Haven Hollow wasn’t so big that it had half a dozen pawnshops. No—there were essentially two. And the one on Kitrey was in the same direction in which the woman had just waved. Not only that, but Jenny had mentioned spotting the shoes in the window of the same pawnshop. And I could easily imagine the second victim finding that ugly, ugly painting in a pawnshop. Or maybe the garage sale of someone with terrible taste.

  “Thank you so much,” I said, my voice like frozen honey. The woman blanched, taking a step towards the door. “You take care, now.”

  I didn’t wait to see if she bolted or not. I just spun on my heel and started towards the back of the shop where there was a tiny room with a desk where Finn did his homework most afternoons. As I strode past a confused Poppy, I muttered.

  “I need to make a call.”

  I didn’t wait for her response, just let the furious clicking of my boot heels carry me towards the storeroom.

  It had been a while since I was this mad. Not only was someone sending truly dangerous and destructive curses out into a mundane population, but they were also being sloppy about it. A painting falling off a wall, okay, that was explainable—bad nail, bad wire, bad attempt to hang it. Things could and did fall. That was gravity for you.

  But a painting that flung itself off the wall, violently enough that someone immediately started babbling about ghosts? Or shoes that made a young woman run and dance herself into traffic? An umbrella that opened hard enough to cause an almost cartoonish amount of destruction? Those sorts of pranks were going to get noticed. They were the types of things people talked about.

  And we didn’t need any more people talking. We’d already had one influencer trying to ghost hunt in the Hollow, broadcasting everything to the internet. Henner might have been a gifted technomancer, but even he’d struggled to scrub everything off the internet. Things like that were a blatant risk—a threat to this town, and they showed a stunning lack of concern for anyone living here.

  Hollows were supposed to be safe. And someone was messing with that safety. Worse, they were selling that danger to the public—the mundane public. I closed the door to the storeroom behind me and leaned my shoulders against it while I took a deep breath. I was a hundred and forty-three years old. I was a mature witch. The days of me letting my temper control my actions or my magic were decades in the past. At least, that was what I told myself as the shadows beneath the shelves and the table, the shade coiled between stacked boxes, twitched and writhed like they were waiting for my command.

  Another deep breath, and the shadows dropped back down to the ground with an echoing sigh that I wasn’t going to think about too much right then. Instead, I pulled out my phone and hit the contact for Taliyah.

  We had work to do.

  Surprisingly enough, Taliyah actually picked up on the third ring, just as I was mentally preparing the absolutely scathing voice message I was going to leave her.

  “What?”

  It wasn’t like I’d been expecting a polite greeting. Chief Morgan didn’t do those, but I still rolled my eyes.

  “Now, is that any way to talk to the woman who has managed to get a tip that will blow this case wide open?” I asked in an overly sweet voice that Maverick would have known meant to start running for cover. I batted my eyelashes for good measure, even though I knew Taliyah couldn’t see me.

  There was a long pause.

  “Are you going to elaborate, Wanda, or did you just call me to waste my time by being cryptic?”

  I shrugged and leaned back against the storeroom door. This was more fun than I’d had in days, frankly. “I mean, I’m a witch. I’m supposed to be cryptic. Imagine how demanding people would get if I just went around handing out spells and wisdom to any yokel I tripped over?”

  The line crackled as Taliyah let out something between a snort and a sigh. “So, you’re just calling to tell me I’m going to be Thane of Glamis and then king?”

  The reference caused a surprised laugh to slip out of me. “Wow, Shakespeare, Chief Morgan? That’s a little high brow for a small-town cop, isn’t it? Still, nice one.”

  Cloth ruffled as Taliyah adjusted her phone. “Wanda, I hate to tell you this, but Haven Hollow has a distressingly high crime rate for such a small town, and I actually am busy, so if you could get on with it, I’d really appreciate it.”

  “Touchy, touchy,” I tsked into the phone. “But fine. I just had a run-in with a woman who happened to have the ugliest of cursed umbrellas.”

