“Why the hell has your witchy face been in my head for the past fifteen years?”

McVey didn’t expect an answer. He wasn’t even sure why he’d asked the question. True, she looked very much like the woman in his recurring dream, but the longer he stared at her—couldn’t help that part, unfortunately—the more the differences added up.

On closer inspection, Amara’s hair really was more brown than red. Her features were also significantly finer than … whoever. Her gray eyes verged on charcoal, her slim curves were much better toned and her legs were the longest he’d seen on any woman anywhere.

He might have lingered on the last thing if she hadn’t slapped a hand to his chest, narrowed those beautiful eyes to slits and seared him with a glare.

“What the hell kind of question is that?”

Night of

the Raven

Jenna Ryan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JENNA RYAN started making up stories before she could read or write. As she grew up, romance always had a strong appeal, but romantic suspense was the perfect fit. She tried out a number of different careers, including modeling, interior design and travel, but writing has always been her one true love. That and her longtime partner, Rod.

Inspired from book to book by her sister Kathy, she lives in a rural setting fifteen minutes from the city of Victoria, British Columbia. It’s taken a lot of years, but she’s finally slowed the frantic pace and adopted a West Coast mind-set. Stay active, stay healthy, keep it simple. Enjoy the ride, enjoy the read. All of that works for her, but what she continues to enjoy most is writing stories she loves. She also loves reader feedback. E-mail her at jacquigoff@shaw.ca or visit Jenna Ryan on Facebook.

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To Anne Stuart, who got the writing ball rolling for me. Thank you, Anne, for all the great books.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Los Angeles, California

Fifteen years ago

The scene felt so real, McVey figured this time it might not be unfolding in his head. His totally messed-up head, which wasn’t improving thanks to the dream that had haunted him every night for the past two weeks.

The moment he fell asleep, he found himself trapped in an attic room that smelled like old wood, wet dirt and something far more pungent than boiled cabbage. The air was muggy and strangely alive. Thunder crashed every few seconds and tongues of lightning flickered through a curtain of fetid gray smoke.

He knew he was hiding, hunkered down in some shadowy corner where the two people he watched—barely visible within the smoke—couldn’t see him.

The man’s fingers clenched and unclenched. The woman circled a small fire and muttered unintelligible words.

Two violent thunderbolts later, only the woman and the smoke remained. The man had vanished.

Okay, that couldn’t be good. McVey searched frantically for a way out of wherever he was before whoever she was saw him and made him eat the same black dripping thing she’d given the now-gone man.

With her eyes closed and her hair and clothes askew, she mumbled and swayed and breathed in choking fumes. Then suddenly she froze. In the next flash of lightning her head began to turn. Slowly, creepily, like a rusty weather vane in a bad horror film.

Her eyes locked on McVey’s hiding place. He heard the black thing in her hand plop to the floor. She raised a dripping finger and pointed it straight at him.

“You,” she accused in a voice that made him think of rusty nails soaked in whiskey. “You saw what passed between me and the one she would have you call Father.”

Whoa, McVey thought on an unnatural spurt of fear. That was a whole lot, what she’d just said. A whole lot of nothing he understood, or wanted to.

“You have no business here, child.” She started toward him. “Don’t you know I’m mad?”

Right. Mad. So why the hell couldn’t he move his—? He stopped the question abruptly, backpedaled and latched on to the other word. Child?

Shock, slick and icy, rolled through him when he looked down and saw his feet encased in tiny, shin-high boots.

Thunder rattled the house. His head shot up when he heard a low creak. Watching her smile, he realized with a horrified jolt that she was beautiful. He also realized he knew her, or at least he recognized her.

When she pointed at him again, the spell broke and he reached for his gun on the nightstand. Except there was no nightstand, and the next streak of lightning revealed a hand that wasn’t his. Couldn’t be. It was too small, too pale and far too delicate.

“Don’t be afraid, child.” Her voice became a silky croon. Her ugly clothes and hair melted into a watery blur of color. “I won’t harm you. I’ll only make what you think you’ve seen go away.”

McVey wanted to tell her that he had no idea what he’d seen and the only thought in his head right then was to get out of there before her finger—still dripping with something disgusting—touched him.

He edged sideways in the dark. He could escape if the lightning would give him a break.

Of course it didn’t, and her eyes, gray and familiar, continued to track his every move.

“There’s no way out,” she warned. With an impatient sound she grabbed his wrists. “I don’t want to hurt you. You know I never have.”

No, he really didn’t know that, but wherever he was, he had no gun. Or strength, apparently, to free himself from her grasp.

She laughed when he fought her. “Foolish child. You forget I’m older than you. I’m also more powerful, and much, much meaner than your mother.”

His mother?

She dragged him out of the corner. “Come with me.”

When she hauled him upright, he stumbled. Looking down, he saw the hem of the long dress he’d stepped on.

“Why am I...?” But when he heard the high, unfamiliar voice that emerged from his throat, he choked the question off.

The woman crouched to offer a grim little smile. “Believe me when I tell you, Annalee, what I will do to you this night is for your own good....”

* * *

MCVEY SHOT FROM the nightmare on the next peal of thunder. The dark hair that fell over his eyes made him think he’d gone blind. A gust of wind rattled the shade above his nightstand and he spotted the stuttering neon sign outside. It wasn’t until he saw his own hand reaching over to check his gun that he let himself fall back onto the mattress and worked on loosening the knots in his stomach.

That they remained there, slippery yet stubbornly tight, was only partly due to the recurring nightmare. The larger part stemmed from a more tangible source.

It was time to do what he’d known he would do for the past two weeks, ever since his nineteenth birthday. Ever since his old man had pried a deathbed promise from his only son.

He would set aside the disturbing fact that every time he fell asleep these days he turned into a young girl who wore long dresses and old-fashioned boots. He’d forget about the woman he thought he should know who wanted to give him amnesia. He’d focus strictly on keeping the promise he’d made to his father. If that meant turning his back on the people he’d worked with since...well, not all that long actually, so nothing lost there. He was going to walk away now, tonight, keep his promise and change the course of his life.

Maybe if he did that, the nightmare would stay where it belonged. Buried deep in the past of the person he feared he’d once been.

Chapter Two

New Orleans, Louisiana

Present Day

“Make no mistake about it...”

Moments after the sentence had been passed, the raspy-voiced man with the stooped shoulders and the tic in his left eye had looked straight at Amara Bellam and whispered just loud enough for her and the two men beside her to hear.

“Those who brought about my imprisonment will pay. My family will see to it.”

Although her eyewitness testimony had played a large part in his conviction, at the time Jimmy Sparks had uttered his threat, Amara had thought his reaction was nothing more than knee-jerk. After all, life in prison for someone of his dubious health surely meant he wouldn’t see the free light of day ever again.

But the word family crept into her head more and more often as the weeks following his incarceration crept by. It took root when Lieutenant Michaels of the New Orleans Police Department contacted her with the news that one of her two fellow witnesses, Harry Benedict, was dead.

“Now, don’t panic.” Michaels patted the air in front of her. “Remember, Harry had close to two decades on Jimmy.”

“Lieutenant, Jimmy Sparks is the two-pack-a-day head of a large criminal family. He has a dozen relatives to do his legwork. Harry was a hale and hearty seventy-nine-year-old athlete who hiked across Maryland just last year.”

“Which is very likely why he died of a massive coronary just last night.” The detective made another useless patting motion. “Really, you don’t need to panic over this.”

“I’m not panicking.”

“No, you’re not.” His hand dropped. “Well, that makes one of you. Chad, our overstressed third witness, knocked back two glasses of bourbon while I was explaining the situation.”

“Chad dived off the temperance wagon right after Jimmy Sparks whispered his threat to us.” She rubbed her arms. “Are you sure Harry died of natural causes?”

“The path lab said it was heart failure, pure and simple. The man had a history, Amara. Two significant attacks in the past five years.”

Hale and hearty, though, she recalled after Michaels left.

For the next few weeks she fought her jitters with an overload of work. Even so, fear continued to curl in Amara’s stomach. She had thought she might be starting to get past it when the harried lieutenant appeared on her doorstep once again.

