Night of the Raven

“Have no business being in my grandmother’s house.”

“You’re gonna have to get past that one, I’m afraid. Truth is I have all kinds of business here.” He shifted position when she almost liberated her other knee. “As far as I know, your grandmother’s somewhere in the Caribbean with two of her friends and one very old man who’s sliding down the slippery slope toward his hundred and second birthday.”

His words startled a disbelieving laugh out of her. “Nana took old Rooney Blume to the Caribbean?”

“That’s the story I got. No idea if it’s true. Her private life’s not my concern. You, on the other hand, are very much my concern, seeing as you’re lying on my kitchen floor behaving like a wildcat.”

“Nana’s kitchen floor.”

“Rent’s paid, floor’s mine. So’s the badge you probably failed to notice on the table above us.”

Doubt crept in. “Badge, as in cop?”

“Badge as in chief of police. Raven’s Cove,” he added before she could ask.

The red haze clouding Amara’s vision began to dissolve. “You said rent. If you’re a cop, why are you renting my grandmother’s house?”

“Because the first place she rented to me developed serious plumbing and electrical issues, both of which are in the process of being rectified.”

Why a laugh should tickle her throat was beyond her. “Would that first place be Black Rock Cottage, rebuilt from a ruin fifty years ago by my grandfather and renovated last year by Wrecking Ball Buck Blume?”

“That’d be it.”

“Then I’m sorry I scratched you.”

“Does that mean you’re done trying to turn me into a eunuch?”

“Maybe.”

“As reassurances go, I’m not feeling it, Red.”

“Put yourself in my position. My grandmother didn’t mention a Caribbean vacation when I spoke to her yesterday.”

“So, thinking she was here, you opted to break and enter your grandmother’s home rather than knock on the door.”

“I knocked. No one answered. Nana keeps an extra key taped to a flowerpot on her back stoop. And before you tell me how careless that is, mine’s bigger.”

To her relief, he let go of her wrists and pushed himself to his knees. He was still straddling her, but at least his far too appealing face wasn’t quite so close. “Your what?”

“Omission. Nana didn’t mention an extra key to you, and she didn’t mention you to me.” She squirmed a little, then immediately wished she hadn’t. “Uh, do you mind? Thanks,” she murmured when he got to his feet.

“I’d say no problem if the damn room would stop spinning.”

Still wary, Amara accepted the hand he held down to her. “Would you like me to look at your head?”

“Why?”

“Because you might have a concussion.”

“That’s a given, Red. I meant why you? Are you a doctor?”

“I’m a reconstructive surgeon.”

“Seriously?” Laughing, he started for the back door. “You do face and butt lifts for a living?”

What had come perilously close to going hot and squishy inside her hardened. Her lips quirked into a cool smile. “There you go. Whatever pays the bills.”

“If you say so.”

She maintained her pleasant expression. “Returning to the omission thing... Can you think of any reason why Nana would neglect to mention you were living here when we talked?”

“You had a bad connection?”

Or more likely insufficient time to relate many details, thanks to Lieutenant Michaels, who’d done everything in his power, short of tearing the phone from her hand and tossing her into the backseat of his car, to hasten their departure. Amara glanced up as a gust of wind whistled through the rafters. “My mother would call this an omen and say I shouldn’t have come.”

“Yeah?” The cop—he’d said McVey, hadn’t he?—picked up and tapped his iPhone as he wandered past the island. “She into the woo-woo stuff, too?”

“If by that you mean does she believe in some of the local legends? Absolutely.”

He glanced at her. “There’re more than two?”

“There are more than two hundred, but most of them are offshoots of the interconnected original pair. The Blumes are very big on their ancestor Hezekiah’s transformation into a raven.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“That transformation is largely blamed on the Bellam witches.”

“The Bellams being your ancestors.”

“My grandmother’s surname gave it away, huh?”

“Among other things. Setting the bulk of them aside and assuming you’re Amara, your gran sent me a very short, very cryptic text message last night.”

“You’re just opening a text from last night now?”

“Give me a break, Red. It’s my day off, this is my personal phone and the windstorm out there dislodged four shutters that I’ve spent the better part of the past twelve hours repairing and reattaching.” He turned his iPhone so she could see the screen. “According to Grandma Bellam, you’re in a whack of trouble from the crime lord you helped convict.”

