The Cursed Lantern: A Paranormal Artifacts Cozy Mystery (Paranormal Artifacts Cozy Mysteries Book 3)

by Tegan Maher

  I shook my head, stealing one last glance at Gina, who didn't answer my question. "Nah, we just wanted to stop by and meet your ... friend."

  He bit the inside of his lip to keep from smiling, but orneriness was bright in his eyes. "Well then, ye scalawags, mission accomplished. Now, back to yer rum!"

  There wasn't much of a way around that dismissal, so we made our excuses and did as we were told.

  "Struck out, huh?" Luther took a long sip off his drink, then held it back and looked at it. "This is delightful. What's in it?"

  Eli and I looked at each other and grinned. "Rum and more rum."

  When we answered in tandem, Luther furrowed his brow and glanced back and forth between us. "Do you two use a psychic connection to do that?"

  "Nope." That time, we did it just to irritate him, sharing identical grins. Though Eli could get into my head, he never did. In fact, he actively avoided it. One of his gifts was the power of persuasion, but he hated it and never used it.

  Luther opened his mouth to say something, but my ringtone cut him off. I fished my phone out of my back pocket and frowned when I saw it was from James, my ex and a local cop who'd recently been elected as sheriff. I sighed. He was only calling me for one of two reasons: he either wanted to talk about our complicated personal relationship, or he had a case he suspected was related to the cursed artifacts. If it was the former, I didn't want to answer, but since it might be the latter, I had no choice. I slid my finger across the screen, not sure which possibility to hope for.

  "Hey, James. What's up?"

  "Hey, Sage. Sorry to bother you on a Saturday afternoon, but you're gonna want to see this. Some guy just drowned under some strange circumstances, and I think we should talk. Can you meet me at the cafe? I don't think we should meet at the sheriff's office, and there's no point in examining the scene."

  I frowned and glanced over my shoulder to make sure nobody nonmagical was within earshot, then put my phone on speaker.

  "Eli and Luther are listening. What's a guy drowning got to do with us?"

  "Well, let's see," he said, and I didn't have to see the exasperated look on his face to pick up the sarcasm. "He reported his wife missing while she was standing right beside him, said he'd lost his watch when he hadn't, and he couldn't find his office building when he was standing in front of it. Pretty sure that reaches your level of weird."

  Luther growled. Like, almost an actual animal growl. He was strangely jealous of James and took offense whenever my ex used his go-to adjectives such as weird and strange to describe anything to do with me or magic. In truth, it was a little offensive, but I don't think James realized it came across that way.

  I shook my head, warning Luther to be cool. Eli, on the other hand, rocked back on his heels and nodded, lips pressed together, even though James couldn't see him. "Yep. That sounds like our kinda weird all right. We'll be there in fifteen."

  I glanced at the two new drinks Jazz had just set in front of our spots. "You said he's dead?"

  "As a hammer."

  "Is anybody else affected or in imminent danger of death, dismemberment, loss of mental faculties, or being sucked into an alternate reality?"

  "Noooo, why?" It wasn't hard to tell he was trying to follow my train of thought and losing. "And wait—an alternate reality? Is that really a thing?" That last had just an edge of panic to it. Though he was trying his best to adapt to a reality where magic existed, he was struggling.

  "Probably not today, or I'd have sensed something. Make it twenty, and we'll be there." I wasn't going to waste a perfectly good drink rushing to deal with somebody who'd already checked out anyway. Besides, if this artifact worked out to be as tricky as the others, we needed to take a minute of peace while we had it.

  "Wait, about that alternate—"

  I'd already moved to hang up when I heard that last, but I didn't want to answer, anyway. That would be a conversation for another day.

  Chapter Three

  After we finished our drinks and were paying the tab, I tried to tell Luther we didn't need him, but he insisted on going. I couldn't decide if it was because he really wanted to help us or if he just wanted to torture James a little. My guess was that it was a little of both.

