by Tegan Maher
Hunter rushed forward and cuffed him before he could recover, and just like that, it was over.
Cheri swept over to Valerie, who was lying stock still. I couldn’t see if her chest was rising, but my living impaired friend cast a panicked, pleading gaze at me. “Help her, Noe.”
I strode the few steps to her and dropped to my knees beside her. She was breathing, but it was shallow. I gave her a small shake. “Valerie? It’s okay. You’re safe now.”
Valerie stirred a little, then opened her eyes. Her first expression was utter terror, but as she got her bearings, it faded to pain. She coughed and put her hand to her throat but struggled to a seated position.
“Just be still,” I said, moving to the fridge where I hoped to find a bottle of water. I was in luck.
She took it from me and took a sip, then winced. “This is gonna hurt for a while.”
Hunter had guided a subdued Charles into the hallway, and a new hubbub broke out.
“You like hittin’ on women?” Ms. Margaret’s voice called, her tone vicious as Charles yelped in pain. “What’s the matter? Can’t take it when it’s turned back on you, you spineless toad?”
Thwack again.
“Ow! Knock it off, Ms. Margaret!” Charles cried. “Sheriff, I want to press charges. She’s assaulting me!”
“Oh, zip it. Keep talking, and I’ll let her have you,” Hunter said, then added, “I’ve got it from here, Ms. Margaret. Thank you, though.”
Charles yelped again, and I jogged to the door to see what was going on. Ms. Margaret was whaling on him with a little powder-puff-pink umbrella.
“Okay, Ms. Margaret,” Hunter said one more time, but I could hear the barely disguised amusement in his voice even as Charles yelped in pain. “You really need to stop, or I’ll have no choice but to arrest you, too.”
She pulled her umbrella back, but crossed her arms, half her little pink curlers loose, letting tendrils of gray hair curl around her face. Just when I thought she was done, the little old woman twirled the umbrella around and brought it up for one final blow—right in the jewels.
Ms. Margaret gave a sharp nod as Charles howled and dropped to his knees. “Now I’m done. Just in time, too. Pat Sajak’s comin’ on.”
She shuffled back to her apartment and closed the door. The ensuing silence was almost deafening. Aside from Charles’s gasps, the hallway was quiet until Valerie hobbled out.
Seeing him, she sneered and marched toward where he was still on his knees, then grabbed him by the hair and kneed him in the face. I cringed when I heard his nose crunch.
“That was for Curtis.” The rest of what she said isn’t fit to repeat, but just know that she didn’t hold back with how she felt.
Finally, she collapsed against me, sobbing when the adrenaline ebbed. Hunter had called for a car, and I wasn’t sure how we were going to explain how we’d gotten there. I’d leave that to him, though.
“Why did he do it?” I asked Valerie.
She sniffed and pulled a tissue from her bra. “He’s insane. He said he thought I loved him and that I was sending him signals to do something so we could be together.”
I furrowed my brow, trying to figure out how I’d missed that. Cheri Lynn hovered closer.
I ran from the cabin because he approached me there right after he’d killed Curtis. I didn’t even know he’d done it because Curt had gone on a walk while I read. Once he found out I didn’t want him, he tried to kill me, too. I needed to get away for a minute to think. I didn’t know if anybody would believe me or not.”
“But why did you come back here instead of coming straight to the police?” Cheri Lynn asked, her forehead furrowed.
Valerie shook her head. “He was supposed to be at work covering for me today, and I wanted to take a quick shower. I figured there was a good chance I was goin’ to jail, so I wanted to be clean goin’ in rather than doin’ it there. I double-checked the lot, and his car wasn’t here.”
I sighed and realized where she’d made her mistake. “He said yesterday that his car’s in the shop. A truck, I assume?”
She nodded.
“We won’t have any problem with makin’ the murder charge stick even without all this, then. Somebody saw him pick Curtis up.”
Her face crumpled. “I can’t help but run things through in my mind, trying to figure out what I did or said that would have made him think that.”
