Murder's a Witch: A Beechwood Harbor Magic Mystery (Beechwood Harbor Magic Mysteries Book 1)

by Danielle Garrett

  Gary reeled back. “Well, well, well. You are a nasty little witch, aren’t you? Let me ask, at what point did back talking a powerful gargoyle sound like a good idea to you?”

  I sneered at him. “About two seconds ago. Listen, Gary, I don’t care who you are or what kind of magic you have. I just want to collect my Heartsong and get back inside. This doesn’t have to be a big thing.”

  Gary let out a cold, cruel laugh. “Oh, but you see, I don’t know how much you heard of my phone conversation.”

  “I didn’t hear any of it. I just got out here.”

  Gary’s unnaturally blue eyes scoured mine. “You’re lying.”

  “I didn’t realize mind reading was a gargoyle trait.”

  “It isn’t,” he replied, the words fast, like the crack of a whip.

  “Then let me go. I don’t care what you were talking about. Or to whom.”

  “Not until you tell me what you heard.” He leaned forward, his face only a few inches from mine.

  I kept my eyes locked on the ice blue orbs shining at me and poured all of my concentration into one hand. A stunning spell. It charged up and I visualized flinging my hand out, fingers wide, the way the spell would roll off my hand like a flame.

  Nothing happened.

  I sighed. “Fine. You said something about a lady and a dog.”

  Gary snarled, his fangs revealed a second time. They had to be at least three inches long, protruding from the top row in place of his canines. It was like looking at a vampire on steroids. They were deadly and menacing. Fangs like that could only mean he killed and ate other…beings.

  I could only hope that loudmouthed witch wasn’t on the menu.

  I tried my spell once more. This time, right before I imagined my hand casting the spell, a yowl shot through the silence of the night. Boots’ calming spell wore off and he lunged out of the bushes and flew at Gary. I screamed at the violent sounds that clashed together as Boots threw his weight against Gary’s chest, his claws slashing and swiping in a fury.

  With Gary’s eyes off of me, and on Boots, I was freed from the spell. I cast my stunning spell at him, hitting him right in the heart, over the top of Boots’ head. Boots clawed at Gary’s face like an animal possessed and Gary let loose a horrifying growl of his own.

  “Boots! Come on!” I bolted for the front yard, forgetting about the Heartsong plant. The Truth Be Told potion was the last thing on my mind.

  “Get back here, witch! You’ll pay for your little beast!” Gary’s wings beat at the air but I didn’t stop running to look back and see where he was. I conjured another stunning spell, flung it over my shoulder, and ducked my chin to keep running as fast as my legs could carry me. I winced as the rush of his wings against the cool night air told me that I’d misfired.

  I made it as far as the front yard, almost to the side of the porch, when Gary swept down from the sky and bowled me over. I hit the ground hard on my side. My elbow struck first and a jolt of pain ricocheted up my arm. Before I could fire another spell he pinned me down and fixed his gaze on me. I froze in place, my shoulder blades pressed into the grass. My body refused to listen to any of my demands to get up and run.

  “Gary, leave me alone!”

  He laughed. “Oh, it’s too late for that, Holly Boldt. You know too much now and I can’t leave you running wild with that information.”

  My eyes flew open wide and crazy. “So, what? You’re just going to kill me? Right here on the front yard?”

  He let his fangs do the talking.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  GARY’S FANGS LOWERED and I squeezed my eyes closed. His cold blue eyes glowering down at me in the darkness would be the last thing I’d ever see. I tried to struggle against him, to squirm away from his hot breath on my face, but it was hopeless. I was pinned and my body felt as heavy as a boulder.

  “Gary!” I begged, hating the pathetic tone to my own voice. “Please. Don’t!”

  “Just accept it, witch. It’s easier if you don’t fight it—” His snarling words were cut short with an impact and a grunt. My limbs freed again and I popped up to find Gary struggling underneath a gigantic black dog.

  “Adam!” Relief and terror washed through me simultaneously. Boots raced around the corner of the house and rejoined the fight.

