Raven's Hollow
Jenna Ryan
Old secrets and a local legend force Sadie Bellam to put her trust in an easy-on-the-eyes detective in Raven’s Hollow by Jenna Ryan Every small town has hidden secrets. But Raven’s Hollow is also hiding a murderer. Twenty years ago, Detective Eli Blume’s stepsister was killed. Though the killer was never found, Eli was forever changed by the family tragedy. Now another woman Eli cares about has been targeted: Sadie Bellam, whose legacy is closely tied to the town’s eerie legends. Sadie knows her stalker is no ghost, but a flesh-and-blood villain. And while she appreciates Eli’s protection, their mutual attraction poses its own danger. Once that attraction ruined the life she thought she wanted; now Eli may be the only person standing between her and becoming yet another victim haunting Raven’s Hollow.
Easing back a tempting inch, she regarded him through her lashes. “I can feel the conflict in you, Eli. I know what it’s like to want but know you can’t or shouldn’t have. I think.”
“That’s part of our problem, isn’t it?” His eyes traveled over her face. “We’re always thinking.”
Her smile widened. “Not sure I’d say that, Lieutenant.”
And yanking his mouth back down onto hers blasted everything that didn’t have its roots in need from his head.
It might have been lightning or the glow from the taper that caused the darkness to shift.
Whatever the source, when he spotted a shadow that shouldn’t be there, his body stilled …
Raven’s Hollow
Jenna Ryan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
JENNA RYAN started making up stories before she could read or write. As she grew up, romance always had a strong appeal, but romantic suspense was the perfect fit. She tried out a number of different careers, including modeling, interior design and travel, but her one true love has always been writing. That and her longtime partner, Rod.
Inspired from book to book by her sister Kathy, she lives in a rural setting fifteen minutes from the city of Victoria, British Columbia. It’s taken a lot of years, but she’s finally slowed the frantic pace and adopted a West Coast mindset. Stay active, stay healthy, keep it simple. Enjoy the ride, enjoy the read. All of that works for her, but what she continues to enjoy most is writing stories she loves. She also loves reader feedback. E-mail her at jacquigoff@shaw.ca or visit Jenna Ryan on Facebook.
To my dad, Bill Goff.
It’s been a long road, and there’s more to go.
Please, don’t forget …
Contents
Chapter One (#ufa51b763-dace-5e86-853b-2980c594ad9a)
Chapter Two (#u0c191d7e-d49d-5d70-8a1a-723e990ed275)
Chapter Three (#u867a7fcd-d8fc-5f95-bbf5-a6f85bc28d87)
Chapter Four (#u66ac8e8c-6db8-589d-8470-036c590efb34)
Chapter Five (#u7a4aa43d-85a0-56f7-8851-d09a775185f8)
Chapter Six (#u12a29ae3-5444-5098-b3d4-2d8594a1cd1f)
Chapter Seven (#u0e19384d-6c1d-5c55-8858-1f8d26eb03e8)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
She was being hunted.
The darkness seethed with the bloodlust of the fanatics behind her. She couldn’t see them, couldn’t see anything except the shadows of the hollow that twisted branches into skeletal limbs and turned everything that moved into her persecutors. The shadows hid their faces, and their bodies, but the footsteps shaking the forest floor told her they were closing in.
An ancient name swam in Sadie’s head even as desperation drove her deeper into the woods. Nola Bellam. Not her, not quite, but someone who was part of her.
The knowledge did nothing to alter her flight. Fear gathered like a fiery liquid in her chest, blocking logic, preventing clear thought. The trees, misshapen and grown together, bent lower. The ground grew rougher, the bushes more tangled. Wind swooped down in bursts to claw at her black robe.
She’d run from these same pursuers many times before tonight, as herself and as her ancestor. She was fast, but they were faster, and one of them was equally desperate.
Ezekiel Blume had raped Nola Bellam, who’d been his brother’s wife. Nola had taken her child and escaped, but not to safety. Nowhere was safe in Raven’s Hollow. Ezekiel had been hell-bent on capturing her before his brother returned to the area. On killing her before the truth came out.
Because ignorance was the mightiest weapon of all, he’d branded her a witch and set a group of fearful townspeople on her. He’d died for that in the end. They all had. His brother, Hezekiah, had ensured it.
Words and images blurred. Ravens dived now with the wind. One of them, as large as a man, landed on the path several yards ahead.
Something about him penetrated the haze in Sadie’s mind, and she slowed.
“Keep running,” he ordered, but she wouldn’t. It was time to make things right.
Moonbeams silvered the trees. Ezekiel’s knife slashed the air while his mob of followers held their torches high, circled and salivated.
Smiling at their fervor, Sadie raised her arms and let the glittering darkness enfold her.
When Ezekiel’s blade struck, pain shot through every nerve in her body. A single cry kept the man-sized raven away. Tonight, the war was hers to wage.
So let it hurt. Let her blood be spilled. This time she wouldn’t try to trick death. She would accept her fate, and in doing so, she would save a man from the evil that stalked him here in the heart of the hollow.
As she lowered her arms, a knife slid from her sleeve into her palm. Resolved, she closed her fingers around it. She saw Ezekiel’s face in the gloom, lit from within by the madness that consumed him.
When his blade fell yet again, she aimed and plunged her own into his chest.
His eyes widened, his hand stilled. His body froze beneath its cloak.
Ezekiel dropped to the ground at her feet, blood flowing like a river from his wound.
Sadie’s breath rushed out. She’d stopped him. There was no longer a reason for the evil to be called up, no need for the poison within it to destroy an innocent soul. The man-sized raven would turn back into what he had been, what he still should be, and life would resume its normal rhythm.
Yet when she turned to watch the separation occur, her heart stuttered.
The raven stood, as solid and malevolent as ever, half bird, half man, staring at her through eyes that glowed red and vengeful.
“What is done cannot be undone, Sadie Bellam. You have your own battle to fight, and he who is me to help you conquer what comes.”
What did he mean, he who was him? Frustration linked with fear even as the creature closed enormous black wings around his body and dissolved into the night.
It started slowly, a mere thread of sound beneath the raging wind. She spun back, but saw nothing. No one.
“Daughter of the witch.” Laughter permeated the silky voice slithering into her head. “Do not be deceived. There is no one in the hollow who can help you. All that you see tonight, your mind has conjured...except for me!”
The voice rose to a roar as another cloaked shape reared up. This one wielded a much larger knife than Ezekiel’s. She saw a gleam of insanity in the eyes that locked briefly on hers.
“Your blade struck a false mark, Sadie Bellam. Be assured, mine will not!”
As the knife pierced her skin, pain exploded in Sadie’s chest. She knew then what it was to die. The taste of it was bitter copper in her throat.
The hollow faded in and out, and her mind spiraled into a pool of black. An iron fist closed around her lungs. She saw claws reaching for her from above.
And woke as she always did—gasping for air on the floor beside her bed.
Chapter Two
“Variations on a theme.”
Standing on the sidewalk outside the pharmacy in Raven’s Hollow, Maine, Sadie rubbed the lingering chill from her bare arms and willed the nightmare that had spawned it away.
But the ice in her veins wasn’t something her mind, or the unseasonal warm spell that had the early October temperatures hovering in the low eighties, could affect. It was simply there, so often in recent days that she was growing inured to it.
“You could exercise before you go to sleep,” her cousin Molly suggested.
“Tried it. Didn’t help.”
“You said the dreams vary. In what way?”
Sadie considered for a moment. “The cast of characters is always the same. It’s the setting that changes. But no matter where it plays out, I wind up on my bedroom floor, gasping for air and checking for blood.”
“It sounds—not like fun. Especially the checking-for-blood part. Do you think you could be possessed? Or maybe channeling our ancestor?”
“You think I’m channeling a three-hundred-year-old ghost?” Even knowing Molly was serious, Sadie quirked her lips. “Okay, I doubt that. And possession’s even more out there. My guess is it’s a residual memory.”
“Of our cousin Laura’s death?”
Dropping both her sunglasses and a firm mental shield in place, Sadie regarded the cloudless blue sky over Raven’s Hollow. “The anniversary of her murder’s coming up in ten days.”
“Yes, but, Sadie, Laura died twenty years ago.”
“I know. Look, this topic’s too uncomfortable for me right now. I need to move past it before I spook myself into doing something ridiculous, like consulting a hypnotist. All I wanted when I came into the drugstore was to show you a preview of tomorrow’s B-Section headline.” At Molly’s level stare, she rolled her eyes. “Yes, fine, and buy a bottle of Tylenol.”
Satisfied, her cousin lifted the ponytail from her neck. “You’ve bought two bottles of Tylenol in the last week, Sadie. You don’t usually go through that many in a whole year.” She frowned. “Meaning you have a problem either at home or at the newspaper. And since you put in three years with the Philadelphia Inquirer and two more with the Washington Post, I can’t see our Mini-Me daily overstressing you. So, home it is. And seeing as you live alone...”
“Right, good, got it.” Sadie waved her to a halt. “Your deductive skills are as sharp as ever—and FYI, the offer for you to come and help me run the Chronicle stands.”
