Before Posy could continue the debate, the front bell rang and we all straightened.
“Showtime,” Adam said, a little too giddy.
Holly went first and the rest of us followed behind like obedient ducklings, all the way to the front door. She glanced back at us and then answered the door.
A lanky girl stood on the welcome mat. She appeared to be in her early twenties and pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way. Her brown hair was pulled back in a low ponytail and it didn’t look as if she was wearing any make-up. She was dressed casually in a pair of boot-cut jeans, pull-over sweater, and a pair of black Converse shoes. Nothing about her seemed out of the ordinary. If I’d passed her on the street, I would have assumed she was a student at the local community college. I wouldn’t have pegged her for a criminal in a million years.
But I’d been at this long enough to know that appearances meant very little when it came to collaring criminals. The most unassuming or even beautiful people could conceal a myriad of secrets.
“Lydia?” Holly said, reaching out a hand.
“That’s right.” She shook it and smiled as she peered in at the rest of us. “Full house.”
Holly offered a polite laugh. “We’re all traveling together.”
Lydia nodded. “Gotcha.”
“Come on in,” Holly said, beckoning the girl inside. “I’ll give you the grand tour.”
Posy drifted into view and it was obvious she wouldn’t be letting Lydia out of her sight.
A couple hours later, we used Holly’s portal to get to the Seattle Haven in the literal blink of an eye, then set off for Holly’s favorite bakery so she could load up on her favorite treats: Lemon Clouds. Not that there were any objections from the rest of us. I wasn’t one for the citrus cakes, but there were plenty of fantastical things to choose from that made most human-world desserts seem bland by comparison. Amazing what a little drop of magic could do for the palate.
When we finished at the bakery, we made our way to the place where Seattle and the haven split. The network of charms and enchantments bound together to conceal the supernatural world from sight were invisible, but powerful. Magic Beans coffee shop in Seattle was the most common route to and from the haven—mostly because, well, they have coffee.
By three o’clock, we were checked into our hotel along the waterfront. We’d pooled our resources and booked a suite with three separate bedrooms. After putting our suitcases in our respective rooms, we gathered around the dining table, munching on our snacks while I set up my laptop to check the surveillance feed.
“Do you think she’s already casing the joint?” Adam asked around a mouthful of something coated in powdered sugar. On the walk to the hotel, he’d told me that the sweet dust was charmed to ensure not a speck was transferrable to skin or clothing, which was downright handy!
“I doubt she’s moved this quickly,” I replied. “It’s not even dark yet.”
“Right.” He glanced up. “Where should we get dinner?”
“Adam,” Holly groaned, rolling her eyes. “You still have a donut in one hand and you’re worried about dinner?”
He shrugged. “Sweet and savory, right?”
I laughed. “Oh to have been born a shifter, with a metabolism that always runs triple-time.”
“Seriously!” Holly commiserated.
The laptop lit up and I hurried to log in and join the hotel Wi-Fi. The surveillance software booted up and we all leaned in a little closer as I cycled through the different cameras until we found Lydia. She was in the living room, walking around with her cell phone in hand.
“Is she taking pictures?” Adam asked, getting closer to the screen.
I narrowed my eyes and then nodded. “She sure is.”
“Cataloging the loot,” he added.
On the screen, Lydia moved through the living room and I had to click a few buttons to switch to the camera mounted in the kitchen as she entered the room.
“Let’s see if she takes the bait,” Holly said.
“Bait?” I repeated, glancing at her.
She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I left a couple twenties in the junk drawer.”
Sure enough, as we watched in silence, Lydia went through the kitchen, opening each drawer and cupboard. When she reached the spare drawer near the fridge, she pulled out two bills and slipped them down the front of her shirt.
“Did she just put that in her bra?” Evangeline asked, horror in her voice.
Holly looked at me. “Looks like your theory was right on, Nick.”
Lydia went to the last set of cupboards and tugged on them, but they were latched shut. We all swiveled our eyes toward Adam. “You locked your snack cupboard?” Holly asked him.
He shrugged. “I don’t want people touching my food. Is that really so weird?”
Holly stared at her boyfriend in stunned silence while Evangeline and I tried not to burst out laughing. After a moment, she sighed and pointed at the screen. “All right, what’s our next move?”
“We wait it out,” I replied. “I imagine at nightfall, they will be some action.”
“In the meantime …” Adam interjected. “Anyone want pizza?”
Chapter 6
To our surprise, no one showed up to the manor that night. As soon as we got back to the hotel following dinner, I rewound through the footage and made sure we hadn’t missed anything. Lydia left not too long after searching the kitchen and hadn’t been back since. In the brief interview before we’d left the manor, she’d told Holly she would stop by twice a day, once in the morning, then again after six, to feed Boots and play with him. The video showed her dumping food into Boots’s dish before leaving, but there was no sign of the giant tabby.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Boots ignore his dinner,” I said, pointing out the full bowl to Holly.
“He’s probably sulking,” she replied. “He hates when I leave.”
“Poor fur ball.”
