Fatal, But Festive, page 1
FATAL, BUT FESTIVE
MAGGIE SHAYNE
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be sold, copied, distributed, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or digital, including photocopying and recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of both the publisher, Oliver Heber Books and the author, Maggie Shayne, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © Maggie Shayne
Published by Oliver-Heber Books
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Created with Vellum
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Excerpt: Cry Wolf
Also by Maggie Shayne
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
Kiley’s House
Kiley sat on her sofa in her living room for the first time in weeks and told herself this was what she’d wanted.
She’d never intended to stay at Jack’s place for longer than it took the cops to finish digging up bodies from her basement and back yard. That was done. And the basement’s concrete floor had been repaired, the secret prison beneath it, filled in. Her lawn was covered in a fresh carpet of grass. And the ghosts who’d scared the living hell out of her had all found peace and moved on to the other side.
She hoped.
She loved her house, even if it was the kind of place where you’d want to film a horror movie. That was part of its appeal. Kind of a way to thumb her nose at the ghosts who allegedly haunted the rural New York town of Burnt Hills and the psychics, channels, and readers who cashed in on them.
But then she’d found out they were real. And now here she was, back home in her big, spooky-AF house all by herself. She liked her space. She’d been eager to get it back, after a month-and-a-half staying with Jack in his cramped little place.
He’d made up a tiny bedroom for her in his log cabin, but they’d shared his bed since Halloween. Every night. Which was weird, because their relationship was new. They didn’t have sex every night, of course, though they did more often than not. After, they would roll their separate ways and go to sleep. But she always woke up all wrapped in his arms.
She’d developed a pre-dawn routine ninja-like moves to extract herself without waking him, so he wouldn’t be embarrassed. Or maybe so she wouldn’t. They hadn’t really reached the wake-up-in-each-other’s-arms-and-snuggle phase. They’d been best enemies only weeks ago. It was weird.
She’d been eager to get back into her place before Christmas. Her gorgeous old house with its turrets and widow’s walk was full of gaudy holiday potential.
Maybe once she decorated, it wouldn’t feel so lonely. She just couldn’t seem to work up the enthusiasm to get started.
Some wind-driven piece of something hit the side of the house and she jumped so hard she sloshed wine onto her hand. At that precise moment, the old-fashioned twist-and-ring doorbell gave its shrill alarm and her heart stopped.
But when insistent knocking followed along with muffled shouts, she realized there was a human at her door—a living one—and went to open up.
Maya, Johnny, and Chris were huddled on her porch, all of them carrying stuff and being buffeted by the wind. “Well, what is all this?” She moved aside and held the door with her arm to let them in, but she wasn’t looking at them. She was looking past them, a little bit embarrassed by the surge of joy she felt when Jack pulled in behind them, got out of his car, and came running, box under one arm, coat over his head.
He came in and kissed her—longer than a peck, but nothing passionate—and said, “Happy first night back.”
Then he moved the box between them. “I brought cake.”
“And I brought my veggie noodle soup!” Maya said, kind of hefting her crockpot a little higher on the way through to the kitchen. “The place looks great!” She was the oldest among them, a forty-something modern witch with shoulder length hair in that shade that might be platinum blond or white.
Chris had a gallon jug in either hand. “My grandma’s rum punch. She made it every Christmas. Kicks like a mule. But it needs ice.” He followed Maya into the kitchen.
Johnny looked from Kiley to Jack and back again, and then he just headed for the kitchen, too. Kiley handed him the cake box on the way by.
“It’s uncanny, how much he resembles John, isn’t it?” It wasn’t the first time Kiley had made the observation. John Redhawk, their friend and resident shaman, had moved west to be closer to his daughter. But before he’d gone, he’d pitched his grandson to take his place in their little group of ghost… not busters. More like helpers.
John said his grandson had been touched by the gods. He had the gift, and years of training at his grandad’s feet.
“Miss me yet?” Jack asked, drawing her attention away from the newest member.
“I’ve only been back here for twelve hours, Jack.”
“So that’s a yes then?”
“Yeah.” He was neat, she was messy. He was an early riser, she liked to sleep in. He liked actual food, she liked garbage. And honestly, they both liked their space.
“Still think we’re doing the right thing? Taking it slow?”
“Yeah,” she replied without looking him in the eye.
He made an ouchie face, so she went on. “We’ve been dating for seven weeks. I think that’s way too soon to move in. Besides, this is my dream house.”
“Nightmare house.”
“That’s over. I love it here. There’s so much room.”
“There’s room for a football team. But it still creeps me out.”
“And you like being near The Magic Shop.” His cabin was within two minutes of his new age tourist attraction. Readings in the back, by appointment only.
“We did okay, though, right?” he asked. “Living together?”