Amara read the message, then returned her gaze to his unfathomable and strangely compelling eyes. “Whack being the operative word. Look, it’s late, and I’m intruding—apparently. I’m sure one of my aunts, uncles or cousins will put me up for the night.” Wanting some distance between them, she started for the door. “I left my rental car at the foot of the driveway. It’s pointed toward Raven’s Hollow. As luck would have it, that’s where my less antagonistic relatives live. So I’ll leave you to whatever you were doing before we met and go break into one of their houses.” She rummaged through her shoulder bag and produced the back door key. “I’ll put this back under the flowerpot. Nana locks herself out at least three times a year.”

Setting his phone on the island, McVey moved toward her. “Forget the key, Amara. Talk to me about this ‘whack of trouble.’”

“It’s a—sticky story.”

“I’m a cop. I’m used to sticky. I’m also fine with ‘sounds crazy,’ if that helps.”

It didn’t. Neither did the fact that he’d ventured far enough into the light that she could see her initial assessment of him had been dead-on. The man was...well, gorgeous worked as well as any other word.

Long dark hair swept away from a pair of riveting brown eyes, and what female alive wouldn’t kill for those cheekbones? Then there was the lean, rangy body. She wouldn’t mind having that on top of her again.... And, God help her, where had that thought come from? She seriously needed to get her hormones under control, because no way should the idea of—okay, admit it—sex with an überhot man send her thoughts careening off to fantasyland.

Jimmy Sparks, vicious head of a family chock full of homicidal relatives, wanted her dead. She couldn’t go back to New Orleans or her job, and she couldn’t reasonably expect Lieutenant Michaels to do any more than he’d already done to help her. Her grandmother wasn’t in Raven’s Hollow, and Amara figured she’d probably alienated the Cove cop who was to the point where he might actually consider turning her over to Jimmy’s kith and kin simply to be rid of her.

“I really am sorry about all of this.” She backed toward the mudroom. “I wasn’t expecting to find...”

“A wolf in Grandma’s cottage?” He continued to advance. “Still waiting for the story, Red. If the trouble part’s too big a leap, start with the ‘less antagonistic relatives’ reference.”

“First off, I’d rather you called me Amara. You can see for yourself, my hair’s more brown than red. Which, when you get right down to it, is the story of my relatives in an extremely simplified nutshell.”

“Gonna need a bit more than that, I’m afraid. So far all I’ve got is that you’re the descendant of a Bellam witch.”

“Yes, but the question is which witch? Most Bellams can trace the roots of their family tree back to Nola. There are only a handful of us who have her lesser-known sister Sarah’s blood.”

Finally, thankfully, he stopped moving. “If Nola and Sarah were sisters, what’s the difference blood-wise?”

“Nola Bellam was married to Hezekiah Blume. At least she was, until Hezekiah went on a killing spree. According to the Blume legend, he repented. However, all those deaths got him turned into a clairvoyant raven. There wasn’t a large window of opportunity for Nola to get pregnant. Unless you add in the unpleasant fact that Hezekiah’s brother Ezekiel raped her, accused her of being a witch, then hunted her down and tried to destroy her. Thus, Hezekiah’s killing spree.”

“Complicated stuff.”

“Isn’t it? It gets worse, too, because, as luck would have it, sister Sarah had a thing for Ezekiel.”

“And that ‘thing’ resulted in a child?”

“You catch on quick. Sarah had a daughter, who had a daughter and so on. So did Nola, of course, but not with Hezekiah. Even in legend, humans and ravens can’t mate. Long story short, and rape notwithstanding, Nola never gave birth to a Blume baby. Sarah did.” Amara shrugged. “I’m sure you know by now that Blumes and Bellams have been at odds for...well, ever. Raven’s Cove versus Raven’s Hollow in all things legendary and logical. So where does a Bellam with Blume blood in her background fit in? Does she cast spells or fall victim to them? And which town does she claim for her own? You can imagine the genetic dilemma.”

McVey cocked his head. “You’re not going to go all weird and spooky on me, are you?”

“Haven’t got time for that, unfortunately.”

“Knowing Jimmy Sparks, I tend to agree.”

Her fingers froze on the doorknob. “You know him?”

“We’ve met once or twice.” McVey sent her a casual smile. “Well, I say met, but it was really more a case of I shot at him.”

