Moonlight Murder: An Inept Witches Mystery Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  More Titles

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Into the Woods

  Chapter 2: Out of the Frying Pan

  Chapter 3: Into the Fire

  Chapter 4: A Storm Unleashed

  Chapter 5: The Lion's Den

  Chapter 6: A Shot of Truth

  Chapter 7: Ghostly Gossip

  Chapter 8: Death Magic

  Chapter 9: A Supernatural Hot Mess

  Chapter 10: Taking Notes

  Chapter 11: True Colors

  Chapter 12: A Blaze of Glory

  About Amanda

  About Auburn

  Copyright

  More Titles from Auburn and Amanda

  Auburn’s Other Titles

  The Immortals: A Vampire Fairytale

  Goodbye Love

  Roanoke Vanishing

  Maya Vanishing

  Inconvenient Murder

  Moonlight Murder

  First Watch

  Amanda’s Other Titles

  Compelled By Love

  Bewildered By Love

  These Lying Eyes

  Song of Sorrow

  Inconvenient Murder

  Moonlight Murder

  The Destruction of Prince Xavier

  Amanda says:

  This book is dedicated to that Jezebel, Auburn Seal.

  Her flavor of crazy is the same as my own.

  And that, my friends, is its own kind of excellence.

  Auburn says:

  Amanda brings an optimism to our projects

  that is both endearing and totally unrealistic.

  Which is of course why I love her.

  Chapter 1

  Into the Woods

  Wednesday Night

  “We’re lost.”

  “Shut up. We’re not lost.” Ingrid said. They were so lost. In the woods. Again. For the love! They’d nearly, almost been murdered in the woods the last time they ventured in. What had possessed them to enter again?

  “Again. We’re lost in the woods again.”

  The moon shone bright overhead, but it was hard to tell under the thick canopy of the evergreen pine trees. The path was covered in shadows so thick they could have been in a cave, and there were noises. Completely unidentifiable noises that could be bears.

  Or honey badgers.

  Or…lurking murderers.

  It happened.

  “I hate you,” Ingrid replied. She scowled dark looks at her best dove, Emily, but the wench wasn’t even noticing. “If this weren’t for you bargaining with Aunt Hazel, I would not be going to this…this…boob fest.”

  “I gave Aunt Hazel my solemn promise we would participate in whatever this is supposed to be,” Emily said with a goody-two-shoes voice.

  Ingrid knew Emily was using that voice to induce eye twitching, and Ingrid intended vengeance.

  It was dark. Too dark. And too silent. Except for the creepy noises that hinted at murder. It was on nights like these that you were supposed to be curled up with a warm, lickable sheriff in your own bed with things like walls. And a roof. To protect you from the outside where the raccoons lived. They were so lost they should have packed in a tent and planned for the long haul.

  She shuffled slowly forward. The moon was bright. The sky was clear. It was a perfect night for a witch deal. If you were into that sort of thing, but Ingrid was into not being in the woods.

  “These shoes are going to be ruined,” Ingrid complained, hearing the whine in her voice and deciding to amp it up. “So ruined. I barely got to wear them in St. Maarten’s. I probably paid whatever it is when you buy a lot of stuff in another country. So, they’re extra good.”

  “Did you hear something?” Emily asked.

  Ingrid gasped and tripped. She clutched the wine bottle close, saving it from being destroyed by the fall. If they had to get naked with a bunch of old lady witches from the island, they were going to do so properly.

  With impaired faculties.

  As soon as the rush of adrenaline to protect the wine faded, she realized that she was sitting, drunk, in the dark in the woods without panties. Possibly they’d already had a bottle of their vacation wine. Possibly that was why they couldn’t find the witch hoo-hah.

  “Did I just see your butt,” Emily asked as she hauled Ingrid to her feet.

  “Maybe,” Ingrid said, clutching the wine close, looking over her shoulder. There had been a noise. Why were there noises?

  “Why?”

  It took Ingrid a second to remember what Emily was talking about. “I left my panties last time. Somewhere in the woods is a little cross-dressing raccoon with my panties!”

