Moonlight Murder: An Inept Witches Mystery Read online

  So, a trip to the freaking forest at first light was on her list. She hated mornings. Every morning. But getting up early to hunt for a dead body. Yeah, not on her list of things to do. Ever. She sighed.

  Her phone buzzed and she answered immediately, only realizing after she accepted the call that it wasn’t Ingrid. It was Sam. The hot fireman. Hmmm. That gave her some ideas. Maybe he could help her unbury the body. No. That would be a disaster of epic proportions. Ingrid didn’t like Fireman Sam to begin with. If Emily brought him into their magical murder mystery tour, Ingrid would completely lose control. Sam would gain some new experiences with fire.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Emily. I’m just getting off my shift. Want to grab some dinner?”

  She wasn’t exactly hungry, but she could eat. She could always eat. Especially if she didn’t have to cook it. Plus it’d be nice to think about something else. Let her subconscious mind worry about how to keep Ingrid’s behind out of jail.

  “Um, yeah. I’m gonna need at least dinner. I hope you are prepared for more. I’ve had a craptastic day.”

  “Okay, I’ll pick you up in 10 minutes. We can go to that 24-hour diner.”

  “Mmm. I could totally use a chocolate malt right now. Extra malt. And fried chicken. And mashed potatoes and gravy.”

  Sam laughed. “Okay, I’ll stop by the bank for a loan before I pick you up.”

  “Uh, yeah, no. 24-hour loan officers are not an actual thing. I’ve got my own money, well, it’s Ingrid’s money, but whatever. And I’ll meet you there. I want to walk anyway.”

  He started to protest, but she hung up before he could get a sentence out.

  She didn’t like being taken care of, not by a guy, and that wasn’t going to change, no matter how insanely hot the fireman was. Besides, and this was the important part, she needed a minute to think about the body in the woods. Because there was a Holy Mary Mother of Pearl body in the woods.

  •••

  Ingrid didn’t start thinking again until she was in the shower, scrubbing blood off of her body. She scrubbed her hands until the water ran clear. Then she washed her hair four times. Once her hair was piled on top of her head, she took today’s clothes, shoes included, and lit them on fire with magic in the shower. The shower was big enough that she could stand outside of the streams of water with her clothes burning fueled entirely by her magic.

  “Oh my…” Her hands were shaking when she finally wrapped herself in a robe and put a towel around her hair, so she made her way to the mini-wine cellar she’d had built in her apartment. She stared at the wine until her eyes focused on the bottles of the St. Maarten’s wine from the vacation.

  “What the hell was that?” she asked herself. She pulled aside several bottles of wine to find the truth serum she’d bought from Saffron, a witch who’d joined the Sage Island coven from some creepy coven. When Ingrid had been finding a way to get Emily off murder charges for her dead husband, it had been Saffron’s former North Island coven that had been recommended to Ingrid. She brought the serum out, made herself a cup of coffee, and poured it into the beautiful brew.

  She played with the empty vial, rolling it in between her palms and staring vacantly around her apartment. It was the top floor of a four-story building on Sage Island. Emily’s apartment was a floor down, followed by another floor of apartments they rented out and then shops on the ground floor. Their hobby bookshop, Enchanted Tales, was down there with several other shops, but they hadn’t walked through the doors of the bookstore since they’d returned from St. Maarten’s.

  Without daring to look at it, Ingrid lifted her mug and gulped the doctored coffee, not even noticing the burn.

  Then she pulled out her phone and tried to text Emily, We didn’t murder that guy.

  But she couldn’t. Her hands wouldn’t do it. Instead they typed,

  We murdered that guy with magic. What the HELL?

  When she wasn’t able to lie—even with her fingers—her hands started shaking. Holy Holy! They’d buried some poor random dove in the woods. I mean, she thought, he was lurking in the woods with two lost girls around. That was creepy. Maybe he was up to no good before she’d blown him up.

  It didn’t make her feel better. She wanted it to make her feel better, but it didn’t. Oh man. Oh man. Oh man.

  They were going to have to hire the evil coven to get them out of trouble, bunnies would be murdered, and more importantly, she was going to feel bad forever.

