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“That’s the point. What if he doesn’t?”
“Reach the landmark? Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because he’s a hundred years old. He could die any day. Any minute. Writing ahead might jinx him.”
Tipping her sunglasses down, Sadie stared. “Have you met the man? Rhetorical question,” she said before her cousin could respond. “He smoked a pipe until he was ninety-two. I hate to think how much whiskey he knocks back in a day. He tells dirty jokes nonstop at the dockside bar that’s basically his second home in the Cove, then laughs until his face turns bright red. If none of those things have gotten him, me writing a series of articles two weeks ahead isn’t likely to do it.”
Molly’s chin came up in a rare show of defiance. “Maybe that’s what your recurring dreams mean.”
“What, you think they’re telling me not to fly in the face of God and/or fate? They’re stories, Molly. Feel-good articles that will, I hope, help stop the residents of our twin towns from going for each other’s throats every time one’s name is mentioned to the other. I’m sure this kind of resent-the-twin thing doesn’t happen in Minneapolis or St. Paul.”
“Raven’s Hollow and Raven’s Cove aren’t twin towns. We’re more like evil stepsisters. The Cove has nasty raven legends. We have a history of witches. You’ll never mesh those two things. Just—never.”
As if cued, a man Sadie recognized from Raven’s Cove strolled past. His name was Samuel Blume. He carried a racing form and a rabbit’s foot in one hand and a copy of the Chronicle in the other. A huge smile split his weathered face.
“Afternoon, ladies. I see you’re forecasting big rain and wind tonight, Sadie. Must be your Bellam blood rearing its witchy head, because the radio and TV both say sunny and hot for at least three more days.”
She shrugged. “You choose, Sam. My newspaper’s going with the rain and wind.”
“Good thing I brought my lucky charm. I’ll be sure to get myself out of here and home safe before whatever storm you’re brewing up hits.”
“I rest my case,” Molly said when the man moved along. “We’re Bellams, he’s a Blume. He assumes we’re all like our ancestor. It’s a battle of sarcastic wills. Hollow witches versus Cove ravens. Whose legends pack a bigger wallop?”
“Well, now you’re getting weird.” Sadie used the folded preview edition of the Chronicle to fan her face. “We’re not supernatural versions of the Hatfields and McCoys, and we’re definitely not Cinderella’s stepsisters in town form. Besides, the Raven’s Hollow police chief’s a Blume, and he doesn’t believe in legends at all. So pax, and thanks for the Tylenol.”
Sadie turned to leave, but a tiny sound from Molly stopped her.
“Problem?” she asked, turning back.
“No. It’s just—you look very nice today.”
Sadie glanced down at her green-black tank top, her long, floaty skirt and high wedge sandals. “Thank you—I think.”
“You seem more city than town to me.”
“Okay.” Her eyebrows went up. “Does that mean something?”
“I wonder how long you’ll stay.”
“I’ve been here for two years so far, plus the seven I put in as a kid.”
“I’ve been here my whole life. You have a transient soul, Sadie. I think you’ll eventually get bored with the Hollow and move on.”
“Maybe.” She waited a beat before asking, “Is that a bad thing?”
“For you, no. But others belong here.”
It took Sadie a moment to figure out where this was going. Then she followed her cousin’s gaze to the police station and heard the click.
“Ty and I were only engaged for a few months. We realized our mistake, ended the engagement and now we’re friends.” Her eyes sparkled. “A Bellam and a Blume, Molly. Can you imagine the repercussions if we’d challenged the natural order of things and followed through with a wedding? Although,” she added, “it’s been done before, and neither the Hollow nor the Cove fell into the Atlantic as a result.”
“Are you teasing me?”
“Yes, and I’m sorry. Really. I know you like Ty. It’s good. I like him, too, just not the way a potential life mate should.”
Molly’s cheeks went pink. “Everyone likes Ty. I didn’t mean—I don’t have a thing for him.”
“No? Weird,” Sadie repeated. She grinned. “Bye, Molly.”
“Bye, Sadie.”
With a quick—and she had to admit—somewhat guilty glance at the station house, Sadie started off again.
The fact that it took her fifteen minutes to make what should have been a two-minute walk no longer surprised her. Ten people stopped her on the sidewalk to jab fingers at the clear blue sky. Thankfully, only three of the ten inquired about the source of the Chronicle’s forecast.
