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

by Tegan Maher

  As James flicked on the blinker to turn onto our drive, he glanced over at me. "You know I didn't mean anything by the comment about how long it used to take you to get ready, right?"

  I waved a dismissive hand. My mind was in no place to deal with his insecurities at that moment. It was all I could do not to drown in my own guilt. "Don't worry about it. We have bigger fish to fry right now."

  "But I—"

  "She said she doesn't want to talk about it," Eli snapped. He'd liked James when we were dating, but when James ditched me like dirty laundry after he found out about the magic, that had been it for Eli. He was my bestie for a lot of reasons, but loyalty was right at the top of the list.

  James clicked his teeth together, flexing his jaw but not saying another word. I sighed. The tension with him was wearing on me, and when you added Luther into the mix, I just wanted to tell them both to take a flying leap. They had to turn everything into a pissing contest, and they were dancing on my last nerve. The problem was that I needed them both, as much as I hated to admit it. I thought James and I had gotten to a place where we were good, or at least on the same page, but that didn't seem to be the case anymore.

  He pulled in front of my house, a large Victorian that had been in my family for generations. My mom made sure the wraparound porch was always bursting with baskets of colorful flowers, and our gardener took care of the rest. Tall, thick privacy hedges lined the entire property just in case somebody slipped over the nine-foot black wrought-iron fence.

  My father's sense of humor shone through with the giant gargoyles that stood sentry at the beginning of our driveway, but the best part of our yard was behind the house. Like everybody else in the neighborhood, our front lawn was shaded with giant oaks, but it was mostly just a plain space that we didn't use much. Having magical kids was a great incentive to have a secluded backyard with lots of room to play and practice, so that was where Mom and Dad had put their focus.

  As soon as the SUV came to a stop, I was hopping out. "Thanks for driving. Hopefully, we'll find something in the book and will be able to move on this. I'm almost certain there's a curse involved somewhere, but right now, I'm in the dark. I'll call you if we need anything."

  He drew his brows down. "How about you call me if you learn anything? I'd like to be kept in the loop."

  "Sure," I said, not meaning a word of it. Despite the fact that we needed him to keep us in the loop, he was way too negative about magic for me to want to draw him too far into the process. And let's be honest—he was way out of his league with this stuff.

  Eli poked his head in the passenger window once he was out. "Catch you later. We'll do our best to bring Mrs. Emerson some closure and get whatever this is off the street before it hurts anybody else."

  I gave a little wave as he drove off, thankful to have his negative vibes behind me. I got why he was so tense, but that didn't mean I was comfortable with the constant tension. The worst part was that he was a nice guy in a rough spot. His introduction to magic hadn't been the best, and so far, his experience hadn't improved. He'd shown some interest in it and had even expressed how cool it must be, but he still had a way to go before he was comfortable with it.

  I skipped up the steps and across the porch, then followed the guys inside.

  "Hey! Where have you been? I've been blowing your phone up." Jake, my twin brother, met us in the foyer, a frown marring his tanned face. He usually went out on dives with us, but he'd stayed behind today to help my brother Marshall clean some paintings. We didn't do that very often, but it was super cool watching the colors emerge from under decades of dust, nicotine, and other yuck that dulled them.

  I pulled my phone from my pocket and winced when I saw I'd missed four calls from him. "Oh, crap. I'm sorry. I turned it off while we were interviewing Carmen Emerson."

  "Who's that?" He trailed after us as we made our way to the kitchen.

  "A woman whose husband died. We think maybe there's an artifact involved." The scent of burning charcoal and cooking meat wafted past me, and I stuck my nose in the air. "Is Dad grilling?"

  "Yeah," he replied as he reached into the fridge. "It's Saturday. Jules is off, and it's beautiful out. Everybody's here."

  Though all four of my brothers still lived at the manor, too, it was rare lately for us all to be there at once. Eli had already snatched a six-pack from the fridge and handed them around, keeping two for himself. "Awesome! I'm starving. We could use some insight on this case, anyway."

