I still felt guilty about not telling Taliyah about the amulet from Mrs. Petryka’s, but, in my somewhat meager defense, I had no idea if it was connected to anything. Maybe some creep just wanted to scare an old lady he hadn’t realized could fight back? Maybe the weaselly guy hadn’t even put the amulet in Mrs. Petryka’s wall a couple days before he’d wound up dead on a stranger’s grave? Maybe the watch was just forgotten by someone who worked in the factory? Maybe I was looking for similarities where none existed? Who even knew.

  “What’cha got there, Fifi?” My brother, Angelo, came sauntering into my office with an obnoxious whistle without even knocking. With his eyes pasted to the two objects on my desk, he walked over and then reached down, lifting the watch and looking it over. I had to fight the urge to snatch it out of his hands.

  Our relationship was… complicated.

  “Now where did you get this?” He held the watch by the chain, letting it spin slowly. The light glinted off the gold, sending dazzling sparkles over Angelo’s face and blond hair. “If you’re buying antique watches, Fifi, you need to raise my salary.”

  I had to fight the urge to roll my eyes, and finally tugged the watch away from Angelo like I’d originally wanted to. “What are you talking about? It’s a watch.”

  He gave me a look, one brow raised in a sardonic arch. “You’re kidding, right? That thing has got to be pushing a century, at least. In that kind of condition, it’s got to be hefting a significant price tag.”

  I rubbed the center of my forehead, hoping it would head off the ache I could feel blossoming to life already. “Since when are you an expert in pocket watches?”

  “I’m an expert in expensive tastes, sister mine.” He flashed me his trademark grin, the one that could, and had, caused traffic accidents. “But seriously, what are you doing with it?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered, shortly. I didn’t want to get my brother involved in any of this. Especially when I didn’t know if there was a ‘this’ to get involved in. Angelo and I were mostly on good terms lately, but he had a gift for both complicating things, and driving me up the wall when he wanted to. “Want to jump in and start filling out forms for me?”

  “As fun as that sounds,” he said, with a stretch and a complete lack of shame. “I have plans.”

  “Of course, you do.” He always had plans—especially when work was calling. I sighed. “Should I even ask?”

  “I’m going out of town for the weekend.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I stopped by to tell you. I figured you were here since you weren’t at home.” He nodded. “I met a girl at the coffee shop, thought I’d show her the time of her life.” He grinned lazily, playing with the edge of a stack of papers until I swatted his hand away. “Try not to miss me too much.”

  “I’ll make an effort.”

  That must have been enough, because Angelo pushed himself off the corner of my desk with a chuckle, sauntering towards the door. “Try to have some fun for once.”

  I waved him off and tugged the watch into my hands, turning it over and over like a worry stone. The front face still opened easily, if with a little catch, like the tiny hinge needed some oil or something. Next, I picked up the amulet and ran my fingers over it. The amulet was more buzzy under my fingertips than the watch. Where had both of them come from? Why had they been hidden away like they had been? There was something here I just wasn’t seeing.

  The watch seemed the easiest place to start, so I pulled my keyboard towards myself and got to work.

  Haven Hollow was a small town, but not small enough that I’d have had any hope of finding someone just by first name alone. Fortunately, the date, being almost a century and a half in the past, did narrow things down to two options.

  Option one: I was looking for a supernatural who could still be alive. It wasn’t uncommon for preternatural creatures to be able to live a few centuries. The easiest candidates there were vampires, of which there were only a few in Haven Hollow. I was even pretty sure one was named William, but he was Wanda’s brother, and just didn’t seem like the marrying kind, so probably hadn’t had an anniversary a century ago. Wanda had another brother but I’d forgotten his name. Either way—neither struck me as the marrying type.

  The second supernatural creatures to consider (those who could live for centuries) were witches, but since women tended to get the lion’s share of any magical inheritance, a male witch wasn’t likely. Besides, there was only one male witch, or warlock, in Haven Hollow, and that was Wanda’s cousin, Maverick.

