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

an app that appeared to show a map of the islands. She pressed a symbol at the bottom of the screen which had two dice, they began to tumble.

“I think he is the werewolf,” I said, checking for signs of fear or horror on her face. She didn’t even blink.

“Is that a problem? If you have an issue going after guys with weird hobbies then you have come to the wrong place girl,” she laughed. “Okay, looks like we are back to the mountain!” I had to jog to catch up to her, she was walking so fast and I still wanted to talk about the shifter sheriff.

“Is he dangerous?” I asked hesitantly.

“I’ve dated guys that aren’t werewolves that were plenty problematic, you can’t expect his behavior to reflect the one thing you think you know about him. So he might shift into some four-legged creature every now and then, does that mean he isn’t a good guy?” She stopped and turned to me. “If Miller is a werewolf like you think, then he is new to this, it’s probably super scary to be him right now. He probably would appreciate having someone to talk to about it.”

I looked up at the mountain that we were standing at the base of. We would probably pass by Greta’s car again; I should speak to someone about finally getting that thing dragged off the road.

“What about Ryder?” I said.

“Oof, you didn’t come here to play,” she laughed. “Are you making moves on them both? I can’t say I blame you, but jeez, leave some for the rest of us.”

“No, I meant… what is the hunt? Ryder said something about a hunt after he saw the wolf. Is he planning to hurt Miller?”

She looked somber and lost in thoughts for a moment, the brightness of her eyes dimmed. She wasn’t moving now, like a statue or a photograph. When she returned to me, her mood had changed. “I’ve warned Effie to keep an eye on things while we are up here. I felt a calling to play the game today, I’m sure you know that those things happen for a reason.”

“You can communicate through your magic? Why do you have a cell phone then?” I asked.

“I can communicate with my sister like this, sometimes my mom too if she is paying attention. If Ryder is part of a wolf hunt, then yes, there is about to be trouble. I think we all consider the outer islands to be the source of the trouble around here, but we have conflicts on the main island too. If Miller has been ‘activated’ or whatever, then an opposing force will have been triggered at the same time.”

“There is always balance?”

“Yes. When Greta was killed, there was a disparity in the magic energy on the islands, you were brought here to make things right again, but in the time between her death and your arrival there was clearly a lot of other stuff going on that we will now have to deal with. For now though, we have to deal with this...”

I followed her eye-line down to a pile of human bones on the ground between the trees. We had been walking slower as the steepness of the mountain increased, so I hadn’t noticed how far up we’d made it. I considered the idea that I only seemed to find bodies in Kate’s company, but following the theory that everything happens for a reason, maybe she was meant to find them, like a search dog or something.

The bones were clean. The size of them, and their position in relation to each other, indicated that this was not an animal’s grave, and the lack of anything other than bones pointed to the death having happened a long time ago. There was a distinct hole through the skull, a bullet wound.

“This is where the app was taking me,” Kate mumbled. “More and more it seems that I get randomly assigned co-ordinates that help me discover something useful. I’ve spoken to other players; it doesn’t happen to them.”

I crouched down beside the legs of the skeleton, the body looked as though it had been hastily buried at some point and some of the bones were still partially submerged in soil. There would be no analysis of the bones by a scientist, Ryder said everything was handled by folks on the island.

I reached a hand forward to touch the bones, Kate put her hand on my shoulder, clearly warning me that what I was doing might be considered gross by most standards. I shrugged her off.

As my fingertips touched the skeleton, a vision of the owner hit me as clear as if they were standing right in front of me. I could see the face vividly; it wasn’t one I recognized but it looked familiar. I pulled my hand back; all it had taken was a second or two of contact and I had seen the face of this dead body.

I now had to put a name to that face and figure out why this body would have been buried close enough to Greta’s car that I could see it through the trees.

I sensed that they were connected.

17

“I have to say, I’m impressed,” Miller said. He had been watching me draw for ten minutes and it seems he had assumed I would be terrible at it. I almost didn’t want to mention that I’d taken a bunch of art classes.

I was creating a sketch of the face I had seen when I touched the bones. I wasn’t sure how long the memory would hang around, so I had hurried down to the police station, briefly explained what had happened and demanded a pencil and some paper.

“Is this looking familiar?” I asked.

“Yeah, as soon as you drew the eyes, I recognized them, but I was curious as to how much detail you could add to a drawing of a face that you have technically never seen. I’ve never seen anyone do