“Oh, no, you don’t, sugar,” Cheri Lynn said, then turned to me. “And there’s no way you could have caught it, either. That feller was clear off his bubble, and there ain’t nothin’ either one of you could have done to stop him.”
When sirens screamed through the morning air a few minutes later, I was certain I’d never heard a sweeter sound. The murder was solved, and the bad guy would never hurt anybody again. And now maybe Val could mourn and heal in peace.
19
Two days later, I looped my hand through Hunter’s arm, admiring how handsome he looked in his tux. I wobbled a little in my heels as he bent down and whispered in my ear. “You look beautiful, and the church looks amazing.”
“You don’t look so bad yourself. Let’s get this show on the road.” I smiled at him as we took the first step down the aisle. The church looked amazing—the result of a late night the night before for me, Shelby and the girls, Raeann, and Levana. I’d spent the last twenty minutes in the dressing room with Anna Mae because I was afraid she’d get cold feet, but I’d never seen a woman more serene on her wedding day.
I took my place at the end of the aisle, then watched as Bobbie Sue, Raeann, Levana, and Gabi followed suit, all in matching peach taffeta dresses. I cast a worried glance at Matt, who was one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen in his sharp black tux. He’d debated wearing his Army dress greens but had decided in the end that that part of his life was behind him. Since he didn’t always do well in crowds, the last thing I wanted was for him to have a panic attack at his own wedding. I was worrying for nothing, though. His calm expression mirrored Anna Mae’s.
My attention was pulled from him when the wedding march began. I turned toward the entrance, and my breath caught in my throat when I saw Anna Mae. She stood there, head held high as she took Earl’s arm. He was beaming, proud as punch to give her away, but that moment was all Anna Mae’s.
Her gown was gorgeous—A mermaid dress that flared into a six-foot train with beadwork and crystals crafted into butterflies that looked as if they were going to fly right off the fabric. Coralee had outdone herself on her makeup and hair, and though she was wearing a veil, she’d gone with the tradition of wearing it flowing down her back rather than over her face.
A blush rode high on her cheeks, and her blue eyes shone as she looked down the aisle at Matt. The raw love there undid me, and I pressed my lips together to keep my chin from wobbling. I blinked because I didn’t want tears to obstruct my vision of this moment.
She and Earl marched slowly down the aisle, and when they got to the end and Earl took her hand and placed it in Matt’s, that was it. I swiped at tears as I tried to hold it together. It wouldn’t do to have Anna Mae’s maid of honor crying in her pictures. They kept their vows short and sweet, and it seemed like it was only a couple minutes before the preacher grinned and Matt swept Anna Mae into a kiss that took even my breath away. I wasn’t sure who was crying more—Anna Mae or Matt, but my heart about burst with joy that two such amazing people had found a second chance in each other. The preacher turned Matt and Anna Mae to face the crowd.
“Ladies and gentleman, I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Pierce! What God and Fate have joined together, let no man tear asunder!”
I watched them go and reached my hand out to Hunter as we followed them down the aisle. Today Anna Mae had joined her soul with its mate, and soon it would be my turn. Life was good.
Author’s Note
Phew, this was an emotional one for me as Anna Mae, Matt, and Faye Amelia joined their lives together into a family, and Noelle and Hunter
took a few steps closer to doing the same. Sure, there was a murder, but just as in real life, there was a lot of happiness, too.
So, if you find yourself standing in the rain, look for the rainbow. I promise you, it’s there somewhere!
Thank you for reading my words, and I hope they brought you joy.
Much love and happy reading,
Tegan :)
PS. In case you haven’t read my new series, Paranormal Artifacts, I’m including the first chapter for you. Just flip the page.
The Haunted Pendant
“Knock it off!” I said, jabbing my fork at my best friend Eli’s hand. It was the fourth time he’d tried to filch a scallop from my plate.
“I can’t help it,” he said, snatching his hand back before I could impale it. “I’m stress eating.”