  Eli wasn't about to give up shotgun, so Luther found himself stuffed into the backseat of a car that wasn't built for more than one passenger. Rather than argue, though, he squeezed himself into the small space, stooping because he was too tall to sit up straight.

  I checked him out in the rearview mirror, hoping to see at least a bit of irritation on his face. Instead, he looked amused. I swear, the guy took almost everything in stride even when we were in a life-or-death magical situation. I didn't get him, but I supposed when you'd been alive for centuries, there wasn't much you hadn't encountered.

  I pulled out of the lot and hung a left onto the street that would take us to Sadie's, the coffeeshop where we were meeting James. "So just off the top of your head, can either of you think of an artifact in the book that would lead to this kind of behavior?"

  The witches who'd sunk the trunk in the sea to begin with had at least included a book that listed each piece and what it did. The problem was that it was in an ancient language and the descriptions were often vague. We'd been working with Sybil, a witch who'd been alive and living in Marauder's Cove when the whole thing had begun. She hadn't realized at the time that the coven had dumped the whole chest into the ocean without first removing the curses, but she felt a little bit responsible for not stopping them back then.

  Sybil'd proven to be a huge help; there's no way we could have handled the first two cases without her, or Luther, for that matter. As much as he got under my skin, I wasn't dumb enough to believe we didn't need him. One of Eli's specialties was languages, but even though he'd made progress on translating the book, we were still flying by the seat of our britches in large part.

  You'd think having a book that detailed each piece would make things simple, but there were so many items that it was nearly impossible to tell which one we were dealing with until we figured out the purpose of the curse, and that was only the beginning. It wasn't just a matter of recovering the artifacts and cleansing them of the curses, which is exactly what I did for a living. Where Eli and I were flailing was dealing with the victim of the curse once we found them. Neither of us had experience with that, so we had no choice but to work with Luther and Sybil.

  Luther hunched forward so that he was between the front seats. "Just off the top of my head, it sounds like some sort of greed curse. Maybe the intention is to take away his valuables."

  Eli furrowed his brow as he looked out the window at the small shops lining the street. We'd gone from the beach side of Marauder's Bay to the quaint part of town where the shops were more what you'd expect in any small town. The pastel colors of the beach shops had faded to brick buildings with tasteful striped awnings offering shade to window shoppers who took advantage of the simple layout of Main Street.

  He scratched his cheek, his fingers scraping over his scruff. "If that's the case, then how do you explain the wife thing?"

  Luther sighed. "It's not a perfect theory, for sure. I think we'll know more once we talk to the family. I don't know why we have to talk to James. We should have just gotten the information and gone to the man's home or business."

  Scowling, I resisted the urge to elbow him in the nose. The whole caveman thing was getting old, and even though I had my own issues working with James, I couldn't deny that we needed him or that his input was valuable if for no other reason than he was our connection—and our cover—when the artifacts showed up.

  I pulled into an open parking space in front of Sadie's. Once I was out, I grinned at the sight of Luther battling the seatbelt while trying to squeeze out of the sliver of space between my seat and the frame. When I laughed out loud, he growled, his green eyes sparking with irritation. "This contraption isn't fit for three people. You need a bigger car."

  "Oh, then maybe we s
hould have brought yours." Seeing as how he'd flown to the bar, I didn't think he had any room to complain. "At least I brought something with wheels."

  Rather than respond, he smoothed his navy polo shirt and pulled his khaki shorts down from where they'd ridden up onto his (very muscular) thighs. I turned and headed around the car before he caught me peeking.

  Before we pushed through the door to the coffee shop, I turned around and poked my finger in Luther's face, narrowing my eyes. He didn't like James and tended to bat him around like a cat would a clueless mouse. "Be. Nice."

  His full lips curved up in a predatory smile that reminded me of the Grinch's grin. "I'm always nice."

  I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath. Though I had my own problems with James, it wasn't fair that Luther, a magical, centuries-old being, baited somebody who not only didn't know the rules, he wasn't even sure what game we were playing. For that matter, when it came to Luther, I didn't either. "Then be nicer. I mean it."

