Ian chuckled as his glass met Alex’s. “Something about this crazy woman keeps me coming back for more.”
Grace smacked him playfully on the knee. “You like a little bit of crazy, remember?”
“That’s true,” he agreed, leaning in to kiss her. “Something must be wrong with me.”
“There’s a lot wrong with you, but your choice of fiancé isn’t it,” Alex teased before giving Grace an approving look. He raised his glass again. “When I first met you, Grace, I wasn’t sure what to think. You were bossy, sarcastic, and, worst of all, a pain-in-the-ass skeptic.” Grace’s brows rose even as a laugh bubbled out of her. He continued, “But I’ve enjoyed watching you become a believer and seeing my best friend torment himself over you. I think if anybody can put up with his moody ass for the rest of their lives, it’ll be you.”
Grace laughed again, clicking her glass to his. “You’re probably right.”
“Excuse me?” a short, timid-looking African-American woman interrupted, approaching their table. She was young—no more than twenty—with tearful brown eyes and a tremble to her lips. “Are y’all Great American Paranormal?”
Ian offered her a concerned smile. “Yeah, we are.”
The girl clasped her hands under her elbows, eyeing them all in turn. “Bishop James said I’d find y’all here. I’m Holly Thompson’s niece, Abigail.”
Apprehension rose within Grace. “Is Holly okay?”
The girl nodded. “She’s much better, thanks to you. She told me everything that happened, including what y’all did. I-I think I need your help, too.”
“With what?” Ian asked, his brow furrowing.
“Well, before I knew that the Ouija board was what caused all of this, my friends and I played with it…I think something came through. Something that hasn’t left.”
Grace looked to Jackie, who was eyeing the girl intently.
“A shadowy aura hovers over her…an entity has attached itself,” Jackie said quietly, sympathy and a growing alarm in her voice. “Have you been having nightmares of an…erotic nature?”
“Every night,” Abigail confessed, tears coursing down her cheeks. She hugged herself tighter. “It won’t leave me alone. It’s like I’m being…” her voice lowered to almost a whisper, “It’s like I’m being raped.”
Jackie pursed her lips, then faced the others. “An incubus.”
Grace’s eyes widened. “A what?”
“A demon whose sole purpose is to sexually assault the living,” Jackie explained.
Ian squeezed Grace’s hand beneath the table, meeting her eyes. “Looks like that trip home will have to wait, Doc.”
She gave a weak nod, still bewildered by the concept of an incubus. “Whatever. We can handle this. Right?”
“If not us, then who?” Ian reminded her before facing Abigail. “Of course we’ll help you.”
Relief softened her features. “Thank you.”
Jackie slipped out of the booth and reached for the girl’s hands. “I promise we will do all we can.”
Grace stared down at the last of her wine, pushing aside the disappointment she felt that they weren’t going home just yet. In its place, a sense of purpose flooded in, along with a thrill to face this new, unexpected challenge.
She tossed back the wine, then accepted Ian’s hand as he helped her stand.
“You sure you’re okay with staying a while longer?” he asked as the others headed out of the restaurant.
Grace gave him a daring smile, one eyebrow cocked. “I am if you are.”
He grinned and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Good answer, Doc.”
His love roared louder than her demons.
—Unknown
ABOUT KATIE JENNINGS
Katie Jennings is the author of the popular fantasy series The Dryad Quartet as well as the award-winning romantic family drama series The Vasser Legacy. Her paranormal romance, So Fell The Sparrow, won an Honorable Mention in the 2014 Readers’ Favorite International Book Awards. Her bestselling contemporary romance, Things Lost In The Fire, is a semi-finalist in romance in the Kindle Book Awards. A Los Angeles native, she now lives in beautiful North Idaho with her husband, who thinks she’s the biggest nerd ever. She’s a firm believer in happy endings and loves nothing more than a great romance novel.
PREVIEW OF UP IN THE PINES
CHAPTER ONE
“THE BODY’S THIS way.”