  The only other real option then were humans, and if that were the case, the original owner of the watch was now very dead. Figuring I might as well start there, I turned to my computer and searched the local cemetery databanks for a William from around the right time frame, figuring I could at least find a next of kin.

  Normally, I used the database to try and find new homes for some of my clients that needed very special accommodations. Sometimes a split level with three bedrooms and a master bath just wouldn’t cut it, and what you needed was an old-fashioned crypt. It meant that I was pretty good with narrowing down search parameters, so after only about forty-five minutes of looking around, I was pretty sure I had the man I was looking for.

  William Carmichael, born 1844, died 1916. If what I was looking at was correct, he was buried in the cemetery behind Poppy’s house.

  I paused, my fingers hovering over the keys. Haven Hollow had just had a rash of grave robberies, and then I found a hidden watch that belonged to a buried man—what were the odds that both weren’t related? I was fairly sure they were.

  I clicked through the digital newspaper and found what I was looking for in a lurid article calling out the Haven Hollow Police department for letting the desecration continue. It didn’t really have any information in it, so after a minute, I switched over to the Haven Hollow Council database and took a look through that.

  Taliyah might not like it, but the Council had been taking care of the more magical citizens of Haven Hollow for a long, long time. Even lately, supernaturals were way more likely to call a Council member for help instead of calling the cops (Mrs. Petryka case in point). It had actually gotten more prevalent, once Ophelia wasn’t leading the Council any longer. Night Hags didn’t really inspire feelings of safety, I supposed.

  According to the Council’s database, a detailed list of graves that had been disturbed, but since most of the graves hadn’t exactly been inventoried before burial, it could be difficult to know exactly what could be missing. The list of names wasn’t huge, but there were still a worrying number of them. Mr. Carmichael’s was listed among them, though.

  I couldn’t find many more recent articles. It looked like the robberies had stopped, or at least paused for almost a week. That, or the would be ‘resurrection men’ had just gotten better at covering their tracks.

  Still.

  I flipped back through the articles, checking the last known robbery date. And then I sat there, chewing my lip as I thought. It was kind of weird that there hadn’t been a robbery since the weaselly guy wound up dead in the graveyard. I didn’t want to speak ill of the dead, but was there a chance he’d been the local grave robber? If he was, it looked like someone had taken offense to what he’d been doing and ended him.

  Okay, this was all a pretty big leap I was making. What I needed to do was tell Taliyah my suspicions, and then let her take the matter from there. Trained detectives. Police business. All the stuff she kept drilling into my head.

  Except.

  Even if I handed over the watch, and told her what I thought, then so what? What was one lost watch? It was multiple hidden valuables that made me think Mr. Weasel might have been up to some literal skullduggery, and I couldn’t tell her how I’d come to that conclusion without telling her I’d found and then hidden the amulet from her.

  I let my head fall forwards into my hands with a groan. This was all too complicated for me. I wasn’t built for this level of intrigue. And I might just be wasting police time, since I really wasn’t sure about anything, anyway.

  I needed to look into the amulet still, but that was going to be a whole other situation. There weren’t any handy search engines that were going to help me with a clay talisman that was used for who knew what. Most of the time, if you wanted information on something like that, you went to a witch. And witches weren’t exactly known for their sharing and forthright nature. They’d be more likely to hex you than to give you something for free, never mind offer up information. Knowledge was power, after all.

  Our local coven was a little bit less cutthroat than most, though. Maybe if I went over to the coven house and looked sad enough, they’d take pity on me and at least take a look at the amulet. It was worth a shot.

  The whole thing still didn’t make sense to me, though. The watch I could kind of understand. If what Angelo said was true, it could be worth a lot of money, which meant it was a reasonable thing to steal. Yet, why risk hiding it in a warehouse—and one that was on the books of Hallowed Homes, which meant people would be coming and going? It seemed risky to me, hiding it someplace you didn’t have regular access to. Like Mrs. Petryka’s house. Without another open house, whoever had stashed the amulet wouldn’t be able to get it back. Unless that was why someone attempted to break in the other night. Yet, it couldn’t have been the weaselly man because he was dead. So... who was it?