Her cousin’s mouth compressed. “You know I’m not good with people.”
“Molly, you’re a pharmacist. You talk to people all day long.”
“I’m in control—well, sort of in control behind the counter. Reporters have to wade into unfamiliar territory and be cheerful, sneaky, sly, whatever it takes to gain an interviewee’s confidence.”
“I said help me run the paper, not trick your friends and neighbors into telling you all their dirty little secrets.”
Molly let her ponytail drop and her shoulders hunch. “I hear plenty of secrets without wading or tricking. Too many some days. Example, Ben Leamer’s sister came in this morning.”
“Ah.” Sadie worked up a smile. “Boils or hemorrhoids?”
“Both. She went into detail for forty minutes.”
“And I’m complaining about a few nightmares. Having said that, and seriously hoping you won’t elaborate on the state of Dorothy Leamer’s hemorrhoids, I’ll ask again, what did you think of my headline?” She dangled the sample copy for her cousin to see.
Raven’s Cove’s Oldest Resident Breezes Into His Second Century.
“It’s good.” Molly pushed her hands into the pockets of her smock. “The photo of old Rooney in his cottage is perfect.”
“Why do I sense a but?”
“Don’t you think you’re rushing things a bit? Rooney Blume’s birthday is two weeks away.”
“And the Chronicle will be running stories about his extremely colorful life until he reaches that landmark date.”
“That’s the point. What if he doesn’t?”
“Reach the landmark? Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because he’s a hundred years old. He could die any day. Any minute. Writing ahead might jinx him.”
Tipping her sunglasses down, Sadie stared. “Have you met the man? Rhetorical question,” she said before her cousin could respond. “He smoked a pipe until he was ninety-two. I hate to think how much whiskey he knocks back in a day. He tells dirty jokes nonstop at the dockside bar that’s basically his second home in the Cove, then laughs until his face turns bright red. If none of those things have gotten him, me writing a series of articles two weeks ahead isn’t likely to do it.”
Molly’s chin came up in a rare show of defiance. “Maybe that’s what your recurring dreams mean.”
“What, you think they’re telling me not to fly in the face of God and/or fate? They’re stories, Molly. Feel-good articles that will, I hope, help stop the residents of our twin towns from going for each other’s throats every time one’s name is mentioned to the other. I’m sure this kind of resent-the-twin thing doesn’t happen in Minneapolis or St. Paul.”
“Raven’s Hollow and Raven’s Cove aren’t twin towns. We’re more like evil stepsisters. The Cove has nasty raven legends. We have a history of witches. You’ll never mesh those two things. Just—never.”
As if cued, a man Sadie recognized from Raven’s Cove strolled past. His name was Samuel Blume. He carried a racing form and a rabbit’s foot in one hand and a copy of the Chronicle in the other. A huge smile split his weathered face.
“Afternoon, ladies. I see you’re forecasting big rain and wind tonight, Sadie. Must be your Bellam blood rearing its witchy head, because the radio and TV both say sunny and hot for at least three more days.”
She shrugged. “You choose, Sam. My newspaper’s going with the rain and wind.”
“Good thing I brought my lucky charm. I’ll be sure to get myself out of here and home safe before whatever storm you’re brewing up hits.”
“I rest my case,” Molly said when the man moved along. “We’re Bellams, he’s a Blume. He assumes we’re all like our ancestor. It’s a battle of sarcastic wills. Hollow witches versus Cove ravens. Whose legends pack a bigger wallop?”
“Well, now you’re getting weird.” Sadie used the folded preview edition of the Chronicle to fan her face. “We’re not supernatural versions of the Hatfields and McCoys, and we’re definitely not Cinderella’s stepsisters in town form. Besides, the Raven’s Hollow police chief’s a Blume, and he doesn’t believe in legends at all. So pax, and thanks for the Tylenol.”
Sadie turned to leave, but a tiny sound from Molly stopped her.
“Problem?” she asked, turning back.
“No. It’s just—you look very nice today.”
Sadie glanced down at her green-black tank top, her long, floaty skirt and high wedge sandals. “Thank you—I think.”
“You seem more city than town to me.”
“Okay.” Her eyebrows went up. “Does that mean something?”
“I wonder how long you’ll stay.”
“I’ve been here for two years so far, plus the seven I put in as a kid.”
“I’ve been here my whole life. You have a transient soul, Sadie. I think you’ll eventually get bored with the Hollow and move on.”
“Maybe.” She waited a beat before asking, “Is that a bad thing?”
“For you, no. But others belong here.”
It took Sadie a moment to figure out where this was going. Then she followed her cousin’s gaze to the police station and heard the click.
“Ty and I were only engaged for a few months. We realized our mistake, ended the engagement and now we’re friends.” Her eyes sparkled. “A Bellam and a Blume, Molly. Can you imagine the repercussions if we’d challenged the natural order of things and followed through with a wedding? Although,” she added, “it’s been done before, and neither the Hollow nor the Cove fell into the Atlantic as a result.”
“Are you teasing me?”
“Yes, and I’m sorry. Really. I know you like Ty. It’s good. I like him, too, just not the way a potential life mate should.”
Molly’s cheeks went pink. “Everyone likes Ty. I didn’t mean—I don’t have a thing for him.”
“No? Weird,” Sadie repeated. She grinned. “Bye, Molly.”
“Bye, Sadie.”
With a quick—and she had to admit—somewhat guilty glance at the station house, Sadie started off again.
The fact that it took her fifteen minutes to make what should have been a two-minute walk no longer surprised her. Ten people stopped her on the sidewalk to jab fingers at the clear blue sky. Thankfully, only three of the ten inquired about the source of the Chronicle’s forecast.
She didn’t think any of those three actually believed in witches of the warts-and-pointed-hats variety, but more than a few of them probably subscribed to the notion that Hezekiah Blume, founder and first citizen of nearby Raven’s Cove, had, upon marrying Nola Bellam, in reality wed a witch.
According to Cove legend, the union had led to a fatal fallout between Hezekiah and his younger brother, Ezekiel. Ezekiel had tried to kill Nola, Hezekiah had ultimately killed Ezekiel, and the entire tragedy had ended with the gates of hell blasting open between the two towns—in the literal sense back then and still in a figurative one today.
Taking her right back, Sadie thought with a sigh, to the beginning of last night’s dream.
Resisting an urge to swallow more pills, she pushed through the doors of the wood and stone building that housed the Chronicle.
She’d inherited the newspaper from her uncle two years ago. Next to the techno-sleek environs she’d known in Boston and D.C., it was a New England dinosaur, complete with antique wiring, fifty-year-old basement presses and fourteen employees for whom the word change had little or no meaning.
It had taken her the better part of a year to nudge the place past the millennium mark in terms of equipment. The employees continued to be a work in progress. But she considered it a major step forward that several of them had gone from calling her Ms. Bellam to Sadie over the past year.
She spent the remainder of the afternoon reviewing advertising layouts with her copy editor. At seven o’clock precisely, the man creaked to his feet. “My knees have been acting up all day, Sadie. Figure you could be right about that storm after all.”
“The weather center in Bangor could be right,” she countered. “I’m only the messenger.”
“Said Tituba to her inquisitor.” With a wink and a grin, he limped off down the hall.
“I give up.” Rising from her desk, Sadie rocked her head from side to side. “Call me a witch. Call everyone with the same last name as me a witch. Make the nightmares I’ve been having go away, and I’ll accept pretty much any label at this point.”
She knew she’d be putting in at least another hour before packing up her laptop and heading home. With luck, a little overtime would help her sleep better. Unless the predicted storm arrived with thunder and wound up sparking another dream.
“Well, Jesus, Sadie,” she laughed, and forced herself to buckle down.
She had the ad layouts sorted, two columns edited and was endeavoring to make sense of a third when the phone rang.
With her mind still on the article—who used Tabasco sauce as an emergency replacement for molasses in oatmeal cookies?—she picked up.
“Raven’s Hollow Chronicle, Sadie Bellam speaking.”
For a moment there was nothing, then a mechanical whisper reached her. “Look at your computer, Sadie.”
The darkest aspects of the nightmare rushed back in to ice her skin. Her fingers tightened on the handset. “Who is this?”
“Look at your in-box. See the card I’ve sent you.”
Her eyes slid to the monitor. She wanted to brush it off as a bad joke. Wanted to, but couldn’t. Using a breathing technique to bolster her courage, she complied.
“Do you see it?”
Her heart tripped as the image formed. The “card” showed two animated ravens. One was locked inside a cage. The other was out. The free bird used a talon to scratch a word in what looked to be blood. It said simply:
MINE!
Chapter Three
“You about done changing that tire, Elijah?” Despite the pouring rain, Rooney Blume stuck his head out the window of his great-grandson’s truck. He squinted skyward as thunder rattled the ground. “Someone upstairs must be working off one big mad.”
“Someone out here definitely is,” Eli said, giving the lug nuts he’d just put on the tire a hard cinch to tighten them. “What were you thinking riding your bike to the Cove in this weather?”