  The umbrella in question, still hooked over my arm where I was ignoring it, rustled as it struggled against the snaps keeping it closed like an irritated animal, but I ignored it. It hadn’t built up near enough power to cause any problems at the moment.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about a cursed umbrella that just caused a bit of a mess at Poppy’s shop, but it’s drained and harmless right now.” Maybe my voice was a little mocking, and maybe I shouldn’t have been taunting the cursed object, but I was annoyed enough to be feeling petty about the whole thing. “But it won’t remain that way for long.”

  “Okay, so you’re thinking it has something in common with the other cursed items we’ve come across?”

  “Right. And guess what? The lady carrying it mentioned buying it secondhand from a pawnshop.”

  I let the silence draw out, and I could practically feel Taliyah on the other end of the line, refusing to play the game. Eventually, cop instincts won out, just like I knew they would.

  “What was her name?”

  I blinked. Okay, that hadn’t been the question I’d been expecting. “What?”

  “The woman carrying the cursed item… What was her name?”

  I glared down at the phone for a second before lifting it back to my ear. “Why the spell would I know that? She’s a human.” As if that were reason enough not to know her name.

  The creak of Taliyah tightening her grip echoed down the line. “Do you have a description at least?”

  “Yellow, plastic handle, the fabric is–”

  “—a description of the woman.”

  “Oh.” I rolled my eyes. “No.”

  “You have no idea what a person you met ten minutes ago looks like?”

  Honestly, the woman’s face had already faded into the mists of memories that weren’t interesting enough for me to bother keeping around. “Well, when someone is ordinary in all possible aspects of the word, they are also difficult to remember.”

  “You would make the worst sort of detective.”

  “Anyway,” I started. “The point is that she was carrying a distinctive umbrella—one that I now have with me.” I paused a moment. “Why do you even want her name?”

  “So I can question her,” Taliyah answered, over-enunciating in the way people do when talking to toddlers with attention span deficits, which was rude, really.

  “Why would you want to question her?” I mean, the human woman wasn’t the one laying the curses. I’d have felt magical potential when she touched my hand to give me the umbrella, unless she was way more powerful than I was and was able to hide that power from me. And what were the chances of that? Not to mention that if such were the case, I had no idea why she’d have been shopping at Poppy’s store in the first place, or why she’d have been so mortified about breaking things.

  I could actually hear the way Taliyah was grinding her teeth, the faint squeak of enamel being abused. I’d definitely been hanging out with Lorcan too much. “So I could find out where she got the cursed umbrella.”

  Honestly, she gave me no credit. “She already told me, Taliyah, which was the reason why I was calling.”

  “Okay?”

  “As I told you earlier, she got the umbrella at a pawnshop—potentially the same pawnshop where Jenny purchased her shoes. Now, isn’t that interesting?”

  “Which pawnshop?”

  Okay, I hadn’t been expecting applause for my contributions, even if it might have been nice, but I’d thought I would have gotten more than a barked question thrown at me. Irritation soaked into my voice, and I didn’t bother to hide it. “Kitrey Street.”

  “You’re sure that’s the one?” A pause. “Did she tell you specifically that the umbrella came from that particular pawnshop?”

  “Well, no,” I started. “But how many pawnshops are there in Haven Hollow?”

  “Three.”

  I snorted. “Shows how much you know—there are two.”

  “And a new one opened up last week.”

  “Oh.” I breathed out a sigh. “How do you even know that?”

  “When you’re in law enforcement, you need to know those sorts of things.”

  “Okay, well, big gold star for you.” Then I paused. “Is the new one north of Main Street?”

  There was a pause then, and a few clicks as Taliyah looked something up. “No.”

  “Well then, Kitrey’s still the one.” I raked my hand back through my hair, pushing it off my face. “Now, I was thinking–”

  “—thanks, I’ll look into it.”

  And then she hung up.

