That explained Abel’s question about doing something stupid. Man, she was downright mean.
Which made me ask, “Why didn’t you take the webcam from the Talbots’ room, Clarissa? Why did you leave it there?”
She tipped her head back and laughed. “You have no idea how lucrative revenge porn is, do you, you knock-off Charlie’s Angel? When I saw how much money I was making from Sabrina and Igor’s vid, after I took care of Grady, I put it back. Have you seen Mr. Talbot? Yum-my! He’ll bring in some good hits.”
The poor Talbots. This woman was mad—and I was freezing.
Had we covered everything? Was there anything left?
I didn’t need to wonder anymore. She hauled me upward by my hair and shoved me forward, jamming that gun between my shoulder blades again.
I winced, sure a bruise was already forming on my spine, but worse, I was cold—so cold, and it was making it hard to think.
“Clarissa!” I yelled against the wind, digging my heels in as we neared the edge of the cliff. “They’ll catch you! I texted Stiles before you stomped my phone and he’ll be here any second!”
“You’ll be dead and I’ll be long gone. No one will ever find me. I’ve figured it all out, and once I’m settled, Igor will finally realize he loves me and join me!”
Finally realize he loves me? She was bananapants, and I wanted off the Bananapants Express.
But Clarissa gave me a shake before whipping me around and pressing the gun between my eyes.
We were no longer bantering or trading information—her eyes, glittering in the dark, said she was going to kill me and there would be no discussion.
“Jump, Halliday! Do it!” she roared. “Or I’ll push you!”
Welp, I had two choices. Jump or be pushed. I wasn’t sure which way would best facilitate my idea about how to save myself, but at least she was giving me a choice.
Now, don’t get me wrong, as the wind screamed and my fingers had no feeling, I was terrified I was going to fudge this up and die in the process, but I would do it with my head held high.
“Do it!” I screamed in her face. “Push me, you coward!”
Yep. I dared her to push me over the edge.
The shock on Clarissa’s face was well worth the lashing I was going to get—one she gave me by raising the pistol and cracking me in the face with it.
I was slow to spring into action, but I grabbed her wrist and gripped it as hard as I could, hoping to wrestle the gun away from her.
“Let me gooo!” she hollered.
I managed to shove her away long enough to move a couple feet back from the edge of the cliff, but no sooner had I done so, she was right back in front of me.
The gun was askew in her fingers, probably as cold as mine, leaving them stiff. She resorted to clocking me in the face again, a hard right jab to my eyeball that knocked me down.
And then she was hovering over me again, gun repositioned and pointed at me. As I crab-walked to back away, I managed to rise to my feet again and bellow, “Do it, Clarissa! Push me! I dare youuu!”
At that point, I think she’d had it.
So she did what I asked.
She ran at me—so fast, so fueled by rage, she didn’t even look like Clarissa anymore, and as she howled her anger, she gave me a shove—one so hard, I thought she broke my shoulder.
Of course, this was when I totally blanked and forgot the spell I was going to use.
Honestly, I needed a good Witch Spells 101 class or something.
Because there had to be a better way.
Chapter 16
So I’m here to tell you, I’m not sure it’s true that your mind goes blank on your way down in a long fall. Because my mind was anything but blank, and as the ragged cliffs and rocky edges flew past me, all I could think was this is gonna hurt like the dickens if I didn’t buck up.
And then I thought about that abominable snowman named Bumble. You know the one. The one in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? You know…big, hairy, lots of teeth, bouncy…toothache as an explanation for why he was so cranky.
I have no idea why a picture of him flashed through my head, or the sound of Yukon Cornelius hollering “wahoooo” when he knocks Bumble out rang in my ears, but there you have it.
It snapped me into action. “Spirits, lift me! Lift me high! Lift me up to the sky!”
And the spirits complied with a roar.
Okay, so there were some technicalities—like the fact that I was now on the shoulders of…of…
I looked down and gasped.
Of a Bumble…
Shut up!
