The Haunted Pendant: A Paranormal Artifacts Cozy Mystery (Paranormal Artifacts Cozy Mysteries Book 1)

by Maher Tegan

  Still, the car was sharp, though not as sharp as its driver. Luther shut off the engine and unfolded his long frame from the driver’s seat.

  “Where’s Sybil?” I asked.

  He grinned, and my heart gave a little stutter. His strong chin had just enough stubble to make him look rugged, and though I hate to admit it, he looked great in the mint-green polo and faded jeans he was wearing.

  “Good morning to you, too,” he said, and my face warmed. That had been a little rude.

  “I’m sorry. I’m still getting caffeinated,” I said, returning his smile. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” Eli said, jumping in. “Now, where’s Sybil?”

  “She had some other business to take care of, but I came to help. She said she’d be at the house waiting once we figured out who Prudence is possessing and capture her.”

  “She didn’t trust us to do it?” Jake asked. “You didn’t have to come all this way for a simple abduction.”

  Again, not something I ever expected to hear in a serious discussion, but apparently that was my life now. I was just glad the pendant was the only artifact listed with that particular curse. Kidnapping was not something I wanted to make a habit of. Nobody looked good in prison orange, and I suspected honey-almond cream cheese wasn’t on the menu, either.

  “She did trust you. To be honest, I’m just curious about the town. I haven’t been out and about much, and I’d like to see how it’s changed since the last time I was here.”

  Ah, an opportunity for me to be nosy. Eli beat me to the punch, though.

  “How long’s it been since you saw it?” he asked.

  Luther smiled but shook his head. “A while. Long enough that I’m sure plenty has changed.”

  “Maybe not as much as you think,” I said, heading to my car.

  “Let’s take mine,” he said. “Unless you’re going to let me drive, there’s no way any of us can fit comfortably in that back seat. Besides, it’s a beautiful day to be in a convertible.”

  I disagreed there because as far as I was concerned, there was no such day. When it was hot, I wanted air conditioning, and we were in the time of year that hot was understating it. Even when the weather was nice, I hated riding in a convertible because my hair was constantly blowing in my face, and it was next to impossible to brush out the tangles later.

  “I have an even better idea,” Jake said. “Let’s take mine. Since we’re kidnapping somebody, it might be better to be in something a little less flashy—and a little more spacious—than either of yours.”

  “Good call,” Eli said, then pivoted toward Jake’s pewter SUV. It was the description of non-descript. “Shotgun.”

  That meant that I was in the back seat with Luther, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I did my best to sit up straight so that the bagel and quart of grapes I’d eaten for breakfast didn’t pooch my gut out like I was four months pregnant. I buckled up, giving him a smile as I did. In the thirty seconds it took us to reach the end of the drive, I’d shifted my weight three times and couldn’t quite seem to figure out where to put my hands. I frowned and settled on folding them in my lap. I was a little irritated at myself because I wasn’t used to not being comfortable in my own skin.

  I cast a quick glance at him from the corner of my eye and was disgruntled by the amused smile he wasn’t even trying to hide.

  “Relax,” he said. “I don’t bite.”

  “Are you sure?” Eli asked, twisting around in his seat, “because that smile looks a little wolfy to me.”

  Luther laughed. “Oh, believe me, when I’m being wolfy, you’ll know it.”

  I would have sworn his green eyes flashed with a hint of gold for a minute, but it had to have been a trick of the light. Eli arched a brow at me but turned back around in his seat.

  Luther took pity on us and changed the subject. “What’s in the folder?”

  Eli handed it to him. “Their older brother Connell drew some pics of the worst artifacts in the book and I copied the descriptions of them. We’re going to post them in the paper along with a hefty reward for their return. Hopefully, we’ll get some back the easy way,” he said. “I’ll upload all of them to our website, too.”

  Luther looked through the pages and nodded. “Not bad. It’s a good idea. Even if you get one back, that’s one less that you have to find.”

