“I handled it,” I said, stopping her before she could go back to ripping into Adam again. “At least, I think I did.”
“Gee, why doesn’t that make me feel better?” Lacey said, her tone dripping with sarcasm.
“Isn’t there a spell you could cast on the house? A ward of some kind?” Adam asked, surprisingly serious.
“Maybe. I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, I made it clear that he isn’t welcome. But if he tries to approach either of you, you’ve got to be careful. As it is, he thinks the place is haunted…”
“Which, to be fair, it is,” Adam grinned, rebounding right back into unhelpful.
“Well imagine how excited he’d get if he found out that not only do we have a ghost, but a vampire, shifter, witch, and, well, whatever Gary is.”
Adam scratched his chin. “We really oughta figure that out. I can’t place his scent.”
“What does this guy look like?” Lacey asked, ignoring Adam.
“Here,” I pulled the business card from my pocket and set it on the counter between them. Boots wriggled, and I set him on the hardwood floors. I was fairly certain the drama had passed. The front side showed a thumbnail image of Nick and the back contained his business details.
“This address is for that new condo building they just finished putting up, on the other side of town,” Adam said, pointing at the line on the card. “He must have just moved in. I didn’t even think those units were available yet. Pretty swanky from the looks of it.”
“He’s kind of cute,” Lacey said, grinning softly.
Something she never does.
“Great.” Adam shook his head. “Ms. Undead and the PI. This love story basically writes itself.”
“Argh!” Lacey roared and lunged for Adam but he threw down the card and darted out of the kitchen before she could get around me and sink her claws…or teeth…into him. “He’s such a…such a…”
“Slow down there, princess.” I took the card from the counter and left Lacey fuming to herself in the kitchen. Hopefully she’d crack open a can of O positive and be back on the bright side before she really did go after Adam. I wasn’t sure who would actually win a fight between the two of them. All I knew is that it wouldn’t be pretty.
CHAPTER FIVE
AS I HURRIED TO leave the manor, early the next morning, I ran into—technically through—Posy on my way to the front door. I jumped back a foot as an icy chill swept over me, soaking through my skin like a blast of mountain spring water. I shuddered at the frosty sensation and rubbed my arms to try and re-circulate the blood. “Sorry, Posy. I didn’t—”
I winced as she finished my sentence, “—see me.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, still rubbing the gooseflesh on my arms. Where was my sweater?
“That’s all right, it’s far more unpleasant for you than for me. Or at least, that’s what I’ve been told by others.” She was gazing off to some point past me. I turned around and didn’t see anyone in the hall. It was my day to go and help Cassie work the opening shift, which at a coffee shop, meant waking up at an obscenely early hour. When I said goodbye to Boots and tiptoed out of the room, it was only a little past four am. The windows were dark, as the sun was still just thinking about rising.
Posy returned her attention to me. “I wanted to catch you before you left to thank you for clearing up the commotion yesterday evening.”
I ducked my chin. “Sure, of course.”
“Those two can be positively beastly.” Posy shook her head.
The irony in Posy effectively running a halfway house for supernaturals was that in life, she would have been absolutely scandalized by the thought of mingling with such riff-raff. Even without the supernatural part, we were a rather motley crew. Lacey was probably the most normal one, as much as it pained me to admit it. She might be spoiled, entitled, and downright bratty, but on the outside, no one would ever assume she was anything other than a ritzy resident of the small community. She’d gathered an impressive collection of vintage designer clothes over the decades since she’d been turned into a vampire. Her bottle blonde locks never faded and would remain the perfect honey toned blonde for all of eternity. And, as she usually had oodles of spare time on her hands before nightfall, she was always coming up with new ways to style herself to princess perfection. I wasn’t sure how she’d ended up at Beechwood Manor. Truthfully, I didn’t know all that much about vampire communities in general. But it seemed to me, that she could rocket to new heights and live some lavish life if she fell in with the right group. If she wanted to, she could escape the small town and be adored by dozens of vampire suitors. Then again, maybe that’s what she was avoiding.