We shot back up in the air like a cannonball from a cannon, cutting through the falling snow and raging winds, his paw reaching out for the edge of the cliff, his claws digging into it to get a grip.
Clarissa, still standing at the edge of the cliff, a look of disbelief on her face as the gun fell from her hands, screamed and began to back away as the Bumble (I swear, that’s what I conjured) clawed his way over the edge and hopped up on the ground with me on his back.
The only problem? He chased after her. Roaring and snarling, his big feet clapping like thunder against the snow, all while Clarissa screamed to high Heaven. He was so enormous, I saw the lights of the lodge and the tops of the pine trees from his shoulders as I dug my nails in and prayed I didn’t slip off.
“Stop!” I yelled, but he was a conjuring. He wasn’t real, though the damage he could do was very real, and he had to be stopped.
I clung to him and wracked my brain, trying to remember how to make him disappear. “Be gone with you, oh conjured one—from this Earth, you must run!”
Now, hindsight said I probably should have prefaced that spell with something soft to land on when I made him disappear. But as per usual, I was panicked and stressed and I screwed it up.
Regardless, with him no longer under me, I crashed into Clarissa, flattening her to the ground with a loud grunt.
“Hal!”
I heard my name, but quite frankly, I was whipped. I’d just dropped from the sky. I could barely lift my head, but I managed to roll off an unconscious Clarissa and lie flat on my back, depleted.
Stiles came crashing through the snow, dropping to his knees to scoop me up. “Kitten!”
My first thought was of Sabrina. Had my vision happened or had I succeeded in changing the future? “Sabrina,” I muttered. “Is she okay?”
“We got her, Hal, she’s fine.”
Relief, so bone deep, washed over me. “Thank Goddess.”
“Now, what did I tell you about doing things on your own?”
Oh, that was rich. I burst out laughing. “Shut up, Stiles, and get me up off the ground, would ya? I’m freezing. I’ll tell you all about it as soon as I warm up.”
“What am I gonna do with you?” he joked as he swung me up in his arms and carried me toward the lodge.
“I don’t know about me, but did anyone besides Clarissa see the Bumble?”
He looked down at me as the snow slashed at his face. “Wait. Like Bumble from our favorite Christmas movie Rudolph? You didn’t…”
I winced. “I kinda did.”
Now he threw his head back and laughed. “I wanna hear all about it. Until then, Hobbs’ll be here any minute. I thought he was gonna have a chicken if he didn’t find you. Good thing that kid called 9-1-1.”
As he set me on the ground near an ambulance, where someone waited to check me, I asked, “Kid?”
He tucked his chin into his thick jacket while police cars and sirens sounded. “Yeah. Hudson something. He called 9-1-1 when he saw Clarissa take you into the woods.”
My little spy. Huh.
Stiles dropped a kiss on my frozen cheek. “I gotta go make sure the scene is secure, Hal, but someone will come take your statement. I’ll see you tomorrow. It’s Christmas Eve…and we have some serious celebrating to do.”
I blew him a kiss and let the paramedic escort me to the back of the truck, where he threw a heated blanket aroun
d my shoulders and handed me some hot liquid in a Styrofoam cup.
“Hal! Hal, are you okay?” Hudson came running toward me, still in his Batman pajamas.
I slipped off the edge of the truck and gave him a huge hug. “Thank you for calling 9-1-1, Carter, Hudson Carter. You’re just like a real spy. A real hero. You probably saved my life.”
He grinned at me, his freckles going red on his cheeks. “I know your secret.”
I leaned back and eyed him. Uh-oh. “My secret?”
“You’re magic!”
I made a face. “Am not.”
He jabbed the air with a finger. “Are too. I saw you!”
I played dumb as I sipped the worst coffee I’d ever had. “You must be seeing things.”
But he was convinced. “Nuh-uh. I saw you make the snowman from Rudolph with my own two eyes.”
Crud. “Did you now?”
“Uh-huh,” he said eagerly, his eyes bright. “Can I have a pony?”
