Dean Elliot appeared to be Savannah’s escort for the night. Two linked arms as they strolled down the path.
Dean’s bright blue eyes crinkled when he spotted Blake making his way back over to Benjamin and me with two cups of sangria in his hands. Blake’s face remained as neutral as possible, but his eyes flashed a warning to his brother.
“What’s that about?” I asked, accepting my drink from Blake.
“I really don’t know.” Blake shrugged. “Just Dean being Dean, I guess. I think he’s trying to get under my skin.”
“Why would he want to do that?” The edge in Blake’s voice made me wonder if maybe Blake wasn’t as “over” Savannah as he pretended to be.
Blake slid his arm around my back. “Because he can see I’m happy right now, and miserable people don’t like to see others happy.”
“Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they like each other,” I said, leaning into Blake, enjoying the warmth of his chest.
“Maybe.” Blake took a sip of his drink. “ I’m not going to worry about it. At least this will help put a stop to those Blavannah rumors.”
“Exactly. Dean’s doing you a favor.” I smiled as Blake kissed the top of my head. “Everyone sure is lovey-dovey tonight,” I observed.
Blake tapped the rim of his cup to mine. “It’s that time of year—spring fever.”
I leaned down and rubbed my face into Benjamin’s black and tan wiry fur. “Now we just have to find a doggie girlfriend for you.”
“Certainly not.” Benjamin rolled onto his side—his signal that it was time for me to give him a belly rub.
I laughed and indulged him. “Why not?” I teased. “Maybe we can find another talking dog around here somewhere.”
“You know what they call female dogs, Natalie,” Benjamin growled. “Besides I have a job to do. One of us needs to be vigilant around here.”
I patted his chest. “You heard Aunt Martha—it’s about time you got into the spirit of things.”
The sound of someone tapping on a microphone drew my attention back up to the stage.
Liam stood front and center, a toothy grin lighting up his tanned face. The tiki torches near the stage area bathed him in flicking orange light.
He took the microphone off the stand and began to speak, hamming it up. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to welcome you to our annual Spring Equinox festival. This is a night when we get the privilege of listening to our friends and family showcase their hidden talents to entertain us all. It’s also a night where we eat too much and drink even more.”
A round of cheers and whistles rose up from the people scattered throughout the clearing.
“Up first, we have the most beautiful and talented woman in all of western North Carolina,” Liam said. “Not like I’m biased or anything. Without further ado, I present, Miss Lola Honeycutt, baker, entrepreneur and apple of my eye.” He held out his muscular arm as the smiling woman with long fiery hair sauntered over to the center of the stage.
With a flourish, Liam handed the microphone to Lola and stepped aside.
Beaming, Lola smoothed down her pink skirt and said, “I’ll be performing a monologue from William Shakespeare’s, Twelfth Night. This scene is from when Olivia realizes she has fallen in love with a handsome messenger named Cesario. Little does she know that Cesario is actually a woman named Viola who had to disguise herself as a man after a devastating shipwreck. I’ll be playing Olivia.”
A wave of applause rolled through the gathering, and Lola’s freckled cheeks flushed with pride.
Flipping her red curls over her shoulder, she started the monologue. “What is your patronage? ‘Above my fortunes, yet my state is well, I am a gentleman.’ I’ll be sworn thou art…”
Lola went on with big, theatrical gestures, her honey-sweet southern accent bringing Shakespeare’s words to life.
As she finished up the last lines of her monologue, a camera flash flickered, causing Lola to break her concentration.
Beside me, Blake stiffened. “Roger Spitz,” he muttered. “I’m going to tell him to leave. This is getting ridiculous.”
I touched Blake’s leg. “Wait until Lola’s done,” I whispered.
A moment later, Lola did a cute curtsey as applause rippled through the crowd.
Then Blake got up and stormed over to Roger. Though they spoke in hushed tones, I could tell by the flush rising up Blake’s neck that he was getting pissed. Then another man stepped in between the two. This man wore an orange Patagonia windbreaker and had a head of salt and pepper hair that was styled a little too meticulously for a townie. This had to have been one of the movie people.
