Mind Over Magic by Lindsay Buroker

19

It wasgray and drizzly by the time Morgen turned up the long driveway toward the house. Her nerves tangled in her stomach, some strange certainty telling her that this meeting wouldn’t go well. Christian hadn’t called again, but she couldn’t help but feel that it was odd that he’d insisted on coming here. And checking on her pond? What was that about?

Lucky whined in his crate.

“You’re the one who wanted to come along on errands today.” Morgen had taken him for a quick walk at a park in town before heading out, but she hadn’t wanted to delay. She didn’t like the idea of Christian skulking around the property by himself if she was late. No, not by himself. Amar would have been there, keeping an eye on him. Maybe threatening him.

Lucky’s tail thwapped against the side of the crate. Snuffling noises followed, and Morgen cracked a window. The smell of rain was thick in the air, and water dripped from moss dangling from the tree branches.

When she pulled into the clearing, Christian’s Land Rover was there, and there was no sign of Amar. Morgen sighed in relief. Maybe Amar had been gone the whole time and hadn’t been here, threatening the agent.

She parked next to the big SUV and was about to let Lucky out when she spotted clothing on the ground beside Christian’s driver-side door. Surprised, and wondering if Amar had stripped out of his jeans and vest again, she peeked around the front of the vehicle. Then reeled back in shock.

It wasn’t just clothing but an entire person.

Magnus Christian lay sprawled on his back on the ground, his arms splayed wide. His eyes were open, staring up at the rainy sky, water spattering his face, but he didn’t move. His throat was bloody—completely torn out.

Shaking with horror, Morgen stumbled backward. She clipped the bumper of the SUV and pitched to the ground. For a moment, all she could do was stare at the body, her mind refusing to parse that Christian was dead. Dead in her driveway.

Dead… by a werewolf’s jaws?

It wasn’t dark yet. Maybe it hadn’t been a werewolf.

But as she glanced at the gray clouds, she remembered Amar’s admission that he could change during the day if the cloud cover was heavy enough.

“Why?” Morgen whispered, digging in her pocket for her phone. “Why would he have killed him?”

She’d told Amar it was all a ruse, that she had no intention of selling the property.

And even if Christian was smarmy, she didn’t think he could have been behind Grandma’s death. He hadn’t wanted the land, just his cut of the money from selling it.

Or so she assumed. What if he’d been in on it? And Amar had found out?

Morgen stared at her phone for a long moment as rain droplets struck the screen. She had to call the sheriff’s office, didn’t she? But what if they came out here, determined it had been Amar, and hunted him down?

If he’d killed someone, he deserved to be hunted down and imprisoned. Didn’t he? Unless he’d been protecting her… or the property.

But even then, it wasn’t okay to kill people.

Damn it. She rubbed a shaking hand down her face and dialed 9-1-1 for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. If Amar had murdered someone, she couldn’t protect him from that, no matter what.

Lucky whined from the car.

“Sorry, buddy,” she said. “I can’t let you out yet. This is… a murder scene.”

The dispatcher answered, and Morgen reported the death, her voice surprisingly calm. Or maybe it was numb. A man was dead in her driveway, and it was her fault. If she hadn’t come up with the scheme to list the property, Christian never would have been here.

“Damn it,” she said once she hung up. Why did everything keep going wrong?

An intense longing for her old life came to her, her life before the divorce and before she’d lost her job. Back when everything had been normal. Back before everything had fallen apart.

Not wanting to disturb the scene, Morgen started to get back into her car, intending to wait until the sheriff arrived. But she remembered that Christian had been bringing physical information on whoever had made the offer on the property.

Careful not to touch his door with her bare hand, out of some vague notion of the deputies coming and looking for fingerprints, she peered through the window into his passenger seat. Her heartbeat sped up. There was a folder lying in it.

She pulled down her sleeve and tried the door handle. It was damp from the rain, so her fear of leaving fingerprints was probably unfounded, but she didn’t want to touch anything or risk somehow incriminating herself. She was a stranger in this town. Who would stand up for her if she ended up a suspect in this murder?

The door wasn’t locked. She opened it and lifted the flap of the folder. Inside lay a printout of a real-estate contract. The offer the prospective buyer had put in?

Mason Arbuckle, the name read. There was a phone number.

In the dim light, with rain striking the windshield, Morgen took a picture of the page with the name and number. She turned to the next page, finding an offer for millions of dollars. It was surreal but not as surreal as the fact that she could see Christian’s mutilated body through the other window. She tried not to look, but it was hard.

The rumble of a car coming up the driveway floated to her.

Morgen closed the folder, shut the door, and flung herself into the front seat of her car. She hadn’t committed this crime, but she felt guilty anyway. Christian had been killed on her property, and she had a strong suspicion who had done it.

“Why, Amar?” she whispered, gripping the wheel, as if she could drive away from this whole mess and wouldn’t have to talk to anyone else that day.

She ran a search for Mason Arbuckle and Bellrock, expecting the name to come up in conjunction with land development, but the only instance of it was in an archived online news article from a couple of years earlier. Internet Entrepreneur Buys Rainwater Estate and Settles into Town.

