by Renee George
As far as intimidation went, Adele Adams was a master. She ranked right up there with Baba Yaga for the Scary Bitch of the Week award.
“Uhm.” Time for a change in subject. “Are you all familiar with Danny Mason’s death?”
The Shifters nodded, but the witch and the warlocks were still looking at me like I’d sprouted horns and grown a third ear.
“Good.” I ignored the magic half of the coalition and pulled up my notes on Danny. “Are you aware of the extent of the damage done to his body before he was killed?”
Bryant Baylor cleared his throat. “I know from the chief there was an extreme amount of broken bones in his body.”
“Yes.” I nodded. “All of them. With the last bone, a rib, stabbing into his heart.”
Mary Lowe gasped. “I didn’t know all that.”
I didn’t allow her grief to move me. I couldn’t. Not and be effective at my job. “You all are the leaders in this community. There is hardly anything that happens that you wouldn’t know about.”
“Are you accusing us of something, Mizzzz Kinsey?” Chief Nichols asked. His sandy blond hair raised with his ire as if pulled upward by a static charge.
“Not yet,” I said. “And I’d like Detective Dennis Mitchell to be made available to me to as well.” I was tired of playing nice. “This case was handled with an ineptitude I’ve never seen in the last fifteen years I’ve spent in law enforcement. He is either the worst police officer I’ve ever met, or he is hiding something.”
Chief Nichols jumped to his feet. “You uppity little bitch.” His hands held out toward me as his lips moved quickly. The hair on my arms stood on end as he gathered magic for the spell. I fisted my hands and stared the asshole down.
I pulled my handgun from its holster and patted it against my thigh. He might be better at witchcraft, but I was betting I could blow a hole in him faster than he could hit me with whatever he was working on. “Bring it,” I said.
My father stepped between us, his back to me as he faced the chief. “Enough!”
Dirk staggered back as if he’d been slapped by the word.
“There’s no call for anyone to be uncivil,” Adele chimed in. She gave Nichols a meaningful look. Instantly, he backed down. “Just what information do you want from us, Agent Kinsey?”
“Boyd Decker was killed yesterday in his home. His death is too much like Danny’s to be a coincidence. And from what I saw, there is not a human or Shifter in this world that could have misshapen the wereraccoon into the blob he’d become. It’s physically impossible. It has to be magic.” I tapped my stylus on the desk. “And a powerful magic at that. I could feel its residue when I walked into Boyd’s bedroom.”
Adele seemed unperturbed. “Those are not questions.”
“Who’s practicing dark magic in Paradise Falls?” Poignantly, I looked at my father.
He sighed. “I paid for my crimes, Hazel. I’m a witch-law abiding warlock these days.”
Too bad he hadn’t been a so abiding when he’d killed my mother using forbidden magic. I turned to Adele. “You are potent with magic, Ms. Adams.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“And you didn’t feel the spells that caused these deaths.”
“You still haven’t asked a question.”
“Do you know who killed Danny Mason and Boyd Decker?”
“No.” I looked around the room. The other five members were shaking their heads. I saw something in Bryant Baylor’s eyes that I recognized right away. A simmering fury.
“I find that hard to believe. It takes something seriously dark to turn a man’s insides into kindling sticks.”
“Are you sure about that?” Kent said. “If magic is the culprit, and it is black by nature, Baba Yaga and her minions would have been all over this town looking to punish the culprit.”
“You would know,” I countered.
His mouth turned down at the corner. Well, boo-freaking-hoo. “I don’t possess black magic, Hazel. I’ll admit that the magic I used was corrupt, but there wasn’t nothing inherently evil about it.”
“Tell that to mom.”
He looked as if I’d slapped him across the face, but he didn’t deny it.
“You’re not a child anymore, Hazel,” Adele said. “You are old enough to understand that your mother—”
Kent cut her off. “Enough, Adele. Hazel can believe what she wants to believe. It’s of no consequence.”
I narrowed my gaze. What was my dad keeping from me? Now wasn’t the time for personal revelations. I needed answers about Danny’s murder. “Have any of you heard of the Arete?”
