Spellbound Murder Complete Trilogy (Spellbound Murder Box Set Book 1) Read online

  The usual early bustle of city noises was muffled and she found that she was enjoying the walk from her car to the store. The street was virtually empty, the snow hadn’t yet been trod upon, and it hadn’t had time to get dingy. She held her gloved hand out to catch snowflakes, and then looked up as she watched the flakes dance through the air.

  Her legs slid out from under her, and Mira landed on her back with a muffled thud.

  Crap. She stared at the sky while sensing for any injuries before she got back up. Besides the pain radiating from her backside, she was relatively unscathed. Making her way slowly to her feet, she vowed to be more careful.

  It didn’t take her long to get the store up and running, but with the snow, customers were few and far between. A few tenacious employees from neighboring businesses stopped in to pick up something to warm them up, and some serious shoppers made their way in.

  While fixing coffee, Mira managed to break a coffee carafe. It was made of metal, but she somehow managed to drop it in just the right way for it to crack. After spilling two drinks, one on a customer—for which Mira apologized profusely—she excused herself from the floor and went to the kitchen.

  Deciding that the lack of sleep was making her more clumsy than usual, she filled up on coffee and cleaned the kitchen. Every surface was scrubbed as if she were doing penance for ruining the customer’s morning. The oven had some particularly stubborn spots that Mira attacked with a single-minded ferocity.

  “Good morning, Miss Owens!”

  Mira jumped and banged her head on the oven. Rubbing the aching spot, she looked up into the last face she wanted to see.

  “Mr. Benton,” she said, trying to curb her frustration. “I’m surprised to see you here today. And back here.”

  “I’m doing a quick inspection,” he said in an overly cheery voice.

  She sighed before she could stop herself.

  “Don’t worry, this won’t take long. Can you point out your smoke detectors?”

  “Sure.” She motioned to the two in the back, not trusting his cheerfulness for one moment. “There, there, and another up front.”

  “I need to check your cold storage as well.”

  It was such an odd question that Mira showed him without knowing why she was doing it. “The city did a health safety check last month, if that’s what you’re checking for.”

  “I need to take a few measurements,” he said, ignoring Mira.

  “Okay,” she crossed her arms, “what’s this for?”

  “I’m checking up on Dad’s records. I’ll be out of the way in no time.”

  Mira was tempted to leave him alone. It had been a bad morning and spending more than a minute with her landlord usually only made things worth.

  However, she didn’t trust him.

  He took out a fancy electronic tape measure and jotted down a few notes. Occasionally, he would hum to himself. She let him into the offices to measure, but she was ready to put her foot down if he wanted to do anything in the store itself. She’d be seriously ticked off if he started bothering the few customers she had.

  Her cell phone rang and Mira hesitated, not wanting to answer it with Mr. Benton lurking around. Ian’s name flashed across her screen. There was no way she could talk to him with her landlord around, so she silenced the phone.

  A few minutes later, the phone rang again.

  “I’ll get out of your way,” Mr. Benton said. “Have a good day and stay safe out there. The roads are bad.”

  Her mouth almost dropped open. Mira mumbled what she hoped was an appropriate reply and answered the phone.

  “Hello,” she said, watching the man leave the store.

  “It’s me.” Ian sounded brisk. “I wanted to see if your friend ever got back to you.”

  “Tyler, you mean?” Mira asked. Mr. Benton had been smiling the whole time. He was up to something, she was sure of it.

  “Yes,” Ian said.

  “No, I haven’t heard from him. I’ll let you know when I do, though.”

  “Are you available?” Ian asked.

  “I’m at work, but I can get free,” Mira said.

  “I should be out front in ten minutes.”

  He didn’t wait for a reply. Mira let her staff know that she was once again leaving. She felt bad having to leave her partner another note. Luckily, as a fellow witch, her partner knew what was going on.

  She was getting coffee ready to go when she realized that she had spent her morning scrubbing the kitchen—and she looked like it. Mira tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter, but she dropped what she was doing and ran to clean herself up as best she could.

  It didn’t matter, right? She had spelled Ian without him knowing and appeared to be frustrating him at every turn. He was nice and seriously cute. Even if there was nothing between them, Mira figured it didn't hurt to look your best.

  When Mira hurried back to the front of the store she saw that Ian was waiting for her. Ana had two piping hot drinks ready to go, and she waved Mira out the door.

  The day had gone bad so far. Really bad. So Mira took her time across the sidewalk. The sun was out, and although it was no longer snowing, what had already fallen was being mercilessly thrown around. Thankfully, Mira made it to the car without incident and handed a cup of coffee to Ian.

  “You look like you could really use this,” Mira said, taking note of the dark circles under his eyes.

  “Thanks,” Ian said.

  “I thought you were busy this morning. You took Barney’s notebooks back, right?”

  “He has the originals back.” Ian was intent on the road. It had been plowed, but not well enough.

  “Where are we going?” Mira asked.

  “Your place. I have some questions for you and…” Ian sighed. “And the case files. I need you to take a look at a few things.”