“He’ll be okay.” She paused for a moment and we watched in silence as the frames ticked by in fast-forward until it caught up to real time. “You think they’ll come tonight?”
“I don’t know, Holls.”
“I was kinda hoping they would so I could get out of this whole comic book festival thing tomorrow,” she said with a soft laugh.
I grinned at her. “Not your thing?”
“Not even remotely.”
“Hey—you guys going to come watch this movie or not?” Adam called from the living room. He and Evangeline had some super-hero movie in the DVD player and the box of leftovers propped open on the glass coffee table between them.
I grabbed the laptop and carried it to the couch and Holly took a seat beside me as the opening credits played. At one point in the movie, I nudged Holly with my elbow and pointed at the screen as Boots came waddling into the kitchen. He looked around suspiciously and then went to the food bowl.
“That’s my little butterball,” she cooed.
She relaxed back on the couch and watched the screen, ignoring the movie entirely as the tabby began scarfing down his dinner.
It was creeping up on midnight by the time the second movie started. My eyes were heavy and drifted more slowly between the laptop screen and the huge TV mounted on the wall.
“Nick! Nick, wake up!”
“What? Who’s—” I jerked at the panicked voice and quickly realized I’d fallen asleep on the couch, one arm propped under my head. My bleary vision cleared and I zeroed in on Holly. She stood above me, stuffing her arms into her thick winter coat. “What’s going on?”
“We’ve got company, compadre,” Adam said.
“They’re at the house!” Holly added, gesturing for me to get up. “We gotta get back.”
I jumped into action, springing up from the couch and back into my shoes that I’d kicked off before the first movie. “What happened?”
Adam was leaning over the laptop, which had been moved back to the dining room table. “The house h
as them trapped. The charms worked. They’re not going anywhere, now.”
“What time is it?” I asked, grabbing for my own coat that hung on the back of one of the chairs.
“Four fifteen,” Adam replied, looking entirely too awake considering the hour. “Evie’s asleep in the other room.”
“I tried to wake her up,” Holly said. “The woman sleeps like a freakin’ rock.”
I smiled slightly and rubbed at my eyes. “All right. Let’s leave her here then. I’ll call Chief Lincoln once we get back to the harbor.”
Adam and Holly took the lead and we all filed out of the suite. With the use of the portal, it didn’t take long to slip through the barrier back to the haven and then into the cellar of a quaint bungalow in Beechwood Harbor. The manor was within an easy walking distance of the house, but we’d left my car parked down the street anyway. I hopped behind the wheel and we took off up the hill.
When I parked outside the manor, I was surprised to find a large black dog staring at me in the rearview mirror. I jolted and cursed out loud. “Geeze, Adam! A little head’s up might be nice next time.”
The dog panted, his lips curled back in a wide smile.
“In case we need a little muscle,” Holly said from the passenger seat.
“Chief Lincoln’s on his way,” I said, still staring at Adam. It was incredible how easy it was for him to shift. My own transformation into a werewolf was uncontrolled and downright painful. For a moment, I envied him.
I shook off the thought and pocketed my cell phone. I’d called Chief’s personal number on the drive up to the manor—and apparently missed the man getting naked and turning into a dog in the backseat.
Yikes. Talk about autopilot mode.
“Let’s go see what’s going on,” Holly said, throwing open her door. She opened Adam’s and the huge dog leapt soundlessly from the vehicle and bolted for the front door.
Personally, I would have been fine waiting for the authorities, but I also wasn’t the type to let my friends wander into a potentially dangerous situation alone. So, with a sigh, I heaved open my own door and hurried to catch up to them.
They might be crazy adrenaline junkies, but they were my crazy adrenaline junkies.
Loud, arguing voices met us in the entryway.
Posy screeched into view, her face pinched and angry. “They tried to steal my Earl’s coin collection!”
Holly winced. “I’m sorry, Posy. The police are on the way.”
“They had better be! That collection is priceless!”
I held up a hand. “Where are they?”
“In the study,” Holly replied, heading for the hallway.
“Yoohoo,” she called, opening the solid oak door that led into a stately room that would be right at home on the set of a Benjamin Franklin biopic. A huge stone fireplace took up most of one wall, the rest were covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that were full to bursting with old tomes. A huge desk and two wingback chairs took up the majority of the room’s floor space.
And tonight, there was the addition of two young men and their apparent partner-in-crime, Lydia herself.
Adam nosed into the room behind her and let out a low growl at the trio who appeared to be suspended in midair. I glanced between Holly and Posy, unsure who to chalk the magic up to. If Posy freaked out over the thieves touching her late-husband’s coin collection, it wasn’t infeasible that she’d somehow triggered the manor into holding the three captive.
“Well, well, well,” Holly started, narrowing her eyes at Lydia. “Seems you’re either a little late or a little early for your pet-sitting appointment.”
“What did you do to us? Are we high on something?” the taller boy asked, moving his arms in slow motion.
Both he and the shorted boy appeared to be in their early twenties. “A better question might be to ask what you guys are wearing,” I added, grinning at them. “Did you get your wardrobe ideas from an episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle or something?”