  “Or wait for,” I added under my breath. It had occurred to me that the only way we were going to get some of them back was after the curse had been triggered.

  “How did you prioritize them?” he asked.

  “By the ones that did the most harm, then we cross-categorized them with the ones that don’t have triggers,” Eli explained, taking the folder back.

  “What do you mean, triggers?” Luther asked, dark brows drawn down in confusion.

  We told him what Mom had found, and he nodded, his expression thoughtful. “That matches up with what Sybil said about them being good people,” Luther said. “I can’t say that I blame them entirely for what they did. It was wrong, but I also have a feeling they didn’t intend for the artifacts to show up over three centuries later to hurt innocent people.”

  I’d thought of the same thing. More than that, I’d been grateful for it. Without those fail-safes, we’d be buried under dead or otherwise-cursed citizens. It would have been so much easier if we lived in a magical community and could just make the announcement outright, but that wasn’t reality.

  My phone rang, breaking through my musings. When I saw it was James, I wanted nothing more than to swipe it to voicemail. I hadn’t had time to process dealing with him yet, and I didn’t want to have another conversation with him in front of strangers, especially Luther. He’d had an odd reaction to him the day before, and I didn’t feel like I had the mental energy to invest right then.

  Still, James might have information we needed.

  “You gonna get that?” Luther asked, tilting his head toward the phone.

  “I suppose so,” I said, then answered. I did not, however, put it on speakerphone.

  “Hello?” I said, trying to be as chill as he’d been the day before. The truth was that I had cared about him, and it had hurt when he’d rejected me. The anger had long since faded, but the hurt hadn’t. Neither had the guilt.

  “Hey, Sage. It’s James. Listen, I’ve been thinking. I reviewed the paperwork from the Hennessey’s, and I gotta say, I’m confused. I don’t understand any of it, and if, like you say, I’m going to be facing more of this, then I think we finally need to have that talk. Can you meet me for coffee? Just you? I don’t want to deal with Eli or your brother staring at me like I’m the Jerk of the Year while I’m trying my best to open my mind.”

  I would have liked to say that wasn’t fair, but that’s probably how it would have gone down.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m on my way to the meeting now. How about this afternoon? Say two?”

  “Two works. Sadie’s?” That was the local coffee shop. The coffee was only so-so, but the place was private.

  “Sadie’s will be great. See you then.” I pulled my phone away from my ear and disconnected.

  “What did he want?” Eli asked, his tone making it clear what he thought. Either that, or he was smelling something dead. My money was on the former.

  “He wants answers,” I replied, the weight of that settling on my shoulders. “He says if we’re gonna work together, he wants to understand.”

  “Oh. So now that it affects his job, he wants to know all about you,” Jake said, scowling at me over his shoulder. “You should have told him to piss off.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said, rubbing my temples. “But we’re probably going to need him. I can’t imagine we’re going to be able to fly under the radar, and when our names start showing up in connection to weird crap, it’ll be best if he’s on our side.”

  Luther hadn’t said anything like he had yesterday, and I was glad. This was none of his business. I didn’t even like talking about this m
uch of it in front of him.

  Eli turned in his seat. “I’ll go with you, Shmoo.” That was a pet name that he only broke out when he was trying to comfort me.

  I gave him a small smile. “Thanks, but he asked that I come alone. He thought maybe you two would be a tad hostile.”

  Luther finally spoke up. “Looks like he called that one right, at least. You don’t have to, you know. We can work around it.”

  I wasn’t sure why he was using the word we considering we’d only known each other for a whole twenty-four hours, but whatever.

  “It’s fine,” I said, sighing. “We need to clear the air, anyway. It’s been too long.” That was true. I thought I’d pushed past the whole ball of leftover emotions created by our disastrous parting, but I obviously hadn’t. It would be good to put the hard feelings to rest, or at least say what I’d tried to back then. That I was sorry. And maybe he’d say it, too, because I wasn’t the only one at fault.

