Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 4-6

by Mara Webb

  “What do they look like?” the healer asked. “Who can you see?”

  “I’m bad at this,” I sighed. “Er… okay, she has a sleeveless dress, two eyes…”

  “Yeah, you are bad at this,” Miller said, rolling his eyes.

  “Tell them about this,” the woman smiled, holding up the teacup.

  “Okay… she has a teacup with moons around the rim. I drank out of it last night, it tasted like licorice.”

  The healer, who was still holding a cup of her own, dropped it to the ground and the ceramic shattered across the floor.

  What had I said?

  10

  “Somebody speak, you guys are freaking me out,” I said, laughing nervously to diffuse the tension.

  Miller was walking around the room in the general area that the woman was standing in, desperately trying to find who I was talking to, but he just couldn’t see her. At one point he seemed to walk straight through her and didn’t even notice.

  “Sadie, are you sure?” the healer asked.

  “She is standing there clear as day, I don’t know what else to tell you. Who is she? Who are you?” I directed my second question towards the woman by the window.

  “Darcy,” she replied. “But they won’t know me by that name.”

  “What would they know?” I pressed.

  “They think I am the grim reaper, or something crazy like that,” Darcy smiled. “You know the game ‘telephone’, where one story is passed from one person to another, and you have to see how much it changes each time it is re-told?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, they talk about me like I’m the bringer of death. Isn’t that wild? Get them to tell you, it’s nuts,” she laughed.

  “She says you guys think she is the grim reaper,” I explained. “What’s that about?”

  “She is the grim reaper,” the healer said. I smirked as Darcy rolled her eyes. “She is one of the spirits that require this sacrifice, or at least that’s what the other witches think. They believe that if she is not kept happy then she will snatch the life out of us one by one. I’ve only ever heard of her being seen once before.”

  Darcy seemed amused by the story, shaking her head in disagreement with almost everything that was said.

  “By who? When?” I asked.

  “It was years ago,” the healer continued. “An older witch fell in the water and couldn’t get herself out. I spotted her from my cabin and ran out, I had to give her CPR to get the water from her lungs. She talked about seeing a woman with a cup of tea, just hanging out on the beach next to us. The old witch didn’t seem all that bothered by it, but the fact that I couldn’t see her…”

  “So, you started the grim reaper thing?” I said.

  “No, I mean that I’ve only ever met one person that’s see her. There have been whisperings about it for so long that I don’t know where it started.”

  “Can I see you because I fell into the water?” I asked Darcy. She shook her head and walked toward me, weaving around the furniture as if she were as solid as I was. I thought back to the bath I’d had in Daphne’s house and the voice I’d heard when I was underwater. I’d only heard it for a second, but now that I’d heard Darcy speak again, I realized it had been her voice.

  “You can see me because you drowned,” she replied. My mouth fell open. “You slipped away, but you were brought back.”

  “I died?” I shrieked.

  Somewhere outside the loud chiming of a clock announced that it was eleven o’clock. As the bell rang, we stood in silence.

  “So, it’s true, only the dead can see her,” the healer mumbled.

  “I’m not dead though, am I? I’m alive, I am clearly, one hundred percent alive,” I complained.

  “But for a second, you weren’t!” Darcy said, jousting a finger into the air like Sherlock Holmes when he cracked a case. “You don’t have long before the ceremony, if you are determined to find Holly then I would get your butts in gear and go look for her.”

  “You want me to put the whole ‘briefly being dead’ thing out of my mind and go work on something else?” I said.

  “Yep!” Darcy grinned. She vanished and I was left blinking vacantly as my brain tried to catch up.

  “What’s she saying?” Miller asked.

  “She’s gone,” I replied. “She said we should go and find Holly, but if everyone on the island is out to murder me this afternoon, then I’m not sure how that’s going to work.”

