Chapter One
“ Y ou pay, we slay.”
I gave a firm shake of my head. “No.”
“You eviscerate, we investigate?”
Narrowing my gaze at my BFF Nina, I repeated firmly, “No.”
“You got ninety-nine problems, but a dead body ain’t one?”
Throwing the sticky pads I was busy organizing on my desk, I made a face at her. “Over my dead body.”
Nina chuckled, spinning around in her office chair. “You know, that can be arranged, Blondie.”
We were sitting around in the murder basement (if you’re not familiar, the murder basement was once a dungeon in Nina’s castle, which we converted to our private detective agency office) a couple of weeks after our first case.
My other BFF, Wanda, sighed, pushing the stray hairs from her updo out of her face. She folded her hands under her chin, her pretty eyes looking to Nina. “I don’t understand why you think it’s so important we have a tagline, vampire. The Accidental Detectives says it all. Now, forget taglines. Let’s focus on what we’re here to do. Figure out our next case.”
I scrolled through the inbox of the email address we’d created especially for our detective agency. We had more emails than days in a year, all from paranormals needing our help.
Tottington, our new right-hand man, had been parsing them for us. Rooting out the less critical and even the ridiculous, flagging the ones that needed immediate attention. But we’d decided before we took another case, we’d spend some time reviewing our last case—going over what we’d done right and what we’d done wrong.
And we’d done plenty wrong, believe that. The hope was to improve and learn from our mistakes.
That was my hope, anyway. Wanda’s, too. But Nina? By now, you know Nina. She doesn’t want to improve; she wants to blow this all up and watch it burn while she sips her synthetic blood.
All right, maybe that’s a little dramatic, but don’t think there hasn’t been plenty of pissing and moaning about how we forced her to join us in our kooky ideas.
As if on cue, Nina groaned. “We’re a fucking disaster, Wanda, or are you forgetting I almost died during our last go at this detective shit?”
I held up a finger as I hopped up from my chair and approached her desk. “But the question is, did you die, Mistress of the Dark?” Giving her nose an affectionate boop, I shook my head. “No. You did not. You lived—or whatever it is vampires do—and you solved the case.
“Did you get roughed up? Sure, but isn’t it always you who says you like a good tussle? Think of it this way, you got to choose violence and no one hassled you about it, aaand you kept us from ending up in clan jail. That’s what Nina Statleon calls a good day, right?”
She flapped her hands at me even as she grinned. “Whatever. Get out of my face, Blondie.”
I blew her a kiss and winked before planting my hands on my hips. “You know, we always tell you if you don’t want to help, you don’t have to. You can stay home and bake cookies with Charlie and Carl. We love a good SAHM, don’t we, Wanda?”
In fact, I have all the respect in the world for women who stay home and raise their children. But I’m here for eternity, barring any unforeseen illnesses or accidents. My daughter Hollis isn’t going to be fifteen forever. (Thank Jesus and all twelve—because wow , her teen years have been a steaming pile of horse dung.) She’ll go off to college, and I’ll have an eternity to fill. Knowing I had a business and something to do with my time soothed me.
These days, Hollis didn’t want me around much anyway.
Wanda and Nina keep telling me her behavior is normal, but explain to me how my husband, who’s far stricter than I’ll ever be, still appears to have hung the moon?
While I’m just the peon who steadied the ladder for him.
Nina flexed her muscles with another grin—a grin so beautiful, so perfect, I almost couldn’t believe how flawless it was, even after all these years.
“But who’d save your asses from a fate worse than death if I wasn’t around? If I was here baking cookies I can’t even eat, no one would be lookin’ out for you two bleeding hearts. I do it out of charity and the goodness of my nonexistent heart.”
I laughed. “As I recall, we saved your ass last time, didn’t we, Wanda?”
Wanda snickered from her desk. “You bet your glowering keister we did, Mistress of the Dark. Now, let’s get down to business. Who’s going to be our next case?” She rubbed her hands together. “After our review, I find I’m anxious to sink my teeth into another one. We haven’t had an accidental turning in a few months, so for the moment, we’re freed up. Plus, we did get a soft blessing from the council and the clan to keep up the good work.”
Twisting a lock of hair around my finger, I thought about that “blessing” from our respective elders after we’d solved our first case. It was begrudging at best, and it hadn’t come without the undertone of a warning.
But seeing as we were their best bet to keep paranormal crimes on the down low, the same way we did with our cases from OOPS, they’d given us a shaky (read: very shaky) green light to proceed.
Not that we wouldn’t have continued even if they’d forbidden us. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d defied our elders in favor of our hearts.
