Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 4-6

by Mara Webb

  Kate ran out of the café kitchen brandishing the cake knife, still covered in crumbs. “Stay back!” she screeched.

  “Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” the woman smiled. “I’m just here to take care of an administrative error, it’s not personal.”

  “Why can’t we just be left alone?” Miller asked.

  “Why? Well why don’t I tell you,” she smirked. “You are a werewolf, a fact that I obviously have to consider when we remind ourselves that a guardian’s job is to protect the peacekeeper. Given that you have already injured Sadie quite severely, I’d say that’s a problem. And you…”

  She was gesturing towards Ryder, but I couldn’t even guess what she could have to say about him. Ryder hadn’t hurt me; he’d never done anything wrong.

  “How would it look if I made you the sole guardian, when she still has to sail off with Miller, hmm? The fact that you are both in love with her obviously clouds the issue. Jealousy can cause men to do very unreasonable things,” she explained. I could see Ryder’s face blush; he didn’t dare look at me after what that woman had just said.

  It wasn’t as though his feelings were a secret, he’d told me as much himself, but to hear it from someone else was sobering. Miller’s body tensed, and I had to hope he wouldn’t shift into his wolf form and chase this stranger off the island.

  “Anyway, it’s all sorted now,” she sighed.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Like I said, you died.”

  “So… what does that have to do with anything? Are you just going to leave us alone?” I said. It was wishful thinking, but weirder things have happened.

  “No, I’ll not be going anywhere for quite some time. You see, your death solved one problem, but opened up a new one,” she grinned.

  “Oh no…” Greta gasped. What was she reacting to? What was I missing?

  “When a peacekeeper dies, a new one is summoned,” the woman said. “Obviously you haven’t stayed dead, so now there are two peacekeepers in Hallow Haven. But now that means that you can have a guardian each! Like I said, one problem solved!”

  Two peacekeepers? Who was the other one? And if we were to have a guardian each, who was I losing? Ryder or Miller?

  Witch Way Down

  Book Six

  1

  I glanced over at my phone on the nightstand. I knew that if I picked it up to check the time, then there would be no chance that I would fall asleep again. Had I even slept at all? I had been awake for hours, staring at the ceiling and hoping that my brain would shut off long enough that I could get some rest. No luck so far.

  I had drowned, something that I hadn’t let myself process fully yet, but it had opened up a new list of problems. Washing up on the shore of the dark island had opened my eyes to the more sinister side of the witches of Hallow Haven, ancient magic that was the stuff of nightmares. They had been a law unto themselves but were now back under the peacekeeper system. Why did I have to think about that right now?

  My death had triggered the summoning of a new peacekeeper. When my cousin Greta had been killed, forces brought me here and gave me the responsibilities that were passed down through my family. Last night I was told that my death, however brief, meant that a new peacekeeper had been activated, for want of a better word, and there were now two of us.

  I didn’t know who it was yet. That was what tomorrow was all about, or today now I guess, and I was already dreading it. Up until now I’d had two guardians: Ryder and Miller. Apparently, this was unusual enough to attract attention from The Bureau, an agency that oversees magical anomalies. This new peacekeeper was going to be taking one of my guardians, and I hadn’t been told which one.

  Both Miller and Ryder had been with me when the woman from The Bureau dropped the bombshell that I was losing one of them. My friends, Kate and Effie, had done their fair share of arguing with her but it was a fruitless endeavor. Clearly, she had made up her mind already.

  Miller and Ryder were to be ‘debriefed’ or something and had left with the woman to hear what she had to say. I’d been expecting a call when their meeting was over, but it had been radio silence from everyone involved. I’d tried to call them and sent them both multiple text messages. I’d not gotten anything back.

  “Can’t sleep?” Greta called out. The thing about being friends with a ghost is that they can just show up at any time and frighten the life out of you. Greta seemed to find this increasingly amusing. I sat bolt upright, my eyes racing to find the source of the voice. It took my brain a few seconds to recognize the sound and bring my pulse back down to a normal rhythm.

