Better Off Dead

by Tegan Maher

  I mulled that over for a few seconds, running my tongue over my teeth. He gave me a polite smile, and she echoed the gesture, though hers was a bit more strained.

  "I understand you had an unfortunate experience with the deceased this morning."

  She fluttered her hand, and the sun glinted off her rock of a wedding ring, drawing my eye. I stifled a laugh when I noticed one of her fingers had a Snoopy Band-Aid on it. "The only thing unfortunate about it is that this place doesn't provide enough towels. Or soap either, for that matter. They expect me to use the same little bar more than once. I asked her to get me some towels, and she did."

  That was much more polite than Coralee had described, and for some reason, I was leaning heavily toward believing the no-nonsense hairdresser over these pompous jerks.

  Still, I was willing to leave them enough rope to hang themselves, at least for now.

  The silly bandage on her hand caught my attention again. "What did you do to your finger?" I asked.

  She glanced at her hand and huffed. "Oh, I pinched it in my suitcase. Another example of the shortcomings of this hovel. All that silly maid had in the way of a first-aid kit was a crumpled box of children's bandages in her purse. Don't think I won't be mentioning that in my Yelp review, too."

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, deciding escape was the best course of action. "Thank you for your time, then. How long are you going to be in town?"

  "For three more days," Harold said. "We're off to the lake. We've chartered a yacht for the day."

  I smiled; the only charter service going right now was Charlie Campbell's, and if they thought they were going out for a yachting excursion, they were sadly mistaken. Far be it for me to burst their bubble, though, and I just told them to have a great time.

  The last couple I interviewed had been in the back courtyard—Kitty had seen them there—and hadn't heard anything at all. Sam finished up a couple minutes after I did, then joined Alex and me at his truck.

  "What do you think?" I asked.

  He pulled his hat off, ran his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair, then shoved it back on. "I think it stinks, but neither of the couples I interviewed set off any alarm bells. What about you?"

  "I talked to two couples before you got here—they're here together. I'm not setting them aside completely, but I'm not inclined to put them on the suspect list."

  "Why not?" he asked, his expression sharp. "If they were here, they're suspects."

  "I know," I said, holding my palm out. "But these aren't just any guests." I explained who they were, and thought for a few minutes. "It's easy enough to learn a little more about them," he said. "Just call your mom to get the witchy lowdown on the Flynn woman, and I'll call down to Eagle Gap. The sheriff and I go way back, and he'll give me the scoop on the Woods character."

  Calling my mom probably wasn't a bad idea anyway. I was, after all, dealing with one of the most powerful witches in the region—maybe even the country—and there could be political consequences. The woman seemed nice enough, but it wouldn't hurt to cover the bases.

  I sighed. "Well, hell. It looks like I dodged her all afternoon for nothing. Now I'm gonna have to apologize for that on top of everything else."

  And if there was one thing my mother was good at personally, it was basking in the glow of a good apology.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  "LISTEN, SAM," I SAID, rubbing the back of my neck and shifting my weight from foot to foot. I wasn't quite sure how to broach the subject of Rhea—he'd been off the night of the accident. That haunted him even though realistically, there was nothing he could have done. "I thought I saw something earlier."

  He waited for me to finish, his expression open. I started again, shaking my head and pushing my hair back from my forehead. "No, I know I saw something earlier, even though I know it shouldn't be possible."

  "Well spit it out," he replied, rolling his fingers in the get on with it gesture.

  I took a deep breath and looked him right in the eye. "I saw Rhea earlier. That's what I was doing when you called me—following her. She was in an old red Cadillac convertible, top down and driving like a maniac."

  He blinked a couple times while he processed that, then his gaze softened. "Honey, I get it. I know how bad you want that to be the truth, but it just isn't."

  Usually, I appreciated his concern, but this time it came across as patronizing and just made me mad. "No, Sam. You don't get it. It's not like she died last week and I'm still mourning her death. I'm telling you—I'm clear as a bell, and it was her. I'd know her anywhere. I'm not mistaking somebody for her, and my eyes aren't playing tricks on me."

