Page 74 of Real Fake Hauntings

Standard dark magic stuff.

I called Dru to update her on the investigation, and since she didn’t pick up, I sent her a text gushing over the tour and letting her know Ian and I had some leads to follow tomorrow.

Three dots appeared on the screen, then they disappeared, then appeared again, then disappeared. Then I wrote, “Three times pay, I promise.”

I hate you.

To which I replied: Hate is the foundation of many beautiful friendships, for where there is a depth of feeling, there is the chance for blossoming love.

To which she answered with a puke emoji.

Beautiful friendship right here.

After I’d exhausted every internet search about the dark magic coven, I returned to watching some of the webcams’ footage. Sonia hadn’t called about any pentagram appearing during last night or today, so whoever had done them was done for now or, more likely in my opinion, had meant the pentagrams for that first night and Crane and my shop had been planned for the second.

And now either Crane’s death had been unintentional, and they had run for the hills, or his demise had a purpose and I was about to wake up to an even worse incident.

Hastily, I jumped off the bed and ran down to double check the locks and the alarm (with its shiny new code).

On my way back upstairs, I poured extra magic on the ward on the stairs. It might not amount to much, but at this point anything helped.

I should’ve asked Ian to bring Fluffy overnight.

Back on my bed with the laptop, I settled in to observe people having a smashing pre-Halloween night in Olmeda’s busy streets until Ian called and broke the spell of crowd-watching.

“Ian?” I asked, so glad to hear from him instead of reading his texts.

“Unless you changed my number from Ass 1,” he said dryly.

“I sure did.” I had added a heart. “Did you talk to Wyatt? How did it go?” From the distorted music and crowd noises filling the background, he must still be around Guiles and Romary.

“I did, and it went about as well as we’d expected.”

I liked that he used “we” as if we’d both agreed it wouldn’t amount to much from the start rather than rubbing it in my nose that I’d thought he had a chance to get anything out of the seedy bar owner. “So, not so useful?”

“Not at all.”

“That’s disappointing.” I flopped back onto the pillow. “Did he look nervous or sketchy when you talked to him?”

“I’m a bounty hunter, Hope.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Did he have an explanation about his fight with Crane?”

“Let me see… ‘None of your business,’ and ‘order something or get out.’”

“How rude. Doesn’t he know who you are?”

“Afraid he does.”

“Did you order something?”

“Yes.”

“Bet he overcharged you by a lot.”

“Thankfully, my current employer pays for expenses.”

I groaned. “Do I want to know?”

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