“Um, he’s a bit of a problem child. I’ve heard he and Emma Stomper are friendly. They’re both prone to wander off, but they’re not usually gone this long.”

  Cain wrote another note and nodded, more to himself than either of us. His eyes were bright, his shoulders square, his bad mood forgotten. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said he seemed almost cheerful. Surely he wasn’t happy about the children disappearing? Maybe he was just excited to have something to work on.

  Over Cain’s shoulder, I saw Fox Aspen straighten. He didn’t look happy, precisely, but there was a strange intensity to his expression. He leaned forward, setting his cup aside so he could grip the edge of his bunk, listening intently. The conversation seemed vitally important to him, though I didn’t see why a drunken hiker would take more than a passing interest in a missing persons report.

  “I’m going to have to review this information with both parents,” Cain said as he looked up at us.

  “Oh, um, I wouldn’t do that,” Marty said.

  Cain frowned at him. “And why not?”

  “Because they didn’t want anyone to come to you in the first place,” I answered as Marty looked at me, as if to say ‘let me handle this’. I just shrugged because I wasn’t sure what we could have said that would be any better.

  “They have certain… beliefs,” Marty started and rubbed the back of his neck as he searched for the right words. “That preclude them from wanting to involve the police in anything having to do with their lives.”

  “Hmm,” Cain said, nodding. “There’s a damned cult in this town and I’d bet my ass, these missing children are part of it.”

  “Can’t you look into this without going to the parents?” I asked, not wanting to touch his ‘cult’ comment with a ten-foot pole.

  “It’s never happened before,” Cain said, frowning at me. Then he tucked the notebook and pen into the breast pocket of his uniform once more. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” I answered.

  Cain faced Marty. “Thanks for coming in and now let me handle this.”

  “Is there anything we can do,” I started, but he gave me a look that stopped the words on my tongue.

  He faced Marty. “You and your girlfriend can get going now, Marty, and leave the crime solving to me. You’ve both done enough.”

  “She’s not my…” Marty began.

  But Cain had already turned away, moving onto the next item on his agenda. Marty and I exchanged a glance, but in the end, there was little we could do. So, we left.

  ***

  Thirty minutes later, I was bustling around the shop, flipping the sign to open, assisting the first customer to step inside the door. Though I kept a smile firmly in place, my heart wasn’t really in it. My mind kept flitting back to our visit to the police department, and Cain’s almost gleeful anticipation of the investigation to come. I hadn’t been happy about Ophelia’s apparent lack of interest in the case. The Stomper girls and Zane needed to be found. But somehow, I didn’t think inviting Cain Morgan to stick his nose into things had been a good idea, either. And I was fairly sure he was going to pay a visit to the Stompers and Louisa to corroborate our stories. And that meant they were going to head straight to Ophelia with the information and a whole load of crap was going to come down on Marty and me.

  This was definitely going to end badly…

  I was so lost in my thoughts, I didn’t hear the chime above the door that heralded the arrival of another customer. But, I didn’t see anyone. Thinking the wind had blown the door open, I started towards it, when I heard a bottle clink on a nearby shelf. I whipped my head around so fast, I winced against the sharp but quick pain that suddenly shot through my neck.

  There was a man raiding my shelves, his back facing me. He was over six feet of very solid and very familiar muscle. He’d been straining to reach something on the top shelf, and one of his elbows knocked a vial of Gypsy Magic into a vial of Moonlight Grove Oil. Neither had shattered, but the noise had been enough to draw my attention.

  “Ahem, can I help you?” I said.

  The man paused and turned around to face me. When he saw me, a smile stretched his full lips and mischief slid into the golden-brown of his eyes—the same mischief that had been in his gaze when I’d first seen him in the holding cell at the precinct.

  Chapter Eight

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Aspen, I didn’t realize you’d come in.”

  “Sort of the point, isn’t it?” he asked, as I wondered what he meant. He waved my apology away good-naturedly. “I’m used to not being seen,” he explained. “But I’m not used to being so... flat-footed. I have to admit, it’s a restriction I don’t care for. I’ll have to talk to Jon about it when I return.”

