by K. J. Emrick
“All right then,” Addie echoed with what she hoped was an appeasing smile. “Now. Does Gary know anything else about the Norris family, or about the murder, even?”
Willow started to shake her head just as the shopkeeper’s bell over the front door rang to announce more customers. She pressed her lips together tightly, leaving Addie to wonder what she might have said next, as two men and a woman came in, arguing with each other.
Addie couldn’t believe her eyes. The two men were Leo and Connor Raithmore. The woman was Misty Norris herself.
These two families hated each other. So how odd was it, Addie thought to herself, that those three should be walking anywhere together, let alone into her café just when the conversation had been all about the death of Esmerelda Norris?
“Leave her alone, Connor,” Leo was admonishing his brother. “Her sister just died. She has more important things on her mind than your precious deal.”
He was a tall man, tawny and slender, a real outdoorsman from what Addie understood. His hair was bleached nearly white from the amount of time he spent in the sun. Today he was in a flannel shirt and a rugged pair of beige khakis. His feet stomped in heavy hiking boots. Now, there was a man who would be comfortable in the woods, Addie found herself thinking. He had strong hands, too. Hmm.
“No,” Connor Raithmore insisted. “I will not listen to that. Not from you, Leo, and not from her either. There are certain promises that are not broken regardless of the circumstances.”
He was shorter than his brother, with black hair rather than blonde. He preferred the crisp lines of blue suits. He preferred working with facts and figures too, rather than being outside in the real world. He had a reputation around town of having made quite the fortune through investments in the stock market and real estate. Not the kind of person to get his hands dirty, in other words.
Misty Norris was a natural beauty, but today her face was troubled. Of course, that might have to do with her sister-in-law being found murdered in the woods. Addie remembered what Kiera had said about Misty and Esmerelda, though. There was no love lost there. Bad blood between them. Misty was just a slip of a girl, though. Her skirt and her white top showed off a slender, overly-thin body. Her long hair was tied into a braid down her back.
No chance that she could have choked Esmerelda to death. Although, the way that Connor had risen to her defense struck Addie as uncharacteristic, considering the two families were always sparring with each other. Misty might be too small to have killed her sister-in-law on her own but just like Addie had been thinking a moment ago, that didn’t mean she couldn’t find some big, strapping man to do it.
If not Gary, then why not Leo Raithmore?
Addie took another look around the café. Gary had noticed the newcomers, and was glaring daggers over at the woman who had taken over the reins of the Norris fortune and fired him.
One, two, three, four. Addie listed them off in her mind. She had to include Gary, at least for now, no matter what she’d said to Willow. Four suspects in the murder of a woman found dead in the woods outside of Shadow Lake.
All of them sitting right here.
The fates were funny sometimes, and God definitely had an odd sense of humor.
“Um,” Willow said to her, suddenly reminding Addie that she was still there. “Are you seeing this?”
“Yes. I am. Do me a favor, and go sit with Gary. Listen to what he has to say about Misty and the Raithmore twins. Let me know if he tells you anything useful.”
“I will not spy on my boyfriend!” Willow whispered defiantly.
Her younger sister was still every bit the hotheaded Irish girl that Addie herself had been at that age. “Willow, this is more important than your boyfriend’s ego. This is for the family. Coven above all else. Go on, now. Just listen and bat your pretty eyelashes at him. A man will say anything if you smile at him properly. Most women do it every day, without magic. You have the added advantage of a Cold Stare, if you need it.”
Willow tilted her head with a scowl. “Whatever. I take it you’re going to go talk with Misty Norris and the Raithmore twins?”
Addie smiled. “Of course. This is my restaurant, after all. I’m going over there to take their order.”
From his seat in the window Doyle lifted his head, locking gazes with her momentarily. She could read that expression from here. At this rate, he was never going to get his morning nap in.
Grabbing up her order pad from next to the cash register, Addie went over to the table with the three newcomers. She knew from experience that her regulars were going to be coming in any second. If she was going to have any chance to talk to these three in private, she was going to have to do it now.
“Good morning, guys,” she said brightly. “What can I get—”
Connor’s hand slammed down on the table. His attention was on whatever had been said just before Addie got there, not on her, and he was not pleased. “She’s dead! We all understand that you’ve suffered a great loss, Misty, but we had a deal between our two families. With your sister-in-law dead it falls to you to honor that agreement!”
“You can go to Hell.” Misty snapped at Connor. “I am not held by any deals my dear sister-in-law may have made before she died.”
The way she said ‘sister-in-law’ made it sound like she’d stepped in something foul and needed to scrape it off the bottom of her shoe. Addie held back, fascinated by the dynamic she was watching unfold before her. She didn’t want to interrupt and have them stop talking. A deal between the Norris family and the Raithmores? This was the first she was hearing of that. The two richest families in town, making a deal between them.
She had to wonder what that would mean for the town of Shadow Lake.
More importantly, what had it meant to Esmerelda? Kiera had said that Esmerelda was staying away from the town because of how much she and Misty didn’t like each other. Could this deal have been enough to bring her back… and was it what got her killed?
