by Tegan Maher
“Then, in that case, why are you home? Why aren’t you out trying to find whoever actually did it?” He flipped his long, furry ears forward and raised his brows. “Or did she do it? If she did, then you need to find somebody better to blame it on so she doesn’t go to jail.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course she didn’t do it. And if she did, you know that’s not how we’d have to deal with it.”
He shrugged. “You modern people get all worked up over the strangest things.”
“Yeah, I can see how murder’s a dumb thing to get worked up about. At any rate, I came home because Hunter’s going to have to work this out, and I didn’t want to stay without him.”
Belatedly, I realized Gabi’s truck wasn’t parked in her regular spot in front of the barn, so I asked Max about it.
“I’m not her babysitter,” he groused as we climbed the steps to the house. “She was here earlier to feed, then she left. Said she’d be home later tonight, but not to wait up.”
Not that I didn’t love her, but I was a little relieved that she’d decided to take her Friday night off. I was beat and just wanted to relax and enjoy the peace and quiet. Rather than go straight to my room, I poured myself a glass of wine and poured a couple blurps of scotch into Max’s bowl, then took them both to the porch along with my fluffy blanket. We wouldn’t have many more decent nights, so I might as well enjoy them while we did. Max and I chatted a little, but mostly we just sat in the darkness, me curled up on the porch swing, and he on his bed a few feet from it, and sipped and enjoyed each other’s company. He’d been with us for as long as I could remember, and even though he could be crude and abrasive, he was part of the family, and words weren’t always necessary.
“So I have to ask,” he said after a few minutes, “what are your plans now that Shelby’s moved out?”
“What do you mean, plans?” I asked, taking a sip of my wine.
“I mean, I’ve been watching you and Hunter dance around the whole issue of ... taking things to the next level, as your generation likes to say. Is he willing to get rid of his house and live here? It’s not like you can walk away. Not with the horses and chickens.”
I pulled in a deep breath and released it. “We haven’t really talked about it. I mean, I can’t just ask him to give up his house.”
“Why not?” he asked. “That’s the most sensible option, and he’s been staying here most of the time, anyway.”
“Yeah, I know.” I pushed my foot against the cool boards of the porch to set the swing in motion, then pulled it back under me. “But I feel like we were off-balance for so long, and now we’re on equal footing again.”
“Off-balance?” He cast me a curious look.
“Yeah, you know. The whole magic thing. And me being a trouble magnet. For Pete’s sake, we had a group of witches bent on killing us and taking over the world, and he just had to stand back and let us deal with it. I can’t imagine how helpless that must have made him feel.”
Max snorted. “That’s incredibly offensive, you know, and given the mindset toward women with which I was raised, the irony that I’m the one pointing this out would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic.”
“Offensive?”
“Yes, offensive. In essence, you’re implying that he has some sort of caveman mentality about being your protector. I’m sure he worries about you, but I don’t think you’re giving him the credit he deserves. It’s insulting to the poor guy, now that I think about it. I’d bet my last bottle of scotch that his masculinity is not tied to being your hero, at least not in the way you think. If it were, he wouldn’t still be here.”
Though it seemed simple, it was quite a bit of intellectual and emotional information, and it was going to take me a minute to unpack it and examine it.
The sound of the crickets and the gentle sway of the swing—helped along, I’m sure, by the wine—soothed me and helped wash away the stress of the day. The temperature dropped several degrees, though, so when I drained my glass, I rose from the swing. “Ready for bed?”
His bowl was empty, and his muzzle was already resting on the wooden planks of the porch. He startled a little, then pushed himself to a standing position.
“I am,” he said. “If you’ll remember, I’d already retired when you arrived and woke me up.” He bumped my hand with his nose to take the sting out of his words as we went inside. “But I’m glad you came home. I much prefer my inside bed, and I’m sure you’ll rest much better here than on some air mattress in the middle of nowhere.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” I said, twisting the lock on the door.
