Remy stopped in his tracks. “I don’t think so.”
“There were only two of them chasing us out of hell,” Meri said. “But, either way, I’m going to run ahead and scope it out.”
“Wait,” I said, but Meri had already shot off into the dark.
“Chasing you out of hell?” Remy asked.
“Okay, so,” I began.
While we waited for Meri to come back, I told Remy the rest of the story about us falling into the hell hole. He listened with concern, but in the end, a smile broke out across his face.
“You know I’m going to say that you should have waited for me,” he said.
“I know that now. At the time it didn’t seem like such a big deal.”
“Someone is coming through the tree line,” Meri said as he trotted back over to us.
“What?”
“It’s two people. They definitely aren’t demons,” he added. “Not witches either.”
“Just two people emerging from the forest on my property in the middle of the night,” I said. “Well, let’s go check it out.”
We moved past the houses and I saw them. It was a man and a woman. Both were dressed in cotton t-shirts and khaki shorts. They carried huge packs on their backs, and I knew right away that they’d been camping.
As we got closer, I could see that they had sunken eyes and dusky skin. The woman swooned on her feet, and the man barely caught her. I rushed forward as they almost toppled over.
“We were lost,” the woman said. “Where are we?”
“You’re in Coventry,” I said. “What’re your names?”
“I’m Joanna and this is Finn.”
“Okay, Joanna,” I said. “I’m Brighton. I’m going to call the sheriff. This is my fiancé, Remy. We’ll help you up to the house and get you some water while we wait.”
“Oh, god. Water,” she practically moaned.
We helped them up to the house, and at the back door, Remy flashed me a look that I knew meant: Are we really just going to take them inside?
I gave him a nod and opened the back door. After all, I’d be opening the house up to complete strangers soon enough. The people were desperate and in need of help. I wasn’t going to make them sit at the patio table while we waited for Gunner.
That was when I noticed the woman was shivering and realized that with the cooler temperatures at night and the campers being dehydrated, they could have hypothermia too. Instead of calling Gunner directly, I called the county dispatch and asked for paramedics too.
I knew it was a bad idea to give severely dehydrated people plain water. Instead, I did a quick internet search for how to make rescue rehydrator from stuff you have in your kitchen.
It was basically a recipe of water, salt, and sugar. “Please just sip this,” I said. “I’m sure the paramedics will want to do an IV. How long has it been since you had water?”
“Two days,” Joanna said as she took a big gulp of the mixture. “Oh, sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” I said. “I just don’t want you to make yourself sick.”
Her companion, Finn, hadn’t said a word yet. He seemed like he was physically stronger than Joanna, but I thought that perhaps he was mentally traumatized by their time lost in the woods.
The water mixture I made for them to drink had a bit of subtle healing magic in it, and they were already starting to look better by the time the paramedics and Gunner arrived.
As I suspected, the paramedics put them both on IV fluids and decided to transport them to the hospital for further evaluation. Gunner ran their names and found that they were both missing persons.
“We’ll contact your families and have them meet you at the hospital,” Gunner said as the couple was wheeled out of my house on their respective gurneys.
Once the ambulances were gone, he returned to Remy and me to take our statements. We explained how we’d been out back when they came out of the woods.
“The renovations on those old cabins is going well,” he said.
The magic was working. Gunner, a human resident of Coventry, believed the bungalows had been on my property all along even though he’d been to my house many times and should have known they were new. It was a relief to know that it wouldn’t be an issue.
“It is. We’ll be ready to open the bed and breakfast on schedule,” I said. “You’ll be attending the grand opening party, right?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world, but I’ll be here mostly for work,” Gunner said. “From what I understand, you’ve pretty much invited the whole town. So my deputies and I will ensure that things don’t get out of hand.”
“Free security. That’s awesome,” I said.
“Oh, it won’t be free. I assume there will be lots of good food and treats at this shindig of yours?”
“Yes. Tons of good food and drinks. I’ll be getting a shipment of the seasonal harvest brew from the brewery in Canton. You’re welcome to stick around for a cozy little after-party once the main festivities, and your work, are done.”
“Of course. I can assume Annika will be there?”
“She will,” I said.
“Great. Well, I’m going to head home. I know where to find you if I should need to talk with you further about the campers.”
When he was gone, I went to the pantry to find some tea. I knew I needed to get to sleep, but I was wired. I had a tin of chamomile and valerian root tea, and I fully intended on drinking a double-strength cup.
“Tea?” I asked Remy.
“Sure,” he said with a yawn. “As long as it’s herbal.”
“Chamomile and valerian root,” I said.
“Oh, you’re not messing around.”
“I need to get to bed, but I’m wide awake now.”
“Well, that tea will do the trick,” Remy said with a chuckle.
He was right. I made it about three-quarters of the way through the cup when sleepiness kicked it. I felt blissfully tired and made my way up to bed.
Remy kissed me good night again in the hallway before he retired to the guest room. Meri jumped into the window to sleep. I knew he wanted to keep an eye out for trouble, but I wasn’t having it.
