knew he was considering tossing caution aside and diving in again, but he went with the wiser, if somewhat disappointing, alternative and reached behind them for his backpack. “It’s time we put some distance between us and these trees. Where’s your—” he raised a humorous brow “—car?”
“Cars are neither bad words nor bad vehicles. I spent half my teenage life wanting to own a Maserati.”
“You own a Maserati?”
“No, I own a Land Rover, because I’m not in my teens, and I knew when I came back to the Hollow that the roads, in a pothole-to-pavement ratio, strongly favor the potholes. My mother had a man friend once who leased a Maserati, but I was thirteen when she left him, so I waved goodbye to that wish and switched to boys instead.”
“I didn’t know your parents had broken up, Sadie. I’m sorry.”
She twitched away any residual sadness. “They were barely together when we lived in the Hollow. Molly says it’s the Bellam curse.”
“What is?”
“The inability of Nola Bellam’s female descendants—my mother in this case—to commit to people, places and/or things. An inability she believes is supplemented by the fact that those female descendants insist on passing the Bellam surname on to their own female children.”
“Would this be your cousin Molly who only left Raven’s Hollow long enough to go to college?”
“That’s the one.”
“Making her the notable exception commitment-wise.”
“So it would seem.”
With a smile grazing his lips, Eli indicated the outside storm. “You ready?”
“Would saying no change the situation?”
His smile deepened. “Between lightning bolts, then.”
He would be gorgeous, Sadie thought with a sigh. A hot, gorgeous cop. A loner, with a reputation for getting the job done—however distasteful that job might be.
As homicides went, Eli did it all. He’d go undercover for weeks, often months at a time, if going under meant bringing down a New York crime lord. During his tenure on the force, he’d worked countless night shifts while investigating gang-related murders. He’d hunted down serial killers, sunk his teeth into a dozen or more cold cases and, in at least one instance that she knew of, apprehended a man who made Hannibal Lecter appear well adjusted.
Of course, it also didn’t hurt that he wore his dark hair long, always looked a little dangerous and somehow kept his truly superior six-foot-two-inch body totally cut.
“There’s less than five seconds between thunderbolts,” he said now. “We’ll need to move fast and stay low.”
“My way’s better.” Dragging her eyes from his profile, she regarded the storm-tossed trees. “Don’t count, don’t think, just do.”
“Which is why, as a kid, you stepped in groundhog holes and sprained your ankles on a monthly basis.”
“Two groundhog holes, two twisted ankles.” And one dead hand, she recalled with a chill that she couldn’t quite battle back. “On three?”
“Your count.”
They exited the truck simultaneously. With her skirt tied into a thigh-baring knot, Sadie led the way to the narrowest part of the fallen tree’s trunk. Before she could boost herself up and over, Eli scooped her off the ground.
“Wait, don’t! Are you...” He deposited her without ceremony in a puddle on the far side. “...crazy?” she finished through her teeth.
Joining her, he shouldered his pack and grabbed her hand. “Come on.”
Because arguing was pointless, Sadie ran with him to her Land Rover. They fell inside on the heels of a triple fork of lightning that illuminated the woodland hollow as far as she could see.
“Road’s a single lane here.” Raindrops flew from the ends of Eli’s hair as he looked in several directions at once. “You’re the DD, sweetheart. How are you at maneuvering in reverse?”
She summoned a tight smile. “Guess we’ll find out.”
Fortunately, she knew the twists and dips well enough to feel her way back through them. Eli’s flashlight helped. So did the sky-wide slashes of lightning. Still, her nerves didn’t stop jumping until they reached a point where the vehicle could be safely turned around.
“I’d say that was worthy of a Maserati should the opportunity for you to own one ever arise.”
“Highly unlikely in this lifetime. And please don’t say I could’ve had a fleet of them if I’d gone to New York, because everyone except my uncle—who looks on the Chronicle as a father might a beloved only child—has already pointed that out.”
She felt more than saw his stare. “I get family loyalty, Sadie. You love your uncle, so you wanted to keep his dream alive. What I don’t get is why he asked you to do it rather than someone who already lived in the Hollow.”
“Back to Molly again, huh?”
“Rooney says she’s smart, and given her history, I don’t see her leaving town any time soon.”
“She’s an introvert, Eli.”
“She worked at the Chronicle part-time through high school.”
“As a proofreader. Look, I’m sure my uncle talked to her before approaching me. If Molly had wanted to run the newspaper, she’d be doing it.” But she angled him an impressed look. “You’ve kept up, haven’t you?”
“It’s a hard loop to escape. There are six Blumes within a six-block radius of my apartment. One of them lives across the street from me and drops by twice a week to make sure there’s food in my fridge.”
Sadie regarded the scattering of blackened houses as they approached Raven’s Hollow. “Power’s out. All I see are glimmers of light in a few... Stop it, Eli.”
He hid most of a grin. “Stop what?”
“You’re giving me a Molly smile. Those flickers are candles, not the spirits of Bellams past.”
Now he chuckled. “I don’t know, Sadie. Word has it Raven’s Hollow was recently named one of three most haunted towns in New England.”
“It was not.” But she lowered suspicious lashes. “Who told you that?”
“Rooney.”
“Well, in that case, consider the source. The man’s propagating a myth to encourage tourism in the area.”
“Always possible. One of my more ambitious cousins lived with him for a few years. He might have planted the thought. Does it bother you?”
Her lips curved into a deceptively sweet smile. “Do witches ride broomsticks?”
“I’ll take the Fifth at this point. Something tells me you’re only marginally tolerant when it comes to people who believe in the local lore.”
“That’s because I’m part of the local lore. Unfortunately.”
She eased the Land Rover along a narrow, densely wooded road that wound up and up to a rocky promontory. The jagged point of land speared into a small bay where the waves, even on a calm day, broke white against the base of the cliff.
Built entirely of faded gray stone, Bellam Manor could at best be called forbidding. Although, Sadie mused, foreboding might be a more appropriate description. Either way, two large towers stood at opposite ends of a structure made up of multiple juts and protrusions, and would forever make her think of the wicked queen’s castle from Sleeping Beauty.
The mansion had taken fifteen years to construct. Storytellers swore that the evil secreted