  I pushed into Sadie's and got a little push of energy just from the heady scent of coffee. The place was empty except for James, who was already sitting at a table in the back corner. Sadie, a fortyish brunette, was in the process of cleaning up to close.

  She tossed the bar towel she was using to wipe the counter into a red bucket and wiped her hands on her apron. "Hey, guys! I was just cleanin' up. Can I get ya anything? James said you were comin', so I left the espresso machine on just in case."

  I flapped a hand at her, not wanting to put her out. "Nah, you don't have to do that. I know closing time's in five minutes. We'll take cans of Coke if you have it, and we'll do our best to hurry this along."

  "No need to rush. If I finish cleaning before y'all are done, I'll just lock up and do my paperwork. That'll take a solid half hour, anyway." She pulled the Cokes from the cooler and handed them to me, then shoved a few wisps of flyaway hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear. "Y'all do your thing and don't worry about the time."

  Since she was a witch and knew what was going on with the artifacts, I didn't bother putting up a silencing spell. For that matter, if she did overhear, she might have some advice. She was more than competent as well as blessed with the gift of longevity, so she'd seen things. In fact, she'd bought a couple of the items at the original auction, so she knew exactly what we were dealing with.

  "What's up?" I asked as I slid into the booth across from him. Luther followed, and James scooted over so Eli could join him.

  He gave the coffee in the white ceramic mug in front of him a swirl and took a drink before answering. "What's up is that Carl Emerson, a local businessman, drowned in his fountain, and I'm sure it wasn't an accident. Or at least not one caused by normal circumstances."

  "And what makes you say that?" Luther asked. "Define normal. Are you implying that something magical shoved him into the fountain, or maybe compelled him? Did he knock his head on the way in?"

  I had to hand it to him—he managed to keep almost all the condescension out of his tone.

  James rubbed his face and huffed out a little breath in frustration. "I don't know about magic or whatever, and yeah, he knocked his head when he fell in, which is why he drowned in two feet of water. All I know is that the guy's been acting weird for the last few days or so, and I can't think of a better explanation than that he got caught up in your all's"—he leaned forward and lowered his voice to a hiss—"hocus-pocus woo-woo stuff."

  I bit down on my lip and took a deep breath, trying not to get irritated because of the way he'd said that. I was doing my best to give the guy some latitude since this was all new to him. Eli, on the other hand, wasn't as inclined. Technically, James had known about magic for five years now, ever since the day he caught Eli and I playing magical skeet on what we thought was a secluded beach. That was when he'd dumped me, and my bestie wasn't inclined to forgive him for breaking my heart.

  Eli turned toward him and arched a brow, then waggled his finger back and forth. "Okay. One, Mr. Law Man, don't take that tone with us. Two, if you want our help, you're going to have to give us a little more than he was acting weird. What, specifically, was he doing?"

  James put out his hand, then raked it through his tawny hair. "He and his wife came into the station yesterday, except, according to the cop who dealt with it, it was like Emerson couldn't see her or something. He wanted to report her missing even though she was standing right there. She was frantic trying to get his attention, and when my guy tried to calm him down, Emerson started to get mad. The station was packed, so rather than have him cause a scene, Marc pulled him into an office and took his report despite his wife sitting right there beside him, crying the whole time."

  Eli frowned. "And you just let him go? I mean, the dude's cheese had obviously slipped off his cracker."

  "What else could we do?" James shrugged. "He might have been acting weird, but he wasn't a danger to himself or others, so the law limits what we can do." He made direct eye contact with Luther. "I mean, if acting odd were grounds for arrest, I know a lot of people I'd lock up."

  "Okaayy," I said, almost choking on my Coke when Luther's eyes turned stormy. Time to put a stop to that line of questioning before James found himself turned into a lock. "I think we've heard enough to be interested. Maybe we should go talk to his wife. Is that the only time he's been off? You mentioned something about a watch and an office building when you called me."

