LITMIR.BIZ

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she shrugged it off. “I saw. I testified. It’s done.” When the lights faded again, she added a quick, “Uh, how’s Uncle Lazarus?”

      Yolanda sniffed. “Still pays me next to nothing to manage this rude branch of hell, but he’s a Blume, so what do you expect?” Her lips quirked. “Word is the man you testified against is the mean and powerful head of a family that’s into all sorts of nasty things. Extortion, weapons, drugs—murder.”

      “My, what big ears you have, Grandma.” His pool-player problems apparently dealt with, McVey surprised Amara by dropping an arm over her shoulders. “Some analogies go on forever, don’t they, Red?” Before she could answer, he made a head motion at the crowd. “I’m seeing a lot of unfamiliar faces, Yolanda. They drifting in for the Night of the Raven Festival already?”

      Amara knew her cheeks went pale. She glanced at a nonexistent watch on her wrist, then at the walls for a calendar. “Is it—? What’s today? The date,” she clarified, still searching.

      “May 10,” McVey supplied. “Why?”

      “What? Oh, nothing. I forgot...an appointment.”

      But damn, damn, how on earth had she forgotten about the scores of strangers who drove, bussed, cycled and hitchhiked to Raven’s Hollow to take part in the three-day celebration known as the Night of the Raven?

      The Night festival was the Hollow’s once-a-year answer to the Cove’s once-every-three-years Ravenspell. Although the story at the root of the events was the same, it was told from two very different perspectives. Over the years both events—the Cove’s in the fall and the Hollow’s in the spring—had become a magnet for every curse-loving fanatic in and out of the state.

      This was, Amara realized, the worst possible time for her to be in either town.

      Her smile nothing short of malicious, Yolanda drew a raven’s head in the residue of a spilled beer. “Bet the Cayman Islands are looking better and better about now, huh, Amara? Say the word and I’ll get right on my little computer and book you a flight out of Portland.”

      When a shrill whistle cut through the crowd noise, she banged her fist on the bar. “I’m not a dog, Jake Blume. What do you want?”

      He wagged the receiver of a corded wall phone. “Boss man’s on the line and he’s in a crappy mood.”

      “I hate that man,” Yolanda breathed. “Both men. Remember the spiders, Amara.” With a lethal look for her cousin, she snapped the dish towel from her shoulder and vanished into a sea of bodies.

      “She put a jar of them in my bed,” Amara said before McVey could ask. “Well, I say she, but Yolanda only had the idea. Jake and Larry collected and planted them.”

      “In your bed.”

      “Under the covers, at the bottom. She told them to leave the top off so the spiders could crawl around wherever. The things were big. I freaked and refused to sleep in that particular room again.”

      McVey tugged on a strand of hair to tilt her head back. “Did you tell your grandmother?”

      “No need.”

      “Do I want to know why?”

      “Because all three of them, Jake most particularly, are terrified of snakes.” She swept an arm around the room. “Is the fighting done?”

      “For now.” He nodded at a row of dull brass taps that glowed an eerie shade of red under lights that continued to surge and fade. “Do you want a drink before we leave?”

      “Poison is a witch’s weapon, McVey, and Yolanda’s a Bellam. But thanks for the offer.”

      “Festival slipped your mind, didn’t it?”

      She ran her hands up and down her arms. “Unfortunately. The prospect of eminent death must have pushed it out. I’ve only ever been to one Night celebration myself. If it’s of any interest to you—and it should be—the Hollow’s Night of the Raven isn’t quite as civilized as the Cove’s Ravenspell.”

      “Translation, Tyler Blume deliberately planned his honeymoon so he’d miss it.”

      “If you’ve met him, you know he did. On the other hand, Jake should be in his element.” She glanced up when the lights winked off. “Uh...” Then back on. “Okay, my nerves are getting a way bigger workout than they need.”

      She heard a familiar double beep beneath wailing Tim McGraw. As she hunted in her shoulder bag for her phone, she saw McVey pluck a mug of beer from a much larger man’s hand.

      “You’re over your limit, Samson. Unless you want to join your buddies in jail, go home.”

      The man’s face reddened. “Gonna get my wife to put a pox on you, you don’t give that back, McVey.”

      “Do it, and I’ll get Red here to put one on you.”

      “My wife’s got an aunt who’s a Bellam.” The man jerked his stubbly chin. “What’s she got?”

      Staring at her iPhone, Amara felt her brain go cold. What she had was a text message from a man who’d sworn he would only contact her in an emergency.

      “Beat it, Samson.”

      Giving the mug to the bartender, McVey turned her hand with the iPhone and read the name on the screen. A name Amara’s terrified mind didn’t want to see or to acknowledge. Willy Sparks.

      * * *

      SHE PACED THE back office of the Raven’s Hollow police station like a caged tiger, dialing and redialing her cell. At the front desk Jake muttered about the Harden brothers being allowed to go home while he had to ride herd on a bunch of drunks in a town that wasn’t his and didn’t even supply its officers with a decent coffeemaker.

      On his side of things, McVey was seriously wishing he’d never made any kind of deathbed promise to his father. Raising his eyes, he watched Amara pace. Okay, maybe not so much wishing as wondering what the hell he was supposed to do with this mess.

      “Come on, McVey, give me one good reason why I can’t haul these boozers to the Cove. Cells there are way more comfortable than here.”

      McVey scrolled through a list of New Orleans police officers. “Paperwork, Jake. Triple the usual amount if we start shuffling prisoners around. And you’ll be doing every last bit of it.”

      The deputy gave his rifle a resentful pump. “I could get me a job in Bangor, you know.”

      “Any time you want that to happen...” A raven-shaped wall clock told McVey he’d been on his iPhone for more than forty minutes. Out of patience, he took a procedural shortcut to a friend of a friend on the New Orleans force. “Samson’s texted me three times since we left the Red Eye,” he said absently. “Wants me to pay for the beer he didn’t get to drink.”

      Amara kept pacing. “Sounds as though Samson’s spent some time around Uncle Lazarus.... There’s still no answer at the lieutenant’s apartment, McVey. I’ve tried his BlackBerry and his landline a dozen times each.”

      McVey flicked her a look but said nothing. Didn’t need to; she knew the score as well as he did.

      It took the better part of an hour to connect with someone in a position of sufficient authority to have Michaels’s apartment checked out. Another hour and a blistering headache later, the captain from the lieutenant’s parish contacted him personally.

      “Michaels is dead.” The man’s tone was lifeless, a condition McVey understood all too well. “Officers found him on his back, staring at the ceiling. He had both hands clamped around his BlackBerry.”

      “Cause of death?”

      “Given the situation, I’d go with some kind of off-the-radar toxin that simulates a stroke. Forensic team’s scouring the apartment as we speak. I’ll let you know what they turn up.”

      Amara

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