The Cursed Crow and the Deadly Hex

by Kelly Ethan

  “Tell me you haven’t rejected your favorite cousin’s baking?” Lila dropped next to Xandie.

  “Hey, I thought I was your favorite cousin?” Holly sat opposite Lila and Xandie.

  “You have that Eau De Mortuary perfume going on now. Xandie’s musty Library smell is so much better.”

  “Nothing is sacred in this town, is it?” Xandie fought off the pancake attack from Lila with her fork.

  “Nope.” Lila successfully stole a generous mouthful of fluffy deliciousness. “Hey, this is good.” She waved to Delilah and ordered two more plates of pancakes for her and Holly.

  “Did you hunt me down at the diner because we have another Elspeth incident or a dead body?”

  Holly shook her head. “Nope to both of those things, and I haven’t had another vision either.”

  “We just wanted to see if you had anything new from the Library?”

  “Actually, Lila, the Library’s given me an information pending message. Jackson letting me look at those two files helped the Library get me access. It’s just a matter of waiting and hoping no one dies in the meantime?”

  “Where are the files then?” Lila snuck another pancake morsel and chewed her mouthful victoriously.

  Xandie scowled at Lila and hunched protectively over her plate. “I left them in the kitchen at home. Theo is supposedly guarding them. I think he’s trying to gather dirt on Elspeth.”

  Delilah cleared her throat and deposited pancakes and syrup in front of Lila and Holly. “Here you go, Harrows. Did I hear you mention bodies? Surely we don’t have any more.” Delilah shuddered. “I thought I left all that behind when I moved Point Muse.”

  Holly nodded sagely. “Pretty much everyone assumes that when they move here. In reality, our accidental death statistics are higher than the city of Portland.”

  Delilah shuddered and then wandered back off to the kitchen, muttering under her breath.

  “So speaks Death Girl.” Lila intoned with a serious look on her face before collapsing into her seat with the giggles.

  “Mom told you not to call me that,” Holly growled at Lila and lifted her fork in a stabbing motion.

  Xandie put her hands up in a time out. “Can we focus on dead bodies and killers, please?”

  “What’s there to focus on? Someone’s killing Morrigan Coven members for their fragments of the super scary Morpheus Amulet. And Elspeth is in the thick of it. At least this time, we’re fairly sure she isn’t the perpetrator.”

  “This time?” Xandie choked on her last mouthful of pancake. “There’s been other times where Elspeth’s been accused of murder?” A bit much even from a mayhem-inclined Harrow witch.

  Lila waved Xandie’s question away. “Occasionally Braun or the Feds come calling about someone they’ve dug up or has gone missing. But Elspeth always wiggles out of anything official. The old girl has serious evasion skills.”

  Every family had a black sheep, the Harrows just had a hag instead. “We’re agreed that Elspeth and her bit of the amulet is a target? Do we have any other information to go on?”

  “Oh.” Holly raised a hand. “Well, it’s not information, but I got through to Aunt Amelia and mom last night. I gave them a heavily edited version of what’s going on. They’re going to speak to someone on the cruise. See what information they can dig up.”

  Xandie nodded. “That’s a start. A person by the name of Burne left the tickets for the delivery driver from the grocery store. Braun updated me this morning. The grocery guy remembered the name.” Burne? Something niggled at the back of Xandie’s mind. She’d heard that last name somewhere else before.

  “Do we get the old girls and Colin back from the cruise?” Lila grimaced. “Interrupt their floating singles’ bar on the slight chance someone offs Elspeth? Do we risk it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. As of today, they’re between ports for the next forty-eight hours before we can contact them again.”

  “Right. We deal with this ourselves. I have the files at home and the Library will get us access soon. Hopefully, we’ll be able to pinpoint the suspects, maybe even work out our next move.”

  Lila look confused for a moment at Xandie’s words. “Suspects? I thought we pretty much worked out that necromancer, Whitburn, was our culprit?”

  “I want to be sure. This is our grandmother. I need to be positive. The Library will give me access to the information soon. That will help us be one hundred percent certain.”

  “If it raises dead pets like a necromancer and plays with dead people like a necromancer, it is a necromancer.” Lila stood and dropped money on the table. “I say we focus on the lover of dead things. He smells stinky to me.”