“DMV lifted my license last year, and the sun was shining when I started out. Probably good you came along when you did, though. My balance tends to fail me in the wet.”
As Eli recalled, his great-grandfather’s balance wasn’t a whole lot better in the dry. There’d also been a thermos of heavily spiked tea tucked in the bike’s carrier, and likely close to half of what he’d started out with inside the old man by the time their paths had crossed.
Right now Rooney was pushing a metal cup through the window. Giving the last nut a tug, Eli accepted the cup, considered briefly, then tossed the contents back in a single fiery shot.
Some things, he realized, when the flames in his throat subsided, never changed. He gave the cup back to Rooney.
His great-grandfather pointed a knobby finger at a line of trees bent low by the wind. “Gonna be a bitch of a night.”
Soaked to the skin, with his dark hair dripping in his eyes and rainwater running down his neck, Eli climbed back inside and started the truck’s engine. “You think?” But he grinned as he spoke, and flicked a hand at the thermos. “I’m surprised that tea of yours hasn’t eaten through the aluminum casing by now.”
“You sound like my great-grandson.”
“I am your great-grandson.”
“I mean the other one. The one who’s wearing a police chief’s badge and sporting a big dose of attitude over in the Hollow.”
“Only a town of fools would give a badge to someone who prefers carrot juice to whiskey.” Eli squinted through the streaming windshield. “Self-denial that unswerving upsets the balance of the universe.”
“Spoken like a cop after my own heart. And while we’re on the subject of badges and balances, did you know your carrot-loving cousin’s not gonna be putting a wedding ring on Sadie Bellam’s finger?”
“Heard about it.” Eli kept his tone casual and swept his gaze across the mud-slick road. “I also heard it was Sadie who ended the engagement.”
Rooney’s expression grew canny. “You got awful good hearing for a man who spends most of his time hunting down killers in New York City.”
“It’s not so far from there to here. As the raven flies.”
The old man chortled and offered him another cup of “tea.” “I won’t say you’re a jackass, Elijah, only that among other more valuable things—and for ‘things,’ read ‘Sadie’—the badge on Ty’s chest could’ve been yours if you’d wanted it.”
“And an executive position at the New York Times could’ve been Sadie’s if she’d wanted it. We do what we do, Rooney, and live with the consequences.”
His great-grandfather made a rude sound. “You’re as stubborn as twenty mules, the pair of you. You knew each other as kids, connection was already there. Life’ll take you down different paths because that’s how it goes sometimes. But it goes in circles other times, and you and Sadie came to the end of a doozy when you met up last April in Boston.”
“Rooney—” Eli began.
“I was there, Eli. I saw you. And let me tell you, there wasn’t a soul at that wedding reception who even noticed the bride and groom with the fireworks you two set off. Suddenly, next thing I know, Sadie’s back at the Chronicle, and you’re tracking a serial killer through the underbelly of Manhattan. Me, the universe and pretty much everyone at the reception are still scratching our heads over that turn of events.”
Eli sighed. “You, the universe and pretty much everyone at the reception read too much into a time-and-place chemical reaction. Sadie was engaged in April.”
“Only until she got back from Boston. Two days later, your cousin Ty was drowning his sorrows in goat milk and a double dose of wheat germ.”
“Sadie’s not ready to be married, and my life’s good the way it is. Cops and relationships don’t mix.”
Rooney snorted. “If you expect me to buy that load of bull, you’re no kind of cop. And no kin of mine.”
“In that case, happy hundred and first in advance, and I’ll be heading back to New York right after I drop you off at Joe’s bar.”
“I need a favor before you go.”
“Yeah?” Eli raised a mildly amused brow. “I could say I don’t do favors for people who claim to have disowned me.”
“But that would make you unworthy of any badge, and we both know that’s as far from the truth as it gets.”
The vague humor lingered despite the fact that Eli could no longer see either the road or the dense woods next to it that stretched from the Cove to the Hollow and beyond. The rain fell in blinding sheets now. “What do you need?”
“Ty’s on duty tonight. I want you to go by his office in the Hollow. He’s got a bulldog there named Chopper. Family in town’s heading south and can’t take him, so I said I’d think about it.”
“You want a dog?”
“Don’t give me that look, Eli. If I die before Chopper does, I’ll leave him to you.”
“Still a cop here. I can’t have pets.”
“No pets, no women. You’re not a cop, you’re a monk.”
“Who said anything about no women?”
“No women of consequence, then. Now, you take my last serious relationship versus the last woman I had sex with.”
“Jesus, Rooney.”
The old man drank from his thermos before offering back a mostly toothless smile. “You think because I’m old I don’t have sex?”
“Yes—no. Dammit, I don’t think about it one way or the other.” Ever.
“Why not? I’m human.”
“You’re also my great-grandfather, and I do my level best to keep thoughts of sex, parents and grandparents out of my head.”
“You’re a prude, Elijah. Doesn’t bother me to picture you with a woman.”
The first bolt of lightning shot down deep in the hollow. “Are we actually having this conversation?”
“I am.” Rooney peered into his thermos. “Seems to me you’re doing more avoiding than conversing.”
Eli swerved around a barely visible pothole. “What I’m doing is trying to figure out how anybody’s sex life, mine included, relates to me checking out a bulldog.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“What, have sex or check out the dog?”
“In a perfect world, both, but I’ll settle for the dog and enjoy thinking about you and Ty firing daggers at each other while you picture, but deliberately don’t talk about, the lovely Sadie Bellam.”
“You have a wide streak of mean in you, old man.” But a slow grin removed the sting of Eli’s remark. In any case, glaring down his resentful cousin would be hell-and-gone preferable to visualizing Rooney naked with a woman.
As the wind picked up, and the truck began to buck, even his garrulous great-grandfather stopped talking. The road, such as it was, became a river, complete with currents, broken branches and sinkholes that could rip out the undercarriage should Eli happen to hit one. That he didn’t was more of a miracle in his opinion than a testament to his driving skills.
Twenty minutes later, he pulled up outside his second cousin’s shabby dockside bar, Two Toes Joe’s. He saw Rooney safely through the door, turned down a mug of coppery green beer—old Joe really should have his lines changed—and jogged back to his still-running truck.
The dashboard clock read 9:30, which surprised him since it seemed to have been dark for hours. If he’d believed in omens, as at least three-quarters of his relatives in the area did, he’d check out the dog—couldn’t not do that—then say screw an early arrival for Rooney’s birthday and return to New York. Return to sanity, and more important, the safety of a no-Sadie zone.
What had flared between them last April had been unexpected and intense. Sadie had been a kid the last time he’d seen her. Seven years old and shocked speechless over the murder of her cousin Laura, who’d also happened to be his stepsister.
Although the residents of both Raven’s Cove and Raven’s Hollow had been horrified, few had been as badly shaken as he and Sadie. How could anyone who’d never had the misfortune to do so possibly understand what it felt like to discover the body of someone you loved? And not merely discover, but, in Sadie’s case, literally stumble over.
Her family had left Raven’s Hollow six months later. His had stuck it out for another six years, searching for a closure they’d never received.
To this day, Laura’s killer remained at large. A handful of suspects and numerous persons of interest had been questioned and released. Over time—two decades at this point—what had started as a countywide manhunt had been reduced to a dusty homicide report in the back of the sheriff’s filing cabinet. Clues gathered at the scene had resulted in nothing, and, as they so often did in situations like these, the case had gone cold.
For Eli, the memory of Laura’s murder had dimmed but never disappeared. Not completely. Every similar crime he worked to solve these days took him back to her death. When that happened, the raw pain and guilt would slam through him as hard as it had done the evening he and Sadie had met in the hollow.
On a less grisly note, Eli couldn’t deny that, even at seven years of age, Sadie Bellam had been a beauty. Fast-forward twenty years, slide her into a clingy silver dress, and she’d quite literally stripped the breath from his lungs. He’d prowled around the edges of that Boston reception hall, watching but not approaching her for thirty wary minutes, until one of her aunts had swept in and sealed the deal by insisting they dance.
The idea of taking the memory deeper tempted, but unfortunately, a gust of wind upward of forty miles an hour had other ideas. It grabbed his four-by-four and sent it sliding toward a deep gully. Eli rode the wave, felt the kick of wind abate and urged the truck back onto the road.
It had been a sunny seventy-eight degrees when he’d left New York City. The clear skies had held to Bangor. Then, less than ten miles from the Cove, a mass of boiling black clouds had rolled in and let go.
He glanced left as thunder rumbled up and out of the hollow. Jagged forks of lightning split the sky overhead. His truck, three years old and heavy as hell, shuddered through another blast of wind.
Only a seriously disturbed person would stay out in this. Would be out in this. The dog could have waited while he went head-to-head with a glass of Joe’s toxic beer.
Without warning, twin beams of light appeared directly ahead. They slashed through the murk, momentarily blinding him. Swearing, Eli jerked the steering wheel hard, felt the truck’s back end fishtail and had to compensate to keep the entire vehicle from tumbling into the ravine.
He might have won the battle if something—tree, car or possibly both—hadn’t become a sudden and solid roadblock in front of him.
