A Wonder Springs Cozy Mystery Omnibus: Books 1, 2 & 3

by B. T. Alive

  The narrow width of the beam revealed a flat, smooth, plain of stone. It stretched for twenty, thirty, forty feet, utterly unbroken.

  And then came a coffin.

  Chapter 39

  The coffin was a massive box of thick, featureless iron. It sat directly on the stone, alone in all that space. The flat lid was empty and blank, but it was hinged to a clasp with a gigantic, ancient padlock.

  The sheriff fingered the ring of keys.

  “Hey,” I said. “My turn.” I held out my hand.

  The sheriff paused, his face a mask of shadow in the weak aura of my flare.

  “You do realize we’re opening a coffin?” he said.

  “Won’t be my first time,” I said.

  “Is that so?”

  “No! Of course not. Just give me the keys!”

  The sheriff rumbled an ambiguous grunt (possibly a chuckle?) and he handed over the keys.

  The largest key was scratchy with rust and very cold. I worked it into the padlock, expecting a screeching struggle.

  But the lock dropped open with an easy click. The sound echoed out into the dark.

  “Um,” I said. “Why is there a lock on this underground coffin, and why is it oiled?”

  “Get the other end of that lid,” said the sheriff. “Ready? On three.”

  But the lid lifted easily too, so easily that I shoved too hard, and it moaned all the way back on hidden hinges and slammed behind the coffin with a deafening crash. The roar reverberated in every direction, loud enough to wake the dead.

  The sheriff aimed his light into the open coffin. Although the light was weakening and dim, when I looked in, I gasped and blinked.

  I’d braced myself to be shocked.

  I had not braced myself for glitter and sparkle.

  “Gold?” I said. “It’s full of gold?”

  It was.

  The entire, six-foot-long iron coffin was swimming with gold like a pirate’s treasure. There were thick gold bars and coins in all sizes, a miniature landscape of hills and valleys that gleamed with glorious luster, even in my flare’s weak light. I’d only ever seen real gold like this as a few artifacts in museums, and I’d never quite believed that it stayed untarnished on its own. Now I did. This hoard was shining like the surface of the sun.

  I picked up a bar, and although it fit easily in my palm, I almost had to hold it with two hands. “How is this so heavy?” I said. “The whole coffin must weigh a ton!”

  “It might,” said Sheriff Jake. He was gazing on the gold with a face very still, his eyes were inscrutable.

  “How much do you think it’s all worth?” I said. The coffin wasn’t full, but the level rose to at least a third.

  “Hard to say. Several million, at least. Maybe a lot more.”

  “Holy crud,” I murmured. I could almost feel the power of all this concentrated wealth, radiating into me like the heat of a stronger world. This was life… the pure, raw potential of a future beyond my dreams.

  Sheriff Jake stepped back, and he shook himself all over. (Yes, a bit like a wet dog.)

  “How did you find this?” I said. “Did you smell the gold?”

  “No,” he said. “Pardon me, I need that flare.” And he plucked it from my hand and walked further into the darkness.

  “Hey!” I said. Without any light, the glittering portal to paradise vanished; I literally could not see even the bar in my hand. I clanked it back into the coffin by feel, and carefully guided myself around the coffin through the dark so I could approach the lights. “I was using that—”

  “Careful,” snapped the sheriff. He whipped back the flashlight, illuminating a stark cliff edge less than five feet ahead of me.

  I froze. And as I breathed, I could feel the faint waft of colder air biting my cheek, a moist breath from far below.

  “Take it slow,” the sheriff said, but he didn’t have to tell me. With small, tentative steps, I joined him at the edge.

  “What is it?” I said. I peered down into the vast crevice, but the dying beam of the flashlight wasn’t touching the bottom.

  “That’s why I need the flare,” he said. He leaned over the abyss and took an exploratory sniff, and then he carefully tossed the flare over the edge. The flare tumbled down for what felt like seconds, not even touching the slope, and then it bounced off a boulder into a rocky crevice. Where it lit up a human skull.

