“No, Thomas, she opened your fly and your dick fell out, along with your common sense. But according to you, that wasn’t the first time your dick fell out and lost its mind, so hey, no biggie, right? I kind of hate you right now.”
“Poppy, really,” he said, disappointment in his voice.
Ha.
That was rich.
Him being disappointed with me.
“Like I pointed out. You had to have noticed the change in the last few weeks. You can’t possibly be that—” He stopped just shy of saying stupid.
Good thing, or I’d have likely stabbed him with my fork for real.
“Silly me. I thought everything was fine between us and that my husband was adult enough to come to me before he up and slept with another woman. But the keyword there was ‘adult.’ We all know you’re anything but that. Mommy never really raised you to be one.”
“That was a low blow,” he said.
“As opposed to you bringing me here, springing the fact you want a divorce, and have been having an affair for…how many weeks was it again?…with a woman you met in a hotel bar, and that she isn’t the first woman you’ve cheated on me with over the course of our marriage?” I asked, speaking loudly enough for everyone to hear.
Thomas tugged at his tie more and lifted a hand. “Really, Poppy. Show a little decorum.”
My gaze snapped to his half-eaten plate of food once more. Every bit of anger, rage, and hurt I felt seemed to wash through me and exhale from my body.
One second his plate was before him on the table and the next it was deposited on his lap.
He shot up. The plate and most of the food fell to the floor. Some stuck to the groin area of his three-hundred-dollar dress slacks.
For a second, I wondered how he could have been so clumsy as to flip his plate onto his lap—because as much as I’d have loved the satisfaction of throwing it at him, I hadn’t touched the thing.
The more I stared at the sight of him in his expensive clothes, covered in a plate of red snapper and risotto, the more the burning anger in me gave way to laughter. The next I knew, it was bubbling up and out of me.
I didn’t just laugh. I laughed so hard that I cackled. Then I lost the ability to breathe as I pointed at him with one hand and fanned myself with the other.
Righteous indignation settled over his face as he grabbed his napkin and began wiping at the front of his pants. All that did was smear the food more.
That only made me laugh harder.
It felt good to laugh. It did wonders for getting rid of the tension in my shoulders and the pressure on my chest.
Several women in the restaurant were nodding their heads in approval, snickering along with me. The men with them wisely averted their gazes, avoiding comment. Clearly, they were smarter than my husband.
Thomas threw his napkin on the floor. “I cannot believe you. You’re behaving like a…”
“A woman scorned?” I managed through my laughter. I then stood and the waiter rushed over to me. I smiled sweetly at him. “Would you happen to have a phone on you? I really need to call a friend, and I don’t think it can wait until I get home where I left my cell phone.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Thomas, his face red from embarrassment. “I’ll take you home.”
The waiter ignored him and reached into his back pocket, materializing a mobile phone for me. He held it for a second and licked his lower lip. “Your husband is an idiot. If I had a woman like you, I’d never let her go.”
As sweet and ego-boosting as that was, he was barely older than my son. “Thank you. Would that you’d have been twenty years older.”
He winked. “A guy had to try.”
He handed me his phone.
I dialed a number I knew by heart.
Dana answered on the second ring. “I don’t know this number. If you’re trying to sell me an extended warranty, I’m going to hunt you down and shove my size nine right up your—”
“Dana,” I said.
“Poppy?” she asked. “Why are you calling me from this number? Did you lose your cell phone—again? Check the potting shed. The last time you lost it, we found it in a potted plant. Not sure what you were trying to grow. A better coverage plan?”
I met Thomas’s gaze. “Thomas wants a divorce. He’s been having an affair. This apparently isn’t the first time he’s done this. And he wants the house.”
She was quiet a second.
Thomas rolled his eyes. “Call your pit bull. Nice, Poppy. Real nice. Bringing her into this will only make it turn ugly.”