“Chad’s dead.” She saw it in his dog-tired expression. “Damn.”

The lieutenant spread his fingers. “I’m sorry, Amara. And before you ask, the official cause, as determined by the coroner’s office, is accidental suicide.”

“This is not happening.” A shiver of pure terror snaked through her system. When the detective spoke her name, she raised both hands. “Please don’t try to convince me that suicides can’t be arranged.”

“Of course they can, but Chad Weaver was surrounded by eleven friends when he collapsed—in his home, at a party arranged by him and to which he invited every person in attendance. No one crashed the event, and the drugs and alcohol he ingested were his own.”

She swung around to stare. “Chad took drugs?”

“Like the booze, he got into them after Jimmy Sparks’s trial. As witnesses, you all had—er, have—impeccable credentials.”

“Right. Credentials.” Feeling her world had tilted radically, Amara headed for her Garden District balcony and some much needed night air. “Mind’s really spinning here, Lieutenant. What kinds of drugs did Chad take?”

The cop rubbed his brow. “Ecstasy, mostly. A little coke. Might’ve smoked some weed earlier in the day.”

She made a negating motion. “No chance that any of those substances could’ve been tampered with prepurchase, huh?”

“Amara...”

Her sarcastic tone didn’t quite mask the anger beginning to churn inside her. “It’s a fair question, Lieutenant. We’re talking about street dealers, people who aren’t exactly pillars of the community. Are you saying that, given the right inducement, not one of them could or would have slipped a little extra something into the goody bags Chad bought?”

“The coroner is convinced it was—”

“Yes, I heard that part. Accidental death.”

“Suicide.”

It cost her a great deal to work up a smile. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” She struggled to maintain her composure. “I can read your face, Michaels. You’re going to tell me there’s nothing you can do in terms of police protection. I mean, on the off chance the coroner is mistaken.”

The detective regarded the toes of his scuffed shoes. “Massive coronary for Harry. Private party for Chad. No one except the three of you and me heard Jimmy’s threat. The media would love to jump all over this, but they won’t, because the powers that be are well aware of Jimmy Sparks’s many and varied connections. Sure, the odd question is bound to surface, but they’ll die as quickly as they’re born. After all, there’s no evidence of wrongdoing in either case.”

“I suppose not. Well, then.” Amara took a deep breath. “At the risk of sounding paranoid, do you have any suggestions as to how I can avoid a date with the forensic team?”

When he raised his head, the steely look in his eyes said it all. “You need to disappear,” he told her. “Get out of the city and go someplace safe.”

“Safe. Great.” She pressed firm fingers into her temples. “Where?”

Tossing a worried look onto the street below, Michaels pulled her away from the wrought iron railing. “Your parents are in South America, aren’t they?”

“Central America. They’re doing medical relief work, have been for the past two years. Mostly with children, Lieutenant. I’m not taking this nightmare to them.”

“You have relatives in Maine, don’t you?”

“What? Yes—no.”

“We’ll go with the first answer.” When the lights bobbed, he closed the French doors and pulled the curtains. “Let’s do it this way. You pack, make whatever calls you need to, and I’ll drive you to the airport.” He managed a feeble grin. “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s shaking criminal tails.”

Amara’s mind swam. “Surely Jimmy Sparks’s family will have the airport covered.”

“Not in Jackson, Mississippi. I know this guy, Amara. It won’t be a group hunt so much as a single-person stalk.”

“As in one person sent to make sure I choke to death on a bite of crawfish or drop dead on the sidewalk from a nonexistent blood clot that’ll dissolve before... God, what am I saying? No, wait, what am I doing?” She turned to face him. “I can’t endanger the lives of my family members. You know I can’t.”

“You can, and you should. Most of those family members live in a spooky little town in a remote and densely wooded section of coastal Maine. Raven’s Cove is your best and safest option right now.”

She stared at him for five long seconds before countering with a flat “It’s Raven’s Hollow, and I will call my grandmother. I’ll explain the situation. But if she’s the least bit hesitant, I’m choosing another destination.”

“Deal.” He ran his gaze over the ceiling when the lights bobbed again. “Pack only what you need.”

What she needed, Amara reflected, was a time machine. Unfortunately all she had was her iPhone, her grandmother’s number and a waning glimmer of hope that she’d ever see anyone in or out of Raven’s Hollow, Maine, again.

Chapter Three

“I’ve already broken up two bar fights tonight, Chief, and the crowd here’s spoiling for more.” Jake Blume’s tone, surly at the best of times, soured. “It’s gonna be a free-for-all by the time this two-town party—which ain’t no kind of party, in my opinion—plays out. Still three days to go and the hooligans on both sides are making their feelings known with their fists.” His voice dropped to a growl. “What do you want me to do about tonight’s ruckus?”

McVey heard about half of what his griping deputy related. More important to him than a minor barroom scuffle was the TV across the room where the Chicago Cubs were cheerfully mopping up Wrigley Field with his beloved Dodgers.

“Run,” he told the slow-motion hitter who’d just slugged the ball to the fence.

“From a bar fight?” Jake gave a contemptuous snort. “This town ain’t turned me into a girl yet, McVey.”

“Talking to the television, Deputy.” Disgusted by yet another out, McVey took a long drink of beer and muted the sound. “Okay, which bar and what kind of damage are we talking about?”

“It’s the Red Eye in the Hollow—a town I’m still trying to understand why we’re working our butts off to cover so its police chief can sun his sorry ass in Florida for the next couple weeks.”

“Man’s on his honeymoon, Jake.” Amusement glimmered. “The novelty’ll wear off soon enough.”

His deputy gave another snort. “Said one confirmed bachelor to another.”

“I was never confirmed—and that was a ball,” he told the onscreen umpire.

“Look, if I’m interrupting...”

“You’re not.” McVey dangled the beer bottle between his knees and rubbed a tired eye. “I assume the damage at the Red Eye is minimal.”

“As bar fights go in these parts.”

“Then give whoever threw the first punch a warning, make the participants pay up and remind everyone involved that it’s you who’s on duty tonight, not me.”

“Meaning?”

“You’ve got a shorter fuse, zero tolerance and, between the towns, six empty jail cells just begging to be filled.”

“Good point.” Jake cheered up instantly. “Can I threaten to cuff ’em?”

“Your discretion, Deputy. After you’re done, head back to the Cove. I’ll be in at first light to relieve you.”

When he glanced over and saw his team had eked out two hits, McVey gave his head a long, slow roll and sat back to think.

In the fourteen months since he’d arrived in Raven’s Cove, he’d only had the dream five times, which was a hell and gone better average than he’d had during his six years with the Chicago Police Department or the nearly eight he’d put in in New York. At least once a month in both places, he’d found himself up in a smoke-filled attic while a woman he still couldn’t place told him she was going to screw up his memories. Not that he’d given up city life over anything as nebulous as a dream. His reasons had run a whole lot deeper.... And was that a floorboard he’d just heard creak upstairs?

With the bottle poised halfway to his mouth, he listened, heard nothing and, taking another long swallow, switched his attention back to the TV.

A third run by the Dodgers gave him hope. A screech of hinges from an interior door had him raising his eyes to the ceiling yet again.

Okay, so not alone. And wasn’t that a timely thing, considering he’d received two emails lately warning him that a man with secrets should watch the shadows around him very, very closely?

Standing, he shoved his gun into the waistband of his jeans, killed the light and started up the rear stairs.

The wind that had been blowing at near-gale force all day howled around the single-paned windows. Even so, he caught a second creak. He decided his intruder could use a little stealth training. Then he stepped on a sagging tread, heard the loud protest and swore.

The intruder must have heard it, too. The upstairs door that had been squeaking open immediately stopped moving.

Drawing his weapon, McVey gave his eyes another moment to adjust and finished the climb. He placed the intruder in the kitchen. Meaning the guy had the option of slinking out the way he’d entered—through the back door—or holding position to see what developed. Whatever the case, McVey had the advantage in that he’d been living in the house for more than two weeks and had committed the odd layout to memory.

Another door gave a short creak and he pictured the intruder circling.

