Midlife in Glimmerspell Read online

  “I’d walk a mile to avoid them.”

  “Mom?” Harper howls as a set of footfalls speed in this direction. “Get back here. I’m not done with you yet.”

  “Funny.” Elliot purses his lips as he looks to me. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  I shrug up at him. “Maybe we should really give them something to see?” I lean up just as he bows down, and just before our lips can meet, a surge of heat fills my upper torso and races to my face. The ground beneath my feet begins to wobble and the scenery around me begins to spin.

  “Oh no,” I pant as sheer panic begins to fill me. “I have to go.” I try my best to bolt, but his grip on me only increases. “Elliot, please, I have to get out of here. I—”

  Before I can finish, the scenery around me changes completely and I find myself standing in the Haunted Book Barn once again.

  “Shoot,” I say as I give a glance around at the boisterous crowd with their Dexter University sweatshirts on full display. I glance toward the café and spot the cameras and the rest of the setup for Morgan’s taping of Murder, Mayhem, and Baking. Just to the right of that I spot Griffin Barker and Elliot having a rather heated conversation and I know exactly what day it is.

  “Billie?” a deep voice strums from behind and I turn to find Elliot Greenly standing there looking wildly concerned and just a touch angry. “What the hell just happened?”

  Chapter 14

  “Son of a biscuit!” I howl. “I’ve dragged you with me.”

  Elliot does a wild-eyed survey of the crowd, and I can practically see his brain ticking away far too fast for him to fathom.

  “How did you do this?” He takes a bold step into the crowd, and I yank him back by his arm.

  “That’s the one billion dollar question,” I mutter. “But never mind how I did this. You can’t go charging out there. You might see—”

  “Is that me?” he growls the words out while staring intently at his slightly younger self.

  “Yes, that’s you.” I grab him by the hand and trot us over to the bookshelves, a few feet over, nearly having a run-in with my former self in the process. “Gah!” I wail and I pull Elliot close. “We need to lay low.”

  “You’re a traveler.” His lips curve as his eyes scour my features. “That’s how you ended up in my shower, isn’t it?”

  My mouth opens and closes. “You know about this?” My finger spins in the air, at the bookstore in general, unsure of where to point. “What does it mean? I know nothing about this. Heck, I can’t even control it. Wait, can I control it?”

  “It’s a transmundane offshoot. Extremely rare.” He frowns a moment. “What do you mean you can’t control it?”

  “I just can’t. I get these hot flashes, and before I know it, I’m here or there, or anywhere. Anyway, it doesn’t happen with every hot flash, and I don’t know why that is.”

  “A hot flash...” He shakes his head. “That’s a temporary state. That might mean when the hot flash dissipates, your abilities may as well.”

  “That makes sense. Not that much makes sense anymore. Anyway, it’s only been happening since I’ve been in Glimmerspell, and I’ve already taken a jaunt back in time a handful of times.”

  “Not forward?”

  I shake my head. “Morgan and Teddy took me to see a couple of women out in Cider Cove out on the coast who they thought might be able to help. The conclusion of that meeting was that I was a time traveler, but that I wasn’t any good at it. Elliot, I have no idea how to get us back to the present.”

  He sighs as he glances back at the crowd. “How long do these episodes typically last?”

  “Minutes. With the exception of the one where I ended up in your shower. I guess that wasn’t really time traveling. I just ended up in your shower in the present tense and that’s where I remained.”

  His lips purse a moment. “You may have been traveling, off by a minute or so.”

  “Oh Lord, I guess the worst thing that can come of it is that I gain a minute on the back end of my life.”

  “But we are clearly in the past, Billie.” He pulls me in close as a couple of coeds pass us by.

  “Hey, Detective.” A cute blonde winks over at him as she and the rest of her friends sail on past us.

  He blows out a breath. “This could get ugly. I know just about everyone in this room, and I’m in this room in duplicate.” He glances over to the café where he stands glowering at the slightly younger version of me as I head to the kitchen as the show prepares to kick off.