This mystery was taking shape quickly. There was an itchy feeling at the back of her head that somewhere in this room was Esmerelda’s murderer.
Her attention fell on the Raithmore brothers, and when it did she found they were both staring back at her.
“Did you want something?” It was Leo talking now, his tone annoyed as he hooked one arm over the back of his chair and stared up at Addie.
“Um. Sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t want to interrupt. Can I get you three something?”
“We aren’t ready to order. Please, just give us another minute.”
“Speak for yourself, brother,” Connor chuckled. “I’m starved. A double stack of pancakes, and… ooh, yes. The breakfast steak. Rare. No vegetables on the plate.”
He grimaced as he said it, and Addie wrote it down just as he’d ordered it. No vegetables on plate. Obviously, the man was a carnivore.
The others ordered as well, eggs and toast for Misty, and just a glass of orange juice for Leo. They fell completely silent after that, staring at her, waiting for her to leave. With no other options Addie retreated back to the kitchen to give Darla the orders.
She hadn’t learned much from her eavesdropping, but it was enough to pique her interest.
“First orders of the day,” she said, pretending nothing at all was amiss, and that she didn’t suspect a killer was sitting right out there in the dining room. “Let’s hope there’s a lot more to come. Can you make these up? I’ll get the drinks and bring them out. I want to catch my sister before she leaves.”
“She’s leaving already?” Darla asked, annoyance tinging her voice. “She and that new beau of hers haven’t even gotten their order yet. I’m just finishing it up now.”
“Yes, well, you know my sister.” Addie affected a laugh that mostly sounded sincere. “She’s flighty and now she says they have things to do today. I think she just wants to get back to Gary’s house. You know how young women can be—”
The sound of a chair overturning out in the dinin
g area, and then voices raised in anger, stopped her midsentence.
Chapter 9
Darla was right on Addie’s heels as she raced back out through the swinging door. Willow was standing up with Gary at their table, but that wasn’t where the commotion was happening.
It was over at the table with Leo and Connor and Misty. Connor was on his feet. His face was sculpted in anger.
They were just in time to see Leo slam a fist down on the table, his face red and angry as he leaned over to scream at Connor. “She’s dead! Don’t you understand! Someone killed her and she’s dead and you can’t sit there and talk about her that way!”
His chair was the one they’d heard being knocked over, lying on its side on the floor behind him. For his part, Connor sat comfortably where he was, glaring up at his brother. His dark eyes had grown darker, somehow. He peeled his lips back in a smile that showed teeth. “Sit down, little brother, before you make a fool of yourself.”
“Little brother! Ha! We’re twins. I was born half a minute after you!”
“Fraternal twins,” Connor pointed out lazily. “You’re nothing like me, Leo, and you’ll forever be the little brother. Defend Misty’s dearly departed sister-in-law all you want. We both know which of them you have eyes for.”
“Guys, please,” Misty was saying, hanging her head and not daring to look either one of them in the eye. “Please, stop. I’m trying to hold everything together and I do not need the pressure of you two acting like a couple of kids in a schoolyard!”
Addie looked at Misty more intently. Funny, she thought, how Leo was the one upset by Esmerelda’s death. Misty was only concerned about how the situation affected her. Connor… well, Connor only seemed interested in his deal, whatever that might be.
Whatever had sparked this, it was going sideways in a hurry and Addie knew she had to do something before it erupted into all out violence. She traded a look with her sister, and Willow nodded, moving around her table and towards the Raithmore brothers at the same time that Addie began approaching from the other side. There were things a witch could do to calm people, to bring peace back to their hearts, without them even knowing.
“Stand up,” they heard Leo growl. “Get on your feet and take back what you said.”
Of course, Addie thought to herself, you generally had to start calming people down before they get to this point.
“Oh, I’ll stand up,” Connor told his brother, planting his hands flat on the tabletop, “but you won’t like it when I do, little brother.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why, little brother, what big eyes you have.”
“Don’t call me that!”
Leo’s eyes flashed. His hand pulled back, his fingers curled into a fist.
Too late to stop anything, Addie raised her hands anyway, arching her middle two fingers and pointing her pinky and circling the thumb and forefinger…
And the bell over the front door rang.
All eyes turned to see Detective Lucian Knight walk in, hands in the pockets of his hoodie, his black t-shirt untucked from his jeans. He looked nothing like a police officer in that moment.
Even so, Addie found him to be a true sight for sore eyes. The man’s timing couldn’t have been any better.
He looked around the café, quickly sizing up the situation, and then set his gaze on Leo specifically. “You look like you’re aiming to hurt someone. Maybe you want to just take a breath before that happens?”
“Maybe,” Leo answered him with the same menace he’d used on his brother, “you want to back off and leave before you get the same thing.”
“Leo…” Connor said to him, his voice easing away from the heated tone of just moments before.
“Oh, don’t ‘Leo’ me, Connor. I’ve had it up to here with people telling me what to do. What to think. What to feel!” He whipped his hand through the air, and now Addie saw that it wasn’t just Connor who had anger issues. It was both brothers. “If this guy wants to stick his face into my business then I say come on!”