  “Oh… oh wow…” I groaned, wrestling down a wave of nausea. It wasn’t just a skull, it was the whole skeleton, or at least the shattered remains. “Who is that?”

  “We’ll need to run tests,” the sheriff said. “But I think we just found Una’s aunt. Sandra Graves.”

  Behind us, a woman said, “That’s not all you found.”

  We both spun to face her, and the flashlight beam found the ghostlike face of…

  “Harriet?” I said.

  Harriet was standing twenty feet away. In the dim light, her face was pale, and her grinning painted lips were stark and black like dried blood. She was wearing a helmet, and when she reached up to touch it, a searing light blinded my eyes.

  But not before I’d seen that she held a long gun.

  “Toss your gun over here, Sheriff,” she called. “And then the whole belt. Don’t even think about trying to pop a shot. I’ll know.”

  I was blinking hard, rubbing my eyes, so I couldn’t see how the sheriff reacted. He grunted, but I didn’t hear him move.

  “Yes, exactly,” Harriet called, as if he’d spoken. “You’re both well within range.”

  “Damn it,” the sheriff muttered. I heard him fumble in his belt, and then his gun clattered and skidded across the rock, followed by his whole tool belt.

  “Sheriff?” I hissed. I still couldn’t see, and in the blinding glare, I felt like I was tied to the track of an oncoming train.

  “She’s a damn telepath,” said Sheriff Jake.

  “I read minds,” Harriet called.

  And then, in my mind, I heard her freaking voice…

  So I don’t suggest trying any tricks, thought Harriet in my head.

  Chapter 40

  A telepath. Of course.

  My mind raced.

  No wonder Harriet finished people’s sentences.

  Even Paris had noticed, remember? And I’d seen it myself, when I was trying to teach that stupid class. When I’d started to say that I’d seen David, she’d cut in with, “At the orchard?” How had I not caught on? She’d had no possible way to know that.

  Of course she was the town gossip! And holy crud, she was a hairdresser. She had a constant supply of minds to read! Including…

  “Una! You read Una’s mind!” I said. “She had that hair appointment on the day she changed her will. You knew everything! But… how are you her relative?”

  “Relative?” Harriet said. My blinded vision was starting to clear, but I was still seeing a huge purple splotch, and her piercing head lamp hid her face. “Sweetheart. I don’t need to be ‘next of kin’ to walk away with all this gold.”

  “Harriet,” said Sheriff Jake. “Listen—”

  “No, you listen,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time. Meeting you two down here wasn’t my first choice, but I do appreciate you sniffing this out for me and lighting those flares. These damn tunnels go on for miles; it could have taken me years.”

  “I thought you could read minds,” I said. “Didn’t Una know the way?”

  “You try getting someone to think their way through a complex route to their darkest secret,” Harriet said. “All while they’re getting a bleach. I was lucky I even got the entrance out of her, and that’s way out in the woods.”

  What? I thought. We came from the house.

  “Huh,” she said. “The house. That does make a lot more sense.”

  Damn it! I thought. How do you fight someone who’s inside your freaking head?

  “You don’t,” Harriet said. She laughed. “Darn it, that’s fun. You have no idea what a pain it’s been having to keep th
is an absolute secret. Not that I’ve known it myself for all that long… I always thought I was just highly observant. Ha! But then when I started to hear more clearly, I started to try little tests… you know I didn’t even tell Paris? She wouldn’t have believed me anyway. That idiot thought that Una had told me all about her new will. Me! And that I was willing to ‘take care of things’, while Paris stayed safe at home and didn’t fly in until Una was dead, all in exchange for this dumb land. For my pathetic hair salon.”

  “Paris was going to let you have the orchard? That was your deal?” I said. “She didn’t know about the gold underneath?”

  “Are you kidding?” Harriet said. “Una took that secret to her grave. Just like all the rest of her messed-up family. She pretended to go off and get all this success, but all she did was sell off the family gold, bit by bit, year by year. Her aunt had been doing the same thing; too bad her aunt was down here when Una snuck down and found it…”

  I imagined teenage Una crawling into this very room… had her aunt been startled? Standing too near the edge? Or had there been some awful struggle…

  Then I thought, Why is she telling us all this?

