The Witch and the Dead Read Online Free Page A

it.”
    â€œSurely you would have smelled him decomposing,” Harper said matter-of-factly.
    I suddenly felt queasy.
    â€œPerhaps not,” Aunt Ve replied. “The garage is detached and solidly built. I hardly ever go in there. I spent the end of that month in Ohio with Derrie, so I didn’t need my Halloween decor. I wouldn’t have gone in there until Christmas, for my decorations. If I smelled something odd, I might have thought a mouse or squirrel had somehow been trapped inside. . . . It was so long ago that I can’t recall.”
    I shifted to face my sister. “It was also heading into wintertime. If temperatures were low enough, wouldn’t that have affected decomposition?”
    Harper slowly nodded. “It would have slowed it down.”
    â€œIt was unseasonably cold that month,” Ve said. “That whole winter, actually.”
    â€œWhen was the last time you cleaned or emptied the whole garage?” Harper asked as she continued to pet Tilda, who was still (astonishingly) allowing it.
    â€œHeavens.” Ve tapped her chin with a finger as she thought about it. “The last time it was thoroughly emptied and sorted was when your mother moved to Ohio. That was a few years before I met Miles.”
    We let that sink in.
    It was a sobering declaration. I said, “Then, yes, I’m guessing he could have been there the whole time.”
    Ve shuddered.
    My mother said, “The question in my mind isn’t necessarily how long he has been in the garage. It is
why
he is in there.”
    â€œObviously, someone dumped him there so Ve would get blamed for his death,” Harper said. “Probablysomeone who doesn’t like Ve very much, since it’s a cruel thing to do.”
    I thought so, too.
    My mother glanced my way. “You’ll look into it?”
    It wasn’t so much a request as an order, and not from my mother but from the Elder. I’d been working under her direction as a Craft investigator for almost a year now, looking into criminal cases within the village that involved our magic in one way or another. Though Miles wasn’t a Crafter, Aunt Ve was.
    I nodded. It would be my first case knowing the Elder was my mom, and I kind of liked knowing that I was working for my mother. I was a big believer in family businesses.
    â€œGood,” she said with a smile. “The sooner we can figure this out, the—”
    In a blink, she dissolved into a cloud of sparkles that narrowed into a thin contrail that shot out the open window and disappeared.
    A second later, there was a tap at the back door before it swung open, its hinges creaking. Missy jumped to her feet and ran off, barking at the visitor.
    â€œHarper?” Marcus called from the mudroom.
    â€œIn here,” she said, tearing her gaze from the window. She stood up and went to greet him.
    I glanced at Aunt Ve. Concern deepened the fine lines of her face as she bit her fingernails.
    â€œDon’t worry, Aunt Ve,” I said, trying to reassure her. “We’ll figure out what happened.”
    She steadily held my gaze. “Darcy dear, that’s what I’m afraid of.”

Chapter Three
    T wenty minutes later, I took Missy outside to the side yard, leaving Ve, Marcus, and Harper inside, mapping out a legal course of action for my aunt should she need it.
    When I had questioned Ve as to why she worried that Miles’ case
would
eventually be solved, she’d given me only a vague answer of having bad feelings about the matter.
    I wasn’t sure I believed her.
    Which had left
me
unsettled, wondering if Miles’ skeleton was some sort of bony Pandora’s box that would have been better left undiscovered.
    Over the fence that divided Aunt Ve’s property from the yard next door, a beautiful scarlet macaw named Archibald, Archie for short, poked his head through an opening in the iron filigree of a large, ornate cage. The tall