Relatively Familiar (Accidental Familiar Book 2)

by Belinda White

  “Archie and I have rooms on the bottom floor,” Mom said. “We pretty much live down there. I’m afraid it might be a bit dusty up here.”

  “We can live with a little dust, Ms. Ravenswind,” Opie said, smiling at her. “Or is that Mrs. Mineheart now?”

  Good point. How had I not thought about that? Right now, sure, I could blame my befuddled brain, but where had the thought been back when I’d been thinking straight?

  She shook her head. “I kept my name the same, dear. But please, after all these years, I really do think you should just call me Sapphire.” She looked over at me. “Or Mom, for that matter.”

  I blushed and turned away, taking the opportunity to look around. Not that I was avoiding her look or anything. But it occurred to me that maybe Opal wasn’t the only one who wanted grandchildren in the near future.

  The upstairs was every bit as grand as the rest of the house. At the top of the steps, there was a balcony of sorts that overlooked the big front room below. I could almost imagine the balls being held there. People dancing in fancy gowns below, and older, more respectable people watching from above. This place had a history; I was sure of it.

  She led us to two doors side by side down a long hallway. Opening the first door, she motioned for Opie to go in. “You can sleep in here, Opie dear. There is a connecting door into the next room where I’ll put the girls.”

  I glanced over his shoulder as he walked in and nodded. Yup, same as I’d expected. Beautiful, but not overbearing. It impressed me that anyone could take a mansion and actually make a comfortable home of it.

  Ruby and I got the room next door. It held two twin beds, both with four posters and an amazing canopy topping them. A little girl’s dream bed.

  “There are plenty of rooms in this old place,” Mom said, looking around to make sure we had everything we needed. “But I thought, at least for tonight, you three would want to be close together.”

  She was right.

  I just hoped whoever had thrown those firebombs wouldn’t realize where we had moved to. The last thing I wanted was to bring the trouble here.

  Senior must have seen my worried expression. “Don’t you worry about the safety here.” He gave me a kind smile. “I’ve tweaked and expanded the wards just a bit since this all started. Trust me when I say that no one will get to the house without our knowing it.”

  I just nodded. I believed him. After all, that was Earth’s special power. Protection.

  I could sure use some of that now.

  Chapter 18

  IT HAD BEEN NICE OF Mom to give Ruby and I a single room. It felt a little like old times back at the farmhouse. We’d shared a room all the way through high school. Like here, there had been plenty of room for the two of us to have separate bedrooms, but neither of us had wanted that. We’d spent many a night staying up well into the wee hours of the morning talking.

  Not tonight, though. I envied Ruby her ability to sleep no matter what. If only I’d inherited that little gene too. Maybe it was tied to the magical one.

  When the sounds of her soft snoring wafted over to me, I realized I had two choices. I could go and invade Opie’s personal space and crawl into bed with him, or I could find something to entertain myself until my brain felt capable of relaxing enough for sleep.

  As Opie had made it clear that until I got my magic under control, he wasn’t willing to risk any type of major affection sharing, that left me with finding something to do.

  That’s when it hit me that of all the online accounts and passwords we had of Sonya’s, we’d only ever really looked at the ledger one. Who knew what a gander at the others might reveal?

  I took the computer into the bathroom to boot it up so that its rather loud startup signal wouldn’t disturb Ruby. Once it was up and running, I propped myself up in bed and situated the computer on my lap. A glance at the other bed showed that Ruby hadn’t even moved. Good.

  Yorkie Doodle raised his head to look at me, but it lowered pretty quickly as he snuggled back into Ruby’s side. Funny, but it made me miss Destiny. I’d only had a cat for a few days, but I’d liked it. The kittens couldn’t get weaned soon enough to suit me.

  Pulling up the passwords file, I went through the names of the online accounts. I ended up back in the online journal. That sounded like a good place to start. And there were plenty of other files there besides the ledger. Files I hadn’t even looked at yet.

