Stranger on Raven's Ridge Read Free Page B

there’s
been no sign of him. He gave up his apartment without notice and vanished. It’s
like the ground swallowed him whole. He even left his car behind.”
    Raven tried not to let her skin crawl. People did strange
things. Gaitor didn’t owe her or anyone an explanation for his behavior.
Assuming his disappearing act had been behavioral, and not a belated shot fired
by a still-seething and not-yet-sated crime lord.
    Cheery prospect, she reflected and gave the bill of her cap a
tug. Hopping out, she stretched her arms upward to relieve the ache in her back.
“I think that might have been the longest drive ever.”
    “No argument here.” George shrugged the stiffness from his
shoulders. “How do we...uh, hmm, okay. That’s kind of creepy.”
    In front of them, the gates stuttered inward with a screech of
old metal.
    “Faulty motion sensor?” Raven guessed. “Or maybe someone inside
saw us arrive.”
    “Someone lives here?”
    “Possibly.” Humor sparked, and it felt good. “Whether feathered
or human remains to be seen.”
    “How many times have you visited this, uh...?” The question
faded to a stare.
    With a faint chill skating along her spine, Raven followed her
companion’s gaze to a human-size bird huddled in a leafy stand of trees to their
left.
    The chill immediately lowered to a tingle.
    “It’s a raven-shaped boulder.” She breathed out her relief.
“They’re scattered all over the property. You get used to it.”
    The clouds overhead darkened—or something did. Raven felt the
air around her stir. And barely had time to raise her head before a silent
shadow fell over her from behind.
    * * *
    C ONNOR O’ BRIEN STOOD alone in the fourth-floor attic of Blume
House. He had an excellent view of the ocean waves that crashed and foamed over
the rugged sweep of coastline that comprised Raven’s Ridge. Almost as good was
the view past the neighboring woods that bled into a clearing where last night
he’d counted close to forty tents. That number had more than doubled today. He
hated to think what tomorrow would bring.
    He’d been told that a small army of people, many of them
self-proclaimed psychics, descended on the ridge every three years for a
three-day celebration known as Ravenspell. Not surprisingly, several of the
participants or seekers or whatever the locals called them, arrived days in
advance of the actual event which stretched from September sixth to the ninth.
Then again, a party was a party, after all.
    This particular party involved Hezekiah Blume’s man-into-bird
transformation, coupled with a tragedy that had occurred at a later point in
time. All Connor really knew was that some form of gruesome death resided at the
core of both things.
    Coffee mug in hand, he rested a shoulder against the window
frame, sipped and stared, and tried not to let his mind wander. Life was what it
was, what it had to be. And what it was, in this case, was better than the
alternative he’d been given once hell had opened its fiery jaws and demanded a
sacrificial soul.
    He spotted the glint of a lens near one of the smaller tents.
Easing back a step, he took another drink. He wore black out of habit and
usually stuck to the shadows, but neither precaution rendered him invisible—as
he’d discovered mere days after his arrival here.
    The Cove should have been a temporary stop at best. A place to
think and regroup, to plan for a nebulous future. But one wrong turn combined
with a squeaky floorboard had changed all of that. For the better, he liked to
think.
    He heard a low creak behind him. The screech of hinges and
muttered curse that followed were familiar enough to elicit a smile. “Better
than a doorbell, cousin.”
    The new arrival snorted. “Not if you’re the one who has to make
the climb. Why are you always up here when I come by?”
    “Same reason you always come by when I’m up here. Your campers
are multiplying.”
    “Like rabbits in heat.”
    “Rabbits are born in heat.” The vague