“Yes, because we both knew it was temporary. I didn’t need to settle in. You didn’t need to truly share your space. And remember what we talked about. Don’t let all this—” she waved a hand at the dining room table where food was piling up. “Make you forget what I said. My place is not going to become spook central.”
Somebody tapped on the door. Kiley frowned and said, “What now?”
And Jack said, “Nothing good,” and he had that look on his face, half-acceptance and half-dread. He only got that look when there was a dead person nearby.
Kiley braced herself and went to opened the door.
There was a large red parka, hood pulled up, face hidden deep within. Short, though, and the hand clutching the collar beneath the chin was a female hand, bearing several rings. The ice storm, sleet and freezing rain, had intensified. The poor thing might’ve gone off the road or something.
“Can I help you?”
The visitor dropped like a sack of laundry.
“Holy–” Kiley bent, Jack crouching right alongside her..
“Here, let me,” he said, and handed her a phone. Then he slid his arms underneath the fallen visitor while Kiley tapped 911, and then he straightened and turned toward her with only the empty coat in his arms.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
Kiley looked from Jack’s stunned face, to the parka he held, to the empty front step where the woman had been standing.
“Hello? What’s your emergency? Can you speak?”
“No. I mean, yes. I mean, I called by accident. Sorry.” She disconnected as her other three guests returned from the kitchen, laughing and chatting until they saw the two of them standing there with the door wide open and an ice storm raging outside, gaping at an empty coat.
“Why do I get the feeling we just missed something big?” Maya rubbed her arms, then hurried past them to close the door. As soon as it closed, she stood very still, looking around. “Somebody was here.”
“No body was here.” Jack looked at each of them and said, “There was someone in this coat, and then there wasn’t.”
Kiley grabbed the coat from him and held it up by its fur trimmed hood. “Why my house? Huh? Why don’t you dead people find some other house to haunt? He’s the not-so-phony-after-all-psychic-channel-whatever! Why aren’t you haunting his place?”
“Yeah, you dumb ghost.” Jack gave a proud nod that Kiley read as, “See how supportive I am?” And took the coat back from her. Maya turned the lock on the door.
Johnny said, “Grandpa says energy finds its own way.” He spoke in a slow, deep voice that could give you a boost of confidence or a shiver of fear. He didn’t say a lot. Hadn’t even told them what sort of … abilities or whatever, he had. His grandfather said he was gifted, but he hadn’t said how.
“What do you mean, it finds its own way?” Kiley asked and it came out a little snappy. “Why can’t it find its own way somew here else?”
“For the same reason a magnet clings to metal, and not to a tree or a stone.”
She blinked slowly as her brain tried to put all that into muggle terms.
“Could be something about the location,” Maya said. She was standing beside the door, near a tall window, holding its curtain aside to gaze out into the darkness and slashing sleet.
“Location?” Kiley asked.
Johnny tipped his head sideways. “If you say it’s built on an ancient Indian burial ground, I swear—”
“I wouldn’t say that any more than I would suggest it’s been cursed by a Witch. “Her comeback was quick and dead on target, but delivered with a twinkle in her eyes that dulled its sharpest edge.
“It was a serial killer’s torture chamber and burial ground,” Kiley said. “That’s plenty all by itself.”
Maya nodded, then moved toward the dining table, which was already piled with dishes and food. Jack’s cake, from Kiley’s favorite bakery, sat beside the inner part of Maya’s crockpot and a loaf of sliced brown bread that smelled like cinnamon.
Jack dropped the coat over the back of the sofa on the way back to the table.
Everyone sat and began filling their soup bowls. Chris, who’d been quiet and clearly deep in thought, finally said, “Maybe it’s the fact that we’re all here, the five of us, together.”
Kiley gave him an eye roll and helped herself to a slice of the bread, which sne sniffed. “Banana?”
“Banana zucchini,” Maya said.
Chris went on. “But this is what we wanted, right? To work together to help people not be scammed by phonies and help the dead if they need it, like we did for Miller’s victims.”
“Yes,” Kiley said. “We all agreed to do this…but headquarters is back at Jack’s shop, not in my dining room.”
Word had got out about them. Burnt Hills was already a new-age sort of town, but finding the bodies of murder victims and rumors about their ghosts haunting this place had got out. Everyone whispered that the town’s handful of genuinely gifted individuals among a vocation rife with frauds, had come together to solve a mystery. Emails and letters had been showing up in Kiley’s inbox and at Jack’s shop ever since.
“It might be nice to have an actual ghost to deal with,” Chris said between bites of soup with broth so thick and veggies so dense it was more like a stew. “Instead of people with overactive imaginations and hints of paranoia.”
“We always tell them the truth,” Jack said. “And when they ask us to clear their houses anyway and we do it and the problem disappears, I believe we’ve helped them psychologically, even if the ghost wasn’t real.”
