Hex on the Beach by Kelley Armstrong

Chapter Seven

It’s almost noon when Aiden does arrive, looking pale and drained. He comes bearing a giant picnic basket filled by one of the local shops.

“Food!” Kennedy says, throwing down her dusting cloth. “Please tell me that’s food.”

Aiden manages a tired smile. “Sandwiches, meat pies and salads. Also wine. Yes, it’s only lunch, but for some reason I felt the irresistible urge to buy alcohol.”

“I bet.” Kennedy takes the basket from him and busies herself with it, saying “How’d it go?” with studied nonchalance, as if asking about the weather.

“I smoothed things over with the investors and convinced them it was a misunderstanding.”

Kennedy’s shoulders tighten, and I know we both long to point out that this was not Aiden’s job, as he does not work for his parents. But that’d be the tenth verse of a very old song that he knows by heart and does not need to hear again.

“And Rian?” Kennedy asks carefully as she lifts out a box of steaming meat pies.

“He’s somewhat less happy with me.”

Kennedy wheels, her hand flying over her mouth as if clamping back a reply.

“Yes, I know,” he says, exhaustion sighing through his words. “I pull him out of a scrape, and he acts as if I’m the one who pushed him into it. This time, at the risk of defending him, I think there’s more to it. He’s just not telling me what it is. He seems . . .”

Aiden glances over at Marius and me. “And no one needs that lunch-time conversation. How have the preparations been proceeding?” He glances around. “It looks ready.”

Before Kennedy can answer, I walk over to the basket. “This is lovely, Aiden. Do you mind if Marius and I take a plate and slip out the back? There’s a lovely little garden there, and we can enjoy a picnic for two while Kennedy explains what still needs to be done.”

While you tell Kennedy about this morning, what happened with your parents and Rian.

That’s what I mean, and Kennedy acknowledges it with a nod of thanks before saying yes, we should take our picnic outside, where she’s set up a patio table beside the neighbor’s garden.

We’re in the midst of dividing the food when the doorbell tinkles again.

Jackie walks in, escorting a white-haired woman in her seventies. Jackie pauses as she sees the food. “Oh, are we interrupting your lunch?”

Kennedy casts a quick glance at Aiden but rebounds with a smile as she bustles over to escort them in. “Not at all. Please, come in and join us. Jackie told me about your connection to Lisa Lake, Mrs. Ricci, and we’re dying to hear the story.”

As her niece said,Mrs. Ricci is delighted to be asked for her story, which she can recite as it if happened last week. She’s also visibly annoyed with the tour guide—Ms. Dowling—for not talking to her. Mrs. Ricci had reached out as soon as she heard about the tour, having her niece pass on a message for the guide. She’d never heard back, and she’s understandably miffed about that. It helps us, though, as she’s happy to dish on every last detail, which Kennedy writes down. And then it’s time to get ready for the opening.

In the past twenty-four hours,Fate has upended nearly all my carefully laid plans. Having a few succeed seems even crueler, giving me a teasing glimpse of victory before snatching it away. The backyard party got off to a rocky start, but then came the bonfire, where I snagged both Aiden and Kennedy with the story of Lisa Lake. Jonathan and Ani weren’t quite as enraptured, but they were intrigued. Bait taken. Then Rian showed up, and that threw in a wrench that keeps gumming up the works. It distracted Aiden. Kept him away from Kennedy. Slowed Kennedy’s opening preparations, which meant she had no time to pursue the Lisa Lake mystery . . . Oh, but here’s a witness! A living witness to the disappearance! Wonderful, except everyone is too busy and distracted to chase mysteries.

I have miscalculated. I readily acknowledge that. Even without the Rian disaster, Kennedy’s focus would be on opening her shop. That is the important thing. Launch this new venture. Save the mysteries and the romance for later.

Logically, I know that, but in my gut, I see opportunity slipping away. With this new shop, Kennedy loses her ties to Boston, where Aiden lives and works. They’ve only known each other a couple of weeks. That bond may have been forged in fire, but it’s too new to hold without more to bind it.

Marius would say I can’t make this happen. I can prepare the garden, but I can’t force love to grow there. I want to, though. I don’t know why it’s so important to me—critically important—but I need to see some glimmer of success.

For tonight, though, I must put the mystery aside. Forget that there is a tour on Lisa Lake starting soon. There will be another tomorrow and again on Sunday. Tonight is all about the shop. Tonight is all about Kennedy.

“It’s going well, right?” she whispers as she walks over to stand beside me. We’re in the shop, thirty minutes after the doors swung open, and it is wall-to-wall people, with tourists lined up outside, impatiently waiting for the locals to leave.

“Maybe I should have had a private opening last night,” she whispers. “Just for residents.”