“Yes, because bringing in one of my best friends who happens to be an assistant district attorney is totally insane. Especially when my husband of nineteen years tells me he doesn’t love me anymore and that I can’t keep my house. How utterly irrational of me, Thomas.”
He scoffed. “Why don’t you call Marcy too? She can wave a crystal at me while she burns incense and chants. Maybe she can conjure a spirit or something to annoy me.”
“Can I punch him in the face?” Dana questioned. “Or kick him in the balls?”
“Nah. I’d rather hex him,” I said, staring directly at the man who was about to become my former husband.
Thomas’s eyes widened. For years, he’d taken little jabs at my family’s history, and I knew the very idea that witchcraft could be real in some way scared him.
I narrowed my gaze on him. “With impotence.”
“Ha! That would teach him. I love you,” said Dana as she laughed. “I’m booking a flight as we speak. I’ll get Marcy. We’ll be there in a jiffy. Your backup bitches are coming.”
I hung up the phone and handed it back to the waiter. “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” he said with a wink. “And if you change your mind about me, your friend has my number on her phone. My name is Austin.”
I smiled wider and laughed at the shocked look on Thomas’s face.
“Stop hitting on my wife,” he said.
The waiter snorted. “Uh, pretty sure she’s not going to be your wife much longer there, pal.”
Thomas looked livid.
“Could you call a ride service for me?” I asked the waiter.
He grinned. “Yes, but I’m willing to leave work early and take you home myself, if you want.”
I couldn’t have smiled wider if I tried.
Thomas, of course, protested.
I ignored him and exhaled slowly, my attention on the waiter. “How about I wait out front for you to finish up?”
The waiter shook his head. “It just started to pour outside. Hell of a storm moved into the area. Wait in here. I’ll bring you some dessert. Chocolate cake sound good?”
It was raining?
That was odd.
There hadn’t been rain in the forecast, and it wasn’t like this time of the year was known for having showers pop up.
I stared at Thomas. “Hand the man your credit card, Thomas. After all, this dinner is on you, since I only earn pennies, remember?”
With a grunt, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet. “You’re not seriously letting this…boy take you home, are you?”
“You didn’t seriously throw nineteen years of marriage down the toilet for a woman you’ve known less than a month, did you?” I countered.
He shut up.
Three
Brett
South Carolina
Chief of Police Brett Kasper stood in the woods that covered one side of the town of Grimm Cove. Portable lights running off small generators were set up around the area, illuminating it to the point it damn near looked to be daytime, rather than two in the morning.
He stared down at the body two of his men had found while out on a morning run. They’d been in shifted forms, making their senses more acute, and when they’d happened upon the body, they’d hurried into town, coming straight for Brett’s house to alert him.
There was a scent they mentioned noticing in the area that had dissipated to the point Brett, even w
ith his heightened senses, could only detect faint notes of. It smelled sticky-sweet. Like someone spilled the smallest bit of syrup near the area, yet deep down he knew the taste wouldn’t match the smell. It was off—unnatural.
Yet he couldn’t put his finger on it.
The medical examiner had covered the body, or what was left of one, with a sheet, and Brett’s officers, along with those from the M.E.’s office, had set up a grid pattern and were working the scene, making sure they didn’t miss any possible evidence.
Sadly, it was not their first rodeo when it came to dealing with a murder in the city limits, and he doubted it would be their last.
Brett was no stranger to death. He was former special ops, and between his time in the military and law enforcement, he had twenty-four years of experience and exposure to violence and death. More if you counted being born a shifter. The world of the supernatural was often a violent one. There was a certain kill-or-be-killed mentality that seemed to go hand in hand with it all. As much as he disliked that fact, it was what it was and had been that way for thousands upon thousands of years. Wishing otherwise wasn’t going to change that.
The town of Grimm Cove had seen a boom in its population in the last twenty years. It had nearly doubled in size. With that increase in population came new schools, a university, a new hospital, a recreation center, and other amenities. It also meant a higher crime rate. And the South Carolina town was hardly normal to start with. After all, most of its residents were supernatural, and almost all the rest knew of the existence of the supernaturals. But nobody talked about it outside of the town’s limits.
