Moonlight Murder: An Inept Witches Mystery Read Free

suggest one of those tattoos that symbolized how many people someone’s murdered. But it was too soon.
    She opened her phone and started searching Google. She typed “Tattoos symbolizing murder count” in the search bar and pressed enter, then set her phone down to let it think. Her cell service sucked in this corner of her apartment, she’d have to work that out later. But in the meantime, while the page loaded, she sipped her tea.
    So, a trip to the freaking forest at first light was on her list. She hated mornings. Every morning. But getting up early to hunt for a dead body. Yeah, not on her list of things to do. Ever. She sighed.
    Her phone buzzed and she answered immediately, only realizing after she accepted the call that it wasn’t Ingrid. It was Sam. The hot fireman. Hmmm. That gave her some ideas. Maybe he could help her unbury the body. No. That would be a disaster of epic proportions. Ingrid didn’t like Fireman Sam to begin with. If Emily brought him into their magical murder mystery tour, Ingrid would completely lose control. Sam would gain some new experiences with fire.
    “Hello?”
    “Hey, Emily. I’m just getting off my shift. Want to grab some dinner?”
    She wasn’t exactly hungry, but she could eat. She could always eat. Especially if she didn’t have to cook it. Plus it’d be nice to think about something else. Let her subconscious mind worry about how to keep Ingrid’s behind out of jail.
    “Um, yeah. I’m gonna need at least dinner. I hope you are prepared for more. I’ve had a craptastic day.”
    “Okay, I’ll pick you up in 10 minutes. We can go to that 24-hour diner.”
    “Mmm. I could totally use a chocolate malt right now. Extra malt. And fried chicken. And mashed potatoes and gravy.”
    Sam laughed. “Okay, I’ll stop by the bank for a loan before I pick you up.”
    “Uh, yeah, no. 24-hour loan officers are not an actual thing. I’ve got my own money, well, it’s Ingrid’s money, but whatever. And I’ll meet you there. I want to walk anyway.”
    He started to protest, but she hung up before he could get a sentence out.
    She didn’t like being taken care of, not by a guy, and that wasn’t going to change, no matter how insanely hot the fireman was. Besides, and this was the important part, she needed a minute to think about the body in the woods. Because there was a Holy Mary Mother of Pearl body in the woods.
    •••
    Ingrid didn’t start thinking again until she was in the shower, scrubbing blood off of her body. She scrubbed her hands until the water ran clear. Then she washed her hair four times. Once her hair was piled on top of her head, she took today’s clothes, shoes included, and lit them on fire with magic in the shower. The shower was big enough that she could stand outside of the streams of water with her clothes burning fueled entirely by her magic.
    “Oh my…” Her hands were shaking when she finally wrapped herself in a robe and put a towel around her hair, so she made her way to the mini-wine cellar she’d had built in her apartment. She stared at the wine until her eyes focused on the bottles of the St. Maarten’s wine from the vacation.
    “What the hell was that?” she asked herself. She pulled aside several bottles of wine to find the truth serum she’d bought from Saffron, a witch who’d joined the Sage Island coven from some creepy coven. When Ingrid had been finding a way to get Emily off murder charges for her dead husband, it had been Saffron’s former North Island coven that had been recommended to Ingrid. She brought the serum out, made herself a cup of coffee, and poured it into the beautiful brew.
    She played with the empty vial, rolling it in between her palms and staring vacantly around her apartment. It was the top floor of a four-story building on Sage Island. Emily’s apartment was a floor down, followed by another floor of apartments they rented out and then shops on the ground floor. Their hobby bookshop, Enchanted