Spell it out hallow have.., p.1
Spell It Out (Hallow Haven Witch Mysteries Book 12), page 1
Copyright © 2022 by Mara Webb
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SPELL IT OUT
HALLOW HAVEN WITCH MYSTERIES BOOK 12
MARA WEBB
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Thanks for Reading
Also By Mara Webb
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CHAPTER 1
There were five people in my living room that I had not been expecting to see when I woke up this morning. Last night had been a full moon, I had slept badly because of it, and now I wished I had more energy to cope with the sight before me.
“Well?” Miller prompted, a nudge to my side to remind me that I was supposed to speak. She’d said ‘surprise!’ and I’d just blinked at her. Over the past twenty-four hours I had been made aware that my werewolf fiancé had been elevated to the rank of ‘alpha’ and a pack had been created. Werewolves summoned somehow and placed under his leadership. My mouth felt dry as it had been hanging open since she’d spoken.
I’d met four of the other wolves yesterday, but another had been added to the group during the night and now all of them were standing – in human form – in front of me. Miller was hopeful that I would welcome them with open arms, but it was going to take me some time to process everything.
“We won’t hurt you,” one of them assured me. I nodded in acknowledgment, and staggered backwards a little, Miller’s arm catching me before I could trip over my own feet.
“Why don’t I get you some coffee?” he offered in a calm voice.
“I’ll take care of that,” she said again, wiggling her fingers and using her magic to produce a coffee pot in her hands, enough mugs for everyone appeared on the coffee table and she began to pour.
“You’re a werewolf,” I muttered to myself. “H-how did this happen?” I looked at my friend, the woman that I’d spent so much time with over the past year, and found myself looking at her in a new way.
She approached me with a mug of coffee and sat cross-legged on the ground at my feet. Her emerald green hair still as vibrant as ever, the black bangs long enough to be tucked behind her ears as she smiled up at me.
Kate.
My fantastically weird sidekick was now a werewolf. How on earth had this—
“Sidekick?” she scoffed.
“You can still read minds then?” Miller grinned, “I wasn’t sure after last night, you were freaking out for most of it.”
“One thing at a time dog-breath,” she snapped.
“Hey, you’re a werewolf too, you can’t really call him dog-breath now,” one of the guys laughed. “He’s also your alpha. I don’t think we should call him names.”
“Is that a thing?” Kate asked, grimacing in Miller’s direction. He shrugged. “Right, well I might have been freaking out a little because I’ve never shifted into a wolf before. I don’t know why you’re all so calm about it, I thought I was dying and in some weird death-related fever dream. My original point was that Sadie was just thinking about how I was her sidekick, I’m no one’s sidekick. I’m a main character in my own story!”
“Sure,” I smiled. I’d hung out with Kate more times than I could count, she’d slept on my sofa, saved my life half a dozen times, made me laugh until my face ached pretty much every day since I moved here… In a way it felt like nothing was different, that nothing had changed at all. I knew that wasn’t true.
I’d only been engaged for a couple of weeks, I had been floating on cloud nine for all of a few days before the problems started. My guardian, Ryder, had professed his feelings about me on more than one occasion and the fact that I had accepted Miller’s proposal had forced a wedge between us. He was so utterly convinced that I was making the wrong decision that I feared I would need to cut him out of my life entirely.
Miller had been shot by werewolf hunters, one of which was Ryder’s brother Jared. Jared was dating Kate’s sister, Effie, who was also one of my best friends. The complexity of the situation prompted me to tip the entire cup of coffee into my mouth, swallowing in three large gulps. Caffeine was my friend, caffeine never made me doubt myself by dating someone that wanted to murder my fiancé.
I recognized one of the men, Milo Morton. He lived in an apartment building that I’d visited, I’d been looking for a place for my familiar to move into but that had all gone out the window when we realized that previous tenants had been murdered. The others were people I didn’t know, maybe I’d seen them in the café once or twice, but I couldn’t put a name to the faces.
“Should I leave you guys to it?” Miller asked.
“Yes please,” I replied.
“Yeah, I mean I can literally read every thought in your head, but you don’t know what I’m thinking,” Kate smirked.
“Get out of my brain!”
“We’ll be in the kitchen,” Miller said, beckoning the others to follow him until Kate and I were alone. Well, we were alone until the ghost of my dead cousin, Greta, materialized by the fireplace.
“Kate!” she shrieked. “Oh well it isn’t all that surprising really, you and Miller are second-cousins and I didn’t think you are actually on the bloodline from the werewolf side of the family, but here you are!”
“Yeah, pretty dope, right? I’m the full package baby!” Kate laughed. She jumped to her feet and patted at her body as she complimented herself. “She’s a witchcraft legend, a mind-reading maestro with the face of an angel, she can shift under a full-moon like it’s her job and would you get a load of her dance moves!”