“You fired bullets at Jimmy King-of-Grudges Sparks and lived to tell about it?”

“Put the living-to-tell part down to pure, dumb luck. I was painfully green at the time, but I was also a better shot than my partner, who took it upon himself through me to try to blow Sparks’s tires out after we witnessed an illegal late-night exchange.”

“And?”

“I hit two tires before someone inside the vehicle fired back. The shooter winged my partner. He got me in the shoulder, then got off when our report of the incident mysteriously disappeared. Before the night was done, we’d been ordered to forget the whole thing.”

“Lucky Jimmy.”

“Is that censure I hear in your voice, Red?”

“On the off chance that you actually do have a concussion, let’s call it curiosity.”

“Let’s call it not your business, and move on to why one of this country’s least-favorite sons is giving you, the descendant of a Maine witch, grief.”

“I helped send him to prison. Seems my testimony pissed him off.”

“Thereby landing you in a whack of trouble and leaving me with one last burning question.” Without appearing to move, he closed the gap between them, wrapped his fingers and thumb lightly around her jaw and tipped her head back to stare down at her. “Why the hell has your witchy face been in my head for the past fifteen years?”

Chapter Four

He didn’t expect an answer. He wasn’t even sure why he’d asked the question. True, she looked very much like the woman in his recurring dream, but the longer he stared at her—couldn’t help that part, unfortunately—the more the differences added up.

On closer inspection, Amara’s hair really was more brown than red. Her features were also significantly finer than...whomever. Her gray eyes verged on charcoal, her slim curves were much better toned and her legs were the longest he’d seen on any woman anywhere.

He might have lingered on the last thing if she hadn’t slapped a hand to his chest, narrowed those beautiful charcoal eyes to slits and seared him with a glare.

“What do you mean my face has been in your head for fifteen years? What the hell kind of question is that?”

A faint smile touched his lips. “Given my potentially concussed state, call it curiosity and forget I asked.”

The suspicion returned. “Are you sure my grandmother’s in the Caribbean and not locked in a closet upstairs?”

“This might not be the best time to be giving me ideas.” With his eyes still on hers, he pulled a beeping iPhone from his pocket and pressed the speaker button. “What is it, Jake?”

“Got a problem here, Chief.”

His deputy sounded stoked, which was never a good sign. But it was the background noises—the thumps, shouts and crashes—that told the story.

“Bar fight got out of hand, huh?”

“Wasn’t my fault.” Jake had to yell above the sound of shattering glass. “All I did was tell the witch people to mount their broomsticks and fly off home.”

“You know you’re in Raven’s Hollow, right? Raven’s Hollow, Bellam territory.”

“Can I help it if folks in this town are touchy about their ancestors?”

“This night is deteriorating faster by the minute,” McVey muttered.

Jake made a guttural sound as a fist struck someone’s face. “Raven’s Cove was settled first, and that’s a fact. Why’re you sticking up for a bunch of interlopers who can’t hold their liquor and are proud of the fact that one of their stupid witch women made it so my great-great-whatever-granddaddy got turned into a bird?”

Were they actually having this conversation? McVey regarded Amara, who’d heard every word, and, holding her gaze, said calmly, “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

He could see she was trying not to laugh as he pocketed his phone and bent to retrieve the gun he’d lost during their scuffle.

“Sorry, but I did warn you, McVey.”

“No, you didn’t. You said your Raven’s Hollow relatives represented the less antagonistic side of the family. That’s not how Jake Blume’s telling it.”

“Twenty bucks says Jake started it.”

Since that was entirely possible, McVey stuffed his weapon. “What can I say? He came with the job.”

“The job’s a powder keg, Chief, a fact that whoever talked you into it obviously neglected to mention. Raven’s Cove goes through police chiefs—”

“Like wolves go through grandmothers?” In a move intended to unsettle, he blocked her flight path. “Gonna need your keys, Red.”

Unfazed, she ran her index finger over his chest. “Are you telling me, Chief McVey, that a deputy came with the job, but a vehicle didn’t? Sounds like someone suckered you big time.”

“I’m beginning to agree.” And, damn it, get hot. “Keys are in case your car’s closing my truck in. Knowing Jake as I do, we need to leave now.”

“We?”

“You’re coming with me.”

“Excuse me?”