  And Harriet’s voice boomed in my mind.

  To distract that idiot sheriff, she thought at me.

  “Harriet, think this through,” said Sheriff Jake. My eyes were finally functioning again, and I could see him holding his hands up in the glare, appealing. “You still have options.”

  No, you have options, Summer, thought Harriet in my head. Either I kill you both and they never find your bodies, down there with Aunt Sandra… or you wipe his memory and get a cut of the gold.

  “What?” I said.

  “Stop talking!” Harriet bellowed, and she brandished the gun. “I need to think!”

  If you have something to say to me, think it, she thought in my head. I know you’ve got a narrow window for your magic to work, so I’m giving you sixty seconds or I’ll fire.

  How can I possibly trust you? I thought. You made a deal with Paris and then pushed her over a cliff!

  Paris got greedy, Harriet thought. We would have been fine if her husband hadn’t gone and tested for cancer. She started freaking about the medical bills. She was already set for life! But she wanted to sell the land to that hospital idiot for the extra cash. The last thing I needed in here were excavations and construction workers crawling everywhere. If any of them had found this tunnel first, I’d have lost every last coin.

  “Harriet,” the sheriff said, softly. “We can work this—”

  “Shut up!” she yelled.

  I do not like killing people, okay? she thought. I will be happy to give you ten of those bars and have two less problems to worry about. Ten gold bars is one thousand ounces, well over a million dollars.

  My breath caught.

  I’d be set for life.

  No more stupid jobs. No more failed sales courses. No more lurking dread that I could lose my new home any day on Grandma’s whim…

  But I’d be more than just safe. My life would turn amazing.

  Images flooded my mind… a gorgeous house… luxurious parties… or even… Cade back in his orchard, the orchard I’d made him lose…

  Do it! Harriet thought. Touch Jake already! Wipe his memory and knock him out! If he wakes up remembering I’m guilty, you’re both dead.

  My breath was coming faster now. I was starting to pant.

  “Stay with me, Summer,” whispered Sheriff Jake. “It’s going to be okay.”

  What the hell is your moral quandary here? Harriet thought. Either two people die or you get a million dollars. Are you worried about Jamie? That woman is at least a double millionaire and it is all because of my work. She’s clueless! In what universe does she deserve all this too?

  I bit my lip.

  As far as I could tell…

  Harriet was right.

  Time’s up! Harriet shrieked in my mind. Now!

  “Fifty bars,” I said.

  Beneath the glare, I could just make out Harriet’s scowl.

  “Done,” she said.

  “Summer?” said Sheriff Jake. “Summer, don’t—”

  He tried to dodge away, but I had already reached up, and I gripped his neck.

  Here’s the thing.

  I never, ever thought that my Touch would hurt him.

  I thought he’d get a memory wipe, and maybe at worst a painful zap (that would jolt me too). Harriet was seriously about to shoot us. It was either get us both killed, or walk away with millions.

  Of course I figured that I’d find some way to get her behind bars later. But for right then, with a gun in my face, I’ll totally admit it: staying alive and getting fabulously wealthy seemed like a decent deal. Because, again, no one would get hurt.

  But as soon as I’d touched the sheriff, my mind flashed to Grandma, standing on the police station porch.

  Jake? she’d said. Watch your back.

  And now I saw why she’d said that.

  Because beneath my fingers, his neck sprouted thick, rough fur.

  I jerked my hand away, but it was too late. The sheriff was hunched forward, groaning and clutching his chest. In the blazing beam of Harriet’s head lamp, I watched in horror as his hands, pressed against his sheriff uniform, shrank and deformed into paws.

  “Sheriff?” I gasped. “What’s happening?”

  “I can’t… control it,” he rasped. “Shifters tune into morphic fields. To change form.” He coughed, hard. “But you broke the connection… I’m all mixed up.”

  “You mean you’re not doing this? You’re just… morphing? Out of control?” I said. “How do you stop it?”