This man said something to Roger which seemed to upset the stocky photographer. A moment later, Roger stomped off into the woods.
Then man in the orange jacket said something to Blake, giving him a friendly, casual pat on the shoulder. That seemed to end the exchange.
Blake came back over to sit with me.
“Everything OK?” I asked.
“It is now.” Blake ran his fingers through his tousled brown hair. “That was Tom Nelson, the producer, and Roger’s cousin, so he’s really the only guy who can keep Roger in line. Nelson’s basically the money guy for the movie, so I have to play nice with him.”
Blake’s words jogged my memory. I had seen that man before. Blake had introduced me to him last month when I signed the paperwork allowing filming on Wolf Mountain Lodge property.
I didn’t press it further. I was enjoying the gentle buzz of the sangria and admiring the way the tiki torches and the slanted sunlight painted the forest with pink and orange light.
After a few more performances, Liam took the stage to announce a ten minute intermission.
Blake gave my hand a squeeze. “I’m going to make my rounds and say hello to the movie folks, thank them for coming, that sort of thing,” he said.
While Blake did that, I put Benjamin on the leash and we went for a walk deeper into the forest.
A sliver of pink was all that was left of the day’s sun, and I estimated that we had about thirty minutes until we only had the moon and stars to rely on for light. Luckily, the full moon had been two nights ago, so there were no werewolves prowling the mountainside tonight.
My eyes landed on a large boulder on the edge of a clearing and I called for Benjamin. “Go jump on the rock and let me get a picture of you.”
Benjamin lifted his head from the foliage and regarded me coolly. “Why?”
“Because dogs are cute, and that rock is on lodge property. It will look great on our social media.”
“No,” he said. “That looks unstable.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re such an old man sometimes,” I said, hiking up my dress and kicking off my sandals. I hoisted myself up and scooted around, looking at my phone screen to find the best background for my selfie. “Sure you don’t want in on this?” I called down. “The view is awesome with this sunset.”
With a grunt, Benjamin hopped up the rock with me. “For the record, I’m only up here to prove to you that I’m as agile as I was five hundred years ago.”
I laughed, and wrapped my arm around him, taking pictures from every angle. Then I scrolled through the camera roll. “No offense, but your yellow eyes kind of make you look demon-possessed in every picture.”
“Not my problem,” Benjamin said, leaping off the rock and giving his body a shake.
I slid off, too, still looking at the photos.
There was something odd in a couple of them.
I noticed an old dilapidated house not too far from the boulder. I pinched the phone screen with my fingers to zoom in. “Who’s house is that?” I asked, lowering the phone so Benjamin could see.
He grew very still as he stared at the screen. Finally, he said, “I’m not sure, but it appears to be abandoned.”
I jerked my phone away, annoyed that the Rottweiler probably knew more than what he was letting on. “Seriously? You’re going to be all vague
and mysterious like Aunt Martha?”
“Maybe you should spend more time reading your grimoire,” he said, trotting back down the path to the party.
“You’re really not going to tell me?” I said, following after him. I was going to push him further, but just then, a text message came through from Sheriff Angie.
I opened it, read it, and felt my heart drop into my stomach.
“Hold up, Benjamin. We’ve got trouble.”
He swiveled around. “What kind of trouble?”
“You know what kind,” I said.
4
Angie’s flashlight sent a tunnel of light, chasing away the deepening darkness, splashing against the peeling white bark of birch trees and the waxy green of springtime buds. “Almost there,” she said.
“It breaks my heart that this has happened to Ace twice now,” I said, tugging up the hem of my sundress with my free hand as I gingerly stepped over a moss-covered log. “No teenager should have to stumble upon a dead body while out on a hike with his girlfriend.”
“That boy will see a lot of worse things if he follows in his family’s footsteps,” Sheriff Angie said, glancing right and left as she walked beside me, her hand on her gun. “The Harris Coven made Martha Wilder look like the tooth fairy.”
