Evidence of a Folktale Recap
After Detective Isobel ‘Bel’ Emerson solved The Matchstick Girl Case (where Jax Frost froze his victims alive) and escaped Dr. Charles Blaubart (the plastic surgeon who used a cursed scalpel to transform women into the likeness of his 1st wife & ran a black market surgery to change criminal’s faces), she ends up in the hospital, where Eamon tells her they need to talk. He blames himself for everything bad that’s happened to her, and he reasons that she’ll be safer if he leaves Bajka. Before they can finish the conversation, Bel’s dad overhears him confess to giving her the scars and kicks Eamon out of the hospital.
Bel goes home with her family for a depressing Christmas, but after a heart-to-heart with her oldest sister, she tells her father that she’ll finally tell him the truth. She promises to tell him as much or as little as he wants to know, and then she goes home to work out her relationship with Eamon. He agrees to stay after an honest conversation and gives her one of his expensive SUVs as a gift since her car was totaled.
After the holiday, Griffin announces that Aesop’s Files, a famous paranormal crime show, will be filming in town. They also plan to hold fan events, meaning Bajka will be overflowing with people. Bel tries to reconnect with her partner, Olivia, but Olivia hates her for lying about Ewan. She and Ewan have broken up, and she wants nothing to do with Bel unless it’s work-related.
Filming starts well, but during an outdoor shoot on Eamon’s property, he smells blood. The police find Gwen Rossa, the show’s head writer, dead in the snow, wearing only a red cloak. She’s been slashed apart, and a small box holds a riddle inside, which, when decoded, means, “What big eyes you have.” Theydon’t know what it means until the autopsy, and they find custom contact lenses in Rossa’s eyes. They are film negatives of an unknown forest location.
While searching for suspects, Griffin and Bel talk to Ellery Roja, the costume designer. She tells them about Orion Chayce, a former crew member who was blamed for a malfunctioning prop that killed a man. He went to prison for manslaughter, but he’s out on parole. He’s also missing, and they worry he’s out for revenge for being sent to prison.
Upset about her relationship with Olivia, Bel finally asks Eamon to tell her everything so that she understands. He tells her how the vampires crawled to Earth from hell, but when mankind found their weakness with sunlight, they created the Dhampir. Children born of black magic to be both human and vampire. The best of both worlds. Eamon’s father was the inspiration for Dracula, the worst vampire of them all, but they didn’t realize that the Dhampir’s had all the strengths of both races and none of the weaknesses. Eamon and his brethren killed all the vampires, and he eventually killed all of his kind until he was the only one left. So while his father was the inspiration for Dracula, Eamon’s violence was what inspired Vlad the Impaler.
At the station the next day, they get another box with a riddle that translates to “What big ears you have.” Ewan Orso (a bear shifter and Olivia’s ex) comes to the station to tell Bel he found a body. It’s Ellery Roja, and she’s hanging from a tree wearing only a red cloak. They find a device in her ear, and it’s a generic weather report from a January of an unknown year. Bel gets an idea. The woods are a where, and January is a when. She thinks the riddles are answers to the cop questions: who, what, where, when, and why.
Someone follows Bel home. It’s Taron Monroe, the show’s lead actress, and she wants to talk. She has a stalker, and shethinks he might be the killer. He signs all of his letters to her as The Wolf, and the killer cuts his victims up like an animal. Taron is afraid she’s next.
Bel decides to use Taron as bait. Bel pretends to be a police consultant for the show, and Eamon visits the set to protect her. Nothing happens, and the killings have stopped, so Violet asks Bel to go on a double date with her and the new officer, Deputy Rollo. Eamon can’t come, so Bel goes alone. Olivia is there too. Seems Violet is trying to get them to mend fences. It doesn’t work. Violet falls for Rollo, and he reveals that the Catholic saint tattoo he has is to honor his grandma.
The next day, Bel acts as Taron’s bodyguard during a signing. At the end, Taron tells her she’s going to the bathroom and to watch her seat. Bel finds this odd, but when she looks down, she finds a note telling Taron to sneak out. If she doesn’t, a hidden bomb will blow up the hotel. Bel races after them and sees The Wolf putting Taron in a car. Bel goes after them, texting her boss about the bomb, and then calls Eamon, putting him on mute so he can listen.
The Wolf makes her hand over her gun, threatening to blow up the hotel, and when he notices her phone, he throws it out the window. Eamon can no longer track her, so Bel forces a car crash to save them. She and The Wolf get hurt, but Taron is okay. Bel tells her to run, but before Bel can escape, The Wolf tries to choke her to death. Taron doesn’t run away, though, and knocks The Wolf out just as the cops and Eamon arrive.
Eamon is concerned about Bel always getting hurt and kidnapped. The kidnappers usually throw her phone away, but never her book charm necklace, so he pays a contact to install a secret (and stolen) military-grade tracker into her necklace, complete with a panic button. If she presses it, Eamon will always be able to find her.
The Wolf turns out to be a dead end in the murder case. He’s just obsessed with Taron, so they are back to suspecting Chayce as the killer. Bel then finds another box with a riddle on her porch. This one solved says, “What a big nose you have.”
