Witching You Were Here (Wicked Witches of the Midwest Book 3) (14 page)

“That was different,” Clove argued. “That was in the middle of spring and nowhere near as dangerous.”

“How is this dangerous?”

“What if someone finds us out here?”

“Then we’ll just say our car broke down and we were looking for a phone,” Thistle said.

“We have cell phones.”

“The longer you sit here and argue, the longer this is going to take us,” I said.

“Fine,” Clove said. “Just know that I’m doing this under duress.”

“Duly noted.”

We let the ball of light lead us into main foyer of the inn. The room was completely empty except for the curtains covering the windows – and they looked new.

“Why would you buy new curtains when there’s no back wall to the property?” Thistle asked.

“To hide something,” I replied.

“There’s nothing in here, though.”

“Not in this room,” I agreed.

Thistle set her jaw grimly and nodded. We moved further into the dark inn. The room behind the foyer led to the dining room. It was also empty. We all looked at the staircase that led upstairs and wordlessly turned away from it. None of us felt comfortable enough to go upstairs. We would be cut off from any avenue of escape if we did.

Instead, we headed for the room behind the dining room – which we all assumed was the kitchen. When we got there, though, we were understandably confused. “This is the kitchen?”

“I think it used to be.”

“There’s nothing here.”

“What’s over there?” I pointed towards a door at the back of the room.

“Probably the larder,” Clove said.

“What’s a larder?”

“This is an old inn. Larders were for keeping food before refrigerators and stuff,” Clove said knowingly. “They probably just used it for storage.”

Thistle moved towards the small room, the ball of light moving with her. Clove was right on her heels. She didn’t want to be away from the light. “Is there anything in there?”

“No,” Thistle said. “But it looks like there was.”

“What do you mean?” I peered around the corner and into the small storage closet. There was a layer of dust on the floor that had clearly been disturbed sometime recently.

“It looks like big crates,” Clove said finally. “What do you think was in them?”

“How should we know?” Thistle asked irritably. “You’ve been with us since we got here. Do you think we magically know something that we’re not telling you?”

“No need to get snippy.”

“I’m not snippy. You’re just being dippy,” Thistle shot back.

“You’re a poet and you didn’t know it,” I sang out.

“No one needs that,” Thistle chastised me.

“There’s obviously nothing here,” I said finally.

“Not now, at least,” Thistle agreed.

We all froze when we heard the sound of a car door slamming somewhere outside. I glanced around the kitchen for someplace to hide. Thistle and Clove were right behind me.

“What do we do?” Clove hissed.

“We can’t get trapped in this house,” Thistle said.

I knew she was right. Instead of heading back through the house the way we had come I turned towards the door at the back of the kitchen instead. When I looked on the other side, I found what I assumed used to be a laundry room. The back of the room was missing, though. It was clearly the part of the inn that had been destroyed by fire. There was only a tarp keeping the elements from claiming the rest of the house.

Thistle quickly doused her ball of light and we all slipped into the laundry room, being careful to shut the door quietly behind us. I knelt down, pressing myself to the wall on the other side of the kitchen. Thistle and Clove did the same, all of us trying to control the ragged tempo of our own breath.

“Why don’t we just leave?” Clove whispered.

Thistle clamped her hand over Clove’s mouth to shush her. It was just in time, too, we could hear voices entering the kitchen. There were three distinct ones to differentiate from.

“Are you sure about this?”

I didn’t know who was talking, but I could hear grunting as something big slid from behind the counter – the area we hadn’t previously looked  – and out into the open kitchen. Whoever was inside had flashlights, but I didn’t want to risk standing up to look inside in case they caught a glimpse of me through the glass door separating us from them.

“I told you already,” the other voice said. “If you want to back out, you have to do it now.”

“Do you want to back out?” The third voice asked.

“No. We’ve been planning this for three years.”

“I just want to make sure that we’re not in over our head here,” the third voice said.

“We’re not. Everything is going just as we planned. This town isn’t going to know what hit it.”

The three men didn’t stay in the kitchen very long. They were gone within a few minutes. Clove, Thistle and I stayed crouched in the laundry room until we were sure they were gone, waiting until we heard the car fire up and then drive away. Once they were gone, I turned to Thistle incredulously.

“I told you something was going on.”

“No, I told you.”

“I was the one that said it first,” I argued.

“I was the one that insisted we come out here,” Thistle countered.

“You both told each other,” Clove interjected irritably. “Let’s get out of here.”

Neither Thistle nor I had the energy – or the inclination – to argue with Clove. The arguments could wait until we were safely home.

Once we got back to the car, Clove passed the thermos around and we wordlessly drank from it until we were a few miles away from the Dragonfly. Once we were almost home, Thistle broke the silence.

“I think one of those guys was my dad.”

“Are you sure?” Clove asked.

“No,” Thistle shook her head. “Maybe I just think it was because I know he’s the one that technically bought the property.”

“That’s possible.”

“Or maybe it’s him and they were hiding something terrible in that house?”

There was that possibility, too.

“What do you think was in the box?” Clove asked, finally voicing the question that none of us really wanted the answer to.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Whatever it was, we had a chance to find it and we missed out.”

“Do you think
it’s drugs?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Do you think it was a body?” Clove asked.