  “No problem.” Mira’s cell phone rang, so she checked the caller ID.

  Her mother. Well, she had been expecting a call from her, but there was no way she’d take the call in front of Ian.

  Mira silenced the phone. “Aren’t you working with your partner today?”

  “We worked together this morning,” Ian said. His hands gripped the steering wheel as though it were a life preserver. “Gabe is running something down, but we’re interviewing a suspect this afternoon.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” Mira asked. “If you have a likely suspect, what am I doing?”

  “Making connections,” Ian said. They moved onto a well-treated road and Ian relaxed his grip, though Mira thought he still looked tense.

  “What kind of connections?”

  “Between the victims and everyone that might have known them.”

  “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?” Mira asked.

  “We’re not moving fast enough. I need you to call every supernatural that knew Sally and Helen and ask if the other names are familiar. We need to find what links them together.”

  “What happened?” Mira asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What happened to spur this on? You look upset, and you’re suddenly rushing through this.”

  “When we talk to this suspect, we need to know more. We have to know who he knows.”

  “Who is it?” Mira asked.

  “I can’t tell you.” Ian said.

  “What? Why not?”

  “I’m not discussing it with you. Anything that I might say could bias the results.”

  “It might make things go quicker.”

  “No.” His voice was stern enough to be emphatic.

  “Okay,” Mira said. An eerie feeling began to settle in her stomach.

  Nearing her neighborhood, the roads became considerably clearer.

  “I didn’t think the roads would be this good,” Ian mumbled.

  “A plus side for living in an area of high salaries, old money, and crushing amounts of debt hidden in the closet with all the skeletons.”

  “I could see how that has its upsides,�
� Ian said derisively. “You have a neighborhood watch, right?”

  “I never really thought about that,” Mira said. “There hasn’t been any trouble around here, though.”

  “No one will be out in this mess, at least.”

  “We are,” Mira grinned.

  “Well, you’ll be at home for the rest of the day anyway,” Ian said, pulling into the driveway. “Is Della around?”

  “I doubt it. She’ll be at work.”

  He nodded and looked around the white wonderland. “Let’s get inside.”

  Cold air engulfed them. Mira clutched at the handrail, worried her feet would slide out from under her again. Once inside, she shivered and caught her breath, which the frigid air had taken away.

  “I can’t stay long,” Ian said. “Where can we work?”

  “The kitchen table is probably best.” Mira hung her coat and reluctantly peeled off her gloves.

  Alchemy and Oracle didn’t seem inclined to get any closer to the cold air their human had let in, but once the pair was in the kitchen, the cats wrapped themselves around Mira’s legs until she gave them an affectionate scratch behind the ears. Ian had apparently passed some sort of unwritten test among the cats. They rubbed against him until he relented and petted them. Some of Ian’s tension dissipated as Alchemy purred his appreciation.

  “What are we doing first?” Mira asked.

  “These are case files,” Ian said. “If anyone asks, you’ve never seen them.” He sat them on the table and put his hand protectively on top of the stack. “I need to know now if you’d rather not see these. There are—” he floundered, “-there are pictures in here you haven’t seen, and some of them are pretty graphic.”

  Was she ready for that? “Are you showing me pictures of my friends after... well, after what happened?”

  “God no,” Ian said. “You don’t need to see that. They are pictures before any, um, cleanup was done.”

  Blood. She could handle that, right? At least with the Fortitude still holding strong.

  “What am I looking for?” Mira asked.

  “Anything that we might have missed before. We think we showed everything important, but we could be wrong. There was stuff that we purposefully left out as well, though.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Mira said.

  Ian looked reluctant when he slid the stack of files over.

  The first folder held pictures that Mira had already seen. She studied each of them anyway in case there was something that had been overlooked.

  She wasn’t expecting what she found in the second file. “Good lord. This place is a mess.”

  There was some blood, but the dominant parts of the scene were broken furniture, cabinet doors falling off their hinges, and some with what appeared to be random junk thrown around everywhere.

  The next few pictures had familiar items. Bullets that shined silver, a glass bottle of water, and a wooden stake. They had been placed together.

  “This is Helen’s house, isn’t it?” Mira asked, trying to keep her mind focused on the objects.

  “I can’t tell you that,” Ian said with a hint of apprehension.

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Out of all of them, she was the only werewolf.” Mira flipped to the next photo. “None of it means anything. A few werewolves have a silver allergy, but it’s no more likely to kill them than anyone else.” She flipped the photo over, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. There was blood, but she was forcing her mind away from that. A snake? She flipped to the next picture and found a closer photo. “Rope?”

  Ian said nothing.

  Rope that had been lying in the blood. Mira felt her blood pressure drop and she paled significantly. She flipped through the rest of the pictures, concentrating on the ones that that didn’t paint a chilly picture of what might have happened in that room.

  It was no good. She closed the file and pushed it away, immediately grabbing the next to find something else to focus on.

  “Why don’t we take a break?” Ian said.

  Mira didn’t bother to respond.

