When we exhausted our chitchat, Chief pushed aside his mug, stood from the table, and thanked me for my time. I smiled and hurried to get one step ahead of him. I peeked out the swinging kitchen door and my pulse spiked when I saw that the blankets were still on the couch but the lump beneath them was gone. I stepped back and bumped into Chief Lincoln. “Oops!” I patted him on the shoulder. “Ya know what, let’s go out the back way.”
“Okay?” He frowned. “Is something wrong with the front?”
I scoffed and flapped my hand. “Of course not! I just thought it would be nice if I could show you the greenhouse. You know, since we were talking about green thumbs and all that.”
“Well, I, uh—”
I grabbed him by the arm and steered him across the kitchen. “No time like the present!”
He sputtered but let me all but shove him through the back door. I launched into a presentation about my varieties of plants—at least the kinds he’d likely heard of before—and drowned out the rest of his protest. We toured the greenhouse for a few minutes until he got a call on his radio. I walked him back to where he’d parked his car along the driveway of the manor and we said our goodbyes.
My heart rate finally started to slow when he turned the corner at the intersection leading out of the small neighborhood.
Adam and Nick were both in the kitchen when I circled back for the rest of my coffee. Adam was plowing through the plastic serving bowl that he used for his customary cereal. Judging by his diet alone, one would think he was some kind of sumo wrestler with a raging sugar addiction. Instead, by some marvel of paranormal genetic mutation, he remained trim and in shape despite his high-calorie, garbage diet.
Nick stood near the sink, his strangely shaped legs stuffed into a pair of Adam’s flannel pajama pants. His paws were bare and my heart clenched all over again at the sight of them. Chief Lincoln would have definitely needed a mind-wipe spell if he’d have seen them.
I sagged against the opposite counter. “Nick, you practically gave me a heart attack! Where did you go?”
He looked up from his cup of coffee, his lip curled into a slight sneer. “The bathroom? I’m a half-breed, not a half-wit, Holly.”
“You’re not a half-breed, Nick!”
He scoffed and looked back into the dregs of his mug.
“Nick? I’m serious.” I swooped in and took the seat beside him. “Look at me!”
He lifted his eyes but not his chin.
“We’re going to figure this out, okay? You’re not going to be like this forever.”
“You don’t even know why I’m like this in the first place, so how are you going to be able to fix it?”
I looked to Adam, silently pleading for back up.
He swallowed a huge bite and reached for his glass of orange juice. “We know people who can help.”
I lifted my eyebrows, nostrils flaring. “I’m not calling in the SPA.”
“Not those people,” Adam replied, a slight twinge of annoyance in his tone. “I know that I’m not a haven fan, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t know people. All right? My parents are very well connected.”
I frowned at the mention of his parents. What can I say? It’s a knee-jerk reaction at this point. They’d come into town for a visit before Christmas and we’d had our first meeting. Unfortunately, at the time, I’d been cuffed and was being dragged kicking and screaming from the manor. They say you can’t make a second impression, which was a real problem when it came to Mr. and Mrs. St. James.
I swiveled around in my seat to face him. “Anyone specific?”
He gave a maddening shrug. “I’ll make some calls.”
I wanted to reach across the table and shake the answers from him, but resisted the urge. There was a good chance he wasn’t holding out on me, but rather, protecting Nick.
“There’s something else you both should know,” I started, ready to change the topic. I tugged at the moonstone ring I wore on my right hand. It was a gift from Cassie on my last birthday and I wore it most every day. “Chief Lincoln wasn’t just dropping by for a cup of coffee and a quick chat.”
“More questions about the shooting last night?” Nick asked.
“Not exactly.” I drew in a long breath. “They found a body last night in the woods.”
Adam’s spoon clattered against the side of his bowl. “What?” he barked, coughing on his half-swallowed bite of cereal.
“As of this morning, no one knows who the guy is. He was naked. No ID on the body. But he was definitely shot and from the looks of it, it was recent.”
Nick straightened. “He was running around naked?”
“Wolf,” Adam said, rubbing a hand along his stubble-coated jaw. “I thought it was you,” he said to Nick. “That you’d completed the change. That maybe you weren’t—”
“An unnatural disaster?” Nick supplied.
Adam set his jaw but didn’t deny it.
“How could there be no trace of it out there?” I asked. “That doesn’t make any sense. You run those woods every few days. You’d be able to smell a werewolf a mile and a half away.”
“I know.”
“Just when everything was getting back to normal,” I said, not thinking.
Nick sighed and shoved up from the table. Without a word, he hobbled out of the kitchen, awkward and unsteady on his strange new legs.
When the kitchen door flapped closed behind him, I turned to Adam. “Why isn’t there some kind of anti-foot-in-mouth spell?”
“I don’t know, but you’d better whip one up in a hurry if we’re going to keep Nick around long enough to help him.”
“Gee, thanks.”
According to the buzz around town, most people were ruling the shooting a tragic hunting accident. Never mind the fact that it wasn’t hunting season and that even if it was, the site was too close to a residential area to be appropriate for a midnight hunt. If that was even a thing. Which, for the record, I hoped was not.