“In a crate?” Thistle asked dubiously.

“We don’t know it was a crate. We know that it looked like crates were in the larder, but we don’t know what was behind the counter because we didn’t look,” Clove shot back petulantly.

She had a point.

“It was probably a coffin,” Clove said excitedly.

“A coffin?” Thistle looked agitated. “I knew we shouldn’t have brought you.”

“How is thinking it’s a coffin equate to you thinking you shouldn’t have brought me?” Clove looked hurt.

“Now you’re going to give yourself nightmares.”

“I am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Bay!” They both yelled my name in unison.

“What?”

“Tell her it wasn’t a coffin.”

“It wasn’t a coffin.”

“How do you know?” Clove asked.

“I don’t. I just think we would have noticed a coffin. It had to be something small enough to fit behind the counter without being obvious.”

“Oh,” Clove seemed placated. “That makes sense.”

“We still don’t know what was in the crate,” Thistle pointed out.

“Let’s just get home,” I sighed.

ONCE
we were back at the gatehouse, we all stripped down to simple T-shirts to pair with our matching jogging pants.

“Let’s order pizza,” Clove said. “I’m starving.”

“I lost my appetite,” Thistle muttered.

“I could eat,” I said.

A knock at the front door distracted us all. We exchanged worried looks and no one jumped to their feet to answer the door right away.

“You don’t think they followed us, do you?” Clove looked like she was about to pass out.

“We left after them,” Thistle said.

“Maybe they were hiding in the woods?”

“How did they hide their car?”

“Maybe only two of them left as a decoy and the other hid in the woods until we left and then they picked him up and they all followed us? Or maybe whatever was in that coffin came to life and followed us?”

Thistle was right, there was no way Clove was going to sleep alone tonight. She’d be crawling into bed with one of us around 2 a.m.

There was another knock on the door.

“One of us has to get it,” Thistle said finally.

“I nominate Bay,” Clove said hurriedly.

“Why me?”

“You’re the oldest.”

“You’re sleeping with Thistle tonight,” I grumbled.

I got to my feet and slowly plodded towards the door. I had images of masked assailants on the other side. I knew it was ridiculous, but that didn’t stop my imagination from running wild.

“Who is it?” I asked when I got up close to the door.

“Pizza delivery.”

“We didn’t order any pizza.”

I tried to peer out the side window and see who was standing on the front porch but it was too dark. I flicked on the light, bracing to run as quickly as possible, but I found that the sight of the figure on the front porch was more welcome than I would have liked to admit.

I threw open the door and greeted Landon with a welcome smile. “You brought pizza?”

“Three of them.”

“I guess you can come in then.”

“Am I always going to have to bring food when I want an invitation beyond the front door?” Landon teased.

“So far.”

Landon pulled up short when he saw Thistle and Clove. “Why are you all dressed alike?”

Uh-oh. I most definitely didn’t want to tell Landon about our little excursion in the dark. Not only had we broken the law, but Thistle’s dad may also (or may not, who knew?) be involved in something underhanded.

“This is how we dress when we want to get comfortable,” Thistle said.

Landon handed me the three boxes of pizza and shrugged out of his heavy coat. Clove jumped to her feet and went to the kitchen to get plates and napkins. We were all settling around the coffee table to eat when there was another knock at the front door.

“Get out your gun,” Clove hissed at Landon.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I waved Clove off. “She’s just high strung tonight.”

“She’s on her period,” Thistle said.

“I am not,” Clove protested. “That’s not even a good lie. We’re all on our periods at the same time. You know that.”

“That sounds like a fun week,” Landon said, clearly uncomfortable with the turn in the conversation.

I opened the front door without looking outside this time. I felt a lot braver knowing Landon was only a few feet away. I found Marcus standing on the front porch with a paper bag in his hands.

“Hey,” I greeted him.

Marcus looked surprised when he came in and found Landon sitting with us. “Hey man, I didn’t know you were back.”

Landon and Marcus knew each other from a few months ago. They hadn’t spent a lot of time together, but they had seemed to get along well enough.

“I’m back,” Landon agreed. “You hungry? I brought pizza.”

“Cool. I’m starved.”

Once we were all grouped around the coffee table, the conversation stalled for a few minutes while everyone relished the hot pizza. Once we were done, though, Marcus handed the bag he had brought to Thistle.

“What’s this?”

“I thought you wanted chocolate martinis?’

“Clove bought the ingredients earlier,” Thistle explained.

“Well,” Marcus shrugged. “Now you have more.”

Thistle and Clove set about to making the martinis while Marcus and Landon got comfortable in adjacent chairs. They were soon discussing the state of the Detroit Pistons and how they thought the Lions were going to do next season – both topics of conversation that pretty much bored me to tears.

Once Thistle pressed a fresh martini in my hand, though, I didn’t care what they were talking about. I just let the chocolate goodness wash over me while Clove built a fire.

Once everyone was settled, the topic of conversation turned to the missing Canadian couple.

“We don’t know anything more than we knew this morning,” Landon said.

“A boat like that doesn’t just get abandoned,” Marcus said.

“No, it doesn’t.”

Marcus turned to Thistle. “So, how did your little adventure turn out tonight?”