I frowned at him. “If you want to be technical.”
“The papers aren’t of note. I do not believe they will assist in discovering the murderer,” he said.
“Do you know anything that you’re not telling me?” he said.
I carefully spooned up chocolate sauce around the edge of my plate. “I know that he had a good friend who used to visit him but doesn’t anymore. At least, he hasn’t in a long time. That’s all I’ve discovered that Cookie doesn’t also know.”
Grant perked up at that. “Do you know anything about the friend?”
“He was good-looking too,” I said.
“Helpful,” said Grant dryly. “What type of good-looking though? Surfer dude? Professor? Pro wrestler? There are so many options.”
“You’re apparently the one to know,” I said, shocked. Not only did this guy talk boots happily, but he’d just said the phrase “surfer dude.”
Grant burst out laughing at that.
We didn’t stay much longer. I was sad to leave, and I hoped I’d get a chance to come back soon.
And yes, I hoped it would be with Grant.
Chapter Twenty-Two
We decided that a walk on the beach was good in theory, but the wind made it too cold for tonight. Once summer returned, maybe we could come back, eat on the veranda, and stick our toes in the sand.
The boat ride back was just as beautiful as the ride out had been. When we reached the beach below Haunted Bluff, I was sad. Not because of the stairs, but because the night was ending. I didn’t give two copper pennies about the stupid stairs at this point.
Now Grant and I holding hands just felt natural. We walked to the stairs and up them, chatting all the while. I was telling him about all of the times when I had ruined clothes working in the haunted house, or trying to help out with unruly supernaturals. Sometimes they had fits in the house, and then everyone was in danger.
Grant thought the stories were funny. He also pointed out that almost all of them concluded with Cookie saving the day . . . and then drinking wine.
We had reached the top of the stairs and I could see the lawn stretching out to the mansion. There were still several lights on, but the kitchen lights were off.
We stood still for a moment, and then I turned my back on home. I wasn’t ready to go in yet. I wasn’t ready for the night to be over. I wanted to continue to stroll like this indefinitely.
Already smiling down at me, Grant wrapped his arms tightly around my waist and pulled me close to him. I realized I had been shivering, but now I stopped.
From this angle his eyes looked black and his skin very pale. He was tall, and once again he blocked the wind as he lowered his head down to mine.
I closed my eyes and tilted my face upwards.
The wind blew over my cheeks and nose.
I felt his chest rise and fall against me.
My fingers grasped each other behind his back and held him tighter.
Totally lost in the moment, I pulled him closer, waiting for what would happen next.
One thing that definitely was not happening next, though, was his lips touching mine.
I cracked one eye open just a tiny bit, to see what exactly was going on.
Grant was frozen. His head was bent but his eyes were averted, looking somewhere behind me and over my head.
“Umm,” I said.
Grant shook his head, only the slightest motion. If I hadn’t been staring at him, I would have missed it.
My heart was hammering in my chest.
His eyes flicked.
I was just taking in a deep breath, getting ready to scold him for not kissing me. Then, finally grasping that something was wrong, I slowly turned my head.
At first I missed whatever it was he was looking at.
Then I saw dark figures scaling the walls of the mansion. They were big, and they looked like spiders at first. But when I looked more closely I wasn’t sure what they were. Then I realized that they were man-sized figures, and they were climbing up the walls of my home.
I snapped my head back to Grant. Fear made me panic. All embarrassment at his not kissing me banished in an instant.
Without a sound, he released me, and I stepped away from him, trying to be as quiet as possible.
He was totally alert. All of his movements were precise and practiced. He lifted his hand and whispered something under his breath. As he did so, a black jet of enchantment spread out before him. Motioning for me to follow, he started moving.
The two of us headed toward the mansion without a word.
The enchantment Grant had sent in front of us must have been to check our path for traps. There were none, and we kept moving forward. As we crept onward, I couldn’t take my eyes away from the climbing figures. I had no idea what they were doing or where they were going, but it was clear that they were a danger.
Were they supernaturals? Maybe they were messengers from the Root.
Were they humans of some sort, who had no clue that there were witches here, not to mention the rest of the inhabitants of Haunted Bluff?
That might actually be the worst option. Given the time of night, uninvited human visitors might see something they shouldn’t.
Breathless, I tried to surge forward. My family was in the mansion, which was under attack, so the last thing I wanted was to alert the intruders that they’d been spotted. They were in front of us, and if they knew we were here they’d just move faster. The element of surprise was the only advantage we had.
We came flush against the house, and Grant stopped and flattened his back against the wall. I did the same. My coat protected me from the stone, but I still knew I had backed up against an icy cold wall.
We both looked up. The figures weren’t in the house yet, but they were now nearly obscured by the ledges and other ornamentation on the outside of the old mansion. Framed by the black night sky, the dark figures moved. Danger swirled around us as I watched them.
Grant leaned very close to me, close enough so that I could feel his lips move against my ear.