“Whack of trouble,” he reminded her, and was relieved when she ground her teeth.

Their banter was getting way out of hand. Given the situation, a distraction like that that could turn into something bad very quickly.

He caught her shoulders before she could object, turned and nudged her through the mudroom. “As much as I’d love to argue this out, my instincts tell me you have a functioning brain and no particular desire to wait here alone for whatever family member Jimmy Sparks chooses to sic on you.”

“I wasn’t planning to wait anywhere.”

“Right. You want to search for a place to flop in Raven’s Hollow. At night, in a windstorm, with no idea how many of your relatives are home and how many are participating in the destruction of a Blume-owned bar at Harrow and Main in the Hollow.”

“The Red Eye?” She laughed as he reached back to snag his badge from the table. “That’s gonna piss Uncle Lazarus right off—assuming he still holds the lease on the place, which he will, seeing as he’s notorious for acquiring properties and never selling them. Never selling anything, except possibly, like his ancestor Hezekiah, his soul.”

“I’m getting that you don’t like your uncle.”

“It’s not a question of like or dislike really. Uncle Lazarus is a miser and a misery of a man. He’s also quite reclusive. Even so, your paths must have crossed a time or two since you arrived.”

“More than a time or two, only once that mattered.”

Wind whipped strands of long hair up into her face the moment they stepped onto the back porch. “What did you do, fine him for jaywalking?”

“Nope.” McVey held the key ring in his mouth while he clipped the badge to his belt and checked his gun. “I arrested him for being drunk and disorderly.”

Amara clawed the hair from her face. “I’m sorry. I thought you said he was drunk.”

“He was hammered.”

“And disorderly.”

“He lurched into a dockside bar in Raven’s Cove, staggered across the floor and slugged a delivery driver in the stomach.” He pointed left. “My truck’s that way.”

“I see it. I’m waiting for the punch line.”

“No line, just two punches. The second was a right uppercut to the driver’s jaw. He’s lucky the guy didn’t file assault charges. I’d guess your uncle did a little boxing in his day.”

“He did a lot of things in his day. But burst into Two Toes Joe’s bar drunk? Not a chance.” She hesitated. “Did he say why he did it?”

“Driver was a courier. He’d delivered a large padded envelope to your uncle’s home in the north woods earlier that afternoon. Four hours later the guy’s eyes were rolling back in his head. Lazarus pumped a fist, laughed like a lunatic and fell facedown on the floor.”

“After which, you locked him in a jail cell.”

“Yep.”

“You put Lazarus Blume in jail and you’re still in the Cove? Still chief of...? Hey, wait a minute.” Already standing on the Ram truck’s running board, she turned to jab a finger into his chest. “That is seriously not fair. I knew— I just knew he’d let a male get away with more than a female.”

“What?”

“You heard me. You arrest him and nothing. No repercussions, no threats, no embellishing the whole suddenly sordid affair to your grandmother.”

Okay, he was lost—and beginning to question her sanity. “What suddenly sordid affair?”

She poked him again. “I snuck out of my grandmother’s house once, just once, so my friend and I could spy on her older sister’s date with the local hottie, and wouldn’t you know it, Uncle Lazarus spotted me. He dragged me back to Nana’s and informed me I’d be mucking out his stable for the rest of the summer. Yet here you stand, still employed and without a speck of manure on your hands.” She indicated herself, then him. “I’m a female, you’re a male. It’s not fair.” Huffing out a breath, she sat, yanked the door closed and flopped back in her seat, arms folded. “I should have put two curses on him.”

McVey climbed in beside her. “You put a— What did you do to him?”

She gave her fingers a casual flick. “What any self-respecting Bellam in my position would have done. I put a spell on the midnight snack Nana told me he always ate before going to bed. He had severe stomach cramps for the next three days. Some of my relatives swear they heard him laughing hysterically while the doctor was examining him. Other than cleaning his stables, I didn’t hear or see him again for the rest of the summer. He’d always been a loner, but Nana told me he became even more of a phantom after his...spell of indigestion. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I was fourteen when it happened, and except for a mutual relative’s funeral, our paths haven’t crossed again.”

McVey’s lips quirked as he started the engine. “Note to self. Grudges run in your family.”

She sent him a smoldering look. “Not a problem in your case, seeing as Uncle Lazarus’s grudges don’t appear to extend to men.”