I scoffed. “What’s got your knickers in a twist now? Is your dry cleaning late? Are your Yoda socks dirty? Oh! No, I know. You forgot it was Tuesday and didn’t steal the crossword out of Mr. Anderson’s newspaper before he got it off the stoop.”
“Stop minimizing my struggles.” He scowled at me, his dark eyes narrowed. “And besides, it’s not any of those things, though I did miss the crossword this morning. I’m stressing about the dive.”
I paused, my fork halfway to my mouth. Unlike me, Eli tended to stress about pretty much everything, but never a dive. We’d been exploring Marauders Bay since we were kids, and we knew it inside out. The only truly dangerous part of it was Devil’s Reef, a treacherous stretch of coral and sand that formed a horseshoe around the bay. The jagged coral and deep sugar sand created a hull-ripping quagmire that had sunk more than one ship over the years.
That wasn’t what worried me, though. We knew every inch of the reef just as well as we knew the bay, and Eli was brash, outspoken, and had never met a convention he didn’t want to flout. It’s why we’d been best friends since kindergarten. He was also one of the most powerful warlocks I’d ever met. If he was stressing, then it would probably behoove me to stress, too.
“What do you mean, stressing? Like, you’re worried we’ll rip a sail, or you foresee our imminent, shark-induced deaths?” The shrimp and scallops I’d just eaten were swimming in my gut much harder than they ever had in the ocean.
He blew a breath out through his cheeks and ran a hand over his face. “I don’t know, Sage. It’s just a feeling, but it’s hard to pinpoint because the storm messed with my juju. I don’t sense physical danger. Just … something else not good.”
“Just not good? Or flat-out bad?” I fought the urge to run my hands over my arms to flatten the hairs that were standing up on them. I’d never known his senses to be wrong, and as much as I was looking forward to our post-storm adventure, I was neither stupid nor suicidal. “Do we need to call off the dive?”
A category-one hurricane had blown through a few days before, and the water in the bay was finally clear enough to allow for some visibility underwater. We’d made some of our best finds right after storms, so the explorer in me was anxious to get out there.
He pressed his lips together and pushed them to the side, thinking. “If we do, we’ll miss the shifts caused by the storm, plus Larry’s going out of town tomorrow. I think instead of diving the reef, we should probably stick to the bay. Even if the boat sinks, we can swim back to shore.”
I had to hope he was kidding, though I couldn’t be sure. Larry was the only captain we ever went out with. He was reliable and capable, not that other captains weren’t. It was just that Larry’d been taking us out to look for treasure and explore the ocean since we were kids, and our Saturday dives were sort of a tradition. Still, it would suck to sink his boat just because we wanted to explore the bay post-storm. No trinket was worth that, and even as talented as we were, I wasn’t sure we could levitate an entire sailboat back to shore.
“Okay,” I said, then stared at him for a few seconds, watching his expression.
“What?” he snapped. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Did the feeling go away now that we changed our plans?”
He rolled his eyes and heaved a long-suffering sigh. “It doesn’t work that way, and you know it.”
I pushed the last remaining bit of linguini around on my plate, not even really seeing it.
“Young lady! That butter sauce is mana from the heavens. Ezra didn’t make it for you to play in it.” A pleasantly plump woman on the other side of middle age clucked at me as she filled my iced tea. “And since when do you leave so much as a noodle behind, anyway?”
I smiled at her, though my mind was still a little distracted. “Never, Maris. And don’t tell Ezra. He’ll think I’m sick and send me home with a gallon of chowder to help me recuperate.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Eli said, his generous lips curving up into a half-smile. “If you don’t want it, I’ll take it.”
Ezra made the best seafood chowder that had ever passed my lips. Rich, creamy, and made with only the freshest ingredients. Larry, who was Maris’s brother, was a shrimper by trade, so Ezra had an inside track on the good stuff.
Maris flapped her hand at Eli. “You about eat us out of house and home here, you and your all-you-can-eat fried-clam addiction. I’m not sendin’ the rest of the day’s profits home with you, too.”