  “Not… sure…” He coughed again, and his hacking ended in a houndish whimper. He grit his teeth. “First… time….”

  But even as he spoke, I caught Harriet in the corner of my eye.

  Taking aim.

  “Get down!” I yelled, and without thinking, I tackled the sheriff as a gunshot exploded. We hit the hard earth and rolled in a tangle of limbs. Another shot cracked, and I heard the bullet hit the massive coffin.

  “Harriet! Stop!” I shouted. “Are you insane?” I was flat on my back, struggling to separate from the heavy sheriff. The nearby coffin was blocking Harriet’s light and shrouding us in shadow. “You can’t get away with shooting a cop!”

  Then the sheriff screamed, and I forgot about the gun.

  When I’d tackled him, I’d forgotten how much we’d touch. And I’d been too amped on adrenalin to notice any jolt. But we had touched, all right. A lot.

  Because now he was morphing out of control.

  His roar was a mangled nightmare of man and beast, of both and neither. Then he bit down on his yell, clenching his jaw as the bones lengthened and his skull stretched. His arms went wrong; the sleeves flapped loose, and he scrambled into a crawl on his forelegs and paws. His hat toppled off, thrust by growing ears. He pawed round to face me, and I think I screamed, because his face was still human and dog and shifting.

  The canine jaw spread wide, and with a deep-throated bark of rage, he lunged at me.

  His paws struck my stomach like pistons, and I crashed back to the rock, pinned under the massive weight of this monster. The hot breath burned in my face, animal and sour. The panting mouth gleamed with lethal white fangs like a vampire. Only his eyes looked remotely human.

  “Sheriff!” I gasped, panicked. “Jake! It’s me!”

  At his name, the dog-man jerked back, and the human eyes in his bloodhound face studied me and went still.

  Then he was gone, barking like mad, and Harriet shouted and got off another shot, and by the time I’d untangled myself from the pants that he’d dropped and I’d clambered to my feet, Harriet was down on the ground in the fetal position, covering her head with both hands as the dog-man roared in her face. The shirt was still stuck around his bloodhound forelegs, an extra demented touch as he raged inches from her face.

  “Call him off!” she shrieked. “Oh god, he
wants to kill me!”

  “Mur…rre…rer…” growled the dog-man, and he sank his teeth into her arm.

  Harriet screamed.

  I flinched. What had I done to Sheriff Jake? I’d never seen him rage like this, not even as a dog. However I’d “disrupted” him, he was totally losing control. Could he even still think?

  Then the jaw closed around her throat.

  She froze, only a whimper leaking from her lips.

  Please, she thought. I’m begging him, but he’s out of his mind. You can have the damn gold, just get him off.

  She lay trapped beneath the growling dog-man. Her helmet with the light had rolled away when she fell, and in its sideways light, I couldn’t make out her face, only the sharp teeth glinting against her neck.

  The creature that had been the sheriff was about to rip out her throat. All the moral qualms that the man would have had must have vanished in his morphing torment.

  I needed to call him off, right? He’d at least still seemed to recognize his name.

  But between me and them lay the coffin full of gold.

  I said you can have it! Harriet’s voice shrieked in my mind. All of it!

  But she’d just tried to shoot me. And the second I saved her, she’d try to kill me again.

  The woman was a murderer.

  And it’s not like I was killing her.

  Yes you are! Harriet’s mental voice screeched. You’re just standing there!

  It was strange how disembodied her voice was in my mind, how hard it was to connect her human voice to the prone, lumpy shape in the shadows. The mass of gold, the very idea of it, felt so much more real, more alive. I would finally, finally have enough.

  Enough? I’d have millions… even more than I’d imagined moments before…

  My entire body flooded with an unbelievable rush. I could do anything… live like a goddess…

  The only thing in the way was that moaning mound in the dark.

  I’m not a THING! Harriet screamed in my mind. If you don’t call him off, it’s murder!

  “I’m not the murderer here,” I said out loud. “Trust me.”

  Trust.

  Oh crud…