by Keri Arthur
“I think we should.”
From that moment on, there was little in the way of sound beyond those that spoke of exploration and rising pleasure. When satisfaction came, it was glorious.
He kissed me gently, then slipped to one side and gathered me close. When sleep claimed me for a second time, the visions of that wailing, grief-stricken woman were little more than a distant tremor.
One that whispered of trouble yet to come.
After cooking me breakfast the following morning, Aiden dropped me home and then continued on to the ranger station. The café was closed on Mondays, but that didn’t always mean we got the day off—especially when the previous day’s trade had all but wiped us out of cakes and salad prep. Once I’d dumped my stuff into my bedroom and shoved a load of washing into the machine, I headed into the kitchen to rectify all that. For the next five hours I made a variety of cakes, cheesecakes, and slices, and was finally on the last leg of veg cutting when Belle came home. She tossed her handbag onto the serving counter and then walked around to flick on the kettle. “You want a coffee?”
“Yes, thanks.” I swept the sliced onions into the container, then shoved on the lid. “How was the show?”
“Brilliant. I might go down and see it again before its run ends.”
She leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms. She was a typical Sarr witch in coloring, with ebony skin, long black hair, and eyes as bright as polished silver. She was also just over six feet tall with an Amazonian build, which made her almost the polar opposite of me. I was five inches shorter with a body that tended to curviness. I also had pale skin, freckles across my nose, and the crimson hair of a royal witch.
“I notice,” she added, voice dry, “that you didn’t ask how the trip home was.”
I grinned. “I don’t need to. I can feel the disgruntled vibes from here.”
She snorted. “It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d just shut up for five minutes. But no, he felt the need to talk all the way home.”
“Maybe it was nerves. You are a pretty impressive specimen of womanhood, after all, and he did fancy you even when you were a scrawny teenager.”
“And still does.” She shook her head, her smile somewhat wry. “No matter how many times I state he and I will never happen, it appears to have made absolutely no dent in his determination to take me out.”
My eyebrows rose. “Implying he did actually ask you out?”
“Yeah.” She pushed away from the wall as the kettle began to whistle. “He has some tickets for the opening night of Evita and was wondering if I wanted to go.”
I couldn’t help grinning. That was a very clever ploy on Monty’s part, given Belle’s love of the theatre and red-carpet events—not that she’d ever been to many of the latter.
“What did you tell him?”
“What do you think?” She reappeared, two coffees in hand. “How often am I able to go to a fancy opening night? There will, however, be ground rules.”
My grin grew. “And do you seriously expect him to obey them? Especially when you’re all made up and looking gorgeous on the red carpet?”
A reluctant smile touched her lips. “Well, no, but the threat of literally freezing him on the spot will at least curtail the most overt of his seduction attempts. The rest I can basically ignore.”
I washed my hands and then accepted my coffee with a nod of thanks. “And what if he averts your threat by buying a stronger anti-telepathy band?”
The bands were something we’d been made aware of when two RWA witches had come into the reservation to help track down a vampire hell-bent on revenge. Monty had also been wearing one when he’d first arrived, but had subsequently learned that while it did stop casual intrusion, a determined effort by a strong enough telepath could still get through.
Belle had since released the restrictions she’d placed on his thoughts, but only because he now knew the truth of why we’d run and had sworn not to mention our presence to anyone up in Canberra—particularly anyone who knew either my parents or the bastard I’d been forced to marry. I wasn’t entirely sure Monty believed my father—who was one of the government’s most sought-after advisors—was capable of such treachery, but that didn’t really bother me. The longer I could keep my presence here secret, the better—even if I knew in the end it wouldn’t matter. My father and Clayton would eventually arrive here, forcing the confrontation I’d been running from since I was sixteen years old.
“I doubt he’ll go to the trouble of buying another band,” Belle said. “Especially after I broke through the first one relatively quickly. Besides, he may just surprise us and be the model of decorum.”
I almost choked on a mouthful of coffee. “This is Monty we’re talking about. You know, the man who paired a Kermit the Frog tie with an Armani suit at our Year Ten formal, and who then spent most of the evening trying to convince you to dance with him.”
A smile tugged her lips. “I know, but hey, stranger things have happened, especially in this reservation.”
Stranger things might have, but I doubted even this reservation could work that particular miracle. “How is he, besides chatty?”
“Good. He can certainly scoot around on his crutches easily enough, although he’s not going to be able to drive the Mustang for a few weeks yet.”
No surprise there given his pride and joy was a manual. The last thing he’d want was to scratch or—heaven forbid—dent the thing. “Did you dump him at home or at the ranger station?”
“Neither. He wanted to go straight to the morgue to examine the remains.”
I grimaced. “Whatever’s responsible for these murders didn’t leave a whole lot behind to examine.”
“I think he wanted to do some sort of magical examination. I don’t think he trusted Ashworth’s declaration there were no detectable spells or magic layered onto the remains.”
“I’m gathering he had the good sense not to say that to Ashworth.”
