Moonlight Murder: An Inept Witches Mystery Read Free Page A

Tales, was down there with several other shops, but they hadn’t walked through the doors of the bookstore since they’d returned from St. Maarten’s.
    Without daring to look at it, Ingrid lifted her mug and gulped the doctored coffee, not even noticing the burn.
    Then she pulled out her phone and tried to text Emily, We didn’t murder that guy.
    But she couldn’t. Her hands wouldn’t do it. Instead they typed,
    We murdered that guy with magic. What the HELL?
    When she wasn’t able to lie—even with her fingers—her hands started shaking. Holy Holy! They’d buried some poor random dove in the woods. I mean, she thought, he was lurking in the woods with two lost girls around. That was creepy. Maybe he was up to no good before she’d blown him up.
    It didn’t make her feel better. She wanted it to make her feel better, but it didn’t. Oh man. Oh man. Oh man.
    They were going to have to hire the evil coven to get them out of trouble, bunnies would be murdered, and more importantly, she was going to feel bad forever.
    Like—was this karma? What had she done to deserve this?
    “Hey,” Gabe said from the doorway to the bedroom. Oh, this was not good. He was supposed to stay sleeping when she truth-serumed herself. He wore only boxer shorts and everything about him was something that begged her to leap into his arms and plead for help.
    Ingrid tried not to vomit at him. Don’t say anything, she told herself.
    “Hey,” she replied carefully, biting the word out to keep any thing else, like confessions, from spewing forth.
    “Are you all right?”
    “Um,” she said. She shrugged.
    He crossed the room and felt her forehead.
    “You’re kind of warm.”
    “Um,” she said. She rubbed her eyes and told herself to say nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.
    “Come to bed,” he said. He pulled her to her feet and across the room. “You’ll feel better after you sleep.”
    Why had she truth-serumed herself? Why had she done it when Gabe could wake up any minute? Where was her phone? What had she been thinking? Oh gods, she was in so much trouble. He could not look at her phone. The irritating and naughty texts that her ex-boyfriend had been sending her were the least of the reasons that the Sheriff of Sage Island could definitely not see her phone. Now she had to hide her murdering ways from him too.
    “You’re too nice,” she told him. He was. He was too nice and too good for her. He was tall, handsome in the rugged, perfect way she loved. He did not have a white beard and no ivory tower arrogance. And he did not semi-despise her like her dead husband Harrison had. Oh gods, she thought, why in all that was holy had she truth-serumed herself during a mental melt down? She did not want to think about her dead husband.
    He kissed her softly on the lips and said, “I’m only after you for your money.”
    She laughed. And her eyes teared. It wasn’t true. She’d found the one guy who wasn’t after her for the money her first husband had left her. And she’d ruined it by killing someone and burying his body. She was going to have to break up with Gabe before he was forced to arrest her and put her and Emily in jail to rot, like the evil witches they were.
    Accidentally evil.
    If it was an accident and wasn’t intended, it wasn’t evil right? It was just…stupid.
    She realized she didn’t want to break up with him before he broke up with her. Or before he arrested her. And that thought made her thoroughly sick to her stomach.
    He was just supposed to be her pretty play thing. She wasn’t supposed to feel this agonizing shot of pain at the idea of them breaking up.
    “Oh gods,” she said aloud as he pulled her close to his body, wrapped her up in his warmth, and whispered, “It’ll be all right, Ingrid. You’ll feel better soon.”
    Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, she repeated silently until he settled into sleep. It was the only thing that kept her from shouting, I’ll never feel better