Paisley was out of town for a friend’s wedding so I picked up a few extra hours at Siren’s Song and got all the hottest gossip as it rolled in and buzzed around. The shooting was all anyone wanted to talk about. Everyone had their own theory, each more outrageous than the last. All I knew by the end of the day was that if I ever turned up dead, the residents of Beechwood Harbor were the last people I’d want investigating it.
I swear I heard someone throw out the possibility of Bigfoot himself getting a hold of an old hunting rifle.
Cassie and I talked about it a little bit, but she rarely wanted to get into conversations about police work. I figured it was because she got her fill after hours, but there was also a part of me that wondered if Chief Lincoln told her anything about work. He was so straight-laced and by-the-book that it was hard to picture him giving too much of an insight into his caseload, even to his long-term girlfriend.
In any case, she didn’t seem too eager to get into it and I wanted to get back to the manor, so at closing time, I said my goodbyes and scurried home.
Seeing Nick startled me all over again. It wasn’t just the furry patches and hind legs, it was the sheer size of him. I decided he wasn’t any taller, but the broader shoulders made it feel like he was.
“Any progress?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Adam’s been on the phone all day, but if he’s found anything, he hasn’t gotten around to sharing it with me.”
I nodded and cast a glance up the grand staircase. “Well, while I was at work, I had an idea.”
“All ears.”
I rounded the couch and sat beside him. “It’s going to sound a little odd.”
Nick snorted, the first sign of a genuine laugh since the whole mess started. “Right now I think you could tell me that Santa Clause was your great-uncle once removed and that you’re concealing a pair of magical fairy wings somewhere under that sweater. Wouldn’t even faze me.”
“I doubt that, but I’m glad you’re in a receptive mood.” I drew my feet up unde
rneath me and then reached into my shirt.
“Uh, Holly?”
I rolled my eyes and pulled out the small locket. “This is the Larkspur. It’s been in my family for generations. Passed down to each of the most powerful witches in our line. Each time it’s passed, it takes a piece of its former wearer and grants it to the new one.”
“Okay?” Nick leaned in and inspected the delicate design etched into the gold. “What does it do?”
“Well, for starters, it gives me the ability to hop. Teleport, I guess you might say. Not anywhere too far away,” I hurried to add. “Otherwise I would spend a lot more time in the French Riviera and a lot less time here in the rain.”
Nick snorted.
“It only seems to work over short distances and I have to have physically been to the place I’m hopping so that I can visualize it, but I can come and go using some kind of portal magic. Last night, when we were in the woods, I had Adam grab onto you and then me and we all hopped back here.”
“Pretty sweet,” Nick said, his interest growing. He reached out to touch the pendent but stopped short and flicked a glance up at me.
I nodded. “Go ahead.”
He brushed the gold. “So, what does this have to do with my … problem?”
I drew in a breath. “Well, the other power locked inside happens to be the spirit of my Great-Grandmother Honeysuckle. Technically she’s great times seven, but great-grandmother is easier.”
“Okay.” He furrowed his brow in a studious look. “So, she gives the locket its power?”
I quirked my lips. “In a way. She’s the one who first charmed the necklace. I don’t really know all of the details of the spell she used, but my best guess is that she found a way to bond part of herself to the necklace and now, though she’d been dead for hundreds of years, that part lives on. Oh,” I soured. “And her little dog, too.”
Nick just nodded.
Wow. I guess he was right. Nothing could faze him.
“Here, I’ll show you,” I said before clearing my throat. I pried open the locket and smiled at the mirrored glass. A silvery fog rolled over its surface but began clearing almost immediately.
Grandmother Honeysuckle appeared through the murky surface. “Who’s there? Don’t come any closer or I’ll blast you into next Sunday!”
Nick reared back and I settled a hand on his shoulder. “She’s harmless,” I told him.
Honeysuckle scoffed. “Harmless? Come here and I’ll show you just how harmless I can be!”
“Grandmother, it’s me, Holly Boldt?”
“She doesn’t know who you are?” Nick whispered.
“It’s a long story…,” I muttered. I smiled brightly as my grandmother’s image became clear. “Hello, Grandmother.”
She eyed me with one raised brow. “Hmm. I know who you are. Now, what’s the meaning of this? Interrupting my nap to insult my wand work?”
“Grandmother, I wasn’t insulting your wand work. I was—”
“I could blast you into next week, you know. You and … well … who is this?” Both her brows arched as her sharp eyes landed on Nick.
“This is my friend, Nick.”
She squinted and then a bright smile broke across her lined face. “Ah, yes, I remember now. You’re Holly and you’re dating a powerful wizard. This must be him,” she cooed her approval.
I winced and then dared a glance at Nick. Luckily, he appeared to be so intrigued by the talking face in my jewelry that he let the dating question slide.
“He’s very handsome, Holly! You two will have lovely children!”
My cheeks warmed. “This is not my boyfriend, he’s just a friend.”
Bat wings.
“Hmm. Perhaps that’s for the best,” she reconsidered, cocking her head. “He’s quite furry, isn’t he?”
“Grandmother!”
I shot Nick an apologetic look.