“Of course I am.” He turned twice on his bed before settling down onto it.
“G’night, Max.” I flipped on the nightlight on the entry table and headed toward the stairs, more than ready to crawl into my bed.
“G’night, Noelle. And don’t worry,” he said, his voice already slurring a little, “everything will work out the way it’s supposed to. I’ll be down here, keeping guard, so sleep well.”
I smiled in the darkness as I padded up the stairs. He was often rude, crude, and a colossal pain in the butt, but inside, he loved us as much as we loved him. He wasn’t one for words, but every once in a while, usually when it mattered the most, he’d let it peek through in little ways. He was one complicated guy, but I was grateful for him, barbed words and all.
I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, but I didn’t sleep well. My dreams were weird and fragmented, flipping back and forth between Jackson’s murder and Shelby. The one about Jackson was always the same and made no sense. He was in a room surrounded by flowers of all colors, then the beautiful blooms would close in and wrap themselves around him, suffocating him.
As far as the ones about Shelby, I’d been having the same sort of dreams about her for a couple of weeks, and even though I wrote them off as my subconscious worrying about her, they still bothered me. They were those sorts of dreams that felt so real even though they were strange and made no sense. Sometimes, she was in what looked like an old library arguing with a monkey—like I said, weird—and others, she was standing at a crossroads, looking down first one road, then the other.
College was all about making decisions about your future so that one at least made a little sense to me. That night, though, it was, of course, the monkey one. Because my brain couldn’t be content with just dumping a little weirdness on me at a time.
CHAPTER NINE
When my alarm went off, I was already awake but still lying in bed, hoping to catch a few more Zs. I hadn’t had the best night’s sleep, but I didn’t have time to laze around if I wanted to stop and get coffee before I went to get my hair done.
The night before, I’d called and scheduled an appointment at the Clip N Curl, the local beauty salon, and Belle, the former owner and current resident ghost, did not tolerate tardiness. With all the other stress the visit was sure to bring, I didn’t need to add a chewing out from her to the list. I loved Coralee, the owner, but I was dreading my appointment. I always felt like a goose cruising in just in time for Sunday supper whenever they thought I had information they wanted, and I was sure today was going to be one of those days. You see, the salon wasn’t just a place to get a good cut or mani/pedi. It was Keyhole Lake’s information hub.
Nothing went on in the town without the girls knowing about it, which is why I’d scheduled the appointment even though I’d known the vultures would descend even on such short notice. I always joked and said I didn’t have to worry about keeping track of myself. If I forgot what I’d done the night before, I’d just ask the Clip N Curl crew. They had good hearts for the most part, though, and Coralee mostly used her powers for good. She didn’t have much tolerance for mean-spirited scuttlebutt, and outright lies were strictly forbidden except in the direst of cases. In those instances, she preferred to call it manipulating the truth to bring about the desired outcome.
Sometimes, a little twist here and there was a must in order to serve the
greater good. For example, we’d had an instance where we’d run into some cursed rings that caused a lot of trouble before we could get a handle on it. The poor preacher had whacked his assistant right on the fanny while he’d been under magical influence, and Coralee had spun it so that he’d saved her life by killing a wasp, which the befuddled girl was deathly allergic to.
That particular mess had required a few white lies and a couple whoppers in order to keep folks from getting shish-kabobbed by the court of public opinion. Thankfully, Coralee knew just which ears to put the bugs in to make sure they made the rounds. She also knew how to guilt you to death when you were late, so I silenced the alarm with a slap and pushed out of bed, shivering when my feet hit the cold wood floor. It was almost October, and nights were getting chilly more often. Fall in Georgia was often like a box of chocolates, Forrest Gump-style. It wasn’t anything for it to be seventy-five or eighty one day, then sixty a couple of days later, and now, in October, the nights were dipping into the fifties. That may not sound cold to somebody facing a snowstorm, but to us warm-weather folks, it was downright freezing.
