Murder Between the Stacks (Paperback)

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Sweat trickled down my spine as I tromped through the darkened building. The sun had finally set, but the heat hadn’t dissipated. Instead, the humidity held it in place, making the air in the abandoned mansion cloying. The greater Seattle area had always been humid, but Whidbey Island was usually much drier. The recent storms had settled over the town, making it unusually muggy for the season. I followed behind Sheriff Chris Harris, the beams from our flashlights bouncing off the graffiti-splattered walls.
“The bank foreclosed on the place last year after Harold Mitchell was arrested,” Chris said over his shoulder. “The company they hired to do periodic checks on the place called it in. The circle is in the in-ground pool.”
“And you’re sure it’s a ritual circle this time?” I asked.
Chris snorted. “No. But as much as Edgar dislikes you being in this position, he dislikes the idea of you not doing your job even more. It’s probably nothing.”
Again. Ever since I had been hired to the position of liaison between the Wardens of the West and the town council, Edgar Graves, one of the city councilors, had made it his mission to make the position as miserable as possible. Part of my official duties was to look into every crime in the city that could have a supernatural element and determine if it needed to be resolved by the town sheriff or by the Wardens, the secret law enforcement for the supernatural community. As part of the town council, he was allowed to know about their existence. He didn’t like them—nor, by extension, me. This was the third ritual circle I had been called out to this week alone, and thus far, they had been graffiti, spilled paint, and an art project a ten-year-old was working on for their mother. Being the town's resident witch expert was exhausting.
We came to a stop at French doors leading to a sunroom. I squinted through the fogged-over glass. The humidity inside was even worse than in the rest of the house. I pushed through the doors, my body sagging from the increased heat.
“The property manager found it?” I asked.
Chris shook his head. “An employee labeling the photos noticed it today. It might have been out here for weeks for all we know. They only do the inspections once a month, and they’re a little behind in putting together the reports for the bank.”
I swept my flashlight around the space, taking in my surroundings. Half the windows in the sunroom were cracked. A large branch, probably blown in there by a freak windstorm two weeks ago, jutted through an opening in the roof. Broken furniture lay scattered in heaps in the corner. The beam of light bounced off an animal's eyes. Whatever it was skittered away. It was a bit too big to be a rat but moved too quickly to be a possum. A raccoon maybe?
I blew a damp strand of hair out of my face, and trudged to the edge of the pool. The ladder was still in decent shape. “I’ll get to it, then.”
The metal ladder groaned under my weight as I descended. I dropped down the last few feet. Fortunately, the pool was completely dry. I inched myself away from the wall and prowled around the corners of the pool before circling inward toward the center. I paused at the first sign of a ritual circle. I knelt down and touched it. The circle was dry. I scraped at it with my fingernail, and a fleck of paint came up. While the circle was white, it was clearly spray-painted on. The circle itself wasn’t meaningful in any way.
Standing, I swung my flashlight, tracing the lines of the circle. It was a crude pentagram with candles at the points. I grumbled. I would have traded every magical mystery in Point Pleasant for the sound of Gertie, my dairy-cow familiar, chewing cud in the barn right now. At least cows never left pentagrams in swimming pools.
I crept to the first candle and lifted it. Battery powered? I set it back down and continued my inspection. I found crystals next, but there was no rhyme or reason to their placement or the crystals being used. Smokey quartz sat next to clear, which didn’t make sense from a mystical perspective. It was more artistic than anything. I flinched as a bottle bounced away from my foot, the glass clinking loudly against the cement. I padded over and picked it up. Beer—and not just any beer but a brand I recognized from my high school days, cheap enough for underage kids to buy but fancy enough to impress the girls.
I dropped the bottle and did one final sweep of the space. Relaxing my eyes, I pulled my magic to the surface and scanned the area to confirm what my brain was already telling me—there was nothing magical about this place.
“Anything?” Chris called down.
“Nope.” I returned to the ladder and hauled myself up. “Looks like kids messing around.”
Chris helped me up the last few feet, and we walked back outside in silence. The night air felt cooler against my skin, carrying the distant scent of wet grass and salt. For a second, I pretended I was already back on the farm.
He fished a bottle of water out of the trunk of his SUV and handed it to me. “Any luck getting city council to switch you to hourly?”
I shook my head as I guzzled it down. My shoulders loosened now that the answer was clear. Fake magic was irritating, but at least it meant I’d get to go home at a reasonable hour. My liaison position had made my schedule chaotic. Some days, I wasn’t called out for anything. But on others, I was up at four in the morning and crawling back into bed almost twenty-four hours later, just after three o’clock. Every day was different. It was hard to plan around.