  Once logged in, I saw that there were years’ worth of Sonya’s life experiences on there. Where to start? On the hunch that whatever had been the root cause of her death probably happened fairly recently, I started three months ago.

  A couple of weeks in, I hit pay dirt. There had been mention of Ryan finding his long-lost brother before, but not anything I hadn’t already known. This entry, however, was new.

  I’m not sure how to tell Ryan my news. He has a right to know. He needs to know. But telling him will be admitting that I took the time to check out his brother. Ryan isn’t going to like that.

  But before Ryan goes down to Indianapolis to meet the man, he needs to know that his brother is a no-good scumbag. I don’t want Ry-Ry getting hurt.

  I had to take a minute to absorb a couple of things here. One was that his brother was in Indianapolis, which just so happened to be where Opal’s little trip was taking her. I didn’t know how she found out before I did, but then, Opal always had her ways around getting critical information before the rest of the world.

  If she were willing to use her powers for evil when it came to the stock market, we’d all be filthy stinking rich. But no, she had her morals.

  A glance at the clock showed that it was far too late to make a call. Yeah, right. If Opal hadn’t wanted to be woken up in the middle of the night, she would have told me the reason for her trip before she left.

  Grabbing my phone, I went back into the bathroom and shut the door. Opal answered on the third ring.

  “This better be good.”

  I could play this one of two ways. I could go on the offensive and demand to know what she knew about Ryan’s brother, or I could play the family card and pretend I was just calling to let her know what had happened tonight. No contest, really.

  “Has Mom called you yet?”

  There was a few seconds of silence. “No. What’s happened?”

  I took a few minutes to tell her about the night’s activity. I heard her relaying the story to someone, and then she was back on the phone.

  “Whatever you’re doing, you must be getting close. Tell Ruby to do the personal protection spell on all of you. She can raid the supplies at the shop. Some of the ingredients are kind of hard to come by, and she will need plenty on hand.”

  “Got it.” I hesitated, but curiosity got the better of me. “Who is that with you?”

  “None of your damn business, that’s who.”

  Yeah, that’s pretty much what I’d expected her to say. Opal loved her secrets.

  “Okay, I’ll give you that one, but I really want an answer to this one. I need to know what you know about Ryan Shea’s brother.”

  A grunt came over the phone. “Ah, you’ve found something, then, haven’t you? No matter. His name was Roger Hendrickson, and he was bad news. In debt up to his eyeballs to all the wrong people. He’d even done some time in prison for drug trafficking. The man was no good.”

  “Okay, so why the trip to Indianapolis?”

  She hesitated. “I’m not sure I want to say quite yet. I know you, and you’re in enough danger as it is.”

  Another quiet conversation with whoever her new roommate was. As much as I perked my ears to try to make out the voice, I just couldn’t quite get a grasp on its owner. It sounded familiar, though, so definitely someone I knew. But who?

  “Okay, look. Maybe you should know this much. Roger Hendrickson didn’t just die. He was murdered. And the cops don’t have a clue who did it, either. I’m wondering how it all ties in, that’s all. Roger’s head was bashed in, same as Sonya’s.
Could be the same killer.”

  “And there’s only one connection that I know of,” I said quietly. Ryan Shea.

  “Yeah. Stay clear of him until I learn more. We checked into a hotel just north of Indianapolis for the night. We’ll spend tomorrow digging up what we can and then head back. If we don’t make it back before Lily’s dinner, I’ll call it in.”

  Sounded fair enough. “Will you be bringing your guest?”

  She laughed. “In your dreams, girl.” And she hung up.

  I said a little prayer to the God and Goddess to protect them, and then quickly expanded it to protection for all of us.

  I had a bad feeling we would need it before all of this was said and done.

  No way was I going to make it to go to sleep now.

  There was someone else I really needed to talk to, and this one I wanted to do face to face. The trouble was that I didn’t have a set of wheels anymore. Not even my bicycle.