Holly snorted. “Good point. They’re just missing the hats and mustaches.”
They both wore black trench coats and slacks. Trying too hard, if you asked me.
“And yet, none of you thought to wear gloves?” I said before making a tsk tsk noise. “Very sloppy.”
Siren’s sounded in the distance and the three faces all flinched in unison. It was almost comical. A little like the moment Wile E Coyote knows he’s been had.
“Let us go!” Lydia screamed, flailing all the harder, though she might as well have been trying to do the butterfly in a vat of Jell-O. “I’ll give you all the money back!”
“Oh yeah?” I lifted a brow. “And what about the Marrions, Lancasters, Candy Shepherd, and all other houses you’ve robbed over the past few months? Are you going to give them everything back, too?”
The two young men cursed and punched at the air. I glanced at Holly, silently wondering if they were breaking the spell. She waved a hand and the three dropped to the floor in an undignified heap. “It’s too late, kiddos. The cops are here and they have your prints and shoe prints on file in connection with at least three robberies. You could try to run, but my dog here is pretty good at hunting. I don’t think you’d get far.”
Adam let out a low, rumbling growl for effect.
All three faces paled.
A knock sounded on the front door and I backtracked through the house to let him and his two officers inside. I grinned as he stepped over the threshold. “See, what did I tell you, Chief? Not a single lawnmower or weed-whacker in sight.”
Within an hour, the three assailants were cuffed in the back of a squad car and Chief Lincoln had taken a full statement from everyone present.
Of course, we left out the more colorful bits.
“I don’t know how we overlooked the pet sitting connection,” Chief Lincoln said, frowning at his notebook.
“To be fair, Chief, the Marrions never hired the pet sitter. They only interviewed her. I doubt she would have thought to mention it in her interview following the burglary.”
He nodded, but the firm lines on his face still told me he was going to chew someone out when he got back to the station.
“I’ll forward you the surveillance video evidence,” I told him as I escorted him back through the house.
“See that you do,” he replied in a gruff voice. And here I’d always thought Chief was a morning person.
“Nice dog,” Chief Lincoln said, patting Adam on the head as he passed by on his way to the front door. “Cassie didn’t mention you’d gotten one.”
Holly’s lips twitched and I knew she was struggling to keep a straight face. “It’s a trial basis. I’m not sure I’m going to keep him. He kind of smells bad.”
Chief Lincoln’s brows knit together but he didn’t question us further and passed through.
When the door closed again, Holly and I burst out laughing and Adam turned, his tail raised, and took the stairs three at a time. We were collapsed on the couch, catching out breaths when Adam reappeared, fully clothed and back in his two-legged form. “I smell bad?” he growled.
“You do get doggy breath,” I said, “especially after you’ve gone dumpster-diving.”
Holly giggled again.
“Whatever,” he scoffed, stalking to the front door. He grabbed a spare coat from the peg by the door and slipped it on.
Holly pushed up into an upright position and stared at him. “Where are you going? It’s like six in the morning.”
“Yeah, and if we hurry, we can hit up that haven bakery again and still get downtown in time for the panel on costume design for that new Robots V Alien movie!”
Holly groaned.
My feature in The Harbor Hubbub ran three weeks after Lydia and her band of thugs were busted for the robberies. The TVs and game systems were long gone, but the police were able to recover some of Candy’s fine jewelry that hadn’t yet been sold off on an online auction set up under Lydia’s account. I sat down with Candy a week after the arr
ests and she personally interviewed me for the piece in the paper. A couple of weeks after that and my face was plastered on two hundred front pages that were littered on every welcome mat in and around the cluster of towns surrounding the harbor.
Sure enough, it paid off.
A trickle of new jobs came in the weeks following, and a month after that, my schedule was bordering on packed.
The best part—my coffee budget was no longer in danger.
Okay, okay, that wasn’t the best part, but it was a big perk.
One Friday, right around closing, I was gearing up to go across the street for a cuppa, when Holly appeared in my doorway, her gloved hands clasped around two cups of coffee and a small bag of pastries tucked under her arm.
I gave her a lopsided grin. “Do you have Lucy poking around in my head these days or something?”
Holly laughed. “No need, my friend. You are a creature of habit.”
She crossed the room and put a cup in front of me. “And lately, that habit has been raging out of control.”
The scent of chocolate wafted up to me as she held out the bag.
“So, you’re my dealer in this scenario?” I asked, taking it.
“Something like that,” she said with a rueful grin.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply before reaching in to snag one of the treats. “The ugly cookies!”
Holly laughed. “You know it.”
“Double chocolate with M&Ms, coconut, and walnuts,” I said, my tone reverent.
“They look like hockey pucks, but taste like heaven.”
“Go figure,” I said, half a second before taking a bite. “What’s the occasion?”
She shrugged. “It’s been a while since we’ve done this.”
“True,” I agreed around a mouthful of sugary perfection.
“You’ve been busy,” she said, dropping into one of the navy blue chairs that sat on the other side of my desk.
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