Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 1-3 by Mara Webb (books to read fiction .txt) 📕

patrol set up in case the stalker, the one that potentially killed your cousin and is frightening an employee, shows up to hurt you, would that be comforting? It wasn’t, in case you hadn’t guessed.

Shortly after Ryder left, Effie had shown up with a new sim card for my phone, made a few calls to port my old number over and managed to do all that with only a handful of threats to customer service staff at the phone network.

Effie said it would be useful for me to keep my number so that anyone from my old life that wanted to get in touch was able to, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it would hardly be blowing up with phone calls.

Having a functional phone meant that I was able to leave a voicemail for Miller, then another. After my third attempt to call him I gave up. Effie had slept on the sofa downstairs and I had lay awake for hours trying to think about my childhood and if there had been any clues about the abilities of my bloodline.

I hadn’t seen Greta and desperately wanted to grill her about the family tree on the dining room wall, but I had more pressing issues.

“Sadie, are you ready to go?” Effie shouted. The police officers that had attended the scene last night requested that I go down to the station and provide a statement. I had agreed and, as I threw on a t-shirt, I hoped that I would see Miller there.

I felt like the girl in class that was sending round the, ‘Do you like me? Yes or no?’ tick box notes. Yes, I actually did that back in school. It was probably just as likely to end in romance as leaving multiple voicemail messages on a hot guy’s cell phone.

I had mentioned the werewolf incident to Effie and her eyes had widened only slightly. It was sort of an, oh really? response as if I’d told her that there was a shoe sale in town. She had remarked that a werewolf sighting was ‘due’ like it was a dormant volcano being closely monitored by the geography channel.

“Do I mention the werewolf to the police?” I asked.

“Up to you, peacekeeper,” Effie teased. “If you think a bunch of humans can handle that information without freaking out and setting fire to the island, then be my guest.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’, shall I?”

“Look, the humans know about magic and we’re all so very proud that they don’t pee their pants every day at the magnitude of our power, but this would probably tip them over the edge. Even just a regular wolf would frighten most people,” she explained.

“You don’t seem bothered by it,” I said, studying her face to see if she was faking bravery.

“My great-grandfather was a werewolf. There are a couple of humans old enough to remember all that, but the younger generations think it’s all fairytales to make the past sound more exciting. I think we’re happy to keep it that way.”

I stepped into the police station and audibly gasped with relief to see Miller in the reception area. He was safe. After seeing a discarded walkie talkie on the sand I feared that maybe he had been attacked by the creature. Looking into his eyes now, his tense forehead and tight lips, I feared that he was the creature.

No. That was crazy, right? But everything here is crazy. Why was I even considering it? It felt something inside me was pulling me to this conclusion, like a gut instinct.

It would be insane of me to ask him if he was a werewolf and it also wasn’t likely to come up naturally during my formal statement delivery for the incident report. It would have to wait.

“I’m heading back to the café; does anyone want to place an order? If you’re lucky I can bring it over,” Effie asked the room. A number of people jumped up to rush at her with their requests, mostly police officers but one young man in handcuffs was also trying to ask for a Reuben.

“Sadie, this way please,” Miller said, his voice hushed as if I was to be the sole recipient of his words. I followed him into a small room, and he sat down across a table from an empty chair. I felt as though we had been in the early stages of a friendship, or at least I had hoped, but now he was acting so business-like.

If we were to defend the land, or whatever a peacekeeper was in charge of, then we needed to work together. Him keeping me at an icy distance was going to make this harder. Could he sense that I was having these bizarre werewolf thoughts? Ryder put the idea in my head and Effie had poured fuel on the fire, she had confirmed that werewolves existed. Miller was human though; I didn’t want to say something stupid and have him question my sanity.

I sat down. He pulled out a notepad, a small tape recorder and a sketchbook from a drawer beneath the table. As he set up the recorder, I couldn’t help but stare at his face in search of a clue as to why he wasn’t the same as the guy I’d met in the storm shelter. Where was the back-and-forth? The light flirting?

“You’re staring,” he said.

“What have I done wrong?” I replied, the words had left my mouth before the logical part of my brain had applied a filter. He stopped pressing buttons and looked up at me. “Is it because I nearly drowned? Has that made you think less of me or something? Look, I’m just trying to figure out what happened to Greta and navigate this new, mind-blowing existence that I’ve been thrown into and I could do with you acknowledging me.”

He smiled, it was a little crooked and effortlessly charming. All of my hostile thoughts seemed to dissolve as he disarmed me with a