  “You have to hunt up that raccoon. You have to get Hazel to do a location spell for you, and then you have to find it and kill it. Dead. Shovel it. Shovel it hard.”

  “Ew! No!”

  “Killlll it,” Emily moaned. “Killll it before it tracks you down by scent and eats your face.”

  “I will go no farther,” Ingrid shouted. “I am done. I have splinters in my butt. I have a near miss on my wine. We could only bring seventeen of these home, and we drank one tonight already. This is number eleven. Eleven.”

  Emily was laughing too hard for Ingrid to bother to continue.

  “Wine,” she said sadly. “Evil dove remember the wine.”

  “Wine,” Emily agreed. “Let’s just do it here. We’re in the woods. We’ll do this ritual, whatever it is, and then we’ll leave and tell Hazel we tried, and she won’t even be able to detect a lie cause we totally did.”

  “And then wine?” Ingrid made a sad face, but she was kind of serious. Why couldn’t they at least do this in a back yard? Why did these crazy witches make them find obscure locations in the woods? Do the witches want them to die? Hazel had a nice yard. If the coven cut out the dead weight like Ingrid and Emily, they wouldn’t even be crowded. Or Autumn. They should definitely get rid of Autumn.

  Ingrid stumbled when her phone buzzed in her bra. She’d forgotten she put it in there, and it scared the crap out of her.

  Emily laughed at Ingrid’s gasp and grabbed the wine before she dropped it.

  “What?” Emily demanded, watching Ingrid dig in her bra with a quizzical expression.

  Ingrid pulled out her phone and found another text from one of her college boyfriends.

  “Sheldon again! He’s still sending me naughty texts. I’ve been ignoring them. Obviously. But I haven’t mentioned it to Gabe. I sort of feel guilty for that. I was hoping Sheldon would just stop. Persistent little pervert.” She sighed. “I’m going to have to tell Gabe. That is going to be awkward and also he’ll probably give me the guilt eyes. The ones that say ‘Ingrid, why didn’t you just tell me from the beginning?’ And then I’ll feel bad about that even though I don’t want to..”

  “Oooh,” Emily answered before tilting her head to consider. “Finger guy. You would think after losing control of your magic and hurting him, he wouldn’t try to look you up again later. Do you think he…manned up?”

  “No! He’s a whiner. He whined a lot about his stupid finger. Also, shut up. He totally wouldn’t have gotten hurt if he hadn’t… ”

  “What did he do again? Knock on your door when you were sleeping?” Emily was already laughing. She set the wine down to lean against the tree and cackle.

  “You sound like a fool. And a mean, evil dove. And he came into my room while I was sleeping and got into bed with me. I freaked out. I was having a bad dream.”

  “Oh yeah. Hadn’t we just watched all those monster movies? Speaking of someone who should have been shoveled, getting i
nto bed with a sleeping college girl is shovel worthy.”

  “He touched me when I was dreaming about Freddie Krueger. He got what was coming to him.” Leaning against an opposite tree, Ingrid crossed her arms over her chest at the memory. Sheldon losing his finger had been unfortunate. She must have just gotten phone service because a whole slew of texts from him came pouring in. There was one, very unwanted, picture. She was going to keep removing parts if he didn’t get a clue. “Sigh, my best dove, sigh. He’s coming to the island. He wants to have coffee.”

  Emily nodded. “He shouldn’t have come into your room. Over the line. You should know coffee is code for sex. But if you have lunch with him, I insist on being there. To protect your virtue. And to see you remove another finger. Why can’t that be my magic ability? I would remove so many fingers.”

  “And,” Ingrid said firmly, “his missing finger is a good reminder to not creep in on people. He should use it as a reminder to leave me alone. Coffee is not code for sex and my bed is otherwise occupied.”

  “A warning to all potential creeper victims. He dumped you right?”

  Ingrid nodded, making a face. “I mean, it wasn’t the first time I’d been dumped. But I was going to be the one who dumped him, and he beat me to it. Now he thinks he can just come here and what? Hook up again? Make me feel sorry about his missing digit and lack of piano abilities or other such things and then get into my pants?”