Nina adjusted her hoodie, crossing her feet at the ankles. “I call we check out the demon guy who thinks his wife’s doing the dirty with the pool guy. Nice, easy, quiet, probably no dead people, nobody who wants to kill me, definitely a lot less hassle.”
Tottington cleared his throat from the spiral staircase. “Pardon the interference, Dark Lord, but I believe it was the gardener that poor Mr. Ratzenburg thinks his wife is enjoying passion-filled afternoons with,” he said, as he entered our basement offices, a silver platter in his hands filled with tea and some pastries Arch had baked.
“Gardner, pool guy, plumber, shoe salesman, it’s all the same, Tater Tot,” Nina replied. “The point is, it’s safer than the shit we did in our first investigation.”
“But is it life or death, Nina? Is it an emergency? I mean, I’m sorry Mr. Ratzenburg-the-demon’s wife is cheating on him, but no one was injured. Anyone could find out if his wife’s cheating. I want something with a little more meat. A case where someone really needs our services.”
Tottington set the silver platter on the edge of Nina’s desk and began to pour tea for Wanda and me, and a mug of synthetic blood for Nina. “Ah, but my research says that’s the number one motive for murder, Mistress Marty. Jealousy. The stats are quite high in cases such as Mr. Ratzenburg’s.”
I rolled my eyes. We could be here all day making a unanimous vote on which case to take. We’d decided if we didn’t all agree, it didn’t happen.
Wanda tapped her computer screen, squinting. “I think we should take this one. It’s a lady, a banshee, who claims the man she ran into with her monster truck is faking his injuries to extort money from her. She wants to hire us to surveil him. You know, take pictures to prove he’s faking.”
Nina guzzled her mug of blood, taking a sip and dropping it with a thunk to the surface of her desk. “Oh, fuck that, Wanda. No damn banshees. They’re loud and screechy. Last time we ran into one of those, my ears hurt for a month.”
I sighed. “She’s right, Wanda. The last banshee we dealt with made my ears bleed.”
“You sure that wasn’t just you with your hairbrush in the mirror, mangling some Tom Jones tune?”
Do not take the bait, Marty Flaherty. Do not.
I was anxious to move forward. Arguing with Nina would only delay choosing our next case. She loved to razz me. I loved to razz her back, but not today, Satan. May the circle remain unbroken.
Going back to my desk, I plopped down in my office chair, cupping my chin in my hand. All the emails were beginning to bleed together, their words blurring.
“I don’t know, ladies. I’m not keen on sitting in the SUV while we spy on some cheating lunk. What he needs is a divorce, not some inexperienced PIs. Let’s look for something more urgent.”
Nina sipped at her mug, peering at me over the rim. “Let’s look for something that doesn’t get me annihilated.”
“Auntie Nina?” I heard someone call from the stairwell.
Instantly, my ears were on high alert and my heart throbbed in my chest. Why was my daughter here? Had she run all the way from Buffalo to Long Island? My heart pounded harder at all the danger she could have encountered along the way.
Mind you, I ran it when we worked here at Nina’s. It was an amazing morning run, something I tried to do every day since my heart attack, but I’m an adult werewolf, and a careful one at that. Aside from the dangers lurking in all the back roads for a young girl, the last thing we needed was someone getting a glimpse of a werewolf in the wild.
I swear on all twelve apostles, Hollis was going to be the death of me. I loved her to the moon and back, but her teen years had been one argument after another. And we were going to have one more if she did, indeed, run here from home.
Nina was up and out of her chair in a second flat as Hollis launched herself into her aunt’s arms with a sob.
That stung a little, but she had a terrific relationship with both Nina and Wanda, and they in turn, always kept the boundaries we’d created when it came to our children.
We mostly had the same core values and rules, and we never impeded on one another’s parenting skills. Yet, we all considered each other’s offspring as much ours as we did the children we’d given life to or adopted. There isn’t a single thing I wouldn’t do to protect Charlie, Carl, Sam, and Olivia. Nothing.
Whether it hurt my feelings that something was obviously wrong and Hollis had turned to Nina first, mattered not. That she’d come to us at all was enough for me.
Nina brushed Hollis’s raven hair from her face, plucking at the pink and purple streaks. “What’s goin’ on, Nugget? Tell me.” She set Hollis from her and scanned her from head to toe with critical eyes. “Are you hurt? Did someone hurt you?” she demanded, the fire in her coal-black eyes hot.
Hollis’s slender shoulders shook as she buried her face in Nina’s shoulder. “It’s bad, it’s so bad, Aunt Nina!”
A chill skittered along my spine. No parent wants to hear those words. I placed my hand on her back, surprised she didn’t brush me off. “What’s going on, honey?” I asked with the gentlest tone I could summon. I didn’t want to scold her for coming all this way—that could wait.