  Like—was this karma? What had she done to deserve this?

  “Hey,” Gabe said from the doorway to the bedroom. Oh, this was not good. He was supposed to stay sleeping when she truth-serumed herself. He wore only boxer shorts and everything about him was something that begged her to leap into his arms and plead for help.

  Ingrid tried not to vomit at him. Don’t say anything, she told herself.

  “Hey,” she replied carefully, biting the word out to keep any thing else, like confessions, from spewing forth.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Um,” she said. She shrugged.

  He crossed the room and felt her forehead.

  “You’re kind of warm.”

  “Um,” she said. She rubbed her eyes and told herself to say nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

  “Come to bed,” he said. He pulled her to her feet and across the room. “You’ll feel better after you sleep.”

  Why had she truth-serumed herself? Why had she done it when Gabe could wake up any minute? Where was her phone? What had she been thinking? Oh gods, she was in so much trouble. He could not look at her phone. The irritating and naughty texts that her ex-boyfriend had been sending her were the least of the reasons that the Sheriff of Sage Island could definitely not see her phone. Now she had to hide her murdering ways from him too.

  “You’re too nice,” she told him. He was. He was too nice and too good for her. He was tall, handsome in the rugged, perfect way she loved. He did not have a white beard and no ivory tower arrogance. And he did not semi-despise her like her dead husband Harrison had. Oh gods, she thought, why in all that was holy had she truth-serumed herself during a mental melt down? She did not want to think about her dead husband.

  He kissed her softly on the lips and said, “I’m only after you for your money.”

  She laughed. And her eyes teared. It wasn’t true. She’d found the one guy who wasn’t after her for the money her first husband had left her. And she’d ruined it by killing someone and burying his body. She was going to have to break up with Gabe before he was forced to arrest her and put her and Emily in jail to rot, like the evil witches they were.

  Accidentally evil.

  If it was an accident and wasn’t intended, it wasn’t evil right? It was just…stupid.

  She realized she didn’t want to break up with him before he broke up with her. Or before he arrested her. And that thought made her thoroughly sick to her stomach.

  He was just supposed to be her pretty play thing. She wasn’t supposed to feel this agonizing shot of pain at the idea of them breaking up.

  “Oh gods,” she said aloud as he pulled her close to his body, wrapped her up in his warmth, and whispered, “It’ll be all right, Ingrid. You’ll feel better soon.”

  Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, she repeated silently until he settled into sleep. It was the only thing that kept her from shouting, I’ll never feel better again. Oh gods, I feel things for you and there’s a body in the woods, and you were just supposed to be my pretty lickable play dove.

  As soon as he fell asleep, she snuck out of his arms to find and hide her phone. In the kitchen alone, she said, “Oh gods, Ingrid. Oh gods. What have you done?”

  She shut her phone off and hid it at the bottom of her tampon box just in case. Not that Gabe would look at it, but what if he did?

  Chapter Two

  Out of the Frying Pan

  Thursday Morning

  If Emily was going to be honest with herself, she would ha
ve to admit that the sunrise, though beautiful, made her want to find a random stranger and claw his face. She’d had no sleep since she and Ingrid had become killers, her fried chicken at the diner was raw on the inside, and her make-out session with Fireman Sam was interrupted by her damn conscious who insisted that she shouldn’t be macking on a hot fireman only hours after killing and then burying someone. Instead, she’d said goodbye to Sam and sent him on his way.

  “But why can’t I just stay with you, Em? I don't have to work for another 24.”

  “Uh, yeah, sorry. Ingrid and I have some, um, some shop stuff to deal with. You know how it goes, a vintage-bookstore-slash-herbery is in high demand these days.”

  He’d been irritated. She could see it on his face, but because she’d said she wanted more than dinner from him, didn’t mean that a girl wasn’t entitled to change her mind. That had been her murderer brain trying to distract itself anyway. Sam was hot, but she really wasn’t ready to get serious with him. Especially now that she’d likely spend the rest of her adult life behind bars. Her life was about to become Orange is the New Black, and Emily did not like girls in that way.

