“Guess we should have phoned.”
“I did. I spoke to—”
“A moron with mushed peas for brains.”
The female voice came from Jasmine’s left shoulder, so close to her that when she spun, she fell into Rogan’s chest.
“Sorry. Did I startle you?”
Whoever the woman was, she looked like a warrior bird. Her midlength hair was black with scarlet tips. She had two visible raven tattoos, black fingernails and God knew what kind of costume on her body. Her coat was a hodgepodge of leather, feathers and rough red lace. So were the boots that skimmed the tops of her thighs.
To Jasmine’s amusement, after a quick once-over, she smiled and shot out a firm hand.
“Riese Blume. If you’ve heard of old Rooney Blume, he’s my grandfather and the patriarch of the Cove. Most everyone here has Blume blood to some extent, with the obvious exception of the guests who pay to stay in my home. As luck would have it, mine is the only hotel in town, but I’m a fair innkeeper. More than fair if you can cook. Dog’s cool as per your question to my pea-brained assistant, who went and beaned himself jumping off a rock at a wedding we hosted today out on the cliff, which is why I’m dressed up like a partly transformed raven in skintight hip waders and a feather coat. But that’s not important. Do you want one room or two?”
“Uh…” was all Jasmine could manage.
Rogan did better, working up a slow smile. “One’s good for me.”
The spell shattered. “Two’s better.”
Dollar signs came and went from Riese’s black eyes. “Adjoining?”
“Please.” Rogan dropped an arm onto Jasmine’s shoulders. “Away from the other guests if possible.”
“In a house the size of the Titanic, I can swing just about any request.” Pausing, Riese shook a curious finger at Jasmine. “I don’t mean to be rude, but are you any relation to Lacey Blume? She ran off thirty years ago with a psychologist from Boston. Fat toad insisted we were loony for thinking any part of our legend was true. Then he got himself tangled up with the biggest loon of all. Er, no offense if you are related.”
Jasmine turned a burgeoning laugh into a smile. “Not that I know of.”
“What about you?” She zeroed in on Rogan. “Your lady friend’s got Lacey’s eyes, but you’ve got the look of a Blume altogether. Dark, dangerous and brooding, with a healthy dose of just plain bad. Not that my great- great- blah, blah, blah ancestor, the one who was poofed into a raven, was truly bad, but…”
The door opened and closed behind them. Riese continued to talk while she mounted the stairs to the entrance, where Boxman stood with a backpack on his shoulder and a butterfly bandage stretched across his nose.
“My multiple great’s name was Hezekiah Blume,” Riese went on. “There aren’t any portraits, but most agree he was a strapping man with a very large chip.”
Despite the fact that she appeared to be in storytelling mode, Jasmine saw her hand ball into a fist. Boxman had mentioned meeting a birdwoman in a local bar. Given the fact that Riese looked like a woman with a fistful of mad, two and two probably made four.
A glance at Rogan yielded nothing except a placid “Cause and consequence, love.”
Because she felt she and Boris owed him for the bandage, Jasmine got to Boxman first and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Nice to see you again, Sergeant.”
He kept his uneasy gaze on their hostess. “What? Oh, yeah, thanks. Uh, hi there, Rita.”
“It’s Riese.” But she stopped on the third step and scowled at Jasmine. “Is he really your friend?”
“Mmm. He’s also a police officer,” she said when the woman’s hand twitched back into a ball.
“What happened to his nose?”
“He tripped over my dog while he was doing police stuff at Lenny Grant’s cottage.”
Riese’s heavily made-up eyes slid to Rogan. “Are you a cop, too?”
“Ever since I quit my restaurant job.”
As he’d undoubtedly anticipated, Riese pounced. “Can you cook?”
Jasmine suspected he was just able to fight back a grin. “Not as well as my—friend can. She and her mother own the restaurant in question.”
Riese tapped a finger to her lips while Jasmine shot him a lethal look. Smiling a little, he absorbed it and started for the door. “I’ll get Boris and our bags while you two talk menus.”