The anticipation that kindled felt good. Sleepy coastal towns worked for him on several levels these days. Unfortunately, as action went, they tended to be...well, frankly, dead. Unless you counted the increasing number of bar fights and the sniping of two local factions, each of which had its own legend, and neither of which was willing to admit that both legends had probably been created by an ancient—and presumably bored—Edgar Allan Poe wannabe.

Another blast of wind rattled the panes and sent a damp breeze over McVey’s face. It surprised him to see a light burning in the mudroom. Apparently his intruder was extremely stupid, poorly equipped or unaware that he’d broken into the police chief’s current residence. The last idea appealed most, but as it also seemed the least likely, McVey continued to ease through the house.

He spotted the shadow just as the wind—he assumed wind—slammed the kitchen door shut. The bang echoed beneath a wicked gust that buffeted the east wall and caused the rafters to moan.

Shoving the gun into his jeans, he went for a low tackle. If the person hadn’t swung around and allowed a weak beam of light to trickle through from the mudroom, he would have taken them both hard to the floor. But his brain clicked in just fast enough that he was able to alter his trajectory, snag the intruder by the waist and twist them both around so only he landed on the pine planking.

His head struck the table, his shoulder the edge of a very solid chair. To make matters worse, his trapped quarry rammed an elbow into his ribs, wriggled around and clawed his left cheek.

He caught the raised hand before it could do any serious damage and, using his body weight, reversed their positions. “Knock it—” was all he got out before his instincts kicked in and he blocked the knee that was heading for his groin.

Jesus, enough!

Teeth gnashed and with pain shooting through his skull, he brought his eyes into focus on the stunning and furious face of the woman from his nightmare.

* * *

FEAR STREAKED THROUGH Amara’s mind, not for her own safety, but for that of her grandmother who’d lived in this house for close to seventy years.

Although she was currently pinned to the floor with her hands over her head and her wrists tightly cuffed, she attempted to knee him again. When that failed, she bucked her hips up into his. If she could loosen his iron grip, she might be able to sink her teeth into his forearm.

“I’ll kill you if you’ve hurt her,” she panted. “This is about me, not my family. You of all people should understand that.”

He offset another blow. “Lady, the only thing I understand is that you broke into a house that doesn’t belong to you.”

“Or you,” she fired back. “You have no right to be here. Where’s my grandmother?”

“I have every right to be here, and how the hell should I know?”

Her heart tripped. “Is she—dead?”

“What? No. Look, I live here, okay?”

Unable to move, Amara glared at him. “You’re lying. I spoke to Nana last night. There was no mention of a man either visiting or living in her home.”

He lowered his head just far enough for her to see the smile that grazed his lips. “Maybe your granny doesn’t tell you everything, angel.”

“That’s disgusting.” She refused to tremble. “Have you hurt her?”

“I haven’t done anything to her. I don’t eat elderly women, then take to their beds in order to get the jump on their beautiful granddaughters.”

“That’s not exactly reassuring.”

“Yeah, it really is, Red.”

When her eyes flashed, he sighed. “Red... Red Riding Hood. Now, why don’t you calm down, we’ll back up a few steps and try to sort this out? My name’s Ethan McVey and I—”

“Have no business being in my grandmother’s house.”

“You’re gonna have to get past that one, I’m afraid. Truth is I have all kinds of business here.” He shifted position when she almost liberated her other knee. “As far as I know, your grandmother’s somewhere in the Caribbean with two of her friends and one very old man who’s sliding down the slippery slope toward his hundred and second birthday.”

His words startled a disbelieving laugh out of her. “Nana took old Rooney Blume to the Caribbean?”

“That’s the story I got. No idea if it’s true. Her private life’s not my concern. You, on the other hand, are very much my concern, seeing as you’re lying on my kitchen floor behaving like a wildcat.”

“Nana’s kitchen floor.”

“Rent’s paid, floor’s mine. So’s the badge you probably failed to notice on the table above us.”

Doubt crept in. “Badge, as in cop?”

“Badge as in chief of police. Raven’s Cove,” he added before she could ask.

The red haze clouding Amara’s vision began to dissolve. “You said rent. If you’re a cop, why are you renting my grandmother’s house?”

“Because the first place she rented to me developed serious plumbing and electrical issues, both of which are in the process of being rectified.”

Why a laugh should tickle her throat was beyond her. “Would that first place be Black Rock Cottage, rebuilt from a ruin fifty years ago by my grandfather and renovated last year by Wrecking Ball Buck Blume?”

“That’d be it.”

“Then I’m sorry I scratched you.”

“Does that mean you’re done trying to turn me into a eunuch?”

“Maybe.”

“As reassurances go, I’m not feeling it, Red.”

“Put yourself in my position. My grandmother didn’t mention a Caribbean vacation when I spoke to her yesterday.”

“So, thinking she was here, you opted to break and enter your grandmother’s home rather than knock on the door.”

“I knocked. No one answered. Nana keeps an extra key taped to a flowerpot on her back stoop. And before you tell me how careless that is, mine’s bigger.”

To her relief, he let go of her wrists and pushed himself to his knees. He was still straddling her, but at least his far too appealing face wasn’t quite so close. “Your what?”

“Omission. Nana didn’t mention an extra key to you, and she didn’t mention you to me.” She squirmed a little, then immediately wished she hadn’t. “Uh, do you mind? Thanks,” she murmured when he got to his feet.

“I’d say no problem if the damn room would stop spinning.”

Still wary, Amara accepted the hand he held down to her. “Would you like me to look at your head?”

“Why?”

“Because you might have a concussion.”

“That’s a given, Red. I meant why you? Are you a doctor?”

“I’m a reconstructive surgeon.”

“Seriously?” Laughing, he started for the back door. “You do face and butt lifts for a living?”

What had come perilously close to going hot and squishy inside her hardened. Her lips quirked into a cool smile. “There you go. Whatever pays the bills.”

“If you say so.”

She maintained her pleasant expression. “Returning to the omission thing... Can you think of any reason why Nana would neglect to mention you were living here when we talked?”

“You had a bad connection?”

Or more likely insufficient time to relate many details, thanks to Lieutenant Michaels, who’d done everything in his power, short of tearing the phone from her hand and tossing her into the backseat of his car, to hasten their departure. Amara glanced up as a gust of wind whistled through the rafters. “My mother would call this an omen and say I shouldn’t have come.”

“Yeah?” The cop—he’d said McVey, hadn’t he?—picked up and tapped his iPhone as he wandered past the island. “She into the woo-woo stuff, too?”

“If by that you mean does she believe in some of the local legends? Absolutely.”

He glanced at her. “There’re more than two?”

“There are more than two hundred, but most of them are offshoots of the interconnected original pair. The Blumes are very big on their ancestor Hezekiah’s transformation into a raven.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“That transformation is largely blamed on the Bellam witches.”

“The Bellams being your ancestors.”

“My grandmother’s surname gave it away, huh?”

“Among other things. Setting the bulk of them aside and assuming you’re Amara, your gran sent me a very short, very cryptic text message last night.”

“You’re just opening a text from last night now?”

“Give me a break, Red. It’s my day off, this is my personal phone and the windstorm out there dislodged four shutters that I’ve spent the better part of the past twelve hours repairing and reattaching.” He turned his iPhone so she could see the screen. “According to Grandma Bellam, you’re in a whack of trouble from the crime lord you helped convict.”

Amara read the message, then returned her gaze to his unfathomable and strangely compelling eyes. “Whack being the operative word. Look, it’s late, and I’m intruding—apparently. I’m sure one of my aunts, uncles or cousins will put me up for the night.” Wanting some distance between them, she started for the door. “I left my rental car at the foot of the driveway. It’s pointed toward Raven’s Hollow. As luck would have it, that’s where my less antagonistic relatives live. So I’ll leave you to whatever you were doing before we met and go break into one of their houses.” She rummaged through her shoulder bag and produced the back door key. “I’ll put this back under the flowerpot. Nana locks herself out at least three times a year.”

Setting his phone on the island, McVey moved toward her. “Forget the key, Amara. Talk to me about this ‘whack of trouble.’”

“It’s a—sticky story.”

“I’m a cop. I’m used to sticky. I’m also fine with ‘sounds crazy,’ if that helps.”