  Holly pushed away from the table and stomped to the door. “I swear, any more cracks about dead things and smells and I’ll steal one of Elspeth’s hexes. Watch out then, baker girl.”

  Lila rolled her eyes. “What a way to insult me. I am a baker girl. Seriously, you’re a Harrow. Where is your originality?”

  “Stick your Harrow originality up your sugary iced buns.” Holly shoved the door of the diner open and waited for her cousins to join her.

  Honestly, anyone unfamiliar with the cousins would think they hated each other. But beneath the squabbling was the easy familiarity of family and the knowledge that no matter what, they’d always be there for each other. Even when you didn’t want them to be.

  Xandie joined her sniping cousins just as deputy Melody Braun, bear shifting sister to Chief Braun, scooted to a halt in front of them.

  “Oh-oh. Who’s on Elspeth duty?” Xandie winced, sure she knew what was coming.

  “Lila told me Buchanan was. Or was that more of this Harrow originality you spoke of?” Holly glared at an innocent looking Lila.

  “Hey, hey. No blame games. Buchanan told me he had Elspeth watch this morning. He wanted to try to squeeze more Morrigan information out of her.” She spread her hands open. “Can’t blame me if he took his eye off the hag.”

  Melody bent over and nested her hands on her knees as she panted. “I swear, no more honey buns.” Letting out a deep breath, she straightened. “Your grandmother escaped Buchanan. Apparently, she is about to hex Rose Mayweather at the Inn.”

  Xandie gritted her teeth. “Why is Elspeth at the Inn?”

  “Seems Rose offered a room free to someone called Bridget if she did a psychic reading for the other guests. Elspeth found out. Best get there ASAP.”

  Melody straightened her uniform and then made a detour directly to Lila’s bakery.

  “If Melody’s overdosing on Lila’s honey buns, then the situation is bad.” Xandie pointed to Holly’s hot-pink moped. “You’re up, Speed Demon.”

  Holly rubbed her hands and intoned in a pseudo-dramatic voice, “Buckle up, Buttercup. You are in for a wild ride.”

  “Better you than me, Librarian. I’ll pray to Hecate you get there in one piece.” With a waggle of her fingers, Lila strode off to her bakery.

  Xandie clambered on behind her cousin and clinched her helmet on tight. For the quietest and least dramatic of the three cousins, Holly drove like a maniac. But then again, when Elspeth had her hex on, no one was safe.

  Speed, it was.

  “How would you like a bun with that bouffant hairdo?” Elspeth stood on a chair, a hard dinner roll in hand.

  Bridget shrieked and covered her crystal ball. “You haven’t changed at all, you vindictive hag.”

  Xandie closed her eyes for a moment. Try as she might, she couldn’t blot out the sight of her grandmother perched on a chair and the ex-Morrigan Coven member, Bridget, surrounded by a pile of hard rolls.

  “You fix this, Meyers. You hear me?” Rose Mayweather, owner of the Mayweather Inn, poked Xandie in the ribs as the Innkeeper cowered behind her.

  She needed a pay rise. “Hey, Elspeth. I think you dropped something?” Xandie held up her grandmother’s hip flask and shook it, making sure the sloshing noise of liquid moving carried to Elspeth’s elderly ears.

  Like a p
redator sensing blood, Elspeth jerked her head toward Xandie and the flask.

  “This is why you’re my favorite.” Elspeth climbed down from the chair and threw her last roll over her shoulder at Bridget.

  Xandie ignored the high-pitched squeal from Bridget as the roll hit her forehead. She drew Elspeth in with the promise of a swig of Witchshine.

  In a choreographed move, Holly swept in and moved Elspeth to the back corner of the dining room, away from bread missiles.

  “She was a menace back then and she’s a menace now.” Bridget straightened and dusted off her crystal ball.

  “At least I’m not a sell-out,” Elspeth hollered.

  “I have a gift that helps others. That’s not selling out.”

  “It is if you get paid for it. There’s a word for that.”

  “Elspeth,” the horrified Xandie protested.

  Elspeth nodded. “That’s right. Fortune-teller. That’s what you are.”

  Xandie sagged in relief. For a moment, she thought Elspeth had meant...

  “Drugs, woman? You drugged me?” Buchanan roared from the entranceway.

  “Oops.” Elspeth dropped out of sight behind Holly.

