How to Stone a Crow (Witch Like a Boss Book 2) by Willow Mason (great novels txt) 📕

on the headstone was in the same shape as the black stone. As I moved to replace it, my fingers tingled and went numb, the amulet dropping to the ground and disappearing in the long grass.

I swept my hand through the stalks a few times but couldn’t locate it again. The pins and needles in my fingertips evaporated, and I rubbed them against my jeans to rid them of the last of the sensation.

“Beyond the flowers, there’s nothing here,” Jared said, his voice tinged with disappointment. “And they might have been torn apart by a passing animal with a distaste for floral arrangements.

His statement coincided with a text message from Patrick. “Our dentist clients want us to come down,” I read aloud. “Their day’s gone from bad to worse.”

A dark bird swooped down to land on Andrew’s gravestone, cleaning its beak on the edge of the stone. Or sharpening it.

I shuddered, the attack from yesterday still fresh in my mind. When we walked out of the gate and picked up the trail, I kept my hands up to protect my head.

Chapter Six

“These original fittings are rather lovely,” I exclaimed, touching my finger to a brass fixture securing an old-fashioned gaslight to the brick wall. “Is this the inside or the outside of a house?”

“It was originally the outside,” Wes said, more animated than I’d seen him since our arrival. “When the extension was added, the builders didn’t want to take down the entire supporting wall of the house, so the exit became just another door inside the house.” He sighed and ran his hand over the rough bricks. “It’s so authentic.”

“So authentic,” his partner Jac called out, coming over and nodding to a framed poster hanging a foot farther along the wall. “Just like this piece. It’s my favourite.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “When it sells, I’ll be ecstatic for the new owner, of course, but…” He sighed again.

“We have far too many like that,” Wes agreed. “One of these days, we’ll get to focus on decorating our place, then we won’t have that horrible wrench when we need to let something go.”

“So difficult.”

“I must say, I’m not feeling any sense of sadness at all.” With a smile, I disengaged from the pair and wandered farther afield. “Does it take a while to arrive?”

“Oh, you don’t need to hunt it down if that’s what you’re asking.” Wes shook his head, staring out the front window at the passing pedestrians for a moment before striding to the counter where he pulled out a binder. “When we became certain something supernatural was going on, we kept a note of each occurrence. To see if we could sort the pattern out for ourselves.”

“Don’t be modest,” Jac said as Wes flicked through the pages. “That was all you. If it had been left up to me, I would’ve fled the area and never come back.”

“The feeling gets that bad, does it?”

I asked to keep the flow of words going but already knew the answer. Nobody goes to the trouble of investigating the paranormal—investing real money—on a whim. Unless they’re like that. I glanced at the pair, scanning them again from head to toe. No, they didn’t seem like that sort of person.

“We spent a literal fortune doing this place up,” Wes said as he pulled pages out and arranged them in a new order. “Literally a fortune. I said halfway through, we’d be better off financially if we just pulled the whole place down and built again from scratch, didn’t I say that?”

“You said that.” Jac moved to the entrance and checked the sign facing the street read open. “You said that a lot.”

“Business is slow?”

Wes nodded at me before spinning the binder around so I could read it. “Here’s the first occurrence after we thought something weird was going on.”

I bent over the text, scanning the detailed notes, my mind filtering out the flamboyant adjectives to arrive at the staler facts. When Patrick came closer, I twisted it around for him to see but he shook his head. “I’ve already read them, the first time I came.”

Each entry boiled down to a recognisable pattern. A feeling of dread would overtake the occupants of the store, something that dissipated immediately upon leaving. This would build and open into an overwhelming sense of loss and regret.

“That’s the worst bit,” Wes said, stabbing his finger at the page. “Like I don’t spend enough time at three in the morning reconsidering every bad choice I’ve made in my life. Doing it again out here in the real world is not necessary.”

“You know, we thought the insurance might cover some of our out-of-pocket expenses if we could prove something bad is happening.” Jac fiddled with a button on his shirt sleeve. “If we get backing that we’re not just making it up, we might be able to emerge from this horrible trial with something.”

I kept my eyes fastened to the pages, avoiding Patrick’s eye. Insurance companies might be fond of advertising that they covered damage from unusual sources, but I couldn’t imagine a scenario where they’d pay out a claim for loss of profits due to paranormal activity.

“That doesn’t even matter.” Wes folded his arms across his chest and tapped one foot on the floor. “If we can clear up the awful atmosphere inside this place, our customers will come back, and we can make money exactly how we planned. By having good taste and expertise in all the things that make a home feel good.”

“Did you feel it?” I asked Patrick when we excused ourselves from the main store to scope out the storage rooms and staff kitchenette out back.

“Yes.” He pulled open a drawer, revealing a pile of odds and ends that might come in handy someday. When he pushed it back into place, the wood screamed against its frame, making me shiver. “It was awful. Worse than they’ve described. I felt…”

He trailed off but the haunted expression on his face