Before she could object, Riese was dragging her toward a shadowed archway.
“All I really need’s a little coaching. You’re on the third floor,” she said to Rogan. “Left staircase, end of the hall, hang another left, you’re there. First two doors on the right. Rooms have fireplaces and balconies. Bathroom’s in between.” She stabbed a backward finger at Boxman. “We’ll sort out your accommodations later.”
Jasmine knew she could have escaped. However, Riese’s grip held a measure of desperation she couldn’t ignore. In any case, a tour of the kitchen would get her away from the thought of adjoining rooms, balconies and, God help her, fireplaces.
“I don’t usually take on more than a few guests at a time,” Riese confided. “Currently, and if I include your sergeant friend, who, just so you know, put the moves on me in town last night, then didn’t show here later like he promised he would if I’d pick up the tab because he was a little short—”
“He is short,” Jasmine interrupted. “Bad divorce, alcoholic lawyer, cop paycheck. Math’s easy.”
Riese shrugged. “Maybe I’ll cut him some slack. Point is, I’m feeling frazzled right now because I have eight people in my regular rooms and two more in the studio suites. I don’t have to feed the two, but even eight reads like eighty when your assistant takes a header and your personal best menu item is KD and ketchup. I can get my aunt to fill in for a while, but crème brûlée’s hell and gone beyond her, and that’s what my flyboy assistant put down for tonight’s dessert.” She studied Jasmine’s face as they passed through the enormous dining room. “You sure you’re not related to Lacey?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Too bad. Blume blood’s not a bad thing to have. Some say it’s evil, but others swear it’s the opposite. Evil for obvious reasons, but good because it’s like a vaccination. You have the blood, you live a good long life without worry, and I’ll buy anything that says I’m not going to die a horrible death.”
So would Jasmine, if such a thing could actually be bought.
The kitchen, when they reached it, was larger than her Salem apartment and twice as forbidding as any exhibit she’d designed at Witch House. She was eyeing a black monstrosity that might have been an oven, when Riese’s cell phone rang.
“Hello… Hang on. Go ahead and explore,” she mouthed, then frowned into her cell. “What?” While Jasmine rattled the heavy oven door, Riese fisted her free hand on her hip. “What do you mean, he told you I’d pay?” With a smile that was more of a grimace, she lowered the phone. “I appear to have a—situation. Feel free to bake if the urge strikes.”
“Don’t count on it,” Jasmine said as Riese stalked out.
Giving up on the stuck oven door, she took a walk around the room. Her own great-grandmother might have enjoyed this place, but it felt like a time warp to her.
Far below a bank of leaded windows, she heard the raging force of the ocean. With each wave that broke, a question sprang to life in her head. Why was Boxman here? Was Wainwright really dead? Where had Daniel gone? Why use an obscure legend to threaten them? Why not just torture and kill them in the usual way?
Pressing on her temples, Jasmine willed the darker thoughts away. She should go upstairs, lock her bedroom doors and order Boris to attack anyone who entered—including a certain dark-haired, dark-eyed cop whose sexy half smiles were threatening to snap the last threads of her sanity.
More waves collided with the rocks below. The lights, already dim, flickered. Glancing up, she skirted a butcher-block island complete with a thirty-piece knife set and a rack loaded with cast-iron pots.
As hard as she fought them, more thoughts and questions crept in. Why had Rogan brought her to Raven’s Cove? To keep her safe was a given, but not the whole reason. Rogan’s agenda was never simple, even if it appeared that way on the surface. What was his motive here, his plan? Why had he been the one to appear in her home last night? What did the killer really want?
Why was she standing here thinking about it?
Using annoyance to battle fear, she located the swinging door. Forget crème brûlée and foolish assistants, it was past time for Rogan to share at least a portion of his knowledge with her.
The phone ringing in her coat pocket distracted her. She pulled out her cell and regarded the screen. Colleen Ellis. With her thumb poised on Talk, she debated how much she should confide to her mother. All of it? Some? None? She waited through two more rings before putting the call through.
