“Because he wants this show to go on as scheduled, that’s why. There’s a lot of backer money involved in this, and he’s going to blame me if the Delaney House doesn’t open with a Ghost Watchers episode.” Danvers looked as frazzled as I felt.
Then I did a double take. “Wait…they do? They just lost their psychic. Someone murdered her in that house.”
“And you’d think they’d want to at least show some respect, right?” Danvers held up his hands. “But no. This is a chance of a lifetime. Perrin overheard that blonde chick, the one with the charming personality, taking about doing a seance on their show to contact this Miss Corvis and find her murderer. That is, if we don’t find him first.”
This was the first I’d heard of a seance. It didn’t sound like something Phil would come up with. He was more practical in his supernatural beliefs. He always wanted scientific evidence of the things he felt and saw. Seances were notorious for being proven as frauds.
No. This sounded like someone I knew very well.
I excused myself with a “good luck” to Danvers and a message to call me if he needed me. I glanced at Phil, Brett and Harper in a huddle, along with the mayor and Beverly Norris. Cass wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and I was pretty sure Mildred Thumper had gone home to roust her armies of the just against opening the Delaney House as a Halloween event.
Mama D was in her car, along with Melody. Mel had the front seat, so I marched around the car and pulled her out of it. Mama D protested, as did Melody. But I moved her around by her shoulders, putting myself between she and the car. “A seance? Really?”
“Seance?” Mama D said as she came around the front of the car. “Who’s having a seance?”
“Melody put it in the Ghost Watchers’ heads to have a seance in the Delaney House on their show.” I narrowed my eyes at my sister. “Are you nuts? You know what can happen if cowens do that stuff.”
“You need to calm down and stop acting like Mom.” Melody straightened her many shawls and stood her ground. “I’m the one that’ll do the seance, not them. And you know I’m perfectly capable of handling it.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about.”
“Is it Phil, then?” Melody arched a brow at me. “You care more for him than the bloodsucker?”
“Melody,” Mama D said in a tone she rarely used. It was a commanding tone. One our mother used to dread. “Go home. On your own. You and I will talk tomorrow.” She started to walk around the car then stopped. “There will be no seance. If I hear about one again, I’ll make sure to take my backing out of that house, and advise every one of the merchants to do the same.”
That got Melody’s attention. But I wasn’t sure it had convinced her not to do it. Melody took in a deep breath, turned and stalked off in a swirl of hair, shawls and fringe. Within seconds, she’d disappeared in the dark.
“Get in the car, Ginger. You’re tired. And you have a lot on your mind.”
That was the truth.
I helped Mama D finish cleaning once we were home. Max was already there, in my bedroom. I wanted to ask him what happened in the house, but he was sound asleep and I was exhausted. I texted David and undressed, ready to soak in the tub again. I wished I had another bath bomb to use.
The book fell out of my jacket pocket and onto the bed. I’d forgotten about it with all the weirdness of Phil. But there it was, now opened to the old rhyme, handwritten on the inside of a German book. I didn’t even know what the book was about, since I couldn’t read German. And I didn’t know a translation spell. Mama D could know one. But then she wouldn’t know the history of the book itself.
But there were two people who might. I grabbed my phone and added a few things to my to-do list for tomorrow, like calling Beverly and Cassandra and having them meet me for coffee and take a look at this little mystery. It might not be what Nichelle wanted to show Phil, but then again, it might be everything.
And if it was everything, then why didn’t the killer take it?
Och…too many questions, and my head hurt. I skipped the shower, pulled on my nightclothes and fell into bed. Within seconds, Max curled up next to me and we both fell asleep.
Something woke me up. I sat forward in bed and dislodged a very drowsy cat, who then went to my pillow and curled up again. “Max…I heard something.”
“I didn’t,” he said sleepily. “Go to bed. The ivy would let us know if there was a bad person in the house.”
The ivy? I twisted around to give him a funny look. “What does that mean?” I whispered.
But he was already oozing kitty snores.
Cute. But not helpful.
I heard something again and realized it was downstairs. I also had a weird feeling inside my head—as if I was hearing the same sounds a beat later, like an echo. I also had an extra feeling of knowing. Yeah, that sounds weird, but think of it like this: we all have that nagging feeling sometimes. It’s either in our stomachs or in the back of our heads. It’s telling us something is wrong. Or something is out of place. It’s the little voice that tells you to look for your keys, but you’re sure you know where they are. But because it keeps telling you to look, you do. Only they’re not where you usually leave them. And then you find them still stuck in the door.
That voice. If any of that made sense.
As a witch, I had a pretty strong danger voice. Only I was hearing it in echo, which was unnerving and a bit disorienting. I got up, held out my hand and summoned a ball of fire. It wasn’t real fire, more of a visual manifestation of what I could throw at an intruder. They’d feel a painful zap to their system when it hit them, and then I was pretty sure they would need new underwear.
I held the spinning ball in the air as I made my way down the stairs, wishing Max would at least get up and help. I nearly yelled when something landed on my shoulder and I heard a deep, somewhat accented voice in my ear. “It’s just me. The cat’s tired.”