“I was referring to you, Red.” The quirk of his lips became a full-fledged grin. “I’m not overly fond of stomach cramps.”

On the heels of that remark, wind swooped down to batter the side of his truck. McVey heard a loud crack among the trees crowding the house and glanced upward.

“Stomach cramps will be the least of your problems if one of those evergreens destroys Nana’s roof.” As Amara spoke, the porch light went out then stuttered back on. “That’s not good.”

“Tell me something that is.”

Overhead, a fierce gust of wind brought two large branches crashing down into the box of his truck.

“Dodgers probably lost by a landslide.” He handed Amara his cell phone. “Do me a favor and speed-dial Jake. Tell him I’ll need more than fifteen minutes.”

“I can help you pull the branches from the—”

That was as far as she got before three shots rang out behind them.

She started to swing around, but McVey shoved her down and dragged the gun from his waistband. Keeping a hand on her neck, he risked a look, saw nothing and swore softly under his breath.

Amara pried his hand free. “Who is it?” she asked with barely a hint of a tremor.

“No idea. One of my backups is in the glove box. It’s loaded. Use the keys.” He gave the door a kick to open it. “Meanwhile, stay here and stay down. Unless you want to be pushing up daisies next to your Bellam and/or Blume ancestors.”

“McVey, wait.” She grabbed his arm. “I don’t want you taking a bullet for me.”

“Don’t sweat it, Red.” He risked a second look into the woods. “Chances are only fifty-fifty that those shots were fired by someone in Jimmy Sparks’s family.”

* * *

HE DISAPPEARED SO QUICKLY, Amara had no chance to ask what he meant. Or to wonder if she’d heard him correctly.

For a moment she simply stared after him and thought that somewhere along the line she must have fallen down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe where police chiefs looked like hot rock stars and any vestige of reality had long since been stripped away by a raging northeaster. Who was this stranger with the wicked sexy body and dark hypnotic eyes?

“More to the point,” she said to her absent grandmother, “why didn’t you mention him when I called you last night?”

Knowing she needed to think, Amara tucked the question away. Three bullets had just been fired at close range. A glance through the rear window revealed nothing except the moon, a scattering of stars and no flashlight beam. Actually—had McVey even taken a flashlight?

“I need you to step on it, Chief.” Jake Blume’s unexpected shout sent Amara’s heart into her throat and almost caused her to drop the phone she’d speed-dialed without thinking. “You there, McVey?” the deputy yelled again. “Come on, what’s taking you?”

“McVey’s busy.” As she spoke she pulled the key out of the ignition. “My name’s Amara. We’re still at Shirley Bellam’s place.”

“You fooling around with my superior officer out on the edge of the north woods ain’t exactly my idea of help, sweetheart. Now, I don’t give a rat’s ass why you’re in possession of McVey’s phone. I just need you to put him on it.” He waited a beat before adding a reluctant, “Please.”

Amara tried one of the smaller keys in the glove box lock. “What you call fooling around, I call dodging bullets while your superior officer goes all Rambo and takes on an unidentified shooter in the woods. Trust me, his plate has more on it than yours does at the moment.”

“Wanna bet?” The deputy’s tight-lipped response gave way to a resounding punch. “You said Amara, right?” Another punch. “You wouldn’t be that little witch bitch who used to come here in the summer, would you? Because if you are, you scared the bejesus out of my kid brother by telling him you could talk to ravens.”

“Does it matter if I’m her?”

“Makes us cousins is all.”

Since he practically spit the words out, Amara assumed the idea didn’t sit well with him.

Behind her, three more shots rang out. She shoved another key into the lock—and breathed out in relief when the compartment popped open to reveal a 9 mm automatic. “Thank God.”

“Depends on your point of view,” Jake muttered. “As I recall, your last name’s Bellam.”

Irritated, she regarded the phone. “Did I mention someone’s firing a rifle out here? I’ve counted six shots so far.”

“Rifle shot, huh? Could be Owen thinking the sky’s fixing to fall on his cabin. Old Owen ain’t been right for years.”

Parallel world, Amara reminded herself. “Will ‘Old Owen’ know the difference between McVey and a piece of falling sky?”

“I said it could be Owen,” Jake countered. “It could just as easily be one of your backwoods cousins looking to shoot himself something feathered for the upcoming street barbecue.”