  Of course, I still had no idea what he was going on about, but I also didn’t want to appear rude, so I just smiled. He, meanwhile, plucked what he’d been looking for off the shelf with a sound of triumph and eased down onto the balls of his feet. I couldn’t help but watch the bunched muscles of his back as he did so. There was something so effortlessly graceful about him. Graceful, but... predatory.

  Fox Aspen held the glass vial up to the light, examining it with a critical eye. The potion was a luminous violet, and it was very potent. One of the newer recipes I’d started concocting after I found the original formula from an old gypsy recipe book online. It was called Faerie Enchantment.

  “This place of yours is impressive, you know,” Aspen continued as I wondered what in the world he could possibly want with such a potion. “It’s hard to come by genuine elixirs and remedies these days. Most of these stores are just tourist traps hawking nothing but smell-good lotions and bath salts that have absolutely no magical powers whatsoever.” I nodded because I had to agree with him. He looked at me and smiled. “It’s all essential oils, discount incense, and a cobbled-together pantheon of goods that don’t belong together.” Then he circled as he took stock of the store around him. “But, this place… this is the real deal. I could feel the magic as soon as I walked in.” He looked at me again. “You ought to be charging more for your creations.”

  He walked up to the front of the store and leaned over the counter, casual as you please and plucked a few cinnamon candies from a dish by the till, popping them into his mouth. He rolled them around on his tongue for a few seconds before giving me a cheeky grin. Then he shook the vial.

  “This, for example. It’s a bit crude, yes, but it’ll work if the faeries are in a playful mood. But you must bribe them with candy or sugar water first. Fae love sugar.”

  I could feel the pulse beating painfully in my throat. I felt like I might choke. How did he know all this? And why was he talking to me like we were old friends?

  “Ah, where are my manners? Fox Aspen,” he finished and held out his hand.

  I had a bad feeling about Fox Aspen, though I couldn’t put my finger on why. There was just something about him—an energy that purported negative feelings. For many years I’d ignored my gut when it came to handsome men. But, this time I wasn’t going to. This time, I was going to trust that little instinctual voice inside me that said this guy was bad news. At the very least, he was hiding something. Something big.

  And as regarded the vial of Faerie Enchantment, I wasn’t sure what he was expecting it to do, but it couldn’t actually summon anything large. Minor fae only, and the worst they’d do was sour milk and tie your shoelaces together. If they were playful, he’d get a wish or two, or he could dance by moonlight with frost faeries. Or it wouldn’t work at all, and he’d probably want his money back.

  He clucked his tongue. Then he gave me a long and languorous smile, taking me in from head to toe and from the look on his face, he liked what he saw. I cleared my throat and frowned at him.

  “You’re a gypsy,” he said.

  My chest puffed out, and in my red silk blouse, I probably looked like an indignant cardinal fluffing its feathers. “Yes.”

  He shrugged. “I always figured all gypsies were nomadic.”

  “Well, you figured wrong.”

  He took a step closer, and I automatically stepped away.

  My back hit the shelf, and every vial, crystal, and jar rattled. A second later, a crystal tumbled off the shelf and would have hit me square in the forehead if Fox hadn’t scooped it from mid-air, long fingers closing around the shining shard with surprising speed.

  In one instant he’d been feet away and the next he was pressed against me, shielding me as several more crystals rained down above me. They shed off his coat and rolled to the hardwood floor, noisy but harmless. It all happened so quickly, I almost couldn’t believe it had. How was he able to move so fast?

  My heart was jackhammering against my ribs, doing its best to tunnel out of my chest. There was a strange, almost earthy scent to him, familiar in a way I couldn’t place. He gently disentangled himself from me, smiling sheepishly as he did so. Then he smoothed his rumpled clothing.

  “Careful. I don’t want you buried in crystals and potions. Who knows what mixing all those things would do to you? Perhaps turn you into something unsavory… like a toad?” Then he chuckled as he shook his head. “Then you’d be no use to me at all.”

