Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 1-3 by Mara Webb (hardest books to read TXT) 📗

too. Our whole family would be ostracized, tourists wouldn’t visit our island anymore, we’d be finished. Then they would be free to take over, the treaties would be ignored even more than they already are and...” Simon paused for breath.

I had fallen into the trap that Link had set. Maybe I didn’t consider Kieran had killed his brother to take over the Davick family, but I had still been pointing fingers in their direction.

“We came to help,” Kieran wheezed. He took a deep breath with an inhaler pressed to his lips. “What? Witches can have asthma too!”

“I didn’t say anything,” I smiled.

“Greta was kind to us, she kept everyone compliant as much as she could. My uncle was a good guy, we didn’t always see eye-to-eye and I know you must think we are terrible people for not reporting him missing, but he used to go off on self-discovery missions all the time. We reported him missing once when he was on some nudist beach on one of the outer islands and he got really annoyed with us, the police raced onto the sand, waving their badges around. He was told not to come back,” Simon explained.

He was laughing at the memory initially, but then realized that he would never have that moment again. He would never have to worry about his uncle, never have to wonder how long he would be gone this time. He was never coming back.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Link snarled from the shadows. “We don’t welcome Davick’s on this island.” He stepped forward, his brothers by his side.

“It’s over, Link. You’ve taken your feud too far and two people are dead. The only family I had left in the world has been taken away from me before I even had the chance to meet her,” I hissed. I didn’t think it was worth mentioning that Greta had been hanging out with me in her ghost form.

“Only family left? You really have no clue,” Link laughed. “We have been held back long enough. Do you know that we can’t open a business if they already have something similar over on Tivercana? We burned down their bakery and opened our own before they could re-build. I can’t open a dive center because you have one, you have a golf course, you have a dolphin swimming experience package... what’s left for us?”

“It was your family that agreed to that!” Kieran yelled. “Your father was the one that wrote up the treaty that insisted on those exact terms, he sabotaged his own family. Look, if that is what it’s all about, then we can scrap that agreement and have competing businesses. Well, the rest of your family can, not you obviously.”

“Why not me?” Link barked.

“You killed my brother and Greta, you will be in jail for a long time,” Kieran replied.

“Oh yeah,” Link sighed. “Not if you can’t find me!” He turned and ran. His brothers both looked like they had loose wires in their heads, neither seemed to realize that they had been ditched and didn’t have the quick reactions to turn and chase after him. Miller slapped handcuffs on them both and Simon and Kieran agreed to wait with them until we returned.

Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to leave the four of them together like that, but we didn’t have much choice. If I was keeping score correctly, it seemed that Link had admitted to arson, as well as the two murders we suspected him of.

I was right by Miller’s side, running aimlessly in the direction that Link had gone but soon we came to a junction. The tunnel split into three separate tunnels and with the space having such a powerful echo, the voices of the bickering group we had left behind were the only sounds we could hear. We couldn’t track Link by the beat of his feet hitting the ground.

“Any chance you can sniff him out?” I asked, only half joking. Miller looked over at me and I couldn’t work out if I had crossed the line or suggested something useful.

“You want me to shift and hunt him down?” he said. I shrugged with a smile, hoping that I could pass it off as a joke if he was offended. “Sadie, it just happened to me. Once. I don’t know how to control it, I don’t know how to trigger it, and...” he trailed off. A sound of scuffling bounced off the walls, was Link fighting with someone?

“If you could make it happen, you would be able to find him. You could catch a murderer,” I said.

“What if I hurt you?” he asked, looking into my eyes. It seemed clear that this was his main concern.

“When it happened the first time, you came to my house. You didn’t hurt me then,” I explained.

“You don’t know that I wouldn’t have if I wasn’t interrupted,” he winced. Greta appeared beside me.

“I can help you,” she explained. “Sadie will be safe, and I can guide your transformation so that you can learn how to do it on your own. Although at some point you will need to track down a relative to have them teach you properly,” she chuckled. Miller’s mouth twitched at the corners as if he was tempted to smile but resisting it.

We waited for him to agree to the plan. The gentle nod he gave us was as good as it was going to get. I stepped back and watched as Greta reached out her ghostly hands and placed them either side of Miller’s face, not quite touching him, and she whispered something so softly that I didn’t catch it.

Movies would have you believe that the werewolf transformation involves the human form twisting and contorting violently as the bones elongate and the fur sprouts out of the skin. The movies got it right. I had to look away at points, but Greta floated over to me to say that it wasn’t hurting him and that with practice the transition would become smoother.

In a