  Gary lashed out and Adam, in his beast form, was blown back. Gary glared at the dog as he shook off the impact. But his magic appeared to not work against animals. Or, in this case, shifters in their animal form. Adam didn’t freeze under Gary’s icy gaze. He rallied and lunged for Gary, knocking into his chest, growling and baring his own impressive set of teeth. Gary was undeterred and made another swipe for Adam.

  Adam flew backwards and landed hard on the ground with a low yelp. Panic rose up inside of me. I’d always been better at potions than combat spells. Light orbs, stunning spells, and shields were my sweet spots. Anything more complicated required a wand and a lot of concentration. I grit my teeth together and threw a shield up right before Gary’s claws—which appeared to be as long as his fangs—cut through the air at Adam. They bounced off the spell and I quickly hit him with a stunning spell as he reared back, looking at his own hand to see what had happened.

  Boots flew at his back, slashing and clawing like mad. Gary howled and violently contorted his body to try and fling the twenty pound tabby from his back. Boots hung tight while Adam recovered from the blow. He shook his giant head and then leaped up to make another run at the gargoyle. He plowed into Gary’s chest. Boots lunged off to one side as Gary fell and narrowly missed being turned into a cat pancake. His job done, he raced over to me and wrapped around my legs.

  “Nice work, Bootsie. Remind me to give you double portions in the morning.”

  Boots puffed out his tawny chest.

  Adam growled, low, and menacing, as he pinned Gary to the ground for the final time. I raced over to where Gary had fallen, murmured a binding spell, and cinched his wrists together. Adam, still in dog form, pounced all of his weight onto Gary’s chest. Gary groaned at the impact of the one-hundred-sixty-pound dog and I smirked over at Adam. He couldn’t speak in his beast form, but his dark eyes were expressive and strangely Adam-like.

  I didn’t look down at Gary, not wanting to get caught in his stone spell. “You should have left me alone, Gary.”

  “Shut up, witch!”

  Adam leaned down and growled, inches above the gargoyle’s face. Gary blanched.

  “Well I guess this actually worked out well for you. You’ll get taken out of Beechwood Harbor at least. However, I don’t think you’re going to like your reassignment locale very much.” I laughed to myself. “From what I hear, the Supernatural Protection Prison doesn’t exactly have five star accommodations. A nasty gargoyle like you will probably be locked up in a steel box for the rest of your life. Which should be what…another couple of centuries or so? Wowzers. That’s a long time to sit and do nothing. Don’t you think, Adam?”

  The dog smiled and nodded.

  “For what? Attacking a witch?” Gary spat.

  I leaned over and bared my own teeth. “No, for murdering a human! I all but heard your confession on the phone.”

  “I didn’t kill that human!”

  I rocked back onto my heels. “Then why were you talking about it?”

  He glared at me and the electric blue rimmed his dark pupils. “I’m not telling you anything, witch.”

  “You have two choices, Gary.” I spun on my heels and paced beside him. “Drop your magic and we can have a civilized conversation, and in exchange for your information, I’ll let you go and not call this into the SPA. Otherwise, I’ll just go call my agent right now.”

  Truthfully, I didn’t want to call the attack into SPA. My agent, Harvey, would probably kick a leprechaun if he found out that I was tangled up with a gargoyle on the front yard of the manor.

  I’d already made him work hard for every gold coin in his retirement fund thanks to the other messes he’d mopped up on my behal
f.

  “What do you say, Gary? You tell me what you know about the murder and I let you go?” I paused and then added, “And, of course, you leave the manor tonight and never come back again.”

  Gary growled. “Fine. Now tell your hound to get off of me.”

  I glanced at Adam and he shook his head once. I turned my attention back at the pinned gargoyle. “Oh, no, no. I think Adam will stay right there.”

  “Adam?” Gary spat.

  I laughed. “If you had ever bothered to say more than five words to any of us, you would know that Adam is a shifter. This is his beast form.”

  He groaned. “Fine, witch. What do you want to know?”