“Hey, Mom. I thought you were going to be out of touch for at least another day.”
“I’m not your mommy, Jasmine,” a creepy but familiar voice replied. “I made your phone lie to you. Lying’s what I do, at least in the small ways. In the big ones, I always tell the absolute truth. Do you believe me?”
She thought having her heart in her throat would have prevented her from responding, but it didn’t. Breathing with difficulty, she regarded the blackened bank of windows across the room. “Why are you doing this?”
A ghastly chuckle reached her. “Oh, my poor, beautiful Jasmine, I haven’t done anything yet. Not to you anyway.”
Her gaze traveled to the front of the house. Rogan? No. Daniel? Her mother? Panic almost broke through, but she reined it back. The killer was here, not in Washington State.
“I’ve confused you, haven’t I?” the voice whispered.
Keeping her eyes on the windows, she edged toward the swinging door. “Is this about Daniel, or the trial, or something else?”
The voice altered unexpectedly, turning her blood to ice water.
“This is about you, Jasmine. All about you! You want a clue, I’ll give you one. You’ll be seeing me soon enough. Too bad it won’t be the real me you’ll see. Reflect on that while you can. But know this.” The words emerged in a virulent hiss. “Wherever you go, whatever you and your cop lover do, I’ll be watching. Everywhere…you…go!”
Her arm dropped. A foot from the door now, she lifted her eyes to the high rafters. Then she heard a soft scrape and snapped them down.
She spotted it instantly, perched on the inside ledge of the window. A raven, large and silent and staring straight at her.
Chapter Eight
Who kept a raven for a pet? Apparently, Riese Blume did. And she didn’t just have one, she had three.
Hezekiah, named for her infamous ancestor and identifiable by a red band on one of his legs, was the oldest. She’d trained him to open the unlatched kitchen windows with his beak and hop inside.
It took Jasmine several seconds to differentiate between the raven watching her and the killer who claimed to be doing the same thing.
Unfortunately, forty minutes later after she’d gone through the call in grisly detail with Rogan, he and Boxman returned to the house with nothing to show for their search efforts except a statement from Boxman that he’d heard a car with a Chevy engine start up nearby.
Dinner was a piece of cake by comparison. Riese’s aunt arrived to make steamed crab, herbed sweet potatoes and a vegetable dish that contained a prickly black root she refused to name. If nothing else, Jasmine reflected, the woman kept her too busy to dwell on the insidious voice that echoed in her head.
Rogan walked her upstairs afterward. He locked the windows and doors, and told Boris to watch her closely. Then he kissed her forehead and suggested she get a good night’s sleep.
In a world where pigs flew, Jasmine might have believed he was planning an early night to compensate for yesterday’s ridiculously late one. But in a town where ravens possessed the only magical powers and pigs walked on all fours, she knew he was up to something.
She might also have discovered what it was if she hadn’t sat down on the velvet chaise and allowed her gaze to drift toward a structure that, from its outline, appeared to be even older than Blume House.
When she woke and brought the clock into focus, it was 3:45 a.m. So much for playing detective. After stripping off her clothes, she took her cue from Boris and toppled onto the large feather bed.
She was asleep on her stomach with her face buried in the pillow when a repeated banging on the outer door broke into her dreams.
Boris hopped to the floor as she rolled over.
“Gotcha this time, pal.” Amused by his guilty expression—how did dogs do that?—she stretched her arms over her head and brought the morning into focus. Though misty and gray, it seemed marginally less sullen than its predecessor.
“Open the door, Jasmine.” Rogan’s lazy drawl penetrated the heavy paneling. “I know you’re in there. If you’re interested, it’s after nine, and both Riese and the college students from Düsseldorf are looking for you.”
“Forget it,” she called back. “I don’t do breakfast.”
In fact, the idea of food made her stomach jitter. Levering up, she pushed the hair from her face and tried very hard not to let her mind stray into any disturbing areas.
“I’m not leaving, Jasmine. You might as well let me in.”
