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

“Ya drive a hard bargain there, cap’n,” Pete snarled. I laughed to myself as Pete slipped back into his pirate language.

“I don’t think I was bargaining with you, more of a polite request,” Miller grinned.

“Aye!” Pete hollered, thrusting his sword skyward. “I’ll hold off for now but let them know that old toothless Pete won’t settle for any Skerry nonsense. There’ll be none of it on his watch!” He leapt up, clicked his heels together, then ran back into the trees waving his sword like he was charging into battle.

“I can’t tell if he is harmless, or the most dangerous person in all of Hallow Haven,” I said.

“Somewhere in between,” Miller nodded. “There are worse folk, no doubt.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ve met anybody else here that has a sword and a cannon that they are actively using to fire at their neighbors.”

“True. Ryder has that crossbow though, doesn’t he?” Miller said. I couldn’t read his expression, or sense why he had decided to bring that up. In the friction between Miller and Ryder, a lot of the trash talk was coming out of Ryder’s mouth. He caught me off guard.

“I think so,” I lied. I knew full well that he had one. “Why?” I wasn’t really in the mood to get into a conversation about it but given that Miller had recently discovered that he was a werewolf and that Ryder had declared himself a werewolf hunter, it was reasonable to be concerned about the weapons in his arsenal.

“Just wondering what he needs that for,” Miller muttered. “Unless you wanna scramble over these rocks, I suggest we take the boat.”

“Boat sounds good,” I said, curious as to why he’d dropped the Ryder topic as quickly as he’d raised it. We walked back into the palm trees and began to weave our way towards the dock where we had shored up the powerboat. “Are we going to miss Shell’s Day if we are over here?” I asked.

“I doubt they’d start without you,” Miller answered. “They need the peacekeeper there to blow the bugle that gets everything started.”

“You’ve got to be joking,” I cringed. “A bugle?”

“Yeah. Have you ever seen those guys on horseback when they do war reenactments? Someone blows that weird horn thing and then everyone starts running. That’s what you’ll be doing,” he laughed. “Don’t look at me, I didn’t start the tradition.”

“Don’t you guys have whistles or something?” I asked.

“Sure, but where’s the fun in that?”

We approached the dock and saw our boat rocking from side to side. I could have sworn I’d just heard a splash and the water around the boat was rippling as if something had landed from above, but the rest of the ocean was still.

“Wait,” I said, grabbing Millers upper arm to stop him walking forward.

“What is it?” he asked.

I watched the ripples still, but something was moving under the surface. Had something just dived into the water from our boat? I was nervous to get any closer, but I needed to see.

“It’s not safe,” I whispered. “Look.” I pointed to a dark shape moving away from us, it was traveling around the edge of the island as if circling it.

“Hmm, probably not a great time to bring it up but…” Miller began.

“What?”

“Green Holt is famous for sightings of, I don’t know how else to put this, sea monsters,” Miller said. My eyes widened.

“Sea monsters? Sea monsters!” I shrieked.

“It’s just rumors, or at least I think it is. It’s a tourist gimmick, keeps people coming here to see if they can spot the elusive creatures that haunt the waters,” he shrugged.

“This island had beaches like no place I’ve ever seen, but they think they need a sea monster to get tourists to visit?” I said, realizing I was now gripping tighter onto his arm.

“When you put it like that it sounds crazy,” he laughed. “But yeah, if the legends are true then maybe what we just saw was a sea monster!”

It felt as though my left hand was shaking down by my side. I looked down at the ring on my middle finger and saw that it was buzzing like an old pager. Effie had given me an amber ring and told me it would provide protection. How exactly it did that, I wasn’t sure. I would often stare at the amber and watch it swirl like molten rock. It looked drastically different now.

The amber stone was now lime green and wasn’t moving at all. It had been vibrating but stopped when I lifted it up to inspect it. I’d never seen it change like this before.

“I should call Effie,” I said.

“About the sea monster? Have you got a spare six hours?” he laughed. “She can talk your ears off about water legends. Her and Kate are both into anything like that. If you can find two people that are more convinced that Big Foot is real, I’ll give you twenty dollars.”

“Hey!” Honey shouted. She was jogging along the beach towards the dock and stopped before leaving the sand. It was as if she was reluctant to approach the water. “My guy is up at the house now, so I thought I should get you. He said something about drinking a calming tea and feeling ready sooner than he thought he would.”

“You want us back there now?” I asked.

“Yeah, if you’re free! I for one will be thrilled to not have a dead body buried in my back yard, don’t know about you guys!” she smiled. “If you can get it out of here before my bedtime, I’d be grateful, otherwise I’ll not sleep a wink.”

“We can get to Skerry later. If we can get Pete to agree to a ceasefire then it would buy us some time,” Miller said.

“Pete? Ceasefire? You’d have better luck getting pigs to fly, but okay,” Honey chuckled. As we walked away from the dock I looked back at the water and wondered what I’d just