the Riley property.”
Chief Torres glanced up from his computer monitor. He seemed taken aback to see me standing amiably next to Dobbes, as though he’d expected to break up a fistfight between us instead. “All right, then.”
“Could you have someone call Teagan and set up a meeting with her after lunch?” I asked, tapping my fingers impatiently against the doorframe. “Detective Dobbes wants a one-on-one.”
“Will do.”
I turned swiftly, beckoning Dobbes to follow me.
He looked down at me from his great height. “I was serious before. You can call me Dominic.”
“Fine. Tell me, Dominic,” I said as we made our way through the station, “have you ever been to a haunted house?”
Since I didn’t have a car and wouldn’t be caught dead in a police cruiser, Dominic drove us out to the Riley property, his sleek black SUV making the trip in a fairly short amount of time. As we drove, I experimented with the various buttons on the passenger’s side, nearly singeing my ass off when I accidentally turned on the seat heater. As Dominic tried not to laugh, I recovered my dignity, turning on the air conditioning to soothe my burning skin. We drove past the last neighborhood of Yew Hollow. The houses out here were spaced farther apart, and soon there were miles between each one. As Dominic’s SUV wound its way through dirt roads carved into fields of dandelions, Dominic filled me in on his life story. Honestly, I wouldn’t have cared too much about his background had his voice been less velvety, but as it was, his subtle Brooklyn accent drew me in, and I couldn’t help but engage Dominic in further conversation.
“I was born in Brooklyn,” he explained when I asked about his accent. “I relocated to the Washington, DC, area when I was about thirteen. Eventually, the accent faded a bit.”
“Why did you move to DC?”
His hand tightened ever so slightly on the steering wheel. “I’d been living with my mother and sister in Brooklyn. When
they passed away in a car crash, I had to move in with my dad’s parents in DC.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t mention it.”
It made him more human, somehow, to know that he had dealt with such a horrible tragedy so early in life. I socialized with a lot of people who had dark backstories. It was a side effect of being a medium. When death was always the first thing on your mind, mortals who had personal brushes with the grim reaper found you comforting.
“There,” I said, pointing through the windshield at the heap of destruction that was all that remained of Teagan’s house. Dominic parked the car along the curb. As I unbuckled my seatbelt, he stepped out, walked to the other side of the car, and opened the door for me.
“I’m capable of opening a door, believe it or not,” I said, unfolding myself from the SUV. Dominic’s car was so large that I had to hop down to the dusty dirt road of Teagan’s street.
“Sorry,” he said, but he kept his hands at the ready just in case the height of the SUV presented another challenge for me. As if to prove my point, I heaved the door closed on my own.
I planted my hands on my hips, taking in the charred leftovers of Teagan’s house. The main reason for my visit was to see if I had missed any traces of witchcraft. If Ronan’s suicide was linked to the other mysterious deaths in Yew Hollow, it would at least give me something to work with. A glimpse of Ronan’s ghost wouldn’t hurt either. Neither craft nor spirit presented itself to me right away, but that didn’t mean our visit was a bust. I started toward the rubble, wanting a closer look.
“I’m not sure if that’s a good idea,” Dominic said, but he followed me anyway. He cleared a particularly large piece of debris, part of a counter or a cabinet, from my path, his eyes sharp for other potential hazards.
I picked my way through what was left of the kitchen, steering clear of the remaining parts of the roof. The scorched supports didn’t look capable of holding much weight. The only evidence left of Teagan’s struggle was the blackened oven and several shards of glass covered in dried blood. There were no signs of witchcraft, no ritual remains, no leftover auras. The house was as normal as a house could be, other than its unexpected demise.
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