The Haunted Pendant: A Paranormal Artifacts Cozy Mystery (Paranormal Artifacts Cozy Mysteries Book 1)

by Maher Tegan

  “That works,” I said, then lit out of there like my hair was on fire. I’d come to give him answers but felt like I was the one leaving with questions.

  Chapter 21

  O nce I was back in my car, I leaned my head back and took a few deep breaths. Adrenaline still coursed through me, and I felt like I’d run a marathon. I about jumped out of my skin when somebody pecked on my window. Expecting it to be James, I rolled it down.

  “Did I forget something?” I asked as I rolled down my window. Rather than James, though, I found Luther staring down at me. His expression was indiscernible.

  “Not that I know of,” he said. “I had to drop my car off to get new tires, and I saw your car.”

  “Oh,” I said, not sure how else to continue the conversation. After what I’d just been through, the only company I wanted came from a cold tap.

  “So what are you doing? I assume your meeting with the cop is over.” A smile slid across his face, and I found myself more tense than ever despite the fact that he was obviously trying to put me at ease.

  “It is. And now I’m going to go drink,” I said, pushing in the clutch and hitting the start button.

  “Want some company?” he asked, his eyes warm. He laid his hand on my left arm, which I had propped on the window frame. Suddenly, then tension drained from me and I was able to breathe again. I sighed with relief, glad that, though the meeting had been a disaster, it was over.

  “I’m just on my way to the Jolly Roger to meet Eli.” I stopped short of telling him he was welcome to join us. I wanted a good ole-fashioned bitch-and-rant session, and that was best done with just the two of us.

  “Great,” he said. “I could use a beer.” He hopped around to the passenger side and slid his long legs into the space, then moved the seat back and settled into the bucket seat.

  “Please,” I said, pasting a smile on my face. “Do join me.”

  “Thanks!” he said with a bright, obtuse smile. “I’d like that.”

  I called Eli on the way there and told him the meeting was over and I was on my way to the Jolly Roger. What I really wanted to do was rant and rave, but I couldn’t hardly do that with Luther in the seat next to me. He told me he’d meet me in an hour or so. That was fine; I didn’t mind getting a head start.

  “I assume you’ve been here,” I said when I pulled into the gravel lot.

  He nodded. “Oh, yeah. Many times, though it’s been a while. Does he still do after-hours poker?”

  I smiled despite myself. “He does. And my skunk regularly partakes.”

  He raised a brow. “Your skunk?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, maneuvering into a spot at the far side of the lot where other people weren’t likely to park. I didn’t want to have to kill somebody for banging their doors into my car. “Well, he’s not my skunk per se. He just lives with us.”

  “I see,” he said. “Everything’s clear as mud now.”

  “He’s sort of a roommate more than a skunk. He’s a familiar, sort of. Not mine, though, my grandmothers. Or that was sort of the situation when she was alive, and he’s just hung around ever since.”

  “Oh, so he’s magical,” he said, understanding lacing his tone.

  “Yeah. Now enough about my skunk. I’m ready for a beer.”

  “Me too,” he said, sliding me a sideways look as we walked across the lot. “And I have a wicked craving for wings. It hit me this morning during the meeting.”

  I looked at him and was irritated when a secretive smile curved his lips. I thought back to the meeting. I’d been picturing him as a rat eating out of a dumpster to keep my wayward thoughts at bay when we’d been sitting waiting for the women to speak. Surely not.

  “Have you, now?” I asked, frowning.

  “I have, but let’s not give it a second thought.” He opened the door for me, and I breathed a sigh of relief when the cool air hit me. Summer in Florida was brutal, but I wouldn’t trade it for snow for any amount of money.

  We picked a corner table so that we could observe without having people milling about around us. I wasn’t in the mood to socialize, though I was starting to regain my equilibrium.

  “Are you okay?” he asked when I shivered.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Talking to James was just a little more stressful than I thought it would be. And he asked some tough questions.” Only one, really, but I wasn’t about to tell Luther that.