I started to laugh. “You cannot have a pony, sir. What you can have is my undying gratitude and all the candy canes I can find for the rest of your life if you promise to keep my secret.”
He clucked his tongue. “That’s not a pony.”
“How about a candy cane in the shape of a pony? Or better yet, in the shape of James Bond’s golden gun—as long as you eat it responsibly, of course.”
His eyes went wide. “You can do that?”
I grinned and winked conspiratorially. “Oh, you’d be amazed at what I can do.”
“Hudson!” I heard someone yell, then a woman in a red, fuzzy bathrobe with untamed brown hair was running toward us through the falling snow and wrapping him in her arms as tears streamed down her face. “You had me worried to death! What have I told you about leaving your room at night? I don’t know what your sister was doing, but she’s in big trouble!”
Hudson snuggled against his mother. “It’s okay. I did a good thing, Mom. I called 9-1-1 for Halliday.”
I smiled at Mrs. Carter through my swelling black eye. “He sure did. He’s a real James Bond. And I’m Halliday Valentine—or am I Miss Moneypenny?”
Hudson broke out into a fit of giggles as his mother excused them and pulled him back into the lodge.
“Hal!” I heard Hobbs call out as he ran toward me, his strong legs taking big strides to get to me. He pulled me close and whispered, “Honey? Thank God you’re okay!”
I let him fold me into his warm, strong arms, closing my swollen eyes and sighing. I inhaled the scent of his cologne while I let the warmth of his chest seep into my bones.
“I’m okay,” I whispered against his chest.
“I tried to stop you from leaving, but you took off in an awful hurry. You did know there was a killer running loose out here, right?”
I chuckled, then winced. “I’m sorry, but I was so excited we were onto something that I wanted to get my phone before someone saw those pictures.”
He pressed his cheek against the top of my head. “Did Clarissa see them?”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure she did. But it’s okay now. She’s in police custody.”
He eyeballed my face when he leaned back. “You need to see a doctor, honey.”
But I shook my head. “I just have a black eye and some sore ribs, but I’m okay.”
He gave a gentle wipe to my face where snow battered me. “Yeah, you got some shiner there, Cowgirl.”
“I’m going to answer whatever questions these nice officers have for me and then I want you to take me home, Texas. I need some wine and sympathy. And a bath. A nice hot bath.”
Hugging me close before he let me go, he said, “You got it. Though, question?”
“Can I tell you all about Clarissa after we get back to the house and I warm up?”
Gripping my hand, he sat me gently toward his Jeep. “That’s not what I want to know.”
“What do you wanna know?”
“What’s a Bumble? I overheard that kid telling his mom he saw one…”
I laughed so hard, it hurt my bruised ribs, and I kept laughing long after I’d been questioned and we’d gotten into the car to head home.
Epilogue
Christmas eve…
I stared at Hobbs and Leona across my dining room table, the Christmas lights from the windows behind us giving their eyes a gleeful gleam. “This is a joke, right? You two are messing with me?”
Hobbs leaned back in his chair with a smile. “Not a joke, Hal. But do you see why I wanted Leona here with me to tell you?”
I fought for a gulp of air. Not because my ribs were a little sore, but because I was breathless from what they’d just told me. “If you guys had told me you were running away together, I’d find that more plausible than…”
“This?” Hobbs asked with a mischievous grin, holding up the book he’d pulled from his jacket, with a hot guy embracing a sexy woman with long flowing hair, the shiny cover glowing under the light of my dining room table.
“The typewriter!” I all but yelped, scaring poor Phil, who’d been curled up with Barbra and Stephen King by the fire.
That had to be why it kept recurring in my visions. The universe was all but screaming at me the answer, and I’d missed it.
Then I remembered what he’d said…butt in chair. Now I remembered why that struck a chord with me. I’d once seen a writer on a Facebook page say, “butt in chair, hands on keyboard.”
I shook my finger at my handsome boyfriend. “Butt in chair…”
“What?” Leona asked, her beautiful face confused. “He doesn’t use a typewriter. He uses a computer and Word.”
