Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 4-6

by Mara Webb

  If all of the horror films I’d ever seen had taught me anything, it was that you should always be on the lookout for clues that something was about to get dangerous. This felt like one of those defining moments that I would look back on later as the point after which everything went south.

  My boyfriend, if he was still my boyfriend, hadn’t mentioned anything about a female relative coming to stay with him. So why was there a beautiful woman in his house right now? I wanted to be overreacting, but I was right to be suspicious here, wasn’t I?

  “No, I was hoping he would be back by now,” she replied. What? “You know, you’re not what I expected.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she giggled, handing me a soda. “Am I how you imagined me?”

  “Umm…” What was I supposed to say here?

  “Miller did tell you about me, didn’t he?” she said, looking more serious now. Before I had to come up with a response, her phone started ringing. Phew. That bought me a few extra seconds to think of something to say. “Hello?” she answered. “Where? All right, well I’ll just stay then. When will you be back?”

  I felt as if I shouldn’t be listening in to her conversation, but she had chosen to sit in the armchair across from me and didn’t seem interested in stepping into another room to speak.

  I still had my own phone in my hand and so I decided to text Kate. ‘Hey, I’m at Miller’s place and he isn’t here. There is a supermodel in his living room though, what’s that about?’

  I don’t know what sort of response I was hoping to get, but at least some validation that my concerns weren’t crazy would be nice. The woman continued to talk as my phone buzzed with Kate’s reply.

  ‘Brunette? Perfect teeth? Little pixie face?’ she wrote.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘Sadie, I’m coming to get you. Don’t speak to her,’ Kate replied. What? The woman was now done with her call and was staring at me. What was I supposed to do? Just get up and walk out of the house in silence? Was Kate going to show up in an explosion of light again? Was this an emergency situation?

  “That was Miller,” she said.

  “Oh?” Why was he calling her?

  “He won’t be back tonight, so did you want to leave a message for him or something?” she asked.

  “Leave a message? What do you mean?” I said.

  “Well, I can pass it along to him when he gets back.”

  “Are you staying here?” I said, my forehead stitched in confusion.

  “Well, this is my house,” she smiled. What? I looked down and caught sight of a silver band around the woman’s finger with a diamond in its center. She was actually wearing two rings, the second was plain.

  “Wait, are you Miller’s wife?” I gasped.

  May Day

  Book Five

  1

  It was warm enough in the house that I had woken up feeling sweaty. The bedroom window was open, but it didn’t feel as though a breeze was strong enough to flutter the curtains, let alone cool me down. I was staring up at the ceiling fan and watching it spin, feeling no benefit as it just circulated warm air.

  I had the air conditioning engineer coming this morning, so at least that would be fixed soon. The unit in my bedroom had only been busted for a day or two, but I was already contemplating dragging a pillow downstairs and sleeping on the beach outside. If I wasn’t so paranoid about waking up covered in tiny sand crabs, then I probably would have done it already.

  I knew that I could use my magic to fix the problem, but as it had been magic that had busted it in the first place, I figured I should leave the repairs to a professional. Effie had been teaching me about the five core types of witch, and during some of the experiments to determine my strengths, I’d busted my AC.

  I felt like Effie was setting up these little activities to take my mind off the fact that no one had seen my boyfriend in over a week. He had taken off without warning but had communicated his departure to a beautiful woman I’d found in his house. She in fact had claimed that it was her house, and Kate had come to drag me out of the place before our conversation could go any further.

  Kate told me that she would ‘handle’ it, and I decided to let her. There was no point fighting about it, I hadn’t even been sure why I’d gone to Miller’s house that night. If he had been secretly dating someone else the whole time, then fine. I was better off without him anyway. I didn’t really believe that, but you have to tell yourself all sorts of nonsense sometimes, don’t you?

  “Are you up?” Kate yelled up the stairs.

  “Yeah!” I shouted back. Kate had taken to sleeping on my couch. Again, I wasn’t asking too many questions. A couple of weeks ago I had been thrust into a love triangle that was consuming almost all of my mental energy, now I was sleeping in a hot bedroom by myself and I didn’t know where my boyfriend had gone. I should probably stop calling him my boyfriend now.

  Miller was gone and had possibly been cheating on me anyway. The details aren’t clear. Ryder on the other hand, well I did know where he was, but he was also keeping his distance for some reason and it was hard not to take it all incredibly personally.

  All I could do was focus all the extra time I now had back onto myself. I was learning more about magic, I’d been spending more time in the café, and it seemed that there had been very little mayhem in Hallow Haven recently. This meant that I could stay in one place and catch my breath.

  As I was the peacekeeper, I was expected to travel out to the islands if there were any disputes between the residents, be they human or witch. I normally travelled out there with the Sheriff, my boyf—just Miller. I was going to have to get used to just calling him by his name.

  In the event that the Sheriff went missing, as he currently was, I didn’t know who would accompany me to deal with peacekeeper business. As of yet, I hadn’t had to find out.

  I pulled my hair into a bun and slipped on a colorful sundress, before heading downstairs to see what Kate needed from me. The sight that greeted me was unusual to say the least.