“Those people outside don’t realize these are your neighbors,” I whisper back. “All they see is that you are very, very busy.”

Hope and Jonathan are escorting people around the showroom, while Ani darts about checking the levels of tea and coffee and baked goods. Marius is talking to an older couple admiring an Edwardian wardrobe. Across the way, Aiden shows jewelry to a trio of teenage girls who don’t give a damn about the old necklaces—they just want to scope out the hot older guy.

“Are the snacks too downmarket?” Kennedy frets. “Aiden offered to supply wine and cheese, but that felt too fancy. It is an antique shop, though. Maybe coffee and cookies makes it seem like a cheap vintage store.” She pauses. “Or maybe I should have angled toward cheap vintage. It is a tourist town, after all.”

“Kennedy?”

“Yes?”

“Breathe.” I lay my hand on her arm. “You’re doing fine. You’ve done this before. Just another opening day.”

“Uh, no. At my last opening, I threw a party and no one came except my sisters and Jonathan. It was four days before I had a customer.”

“Then see how far you’ve come?”

“Yes, I’ve come home, to where people know me and will actually show up.” She takes a deep breath. “It’s fine. All fine.”

Something cuts through the chatter. Was that a distant scream?

I glance around, but no one else seems to have heard it. Must be from the Ferris wheel.

Kennedy’s gaze goes to Aiden. “Aiden needs rescue before anyone thinks he’s flirting with those girls.” She shakes her head. “He really thinks they’re interested in those necklaces, doesn’t he.”

“Oh, if they were a decade older, he might—might—realize there’s another reason they’re hanging on his every word. But given their youth, no, he’s not going to see it, because that would be wrong. Yes, go rescue him. Maybe you can throw them to Rian.” I scan the shop. “Where is the boy, anyway?”

“If he’s not beside Hope, he’s not here. He was supposed to come by.” She looks around. “Maybe he realized Aiden would be more comfortable without him.”

“All the more reason for him to show up,” I murmur.

Kennedy shakes her head. “He’s not like that. He’d do it to needle Aiden in fun, but he’s not a total asshole. Not really an asshole at all. Just very good at playing one.” She clutches her clipboard to her chest. “Let me go rescue—”

“Kennedy,” Ani says, appearing from our other side. “I need your help. I’ve recruited Jonathan to start shooing people toward the exit, in favor of actual customers, but they aren’t moving fast enough. You should do an announcement. Thank them for coming, joke about making way for paying customers. From you, it’ll be cute and funny.”

Kennedy steps forward. “Hey, everyone!”

Jonathan’s whistle cuts through the chatter, and everyone turns.

Kennedy steps onto a small colonial stool. “Thank you all for coming! It means so much to me. I was just telling Vanessa how no one showed up at my last shop until four days after my opening party.”

“Hey, I did!” Hope calls.

“You don’t count. Also, you didn’t buy anything. In fact, I’m pretty sure you still haven’t paid for that hair comb you took.”

“Family discount!”

The crowd laughs.

“Anyway,” Kennedy says. “Speaking of buying things, it seems I have a line up of potential customers out front. Which is lovely, but you guys are my priority. Always. So I’m offering you all a gift. In ten minutes, everyone remaining in the shop will get a free . . .” She turns to Jonathan. “Drumroll, please?”

He obliges, beating out a rhythm on a tabletop.

“A free curse!” Kennedy shouts. “Yes, that’s right! Curses! You get a curse, and you get a curse. Everyone gets a curse.”

People laugh and start filing toward the exit.

“Wait! Don’t leave before I pass out the curses. Who knows what you might get. It could be a—”

A clanging bell drowns her out.

“Hey, Kennedy!” Someone calls. “We’re leaving. No need to call the fire brigade.”

“Whoops!” she says, shouting to be heard over the bells. “Wrong curse!”

Outside, the waiting line ripples as people head out toward the street.

Ani swears under her breath. “I’ll tell them we’ll be clear in a moment.”

She edges through the exiting crowd. As the door opens wide, fire engines whoop. Someone shouts.

“Ghost! They saw the ghost!”

“And called the fire department?” Aiden says as he reaches us.

Kennedy’s already moving toward the door as he clears the way for her. I follow. We reach the sidewalk. It’s chaos, people running up the street, pulling out their phones and cameras, the shop queue disintegrating as the street crowd surges behind the fire trucks.

“It’s the theater,” a woman says when Aiden asks. “There’s a fire at the theater.”

“And a ghost!” her friend says. “They saw the ghost of that missing girl. The one from the sixties.”

“Lisa Lake?” Aiden says.

“That’s the one. She appeared and then burst into flame. Her ghost spontaneously combusted!”