Using his forward momentum, together with muscle and brakes, he went for a one-eighty turn. But the mass was too close and the road too slick for him to gain the traction necessary to execute it.
The collision sent his head and shoulder into the side window. A clap of thunder underscored the hit, but the sound was nothing more than a murmur in Eli’s mind. By the time the truck stopped moving, the storm, the night and the hollow had faded to black around him.
Chapter Four
“Eli, can you hear me?”
A woman’s voice reached him. Possibly Sadie’s, possibly not. She was far away but definitely calling his name. Did that mean he was alive? Because if not, he’d gone someplace dark, wet and incredibly uncomfortable.
“Eli, damn it, open the door!”
Someplace where the angels—at worst, he hoped, angels—shouted orders, and every thought was coated in a bloodred haze.
The haze pulsed for several seconds before subsiding to a repetitive and annoying thud.
He cracked his eyes open to a different kind of darkness. This one was loud and it moved. Both sound and motion jabbed at him like dull knives. He was tempted to sink back under until it stopped.
“Wake up, Eli, and open the door.”
Sadie’s voice—he was sure of it now—sounded impatient, yet held the barest hint of a tremor. He let the memory of her face draw him to the surface and most of the way through it to consciousness.
Levering himself upright, he swore. And kept swearing because it helped him clear out the last of the haze. Once it was gone, he located and hit the lock release.
The door shot open. It very nearly flew off its hinges judging from the screech of metal and the ferocious howl of the wind that grabbed it. Eli managed to clamp a hand on to Sadie’s arm before the unexpected backward motion sent her into the ravine.
He’d forgotten she had the balance of a mountain goat. Without missing a beat, she bunched his wet T-shirt and gave him a hard shake. “Are you hurt?”
He almost smiled. “Been better. Need a minute for my brain to settle.”
“In that case, Lieutenant, shift your excellent butt to the passenger side, and let me in.”
Not quite a storybook angel, but close enough. He grinned. “Helluva time to decide you want to do what we managed not to do in Boston.”
With a glance into the hollow, she pushed on his shoulder. “If we do now what we didn’t do, this really thin rock ledge that your rear tires are barely sitting on is going to crumble apart and send us straight to hell. Or into Raven’s Bog. Jury’s still out on which name’s more appropriate.”
Either place was jarring enough for him to snap his head around.
“Bet that hurt—” she began, then gasped when he lifted her inside and deposited her on the passenger seat. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t move.” He reached for the ignition key.
Swinging her legs around and down, she snagged his wrist. “The engine’s running, Eli. You just can’t hear it over the Tarzan roar of testosterone in your brain.”
“Pretty sure I spun out trying to avoid a head-on with your vehicle, Sadie.”
Keeping an eye on the rearview mirror, and using a spectacular bolt of lightning to aid his vision, Eli shoved the truck in gear. After several seconds of maneuvering, he crawled it away from the edge.
Sadie let out a relieved breath. “I’d be impressed if I didn’t know for a fact that I could have done the same thing a full minute sooner.”
“We’re not on a deadline, sweetheart.” He fingered a cut on his forehead, and wasn’t surprised when he spied a smear of blood. “Are you hurt, and did we hit?”
“No, I’m not, and yes, we did. But not each other.” In the process of wringing out her long red-brown hair, she nodded at the windshield. “It’s difficult to see right now, but that big black thing in front of us is a pine tree. It started to fall, I hit the brakes. At the risk of fueling your already massive ego, you must have done one wicked spinout to avoid being flattened by something that could have pancaked an eighteen-wheeler.”
“Speaking of.” Eli sized up the tilt of his truck’s back end. “Unless one of my tires is sitting in a hole, I’ve got a flat.”
She waved a hand in front of his face. “Did I mention the tree was huge, with the potential to destroy both you and your vehicle?” A frustrated sound emerged. “Why are you even on this road, Eli? Why are you in Maine at all for that matter?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t come for Rooney’s hundred and first?”
“No, I figured you’d come, just not until the last minute.”
“I’d be offended if I wasn’t sure about that flat and apparently in need of a lift.”
She stabbed at the windshield, repeated very clearly, “Big tree, tremendous crushing power.”
His lips curved. “Yeah, I get the luck part. What I haven’t got is a second spare.”
He told her, in bullet points, about Rooney, the bicycle that was currently strapped to his roof rack and Joe’s bar.
Laughing, she dropped her head back onto the seat. “If I said any of that surprised me, I’d be lying.” She slanted him a speculative look. “Still a little shocked to see you, though. On this road. At this time of night.”
“Right back at you. And don’t tell me you didn’t know there was a storm rolling in.”
“I knew,” she agreed, far too softly for his liking.
He studied her profile in the next flash of lightning. “Something’s wrong.”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
With his brain back on track, he reached out and wrapped his fingers around her neck. “You were driving from the Hollow to the Cove, Sadie, in weather no sane person would take on without extremely strong incentive. As I recall, you’re stubborn, but relatively sane.”
She started to speak, then broke off and grabbed his chin as lightning snaked through the clouds. “You’re bleeding!”
“A little. It’s not...” He hissed when she poked at the gash. “Well, it was going numb.”
“Sorry.” She lightened her touch and her tone. “Eli, you were barely conscious when I found you. You could have a concussion.”
“I could also be halfway back to New York. Might have been except for a damn bulldog. Don’t ask. Just trust me when I tell you I’ve been hit on the head more times than I can count.”
She formed her lips into a smile. “To which I’ll simply say, no comment—and you can let go of me now.”
“I will, just as soon as you tell me why you were heading to the Cove in a storm that scared Rooney spitless for close to twenty minutes.”
“I—seriously?”
“Talk to me, Sadie.”
She blew out a breath. “Fine, I got an email. It was—unusual. I don’t know how or why, but it also seemed familiar. Like a memory buried deep in my head. So deep I can’t visualize it.”
“You got a familiar feeling from an email?”
“Well, I say feeling. It was more like a punch of pure creepy. And a strong sense that the sender was watching me.”
“Was he?”
“I don’t see how. I was in my office at the Chronicle. The guy on the phone couldn’t have...” She halted there, bit her lip. “I, uh, didn’t mention him, did I?”
“Not unless my brain’s shorting, and I doubt that.” Because his fingers were still curled around her neck, she couldn’t draw away. That she made no effort to do so told him a great deal—most of it not good. She was scared. “What did the guy on the phone want?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have been going to the Cove in a storm that scared your great-grandfather spitless.” Her eyes, as gray and stormy as the night, slid past him to the trails of mud that slithered down the driver’s window. “The ravens must be significant.”
Eli’s grip tightened. “You wanna back that up for me?”
“The card was animated. One of the ravens was inside a cage, the other was out. The outside one scratched the word MINE in blood with his talon. I freaked at first, but after a while I convinced myself it was no big deal.”
“How long’s a while?”
“Not sure, maybe fifteen minutes. Afterward, I decided to proofread a column I’d imported for the weekend edition about fanatics and the rising numbers of them who’ve begun to act on their so-called beliefs. And there I was, right back to freaked. Seeing as he knows everything raven-related, I figured the best thing to do would be talk to Rooney, who, in case you’re unaware, never answers his phone.”
“I am aware of that, actually.” But Eli’s response was preoccupied as he searched his mind for—something. “A raven in a cage,” he repeated. “Why can I almost picture that?”
“No idea, but please tell me there isn’t a legend in the Cove about this kind of thing.”
“Not that I know of, and it’s the card part that’s ringing a really distant bell.”
“That bell could be your head still ringing from the whack it took when you almost wound up in the bog.”
“There is that,” he agreed.
When thunder caused the ground to tremble, she stared straight into his eyes. “You know where we are, don’t you.”
It wasn’t a question, Eli reflected. “Yeah, I know. This is where you and I met the night we discovered Laura’s body.”
“Met, argued, walked and found.”
“It’s been two decades, Sadie.”
“I have a long, and vivid, memory.”
“Ditto, but right now I have a more immediate problem.”
The breath she released ended on a laugh. “You really don’t, you know. You’ve got a flat and no spare, which means your vehicle’s stranded. Mine, on the other hand, has all four tires intact. Seeing as it’s on the other side of the pine, the Hollow as a destination wins by default.” A light danced up into her eyes. “Looks like you get to check out that bulldog after all, Lieutenant.”
“Yeah, well.” He moved too quickly for her to react. One moment, his gaze was sliding across her mouth. The next, his own was covering it.
The last thought Eli had before his brain shut down was that kissing Sadie Bellam would be either the best thing he’d ever do or the worst mistake he’d ever make.
Chapter Five
For a suspended moment, Sadie’s mind and senses blanked. Then everything inside began to sizzle and snap.
She hadn’t kissed him in Boston. Oh, she’d wanted to, too many times to count, but whenever she’d thought about it, the ring on her finger had become a lead weight reminding her that she was engaged to another man.
There was no ring on her finger now, Sadie’s overheated senses pointed out. But that still didn’t make kissing him a good idea.