  Kate was standing in my kitchen in a Victorian-looking ball gown, her waist cinched in with a corset and her brightly colored hair was pinned up in elaborate curls.

  “Have I just stepped into the past?” I laughed.

  “Dude, I told you that I wanted to go to the karaoke place dressed up like this. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten!” she sighed.

  “It’s not that I’ve forgotten, I was just hoping that you might have,” I smiled. I stepped around her and grabbed a box of cereal out of the cupboard. I glanced briefly at the portion size recommendations on the box, then disregarded it anyway as I tipped a mountain of fruity pebbles out. “Is that tonight?”

  “It’s tomorrow. I have your costume right here,” she smiled. “The deal was that you do this with me and then I stop reading your mind for a few hours.”

  “The deal was actually that you stay out of my head for forty-eight hours, don’t try to shortchange me now!” I said, jousting a spoon in her direction. “I still don’t get why there is an English theme night at a karaoke bar.”

  “Because it’s May,” she said, as if that was a full sentence. “Or at least it will be tomorrow. They have been doing May Pole dancing in Britain for two thousand years, or at least that’s what a book told me. We celebrate May beginning, that’s all. We have mashed together a bunch of traditions. It’s an ancient spring festival essentially, witches dig this sort of stuff. Aren’t you excited?”

  “I mean, I guess,” I said. I took my breakfast to the small table in the middle of the kitchen and sat down, pulling the newspaper closer so that I could read it as I ate. “It will be a welcome distraction.”

  “There are plenty more fish in the sea, you know,” Kate said. She tried to sit down in a chair across the table from me, but the side of the hip pads underneath her dress made it impossible, so she chose to stand.

  “I feel like I’m getting relationship advice from Mar
ie Antoinette,” I laughed.

  “Didn’t she have, like, eight kids and then get executed in a revolution?” Kate pondered.

  “Are you mistaking me for a French historian?” I smiled. “Besides, I don’t care about how many fish there are in the sea, I had my eye on one fish in particular. Now it seems that the fish was swimming in someone else’s water the whole time, and don’t even get me started on the other fish, because—”

  “This metaphor is getting too complicated,” Kate interrupted.

  “I still don’t know why Miller had a supermodel in his house and why he hasn’t called me. She said it was her house, Kate. Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?” I asked, leaning back in my chair and raising my brows questioningly.

  “It’s not my story to tell,” Kate replied. “Look, I know you probably think that I’m keeping some big, massive secret, and yeah, I am…” she said, drifting off for a second. “But Miller should be the one to tell you.”

  “You’re up to something and I don’t like it,” I groaned. Kate snapped her fingers and the elaborate costume disappeared and she was now wearing a Taylor Swift t-shirt that had been tie-dyed, and a pair of shorts. She had kept her black hair up in curls, but the emerald-green bangs were now covering her forehead once again. I wished I had control of magic like Kate did.

  “What did you want to practice today?” she asked.

  “How about we practice making cookie dough and eating it while watching the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills?” I sighed.

  Despite my personal life being a total, complete disaster, there had been some positive developments recently. Hallow Haven still had the worst internet service of any place in the Northern Hemisphere, but we had now been granted access to cable TV. I had reignited my passion for Bravo and was desperate to get Kate in on the action.

  “How about we work on your witchcraft, huh?” Kate replied. I tutted and rolled my eyes, but I knew that her suggestion was the better one. Effie called out into the house as she walked up the corridor from the café next door.

  “Where are you guys?” Effie said.

  “Kitchen!” Kate and I replied in unison. I stared at her in disbelief when she walked into the room. I had seen Effie yesterday and she had mentioned nothing about plans to change up her hair. Judging by the look on Kate’s face, it seems that Effie hadn’t told her sister either.

  Effie normally had shoulder length hair with full bangs, she had a peach color on the right side of her head and lavender on the left. She almost looked like a totally different person now. Her hair extended down past her waist and was a pale green with subtle streaks of an almost platinum blonde.

  “You look like a mermaid,” Kate shrieked with delight. Effie had half of her hair up in a braid and the rest fell in soft waves.

  “You look so cool,” I muttered. I meant it one hundred percent. Both Kate and Effie were like my two older sisters that were just so effortlessly awesome, and I felt like the world’s biggest dork by comparison.

  “Glad you like it,” Effie grinned. “I figured that I would change it up for the spring festival.”

  “Is this a big deal? I haven’t been asked to do anything,” I said. As the peacekeeper I normally ended up getting roped into every event on the islands.

  “It’s a big deal, for sure, but people all celebrate in their own way. There isn’t any big official thing, there are lots of small events that the residents set up,” Effie explained. “The May pole is a big deal though; we all have to hold a ribbon and dance around this giant post that they plant in the ground.”

  “What else?” I asked, taking my empty bowl to the sink.

  “Well, there are the May baskets,” Kate began. “You fill a little basket with spring flowers then leave them on someone’s doorstep. It’s kinda like ding-dong ditch actually.”

  “Like what?” I laughed.

  “What do you call it then?” Effie asked.

  “Call what?”

