Cold Cases and Haunted Places

by Trixie Silvertale

  I sighed. “Tim got to the darkest part of the tunnels, made up a stabbing story—which is why you’d never heard it before, Sid—faked an attack with the dagger he brought with him, and collapsed, dying. He made up the story to make us think it might have been a ghost who attacked him. He tried to protect you, Bryan, right till the end, by trying to throw suspicion off of you as best he could.”

  Bryan staggered toward the curtain that led to the back of the store. He sneered. “This is all conjecture. You can’t prove anything!”

  Daisy advanced, and Bryan cringed away from her. The German shepherd sniffed around behind the display case. She lifted her head and barked.

  I looked to Jolene, and she nodded at me. “She’s found some blood.”

  I turned to Bryan. “You did your best to clean up after you stabbed Tim, but in your haste, you missed some blood. It’ll prove you killed your friend.”

  Bryan’s chest heaved. “Why’d he hire the lawyer then? If he wasn’t starting a new business?”

  Officer Flint answered this one as he advanced, glowing golden handcuffs at the ready. “He updated his will to leave some money to charity and his half of the shop to you.”

  Bryan groaned and hung his head as the officer handcuffed his wrists behind his back. “Bryan Moreau, you’re under arrest for the murder of Tim Mulaney.”

  As Officer Flint read him his rights and Jolene gave me a little salute, my friends gathered around me.

  Hank took my hand and squeezed it, a glint in his eyes. “Congratulations on solving another case—and on Halloween, no less.”

  It’d been a pretty macabre way to celebrate. “I’m just glad we got justice for poor Tim.”

  Maple flashed her eyes. “And I’m just glad it wasn’t a ghost.”

  Kenta shook his head. “That was seriously messed-up of Bryan to kill his friend. Where’s the loyalty?”

  We all nodded our agreement.

  Wiley raised his brows at me. “So, Red, did you get your fill of spookiness?”

  I curled my lip. “Yeah… that was more than enough.”

  Sam shivered. “Doesss thisss mean we can go sssomewhere to get warm now?”

  Kenta put an arm around his shoulders.

  “And get some snacks already? I’m starving,” Iggy grumbled.

  Hank grinned. “How about we head over to the Rusted Wreck—first round’s on me.”

  My little flame opened his mouth, but Hank anticipated it and cut him off. “And I’ll make sure we get you some sticks, Iggy, linden wood if possible.”

  “Hmph. See that you do.” But Iggy grinned and burned a little brighter.

  We bid our goodbyes to Officer Flint, Jolene, and Daisy as they arrested Bryan, and then headed out into the drizzly fall night to get drinks at our favorite dive bar. It’d feel nice to eat and drink with some of my favorite people and relish in the things that made life worth living. Nothing like a little murder to make you appreciate what you had.

  I held Hank’s hand on one side and swung Iggy’s lantern on my other. He peeked his fiery head out, little zips of steam rising from his flames as raindrops hit them. “Happy Halloween to all, and to all a good Hallow’s Eve!” He turned to me. “Is that what they say in human lands?”

  I grinned. “Something like that.”

  Thank you for reading Haunted Tours & Evildoers, I hope you enjoyed it! To read more about Imogen, Iggy and the gang, check out the complete, ten book Spells & Caramels series, all of which are FREE to read in Kindle Unlimited.

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  Imogen Banks is struggling to make it as a baker and new witch on the mysterious and magical island of Bijou Mer. With a princely beau, a snarky baking flame and a baker’s dozen of hilarious, misfit friends, she’ll need all the help she can get when the murder mysteries start piling up.

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  Ted adores his job as Eastwind's reaper. However, a recent dearth of death has him feeling like a spare part. But when the next person passes and he goes to collect her soul, he makes a grim discovery: there's no soul to be found. Can Ted find what's lost in time to avoid a public panic?

  1

  Dear Necronomicon,

  Today marks three months since anyone has died. I feel listless, useless, as breathless anxiety tightens around me. For what is a grim reaper without anything to reap? I harbor no selfish desire to see my friends die, but I equally cannot deny the reality: that fate is sealed for all but the few immortals in this realm, and the fact that none have passed in so long is … suspicious.