“Who’s to say what’s real?” Johnny asked. “What’s real to one person is very different from what is real to another.”
“Reality is a construct of the mind,” Chris said, tapping his head amid its forest of longish dreads. Then he slathered a slice of the bread in butter, ate it in two bites, got up and carried his napkin with him into the living room. They watched him through the wide doorway that had once held double doors in it as he wiped his hands carefully, then picked up the coat and looked it all over.
“I think it’s vintage. But it looks brand new.” He frowned, looking at the tag inside the collar. “JaVoe,” he said, then he spelled it out for them.
Jack pulled out his phone and started tapping while Chris went through the coat’s pockets. The rest of them watched and kept on eating. Maya’s cooking skills, Kiley had learned in the seven weeks they’d been working together, were not to be taken lightly. And her meals somehow felt as good as they tasted. When Kiley had tried to put into words how light and nourishing Maya’s food felt to her, Maya had nodded as if she understood fully and said, “That’s because I put magic into it.”
Kiley did not think she’d been joking.
Jack read from his phone. “Women’s Clothing Line chiefly known for heavy duty outerwear, 1954 to 1982. It says here it was tough for women to find cold weather gear.” Then he read, “’Women’s coats were made to look nice. Men’s were for actual protection against the elements. Women who worked outdoors had to buy men’s coats, until JaVoe released its line of warm, attractive parkas made for women. Large, fur trimmed hoods were a JaVoe Coat trademark.’”
Kiley’s bowl was empty. She felt sad and eyed how much was left in the pot. Enough that it wouldn’t be rude to go for seconds?
“This was in the pocket.” Chris held up his hand. A gold heart dangled from it by a delicate chain.
“Is that a locket?” Maya asked, leaving her own fabulous meal behind to hurry in there. “Can I see it, Chris?
He snapped the chain, caught the charm, and pressed it into her hand. Maya fiddled with it until it popped open. And that launched the rest of them away from the meal that deserved so much better. They crowded together for a look. The locket had two photos, one in each side of the heart. In one, an older woman with a plump face, bronze skin, dark eyes that seemed weary and burdened. In the other, a young couple, arm in arm at an outdoor ice rink. They were obviously in love. She had dark hair like mink and was clearly not the same person as the older woman in the facing photo. The boy’s hair was curly and brown. And they both had the saddest eyes she’d ever seen.
“Lay it on the table,” Chris said. And when Maya did, he took a photo with his phone. “My notion is, we post these photos on social. ‘Found this family heirloom. Looking for its rightful owner.’ That sort of thing.” He moved the phone closer, then back a little.
When he finished, he lifted his head, looking at the rest of them for consent. Maya shook her head. “It’s gold. It’s heavy, worth some money, maybe. How do we know some greedy liar won’t come and claim it?”
“We ask them to show us a recognizable photo of the same people,” Johnny replied. “If they’re family, they’ll have one.”
“Makes sense to me,” Kiley said. “Jack?”
He hadn’t laid a hand on the locket yet. He still wasn’t comfortable with his…abilities. He wasn’t even sure what they were, except that he’d somehow been able to communicate with the murdered women in her basement. He’d seen their killer. He’d seen their deaths.
“I say post it,” Jack said.
“Post it,” Kiley repeated. Maya and Johnny nodded.
Chris tapped his phone. “Done.”
“Good,” Jack said. “Now enough work. This is supposed to be a celebration.” He took Kiley by the arm and walked her back through to the dining room.
Johnny came with, but kept on going through to the kitchen, then returned with a bottle of wine in a bucket of ice. He poured for all, and then raised a glass, “Happy homecoming, Kiley.”
Chris said, “Yeah, welcome back to spook central.”
They all clinked glasses while Kiley tried not to get weirded out by his choice of words. That was exactly what she’d just said she did not want her house to become. She got a chill down her spine as she tipped up her glass for a long, long sip.
Jack caught her eye, and she knew he’d spend the night if she asked him to. But she wasn’t going to ask him to. She had to see if she could do this. Sleep in her own house alone, like a grown up, now that the bodies of murder victims were no longer buried under her feet.
CHAPTER TWO
The Magic Shop
So, Jack thought, Kiley really didn’t want to live with him.
Not that he wanted to rush into a full-on cohabitation thing. Hell, that was way down the line for them. He was in no hurry. What he couldn’t figure out was why it bothered him so much that she wasn’t either.
She’d stayed with him for six weeks and three days while her home had been a crime scene. He’d given her the guest room, but they’d spent most nights in his. And he thought it had gone pretty well. He thought she’d thought so, too. And yeah, she said it was because they were new, and living together put a lot of strain on a brand-new relationship, and that she’d just bought a house for fuck’s sake—she said for fuck’s sake a lot—all of which made perfect sense.