It didn’t. Neither did the fact that he’d ventured far enough into the light that she could see her initial assessment of him had been dead-on. The man was...well, gorgeous worked as well as any other word.

Long dark hair swept away from a pair of riveting brown eyes, and what female alive wouldn’t kill for those cheekbones? Then there was the lean, rangy body. She wouldn’t mind having that on top of her again.... And, God help her, where had that thought come from? She seriously needed to get her hormones under control, because no way should the idea of—okay, admit it—sex with an überhot man send her thoughts careening off to fantasyland.

Jimmy Sparks, vicious head of a family chock full of homicidal relatives, wanted her dead. She couldn’t go back to New Orleans or her job, and she couldn’t reasonably expect Lieutenant Michaels to do any more than he’d already done to help her. Her grandmother wasn’t in Raven’s Hollow, and Amara figured she’d probably alienated the Cove cop who was to the point where he might actually consider turning her over to Jimmy’s kith and kin simply to be rid of her.

“I really am sorry about all of this.” She backed toward the mudroom. “I wasn’t expecting to find...”

“A wolf in Grandma’s cottage?” He continued to advance. “Still waiting for the story, Red. If the trouble part’s too big a leap, start with the ‘less antagonistic relatives’ reference.”

“First off, I’d rather you called me Amara. You can see for yourself, my hair’s more brown than red. Which, when you get right down to it, is the story of my relatives in an extremely simplified nutshell.”

“Gonna need a bit more than that, I’m afraid. So far all I’ve got is that you’re the descendant of a Bellam witch.”

“Yes, but the question is which witch? Most Bellams can trace the roots of their family tree back to Nola. There are only a handful of us who have her lesser-known sister Sarah’s blood.”

Finally, thankfully, he stopped moving. “If Nola and Sarah were sisters, what’s the difference blood-wise?”

“Nola Bellam was married to Hezekiah Blume. At least she was, until Hezekiah went on a killing spree. According to the Blume legend, he repented. However, all those deaths got him turned into a clairvoyant raven. There wasn’t a large window of opportunity for Nola to get pregnant. Unless you add in the unpleasant fact that Hezekiah’s brother Ezekiel raped her, accused her of being a witch, then hunted her down and tried to destroy her. Thus, Hezekiah’s killing spree.”

“Complicated stuff.”

“Isn’t it? It gets worse, too, because, as luck would have it, sister Sarah had a thing for Ezekiel.”

“And that ‘thing’ resulted in a child?”

“You catch on quick. Sarah had a daughter, who had a daughter and so on. So did Nola, of course, but not with Hezekiah. Even in legend, humans and ravens can’t mate. Long story short, and rape notwithstanding, Nola never gave birth to a Blume baby. Sarah did.” Amara shrugged. “I’m sure you know by now that Blumes and Bellams have been at odds for...well, ever. Raven’s Cove versus Raven’s Hollow in all things legendary and logical. So where does a Bellam with Blume blood in her background fit in? Does she cast spells or fall victim to them? And which town does she claim for her own? You can imagine the genetic dilemma.”

McVey cocked his head. “You’re not going to go all weird and spooky on me, are you?”

“Haven’t got time for that, unfortunately.”

“Knowing Jimmy Sparks, I tend to agree.”

Her fingers froze on the doorknob. “You know him?”

“We’ve met once or twice.” McVey sent her a casual smile. “Well, I say met, but it was really more a case of I shot at him.”

“You fired bullets at Jimmy King-of-Grudges Sparks and lived to tell about it?”

“Put the living-to-tell part down to pure, dumb luck. I was painfully green at the time, but I was also a better shot than my partner, who took it upon himself through me to try to blow Sparks’s tires out after we witnessed an illegal late-night exchange.”

“And?”

“I hit two tires before someone inside the vehicle fired back. The shooter winged my partner. He got me in the shoulder, then got off when our report of the incident mysteriously disappeared. Before the night was done, we’d been ordered to forget the whole thing.”

“Lucky Jimmy.”

“Is that censure I hear in your voice, Red?”

“On the off chance that you actually do have a concussion, let’s call it curiosity.”

“Let’s call it not your business, and move on to why one of this country’s least-favorite sons is giving you, the descendant of a Maine witch, grief.”

“I helped send him to prison. Seems my testimony pissed him off.”

“Thereby landing you in a whack of trouble and leaving me with one last burning question.” Without appearing to move, he closed the gap between them, wrapped his fingers and thumb lightly around her jaw and tipped her head back to stare down at her. “Why the hell has your witchy face been in my head for the past fifteen years?”

Chapter Four

He didn’t expect an answer. He wasn’t even sure why he’d asked the question. True, she looked very much like the woman in his recurring dream, but the longer he stared at her—couldn’t help that part, unfortunately—the more the differences added up.

On closer inspection, Amara’s hair really was more brown than red. Her features were also significantly finer than...whomever. Her gray eyes verged on charcoal, her slim curves were much better toned and her legs were the longest he’d seen on any woman anywhere.

He might have lingered on the last thing if she hadn’t slapped a hand to his chest, narrowed those beautiful charcoal eyes to slits and seared him with a glare.

“What do you mean my face has been in your head for fifteen years? What the hell kind of question is that?”

A faint smile touched his lips. “Given my potentially concussed state, call it curiosity and forget I asked.”

The suspicion returned. “Are you sure my grandmother’s in the Caribbean and not locked in a closet upstairs?”

“This might not be the best time to be giving me ideas.” With his eyes still on hers, he pulled a beeping iPhone from his pocket and pressed the speaker button. “What is it, Jake?”

“Got a problem here, Chief.”

His deputy sounded stoked, which was never a good sign. But it was the background noises—the thumps, shouts and crashes—that told the story.

“Bar fight got out of hand, huh?”

“Wasn’t my fault.” Jake had to yell above the sound of shattering glass. “All I did was tell the witch people to mount their broomsticks and fly off home.”

“You know you’re in Raven’s Hollow, right? Raven’s Hollow, Bellam territory.”

“Can I help it if folks in this town are touchy about their ancestors?”

“This night is deteriorating faster by the minute,” McVey muttered.

Jake made a guttural sound as a fist struck someone’s face. “Raven’s Cove was settled first, and that’s a fact. Why’re you sticking up for a bunch of interlopers who can’t hold their liquor and are proud of the fact that one of their stupid witch women made it so my great-great-whatever-granddaddy got turned into a bird?”

Were they actually having this conversation? McVey regarded Amara, who’d heard every word, and, holding her gaze, said calmly, “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

He could see she was trying not to laugh as he pocketed his phone and bent to retrieve the gun he’d lost during their scuffle.

“Sorry, but I did warn you, McVey.”

“No, you didn’t. You said your Raven’s Hollow relatives represented the less antagonistic side of the family. That’s not how Jake Blume’s telling it.”

“Twenty bucks says Jake started it.”

Since that was entirely possible, McVey stuffed his weapon. “What can I say? He came with the job.”

“The job’s a powder keg, Chief, a fact that whoever talked you into it obviously neglected to mention. Raven’s Cove goes through police chiefs—”

“Like wolves go through grandmothers?” In a move intended to unsettle, he blocked her flight path. “Gonna need your keys, Red.”

Unfazed, she ran her index finger over his chest. “Are you telling me, Chief McVey, that a deputy came with the job, but a vehicle didn’t? Sounds like someone suckered you big time.”

“I’m beginning to agree.” And, damn it, get hot. “Keys are in case your car’s closing my truck in. Knowing Jake as I do, we need to leave now.”

“We?”

“You’re coming with me.”

“Excuse me?”

“Whack of trouble,” he reminded her, and was relieved when she ground her teeth.

Their banter was getting way out of hand. Given the situation, a distraction like that that could turn into something bad very quickly.

He caught her shoulders before she could object, turned and nudged her through the mudroom. “As much as I’d love to argue this out, my instincts tell me you have a functioning brain and no particular desire to wait here alone for whatever family member Jimmy Sparks chooses to sic on you.”

“I wasn’t planning to wait anywhere.”

“Right. You want to search for a place to flop in Raven’s Hollow. At night, in a windstorm, with no idea how many of your relatives are home and how many are participating in the destruction of a Blume-owned bar at Harrow and Main in the Hollow.”