People, or humans, as most of his kind referred to them, simply didn’t understand, and trying to explain it without them freaking out wasn’t going to happen.
A lot of time, money, and effort went into hiding the existence of supernaturals from the general public. It went higher than most governments even and was worldwide. Honestly, it was one of the only things all the factions of the supernatural world could agree upon.
Brett had been born a wolf-shifter and grew up having a father who was pack enforcer. That meant his father handled any pack members who stepped out of line. He’d been the pack’s version of law enforcement. He’d never aspired to be pack leader and left that to his lifelong best friend.
Much the same way the dynamic worked between Brett and his best friend, Jeffrey. It was funny how the roles stayed the same even with the new generation in charge of things. Brett wasn’t simply the chief of police, just like his father had been as well; he was also pack enforcer. Jeffrey was alpha—the man in charge, as his father had been. When he wasn’t heading the pack, he was operating the bar he owned.
Right now, he was standing next to Brett, staring down at the sheet-covered body. “That’s the fourth one in the last six weeks,” he said. “Two men. Two women.”
Brett nodded, doing his best to ignore the scent of decomposition and blood. It would only serve to trigger his shifter side. Thankfully, he had a lot of control over the beast. “I know.”
“And your people are sure this wasn’t a shifter attack?” questioned Jeffrey.
Brett looked at him. “The other three weren’t, and this one looks and smells just like those. We’ll know more after the autopsy and after the evidence is examined. But I think it’s safe to say a shifter didn’t do this. Unless Gilbert has suddenly become a serial killer, since his tracks are the only ones I see out here.”
Jeffrey snorted at the mention of the local deer-shifter, Gilbert Carol. It was rutting season, and poor Gilbert hadn’t figured out a way to master full control over his animal side just yet. When not losing control and shifting into a huge stag, he could be found working at a service station over on the corner of Sycamore and Jackson Streets. He was great with cars but crap with being a shifter male.
Knowing Gilbert, he’d tried to drink away the pain his lack of control caused him emotionally. That only left him more susceptible to the demands of the animal he shared his body with.
“Think he maybe saw who did this?” asked Jeffrey.
“Maybe. I’ll track him down later today and see if he remembers anything,” added Brett.
Jeffrey stared at the covered body. “What in the hell could have done this?”
“I honestly don’t know. But with the estimated time of death, we can rule out vampires. Unless they figured out a way to be out in noonday sun without issue.”
Jeffrey glanced upward at the canopy of trees. “Think there is enough coverage for them to have made it work?”
He raised a brow. “You know any dumb enough to try to get this far into the woods in broad daylight?”
“Newly turned one maybe,” suggested Jeffrey, sounding almost hopeful. If it was a vampire, they’d at least have a lead. As it stood, they had none.
“I don’t think so,” added Brett. “Now we just need to run down the list of a trillion other things that could have managed this.”
Jeffrey paled and ran a hand through his medium-length sandy-blond hair. He, like Brett, had taken to just keeping a stubble-covered jawline because it was far easier for them as shifters than trying to maintain a baby face. And like Brett, Jeffrey had white appearing in his beard, but Jeffrey’s was harder to notice.
Brett had naturally black hair, so his white hair stuck out like a sore thumb. It was on his temples now too, slowly working its way into his hair more and more. Getting old wasn’t for the faint of heart, as noted by his trick knee. He’d injured his leg while serving overseas and had been unable to shift fully to heal it himself. Doing so would have outed his species to the humans around him, and it was hard enough to keep it hidden with the medical screenings the military did. Shape-shifting into a wolf that was nearly twice the size of a normal wolf would have tipped everyone off that he wasn’t human.
And they probably would have killed him either in fear or to cut him up and study, so he’d suffered through the injury and healing process. When he was finally given time alone, the injury had already healed.
It was what it was now.