  Jake stopped at an intersection, then hung a right toward the newspaper office. “Are you going in?” I asked Jake and Luther once the vehicle was stopped.

  “Nah,” I’ll wait here,” Jake said, but Luther opened the door.

  “I’d love to go in and see how much the process has changed,” he said. “Newspapers have always fascinated me.”

  I laughed as I climbed out. “It’s not like you can see the printing press.” I paused and thought for a minute. I wasn’t exactly an expert on the news delivery industry. “I’m not even sure they have a printing press anymore. Maybe it’s all done on a computer.”

  The look on his face was priceless. “Modern technology is savage. The printing press was one of the greatest inventions of all time, along with the telegraph. It connected the world in a way no other invention ever has.”

  I laughed and pulled my smartphone from my pocket and wiggled it at him. “I can look at whatever newspaper I want in about three seconds while looking at cute cat memes, listening to music, and texting somebody.”

  He pressed his lips together and shook his head. A lock of raven hair fell over his forehead, softening his rough-and-tumble look. “Written communication is a lost art. When was the last time you hand-wrote a letter or even a postcard?”

  I thought for a minute. “I signed Dad’s birthday card last month. Does that count?”

  “Savage,” he repeated, then opened the door to the Marauder’s front office and waited while Eli and I preceded him.

  That made me even more curious about his history, though I still didn’t have the nerve to ask him flat-out what his deal was.

  “Eli!” a short, rotund woman with curly gray hair said as she waddled around the counter, her white orthopedic shoes squeaking on the gray wood-grain laminate.

  “Ms. Marilyn!” He bent down to give her an enthusiastic hug. “You look ravishing as always!”

  She preened and patted her hair, then smoothed her floral dress. “Oh, you rascal, talkin’ up an old lady like that.” Her expression became admonishing. “When are you going to get a haircut? You look so handsome when you’re clean-cut, not that you don’t now.”

  “Now, Ms. Marilyn, if I cut my hair, how will everybody know I’m a pirate?” he grinned and squeezed her arm.

  She swatted at him, then turned her periwinkle gaze toward me. “Sage, dear, it’s good to see you, too. How’s your mother? I heard she had the flu a few weeks ago.”

  It had actually been a few months ago and had been a minor cold, but snowballs tended to roll downhill quickly in Marauders Bay. I was a little surprised it hadn’t gone to full-fledged plague, though Ms. Marilyn was at the top of the gossip chain.

  “She’s good,” I said, smiling at the matronly woman. “She sends her regards and says to thank you for the pie you sent for Dad’s birthday.”

  “Pshaw,” she said, flapping a blue-veined hand. “It was nothin’. Just a peach pie my mama used to make. Now what brings you two in? You need to place—” her words trailed as she caught sight of Luther, and she tilted her head. “Well, hello. Have we met?”

  He stepped forward and bowed over her hand. “I’m positive we haven’t, ma’am. I’m sure I would have remembered such a lovely woman. We’re just here to secure a placement in the paper. A full-page one if you could.”

  “Oh, of course,” she said, though she didn’t stop looking at him. She returned to her place behind the counter and pulled out a notepad. “I know how to use that computer, but I prefer to hand-write it, as well. Never hurts to have a backup, especially with the way all this technology goes down all the time. Now, let me see what you want to insert.”

  Eli handed her the ad he’d composed while I was getting dressed. “We had a mix-up at the gallery. We’d already sold these items, but when Ms. Dilley’s men came to pick up items for the auction, they were accidentally boxed with them. They’re important to the gentleman that bought them because they’re family heirlooms and all he has left of his grandparents. The house sold, and he didn’t have the money to buy it. Just this stuff.”

  That was my Eli, silver-tongued and slick with a cover story when he needed to be.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “That’s terrible. The Sunday edition’s already gone out, but I can get you in tomorrow’s. Will that do?”

  “That would be perfect,” I said, smiling as I pulled my wallet from my purse. “In fact, can you run it all week? We’d really like to get these pieces back.”