  “Is there some sort of spell I can put on this house that forces you to ring a doorbell before you come in?” I teased.

  “You know, Kate said the same thing a few weeks ago,” Greta laughed.

  “Do you just float about the islands all night?” I asked. I figured she didn’t sleep, but I had never actually delved too deep into the subject.

  “Sometimes,” she replied. “There are a few cool specters on the dunes, they hang out there on weekends and it feels like I’ve made it into the popular clique in high school.”

  “Just normal stuff, then?” I smiled.

  “Hey, you were dead for a few seconds, you’re just a poser! Being dead, and I mean really dead, is mostly about finding ways to occupy your time. I have an endless supply of it after all.”

  “You don’t fancy learning a language or taking a dance class online?” I laughed. “I’m just kidding, if you are having fun then I’m happy for you.” I switched on the light beside the bed and saw that Greta was staring out of the window that faced the ocean.

  On a clear night I could see the stars from my bed, so I had stopped pulling the curtains across. It did mean I was woken up at sunrise every day, but I liked it. Some people pay big money for those alarm clocks that imitate the sunrise so that their rooms slowly fill with a gentle, golden light. I get it for free.

  “My family are back,” she said.

  “What?”

  “My dad, obviously you’ve seen him a few weeks ago, but my mom and my sister were gone. All three of them had disappeared for some reason and we couldn’t find them. I went to Wilmore last night and they were all back,” she explained.

  “Where had they been?” I pressed, quickly realizing that this meant I had another cousin in Greta’s sister, and an aunt too.

  “I don’t know. It didn’t come up,” she replied.

  “What do you mean it didn’t come up? How could it not come up? Your family left their house, and no one knew where they were, then all of a sudden they come back, and you didn’t ask them about it?” I said, a look of disbelief on my face.

  “My sister is chatty, like, really chatty, so I honestly just didn’t get a word in. We talked about TV shows, I explained that we’d gotten Bravo here now and she was pumped, let me tell you,” Greta laughed. “She was talking to me about Vanderpump Rules, whatever that is, and she seemed jazzed that she could finally watch it.”

  “Is that a show?” I asked. “It sounds familiar.”

  “Yeah, she’s not seen it before, but she is still in touch with her pen pal friend from Petaluma.”

  “Petaluma? As in, Petaluma California?”

  “They had a pen pal assignment when she was in fourth grade and they just never stopped writing to each other,” Greta continued. “I had one too, I think they were from Sacramento. I just lost interest in it at some point, and we stopped writing.”

  “My pen pal was from Germany,” I said. “It was part of a language class, and I basically ran through a list of pointless questions like, ‘what color are your eyes?’ and ‘how many brothers do you have?’ which is just not how normal people speak at all.”

  The sky was beginning to lighten, and I knew that we couldn’t be all that far away from dawn.

  “Maybe you can ask them yourself,” Great shrugged.

  “Ask them what? Did I miss part of this conversation?” I said, squinting at he
r.

  “My family. Our family. You should ask them where they went,” she clarified.

  “Sure, why not? I just have a small matter of meeting the new peacekeeper, figuring out which guardian is going to be taken away from me, and going back to Coaled Water and asking the woman there why she never mentioned that she was related to me. But after all that, I can row over to Wilmore Island and have dinner with your folks,” I said, rubbing my temples.

  When I’d been over on the dark island, I had run into a woman called Darcy. She was nice and all, can’t fault her on that front, but it seemed that no one else could see her. She wasn’t a ghost, or at least not one in the traditional sense. She explained that I could only see her because I’d drowned; some sort of ‘only those that have died’ vision.

  I’d gone with her to her house, realizing that she was the one that made the goods that were sold in the weird witch shop off the high street; ‘Coaled Water’. The owner of the store, Sage, was her sister. The two of them were sisters with my father, making them my aunts. It’s complicated, right? I need to write this family tree down because I’m struggling to keep up.