  “Thinking good thoughts about me?” I tease.

  “Never mind what I was thinking.” Oddly enough, he’s glaring at himself at the moment. “There’s Griffin.” He nods to where Griffin is talking to Vera, the woman who is set to mic me up in just a few minutes. “Since the killer doesn’t strike for at least another hour, maybe I should head over and have a word with him.”

  “Good idea,” I say as he starts to stalk off and I reel him right back. “On second thought, bad idea,” I hiss. “I need to go with you. I was holding onto you when I yanked you back here with me, and I don’t want to find out the hard way that I should have been holding onto you to get you where we truly belong.”

  “You’re right,” he says, taking up my hand. “You’re coming with me.”

  “But—” Before I can protest, Elliot has navigated us right into Griffin Barker’s path.

  Here he is—the deceased—examining us, glancing down at our conjoined hands and lifting his brows over at his old friend.

  “You work fast.” He shakes his head. “No wonder you told me she was off-limits. You’ve already pulled that fish ashore.”

  “You said that?” A laugh gets caught in my throat as I look up at Elliot, and he averts his eyes.

  “I may have said that.”

  “I can see why.” Griffin runs his gaze freely over my body. “Watch out for this one. He’s—”

  “Here to help you,” Elliot cuts him off. “You’re in danger, Griffin, and I don’t know if I can stop it. Tell me right now who in this room poses a threat to you.”

  “A threat?” He blinks back, amused, before his chest bounces with a quiet laugh. “Is this your way of impressing the new woman in your life?” He looks my way with a wry smile tucked in his cheek. “The only person in danger around here is you. I don’t think he’s looking to take a bite out of crime as much as he’s looking to take a bite out of you.”

  “Griffin,” Elliot growls. “What the hell is going on with you right now? You’re in trouble.”

  “Is it Jenny?” I can’t help but interject myself into the conversation. “She’s awfully ticked. And what about Vera? She’s been shooting daggers at you all afternoon. And Silvia? She’s in on your little secret, isn’t she? The one regarding the Chatham House?”

  Griffin’s face irons out. “You know about that?” His eyes enlarge as he looks to the two of us and Elliot grabs ahold of his shirt and pulls him in.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” Elliot growls at his old friend just as the ground bounces beneath my feet and the room begins to spin.

  I give Elliot’s hand a hard squeeze as the scenery changes around us and we’re right back on that dark snowy porch where the arctic breeze shocks us back to reality.

  Griffin looks to Elliot and me and I let out a short-lived scream.

  “You brought him with us!” I swat him on the chest just as Griffin takes a staggering step back.

  “What’s going on?” The poor man looks morbidly confused as his body begins to dissipate right before our eyes.

  “Who killed you, Griffin?” Elliot bellows as Griffin begins to float toward the sky.

  “The baby,” he says in a ghostly whisper, and just like that, Griffin Barker is once again no more.

  “He said the baby,” I whisper as I take a few steps out.

  The sound of footfalls speeds this way and we see Sadie shaking her head at us.

  “I found them!” she shouts, and soon Harper, Roy
ce, and Cash’s son, Aiden, are upon us once again.

  “What are you doing?” Harper pins me with that worried look on her face. “You had me worried sick. Look, I’m going to have fun with my friends tonight.”

  “Studying biology?”

  “Yes,” she counters. “I’m sorry I freaked out on you. Just don’t like run off on me and break a hip or something on my account.”

  “You kids have fun,” Elliot says as he leads us past them. “There’s pizza in the kitchen.”

  “Where are you going?” his son shouts after us.

  “I’m taking Billie to grab a bite to eat.”

  We sail through the house, I grab my coat and purse, and Elliot speeds us into his SUV and out onto the road in no time.

  “All right, Billie.” He pulls into an alcove that overlooks Glimmerspell. The view isn’t as magnificent as it was from his back patio, but it’s equally majestic. “Start talking.”