A sigh escaped. She could picture him out there, looking dark and dangerous with no hint of what he was thinking on his gorgeous cop features. She could also give him credit for not walking in on her through the adjoining bathroom. Privacy mattered to him. Damn the man for giving her yet another reason to want him.
Kicking back the covers, she swung her legs down and released a bolstering breath. “Forty-five minutes,” she said. “I need to get ready.”
It took her less than forty to shower and dress in her favorite jeans, boots and a green V-necked sweater her mother had sent from Scotland. She added a newsboy cap and a battered aviator jacket, held out a hand to keep Boris quiet and went to the door to listen.
“Rogan?”
No answer. Perfect. Slipping into the corridor, she and Boris headed for one of the rear stairwells. They were halfway to the second floor when a pair of hands cuffed her arms.
“You weren’t planning to ditch me, were you, love?”
As it always did, Rogan’s voice in her ear sent a shiver straight to her belly.
Fire with fire, she decided, and, turning, summoned an artless smile. “Now, would I do that to you when you’ve never been anything but honest and above board with me?” She touched a finger to his lips. “When I know without a single question or doubt that the man I glimpsed through my window last night, a man who was leaving the property and who just happened to be about your height, weight and coloring, couldn’t possibly have been you?”
Braced for the sexual punch of his answering smile, she countered it with a light kiss—then gave his bottom lip a bite. “Nice try, but I’m not open to being diverted this morning. Where did you go, Rogan?”
“For a walk.”
“There you are, then.” Kissing him again, she stepped back. “That’s what I’m doing.”
“Going for a walk.” His eyes glinted. “Via an out-of-the-way third-floor staircase.”
“This staircase leads to a kitchen that leads to a door that opens to a garden where Boris really wants to go.”
“Boris might, but you probably don’t.” He snagged her wrist before she could elude him. “I heard Riese and her aunt going at it in the dining room. Your name and the word strudel came up more than once.”
She stared at his shadowed features. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” Bringing her closer, he let his dark eyes glitter into hers. “But you might before this is over.”
“That’s not exactly a promising state—”
He cut her off midsentence, or rather his lips did, as he covered her mouth with his.
She should have seen it coming. She might
have if more than a quarter of her brain had been functioning. But once caught, and with desire scrambling in her belly, what else could she do but grab hold and make sure he didn’t end things prematurely.
Of course, tempting a male tiger wasn’t the smartest thing to do, especially when that male was using his tongue and his hands to reduce her brain to a pool of lust.
The taste of him drugged her bloodstream. With nothing more than a kiss, he whipped her into a frenzy that spun her into and out of herself at the same time.
Better than breakfast, she decided, and fed on him as he did on her.
If she hadn’t heard a door slam below, she hated to think where they might have wound up. Well, no, she knew where, she just wasn’t sure this was the right time for it. Or if the time ever would be right. But that was a thought for later, when someone’s feet weren’t thumping up the stairs toward them.
Rogan eased back with a reluctance that surprised her. “Remind me to get the local witch to teach me a modern-day curse next time we’re in town.”
“There’s a witch…?” she began, then spied the amusement in his eyes and narrowed hers.
Unfazed, he motioned upward. “I’m betting those footsteps belong to Riese. Unless you want to be sob-storied into spending the bulk of your day in the kitchen, you need to climb.”
“No, I need to board the first southbound train out of Raven’s Cove. Switch tracks and I’m home for Sunday dinner at my neighbor’s house.” But she started up.
“Gunther’s not your type, Jasmine.”
“Why? Because he’s normal and nice?”
“Partly.”
“You’re sick.”
“He’d never make you scream.”
She set her teeth. “You made me scream once. In a past that is not going to be repeated.”
“All things repeat, love, good and bad.”
“Would you like me to tell you in which category I put the night we spent together?”
His lips twitched. “Not until your mood improves. Right now, you’d only lie.”
“I…” Her mind veered off. “That’s what he said, the killer, on the phone last night. He told me he lied in the small ways but not the big ones.”
Raven's Cove - Jenna Ryan Page 7