Deputy Sheriff Lark Galloway stepped nimbly over a fallen tree trunk carpeted with moss, her weathered hiking boots sinking into the rich soil beyond. Faded pine needles and the skeletal remains of pine cones littered the forest floor and crunched beneath her feet.
“You sure you remember the way?” she asked, her breathing practiced and consistent as she navigated the terrain. Her length of dark brown hair was swept back in a neat tail, clear of a long face made masculine by smooth angles and a notable cleft in her chin.
The young man adorned in flashy new L.L. Bean outerwear that she followed wasn’t nearly as capable. He huffed and puffed and shivered with what she imagined were more nerves than a chill, though the October air did have a distinct bite to it. Pieces of black hair poked out from beneath his bright red beanie, a sharp contrast to the pasty white of his face.
He gave a curt nod. “Yep. It was right up here.” He paused, his eyes scanning the expanse of trees. “Somewhere…”
Lark stopped beside him, her hand lowering instinctually to her holstered pistol as she followed his gaze. “You said you found it near a damaged tree?”
“Yeah. The tree looked like it’d been struck by lightning or something.” He glanced up as a light mist began to fall, scrunching his face against the wetness. “Oh, great.”
“Let’s keep moving.” Lark urged him onward, wondering if he was leading her on a wild goose chase. She never knew what to expect with tourists, but generally they were as green as the pines were tall. “Keep an eye out for bears. It’s nearing dusk.”
He faltered. “You really think we’ll run into one?”
She regarded him through heavy-lidded jade eyes, unamused by his lack of preparedness. “This is their home you’re intruding upon, Mr. Lowry. You’d do well to remember that.”
He gulped, but nodded before continuing.
As they walked, she felt the sick feeling in her gut grow stronger. When Kevin Lowry had shown up at the sheriff’s department in a panic declaring he had discovered a body in the woods, she hadn’t really believed him. It was common for tourists’ imaginations to run wild while on a hike through the desolate forests of Montana, leading them to believe they had seen all manner of odd things. She thought she had heard it all. Of course, no one had ever claimed to have found a body before.
In her eight years as a deputy sheriff, the worst she had dealt with were drunk locals starting bar fights and the occasional domestic dispute. She had been trained to handle more, but in the tidy mountain communities of Missoula County life was often quiet and predictable. It suited her, as she valued the constant and the familiar. But every once in a while, she found herself craving a little more excitement.
She was seriously regretting that desire now.
There was a distinct change in the air, like she had walked through an invisible wall. The atmosphere was heavier, charged with an electricity that prickled the hairs on the back of her neck. Whatever caused it had her instincts on high alert. They screamed at her to run, to flee to safety. It was exactly the sort of feeling she imagined animals got when they scented the death of one of their own.
Only this wasn’t a smell. It was a sensation. A sudden, tremulous shiver that told her this was the site of something terrible. Something tragic and wrong.
At that moment, she saw the tree several yards in the distance. The lightning bolt had severed the trunk neatly down the center, carving a vertical line of exposed bark. The light amber wood stood out like a flame among the sea of charcoal gray trunks.
Kevin pointed. “There it is!”
He took off at a run, leaving her no choice but to race after him. Adrenaline pumped in her veins, joined by a horrible sense of dread. Her finely tuned body seemed to pull her back, advising her to stay away from her destination. Her equally focused mind wouldn’t let her.
“Stand back, Mr. Lowry,” she ordered just before he reached the tree. He doubled over, panting as he pointed once again, this time at the forest floor.
“It’s there. See it? Sticking up out of the ground.”
She did see it. Tucked into the bed of needles and cones was the perfectly rounded skull of a human being. Beside it, what she imagined to be rib bones and perhaps a leg or arm jutted up out of the earth. One look at the jagged slope of the ground had her determining that rainwater must have exposed the grave some time ago.
Kevin inched closer, his hands shoved deep inside the pockets of his jacket. “See? Told you I wasn’t crazy.”