  So she sent Sam on his way and made a strong cup of coffee—now it was time for doing. As soon as she could see the light begin to appear in the eastern sky, she jumped in the Camaro that she and Ingrid shared. Emily’s Uncle Jonas had left it to her after Owen’s murder. If she didn’t know better, she’d think this damn car was haunted. She’d gotten it from a dead person anyway. It just made sense that it would be possessed or something. The doors would just lock themselves sometimes, and at other times the accelerator would stick at 47. Not 48 or 49. 47. And then there was how Ingrid had an incredibly large number of wardrobe malfunctions in the car.

  What was that? Hopefully it wouldn’t act up today, though. Emily had almost-filed murder charges to beat. There was no time for ghosty sports cars, no matter how awesome.

  She stomped through the woods in jeans, hiking boots and a flannel shirt. It was late October and there was a chill in the air that promised winter was around the corner. When she rounded through the last thicket of trees and saw that her hurried grave-making skills had been disrupted and there was no longer a body in the grave, her stomach fell and her anxiety climbed.

  Great. Now someone knows there was a dead body. It was only a matter of time before someone figured out the stranger had been blown apart by magic. She needed Hazel.

  Emily pulled out her phone and called her. No answer. Then she texted her. “Auntie,” she typed, “uh, Ingrid and I need to come by later today and have our auras cleansed. Again. There is a situation.”

  If Hazel, head of the Sage Island Coven and sister to Emily’s dead mother, was serious about anything at all, it was magic. And auras. Normally a calm, genteel woman, when someone had a messy aura, Hazel made it her personal mission to cleanse it. Or run them out of town. Either way.

  And in this case, Emily wasn’t so sure that Hazel wouldn’t send Emily and Ingrid both right back out of town. St. Maarten's was lovely this time of year, Emily daydreamed. We could buy a little cottage near the winery we visited…

  “Snap out of it, Emily,” she scolded herself. We aren't leaving. Probably. Emily would run down a massive number of people to escape jail and drag Ingrid along behind. But plan A was to avoid jail. It had been an accident. They were witches. There were options.

  Frowning at her phone and the lack of a return text from Hazel, Emily decided it was time for some of Ingrid’s witch-brewed coffee that tasted like magic and coziness all at once.

  They would plan and they would figure something out. Even if it was just fleeing the country with all their money. She suspected that Ingrid would have a tough time leaving Gabe but doubted seriously that Gabe would want Ingrid to become someone’s plaything in prison. Emily just couldn’t picture Ingrid locked up.

  A memory from last night flashed through her brain. “No. No, no, no. No. No! The wine bottle. Gods!”

  Emily dug through the scarred earth for the bottle of wine they’d been carrying with them last night. It was nowhere to be found. She raced back to her car and dug through the backseat and then the trunk of the ghost Camaro. “Come on, Ghosty. Don’t let me down. Be here, be here,” Emily pled with the car to have the wine bottle she searched for. But it wasn’t there.

  “Well, we are definitely going to jail now. Ingrid is gonna be pissed.”

  •••

  “Sorry I left last night,” Gabe said. He’d come into the apartment using his key. Ingrid tried not to throw up at the sight of him. What was she going to do? They needed help, but she didn’t think she could tell him the truth.

  “Hi honey,” she would say, calling him honey for the first time, “Me and Em were pretty drunk last night, trying to get to one of those naked witch fests, and we decided to do the magic ourselves. We blew stuff up, including a random, lurking man, and then—in our best judgement—which was admittedly terrible, we buried the body. Ooops. Save me?”

  Right.

  “Was there a late night island jaywalker?” She tried to be funny, but even to her, the words sounded wooden.

  “Actually,” he sounded tired, she realized, and felt a flash of concern, “I got a call from Hazel. She sensed a murder. That sounds so certifiable. The local coven leader called me in the middle of the night, and I went and got her, and then we found a body.”

  Emily walked in just as he said, “we found a body.”

  The friends’ gazes met in silent panic.

  “I should be,” Gabe continued, “put into a hospital and medicated after saying something like that. But the only person who was surprised was Kevin. My new deputy thought I was insane until we found the body. Now he’s eying Hazel like she’s the devil.”

