Page 13 of Last Witch Attempt
“Then go home and eat.” I handed her my keys. I had no intention of leaving, but there was no reason the others had to stay. “I’ll stick with Landon and Chief Terry.” I turned my uncertain eyes to my husband. “You’re going to call in Steve Newton, aren’t you?”
Steve Newton was his boss. Recently, he’d approached Landon and me about forming a paranormal task force of sorts. We wouldn’t be constantly working for the FBI in an investigative capacity, but we would be called in on certain cases.
“This is exactly the sort of case Steve has been looking for,” Landon replied, squeezing my elbow. “If you don’t want to be involved?—”
I cut him off with a firm headshake. We’d already talked about this. I was going to join the task force, at least on a temporary basis, until we started figuring things out.
“Okay.” Landon nodded, then glanced back at the others. “The rest of you head home. Especially you.” He glared at Crusty, who kept sending him little waves because he knew it unnerved Landon. “Have dinner—make sure you save some for us—and we’ll be in touch when we know more.”
Thistle shook her head. “If there’s something out here, maybe we should stay.”
“We’re okay,” I assured her. “I have magic. Evan will be around a bit longer.” I looked to the vampire for confirmation, and he nodded. “We’ll be fine.”
3
THREE
Landon told me not to touch the bodies—and I followed his orders—but that didn’t stop me from looking. The fact that I used magic to brighten the area around the bodies as the setting sun stretched the shadows wasn’t lost on my husband.
“Bay, do you really think this is a good idea?” Landon looked pained as he glanced between me and the path Chief Terry had taken back to the main road.
“I need to see,” I replied as I got closer to the first body. Normally, I wasn’t squeamish when it came to this sort of thing but I couldn’t stop myself from looking up at him several times as I tried to get a look at the ground beneath his feet.
“What are you looking for?” Landon asked.
“I’m trying to run it through my head,” I replied as he hunkered down with me. “We drove through there on our way to Mrs. Little’s house,” I explained. “The road was empty, which means whatever happened went down very close to the time we were there.”
Landon’s eyebrows moved toward one another. “Are you worried that you were the targets?”
“I hadn’t even considered that until you brought it up. I was feeling guilty that we just missed the action. I thought we could’ve saved them if we hadn’t spent so much time arguing about Bigfoot.”
Landon’s lips quirked. The situation was anything but funny, but he seemed amused. “Bigfoot, huh? I take it Clove was worked up.”
I shrugged. “She was just being Clove.” I scuffed my foot over a tree root and shook my head. “I think something is going on with Thistle, though.”
“Like what.” Landon was engaging in the conversation even though he had bigger things on his mind because he didn’t want me getting too worked up. I appreciated the effort.
“She’s hiding something.” I cocked my head and looked around, trying to imagine what happened.
“Do you think she’s pregnant?”
“That was my first assumption. She said she’s not.”
“Do you believe her?”
I shrugged and moved in front of one of the other men. “I don’t see why she would lie about a pregnancy. She saw what happened when Clove did it. She was unmarried, so she laid the groundwork if Thistle finds herself in the same predicament. I don’t think that’s it.”
“Okay, well…” Landon trailed off, frowning when I leaned to the side and called upon my magic to flash against the body. It looked like a small lightning storm. The atmosphere sparked with magic when I finished. “What the hell was that?” he demanded.
“She’s trying to see if she can find a magic echo,” Evan announced as he strolled back into the clearing. “This happened recently. If she can snag the memory, she might be able to see what happened to these men.”
“Because you believe what happened here is paranormal in nature,” Landon surmised, his gaze on me.
“Don’t you believe that?” I challenged. I didn’t see how he could think otherwise. “If it wasn’t paranormal, how did this happen?”
Landon’s hands landed on his hips as he looked around. I knew from past experience that he was really trying to work it out. “Just off the top of my head, I have to think that if this isn’t paranormal then a group of people are responsible.”
“Because even if it had been an ambush, once one of the men died, the natural instinct for the others would’ve been to panic and run,” I said.
