RAVEN'S HOLLOW (3 page)

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.