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“Yes, of course.” Rory began to tackle his breakfast casserole but found he’d lost his appetite. He noted that Kate, too, only picked at her food this morning.

She took another nibble of muffin. “How well do you know your band members?”

“We’re like brothers.” Weren’t they? He felt that way, but did they?

They were all close friends, yes, but they had moved on with their personal lives now that they’d made a little money.

Life was no longer all about the band. Were they drifting apart?

Had one of them let an unstable family member get too close? Rory shook his head.

“Think about it. Think about who in the band might be connected to her. Go over in your head how they all responded when she showed up. Were they surprised? Upset? Resigned?”

“I’d know if one of them was lying to me.”

“Would you?”

“Sure, liars won’t meet your eyes, and the guys in the band are all straight shooters. There’s not one of them who doesn’t look me in the eye.”

Kate shook her head. “That hasn’t been my experience with liars, and believe me, in my profession, I’ve ferreted many lies.

Liars look you straight in the eyes. They watch you to gauge your reaction to the lies they’re spinning.

People who won’t meet your eyes aren’t lying.

They’re trying to keep information from you without lying.

They won’t look at you because they’re hurt or trying not to hurt you with what you might see in their eyes.

But intentional liars will always look at you straight on. ”

Rory paused to think about that.

Kate continued, “Listen, I can approach the paper, but there isn’t really anything in there we can use to insist on a retraction.

I can scold them for not fact-checking and reaching out to you before printing the piece, but they put it forth as a type of exposé.

Honestly, the press isn’t bad. I know you didn’t want your real name out there with your stage name, but it is local, and it isn’t like the Associated Press is pulling stories from the Hazard Gazette . ”

“Unless she has connections. We don’t know…” Rory ran his hand through his hair. “How can you be so calm about this?”

“Because this is what I do. I’ll approach the paper this afternoon to make sure the piece stays local. I imagine the historical society will back me on that.”

Rory nodded. “They’re a local force to be reckoned with. And, maybe Whitney Hopewell. She’s running for mayor and her cousin owns the paper.”

“You know her?”

“She’s a friend, sort of, from high school.”

“Okay, good. That’s good. After breakfast, give her a call. This afternoon, I’ll put on my professional garb and scare the editor of the local paper into doing my bidding. But first, I really need to learn to bake a muffin.”

*

“It’s easy,” said Ivy. “And fun. You’ll have it down in no time. The secret is knowing the proper consistency of the batter. Not too wet and not too dry. Here, see, stir for a while and get a feel for it.”

“We are using a recipe.” Kate needed that clarification. When it came to baking, no way could she wing it.

“Of course, but sometimes it doesn’t come out the same. It might be the humidity that day, or the temperature. Altitude has a lot to do with baking. So long as you get a feel for the altitude you’re in, you should be fine.”

“Why do I have a feeling these lessons would go differently if your sister Holly from the bakery was teaching me?”

“Oh, they’d be very different. Holly isn’t flexible. But this recipe is, and you’re going to love these muffins so much they’ll become your signature muffins. I know it!”

“So, if the batter is too wet…”

“Add more flour.”

“And if it is too dry…”

“Add more liquid. In this recipe, that would be the applesauce.”

“So, I’m making applesauce muffins, seasoned with allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove.”

“Yes, but subtly applesauce muffins. This will be your basic recipe. You can change it up depending on the season and what you have on hand. You can substitute the applesauce with mashed banana for banana muffins. You might add chocolate chips. Chocolate and clove are an unexpected flavor profile, and I love that. Holly would never let you experiment. She has a separate recipe for every type of muffin.”

Kate mixed and stirred and followed Ivy’s instructions. When she reached for her cupcake papers, Ivy shook her head.

“No, grease and sugar your pan instead. You don’t need the papers. The muffins will be like the top all the way around if you do it this way. And, it’s more fun.”

And it was. Although getting the sugar to coat the hollows in the muffin pan took some effort.

“That’s it. Get your hips into it,” laughed Ivy, and Kate did a little dance around the kitchen.

“Don’t fill them too much. You don’t have to worry about filling up a silly paper. You can make them any cute size you want this way.”

Once the first pan was in the oven, Kate added dark chocolate shavings to the batter and readied the next pan to go in. Ivy was right. It was fun to mix it up a little. And baking should be fun.