  Bridget pointed a red-tipped nail straight at Elspeth. “She’s hiding in the corner. She called me a fortune-teller. Throw the book at her.”

  Elspeth peered around Holly at Buchanan. “You’re old. It’s not my fault you fell asleep.”

  “Fell asleep?” Buchanan growled. “I drank that horrendous mix you call a smoothie and I passed out with my head on your table. You drugged me.”

  Holly rolled her eyes and whispered to Xandie, “You take any kind of beverage off Elspeth and you’re asking to be drugged. No one is that stupid in Point Muse anymore.”

  Elspeth sniffed. “Not my fault you can’t hold your smoothie.”

  “This is why you can’t trust her. She’s crazy.” Bridget grabbed a tablecloth off a neighboring table and polished her crystal ball.

  Elspeth shoved past Holly and shook the hand that held her flask at Bridget. “I was never crazy, and I wasn’t the one that crossed a line. That was you and the rest of the coven.”

  Bridget drew herself up, outrage in every curve of her plump body. “We did our duty. We weren’t responsible for the one rotten egg in the carton. You, with all your plots and conspiracy theories, caused the drama. You live on secrets.”

  Elspeth’s eyes grew wide and her top lip drew back from her teeth as she opened her mouth.

  “Yes, Mother, why don’t you spill some of your secrets and tell us all exactly what’s going on and who’s after your wrinkled hide this time?” Amelia Harrow, middle daughter and Lila’s mother, stood with hands on her skinny hips and a scowl on her tanned face.

  Winifred, Elspeth’s youngest daughter and Holly’s mother, peeked out from behind her elder sister’s back and giggled when a junior Paladin agent standing with Buchanan winked in her direction.

  “What are they doing back? They were on that singles’ cruise. Supposedly out of our hair?” Xandie hissed at Holly.

  “The last I heard they were out of contact for forty-eight hours. I have no clue how they got back or who told them Elspeth was in trouble.”

  “My bones told me. They always ache when Elspeth is up to mayhem.” Amelia fixed an accusing eye on her mother. “An ex-coven member trying to kill you? Really, Mother? Only you could make someone hate you enough to kill.”

  “No one is gonna hurt my dame.” Colin strutted out from between Amelia’s legs, red-colored zinc cream spread across his nose.

  “Love your skin protection, Colin.” Xandie bit a smile back at the mouthy pug. Elspeth had played Doctor Frankenstein with the pug in the hopes of making him gold medal worthy material in the Supernatural Pet and Familiar Show. He’d won due to the fact most of the competitors had been killed off—literally—by a murderous monster. Now the cigar-smoking, food-inhaling, humping-obsessed pug had become part of the family.

  “Gotta protect this manly bod.” Colin puffed out his chest and twerked his hips in a manic circle.

  Holly slapped a hand over her eyes. “Let me know when he’s done. My brain can’t handle the image of a pug gyrating.”

  “Mother?” Like a dog with a bone, Amelia kept her focus on Elspeth.

  “What? I can’t help it if you couldn’t even let loose on a singles’ cruise.” Elspeth shrugged. “Not my fault they kicked you off. You need one of my potions.”

  “Do. Not. Distract. Me.”

  Winifred raised a hand like a naughty schoolgirl. “Actually, they tried to talk her into staying. She’s the new limbo champ. She swept the betting pool.”

  Chortling, Elspeth waved a bread roll overhead and cheered. “Well, that sounds like a little of my DNA finally showing up. You have no idea how loose I was when I was a young woman.”

  “Stop.”

  “Mother.”

  “Elspeth.”

  Everyone’s cringing protests collided as Buchanan roared, “Enough.” Waiting for silence, he nodded as everyone shut up. “Ladies, you were on a cruise arranged by our suspect. Did you happen to see anything of note?”

  Amelia grimaced. “We questioned the purser, but all she knew was the name of the person who’d organized the tickets. Apparently, quite a few were bought in bulk. We weren’t the only ones there who’d supposedly won tickets.”

  “Let me guess. Alberta Burne?” That alias kept showing up. Xandie

  rubbed her forehead with a weapon-free hand. There was a connection, a link she was missing. The Library would be disappointed with her sleuthing, but when your family was on the line, the stakes became raised and the level of pressure escalated causing a brain-fog to drift in.