  Is this merely paranoia? For the last few days, I have been unable to shake the feeling that something, someone, is watching me. But who would spend their short time on earth stalking Death? The written acknowledgement of the feeling sends a shiver down my spine. Is this what others feel when they pass too close by me? This reckoning with the end? One might ask why this nervousness, this mental prickling, when I am Death and Death cannot come for me? The answer is simple. I do not fear Death, but that does not alleviate all fear from me. Can I not love and mourn the loss? There are things in this world worse than Death; I understand that keenly, because there are things in this world worse than me.

  Oh! I almost forgot. I accidently mixed some hot sauce with syrup at the diner this morning and turns out, it is delicious on eggs. Who would have thought?! I’ll have to remember that.

  * * *

  Ted, Eastwind’s grim reaper, set down his ink quill and looked up from his Necronomicon as the interior of his tiny cabin came back into focus. No light entered through the uncovered windows, and darkness hid the far corners in his home in the dense Deadwoods.

  The soft glow by which he recorded his thoughts wasn’t candlelight, and it wasn’t electric—they didn’t have that in Eastwind, but he’d heard about such a strange thing existing in other realms—and it wasn’t conjured by magic.

  He wrote by the golden light of birds. Specifically, the rear end of birds.

  He was happy to say that his flock of phoenixes was finally housetrained. Well, mostly. They knew to exit through the bird flap he’d installed if they had a major fireball coming on. Otherwise, the glowing while inside was not only allowed, but encouraged, especially when he had need of a bit of light to write by.

  His cottage had burned down five times in the training process, but that hardly seemed like something to get upset about. He could and did rebuild. It was a simple abode, anyhow, and now he felt certain his birds wouldn’t catch anything alight with those flames that danced on their tail feathers when they were feeling especially relaxed. Just to be sure, he’d commissioned the South Wind witch who owned the magical outfitters shop in town, Ezra Ares, to ward the place heavily in flame-repellent spells. It was nice to have friends to call on.

  Ezra had asked if he’d like the same to be done to his black reaper’s cloak, but Ted already knew from experience that the thing couldn’t burn. There was, indeed, a story behind his discovery of this useful aspect of his wardrobe, but to tell it involved a lot of screaming and descriptions of gore and melting flesh that he didn’t like to think about. Most mortals preferred to be spared those details.

  Unfortunately, Death was almost always messy. Almost. Ted himself was quite clean and orderly.

  He blew on the fresh ink to help it dry and set aside the open book before docking his quill. He wiped a little ink spillage from the lip of the well, then secured it. It was only a matter of time before one of the birds knocked it over. They hopped everywhere. No surface was safe from their little feet. He didn’t mind at all.

  His cabin was nothing much, but
it was home. And he’d spent far too many hours alone in it lately while everyone in Eastwind seemed so intent on surviving another day.

  Ted stared absently at the closest glowing bird bottom and sighed. He was lonely. He hated to think it, but that was the truth. While he didn’t love the clean-up of a physical body, he did love the other part where he accompanied the newly departed soul to the next stage of existence. He got to be there for someone in their dark time. When Ted was psychopomping, he was absolutely necessary. He had a clear place in the world, a purpose. Though brief, a deep bond between soul and reaper was formed in these journeys from place to place. He got to be their liaison to the afterlife, got to listen to them unburden themselves of the things they held on to in life. And he got to be nice to them. It seemed as if that was all anyone really wanted, to have someone be nice to them.

  But for the last three months, nothing. No deaths, no deep conversations. The closest thing he had to intimacy were his brief interactions with Nora Ashcroft each morning as she brought him his coffee and breakfast at Medium Rare. And sometimes he could get the vampire Count Sebastian Malavic tipsy enough to confide a few tender thoughts to him, but that was a rarity. The vampire worked hard to preserve his image as the town’s necessary evil.