  Bert, a squat, beefy guy with a dark complexion and friendly eyes, brought us over two beers, my Big Wave and an IPA for Luther.

  “I started you a tab,” he said, smiling and wiping the condensation from the mugs on his apron. “You want food?”

  “Wings,” I said, smiling back. “My regular, please. Hot garlic.”

  Luther held up two fingers indicating to bring him the same.

  “It won’t be long,” Bert said with a friendly wink before heading back to the bar.

  “He knows what you drink,” I said. That had surprised me a little for some reason.

  “Of course,” he replied after taking a drink. “I told you I come here. It’s been a while, but not that long.”

  The beer was amazing, cold and frothy as the first big gulp slid down my throat. When you were hot, stressed, and about to snap, there was nothing like that first drink.

  I decided then and there to ask Luther who—and what—he was outright, but somehow it was like he knew.

  “Not now, Sage,” he said as he took another long pull from his beer. “Soon, but not now.”

  I sighed. That seemed to be the sentence that summed up my entire life. Everything was in a holding pattern. I was waiting for artifacts to turn up, hopefully without anybody dying. I was waiting for James to call and push for another inevitable meeting, and now Luther, the mysterious man who’d slipped into my life and turned my emotions upside down, was evading telling me who—and even what—he was.

  Still, though, in that very moment, I forced myself to chill. The beer was cold, the bar was dim, and the guy was hot. In just a few minutes, the best friend a person could ask for would show up and beat me at pool, and I’d go home with a full belly and a better outlook.

  I knew my life was about to go completely sideways, but somehow I also knew it was going to work out okay.

  Thank you!

  I hope you enjoyed the first book in my Paranormal Artifacts series as much as I loved creating the world and writing it. Sage and her crew have a lot of adventures ahead, and I look forward to having you join us! If you haven’t read my Cori Sloane series, I’ve included the first chapter of book 1, Howling for Revenge in the following pages. I hope you love it, too.

  HOWLING FOR REVENGE

  PROLOGUE

  I JOGGED ALONG THE stream, reveling in that peaceful, early-morning stillness that only lasts until the rest of the world stirs. I picked up my pace a little as I followed the sun-dappled path around the tree line, enjoying the brush of the cool breeze along my skin as it dried the fine sheen of sweat from my body. The only sound beside the birdsong was my heart beating in tempo with the soft, steady thud of my sneakers against the asphalt.

  I sucked in a lungful of air, inhaling the fragrance of the early morning. The damp, earthy scent drifting from the stand of trees overshadowed the stench of humanity, and night-blooming jasmine sweetened the air, masking the lingering odors of fast-food wrappers and cheap perfumes.

  I slowed as I neared the end of the trail then stopped, placing my hands on my knees as my heart rate slowed and my breathing returned to normal.

  As always, tendrils of regret wound through me at the thought of leaving the peace and getting back to the grind. I propped my foot against a picnic table and leaned into a stretch, feeling a little euphoric as I did so. The endorphins flooding my brain were more addictive than any drug, which was the main reason I ran daily, rain or shine, in either this form or my other.

  The wind shifted and I picked up a coppery, cloying odor that was as out of place in my little slice of heaven as a F
errari in a trailer park. Dread trickled down my spine and I put my nose in the air, grinding my teeth as I searched for the source.

  I picked it up and followed it, the stench getting stronger as I approached the road that ran parallel to the small strip of forest that separated it from the trail. My heart sank. A small white hand lay in the grass, palm up, about ten feet from the side of the road. Glossy red fingernail polish gleaming in stark relief against the dull, gray skin of the fingers.

  My gaze traveled up the hand to the mangled body of a woman, her platinum hair covering her face, hiding her identity. I pulled my cell from my armband and called 911.