Kate proceeded to jive about in an uncoordinated pop-and-lock which succeeded in taking my mind off the mayhem that this werewolf revelation would cause. What would her sister say? I still wasn’t sure if Effie knew that Jared was one of the hunters. There had been three men in the cemetery when the wolfpack had shown up to defend their leader, three hunters that were determined to cause harm.
Miller had already been shot this week, something that I’d been informed was a breach of some ancient treaty between the last wolf pack and the hunters. They could only harm the wolves if they became a threat to the lives of Hallow Haven residents. Miller had been shot in cold blood, in human form no less. Something stronger than coffee might be needed to get me through the day.
“Effie doesn’t know, does she?” Greta asked.
“Of course not,” Kate said, suddenly still. “I wasn’t in the cemetery yesterday, but the rest of the guys were. I know what they saw, I know that Jared is a hunter. How is that gonna go down when I tell my sister that she’s dating a guy that wants me dead?”
“You live together, how are you going to keep it from her?” I asked.
“I’m the mind reader, not Effie. I am an expert at keeping things from her. Jared might be able to smell it on me though… yeah maybe I’m screwed,” she shrugged. “I’m open to ideas, guys. Maybe Ryder can help us out? Or is he pro-hunter?”
“I don’t know what he is,” I admitted.
“He’s pro-Sadie,” Greta remarked. “Whatever she says, goes.”
“There’s a lot of brother and sister drama in the mix here. Couldn’t you just speak to Effie? She would choose you over a guy, there’s no way that she’d let him hurt you,” I said.
Kate tensed. I saw concern on her face and I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know that she had doubts about sisterly loyalty. Effie and Jared could be intense with each other, there was little doubt about that, but did Kate really think that Effie would allow this man she’d only been dating a few months threaten her sister’s life? That was crazy.
“How would I even go about telling her something like this?” she asked. I shrugged, so did Greta. “Good talk, guys.”
“I would recommend getting your own thoughts organized before trying to word-vomit in Effie’s direction. Make a plan about what you want to say and then go through with it, commit to a timeline for explaining this to her,” Greta said.
“And until then?”
“Avoid Jared like the plague,” I replied. “Does he come to your house much?”
“Yeah, the two of them basically live in each other’s pockets when she’s not at work. I don’t really remember the last time we hung out just the two of us,” Kate sighed. “How is it not even nine in the morning? Urgh, I’m supposed to be at ‘Coaled Water’ for my shift soon and I would rather stick pins in my eyes.”
“It’s your second day!” I laughed, amused by the speed of Kate’s mood turn-around about the new job at my aunt’s store.
“You have just found out you’re a werewolf, I’m sure you could call in sick,” Greta suggested.
“No, it keeps me out the house and stops Effie and Jared sniffing the dog on me, or whateve
Vampires and werewolves. Great. My life was irreversibly entwined with the fantastical creatures of the island I lived on, there was no going back now. Miller was a werewolf, now so was my best friend. My guardian was a vampire and one of my cousins is a ghost. Maybe I needed to start meditating or drinking more herbal teas, otherwise I was going to start getting migraines.
The living room door opened and Miller leaned his head in to see if it was okay for him to interrupt. The three of us looked at him expectantly. “Hey, could one of you use some magic to get more food? We’ve eaten everything you had, sorry.”
“How can you have eaten everything? The refrigerator was full!” I stood up and marched after him, through the hallway into the kitchen where I could see the cupboard doors all hanging open to reveal how empty they were.
“Shifting makes you hungry,” Miller shrugged by way of an explanation.
Kate appeared behind me in the kitchen doorway and used her magic to create a breakfast buffet on the kitchen table that put smiles on the faces of the strangers sat around it. Pancakes, waffles, scones, you name it, they were spreading butter on it.
“Psst, Sadie,” Greta called from the hall.
“What?”
“No, come out here,” she insisted. She beckoned me to follow her away from the door so that our conversation could be somewhat private. “What is the plan here? A treaty has been broken, a hunter shot Miller for no good reason and you are hosting a breakfast party for the wolf pack? You’re the peacekeeper, Sadie, you’re supposed to be neutral.”
“Sure, but I was dating Miller long before the hunters showed up and I think everyone knows that. I’m hardly choosing sides, am I? Although, if I had to choose a side in this situation I’d probably go with the very pleasant folks eating waffles in the kitchen over that brute that aimed a gun at me yesterday.”
Greta didn’t look amused.
“Sadie, this is going to get much worse before it gets better. Tourists are going to start showing up on this island before you can so much as blink, this place will be crawling with people and they have to be safe here,” she explained.
