Night of the Raven Read Online Free

thoughts careening off to fantasyland.
    Jimmy Sparks, vicious head of a family chock full of homicidal relatives, wanted her dead. She couldn’t go back to New Orleans or her job, and she couldn’t reasonably expect Lieutenant Michaels to do any more than he’d already done to help her. Her grandmother wasn’t in Raven’s Hollow, and Amara figured she’d probably alienated the Cove cop who was to the point where he might actually consider turning her over to Jimmy’s kith and kin simply to be rid of her.
    “I really am sorry about all of this.” She backed toward the mudroom. “I wasn’t expecting to find...”
    “A wolf in Grandma’s cottage?” He continued to advance. “Still waiting for the story, Red. If the trouble part’s too big a leap, start with the ‘less antagonistic relatives’ reference.”
    “First off, I’d rather you called me Amara. You can see for yourself, my hair’s more brown than red. Which, when you get right down to it, is the story of my relatives in an extremely simplified nutshell.”
    “Gonna need a bit more than that, I’m afraid. So far all I’ve got is that you’re the descendant of a Bellam witch.”
    “Yes, but the question is which witch? Most Bellams can trace the roots of their family tree back to Nola. There are only a handful of us who have her lesser-known sister Sarah’s blood.”
    Finally, thankfully, he stopped moving. “If Nola and Sarah were sisters, what’s the difference blood-wise?”
    “Nola Bellam was married to Hezekiah Blume. At least she was, until Hezekiah went on a killing spree. According to the Blume legend, he repented. However, all those deaths got him turned into a clairvoyant raven. There wasn’t a large window of opportunity for Nola to get pregnant. Unless you add in the unpleasant fact that Hezekiah’s brother Ezekiel raped her, accused her of being a witch, then hunted her down and tried to destroy her. Thus, Hezekiah’s killing spree.”
    “Complicated stuff.”
    “Isn’t it? It gets worse, too, because, as luck would have it, sister Sarah had a thing for Ezekiel.”
    “And that ‘thing’ resulted in a child?”
    “You catch on quick. Sarah had a daughter, who had a daughter and so on. So did Nola, of course, but not with Hezekiah. Even in legend, humans and ravens can’t mate. Long story short, and rape notwithstanding, Nola never gave birth to a Blume baby. Sarah did.” Amara shrugged. “I’m sure you know by now that Blumes and Bellams have been at odds for...well, ever. Raven’s Cove versus Raven’s Hollow in all things legendary and logical. So where does a Bellam with Blume blood in her background fit in? Does she cast spells or fall victim to them? And which town does she claim for her own? You can imagine the genetic dilemma.”
    McVey cocked his head. “You’re not going to go all weird and spooky on me, are you?”
    “Haven’t got time for that, unfortunately.”
    “Knowing Jimmy Sparks, I tend to agree.”
    Her fingers froze on the doorknob. “You know him?”
    “We’ve met once or twice.” McVey sent her a casual smile. “Well, I say met, but it was really more a case of I shot at him.”
    “You fired bullets at Jimmy King-of-Grudges Sparks and lived to tell about it?”
    “Put the living-to-tell part down to pure, dumb luck. I was painfully green at the time, but I was also a better shot than my partner, who took it upon himself through me to try to blow Sparks’s tires out after we witnessed an illegal late-night exchange.”
    “And?”
    “I hit two tires before someone inside the vehicle fired back. The shooter winged my partner. He got me in the shoulder, then got off when our report of the incident mysteriously disappeared. Before the night was done, we’d been ordered to forget the whole thing.”
    “Lucky Jimmy.”
    “Is that censure I hear in your voice, Red?”
    “On the off chance that you actually do have a concussion, let’s call it curiosity.”
    “Let’s call it not your