Freaky Rites (A Mystic Caravan Mystery Book 6) Read online

  I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing and slid a sidelong look to Kade. I found his mouth curving as well, although he was clearly fighting the effort. He wasn’t ready to cede his bad mood.

  “There was no one in the library,” I repeated. “No one came in and, now that I think back on it, Remy didn’t act as if she was expecting anyone to come in. She seemed fine helping me with my research.”

  “Did she tell you the truth?” Raven asked.

  That was another good question. “I think so. I mean … I didn’t get the feeling that she was lying or anything. What would be the point? The history of Falk isn’t exactly a secret. Most of it I already knew. She did throw in a few interesting tidbits.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, for starters, she mentioned that the mill didn’t simply shut down because of the Great Depression,” I supplied. “That’s in all the history books – and it was certainly part of it – but there was also an incident with the primary saw blade at the mill becoming warped.”

  “I have no idea what that means,” Luke said after a beat.

  “I guess it was bent.” I waved my hand for emphasis. “Apparently that’s not supposed to happen, so the townsfolk believed they had a witch in their midst.”

  Kade jerked his shoulders. “Do you think that’s possible? Do you think a witch was responsible for the downfall of Falk and she somehow carried through until we got here and now she wants to make Poet pay for … um … her lot in life?”

  That sounded like one of the most ridiculous theories I’d ever heard. “Well, probably not.” I was trying to be diplomatic, but Luke and Nellie were having none of it.

  “You think she wanted Poet to pay for her lot in life?” Luke snickered. “Why would she wait around for fifty years and then go after Poet?”

  “Longer than that,” Nellie corrected. “The mill shut down in the thirties. It’s more like eighty years.”

  “The mill shut down in the thirties, but I thought the town was standing until the seventies,” Luke countered. “I’m guessing the witch didn’t really get upset with her lot in life until all the buildings were torn down.”

  “I don’t care if you think I’m being stupid,” Kade challenged. “I want to know exactly what is happening and why Poet is being targeted. That’s all I care about.”

  Raven snorted. “I hardly think she’s being targeted.”

  “Really?” Kade refused to back down. “She’s the one who first saw Caroline Olsen in the woods. She’s the one who heard the chanting.”

  “Hey, wait.” Luke made a face. “I heard the chanting first. Maybe I’m being targeted. I don’t see you freaking out about protecting me.”

  Kade quieted him with a stern look. “Poet insisted on going into the woods the day we found the blood,” he continued. “Poet was with me when I saw the dancing ghost things on the other side of the dreamcatcher.”

  “We all saw those,” Raven pointed out.

  Kade barreled forward as if she hadn’t said a word. “Poet almost got killed in her sleep last night. Poet was attacked at the library today. The common thread in all of this is Poet.”

  His anxiety was so high I thought he might legitimately suffer some sort of heart malady if he didn’t calm himself. “Kade, look at me.” I stared hard until he reluctantly turned in my direction. “There is no reason to freak out. This is hardly the worst thing we’ve ever faced.”

  “I get that, but … I have this fear in my heart and I can’t seem to shake it.” He rubbed his temple, as if warding off a headache. “It’s as if it’s taking me over. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  He seemed so lost I couldn’t stop myself from going into a sort of protective mode of my own. “We’ll figure it out.” I patted his hand as I exchanged a quick look with Raven. I could practically see the gears in her mind working. “I think we should bring Max in on this as well,” I added after a beat. “We haven’t kept him in the loop on this one. He might have some ideas we haven’t yet considered.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Raven said hurriedly. “You should pin him down now so he can enjoy dinner with us.”

  “Great idea.” I slowly got to my feet. “I’ll be right back, Kade. I won’t be far.”

  “I can go with you.” Kade continued rubbing his forehead, serving to increase my worry.

  “No, I’ll handle it. I won’t be gone long.”

  “YOU HAVE TO JOIN us tonight.”

  I thought about asking Max to participate in the evening’s festivities, using my nicest and sweetest voice and wearing him down until he agreed. Instead I barreled inside his trailer and demanded his attendance.

  Max, his eyes on his computer screen, barely glanced up when I stormed his trailer without knocking. “And good afternoon to you, too, Poet.”

  I glared at him. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “I did. Can you hold on a minute?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Max tapped on his keyboard. “Thirty seconds then.”

  “No. I need you now.”

  “And done.” Max closed his laptop, smiled, and looked me up and down. “You look flushed. Are you feeling all right?”

  I love Max like a father – which is kind of gross if you think about it too hard because he’s my boyfriend’s father – but there are times when his sense of humor grates in the worst way imaginable. “I’m really not feeling all that great,” I gritted out. “It’s been a trying two days.”

  “Is there something wrong with the trailer?”

  “What? No.”

  “Then what seems to be the problem?”

  I wanted to nutshell everything for him, keep my diatribe short. Instead I launched into the tale from the beginning. I was still talking twenty minutes later. “And that’s basically it. I have no idea what the lady in the library was doing, but I’m fairly certain it was some kind of mind manipulation.”