  Furthermore, why try to steal the amulet—something seemingly worthless? Stealing for money, that I could understand, at least in the abstract. But why steal the amulet? Charms and things like that, they tended to be either general, like the ones Wanda wove into the clothing she sold or the potions stocked on Poppy’s shelves, or very personal—aka weaved for just the user.

  The more personal charms, the kind you might not want to be parted from even in death, well, those tended to be one-person only, a family bloodline at most. They weren’t something that would be easily applied to someone else. So why steal it in the first place? Plus, the amulet was old and not very pretty.

  A general search online got me about the results I’d expected. The amulet could be for anything from predicting the weather, to warding off curses, to granting fertility. Not much help. If I wanted to know what the old lump of clay was for, and it was looking like I might need to figure that out, then I was going to need some magical advice.

  I slipped my shoes back on and snatched up my purse as I headed for the door. It was a good thing that Wanda had started living on vampire hours, because the sun had set a few hours ago, and I really didn’t want to start off asking for a favor from a witch who’d just woken up.

  Chapter Nine

  I gave Wanda a call once I got to my car.

  Lorcan owned a lot of property in town, and while he had his favorite haunts (forgive the pun), it was much easier just to ask Wanda where she was instead of driving from house to coven to house like the world’s most annoying game of Trick or Treat.

  “Hello, Fifi,” she said after only two rings. She sounded, not exactly happy to hear from me, but not annoyed. Plus, she hadn’t hung up on me, so that was a good sign. If nothing else, Wanda was unpredictable.

  “Hey, Wanda. Sorry to bug you, but I wanted to ask you about something.”

  “What sort of something?”

  “Um, witch stuff. Is there any way I could come and see you?”

  There was a pause while she sipped something. If I knew Wanda, it was probably black coffee, roughly the size of a second grader’s blood volume. Or else it was something alcoholic. “Sure. Swing by the coven house.”

  That surprised me: that she wasn’t with Lorcan. It also made me a little nervous, more like I was going to see Wanda, the High Witch of Haven Hollow’s coven, and less like I was going to see my friend Wanda.

  “Okay, I’m on my way,” I managed to get the words out without tripping over them.

  Wanda hung up. She was never one for drawn out goodbyes, so I didn’t take it personally.

  The drive to the coven house was just long enough for me to start to fret. Maybe I was making a big deal about nothing. For all I knew, the amulet was Mrs. Petryka’s. Though I doubted she would have been okay with that open hole in her wall.

  Maybe I was just meddling. Maybe I should have just turned over everything to Taliyah and walked away. Getting involved in other people’s business didn’t usually end well, case in point; Taliyah herself.

  I had to force myself up the coven steps when I finally arrived, and used the heavy brass ring to knock before I chickened out completely. Yes, I was a Succubus and, thus, a demon, but I wasn’t representative of my species as a whole and, besides, witches could be intimidating.

  It was Maverick who opened the door, which was a surprise, though I wasn’t sure why. I guess he’d always struck me as kind of the loner type, the only Warlock in a coven of Witches.

  He nodded to me, and stepped back to let me inside, which was downright cheerful for the man, and I had to fight back the urge to squint at him suspiciously. He’d been extra testy for the last month or so.

  I still wasn’t used to seeing Maverick with short hair. It had gotten butchered in a fight, from almost elbow length to up around his collar bone, and then he’d cut it further in order to go undercover at Blood Rose Academy in order to help his sister out of a bad situation. Now, as far as I understood things, Astrid was with her Fae uncle who had turned out to be Fox Aspen, Prince Reynard. Fox had taken Astrid under his wing to teach her about what it meant to be a Fae royal and he was helping her to understand her new vampiric powers, while keeping her safe from those who would do her harm.

