I was shocked and I had no doubt that it showed.
David continued, “Don’t be too surprised. I know you went there last night and found nothing, which is exactly what we found.”
He was right. I’d found nothing. There were signs that Ember continued to go to her tree house from time to time, but she hadn’t been there when I checked.
Ignoring his indirect reference to my disobeying his orders to stay at the house, I asked, “What about the intruder. Were you able to track that scent?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “We could only pick up Ember’s scent. Whoever came into this house was either not a stranger, or they were masking their scent pretty well.”
There weren’t too many ways to mask one’s scent from a wolf, except for with magic. I assumed that’s what he meant by masking. Someone had used a spell to mask their scent. This didn’t necessarily point to the intruder being a witch. There was always a witch willing to spin a spell if you had enough money.
“Whoever took her is dead.” Jasper made his point by slamming his fist into his hand, demonstrating how he would murder said person.
For the first time ever, I agreed with Jasper. If I found whoever took Ember, they were going to wish they were dead.
“A spell might explain the absence of the intruder’s scent trail but what about Ember?” I asked no one in particular.
“If the trail ends at the tree house it could be that Ember is masking her scent,” Evie offered as an explanation. “Either that or she disappeared into thin air. This is unlikely.”
“You think?” I asked, arching one brow. “Those are good assumptions but I don’t know if they get us any closer to finding Ember.”
Maybe I was being too rough on Evie. She was just trying to help, but as far as I was concerned, she’d joined the opposition. To put it mildly, I wasn’t happy the local police hadn’t made any arrests in my mother’s case. I could have done a better job of finding her killer and I wasn’t even a cop.
“Then why don’t you do it?” The voice came from above but it was far from angelic. I recognized that voice. It belonged to that pain in the ass that had hitched a ride from L.A.
Beware of hitchhiking ghosts.
Where had I heard that before?
Kayla was sitting on the ceiling fan and appeared to be having one hell of a good time as it spun her around.
“Mind your own business!” I told her. “And stay out of my head.”
Everyone in the room was looking at me as if I’d lost my mind. They could be right. Kayla could be a figment of my warped imagination. Either way, I wasn’t about to admit to a thing.
“What are you looking at?” I glared at them.
Pippa’s eyes narrowed. “What do you think you’re doing? Did you bring a ghost with you? Necromancy is forbidden in this house. You know that.”
My sister had officially graduated from just annoying to a true nuisance.
“You also know that sometimes they just follow me, uninvited,” I said, emphasizing the last word as I glared at Kayla.
The wild and unruly specter ignored me, as I’d known she would.
Evie cleared her throat. “We should get back to the problem of finding your sister.”
As usual, Evie was right. It really sucked that she was always the logical one. In comparison, it made me look irrational, which I sometimes was.
I hadn’t forgotten about Ember. I was just trying to juggle my dysfunctional family and a stalker ghost.
Drawing in a deep, calming breath, I searched my memory for something I’d learned in college that might be helpful. I was drawing a blank. It wasn’t easy to draw from your education if you spent most of your college days in a haze of intoxication and wickedness.
“What about the Ricks family? They are pretty creepy,” I pointed out.
David’s face twisted in disgust. I couldn’t blame him. The Ricks were a family of hyena shifters that lived about a mile down the road. The Ricks thought they were miles above everyone else in town, yet they had the worst manners of any people I’d ever known.
Disgusted by the mention of the Ricks family, my stepfather shook his head. “I’ve already checked them out. It appears they’ve all been out of town for the last couple days.”
“Is there anyone new in town that we should be looking at?” I asked.
Evie nodded. “A few months ago, someone bought that old house in Shadow Grove. That’s only a few miles from here. We don’t know anything about the new owners except that they opened a nightclub in town and plan to open a resort.”
A nightclub and resort in Raven Point was a bit of an overreach. My hometown had a few watering holes like the one my stepfather owned, but if you wanted a real nightclub the place to go was San Francisco or Portland and neither was very close.
“A nightclub in Raven Point will go over like a tricycle at a biker rally,” I said with a roll of my eyes.
Whoever these mysterious new neighbors were, they hadn’t done their homework. Raven Point had a large population of witches and shifters. Witches wouldn’t mind a trip to the big city for a real night out and most shifters had a pack mentality. This meant they frequented businesses owned by others in their pack. It wasn’t that they wouldn’t do business with anyone else but if given a choice, they’d choose the pack every time.
“It’s time to welcome them to the neighborhood,” I said.
“I don’t think so.” Evie frowned. “This needs to be left to law enforcement.”
As much as I loved my best friend, she sure could be dumb sometimes. Why would I leave this to the cops when they’d already screwed up my mother’s case?
Everyone, including Evie, knew I had no intention of leaving this to law enforcement.
Chapter 9
“This is a really bad idea.”
I gave Kayla a sideward glance. “Why are you whispering? It isn’t as if anyone can hear you.”
At first, Kayla seemed confused, but then she shrugged. “Doesn’t change the fact that this is a really bad idea. You should listen to that friend of yours and let her handle this.”
