by Tegan Maher
"We've got a few minutes, but we need to get ready." I dumped our plates in the trash can, and Hunter darted toward the wagon, which was returning from a ride. He and Shelby helped the kids off, while Cody unblocked the barn doors so they could get the horses and wagon inside.
Folks were coming toward the food tent to gather their dishes, and the few cakes left from the walk were carried into the house or claimed by their owners. That pretty much covered everything; the other games were waterproof. With kids and casserole dishes corralled, families headed toward their vehicles and we made it to the house just as the first fat drops of rain started to fall.
Cody and the rest of the teenagers were relaxing on the porch, picking through the Halloween candy and drinking punch, so I headed inside.
I had to tell Rae and Addy what Hunter had said, but when I turned around to call for them, I saw that all the after-party guests were gathered in the salon, including the ghosts. Anna Mae was chatting with Bobbie Sue, who was lighting the Sterno under the warming tray for a fresh pan of her pulled pork.
Bobbie’s husband Earl was standing in front of my rifle case talking to Angus and to Bob, who owned the hardware store. His wife Marge was chatting with Coralee next to the punchbowl as they watched over her grandkids, but moved aside when Shelby came through with the punch.
Belle and Addy were arguing about something over by the fireplace, and Raeann had gone into the kitchen. I followed her, trying to catch Addy's eye as I went. She caught the hint and followed me in. Rae was alone, stirring a batch of mulled cider as it warmed. The smell of fruit and spices filled the kitchen and reminded me I still had to bake the peach crisp. She smiled at me, reading my mind. "I already put it the oven for you. It's been in for about twenty minutes."
"As usual, you're the bomb." She scooched to the side so I could open the oven door and check on it. It still needed another five minutes or so. I moved back so Rae could finish her cider and cleared my throat.
"Listen, you guys. I was talking to Hunter about our problem a little bit ago, and I think he hit on something."
All eyes were on me. "He thinks maybe—"
The kitchen door swung open and Marge and Coralee bustled in. Marge was sniffing the air. "Goodness!” she said. “It smells marvelous in here, ladies. Is that peach crisp I smell?"
I shrugged and widened my eyes at Rae and Addy, who were still staring at me. I would have been fine filling Coralee in on the problem, but Marge had her grandkids there. She’d been looking forward to this after party for three weeks, and I didn’t want to rain on her parade, bless her heart.
"We just came in to get some cups to put beside the punch bowl," Coralee said.
I reached into the pantry and handed Marge a sleeve of clear plastic punch cups, then reached into the fridge to pull out the rest of the h'ordeuvres. Coralee took each plate from my hands as I took them out and set them on the table behind her. Then she and Marge started pulling the plastic off the tops.
"Goodness, Noelle," Marge said, popping a cold sausage ball into her mouth, “you really outdid yourself on the food, dear.” She wiped her fingers, then continued: "Delicious, but the little olive eyeball on top was a bit creepy."
I rolled my eyes; there was always a "but" attached. I thought about asking them to take the trays out so I could talk to the girls, but that would have been rude. Instead, I stacked the platters along my arm and carried most of them out myself, with Marge and Coralee trailing behind me with the rest.
I returned to the kitchen just in time to pull the crisp out, but by then Rae was in the salon filling the other punchbowl with the warm cider. Finally, I managed to get her back in the kitchen, and Addy and Belle popped in. Before anybody else could interrupt, I filled them in on Hunter's hypothesis.
Rae shrugged. It seemed like somebody drowned or had a boating accident at least once a year, but we didn't know any of them personally.
Addy had filled Belle in on the situation, hoping for some input. Now they were strangely quiet, communicating silently between themselves. I turned my gaze to them.
"Oh dear, Addy,” Belle said. “Do you think—"
Addy was nodding. "It could be, but that would be just awful."
"Um, excuse us," Rae said. "Mind filling in the rest of the class?"
Addy pulled in a deep breath, then released it. "Back when we were young, right after that picture on the mantle was taken, there was a horrible tragedy out on the lake. A girl whom we all called Trouble—"
Lightning crashed, causing the house to shudder on its foundation, and the lights flickered twice, then stayed out.