  I stepped back, careful not to bang into my shelf again, all the while glaring up at him with all the defiance I could muster.

  “What’s that supposed to mean… that I wouldn’t be any use to you?”

  He nodded, as if he expected me to ask the question. “Perhaps it’s more accurate to say I think we could help each other.”

  “Help each other?” I repeated, eyeing him narrowly as I wondered if I were safe with him. My other customer had left as soon as Fox walked into the store, so now it was just the two of us. And he was obviously much bigger and stronger than I was. Not to mention I was fairly sure he possessed magic of his own, which had allowed him to move as quickly as he had when he’d saved me from the raining crystals.

  That’s when I remembered the crystals were still on the floor. I glanced down at them but then wasn’t sure if I should bend over to retrieve them because maybe Fox would take that as his invitation to hit me over the head with something.

  “My employer, Jonathan Moses,” he continued as he took a few steps towards me and then bent over, retrieving the crystals himself. He picked up two of them and handed them to me. I accepted them and noticed with interest how he traced the inside of my palm with his thumb as soon as our hands met. And there was an energy that suddenly fired through my hand and up my arm. It was so surprising, I immediately pulled away as Fox laughed.

  “Anyway,” he continued as he bent over and retrieved more of the crystals.

  “You can put them on the counter,” I said when he tried to hand them to me again.

  “Right,” he said and did as I instructed. “Jon has sent me on an errand of sorts, and I think you can help me find what I’m looking for,” he finished as he placed the last of the crystals on the counter and then turned to face me squarely.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “My quarry in Haven Hollow may be connected to your missing children. If you’d lend me a bit of your time and aid, we could both leave this arrangement better off than when we started.”

  The cryptic proposal only begged more questions, but I didn’t have the chance to speak even a word, before my door burst open with a clatter. Every potion on my shelves jumped, more crystals rolled to the ground, and the bell above the door flew off, skittering to a stop by Fox’s feet. The sound made me yelp and wonder, yet again, how Fox had managed to creep in unnoticed. Clearly my bell was intact... or had been.

  When I craned my neck to see who the culprit was, I found the infamous Ophelia Ponsobby, realtor, fashion disaster, and destroyer of door chimes. As soon as I recognized her, I felt my heart stop and my stomach drop down to my toes. Now would be the time of reckoning, and I sorely wasn’t prepared for it.

  Had she already caught wind of Marty’s and my visit to Cain? But, how was that even possible as we’d only left the precinct an hour or so ago!

  Cold sweat broke out on my forehead. Ophelia was a night hag, a nasty creature capable of rotting most living matter at fifty paces. She could also elicit and feed off an immediate and irrational fear response in the human body, eventually resulting in said human’s death.

  Thanks to Wanda’s haywire magic, I’d even met one of her victims, a zombie named Libby. But going back to Ophelia’s appearance in my store and the fact that I was about to pay the piper, I wasn’t sure how much or what I owed her. What was the punishment for breaking her contract?

  But Ophelia didn’t even glance my way. Instead, she stalked forward, her cane striking the hardwood with the furious weight of a judge’s gavel, fiddling with the carved raven top until it popped loose. Then she drew a short rapier from the cane and let the rest of the cane drop to the floor with another deafening clatter.

  Ophelia only had eyes for Fox Aspen.

  She bared yellowing teeth and put all the strength her frail body could muster behind a lunge, thrusting the blade up at an angle that would skewer Fox’s throat. It all happened in a matter of seconds, so quick I didn’t have time to think.

  Fox merely smiled, reached into his coat, and pulled a dagger from the interior. Then he pushed Ophelia’s sword away easily, revealing the fact that she hadn’t actually intended to kill him. Just intimidate him. But, owing to his expression, it didn’t appear to have worked.

  Ophelia’s eyes narrowed on Fox. “A parrying dagger? Really?”

  His smile was puckish. “It pays to be prepared, hag.”