“Fear not, my dear! You can still have children together, I have a spell around here somewhere that will get rid of any follicular excess.”
“Good thing she can’t see my feet…,” Nick said out of the corner of his mouth.
I snorted. At least he had a good attitude about the whole fiasco.
“Grandmother, we need your help!”
“Yes, yes, of course. What is it this time, dearie?”
She wouldn’t respond well if I told her that Nick was a werewolf, or at the very least, half of one. In her day and age, werewolves, vampires, and witches would never be at the same dinner party together, let alone living under the same roof. While I didn’t want to mislead her into thinking that Nick and I were dating, I also didn’t like the idea of her despising him on some centuries-old principle. On top of that, I really didn’t want to know what might come out of her mouth.
“Have you ever heard of a were-being that wasn’t fully were? An incomplete curse?”
Honeysuckle furrowed her sparse brows, deep wrinkles appearing between them. “There is no such thing as an incomplete curse, Holly. You should know that by now! What are they teaching in academy these days?” She clucked her tongue.
I sighed and resisted the urge to remind her I hadn’t been in academy in quite some time. “What I mean is, what would happen if a curse was interrupted or somehow magically altered?”
“Hmm.” She leaned back and I heard a faint barking in the background. I cringed. Please, Weeble, go away! Her little mop with a face would throw the conversation off kilter and we were already running short on time. I never got much more than five minutes or so until the magical connection fizzled. It was worse than my patchy cell service.
I leaned in closer and spoke quickly. “If a werewolf was forced to change by a powerful spell and then cursed someone else. What might happen to that person?”
Honeysuckle narrowed her eyes, the wrinkles at the edges crinkling. “The conditions of the curse wouldn’t be fulfilled. I don’t see how the curse could be passed. It’s like a potion, Holly, if one ingredient is misused or missing altogether, it can end in disaster.”
Nick gulped.
“There’s always the retraxi spell. It will cast off magic residue and return the wielder to their true form.”
“Really?”
“I know it well.” Honeysuckle’s eye gleamed with mischief. “See, back in my heyday, I was sneaking around with a fox-shifter.” She made a throaty purr. “For some reason, whenever he’d shift back, he’d keep the tail.”
Nick shifted in his seat.
Honeysuckle giggled. “If he was being particularly naughty, I’d make him keep it.”
“Grandmother…,” I cringed.
Honeysuckle flapped a hand. “We never could figure out why, but a few flicks of a wand and it would be gone and we could get back to—”
The edges of the mirror started to fog over and I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d never been happier to see her go. Her detour down memory lane wasn’t one I wanted to follow.
“Thank you! Goodbye, Grandmother!”
I snapped the locket closed, cringing as her echoing voice went silent.
Nick snorted.
“What?” I barked.
“She’s a card. I can see where you get your spark from.”
I wanted to argue, but it was so good to see him smiling again that I resisted, feigning an irritated glance instead.
“You think it will work?” he asked, his smile fading as worry took hold again.
I nodded. “Listen, she’s easier to distract than a magpie in Tiffany’s, but when I can get her to focus, she’s a brilliant witch.”
“And you know how to do this retraxi spell?”
I shrugged. “Not exactly. But it’s gotta be in one of my spell books.”
Nick narrowed his eyes. “Holly, I’m already covered in fur. If you give me a tail, I swear I’ll never forgive you!”
Chapter 8
Adam was just leaving the manor when Nick and I carted two armloads of books out to the living room. The stacks towered across the coffee t
able and the sheer volume of the research ahead of us made me a little dizzy. He stopped, one hand on the front door knob, and raised a thick, jet-black eyebrow. “A little weekday reading?”
I reached for a book. “Grandmother Honeysuckle had an idea, but I want to make sure it will work as intended, all things considered.”
“Aha.” He shifted a sly grin at Nick. “Don’t want to end up like Honeysuckle’s little dog, huh?”
Nick paled. “Her dog used to be a man?”
Adam laughed and I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you have some investigating to do?”
“What do you think I’m doing?” he asked, still smiling at his twisted little joke.
I crossed my arms and eyed him up and down. “If I had to guess, I’d say you’re off to the bakery. It’s moon-pie day.”
He feigned innocence. “Is it?”
“Yeah, yeah. I know your tricks, St. James. Just bring some back for the rest of us.”
He saluted, acknowledging my order, and then headed out the door.
“He isn’t going to go through the woods?” Nick asked once he was gone.
“He will,” I replied, cracking the book open. “Shifting takes a lot of energy. He’ll want a big meal before he goes for a long run. And, as usual, sugar and fat are his fuel of choice.”
Nick chuckled. “Is it the same with wolves? I swear I’ve turned into a bottomless pit the last month.”
“Really?”
“It’s not like me, but I’ve been eating five, six times a day just to keep the edge off.”
“Hmm. Well, I don’t really know a lot of the day-to-day details of being a wolf, but that seems like it makes sense.” I gestured at his torso. “Those muscles didn’t grow from pixie dust.”
Lucky Witch: A Beechwood Harbor Magic Mystery (Beechwood Harbor Magic Mysteries Book 5) Page 6