  “Hey, Kay,” I said when Castle’s Bluff’s one dispatcher picked up. “This is Cori. I need an ambulance out on Route 6 by the park, and keep it as hush-hush as you can, please. We have another dead body.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  M y next call was to my second in command, Sam Cassidy, who said he’d call the coroner and meet me there in ten minutes.

  I examined the scene while I waited, using my heightened sense of smell to pick apart the different scents in hopes of finding some clue to the identity of the killer. Sometimes being a werewolf came in handy, but it wasn’t doing me a lick of good right then.

  All I could detect was the same strange wolf scent that I’d gotten from the other scene. Like fingerprints, it would help if I came across the killer, but for the moment, it was useless. All I could tell for certain was that he was male, and wasn’t a member of my pack.

  Exactly ten minutes later, a beat-up truck pulled off into a wide spot across the road from me and a grizzled man climbed out the driver’s side, followed by a shorter, younger guy I’d known since grade school.

  Sam strode across the road, a slight hitch in his step and a scowl on his leathery face. My mind shifted from the murder to the man I’d looked up to since I was a little girl.

  Even though I was his boss, he still saw me as a little girl if things got real. Of course, until the murders, "getting real" usually involved a drunk tourist getting handsy when I'd have to haul him out of the Hook, our local dive bar. Even with—or more likely because of—the confluence of supernatural beings in Castle's Bluff, things like murder just didn't happen. Until then, anyway.

  “Cordelia,” he said, nodding at me as he strode toward the body. Though he tried not to show it, I knew he was worried about me; it was the only time he defaulted to my given name. I drew my brows together, but didn’t say anything.

  Stan Lee, the younger man, took off his hat and mopped the sweat from his forehead with a bandana he pulled from the shirt pocket of his deputy’s uniform. Though it was late in the summer, the humidity still made the air thick as the Georgia mud our state was known for.

  Despite his best efforts, his gaze inadvertently dropped to my chest; my snug tank top was still damp with sweat. I whacked him on the arm and glowered at him.

  His face went beet red and he snapped his eyes back to my face. “Sorry, Cor—Sheriff,” he stuttered.

  I cut him some slack because I knew he’d had a crush on me since the seventh grade, and he was a good guy with a huge heart. He looked around me, trying to put on his cop face, but turned green when he caught his first glimpse. I couldn’t blame him; I wasn’t feeling so peachy myself.

  Sam was standing back a few feet from the body, one arm crossed over his chest, the elbow of the other resting on it. He rubbed his chin, his gaze roaming over the scene, taking in the body and the mish-mash of huge paw prints surrounding it.

  “You pick up anything?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Nothin’ other than what I got from the last scene.”

  A breeze fluttered through, and I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, behind the body. Squinting to get a better view, I stepped closer to the body. A clump of black fur clung to a broken branch.

  “Do you have an evidence bag on you?” I asked, a little thrill running through me; this time, he’d left evidence. I moved around the body to avoid disturbing the scene.

  Sam reached into a small pouch on his gunbelt and pulled out a clear baggie, passing it to me over the weeds.

  I placed my hand on the bottom and pushed it back over my fingers like it was a glove, then pulled the clump of fur off the branch. Holding onto it, I peeled the bag back over my fingers and sealed it.

  When I held it up to the light for a better look, a few white hairs glinted through the black. Not enough to alter the color of the wolf, probably, but it would give me something to compare it to if—when—I caught the guy. Maybe before, but I doubted it since black wolves were common in our region.

  Still, if I could match it to somebody who’d been acting erratically or couldn’t vouch for their whereabouts during the times of the murders, it could be a nail in the coffin.

  I turned to Stan. “Would you mind running crime-scene tape around this area,” I asked, motioning to where I wanted it.

  He nodded, glad to have something to do that didn’t involve dealing directly with the body, and turned toward Sam’s truck to get the tape out of the box of supplies he kept there.

  The ambulance pulled up, lights off, and the coroner, Colleen Bennett, pulled in right behind it in her Blazer. Two guys stepped out of the ambulance and started to pull the rear doors open to pull out the gurney, but Colleen held up her hand.