“Do you know where they’re going?” he whispered.
“They’re outside the haunted house. Those windows are for the replica library,” I whispered back.
We had a library in the haunted house that Meg made spooky in every way she could think of. We were constantly changing the decorations to fit Meg’s latest imagining so that repeat customers would never be bored.
“Can we get in from the inside?” Grant asked. His voice was low and still utterly calm. I tried to match his feelings, but I only got so far.
“Yes. This way,” I said.
He followed me to the kitchen door. Shadowed from where the figures were, we were able to slip inside the mansion without being seen.
I ran through the house. The kitchen was closed. We didn’t stop at Steve’s door or anywhere else. I didn’t know where my family had gotten to, and we didn’t have time to find out.
To the haunted house we ran. I burst through the door and the usual eerie red light met me.
I knew Grant was at my back.
Once we entered the graveyard, Grant stepped in front of me. We made our way like that, Grant staying a bit ahead of me as we raced against the clock.
I simultaneously felt a pang of fear for him, and gratitude. He had been in a lot more of these fights than I had. He knew what he was doing. Also, since he was the law and I was a private investigator, I had to do what he said.
We moved faster than I would have thought we could. He knew we weren’t about to run into the intruders, so we hurried around one corner after another on silent feet.
The whole time, I kept hoping that my family was asleep and out of danger.
But I didn’t get to think about Mom for long. In no time at all, we reached the haunted library. Cobwebs hung in front of the door, one of Meg’s latest decorative additions.
Grant cast another enchantment. From my position behind him I couldn’t see his lips move, but the door was s
uddenly ringed in smoke that was black at first, then burned more and more brightly until I couldn’t look at it anymore. Finally, it disappeared.
When Grant opened the door, the movement was so silent that I knew he had cast some sort of noise enchantment to make sure that whoever was inside the room wouldn’t hear us coming until it was too late.
We slipped through the heavy door, and Grant motioned for me to close it. I did so, trying to be as quiet as possible just in case.
Then I turned around and found that even though it had taken me just a second to close the door, Grant wasn’t there anymore. He had already started moving forward. As I moved to follow him, a blast of cold air hit my face. I concluded that the windows must be open, and further, that whoever we’d seen scaling the mansion walls was now inside the haunted house.
I longed for the days of terrifying gigantic spiders that were actually not brave at all. I had a feeling that whoever was attacking the mansion tonight would fight to the death.
I took three quick steps to catch up with Grant. His broad shoulders were never more noticeably broad and strong than on nights like this. With him at hand, this fight couldn’t possibly go wrong.
As I came near to Grant I felt my spine tingling, and suddenly the back of my neck felt hot. I didn’t know what drove me to do it, but my head snapped upwards.
Falling toward me was a black figure that had jumped off the second floor balcony. There were books on the second floor, plus a walkway that was open in the middle to other floors of the library. All that separated the walkway from the wall was a thin railing.
With a cry, I rolled sideways and came up onto my feet again. My shoulder throbbed from the contact with the floor, but my eyes stayed focused on the shadowy intruder. He had landed on the floor with a thud in exactly the spot where I’d been standing only moments before.
“Trip this intruder up,” I said, casting a quick enchantment. Nothing pretty, just effective. The intruder had started to run away, but now his feet tangled with each other and he went sprawling.
Before I could cast another enchantment, Grant was there next to me. His hat was set at a rakish angle and his cloak billowed behind his legs. He tossed his hat at the struggling figure, and as he did so he yelled a word I didn’t quite catch.
The hat became a silver boomerang and slammed into the intruder, who fell back down and this time stayed motionless. The boomerang circled and returned to Grant as a hat. His Majesty of Magic plucked it out of the air and replaced it on his head. He glanced at me and said, “You okay? Nice work.”
“Fine. Let’s get the rest,” I said.
“My kind of girl,” said Grant with a grin. The two of us raced for the stairs. I jumped over the prone figure, conscious of my nice suede boots.
As we hurried up the stairs, I scanned right, left, and above. I didn’t want any more surprises, and I knew there had to be at least two more figures somewhere nearby.
We reached the second floor, but when I saw no one up there, a terrifying thought entered my head. What if the figures had already gone deeper into the house, let’s say into the family’s living area?
What if they had gone through the haunted house to Cookie’s apartment, and my grandmother was under siege even as I was standing there?
Then I remembered that she had booby-trapped her entire apartment. She claimed it was to defend herself, but I knew she was really just trying to get back at any family members who might stop by for a visit. I was careful never to go to her wing of the mansion unannounced.
“There!” I pointed across to the fake windows, which were covered in fake blood. Some nights two vampires pretended to fight against the windows for the amusement of visitors. Tonight, the other two intruders were there.
I didn’t have time to think about who these intruders might be. Before I could stop them, one threw a match. In the next breath the library was going up in flames.