  I glanced at Luther. He'd met most of my family one at a time, but that was much different than having them all piled on at once. "What do you think? Ready for some family barbecue time? My people can be ... a lot."

  He popped the top off his beer and grinned, and my stomach did a little flip-flop when his green eyes lit with mischief. Sometimes those eyes made him look centuries old, and at other times like now, they made him look young and vibrant. "Bring it on. I had ten brothers and sisters way back before there were warning labels."

  I laughed as I headed down the hallway toward the backyard. "Or birth control, apparently! Don't tell me you rode bicycles without a helmet and played lawn darts."

  He rolled his eyes. "We did neither of those, but only because they weren't invented yet. We did, however, race our horses bareback at breakneck speeds, practice swordplay without tips, and leave each other in the forest overnight as a prank. Oh, and we played a rough equivalent of baseball with sticks and rocks. Every single one of us made it to adulthood relatively unscathed."

  Eli had been tagging right along, and I could see his love of history trying to do some math. "Wow, so you are old, then."

  I arched a brow at him. "A lifetime of training and a formal education in history, and that's your professional assessment?"

  "Hey, I can tell you he was a kid before 1817 because that's when the bike was invented. Beyond that, it's a mystery. Swords and youthful stupidity have always been around." He bounced out the back door and over to the grill where Dad was flipping brats. I smiled when he handed my father a beer, then reached around him and snatched a hot dog off the plate.

  "I envy you your family," Luther said as he watched them. "I'm the only one left, though I do have Sybil. She's my family now."

  That was a relationship that I'd tried to ask about before, but aside from saying they'd been an item a couple centuries ago, he'd always stonewalled me. I figured it was something he'd tell me about if and when he was ready.

  I led him to a wrought-iron patio set near where Dad was grilling and motioned for him to take a seat. The shade provided by the umbrella was great, and the smell of sizzling meat made my mouth water. I plucked a carrot from the veggie tray sitting on the table and dragged it through the ranch dressing in the center, then waved it toward where three of my brothers were playing frisbee in the yard. "They make me crazy sometimes, but I wouldn't trade them for the world."

  Jake slid in beside us and dunked a piece of broccoli in the dip. "We feel the same about you, except we put more emphasis on the crazy."

  As my twin, we were the closest in looks, but all of us except for my sister Willow bore a striking resemblance to my father. It's one of the reasons I died my hair every color under the rainbow; I didn't mind looking like them, but I did want to stand out a little. Jake reached out and tugged on a strand of my purple locks. "But we love you despite your insanity. Now, tell me about this murder."

  "Wait, what murder?" my dad asked, pulling out a chair and sitting down with us after he slid a platter of burgers, brats, and dogs onto a side table.

  "Oh, it wasn't a murder." I gave them the rundown as we made plates.

  Eli'd made a plate and flopped down in a chair when I was halfway through the story. "We haven't had time to think much about it, but maybe it has something to with greed. He was super driven."

  Dad steepled his fingers and tapped them to his mouth, his forehead furrowed in thought. "I don't think so. He lost sight of the things most important to him."

 
; My brain hadn't worked its way around to that yet, but he was right.

  Eli put down his burger, then leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. I could practically see the gears turning. "That makes much more sense. So far, it seems like the artifacts are more lessons than they are punishments."

  I raised a brow as a popped a cherry tomato in my mouth and shooed off a gnat. "I don't think we can call them lessons when the person doesn't live long enough to turn themselves around."

  Dad held up a hand. "We don't know it's not possible, though. I mean, maybe it's a matter of degrees. The diadem might have been a perfect storm because she was so deeply insecure on top of being covetous, but we don't know that this one would have been lethal. I mean, what if he would have realized what was going on? The item, whatever it is, didn't make him bash his head."

  Mom, who'd been sitting in her glider reading, finally popped up to fill a plate and heard what we were talking about. She wagged a slender finger at us. "Down that road lies madness. You can't approach them like that. We need to assume that every single one of them is lethal."