  Ian took the files that she was done with, and then tried to grab the one she was holding.

  Mira tugged it back. “You didn’t show me these before.”

  “No.”

  These weren’t gruesome. Once again, they bordered on the bizarre.

  “Is that a turtle shell?” Mira asked.

  “Not everything has been fully processed. We’re still waiting for confirmation on most of the items. It appears to be a turtle shell, but it could be a plaster replica.”

  “Still processing?” Mira said. “You’d think they’d put a rush on this stuff.”

  “There is,” Ian said, sighing. “There’s been a lot to process.”

  “Real or not, all of this adds up to nothing. Someone is staging a scene.” Mira couldn’t help but shudder. “But the scenes themselves don’t mean anything. Is that an actual cauldron?”

  “We think it’s cast iron.”

  “As I’m sure you know by now, witches don’t actually use cauldrons.”

  “Not for anything?” Ian asked.

  Mira forced a chuckle. “Halloween decorations? It would take forever to clean and take care of, if you really used one. Stainless steel, or occasionally copper pans work best.”

  “The candles?”

  “Well... Okay. They aren’t necessary, but some witches still use them. Everything around us has energy, and some witches prefer to have the power of raw fire around them instead of electricity.”

  “How is it different?”

  She searched for the right words. “It’s like the difference between snow and rain... no, that’s not right... Like vanilla ice cream and chocolate. They’re still both ice cream, but they have different flavors.”

  “I think I get it.”

  Mira flipped through the last file. “There are a lot of interviews here.”

  “Those aren’t half of them.” Ian looked tired when he stared listlessly at the paper. “You don’t need to go through those.”

  “Did you have other suspects?” She turned the pages without really reading anything

  “There was another person Sally worked with, Tom Anderson. He was upset that Sally always sold more cars than anyone else did. She’d stolen several customers from him.” He leaned over and thumbed through the file.

  His hand rested on her arm. Mira thought it could be her imagination, but he seemed to hesitate before removing it.

  Ian cleared his throat. “That’s what we got when we talked to Tom.”

  Mira flipped through the notes. The man sounded pissed off by the end of the interview. He said Sally was somehow cheating.

  “He could be right,” Mira said after speedreading through the interview. “Sally could have used her clairvoyance to get to know buyers on a whole other level. She could probably say exactly what they wanted to hear.”

  “When we interviewed him again, he knew nothing about anyone else, and we can’t place them together.”

  “I’ve never heard of him,” Mira said, closing the file. “Who else do you have?”

  “I really shouldn’t be talking about this.” Ian glanced at his watch. “I should go.”

  “Do you want to leave these here for me to go through again?”

  “No!” It came out in a forceful rush. “I mean, no. You’ve already been a big help,” he said in a more normal tone,

  “If it helps, the cauldron couldn’t have been cheap, and I doubt there are too many of them out there.”

  “Thanks. Are you staying here for the rest of the day?” Ian asked.

  “I think I’m stuck here,” Mira said. “My car is in the city.”

  “Oh yeah,” Ian said. “Sorry about that. The roads are probably still pretty rough, anyway. You’ll make those calls for me?”

  Chapter 16

  Piecing together the hidden parts of Sally’s life felt like it tore a hole in Mira’s soul. How had she never noticed that her friend
was blackmailing people?

  When she began to contact other supernaturals on Ian’s behalf, a few people had said nice things about her friend. One had refused to say anything, two people were reluctant, but talked after Mira explained what was going on, and another cussed Mira out and hung up on her.

  She had better luck when she started with the other names. A few remembered Karen Green. She felt like she had hit the jackpot when someone recognized the name Yvonne Childs. The only thing they knew was that she was supernatural and kept to herself, but at least someone knew her.

  It wasn’t until she got around to calling the elders and felt as if she had been rung through a wringer that she found someone who knew Dennis Simmons. Turns out, according to Noah, Lance knew him.

  Ms. Vears knew most of the people on the list, and she could draw a line between Sally and Karen. It turns out they had only known each other a few months. She didn’t know what their relationship was, but she was certain that Karen hadn’t liked Sally or her boyfriend, Martin.

  Mira knew that Lance held the key to at least one of the names, but still, she had put off calling him until she had exhausted other options. Although she would never admit it, the vampire made her nervous.

  Lance knew them all. He hadn’t met Yvonne, but had known of her. Dennis was a muse. Who knew muses even existed?

  There was no way that the vampire had killed everyone. Remembering the amount of blood found at what she was sure was Helen’s house proved that the vampire couldn’t have done it.

  It was such a waste of food.

  Ian called when she was talking with Lance, which gave her a good excuse to get off the line. Something about talking with a man who was centuries old made her feel exposed.

  “How did your interview go?” Mira asked.

  “Not great. I think Gabe disagrees,” Ian said.

  “How so?”

  “I’m not sure. He’s already gone for the day. Do you have anything for me?”

  It didn’t take long for Mira to distill what had taken her hours to discover.

  “You haven’t mentioned Lance before,” Ian said. “Do you trust him?”