It was Burt, Mama D’s familiar. Think of those really cute teddy-bear bats. And then put a sarcastic, Brooklyn-accented voice on it. Presto. Burt.
Another noise in the kitchen. It could be Mama D up making tea. But it didn’t feel like her. So I went to the door of the kitchen, raised my weapon and—
“Whoa!” David said as he appeared in my line of sight. “Don’t throw it! If I remember right, those things hurt. And I don’t have clean underwear here.”
I had to do something with the thing, so I ran to the den and threw it into the fireplace. It ignited a fire on the dry wood, then fizzled out.
David sighed and snapped his fingers, and a flame burst from the wood. Within seconds, there was a nice, crackling fire. Vampires and their magic. Och.
“What’re you doing here?” I said as Burt flew over to one of his parrot perches next to the fireplace. I followed David back into the kitchen.
“Making hot chocolate.” And he had indeed. Two of Mama D’s hand-made ceramic mugs sat on the counter, complete with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. He handed me one.
I held the warmth in my hands and moved back to the den and the fire. Yes, some vampires can eat. If they want to. And being a shifter, David usually had at least one good meal a day, though he preferred rare meat. “Thanks, but”—I sat on the papasan in the corner; it had the best access to the heat—“you do realize what time it is—” And then I remembered I was talking to a vampire.
He sat on the coffee table. It was the closest thing to me. He also cradled the mug in his hands. “I wanted you to be warm when I woke you up.”
“So you planned this. What time is it?”
“Four.”
“In the morning.”
“Yeah. Look.” He set the mug behind him on the coffee table. “I heard what was said about this Phil Boscawen. And I know we’ve only known each other a month. But he was coming over here tonight—and you never even mentioned that you’d had a relationship with him.”
“Does that bother you?” My heart fluttered in my chest. Yes, my hesitation and b
ad decisions were going to bite me in the butt. As usually. Yep. Situation normal.
“Your having a past doesn’t bother me. We all have pasts. Mine is particularly long…and complicated, and can be a bit gruesome. But I’m also an adult and I can take the fact I haven’t been the only man in your life. But if he’d been there, I’d have been taken by surprise.”
“Oh.” Yep. Mama D had been right. But then, she always was. “David—I wanted to tell you. And I had planned on telling you when you got here today—er, yesterday. But then we got busy with the food and they got here early and I just forgot.”
“You avoided.”
I pursed my lips. “I hate it when you do that.”
“What? See the truth?”
“It’s a vampire thing, isn’t it?”
David smiled at me, but it wasn’t one filled with his usual mirth. “No, it’s a long-lived thing. After a while, it becomes easier to read people and their tells. You have a lot of them. And I’m still learning them.”
Oh, great. I had tells. “David…it was a very short-lived affair. He wasn’t producing Ghost Watchers back then. But he was working on projects. We met when I did his taxes…”
“And it came and went. That I can believe after meeting him. He’s very”—David tilted his head—“not your type.”
“Because you’re my type.”
He reached out and took my hand in his. “I am. And I want to trust you. So please, Ginger, fill me in. Let me know when there could be a situation.”
“Uh huh. And what about Miss Van Wesson and her obvious infatuation with you?”
He stuck out his tongue. “You know me better than that. I’m not into fake.”
“Okay.” And I believed him. “But don’t worry about Phil. There’s no situation there.”
“Oh yes there is.” He released my hand, after pulling it to him and kissing it, and fished his phone out of his back pocket. He looked at the screen and blinked. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t see your texts. I was busy doing research.”
“Research?”
“Yes. Into Phillip Boscawen and Nichelle Corvis.”
“And?” I sat forward, which is not a graceful thing to attempt in a papasan chair. “There’s an ‘and’ there.”
“The victim is Nichelle Juliet Corvis, age forty-two. Has a record for identity theft. Served three years in New York. No convictions or arrests in the past ten years. Has worked as a psychic and came to fame on Ghost Watchers as of last year. And”—he looked up from his phone at me—“she was born in Castle Falls.”
My jaw dropped. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Did…did Phil know she was from here?”
“I’m not sure, but Danvers will probably haul him back in and confront him with it. I sent all this to his inbox for the morning, once we found Miss Corvis’s prints in the system.”
“She have immediate family here?”
“None we could find. What this does, though, this murder, this Ghost Watchers show, and now learning the dead woman is from here, is set off a whole host of alarms.”
I gulped down some warm chocolate and wiped the remaining whipped cream off my nose. “I don’t understand.”
“Castle Falls is a refuge, Ginger. You know that. It was set up that way by the Castle family.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Unless you don’t know the truth about the Castle brothers.”
“You’re talking about the original Castle family. What’s to know?”
“That they weren’t human.” He winced as he spoke. “That they were…different.”
“I don’t…what were they?”
David shook his head. “No one knows. Well, I’m sure someone did. But it’s old history, known by a few. I don’t know if your friend Cassandra knows, but I’m sure that historian knows, since she’s aware of us. Meaning vampires and witches and shifters. So for now, just be aware that a lot of the people who live here and support this place are here because they enjoy their anonymity within the supernatural community. They don’t want a lot of people sticking their noses into their business, or their past. And personally”—he shrugged—“I don’t want them, especially this Phil guy, sticking his nose into my past.”