Unfortunately, the sound that emerged from her throat more closely resembled a purr than a protest. She also suspected the fingers she’d curled into his hair were holding his mouth on hers rather than trying to push him away.
Fascination wove a greedy path through the sparks. Eli was seducing her with his lips and tongue, with his whole mouth, in fact. Although it was difficult to form a thought, Sadie wondered if she’d ever been kissed quite this thoroughly before. If she had—and she doubted it—the memory eluded her.
A crackle of lightning preceded another ground-shaking peal of thunder. The storm sounds matched the heat currently shooting through her veins. With her fisted hands, she tugged him closer. She wanted to climb over the console and onto his lap, to let herself slide from fantasy into reality. She wanted to return the demands of his mouth, then simply sink in and not think at all.
The fingers on her neck slid up into her damp hair, and his thumb grazed the side of her jaw. Her skin tingled everywhere, and her breathing—well, maybe she’d stopped breathing, because her head was alive with sensations she couldn’t hope to untangle.
The next thunderbolt vibrated the body of Eli’s truck and shot straight up into her bones. Prying her mouth free, Sadie raised uncertain eyes. “Why do I feel like someone just reached down and gave us a really hard shake?”
“I thought it was my brain trying to shake some time-and-place sense into us.”
Or sense in general, Sadie reflected. A sigh escaped as she forced her spinning emotions to disengage.
Did it surprise her that his kiss would be off the scale? Hardly. After one dance in Boston, she’d expected that scale to blow eventually.
It was an effort to separate herself from him and keep her voice steady. “This shouldn’t have happened, Eli. We shouldn’t have let it happen.”
Skimming his knuckles over her cheekbone, he held her gaze. “I won’t argue with you, but only because I know what I can and can’t give a woman. More than sex is more than I’ve got inside me right now.”
She laughed out a breath. “When I unscramble that remark, I’ll probably agree. In the meantime...” She leaned forward just far enough to whisper a teasing “Your kisses rock, Lieutenant, with or without the drama of a full-blown storm beneath them.”
Sadie knew he was considering tossing caution aside and diving in again, but he went with the wiser, if somewhat disappointing, alternative and reached behind them for his backpack. “It’s time we put some distance between us and these trees. Where’s your—” he raised a humorous brow “—car?”
“Cars are neither bad words nor bad vehicles. I spent half my teenage life wanting to own a Maserati.”
“You own a Maserati?”
“No, I own a Land Rover, because I’m not in my teens, and I knew when I came back to the Hollow that the roads, in a pothole-to-pavement ratio, strongly favor the potholes. My mother had a man friend once who leased a Maserati, but I was thirteen when she left him, so I waved goodbye to that wish and switched to boys instead.”
“I didn’t know your parents had broken up, Sadie. I’m sorry.”
She twitched away any residual sadness. “They were barely together when we lived in the Hollow. Molly says it’s the Bellam curse.”
“What is?”
“The inability of Nola Bellam’s female descendants—my mother in this case—to commit to people, places and/or things. An inability she believes is supplemented by the fact that those female descendants insist on passing the Bellam surname on to their own female children.”
“Would this be your cousin Molly who only left Raven’s Hollow long enough to go to college?”
“That’s the one.”
“Making her the notable exception commitment-wise.”
“So it would seem.”
With a smile grazing his lips, Eli indicated the outside storm. “You ready?”
“Would saying no change the situation?”
His smile deepened. “Between lightning bolts, then.”
He would be gorgeous, Sadie thought with a sigh. A hot, gorgeous cop. A loner, with a reputation for getting the job done—however distasteful that job might be.
As homicides went, Eli did it all. He’d go undercover for weeks, often months at a time, if going under meant bringing down a New York crime lord. During his tenure on the force, he’d worked countless night shifts while investigating gang-related murders. He’d hunted down serial killers, sunk his teeth into a dozen or more cold cases and, in at least one instance that she knew of, apprehended a man who made Hannibal Lecter appear well adjusted.
Of course, it also didn’t hurt that he wore his dark hair long, always looked a little dangerous and somehow kept his truly superior six-foot-two-inch body totally cut.
“There’s less than five seconds between thunderbolts,” he said now. “We’ll need to move fast and stay low.”
“My way’s better.” Dragging her eyes from his profile, she regarded the storm-tossed trees. “Don’t count, don’t think, just do.”
“Which is why, as a kid, you stepped in groundhog holes and sprained your ankles on a monthly basis.”
“Two groundhog holes, two twisted ankles.” And one dead hand, she recalled with a chill that she couldn’t quite battle back. “On three?”
“Your count.”
They exited the truck simultaneously. With her skirt tied into a thigh-baring knot, Sadie led the way to the narrowest part of the fallen tree’s trunk. Before she could boost herself up and over, Eli scooped her off the ground.
“Wait, don’t! Are you...” He deposited her without ceremony in a puddle on the far side. “...crazy?” she finished through her teeth.
Joining her, he shouldered his pack and grabbed her hand. “Come on.”
Because arguing was pointless, Sadie ran with him to her Land Rover. They fell inside on the heels of a triple fork of lightning that illuminated the woodland hollow as far as she could see.
“Road’s a single lane here.” Raindrops flew from the ends of Eli’s hair as he looked in several directions at once. “You’re the DD, sweetheart. How are you at maneuvering in reverse?”
She summoned a tight smile. “Guess we’ll find out.”
Fortunately, she knew the twists and dips well enough to feel her way back through them. Eli’s flashlight helped. So did the sky-wide slashes of lightning. Still, her nerves didn’t stop jumping until they reached a point where the vehicle could be safely turned around.
“I’d say that was worthy of a Maserati should the opportunity for you to own one ever arise.”
“Highly unlikely in this lifetime. And please don’t say I could’ve had a fleet of them if I’d gone to New York, because everyone except my uncle—who looks on the Chronicle as a father might a beloved only child—has already pointed that out.”
She felt more than saw his stare. “I get family loyalty, Sadie. You love your uncle, so you wanted to keep his dream alive. What I don’t get is why he asked you to do it rather than someone who already lived in the Hollow.”
“Back to Molly again, huh?”
“Rooney says she’s smart, and given her history, I don’t see her leaving town any time soon.”
“She’s an introvert, Eli.”
“She worked at the Chronicle part-time through high school.”
“As a proofreader. Look, I’m sure my uncle talked to her before approaching me. If Molly had wanted to run the newspaper, she’d be doing it.” But she angled him an impressed look. “You’ve kept up, haven’t you?”
“It’s a hard loop to escape. There are six Blumes within a six-block radius of my apartment. One of them lives across the street from me and drops by twice a week to make sure there’s food in my fridge.”
Sadie regarded the scattering of blackened houses as they approached Raven’s Hollow. “Power’s out. All I see are glimmers of light in a few... Stop it, Eli.”
He hid most of a grin. “Stop what?”
“You’re giving me a Molly smile. Those flickers are candles, not the spirits of Bellams past.”
Now he chuckled. “I don’t know, Sadie. Word has it Raven’s Hollow was recently named one of three most haunted towns in New England.”
“It was not.” But she lowered suspicious lashes. “Who told you that?”
“Rooney.”
“Well, in that case, consider the source. The man’s propagating a myth to encourage tourism in the area.”
“Always possible. One of my more ambitious cousins lived with him for a few years. He might have planted the thought. Does it bother you?”
Her lips curved into a deceptively sweet smile. “Do witches ride broomsticks?”
“I’ll take the Fifth at this point. Something tells me you’re only marginally tolerant when it comes to people who believe in the local lore.”
“That’s because I’m part of the local lore. Unfortunately.”
She eased the Land Rover along a narrow, densely wooded road that wound up and up to a rocky promontory. The jagged point of land speared into a small bay where the waves, even on a calm day, broke white against the base of the cliff.
Built entirely of faded gray stone, Bellam Manor could at best be called forbidding. Although, Sadie mused, foreboding might be a more appropriate description. Either way, two large towers stood at opposite ends of a structure made up of multiple juts and protrusions, and would forever make her think of the wicked queen’s castle from Sleeping Beauty.
The mansion had taken fifteen years to construct. Storytellers swore that the evil secreted within the walls of Blume House in Raven’s Cove had nothing on this place. But of course, Blume House had never been home to a family of witches.
When she’d returned to the Hollow, Sadie had promised herself she would do so with an open mind. The manor, as remote as it was, and for all the tales that had been spun around it, was simply a place to live. Or a small portion of it was.
She had an apartment in one of the two habitable wings. Molly occupied the second. It didn’t take a structural engineer to determine that the central core and several of the outbuildings were in desperate need of restoration. Unfortunately, a full fix would take more money than she and her cousin would earn in fifty years.
When a slash of lightning delineated the manor from tower to imposing peak, she glanced over. “I’m waiting, Lieutenant.”
“Working on absorbing here, Sadie. I feel like we’ve been swept off to the Black Forest by a freak tornado.”
“That’s how I felt when I saw the place again two years ago. It was more of a fairy-tale castle when I was young, but then I only came out here twice that I can remember.” She made a circular gesture. “My apartment backs onto the ocean. Molly’s overlooks the woods. It’s an interesting trek from my door to hers. Still no comment?”