  “That sounds terrible.” Max leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers over his stomach. “Why wasn’t I informed any of this was going on?”

  Oh, now he really wanted me to melt down. “Because you’re rarely around, Max! You come down for dinner, like, once a week and otherwise leave everything to us. We already saw you the night we arrived, so I figured that was your limit for this week.”

  “While I do enjoy my solitude, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be around when my workers – my family, really – need help. You should’ve called me.”

  “Well, I’m calling you now.” I pulled together my fraying patience. “I need you to be a part of what goes down tonight. It’s not just for me. It’s for Kade.”

  Max’s sparkplug eyebrows migrated north. “And what’s wrong with Kade?”

  “I don’t know, but I think those things are affecting him, too. He just doesn’t seem to realize it.”

  Max leaned forward, finally alert enough to fully engage in the conversation. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s acting weird, overprotective and whiny.”

  “Given what happened to you last night, can you blame him? That must have been terrifying.”

  “It’s more than that. He said he feels as if he’s being overcome by fear. That’s not like him. He’s brave even when he doesn’t understand stuff. That signifies that something – or someone, for that matter – outside of the dreamcatcher is trying to influence him. He simply doesn’t appear to recognize the signs.”

  “Well … .” Max broke off and pursed his lips, his mind clearly busy.

  “You’re his father, which means he has some mage in him,” I pointed out. “If these things – whatever they are – are going for those most sensitive on a psychic level, they might zero in on Kade. Just because he hasn’t manifested powers yet doesn’t mean he won’t now that he’s close to regular magic.”

  “I’ve been wondering if that would happen. It’s not out of the realm of possibility.”

  “So … you’ll come?”

  “Of course I’ll
come. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. We’ll figure this out. We always do.”

  I only hoped we could do it sooner rather than later. Kade was fraying quickly – too quickly for me to keep ahead of the meltdowns – and I wasn’t sure how much he could take.

  13

  Thirteen

  For a change of pace, I was the one sticking close to Kade throughout the rest of the afternoon. He didn’t complain, of course, and I honestly believed he thought he was the one hovering over me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something big (and potentially bad) was about to happen.

  Even though interior design didn’t exactly blow up my bohemian skirt, I allowed him to take me on another tour of our new office digs. It looked exactly the same – although you would never know it by his enthusiasm – but I made the appropriate noises and congratulated him on a job well done.

  We ended up making out on his desk – and mine – before touring the circus grounds to make sure everything was in order. We held hands the entire time, both of us working overtime to project an air of calm, even though we both knew a storm was coming.

  The walk around the circus was leisurely. I stopped by my tent long enough to make sure everything was set up – Melissa had obviously been inside to add the finishing touches to the display – and then hit the midway before heading back to help with the dinner preparations.

  In typical fashion, Mark Lane, the oily midway head honcho, was waiting for me in the middle of the set-up mayhem.

  “Don’t worry about us,” Mark announced, a cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth. “We got our trucks late, but we’ll be finished before darkness falls this evening.”

  I hated the man on principle – he was a grifter of the highest order – but he was good at his job and I was thankful at times like these (when a paranormal threat was breathing down our necks) that I could trust him to handle his corner of the world.

  “That’s good.” I bobbed my head as I studied the midway. “It looks almost completely put together now.”

  “Yes, well, my people are motivated.” Mark puffed on his cigar, blowing three smoke rings in my face as he grinned. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  Kade scowled as he waved the smoke out of my face. “Don’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because secondhand smoke kills.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” I offered, my lips curling. “He’ll die long before secondhand smoke becomes an issue for me. I can promise you that.”

  Mark blinked several times in rapid succession before ultimately shifting so the cigar smoke didn’t blow directly in my face. “Better?”

  “I’m considering throwing you a party,” I said dryly. “I might even make you the piñata for the celebration.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that your personality needs some work?”

  That was rich coming from him. “Believe it or not, you’re not the first person to say that to me.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “But you are the most hypocritical person to have the audacity to say it to me,” I added, offering him the fakest smile in my repertoire before sobering. “I never thought I’d say this, but we need to have a quick talk.”

  “Oh, I would like nothing better than to have a quickie with you, baby, but I’m on a timetable.” Mark winked at Kade, something that I’m sure infuriated my boyfriend, and puffed out his chest. “I don’t want to miss my deadline.”

  “The deadline isn’t as important as what else we have going on,” I argued. “Also, I wouldn’t have a quickie with you if you were the last leech on the planet. Don’t be gross. You know I don’t like it.”

  “Since when has that stopped me?”

  “Okay, let me rephrase that,” I said. “You know I’ll shrink your unit to the size of a peanut … without the shell … if you don’t knock it off, right?”

  Mark rolled his eyes, but I was amused to see him shift his groin as far away from me as possible. “Well, now that we’ve discussed circus food, what is it that you want?”

  “I want your people inside before dark,” I answered without hesitation. “I don’t care if you’re not finished. You have time to finish tomorrow if it’s necessary.”

