One Corpse Open Slay Read online

  My chest rose and fell in exertion and sheer terror. If I got us out of this, I was going to go to Ruthie’s yoga class every day for the rest of my life because my legs were killing me.

  Gripping her shoulders, I whisper-hissed, “Ruthie! It’s Hal!”

  She jumped, her muscles tightening as she woke and shook her head, her breathing muffled by the tape. Whimpering, she looked at me with eyes full of terror.

  I held my finger to my lips to quiet her. “It’s going to be okay. I promise. Just give me a minute to figure this out.”

  As I strained to remember a spell that would take us anywhere but here, her eyes widened as she scanned the length of my body until she reached my feet. She looked up at me, a question in her glassy, tear-filled orbs. Maybe she wasn’t a fan of thigh-high boots?

  Tipping her chin up, I implored her with my eyes to stay quiet as fat tears fell down her pretty face, splotching to her lap—and I drew a complete blank.

  So, I think I’ve talked about hindsight before, haven’t I?

  Well, in hindsight, I should have done at least one of two things. Locked the door behind me or simply snapped my fingers and hoped for the best. It’s not an optimal answer, but it’s better than the alternative.

  An alternative that was staring me in the face as Tana flew into the doorway and threw gasoline all over me and poor Ruthie before holding up a silver lighter and flicking it to life.

  CHAPTER 15

  “O’er the fields we go, laughing all the way!”

  Dear magic, now would be an awesome time to work—properly, of course. Love, Halliday Valentine.

  Tana West loomed in the doorway as the wind swirled behind her, the handle of the empty can of gasoline balancing between her fingers before she let it fall to the floor in a clatter, making Ruthie shudder and sob through the duct tape.

  The smell of the gasoline dripping off us, mingled with the damp air, clung to my nose, bringing my fear to a head.

  One wrong move, and we’d go up in flames. All of us.

  Tana’s eyes met mine, and they weren’t the eyes of someone gone mad. They were the eyes of someone with determination and a mission on their mind.

  “Boy, you weren’t kidding when you said you were nosy. How did you get here? How did you know?”

  Dripping gasoline and freezing, I eyed her with clenched fists. “Don’t worry about how I got here, just tell me why you’re doing this, Tana? Why?”

  She sighed as though I was an inconvenience and managed to ignore the question. “I need you to know, I don’t want to do this, Hal. I just don’t have choice,” she said, without appearing at all frantic or upset as she yanked the trailer door shut behind her.

  In fact, she was eerily calm, and that couldn’t be good. That meant she was resigned to kill us, but I needed to understand why.

  Licking my now dry lips, melting snow dripping down my face, I made the choice to further engage.

  “You do have a choice, Tana. You have a beautiful daughter and husband who adore you. Think of them. Don’t tack another murder onto your dance card.”

  The determination on her face sagged for a moment in the flicker of the flame, before she said, “So you know.”

  I didn’t know if I knew, but I think I knew, but my primary concern was Ruthie and getting her gone. “Why do you have to hurt Ruthie, Tana? Let her go, please,” I begged.

  Using her forearm to push her soaking-wet hair from her face, she shook her head, still clinging to that lighter. “I don’t want to, I have to. Ruth saw my car that morning when she was jogging. She can identify it, and the police will know I was here in Marshmallow Hollow the morning Yule was killed, not later in the afternoon. I can’t take a chance. Not a single one. They won’t understand, Hal. My family won’t understand. I can’t let Gerald know. I can’t let Jolie find out. She can’t ever, ever know.”

  Her words were so ominous, so devoid of hope, everything came together for me then. The picture of Tana with Yule’s mother suddenly made sense—and Tana was willing to kill to keep it a secret.

  Inhaling, I fought a violent shiver and tried to remain calm. “Jolie is Yule’s biological child, isn’t she, Tana?”

  She cracked then, only a little, but I saw it in the headlights of the car, shining in through the tiny window. Just a slight falter from a woman trying desperately to keep it all together.

