Night of the Raven (8 page)

“I’ll leave when I’m ready, and not before. I didn’t come all this way to tip my hat at you, McVey. I want to watch you squirm, knowing I’m here, knowing I know how it used to be, how you used to live and who you stepped on to get out.” His teeth gleamed in profile. “It’s not as if the tasty lady’s hard to look at.”

With a warning squeeze, McVey released his prisoner and shoved him forward. “Did the woman in the bar happen to mention that my tasty lady’s got the blood of a three-hundred-year-old witch in her veins?”

On his knees and coughing, Westor rubbed his throat. “Come on, man, you don’t believe that spooked-up crap, do you?”

McVey slung the rifle over his shoulder. “I believe what I see. Amara wanted the wind gone and, what do you know, it is. So here’s the really intriguing question.” His grin fell just short of evil. “What do you think would happen if she wanted you gone, too?”

Chapter Seven

Amara woke to find a raven staring at her from the ledge outside her window. Now, there was an interesting start to her first full day in Maine. On the upside, there’d been no spiders in her bed last night, and ravens, for all the local superstitions about them, had never frightened her.

McVey was another matter. She’d dreamed about him—hot, vivid dreams that had culminated with the two of them having sex in a north woods clearing filled with pointy boulders. The location might have been questionable, but the sex had been spectacular.

She replayed the highlights while she showered and dressed in a pair of faded jeans, black boots and a charcoal sweater the same color as her eyes. As far as Lieutenant Michaels’s death, Willy Sparks’s mission and the come-and-go man with the big knife and the creep-show leer went, she shut those thoughts away for examination later. That being after she’d poured at least two cups of coffee into her system.

The raven watched while she tidied the room but flew off with a noisy caw when she turned for the door. Very odd.

There was no sign of McVey on the second floor and no sound of him in the kitchen. At 8:15 a.m. on a misty Thursday morning, she imagined he was busy processing the handful of hungover brawlers who’d smashed up her uncle’s bar last night.

Better for the brawlers that McVey should mete out the punishment than her uncle. She was chuckling at that thought as she pushed through the swinging door. Two steps in, the chuckle gave way to stunned silence.

“Uncle Lazarus.” She made herself smile. “What a...nice surprise.” She raised her hands, palms out. “For the record, I didn’t throw a single punch at the Red Eye.”

“Never crossed my mind you did, niece. Taught you to kick and jab and get your knee up whenever possible. But all punching’ll get you is a fistful of swollen knuckles.”

“Right.” Why was she drawing a blank here? “Would you like some coffee?”

“Coffee is the devil’s brew.”

Strangely, his unyielding attitude relaxed her. “As I recall, you used to tell Nana I was the devil’s spawn. Maybe that’s why I can’t start my day without caffeine.”

“Likely so.”

He hadn’t taken his raven-black eyes off her, hadn’t moved in his seat or altered his expression since she’d come in. Although his stare was designed to intimidate, she held it for five long seconds before skirting the table and reaching for the pot of coffee McVey, bless him, must have brewed earlier.

Lazarus Blume had always been a riveting man, and fifteen years had done nothing to diminish that quality. He might be a little leaner around the cheekbones, but he still made her think of a pilgrim, right down to his plain clothes, his gray-streaked beard and the hair that stuck up in windblown tufts.

Determined to find whatever humor she could in the situation, Amara brought her mug back to where he sat. “There was a raven outside my window this morning, Uncle. He was watching me exactly the way you are now. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were him in human form.”

“And I’d say you were spouting useless Bellam rhetoric to avoid an unpleasant conversation.”

“Which would be an appropriate tactic since I’m a Bellam.”

He thrust himself forward. “You’re a Blume as well, and don’t you forget it.”

“My mother—”

“Gave you the surname that was given to her by her mother. I know how the Bellam family works, Amara. I also know that three people with whom you had a courtroom affiliation in New Orleans are dead, and the man around whom the affiliation revolved likely engineered those deaths from his prison cell.”

“Very likely. Unfortunately no one can prove it.”

“Which is why you’ve come home to Raven’s Hollow.” He turned a thumping fist into an accusing finger when she opened her mouth. “Don’t you dare say this isn’t your home. Your mother grew up and married here, and you spent ten consecutive summers in this house with your grandmother. You’re connected, as we all are, to the first settlers who landed on these shores with the intention of forging better lives for themselves.”