“The Red Eye?” She laughed as he reached back to snag his badge from the table. “That’s gonna piss Uncle Lazarus right off—assuming he still holds the lease on the place, which he will, seeing as he’s notorious for acquiring properties and never selling them. Never selling anything, except possibly, like his ancestor Hezekiah, his soul.”

“I’m getting that you don’t like your uncle.”

“It’s not a question of like or dislike really. Uncle Lazarus is a miser and a misery of a man. He’s also quite reclusive. Even so, your paths must have crossed a time or two since you arrived.”

“More than a time or two, only once that mattered.”

Wind whipped strands of long hair up into her face the moment they stepped onto the back porch. “What did you do, fine him for jaywalking?”

“Nope.” McVey held the key ring in his mouth while he clipped the badge to his belt and checked his gun. “I arrested him for being drunk and disorderly.”

Amara clawed the hair from her face. “I’m sorry. I thought you said he was drunk.”

“He was hammered.”

“And disorderly.”

“He lurched into a dockside bar in Raven’s Cove, staggered across the floor and slugged a delivery driver in the stomach.” He pointed left. “My truck’s that way.”

“I see it. I’m waiting for the punch line.”

“No line, just two punches. The second was a right uppercut to the driver’s jaw. He’s lucky the guy didn’t file assault charges. I’d guess your uncle did a little boxing in his day.”

“He did a lot of things in his day. But burst into Two Toes Joe’s bar drunk? Not a chance.” She hesitated. “Did he say why he did it?”

“Driver was a courier. He’d delivered a large padded envelope to your uncle’s home in the north woods earlier that afternoon. Four hours later the guy’s eyes were rolling back in his head. Lazarus pumped a fist, laughed like a lunatic and fell facedown on the floor.”

“After which, you locked him in a jail cell.”

“Yep.”

“You put Lazarus Blume in jail and you’re still in the Cove? Still chief of...? Hey, wait a minute.” Already standing on the Ram truck’s running board, she turned to jab a finger into his chest. “That is seriously not fair. I knew— I just knew he’d let a male get away with more than a female.”

“What?”

“You heard me. You arrest him and nothing. No repercussions, no threats, no embellishing the whole suddenly sordid affair to your grandmother.”

Okay, he was lost—and beginning to question her sanity. “What suddenly sordid affair?”

She poked him again. “I snuck out of my grandmother’s house once, just once, so my friend and I could spy on her older sister’s date with the local hottie, and wouldn’t you know it, Uncle Lazarus spotted me. He dragged me back to Nana’s and informed me I’d be mucking out his stable for the rest of the summer. Yet here you stand, still employed and without a speck of manure on your hands.” She indicated herself, then him. “I’m a female, you’re a male. It’s not fair.” Huffing out a breath, she sat, yanked the door closed and flopped back in her seat, arms folded. “I should have put two curses on him.”

McVey climbed in beside her. “You put a— What did you do to him?”

She gave her fingers a casual flick. “What any self-respecting Bellam in my position would have done. I put a spell on the midnight snack Nana told me he always ate before going to bed. He had severe stomach cramps for the next three days. Some of my relatives swear they heard him laughing hysterically while the doctor was examining him. Other than cleaning his stables, I didn’t hear or see him again for the rest of the summer. He’d always been a loner, but Nana told me he became even more of a phantom after his...spell of indigestion. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I was fourteen when it happened, and except for a mutual relative’s funeral, our paths haven’t crossed again.”

McVey’s lips quirked as he started the engine. “Note to self. Grudges run in your family.”

She sent him a smoldering look. “Not a problem in your case, seeing as Uncle Lazarus’s grudges don’t appear to extend to men.”

“I was referring to you, Red.” The quirk of his lips became a full-fledged grin. “I’m not overly fond of stomach cramps.”

On the heels of that remark, wind swooped down to batter the side of his truck. McVey heard a loud crack among the trees crowding the house and glanced upward.

“Stomach cramps will be the least of your problems if one of those evergreens destroys Nana’s roof.” As Amara spoke, the porch light went out then stuttered back on. “That’s not good.”

“Tell me something that is.”

Overhead, a fierce gust of wind brought two large branches crashing down into the box of his truck.

“Dodgers probably lost by a landslide.” He handed Amara his cell phone. “Do me a favor and speed-dial Jake. Tell him I’ll need more than fifteen minutes.”

“I can help you pull the branches from the—”

That was as far as she got before three shots rang out behind them.

She started to swing around, but McVey shoved her down and dragged the gun from his waistband. Keeping a hand on her neck, he risked a look, saw nothing and swore softly under his breath.

Amara pried his hand free. “Who is it?” she asked with barely a hint of a tremor.

“No idea. One of my backups is in the glove box. It’s loaded. Use the keys.” He gave the door a kick to open it. “Meanwhile, stay here and stay down. Unless you want to be pushing up daisies next to your Bellam and/or Blume ancestors.”

“McVey, wait.” She grabbed his arm. “I don’t want you taking a bullet for me.”

“Don’t sweat it, Red.” He risked a second look into the woods. “Chances are only fifty-fifty that those shots were fired by someone in Jimmy Sparks’s family.”

* * *

HE DISAPPEARED SO QUICKLY, Amara had no chance to ask what he meant. Or to wonder if she’d heard him correctly.

For a moment she simply stared after him and thought that somewhere along the line she must have fallen down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe where police chiefs looked like hot rock stars and any vestige of reality had long since been stripped away by a raging northeaster. Who was this stranger with the wicked sexy body and dark hypnotic eyes?

“More to the point,” she said to her absent grandmother, “why didn’t you mention him when I called you last night?”

Knowing she needed to think, Amara tucked the question away. Three bullets had just been fired at close range. A glance through the rear window revealed nothing except the moon, a scattering of stars and no flashlight beam. Actually—had McVey even taken a flashlight?

“I need you to step on it, Chief.” Jake Blume’s unexpected shout sent Amara’s heart into her throat and almost caused her to drop the phone she’d speed-dialed without thinking. “You there, McVey?” the deputy yelled again. “Come on, what’s taking you?”

“McVey’s busy.” As she spoke she pulled the key out of the ignition. “My name’s Amara. We’re still at Shirley Bellam’s place.”

“You fooling around with my superior officer out on the edge of the north woods ain’t exactly my idea of help, sweetheart. Now, I don’t give a rat’s ass why you’re in possession of McVey’s phone. I just need you to put him on it.” He waited a beat before adding a reluctant, “Please.”

Amara tried one of the smaller keys in the glove box lock. “What you call fooling around, I call dodging bullets while your superior officer goes all Rambo and takes on an unidentified shooter in the woods. Trust me, his plate has more on it than yours does at the moment.”

“Wanna bet?” The deputy’s tight-lipped response gave way to a resounding punch. “You said Amara, right?” Another punch. “You wouldn’t be that little witch bitch who used to come here in the summer, would you? Because if you are, you scared the bejesus out of my kid brother by telling him you could talk to ravens.”

“Does it matter if I’m her?”

“Makes us cousins is all.”

Since he practically spit the words out, Amara assumed the idea didn’t sit well with him.

Behind her, three more shots rang out. She shoved another key into the lock—and breathed out in relief when the compartment popped open to reveal a 9 mm automatic. “Thank God.”

“Depends on your point of view,” Jake muttered. “As I recall, your last name’s Bellam.”

Irritated, she regarded the phone. “Did I mention someone’s firing a rifle out here? I’ve counted six shots so far.”

“Rifle shot, huh? Could be Owen thinking the sky’s fixing to fall on his cabin. Old Owen ain’t been right for years.”

Parallel world, Amara reminded herself. “Will ‘Old Owen’ know the difference between McVey and a piece of falling sky?”

“I said it could be Owen,” Jake countered. “It could just as easily be one of your backwoods cousins looking to shoot himself something feathered for the upcoming street barbecue.”

Now she frowned at the phone. “You people are deranged.”

She heard a grunt and a punch. “This from a raven whisperer?”

“I can’t talk to—” She spun in place as three more shots sounded. “The whole world’s deranged. Later, Deputy.”