Lark ignored him and knelt beside the bones, careful not to disturb them as she took a closer look. She was no expert, but she’d wager they had been buried for a very, very long time.
“Who do you think they were?” Kevin wondered aloud.
Lark reached for her radio and motioned for him to stand back. Just as she was about to call her partner to give him her location, she spotted the hole on the front of the skull. Her eyes narrowed as she lowered her radio and shifted closer, needing to confirm what she saw. Though her fingers itched to examine the neat, half-inch diameter circle cut through the yellowed bone, years of training had her resisting. Instead, she rested back on her heels and released a long, unsteady breath.
Kevin’s shaky voice broke the silence. “Wait, is that a bullet hole?”
Not willing to confirm or deny it, Lark raised the radio to her lips.
“Russ, come in.”
“Hear ya loud and clear, Sparky. Go ahead.”
Lark rolled her eyes at her partner’s nickname for her. “I’ve got possible human remains up here on Heller Ridge. Request back up.”
“Hot damn. So the tourist wasn’t kidding, huh?”
“Just get your ass out here.”
“Ten-four. On my way.”
Clipping her radio back onto her belt, Lark refocused on the pile of neglected and weathered bones. She felt the first stab of remorse hit her like an ice pick to the stomach.
There was no doubt in her mind that this person, whoever they were, had been shot point blank in the head. Murdered in cold blood, right in the heart of her forest. At that moment, the how and the why of it were unimportant. She simply took the time to ponder the heavy weight of death and how it would inevitably shake up the remote mountain town she’d been sworn to protect.
Murder, it seemed, had come to leave its mark on Eden Falls, Montana.
THE FORENSICS TEAM combed the area surrounding the body. When dusk set in, the use of high-powered flashlights became necessary. Clad in blue windbreakers and khakis, the team of four broke off on assignments; two to meticulously photograph and exhume the remains, two more to search for shell casings, weapons, or any other sort of evidence that might relate to the case.
Lark stood by with her partner, Russ, at her side, her arms folded and a thoughtful frown on her face. She watched the team with scrutinizing eyes, feeling protective over the dead person not just because she had been the first on the scene, but because this was her hometown. Even if he or she had not been a resident, they still died in Eden Falls. That made the case all the more personal for her.
She could sense Russ vibrating with energy, like a restrained horse impatient for a race. As a young rookie just shy of twenty four years old, he thirsted for action like he had seen in the movies. Soon enough, he would see that this kind of thing wasn’t anything like Hollywood made it out to be. For one, in reality, someone actually had to die. While he may not feel the weight of death hanging in the air, she certainly did. And what mattered most to her was not that there was a body in the forest, but that someone, somewhere, was missing a loved one and it was up to her to bring the family closure.
A hand fell over her shoulder, and she turned to face the lead detective of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department, Matt Fisher. He was a tall, mild-tempered man in his mid-thirties with a crop of dusty blond hair and quietly discerning brown eyes. At one time, she had considered him attractive, supposed she still did. But when he had married his high school sweetheart and had a couple of kids that infatuation faded into nothing more than a solid friendship.
“No sign of the bullet just yet,” he informed her. His gaze swept over the area, his lips pressed into a tight line. “Hell of a thing, isn’t it?”
Russ grinned, his thumbs tucked through the belt loops of his beige slacks. “You kidding? This is exciting.”
“Maybe for you,” Lark said drily. She turned back to Matt, all business. “So, what can you tell me?”
“Honestly? Not much.” He paused as one of the crew swept by with a clear plastic evidence bag holding the skull, another crew member following with a bag full of rib bones. They loaded both into a plastic container to be hauled back to the road where the cars waited. “For now, all we can tell is that the remains have probably been buried for twenty years or more. It’s pretty obvious that’s an entry wound in the skull, but until we examine it closer, we won’t know for sure. In the meantime, we’ll keep looking for the bullet. It might be buried here somewhere.”
Lark cocked her head. “Unless the victim was killed elsewhere.”