  She hung up on me. On me. On Wanda Depraysie, High Witch of the Scapegrace Coven of Haven Hollow. Not only that, I’d just given her the clue that could break this case wide open, and she thought she could just go off and be a police chief and cut me out of things?

  Oh, no.

  No, no, no.

  I was in this now; I was invested.

  Plus, I had a few choice words ready for the person who was flinging dark magic at humans and putting us all at risk. They were not nice words either.

  Unfortunately for Taliyah, I knew how to search for an address, too.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The pawnshop on Kitrey, which was creatively named ‘Kitrey Street Pawn’, was about what I’d expected a pawnshop to be, at least from television and movies.

  That was to say, it was wildly out of place for cutesy, touristy Haven Hollow.

  The shop appeared old, a little grimy, and it had steel shutters that could be rolled down over the front window, which, frankly, was a bit of overkill, in my opinion. I mean, there didn’t appear to be anything in there that looked like it was worth the effort to steal. I was pretty sure Jenny’s shoes were the greatest thing the store had seen in the last decade, at least. Maybe its entire career.

  Even the awning was old and sagging, a tattered green and blue striped pattern that managed to be garish and faded at the same time. It looked like the whole building had been surgically removed from some bad neighbourhood in a big city and dropped awkwardly between a bakery and a bookstore, squatting like a toad on a lacey white tablecloth.

  Poppy’s Potions was closer to Kitrey Pawn than wherever Taliyah was located when I called her, so I was already out of my Escalade and striding towards the front door when Taliyah pulled up.

  As soon as she parked and stepped out of the cruiser, I flashed her a smug smile—the frown she gave me in response was pretty impressive.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded as soon as we were within hearing distance of one another.

  “Look, you chose to get me involved.”

  “You’ve gotten involved as much as I needed you to get involved.”

  I gave her a raised brow expression. “I’m not about to get left behind now, when this case is finally getting good.”

  These days, Taliyah’s anger actually put a chill in the air, and I could feel the threat of frost nipping at my skin as she stalked closer.

  “Do you understand what it means to interfere with a police investigation?”

  I pursed my lips, tapping my finger to my chin like I was thinking hard. “Is that what I’m doing?”

  “That’s exactly what you’re doing.”

  I cocked my head to the side. “Because I feel like I’m walking into a business that’s open to the public and last I checked, it was my legal right to do so.”

  “Wanda.” Taliyah didn’t growl, but the sound she made was a close cousin.

  “After seeing those fabulous shoes Jenny found here, of course, I wanted to see what I could find. So… here I am.” I grinned and tossed my hair over my shoulder as I turned towards the door to the pawnshop. Even the fluorescent open sign had seen better days. When Taliyah made no motion to follow me, I turned back to face her.

  “Of course, you’re always welcome to stay out here in the cold, Chief Morgan. I’m happy to go inside and putz around on my own.”

  She caught the door before it had a chance to close more than an inch behind me, and I just barely managed to stifle the laugh that probably would have gotten me arrested.

  The inside of the pawnshop was…

  Well.

  Back in the day when we’d been sharing the duplex, I’d once walked in on a fight between Darla and Libby. It hadn’t been a physical fight, not quite, anyway, but it looked like it might have been headed in that direction. And as interesting as it would have been to see an ex-ghost and a zombie duking it out, I’d been too annoyed to appreciate it.

  Apparently, Darla had been watching a television show that had deeply upset Libby—not that deeply upsetting Libby was a difficult thing to do. No—any program displaying any amount of skin or drinking of liquor was just enough to make the once nineteen-fifties housewife’s stockings roll up and down in judgemental outrage. I’d half expected some risqué reality show, or a male swimsuit competition, knowing Darla’s taste. But it hadn’t been anything like that.

  No, the show that had so upset Libby, that had offended her homemaker heart, had been a show about hoarders. And not just people who happened to buy lots of stuff and then never parted with it. These were entire houses that were stacked top to bottom with stuff—new stuff, old stuff, used stuff, broken stuff, garbage, and random things the owners couldn’t bear to part with. Some of the houses had tunnels and valleys carved into the heaps and heaps of crap—so the hoarder could weave between the piles of stuff.