She panics, thinking she’s the next victim, but she finds Alistair Rot, the show’s producer, dead on her backyard bench, wearing only a red cloak. The police arrive and, upon looking in his nose, find a news article from years ago about how the show was almost canceled. With this kill so fresh, Eamon tells Bel that the victim came into contact with something supernatural. He thinks there is evil at play.
The next day, they get a call from Orion Chayce’s parole officer. He isn’t missing. He went for a jog and was hit by a car. He was put into a medically induced coma to help with his brain swelling. He was labeled as a John Doe until he woke up. He isn’t the killer.
Curious about how a show that was almost canceled (and one that refuses to halt production despite 3 deaths) became so famous, Eamon watches all the seasons. He can’t figure out why it’s popular. It sucks. The only explanation he can think of is it’s a black magic deal like the one Blaubart made to get the scalpel.
The next morning at Bel’s cabin, Eamon hears screaming. They run down the road and find one of the neighbors screaming and covered in blood. They go inside her house and find Warren Rouge, the show’s director, dead in her bed, wearing only a red cloak.
His riddle box contains a human tooth. “What big teeth you have.” They find a piece of an autopsy report in his mouth detailing 5 abdominal stab wounds.
Beau Draven, the show’s lead actor, takes this as his big break and decides to direct as Bel tries to get production shut down. A car follows her home, and a man in a suit gets out and threatens her to leave the show alone. She realizes Eamonwas right. She just came face-to-face with the deal. He’s why the show is popular, but Bel thinks he’s collecting payment from the people who made the deal. Black magic is usually fueled by death, and the riddles have answered where, when, why, and what. All that’s left is who.
Bel works protection for Beau Draven while they continue filming, and Bel learns that his real name is Beau Reds. A few days later, a blizzard sets in, and Lina Thum calls her and asks her to come to the morgue. Rollo takes over watching Beau. Lina used the autopsy report to find the real cold case. An elderly woman was murdered in the woods in January, right before the show got unexpectedly renewed. She’d been stabbed 5 times, and she bled so much that her long white coat had been stained red. A necklace had been found at the scene. It was the pendant of a saint. The same saint Deputy Rollo has a tattoo of.
Bel knows who the killer is, and she just let him take Beau. She chases him down through the terrible blizzard and finds Rollo about to kill Beau in the woods. The 5 victims had made a deal with black magic to make the failing show a success, but the deal wasn’t the one killing the 5 as payment. Their payment was killing a loved one of someone close to the show. They chose a production assistant’s grandma to kill. Rollo was that assistant. Now he’s back for revenge.
Rollo transforms into a werewolf and tries to kill Beau, not caring that Bel is there. She hits the panic button, and Eamon runs to her, saving her and helping her arrest Rollo and Beau. After the blizzard, Beau’s lawyer, the same man who threatened Bel (aka the deal), pays his bail, but Rollo is transferred to a more secure location. Violet finds out she was dating a serial killer.
Later that day, the news reports that Rollo’s transport had an accident, and he’s missing. They also report that Beau and thedeal were in a fatal car accident. Bel knows the werewolf got his 5th kill.
The book ends with Bel agreeing to tell her father enough of the truth so he understands her relationship, and Eamon asking Violet and Ewan to help him with a secret…
“Ow, ow, my friends are hot!”Violet twirled her pointer finger through the air, and Bel obeyed her request with a balletic spin before dropping into a curtsey. “You’re gorgeous.” Violet reached out and tested the skirt’s blue fabric between her fingers. “And this dress is a work of art. Why have I never seen you dressed like this?”
“Because I only wear designer outfits to crime scenes on Tuesdays,” Bel said as she retrieved her overnight suitcase and rolled it to the front door.
“Ha, ha.” Violet enunciated the syllables with a sarcastic monotone. “I know you can’t wear custom dresses to examine dead bodies, but why not dress like this for girls’ night? You lookso good. I can’t believe you’re going to upstage me at my own friend’s wedding.”
“Oh, please.” Bel rolled her eyes. “Did you check the mirror before you left your apartment? You always look flawless.”
“I do, don’t I?” Violet tossed her straightened black hair over her shoulder and struck a pose, the afternoon sun bathing her form-fitting black ensemble and matching stilettos in angelic light. After learning that her boyfriend Ethan Rollo had manipulated his way onto the Bajka Police force so that he could exact his brutal revenge on his grandmother’s murderers, Violet had sworn off men. The entire town looked at her differently now—the girl who’d dated a serial killer. People whispered and stared and judged, and if Bel hadn’t supported her through the heartache, she would’ve locked herself away from the world. The women had spent most of their free time together over the past few months because Bel understood the reality of loving a killer. The man she’d aligned herself with had been a monster unmatched. The couples’ only difference was that Rollo’s good looks and disarming charm had fooled Violet, while Bel had willingly delivered herself into the devil’s arms. Rollo had killed five. Eamon had slaughtered unspeakable numbers, and while she couldn’t confess his sins to her friend, she could help her heal. But just because Violet forgave herself for trusting a murderer didn’t mean she had any intention of dating, which was why Bel was standing in her cabin wearing the gorgeous blue dress that Eamon had gifted her on their first romantic getaway.