“Come to bed,” I said.
“I need to keep watch.”
“No, you don’t. You need to come to bed. You can’t stand watch while you’re asleep anyway, so you might as well be comfortable.” I patted the bed.
“Whatever,” Meri said, but he jumped from the window to the bed.
He settled at the end still facing the window, and I figured it was a good compromise. If it made him feel better, than I’d leave it be.
“Good night,” I whispered before I clicked off the lamp.
I was almost asleep when I felt him jump back off the bed into the window. I looked at him through one cracked open eyelid. Meri looked over at me, and I shut my eye quickly. If he really wanted to stand guard in the window all night, there was no point in trying to talk him out of it.
Chapter Five
Everything was quiet until the day of the grand opening Halloween party. I’d been a nervous wreck thinking we were going to have to call the whole thing off, but nothing else had happened. No more missing campers showed up on my property, and the huge demons hellbent on killing me and my familiar were scarce as well.
I wrote the demon incident off as a one-off event. It was nothing more than one demon coming after us for destroying its friend. That was what I told myself.
The bungalows were complete and ready for their first guests. Word of mouth must have traveled fast because they rented out minutes after I opened the online booking.
With the guest rooms decorated and ready to go, I turned my attention to the party details. I briefly considered hiring a caterer, but Annika assured me that we could handle all of the food. We wouldn’t be able to use magic to prepare food in front of the guests, but we could have most of it ready to go ahead of time.
I’d purchased a large commercial refrigerator and freezer and had th
em delivered to my newly demon-free basement. Since no one would be allowed down there during the party, we could store appetizers in them and then use magic to heat them up before taking them back upstairs. No one would be the wiser, she assured me.
The day of the grand opening came, and I was far more nervous than I’d expected. Remy and Annika both took the day off work to help me get everything set up.
I wasn’t going to have a front desk area or anything like that for checking guests in. I had a little swipe thing that attached to my phone, and the rest was all done online through the same software that ran my reservation system.
The only thing missing was Jessica. She’d originally agreed to work with me but had taken a job at the hospital in the city. It was only going to be temporary, but she’d done so well that they’d hired her on full-time. Part of her benefits package was college tuition, so she’d decided to go to school to be a nurse. It had come out of left field, but I was happy for her.
Since Jessica had moved on to other things, I decided not to hire a housekeeper. If I used magic, cleaning the rooms would only take a few minutes per day. I could save myself the cost of hiring an employee and do it myself.
The rooms were ready, the food was done, and it was time for guests to start arriving. Boy, did they. The actual overnight bed and breakfast guests had been warned when they made the reservations that there was a grand opening celebration going on, so none of them were shocked by the throng of Coventry residents who showed up for the Halloween bash. Thankfully, many of them walked, and I didn’t have to turn my front and side yards into a parking lot.
When the sun began to set, Annika and I took the pumpkins we’d carved earlier in the day out and lined them up on the front porch. There were so many of them that the candles inside lit up half of the front yard.
We went out back and checked the tables of food. People were mingling around them or out on the dance floor. Some high school kids had a band and had asked if they could play. I’d agreed to pay them a hundred dollars for the gig and they had a tip jar out. It looked as though they were going to make out quite well for the evening.
People were having a good time. Even the bed and breakfast guests had found locals who were gleefully filling their heads with ghost stories. All in all, the mood was quite festive.
I wandered around until I found Gunner and Annika. He had a beer in one hand and his other arm around her waist.
“I thought you were on duty tonight?” I teased.
“What’s the point in having deputies if I can’t put them to good use?” he said and raised his beer. “This is quite good. Thank you for sharing.”
“My pleasure, and I’m glad you decided to relax and have a good time.”
“Everyone seems to be on their best behavior, anyway,” Gunner said.
“Yeah, no one is going to mess around and ruin a party this good,” Annika said.
She gave me a wink. We both knew it was the presence of some of the most powerful members of her family that was keeping everyone in line. Magicals and normals alike, they were all susceptible to the powerful Skeenbauer influence.
Another hour went by, and I rounded up Annika to go to the basement and get another round of appetizers with me. On our third trip out of the house with trays, I thought I heard someone upstairs.
No one was supposed to be up there. I’d put a rope and a sign across the stairs, but that probably wasn’t enough of a deterrent after all.
“I thought I heard someone upstairs,” I said as we set our last round of trays down.
“It was probably just Meri,” Annika said.
“Nope, he’s over there,” I said and pointed to his lookout spot behind the garage.
“Well, just send him up to check it out,” she said.
“No, it’s okay. I’ll just go up and take a look. Probably just someone who couldn’t resist a closer look at the inside of Hangman’s House.”
“I’ll go with you,” Annika said.
“No, it’s okay. Go enjoy the party with Gunner.”
“You sure?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
I heard the noises upstairs again as soon as I walked through the back door. Only then, they’d become louder. It sounded like multiple feet shuffling on the floor above me.
Thump.
