Torrent Witches Box Set #1 Books 1-3 (Butter Witch, Treasure Witch, Hidden Witch)

by Tess Lake

  I wasn’t entirely sure what I was actually supposed to learn. Coldwell had bought properties that had burned down and so had other real estate developers. I didn’t need evidence to prove that.

  I was sorting through the papers when there was a knock on the door. I looked up, grinning, but it wasn’t Jack. It was Jonas.

  “Hey, Jonas,” I said, feeling my heart sink just a little. Jonas is a good guy, but he was not the one I was waiting to see.

  “Hi, Harlow. My dorkus of a brother has just called me from down the street, where he is buying a new shirt because he got paint all over the one he was wearing to lunch. He will be here in about five minutes. Do you guys not have each other’s numbers yet?”

  “We seem to have missed that. I don’t really know why.”

  Jonas ran his hand through his hair and then rubbed his stubbly jawline.

  “Do you have a minute so I can ask you some questions about some of the people in town? I’ve had some stuff happen lately and I don’t know if it’s normal or not,” Jonas asked.

  I waved him to the sofa.

  “Step into my office. Weird happenings in Harlot Bay is my department,” I quipped.

  Jonas sat on the sofa next to Carter’s pile of papers which I’d left sitting open. He looked down and saw the property transfer papers that had Coldwell printed on them.

  “This is weird. I was about to ask you about Sylvester Coldwell. What do you know about him?”

  “He’s a Harlot Bay real estate developer, one of many, from a family that has been here for a long time. I’m looking into whether there is any connection between fires in the past and real estate development purchases. I don’t know if he’s a friend of yours, but I think he’s sleazy and horrible and I don’t like him whatsoever.”

  Jonas smiled and raised his eyebrows.

  “That’s pretty much what I wanted to know. I had both him and Dominic Gresso coming to my office trying to get me involved in real estate development with them. I happened to buy these three really old houses over near where that warehouse burned down a couple of nights ago and have had both of them offering to buy them from me. I also had Dominic Gresso in here making big noises about referring work to each other and things like that. But at the same time, he implied that I was small fish in a big pond and he was the big fish. He was kind of a jerk.”

  “Yup, that’s Dominic. His family has been here a long time too. My Aunt Cass doesn’t like him because when he was twelve he went around saying he was selling cookies and she put in her order, which he never delivered.”

  “Nondelivery of cookies? That’s a rookie mistake, especially in a small town. Stuff like that will follow you forever,” Jonas said. “So, what is all this here?” he asked, pointing at the pile of land transfers.

  I told him I’d received them from Carter Wilkins and that it was background information on all the land transfers that had occurred over a number of decades.

  “I haven’t found anything suspicious yet, but I’ll keep looking.”

  “So you’re saying that I should stay away from both these guys?”

  “I wouldn’t trust either of them farther than you can throw them.”

  “Hello?” I heard Jack call from downstairs. My heart leapt at the sound.

  “Five dollars says he started painting without realizing he was wearing a nice shirt,” Jonas said to me as Jack came up the stairs.

  Jack walked into the office wearing what was clearly a new shirt, given it still had price tags hanging off it. He noticed and snapped them off before shoving them in his pocket.

  “Let me guess… you were at the house and you decided to pick up a paintbrush even though you had no intention of painting and a second later you had paint on yourself?” Jonas asked.

  “Yes, and?” Jack said, rolling his eyes at his brother but still smiling.

  Jonas turned to me. “Our dad handed down many gifts to us – great hair, wonderful eyes, sense of humor. Well, I mean, only one of us really got most of the gifts, but he also handed over the gift of starting work in inappropriate clothing. Dad would go to a building site to check something, pick up a paintbrush or a hammer and start working. It’s a real problem. They’re thinking of naming a syndrome after our family.”

  Jack stuck his tongue out at his brother, who clapped him on the shoulder as he went by and out the door.

  “Ready for lunch? Or are you going to be spending some time today being a fugitive from justice?”

  Obviously Jack knew I had been taken in for questioning and he was trying to joke about it, but for some reason the smile slipped away from my face.

  “I’m sorry. Too soon? Come with me to lunch,” Jack said.

  I recovered my smile when I kissed him.

  We went to a small Indian place two streets away called Curry Cauldron. I know it sounds like eating hot curry in the middle of summer is ridiculous, but the Curry Cauldron is well-known for its incredibly good air-conditioning. It was like stepping into a meat locker, and I swear I could see a plume of my breath in front of me.

  We found a small table in a darkened nook and I decided to dive into the subject of me and the police and get it over and done with.

  “I did get taken in for questioning about the fires in Harlot Bay. And I’m pretty sure most of the town knows,” I said over my menu.

  The butter naan looked good.

  “I heard there’s a special investigator in town. Why did you go in to have an interview with him? Hasn’t the Internet taught you anything about talking to the cops?” Jack said with a teasing smile.

  “Are you saying I need to watch what I say to you?” I teased in return.

  “I’m sure I could make you crack under questioning. Also, former policeman. I’m all for crime now.”