  “Jerk,” Emily said, pushing away from the tree. She assumed a serious expression that was utterly foreign to her normal one. “I told you that you should have shoveled him. Or punched him in the throat. Or…magically removed his thumb.”

  “Stop it, mean dove. I didn’t mean to hurt him. At least permanently. I did not mean to hurt him permanently.”

  “Let’s do this thing.”

  Ingrid stared at Emily and then snickered.

  “Shut up,” Emily said. She stretched her neck, held out her hands, and then sighed.

  “You don’t know how to start this ritual!” Ingrid laughed. She took the bottle of wine, struggled with the cork, and then finally it popped free. “That is hard, even with magic.”

  Emily frowned and then closed her eyes. “Oh—spirits…”

  Ingrid laughed, certain that start was wrong.

  Without opening her eyes, Emily said, “I will beat you to death with your own wine bottle and then finish the wine.”

  “Gross, you should drink the wine first.”

  Emily hummed and then snapped, “Close your eyes, focus on your magic, think happy thoughts.”

  Ingrid closed her eyes, knowing that getting back to her lickable sheriff would be faster if she’d just comply. He was probably there. Sleeping in her bed. All perfect and warm and snuggly. She focused on the well of her magic and thought about Gabe. He was tall, he had lovely broad shoulders, and coming back from St. Maarten’s to him had been legitimately exciting. He was rugged and strong. She hadn’t felt like this with anyone…except Harrison.

  At the thought of her dead husband, Ingrid’s power surged and the ground exploded around them.

  “That tree is on fire and you just blew a hole in the ground,” Emily said, cocking her head to examine it. Honestly, it wasn’t the first time that Ingrid had set something on fire, but maybe the first time she’d started terraforming. So, this was sort of par for the course for the two of them. For all of Emily’s threats of violence, it seemed to be Ingrid who actually hurt people. Accidentally or not.

  “Shut up,” Ingrid yelled, batting at her hair to ensure she wasn’t aflame. She backed up to get away from the fire and tripped again. “Damn it. Ouch. Ouch. This tree is squishy.”

  Emily scoffed, “If it’s squishy, it’s not a tree.”

  “But there’s sap,” Ingrid said, rolling over to push to her feet and realizing that the branch she was holding onto was a somewhat warm hand and it was not attached to a body. “Oh no.”

  “Quit whining. Let’s go.”

  Ingrid dropped the disembodied hand. “There’s a body.”

  Why was there a body? Why had she tripped on two bodies in the woods? Why had she gone into the woods once? Let alone twice!

  “Stop lying, you faker. I will beat you up. Just a little bit, since I love you.”

  Ingrid jumped to her feet so quickly she might have used magic and grabbed Emily’s arms to shake her. “There is a body, you evil, disbelieving dove. There is a body. We killed someone. With our magic. We killed someone dead, dead, dead. Damn it. Not again.”

  “Well, damn it,” Emily said calmly. “You have blood on you and you got it on me, and now we have to get rid of the body.”

  “Are you insane?” Ingrid was breathing so fast, she had to put her face between her knees. Dead people gook. She had dead people gook on her again. She needed to be power-washed. Immediately.

  “I have learned how to move things,” Emily said, patting Ingrid on the back. She sounded too calm. Why wasn’t she freaking out? Was she in some sort of booze haze? “I’ll just move aside some of the earth, we’ll push him in, and no one has to know that your magic killed someone.”

  “Your magic did!” Ingrid countered. “I wouldn’t have done magic without you. I’m going to throw up. Damn it. I am a murdering dove.”

  Emily moved the earth and shoved random pieces of dismembered body in with her magic while comforting Ingrid. “It was an accident, so maybe it doesn’t count?”

  Ingrid watched, horrified as the body disappeared.

  “Um,” Ingrid said. Had they just buried a body? Was this even happening? She needed to be dreaming.

  “Um,” Emily replied. She grabbed Ingrid’s hand and yanked her down the trail. “We must forget this ever happened.”

