He gave me one of his courtly bows, his pupils dilated and glittering. The pull I felt from him now wasn’t his inner core of stillness, but the vast hunger that lay beneath it. “You are welcome.”
Without thinking, I raised my mental shield between us. “Um . . . it’s probably best you were going now, right?”
“Yes.” Stefan paused, and I had the impression he was struggling unsuccessfully to regain his usual self- control. “If there is another such incident within the next few hours, it would not be wise to call upon us.”
“Duly noted,” I said. “Sorry—I wasn’t expecting an entire wedding party on the first outing.”
Although his pupils were still huge, Stefan smiled, his unexpected dimples appearing. “You did well.”
“Thanks.”
All in all, I felt pretty good about the incident. I hadn’t screwed up. I hadn’t lost my cool. When an unexpected problem arose, I’d found a solution. Hell, I could already hear the bridegroom in the background, bragging about his role in the whole affair. Even the presence of Stacey Brooks—
I looked around. “Hey, Cody! Where did Stacey go?”
“Huh?” Cody glanced up from a table containing an abandoned serving tray filled with skewers of chicken satay, his mouth full. He chewed, then swallowed. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. She took off a while ago. Why?”
“Just wondering.” Wondering what she meant to do with that footage she shot was more like it.
“She’s fine.” Cody wiped his hands on a napkin, tossing it on the table. “When you get right down to it, she’s pretty ballsy.”
I scowled at him.
He grinned. “Lighten up, Pixy Stix. We did a good job here, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, but you know this is probably just the beginning, right?” I said. “And I’m really not loving the nickname. Especially now.”
Cody’s grin widened. “Consider it an endearment.”
And consider me still confused, I thought. The thick-braided caterer bustled past us to reclaim the tray of chicken satay, shooting me a sympathetic look in passing. I wasn’t always down with the whole solidarity-in- sisterhood thing, because it can get bitter and acrimonious—and yes,
Forty-one
Stacey Brooks uploaded footage of the haunted wedding reception to YouTube at five forty-three p.m. on Saturday afternoon.
By Sunday, it had gone viral. It turns out that Stacey had a knack for this whole social networking thing. I found out about it because Lee Hastings turned up on my doorstep to tell me.
“There’s something you should see,” he said without preamble, whipping out his computer tablet to show me.
“Holy crap.” I watched the footage with dismay. “Can she do that? Post it without our permission?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” Lee said. “You can file a complaint for violation of privacy, but it takes a few days to resolve it. Which they might not even do, since you’re not actually identified by name or anything.”
On the screen, a series of wedding guests babbled about the experience in a state of giddy excitement. I got a sinking feeling watching it. “This is a bad idea,” I said. “A very bad idea.”
Lee halted the playback. “Yeah, I thought you might think so.”
“Can you make it go away?” I asked him.
He shook his head ruefully. “If you’re asking if I can hack the PVB’s YouTube account, probably. But this thing’s already been mirrored a dozen times. It’s out there, Daisy. Even if it wasn’t, Stacey still has the original footage. All she has to do is upload it again, and if other hackers think someone’s trying to scrub it, they’ll do their best to spread it further. Your best bet’s to ask her to take it down and hope people decide it was just another hoax.”
“I’m calling her mother,” I said, fishing out my phone.
Not only was Amanda Brooks unsympathetic to my concerns, but she had no intention of telling Stacey to remove the footage. “Do you have any idea what kind of publicity this could generate?” she asked me grimly. “Or any idea how long I’ve been trying to find the perfect off-season marketing angle for this town? Daisy, you do your job and let me do mine. I’ll go over your head if you don’t drop the matter. As long as this lasts, we’re going to exploit it for all it’s worth.”
“I just think you’re asking for troub—”
She cut me off before ending the call abruptly. “Something’s come up. Just do your job and stay out of our way.”
I let out a low hiss of frustration. “Goddammit!”
“No luck?” Lee said.
“No.”
Lee fidgeted with his tablet. “I guess you can’t blame her for wanting to find the silver lining,” he offered. “And you can’t blame people for wanting a glimpse of real magic.”
“I just hope the coven gets their shit together soon,” I muttered. “Because—”
My phone rang.
It was Cody. “We’ve got another one,” he said tersely. “Grab your gear and meet me at Riverside Grove.”
I gave Lee’s good arm a squeeze. “Thanks for the heads-up. I’ve got to run.”
Riverside Grove’s School of the Arts was a charming establishment out in the woods overlooking a lagoon. Back in the lumber days, the site boasted a hotel situated on a bend of the Kalamazoo River that catered to passengers traveling on Lake Michigan, but it was left stranded when the course of the river was altered around the turn of the century, cutting off the hotel from its patrons. Thanks to a handful of visionary artists and architects, the hotel and its surroundings got a second life as a haven for the arts, and it remained a thriving program to this day.
Which is also one of the reasons that until the dollar store opened, you could buy a painting for ten grand in Pemkowet, but not a pair of socks.
Anyway, the majority of Riverside Grove’s programming takes place in the summer and it should have been fairly empty at this time of year, but as luck would have it, the Pemkowet Historical Society was hosting an open house on this particular Sunday and had arranged hourly tours of the rustic campus with commentary by local historians.
It was a nice idea, and I understand it was a rousing success before the caretaker’s ghost showed up.
“Hello, dear.” Mrs. Meyers greeted me placidly when I emerged from my Honda onto the grassy parking area, where would-be tourgoers and other members of the historical society were hiding behind their cars. She nodded toward the insubstantial figure of a stocky man who was patrolling the verge and scowling, a double- barreled shotgun over his shoulder. Unlike the ghost bride’s, his feet appeared to make contact with the earth, presumably because he hadn’t died dangling above it. “I was just telling Officer Fairfax, I’m afraid Leonard’s risen.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Leonard?”
“Leonard Quincy,” Cody informed me. “Off-season caretaker of the facility until he was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in the winter of 1968.”
“Suicide?” I asked.
Cody shook his head. “According to Mrs. Meyers, it was an unsolved homicide.”
“It was probably an accident. Hunters, you know. Poaching. I always suspected one of the Thornberrys, myself.” Mrs. Meyers lowered her voice. “I tried a banishing spell, but Leonard only flickered.”
A shiny black SUV came barreling out of the woods and pulled into the parking area, disgorging Stacey Brooks, camera in hand. “Did I miss it?” she asked eagerly. “Tell me I didn’t miss it!”
I rolled my eyes. That was probably the something that had come up while I was on the phone with her
