Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 4-6

by Mara Webb

“Don’t sugar coat it, doc” I laughed nervously.

  “Yeah, how would you even be able to tell if she had brain damage?” Kate teased. Effie put down her bags of take-out food and high fived her sister.

  “You don’t get to be mean to me, you are both lying about that woman and I could have died out there playing that stupid game with the flowers,” I complained.

  “What woman?” Brielle asked.

  “If we tell you,” Effie began. “And I mean, if, will you promise to be chill? Like, don’t blow a gasket or whatever?”

  “You are making it sound like I’m about to get terrible news,” I said.

  “Let me just give her a quick examination first, then tell her over lunch,” Brielle insisted. It only took a few minutes, but it felt like hours. Kate and Effie dug around in the cupboards to find dishes and glasses for all of us and set up on the table. Effie had brought enough Italian food to put us all to sleep, and I wasn’t feeling particularly hungry after the fall.

  When Brielle finally gave me the all-clear, I stared directly at Effie so that she would start explaining.

  “Alright, okay, so here’s the thing,” she said, clearly stalling. “You have two guardians, right?” I nodded. “And that’s great and all, but clearly it hasn’t been working out all that well on account of them both hating each other, and they both have the hots for you too, so it got messy pretty fast.”

  “I know all this…” I added, raising an eyebrow suspiciously.

  “I think the incident on Tivercana must have set off some alarm bells somewhere,” Kate said. There had been a golf tournament on one of the smaller islands. Ryder had tried to control the weather to give the golfers blue skies, but it had gone wrong somehow, and he had summoned a full moon instead.

  The full moon was problematic because I was on an island with Miller, my werewolf boyfriend, and we hadn’t taken the right precautions because the full moon hadn’t been due for weeks. He had shifted, injured me by mistake, and… well it had been a rough weekend.

  “That woman is from The Bureau, it’s an organization that looks to straighten out anomalies in the magic community. They stay out of the way for the most part, leave people to govern themselves, but if she is here,” Effie said, pausing as she considered how to phrase the next part.

  “We think she is here to bring you down to one guardian,” Kate said.

  “What? How? How does she pick one of them? What happens to the one that isn’t chosen?” I gasped. They both shrugged.

  4

  Brielle, Kate and Effie seemed to have enough to say that I was able to sit back and just listen. It hadn’t been that long ago that they weren’t talking to Brielle, but I had managed to convince them that their squabbles weren’t worth cutting out their cousin for so long. They had been almost inseparable ever since.

  It seemed that Brielle was in a long-term relationship with a guy named Patrick, and Kate was convinced he was about to propose. The three of them were debating the color scheme for a potential wedding with great enthusiasm, and I was still stuck in my concern about this woman from The Bureau.

  Lunch had lasted hours. Brielle was called away to deal with another medical incident elsewhere on the island and Kate was needed back at the radio station. She had temporarily been given a drive-time slot while another presenter was ill. Despite the fact that she was just a stand in, she was acting as if she had been promoted.

  “Well guys, I’d love to stay,” Kate performed as she stood up to leave. “But as you know, the people of Hallow Haven are waiting for my input, my voice, and of course my musical tastes, to get them home tonight. I have to give the people what they want.”

  “Do you think that you have a lot of people desperately waiting for you to get on the radio and play yet another song by Metallica?” Effie teased. “You are the only station that anyone can get out here.”

  “Does that make my work any less valuable? I am providing a gift to the community, the gift of my opinions,” Kate smiled as she walked out the door. “I wouldn’t tune in tonight if I were you Effie, I imagine there will be a lot of talk about the benefits of being an only child.”

  “Oh, get lost,” Effie laughed, throwing an empty take out container at Kate as she ran out the door.

  I cleared the plates away and could feel Effie’s eyes on me. “What?” I asked.

  “What are you thinking about? I can’t read your mind like my sister can, so I have no idea where your head is at,” Effie said.