  Now that Greta’s mom was back in Hallow Haven, I had three aunts. I’d had precisely zero a week ago, or at least I’d thought that was the case. I did actually have a family tree on the wall of the dining room downstairs, complete with pictures, but I kept avoiding going in there because it freaked me out.

  “Sage?” Greta said. “Yeah, she’s your dad’s sister. I thought you knew that already.”

  “Does this look like the face of a woman that knows what’s going on?” I replied, pointing at myself. I swung my legs off the bed and planted my feet on the floor. There was still a chalk pentagram on the ground at the foot of the bed that I’d drawn the night before I went to the dark island. The lesson I learned from that whole experience is that I’m not skilled enough to be practicing magic on my own.

  “Hello?” a voice shouted up the stairs.

  My house is attached to the café that I own. It makes for a great commute time, obviously, but Effie seems to have made sure everyone that works there has a key to get into my house too. I quite liked the company, truth be told, but all of my friends had a tendency to barge in whenever they felt like it. The voice downstairs had been Kate’s actually; Effie’s sister.

  “Up here!” Greta replied.

  “Make yourself at home, why don’t you?” I laughed.

  “I lived here before you!” Greta countered. “I’m right at home!”

  “What’s up guys?” Kate boomed as she strode into my bedroom. “You just keeping that pentagram forever then?”

  “I’ll clean it up eventually,” I groaned. “What’s in the box?” Kate was carrying a white shoebox, but she had painted over the logo.

  “Your future!” she announced.

  “What?”

  “Listen, I’m an entrepreneur, that’s something you probably already knew, right?” she said, walking over to sit on the end of the bed and resting the box on the sheets between us.

  “Do I know that?” I replied.

  “Yeah, you have two jobs, one at a pizza place and the other hosting a middle of the night radio show,” Greta pointed out.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, does that not demonstrate that I’m exploring all of my options?” Kate scoffed. “You two are gonna hear out my business proposal and I think it’s going to blow your minds.”

  “Your business proposal is in that box?” I asked.

  “Is this like Shark Tank? Are you going to pitch us something and then ask us for a few million dollars in start-up money?” Greta said.

  “Yeah, I’m not giving you more than ten dollars for this box, Kate. And honestly, that’s a pretty good amount for a cardboard box, I’d take it if I were you,” I teased.

  “If I didn’t want to tell you guys about this so badly, I would storm out of here,” Kate smirked, crinkling her nose at the pair of us. Greta wandered over to the bed to stand beside me as Kate began to open the box. At this point, curiosity was getting the better of me. Inside the shoebox there seemed to be a few pastries, small jars of jam and sliced fruits.

  “What am I looking at?” I asked.

  “This, my friend, is breakfast in box,” Kate said.

  “Breakfast in a box?” Greta corrected, emphasizing the ‘a’.

  “No, breakfast in box. It’s like breakfast in bed, but it’s in a box, right?” Kate smiled. “I’ve been looking online and seen that some cafés and bakeries do this, it’s like a gift box but it’s food! No one in Hallow Haven is doing this, Sadie. Basically, you prepare a bunch of boxes, nice ones, not old Nike ones, and sell them. You can get them delivered to any place on the islands and charge a little extra for it.”

  “It’s not actually a terrible idea,” Greta nodded.

  “People would buy that?” I said.

  “If you could eat a fancy breakfast, but you didn’t have to put pants on to go get it, wouldn’t you pay extra?” Kate laughed. “It’s a gold mine waiting to be tapped. I swear, if that Italian place on the high street starts doing something like this then people would never leave their homes again!”

  “I’ll look into it,” I nodded. “I don’t know where to get boxes from, and I’d have to run it by Effie first, and I am swamped with other stuff today.”

  “Oh yeah, well you’re meeting the new peacekeeper at eight, right?” Kate grinned.

  “Yeah, and Miller hasn’t answered my calls, Ryder isn’t texting me back, and I have a sneaker box full of strawberries on my bed. I’m in for a day of it, aren’t I?” I sighed.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Kate offered. “I am meeting with my psychiatrist again at ten, but I should have plenty of time to hang with you and your mystery colleague.”