He hopped up and pulled her into a big hug, then planted a sloppy kiss on her cheek. “You know you love me, Ms. Maris. I’m your best customer.”
Her plump cheeks pinked, and she smacked him on the arm as she patted her gray hair. “Fresh! Now go on, you two. Surely you have somethin’ better to do than sit around a musty old fish house on such a beautiful day.”
Her description of the restaurant was way off base. The Cozy Clam was old, but the weathered wooden floorboards and plank tables worn smooth by the feet and elbows of thousands of happy customers gave the place a homey, welcoming feeling you just didn’t find in a brand-new building.
Used nautical pieces including fishing nets, deep-sea lures with chipped paint, old line weights, and even a wheel salvaged from a sunken pirate ship covered every square inch of wall, giving it an authentic feel that you’d never get in a chain seafood place. The smells of ocean air, fried seafood, garlic, and French fries had hovered in the air for so long that it had permeated the very walls. There was nothing about the place that wasn’t amazing, at least to somebody who’d grown up on the ocean’s edge.
I plucked the last hushpuppy from our shared cardboard boat and popped it in my mouth as I dug my wallet out of my backpack-style purse. After handing Maris enough money to cover the tab and tip, I gave her a quick hug. “Thanks for another awesome lunch. We have to hustle, or we’ll be late meeting Larry.”
She rolled her merry green eyes and smiled as she tucked the cash into her apron. “Like that old coot ever knows what time it is, anyway. Fair winds, and good luck explorin’.”
When we pushed out the door, I took a deep breath of fresh air washed clean by the hurricane. The storm had only brushed the coast, so the only thing left in its wake was perfect weather. The humidity was low, which was rare in our little Florida town.
I glanced over at Eli as we rounded the corner to follow the boardwalk down to the docks. “Are you feeling better?”
He nodded and tossed his backpack over his shoulder. “I think so. I love storms, but I hate what they do to my magic. Everything is muddy. I think we’ll be fine, though. I’m not scared; I just feel like something’s coming. It might not even have anything to do with the dive.”
I waggled my eyebrows at him. “Something wicked this way blows?”
Laughing, he gave me a little push. “Go ahead—make fun of me. You know I’m never wrong.”
That much was true, but it didn’t mean I’d ever miss a chance to tease him.
“Speaking of something wicked,” he said, and I followed his gaze.
“Fabulous,” I mumbled when I saw two high-fashion, low-class brunettes heading our way. Faith and Hope Ward had plagued us
since third grade when they’d moved to Marauders Bay with their father who, oddly enough, was an absolute joy. They were identical other than a mole above the right corner of Faith’s mouth. The twin witches were rich, snobby, and condescending, and never missed a chance to take a shot at one or both of us.
“Oh, look, Eli. It’s Bibbity and Bobbity,” I said when they were within hearing distance. “They must have been trolling the docks for a little Saturday-night spending cash.”
Eli snickered. “You’re probably right. I have Faith they’ll find it, but I Hope the poor guys didn’t catch anything.” One of his favorite ways to get under their skin was to twist their names around.
Faith smirked. “Yeah, because we’re short on cash. Daddy has more money than God, and you know it. What brings you two weirdos down here?”
Hope raked her gaze over us and shuddered. “They’re probably heading out on that ratty boat, seeing as how they’re both dressed like beach bums as usual. Nice shirt,” she said to Eli.
He glanced down at his Show me your booty tank top, then shook his head and waved his finger. “Oh, no, sweetie,” he said, making a circular gesture around the text with his forefinger. “This doesn’t mean you. Even if I were so inclined, I can guarantee my tastes wouldn’t run toward tall, dumb, and nasty.”
Faith’s dark eyes snapped to him. A spike of energy washed over me, and my armlet grew warm, giving me a heads up that something was coming. Knowing Eli’s magic was wonky, I stepped in front of him and threw up a shield before whatever curse she was throwing at him could stick.
“Now, now,” I said after I felt the sting of her magic hit my shield. ““That’s no way to play nice.”
