An eerie quiet settled over those gathered. I might be facing the bar, but I was sure everyone’s eyes were suddenly on me.
“I hadn’t meant to ask that so loudly,” I whispered.
Gideon shook his head. “It wouldn’t have mattered. Most of the people in here would’ve heard you anyway.”
I glanced around. The Den had an English-pub vibe, so there was a lot of dark wood and hard surfaces. Everything gleamed as if it had been polished a thousand times. It made sense that sound would bounce around. “Because of the acoustics?”
“Because most of these people aren’t human,” Gideon corrected.
“What?” I spun around. Man, there were a lot of them! They all seemed human enough. I never would have guessed they were something… um… other.
“Relax,” Gideon said. “They’re people, the same as you.”
I guessed he was right, but it was still a little weird. I forced myself to turn back to face him. “We can talk about this later. It looks like things are getting busy. You need to work.” I chugged down the coffee he’d given me. It was so much better than the slop I’d grabbed from Lily. “How much do I owe you?”
“Don’t worry about that.” Gideon waved off my offer to pay. “You should stick around, though. Try eating something.”
“I’ll be fine. I think I need to think things over. Elwood didn’t do this, regardless of what Leon says. I know he didn’t.” I rubbed my chest, where a strange tingling sensation had taken hold and hadn’t let up yet. I was well past thinking it might be a medical condition and suspected it might be my intuition. My parents had raised me not to put any stock in intuition or gut feelings or the like, but this sensation was impossible to ignore. “I can’t explain it, but I feel… something…”
Gideon eyed me curiously. “So you’re going to Elwood’s to think about things…”
I nodded. It wasn’t a lie. I mean, I’d be going to Elwood’s eventually. I just needed to make a stop somewhere else first.
“Okay.” He eyed me like he suspected I was lying. “But be careful. Someone killed Winston. Until his killer is caught, you need to watch out.”
I snorted. “I haven’t been in Ravenstone for years. No one’s going to be coming after me.”
Gideon leaned forward and held my gaze for a long moment, seemingly unconcerned with helping his other patrons while he was talking to me. It was a strange thing to have someone’s complete attention. “I mean it. Be careful. If you need anything, shout. I’ll hear you and Iwillcome.”
I didn’t know what to make of this protective thing he had going on. I almost joked and called himmy knight in furry armor. But he’d said he couldn’t shift, so that would’ve been wildly insensitive. Still, I wondered if his protectiveness and natural bossiness might be connected to his wolf-ish alter-ego. Elwood must have a book about wolf shifters I could read when I got back to the shop.
“I promise,” I said.
When I left the pub a moment later, I turned toward Elwood’s store, just in case Gideon was watching. The police had yellow tape draped from the dumpster, across the sidewalk, and over to the front of the store. If Leon was upset about the dumpster before, he’d be livid about the police tape.
Curious pedestrians were being rerouted, but not before they strained to see what was happening inside the store. Emergency vehicles were parked haphazardly in the parking stalls beside the dumpster. I shuddered at the sight of the lone ambulance with its back door gaping open, like it was waiting to swallow Winston’s body.
As soon as I’d passed the pub’s windows, though, I pivoted toward the street. I glanced both ways before cutting across the lanes. It might be illegal to jaywalk, but I figured the police had more important things to think about right now. Traffic was ridiculously slow as people gawked at the police vehicles clustered outside the Nook, so dodging the oncoming vehicles wasn’t difficult.
I waved at Henry, who was standing in his grocery store window watching what was going on. The Witch’s Brew was next. The neon light in the window grabbed my attention, and I glanced in. The place was empty again. Lily was focused on whatever she was doing at the counter. In front of her was an array of measuring cups, about a dozen bottles of variousdescriptions, and an assortment of jars of pickled onions, olives, asparagus, and green beans.
Oh boy. Call me a skeptic, but I didn’t have high hopes for a pickled onion and hazelnut flavored coffee. She reminded me of a mad scientist concocting a tincture that no one would want to choke down. Huh… I wondered if she was magical, too. Was her coffee literally a witch’s brew?
I debated stopping in because I felt badly for her and her lack of business when she seemed so determined to succeed. There had to be something on her menu that was drinkable.
But I had something to do first.
The closer I got to the antique store, the faster my heart pounded.
Leon was a nasty piece of work, but that didn’t give him the right to accuse my grandfather of murder. In fact, if someone was taking out unlikeable people in town, I was surprised they hadn’t chosen him as their first victim.
I winced.
Okay, that was harsh. I didn’t want the man to die. But I did want him to stop trying to save himself by pointing fingers at other people.
I adjusted my glasses. I braced my shoulders. Then I shoved open the door to Arcana Antiques and stomped inside.
Antiques weren’t my thing, so I’d never been inside this shop before. But when I’d envisioned the uptight man’s store, I’d imagined shelves lined with objects arranged in rigid rows and a few walls covered in dreary oil paintings, all hung with laser-level precision. That wasn’t what greeted me when I walked through the door.