She didn’t think any of those three actually believed in witches of the warts-and-pointed-hats variety, but more than a few of them probably subscribed to the notion that Hezekiah Blume, founder and first citizen of nearby Raven’s Cove, had, upon marrying Nola Bellam, in reality wed a witch.
According to Cove legend, the union had led to a fatal fallout between Hezekiah and his younger brother, Ezekiel. Ezekiel had tried to kill Nola, Hezekiah had ultimately killed Ezekiel, and the entire tragedy had ended with the gates of hell blasting open between the two towns—in the literal sense back then and still in a figurative one today.
Taking her right back, Sadie thought with a sigh, to the beginning of last night’s dream.
Resisting an urge to swallow more pills, she pushed through the doors of the wood and stone building that housed the Chronicle.
She’d inherited the newspaper from her uncle two years ago. Next to the techno-sleek environs she’d known in Boston and D.C., it was a New England dinosaur, complete with antique wiring, fifty-year-old basement presses and fourteen employees for whom the word change had little or no meaning.
It had taken her the better part of a year to nudge the place past the millennium mark in terms of equipment. The employees continued to be a work in progress. But she considered it a major step forward that several of them had gone from calling her Ms. Bellam to Sadie over the past year.
She spent the remainder of the afternoon reviewing advertising layouts with her copy editor. At seven o’clock precisely, the man creaked to his feet. “My knees have been acting up all day, Sadie. Figure you could be right about that storm after all.”
“The weather center in Bangor could be right,” she countered. “I’m only the messenger.”
“Said Tituba to her inquisitor.” With a wink and a grin, he limped off down the hall.
“I give up.” Rising from her desk, Sadie rocked her head from side to side. “Call me a witch. Call everyone with the same last name as me a witch. Make the nightmares I’ve been having go away, and I’ll accept pretty much any label at this point.”
She knew she’d be putting in at least another hour before packing up her laptop and heading home. With luck, a little overtime would help her sleep better. Unless the predicted storm arrived with thunder and wound up sparking another dream.
“Well, Jesus, Sadie,” she laughed, and forced herself to buckle down.
She had the ad layouts sorted, two columns edited and was endeavoring to make sense of a third when the phone rang.
With her mind still on the article—who used Tabasco sauce as an emergency replacement for molasses in oatmeal cookies?—she picked up.
“Raven’s Hollow Chronicle, Sadie Bellam speaking.”
For a moment there was nothing, then a mechanical whisper reached her. “Look at your computer, Sadie.”
The darkest aspects of the nightmare rushed back in to ice her skin. Her fingers tightened on the handset. “Who is this?”
“Look at your in-box. See the card I’ve sent you.”
Her eyes slid to the monitor. She wanted to brush it off as a bad joke. Wanted to, but couldn’t. Using a breathing technique to bolster her courage, she complied.
“Do you see it?”
Her heart tripped as the image formed. The “card” showed two animated ravens. One was locked inside a cage. The other was out. The free bird used a talon to scratch a word in what looked to be blood. It said simply:
MINE!
Chapter Three
“You about done changing that tire, Elijah?” Despite the pouring rain, Rooney Blume stuck his head out the window of his great-grandson’s truck. He squinted skyward as thunder rattled the ground. “Someone upstairs must be working off one big mad.”
“Someone out here definitely is,” Eli said, giving the lug nuts he’d just put on the tire a hard cinch to tighten them. “What were you thinking riding your bike to the Cove in this weather?”
“DMV lifted my license last year, and the sun was shining when I started out. Probably good you came along when you did, though. My balance tends to fail me in the wet.”
As Eli recalled, his great-grandfather’s balance wasn’t a whole lot better in the dry. There’d also been a thermos of heavily spiked tea tucked in the bike’s carrier, and likely close to half of what he’d started out with inside the old man by the time their paths had crossed.
Right now Rooney was pushing a metal cup through the window. Giving the last nut a tug, Eli accepted the cup, considered briefly, then tossed the contents back in a single fiery shot.
Some things, he realized, when the flames in his throat subsided, never changed. He gave the cup back to Rooney.
His great-grandfather pointed a knobby finger at a line of trees bent low by the wind. “Gonna be a bitch of a night.”