  I knelt down beside him and he rolled his eyes toward me. They were still icy blue, but this time, the only source of light came from the orb I’d conjured to follow Boots around the side of the yard when we’d first set out on our errand. The unnatural blue from Gary’s internal magic had faded. “Why don’t we start by you telling me more about the phone call that you’re so concerned about. Who were you talking to?”

  Gary ground his teeth and I winced, hoping he’d retracted his fangs first. Otherwise, ouch. “I was talking to Daryl, my SPA agent.”

  “About killing Peg Holloway?”

  “No! I told you, it wasn’t me.” He tried to sit up but Adam pressed down with his paws, not willing to give him an inch. Gary glowered at the dog and then flicked his irate eyes back to me. “I didn’t kill anyone! But yes, I was there.”

  My eyes widened and my heart thumped a little faster. “What happened?” I prompted, and waved my fingers, so he knew I wanted to hear the rest of the information as quickly as possible.

  “I was cruising through town. It was pretty late. Not a lot of people out. Anyways, I heard an argument and wanted to see what was going on.”

  “And the argument was in the alley behind the coffee shop?”

  He nodded.

  “Between Peg and…” I was running low on patience. Gary had the answers I needed and I was about to let Adam have a go. Maybe nipping at his fingers would get him talking.

  “That old bat from the store next door.”

  My mind flashed like a pop of a camera bulb. “Gretta?”

  Gary grinned. “They were arguing about something stupid. I landed on the roof of one of the shops, just to listen in. I thought maybe I’d scare them. You know, just for kicks. This town is super boring.”

  My hand exploded with a spell before I even fully realized what I’d done. My emotions were getting the best of me and taking over. Gary yelped at the sting of my magic and his eyes flashed bright again.

  “I’m done talking, witch.” He shoved up against Adam but Adam jumped, ramming his two front paws that were roughly the size of salad plates on each of Gary’s shoulders. He growled low and bore his teeth again. Gary flashed his fangs and let out a deep, rumbled growl of his own.

  “Bat wings! Knock it off, you two. You’re going to wake up all the neighbors. If you keep growling like that, we’re going to have wackjobs out here looking for Big Foot!”

  Adam glared at Gary remained silent.

  “Gary, don’t test me. You won’t like what happens if you cross me. We made a deal. Finish telling me your story! What did you see?”

  His eyes flickered again and he refused to look at me. I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a sign of disrespect or if he was keeping his magic off of me. I didn’t care. As long as his lips started moving we weren’t going to have a problem.

  “The taller one, Peg, as you said, she was unloading some stuff from her car and had left it running. The short, squat one was lecturing her about exhaust fumes being bad for her plants.”

  I rolled my eyes. Gary wasn’t lying. That sounded just like Gretta.

  “The tall one, Peg, she was angry. She started railing on the short one. She even slapped her across the face. That’s when things got good…” Gary smiled, a cruel, bloodthirsty smile that made my insides turn to jelly. “The short one made her pay for that. That’s for sure. She took a bottle of something from the box in the car and swung it right at the tall one’s head. She missed the first time. The bottle hit the car and shattered into a million pieces. That’s when that awful stench reached me. I was about to leave. The smell was making me sick. But I wanted to watch the rest of the fight. So, I took to the air. I stayed low. I figured they wouldn’t see me because they were going at it like old alley cats fighting over a box of fish.” He cackled, apparently deeply entertained by the violent tale. My stomach turned at the images he was painting.

  I drew in a steadying breath. “Then what?”

  “The taller one, she realized what the short one had tried to do and she started running, screaming bloody murder about calling the cops. All that. So the short one grabbed another bottle and slammed it into the back of her head as she tried to get away.”

  I shuddered and Adam whined low and nudged me with his nose. “That’s awful…”

  Gary smirked. “It was the most fun I’d had since moving in here.”

  “You’re sick. You know that?”

  Gary’s eyes flashed. “I can’t help what I am, witch. I’m a gargoyle. An ancient species that has thrived for thousands of years. We’ve survived every human revolution and will continue to do so. Why? Because we’re unafraid of violence. We welcome it. Embrace it. You don’t see our kind getting burned at the stake or drowned in backwater rivers.”