  The phoenix closest to Ted hopped closer, crossing over the open Necronomicon, stepping on the wet lettering, and adding a few choppy bird prints to the page. Tiny flames, the color of sunset over Rainbow Falls, roiled and tendrilled up from the bird as it cooed softly.

  The reaper patted its head. “Hey, Jim.”

  Ted named all his birds this way. Three-letter names to match his own. There were twenty-two birds in his flock (more would arrive before long, as they always did—fire was attracted to fire, after all), and each of them were named thusly. There was Jim, of course, and also Jon, Jen, Dan, Don, Des, Pip, Peg, Pam, Len, Lon, Lin, Ken, Kit, Kev, Tim, Tom, Tam, Gil, Gem, Gav, and Bob.

  He leaned heavily toward more traditionally masculine names, but that seemed of little consequence when phoenixes had no specific sex. They didn’t need one. They were born out of ashes. They were ash-sexual creatures.

  Jim nuzzled Ted’s gloved hand. “I think I’m lonely, Jim. Is it possible to be so lonely that one becomes anxious?”

  But the bird didn’t answer, because phoenixes can’t speak.

  2

  By the time dawn rolled around, Ted was more than ready to leave the cabin and grab his unofficial spot in the back booth of Medium Rare. A phantom taste of their hot coffee tiptoed across his tongue, which was itself a phantom as he had never had a tongue. But his mind still registered taste, and it registered that he liked the ones associated with the diner in the Outskirts. His little neighborhood hotspot. The closest establishment to his home, since no one had yet been brave enough to open anything inside the deadly Deadwoods. Or perhaps “brave” wasn’t the word. “Foolish,” that was more like it.

  While Ted liked coffee, he certainly didn’t need it. And not in the way that no one technically needs it, but in his own way. He didn’t “need” coffee to help him stay awake, because he never slept. Death needs no rest.

  At this early hour, Medium Rare was mostly empty when he arrived. The tiny bell above the door tinkled, announcing him to the dining room. He nodded to the werewolf Hendrix Hardy, the neighborhood insomniac who always looked a few seconds from a sleep he couldn’t fully embrace. Ted headed to his usual corner booth, thinking fondly of the day, sometime in the not-so-distant future, when Hendrix would get the ultimate sleep and more—how delightful to be the reaper to welcome the poor man into a realm of true rest! Oh, the conversation they would have along the way!

  He leaned his trusted scythe against the wall and settled in.

  “Morning.” Nora Ashcroft, as beautiful of a death conduit as Ted had ever seen, set his hot coffee on the table in front of him.

  He gazed upon her face from below his dark hood. She was like a lantern in the darkness between lifetimes. Her mocha eyes, flecked with glimmers of gold, reminded him of the first beams of sunlight on the trunks of the Deadwoods trees each dawn. Her smile was complex like an expensive wine, with layer upon layer of flavors to sort through. And he knew her heart, full of the heaviness of death, was much like his own. As a Fifth Wind witch able to speak to the deceased, she was one of the only people in town who knew about the afterlife in a sense that one can only gain from experience. She had entered Eastwind on a tide of death not long ago, and that fierce knowledge bonded them together in a way little else could.

  “The usual?” she asked.

  “Yep. You got it. Heh.”

  You fool, Ted! You incoherent, bumbling fool!

  But she smiled kindly anyway. “Coming right up.” And then she hollered, “Grim, your scrap dealer is here.”

  A moment later, a great black beast emerged from behind the counter of the diner, loping over to the table where Ted was sprinkling sugar into his coffee mug. Nora’s familiar was one of the few true friends Ted had, which was a strange thing, since the two of them couldn’t communicate particularly effectively. The grim—a hellhound who’d died and then risen from the dead—could understand Ted’s words but couldn’t speak back. Only Nora could hear Grim’s innermost thoughts, and she rarely seemed especially happy about that. He would have given anything to hear what was on the hound’s mind. However, he often didn’t need to be told explicitly to understand.

  Grim settled on the tile floor by Ted’s booth. The hound could fit underneath the table, but just barely, so he only ever did that when he was trying to hide from his witch.