  “Wanda’s in the main room,” Maverick said, jerking his chin towards the hallway.

  There was a fire in the fireplace, keeping the big room toasty warm and casting shadows on the wall in the dim lighting. Everything was soft and comfortable, and completely not what I’d expected. There were also a lot more people present than I’d expected.

  I’d kind of thought that the coven house was just kind of a formality. Most covens tended to live together, or in close proximity, at least, but the Haven Hollow coven had never exactly been traditional, what with its Blood Warlock member, and Poppy wasn’t even a witch. I’d kind of thought the coven house was more to make things feel official, but watching the members of Scapegrace Coven hanging around now, existing in each other’s company quietly, made me think maybe I’d done them a disservice.

  Wanda herself was sprawled in a big, squashy chair in front of the fire, with one leg thrown over the arm, her shoe dangling off her toes as she sketched a design onto a big pad of paper. Her face was relaxed, or as close to relaxed as I’d ever seen it. I wondered if it had been hard for her in Haven Hollow before, when there hadn’t been any other witches around.

  In a straight-backed chair set up over by a floor lamp where the light was better, Olga was getting her hair done by Imani. I’d been introduced to Imani in passing, but that was pretty much the extent of our acquaintance. She’d always seemed very nice, especially for a witch. And that was probably the exact reason she’d moved to Haven Hollow—she’d been too nice for other covens and had, consequently, gotten the boot.

  The comb that she was using to part Olga’s blond curls moved like another kind of magic between Imani’s slender fingers. She spoke quietly under her breath in what sounded like French as she wove blessings and charms between the strands, until Olga’s hair shone like spun gold in the soft light of the room.

  Imani herself, a not very tall, delicately beautiful African American woman, wore her own hair in the most beautiful waist length coils, and she’d threaded strands of silver charms through them, so that every movement was accompanied by a soft chime. The last time I’d seen her, she was wearing her hair up in a tignon, the traditional turban headdress for a Creole woman from Louisiana (Imani was from New Orleans and practiced hoodoo-voodoo particular to that region).

  Maverick stalked back into the room, all long legs and easy grace. Imani glanced up from her work and grinned when she saw him.

  “Looking a little shaggy there, Maverick. When are you going to let me give you a haircut?”

  Maverick’s hand shot up protectively towards his sad little bob, but his voice was surprisingly mild when he answered. “Hmmm. Perhaps when Hell freezes over. I’m sure you’ll be able to pencil me in then with so much advanced notice.”

  Imani shook her head sadly. “Fine, fine. Stay looking like Little Boy Blue. I can’t stop you.”

  Maverick turned to where Wanda was still working at her sketch book, only now she was wearing an undeniable smirk. “I changed my mind. I think we have enough coven members; we don’t need any more,” he said, totally deadpan.

  Imani threw back her head and laughed, and the sound was like bells ringing.

  “Children,” was all Wanda said, without looking up.

  Olga was giggling, trying not to shake too badly so as not to mess up Imani’s careful work.

  Maverick rolled his eyes with a theatrical sigh and stalked towards the stairs. But there was the shadow of a smile hovering around his lips when he threw a, “Hate you,” over his shoulder at Imani.

  “Aw, hate you more, Maverick.” She raised one hand, pinky finger extended. “Worsties for life.”

  And to my shock, Maverick actually linked his pinky with hers for a second before vanishing upstairs, though he fought to make himself look terribly put upon when he did it. Clearly, the two of them were friends, and that was nice to see. Even if their brand of friendship wasn’t one I was accustomed to but when in Rome, I supposed.

  Maverick, who was usually pricklier than a hedgehog about anything even resembling a slight, had clearly come a long way. Remembering why I was here though, I made my awkward way over to where Wanda was sitting.

  She put down her sketchbook, flipping it closed as I got closer. “Hello, Fifi.”

  “Hi, Wanda, thanks for seeing me.”

  She shrugged, just a lazy roll of her shoulder, but she did straighten up a little, putting both feet on the floor.