My voice was dry, and her lips twitched. “It appears the slap over the ear he received the last time he said something about our favorite witch’s abilities did do the trick.” She rested a hip against the bench. “I get the feeling those remains are not the reason for the vague uneasiness I was sporadically receiving before you went to sleep last night.”
“No. Sorry, I thought I had everything locked down.”
“You did—if it had been anything more substantial, I would have contacted you. So, give.”
I quickly told her about the woman in white and the unsettling visions I’d had before Aiden had so delightfully woken me. “There was no threat in her presence, but those images suggest that might not remain the case.”
Belle frowned. “A ghostly woman in white is a common occurrence throughout many cultures, but they’re usually associated with some sort of tragic event—such as the loss of a husband or child. They’re known for seeking vengeance.”
“She carried the body of what I think was her child in the vision.”
“But not when she was following you, which is odd. It suggests there’s some other reason for her presence here.”
“Could she be the mother of one of the victims?”
“The current victims? Unlikely, as her appearance happened too soon after the deaths.”
“We haven’t got a time of death for the first victim, though.”
“It’s still unlikely.” She took a sip of coffee, her expression thoughtful. “But I guess it’s possible there are more victims out there than the two we’ve found. Maybe you should mention it to Aiden and see if there’ve been any recent suicides.”
“I actually don’t think it was recent—she felt far older than that.”
“It’s still worth asking, especially if the suicide happened soon after a child had been killed.”
I nodded. “In the meantime, we can hit your gran’s books and see if she has anything on white ladies or flesh-stripping, bone-stacking demons.”
“She likely has—it’s just finding which books
they’re in that’ll be the problem.”
Her grandmother’s handwritten indexing system tended to be somewhat haphazard, which made it hard to find anything quickly. But recent events had made us realize we needed an easier means of quickly accessing the information within the vast number of books—most of which were secured off-site, as we simply didn’t have the room here to store even a quarter of them.
To that end, Belle had asked a techie friend of hers to help catalog and then convert them over to an easily accessible electronic format. One that would not only provide a backup in case the High Witch Council ever discovered we had Nell’s library—which should, for all intents and purposes, have been gifted to the National Library on her death—but also protect us against a natural disaster destroying part or all of the library. Castle Rock might not get much in the way of floods, but it was in an extremely high-risk fire zone. And while I’d recently added a fire protection spell to the multiple layers protecting them, there was no guarantee that what worked against unnatural flames would work against real.
“How much of the library have you and the lovely Kash managed to convert?”
“About a third, I think. It’s slow going thanks to the age of some of the volumes.”
“I’m thinking you’re not overly worried about the length of time it takes.”
My voice was again dry, and she grinned. “Indeed no. I am, in fact, due over there this afternoon for another session.”
Amusement twitched my lips. “And will this ‘session’ actually include any scanning or text conversion?”
Her grin grew. “Once we’ve satisfied other hungers, quite possibly.”
I chuckled softly. “Then you’d better go get ready. I’ll go through your gran’s index and see what I can find.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want me to help with the rest of the food prep?”
I shook my head. “I’ve only got to decorate a few remaining cakes and slices, then get the scalloped potatoes ready and I’m done.”
Besides, Belle had covered for me often enough in the kitchen. It was about time I returned the favor.
“Awesome—thanks. But you will contact me if that specter makes a reappearance, won’t you? The sooner we get to the bottom of that, the better.”
“It’s not likely to make an appearance during the daylight hours—is it?”
She hesitated. “Generally no, because most of them simply haven’t the strength to project their form in sunlight. But this one is capable of magic, which means anything is possible.”
“Have you ever heard of or seen a concealment spell whose threads are silver?”
She raised her eyebrows. “We went to the same school, remember? If you didn’t recognize the spell, I sure as hell wouldn’t.”
“Yeah, but you did make a habit of reading through your gran’s spell books before you went to sleep.”
“Only to find innocuous old spells to fling at our classmates when they annoyed us.”
Like the ‘shoelace constantly undone and tripping you up for a day’ one she’d used. While the whole ‘do unto others, because it will come back threefold’ rule did generally apply to spells, it couldn’t actually be enforced if you didn’t wear laces. It also didn’t apply to spells cast by dark or blood witches—maybe because such witches were already bound to hell or had their souls so stained by their evil that they were irretrievable and little else could be done to them.
“But you do know a whole lot about ghosts and specters,” I said. “How usual is it for them to be able to perform magic after their death?”
“It’s rare, but there are some who can interact with our world, so this may just be an extension of that.”
If that were the case, then I could only hope that she didn’t start aiming her magic at us. “Are you driving the SUV across to Kash’s?”
She shook her head. “It isn’t that far away, and it’s not too hot to walk.”
“For you long-limbed types who don’t burn after ten minutes in the sun, maybe.”
She grinned. “I burn. I just don’t go flame-red and then peel afterward. You want me to bring something back for dinner?”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re not staying overnight at Kash’s?”