He’d start reciting the Blume family history if she didn’t stop him. So she sat back, let her lips curve and said simply, “I hear you got yourself arrested recently, Uncle. I believe drunk and disorderly was the charge.”

He inhaled sharply through his nose. “I had my reasons.”

Because it wasn’t in Amara’s nature to be cruel, she softened her tone. “I’m sure you did. And you of all people know I’ve done my share of wrong things.” Because it
was
in her nature, she let mischief bubble up. “Like spy on a friend’s sister’s hot date. Or try to.”

Lazarus gave an approving nod. “Best damn mucking out of stables I ever saw. And now you’re a cosmetic surgeon.”

“Reconstructive surgeon.” Cupping her mug in her palms, she said, “Why did you come here today, Uncle? I know you don’t like me.”

“Don’t like you,” he bellowed, and pounded the table again. “Why, you were the only person, young or old, who ever made me laugh.”

“I did? You did?” Amara frowned. “When?”

“The summer of your fourteenth year, when I punished you for sneaking out of this house. Your grandmother said you put a spell on me.”

Why did the morning suddenly feel completely surreal to her? “I didn’t—well, yes, I did. But I put the spell on your midnight snack, not you.”

He nodded again. “Showed initiative. I appreciate that quality.”

“I think it showed I had a temper, but in any case, the medical side of my brain says your stomach troubles didn’t come from me.”

“It was still a feisty counterstrike.”

Amara sipped her coffee. “Aunt Maureen believed in the Bellam legend. She encouraged me to memorize a number of rhyming spells from a book she and Nana found in one of the attics at Bellam Manor. We—all of us—wanted Yolanda’s brother, Larry, to stop sleepwalking, or at least to wear clothes when he did it. I failed miserably.”

Her uncle flapped a hand. “My sister had a streak of ridiculous in her. Had an even bigger stubborn streak. She smoked herself into an early grave. Didn’t want a service or even a family gathering. That’s not right.”

“It was for her. I know you would have preferred a funeral, Uncle, but Aunt Maureen hated sad faces.”

“And naked sleepwalkers, it would seem.”

Amara glanced up, but his saturnine expression remained intact.

Pushing her chair back, she started to ask if he’d seen McVey, but a beep from her iPhone signaled an incoming message.

“You immerse yourself in the technology craze, too, do you?”

His stoic expression made her grin. “Let me guess. You think technology’s only a step below caffeine on the devil’s list of temptations.”

“Can’t tell you that, as I own a similar device. But I set it to vibrate when I’m socializing face-to-face.”

“It’s probably one of my colleagues in New Orleans. I had to reschedule several surgeries on the drive to...” Her voice trailed off. “Jackson.”

She stared unbelieving, first at her phone, then at the counter next to her. If her uncle spoke, and she thought he probably did, she only heard a freakish buzz, and even that was drowned out by the roar of blood in her ears.

She knew, vaguely knew, that the screen door slammed and someone else came into the kitchen.

McVey. Had to be.

He said something and crossed to the counter. Because she was already there, it was easy enough to catch his arm and stop him from reaching for a mug.

“Probably not the best idea,” she said, showing him the message she’d just received.

DID YOU DRINK THE COFFEE, AMARA?

* * *

W
ILLY
S
PARKS SWITCHED
off the stolen phone and tossed it into the trees. Time to leave, but hmm...

Uncle Jimmy was far more intrigued by small towns than he was by big cities. He claimed you could live in one your whole life, know everybody by name yet never know for sure who might be doing what to whom.

Maybe he was right. While the quite lovely Amara Bellam was inside her grandmother’s edge-of-the-woods house, undoubtedly thinking she’d been poisoned—too bad about the police chief showing up, but not every circumstance could be foreseen—a truly fascinating situation was unfolding a mere fifty yards away.

Perched in the branches of a leafy chestnut tree, Willy spied someone dressed in shades of brown and green. Someone with binoculars and a large hunting rifle, who appeared to be watching the people in the house.

* * *

“
I
’D BE ROYALLY
pissed off if I could get my heart to beat normally again.” Amara checked the tips of her fingers for any discoloration. “You swear you made this coffee, McVey?”