  I chewed my lip, thinking about my alternatives. A quick search on the internet told me that Lily’s house was about five miles away. Too far away for a post-midnight walk in a town I wasn’t familiar with. Especially considering the fact that there had been one attempt on my life already tonight.

  There was always Uber, but I didn’t like that idea one bit, either. That left Opie.

  I crept into his room and stood by his bed, looking down at his sleeping form. At the sight of him, something in me relaxed. I just wanted to hold him. Just for a minute.

  Crawling under the covers, I snuggled into his back and rested my arm gently around him. He sighed in his sleep and settled in even closer.

  I closed my eyes for just a split second to revel in the closeness.

  THE NEXT THING I KNEW, it was morning. Real morning, with the sun streaming in through the windows and everything.

  I opened my eyes straight into Opie’s gaze. Okay, that was a bit of a shock. It took me a minute to get my bearings. This was so much worse than the whole, where am I thing that normally came with waking in a strange bed.

  “Why are you in my bed?” His voice sounded oddly strangled.

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t take advantage of you if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  He took a deep breath. “Nope, pretty sure I would have remembered that. What I don’t remember is you being in my bed.”

  I smiled at him. “I came in to ask you for a ride, and then . . . well, I just wanted a quick snuggle, you know?”

  Opie sucked in a breath. “A ride?” Okay, now his voice was really strangled.

  Frowning at him, I nodded. “I need to talk to Arc, but I don’t have a car anymore, remember?”

  He nodded, his face clearing and his breath going back to normal. He rolled over onto his back and closed his eyes. “And you fell asleep.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  I was about to suggest we make the most of the current situation when, of course, Ruby walked in. She never was much of a one for personal boundaries. And yes, I saw the irony in me being the one saying that.

  “I wondered where you’d gotten to.” She sat on the side of the bed, grinning at us. “So, what’s ya doing?”

  “Nothing, with an audience,” I said, throwing the covers off and setting my feet on the floor. “Besides, we have things to do. I need a ride over to Lily’s. We need to have a talk with Arc.”

  I briefly caught them up to date, and then we each went our separate ways to get dressed and ready to go. Showers were definitely in order. Laundry would be in order soon, too. The smell of smoke still clung to our skin and the clothes we had worn the night before.

  Probably something we should have taken care of then, but it hadn’t crossed our minds.

  I went first for the shower in our shared bathroom, as I’m generally a three-minute lather and rinse kind of girl, and Ruby likes to dawdle. I didn’t want to end my shower time with a quick burst of ice-cold water because Ruby had hogged all the hot. Happened all the time back at the farmhouse before I’d become self-employed. It was easier to share shower schedules now that I set my own work time.

  Within a half hour, we were all dressed and headed down to Opie’s car. We didn’t quite make it.

  Mom met us at the bottom of the stairs.

  “I heard you all moving around up there, so I started breakfast. Wherever it is you all are off to can wait until after you’ve eaten.”

  Who could argue with the smell of freshly fried bacon in the air?

  Chapter 19

  Two heaping plates full of southern fried goodness later, we were finally on our way to see Arc. Mom called ahead to let them know we were coming.

  As she put it, “You don’t go calling on Lily without a proper warning first. Especially not with the goings on of late.”

  When we got there, the first thing Lily did was throw her arms around me. “I’m so very glad you’re all right, child. I was so worried.”

  It took her words for me to realize that I hadn’t called to let them know what had happened. Mom or Senior one must have filled them in. Either that or, like Opal, she had her own witchy ways of knowing things.

  Arc gave me a hug, too, but it was a bit awkward. He kept glancing at Opie to see if there was a problem. I really didn’t get it. I mean, he was my brother, right? What on earth would Opie have a problem with?

  Once we were settled in the living room with glasses of Lily’s special lemonade, I turned to Arc. “I want to know everything you know about Ryan’s brother.”