CHAPTER SIX
The house fell silent for a split second as we waited for the lights to come back on. When it didn't, people started scrambling.
Bobbie Sue popped into the kitchen, lit Sterno can in hand for light, and reached for the drawer closest to the sink. "This is still where you keep the candles, right?"
“Yeah,” I said, then heard a crash from the living room. I groaned. "Hold that thought, you two. Rae, we need to go make sure nobody kills themselves in there."
We went out to the living room; somebody had just knocked an empty cake pan off a table. Rae started lighting the candles I'd put on the tables for decoration, and the glow set the perfect ambiance for the occasion. I picked up the pan and smiled when I saw one of the girls in Shelby's group shining a flashlight up from under her chin.
"Ooh, you know what we should do?" she said, leaning forward in her chair. "We should have a séance!"
A couple of the other girls squealed. "Yes! Let's do it." They were already clearing a space around a large card table. Shelby stared at me, at a loss. I put my hand to my forehead as I felt the beginnings of a migraine. It wasn’t like I'd had an unknown spirit haunting me all day or anything. No, a séance wasn't a horrible idea at all.
I went back into the kitchen with Shelby and her best friend Emma—also a witch—hot on my heels.
"We can just fake it, right?” Shelby said. “I mean, we don't even know for a fact that whoever wrote on the mirror is still in the house, do we?"
I explained what had happened with the Ouija board earlier.
She collapsed into a chair and put her hands over her face. "What are we going to do?"
Emma shrugged. “We'll do exactly what you said; we’ll fake it. After all, they don't have a conduit, and we're not doing the actual ritual, so it'll be fine."
"What will be fine?" Addy asked.
"A couple of Shelby's friends have decided to have a séance."
She looked relieved. "Oh. That's no big deal. There's not a drop of witch blood in the lot of them. None of them could summon their grandmother even if she was alive and well and standing right in front of them. Besides, there's no conduit."
The girl who'd suggested the séance surged into the room and began to dig through the boxes on the kitchen table. "I know I saw a Ouija board in here earlier,” she muttered. “Have any of you—never mind. I found it." She rushed back out of the room carrying it under her arm.
Shelby, Em, and I looked back at Addy, hoping she was still feeling confident.
She shook her head. "Now we may have a problem, ladies."
Belle's gaze darted toward the salon as Shelby followed her friend, calling out to her to wait. I scraped the crisp into a warming pan, determined to wear my rose-tinted glasses until somebody knocked them off, then peeked out the door. The kids had the board laid out in front of them. Several candles were burning in a half-moon around it, but nothing out of the ordinary was going on. So far, so good.
Meanwhile, Belle and my aunt were deep in conversation. "Addy,” Belle said, “if it's who we think it is, we have to tell him. What if something actually happens out there? He needs to be ready."
I spun back around. "Tell who what?"
Addy opened her mouth to respond, but Hunter pushed into the kitchen with Angus right behind him.
"Evening, ladies." Angus paused to take a closer look, wrinkling his
forehead in concern. "Is everything okay? Y'all look a little peaked."
Belle managed a small smile. "We're fine, Angus, but—"
One of the girls in the living room screamed, and the clanging of a metal lawn chair hitting the hardwood floor echoed through the room. Hunter pushed open the door. A blinding white light gushed in from the salon.
"Noelle!" Shelby shrieked as I leapt toward the kitchen door.
"Oh, no," Addy cried. "Angus, you need to stay in here for a minute. We need to talk."
I pushed past Hunter, who had dropped the napkins and was staring at the source of the light along with every other soul—literally—in the room, mouth wide open. I skidded to a halt.
"Angus!" Belle barked one more time in an attempt to keep him in the kitchen, but it was too late.
The girl I’d seen staring back at me in the window was glowing and hovering over the table where the other girls had gathered for their impromptu séance. Angus passed right through me, something a ghost just doesn’t do because, well, it’s rude to walk through people. He glided forward, entranced, until he was floating only a few feet from the table. I followed him, not sure what was happening or what I should do about it.