“Still absorbing.”
“Mmm, well, when you’re done, I’ll tell you that I’m not eager to make the drive back down to town tonight, so I’m going to be generous and let you borrow my Land Rover.”
Eli grinned. “Some would call that avoidance.”
“My mistakes often have that result. For the most part, I circle around Ty the way Cocoa circles Molly’s long-haired Chihuahua.”
“Who’s Cocoa?”
A dangerous smile appeared. “My cat. She’s black. I’ve heard her referred to as my familiar. Ready?”
They waited through another flash of lightning, then made a dash for the porch. In the shelter of a wide overhang, Sadie shoved the dripping hair from her face. “I could sit on a rock at the base of Bellam Point and not be this wet. Cocoa’s going to think she scored a giant rat if she sees...me.” When her eyes picked out an odd shadow, she bent forward to point. “Uh, Eli, can you shine your flashlight on that—whatever it is on my doorstep?”
He followed her gaze, frowned and, handing her the light, moved in for a closer look.
She clicked the switch. And immediately jerked back in disgust. “Oh, yuck. Dead bird. That’s...” An ominous creak of hinges had her raising the beam slowly to the door. “...definitely not right.”
Eli rose from his crouch. “Meaning you locked up this morning?”
“City girl. It’s a habit.” Her eyes traced the outline of the dark wooden frame. She honestly didn’t know which was worse—the open door or the unfortunate creature lying outside it. Fighting a swell of fear that had already slicked her skin with ice, she said evenly, “What kind of sick person would put a dead raven on my welcome mat?”
“More to the point,” Eli countered, “is that sick person waiting inside?”
Sadie’s heart threatened to slam right out of her chest. “This is hell-and-gone creepier than my nightmares.”
Already checking out the darkened entryway, Eli offered an absent “You have nightmares?”
She prodded his shoulder. “Later. There’s a puddle of blood around the raven’s head.”
“Better its than yours. Stay behind me.”
“Then keep moving. Dead animals are gross.”
“Getting shot’s grosser.”
“Shot?” Astonishment halted her on the threshold. “Who’d want to shoot me?”
“You’d know that better than I would.”
“It was a rhetorical question, Lieutenant. I’m not...”
A flurry of unexpected motion cut her off as someone leaped from the foyer shadows. Whoever it was knocked her into the doorframe, swung a lamp at Eli’s head, then tossed it and bolted.
Trapping her arms, Eli stared into Sadie’s slightly starry eyes. “Are you all right? Sadie, did he hurt you?”
“Yes—no.” She willed the dizziness away. “I’m fine, I’m good. Go.”
Cold metal brushed her wrist as he pulled a gun from the back of his jeans and vanished into the night.
Before she could turn, something swished across her calf. Swallowing a scream, she grabbed the discarded lamp and raised it like a bat.
A tiny meow floated upward from the floor.
“Cocoa...” Her breath rushed out in relief. “God.”
She closed her eyes for a long moment, then, rubbing her head with the heel of her hand, retrieved the flashlight she’d dropped and pushed the door closed. When she touched the switch, a powerful beam of light bounced off the hall mirror and straight into her eyes.
“Oh, that was smart.”
She needed another moment, she decided, to slow her spinning mind and regroup.
Three feathers on a door foreshadowed death in Raven’s Cove. That was a matter of legend. She couldn’t recall any mention of dead ravens on doorsteps in Raven’s Hollow.
There had to be a crazy person on the loose.
But this didn’t feel crazy, or not entirely. This was twisted and cruel and, when added to the email she’d received earlier, personal. It was...
The thought dissolved as she spied a slash of red on the wall opposite the mirror. The wall on which she was leaning!
Pushing off, she whirled in a half circle. And took three unbelieving steps back.
A single slashed word covered the plaster from end to end. It appeared to have been written by a giant claw. And said simply:
FOREVER!
Chapter Six
“Slow down. Let me get this straight.” Sadie’s former fiancé, Tyler Blume, gave her a light shake and sent Eli, several feet behind her, a fulminating look. “Someone broke into Bellam Manor, placed a dead raven on your doorstep and wrote a message in red on the wall. This person, who was still inside when you arrived, then proceeded to knock you down and fled the scene on foot with Eli in pursuit.”
Sadie eased free of his increasingly tight grip. “Something like that, yes.”
Ty’s ice-blue eyes met the shadowed green of his cousin’s. “I gather you lost him.”
Eli’s expression gave nothing away. “Unfortunately.”
“So he was faster than you.”
“Apparently.”
“And smarter.”
“If by that you mean he had a head start and a vehicle hidden in the woods, then yes, he was smarter.”
“Were you able to obtain the license plate number of this hidden vehicle?”
“No.”
“So all in all, your presence at the manor wasn’t overly helpful.”
Sadie drew her iPhone from her shoulder bag. “I didn’t come into town so you and your cousin could have a pissing contest, Ty.”
“You shouldn’t have come into town at all,” he fired back. “Why didn’t you call me from the manor?”
She wagged her phone. “I did, three times. There was no signal, and by the time I got one, we were in the Hollow.” She made a frustrated gesture. “I heard the vehicle Eli mentioned roar off.”
“Direction?”
“East,” Eli told him. “Toward Raven’s Hollow.”
A four-year stint in the army had taught Ty how to control his facial muscles, if not his entire expression.
“I’ll need to inspect the site, gather more facts. You took pictures of the bird and the wall. Kudos for that. But Eli can’t provide me with a license plate number, and neither of you can describe the intruder, leaving me with nothing except a dead raven, an eastbound vehicle and a single painted word to go on.”
“It was a truck.” Eli kept his tone conversational.
Ty’s dark blond eyebrows came together. “What was?”
“The eastbound vehicle. I’d guess a Dodge Ram, twenty, maybe thirty years old. I’d also go with stolen since the guy was smart enough to send the raven-card email Sadie told you about from a toss-away phone.” He shrugged at his cousin’s glare. “Police computer. I linked to Sadie’s office line. There’s no owner registered on her last incoming. Sender’s got a plan, and it doesn’t involve being identified.”
She’d known that, Sadie thought, of course she had. She’d been a journalist far too long to delude herself. “I don’t suppose you have any idea, beyond terrifying me, what that plan might entail?”
She felt Eli’s gaze on her face. “Working on it.”
Across the cramped room, Ty drummed a pen on his blotter. “Tell me, cousin, how do you determine twenty or thirty years old in a truck?”
“Three back-breaking summers spent on my grandfather’s farm in Idaho. Why are you wet?”
Ty frowned down at his soaked shirt and pants. “I—was hungry, stepped out. Figured the diner might be serving on emergency power.”
“It’s after eleven,” Sadie remarked. “Johnny’s closes at ten.”
“The time thing didn’t occur until I was halfway there. I was heading back when I spotted a couple kids outside Dorothy Leamer’s antique store and made a detour.”
Eli grinned. “Does she still keep her cash float in a cigar box under the counter?”
“It’s her lucky box. She’s been robbed a dozen or more times, but she always gets the money and the box back. Neither thing made it out of the store tonight. Unfortunately, the kids ran off before I could identify them.”
“Making you and Eli even in the ‘oops’ department.” Sadie indicated the curb outside. “The lamp the intruder used is in my Land Rover. I picked it up after he took off, but you could still check it for fingerprints.”
A muscle in Ty’s jaw ticked. “You figure there’ll be any to find?” he asked Eli.
“Doubt it. You might get a clue from the bird. It was shot through the head.”
“Did he use blood or paint for the wall message?”
“Paint. There wouldn’t have been enough blood in a single raven to write a message that large.”
“I assume you secured the scene.”
“Do I really need to answer that?”
The tick in Ty’s jaw deepened. “I think you should stay in town tonight, Sadie.”
“And leave Molly alone out on the point? Answer’s no.”
“Fine.” He yanked out his smartphone. “Is she at the manor?”
“Not when we were there. Save your battery, Ty. I’ve left five unanswered messages. All I can think of is that she went somewhere after work, turned her phone off and hasn’t turned it back on yet.”
“Right, then I’ll just drive you home myself and spend the night.... Crap!” He scowled at his beeping cell, then breathed out and punched Talk. “Raven’s Hollow Police Station. Chief Blume.”
Leaving him to the call, Sadie joined Eli at the rain-streaked station window and studied his face. “Even in shadow, I can see the wheels turning. Talk to me, Lieutenant. Why would someone want to torment me with words that read like threats, and a raven with a bullet in its head?”
“Mine forever. Says it all, don’t you think?”
She did, actually, or would have if she’d been willing to take it that far.
Ty’s voice cut in. “Stay calm, Liz. I’ll be right there.” Frustration etched itself into his handsome features. “A six-year-old girl ran off in pursuit of her new puppy after it wiggled through a window. Now puppy and child are both lost. Mother’s hysterical. Are you sure you secured the scene?” he demanded of Eli.
“I didn’t ditch my badge and training at the state line. Everything you need to see will be there in the morning.”