Casting one last longing glance at my warm bed, I shuffled to the bathroom to get ready. At least I didn’t have to worry about doing my hair. After pulling on the first pair of jeans and tee-shirt I could find, I yanked the think mass of red curls through the loop in a Bulldogs hat, shoved my feet into my sneakers, and dashed out the door.
“Hey!” Gabi, my roommate and close friend, called to me from the barn. Since I’d planned to be gone for the weekend, she was doing my share of the weekend chores. She leaned the poop fork against the wall and trotted toward me, the left strap on her bibs flopping as she did. “Where’s the fire? I wanna hear all about what happened yesterday, and you were already in bed when I got home.”
“Yeah,” I said, giving her a suspicious look. “That’s kinda a regular thing lately. Where’ve you been spending so much late-night time at?”
Her cheeks flushed, and she made it a point to look everywhere but at me. “Oh, you know. Just doin’ stuff.”
I arched a brow. “Stuff. Okay. And is there a gentleman attached to this stuff?”
She scuffed a rock with the toe of her sawdust-covered sneaker and shoved a stray lock of dark hair behind her ear. “Maybe. But I really don’t want to talk about it yet, okay?”
I sighed. When it came to men, Gabi had about the same luck as Raeann did. Between the two of them, any psychopath who entered the county had better-than-average odds of getting a date. Not that either one of them did it on purpose—it just worked out that way. They all seemed perfectly normal until they tried to kill us.
To be fair, that had only happened once each. But both times had been enough to make me worry about them more than I already did.
“At least tell me he’s somebody you’ve known for a while rather than somebody who’s just landed in town.”
Her mouth curled up into a half-smile. “You could say that. I’m pretty sure you’ll approve when and if we decide to move things to the light of day. For now, though, we’re still feelin’ things out. If you must know, we went to dinner and a movie over in Eagle Gap.”
“Gabi! Is he too ashamed of you to take you out in public here?” I narrowed my eyes. “If that’s the case, you’re too good for him.”
She held her hands out and laughed, her brown eyes sparkling. “No, for Pete’s sake. He’s not ashamed of me. I’m not ashamed of him. We just don’t want to throw things into the public hopper yet. You’ll be the first to know, okay? I promise.”
I grumbled a little and scrunched my nose at her. “I better be. If I hear about it at Coralee’s, I’m gonna be pissed.”
“You won’t hear about it from Coralee,” she said, shoving me toward my truck. “I unhitched your trailer for you. And cleaned it out. You’re welcome.”
I grinned at her as I climbed into my truck. “I’ll let you off the hook for now, but this conversation isn’t over! Ice cream and binging Supernatural this week?”
She laughed and turned back to the barn. “You’re on,” she called over her shoulder. “But I’m not promising anything other than girl time!”
Addy, who’d been conspicuously absent the night before, popped into the passenger seat as I was pulling away from the farm.
“Do you know what she’s up to?” I asked.
“Course I do,” she said, her shimmering, gray-streaked red bun bobbing. “You don’t honestly think I’d just take her at her word that everything’s okay, do you?”
“Well when you put it like that, I feel kinda bad for bein’ nosy. She is an adult. She can make her own decisions.”
“Pht,” Addy said, flapping a translucent hand. “It ain’t got nothin’ to do with her bein’ an adult. It has to do with the fact that I care about her. I keep tabs on all you girls.”
“You’re not gonna start in on me about Hunter, too, are you?” When my aunt got her teeth into something, she didn’t let loose until she got what she wanted, and I didn’t want her adding to the mix.
“Start in on you about what?” she asked, her gaze snapping to me. “Are you two fightin’? You were fine when I left you at the fairgrounds yesterday afternoon.”