  “Of course. And I’ll cut you a deal on the cost. That poor man. He deserves to have something to remember his family by.”

  She drew up the bill and made sure she had all the information, then we paid and left. Luther had left shortly after his exchange with Ms. Marilyn, though I hadn’t noticed until we went to leave.

  He and Jake were in a spirited debate about the most historically significant gems when Eli and I climbed back into the SUV, and they continued it for the five minutes it took us to drive to the community center where the committee was holding the meeting. That gave my imagination plenty of time to run wild, but I told myself that Ms. Marilyn had seen a lot of handsome faces in her time, so I was probably giving her comment way too much headspace.

  Still, I didn’t like having questions but not answers, and nothing drew me to the flame like a good mystery.

  Chapter 17

  I was surprised by how many people were at the meeting. For some reason, I’d had an image of a handful of people arguing over where to put the fish-n-chips trucks and kiddie games, but that wasn’t the case. At least thirty people were mulling around in the parking lot, all of them holding clipboards, laptops, or notebooks.

  “Wait,” I said before getting out of the truck. “Won’t they recognize us?”

  “Not if we do this,” Luther said, and I jumped when he turned into a blond guy about my age. He wore the same outfit, but I’d have never guessed who he was if I hadn’t known.

  “Oh,” I said, a little irritated that I hadn’t thought of it. We’d all practiced glamours since we were kids, so it should have been the first thing that popped to mind. I blamed my distraction on the dark-haired—or rather, blond—guy beside me. Eli, Jake, and I followed his lead, then climbed out of the vehicle and strolled toward the group as if we belonged there.

  It took us a minute to pick the women who’d been at the Hennessey’s from the crowd, and by the time we did, a tall blonde woman moved to the long table at the front of the room and called the meeting to order. People shuffled around to find a seat in the rows of chairs set up in front of the table, and two older ladies glared at us when we plopped down where they’d obviously intended to sit. Those seats put us directly behind the three women we were there to see, though, so they could either like it or lump it.

  “How can we tell?” Eli whispered to Luther, who was sitting between us.

  “Listen for her speech pattern,” Luther whispered back. “There’s no way she’s adapted her language yet, so she should stand out like a sore thumb. Also, she might appear clumsy because she
’s probably not used to the body yet, either. Women her age in her time didn’t tend to be ... portly like these ladies are.”

  Both good points, but if being clumsy got you exorcised, I may as well have grabbed my swimsuit and prepared for the holy water dousing right then and there. I decided to focus on the speech.

  It was just our luck that the women were good little meeting-goers and didn’t so much as whisper the entire time the people in front were talking. Instead, they sat and listened to every word being uttered.

  I shifted my weight and tried not to focus on the fact that Luther’s knee was up against mine. I would have moved the chair over a little, but that would have been obvious. I did my level best to think of him in his old-man body, wishing that was the form he’d chosen. When that didn’t entirely work, I imagined him as a rat shifter, eating old chicken wings out of a dumpster. I chanced a quick glance at him out of the corner of my eye. Though his attention appeared to be laser-focused on the women in front of us, a small smile curved his lips.

  When the woman up front called for people to break into their subcommittees, I’d never been happier. The three ladies in front of us stood and smoothed their slacks, then picked their purses up off the floor.

  “Dave’s over there,” the one who’d been walking the bulldog said. “He was supposed to get the dimensions of the vendor spaces so we can start assigning spots.”

  The other two nodded and followed her, and we stood and tried to stay with them without appearing obvious.

  “Excuse me,” Eli said, tapping the lady who’d been walking the bulldog on the shoulder. “I thought I heard you mention vendors. We just arrived from Port Charlotte. We booked a slot for our shrimp po’boy stand, but I forgot the paperwork at home and can’t seem to find the email. Can you tell us where we should park? Right now, we’re in the Walmart parking lot, but they told us we had to leave.”