The article itself wasn’t accessible without a subscription. She tried wider searches, hoping to find what the internet entrepreneur sold, but very little was linked to his name, other than fifteen-year-old track-and-field records from one of the state universities.

“A town named Arbuckle in Mason County, West Virginia. Probably not helpful.”

Lucky thwapped his tail again.

“I’m afraid dinner is delayed,” she muttered, then turned to open his crate, so he could at least have the freedom of the car.

He licked her cheek.

“I’ll feed you after this.” Morgen glanced in the rearview mirror as not one but two sheriff ’s department SUVs parked behind her. “If I don’t end up arrested.”

Deputy Franklin was one of the drivers. Morgen didn’t know whether to be relieved or not that someone familiar had been sent. He headed toward her car as the other man went over to look at the body.

Morgen made herself get out and face Franklin.

“Ma’am,” he greeted her gravely. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Yeah, it was like with the deer in the driveway. But worse.

She took a breath and explained how she knew the agent and that he’d been like this when she arrived. Franklin gave her a long, assessing look. These people had to be growing suspicious of all the strange things happening at her property. Now including murder.

She wanted to blurt, It’s not my fault!

But Franklin didn’t make any accusations. He joined his fellow deputy, and they pointed at the body and marks on the ground. One called for a coroner.

Morgen waited, wondering if she should invite them into the house or keep sitting in her car. What was the protocol when dead people were found in one’s driveway?

She glanced toward the barn, then started. Amar was walking out of the woods, off the trail he’d taken the other day to show her that spring, and he paused. He met her eyes across the lawn and frowned at the deputies and the body. She hesitated, not sure whether she should point him out to them or make shooing motions so he would know to leave.

If he’d done this, why had he come back?

She shook her head. He hesitated, then backed into the woods.

“Ma’am?” Franklin waved her over.

They hadn’t seen Amar.

“Uh, I’m fine here.” She’d already seen Christian once and knew the image of his throat torn out would remain with her forever.

Franklin opened his mouth, as if to object, but he seemed to understand that she was shaken. “There are prints. I think they’re too big to belong to your dog.”

“My dog didn’t do this,” she said, panic flaring in her chest. If they believed that, they would put him down. “He was in the car with me. I haven’t let him out, and he doesn’t tear people’s throats out. He licks them and leans against their legs.” She took a deep breath, realizing she was speaking too rapidly.

“Oh, I didn’t think he’d done it, ma’am. We were just debating these prints and how fresh they are. They look like they belong to a giant dog. Or a wolf.” He gazed at her, as if she should grasp the significance.

Unfortunately, she did. But did he? Did he know about Amar? And the werewolves in town?

“I saw similar tracks around that deer that had been dragged into the road the other day,” Franklin said.

“Yeah,” Morgen said. “This place has been… a lot creepier than I was expecting.”

A lot more of everything than she’d been expecting.

“I understand. Did you ever see the wolf?”

She hesitated, tempted to lie, to cover for Amar, but so many people here knew about the werewolves that it was hard to imagine everyone in the sheriff’s office being oblivious. Especially if the various packs had caused as much trouble over the years for the townsfolk as Phoebe had implied.

“Yes,” Morgen said. “I’ve since learned that one lived—or was living—on the property here. He’s a werewolf.”

Franklin gazed grimly at her, neither acknowledging nor disputing the existence of werewolves.

“He claimed to know my grandmother,” she continued. “He was living in the barn, but he’s moved out now.”

She nodded to the burned structure and neglected to mention that he’d moved into the main house the night before and slept in one of the guest rooms before rising to eat cantaloupe and granola and sneer at faux sausage.

Franklin exchanged a long look with the other deputy. “Maybe you should stay somewhere else for a while, ma’am. We’ll do a search of the woods and try to find this… wolf, but it could be dangerous here for you.”

“I don’t have anywhere else to stay.”

Morgen didn’t bring up the Wild Trout. She wanted to look up the Rainwater Estate and learn everything she could about this Mason Arbuckle. She also wanted to talk to Amar, whether that was wise or not. If he’d done this, she had to know. If he’d been framed—she hoped he’d been framed—she had to know that too.

“We’ll have someone stay the night and keep an eye on the house,” the other deputy said.

“Oh.” Morgen didn’t want a babysitter, even if that could be wise, but she made herself say, “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“Why don’t you take your dog inside while we handle this?” Franklin waved to the body as another car arrived. The coroner.

“Thanks,” she said again.

More SUVs arrived, and uniformed men with rifles and armored vests hopped out. They barked orders about searching the woods and headed off in several directions.

Morgen watched numbly, hoping Amar could avoid them. And wishing she knew his phone number. Did he even have a phone?

After she retrieved Lucky, she walked him across the yard on his leash so he wouldn’t disturb anything. As she took him in the house, she wondered how she was going to talk to Amar and find out what had happened. She also wondered what would happen if they caught him wandering around out there in wolf form.