  “Yes. Yes,” she ground out, her sharply drawn jaw tight as she held the lighter higher. “Yes. And I hate it. I despise him. The very idea I was ever anywhere near him disgusts me to the bone. It makes my skin literally crawl. But Jolie is Yule Wolfram’s daughter, and I’ll die before she’ll ever know!”

  That was when I remembered. Yule had made suggestive remarks toward Jolie. Dear Goddess… “Because he made a pass at her?” I squeaked out. “Did he know Jolie was his…”

  “No!” she spat with a ragged gasp. “No. He didn’t know when he…” She shook her head vehemently as though she were shaking off a layer of filth. “No.”

  “It was you on the phone with him that night, wasn’t it? Twyla Good told me he got a phone call from someone. It was you.”

  Her shoulders slumped momentarily, her face wracked with anguish, her lips in a sneer. “That disgusting, repulsive pig came on to his own daughter, for God’s sake!” she spat. “There wasn’t a woman with a pulse he wouldn’t chase after—not one. But not my daughter. There was no way I was going to allow it, and I told him so. I bought a burner phone and called him up and I told him I’d kill him if he came near her again!”

  But Tana had said they were never involved. “But I thought you were at least friends before he stole the competition, weren’t you? I saw pictures of you, sitting together on a bench… Why wouldn’t you tell him about Jolie?”

  She shook the lighter in the air, her face a mask of hatred. “We weren’t friends and those pictures were taken before he…”

  Oh, no. Dear Goddess, please no. As Ruthie whimpered, shivering from the freezing cold, a horrible, insidious thought came to mind. “Did he…?”

  “Yes!” she screamed, her face going red, her cool façade finally falling away. “Yes! Yes! He forced himself on me all those years ago, and Jolie is the result!”

  My throat tightened up, my fists clenching at just how sick and horrible Yule really was. “Oh, Tana…Tana, I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. I only knew I had to get the lighter from her.

  The floor of the trailer was soaked in gasoline, as were Ruthie and I. She’d set us all on fire.

  But Tana held tight to the lighter, shaking it in the air as the flame hissed and crackled. “It was the night before he stole that championship from me. He came to my hotel room,” she sobbed, her body quaking. “He came to my hotel room and forced his way inside and—”

  “Stop!” I cried out, my heart breaking for her. “Don’t. You don’t have to tell me if it hurts too much. But would you please, tell me why? Why didn’t you tell someone, Tana? Why did you let him get away with it?”

  But Tana scoffed at that, her expression sour with revulsion. “Because back in those days, you just didn’t, Hal. You didn’t tell anyone because they didn’t believe you!” she howled before she became quiet again, as though lost in the memory.

  “I’m sorry, Tana. Dear heaven, I’m sorry,” I rasped out, fighting the chatter of my teeth.

  She straightened her spine and stared right through me, lost in her misery. “They didn’t believe you back then. They just didn’t,” she repeated.“So I went home and I found out I was pregnant and I was going to give the baby up for adoption, but when I saw her…the day I first saw her sweet, round face…it was a warm spring day, and the sun was shining and the birds were singing, and I held her in my arms and…”

  The spring flowers in my vision. The revelation that Jolie was born in the spring hit me hard in the gut.

  “Does Gerald know what happened?” I squeaked.

  Tana shook her soaking wet head, her e
yes filling with tears. “No!” she ground out. “I met him three years after I had Jolie, but she’s always known him as her father and we never told her any differently and I won’t start now! I’ll never tell her that animal is her father. Never!”

  “Then why did you let her come to a competition he was judging, Tana? Why would you risk it?” I almost couldn’t fathom it.

  She made a face of disgust. “I had no idea he was still judging and if I’d known he was going to be here, I’d have made sure she stayed far away from him! And now, after all this, now, now she’s having…”

  I stepped in front of Ruthie and the chair, keeping my hand on her shoulder. “Now she’s having a baby of her own,” I whispered quietly.

  Tana crumpled at my words, tears filling her eyes and falling to the floor. “Yes. Now she’s having a baby of her own, and I don’t want to miss it. But I’ll miss it if the police figure out who killed him, Hal. I can’t miss it!”