And then a scream. I raced up the stairs, and I couldn’t believe the scene in front of me. It was the campers and Remy, only something was seriously wrong. I could only guess that they’d heard about the party and decided to drop in. It was the only reason I could think of why they would be back.
Finn was lying on the floor in a pool of blood, and Remy stood over him with a knife. Joanna was backed into a corner with her arms wrapped around her knees.
“Remy, what the heck?” My mind raced as it tried to wrap around what it was seeing.
“It’s not what you think,” he said, and I was ashamed to admit, for a moment, it did make him sound guilty.
Other people must have heard the scream because I could hear them coming into the house and up the stairs. I wanted to check to see if Finn was alive, but I was afraid to move. If he was dead, then it was a crime scene.
“I’m going to drop the knife,” Remy said.
“I think that’s a good idea.”
As soon as he did, Joanna came to life. She started to scramble across the floor to get it. “You didn’t have to kill him,” she hissed.
“Stop there,” I said with a twist of my hand in the air
She froze in place, and a look of sheer terror washed over her. I shouldn’t have used magic that way, but what else could I do? She was going for the knife.
“Everybody freeze,” Gunner said when he walked into the room.
The difference when he said it was that he wasn’t a witch, so nobody froze. I let go of the magic that was holding Joanna in place, but since Gunner was there, she didn’t make another move toward the knife.
He didn’t have his service weapon on him, and he’d been drinking. So, it was nothing more than his presence and commanding tone of voice that kept her from trying to get the weapon. That and there were more witnesses.
A few seconds later, a deputy entered the room. Deputy Hallie Lowenthal surveyed the scene.
“Is he breathing?” she was the first person to ask out loud.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t check in case it was a crime scene.”
“Go ahead,” she said. “I’m going to call in for an ambulance just in case.”
I thought she would check to see if he was alive herself, but when I turned to look in her direction, I saw why she hadn’t. Hallie had drawn her gun. Possibly because despite not going for it, Joanna was still eyeing the knife.
“I’m going to need everyone behind me to back out of the room and clear the premises. I need everyone in the room besides Brighton to back up against the wall.”
“He’s alive,” I said. “Barely, but he is alive.”
I didn’t know what was going on or what Finn had done to end up the way he had, and it wasn’t my place to judge. I used what healing magic I could to keep him from slipping away. He was about to cross over, but I gave him a chance. I couldn’t heal him more than that with all of the witnesses, but I didn’t have to let him die. I also eased his pain. Looking at him, I knew that if he was even close to consciousness, he had to be in agony.
“Does he need CPR?” Hallie asked.
“No, he’s breathing, and he’s got a weak pulse. I do need to keep pressure on these wounds. Two of them are bleeding badly.”
They weren’t bleeding as badly because of my spell, but I knew Hallie wanted me to back against the wall. I couldn’t leave him there like that. I didn’t know Finn at all, but I was too much of an empath to just leave him alone and bleeding until the paramedics got there.
The wait for the ambulance felt like an eternity. Everyone stood there silently, and the tension hung in the air like a bad smell. I assumed the other deputies were cleari
ng out the party, and I wondered if my bed and breakfast guests had gone back to their bungalows. Or had they left too?
We all stood back and watched as the paramedics stabilized Finn as best they could. From inside the spare bedroom, I could hear them struggling down the stairs with the gurney.
“Who am I supposed to arrest here, Chief?” Hallie asked once the ambulance pulled away.
“I can’t tell you that,” Gunner said. “I’ve had a couple of beers, and I cannot make official decisions at this time.”
“Well, could you maybe give me a hint?” Hallie asked.
Gunner looked at me. “Brighton, what’s going on here?”
Great…
“I don’t know exactly. I got here moments before you did,” I said because the last thing I wanted to do was have my fiancé arrested the night of the grand opening we’d worked so hard on over the last few weeks.
“Who had the weapon when you came in?” Gunner’s voice had an edge to it. He knew I was withholding information.
“It was me,” Remy said, saving me from having to point the finger at him. “I had it.”
“Do you want to tell us why?” Hallie asked.
“I took it from Joanna,” he said. “I heard a commotion. I came up here, and I found her stabbing him. I took the knife away, and that’s when Brighton walked in.”
“That’s not true,” Joanna finally spoke. “I walked in and he was stabbing Finn. I tried to fight him off. Look,” Joanna said and held up her hand.
She held her hand out and showed us the cuts crisscrossing her palm. My heart sank because they looked like defensive wounds.
“I don’t know,” Hallie said with a sigh. “I’m going to take them both in. Brighton, I need you to leave the room.”
I stood in the living room and watched as Hallie and another deputy led Remy and Joanna out of the house in handcuffs. I couldn’t believe what was happening.
Annika stood next to me, and Gunner came down from upstairs to join us. “You should stay somewhere else tonight, Brighton.”
“She can stay with me,” Annika said.
“I can’t just leave. I have the guests out in the bungalows, and I have to clean up after the party.”
Broom and Gloom Page 3