Wanda joined us, pressing a kiss to the top of Hollis’s head and cupping her chin. “Deep breaths, baby girl. In and out,” she cooed, before tugging her toward the peacock-blue settee Nina hated so much. “Let’s go sit while you catch your breath and then we’ll talk.”
As anxious as I was to discover what my daughter was so upset about, Wanda had the right idea. But then, she almost always knew how to soothe even the cagiest (see Nina).
She settled Hollis and brought her a fuzzy blue blanket, taking her short, puffy jacket off and tucking her in.
Nina took the jacket from Wanda and chucked Hollis under the chin. “I’ll get Arch to make you some hot cocoa, ’kay, punkin’? I love you. Whatever’s wrong, we’ll fix it. Sit tight.”
Hollis nodded with a sniff. “Thanks, Aunt Nina. I love you, too.”
I sat beside her and held her hand. Again, she didn’t pull away, which meant whatever was wrong was serious. “You ready to talk about what’s going on?”
Her chin fell to her chest. “Oh, Mom…it’s…it’s Charmaine!” she cried.
Her best friend? Another chill skittered along my spine. Hollis and Charmaine Ellis had been best buddies since kindergarten. They’d experienced so many firsts together, I’d lost count. Dances, science fair projects, their first shifts, their first group date.
Though, as of late, since Charmain’s father Ronald Ellis had remarried six months ago—after losing his wife, Seraphine, to a brain aneurism two years before—she’d become quite distant from everyone and everything.
She and her brother Rafe had been very close to their mother, and losing her had been a rare tragedy in the were community. But as immortal as we were, we weren’t immune to human ailments.
Ellis’s new wife Eve, a fellow werewolf, was lovely. We’d met her at several community functions and council meetings, and she had nothing but fond words for Charmaine and Rafe.
I’d heard Hollis on the phone with her bestie many a time, coaxing her to come out and join the rest of their friends on a group date, only to end the conversation frustrated by Charmaine’s resistance.
Hollis had been visibly upset at being unable to reach her best friend, distraught over the distancing of their friendship.
My husband Keegan and I had talked a lot with Hollis about how hard the adjustment might be, with a new stepmother, and that could be what had Charmaine in such a funk. But that doesn’t make a fifteen-year-old who missed her best friend feel any better.
I squeezed her hand tighter, looking deeply into her beautiful blue eyes. “What’s happening with Charmaine, sweetheart?”
Her words were stilted when she finally spoke, her sweet voice hoarse from crying. “It’s Charmaine’s… father… The…the council… they arrested him !”
We all looked at each other with confused, shocked eyes. Nina, back with a steaming mug of cocoa, looked down at Hollis with astonishment.
“Wait, isn’t he the guy who’s in charge of all the werewolf paraphernalia? Like all the cultural, historical stuff? Keeps it in a vault at his house, right?”
I nodded at her crude description of Ronald’s position in the werewolf community. “He’s our historical curator.”
Nina rolled her eyes as she handed Hollis the mug. “Yeah, him. He’s responsible for identifying shiz as authentic werewolf artifacts. He’s got some of the more priceless crap in a vault, right?”
I caressed Hollis’s hand. “Uh-huh. He also maintains the museum. Werewolves from all over the world come to see the collection he’s responsible for overseeing.”
Hollis began to cry in earnest. “Someone sto— tried to steal something from the…the vault, and now Zinnia is…”
Zinnia Hutchins? That was the daughter of Pearl Hutchins, the Ellis’s housekeeper/house manager. She performed a multitude of tasks. Ron had often said she didn’t just dust and he didn’t know how he’d ever live without her.
It was almost as though Hollis couldn’t find the words for whatever was troubling her, and to see my baby in pain made my stomach turn.
The vault in Ron’s home had the most priceless of werewolf artifacts. Priceless as in werewolf DNA dating back to the origins of the species, among other things—like scrolls from the ancients and so on. All items that, if in the wrong hands, could turn into a complete disaster. Not to mention reveal us to humans.
“Zinnia’s what, Hollis? And how does this involve Mr. Ellis, honey? Was he hurt during the robbery attempt? Is that what’s upsetting you?”
She scrunched her nose up at me, and I braced for the, “You just don’t understand!” line she gave me every time I unintentionally misinterpreted what she was saying. But she didn’t say it this time.
Instead, Hollis looked at me with pleading eyes filled with fear, gripping my hand tighter. “No! The council took him, Mom! They said he…he…” She put her face in her hands, sobbing harder. “I can’t say it. I can’t! I don’t believe it!”
Nina quietly held up her phone to show me an email my husband Keegan had sent to us all.
I blanched while I read, as did my cohorts.
Oh dear.
Hollis was trying to tell me it was murder, without telling me it was murder.