  “And why don’t you want us out after dark? Wait … I don’t want to know.” Mark held up a hand to quiet me. “This is more of your extracurricular nonsense, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I don’t want to know.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that you need to be inside before dark,” I shot back. “No matter what you do, don’t leave the fairgrounds. It’s important.”

  “Fine.” Mark sighed. “I won’t leave the fairgrounds. Happy?”

  “I’m so happy I’ll gladly refrain from making peanut brittle from your naughty bits tonight.”

  Kade waited until Mark turned on his heel and stalked away. Then, when he was sure no one could overhear us, he burst out laughing. “You have a certain way with words. You make me laugh even when I’m nervous.”

  I was so happy to hear the laugh I was willing to call Mark back and threaten him some more. We didn’t have time, though, so I decided to simply give Kade a kiss. “I’m glad I can serve as a source of entertainment.”

  Kade graced me with a softer kiss, this one more sensual and full of promise for when things calmed down. “Always.”

  “ALL RIGHT. I’M HERE.”

  Max appeared in the communal dining area just as we were cleaning up following our dinner feast. He was dressed in bright track pants and a T-shirt – something I rarely saw him wear – and he seemed ready for business.

  “We have pie for dessert,” Luke offered, lifting his plate. “Blueberry. It’s really good.”

  “I’ll pass for tonight.” Max’s smile was fond as he surveyed Luke. “I don’t want a lot of carbs slowing me down.”

  “Carbs are good for muscles,” Luke argued.

  “Yes, well, I don’t have need for muscles.” Max shifted his gaze to Kade and me. “How is everything so far this evening?”

  “It’s not dark yet,” Kade replied. He looked relaxed, but I could feel the agitation rippling through his skin. “We won’t see any action until dark.”

  “It will be dark soon.” Max ran his hand through his snowy hair. “Where did you guys see the … shades, for lack of a better word, last night?”

  “That way.” I pointed toward the trees. “I expect that’s where we’ll see them tonight, too.”

  “Because you think they’re coming from Falk?”

  I gave the question serious thought. “I don’t know that they’re coming from Falk,” I hedged. “It’s just a suspicion.”

  “Well, until we know otherwise we’ll go with that. Your feelings are usually spot on.”

  “They are,” Luke agreed. “Unless she’s not telling me when she has a horrible nightmare that almost kills her and I have to find out from others.”

  “Oh, let it go,” I snapped. “I won’t make that mistake again. I promise.”

  “That’s all I ask.” Luke polished off his pie before grabbing the paper plate and tossing it in the closest trash receptacle. He looked intense as he stared at the trees. I wasn’t used to him being serious – overwrought and theatrical, sure, but not serious – so my anticipation ratcheted up a notch.

  “Do you see anything?” I asked.

  “The fog is rolling in,” Luke replied, inclining his head.

  I looked in that direction, my stomach twisting when I realized what looked to be a large cloud billowing in this direction. “That’s new,” I muttered, hopping to my feet. “Usually the fog is more subtle.”

  “Yes, well, I don’t think it’s going to be a subtle sort of night,” Max muttered. “Come on. Show me where we should be watching from.”

  I did as he asked, making sure Raven and Naida weren’t far away. Instead of separating this evening, we were all approaching the problem as a group. We were strongest when together and
we wanted to show our mystical friends that we were firm in our solidarity.

  It took less than five minutes to creep to the other side of the grounds. By the time we arrived at the edge of the dreamcatcher, the fog was so thick we could barely see five feet in front of our faces.

  “Don’t go any farther,” Raven warned, jutting out a hand to still Max when he looked as if he was about to traipse over the dreamcatcher line. “We don’t know what will happen if we’re on the other side.”

  Max looked amused that Raven was bossing him around, but he followed her instructions and stopped in his place. “I don’t see anything.”

  “How can you see anything?” Kade queried. “The fog is so thick it’s almost impossible to see each other let alone anything else.”

  “We need some illumination,” Max supplied, lifting his hand and sending sparks into the air. They were blue, green, purple and pink, and while they didn’t boast a great deal of light they offered enough for me to see the shadows moving on the other side of the dreamcatcher.

  “Will you look at that.” I gasped as I instinctively moved forward, Kade grabbing my hand to make sure I didn’t cross the dreamcatcher perimeter. I knew better than worrying him, but I couldn’t stop myself from staring.

  There had to be at least fifty – maybe even a hundred – ghostly figures standing on the other side of the dreamcatcher. The fog hid them well until Max utilized his magic to give us an edge. The figures, all transparent, ranged from small children to wizened adults.

  While I’d seen ghosts and shades before, this group was more unnerving than usual because they were all dressed in antiquated clothing. We’re talking homemade trousers with suspenders to hold them up, ankle-length dresses with thick stockings poking out beneath, and shirts that looked as if they’d been mended so many times they were one good rip away from giving up the ghost.

  “Oh, I feel as if I’m in a Little House on the Prairie episode,” Luke enthused, clapping his hands. “Quick, somebody find the Nellie Oleson ghost. I want to pull her hair.”