Mary and Chief Nichols blanched. Baylor glowered. Adele, my dad, and Robert Townsend had blank, unreadable expressions.
“Where did you hear that name?” Baylor growled.
“Why does everyone get so antsy and nervous whenever I bring the name up?”
Adele clucked her tongue against her teeth. “Arete isn’t a group or a person, Agent Kinsey. It’s a state of being. A striving for excellence in all things. To be arete is to be morally, mentally, and physically virtuous.”
“Why would Danny be scared when talking about the Arete then?”
“I have no idea.”
“Mizzzzz Kinsey, you are barking up the wrong tree on this Danny Mason business. The boy was into stuff that would have gotten anyone killed, Shifter, witch, or human. He was bad news.”
“Like what kind of stuff, Chief?”
“There is a group of methamphetamine producers out of northern Missouri, who have been trafficking drugs up into Iowa. If you check with your FBI, I’m sure the can corroborate what I’m saying. These folks have been flying under the radar, and it’s made it difficult to catch them in the act of moving product. I suspect there are several young people in our community who help and work for them,” Chief Nichols said. “I’ve been trying to stop them for over two years. I long suspected Daniel Mason was part of that group.” He looped his thumbs into his black belt. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Boyd was not a part of their organization as well. The young man was a known drug offender.”
Robert Townsend pounded his fist against the desk. “That enough, Dirk.” He strode to the chief. “I’ve known John and Joy Decker my entire life, they are my kin. I won’t have you talking about their son that way. Not without real proof.”
A hint of a smile tugged at Nichol’s lips. “No offense, Bob. It’s just a speculation.”
“So you think some human meth heads had the finesse, not to mention, ability to manipulate flesh and bone, to perpetrate these killings?”
Dirk Nichols smug smile soured. “That’s what I think.”
“You really are a crap police officer, Dick.”
“Just wait one damned minute,” he protested.
Adele Adams held her hand up and silenced him. “Is there anything else you want to know, Agent Kinsey? As you can see, we are dealing with external forces in our town that we haven’t quite figured out yet.”
“You have to know magic is involved. There’s no way in hell a bunch of human yahoos twisted Danny and Boyd into pretzels. It might not be witchcraft, but it it’s definitely supernatural. Why haven’t you insisted on a vigorous investigation?” I directed the question at a Nichols and Adele.
“My man took the investigation as far as he could.”
I snorted. Super unprofessional. “You and I have both read Mitchell’s reports. There are enough holes in his inquiries to sink the Titanic.”
“Are you questioning my integrity, Mizzzzzz Kinsey?”
“I think I’m being pretty obvious about it.”
The police chief turned red in the face, Adele Adams looked annoyed, but the rest of the group, including my dad and Bryant Baylor, seemed to be conveying quiet approval.
“I think we’ve given you enough of our time, Agent Kinsey.” Adele started walking to the door. “You be sure and tell Carol we cooperated.”
“I certainly will,” I mumbled. “I’ll make sure Ba
ba Yaga gets an earful.”
Once I stood outside the building on the concrete sidewalk, the June wind whipping through my hair, I breathed a giant sigh of relief. I’d learned three things: My dad was out of magic jail. There was tension between the Shifters and the witches. And finally, the coalition was full of liar-liar-pants-on-fires.
Did Lily know my dad was back in town? If she did, why didn’t she tell me? Ford had to know, but we weren’t exactly friends, so he might not understand the significance. How could Lily let me walk in there unprepared?
I got in my car and took out my phone. There was a certain werecougar who had some ‘splaining to do.
Chapter Ten
“I’M SORRY I DIDN’T TELL YOU, HAZE,” my best friend said, confirming she knew my father was back. “When you left Paradise Falls, you hated him and hated this town. Your mother had…you know, and your father was in jail. You never looked back. I wanted to tell you when I called, but I was afraid if you knew Kent was out of jail, you wouldn’t come home. I tried to tell you again when you got here, but then the whole Boyd tragedy happened.”