  “Some woman shows up to take one of my guardians away, and since she arrived, I haven’t seen Miller, he hasn’t called me or responded to any of my messages,” I ranted. “Ryder has been avoiding me entirely and it feels like she took them both. Where is Miller? Has she done something to him? Has she chosen Ryder to be my guardian and Miller has just been taken away to be somewhere else?”

  “I think you need to trust the process,” Effie replied.

  “But I don’t know what the process is. I didn’t even know that a process existed until you told me that this woman is from some head office, or whatever you said,” I sighed. “If I could just get hold of Miller, I would feel a lot calmer about things. Like, where is he? Why don’t I know where he is? I don’t even know if we are still dating, Effie. If I don’t look for him, who will?”

  “I hear you,” Effie said. “Look, tomorrow is May Day, there will be a ton of stuff going on and it will be hard to get the rest of the police department to hear you out because they will be busy making sure the festival doesn’t get out of hand. I think the day after that would be the best time to speak to them.”

  “Where do they think their sheriff has gone?” I asked. “There’s no way they haven’t noticed.”

  “Good point,” she agreed. “Why don’t I go and snoop around, do a little bit of peacekeeper-sanctioned breaking and entering, and then come back to tell you what I find?”

  “Peacekeeper-sanctioned? You want me to give you permission to break into someone’s house?” I smiled.

  “Yeah, I think I just made that pretty clear.”

  “Who’s house?” I asked.

  “Miller,” she said, rolling her eyes as if it had been obvious.

  “Should I come with you?” I said.

  “No, you should hang out here. I’ll be back to sleep over because you shouldn’t be alone after hitting your head on the sidewalk. I mean, you shouldn’t sleep alone, you’ll be fine to roll solo for an hour or so while I’m trespassing somewhere else,” she smiled.

  “Alright then, I’ll go check out my AC unit upstairs. If it’s still busted, then you will hear my screams all the way from Miller’s place.”

  “I’ll listen out for it,” she nodded. Effie jumped up and made for the door. “Hey, don’t do anything dumb while I’m gone.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I replied. She eyed me suspiciously, then continued out of the house onto the beach beyond. The silence reminded me that I hadn’t been alone in the house like this for a long time. Effie and Kate had been providing an almost round-the-clock Sadie-supervising service and I had been put on a tight leash.

  The gentle hum of a distant, functional air-conditioning unit caught my ear. I grabbed the bag off the back of my kitchen chair and took it upstairs with me as I made my way back to my bedroom. I hadn’t actually looked through the paper bag of goods from Coaled Water and I would rather inspect them without having prying eyes over my shoulder.

  I had barely made it to the top step when my cousin, Greta, appeared in front of me. Having a ghost in the house wasn’t the problem, it was just that she could move around so quietly that her arrivals often caught me off guard.

  “Jeez, what are you doing here?” I gasped.

  “Checking up on you,” she replied. “What are you doing? Kate said you know about The Bureau.”

  “Oh, you know about it too? Good job to all of you for keeping that little secret,” I scolded.

  “When it turned out that you had two guardians, I did think it was
pretty weird. I mean, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “I had just found out that I was a witch. Everything was weird back then,” I huffed. I’d said ‘back then’ as if this saga had been going on for years, but I was still living a normal life back in Virginia six months ago.

  “That’s fair,” she smiled. “Look, you’ve just gotta trust the process.”

  “I wish people would stop saying that,” I groaned. “I just want to be alone with my over analysis of every move I’ve made in the past few weeks. Let me have that, please.”

  “When will Effie be back?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, she’s planning to break into Miller’s house so she could be a while. Why don’t you go and check up on her?” I suggested.

  “She’s breaking into a guardians house when that woman is on the island?” she shrieked. “Why would she do that? Surely she knows how dangerous it…” she trailed off as her body faded away. I continued on into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  I tipped the paper bag onto the sheets and looked at the items that had tumbled out. There was a small bundle of heather, a five pack of candles, a stick of white chalk, and a net bag filled with clear quartz candle holders. Sage had included instructions for how to use what I had, and I read over it a few times. Or at least I tried to, she was right, her handwriting was pretty bad.