  Luther nodded as he scooped up a huge bite of potato salad. "I agree one-hundred percent, but Sybil and I have discussed this. Our thoughts are that the artifacts were cursed specifically with witches in mind. It's likely others in the coven would have realized what was going on and turned them around before anybody was hurt. Even in the case of the diadem, witches would have known how to counter that before she died."

  I'd been eyeballing the three deviled eggs on Eli's plate. I really wanted one but didn't feel like getting up again. Instead, I reached across and swiped one of his, barely dodging his fork as I stuffed it in my mouth. We didn't kid around about food in this family. "Plus it's important to understand the motivation behind the curse so we can break it. Otherwise, we're shooting in the dark."

  Mom glared at me as she plucked a few pieces of fruit from a platter, though I don't know if it was for stealing Eli's food or for talking with my mouth full. "That's academics, though. It's a good idea to work it out as you go in case you need to lift a curse from a person as well as the artifact, but the most critical task is retrieval. Get it off the street and back here so Charity can take a look at it. She and Sybil have been working together, right?"

  I nodded. Charity was a Romanian woman who'd volunteered to help us. She wasn't a witch exactly, but she was magical. Romani magic was different than witch magic, so even though my specialty was cleansing spells from artifacts, we were dealing with a whole other ballgame. I was confident in my abilities, but I was also smart enough to know when I needed help. We were still new at this, so until—unless—Sybil and Charity managed to get me up to speed on Romani magic, we needed them.

  "So, do you have any idea what the item even is yet?" My dad glanced between us, and Luther shook his head.

  "Not yet. We went to his house, but I didn't pick up on any magic." I glanced at Luther and Eli to see if they had, but they both shook their heads. "I think we need to go check out his office because I scanned that whole house while we were there, and there wasn't so much as a hint of magic."

  Luther brushed his hands off and looked at the time on his phone. "That's an excellent idea, but it's surely closed by now, if they even opened today. It's five on a Saturday."

  The corner of Eli's mouth curved up into a smile I'd long associated with mischief. "That's the best time to go, don't you think?"

  Luther grinned back. "No humans and free rein? What are we waiting for?"

  I sighed and wondered when I'd turned into the good girl in the group, then gave a little laugh. Who was I kidding? I was as down as they were for a little Saturday night B&E.

  Chapter Six

  It was a piece of cake to look up the address of Carl Emerson's office. Since Old Town wasn't that big and we were trying to fly under the radar, we decided to port to our gallery, which was only a couple blocks from Emerson Foods, and walk from there. We needed to go through the book anyway to see if we could find an object that fed on somebody's lack of work/life balance, for lack of a better description. I'd thought about what Dad had said, and it felt right.

  "So," I said once we were in my office, a little back room behind the public portion of the gallery, "Do either of you two remember an object that would punish somebody for losing sight of what was important to them?"

  Eli pulled the leather-bound book that had been in the chest with the artifacts from a shelf and chewed on his lip as he flipped through the pages. Something fuzzy bumped against the back of my leg and I about jumped out of my skin.

  "Holy crap on a cracker!" I exclaimed when I spun to find Axel, our spotted skunk, hopping onto a chair then leaping over to the desk where Eli'd opened the book. He'd done all that on three paws because the fourth was clutching a grilled hot dog. I reached over to flick him on the white dot centered right between his beady little black eyes. "Where did you come from? I haven't seen you since yesterday, now you come in here without so much as a word and scare the daylights out of me? I thought you were a freakin' rat." I smoothed the goosebumps on my arm.

  His whiskers twitched as he dodged my hand. "I followed you from the house. Frankly, I'm a little hurt you didn't think to include me in your little crime spree. You know that's right up my alley."

  His voice was as gravelly as a nineteen-twenties gangster's, and I suspected he'd just woken up, no doubt because he'd been playing Friday night poker at the Jolly Roger until the sun rose.

  Eli shoved his fuzzy rump off the corner of the book so he could flip the page. "That's hard to do when we don't see you."

  He waved a paw. "No worries. I stumbled through just as you were leavin'. I even managed to grab a dog on the way."

