Declan
I was pretty sure Gideon was talking to me, but nope, my brain wasn’t listening. It was like my whole body—ears included—had gone numb. Shouldn’t I be screaming or something? My mom loved watching cute little small-town mysteries on TV, and someone always screamed when a body was discovered.
“Shit,” Gideon muttered.
Huh, so my ears were working.
Then he started mumbling, but I didn’t think he was mumbling to me, so I ignored him. I couldn’t look away from the—gulp—body. There was a body. Right there. And something wasn’t right about it. I just couldn’t?—
Something touched me.
I screamed. My coffee—if you could call that coffee… yeah, Lily’s attempt at dark roast wasn’t my favorite—went flying as I flung out my arm.
“Declan!” Elwood was shaking me by my shoulders now.
“Why on earth did you scare me like that?” I shouted. I pointed at the body on the floor. “Can’t you see there’s a dead body? Don’t sneak up on people when there are dead bodies!” I shook my head.
Elwood glanced at Gideon. “I think he’ll be okay.”
“Wait.” I turned to Gideon. I stared at him as I adjusted my glasses. “You called Elwood here because you thought I was freaking out? Before you called the police? Haven’t you people ever seen a mystery show? The first call should always be to the police. If you call someone else first, it makes people suspicious.”
Gideon flattened his mouth before glancing at Elwood as if to say,deal with him. “I’ll call Grady.”
“Grady?” I asked, because honestly, if Gideon was calling some other random person before the police…
“Grady King. Our sheriff,” Elwood said.
“Good.” I took my glasses off and polished the lenses with the hem of my shirt–mostly because I needed something to do with my shaking hands.
As Gideon finally called the police, my eyes drifted back to the body again. At least my coffee hadn’t landed on it—er, him—when I’d thrown it. The dark liquid pooled around the upturned cup a few feet away, spreading out across the dusty floor.
“That’s it. That’s what’s wrong… there isn’t any blood.” I pointed at the spot where a quartz point was embedded in the body’s chest. There wasn’t a teeny, tiny little speck of blood. That made no sense. I inched closer to get a better look.
When I’d first glimpsed the body, I’d been sure it was Winston. The corpse was dressed in the same clothing Winston had been wearing last night, but now that I was staring at it, I wasn’t so sure. It was too… what was the word? Desiccated?
Elwood came to stand at my side and studied the body, too. “Well, what do you expect?” he said. “Winston was a vampire.”
I spun to look at him, ready to give him a piece of my mind for making a joke like that right now, but the minute I saw his face, I knew he wasn’t joking.
“A vampire?” I squeaked out. My mind reeled. A vampire. And yesterday, he’d called Tulip a mermaid. “Supernatural creatures don’t exist.”
“Of course they do, magic is very real.” Elwood narrowed his eyes as he studied me, almost as closely as I’d been studying Winston’s body a moment ago. “What on earth did you think? Honestly, you were more sensible as a child than you are as an adult.”
A man in a police uniform burst into the shop before I could formulate a response to that unflattering observation. Despite the man’s frown, I relaxed as soon as I saw him. He was a brawny man, who projected an aura of calm and authority. It might have been the bit of gray in his black hair that made me think that, but whatever. I was just happy to see someone official here.
“Sheriff King, you got here fast,” Gideon said to the newcomer.
“I was over at the Thistle grabbing a coffee,” Grady said. “The damned coffee machine at the station’s broken again.”
“The body’s over there,” Gideon said. I thought that was a little unnecessary. No one could miss it.
The sheriff glanced around the room, seeming to take in everything and everyone all at once. He narrowed his dark eyes at me. “Who are you?”
“Declan.” I cleared my throat. “Declan Hawthorne.”
“My grandson,” Elwood added.
“Uh… sorry about the coffee. That was me. I… uh… dropped it,” I stammered.