Matt nodded. “That’s a possibility. Unfortunately, given the amount of time that’s passed, there won’t be much evidence to go on. We’ll pick up what we can but the key now is to identify the body.”
“I’ll look up missing persons’ reports for the area from around twenty years ago and get you some names to start with,” Lark offered.
“Good.” Matt squinted up at the darkening sky, then whistled to the forensics team members, waving them over. “Time to go for tonight, guys. It’s getting too dark to do much good.”
A brisk wind blew past them, shivering through the trees above. Lark zipped up her jacket and nudged Russ with her elbow. “Ready to hike back?”
“Sure.” He held out a hand to shake Matt’s. “Always a pleasure, Detective. See ya around.”
“I’ll have Bev fax over the reports to you as soon as possible,” Lark told Matt, giving him a curt nod before following Russ through the trees.
Russ, for all his childish humor and laid back attitude, was a trained outdoorsman. Much like her, he had been going out in the woods his entire life, learning everything it took to survive. It was because of this that she valued his addition to her team, even if his immaturity got under her skin from time to time.
People often mistook them for siblings, if only because they had the same sable-brown hair and similar eyes, though his were more hazel than green. Lark felt the resemblance ended there, as Russ was all long limbs and height while she was lean and athletic in a compact, five-foot-seven frame. One time he had nearly outrun her during a training exercise, and she had learned not to underestimate his physical abilities. Despite his habit of inhaling an entire pepperoni pizza on his own, Russ was no slouch.
He was a good partner and the closest thing she had to a best friend. The five-year age gap between them made her feel slightly his superior, even if he was just as much of a deputy as she was.
The drive back to town took only minutes. They curved around a tight bend with a wall of trees on both sides, then crested over a ridge that took them within eyesight of Eden Falls.
No matter how many times she saw it, the town tucked among the rocky-faced mountains and towering pines took her breath away. Even now, with the sun long gone and the sky murky and dark, the view of log homes with warm yellow light shining through windows and smoke rising from their chimneys calmed her. This was home. Always had been, always would be.
The road straightened out into a mile-long strip that made up the heart of Eden Falls, lined with wood-panel
ed buildings with sloped roofs in varying sizes and colors. There was the Eden Falls General Store, the tiny shack-of-a-Post Office, the hardware and snow equipment store, the steakhouse slash cocktail bar where most of the locals spent their evenings, the sheriff’s department, ranger station, and several small boutique shops carrying Native American trinkets and wildlife souvenirs for the touristy crowd. Tiny roads twisted off the main strip into the hills around the town, branching off every which way so that the old-fashioned, log style homes had both privacy and stunning views of the Lolo National Forest and the jagged, white-tipped mountains.
Eden Falls was, in Lark’s opinion, the best kept secret in Montana. Over the years more and more people had discovered its abundance of hiking trails, scenic falls, and majestic mountain views, allowing the town to grow and flourish. Lark had watched it all happen, but as much as she valued progress, part of her wished for nothing to change at all. She wanted her little portion of heaven on earth to remain just as it was—charming, rugged, and a little bit wild.
With just shy of seven hundred residents year-round, there was very little that went on in town that everybody didn’t know about within one twenty-four-hour gossip cycle. The body would be the latest victim of a slew of rumors and bullshit, making it all the more important to get a jump start on identifying the remains and the exact cause of death.
Until then, her goal was to keep Russ from losing all control and spilling the beans prematurely.
She parked the cruiser in her usual spot in front of the sheriff’s department, latching onto Russ’s forearm before he could hop out. She fixed him with a no-nonsense stare.
“As much as it kills you, I need you to refrain from telling everybody in town about this, okay? I mean it.”
Russ patted her hand. “Gotcha. I won’t tell everybody. Just some people.” He grinned and exited the car before she could stop him again.
She sighed and followed him up the wooden steps to the station, envisioning strapping duct tape over his mouth. Her lips twitched at the thought seconds before she was bombarded by a wave of questioning from her team.
Of The Ashes: A 'So Fell The Sparrow' Sequel Novella Page 12