“Now, we need to watch because every oven is different, and you need to learn how long to cook your muffins during each season. Baking them at 400 degrees instead of 350 will make the muffin tops prettier.”

“You know all the tricks.”

“Well, I should. Are you having fun?”

Kate nodded.

“Good, because I feel like you need more fun in your life.”

Kate thought of all the bills piling up for the renovation of the inn.

She’d placed Derrick Cross’s offer letter at the bottom of the stack.

Each time she wrote out a check for repairs, she knew the offer waited at the bottom, mocking her, reminding her she could be free of all this financial angst. She could make a tidy profit on the inn and go back to working for her father.

And this afternoon she would be doing exactly that, working for QHM when she went down to the paper to meet with the editor. Just thinking about donning her professional mantle made her tense. “I do need more fun,” she admitted.

“So what happened out front?”

Kate blinked. “Oh, did I miss a spot? Someone smashed my pumpkins on my front door. Two of the largest ones, and they slashed the others. I think they would have thrown those too, if Rory hadn’t stomped to the front door and flung it open.”

“That’s awful. Do you know who did it?”

“We didn’t catch them. I thought it was teens.”

Ivy frowned. “Maybe, but that’s not really a thing around here. And no, you didn’t miss a spot. I was curious about all the tiny bones scattered about. Looks like a voodoo ritual in your front yard.”

“Bones?” Kate blinked, imaging something ghoulish and almost cartoonish. She shivered. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh,” Ivy motioned to the oven. “Time to take them out and test them with a knife in the middle.”

Kate grabbed her oven mitts, still disturbed by their conversation but unwilling to ruin yet another batch of muffins. She set the pan on the burners and slid a knife into the center of a muffin and pulled it out clean.

“Perfect! Okay, so you’ll want to cook your muffins for twenty-two minutes.”

Kate slid in the next pan, then popped the muffins out of the first and set them to cool on her wire rack. Then came the moment of truth. Kate took a test bite and almost moaned in delight. Ivy sampled one too.

“See, you did it. These are lovely.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you. Now, show me those bones.” Kate imagined a scene from a horror movie with human bones scattered about, but surely that was ridiculous. Ivy would have said something when she came in, and they would have noticed anything crazy last night.

When she saw all the itty-bitty bones scattered below her window box, she sagged a little.

“With everything else going on, I’d forgotten I moved them out here.

My little gift skeletons are all broken.

” Kate’s spirits dropped. She’d been so careful to preserve them, and then to set them out for display on Halloween.

Now they were just bits scattered beneath her window box.

It did look like some weird voodoo practitioner was cursing her inn. That was the last thing she needed.

“Gift skeletons?” Ivy’s question penetrated her thoughts.

“My mystery cat leaves them for me, all picked clean. It’s weird, and really, I was surprised they stayed together at all without being wired.

It never did seem normal to me. First that a cat would pick a small animal skeleton clean like that, and then that the bones stayed intact rather than just falling apart. ”

“What were they exactly?” Ivy’s voice rose.

“A mouse, a bird, and what I think was a tiny lizard.”

“And why do you call it your…mystery cat?” Ivy raised her hands and put imaginary question marks around the words.

“Well, because I never see her. Just her shadow—usually on the stairs, sometimes in the hall or the parlor. Even in my room on the third floor. She never acts skittish or scared of me, not really, but she never gets close enough for me to pet her, and when I turn on the lights she’s just gone, like she vanished into thin air. ”

Ivy grinned. “Are you sure she’s real?”

“Well, she has to be.” Kate waved her hand at the bones.

“I mean…are sure she’s not a ghost cat?”

“Casper the friendly ghost cat?”

“Well, you only ever see her shadow…maybe she’s otherworldly.”

Or from a different time merging into the present. Kate shook her head. What was she thinking? She dealt with reality.

At least she had until she moved here.

And met Rory.

And saw cat shadows.

“…the bones all stay together,” she spoke the words thoughtfully, “or they did until my vandal smashed them.”

Ivy clapped her hands. “Magic!”

Kate let out a long sigh. “Okey dokey, my inn is haunted by a cat. And you call that…”

“The magic of Hazard.”

“The magic of Hazard,” Kate repeated.

Ivy nodded solemnly. “The best kind.”

*