  He shrugged. “I know he had a much rougher time at life than Ryan. I guess Ry really lucked out when it came to adoptive parents. Roger wasn’t so lucky. He got in with a bad crowd, and things just snowballed from there.”

  Not at all sure that I believed in the whole blame it on the parents' thing, but I nodded all the same. “Did you ever meet him?”

  Arc shook his head. “Never got the chance. Ryan only met him once that I know of. A week before Roger died.”

  It struck me odd that he said died rather than was murdered. Obviously, I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

  “You do know that Roger was murdered, right?” Opie asked.

  Arc’s face kind of said it all. “No! He was murdered? How?”

  The more important question to me was why had Ryan left out that little fact when telling Arc about it. Kind of need to know information, wasn’t it?

  “According to Opal, his head was bashed in like Sonya’s. She’s thinking maybe there is a connection between the two.” I was trying to be gentle, but it was hard. Arc had to come to grips with all of this, and fast. We needed answers.

  “But what connection could there possibly be . . .” He stared at us. “No way. Ryan did not do this. He loved Sonya like a sister. Hell, we grew up together, the three of us. He’s a good guy.” His eyes met mine dead on. “Ryan didn’t do this.”

  I took a deep breath. Part of me wanted to point out that up until we’d found Sonya’s ledger, he’d thought she was a good gal, too. That had been proven wrong pretty dang quickly. Maybe my brother just wasn’t a very good judge of character.

  Besides, Ryan hadn’t made all that good of an impression on me the day before. Actually, he’d seemed more than a little like a jerk.

  And that wasn’t even taking into consideration that he had a key to pass through the high-powered Mineheart wards. After all, we only had his word that he had lost it.

  I looked over at Opie. “We could use someone with a newspaper database brain when it comes to crime.” In other words, we could use his dad. The man kept up to date on everything that was going on in the world of bad guys. I hoped that he didn’t just keep that to a more local range.

  He nodded. “I’ll call him.”

  We waited. I wanted to ask him to put it on speakerphone, but I didn’t think Sheriff Taylor would like that very much. He was a very private kind of guy.

  “Hey, Dad, I got a question for you.”

  No hi, how are you doing? Geesh, men were so different f
rom women, it was like they were a different species. It would have taken me at least three minutes of small talk to get to the meat of the call. Probably one of the reasons my cell phone bill was so high. I really needed to look into one of those unlimited plans.

  Opie was quiet for a minute, listening and nodding. “I see. Well, off the top of your head, do you remember anything about a case down in Indianapolis? The murder of a man named Roger Hendrickson?”

  More listening and nodding. At one point, I thought I saw Opie gulp, but he covered it well. By the time he hung up—again, without the girly preamble—I was bouncing on the balls of my feet. He knew something.

  When he turned to me, his face had lost a bit of color. My bouncing stopped. I wanted good news, not bad. This looked bad.

  “Dad isn’t in the office today.”

  For once, Ruby stepped in. Odd for her. “So, what did he tell you?”

  “Just that he’d check into it today and get with me tonight.”

  There was so much more to that phone call than that.

  “Dang it,” Arc said. Then he turned to Ruby. “Are you up for some computer research? I’ve been pretty limited as to how I can help up until now, but I’m great with a computer. If you’re willing, the two of us should be able to track down the information we need pretty quickly.”

  Ruby glanced at me and then Opie. “Would you two be okay with that?”

  Opie nodded, the color slowly coming back. “Sounds good to me. A division of work just makes sense at this point.” He took my hand and started pulling me to the door. “Call us if you get anything.”

  They just nodded, already deep into the process of booting up their laptops. Never leave home without one. That was one of Ruby’s rules. Of course, the bag she carried would hold a small horse. I went for light and easy, personally.

  Lily followed us out. Once the door was shut, she turned to Opie. “Spill it.”

  Okay, so I wasn’t the only one who noticed something was wrong with him.

  He swallowed and then looked from Lily to me and back again. “It doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on with Arc. I promise.”