“I think it’s repressed attraction,” I commented dryly.
Posy wrinkled her nose. “Well, whatever it is, I’m glad you’re here to keep them in check. They both run hot tempered and I’d hate to think what would happen if you weren’t here to handle them. I don’t know what we did before you arrived!”
“Well, I’ve got nowhere else to go, so I guess you can rest assured that the chaos around here will be kept in check.” I didn’t mean to sound bitter, but as my statement echoed back, I could hear a note of distaste creeping into my tone all the same.
Posy nodded and floated off. “Have a good day at work.”
“Thanks, Posy.” I backtracked to my room to grab a sweater, still chilled from the run-in with my ghostly landlord.
Boots meowed as I popped back into the large room. “Hey pal, sorry to wake you. I can’t stay. Someone has to bring home the bacon, or, in your case, the kibble.” I squatted down to pat his head as he peeked out from under the edge of the turquoise colored sheets. Apparently in my absence, he’d decided to take over the bed for himself. “Let’s just cross our fingers Nick doesn’t come in to visit today. Then again, at least he was a decent tipper…”
I stood and waggled my fingers at Boots before he disappeared under the bedding again. Now, I was going to be late.
Siren’s Song was located a little over a mile away from the Beechwood Manor, and most days, I kicked up a brisk pace and hoofed it to work. However, as I was running late, I went around the house, to a place in the thick wooded tree line at the back of the property. I huddled in the dark where no one walking by could see me in the exterior lights of the old house and tugged my necklace free from under my shirt where it lay against my chest. The chain and locket were made from antique rose gold, and while it looked vintage in style, no one would be able to guess just how old it actually was. The Larkspur. That was its name. It was a magically charged locket that had been passed down through countless generations in my family. It was handed down to the most gifted witch in each new line as a way to propel them forward even farther in hopes they might do greater things than the generation before. Each time the locket was passed down, a bit of the previous owner remained with the necklace, granting additional power to the new guardian.
The Larkspur had been gifted to me by my aunt Bethany on my seventeenth birthday, after I completed my formal academy training. Her greatest power had been the ability to hop from one place to another—and some rumored time—but so far, I’d only managed short distances.
Like from the manor, to work.
“Siren’s Song,” I whispered, running my thumb over the warm metal.
When I opened my eyes, I was standing in the back alley, behind the mega-sized dumpster. I sighed with relief. I didn’t use the power of hopping often. It was a dangerous kind of magic, tinkering with the unknown. But I’d carefully trained myself to appear in the alley, behind the dumpster, as to not cause alarm. No one would ever see me appear there. If I were to show up in the middle of the cafe, during business hours, in front of a rush hour crowd…let’s just say that Harvey, my assigned agent with the Supernatural Protection Agency, or SPA (though there was nothing spa-like about dealing with the brutes) would have me permanently relocated.
To the Otherworld.
I tucked the locket back un
der my shirt and stood from my crouched position. A strange scent was floating through the air on the early morning breeze. Peppermint. And strong. I fished the shop keys from my front pocket, flipped to the right one for the back door, and rounded the dumpster. I took two steps into the pool of light from the small, exposed bulb beside the steel security door and froze in place.
Five feet away, someone was sprawled face down on the pavement.
A chill ran over me and I nervously glanced over my shoulder to make sure I was truly alone and hadn’t stumbled into the middle of something. I flicked my wrist and a small orb of light hovered a fraction of an inch from my fingertips. I held up my hand and forced myself to take small, clipped steps towards whoever was laying in the alley.
I licked my lips and cleared my throat. “Hello? Excuse me…are you…”
I gasped, seeing the large dark puddle under the person’s head. Every instinct screamed at me to run fast and to not look back. Better yet, hop back to the manor and pretend I never left. Let this atrocity become someone else’s problem. But I couldn’t tear myself away.
