Page 48 of Last Witch Attempt
“Yes, well, that is my lot in life. I’ve never been overly handsome, so I had to win people over with my personality.”
I gave him a sidelong look. “I hate to break it to you, but women—and a lot of men, for that matter—swoon when they see you. I know you don’t care about women swooning, but it’s totally a thing.”
Evan grinned. “It’s always nice to be swooned over. People aren’t swooning because of my looks, though. It’s the vampire thing.”
“It’s both. People who don’t know you’re a vampire swoon.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not, but there’s nothing to argue about.” I glanced around the clearing one more time. “There’s nothing here.”
“You like a clear path to follow,” Evan said. “We’ll find answers. Maybe we should track down Tillie.”
“She was downtown an hour ago … doing costume changes. She had both her four-wheeler and scooter. She wore her redcape with the scooter and purple cape with the four-wheeler. She kept zipping past the diner, changing outfits and mode of transportation.”
Evan’s forehead puckered. “Why would she do that?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. If I could understand the way Aunt Tillie’s mind works, I wouldn’t have half the headaches I’m regularly plagued by.”
Evan rolled his neck. “That seems weird even for her.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.” We started back toward my car. “She’s a pain in the butt. Maybe this is her new strategy to drive Mrs. Little crazy.”
“I could see that.”
My phone buzzed with an incoming call when we were almost back to the road. I wasn’t surprised to see Landon’s name on the screen.
“Aw, he’s making sure you didn’t do something stupid,” Evan teased. “It’s kind of sweet.”
I pinned him with a dark glare before answering. “I’m still alive,” I drawled.
“You can be as angry as you want,” Landon replied, his tone even but brimming with agitation. “You said you would text, and you didn’t.”
“Sorry. Evan and I got to talking about the nature of three-pronged magic versus four-pronged magic, and I got distracted. I’m fine. Nothing happened, and we didn’t find anything of interest out here.”
“You’re still there?”
“We’re getting into the car now. We didn’t find anything.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I would like to know which direction to point my efforts.”
“No arachnids or anything?”
“No. What about you? Did the mother give you anything?”
“She gave us a reason for why they were up here. I guess they reserved the cabin in the winter to snowmobile and had to cancel because one of them got sick. They couldn’t get a full refund and negotiated a cheap stay with the cabin owner. The plan was just to drink and hang out. Also, there was something about maybe getting a line on some work—they’re all in construction—and they were going to check that out too.”
“Okay. I guess we can rule out them being involved in something nefarious.”
Landon agreed. “The mother is understandably upset. She doesn’t have anything to offer, though.”
“And Steve?” I asked. “How is he handling things?”
“As well as can be expected,” Landon said. That suggested Steve was close enough, although likely not on top of him, that he didn’t want to risk his boss overhearing us talking about him.
“I’m going to the inn,” I said. “I have nothing to do in town, and I want to track down Aunt Tillie.”