"Trouble?" Silvery tears slipped down Angus’s cheeks and he reached out to the glowing girl.
She looked down at him and smiled.
The lights flickered back on, and the moment was broken. In the few moments it took for my eyes to adjust to the light, both the girl and Angus disappeared. The teenagers were chattering a mile a minute, but the adults in the room didn’t seem so surprised. It seemed Rae and I were the only people over the age of twenty who didn't understand exactly what was going on.
We stepped into the kitchen, and the four ghosts were hovering over the table: Addy, Belle, Angus, and the new girl. Everybody was hugging and crying.
Angus stepped forward, his hat in hand. "Girls, I'd like for you to meet Sarah James—but we always called her Trouble, because it seemed to follow her."
Trouble smiled. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm sorry for hassling you like I did today—and I’m real sorry about your glass, Addy—but Noelle’s the first person who's been able to see me since my pendant washed up on shore.” She turned to me. “I think I was as shocked as you were when I saw you in the window, then I got so frustrated because I couldn't make you understand."
Angus couldn't seem to take his eyes off her. "Trouble and I were engaged back when we were about your age. I'd just gotten out of the military, and her family had a summer home on the other side of the lake." His voice cracked and he looked away.
Addy stepped in. "We were all supposed to go out on her father's boat to celebrate their engagement. It was storming something fierce that night, but we weren't worried; we figured we'd move the party somewhere else if there wasn't room inside the boat."
Trouble nodded, and gazed into the distance. "Except something went wrong. The skies were clear when Daddy an I left, but a storm blew in out of nowhere. Lightning struck the boat, and we were taking on water fast. The radio was out. We had no way to call for help." She glanced at Angus. "I remember holding onto the crystal as I was thrown overboard, because I didn't want to lose it. My last thought as I went under was that I wasn't going to get to spend the rest of my life with you."
Angus was tearing up again. "I was devastated. I couldn't eat, but I sure could drink. And then I couldn't stop, because when I did, it hurt too much. I never even got to say goodbye."
"So let me get this straight," I said. "You've been locked in the crystal for all these years?"
Trouble nodded. "Yes, because my body was never found. I've been in a kind of limbo since then. Time had no meaning. I was just ... stuck."
Rae shook her head, then picked up a ghost cookie and bit into it. "Well,” she said. “I don't know about the rest of y'all, but this is one Halloween I'll never forget."
"Me either," Angus said, looking into Trouble's eyes. "You girls have given me the only treat I ever wanted."
Moonshine Valentine
It’s Valentine’s Day, and Noelle has no idea what to get for Hunter. While she’s getting her hair cut and tossing around gift ideas, Coralee’s long-term boyfriend pops in and declares his undying love via a marriage proposal, breaking rule numero uno of their relationship clause.
He’s only the first to fall, though. When the men of Keyhole Lake start acting like lovesick lunatics, Noelle and Rae have to put their heads together to figure out what happened before the whole town goes loopy in love, or someone ends up in jail.
This story falls in between book 4, Murder and Mayhem, and Book 5, Murder and Marinade, in the Witches of Keyhole Lake Mystery Series, but may be read as a standalone at any point in the series.
CHAPTER ONE
“So what did you get Hunter for Valentine’s Day?” Coralee, my hairdresser and the owner of the local beauty parlor/gossip mill, asked as she tilted me back to put my head in the sink.
I’d been fretting about that very issue when I’d made the impromptu stop to get my hair cut. I’d managed to push it to the back of my mind, sort of, but her question brought the stress crashing back. I sighed. “Nothing yet. He already has everything I would think to buy him. I’m horrible at coming up with good gifts.” Valentine’s Day, Christmas, birthdays ... they gave me hives because I always ended up buying something lame at the last minute because I couldn’t think of anything cool.