His cousin’s response came in the form of a snarl. “See that it is.” Giving Sadie’s arm an awkward pat, he said, “Watch your back.” Then he shot an accusing look in Eli’s direction. “Unless you want a knife in it.”
As soon as he was out the door, Sadie plastered a serene smile on her lips. “Well, that was horrible.”
“Can I say I told you so?”
“Only if you want to walk to wherever it is you plan to sleep tonight.”
“I was originally thinking Rooney’s cottage.”
“In that case, you’re facing a long and treacherous hike.”
He chuckled. “I haven’t checked out the bulldog yet, Sadie. You know how Rooney gets stuck on a point.”
“So...Ty’s sofa it is. Good luck with that.”
“Uh-huh.” When she turned away, he tugged on her hair and swung her gently back around. “You know where I’ll be sleeping tonight, and there won’t be any old men, dogs or hostile sofas involved. Your front door lock’s been compromised, Sadie.”
Reaching behind her, Sadie extricated his hand from her hair. “You’re trying to frighten me into letting you sleep at my place. Not only is that an unworthy tactic, it’s also an unnecessary one, because while I don’t appreciate your high-handed I’m-a-cop-and-you’re-not attitude, I do in fact recognize that I’ve been threatened, and there was both a bullet and blood involved. So let’s slide past the sleeping arrangements and the mind games, drive back to Bellam Manor and make sure Molly and Cocoa are safe.”
The hand that had been in her hair moved to trap her chin. Eli’s green eyes stared straight into hers. “This guy doesn’t want Molly or Cocoa, Sadie. That’s not what it’s about.”
She held his gaze. “What aren’t you saying? I’m totally terrified to ask. In my experience, crazy people will steamroll anyone who gets in their way. Or so the theory generally goes.”
“Generally,” Eli agreed. “Except this isn’t general, it’s specific. And in terms of the email card you received, it’s a virtual carbon copy of what happened to Laura a week before she was murdered.”
* * *
TELLING SADIEWHAThad suddenly clicked in his mind did more than shock her into silence. It catapulted Eli back to the night his stepsister—Sadie’s seventeen-year-old cousin, Laura—had died.
Sadie’s aunt had married Eli’s widowed father when Eli was ten. The melding of their families had been a seamless affair. But no doubt about it, Bellams and Blumes living under the same roof in Raven’s Cove had been like Christmas on the local grapevine.
Eli and two friends from school had gone to a movie in the Cove the night of the murder. Laura had been babysitting Sadie, but she’d driven to the Hollow in her mother’s cherry-red ’69 Mustang with a promise to pick them up as soon as her aunt and uncle returned home.
He could have told her not to bother, Eli thought now. Less of a hassle to walk or let someone closer come and get them, but there’d been intermittent hailstorms all day, and face it, what adolescent boy would turn down a ride in the coolest car in town?
So he and his friends had wandered over to the arcade to wait. They’d slain dragons, bludgeoned knights and smashed castle walls, until, finally, the manager had come in and told them he was shutting down.
Eli had felt the first prickle of fear at that moment. He hadn’t known why, not exactly. It hadn’t been until later that he’d remembered hearing Laura on the phone three days earlier, pleading with someone to stop pestering her.
Drama queen, he’d figured at the time. People called Laura a diva, and, what the hell, she’d stuck her tongue out at the handset after slamming it down, so how serious could the call have been?
He’d gotten his answer that weekend when, feeling sick and guilty, he’d trudged into the hollow to search for her. Everyone had been looking by then, yet oddly enough, the only person he’d bumped into in the dense woods was Sadie.
He’d known something was terribly wrong, because he’d snuck into Laura’s room and discovered a card with two ravens on it in the wastepaper basket under her desk. She’d torn it up, but the pieces had been easily reassembled, and once whole, had made even a fourteen-year-old boy’s blood run cold.
The scrawl inside had read MY LOVE in bold red letters. There’d been no signature, and of course, nothing on or in it could be traced. Not to the boyfriend Laura had recently broken up with or to anyone in the Cove or the Hollow.
But someone had written those words. Someone who’d either sent the card or slipped it to her before she’d died. Someone, Eli reflected darkly, who’d sent Sadie an eerily similar message—two full decades later.
* * *
SADIELETHIMdrive her Land Rover up the treacherous road to Bellam Manor. They didn’t talk much, which was normal enough for Eli and perfectly fine with her. Staving off terror took concentration and strong mental locks.
Two ravens, though, on two separate cards, two decades apart. One imprisoned, one free. And no signature in either case.
Determined not to think about where this was leading, she attempted to contact Molly again. But her cousin’s voice mail picked up, and as it did, frustration slipped past the knot of fear in her throat. She turned in her seat. “Why didn’t I hear about Laura’s card before tonight, Eli? Or the phone call you say she got?”
He kept his eyes on the road and his tone mild. “You were seven years old. You found her body in Raven’s Bog. Literally tripped on her hand and went down. The doctors in both the Hollow and the Cove agreed you must be in shock. And I repeat—only seven.”
“A resilient seven.” She tapped an impatient thumbnail on her phone. “The only call I’ve gotten came in conjunction with the email that was sent to me today at the Chronicle.”
“Still a call.”
She thought back. “The voice was computer altered. I didn’t recognize it.”
“Male?”
“Inasmuch as a synthesized voice can have a gender, yes. In any case, the intruder at the manor was male. And don’t you dare suggest an accomplice. This is twisted enough already. Whoever hit Laura with a tire iron left her and her car in what used to be the heart of the hollow. But twenty years ago, the road we were on tonight—which is the only drivable road from end to end—was nothing more than a goat path. So, obvious next question. How did her car wind up in the bog?”
“The consensus was that Laura let the killer get into the car. Once inside, he forced her to drive to Raven’s Bog. They exited the car, he struck her, then left her body, the Mustang and the murder weapon at the scene.”
“Do you know where the tire iron came from?”
“An auto scrap yard in Bangor.”
“So, summing up, there were no fingerprints on the murder weapon, there was no blood in the car and nothing but... God, why am I doing this?” Unbelieving, Sadie drilled her index fingers into her temples. “It’s insane, like Laura’s murderer—who’s apparently been in the area all along. Whoever he is, this guy’s a volcanic time bomb on a really slow tick. And he seems to have it in for Bellam females.” When Eli didn’t respond, she lowered her hands. “A little reassurance would be nice here, Lieutenant— before I totally freak out!”
He made the final turn to the manor. “Would it help if I said we could be dealing with a copycat?”
“Which would be better—how exactly?”
“Different perpetrator, potentially different...motive.”
She pounced. “You hesitated before you said ‘motive.’”
“I hesitated because something just blew off one of the manor’s towers and across my line of vision.”
“You were going to say ‘outcome,’ weren’t you? Potentially different outcome. As in he might shoot me instead of using a tire iron.”
“Sadie...”
“I know.” She went back to pushing on her temples. “Freaking myself out again. I need to refocus, and lucky me, I see a light in Molly’s window. I can distract myself by reading her the riot act for turning off her phone.”
“Isn’t shouting at Molly a bit like kicking a puppy?”
“I said read, not shout. All I really want to do is make sure she’s safe. Because I don’t believe, and neither do you, that there’s a copycat at work here. It’s twenty years later, Eli, and somebody’s doing to me almost exactly what he did to Laura. But who’s to say that after such a long hiatus, this person doesn’t have a different plan in mind? How do we know I’m the only Bellam he intends to threaten? Or kill?”
* * *
HESATINthe dark, with the storm shrieking around him, and he breathed. In and out, in and out.
It was all about making the right moves at the right time. He wanted Sadie. He needed Sadie to know he wanted her. But he also needed her to know she’d hurt him.
Love and fear and anger fought a bitter, three-way battle in his head these days. Twenty years ago, he’d discovered that a sleeping monster lived deep inside him. What if the monster woke up and consumed him? He might kill Sadie the way he’d killed Laura.
Would he, though? Could he? He loved Sadie so very, very much. He saw himself spending the rest of his life with her. Was it possible this newer, deeper love might stop the monster from clawing its way out?
Possibly, but one thing he’d learned tonight was that accidents could happen when you carried a gun.
The raven should have been a symbol of his love. He hadn’t meant to kill it, but at least the bullet hadn’t wound up in Sadie’s head. He could take comfort in that.
When he started to shake, he dropped his face into his hands. He was tired, so damnably tired. Should he try to sleep? Did he dare? Or would the monster know and seize the opportunity to go on a rampage?
To go on a witch-hunt?
Chapter Seven
“The battery in her cell phone died.”
Twenty minutes after they walked through her cousin’s front door. Sadie returned to the thickly shadowed room Molly called a parlor.
“She stayed in town to have dinner with a friend who’s afraid of thunderstorms. Neat, tidy, logical. Mystery solved, Lieutenant.”
“One mystery, anyway.” Eli held up and examined a double-edged dagger. “Any reason she collects and displays lethal weapons?”
“Witch’s tools,” Sadie corrected. “That dagger you’re holding is an athame. Its white-handled counterpart is a boline.” She swept a hand along the sideboard. “Chalice, ritual candles, tarot cards, protective crystals—dog.”