  “It’s gonna be a few minutes, boys,” she said, swinging her black crime-scene bag as she approached us.

  Like Sam, Colleen was in the loop when it came to the existence of supernatural beings. She had to be when all of the deaths in the area passed through her office.

  She tossed a humorless smile our way but went straight to work. “Same as last time?”

  “Yup,” I said. “No real sense of who he is, other than a werewolf.”

  “You can’t pick up anything with your other abilities?” She wiggled her fingers, indicating my witchy powers, inherited from my mother.

  I pinched my lips shut and shook my head. “You know they’re spotty on the best of days.” Turning so that my back was to the medics, I pulled the bag of fur out of my pocket and showed it to her.

  I opened my mouth to say something, but a tingle of electricity ran through my body, and I got a glimpse of a woman screaming. It was over before it even really started, and I swallowed, trying to fix it in my brain before it wisped away, but I lost it. Speaking of shorted-out witchy powers.

  “What did you see?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at me. Like Sam, she’d known me since I was young.

  “Nothing of use,” I replied, frustrated. “Just a quick glimpse of her”—I nodded toward the victim, shuddering—“screaming while something dragged her by the arm. I could feel the teeth biting down.”

  Anger flashed across Sam’s face, and Colleen set her jaw as she snapped on a pair of gloves and bent over the body. When she pulled the hair back from her face, she gasped.

  “I know this girl, Cori. We have to get this guy.” She smoothed the bangs back and her face hardened. “Nobody deserves to die like this.”

  As I expected, a small crowd had started to gather, and I went to help Stan keep them back while Colleen did her thing. Sam pulled his truck so that it blocked most of the scene. The gossip was going to be bad enough without giving them access to the gory details.

  Half an hour later, he laid his hand on my shoulder and I turned to him.

  “She’s almost done.” His voice was tired, and his thick salt-and-pepper hair was standing on end. I knew he'd been running his fingers through it like he did anytime he was frustrated.

  He gestured toward my running clothes. "I got this handled if you want to go home and change or something."

  I gave him a wry half-smile. "I will, but first I wanna take one last look at the scene before everything gets trampled worse than it has. See you back at the station in an hour?"

  Sam nodded. "See ya then, kiddo."

  Despite his use of pet names, Sam respected my position as sheriff. As a matter of fact
, he was the one who pushed for it when others urged him to step into the role instead. He said he liked fishing too much to listen to old ladies bicker over parking tickets.

  To be fair, that's definitely a time-suck, but he also understood there was much more going on beneath the façade of our town that he didn’t have the experience to deal with. He was one of the few humans who knew about the town’s diverse citizenry.

  I noted the slight hitch in his step as he walked back to his cruiser. He brushed off his aches and pains, but I worried about him. At sixty-five, he was healthier than a lot of people in their early fifties, but still.

  The one thing that bothered me about the murder, and the one that had been committed a few days prior, was that the wolf didn’t seem to care if he was caught. That was a problem on a number of levels. He had to know the pack wouldn't tolerate this, and that if we didn't get him, one of the other organizations would, so I didn’t get it. Yet.

  What I did get was that it was about to turn into a hot mess if I didn’t get it under control, pronto. Some of the unofficial organizations tended to come in with sledgehammers rather than scalpels, and I needed to avoid that at all costs.

  "Cori?" somebody said from several yards behind me. My heart stuttered at the familiar voice, even though I hadn't heard it in nearly twelve years.

  I paused as a tangled rat's nest of competing emotions writhed in my stomach, the fur forgotten. I mentally wadded them up and shoved them to the back of my mind. That was a therapy session or twelve for another time.

  I schooled my face into a friendly yet detached expression, then willed my heart to slow before I pushed to my feet and turned to face the man who’d broken my heart. Because, you know, I didn't have enough to deal with right then.

  Want to keep reading? Pick up Howling for Revenge here . Available for free on Kindle Unlimited.