But he was in far better shape than the guy under the sheet, so he wasn’t about to complain.
“Think you’ll be able to figure out who the dead guy is?” asked Jeffrey.
Brett shook his head. “I doubt it. From first glance, all identifying marks are missing, just like the other bodies. Whoever is doing this has taken a lot of counter-forensic measures. In this day and age that’s hard to do. But they’re managing, and you know as well as I do that our techs and labs are more advanced than normal because of what we have to work so hard to hide. Guessing this one ends up being human too. Like the rest.”
“Shit,” said Jeffrey, pulling his hand over his jaw. “Someone is going to come looking for these missing humans. When they do, it will lead them here—to Grimm Cove—to us.”
“Yep. And I’m right here to deal with it. Just like always,” said Brett, putting his hand on his buddy’s shoulder. “We’ll handle this. It’s what we do. And we’ll figure out who’s doing this and stop them. I’ll reach out to the heads of the other groups. I’ll handle the rest of the shifters, the vampires, the Fae, and the witches. I’ll let them know about the newest body and see what, if anything, any of their people have found out.”
Jeffrey gave Brett a sideways glance. “Noticed you left off a few groups there.”
Brett snorted. “Yep. You can have the pleasure of asking the demons and the slayers. I know how much you love dealing with both of them. Try to avoid getting in any more fights with Elis. Finding both of you sitting in cells back at the station isn’t my idea of a fun time. So how about you not make my officers have to respond to yet another issue between you guys?”
Jeffrey shook his head. “Not my fault the head of the slayers is an asshole. I try working with him nicely. All he does is make jabs about me being a wolf or dog.”
“Every other group makes those snide comments. It’s what we all do—razz each other. Why do you let this
one get to you?” asked Brett, never understanding why his best friend’s fuse was so short when it came to slayers—especially Elis.
“He’s a Van Helsing. They have god complexes,” said Jeffrey. “Sure. Get your name mentioned in a book alongside Vlad’s and you think you’re all rock stars. Whatever.”
Brett couldn’t help but laugh.
“I kind of hate you a little bit right now,” grumbled Jeffrey as he walked off in the other direction and pulled out his cell phone.
One of the women from the medical examiner’s office approached Brett. “Chief Kasper, the coroner needs to talk with you. He’s over by the van.”
“Thanks,” he said, glancing down once more at the sheet-covered body.
Jeffrey was right to be concerned. If they didn’t find the serial killer responsible for the deaths of the humans, Grimm Cove would be crawling with outside law enforcement and media. Damage control on something like that would be difficult, maybe impossible.
He’d do his best to keep control of it all, but it wasn’t going to be a small task.
He walked carefully around the crime scene to avoid disturbing anything and headed in the direction of the coroner’s van parked up on the ridge. Halfway there, he spotted a grouping of small yellow flowers in circle clusters on the ends of a plant. They were near one of the portable lights.
He knew instantly what type of plant they were from.
Yarrow.
He couldn’t help but laugh over how he’d come by the knowledge. He used to forage in the woods with Poppy Proctor. She’d been his everything during his teens and early twenties, but he’d screwed things up between them, pushing her away and then losing her to some rich, fancy-pants prick.
He could hardly blame Poppy for moving on after what he’d pulled, but it still hurt whenever he thought about it—which was often. He knew why that was, but hadn’t really admitted it to himself just yet, let alone said it out loud.
Not that it mattered.
Jeffrey and his buddies said it out loud enough for him.
He continued to focus on the flowers, remembering walking through the woods with Poppy, with a list of things her grandmother had asked her to retrieve. She and her grandmother used the yarrow for medicinal remedies. Most of which Brett hadn’t bothered to pay attention to. He’d been happy for the time with Poppy and didn’t care why they were there. They did it often…and just as often they’d used the time alone in the middle of nowhere to make out.
Cloudy with a Chance of Witchcraft: A Paranormal Women’s Fiction Romance Novel Page 3