  I waited for him to look at me, then stiffened my spine with resolve. "I don't know how or why, but this afternoon, I saw Rhea Butler driving a vintage caddy down CR54, pretty as you please, without a care in the world."

  Rather than make some kind of argument, he leaned back against the side of his truck and chewed on his toothpick. He seemed to come to some sort of a decision, because he nodded.

  "Okay, then. You saw Rhea. Now what are we gonna do about it?"

  "I don't know," I said, leaning beside him. "But right now, I guess we have a murder to solve."

  "Hold up," he said, putting his arm out before I could walk away. "You can't just drop this on me, then shrug it off. There are repercussions, and some mighty odd timing going on here."

  "What do you mean?"

  He arched a brow at me. "Really, Cori? You can't think of a single reason why Rhea's reappearance right now, after being gone half a decade, would throw a wrench into things?"

  Realization dawned, and it must have shown on my face.

  "Yeahhhh," Sam said. "Now you're gettin' it."

  At the time she'd been killed, Rhea had worked at a diner on the other end of town. Daisy had been her manager. I’d loved Rhea, but she'd had a wild streak that had shone through in her work. She'd missed work a few times and was late a lot. On the night she'd died, she'd shown up an hour late to work, and poor Daisy'd had no choice but to fire her—she'd gotten the directive straight from the owner.

  Rhea had plowed out of there in a rage, slinging gravel and screaming invectives at Daisy out the window as she left. And that's the last time anybody saw her alive.

  "So you think she's back after all this time to kill Daisy?" That seemed a little too far outside the realm of reality for me.

  He shrugged. "Who knows? You know she had a temper. And we don't know where she's been. If this is the first time she's been able to come back, then maybe she was just takin' care of business. After all, if Daisy hadn't fired her, she wouldn't have been on that road to begin with."

  I shook my head. "No way Rhea could have done this."

  "No way the Rhea we knew could have done this. But if she was turned or something, she's probably not the person we remember." His brown eyes went all gooey with compassion. "You know that more than anybody, Cori."

  He'd given me something to think about. Kat, my best friend and roommate, was a vampire, but she was the only one I really knew other than Sean, and my relationship with him was recent. Since she had zero memory of her life before she was a vampire, it wasn't like she could tell me whether she was drastically different or not. She did know that it had taken her a decade to get the bloodlust under control, so what Sam was saying had some merit.

  If Rhea'd been turned into a vampire.

  I touched base with Colleen. She said she hadn't found anything yet, but would get back with me as soon as she had anything. After doing what I could to console Kitty, I took my leave.

  "You're awful quiet," Alex said, stealing a sideways glance at me after we'd been driving for a few minutes.

  "Yeah," I said. "Sorry. It's just ... Sam has a theory." I ran through it for him, and he thought about it for a minute.

  "It's possible, I suppose,” he said. “Though I'm not sure why they would have left you out of the loop. I mean, it's not like vampires like the taste of werewolves."


  I shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe because I'm half witch?"

  "Nah," he replied. "You know Sean says we don't smell any better to him than full-blooded wolves do. Did you two fight before the wreck?"

  "Nope. As a matter of fact, we were going to meet up later that night and go to the lake." I smiled at the memory. "That was all her idea. She'd met some guy and talked me and Zach into borrowing her dad's boat with them."

  Alex turned to me, concern in his eyes. "Zach? She knew Zach?"

  Zach McClure was a complicated part of my life. He'd been my first boyfriend, my first love ... and then my mother had decided I didn't need to date a human boy, and wrecked everything. But it wasn't destined to work anyway.

  To sum things up, Zach had ended up a legendary Hunter. He'd literally made it his life's mission to purge the earth of werewolves. Once he learned too much, including that I was a werewolf, Sean had wiped his memories. Now he quite happily ran a sandwich shop in town. He had no clue about anything magical, and I aimed to keep it that way.