  It was possible, Ingrid realized, that they’d just buried a body.

  •••

  “Goodnight Ingrid. We’ll figure out a plan tomorrow. I must have sleep.” Emily held back the opportunity to torment Ingrid, thinking murder is murder even if it was an accident. But it was an accident. And it helped not knowing who the dead body belonged to.

  But was murder actually murder if it was an accident? They just needed no one to find out. They would have their memories wiped—by a witch who knew how to do that stuff. That way the guilt would go away. And they’d have the grave hidden. Also by a witch who could do things.

  Ingrid rolled her eyes at Emily, needing to be slapped a little bit. The panic in her gaze had not faded.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Maybe. I need to think this never happened. I need sleep. But maybe we don’t need a plan. What’s done is done, right? Oh goodness, what did we do?” Ingrid was bouncing on her feet, obviously fighting back horror at what had happened.

  But, they couldn’t just pretend. Not yet, anyway.

  “Did you forget,” Emily told her, “that you are dating the sheriff of this town and that we live on a very small island and someone will certainly find the bits of that poor dead body. It’s going to come out. We need to get ahead of it. We need better witches than us.”

  “Every witch is better than us,” Ingrid said absently.

  Emily was shutting the wrought-iron doors to the elevator to send Ingrid upstairs. She wanted to believe that the well of panic was not guilt. But it was a festering well of horrified guilt. Except, it was Ingrid’s magic that had hurt that guy. And Ingrid was going to lose it. Emily had to hold it together for Ingrid.

  With the look on Ingrid’s face—exhaustion bordering on panic—Emily changed tactics. “Tomorrow. We’ll decide tomorrow if there is anything that needs doing. Everything is fine. Just sleep.”

  She kissed her best friend on the cheek, something she reserved for times of real stress and concern. If this were a broken nail or wine emergency, Emily would have been horrible to Ingrid. But Emily knew that Ingrid’s pain was real. It had been her magic, after all, that killed the stranger in the woods. Emily watched as Ingrid half-heartedly pushed the elevator button that would take her to her private apartmen
t on the top floor of the building. Ingrid’s face was flat and vacant.

  The elevator doors closed, and Emily thoughtfully gnawed on her lip as she headed to her apartment door. “I’m going to have to put a stop to this. And soon,” she said even though no one was around.

  They were both involved now. It might have been Ingrid’s magic that had gone out of control, but Emily had buried the body. A rush of…was it the need to protect Ingrid? Something anyway. It had flooded over Emily, and she’d just had to do something. Make it go away.

  Her mind drifted to the scene in the woods. At first she’d thought Ingrid was screwing with her, but when Ingrid had grabbed Emily with bloody hands, she thought she would puke. Her instincts to protect Ingrid kicked in, and she’d used her one magical ability—levitation. Moving the earth with her magic was easy, and she knew she owed a debt to Aunt Hazel for insisting that she practice magic every day, even when they were on vacation at St. Maarten’s. It had paid off.

  But now Ingrid needed to sleep and Emily needed to think. She’d been a wreck the last few weeks since her ex-husband’s body was found in the basement of their bookstore, Enchanted Tales, and Ingrid had kept it together. It was Emily’s turn. By morning she would have a plan. A good one.

  She took a quick shower, tossed her clothes, and brewed a steaming cup of Earl Gray. With almond milk and vanilla syrup, this was her thinking drink. Coffee was her doing drink, and wine was her ‘refusing to deal’ drink, but tonight she needed to think. Tomorrow would bring all the coffee she could stand.

  She considered her options. First, she needed to know who they killed. And she would say they from now on. She wouldn’t put that on Ingrid, even playfully. Not yet anyway. There would come a time when she could mock her endlessly, call her a murderer, maybe even suggest one of those tattoos that symbolized how many people someone’s murdered. But it was too soon.

  She opened her phone and started searching Google. She typed “Tattoos symbolizing murder count” in the search bar and pressed enter, then set her phone down to let it think. Her cell service sucked in this corner of her apartment, she’d have to work that out later. But in the meantime, while the page loaded, she sipped her tea.