  She had drawn a small diagram at the bottom of the instructions card. It seemed to have a pentagram, with a candle placed at each point on the star. It didn’t seem all that complicated really, if Kate’s only function here was to decipher the scrawl on the card, then maybe I didn’t actually need her here to do this.

  I took the chalk and drew a pentagram on the floorboards, fitted each candle into a candle holder, then placed them on the points. I sat in the center and realized that I probably needed to actually light the candles in order for the spell to work. I double checked the paper bag for a lighter or a match; there was neither inside.

  I knew I had a box of matches in the living room downstairs, so I got back up onto my feet and went down to get them. I hadn’t been anywhere other than my bedroom or the kitchen since I’d woken up this morning, so I hadn’t seen the mess that Kate had made during her sleepover on the couch.

  She had folded up her blankets but left all the snack wrappers scattered around the coffee table in between burned-out tea-lights and a few empty soda cans. I grabbed the matches, gave one last judgmental scowl at the state of the room, then ran back upstairs.

  I lit each candle, then sat back down in the center of the pentagram. Now what? Was I supposed to wait here for something to happen? How would I know if it had worked? How long should I sit here? I was cross-legged, my hands on each knee and my back straight. I figured good posture was probably important for this. Maybe I should have spoken to Kate or Effie first.

  I closed my eyes and tried to focus my mind on the idea of bringing by bad luck streak to an end. I couldn’t get the image of that woman out of my head though. She had pulled both of the men in my life away from me, what had she said to them? What might she have done to Miller? I had sent him text messages and tried to call him; all had gone unanswered.

  The hum from the AC unit stopped suddenly. I opened my eyes just as a rush of air swirled through the room and extinguished the candles, causing each wick to smoke. It wasn’t dark yet; the sun was still up enough that I could see even though the bedroom light had switched off. Had there been a power cut? Maybe the AC engineer had messed up the repair and the unit had shorted the electricity through the whole house.

  The windows were closed, but I could still feel the air moving, causing the smoke to swirl. The candles weren’t huge, but there was enough smoke here that it was making me cough. I watched as the smoke merged together from each candle and began to drift towards the bedroom door; it was guiding me somewhere.

  I stood up and walked out to the top landing as the smoke carried down to the staircase. Sage had told me to ignore calls, right? Maybe this was what she was talking about, but what if it was taking me to Miller? I probably shouldn’t be so willing to trust my gut instincts after hitting my head so hard, but I felt compelled to see where it was taking me. I walked down the stairs, along the corridor and out onto the beach. I didn’t stop to put shoes on, I didn’t want to lose sight of the smoke in the air.

  My bare feet didn’t seem to sink into the sand as I walked towards the ocean, as if I was gliding over the ground. The smoke stopped, hovering in a thin cloud a few feet above the shallow waves. The water lapped at my ankles gently. Was the smoke going to try and lure me into the deep? When it started to move again it guided me in the direction of the marina.

  I glanced back quickly at my house, watching it grow smaller in the distance. I patted myself down in the hopes that I had my cellphone on me. I was wearing a sundress without pockets; dresses rarely have pockets and I had never been more annoyed about it. I had to run a few steps to catch up once I was facing forward again.

  Once I reached the marina, the smoke led me out onto a dock and hovered above one of the boats. I felt a strange sensation in that moment, as if I was watching myself move from outside of my body. It almost felt like a memory, like déjà vu. I climbed into the boat as if on autopilot and began to loosen the rope that was keeping it attached to the dock.

  Where was I going? Why couldn’t I stop myself? Once the rope was released, I began to row, sitting in the center of the boat with a firm grip on both oars. I started to maneuver myself away from the island to a destination unknown.