I fought the urge to hang up the phone. She was right, but it didn’t mean I had to like it. I guess my silence freaked Lily out because she started talking a mile a minute.
“You haven’t called me or written to me since the day you left Paradise Falls, Haze. Hell, we’re not even friends on social media.” Her voice quivered. “I am desperate to find out what happened to my brother. He was the only family I had left. I couldn’t take the chance that you’d change your mind. I’m sorry if that feels like a betrayal.”
“I can’t deal with this right now.” My father’s betrayal had been the pinnacle of angst for me when it came to this town. “I just need some time to process. We’ll talk about it later.”
“Will we?” I heard the trepidation in her voice.
“Yes, Lils.” I made my reply gentle. “We will.”
I hung up with Lily as I turned onto Harmony. Ford’s street. I parked on the curb in front of his pale green ranch-style house and put my head down on the steering wheel and closed my eyes. I’d never felt so exhausted. Seeing my dad, finding out he was out of jail, had taken an unforeseen emotional toll on me. In my youth, many had described me as a “daddy’s girl,” and when he was taken by the witch police, I believed I never wanted to see him again. I still felt that way. He and my mother had never been attentive parents. They’d been obsessed with each other to the exclusion of everyone including me.
Which is why I still didn’t understand why they’d tried a bond severing spell. When the tether between them had been cut, my mother perished into nothingness and my father was arrested. It had all happened so quickly. I’d moved in with Lily and Danny to finish out the last month of high school, and they rest, as they say, was history. Or at least I thought so, but it turned out I’d left more than a broken youth behind.
A sharp rap on the roof of my car startled me. I looked up to see Ford standing outside my door and staring at me. “You coming inside?”
“Yes,” I said, willing my racing pulse to slow down. “I’m coming.”
“I bet that’s not the first time he’s made a woman say that,” Tizzy said.
I screamed. She screamed.
Ford yanked the door open and pulled me out of the car as if rescuing me from a pit of snakes. He shoved his head in the car, his body relaxing when he saw it was only Tizzy.
“Why did you scream?” Tiz said. She clutched her chest dramatically. “I think you gave me a heart attack.”
“I didn’t know you were in the car! You scared the crap out of me.”
“I thought something smelled bad.” She waved her paw in front of her face, her tail swishing from side to side.
Ford chuckled.
I snapped my fingers at him and the squirrel. “Not funny.” I shifted my focus to my sneaky familiar. “How did you get in my car?”
“You left the window cracked about two inches. I’m pretty flexible, you know.”
I sighed. “No. I mean, when did you get in my car?”
“Oh,” She shrugged, her shoulders brushing her cheeks. “While you were in with the witch-were group. Lily told me about your dad. I thought you might need me, but then you were so mad at her on the phone, and I thought you might need someone to yell at, so I stayed out of sight.”
She wasn’t wrong about me needing someone to yell at. “Go back to Lily’s,” I ordered her.
“She really feels bad about not telling you right away, Haze.” Tiz’s sincere defense of my oldest friend moved me. Not enough to forgive her, yet, but it did take some of the sting off the hurt.
“Then she’ll need you, Tiz. Lily’s alone right now, and I can’t be there for her. I’ll get there, though, I promise.” I tipped her chin with my knuckle until her big brown eyes looked up at me. “So, go. Okay. I’ll check in later, I promise.”
I crossed my arms as I watched Tizzy climb up a nearby tree, jump onto the roof of a ranch house, take a flying leap off the far side, and disappear.
“She loves you,” Ford said. His blunt observation rattled me.
“Don’t you think I know that?” Some witches treated their familiars like tools, some as pets, but Tiz had always been more like family to me. A sister, of sorts. She kept me sane during an insane part of my life. I don’t know that I’d have made it out of Paradise Falls if it weren’t for her.
“Let’s get inside,” Ford said coldly. “I have the reports and witness statements laid out in the kitchen.”