  “Colleague? I guess I hadn’t thought of it like that. I never considered that we would be working together,” I shrugged. “Hang on, did you just say psychiatrist?”

  “Yeah, she is hoping to have a segment on the radio station and Scott, the guy from the studio, wants me to meet with her and check her out. We’ve met a few times already and I think she’s great,” Kate nodded. “He’s hoping it would be like having our own Frasier Crane.”

  “Wasn’t he kind of a pompous nightmare?” Greta grimaced.

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” Kate said. “Croissant?”

  “How long have they been in this shoe box?” I asked, reaching out to take one.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Kate smiled. Why not? Nothing like a stale pastry to start the day.

  2

  I flipped between anxiety causing me to lose my appetite, and anxiety making me ravenous. Today it seemed that my body favored the latter. The small amount of food that Kate had managed to fit inside the shoe box just wasn’t cutting it, so I’d gotten dressed and made my way down to the kitchen to raid the fridge.

  No sooner had I started loading bread into the toaster, Effie burst through the front door of the house. It seemed that she was looking for Kate and had correctly guessed where she would be.

  “Kate, you left my straighteners on again!” Effie began. “I told you that I didn’t mind you using them so long as you didn’t try to burn down our house. This is your final warning, because if I find them in your room still switched on again, I’m hiding them. Oh, good morning, Sadie.”

  “Good morning to you,” I smiled back, reaching for the butter.

  “Effie, come on, I knew you’d find them before they had a chance to burn through the carpet. There’s no real risk,” Kate teased.

  “When did you even start straightening your hair again?” Effie complained, snatching a slice of toast from my plate and taking a bite. Oh, help yourself, I guess.

  “Look, curls were cute and all, and I am still a big fan of the waves, but honestly I feel like I need to try new ways to stand out from the crowd. Clearly my hair has become part of my personality and it is holding me back from improving other areas of myself, you know?” Kate said
.

  “I have no clue what you’re talking about,” Effie replied.

  “My sister dyes her hair cool colors, then what do you know? So do I. My sister is dating a guy from a band that turns out to be a psychopath, then what do you know? I do that too. You have wavey hair, sis. It’s time for me to step into my own spotlight and stand out for being me, not a poor imitation of you,” Kate nodded, as if agreeing with herself.

  “Wait,” I said, sitting to the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal, three slices of toast – I’d made four, but Effie took one – and a small yogurt. “You said you had a psychiatrist thing for the radio, have you been speaking to her already?”

  “Maybe,” Kate shrugged. “But isn’t it brave of me to be working on myself in a society where it can be embarrassing to admit fault?”

  “I wouldn’t be so smug,” Effie scoffed. “All you did was straighten your hair, you didn’t cure a disease or anything.”

  “You never support me,” Kate huffed. “I tell you what, Gloria will be hearing about this.”

  “Oh, is Gloria the psychiatrist? What is she gonna do? Tell our mom that I’m picking on you?” Effie teased. I just wanted to eat my food in peace, I didn’t need these two having a family bust up over some straighteners.

  “Mom always takes your side anyway, Gloria thinks that’s because mom sees herself in me and is putting too much pressure on me to avoid making the same mistakes she did,” Kate continued.

  “This chick is a radio shrink and you aren’t paying her, right?” Effie said.

  “I… I’ve paid for a couple of sessions,” Kate admitted. “She’s really good!”

  “Can we stop arguing for a minute?” I interrupted.

  “Fine,” they said in unison.

  “You just don’t trust psychiatrists because of that stupid one dad took us to when we were kids,” Kate complained.

  “That ‘doctor’,” Effie said, dramatically adding air-quotes, “was like twenty years old. There is just no way that guy had graduated med school, or brain school, whatever school you’re supposed to go to. He wasn’t even shaving yet, he looked like a boy in his grandpa’s suit.”