Evie had promised to meet up with me so that we could visit Shadow Grove together, but I’d given her the slip by leaving early. As much as I loved Evie, I figured I would get further since I wasn’t wearing a uniform.
The narrow driveway was at least two hundred yards long and lined on both sides with massive oaks. At the end of the driveway was the old Greek revival known locally as the Shadow Grove Mansion. It looked like something out of Gone With the Wind until you got close enough to see the faded and peeling paint.
Needless to say, Shadow Grove had a reputation for being haunted. I had no idea if it actually was or not, but it did have that haunted house look to it.
“Do you sense any ghosts?” I asked Kayla.
“You’re such a nerd!” she said, rolling her eyes. “Aren’t you the witch that sees dead people?”
She had a point, but I wasn’t caving. “I rarely see dead people. You’re just an oddity and you apparently don’t understand what dead means.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Kayla shrugged off my rebuttal as she usually did when I got tired of her snark and tossed it back at her.
As far as I could tell, the old mansion still appeared deserted. Maybe Evie was wrong and there weren’t any new neighbors.
Grabbing the plastic storage container of tuna casserole from the passenger seat where Kayla had spent the drive to Shadow Grove sitting on it, I proceeded to get out of the car.
It was a good thing Kayla’s butt was as ghostly as the rest of her or they’d have some pretty stinky casserole. Tuna casserole was smelly enough already, but the idea of someone’s butt on it added a layer of yuck to it.
Climbing the stairs to the massive wrap around veranda, I nearly tripped on all the ivy growing up the side of each of the stairs. If I were the paranoid kind, I might think the ivy had purposely tried to trip me.
Kayla snickered but to her credit, s
aid nothing.
I grabbed the massive gargoyle knocker and let it fall a few times against the door. When there was no answer, I knocked again.
“This is a waste of time,” Kayla grumbled.
“Go home then. It isn’t like you were invited or anything.”
Kayla waved away my words. “You couldn’t handle this trip without me. That FBI agent would have had you eating out of his hands if I hadn’t been there to shock some sense back into you.
“Yeah, right. I don’t think so.”
“Don’t lie. You were swooning over that guy,” Kayla laughed. “You really do need to get out more.”
Before I could think of a way to shut her up, the door swung open. Even though I'd actually been waiting for someone to answer, it happened so quickly that I nearly dropped the casserole dish.
A man with graying hair and a suit out of the 19th century stood in the doorway, a blank look on his face. He was so oddly appropriate to his surroundings that I wondered if he might be a ghost.
“Hello,” I said, putting on a friendly smile. I’m Destiny Summers from down the road. I heard someone had moved in here and wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood.”
The man continued staring at me with an empty look in his eyes. His behavior was so odd that I was momentarily, speechless.
“I think he’s the butler,” Kayla whispered.
Thankfully, the weird butler couldn’t hear Kayla, as far as I could tell anyway.
Snapping out of it, the man bowed his head. “I will announce your visit. I’m sure Mr. Petrova will be happy to receive you,”
Receive me?
I hadn’t even met this Petrova character and I was already getting a weird Henry VIII vibe about him. The urge to ask about headless specters wandering the halls of Shadow Grove was almost overwhelming.
Kayla must have been reading my mind because I felt a sudden jolt of electricity in my side. That was Kayla’s way of reminding me to keep my mouth shut, at least for the time being.
The man stepped aside so I could enter, which I did with some hesitation. I had to keep in mind that my number one mission was to look for signs that Ember might have been at Shadow Grove.
The foyer was pretty creepy. I fully expected that at any minute, a knife-wielding maniac would jump out at me.
While I was taking in every detail of the foyer, the butler disappeared down a dark corridor lit with flickering candles that didn’t actually provide that much light. Later, I would wonder how the hall could be so dark in the middle of the day, but right then and there, all I could do was speculate about the kind of nut who used candles instead of electricity, especially if the power wasn’t out?
The interior of the mansion was clean enough but it didn’t appear as if it had been updated in the last hundred years. There was a grand staircase on each side of the huge entry hall. The staircase had probably been elegant in its day, but now it looked a bit unstable.
Peering up the stairs to the second story, I was struck by how dark it was up there. In fact, it was so dark that the stairs seemed to disappear into a black void.
The hardwood floor was clean but it obviously hadn’t been polished recently. The entire place had a rundown look to it. There were creepy statues of long ago gods and even some candelabras framing each staircase.
Peering up at the staircase to the second floor, I whispered to Kayla, “You could make yourself useful and sneak up there, maybe have a look around.”
When there was no answer, snarky or otherwise, I turned to look for her ghostly presence. She was gone.
Kayla was the wimpiest ghost ever. She couldn’t even handle a creepy old house.
Though it had probably been less than five minutes, it seemed as if I’d been standing in that foyer for an hour. Even under good circumstances that would have sucked, but it was really bad, seeing how I was holding a stinky tuna casserole.