“He won’t do that—”
“He already did,” David said, and then held up a hand. “I pay people to keep an eye on that kind of thing. In fact, most of us do in this town, including your grandmother. So just be aware that though it might be good for the normals and their economy, the rest of us would prefer there was no show. So, pushback is pretty much expected.”
“And I’m sure Melody doesn’t know any of this.” I sighed.
“I have no idea. But besides getting your side about Boscawen, I wanted you to be aware of this. Your sister’s heading this up, and your grandmother is putting in some clout by helping Peewee upgrade the Delaney power grid. But it might be up to you to help Danvers solve this murder, and quickly, so they will leave and this can be put aside.”
“I wish it was always that easy, David.” I set my mug on the floor and tipped forward in the chair. We were face to face, and he smelled of wild grass and jasmine in the summer. “But solving murders isn’t my specialty.”
“Oh.” David smiled at me and kissed my nose. “I think it’s one of your best assets. And I’m here to help you.” He pressed a kiss to my lips. “Always.”
EIGHT
It wasn’t until the next morning I remembered the strange little book. I should have showed it to David because I was pretty sure he could speak and read German. But then, I was a bit distracted.
He was gone before I woke up and left a note and a rose on my pillow.
Got a full day with Dr. Helena as well as my own patients. I’ll text you when I can. Be careful. Yours, David.
I put the note on my nightstand and grabbed the little blue book. Max jumped on the bed and complained about needing breakfast. Of course, his idea of a first meal of the day included bacon and eggs, not kibble.
“Isn’t Mama D awake?” I said as I opened the book and gave it a thorough once-over, cover to cover. No other notes scribbled on the pages. Just the one in front.
“Yeah, but she insists I eat like a regular cat.” He plopped down with a paw on my knee. “I know she’s just too lazy to fry bacon.” He started purring. “What’s that?” And he shifted his paw to the book in my hand.
“Something Phil found in the Delaney House next to Nichelle’s body.”
“Oh? I didn’t hear anything about a book.”
I looked down at him. “Hear anything? Were you hanging around and listening after you bounced off? Because I called for you when I was leaving.”
“I did a run-through of the house, looking for anything weird,” Max said in a matter-of-fact voice. “And then I went back downstairs and watched and listened to everyone else. Then I got a ride with Melody to the station and walked home.”
Huh. Industrious little beastie, wasn’t he? “You hear or see anything that could help solve Nichelle’s murder?”
“I’m still processing it all.” Max yawned and stretched out his paws, exposing his claws. “I will say the house seems to be more of a depository than somewhere to live.”
“What’s that mean?”
Max rolled over and looked up at me. “There are rooms full of stuff upstairs. Mostly furniture. Someone’s using that place for storage.”
“Well, since it’s still owned by the Historical Society, they might be using it.” I rubbed my chin, opened the book to the hand-written page and turned it to face Max. “What do you think about this?”
I watched his eyes track the words. “‘Cat jumped over the moon’? Isn’t that supposed to read ‘cow’?”
“There are several parts of it that aren’t right.” I turned it back to where I could look at it. “Like where it says ‘to see such craft’ instead of ‘see such fun,’ and I always thought it was the dish that ran away with the spoon, not the fork.”
“I dunno. Google it.” He
was still on his side looking up at me.
“Is the house haunted?” I asked him.
“It could be. I mean, there are things in there. The whole place has the feel of being…I don’t know…in suspension.”
I blinked at him. “That’s a weird way to describe a place. What does that mean?”
“What I said. Suspension. It’s like the house is waiting for something.” He yawned again. “What’s on the docket for today?”
“I need to call Beverly and Cass and see what they make of this little book. And then I want to find out more about this Kell murder.”
“What’re the ghost freaks doing?”
“I don’t know. They mentioned a seance, which Mama D put a stop to.” I scratched my chin.
“Melody?” He chuckled. “Keep an eye on that blonde chick.”
“Van Wesson?”
“Yeah. I think she’s got her sights on your bitey boyfriend.”
I smirked at him and pulled his ear. He made a pfft noise. “Don’t get too comfy, familiar. You’re on duty with me today. My bitey boyfriend made a point with me last night. This whole thing with the Ghost Watchers, and this murder, could bring a lot of unwanted attention to Castle Falls.”
“It could. But I was thinking more along the lines of making sure your old boyfriend doesn’t take too hard of a look at your new boyfriend.”
I watched him stretch on the bed next to me and close his eyes. I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling and the old Duran Duran poster still tacked up there. David was right. What had started as an idea to bump up attendance for the town’s annual Halloween event could actually prove to be the liability that broke the magic created by the Castle family.
Mama D was up with coffee and reading the paper on the iPad David had bought her a few weeks ago. I thought it was a cool gift, until I found her spending an inordinate amount of time playing games on it.
She mumbled a good morning as I poured myself a cup of coffee. I leaned against the counter as I sipped the hot, bitter brew and thought for a few minutes that Mama D wasn’t going to talk to me, given the seance problem.
The Cat Jumped Over the Moon Page 6