I took the final step to the body and stooped over, lowering the magic ball of blue light to the person’s head to get a closer look. With my free hand, I brushed away the damp hair and gasped when I recognized the profile that was mashed against the pavement.
Peg Holloway was dead.
Once I realized who I was looking at, the rest of the details of the scene flooded over me. I spun around, taking it all in, desperately trying to figure out what happened. The first thing I realized was the nauseating scent of peppermint was even stronger. I covered my mouth and scanned the area. Hulking in the shadows, was an old beat up sedan. I recognized it immediately. It belonged to Peg. She would sometimes back it down the narrow alley to unload supplies rather than carting them through the front door of the shop. However, she never came in before the opening shift. In fact, she’d given me a set of keys within two weeks of getting hired on, solely so she wouldn’t have to open the shop in the event that one of the regular openers was sick and unable to come in. I’d thought it odd to trust someone who had just been brought on staff, but that had been before I’d realized the full extent of Peg’s aversion to mornings.
She wouldn’t have been unloading supplies this early in the morning. Which meant, she’d have been there lying in the alley dead, since the night before, after closing up with Frankie and Cassie. I shuddered at the awful truth and pulled my collar up closer against my neck, as all the hairs along the back were standing up.
“What do I do now?” I whispered to myself, spinning in a small circle.
I tossed the orb of light to hang over the area, spreading fragments of light over the full scene so that I could better figure out what had happened. There were three broken bottles of peppermint syrup lying on the ground under the bumper, like they’d been sitting on the trunk and had fallen to the pavement below and broke open.
Well, that at least explained the gag-worthy smell.
For some reason, the people in Beechwood Harbor were obsessed with peppermint drinks. Even though it was a beachside community, in the middle of spring time, people wanted peppermint mochas, cocoas, and even a splash of the sticky sweet syrup added to their afternoon tea. It was like the town was set in some kind of forever Christmas mode. Peg frequently purchased it three or four bottles at a time to keep us stocked up.
Staring down at the shattered remains of the bottles, gagging on the scent, I had a feeling I would never be able to smell peppermint again without thinking back to this moment.
I scanned the area one more time but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Nothing made sense though. Why would someone have killed Peg? Had they robbed her? I crept down the alley, careful not to step on anything, and called the orb of light over. The door to Peg’s car was still open but the car battery appeared to have died. Her leather purse was sitting in the passenger seat and a few folded up twenty dollar bills were stashed in the cup holder beside a Siren’s Song tumbler in the center console.
Not a robbery gone wrong. Unless they were the most incompetent thieves ever.
Through the noise and chatter in my brain, a new question entered the mix. Where was Cassie? She should already be inside. She opened most days, and usually arrived at the shop long before me. Cassie was the opposite of Peg in that she loved morning shifts and was always there, a smile on her face, and half of the morning checklist already completed by the time I rolled in the door.
I tiptoed to the back door and tried the doorknob. It was still locked and didn’t budge.
What was going on? I pulled my phone from my pocket and checked if there was a message from Cassie. Maybe she had car trouble.
Nothing.
Maybe she already found Peg and had gone to get help? Were the police already on their way?
I snapped my fingers and the orb of light popped like a bubble, leaving the alley dim and dank again. Another chill crept over me at the thought of being alone in a dark alley with a dead body. But at the same time, it didn’t feel right leaving Peg alone.
I put my key into the lock and let myself into the back room. I left the door propped open and stood in the doorway to place a call to the police. The dispatcher on the other end spoke with the cadence and volume of a zombie and for a moment, I wondered if she’d missed the part where I told her there was a dead body at my place of employment.
“The police are on their way, ma’am. Stay with me,” she repeated for the sixth time in the span of five minutes.
“I am.” I peeked out the back again. The body was still there. I didn’t know what I expected. I’d been around lots of undead, I mean, I lived with a ghost and a vampiress for crying in a cauldron.