  Watching this, Libby had been nearly moved to tears, and I didn’t want to see a zombie cry, mostly because I had no idea if her tear ducts still functioned. So, I’d asked Darla to put on something a little more family friendly—something that wouldn’t have Libby purging all our worldly belongings the second we stepped out of the house, pre-emptively.

  The pawnshop reminded me a lot of that show.

  There were shelves and shelves of the most random stuff I’d ever seen, piled almost to the roof of the store. Board games and small appliances, ski equipment, a pogo stick, what I was pretty sure was a scuba tank, and a moped propped up on a kick stand. One shelf had a full sized taxidermized raccoon that scared the heck out of me when I walked past it, its creepy glass eyes staring at nothing. There were old and scary dolls all over the place, antiques, a few pieces of furniture crowding the room—you name it, and it was probably here.

  I had to turn sideways and shimmy through a narrow gap between a globe that turned out to be a cleverly concealed dry bar when I bumped it, and a bean bag chair that looked like a pudgy alligator. The whole place felt cramped and claustrophobic, and even though there wasn’t any sign of bugs or vermin, I still didn’t want any of the stuff touching me. I almost wished I hadn’t left the house wearing my favorite gray cashmere sweater. The fibers were terrible for picking up smells, and there was a musty, mildew scent in the shop that had me wrinkling my nose in distaste. If I needed to have my sweater dry cleaned, I wondered if I could bill the Haven Hollow Police department.

  A quick glance at Taliyah’s tight jaw and narrowed eyes made me think that maybe that wasn’t an angle I should push. At least not anytime soon.

  “Jesus,” Taliyah groaned as she took stock of the various things that were bearing down on us from every possible angle.

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  I’d just managed to ease my way past a shelf that was sagging with dozens and dozens of books, when I heard a shout from the back of the store, and Taliyah shoved past me, leaving me to hurry along in her wake.

  When I finally managed to wedge myself out of the overcrowded labyrinth of precariously leaning shelves, it was to see Taliyah effortlessly striding over to the glass counter to break up a fight between two old men.

  Well. Old was relative. They were both probably younger than I was, but humans didn’t tend to age as well as witches, so old they were. They were both slightly stooped over, skinny, wrinkled, dressed in jeans, one in a sweatshirt and one in a plaid flannel. Other than the fact that the one behind the counter was bald, while the other man who was facing and shaking a finger at him had what little hair he had remaining pulled back into a ponytail, I was having trouble telling them apart.

  “You’re a blackguard, Hughes,” ponytail shouted, straining to lean around Taliyah without touching her. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re about! I won’t stand for it, you hear? I won’t!”

  Baldy scowled, suddenly seeming a lot braver with Taliyah in between him and the other guy.

  “I’m not doing anything wrong,” he blustered. “It’s not my fault you don’t know your business. Go on, get out of here. I don’t want to see you in here again, you old fool.”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Taliyah said, stepping firmly between them. Her words were so cold, I half expected them to leave a rime of frost on the glass counters. “What’s going on here?”

  Ponytail made a sound in his throat, and for a horrifyingly fascinating second, I thought he was actually going to spit on the floor, but he seemed to think better of it.

  “Ask him,” he barked instead, flinging his hand towards Baldy. “See if he can even tell the truth anymore. I’m through here.”

  Ponytail then spun on his heel and stalked towards me, his dark eyes still snapping with fury.

  For a second, I thought about standing my ground. I didn’t like making way for people, especially rude ones, but the idea that my sweater might brush up against something gross on one of those shelves had me slipping quickly out of the way. As soon as I sidestepped him, I glanced down to make sure I wasn’t standing near anything I didn’t want to be. These were my favorite leather boots, after all, even if walking three blocks in them might have killed me.