  “I’ll head back and keep everyone busy,” the healer said. “Maybe I can find out if they have Holly locked away somewhere. You should speak to her husband if you can, grab Fleur and have her take you there.”

  “I don’t know how to find Fleur,” I admitted. “She just sort of dragged me off the street, I wasn’t paying enough attention to see what the house number was.”

  “I can get us to the husband’s house,” Miller said.

  “Okay, let’s go!” I declared, turning to leave the building.

  “You have until sundown, Sadie,” the healer added. “If the sun starts to get low, you need to get off this island. You can’t hang around.”

  “Got it,” I nodded. Miller followed behind me and we made our way back out onto the beach as the healer set about locking up the house and running off through the trees. It had all seemed to flash by in such a rush that I hadn’t considered that this little mission of ours would be the first time Miller and I had been alone in quite some time.

  Perhaps he was thinking about that too. We weren’t even walking, just both staring out at the shining sea and lost within our own thoughts.

  “I’ve missed you,” he finally said. I felt a huge weight lift from my shoulders. I threw my arms around him and he held me close to his chest, kissing the top of my head softly as he did so.

  “The woman in your house, I thought maybe she was your wife,” I mumbled against his shirt.

  “What?” he laughed.

  “Yeah, I know. Only for a few days, though,” I smiled.

  “Oh, just a few days, huh? You just thought I was secretly married the whole time and hadn’t mentioned it,” he scoffed sarcastically. I stepped back so that I could look at him properly.

  “In my defense, you are getting married tomorrow, so it’s not like things are going great between us.” That seemed to have hit a nerve.

  “The whole time I’ve been here, ever since I left the main island, my only thought has been that I was doing all this for your safety. I messed up; this whole mess is because of me. I hurt you, you are supposed to be safe with me and until I have this wolf thing under control, you’re not,” he huffed.

  “I’m not scared of you,” I said.

  “Well maybe you should be.”

  I gulped. “I don’t blame you for what happened.” I meant it, but his expression let me know that he didn’t believe me.

  “She didn’t even get a chance to try and fix me,” he said, gesturing back at the healer’s house. “I’m still the monster that I was before I came here, only now I’m engaged to some random woman.”

  “Well one thing you’ve got going for you is that you’re never boring,” I grinned. I cracked his veneer of annoyance and a smirk touched his lips.

  “I’m glad you’re so entertained,” he replied.

  “We should go to find Holly’s husband, find a missing woman, kidnap an IRS agent and then get all of us on a boat away from here as soon as possible. How hard can that be?” I joked.

  “A regular walk in the park, I’m sure.”

  Miller guided me back into the trees and began to walk parallel to the shoreline. I assumed this was to avoid us being easily spotted as we worked our way around the island. The sound of music from the festivities on the island acted as a constant reminder that we were far from home, and if it was just the two of us here then I would consider trying to use my transport magic to get us out of here.

  I’d done it once before, and it seemed that everyone in Hallow Haven was doing it now, so it was
at the forefront of my mind as an emergency exit strategy. But we had to think about Kane, a guy that I’d never actually met but one that had the potential to jeopardize all of us. If we didn’t get him back to his office, then we would be swarmed by people investigating his disappearance and we couldn’t risk having them discovering what this place really was.

  Miller was walking a few paces ahead of me and I was so busy thinking about the fallout of us not getting Kane back on a plane soon, that I didn’t notice when he stopped walking and I crashed into the back of him.

  “Sorry,” I whispered.

  “You are worryingly clumsy,” he smirked. “The house is just this way.” He pointed up ahead and as we began to edge closer, a rustling to our left stopped us in our tracks. Miller put an arm across me and stepped between me and the sound, protecting me from whatever was lurking in the foliage.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  “How should I know?” he whispered back. He indicated that I should stay where I was, picking up a large stick from the ground and creeping toward the rustling.

  “Don’t hurt me!” a voice screeched. Miller had been holding the stick high above his head as a potential weapon but had now lowered it. Fleur emerged from a shrub and looked fearful as she regarded us both.