The two figures realized that they had an audience and turned toward us. Like the one that Grant had left sprawled on the floor in the library, they wore dark cloaks and were difficult to see clearly. I couldn’t make out their faces at all. What or who they were was still a mystery.
“We have to split up,” I said to Grant. “You go one way and I’ll go the other.”
“No way. We have to stay together,” he said, his eyes locked on the dark figures.
Then the two of them split up, one heading around to the right and the other to the left.
“See?” I said. “We have to split up.”
“Oh, very well. Be careful,” Grant said as he made his way to meet his target.
“You too,” I shot after him.
He didn’t acknowledge that, he just kept going away from me and toward danger. I kept a steady pace and didn’t hurry to meet the figure coming toward me. Shadows moved around us, and I tried to remember everything I could about Meg’s haunted library.
She had books stacked everywhere, including some on the upper floors. She had also scattered black acorns all over the floor, and she was forever seeking out the creepiest book titles at yard sales in order to make the library as spooky as possible.
When there was only a space of about twenty feet between me and my attacker, I spared one glance to see how Grant was doing.
That was a mistake.
The instant I looked away, the intruder coming around to meet me sprang forward.
Faster than I would have thought possible, he was on me. I saw him at the last possible moment and put my head down, running toward him to match his motion. Surprised, he half tripped in an effort to avoid me. What kind of attacker doesn’t want to attack, I didn’t know. But when this one tried to hop over the railing, I skidded to a stop and reached out to grab him. He in turn tried to get away. When he changed direction and I tried to match his movement, I nearly fell into the thin railing.
He wasn’t faring any better; he nearly tripped himself in his hurry to evade me.
From the other side of the library I could hear Grant casting enchantments, and also swearing. Whatever was happening, he and the intruder he was pursuing were having a higher class fight than I was having with mine.
My masked man and I were doing a sort of awkward-looking dance, where we each tried to attack the other at the same time we were each trying to get away from the other.
“Who are you!” I yelled, as my fingers just missed closing on the black cloak.
Instead of answering, he tried to grab me by the shoulders and shove me backward.
The railing and a long fall were behind me. I dodged the gloved hands and tried to get a look at his face, but the thick hood still obscured my view.
A yell behind me caused both of us to turn, only to see that Grant had thrown his opponent over the railing. Instead of falling, he seemed to nearly float before he landed.
The attacker I was fighting wasn’t sticking around for anything more. He darted away just as Grant jumped over the railing and I opened my mouth to yell in panic.
I stopped myself just in time. Grant landed on silent feet, his cloak billowing out behind him as he advanced on the intruder. He cast another enchantment, and this time I heard the words. “Stick this sticky-fingered thief to the floor!”
The figure on the floor rolled, but his coat got stuck on the sticky magic and he rolled around wildly as Grant advanced on him.
The attacker I had been fighting was still on the second floor, but I knew he’d be down at any moment.
Then we discovered that the third figure had gotten loose from the enchantment that had tripped him up in the library. As he came stumbling and bumbling toward Grant, my heart stopped.
I thought Grant didn’t see the danger he was in, but suddenly he whirled. As if in slow motion, his movements were practiced, controlled, and utterly breathtaking. He moved so fast that I couldn’t even see exactly what he did, but whatever it was, it sent the third figure sprawling again.
At that moment, the one I had been fighting reached the ladder
and hurried down to the floor where Grant had just done his dance.
Now I sprang into action. I couldn’t leave him by himself.
“Grant! Be careful!” I yelled, pointing to the one who had just reached the first floor. The one who had lost his cloak had reached a nearby set of shelves and started pulling down books and throwing them at Grant. Grant dodged each one easily.
The other two figures reappeared and converged on Grant. I landed on the first floor just as all three of them were attacking him. But before I could reach him, one of the figures lit a match.
Now everything came to a halt. Fire was very bad. We were in a library, after all.
For an instant, everything was suspended. Then I started forward just as the match left the attacker’s hand and flew through the air. All I saw was the tiny flame heading toward the floor, and the air had a faint tinge of something bad-smelling. The three criminals who had scaled the walls of the mansion were planning to burn the place down.
Chapter Twenty-Three
In the confusion that followed, all three of the hooded figures got away. The cloak that had gotten stuck to the floor went up in flames. I tried to follow them out, but they were through the windows so fast that I couldn’t catch them.
Knowing where they were headed hardly mattered at the moment. We had forced them out of the haunted house, which was the most important thing. Now all that was left was the minor matter of saving our home and our lives from going up in flames.
Grant and I battled the blaze together. The fire spread faster than I thought it possibly could have, probably because Meg had used a lot of dry materials in her decorating. There also appeared to be some sort of accelerant helping it spread, making me wonder if one of the intruders had already been inside the house, spreading kindling for the fire, by the time Grant and I came onto the back lawn and saw the dark figures climbing the walls.
The soot was making me cough, and the flickering orange and yellow flames were our only light.
Grant performed another enchantment, this time to contain the blaze, but he was clearly tiring.
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