Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay by Babette Jongh (best fantasy books to read TXT) 📕

about Georgia causing her to fall. Then, leaning back and closing her eyes, she listened. It almost looked like she was falling asleep, but he knew she wasn’t, because she held the phone to her ear. After what seemed like forever, she said, “You think?” Then she got quiet for a minute before speaking again. “Okay, yes, I can see it, but I don’t trust myself. Are you sure?”

This was the strangest phone conversation he’d ever witnessed.

“Okay, okay.” Abby sat up, eyes open, acting more like a normal person having a normal phone conversation. “I will. Thank you, Aunt Reva. I love you. Yeah, okay. Bye.”

She ended the call and put the phone back in the basket. Then she looked over at him and noticed his reaction. “I guess that phone call may have seemed a little strange.”

He couldn’t help but grin at her understatement. “A little.”

“Aunt Reva says that Georgia is hiding out, either under something or in something, like a cave or a den. And Wolf is with her. We think they might have dug a hiding place under the front porch.”

Quinn chuckled. “And you’ve determined all this how?”

“Telepathy.” Abby sat up and gave him a challenging look. “If you must know.”

He grinned. What a bunch of horseshit.

Abby scowled. “Don’t laugh. I’m serious. And it would make sense, because Georgia’s feet were dirty today. It’s why I wanted to give her a bath.”

“Okay, Ms. Pet Detective.” He made a straight face, though an indulgent grin kept wanting to break through. Her obvious irritation at his teasing was kind of cute. He held up the first three fingers of his right hand. “Scout’s honor, I won’t laugh.”

“You already did laugh, but okay. I know you don’t get it.”

“You’re right. I don’t get it, so please explain it to me. Your aunt knows all this from five hundred miles away how?”

She took a breath and let it out. “My Aunt Reva is a telepathic animal communicator. She can connect with animals and know what they’re thinking.”

He couldn’t help himself; a snort of disbelief escaped him before he knew it was coming. “Okaaay.”

“Shut. Up.” Abby really looked mad now. She bolted to her feet and wrestled the handlebars of the scooter around, obviously prepared to flounce away, only too bad for her, flouncing wasn’t easily done when she had only one foot on the ground and had to hop behind a scooter.

The very thought of her trying to make a huffy exit behind that scooter made him chuckle. “I’m sorry.” But his funny bone had been tickled, and now he couldn’t stop laughing.

“Don’t you dare make fun of this just because you don’t understand it.” She stormed out of the room, hopping as fast as that stupid scooter would go. Boy, she really was mad.

“I’m sorry!” He went after her, laughing even harder. If she knew how silly she looked right now, she’d know he wasn’t laughing at her aunt’s crazy ways, or even her own. He was simply laughing because she was so damn cute. He should’ve made her mad long before now, because watching her hop around in a fury was so entertaining. He bit his lip and tried to sober up. At her side now, he refrained from touching her. He was pretty sure that if he reached out a hand, he’d draw back a nub. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to get a flashlight, you…” She looked over at him, so pissed that she couldn’t think of a word bad enough to call him. “You asshat.”

Shit. He had to laugh again. “So now I’m an asshat. I’m wounded that you would call me such a terrible name.”

She wrenched open a kitchen drawer and took out a foot-long metal flashlight. “Shut the fuck up.” She turned on him with such a daggered glare that he backed up a step in case she was thinking of beaning him over the head. “Get out of my way.”

He held up both hands. “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry. Where are you going?”

She took a deep breath and puffed up with dignity. “I’m going to look under the porch and see if Georgia and Wolf are there.” Her eyes looked suspiciously bright, as if she might cry.

His sense of hilarity died a quick death. He really hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings. “Let me.”

She hesitated at first, but then handed over the flashlight. “I’m coming with you.”

“As far as the porch,” he specified. He walked behind her onto the porch, hoping she was realizing right this minute that she definitely needed his help. “Wait here.”

“Fine.” She didn’t much sound like she was appreciating his presence, but maybe she’d think about that later, when she wasn’t so worried about the dog. He went down the stairs and walked around the porch, looking for a break in the dense azaleas that surrounded the house. He wanted to point out that if he hadn’t been here, she’d be hobbling around outside in the dark all by herself. But maybe he should wait until he found the dogs to do that.

Around the far side of the porch, he found a scraggly, puny azalea that had been partially dug up by the gutter’s rain spout. He turned on the flashlight and got to his hands and knees, pushing forward in the less-dense spot until the bushes parted enough to allow him to see under the porch. Sure enough, a freshly dug mound of dirt loomed before him, the area around it patterned with dog footprints, some big and others small. “I’ll be damned.”

He couldn’t see the entrance to the den, so he crawled around where the porch overhang met the backside of the shrubs, brushing cobwebs out of the way with the flashlight. “Georgia?”

Unlikely visions of badgers and coyotes flashed into his already weirded-out brain, and he was pretty sure something was crawling in his hair. But he pressed on until he could see the edge of an opening in the den that seemed to go under the foundation