But the actual dead. That was a different thing altogether.
CHAPTER SIX
“SO, TELL ME AGAIN, from the beginning, how did you come across the victim?”
I bit back a frustrated sigh at Police Chief Lincoln’s question. We’d gone through my story three times already and I was beginning to feel less like a concerned citizen and more like a suspect. “I walked to work—” Well, mostly. “When I came down the alley, to go in the back door, I saw the…body.” I couldn’t help but look past Chief Lincoln’s squared shoulder to the sheet that covered Peg’s body until the coroner arrived.
“And then?” Chief Lincoln said, his tone gentler this time.
I roused myself. “I went inside, called the police, and here we are.”
Jeffery Lincoln, the Beechwood Harbor police chief, gave me a lie-detector stare, as though he could peek right into my head and read every thought. It was unnerving to say the least. Especially, since I was fudging the part about walking to work. But what was I supposed to say? I appeared to work? Sure. I’d skip out on jail time and go straight to the asylum instead.
Which, as a study of history would show, weren’t known for being kind to my people.
“And did you touch the body or anything present at the scene?”
The sigh I’d been holding back, slipped out. “No. I didn’t touch anything. I swear.”
Chief Lincoln bristled and jotted down a note. “Okay, Ms. Boldt. Thank you for the information. We will be following up if we need anything else.”
Fantastic.
“I understand.” I glanced beyond him toward the crime scene that had been blocked off with thick, yellow tape that read: Police Line Do Not Cross. “So, what now?”
Chief Lincoln followed my stare. “I’ll begin processing the scene. A team of forensic experts are already en route.”
The morning light was starting to creep through the alley and my stomach clenched at the thought of Peg just lying out there, possibly for hours, while the team of police investigated. In a town like Beechwood Harbor, a crowd of people would soon form at the edge of the taped off section, hovering and gawking for the majority of the day and the gossip would rip through town like an out of control wildfire.
“Oh, my gosh!”
/>
I whipped around at the breathless cry that belonged to Cassie. She was standing on the other side of the tape and her hands flew over her mouth as her eyes darted between the police tape, Chief Lincoln, and me, and then back again, coming to rest on Peg’s body. “Cass—”
She ducked under the tape and came over to us. “What happened?” she burst out, her eyes locked on Chief Lincoln.
“Excuse me, miss. You’ll need to leave. This is a crime scene.”
Cassie’s face screwed up and she planted her fists on her curvy hips. “Miss? Don’t give me that, Jeffery. We’ve known each other since grade school!”
I reared back, surprised by the abrupt change from Cassie my even-keeled friend and co-worker, to the snappy, demanding version on my left. I glanced at Chief Lincoln and saw his shock register as well.
“Grade school? Really?” the question slipped out before I could rein it in.
Cassie nodded at me and then shifted her eyes to Chief Lincoln. “What happened?”
He sighed and put away his little notebook. “Cassie, Peg’s been…well…she’s passed away…” Chief Lincoln’s tone bordered on sweetness and it seriously freaked me out. What happened to the hard-ass detective routine he gave me? His dark, deep set eyes considered Cassie with care. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way. Please, let me escort you—”
Cassie shook her head. “No…that isn’t possible. What happened?”
Chief Lincoln took a step to his right, blocking Cassie’s view of the body behind his stocky shoulders. I hadn’t realized before how close in age he was to Cassie and I. I supposed his prominent position had tricked my brain into adding years to him. Police Chief seemed like a title that was reserved for older, more distinguished officers. If Jeffery Lincoln and Cassie had known each other since grade school, that would set him in his late twenties, maybe his early thirties. Perks of living in a small town, I suppose. Early promotions were possible as there were only three or four positions to fill.
Murder's a Witch: A Beechwood Harbor Magic Mystery (Beechwood Harbor Magic Mysteries Book 1) Page 4