Soaked to the skin, with his dark hair dripping in his eyes and rainwater running down his neck, Eli climbed back inside and started the truck’s engine. “You think?” But he grinned as he spoke, and flicked a hand at the thermos. “I’m surprised that tea of yours hasn’t eaten through the aluminum casing by now.”
“You sound like my great-grandson.”
“I am your great-grandson.”
“I mean the other one. The one who’s wearing a police chief’s badge and sporting a big dose of attitude over in the Hollow.”
“Only a town of fools would give a badge to someone who prefers carrot juice to whiskey.” Eli squinted through the streaming windshield. “Self-denial that unswerving upsets the balance of the universe.”
“Spoken like a cop after my own heart. And while we’re on the subject of badges and balances, did you know your carrot-loving cousin’s not gonna be putting a wedding ring on Sadie Bellam’s finger?”
“Heard about it.” Eli kept his tone casual and swept his gaze across the mud-slick road. “I also heard it was Sadie who ended the engagement.”
Rooney’s expression grew canny. “You got awful good hearing for a man who spends most of his time hunting down killers in New York City.”
“It’s not so far from there to here. As the raven flies.”
The old man chortled and offered him another cup of “tea.” “I won’t say you’re a jackass, Elijah, only that among other more valuable things—and for ‘things,’ read ‘Sadie’—the badge on Ty’s chest could’ve been yours if you’d wanted it.”
“And an executive position at the New York Times could’ve been Sadie’s if she’d wanted it. We do what we do, Rooney, and live with the consequences.”
His great-grandfather made a rude sound. “You’re as stubborn as twenty mules, the pair of you. You knew each other as kids, connection was already there. Life’ll take you down different paths because that’s how it goes sometimes. But it goes in circles other times, and you and Sadie came to the end of a doozy when you met up last April in Boston.”
“Rooney—” Eli began.
“I was there, Eli. I saw you. And let me tell you, there wasn’t a soul at that wedding reception who even noticed the bride and groom with the fireworks you two set off. Suddenly, next thing I know, Sadie’s back at the Chronicle, and you’re tracking a serial killer through the underbelly of Manhattan. Me, the universe and pretty much everyone at the reception are still scratching our heads over that turn of events.”
Eli sighed. “You, the universe and pretty much everyone at the reception read too much into a time-and-place chemical reaction. Sadie was engaged in April.”
“Only until she got back from Boston. Two days later, your cousin Ty was drowning his sorrows in goat milk and a double dose of wheat germ.”
“Sadie’s not ready to be married, and my life’s good the way it is. Cops and relationships don’t mix.”
Rooney snorted. “If you expect me to buy that load of bull, you’re no kind of cop. And no kin of mine.”
“In that case, happy hundred and first in advance, and I’ll be heading back to New York right after I drop you off at Joe’s bar.”
“I need a favor before you go.”
“Yeah?” Eli raised a mildly amused brow. “I could say I don’t do favors for people who claim to have disowned me.”
“But that would make you unworthy of any badge, and we both know that’s as far from the truth as it gets.”
The vague humor lingered despite the fact that Eli could no longer see either the road or the dense woods next to it that stretched from the Cove to the Hollow and beyond. The rain fell in blinding sheets now. “What do you need?”
“Ty’s on duty tonight. I want you to go by his office in the Hollow. He’s got a bulldog there named Chopper. Family in town’s heading south and can’t take him, so I said I’d think about it.”
“You want a dog?”
“Don’t give me that look, Eli. If I die before Chopper does, I’ll leave him to you.”
“Still a cop here. I can’t have pets.”
“No pets, no women. You’re not a cop, you’re a monk.”
“Who said anything about no women?”
“No women of consequence, then. Now, you take my last serious relationship versus the last woman I had sex with.”
“Jesus, Rooney.”
The old man drank from his thermos before offering back a mostly toothless smile. “You think because I’m old I don’t have sex?”
“Yes—no. Dammit, I don’t think about it one way or the other.” Ever.
“Why not? I’m human.”
“You’re also my great-grandfather, and I do my level best to keep thoughts of sex, parents and grandparents out of my head.”
“You’re a prude, Elijah. Doesn’t bother me to picture you with a woman.”
The first bolt of lightning shot down deep in the hollow. “Are we actually having this conversation?”