  Ted patted him on the head. “Heh. Good boy.”

  By the time Nora brought over the usual, which evolved by slight changes every few months but was currently composed of scrambled eggs, a short stack of cherry pancakes, and a double portion of crispy bacon (to share with Grim), a familiar feeling had crept into Ted’s body.

  He felt it through a sense only he possessed. It was like if taste had a color and a shape and fizzed. Then add a slight gravitational pull. He’d spent days at a time trying to come up with a more accurate description for those who couldn’t feel it, but he’d fallen short of anything useful each time. He simply called it his sense of Doom.

  And it meant he would be needed shortly.

  “Heat up on the coffee?” Nora asked.

  “’Fraid not. Just got notified of a job.” He stuffed an entire cherry pancake into his mouth, moistening it with a sip of coffee to help it go down, and then set a small handful of copper coins on the table. “Orr-ee,” he said around the mouthful. “Ah-ah un.” Which of course meant, “Sorry, gotta run.”

  Nora nodded. After so many years working in restaurants, she was fluent in Food-ese. She stepped to the side to make room, and Ted was so excited to be needed again that he almost didn’t notice her shiver as he passed by her.

  3

  Ted’s talent for being in the right place at the right time was nearly flawless. He was proud of that. It was a gray day as he arrived at the quaint home in the sleepy Erin Park neighborhood where his sense had led him. He spotted Sheriff Gabby Bloom’s bright white wings tucked against her back before he registered the rest of her. Her tan uniform blended in with the other dreariness as she chatted with a tiny leprechaun woman who clutched herself tightly.

  So many Eastwinders had come and gone, both moving and dying, in the centuries—or was it millennia?—that Ted had been in charge of this realm, and he often struggled to keep track of who lived where. But he was fairly sure that this home belonged to a gray-haired faun widow named Florence Knack. Perhaps the woman, as advanced in age as she was, had finally been allowed to pass on peacefully in her sleep. Those were his favorite guests to accompany into the afterlife, the ones who were just so grateful that it was their time to try something new. They also had the greatest stories!

  The leprechaun woman spotted him first as he approached, and she made a face he was used to seeing when he showed up places unexpectedly: ey
es wide, color draining from cheeks.

  His guess was that this woman had discovered the body, and it would seem to most like that would be enough for her to understand that whoever was inside was actually dead. But no, it often took his appearance before the reality, the finality, landed.

  Sheriff Bloom turned, no doubt reacting to the leprechaun’s look of shock and horror. “Oh, Ted.” Her brows pinched together. “Didn’t you…? You’re just now getting here?”

  He jerked back. “Yes. Am I that late?”

  The angel smiled, but a faint crease remained between her brows. “No, not late at all. Go on in.”

  He could feel the leprechaun’s eyes glued to him as he entered the home. If only he didn’t have to wear such dreary clothes all the time, perhaps people wouldn’t be so frightened. Perhaps they would realize how great a gift the arrival of Death could be when such great things waited on the other end of his Soul Walk with the deceased.

  But he had to wear black. Lots of it. It was just part of the gig. He’d worn the same black robes, carried the same scythe, for as long as he could remember, and that was a very long time.

  What else would I wear? I haven’t had the opportunity to develop any fashion sense.

  He poked around inside the home until he located the master bedroom. And there she lay in bed, just as he’d suspected. The faun Florence Knack. She rested on her side, head on the pillow, as if she were merely sleeping, but he knew that couldn’t be the case if he’d been called this way by Doom.

  He approached the bed, pulled back the covers to check for signs of foul play—this wasn’t one of his duties as a reaper, only a sort of hobby interest of his—but saw nothing that caught his attention. The deceased wore a light blue sleep shirt with lavender pinstripes, but her furry legs and hooves remained unclothed, as per usual for fauns. It would be easy enough clean-up for this scene, at least. The janitorial part of his job was admittedly not his favorite, but he did feel grateful for the opportunity to give every person one last pampering session, to show their physical form a little kindness before the burial, even though the soul had vacated the body.