  “That won’t go well,” Emily said, sitting at the table. She’d brought donuts, and Ingrid shoved one into her mouth to keep herself from saying anything. Then she got up to make everyone coffee with her magic touch.

  Gabe got his first, and he sighed as he sipped it.

  “I can’t believe we’ve had a murder on the island. Another one,” he shook his head, looking exhausted. Ingrid wanted to wrap her arms around him and lead him to bed, but she had been on the edge of puking and panic for hours now. She could barely breathe.

  “How do you know it wasn’t an accident,” Emily asked, idly taking the coffee that Ingrid handed over. Ingrid shot Emily a look to tell her to stop probing immediately, but Emily shook her head slightly.

  “The gunshot wounds were a pretty good indication,” Gabe said. “I can’t give you the details.”

  “Did you say gunshot wounds,” they asked in unison. Ingrid was very precisely not looking at Emily or Gabe. She swirled her coffee in the cup idly, without any sign of the interior storm she was experiencing. It was almost as bad as when she’d realized that she’d killed the guy. But wait! She hadn’t! She hadn’t killed anyone. Sure, she might have mutilated a body a little bit, but that was totally different.

  And it was an accident.

  She wanted to dance. Needed to run around the apartment shouting. The relief was overwhelming. Sure, they shouldn’t have buried a body. That was bad. Very bad, even. But she hadn’t killed anyone.

  Gabe looked at them with a raised eyebrow, then shook his head. “I’m going to work. Lots of paperwork. This was supposed to be a small, simple town with no crime…” He kept mumbling even as Ingrid kissed him on the cheek, and he walked out the door.

  “Bye Sheriff,” Emily called after him.

  He didn’t answer and the door shut behind him. Ingrid leaped into the air. “Wahoo for death by gunshot.”

  Emily stayed calm, quiet. “There was nothing to worry about. I told you. I haven’t even thought about it since you got in the elevator last night.”

  “Whatever, Emily. If I know you, you’ve been up all night trying to figure out how to keep your best friend and sugar-mama from going to jail. Also, I don’t even have to guess. I can tell by
the dark circles under your eyes.” She shook her head with fake-disapproval. “Beauty Magic 101: Keep yourself looking amazing. Honestly, my darling, non-murdering dove, it’s like you never listen to me at all.”

  Ingrid thought she might vomit from the lack of reason to be stressed. They didn’t kill the lurker. Life was good. Maybe time for a pedicure. And to break her own rule of no wine before noon.

  But Emily wasn’t talking. Something must be bugging her. It was then that Ingrid, finally relieved enough to notice her surroundings, noticed that Emily was fully dressed.

  “Um, given that I was nearly a hardened criminal only moments ago, I don’t want to seem all judgey, but you look like Outdoor Spice. What the what, Emmy my dove?”

  “Outdoor Spice? I don’t think that is a thing. Baby, Posh…what are the others named?”

  Ingrid only glared at her with her arms folded tightly across her chest. “What gives, Em?”

  “Well, first of all, you were not almost a hardened criminal. Give me a break. You are like the farthest thing from a criminal. However, I did research murder tattoos. I couldn’t sleep so I totally designed an awesome one for you in Photoshop. It’s all colorful and awesome—”

  Ingrid cleared her throat, and Emily pretended to be apologetic, not that Ingrid would believe it, but Emily continued. “But then, when I stopped screwing around—after Fireman Sam left—I decided to go back to the scene. You know our little spot in the woods where horrific things keep happening to us? Anyway, I saw the body had been dug up. I wanted to figure out who it was we killed so we could decide whether to feel bad, but then he was gone. I didn’t know until right now that your Mayberry sheriff had found it.”

  “Em, dove. You shouldn’t have gone out there by yourself. I mean, I’m swearing off the woods. And I wouldn’t go out there again. Not even to search for your body. But anyway, it doesn’t matter because we didn’t do it! Didn’t you hear my awesome lickable sheriff just tell us we were in the clear. Well, that’s not exactly what he said, but you get the idea. We didn’t shoot him. So, hurray.”