  “Fleur?” I said. “Why are you hiding there?”

  “I came to see if there were any signs of my sister at the house,” she explained. “I heard you guys chatting and walking this way, I thought it might have been a couple of the elders, so I hid. I’m pretty sure that I’m allergic to that plant though.” She pointed back at the place she had been hiding. “My arms are so itchy.”

  “Okay, well we are also here to help look for Holly,” I said. Fleur’s posture relaxed and she smiled at both of us.

  “You are the first person to take this seriously,” she sighed. “I’m not thrilled that you are walking around with her though.” She was giving Miller a judgmental stare. “You are engaged after all; you shouldn’t be wandering about with another woman.”

  “Yeah, the wedding isn’t happening. I haven’t figured out exactly how I’m getting out of it yet, but I am,” Miller announced. “And I can walk about with Sadie because Sadie is my girlfriend. I came to this island for…” he considered his words carefully. “I had my reasons, let’s put it that way. I am committed to her and she said that it is important to find your sister, so here we are.”

  “You two are together?” Fleur asked. Her eyebrows almost touching as her forehead puckered. I didn’t respond, I just smiled. Everything had been a total mess since I’d last seen Miller and I thought he’d ended our relationship; I couldn’t have been more wrong. Well, he was still engaged to another woman, but I was choosing to not think about that.

  “Yes,” Miller answered. “But we are on the clock here, so get me up to speed. I know that your sister and her husband live on this side of the island, have you asked him about her disappearance?”

  “I tried, he won’t speak to me,” Fleur said, her shoulders slumping slightly.

  “Is there any chance she’s sick? Maybe she’s just been in bed for a few days,” he offered.

  “I know that she’s in trouble,” she said, her eyes looking at me pleadingly.

  “Okay, well then let’s go and speak to him,” I nodded.

  We walked towards the house that was still partially obstructed by the trees. There was a large window that faced in our direction and we could see movement inside. Fleur gasped and we both looked at her, then back at the house.

  Inside we could see a man and a woman laughing. The man stepped closer to her and they shared a kiss. Fleur was shaking her head in disbelief. Miller looked at me and raised an eyebrow, it seemed that we had no idea what was going on.

  “I can’t believe him, I can’t—” Fleur was struggling to get the words out.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  “That is my sister’s husband kissing someone that is not my sister. He’s cheating on her,” she exclaimed. Miller gave me a sideways glance but said nothing. He didn’t need to. Her husband was cheating on her and now she’s missing, did he want her out of the way so he could start a new life with someone else?

  I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but it’s usually the husband, right?

  We didn’t have time to waste.

  11

  It seemed as if Fleur wanted to hold back and observe for a little longer. I was initially confused by her hesitancy, but it was clearly weighing on her.

  “So…” Miller said, his brows high on his forehead and his eyes moving between Fleur and the house. “Are we heading over there to ask about your sister?”

  “You guys saw that kiss too, right?” she replied. “I can’t get my head around it; I feel like I’ve misinterpreted something platonic. Maybe they are just friends.”

  “Those two were getting more than friendly,” I said. “You didn’t imagine it.”

  “Then let’s go,” she sighed. She looked defeated, as if she had lost all hope of finding out anything useful from her brother-in-law. Our path from the trees to the front door was short, and during the walk I could see Fleur growing increasingly worried.

  Miller knocked on the door twice, the stern rap of knuckles against wood was followed by chaos within the house. There were two voices, each seemingly oblivious to their own volume, that were noticeably nervous about who had just shown up outside.

  A male voice urged for his companion to climb out of the back window, a female voice protested, but seemed to comply soon after as the house grew silent. Miller smirked as he looked at me but grew more serious when he caught sight of Fleur’s expression.

  The door swung inward, and a sweaty man acknowledged us with a smile, still out of breath from his recent urgency to get his mistress out of the house.