  I knew I was in that ridiculous romantic space when he could practically say anything and it would sound devilishly charming, but I couldn’t help being charmed. We’d had a great date at Valhalla Viking, although it had been cut a little short by the hedge fire that had pulled me to it. Now it was the middle of the day, and I was hoping against hope that there wouldn’t be another fire.

  “I know I probably shouldn’t have talked to him…” I began. We ordered some food (lamb rogan josh, butter naan, mango lassi) and while we waited I told Jack about the fires I’d been involved in. The bad wiring at the apartment building and at the house on our land. Zero Bend leaving a kettle on the stove. I stopped short of telling him about the fire at the lighthouse. Only Sheriff Hardy knew about that. Although, Carter Wilkins had caught us soaking wet from where we’d flown our broomstick into the ocean and I guess suspected that we’d been involved. Thus far he hadn’t printed anything about it. Actually, now that I think about it, it was strange that he hadn’t pursued the story. I wonder if Sheriff Hardy had dissuaded him?

  Jack asked a few questions here and there. The delicious food arrived and we ate.

  I told him about going out to the warehouse because I suspected that empty places were being burned down, and the coincidence that it did burn down. I felt like I could trust him, but of course I could never reveal that I was a witch. I mean, if we ended up together, eventually I would have to tell the truth. Just like Molly and Luce would tell Will and Ollie at some point. But that was a secret to be revealed another day very much in the future.

  By the time I’d finished the story, Jack’s voice had turned grave.

  “It doesn’t look good. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence and people have gone to jail for less. The good thing is that you’re not guilty. I know it sounds obvious, but you’re not the arsonist and that means they won’t find any evidence of you where there has been a fire. If you really want to seal the deal, you should probably go away for a month. The fact that there could be a fire while you’re gone means you didn’t do it, unless of course you have an accomplice.”

  “The only accomplice I have is a little black cat who eats too much cheese.”

  “Oh, a little black cat, did
you say? That changes everything. You’re definitely going down for this. Everyone knows that black cats are pyromaniacs. Why are you protecting him? What do you and that cat have against Harlot Bay?” Jack said, grinning at me.

  We finished our lunch, changing topics to what he was working on. He’d taken a renovation job working for a little old lady who wanted to modernize her kitchen.

  “Actually, you should see her house and library. It’s really amazing. Do you want to check it out? It’s only three streets away. She’s off visiting friends while I work,” Jack said.

  “So someone told you I have a weakness for books?”

  “Do you? Well, then, let’s definitely go to this library right now!”

  I laughed, the sudden thought of kissing Jack in someone else’s library coming into my mind. I knew it was absurd, but at the same time it felt like something I very much wanted to do.

  We got out of there and went to Jack’s truck, which was parked nearby. It still smelled of leather and man and sawdust. We drove the three streets and parked. Jack wasn’t wrong. It was really a mansion, with giant marble pillars and a balcony. The garden was simply spectacular and filled with colorful plants and rows of thyme and rosemary. Bees lazily bobbed about.

  “Come in and check this out,” Jack said, leading me to the house. He opened the door and we went inside, entering into a cavernous hallway with gleaming polished wooden floors.

  “Wow,” I breathed. I followed him in through to the kitchen, which was clearly being renovated. There were sheets all over the floor to stop any drips of paint, and the cabinets all along one wall had been disassembled. Nearby, there was also a wall freshly painted in light cream. I noticed for the first time that Jack had a few dots of that on his boots.

  “So Jonas was right? You were in here doing something else and then you picked up a paintbrush?”

  “I stopped by to grab some timber measurements and then I saw the wall. I thought I’d test the paint to see whether it looked good against the cabinets. And… then I got paint on myself,” Jack explained.

  He grabbed my hand and pulled me through to the library.

  Oh. My. Goddess.

  Floor-to-ceiling shelves. A library ladder. Comfy single chairs and tasteful small wooden tables. A translucent green vase of flowers almost glowing in the light coming through the window.

  “Muh,” I said, trying to take it all in.

  “Nice, huh.”

  “Muh,” I repeated. So many beautiful hardcover books.

  “Okay, gotta get back to work now, so I’ll take you back to your office,” Jack said, touching me on the shoulders.

  I hadn’t kissed him yet, so I took this opportunity to step a little closer and smiled at him. Jack did the same and then kissed me in front of the collected works of Charles Dickens. The kiss went on for longer than I anticipated, and by the time we pulled apart, my heart was thudding in my chest. I knew if I didn’t get out of there soon I might do something that I hadn’t planned on doing. Note, I did not say do something that I would regret. I was certain I would not regret it. Nevertheless… we’d hardly dated at all, and so I cleared my throat, straightened my clothes and smiled at Jack before telling him it was time for me to go to my office. He drove me back, both of us casting sideways glances at each other. I felt like I was a teenager again, out on a date my parents didn’t know about.

  Outside my office, I kissed him goodbye, the urge to keep kissing him strongly pulling at me. I finally managed to break away and get out of his truck. It was a hot day, but Jack’s cheeks were slightly more flushed than the heat warranted. Jack winked at me and I winked back before he was gone, leaving me surrounded by tourists, floating off my feet.