  “Enough!” I snapped, hovering a ball of magic above my hand for him to see. “Tell me the rest of what you saw or this is for you.”

  Gary considered me, his cold eyes flashing with a hint of magic again. But he looked at my hand, the power it held, and stopped. His eyes returned to normal. “The short one ran to her shop. Locked the door. And left. I don’t know where she went. I was going to follow her but when I lifted up above the eaves of the building I heard a scream.”

  “Who screamed?”

  “Some lady walking her dog. She saw me in the sky.” Gary huffed. “This has happened before. It’s the reason I was shipped to this Podunk-nowhereville town in the first place.”

  Considering that Gary stayed in his room nearly twenty-four hours a day, it was hard for me to understand why he cared what the town around him looked like. It wasn’t like he spent much time out in it.

  “Then what?”

  “I’m done with this. I’ve told you all there is to know, witch,” he hissed. Adam growled low and deep. That was Gary’s last warning.

  I grit my teeth. “What happened next, Gary?”

  He scoffed an impatient sound. “She screamed, and her little dog went off the deep end. It started barking its head off. Normally, when I fly, I can use my magic to shield myself. I also fly high enough that most people wouldn’t notice against the dark sky. But I wasn’t thinking about it.”

  “What did you do?”

  He laughed. “I thought about killing them. The dog probably would have made a nice snack.”

  Adam dug his paws into Gary’s shoulders.

  “I left. I flew away. I spent the next few days here, holed up in my room, trying to work my SPA contacts to get a reassignment.”

  I shook my head. Something wasn’t quite clicking together. “Why do you want to be reassigned? You just told us you don’t care about violence. And it doesn’t appear as though you have much—if any—respect for humans.”

  “Yeah, well, in case you haven’t noticed, I hate it here. Especially after your ghost pal went off her rocker the other day. I’ve had enough. Someone seeing me is the only way I can really get relocated. SPA will move me to a new town and send in mind wipers to take care of the damage. I wasn’t trying to get caught, but hey, call it a silver lining. I can start over and not have to deal with this halfway house of freaks for another day!”

  I rocked back onto my heels. “Wow. So, you don’t even really care that someone was murdered? Were you planning to tell anyone what you saw?”

  “Nope. I’m not getting drag
ged into this. I just want to get out of this house. Away from you,” he said, glaring at me before shifting his gaze toward Adam. “And you. And, most of all, that princess vampire and the crazy ghost. This place is a nightmare. And believe me, I know what nightmares are really made of!”

  “You are the only nightmare in Beechwood Harbor. And now your time is up.”

  He scoffed. “I have to wait for my SPA agent to get me papers.”

  “That’s not my problem, Gary. Our deal was that you leave town. Tonight. I’m not spending one more night in this house with you lurking around. I won’t call SPA and turn you in for attacking me, my familiar, or Adam. In exchange, you leave. Now.”

  I pushed up from the ground and wiped at the knees of my leggings which were sopping wet from the dewy ground. Boots swept in to stand in front of me and I smiled down at his determined expression as he stared in Gary’s direction. “Adam, come on.”

  Adam glanced up at me. He gave Gary one more low growl and then stepped off of him and came to stand at my side. In his beast form he nearly came up to my hip. He was the perfect guard dog size.

  Gary sprang up from the ground and flapped his wings, stretching them out after they’d been crumpled underneath him all that time. He glared at me, Adam, and Boots each in turn before turning his glowering eyes back on me. “You’ve made a dangerous enemy tonight, Holly Boldt. I’m not going to forget this.”

  “Neither will I, Gary. And you know something, you were wrong about what you said. My people, witches and wizards, have been persecuted over the years but we’re still here. We’ve survived without resorting to murder and mass destruction. That speaks more to our strength than to any weakness you may perceive. Our kind helped create the haven systems, to ensure a place of safety for all supernaturals. We created synthetic blood to provide nourishment for vampires and other creatures that rely on human blood for survival. We’ve worked to eliminate fighting and violence. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use it when necessary.”

  Gary stared at me. “Is that a threat?”