True to form, it was Valentine’s Day, and though I’d been agonizing over what to get him for a month, I still didn’t have a clue. It was our first one together, and I wanted it to be perfect. Not mushy though, because that just wasn’t us. Unfortunately, that ruled out the easy stuff like froufrou cards and candy hearts and crap like that.
As Coralee’s fake nails massaged my scalp, the worry faded partly away again. It was impossible for me to stay stressed when she was doing that. Way too soon, she finished rinsing my hair and was putting a towel around my head. “Sugar, you better think of somethin’. Today’s the day.”
I huffed out a breath. “You don’t have to tell me. I was hoping inspiration would strike while you were washing my hair, but no such luck. What did you get Buddy?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “We don’t do much of that stuff anymore. Shoot, we been together fifteen years. We figure he’s caught me and I’ve caught him. Besides that, we keep the romance goin’ every day, if you know what I mean.” She grinned and waggled her eyebrows at me in the mirror. “Why, just last night, he took me up to truck pull over in Eagle Gap, then to the Golden Corral afterwards. Nothin’ says I love you like all-you-can-eat steak.”
“Fifteen years.” I shook my head. “What’s the trick to keeping it fresh?”
Belle, the previous owner and resident ghost, popped in before Coralee could answer. “The secret to keepin’ it fresh,” she said, “is to trade ’em in every ten years.”
Coralee scowled at her. “Just because you were married six times doesn’t mean the rest of us have an aversion to a lifetime commitment.” She nudged me on the shoulder. “Ain’t that right, Noelle?”
Before I could reply, Belle humphed. “Says the woman who’s been dating the same man for a decade and a half and still lives in her own house.” She made a show of looking at Coralee’s ring finger. “Either that thing’s bare, or he bought you the world’s tiniest diamond.”
Coralee furrowed her brow and swatted at her mentor, for all the good it did; her hand passed right through her. “You know good and well we decided right up front not to get hitched. He has his place, I have my place, and we both agree it works. ’Sides, most of the time we’re at one house or the other together anyway. Ain’t no need for the state to stick their nose in our bedroom.”
I’d heard that sentiment a hundred times, but it just didn’t feel right to me. “I don’t know.” I said, wrinkling my brow. “I kinda like the idea of settling down with one man, sharing a house and growing old with him. That includes sharing names and finances and,
well, everything. Dating is so much work. Besides, it’s hard to find a good man; it’s not like they grow on trees around here.”
Coralee’s scissors were flying around my head, hopefully trimming my unruly red curls into something I wouldn’t need a whip and chair to tame. “Yeah? What happens when you just want some alone time?” She shuddered. “I can’t imagine living with somebody—even Buddy, bless his heart—full time. I’d be battin’ an eye and twitchin’ in less than a week, and he feels the same way.” She shook her head, and I was amazed as always that her huge 80s hairstyle didn’t so much as wobble. The power of Aqua Net. “No siree, Bob. Ain’t happenin’.”
We chatted on for a bit, mostly about possible ideas for Hunter’s gift. They’d throw out a suggestion and I’d discard it just as fast. Too mushy. Already has it. Hates it. Wouldn’t use it. Not original. Of course, I had no doubt I’d end up going with one of the suggestions that fell into the latter category in a last-ditch effort to at least get him something.
Coralee was scrunching my hair in her hands as she blow-dried it when the front door swung open, letting in a draft of chilly air. I blew the hair out of my face to see who it was. Buddy, the very man we’d just been talking about, came rushing through the door, stomping the snow off his beat-up work boots.
“Well hey, Buddy!” I said. “How you been doin’? I haven’t seen you in forever.”
“Yeah, hey Noelle,” he muttered, but his gaze was glued to Coralee. He rushed over and took the blow dryer from her hands and handed it to me along with his Earnhardt ball cap, then took both of her hands in his, kissed her on the cheek, and dropped to one knee. His eyes were all moony and he was looking at her like she was a brand-new pick-up truck, season Bulldog tickets, and a deluxe pizza from Duck’s—the best pizza place in town—all rolled into one.
Coralee looked just as confused as I felt and Belle hovered beside her, unwilling to miss a single second of whatever was happening.