  "Yeah, so I see," Eli replied, scowling at him. "Don't get grease on the pages. It's hard enough to decipher without having the ink smudged to boot."

  "Yeah, yeah," Axel grumbled but stepped back from the book as he took a bite of the purloined meat.

  Luther had leaned over and was reading over Eli's shoulder, basically ignoring the exchange. He pointed to a picture of a lantern. "There. If I'm translating this right, it could be exactly what we're looking for."

  Since the book had been written in not only one ancient language but a weird mix of two, I had to go off what he and Eli said. Though I spoke a few different ones, all of them but Latin were modern. Still, I leaned over to get a better look at what he was talking about.

  I sighed. "Great. whoever drew that either didn't have the greatest skill with charcoal, or it's utterly unremarkable." The lantern at the head of the page looked like every other generic lantern from the period that I'd ever seen. For that matter, they hadn't changed much over the centuries.

  "It's it, though." Eli jabbed his finger at the page and translated. "Spell appears to curse the bearer with taking away those people and items they hold most precious." He slid his fingers down a few lines, then paraphrased. "At first, they thought it was benign—just a random item the Romani had left behind, but one of their coven who was, in today's terms, a workaholic got hit with the same symptoms Carl did." His lips curved into a smile.

  "What's so funny about that?" I asked when I noticed Luther was smiling, too.

  He picked up where Eli'd left off. "Times were simpler back then. Apparently, she lost sight of her milk cow and her three lovers. It seems she was a nympho of sorts and kept multiples on hand for her different ... proclivities."

  Axel waggled his eyebrows. "A witch after my own heart."

  I laughed and rolled my eyes. "At least we know why this coven managed to run off the puritans. It's a wonder they didn't burn the town down on their way out.

  Luther arched a brow. "I imagine they knew that wouldn't be in their best interests. Remember, the town started as a pirate city. It wasn't exactly conforming to those standards even then, so imagine the sort of witches it took to scare them out of town. They weren't weak-kneed, hiding-in-the-shadows types, to be sure."

  I gave another c
huckle. "No, I guess when you put it like that, I suppose they weren't. I kinda wish I'd have been around to see it."

  Luther's face took on a faraway look, and it was obvious he had fond memories of whatever he was seeing in his mind's eye. "Times were a lot harder then, but a lot simpler, too. That was back when magic was everywhere. There was none of this hiding who you are. This town was magnificent once it was established. Terrible sometimes, but magnificent."

  "So you were here." I was getting his life in bits and pieces, it seemed, like a puzzle. I knew I only had a few inside pieces and none of them fit together, but it was something.

  "I was. I'm actually the one who convinced Sybil to come I'd been coming here for a couple years before she joined me." His mouth curved into a nefarious smile.

  Eli's mouth fell open as he looked at Luther through all-new eyes, then his face lit up with a mixture of delight and disbelief. "Oh, no, you weren't!"

  Not dropping that ornery smile, Luther nodded, his green eyes glittering with mirth. "Oh, yes, I was."

  "Say it!" Eli prodded, then smacked him on the arm.

  Luther laughed, and it took my mind a minute to catch up. He'd been there before Sybil. Before the witches, maybe? The pieces of Marauder's Bay history clicked into place, and I joined their fun. "Yeah, say it!"

  Luther rolled his eyes, then drew his brows down and threw his fists on his hips. "Arrrrr Matey!"

  A vision of him with longer hair, a tricorn cap, and a full pirate's uniform sprang to mind. An earring, maybe? I tilted my head. Yeah, he'd look good with one. Two, even. What did it say about me that imagining him as a pirate turned me on a little? Maybe that I shouldn't trust my own taste in men.

  Eli gave a fist pump. "I have SO MANY questions!"

  "You know, we didn't really say it like that, right? Well, I mean, we did, but it wasn't a catchphrase or anything back then. The life wasn't nearly as romantic as people make it out to be."

  Yeah, romance wasn't what that image of him brought to mind, but I was pretty sure that wasn't how he was using the term.