  “What’s going on, Ophelia?” I demanded. “You can’t just barge into my store and try to kill one of my customers!” I wasn’t sure what else to say, but I felt the need to try to diffuse the situation. Actually, the sooner I could get Ophelia and Fox out of my store, the better. Let them try to kill each other on the sidewalk.

  “I can do exactly that if your customer happens to be a hunter who’s come to kill us!”

  “A hunter?” I repeated at the same time Fox said;

  “Ophelia, don’t be so hyperbolic!”

  Ophelia bared her teeth in a grimace and held her blade up in his face again. He shook his head and wielded his blade in the air, as if to say he had one too.

  “This again, Ms. Ponsobby? We’ve already uncovered the fact that you aren’t going to kill me.”

  “I wouldn’t be so certain of that,” she responded.

  He chuckled. “Well, contrary to your beliefs, I am not here to kill any of you.” He looked back at me. “Least of all, the gypsy.”

  “A likely story,” Ophelia continued.

  “Can we talk about this like civilized adults, or will you force my hand?”

  “You can tell me what you have to say,” she answered.

  He nodded. “Firstly, I wasn’t sent here for you.”

  Ophelia’s hands balled into fists at her side as she brought her blade down. Her hands were almost swallowed by the sleeves of her overlarge sweater. I hadn’t noticed her getup in all the excitement, but, as usual, she looked like a catastrophe. Just as the sun rose in the east, and the sky was blue, Ophelia Ponsobby always dressed in something hideous. Today was no exception.

  The red holiday sweater had been embroidered within an inch of its life, and the sleeves seemed to be trailing silver tinsel. The buttons were patterned to look like oversized peppermints, and the belt that cinched the whole thing in the middle just served to accentuate her slight paunch and girthy waist. The pants weren’t much better: a hideous shade of pea green and striped like a green candy cane. They were tucked into what looked like muck boots. I had no idea what she’d been planning to do before she’d entered my shop. Maybe she’d been looking for a nice place to bury Fox’s body after she skewered him with her cane-sword.

  “You have to be here for someone or you wouldn’t have been able to enter the Hollow in the first place,” she hissed.

  “Okay, what the hell is going on here?” I asked, taking turns glaring at Ophelia and then Fox. They both were still holding their blades and facing each other squarely. “For the love of Pete, put the swords away!” I continued. “What if someone walks in and sees you both? How am I supposed to explain that?”

  Fox and Ophelia stared at each other and seemed to decide at almost the same moment to holster their weapons. Ophelia knelt, bones creaking and clanking in her best Tin Woodsman impression, never taking her eyes off the handsome hunter.

  Fox simply swept his coat aside, revealing an incredible array of pockets. And within the pockets were all types of weapons—blades, guns, other things I wasn’t even sure how to characterize. He put his blade back among the rest of its brethren and then faced me with a big smile.

  But, I wasn’t having any of it. I needed to get to the bottom of what was going on and why Fox was here in the first place.

  “Okay,” I said as I faced Ophelia. “What’s the story?”

  “This brigand planned to steal into our sanctuary and slaughter our people!” She took a step forward, eyes narrowing on Fox. “He is a hunter of monsters.”

  And in the next second, the air in the room thickened, growing so heavy that every breath felt like trying to draw in a lungful of sludge. I wheezed and black spots danced in front of my eyes. My heart spasmed in my chest, adrenaline streaking through my veins as abject terror seized me. I couldn’t breathe!

  “Enough!” Fox yelled.

  There was a sound of smashing glass, and suddenly I was free. I collapsed, knees hitting the floor so hard, pain spiderwebbed from my knees into my shins. Tears sprang into my eyes and poured down my cheeks. My hands stung, and a sound caught in my throat. When I craned my neck to see what had happened, I found Ophelia standing in the midst of a broken bottle of Command Oil and Fox towering over her. There were numerous bottles—maybe twenty or more—that lay around me, shattered and the contents leaking onto the floor.

  “Out!” Fox seethed as he pointed at the door. “Get out, you vicious hag! I told you I’m not here for your brood, but that may change if you keep this up!”