  “Exactly right. Paid with a credit card in the name of Hellacious Whitburn. But I’m gathering that’s not a surprise.” Agent Jackson dipped a sweeping bow in Elspeth’s daughters’ direction and caused Winifred to titter again. “Ladies, may I ask how you knew to come home?”

  Winifred fluttered her eyes at the agent. “My daughter’s phone call was suspiciously absent of detail and she kept trying to distract us by asking questions about the cruise.” She shook her wild reddish-brown curls. “What grown-up daughter wants details about her mother’s singles’ cruise? The jig was up then. We blackmailed the cruise with a fake limbo-related injury and the company flew us back in on an enchanted carpet this morning.”

  Amelia growled. “We also found out Colin gets magic carpet sick. Not the most pleasant few hours I’ve spent.” She rounded on the pug that had sidled over to Elspeth’s old coven member. “I told you you’d regret that last prawn cocktail.”

  “Ya gotta live in the moment or regret the past, doll face.” Colin nudged Bridget. “How you doin’?”

  Bridget cast a perplexed glance down at the pug. “This animal has something on his nose?”

  That was the weirdest thing that struck the woman about a talking dog? “Uh, Ms. Doyle?” Xandie tried to get the older woman’s attention.

  Transferring her attention away from Colin, Bridget shook a fist at Elspeth. “Don’t try and distract me. Someone needs to take that menace of a witch in hand.”

  Colin twined his body around Bridget’s legs. “Oh, no one controls my Elspeth. She’s an original.”

  Clearing her throat, Xandie tried again. “Ms. Doyle? You really need to move…”

  “I will not move from this spot unless that woman leaves first.” She pointed to a snickering Elspeth. “Stop laughing at me, Harrow.”

  “I will when you watch out for perving pugs.” Elspeth bent over, her cackles echoing through the dining room.

  Bridget squealed when she realized that Colin had positioned himself so he could stare up her gauzy, floaty skirt. “You disgusting animal. Back, filthy dog.”

  Colin shook his head like a bumble bee had stung him in his neck rolls. “I should have known better than to hang out under the skirts of Elspeth’s nemesis. She’s one of those women.”

  “I know
I’ll regret asking, but what kind of woman?” Holly bit her lip, looking equal parts curious and worried.

  “Cat lover. She has hot-pink cats on her drawers.” Colin shuddered. “I’ll need a whole-body cleanse just to deal with the trauma.”

  “You.” Bridget glared at Elspeth. “This is all you. I can see your meddling claws in that abomination’s face.”

  Elspeth drew herself up. “Abomination? How dare you insult my beautiful boy?” She held up her fists. “Bring it, fortune-teller.”

  Screeching, Bridget rushed forward, hands slapping the air in front of her.

  Xandie hip-checked Bridget off course and grabbed a bread roll off the table and threw it to Holly, who deftly caught it and shoved it into Elspeth’s open mouth.

  Buchanan stepped in and hoisted Elspeth over a shoulder and carried her out, dislodging the bread roll in the process.

  Elspeth’s holler was muffled as she bumped against Buchanan’s back. “I swear you’ll regret coming here, fortune-teller. Got me? R. E. G. R. E. T,” Elspeth spelled out the last word.

  Everyone sagged in relief as the Paladin and upside-down witch disappeared from sight.

  “I wonder if it’s time to consider Eternal Springs Retirement Home. I think she’s getting worse.” Amelia wrinkled her nose. “And Colin, you know I’m an animal Empath and can read you? You set that entire scene up.”

  Colin wiggled his tail in an energetic circle. “One way to get Elspeth out of the room. Besides, I really saw cats. I took one for the team.”

  Winifred shot forward and corralled Colin under an arm. “Yes, dearest boy. We’re lucky to have you. Now don’t upset Amelia, you know she’s the town veterinarian. I’d hate it if you ended up in her clinic for a nasty snip snip surgery.”

  “And people say I’m obsessed. That’s all you dames talk about.” Colin sniffed as Winifred followed a stomping Amelia out of the dining room.

  “I swear, I’m this close to banning all Harrows from the Inn.” Rose held up her hand and measured two fingers apart.

  “The last Harrow to set foot in the Inn was Xandie when you had that plague of rats.”

  Rose gasped. “Holly Harrow, how dare you suggest the Inn was in any way liable for that rodent invasion? It was caused by a psychotic Dragon.”