  The water was rougher once I moved away from the shore, and rowing became increasingly difficult as the waves churned beneath me, but part of my mind had a singular focus and was determined to take me away from the main island. I looked back over my shoulder and could only just see my house in the dimming light.

  The first time a wave lashed the side of the boat, I’d felt a splash of water against my legs. There had been more force behind the second wave and when it hit my legs, I looked down only to see that it was pooling by my feet. How much water could this thing hold before it sank? I began to panic, as if the trance had been broken and I was now fully aware of the mess I was in.

  I pulled at one oar to turn the boat; if I rowed quickly enough then I could get back before the sky was totally black. I let go of the oar on the right so that I could pull back the left one with all my strength, and thankfully the boat responded by pivoting in place about forty-five degrees. The current was pulling me away from the main island, it was trying to take me further out. I would be fighting the tide to get home, but I had to try.

  I reached back for the right oar, only to find that it was gone. I could swear this happened to me every time I got in a boat, why don’t they have the oars fastened in place so that they can’t fall out if you let go? It was a little late to be making design modifications.

  When the third wave hit, it blindsided me. I’d been frantically looking for the oar in the water and had spotted it only a few feet away from me, so tried to lean over the side to grab it. The combination of my weight shifting across the boat and the water hitting from the opposite side cause the boat to flip. Before I knew it, I was in the water and scrambling for the surface.

  I couldn’t open my eyes or take a breath. The chill of the water had caught me off guard, it was so much colder that I had expected, and it made it harder for my body to move.

  I was in real trouble now.

  5

  I was moving, or at least my body was being moved. I was so bitterly cold that I couldn’t find my voice in my throat, all I could do was murmur softly in protest. I felt a pain in my chest as if I’d been punched, and the air in my lungs felt like fire, burning with every breath. I opened my eyes, but everything was so dark that I couldn’t see anything anyway. It seemed I wasn’t in the water anymore at least, so that was something.

  “What are you doing?” a voice hissed.

  “She can’t stay here,” another one replied. Who wa
s talking? Where was I?

  “H- hey,” I said, determined to shout but letting out a whimper instead.

  “She’s awake.” That was the last voice I heard before surrendering to the exhaustion, despite wanting to desperately stay awake. I had been dragged, I could feel my heels creating troughs in the sand, but when I’d spoken someone had grabbed my ankles and now, I was completely off the ground. I was being taken somewhere. Had they saved me? Or was I still in need of saving?

  It wasn’t sleep that had come for me, but a half-conscious state that still granted me access to dreams. Images played in my mind like a carousel of photographs, and they felt almost painful to witness. I could see Miller standing inches from my face as he approached me for a kiss, I could see Effie and Kate laughing raucously at my expense but enough that I had started to laugh too. Then I saw Ryder; he had run to my side when I’d fallen in front of his house.

  Was this all about the head injury? Maybe I was tucked up safely in my own bed and this was all some bizarre concussion fantasy. Had I been watching a movie where someone had almost drowned? My brain would always recreate scenes from films but insert me into them, this had to be it.

  Maybe it was all that woman’s fault. She had shown up and Ryder and Miller had all but disappeared, although in Miller’s case he actually had disappeared. I heard the sound of a wooden door creaking as it was opened and then the heat of an indoor space washed over me.

  “Is she alive?” someone asked. This was a new voice, so I had accessed that there were at least three people here, wherever here was.

  “Yes, but… well you must know who this is, right?”

  “Of course, I’ll make her a drink.” I heard the sound of feet retreating and then I was alone. The ability to move seemed to return as the heat of the room soaked into me, and I grabbed at the fabric beneath me, feeling the texture of the bed I was lay on.

  It was silk, but with thick embroidery in places. A flickering candle on a nightstand beside me made a spattering noise, wind whipping at the flame. There was a slight gap around one of the doors that lead out of the room and it was letting the heat escape. I wanted to get up and close the door, but my body had other ideas.