Chapter Eleven
FORD’S HOUSE WAS UNEXPECTED. It was a three bedroom ranch house, with one bedroom converted to an office, and two bathrooms. The large kitchen with a stainless steel convection oven, a gas range, a butcher block top center island, a double well stainless steel sink, a peg wall full of high-end pots and pans, and granite counters. His side-by-side refrigerator was bigger than my clothes’ closet in my bedroom back home, and he had a large pantry. This was a kitchen for someone who loved cooking.
“Are you any good?” I asked when we moved to the center island. Photos, newspaper clippings, official reports, and oddly two books that appeared well-read if the worn edges of their binding were any indication.
His brows raised. “Good at what?”
I warmed under his heated gaze.
“Cheffing.” I gestured to the room. “It’s quite the kitchen.” The dark brown curtains matched his hair color, and the pale blue walls complimented his eyes. Coincidence? “The choice of colors…”
“Tanya picked the colors.”
Heat crept up my neck. “She did, did she?” My words sounded tight in my ears. It was taking every ounce of my control not the tear down the curtains and slash the walls with the professional knives in the butcher block caddy near the stove top.
He noted my indignation and smiled. “Yep.” He nodded. “As a favor.”
“She sure likes to do you a lot of favors.”
“You forfeited your right to be angry when you left me.”
“Seriously? We never dated.” His insistence that I was his mate and somehow should have magically known tweaked my ire. “You act as if we were together. I’d never even so much as had a conversation with you if you don’t count the time in the lunch line when you asked me to hand you the catsup.”
He shook his head as if to deny my words. “My life was good, Hazel. I got good grades, I had the perfect girlfriend, and I knew what I wanted to be when I got out of high school. Then you come along one night, and on a drunken dare, you kiss me.” His next words were almost hushed and reverent. “You changed me, Haze. When you did that, you changed everything.”
I rolled my eyes. “I never knew just how transformative my lips were.” I threw my hands up in the air. “If I’d have known that I could turn popular dicks into my love slaves, I might have kissed all the boys.” Yeah. I was being an asshole.
“Don’t you know anything about Shifters?”
“Uhm, yeah. Duh.
My best friend is a freaking werecougar.”
“Is she?” He glowered. “Is she your best friend? Before you returned to Paradise Falls, when was the last time you even talked to her?”
His spicy scent became more pungently delicious with his anger. My lower bits clenched. My face flamed. I realized I was turned on. The stupid bearman was giving me a bunch of crap about being a crappy person and all I could think about was much I wanted to conquer his peak with my valley.
I blew out a ragged breath and tried to focus. “That’s not fair. I had to get away. I…” Left my friend behind. I sniffled. “My mom was dead. My dad responsible.” I didn’t think I could ever have you. I hadn’t realized until that moment just how much Ford had affected me. “Why are you being so mean to me?”
He surprised me by wrapping his arms around me and pulling me into the warmth of his wide chest. “Because,” he said, “I need you to understand that while witches may consider their mates temporary, it’s not the same for Shifters. When we mate, it’s for life.”
The word “life” echoed in my head. “This is all so confusing.”
“Two Shifters are bonded by an overwhelming need to be together. There is always a unique scenting involved. For me, with you, it was vanilla and rum.” He touched my hair and inhaled. “I can’t even go into a bar because it makes me think of you.”
“Is that why I smell cinnamon desserts every time I’m around you? I noticed it our senior year, but I just thought you’d changed colognes.”
“I smell like cinnamon desserts?” His hands stroked my back.
“Cinnamon buns right now.” Unwitch-like, I sniffed him. “It’s making me really hungry.” I hadn’t eaten all day, but I wasn’t just starved for food. I rose up on my tip-toes and kissed his neck.
Before we took this any further, there was something I had to know. “So you never had sex with Tanya Gellar.”
“Nope.” He started to say more, but when I leaped up and wrapped my legs around his waist, he shut his mouth.
“I don’t need to know anything more,” I said. I stroked his short beard, caressing the dark hair with my fingertips. I pressed my mouth against his, gentle and easy. I tugged his lower lip between my teeth and bit down—not hard enough to break the skin but hard enough to make him moan.