I shook my head as we drove down the tree-lined driveway. Oak trees draped with moss formed an archway over large parts of the road, casting it in sun-dappled shadow. Now that the leaves were changing, it was breathtaking, even though I’d seen it a thousand times. The horses were already out grazing, flicking flies with their tails as they munched their way across the pasture. The white fence stretched around the corner and out of sight, and I sighed with the peace it brought. No matter my frame of mind, the farm always soothed me.
“No, we’re not fighting. I was talkin’ about the whole moving-in-together thing.”
She waved me off, her silvery-green eyes going soft. “Honey, that’s between you two. You’ll know when you’re ready to take that step. It isn’t somethin’ I can tell you. You got a good head on your shoulders. Things’ll shake out the way they’re supposed to in their own time.”
I nodded. Now that I knew she wasn’t gonna nag me, I switched back to Gabi. “So, you’ve been keepin’ tabs on her?”
“Like I said, I keep tabs on all you girls. We’ve been through too much for me to let any of you wander too far off without knowin’ what you’re up to.”
“Shelby, too?”
“Shelby, too,” she replied, a shadow flitting across her features before she could hide it. She shimmered a little and my heart rate picked up.
“What’s goin’ on with Shelby? Is she okay?” My mind flickered back to the weird dreams.
“Yeah, she’s okay,” she said. “I just popped in on her yesterday. She’s fit as a fiddle.”
I wanted to press more, but I knew if there were something really wrong, Addy’d have told me even if Shelby chose to keep it mum. Beyond that, my aunt practiced a live-and-let-live policy when it came to sharing private information. That didn’t stop me from trying to get more info about Gabi, though.
“So, what’s Gabi been up to?” I asked as I flicked on my blinker to turn onto the main road.
“That ain’t my story to tell. She’s not in any danger, and she’s not doin’ anything crazy, so just let it be. Just like you, she’ll deal with things in her own time and way.”
When she compared the two, I felt bad for pushing. “Okay, then, as long as she’s okay.”
“She’s fine.” She turned to look out the window, and after a few seconds, she said softly, “Everybody’s fine. Or they’re gonna be.”
There was something in her tone that made me think she had something on her mind, but before I could figure out a way to ask her about it, she began to fade out.
“Enjoy gettin’ your hair cut,” she said as she disappeared. “That place is already buzzin’ about the murder, so prepare yourself.”
Great. If Addy was telling me to prepare myself, then I’d do better to forget about everybody else’s hi
de and worry about my own.
CHAPTER TEN
By the time I made it to town twenty minutes later, the sun had burned off the overnight chill and the temperature was crawling toward seventy. These were the days that made suffering through the blistering heat of summer worth it. I wasn’t a cold-weather person, so I was glad the powers that be had seen fit to plop me down somewhere where I didn’t have to deal with subarctic weather.
I glanced at the clock on the dash and breathed a sigh of relief. I still had twenty minutes until my appointment—plenty of time to skip down the street to Brew4U, Raeann’s coffee shop, and get a big cup of caffeine. It was never a good idea to go to the salon uncaffeinated. I figured I was gonna have enough problems navigating the madness even with a clear head—no way was I gonna face it before I’d had a cup of coffee. A big cup.
I pulled my truck into the alley behind the salon, which was only a block from Raeann’s, and parked in my regular space behind my shop, Reimagined, which was right next to Coralee’s. Brew4U was packed when I pushed through the back door. Raeann and Levana were hustling to keep up with the line that extended nearly out the door.
Raeann and I had run the shop by ourselves for the first year or so that it was open because, as a new shop, there just hadn’t been the extra money to hire anybody. She ran the business and coffee parts of things, I made all the pastries, and we both jumped in to put in the time behind the counter. Business had taken off so quickly that she had most of her loans paid off within a couple years, and now it was a successful, kitschy little shop with two employees and a loyal following, including Jimi and Roy, the two old men currently playing chess and arguing politics at their table by the window.
“Hey!” Rae said when I popped behind the counter. Pouring the milk she’d just frothed into a latte mug, she asked, “Have you learned anything new?”