I have no idea why I chose to make a tuna casserole instead of something tastier, like a pecan pie. Subconsciously, I must have already come to the conclusion that our new neighbor had something to do with Ember's disappearance.
When the butler finally returned, he held out his hands to take the casserole dish. “Miss Summers, the master has asked that I thank you for your gift and express his regret that he cannot receive visitors at this time.”
I was grateful to the old guy for taking the casserole off my hands but was also a little perturbed that our new neighbor wasn’t being very neighborly.
“Is there a better time I should visit Mr. Petrova?” I asked.
“The master has asked me to extend an invitation to Wicked. He would be happy to entertain you at his club.”
“Wicked?” I echoed, feeling a bit clueless until I remembered that our new neighbors had also opened a club.
“Yes, Miss Summers. It is the new club in town.”
I thought it odd that he preferred we meet in a club instead of having a neighborly chat in his foyer, but whatever. After all, this was Raven Point and everyone in town seemed to have their quirks.
“Thanks. Maybe I’ll check it out,” I said, careful not to betray my irritation. I didn’t want to wear out my welcome before I had a chance to put this new neighbor under the microscope.
Although disappointed that I hadn’t been able to get a look at Petrova and the rest of the house, I was glad to leave. The gloom inside Shadow Grove was almost tangible.
As soon as I was back in the car, Kayla materialized.
Narrowing my eyes, I gave her a death glare. “You’re a big wuss.”
“Sorry, but that place is too creepy.”
“You’re a ghost! That means you’re the definition of creepy,” I scoffed.
“There’s a lot more than ghosts in that house.”
I’d been ready to start the car but her unusually serious tone took me by surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“I'm not sure,” she said, her eyes glued to the house. “There are spirits there, but there is something more. Something I’ve never felt before.”
She was right. There had been a major creep factor to that house that went beyond the ordinary.
I have this crazy theory about creepy. If something can creep out a witch and a ghost, it had to be pretty damn dark.
I would be paying close attention to Shadow Grove and its rude owner from now on.
Chapter 10
The search for Ember continued but so far, there hadn’t been a single clue to point us in the right direction.
Bless their hearts for trying, but I was sure the search party was wasting their time. If the wolves couldn’t pick up Ember’s scent, it wasn’t likely a search party would find her. We had to be looking in the wrong places.
But where could she be?
I refused to even consider the possibility that she was gone – gone, as in dead.
With Ember missing, the family reunion had been canceled. I wasn’t disappointed. Mingling with sniping relatives wasn’t something I’d been looking forward to begin with.
I was convinced that finding Ember meant finding motive. If we had some idea of why she’d been taken, we’d have a better idea of who took her and where she might be.
It was time for some good old-fashioned interrogating. My first target was Joby. He was closest to Ember’s age. It stood to reason that she might have confided in him.
Evie and Pippa had left to take hot coffee and food to the search party. I figured it was a good time to question Joby.
My brother sat at the table and stared out the kitchen window, seeing something that no one else could. My heart went out to him. He was too young to deal with so much tragedy.
Setting a cup of hot chocolate in front of him, I offered a gentle smile. “Don’t worry, Joby. She's fine. I can feel it in my bones.”
When he finally looked away from the window, the distrust I saw in his eyes tore at my heart. Like the others, he thought I was bad luck and that some of this might be my fault, if indirectly.
<
br /> I can admit to breaking a mirror once and I’d stepped on several cracks in the sidewalk, which was totally bad luck. At least it was bad luck according to most nine-year-old girls, but in this case, my family was being so unfair.
“You know, Joby, communicating with the dead doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Sometimes the dead can be helpful, and sometimes, they just want help,” I told him.
“But it’s forbidden,” he said in a flat, emotionless voice.
“It’s only forbidden because Mom didn't like it,” I pointed out.
“A lot of people think it’s a bad thing,” he shot back.
“Raven Point is full of superstitious people.”
Frowning, Joby shook his head. “They don’t like it because it invites death. I used to think Mom was overreacting, but now I’m not so sure.”
Wow! That one cut deep.
I was in a tough position. There was a part of me that wanted to hug my brother and make the hurt go away, but another part of me wanted to smack the crap out of him.
Still, his reasoning was hard to argue against. I had no way to prove Mom had been wrong about Necromancers. I wasn’t even sure that she had been wrong. After all, she’d had a lot more experience than I did when it came to all things witchery.
In Raven Point, they had a name for witches who practiced necromancy. They were known as Grave Walkers. It was said that Grave Walkers had powers that went beyond mere psychic abilities. I was pretty sure that I was just psychic since I couldn't witch myself out of a wet paper bag.
This was something my family had never understood. My mother fear probably stemmed from her worry that sooner or later, I’d become a Grave Walker.
Seeing how I didn’t have a good argument that I hadn't used already, I figured it was time to change the subject.
Leaning the kitchen chair back on two legs, I folded my arms across my chest. “Was Ember acting strange before she disappeared?”
He seemed confused by the question but quickly regained his composure. “Are you playing cop?”
“Not really.” It was a lie. Of course I was playing cop.
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