  James nodded. "His wife said that before he stopped seeing her, he complained that he'd lost his watch, an heirloom passed down to him from his grandfather. The thing is, it was on his nightstand, right where he'd put it the night before, when he mentioned it. She didn't know what to say, and he changed the topic before she could come up with a response."

  Luther, who'd either gotten a handle on his temper or decided the case was more important than turning James into a waterspout, cut in. "What about the office thing?"

  James shook his head, and I could see the weariness setting in around his eyes. The whole magical thing seemed to wear him thin. "I haven't been there yet. I figured I'd save making two trips and just wait and take you with me. He's a corporate exec and works downtown, but that's a recent thing. He just bought the building a few months ago. Before that, he and his partner leased a suite over on Dolphin Drive."

  I gave Luther a shove to get him to move out of the booth. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's go see what strange things he was up to when he wasn't reporting his wife missing."

  As much as I wanted his partner to tell us he'd been perfectly normal, I had a gut feeling that wasn't going to be the case. Guilt curled in my belly because it seemed that this time, my screw-up had gotten somebody killed.

  "Stop that, Sage." Luther dropped some bills on the table and put his hand on the small of my back to guide me toward the door. Despite the guilt and the fact that I didn't typically like handsy guys, I was hyperaware of the shock of warmth radiating from his fingers.

  "Stop what?" I asked, playing it off like he wasn't a mind reader who had no moral issues about eavesdropping in my head.

  "You know what. You didn't do any of this on purpose, and it's not even entirely your fault. I've thought about it a great deal, and Sybil and I have discussed it, too."

  Sybil was an ancient witch who'd been helping me learn about the curses. She'd helped me out twice now, and I'd come to depend upon her wisdom—and strange sense of humor—to get me through.

  I followed Luther and James out, and Eli brought up the rear. Once we were outside, he cut between us and brought the focus to himself, something I was grateful for. "And what have you two crazy kids come up with?"

  Luther sighed in exasperation. "We've come to the conclusion that there were too many stars that had to align just right in order to get those artifacts out into the public. The storm that uncovered it and the fact that you found it are easy to explain. We live on the Gulf of Mexico. Storms happen. You dive, and you find new stuff when the storms shift the sand. Those two are logical."


  He paused and shook his head. "But then, rather than check them as soon as you bring them in like you always do, you put the chore off until the next day. Then to pile more 'coincidence" on top, your sister, who is one of the most organized people I've ever met, messed up in grand fashion on a day that just happened to be the one where workers were coming to pick up donations for an auction." He shook his head. "It's too much. You know as well as I do that there aren't that many coincidences in the magical world."

  I took a few moments to unpack that as we walked to James's SUV. "So, what? You think somebody planned it? I agree that a whole lot of things had to happen just so for the artifacts to get loose, but it seems farfetched to think the whole thing was contrived."

  His forehead creased in consternation as he opened the front door of the vehicle for me. "That's true, too. But it just seems too slick. We don't know what to think yet, but we're not willing to call it a series of unfortunate events that just happened to lead to the perfect storm. Not, at least, without taking a much harder look at it than we have so far."

  I climbed in and buckled my seatbelt, letting that sink in. If this was a case of magical manipulation, somebody was gonna have some 'splainin' to do once I figured out who was behind it and caught up with them.

  Chapter Four

  #

  Carl Emerson lived on the other side of Old Town, the neighborhood where people who'd been rich forever lived. The only thing that hung in the air thicker than the humidity and the Spanish moss was the sense of entitlement imbued into the very air.

  We drove past massive brick and stone mansions set back from the street on oversized lots. Unlike other parts of town where cookie-cutter houses lined treeless, middle-class streets, Old Town had centuries-old oak trees shading custom-built estates that oozed elitism and tasteful excess.

  Eli craned his neck to look at the mansions. No matter how often we drove through there, neither of us ever got tired of looking. "How'd they make their money?"