  “Good morning, how may I help you?” he asked, politely. “Fleur, how are you?”

  “Where is my sister?” Fleur hissed in response. She had shed her timid outer shell.

  “I told you, she’s unwell,” he replied, scoffing slightly and shrugging at Miller and me. It felt performative, as if he was trying too hard to brush it off as a stupid question. “Who are you guys?”

  “You know exactly who they are,” Fleur hissed under her breath.

  “My name is Miller, I’m the sheriff for Hallow Haven and this is—”

  “Sadie Alden,” the man smiled. He reached for my hand, grabbed it awkwardly, and brought it up to his face to kiss the knuckles softly. My expression remained neutral, but I was tempted to burst a diatribe about how gross I found that. I mean, Miller had done that to me, but we were dating. When a strange man does it by way of greeting, it’s nasty.

  I’m sure this guy thought it was an incredibly charming thing to do, like he was Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, but as I pulled my hand away, I could see a sheen across my skin where his lips had made contact. Urgh. I wasn’t subtle about wiping the back of my hand against my dress.

  “We have come to speak to you about your wife,” Miller continued.

  “You hold no authority over this island, sheriff,” he said, keeping a creepy smile on his face as he spoke.

  “Do I?” I asked, mirroring the grin. He let out a disgruntled breath through his nostrils, then pushed the door a little wider open so that we could come inside. We stepped into the house and could see two wine glasses on the kitchen counter beside a bottle of wine with half the contents gone. It wasn’t even noon yet, a little early to be drinking surely. Unless they were celebrating something. Hmm.

  “Let me ask the questions,” Miller muttered to Fleur. She nodded begrudgingly. “Is your wife here?” he was addressing the man that was now trying to discreetly slide the wine glasses into his dishwasher. Did he really think we hadn’t seen them already?

  “She’s not,” he said, slamming the appliance closed and turning back to face us.

  “Then where is she?” Miller asked.

  “Go on, Curtis, answer him,”
Fleur added.

  “I don’t exactly know. She was ill, as I’ve mentioned, and I believe she went out to speak to a pharmacist and I haven’t seen her since,” Curtis offered.

  “When was that?”

  “Well, she was complaining of feeling sick about five days ago. I suggested she went to see a professional because I just, urgh, I find all that sort of stuff so disgusting,” Curtis continued. I rolled my eyes which was probably not the best thing to do at this point, but I already didn’t like this guy and he was whining about having to take care of his spouse.

  “Why haven’t you reported her missing?” Miller asked.

  “Honestly?” Curtis asked, suddenly standing up a little straighter. “Because she’s probably somewhere with her boyfriend, and if the whole island were made aware that my wife was cheating on me then I would be humiliated.”

  “But you can have random women in here drinking wine and making out with you at eleven o’clock in the morning and that’s totally cool?” I snapped. I regretted my outburst when I saw the look on Miller’s face, but what I’d said was valid. He was a hypocrite, and I seriously doubted that he’d just happened upon a new woman in the five days since his wife had disappeared. This had probably been going on for a while.

  “I don’t know what you think you know, but I love my wife. With each passing day I am growing more concerned about her disappearance, naturally, but I think I am in denial about the whole thing,” Curtis explained. “In a way, it is more comforting for me to think of her safely in the arms of her lover, than to consider for a second that she has drowned.”

  “Who said anything about her having drowned?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. It was disturbingly specific.

  “Well, I mean, it’s an option, isn’t it? She could have drowned, or fallen down the stairs, or perhaps tripped and hit her head in the woods.”

  “You’re the absolute worst,” Fleur hissed. “If I find out that anything had happened to Holly, I am going to murder you myself!”

  “Alright, let’s all stop talking about ways to die or death threats,” I said, hoping to diffuse the tension. “Let me take a few steps back here, Curtis, because I think I’m missing some of the details.”