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

“I can be, and I am,” he huffed.

“What am I missing?” I said.

“Oh, just a small matter of manners, Sadie. Manners and dignity,” Fitz replied, jumping up onto the sofa laundry pile to begin ranting. “Once upon a time I attended one of these ‘parties’.” He lifted his paws into the air to dramatically add the quote marks. “I brought a huge platter of corndogs to one of his parties and I didn’t get to eat a single one of them. He took the tray out of my hands and started passing them around as if they were his offerings!”

“You brought food to a party and people at the party ate it, I can’t believe you are still annoyed about that,” Greta sighed.

“Well, it’s the corndog thing and the fact that he once argued with me that the moon landings were fake and I just don’t have time for that nonsense in my life,” he grumbled.

A sound of wailing sobs floated down the stairs and Kate grinned at me. “I should have put money on this,” she said as we all turned to run up in search of Effie. We found her lying on a double bed, her arms wrapped around a picture frame.

Kate prized it out of her hands and turned it around to reveal that it was a framed picture of Effie and a man that I had to assume was her ex-boyfriend Max.

“Why would he keep this if he didn’t still love me?” Effie cried.

“Darling, he has trash all over the ground floor of this house. Clearly, he isn’t a big fan of keeping things organized. He probably just forgot to set the picture on fire,” Fitz answered. It wasn’t a helpful response and triggered another wail from Effie.

“Get out of here furball,” Kate scolded. “Look, I know this is horrible and you are going through it at the minute, but if Max is using dark magic then people could be in danger. You know why we are looking for this thing, don’t you?”

“P-p-p-page 89,” Effie sniffed.

“What’s on page 89?” I asked.

“You think he performed a ritual sacrifice?” Greta screeched. “Are you freaking kidding me!? Sadie, how have you allowed this to happen on your watch?”

“I have no idea what is happening right now, so I don’t know if I should be getting the blame,” I said defensively.

“So Ryder showed you a clearing, right?” Kate said. I nodded. “There was blood on a stone and blah blah, the whole thing looked fishy. As soon as you told us, we were both thinking ‘oh, this sounds like bad news.’ Add that to the murder of Jake Hall and then the fact that our book is missing…”

“You think that Max killed Jake?” I said. “That’s… that’s a huge accusation and I—”

“Not necessarily that he killed him, look, we just need to find the book,” Kate said.

“Well, it’s right here,” Greta said, pointing at a desk that was littered with potato chips and screwed up balls of paper.

Effie pushed past all of us and snatched the book off the desk. It was exactly as she had described it, down to the gold embossed shapes on the front of the black leather binding. She flicked through the pages and stopped at one that had been bent over as if bookmarked.

“Is that…?” Kate asked.

“Yep, page 89,” Effie replied. She had become pale and it looked as if the pink and purple color of her hair became suddenly less vibrant.

“Can I see that?” I asked, holding out a hand.

“Sure,” Effie replied, stretching out her hand to pass it to me. “Hold on, what’s that?”

She was looking at my open palm. I brought my hand closer to my face to see what she was looking at. Blood. Why was there blood on my hand? I hadn’t cut myself. It made no sense.

“Well aren’t we a bunch of dummies,” Kate snorted. She was laughing for some reason, which made me think that maybe something funny was going on. It wasn’t. “I saw Tim with a bunch of gasoline, and then we ran off on some crazy side quest looking for the book and getting all up into Max’s business. We didn’t even check Tim’s hands, but Sadie did.”

“Did I?” I said, furrowing my brow.

“You shook his hand. Part of the sacrifice ritual outlined on Page 89 of this book,” she said, pointing at the black leather, “is to create a demonic space for the ceremony. That includes fire and a drop of blood from the people looking to brew dark magic. You’ve seen how they do it in films, right? Press a blade into the inside of your hand and voilà!”

“So Tim might have killed Jake?” I said. “I’m totally lost here.”

“I think Kate and I need to think things over for a hot second. Maybe the pollen count is extra high today and is sending us both crazy, but at the minute we both seem to be accusing the men in our lives of being thieves and killers that are dabbling in the dark arts. Let’s take this book and go grab an iced tea at The Sand Witch,” Effie suggested.

Greta vanished into thin air and Fitz bounded down the stairs ahead of Effie and Kate. I stood looking at the framed picture on the nightstand for a moment longer, before looking back at the desk. I picked up one of the screwed up balls of paper and unraveled it. Something about what was written on it reminded me of something, but what?

13

Sitting around a table with Effie and Kate made me feel like I was hanging with the cool kids in high school. We were drinking our iced teas in The Sand Witch, the café that I was the owner of, but still felt as though the two of them had seniority. Maybe it was because of the topic of our conversation.

Rosie, one of the other witches that worked here, was operating the cash register and would occasionally join