“Made it and drank two cups before I left.”

Her uncle nodded. “I’ve been sitting here since he left, so I can tell you no one’s tampered with it. Unless the tampering was done to the beans themselves. Then you’d both be poisoned.”

“More likely we’d be dead,” McVey remarked.

“Could be we’re all dead,” her uncle postulated, “and having this conversation wherever we wound up.”

McVey poured some of the brewed coffee into a jar and capped it. “That’d be hell for me.”

“Me, as well,” Lazarus agreed. “Since I don’t drink coffee, though, I must have died some other way. Maybe my heart gave out.”

Amara pressed lightly on her temples. “Excuse me, people, but am I the only one here who thinks this so-called conversation is almost as bent as the person who sent the message? Wait a second...” She narrowed accusing eyes at her uncle. “You were here before McVey left?”

“I had business,” he said stiffly.

“Business with a man who arrested you and whose butt you should have but didn’t put in a sling?” She aimed an I-told-you-so smile at McVey. “See? Males get preferential treatment over females.”

“We were talking poison, Red.” McVey opened the bag and sniffed the coffee beans, a sight that did nothing to quiet her still-jumping nerves. “We should stay on topic.”

“That being someone—undoubtedly Willy Sparks—wants me to know how easy it would be for him to kill me. And a strong dose of psychological terror never hurts, either.”

Her uncle stood. “What do you propose to do about this, Chief McVey?”

“What I can.” McVey picked up and tapped Amara’s phone. “Sparks is a pro. It’ll take more than a lucky guess to identify him. No one outside the family has a description, and no one within it will talk. You talk, you suffer. I understand Jimmy has a long-standing policy in that regard.”

“The Night of the Raven is coming up fast.” Amara paced off her jitters. “People are already arriving for the event.”

“I told my late sister’s nephew he could reopen Blume House to guests for the duration.” The look her uncle shot McVey had
challenge
written all over it. “What will you do about that?”

McVey glanced from the phone to her uncle and back. “I could suggest the name of the place be changed to the Hotel California and hope that that alone would cause the out-of-towners to turn tail. But more realistically, I’ll run incoming names and license plates, see what comes up.”

“That won’t—”

“He can’t arrest people for being strangers,” Amara interrupted her uncle. “And he can’t treat every stranger as if he or she were a criminal.”

“Hit man,” Lazarus corrected.

“Yes, thank you, I was trying not to use that phrase. The best idea—” she looked at McVey “—is for me to leave.”

“Been down that road, Red. Even if you could slip away—unlikely in my opinion—Willy won’t be happy, and neither will some of your relatives.”

Because he hadn’t raised his head to speak, Amara grabbed a handful of his hair and did it for him. “Fine. Give me a viable alternative.”

“Joe Blume.” He held up her phone. “The message you received was sent from Two Toes Joe’s cell.”

Amara released him because...well, mostly because his eyes and mouth were even more riveting today than they had been last night, and she really didn’t need to be quite as aware of that as she suddenly was.

“So Willy Sparks is a thief as well as a murderer,” her uncle said. “Is that your point?”

Amara held McVey’s gaze. “I think his point is simply an expansion of what he said before. Not only is Willy Sparks here, but he’s already connected some of the dots. If I leave the area, I’ll still die. I just won’t be the only member of my family to do it.”

* * *

T
HEY CLIMBED UP
to the attic, where the overview of the north woods tended to be impressive. Although Amara had hoped her uncle wouldn’t follow them, he pushed through the trapdoor a few seconds behind her.

He wouldn’t have it in him to “feel” the room, she thought, certainly not the way she’d felt it as a child. Family history books claimed Sarah had come here to hone her craft. Whether she’d done so alone or not had never been determined. Unfortunately much of Sarah’s life remained a mystery, even today.

She’d conjured things, Amara knew that much. The air smelled faintly of herbs and even the must of three centuries couldn’t erase lingering traces of woodsmoke.

She ran her fingers over a stack of dusty trunks. “Antiques hunters would see this place as a treasure trove.”

McVey pushed aside an enormous cobweb on his way to the cupola. “Spiders, mice and birds sure as hell do.”