Tossing the phone aside, she firmed up her grip on McVey’s gun and slid cautiously from the truck.

The wind blew in wild circles and made pinpointing the shooter’s location next to impossible.

Amara searched the dark woods. Would Jimmy Sparks abandon all discretion this way? She didn’t think so, but then, what did she know about the man’s psyche? Maybe he’d sent a hothead after her.

Heart pounding, she worked her way along the side of the truck. She hissed in a breath when the tips of a broken branch snagged her hair like claws. She had to stop and untangle herself before she could continue.

Continue where, though, and do what when she got there? Her grandmother had taught her how to shoot clay pigeons, but she doubted the owner of the rifle would move in a high, wide arc for her.

“What the hell are you doing?”

The question came from close behind her. Snapping the gun up, Amara spun on one knee and almost—almost—squeezed the trigger.

When she saw who it was, her vision hazed and she lowered her arms. “Jesus, McVey.”

“Have you gone mad?”

“Don’t you dare glare at me. I counted nine shots, none of which came from a handgun. For all I know, you could’ve been dead or bleeding to death in the woods.”

“I also could’ve shot you in the back. You want to protect yourself, you use the best cover you’ve got. Case in point, my truck.”

“I’ll remember that next time someone decides to fire a rifle in the middle of nowhere, during a windstorm, while a cop with a much bigger weapon than the one he left behind disregards his own advice and takes off in pursuit.” Pushing aside the hand he held out to her, she stood and dusted off her jeans. “I talked to your deputy while you were gone. He seems to think the rifleman might be someone called Owen, worried that the sky’s falling.”

McVey ran his gaze around the clearing. “It wasn’t Owen.”

“Figured not. A Bellam bird hunter was his second suggestion. Looking for barbecue night’s winged entrée.”

“Red, the most common birds in these woods at night are owls, and not even a grill can make a screech owl taste good.”

Moving her lips into a smile, Amara dropped the gun into his free hand. “I keep telling myself that at some point this night will end. Whether any part of it makes sense when it does remains to be seen. Moving on, if not Owen or someone who likes to hunt owls, are we back to a member of the Sparks family as the prospective shooter?”

He kept scanning. “Not necessarily.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“Yeah, you did, but think deeper. Sparks wouldn’t want you taken out in such an obvious fashion. It’s true, Jimmy has moments of blind rage during which he loses all control, but that’s the reason he gets people with cooler heads to do his dirty work.”

“There’s good news. Look, McVey, if you think the shooter’s close enough to be watching us, why are we standing here having his discussion?”

“Shooter’s gone.” He made a final sweep before bringing his eyes back to hers. “If he wasn’t, we’d be dead.”

Spreading her fingers, she gave a humorless laugh. “I am so out of my element right now. Is there any chance you’re going to tell me what you think just happened here?”

“Someone fired a rifle nine times, then took off.”

“And you know he’s gone because...?”

“I heard his truck.”

“Are you—?”

She saw him move, but not in time to avoid the fingers that curled around the nape of her neck.

He stared down at her. “The only thing I’m sure of, Amara, is that we need to get something out of the way before it gets both of us killed.”

“What? No.” With the truck at her back, she had nowhere to go, no escape. “Don’t you dare do this, McVey. I’m messed up enough already without adding sex to the mix.”

A dangerous grin appeared. “I wasn’t thinking sex quite yet, Red, but I could probably be persuaded.”

She planted her palms firmly on his chest. “You’re messing with my mind.” And tangling everything inside her into a hot ball of... She wasn’t sure what, but something that wanted very badly to take things a whole lot deeper a whole lot faster than she should.

“Lady, you’ve been messing with my mind for fifteen years.”

“Don’t go there.”

“Not planning to.” Eyes gleaming, he lowered his head until his mouth hovered a tantalizing inch above hers. “If you really want to stop me, Red, this is your last chance.”

“Seriously, McVey. We shouldn’t... I’m not...” She exhaled heavily. “I hate you.” Casting caution to the still-howling wind, Amara took his face in her hands and yanked his very sexy mouth down onto hers.

* * *

LIEUTENANT ARTHUR MICHAELS mopped the back of his neck as he climbed the stairs to his Algiers apartment. He’d taken a roundabout route from Jackson, Mississippi, to New Orleans—by way of Arkansas and an old friend, who’d given him both a bed for the night and a name: Willy Sparks.

Rumor had it Willy could outthink a fox, outmaneuver a weasel and poison an enemy so neatly that the best forensic teams in the country were left scratching their collective heads as to why the corpse they were examining didn’t simply get up and walk out of the room.

And speaking of rooms... He saw right away that the door to his apartment was still marked with the tiny paper he’d placed between it and the frame before leaving town. Absurdly relieved, he went inside, shed his jacket and cranked the high windows open.

One of his neighbors was having a party. Boisterous jazz, led by trumpet and saxophone, drifted through the openings. The smell of gumbo made his mouth water and his system long for a cold beer. Being a cautious man, however, he settled for water from the jug in his fridge.

He didn’t hear the sound behind him as much as sense it in the light brush of air on his neck.

It only took him a split second to unholster his gun, spin and aim at— Nothing, he realized. Funny, he could have sworn...

Several rapid eyeblinks later, he lowered his arm.

He continued to blink as the edges of the apartment fuzzed. His fingers lost sensation. The gun clattered to the floor.

“Son of a...”

“Ah, ah, ah.” One of the long shadows came alive in the form of a wagging finger. “Don’t be rude, Lieutenant, or I’ll go against orders and add unspeakable pain to your death. It’s a well-known fact that Willy Sparks’s mother is not what you were just about to call her.”

He couldn’t move, Michaels realized; not anything except his eyes.

He slumped to the floor. Hands groped his pockets, then rolled him onto this back like a discarded doll. He heard a series of beeps beneath his neighbor’s music. When they stopped, a low chuckle floated downward.

“You have a most obliging BlackBerry. Raven’s Hollow, Maine. That’s very far north, isn’t it? But you know, Lieutenant, I’ve heard the water’s much safer to drink up in Maine than it is here in the Big Easy.”

The BlackBerry hit the floor. Water gurgled down the drain. The music played on. His apartment door clicked shut. And Lieutenant Arthur Michaels thought of ravens....

Chapter Five

Lock it away, Amara cautioned herself. Bring it out later—because how could she not? But she’d kissed men before and would again, so...not a problem.

Unless she acknowledged the fact that ten minutes after she’d dragged her mouth from his, her senses continued to zap like an electric wire gone wild.

Did McVey feel the same? They were in his truck, driving. She couldn’t read his profile, and he hadn’t really looked at her or talked to her, so who knew?

There was that other thing, too; the part about her face having been in his head for fifteen years. What was she supposed to do with that weird knowledge?

He finally glanced over as they neared the outskirts of the Hollow. “You’re annoyed, aren’t you, Red? I can feel the vibes taking bites out of me.”

Amara flicked him a similar look. “Don’t flatter yourself, McVey. It’s been a very bizarre night. I was torn between kissing you and kneeing you. It just so happens I’m a pacifist.”

“Is that why I have four gouges in my left cheek?”

“You tackled me in my grandmother’s house. Maybe you’re renting it at the moment, but I didn’t know that going in.”

“Breaking in.”

Her lips curved. “I’m fairly certain that using a key to enter a property can’t be construed as a break-in. However, to answer your question, yes, I’m annoyed, just not for the reason you probably think.” Lowering the visor, she regarded the tangled mess of her hair, sighed and began rooting through her shoulder bag for a brush. “I liked it.”

“I know.”

She heard the amusement in his tone and told herself not to react. “I know you know. That’s why I’m annoyed. Tell me—” she worked the brush through the tangles “—do you eat midnight snacks?”

“Not anymore.” He swung onto Main Street, made a wide U-turn and stopped in a no-parking zone. “You might want to stay behind me when we go inside. I see two broken windows.”

“I see four. I hope whoever broke them likes mucking out stables. Male or female, when it comes to serious property damage, Uncle Lazarus is a tyrant.”

“You know your family’s a little scary, right?”

“Which side?”

