The Deadly Diadem: A Paranormal Artifacts Cozy Mystery (Paranormal Artifacts Cozy Mysteries Book 2), Tegan Maher [read this if .txt] 📗

“Weren’t you on your way to the bathroom?” I asked.

“Yeah, but we figured we’d stop and offer our condolences first,” Hope replied. “You know, before Daddy puts you in front of the council.”

“And you’d have experience with that,” Eli said.

He wasn’t wrong. The girls were skating on thin ice with them because they couldn’t manage to keep from doing magic in public. So far, no damage had been done, but it was only a matter of time.

“Maybe,” Faith replied, “but we’ve never killed anybody.”

Axel did a handstand, his fluffy tail sticking straight in the air and his butt pointed straight at them. The twins knew from experience they were about to get sprayed. What they didn’t know what that he’d never do that inside.

“Eww,” they said in tandem, stepping back from the table and hurrying toward the bathroom.

“Make sure we wrote the right number for you down in there,” Eli called after them. “Stall three.”

“I don’t know why you don’t just turn them into rocks,” Axel grumbled, righting himself. “They’d gain a few IQ points, and the world would thank you.”

“Maybe,” I said with a tired sigh, “but this time they have us dead to rights. I need to call Mom so she can start putting out fires.”

Dread washed over me as I pulled my phone out and fired off a text. This was not going to be good.

As it turns out, Mom was already a step ahead. It wasn’t two minutes later that my phone rang, and I answered and put her on hold so we could go outside where we could hear.

Though she hadn’t told the local council, she’d gone to Athena Clarke, the head of the regional council, and told her the whole story, including that we were working with Sybil Blackburn to contain it. They’d put us on probation until we found every last one of them and said they’d determine the penalty when it was all said and done.

Since we had a near-perfect history and a blood membership, meaning our ancestors had been part of the founding group, they were going to give us a little latitude. After all, the situation was unique and not entirely our fault considering we’d had no idea about the scope of the problem when I’d left the trunk unattended. Mom had glossed over that and attributed it to human error, which meant they couldn’t do a full investigation without questioning Kylie, which wasn’t an option.

When she told us that, it was like the weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders. The twins, as usual, had been full of it. They’d probably been eavesdropping on one of their dad’s conversations and only gotten part of the story.

Still, we were on the clock and under the gun to get results, but on the upside, they knew about it and would keep an ear to the ground for signs of loose artifacts. In the scheme of things, that was a best-case scenario.

Since we were already outside, we debated leaving. If we did, though, the twins would know they’d gotten to us, so we decided to go in and finish our beers and golf game.

When we got back inside, two of the college guys had commandeered the Golden Tee, so instead of making a stink—figuratively because Axel had taken my money and run once the twins were neutralized—we jumped on the pool table instead.

Even though the twins had put a damper on the night, we put on a good show and left after Eli beat me one more time.

Chapter 14

Ten hours later, I groaned at the sunshine pouring through my window and pulled my pillow over my head hoping for ten more minutes. I considered throwing my spare pillow at the bird singing outside in the tree, then narrowed my eyes, wondering if it was Luther in disguise. That made the urge even harder to resist.

The chance of a few more minutes of shuteye became moot, though, because my phone rang.

Grumbling, I rolled over and fumbled on my nightstand for it. Rather than picking it up, though, I knocked it to the floor, then had to scramble to find it before it stopped ringing. It was James.

“Hey,” I said, my voice rusty from sleep. “Did you change your mind about the ticket?”

“No,” he said, and I sat up when there wasn’t so much as a trace of humor in his voice. My heart jumped into my throat and I sent a fervent request to the universe that he wasn’t calling to tell me somebody else had died.

“Then what?” I asked around the dread that was almost choking me.

“We have a problem, and I think it might be related to the artifacts.”

That didn’t sound terrible, since he would have probably led with something much more dire than that if we had another body.

I stumbled toward my dresser and pulled out a clean pair of shorts and a tank top, then put my phone on speaker so I could pull them on. “Tell me.”

“Martha Hightower is at the Goodwill donating all her stuff.”

I struggled to wrap my still-sleepy brain around that. Martha Hightower was one of the biggest penny-pinchers in Marauders Bay. She wouldn’t even drop her change in the bell ringer’s bucket at Christmas.

“What do you mean by all her stuff?” I rushed to the bathroom and squeezed a blob of toothpaste onto my toothbrush.

“I mean everything,” he replied. “Her furniture, her clothes, her jewelry. She says she doesn’t need material things anymore and has a truck loaded to the brim.”

“Yep, that sounds like a curse, all right,” I said, my voice a little garbled because I was brushing my teeth.

“Are you brushing your teeth?” he asked, and I could hear just a trace of disbelief in his voice. Welcome to the dark underbelly of being my friend instead of my lover.

“Yeah,” I replied around my toothbrush. “I’m multitasking because I assume you need me right now