  “The thing when you run up to someone’s door, ring the bell, then run away before they answer,” Effie said.

  “I don’t know, I don’t think I ever did that,” I shrugged.

  “You have lived a very sad, very sheltered life,” Kate replied, shaking her head. “I normally don’t even bother with the May basket thing, but if you are serious about having never played this game, then we are doing it.”

  “Kate, I’m not spending another night in the police station,” Effie admonished.

  “What?” I exclaimed.

  “Don’t listen to my sister, she’s just annoyed that sometimes my pranks get away from me and we get arrested. It won’t happen this time, we have the peacekeeper with us. Miller isn’t even around to be slapping handcuffs on us,” Kate said.

  She winced as she realized that saying his name out loud was a buzz kill in this house. She drew in breath through her teeth.

  “Hey, he might be there,” Effie offered.

  I didn’t even know if I wanted to see him at this point.

  “Hold up, so you just leave flowers on the doorstep, ring the bell then run away?” I said, trying to steer the conversation back.

  “Yeah, but if the person in the house catches you then you have to give them a kiss!” Effie said. “I mean, it’s probably a sketchy thing to be doing at this point, but it’s just a bit of fun, right? No one is enforcing the kiss part. I know where we can get some baskets and flowers though, then we can get going!”

  “I want to look cool too,” I announced. “If you are doing an awesome Spring festival makeover, then I want to do that too.”

  “Dude, ask and you shall receive,” Kate grinned. I already had accidentally given myself a blue streak in my hair due to a surge in my magic a few weeks ago, but Kate and Effie looked like they should be in a rock band. I wanted a piece of that action. They say you are a mix of the six people you spend the most time with, right? I just had these two people, a ghost and a talking cat.

  Kate put her hands on my head, and I felt a tingling sensation. Effie was now somehow holding a mirror and aiming it in my direction so that I could watch as my hair grew down to my waist, just like hers.

  The blue steak was gone, and a red ombre effect had taken over. I couldn’t help but smile at my reflection as I inspected the color. I was almost unrecognizable, and I loved it.

  “Are you ready to go ding-dong-ditching?” Effie asked.

  “I’ve never been more ready!” I beamed. Was this a desperate cry for help? Sure. But I’d gone from a love triangle to a, well, what’s a triangle when you take away two corners? A dot? Either way, I’d needed to make a change, so maybe this was it.

  Spring would bring new opportunities, right?

  “We can point out which houses to avoid, you know, in case you tick off the Wiccans,” Kate smiled.

  Wait, what?

  2

  “You really have just been living under a rock,” Effie laughed. “Look, we can worry about the witch stuff later, let’s get out to the market before all the good flowers are gone.”

  “Is this going to be one of those things where I end up in trouble because I only know half of a story?” I asked.

  “Probably,” Kate shrugged. “But it keeps life interesting, doesn’t it?” I couldn’t disagree with that. I grabbed my purse, slipped on some shoes and we made our way outside. My front door opened right out onto the beach and it was a beautiful spring morning, the blazing sun reminded me that I had an AC engineer coming.

  “That guy is coming to fix the unit in my room!” I said, turning back to the house. Kate and Effie grabbed my arms and span me back around.

  “Everyone at the café has a key to your house, someone else can let him in. Let’s go,” Effie insisted.

  “Wait, everyone has a key to my house?” I said.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Effie dismissed. I felt like I should probably get the locks changed, otherwise I would never have a moment of privacy again. Although, come to think of it, Kate and Effie were in my
house pretty much all the time recently, so when had I last had any privacy at all?

  The beach was crowded with sunbathers. The cloudless sky was made all the brighter by an unrelenting sun, these people would be sunburned all over if they didn’t get into some shade before noon. When we made it to the high street, I could see that streetlights had been covered in bright yellow flower displays. With such a focus on the upcoming summer season, it was easy to feel hopeful about the months to come.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “They have a market on the high street,” Effie replied.

  “Since when?” I said. I had been here for a couple of months now and hadn’t seen a market once.

  “It’s on about nine times a year,” Kate explained. “It’s eight times a year in accordance with solar events, and then they have one for new year. The new year one is actually pretty intense, and it is almost exclusively fireworks. I’m pretty sure they are phasing that one out after some petitions went around trying to get it banned. The fireworks are so annoying and loud.”

  “Solar events?” I repeated. “What does that mean?”

  “Solstices and equinoxes,” Effie said, her tone implying it was obvious. “It’s a witch thing, you’ll get used to it. Anyway, this one is for May Day stuff, they sell a lot of fishing equipment, face wash, beekeeper suits and flowers.”

  “That seems like a weird list of things to be selling, what’s that about?” I asked.

  “Urgh, stupid old traditions that got rooted into the islands and have stuck around. May first is the day to do all the fun summer-festival stuff, but also if you are a beekeeper you are supposed to move your bees for some reason, it’s a lucky day to get out onto the water to catch fish and washing your face is just a good idea anyway,” Kate said.

  “Do you guys go fishing?”

  “We like going out on boats, but not to catch anything,” Effie answered. “The water is just nice for the festival; the blue seems bluer.”