“Take your pick,” he said as they approached the front door. “Now, unless your repertoire contains a curse for every occasion, remember to stick close when we go in.”

Low lights tinged with red burned throughout the bar. Kiss rocked the jukebox and glass crunched like pebbles underfoot. Oh, yeah, Amara thought, Uncle Lazarus would be plenty pissed.

To the left of the entryway, behind a long line of pool tables, a dozen broken chairs and tables sat in a cockeyed heap. Groups of customers continued to hurl insults back and forth across the remaining tables. Amara spotted more than a few drops of blood both on the people and on the floor.

“Well, hallelujah, Chief, you made it.” A tall man with receding brown hair, heavy stubble and bean-black eyes pushed through the crowd. He wore a tan T-shirt, a shoulder holster and a frown that became a sneer when he spied his newly arrived Bellam cousin.

“Spit and I’ll suspend you,” McVey warned, not looking at him. “I assume you two have met.”

“I know who she is.” A muscle twitched in Jake’s jaw. “She don’t look much different than she did the night she gave my brother Jimbo the screaming meemies up on Raven’s Ridge.”

“I imagine that was unintentional, Deputy.”

As a wave of people began to enfold him, Amara shrugged. “It wasn’t, actually. I meant to scare him, and it worked.”

“Jimbo was a year and a half younger than you,” Jake accused.

“He was also forty pounds heavier, six inches taller and trying very hard to coax me into jumping off the edge of the cliff.”

“You could’ve said no.”

“He said he didn’t like that word. Push, though...he liked that word a lot.”

Jake thrust his chin out. “He was a kid.”

“So was I.”

“He still half believes one of his spooky Bellam cousins can talk to ravens and make them do her bidding. Frigging witch.”

Losing patience, Amara regarded him through her lashes. “Don’t tempt me. I’m older now and less...tolerant.”

Jake showed his teeth but didn’t, she noticed, utter another word.

“Smart man.” Through a crowd that was now vying loudly for his attention, McVey indicated the carnage in the corner. “How many arrests have you made?”

Jake dragged his resentful gaze from Amara. “Six. When you didn’t show, I called the Hardens in to help out.”

“Part-time Hollow deputies,” McVey said over his shoulder. “Twins.”

“Thick as bricks, the pair of them.” Jake snarled at a trio of men who elbowed him aside and began pleading their cases to McVey. “The Hardens are kin to Tyler Blume. No idea why he took the job, but Tyler’s the police chief here in the Hollow.” He raised his voice. “A town we Cove cops are being forced to watch over while he’s off snorkeling with his new Bellam wife.”

“That would be my cousin Molly.” When McVey shifted his attention from the squabbling men to arch a brow in Amara’s direction, she let her eyes sparkle. “It gets complicated very quickly if you start talking relatives around here. Think of me and Nana as the link between two feuding families.” Without missing a beat, she offered a placid, “Say missing link, Jake, and you’ll have hemorrhoids by the end of your shift.”

She felt the deputy’s glare before he pushed his way to McVey’s other side.

A man with a pockmarked face and no neck shouted over Amara’s head, “Was a Blume who started it, McVey. Called our beer donkey—er, well, anyway, he accused Yolanda of cutting it.”

Amara poked McVey’s hip. “Does Yolanda Bellam manage this bar?”

“More or less.... Yeah, Frank, I heard you.... From your expression, I’d speculate you and Yolanda aren’t BFFs.”

“Put it this way, if I’d known she was here, I’d have taken my chances with the shooter up at Nana’s.”

On cue, a high female voice sliced through the predominately male grumbles. “Amara? My God, is it really you?”

Her cousin had a little-girl drawl, glossy pink lips and red-blond curls clipped back at the sides to show off her angelic face.

Yeah, right, angelic, Amara thought, tipping her lips into a smile as a pair of wide blue eyes joined the mix. “Hey, Yolanda. It’s been— Well, years.”

Her cousin pushed a man out of her path, slung the dish towel she carried over her shoulder and spread her arms in welcome.

“Cousin Ammie’s back. And isn’t she a living doll? She brought me the best present ever.” Those welcoming arms knocked Amara aside and wrapped themselves tightly around McVey’s neck. “How’s the handsomest lawman on the East Coast tonight?” Her eyes and mouth grew suddenly tragic. “You’ll make them pay, won’t you, McVey? I tried, but I couldn’t get any such promise out of your mean-mouthed deputy.”

Amara’s opinion of Jake shot up ten full points. She wasn’t so sure about McVey.

To his credit, however, he removed her clinging arms, sent Amara a humorous look and headed for the pool tables, where three men with pierced body parts were holding their cues like baseball bats.

Yolanda pouted after him...until someone stepped on her foot and then the pout became a snarl. “You still nipping chins and lifting butts?”

Unruffled, Amara smiled. “Why? Are you looking for a freebie?”

“I wouldn’t come to you if I was.”

“Only because we apply the word in different ways.”

Yolanda’s fists balled. “I could blacken both your eyes, you know.”

“I’d say the same, except you’ve already done it yourself.”

“I— Damn!” Wiping a finger under her lower lashes, Yolanda scowled. “Some dumb Blume threw a beer and got me square in the face.” She gave her other eye a wipe. “Talk to me, Amara. Why have you come here after fifteen years of not here?”

“I wanted to see Nana.”

“In that case, Portland’s an hour’s drive south and have a nice flight. Nana’s in St. Croix. Or maybe it’s the Cayman Islands. Anyway, you’ll find her if you look hard enough.” With the speed of a striking snake, she grabbed Amara’s trench coat and yanked her forward to hiss, “He’s mine. You got that?”

Amara pried her hand away. “I got it when you turned into a barnacle a minute ago.”

Her cousin’s eyes flashed. “I can make your life hell.”

“You can try.” And, she admitted silently, might have succeeded if Jimmy Sparks hadn’t beaten her to it. “In an effort to keep the peace, Yolanda, if McVey says he’s yours, he’s yours. And welcome to you.”

A finger jabbed her shoulder. “You can’t stay at Nana’s house while you’re here.”

“Yep, figured that one out, too.”

“Can’t stay with me and Larry, either.”

“Your brother, Larry, the nighttime nudist? Uh, no.”

The overhead lights surged and faded and caused an icy finger to slide along Amara’s spine.

“Stupid wind.” But Yolanda observed her more keenly now. “A little raven told me you had some heavy court action going on down south. Saw someone die who wasn’t on your operating table when it happened.”

She didn’t need this, Amara thought, but rather than snap at her cousin, she shrugged it off. “I saw. I testified. It’s done.” When the lights faded again, she added a quick, “Uh, how’s Uncle Lazarus?”

Yolanda sniffed. “Still pays me next to nothing to manage this rude branch of hell, but he’s a Blume, so what do you expect?” Her lips quirked. “Word is the man you testified against is the mean and powerful head of a family that’s into all sorts of nasty things. Extortion, weapons, drugs—murder.”

“My, what big ears you have, Grandma.” His pool-player problems apparently dealt with, McVey surprised Amara by dropping an arm over her shoulders. “Some analogies go on forever, don’t they, Red?” Before she could answer, he made a head motion at the crowd. “I’m seeing a lot of unfamiliar faces, Yolanda. They drifting in for the Night of the Raven Festival already?”

Amara knew her cheeks went pale. She glanced at a nonexistent watch on her wrist, then at the walls for a calendar. “Is it—? What’s today? The date,” she clarified, still searching.

“May 10,” McVey supplied. “Why?”

“What? Oh, nothing. I forgot...an appointment.”

But damn, damn, how on earth had she forgotten about the scores of strangers who drove, bussed, cycled and hitchhiked to Raven’s Hollow to take part in the three-day celebration known as the Night of the Raven?

The Night festival was the Hollow’s once-a-year answer to the Cove’s once-every-three-years Ravenspell. Although the story at the root of the events was the same, it was told from two very different perspectives. Over the years both events—the Cove’s in the fall and the Hollow’s in the spring—had become a magnet for every curse-loving fanatic in and out of the state.

This was, Amara realized, the worst possible time for her to be in either town.