“I almost regret pushing you to take on this role. It’s more work than I anticipated,” he said.
Gertie was none too pleased with me being away from home so often. I’d missed evening feed time more than once, and I would probably owe her an apple or two to make peace. But whenever I questioned if this was worth it, the faces of the local werewolves flashed through my mind. If I hadn’t been involved in that first case, the wrong person could have been arrested. The supernatural community was counting on me to have their backs since the Wardens were notorious for going with the easy answer.
I shook my head. “Don’t be. Someone’s got to do it. Might as well be me.”
Chris squeezed my shoulder. “You’re one of the good ones.”
I grabbed the clipboard from my truck and filled out the incident report while he waited. I made sure to press down hard enough that my handwriting would transfer down to the two layers of carbonless copy paper underneath. Every incident report had to be filled out in triplicate, one for the city council, one for the Wardens, and one for the sheriff’s department. I checked the box at the top indicating it was a mundane case—not preternatural, the term the city council had adopted for the supernatural community.
I was jotting down the last of my thoughts when my phone rang in my pocket. I fished it out as I continued to write. “This is Megan.” Over the past few months, I had adopted Miranda’s strange way of answering the phone after routinely having to spend the first minute of every call clarifying who I was to whichever department downtown was reaching out to me.
“Hi, Megan.” Victor sounded as tired as I felt. “Sorry for calling so late. Hopefully, I didn’t wake you.”
“Nope. I’m out at the old Mitchell estate. What can I do for you?” I signed the bottom of the form.
“I… there’s been a murder at Harborlight Books. Would you mind coming by to take a look?” Victor was the local medical examiner. Like Chris, he was obligated to inform me if he encountered anything strange.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. At this rate, I wasn’t going to make it home until after midnight. My new duties as the Wardens’ liaison had required me to take on Lindsey—my coven mate Kim’s daughter—part-time at the farm. Once the school year let out for the summer, she had agreed to work full-time so I could catch up on maintenance around the farm. I only had her for a few more months before she went off to college. I would have to figure something else out soon if I was going to keep balancing these two roles.
“I’ll be right there. Give me thirty minutes.” I shoved my phone into my pocket and ripped off the top copy of the form then handed it to Chris and climbed into my truck. Yawning, I tossed the clipboard onto the passenger seat.
“Got another case to look at?” Chris asked, leaning against my truck door.
“A murder at Harborlight Books.”
He nodded. “It should be a quick one for you, then. I was there soon after it got called in. It looked like a standard B and E gone wrong.”
I smiled at him weakly. “Who was the victim?”
“The owner.”
My eyes watered. I had met the man a handful of times in passing, and he’d always been pleasant enough. Since Avery, I had looked at two other deaths but neither one ended up on my desk. Victor’s call was different than the others—I had met the victim before.
Chris tapped his knuckles against the roof of my truck. “Let me grab you a muffin real quick. Dani would be disappointed in me if I let you leave without refueling you.”
Dani, another member of my coven, had married Chris just two months before. Having witnessed his wife overcast magic on more than one occasion, he was well-versed in what we needed to keep our magic properly fueled—food. While Dani preferred protein bars and Kim was partial to trail mix and jerky, I had a sweet tooth and wanted my extra energy to come from tasty things. My go-to easy snack was a Snickers, but I would never turn down a muffin or other baked good. Especially since I was pretty sure this muffin had been made by the fourth, and last, member of my coven—the only nonwitch, Heather. While she didn’t have magic, she was the heart and soul of the group.
My mouth watered as he returned. Muffin didn’t do the delectable item justice. It was a triple-chocolate monstrosity with a gooey center.
I groaned as I bit into it. “Thank you. You are a god amongst men.”
He barked out a laugh. “Drive safe.”
I chowed down on the muffin as I backed out of the driveway and drove into town. The past two months had been exhausting in a way that I was unprepared for. Almost every day, I’d been called out yet another false alarm. Each one required me to check it out with magic. I hadn’t ever cast so many spells in such a short period of time. I was getting better at keeping up my magical stamina, but between attending to my liaison duties and keeping my farm going, I was running myself ragged. I stifled another yawn and turned off onto the road leading to the bookstore and the latest crime scene for me to clear.

• Murder Among the Hives
• Murder Between the Stacks
• Murder Under the Moon
• Murder Along the Shore (Coming Soon)