The café went silent. Behind him at the table, Connor cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should save this for another time, brother. Our friend here is a cop.”
Lucian nodded in a friendly way and took a badge case out of the back pocket of his jeans. “Guess my reputation precedes me,” he said, opening the case and showing off the shield inside.
That finally got Leo to deflate. As his color paled back to normal, he slowly bent to pick up his chair and set it back on its feet. He sat down. He lowered his gaze to the table. When Misty reached a hand out to lay it on is wrist, he put his hand over hers, and they whispered quietly to each other.
Interesting, Addie thought to herself. For a woman married into the Norris family, she certainly seemed to be on familiar terms with Leo Raithmore.
“Well,” Lucian said as he put the badge away again. “Now that we’re all nice and friendly again. Oh, look. A cat.”
He leaned into the shelf in the front window and scratched Doyle under the chin and around his ears. The Old Man got right into it, Addie saw, arching his back and flashing his tail and actually purring. Addie couldn’t remember the last time he purred for a stranger. Well, well. The nice police detective was a cat person. Points in his favor, certainly.
Doyle blinked after him when he stopped and Addie suppressed a smile at the disappointed look on the cat’s face. Willow was sitting down with Gary again, and there were other people starting to come into the café. The morning was getting away from her. Not that it mattered now, because with Lucian here she wasn’t going to be able to get much more out of Leo and Connor. They’d clammed right up as soon as Connor realized a police officer was in the place.
She turned to Darla, handing her the order pad, asking her to get the food ready and check on the things in the ovens. “Will do,” Darla said. “I’d rather be out here talking with that cutie, though.”
Lucian, she meant. Not that she didn’t agree, but this was all business. The next time she went on a date with a man, it wasn’t going to be in her own restaurant, talking about a murder. It would be somewhere nice. Maybe someplace away from Shadow Lake…
“Hey there.”
He’d snuck up on her while she was still giving Darla directions on getting things ready. Now he was right there next to her, and she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“You look different today.” She could have died from embarrassment. There had to be something better she could have come up with than that. “I mean, um, because you’re dressed so casual.”
He grinned at her, and shrugged a shoulder. “It’s actually my day off.”
“You’re working on your day off? Well, that is dedication.”
“Someone got murdered in my jurisdiction. That’s kind of an all hands on deck sort of thing.” He shrugged again, as if that was just the way it was.
Addie was once again struck by his plain-spoken honesty and the way he felt so strongly about what he believed in. It said volumes about his character. Maybe, she thought, he would be the kind of Typic who could accept her and her sisters for what they were. If she told him about her and her sisters, about the coven and how they wanted to keep Shadow Lake safe, just like he did, then she could tell him what she knew about the murder…
And that she learned it from a ghost.
By using magic.
Um.
Well. When she thought of it that way, maybe she would wait until she knew a little more about him first.
“So,” he asked her after a moment, “is there a place we can go to talk? This shouldn’t take long.”
“Of course. I have an office in the back. It’s private.”
“I like private.”
She blinked at him, not sure how to take that. It was when she saw the way his cheeks colored that she knew he’d heard the double meaning in his own words, too. He suddenly couldn’t decide what to do with his hands, and shoved them deep in his pockets again. “Maybe I should just go
and get my forms out of my car.”
“Yes,” she said, strangely enjoying his discomfort. “Why don’t you do that?”
He nodded, his eyes staring into hers, but he didn’t move. “You know, it’s strange… I feel like I’ve met you somewhere before.”
“You mean, besides yesterday?”
“Right. Other than that. Before that, I mean. It’s more than that. Sort of like I know you, although that’s crazy, right? We’ve never met.”
Acting on instinct, Addie reached out to him with her magical senses. If he was some sort of shapeshifter, or magical being in disguise, she should have been able to feel it by threading her way deep into his aura. It was the only way to tell, which was why magical users could hide themselves in plain sight so easily. Her Essence reached for his…
And came back empty.
There it was again. The sense that he was somehow resisting her, but not really. More like he was a brick wall that she was trying to break through with a slingshot. Although it worked eventually, it took a lot more effort than it did with most Typics.
What are you, she wondered. Who exactly was Lucian Knight?
“Be back in a minute,” he promised.
Addie snapped her magics back into place. She smiled and nodded and waited for him to leave again. Then she went to get food orders from the other people who had come in for breakfast. Not that Darla couldn’t work the café by herself for an hour or so, but she didn’t feel right leaving her to do everything. The Hot Cauldron had been doing such good business recently that she was considering hiring another worker. For now, it was just the two of them, so Addie rushed from table to table, doing what she could in the few minutes it would take Lucian to go to his car and come back again.
As she was doing all of that, she realized that Leo, Connor, and Misty had gotten up from their table at some point, and were gone.
She made her way around to Willow’s table again, noticing that Darla was already coming out with coffee and some of the food orders for people. Sitting down in the seat next to Willow, she leaned in close to whisper, “I don’t have a lot of time. Did you see where Leo and Connor went? Or Misty?”