“Yes I know that—”
“Do you?” she snapped. “We’re getting close to vacation season, tourists are going to start arriving soon and you need to get this mess cleaned up before they do. If people see that you don’t act when a treaty is broken then this place will descend into chaos very quickly. If you think it’s a mess now, just you wait!”
“Greta, what exactly do you want me to do?”
A phone rang in the living room and I didn’t leave to answer it straight away. Greta and I were still locked in a staring contest.
“I think you’re wanted,” she finally uttered.
I walked into the living room and picked up the phone, “Hello?”
“Is that Ms. Alden?”
“Yeah, I mean, yes it is. Who is this?”
“My name is Alex Dubois, I’m the mayor of the South coast and—”
“Hold on, you’re the what?”
“The mayor of the South coast, well Hope Falls to be specific,” he said. “I assume you’re aware of our situation down here.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t know there was a mayor anywhere, I don’t even—”
“It’s okay, Hope Falls runs a little differently to the rest of the main island. Anyway, I was wondering if you would be able to come down to visit as I could really use your help with something,” he continued.
“Oh?”
“Yes, I’ve only been the mayor for about an hour. I came into the office this morning and the previous mayor was slumped over the desk with a knife in his back. I think he’s been murdered!”
I let out a sigh. “It sure sounds like a murder, people don’t often stab their own backs.”
“Should I send a car for you?”
“No, I’ll figure it out,” I muttered, turning back to the sound of conversation and laughter erupting from the direction of the kitchen. “I always do.”
CHAPTER 2
The wolf pack in my kitchen were laughing loudly enough that I’m sure people could hear it from outside the house. I slumped down onto the sofa and gazed out of the window at the water that danced under the morning sunlight, gently moving towards the shore and then being pulled away again seconds later.
Fitz burst through the living room door as if he’d been thrown and was almost gasping for breath. “Did you know there were six werewolves sitting at the kitchen table? I nearly had a heart attack!”
“I knew,” I smiled. He hadn’t been thrilled by the presence of Miller in this house, never mind five of his shifter friends. Fitz had managed to regain some of his shifting abilities after my Aunt Sage performed some weird ritual involving black candles and strange herbs. He hadn’t managed to go all the way into a human yet, but had successfully changed the pattern of his fur at least twice.
The plan had been that once he re-gained his powers he could move out, but we hadn’t managed to get far enough with that yet. He was still living here and invading my privacy at every opportunity.
“Is this how it is now? Werewolves just hang out here like it’s some sort of youth center for juvenile delinquents and we can’t feel safe in our own homes!?”
“I feel perfectly safe, and I am pretty sure they won’t eat you if I’m anywhere nearby,” I teased.
“Did you do this so that I’d pack my bags?” he complained.
“I didn’t do anything, this ‘alpha’ situation has nothing to do with me.”
“Apart from the fact that your engagement to Miller is the reason he’s now an alpha,” Greta added, floating over to insert herself into the conversation.
“Yes, apart from that.”
“This is why you should be marrying Ryder,” Fitz muttered under his breath.
“For the thousandth time, Ryder and Jared survive by drinking animal blood. You’d be no safer with them, what if they got a case of the midnight munchies and you were just snoozing away by the fire, looking all delicious, huh?” I smirked, making claws with my hands and sniffing at the air as I leaned towards him. He didn’t find it funny.
“What’s this about marrying Ryder?” Miller asked as he stepped into the room.
“Fitz said it, not me!” Greta shrieked defensively. What she thought Miller could possibly do to a ghost I had no idea.
“It’s nothing I’ve not said to your face already, dog,” Fitz huffed.
“You really should stop taking in strays,” Miller said in my direction.
“Who are you calling a—?”
“Fitz, enough. Both of you, can it.” I massaged my temples and closed my eyes, trying to focus on the task that I had been assigned by the strange man on the phone. “Look, I’m going to have to go and deal with a dead body, again. If I go is there going to be a fight?”
“There’s six of us and one of him,” Miller explained.
“He’s more deadly than he looks, or so he says,” Greta said in Fitz’s defense.
“Maybe I should give Fitz all of upstairs to wander around in, you and the gang can stay down here.”
“What if I want to look in the fridge?” Fitz complained.
“Hold on, did you say there’s a dead body? How did you hear about that? No one’s called me,” Miller said, pulling a phone out of the back pocket of his jeans and checking for a message.
“Someone rang up and said they were standing over a dead guy in the mayor’s office,” I shrugged. “I figure the quicker I get down there the better because—”
“Mayor’s office? Is that what you said?” Miller interrupted.
“Yeah, why?”
“Who called you? Where did they say they were from?”
“Alex Dubank, or Dubo… something like that,” I said, looking keenly at the face of my fiancé as he made a poor attempt to mask his concern. “Dubois! He said he was calling from Hope Falls on the South Coast, I’ve never even heard of the place but apparently they have a dead mayor and need my help.”