She shook her head again. “His bed is too damn uncomfortable, and he refuses to get another, so he pays the price by not being able to sleep with this luscious bod.”
“So, despite high intelligence, he’s not actually that bright?”
“Indeed. But it doesn’t matter, given neither of us are looking for anything serious.” She pushed away from the bench. “I should be home by about eight.”
I nodded and continued the prep. When that was done, I grabbed another coffee, a thick slice of freshly made caramel shortbread, and then headed upstairs to go through the index and jot down the numbers of any books that might contain information about flesh-stripping demons or ghostly white ladies.
It was close to four when a sharp ringing startled me awake. I blinked for the second or two it took for true alertness to catch up, and then realized it was the café’s phone rather than mine. I carefully shifted the book—which had obviously dropped onto my chest when I’d fallen asleep—then pushed upright and ran downstairs.
And knew, even as I reached for the handset, trouble was about to step my way again.
Three
“Is this Elizabeth Grace?” a somewhat distraught voice said.
My stomach sank, even though intuition wasn’t yet suggesting that whatever this woman wanted in any way involved the evil we’d discovered last night.
“Yes, it is, but I’m afraid we’re closed until—”
“Yes, I know, and I’m sorry, but my son is missing, and I desperately need your help. I don’t know where else to go.”
I closed my eyes and briefly wished I had strength to ignore the desperation in her voice. But I didn’t, and probably never would, simply because I understood it. I’d felt exactly the same way the day my sister had been snatched and subsequently killed by a serial killer—a tragic event that had no doubt given birth to this inner need to help others when and where I could. Still…
“Have you tried the rangers?”
“Yes, but they think I’m being paranoid, and I’m not. I know I’m not.”
I seriously doubted they’d said or thought any such thing, but there was little point in saying that. It was pretty obvious she wasn’t in any state to listen.
“When did he go missing, Mrs…?”
“Hardwick. Marion Hardwick. And I haven’t seen him since yesterday afternoon. He went to a party at a mate’s, and hasn’t come back.”
“And you’ve talked to them? Asked when they saw him last?”
“Of course I did.” Her voice was a mix of indignation and desperation. “They said he left them at midnight to walk home. But he never made it here, and he’s not answering his phone.”
“Have you tried to find his phone via a locator app?”
“Is something like that even possible?”
“Yes, but only if it’s been previously set up.” I sighed and rubbed my head. Maybe if I did this quickly enough, Aiden’s plans for the evening would not be curtailed yet again. “I’ll need something of his—something like a watch or a neck chain he wore on a regular basis—to find him. And you’ll need to come here.”
While instinct might be suggesting whatever had happened to her son wasn’t related to the events of last night, I wasn’t about to take a chance. Our reading room was probably one of the safest places in Australia when it came to dealing with any sort of magic or occult entities. Not only was the café surrounded by multiple layers of spells that guarded us against all manner of things—from preventing anyone intending us harm entering the café, to protecting us against a wide variety of supernatural nasties—there were also a whole range of additional measures within the reading room. No spirit or demon was getting in there, even if it somehow broke through the main spells.
�
�I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Mrs. Hardwick said. “Thank you for doing this.”
“It’s not a problem.”
She hung up. I took a deep breath and rang Aiden. “Guess what?”
He groaned. “You’re getting another bad feeling?”
“No. This time it was a rather desperate call from Marion Hardwick—”
“Whose son is missing,” he finished.
“I take it she’s been to the station already?”
“Yes, and this is not the first time the kid has disappeared. The last time he hitched a lift down to Melbourne to see some band with a girl he’d met the day before.”
I frowned. “How old is he?”
“Sixteen going on thirty.” Aiden’s voice was dry. “He’s basically a good kid; he’s just a little headstrong.”
“I take it you’ve had people out looking for him?”
“Yes, but there’s no sign or scent of him on the usual tracks back to his mom’s place.” He paused. “You want me over there?”
“No, because I’m actually not getting any bad vibes about this disappearance at the moment. If that changes, I’ll call you.”
“Fine. But let me know if you’re not going to be ready by seven, so I can cancel the dinner reservation.”
“Where were we going?”
“It’s a surprise, and will remain that way until we get there.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then it’ll wait for another day.”
“You know you’ve just set me a challenge, don’t you?”
“I welcome said challenge, but I will not break.”
I grinned. “We’ll see about that, Ranger.”
He chuckled softly. “Call if there’s a problem.”
“Always do.”
I hung up, then made myself a big mug of hot chocolate and shoved a ton of marshmallows into it. I had a feeling I’d need the sugar hit to cope with the onslaught of Mrs. Hardwick’s emotions.
As it turned out, I should have shoved a whole lot more marshmallows into the drink.
Marion Hardwick was a tall, thin woman with short black hair and brilliant green eyes that were currently puffy and red. She was also surrounded by a fierce halo of fear and panic, and her aura was a writhing mess of dark blue—a sign that she either didn’t trust the future or couldn’t face the possible truth of it.