I shook my head, forgetting Leona knew nothing about my visions. “Sorry. It’s nothing.” Then I looked at a sheepish Hobbs, who knew exactly what I meant. “I don’t know what to say. You’re Savannah Temple? You? You write paranormal romance novels? You, a big, strapping Texan? No wonder there are no pictures of you…er, Savannah on social media!”
He reached for my fingers and entwined them with his. “Nope. No pictures—and believe me, there’s been loads of speculation about that, which is what I meant about Twitter and a witch hunt. I have a publicist who very artfully dodges all the questions about my gender. And excuse me, but big, strapping Texans can be romantic.”
Tucking my hair behind my ear, I shook my head. “That’s not what I mean and you know it. I mean, you’re really in touch with your feminine side, aren’t you? You write books under a female pseudonym.”
“Books you don’t like,” he very kindly reminded me.
My face flamed hot. “But…but Stiles loves you!” I redirected.
“You don’t like Digby’s books?” Leona asked with obvious disbelief.
Oooo, I was in hot, hot water. “I didn’t say I don’t like them. I just said—”
Hobbs clucked his tongue and mimicked my voice. “As I recall, you said to Stiles, and I’m not even paraphrasing here, ‘Blick. She’s so dark and gloomy and everything is about how awful life is and how hard it is to merely breathe.’”
I winced and bit the end of my nail. Oh, yeah. I had said that. “I just meant I like a funnier take on my paranormal romance, but what do I know? Obviously, people love your dark romances and they clearly don’t care if you’re a man or a woman or a zebra. You’ve hit The New York Times’ Best Seller List a bunch of times. That’s proof I don’t know what the heck I’m talking about. But it does explain why you knew what a weredeer was.”
He gave me a lopsided grin. “It’s all good, honey. I get bad reviews all the time. You should see some of my one-star reviews. Phew, people can be vicious. But my skin is thick. I mean, it would be nice if my girl liked what I do for a living, but it’s nothing I can’t live with.”
I Wanted. To. Die. Slide right under the table and D-I-E die.
And I didn’t know what to say. So I said something stupid. “I would never give you a one-star review anywhere.”
“Well, maybe not now that you know your boyfriend is Savannah Temple,” he
teased.
Leona clapped her hands on the table. “All right, you two. It looks like you can take it from here, Dig. I’m outta here. I have a hot toddy and a hot girlfriend waiting for me back at the lodge, where I plan to snuggle up under a thick comforter with her in that hotel’s big feather bed, watch silly Christmas movies, and be happy to be alive while I stuff my face with those amazing marshmallows from that cute Gracie Good.”
She stuck her hand out to me, her long, graceful fingers wrapping around mine. “Hal, thanks for lunch. Best chowder I’ve ever had, and it was awesome to meet you. You’re as gorgeous as Digby said, and I think you’re one brave cookie. You’re the real romance novel heroine here, lady.”
She pulled me into a hug, and I inhaled the scent of her expensive perfume and sighed, only hoping I could ever be as elegant.
“It was really nice to meet you, too, Leona. Thanks for being so nice about how rude I was back at the lodge coffee shop.”
She dismissed me with a fine-boned hand. “Bah! No worries. Digby should have told you long ago what he does so late at night. He brought that on himself. And now, I’m really out. Merry Christmas, darlings!”
Leona left in a cloud of perfume and flawlessness, leaving both Hobbs and I alone to stare at each other until we both broke into grins.
“You’re Savannah Temple. Stiles is going to lose his mind.”
“And you’re a witch,” he teased. “We both had secrets.”
“What made you decide to write romance novels?” I was dying to know.
“I did it on a bet in college when I teased one of my girlfriends about reading them, and said that anyone could write one, even me. She dared me to try. So I did, and it was awful. Then I got the bug and started reading them one after the other, and tried again. It took a while, but I got an agent—who you now know is Leona—and we sold it to a publisher, and here I am. Still pulling my foot out of my mouth all these years later.”
Carnage in a Pear Tree Page 14