  "Of course she knew Zach," I replied. "We were all inseparable in high school."

  "Do you think she'd hurt him?" he asked.

  I growled in frustration. "No," I snapped. "I don't think she'd hurt him. I don't think she'd hurt anybody. We were practically connected at the hip. And I don't think she'd murder somebody that got her fired from a waitressing job she held as a teenager either."

  Alex gave me a doubtful look from the corner of his eye as he flipped the blinker on to turn toward town.

  The whole thing was wearing on me, and I'd had enough already. I wasn't big on puzzles, especially when it involved deception. "I don't know what's going on, but you can bet your bottom dollar I'm gonna ask her about everything myself. And sooner rather than later."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  "I'D FEEL BETTER IF we swung by and checked on Zach," Alex said. The weight of what we'd done to his memory weighed as heavily on him and it did on me. Even though it had saved his life and even arguably made it better, playing God wasn't something either of us were comfortable doing.

  "Me too," I said. "Plus, a bowl of his baked potato soup wouldn't hurt, either. Assuming he has any left this late in the day." Zach had taken a standard recipe and added sour cream, triple bacon, and a blend of cheeses to it, and it was wicked addictive.

  "It's a hundred and eighty degrees outside!" Alex exclaimed. "Soup? Really?"

  "I'd eat that soup while somebody was toasting my toes over hellfire," I responded. "Comfort food has no season, and that stuff's about as comforting—and delicious—as it gets."

  He shook his head. "Your arteries, I suppose. If you keel over dead before I do, do you want me to stay single and pine for you for the rest of my life? Like, will you haunt me if I try to replace you?"

  I gave him the stink eye. "I'd be worried because you're planning ahead, except I'm pretty sure it's a non-issue. No way you're gonna outlive me."

  "And what makes you so sure?"

  "Because I'm probably gonna end up killing you myself at some point."

  He laughed. "Now I'd be worried, except I know you love me and would miss my face."

  I arched a brow, but couldn't hide my smile. "I have pictures. I'm sure I'd make do."

  Before I'd met Alex, I'd been happy. Or at least I'd thought I was. I'd been so busy trying to keep the pack together and move them forward that it had taken everything I had. Add in trying to keep the peace, both magical and mundane, in Castle's Bluff, and my life had been full.

  Then we'd met, and I’d finally realized how empty my personal life was. I realize how cliché that sounds, but it was the truth. And now that we were together, I wouldn't trade our relationship for anything. Alex was easy; spending time with him was as natural as breathing. That's not to say we didn't argue sometimes because we did, but even that was a comfortable place.

  We pulled up to the curb in front of Zach's shop, and I was amazed at how much he'd put his mark on it. In the beginning, he'd just planned to have a little deli-like place where people could grab a quick sandwich, then football season had rolled around.

  Since he hadn't been able to afford to hire anybody, he'd installed a TV so he wouldn't miss the games. Then people started sticking around to watch with him, so he'd added a few more TVs so they could watch different games. Then he’d added a fryer so he could serve wings and fries. But you can't have football and wings without beer, so he’d gotten the license and installed some taps and an extra cooler for cans and bottles.

  Now, it was a kitschy combination of deli and sports bar, if you can imagine such a thing. He looked up when the bell above the door announced our arrival, and a grin split his handsome face. The same flash of regret always crossed his face when he saw me, but it was fleeting.

  I'd been the love of his life at one point and vice versa, even if we'd only been teenagers. They say you never completely get over your first love. I wouldn't go that far, but I would always have a soft spot for him, and I knew he had one for me, too. He and Alex were close too, though, so it wasn't awkward. It was just ... there.

  "Hey, man," he said, wiping his hands on the bar towel in his hand and holding it out to Alex. "What's up?"

  "Not much," Alex replied shaking his hand. "We were just in the neighborhood and figured we'd pop in."

  Zach gave me a knowing look. "You wanted to see if I had any soup, didn't, you?"

  "Maybe," I said, strolling behind the counter to lift the lid off the pot. "But that's not the main reason we came. We just wanted to see how things are going."