Benjamin led the way, his nose twitching in the fragrant, night air. Despite his large, bulky frame, Benjamin moved quietly through the wild flowers and broken twigs.
The dim twinkling of fireflies appeared and disappeared between the tree branches. Normally, I enjoyed a quiet nighttime walk in the forest, especially with Benjamin at my side, but tonight the silence felt all wrong.
The darkness of the forest wrapped around me like a boa constrictor.
A sudden bark from Benjamin made me jump.
“Over there,” Benjamin said, pointing his snout in the direction of a clearing.
That big, round almost-full moon hung above the horizon. I inhaled sharply, startled by the reddish hue of the glowing ball of light. It was tinged with a pale pink, like the color of the water that pools in the sink when you’re rinsing off a cut.
Angie, Benjamin and I walked into the clearing and saw it led to a steep drop off. It looked like we had arrived at the right place—Banshee Overlook.
A dark figure stood on the edge of a cliff, the silhouette just visible against the backdrop of the moonlight sky.
A light breeze tickled my bare shoulders and goosebumps rose up along my arms and legs. “Ace?” I called.
Angie trained her flashlight on the person standing near the cliff’s ledge, and I let out a sigh of relief.
It was Ace—of course, it was.
After all, he was the one who texted Angie and me about this horrifying development.
“Hi, Sheriff Dempsey. Hi, Ms. Wilder,” Ace said in a shaky voice. He shoved his hands in his jeans pocket as he lumbered over to where we stood. Ace was in his last semester of high school, and had all the energy, positivity and enthusiasm of a boy with his whole life ahead of him. He worked at the lodge after school and was the best employee I had. Still, I knew not to get too attached to the kid. Underneath that winning smile and unruly man-bun, Ace Harris was destined to become the next leader of the most notorious black magic practicing coven in the region.
But tonight, we had more pressing problems.
“Are you OK?” I asked, touching his shoulder.
He was trembling. “I’m OK,” he said. “But you’re not going to believe what happened. Mer and I saw the whole thing.”
I noticed the outline of another person sitting on a fallen log near the ledge. In the dim glow of Angie’s flashlight, I saw it was Meredith Waters, the cute vampire who had taught ski lessons over the winter.
She had on leggings, pink sneakers, and a baggy sweatshirt with the Wolf Mountain Lodge logo emblazoned across the front. She glanced up, tucking her long wavy hair behind her ears. “Sheriff Dempsey, Miss Wilder—he’s, I mean, it’s over there.” She lifted a slender finger and pointed right into the horizon. “Down over that ledge.”
Ace hitched up his dusty jeans and offered me a grim smile. “I think it’s one of the people working on the movie,” he said, turning back to look over the cliff’s edge.
Angie and I inched up beside the teenager, while Benjamin busied himself by sniffing the area.
At first, I didn’t see anything when I leaned over the edge. Then Ace pointed, and I noticed a bright orange jacket, stained with some kind of thick liquid that glistened the moonlight.
Blood.
I felt my knees wobble and I took a step back as the light from Angie’s flashlight illuminated the rest of the gory scene.
“That’s Tom Nelson,” I said. “I recognize his jacket. He’s the producer for Blake’s movie.”
The man’s body lay crumbled on the mossy ground, about fifty feet below us.
“We need to get him to a hospital,” I said, more urgently now, as I searched around for a way to climb down to get the man.
“No, he’s dead,” Ace said, trying to hide the crack in his voice by clearing his throat. “The fall killed him.”
Angie’s face was calm, but a tremble in her chin told me she was more disturbed by the lifeless corpse than she wanted to let on. “We don’t know that for sure. We need to check for a pulse,” she said.
Meredith lifted her head, tugging her hoodie up over her hair. “No, he’s for sure dead, Sheriff Dempsey. I-I can’t hear his pulse, or his breath, or anything,” she stammered.
Angie and I exchanged glances. Angie knew Meredith was a vampire, and that also meant the girl’s ears were sharp enough to hear his pulse if he’d been alive.”