Eli regarded the tiny, ratlike creature at the far end. Its pointy ears quivered as the animal stared back.
“His name’s Solomon.” Sadie bit back most of a smile. “He and Cocoa don’t get along. Seeing as Molly’s coming with us to my place, it should be a lively gathering.”
“Especially if Cocoa’s in the mood for a midnight snack.”
“I’ll make sure she’s well fed. By the way, you might want to put that dagger down before Molly sees you. She’s proprietorial about family heirlooms.”
“Seriously? These things belonged to your ancestor?”
“Most of them did. Molly’s a buff. She’s searched the manor from subcellar to tower peak. If you look closely, you’ll see Nola Bellam’s initials inscribed on the larger items.”
“So Hezekiah Blume really did marry a witch.”
“Depends on how you look at it. Nola possessed the implements of a witch, but then Molly currently possesses those same implements, and no one’s ever accused her of witchcraft.”
“I’ll let that one pass.”
“And I’ll light a metaphorical fire under my cousin.” But Sadie paused in the doorway. “Do you have any ideas, theories, even vague thoughts on tonight’s intruder?”
“Having seen this house, I’d say he doesn’t believe in curses.”
“Oh, well, if that’s true, you can take almost every male in both towns out of the running.”
“There you go. Should be an easy solve.”
“Five minutes.” Giving the molding a double tap, she left Eli alone with the lash of rain and wind outside and a tangle of thoughts in his head.
He was a cop, he reminded himself. Solid facts and cold, hard evidence were his life. What was screwing it all up for him at the moment was his inability to slam a mental door on the welter of Sadie-related emotions he didn’t want to feel.
She’d been a beautiful child, with her wild mass of red-brown hair and her amazing storm-gray eyes. Fortunately, back then—kid. Unfortunately, now—woman.
His own eyes shifted as wind whipped through cracks in the ceiling and rattled the window glass.
“No one’s going to rob you, Molly.” Sadie returned a few minutes later with her cousin in tow. “And the more people under one roof tonight, the better.”
Yes, no, maybe. Eli managed not to grind his teeth as he watched Sadie bend to pick up her black trench coat. “Could you bring Solomon?” Her expression solemn, Molly dragged her Bellam red hair into a ponytail. “He doesn’t bite.”
Did he even have teeth? But Eli tucked the dog under his arm and followed the women into the storm.
Confusion reigned from the moment they entered Sadie’s plant-filled home. As predicted, Cocoa chased the Chihuahua under a tall cabinet. The lights flared and died three times, and in spite of the fact that he’d draped a sheet over the sinister message, on one of his trips through the foyer, he found Molly easing a corner up for a look.
“Morbid curiosity?” he inquired from the shadows.
She jumped back a full foot before finding him in the dark. “I was just—I wanted to see. It’s not that I don’t believe what Sadie said, I’m only surprised anyone would come into Bellam Manor to do it. A lot of people are afraid of this place.”
“But not you.”
“No. I mean—why would I be?” She touched her ponytail. “The house wouldn’t turn on one of its own.”
Okay, that was weird. But, as he recalled, so was Molly. Or had been back when he’d lived in the Cove.
With a small smile, she and her flickering candle more or less melted into the darkness. Unsure what to make of her, Eli checked the writing behind the sheet, listened to the storm for another moment, then made his way to the kitchen.
He saw Cocoa sitting calmly on the windowsill while Sadie rummaged in a high cupboard. “No offense,” he said genially, “but your cousin hasn’t gotten any less strange with time.”
“I’ve heard that before. Yet people keep coming into the pharmacy to have their prescriptions filled. Not to worry, her plan for the rest of the night is to lock herself in my guest room with her tarot cards, her laptop and, I’m pretty sure, since it appears to be missing, my grandmother’s carving knife.”
Eli straddled a hard chair while she continued to rummage. “Am I responsible for that, or does Molly generally sleep with knives?”
“I think you unsettle her.”
“Makes us even.”
Sadie laughed, and the sound of it was a punch of pure lust in his gut. “You are not afraid of my cousin, Eli.”
“No? I heard a story in my junior year. A girl who humiliated her wound up with a bad case of warts.”
“Where do you get this stuff? Never mind.” She held up a hand. “Rooney. Ah, good, found them.” She set a taper and three pillar candles on the table. “Your great-grandfather is leaning as heavily on our witchy legend as he is on the Raven’s Tale in order to entice tourists to visit your town.”
Warily fascinated, Eli tracked her movements. “Nola Bellam married Hezekiah Blume, Sadie. That’s a fact. The legends are intertwined and fair game for anyone wanting to use them as an enticement.”
She aimed the taper at him. “This is why my great-grandfather went to live in the north woods.”
Sadie had a hypnotic way of moving, Eli noted. By the glow of a single taper, she appeared to float around the kitchen. Her still-damp tank top and skirt clung to her in a way that made his lower body burn and brought him right to the edge of begging.
Common sense and a hard slap of memory would keep those reactions in check, but it would still take every scrap of restraint he possessed not to jump her.
When he realized she was watching him, he shrugged off her last remark. “You want to talk fear factor, your great-grandfather’s got it all over Rooney. What is he now, ninety-five?”
“Ninety-nine.” Sweeping around behind him, she ran a teasing finger over his hair. “Hot on Rooney’s colorful heels.”
With a silent curse, Eli caught her hand. Coming smoothly to his feet, he murmured, “This sleepover thing actually might not be such a good idea. We’re standing here talking about weird cousins and Hezekiah, a man people think is a ghost, and what I’m really wondering is why the hell we’re talking at all.”
She resisted ever so slightly as he drew her toward him. “We agreed back at your truck not to do this.”
“I remember the conversation.” He held her gaze. “And you can stop me any time. We both know there’s nowhere for it to go. Cops and relationships don’t work. Trust me, I’ve been there and back again.”
With his thumb and fingers, he captured her chin, tipping her head up until he saw the glimmer in her eyes. He recognized the challenge in them, but right then he didn’t care. He wanted his mouth on hers, and screw the consequences. The moment for any last chance objections came and went as he brought her lips slowly up to meet his.
He’d keep it brief, he promised himself, hot and fast, a flash of desire satisfied.
It would have worked if she’d been another woman. Any woman other than the one he’d met and danced with in Boston.
Her fingers curled into his hair, and she moved against him in a kind of sinuous samba. He let his hands roam over her ribs, then around them so his palms cupped her breasts. He breathed in the scent of her while his tongue explored her mouth. She smelled like wild roses. She tasted like sin. She felt like the answer to a prayer.
If there were answers.
If he’d had prayers.
Easing back a tempting inch, she regarded him through her lashes. “I can feel the conflict in you, Eli. I know what it’s like to want but know you can’t or shouldn’t have. I think.”
“That’s part of our problem, isn’t it?” His eyes traveled over her face. “We’re always thinking.”
Her smile widened. “Not sure I’d say that, Lieutenant.” And yanking his mouth back down onto hers, she blasted everything that didn’t have its roots in need from his head.
It might have been lightning or the glow from the taper that caused the darkness to shift. Whatever the source, when he spotted a shadow that shouldn’t be there, his body stilled.
Sensing the change, Sadie drew back. “What is it?”
“Not sure.” He scanned the spread of black rocks that led to the edge of the cliff. “No, don’t look.” He held her in place when she started to turn. “Pretend we’re talking.”
“We are talking.” But she gave the ends of his hair a playful flick with one hand, and skimmed the fingers of her other across his cheek. “What do you see?”
He kissed her forehead. “Unless Molly’s taking a late night stroll, someone’s out there.”
“Wonderful. Can you tell if ‘someone’s’ carrying a gun?”
“I’ll need more than a glimpse for that. The light’s pretty much nonexistent.”
“I am so getting a generator.”
Ten seconds ticked by. “There it is.” He drew his own gun from the back of his jeans. “Considering its remote location, Bellam Manor’s a busy place tonight. Is there a side door?”
“Through the pantry. Eli, are you sure...?”
“Dead raven,” he reminded her, and she held up her hands in surrender.
A feeble streak of lightning flashed as the storm limped grudgingly out to sea. With his gun pointed skyward, and his eyes alert, Eli inched the pantry door open, waited a beat, then stepped out into the gusting rain.
“Come on,” he muttered to the shadowy caller. “Give me a target.”
He got one ten seconds later in the form of a barely there movement that indicated the caller was creeping along the back of the house.
Whoever it was wore a long coat and had one hand pressed to the outer wall. The other hand—he couldn’t tell. Might be carrying a weapon, might be holding something else. Like another dead bird?
Able to just make out the flat rocks ahead, he jammed the gun in his waistband and went for a takedown. When the shadow lost its balance on the slippery ground, Eli knew it was over.
One solid tackle was all it took. Surprised by the ease of the capture, rather than plant a knee, he flipped his quarry over. And found himself face-to-face with a writhing, swearing female.
Even fully pinned, she bucked, thrashed and squirmed, twisting her head from side to side. At length, she settled for spitting at him.
“Stop fighting me,” he shouted above the wind. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
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