  “I’ve already told you everything I know. Besides, I think you’re the one who needs to start talking. Evidently, you know about travelers. Give me the answers I need, Elliot. I beg of you.”

  He looks out at the lights twinkling from the cozy town below. “I know someone you can talk to. They might be able to help. But not tonight.”

  “Okay.” I nod as a sense of relief swells in me. I’m not alone in this. Elliot knows something, knows someone, and he’s going to help me. “Then let’s focus on Griffin, I guess. He gave us a clue. He said the baby.” A thought comes to me and I gasp. “Oh wow, I think she was pregnant.”

  “Who?”

  “Silvia. I distinctly remember her touching her stomach the other day in a way that expectant mothers are prone to do. Maybe she’s having his baby? I bet she wasn’t all that thrilled with the idea, and that’s why they exchanged such nasty words the other day.” I wince. “And by other day, I mean when I traveled back and did a little eavesdropping. I heard him tell her, ‘I’m not doing this with you here.’ And then he asked her not to utter a word regarding the things she learned about his life. That it was for him to handle. He said he didn’t want their past to complicate his future. And then she said that he didn’t have a future. She told him that life as he knew it ended that day. Elliot, that was the day of his murder. I spoke to her again at Fae Gardens the other night—the night we inadvertently showered together? She told me that Griffin Barker was collecting blood from her. That he was donating it to the Chatham House, an organization that works closely with Winchester General Hospital to replenish their blood bank.”

  Elliott’s jaw hardens. “I can guarantee you that’s not true.”

  A thousand nefarious thoughts sail through my mind at once.

  “Oh no,” I pant. “You think he was giving it to the Faulkner coven, don’t you?”

  “Selling it. Griffin was too greedy to give anything away.”

  “Wow.” I give a hard blink. “I guess if times ever get tough, I know what business to jump into next.”

  He shoots me a look.

  “Okay, never mind.” I press my lips tightly. “There’s one more thing Silvia told me.” I look to Elliot Greenly and wonder how he has this intimate knowledge of the supernatural, how he may have stumbled upon it himself, and a part of me doesn’t want the answers. “She said Griffin Barker was operating under a false identity. She said that she told you about it three weeks ago and that you did nothing,” I hiss. His features harden as he looks my way. “She said you were covering for him. Is it true?”

  A thick silence crops up between us.

  “I was looking into it,” he says. “Anything else?”

  “She told him that if he didn’t come clean, she was going to expose him to everyone in that room after the taping.”

  Elliot expires a deep breath. “What other suspects are you looking at?”

  “Vera. I think she really loved him. According to Jenny, Vera was his first coed girlfriend of the bunch. Jenny said Vera wasn’t all that thrilled to learn he was moving on with her. Anyway, Vera mentioned that the day of the murder she and Griffin were discussing a secret he had—one that had the power to destroy him. She’s the one that pointed me to Silvia. And Silvia exposed his blood bank dealings to me. Elliot, do you think Griffin was a vampire? Is that why he had a false identity?”

  His eyes close a moment. “No. Griffin wasn’t a vampire. He was just another regular human in over his head. The identity he stole belonged to his brother. He’s been using it for years. His real name was Dale Barker. He was a small-time swindler who ended up doing big time for corporate fraud that turned into a felony offense. His father had a great team of lawyers on the case, but he still got put away. A few palms were greased and Griffin was released early. He thought he’d never work again, and he was probably right, so he arranged to have his brother’s identity work as his own. The Faulkners saw him as someone who would easily play their games, and apparently they were right. Griffin got a cushy payday out of it.”

  “That’s a lot to take in. Elliot, he was poisoned with an injection of ricin. That’s a sophisticated act of violence, don’t you think? Maybe none of those women did this to him. Maybe it was the Faulkners?”

  “No way.” He shakes his head. “They’re even greedier than Griffin was. He was handing them a delicacy they could never refuse. The blood from beautiful women is the most coveted of them all. And the tastiest so I hear.” A smile curls in his cheek briefly.