  Translation: You haven't, by chance, seen our dead friend today, have you? Of course, I couldn't just ask him, but I had to assume that would have probably been the first thing he would have mentioned. I scanned the restaurant, and the strangest thing I saw was a cute little old couple feeding each other french fries.

  Turning my attention back to the soup, I was glad to see I was in luck. There was only enough left for a bowl or two, but that was good enough for me.

  "You guys want your regular sandwiches, too?" Zach asked.

  I glanced at Alex. It had been a few hours since the wings at Sully's, and he was like me; it didn't take his body long to burn off even a big meal.

  "Sure," he replied, then made a face. "But no soup. I can't even think about all that rich creaminess when it's so hot out."

  "Good," I replied, scrunching my nose at him. "There's not enough for you, anyway."

  Zach shook his head and gave me a wry grin. "I swear, you're like a rabid wolf when it comes to food. I'm afraid to reach across you to refill your tea. And I have no idea how you eat like you do without gaining any weight. It's ridiculous."

  I smiled at the unintended pun and dipped myself out a hefty serving. The smell of warm, creamy, bacony, cheesy deliciousness had my mouth watering. Zach put together Alex's favorite Philly cheese sandwich and slathered some peanut butter onto crusty Italian bread for me to dip into my soup. Despite what the two of them—and most of the rest of the world—thought, it wasn’t not weird—it was delicious.

  Since Zach was busy most of the time, I was used to serving myself. He refused to take any money for our food, so I figured the least I could do was make it easy for him.

  He brought us our sandwiches, then went to check on other customers.

  "What do you think?" Alex asked, taking a huge bite of his sandwich.

  "I think if he'd seen our long-lost dead friend, he'd have mentioned it," I replied around a bite of soup. That brought about an entirely different can of worms. Thanks to Sean's little bit of mind magic, Zach was blissfully unaware of anything that went bump in the night. Magic only existed on TV, and there was no such thing as vampires, ghosts, or werewolves. If Rhea somehow was alive and kicking, or undead and kicking as the case may be, there was no way Zach could ever know. I didn't think there was a tall-tale tall enough to cover that one.

  I fiddled with my soup for a minute, wondering how best to deal with the situation. It was an emotional
landmine for me. Of course I wanted my friend to be alive, but I wasn't sure how I'd feel about her being undead. Not that I was prejudiced, because I wasn't. No, if she really was a vamp or a shifter, I just wondered why she'd stayed hidden from me for so long.

  CHAPTER NINE

  "HELLOOO," I YELLED as I pushed through the door of our house. "You up yet?"

  Kat, my roommate, was a bartender and worked the night shift at our local dive bar, the Rusty Hook. Since, as a vampire, she was naturally nocturnal, it worked for her. It helped that she didn't have to wear a business suit or be nice all the time. It was strange to me, but her regulars seemed to like it when she was snarky to them.

  Chaos, my arctic fox familiar, peeped a cranky emerald eye open at me from her position on the couch and smacked her lips. "If we weren't, we are now. What's wrong with you?"

  "What's wrong with me?" I asked. "It's like three o'clock."

  "Yeah. I know," she said, standing and stretching. "But you don't have to shout it from the rooftops. We've been up. We just finished watching Jeopardy. The mouse shifter who's been on a streak for like a week finally lost."

  I scowled at her. We'd been DVRing it because we were rooting for him and his ten kids and overworked wife. Plus, he had a habit of twitching his nose when he knew the answer.

  She stuck her little black nose in the air and sashayed toward us, her silky black-and-white tail flicking back and forth as she sniffed. "What's in the box?"

  Scowling at her, I said, "I may or may not have brought you home a sandwich and fries from Sean's, but that was before you were so cranky and mean and threw out the mother of all spoilers."

  She butted my leg with her head, then rubbed against my calves, batting her eyes at me. "C'mon," she said. "Don't be that way. We watched ahead on Supernatural, too, but I haven't told you Dean—"