Her smile nothing short of malicious, Yolanda drew a raven’s head in the residue of a spilled beer. “Bet the Cayman Islands are looking better and better about now, huh, Amara? Say the word and I’ll get right on my little computer and book you a flight out of Portland.”

When a shrill whistle cut through the crowd noise, she banged her fist on the bar. “I’m not a dog, Jake Blume. What do you want?”

He wagged the receiver of a corded wall phone. “Boss man’s on the line and he’s in a crappy mood.”

“I hate that man,” Yolanda breathed. “Both men. Remember the spiders, Amara.” With a lethal look for her cousin, she snapped the dish towel from her shoulder and vanished into a sea of bodies.

“She put a jar of them in my bed,” Amara said before McVey could ask. “Well, I say she, but Yolanda only had the idea. Jake and Larry collected and planted them.”

“In your bed.”

“Under the covers, at the bottom. She told them to leave the top off so the spiders could crawl around wherever. The things were big. I freaked and refused to sleep in that particular room again.”

McVey tugged on a strand of hair to tilt her head back. “Did you tell your grandmother?”

“No need.”

“Do I want to know why?”

“Because all three of them, Jake most particularly, are terrified of snakes.” She swept an arm around the room. “Is the fighting done?”

“For now.” He nodded at a row of dull brass taps that glowed an eerie shade of red under lights that continued to surge and fade. “Do you want a drink before we leave?”

“Poison is a witch’s weapon, McVey, and Yolanda’s a Bellam. But thanks for the offer.”

“Festival slipped your mind, didn’t it?”

She ran her hands up and down her arms. “Unfortunately. The prospect of eminent death must have pushed it out. I’ve only ever been to one Night celebration myself. If it’s of any interest to you—and it should be—the Hollow’s Night of the Raven isn’t quite as civilized as the Cove’s Ravenspell.”

“Translation, Tyler Blume deliberately planned his honeymoon so he’d miss it.”

“If you’ve met him, you know he did. On the other hand, Jake should be in his element.” She glanced up when the lights winked off. “Uh...” Then back on. “Okay, my nerves are getting a way bigger workout than they need.”

She heard a familiar double beep beneath wailing Tim McGraw. As she hunted in her shoulder bag for her phone, she saw McVey pluck a mug of beer from a much larger man’s hand.

“You’re over your limit, Samson. Unless you want to join your buddies in jail, go home.”

The man’s face reddened. “Gonna get my wife to put a pox on you, you don’t give that back, McVey.”

“Do it, and I’ll get Red here to put one on you.”

“My wife’s got an aunt who’s a Bellam.” The man jerked his stubbly chin. “What’s she got?”

Staring at her iPhone, Amara felt her brain go cold. What she had was a text message from a man who’d sworn he would only contact her in an emergency.

“Beat it, Samson.”

Giving the mug to the bartender, McVey turned her hand with the iPhone and read the name on the screen. A name Amara’s terrified mind didn’t want to see or to acknowledge. Willy Sparks.

* * *

SHE PACED THE back office of the Raven’s Hollow police station like a caged tiger, dialing and redialing her cell. At the front desk Jake muttered about the Harden brothers being allowed to go home while he had to ride herd on a bunch of drunks in a town that wasn’t his and didn’t even supply its officers with a decent coffeemaker.

On his side of things, McVey was seriously wishing he’d never made any kind of deathbed promise to his father. Raising his eyes, he watched Amara pace. Okay, maybe not so much wishing as wondering what the hell he was supposed to do with this mess.

“Come on, McVey, give me one good reason why I can’t haul these boozers to the Cove. Cells there are way more comfortable than here.”

McVey scrolled through a list of New Orleans police officers. “Paperwork, Jake. Triple the usual amount if we start shuffling prisoners around. And you’ll be doing every last bit of it.”

The deputy gave his rifle a resentful pump. “I could get me a job in Bangor, you know.”

“Any time you want that to happen...” A raven-shaped wall clock told McVey he’d been on his iPhone for more than forty minutes. Out of patience, he took a procedural shortcut to a friend of a friend on the New Orleans force. “Samson’s texted me three times since we left the Red Eye,” he said absently. “Wants me to pay for the beer he didn’t get to drink.”

Amara kept pacing. “Sounds as though Samson’s spent some time around Uncle Lazarus.... There’s still no answer at the lieutenant’s apartment, McVey. I’ve tried his BlackBerry and his landline a dozen times each.”

McVey flicked her a look but said nothing. Didn’t need to; she knew the score as well as he did.

It took the better part of an hour to connect with someone in a position of sufficient authority to have Michaels’s apartment checked out. Another hour and a blistering headache later, the captain from the lieutenant’s parish contacted him personally.

“Michaels is dead.” The man’s tone was lifeless, a condition McVey understood all too well. “Officers found him on his back, staring at the ceiling. He had both hands clamped around his BlackBerry.”

“Cause of death?”

“Given the situation, I’d go with some kind of off-the-radar toxin that simulates a stroke. Forensic team’s scouring the apartment as we speak. I’ll let you know what they turn up.”

Amara rubbed her forehead with her own phone after the captain signed off. “Michaels is dead because he helped me get out of New Orleans. This is my fault.”

Figuring sympathy wasn’t the way to go here, McVey countered with a bland, “You know that’s a load of bull, right? And if we all just went with it, Willy Sparks would go on killing cops and civilians ad infinitum.”

She shot him a vexed look. “Thanks for the shoulder.”

“You don’t want a shoulder, Amara. You want to pound your fists. If I tell you it’s not your fault, you’ll get angry and say it should’ve been you, because that’s who Jimmy Sparks was gunning for.”

“He was. He is. And as emotional releases go, angry words are better than furious fists.”

“Not always. Back on point, what if Sparks’s nephew, godson, second cousin—whatever—had killed you instead of Michaels. Then what? True, he’d get paid, maybe bask on a tropical island for a while, but what he’d really be doing is waiting for Uncle Jimmy to crook his finger again and point it at a new target. The way things stand, this job’s not done. In fact, it’s a good bet Willy Sparks is either en route to or has already arrived in whatever Raven town the lieutenant entered into his BlackBerry.”

Amara frowned at her cell, then at him. “He said he buried the destination and phone number.”

“There’s buried, and there’s buried, Red. The phone wasn’t taken, therefore there was no need to take it.”

“As in the killer got what he wanted from it before he left.” She closed her eyes. “My ex is a geek. He could hack into just about any device.”

“Geeks can murder as effectively as anyone, Amara.”

“So it seems.” She looked around the office. “I need to leave before he gets here.”

McVey regarded his iPhone screen, shook his head and pushed off from the windowsill where he’d been leaning. “You’re not getting this, are you? Skip past the beating-yourself-up part, Amara, and think.”

“I’m not beating myself...well, yes, I am, but that’s because I feel responsible.”

“Did you kill him?”

“You’re joking, right? I’m a doctor, McVey. Psychology doesn’t work on me.”

“Fine. Here’s the reality. You leave town, Willy arrives. He’s pissed off to start with. Then he stops and thinks. And being a pro, sees a golden opportunity to draw you back.”

“By hurting members of my family.”

“Wouldn’t you, in his position?”

“Let me think. Uh—no.”

“Put your mind in his. We’re talking about a killer here.” When she didn’t respond, McVey held his arms out to the sides. “Look, if it’ll help get you past the guilt and make you see reason, you’re welcome to take your best physical shot. All I want in return is a handful of Tylenols, a couple hours of sleep and no argument from you about where you’ll be spending the night. You have two options. Come with me to your grandmother’s place or hang with Jake on a cot in the back room.”

“That’s quite a choice. Seeing as I know all the hidey-holes at Nana’s house and wouldn’t trust Jake not to sell me out for cab fare, I’ll go with the lesser evil and take you. As for the gut punch, I’ll take a rain check.”

“Excellent choices,” McVey returned.

Although it felt like a betrayal of sorts, he deliberately neglected to tell her about the text message Michaels’s captain had sent him less than a minute ago. But it continued to play in his head like a stuck audio disk.

In the captain’s opinion, if one of his most experienced detectives could be taken out as easily as Michaels apparently had been, then it was only a matter of time—likely short—before the fourth person on Jimmy Sparks’s hit list followed him to the grave.

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