  “Okay, then we’ve got Jenny, Vera, and Silvia. And one prospective pregnancy. Wait a minute—that day back at Rex’s Stake House Jenny said something odd to me.” I shake my head as I try my best to recall it. “She said she really thought he loved her. That she gave him everything and that she was ready and willing to give him the rest of her life. That all he had to do was go along the path destiny had already given them. When I asked her which path that was, she said it was a path that she’d obviously still be taking.” I lean back in the seat of his truck. “Maybe Jenny is in the family way, too?” I search his face as if it held the answers. “Is there a medical facility at the university?”

  “No. There’s nothing more than a nurse on site. They send any serious cases to a network of doctors that work out of Winchester General.”

  I pull out my phone and hit the search engine hard.

  “What are you looking for?” he asks, leaning over a notch.

  “There’s only one gynecologist the university directs their female students to.” I look up at Elliot and shed a satisfied grin. “And I think you’ll be able to get us into his office with no trouble at all.”

  His brows depress as he scowls. “My brother.”

  Dr. Warren Greenly, gynecologist extraordinaire, wasn’t up for letting us snoop on his patients. He shouted something about the Hippocratic Oath over the phone to Elliot, then let him know he would call the sheriff’s department if he knew it would get him somewhere. But after a little finagling, Elliot managed to wrangle enough info from his brother to land us inside the exact same gynecologist’s office that I sat in when I had my impromptu meet and greet with Charlene.

  Half the florescent lights are on up above, the air is icy, and the scent of industrial floor cleaner burns my nostrils.

  “We must have just missed the cleaning crew,” I whisper. “Although I have no idea why I’m bothering to keep my voice down, there’s not a soul here with us.”

  “Good,” Elliot whispers back, giving my hand a squeeze. “I don’t need anyone pointing me out in a lineup. And for whatever reason, whispering feels right.”

  My teeth graze my lips as I stare down at our conjoined hands. I’d like to think Elliot’s decision to do so had some romantic implications, but in reality he’s probably afraid I’ll drift off to the scene of the crime again without him. And knowing my time-traveling track record, he’s probably right.

  We head into the reception area where a row of computers sits to the left and both Elliot and I plant ourselves behind one.

  “I’ll start with Jenny
,” I say. “You look up Vera.”

  Elliot pauses a moment, with his hands poised over a keyboard, as he looks my way.

  “You really think this is your investigation, don’t you?”

  “I’m the one your ex publicly outed as the killer. It’s up to me to clear my good name.”

  “I’m the lead homicide detective on this case, Billie.” He sighs as he starts clicking away. “I’ll clear your good name. And I’ll talk to Iona for you.”

  “No way, no how.” A throaty laugh bumps from me. “You leave Iona to me. I stopped looking to men to solve my problems the day I caught my ex knocking a coed senseless into my headboard. Besides, I have to work with Iona. It’s best I iron this out. She seems like a smart woman. She’s probably already figured out that I don’t take orders from people.” I glance his way. “Is that why you’re no longer together? Was she barking out orders your way?”

  A soft chuckle strums through him. “No. I don’t take orders too well either, but she knew that going in. Iona and I were simply two different people. We have a good son, though, so for that reason alone I won’t disparage the mother of my child.”

  “Jenny McAlister,” I say as her name pops up on the screen. “I’m in her chart.” I shake my head as I quickly scan the patient info and dart down to the last visit and read the doctors notes. “Fourteen weeks gestation. Pregnancy is moving along without incident. Pedestrian symptoms of nausea and loss of appetite.” I look to Elliot and he ticks his head to the side.

  “Good work, Detective Buttonwood. Although we can’t be sure the child belongs to Griffin.”

  “I’m sure,” I say as I get to typing once again. “And now I’ll look up Silvia Arden. Anything on Vera yet?”

  “Vera Henley doesn’t seem to have a file. Let me look her up on the school roster. She might have a formal name I’m not aware of.” Elliot pulls out his phone and starts in on a different search altogether while Silvia’s name pops up on my screen and I click into it.