I trusted Meredith. She had no reason to lie.
“What happened here?” I asked, shoving my clammy hands in the pockets of my cotton dress.
“It looks like an accident,” Angie said. “I’m guessing he went for a walk during intermission, and lost his footing.” She looped her thumbs in her belt loops. “Maybe there was a little alcohol involved.”
“No. No.” Ace rubbed his palms over his face, shaking his head. “It wasn’t like that. It was real messed up.” He moved back from the ledge and sat down on the ground near Meredith. The teenager leaned his head against her leg as he absently picked at the sprigs of grass peeking out from the dirt. “Meredith and I were at the equinox party, but we left a little before intermission. I wanted to show Meredith my favorite place to watch the sunset.”
I figured “watching the sunset” in this instance meant making out—which kind of weirded me out when it came to Meredith Waters and Ace Harris. Meredith was an old vampire, probably decades older than her teenage beau. But that was none of my business.
“Then what happened?” I asked, giving the contorted body with the torn orange jacket one more glance before turning my back to the cliff.
Ace’s gaze flicked nervously to Meredith. “Then we heard footsteps and people talking.”
“Male or female?” Angie asked, dragging her eyes back to Ace.
“It was a man and a woman,” Ace said, fidgeting with a piece of bark on a nearby tree. He seemed to want to look anywhere but Angie’s eyes.
“Can you describe the people? Any distinguishing features? Had you ever seen them before?” Angie said, her full attention on Ace now.
The teenager’s cheeks began to redden. “Well, yeah. The man is the dead guy. And the other person was Savannah Silver.” He cleared his throat. “Kind of.”
“What do you mean ‘kind of’?” I asked.
Meredith gave Ace an encouraging nod.
Ace took a deep breath. “She didn’t stay Savannah Silver.”
“I’m not following you,” I said.
Ace pursed his lips. “If I show you something will you promise not to get me into trouble?”
Angie frowned. “You know I can’t promise that, Ace, but this is a man’s life we’re talking about. If you know something, you’ve got to tell us.”
Ace sighed. Then he p
opped his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans and tapped several times on the screen. He chewed his lower lip as he turned the screen to face Angie and me.
“Here. Take it,” Ace said, absently wiping his forehand with the back of his hand. “Just watch the whole thing before you say anything else. I got it all on video.”
“You recorded the murder?” Angie stiffened as she accepted the device.
“It’s not what you think!” Throwing his arms out defensively, Ace spoke quickly. “I didn’t know that was what was going to happen. I mean, it’s not like I wanted a dead guy on my camera roll. I just thought it might come in handy if I got some, you know, exclusive footage of them.”
“Exclusive footage?” I repeated. “You sound like that Roger Spitz guy.”
“Exactly.” Meredith folded her arms. “Mr. Spitz has been telling everyone that he’ll pay at least two hundred dollars to anyone who gets a candid video of Savannah Silver.”
“Is that true?” Angie cocked an eyebrow in Ace’s direction.
Ace swallowed, nodding once. “I know it’s kind of a garbage thing to do, but that’s two hundred dollars. That’s, like, gas in my truck for two months. I recognized Savannah Silver, and started recording. I didn’t think it would hurt anyone,” Ace said. “You’ve got to believe me, and I definitely didn’t know that, um, this would happen. I just thought maybe I’d make a little money.”
I sighed. I understood where he was coming from. Two hundred dollars was a big deal to a teenager, even someone from a wealthy family like Ace.
“It’s OK, Ace,” I said. “I guess it’s good you got it on camera, so we know exactly what happened and who was responsible.”
“You’re not going to say that after you watch the video,” Ace said shoving his hands back into his pockets. “I feel all messed up over this. After it happened, Mer and I didn’t know what to do. It all happened so fast, and the killer was gone even before I had a chance to use a paralysis spell. I don’t think the killer had any idea we were there,” Ace said, rocking back on his heels. “Will you have to take my phone for evidence? I’m on my family cell phone plan, and my dad will be really pissed at me if I ask him for a new phone.”
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