  Chapter 15

  “And then what happened?” Luce said, her hands clenched in front of her like she was praying.

  “And then we kissed in front of the library,” I said.

  Molly, Luce, and Kira gave three united squees together.

  Apparently Jack driven us past Traveler and I’d been so caught up in going over to the house with him that I hadn’t even noticed. My cousins and Kira with their eagle eyes had spotted me. They’d known I was having a lunch date with Jack, but then seeing us driving off together was a whole ’nother thing.

  “Did he take his shirt off and do any work?” Molly asked.

  “No, we only kissed, it was perfectly innocent,” I said, somewhat censoring my story. If Kira hadn’t been there, I might have told the whole truth. I didn’t want her to get the idea that I had gone boy-mad.

  The analysis of my love life was cut short by Ollie arriving at the front door. He and Molly were going out tonight. For the first time in a while, Luce and Will weren’t going with them. Molly kissed him welcome but then raced off to get ready. She’d been so caught up in my story of my date that she still hadn’t changed out of her sweaty coffee clothes.

  Kira moved herself over to the kitchen table, tapping away on her phone and casting sideways glances at Ollie. As I’ve said before, I do not have the slightest bit of romantic interest in my cousin’s boyfriends, but both of them are damn cute boys.

  “So how’s the library going?” I asked Ollie after we’d taken a seat on the sofa.

  “Not much happening. Mainly helping Carter Wilkins try to find old records.”

  “Was that you who retrieved all the property transfer records? He gave them to me to look through.”

  “Yeah, I gave him most of them. The council abandoned its archives after a certain point, so the library ended up with them. There’s another entire warehouse full of old papers in desperate need of being digitized, but they’re doing all the police records first.”

  Sheriff Hardy had told me that the police were slowly moving over to the modern world, but there were decades of old files waiting to be scanned and transferred. I’d written a story on it for my newspaper. The whole process was moving incredibly slowly due to budget cuts. In most towns the sheriff had his own building, but to save money, in Harlot Bay his office was in the same building as the police station.

  “From what I hear, you’re going to be waiting awhile.”

  “Why are you looking at property transfers?” Ollie asked.

  I told him about the fires in town that had occurred all throughout our history and how there was a suspicion that a local real estate developer was possibly profiting in some way. By the time I was finished, Ollie was nodding his head rapidly and his face was lit up.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking the same thing. I’ve been writing a post for my website about the historical fires of Harlot Bay and as I was researching it, I realized a lot of the new buildings had been built on the sites of suspicious fires. It almost always comes down to the Gresso family or Coldwell. I understand that they are the two biggest real estate developers in town and so it appears perfectly legal and aboveboard, but if you look at it another way, they have profited enormously from these so-called accidental fires. I read a journal entry where someone claimed they’d been asked to sell their home by Coldwell and when they refused, their business burned down a few days later. It put them under financial strain, and so they were forced to sell.”

  I looked across at Luce and Kira and I could see they were thinking the same thing. Was there something suspicious going on? Or was it a fire spirit?

  “Have you found any evidence that there is an arsonist in town right now?” Ollie asked me.

  “Well, I had a suspicion that an arsonist was burning down abandoned buildings. I happened to go to one a few days ago that then got burnt down that very night. Then, of course, I got called in for questioning.”

  “Questioning? What happened?”

  Did he not know? I was so used to my cousins blabbing every single detail of our lives that I’d automatically assumed that Ollie would know I had been taken in for police questioning.

  I gave him a summary of there being an arson investigator in town and told him I’d gone in for questioning because I’d been at the addres
ses of some places that had burnt down, coincidentally. By the time I’d given my brief explanation, Ollie was looking very grim.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t investigate this further,” he said. “Did you know that there have been some journalists who have died in Harlot Bay as well?”

  Molly came out of her bedroom looking like a million bucks, wearing a red polka-dot dress. Even looking amazing, she couldn’t distract Ollie as he told me of the coincidental deaths of journalists in Harlot Bay. The most recent deaths were in the 1980s of two journalists who had been investigating fires in Harlot Bay.

  “The first one was ruled an accidental drowning, given they found excessive amounts of alcohol in her blood. But there was always a suspicion it was murder. For starters, a friend of hers reported she was afraid of water, to the point that she never went swimming or anywhere near the ocean. So why would she get drunk and then hop in some random rowboat to try to make her way across to Truer Island? The second one was suicide. He hung himself, even though his friend said he never expressed any suicidal thoughts and in fact only two weeks earlier he’d bought a new house. He’d been packing at the time and then apparently just decided to make a noose and hang himself off his back porch.”

  “So you’re saying there was some murderer from the 1980s who killed journalists who were investigating fires and now Harlow is investigating fires and someone is going to kill her!” Luce said.

  “I hope not. But between that and some other deaths that have occurred even further back for journalists, maybe it’s something you should give up on. Let it go, get out of town until they find who it is, and then think about coming back,” Ollie said.

  “Okay, I think that’s enough murder talk for tonight, honey,” Molly said, grabbing Ollie by the arm. She hustled him out. As soon as Ollie was gone, Kira disappeared to her room.