  A flicker of a memory for a solution to getting us out of here tugged at the back of my mind, but until I could cohesively remember the spell, I had to keep her talking.

  My teeth chattered, but I clamped down hard to regain control before I asked, “But why did you kill him? Surely, after you told him about her, he didn’t want Jolie to know he was her biological father—not after making an inappropriate remark to her.”

  I almost choked on those words, they made my stomach turn a hard right and stirred bile in my throat.

  “Because Yule knows a good thing when he sees it. Jolie’s going somewhere in the ice sculpting world, and he wants to ride her coattails because he’s a talentless hack. That’s why! He had the nerve, after coming on to his own daughter, to suggest to me he could be her agent!”

  In that moment, I thought I’d throw up over how truly insidious Yule Wolfram was. In fact, it was all I could do to avoid it as my stomach rolled. “But why would you go see his mother? Why would you bring Jolie with you?”

  “I’d known Yule’s mother for almost all of my competition years. She was a wonderful human being, and when I heard she was dying, I couldn’t bear that she was alone. So I brought her someone to make up for the sick animal she’d given birth to. It was the right thing to do.”

  “So what happened that morning, Tana?” I asked gently. “Why was he in the sled? How did you get him up the hill?”

  That brought her back to life, her sarcastic laughter ringing out in the frigid air. “We argued in the ice sculpting tent. We were the ones who broke your carving, by the way. When I told him I’d tell the world about what he’d done, that I’d tell the tabloids if he didn’t shut his mouth, he pushed me into it.” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug of almost indifference then, the lighter still flaming.

  “So you got angry…” I coaxed.

  “I saw red,” she seethed, her spit flying and the hand that held the lighter shaking. “He pushed me the way he’d pushed me once before, and I saw red. There was no way I was going to let him tell Jolie she was born because he—because—” Stopping, Tana appeared to gather herself together and shake off her disgust. “When he pushed me into your table, I grabbed the ice pick on your carving.”

  Wow. Wow. Wow. Who knew ice could be so sharp? “That’s what cut his jugular? A lightsaber?”

  Her smile under the glow of the small flame of the lighter was almost macabre. “Carved ice can be deadly, Hal.” She shook her head. “I didn’t mean to kill him. Not at first, but when he turned away, when he treated me like he had all those years ago, when he called me something filthy, as though I’d made him attack me, I ran after him. All the years of hating him for what he’d done to me, for having to keep a tawdry secret about my beautiful daughter, came to a boil and spilled over.”

  “You chased him up the hill?” Man, kudos to her for still being able to stand after running up that hill.

  Her eyes went cool again. “I did. I chased that coward up the hill and when he tripped, I stabbed him. He deserved nothing less. When I realized he was dead, I hauled him into that sled and I walked away. I drove to the rest area on the highway and took a nap…because I didn’t care who found him. I didn’t care that he was dead. He deserved to die, Hal. He deserved it!”

  My whole body was growing numb from the soaking-wet cold, the stench of gasoline was beginning to choke me, and Ruthie had stilled behind me. I needed to get us out now.

  “He did, Tana. He was an awful person, but don’t make this worse. I’m begging you to let Ruthie go. She didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t let Yule ruin another life.”

  But her pretty eyes pleaded with me, tears of regret filling them. “I can’t do that, Hal. You know I can’t. I can’t have any witnesses if I hope to ever see my grandchild! You have to go!” she cried. “Please forgive me. I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

  As Tana obviously made her decision, and I prayed I was going to chant the right spell, she lifted her arm, the glow of the flame from the lighter now above her head, making her silhouette against the trailer wall appear sinister.

  The silver lighter arced in the air, turning end over end as I screamed, “Drag her in, drag us out, take us away, hear me shout!”

  Snapping my fingers, I sealed the deal.

  And then it all went left.

  The back of the trailer blew wide open to the sound Tana’s screams ringing in my ears, blowing poor Ruthie and I out onto the ground, where we hit the deep snow with a bone-jarring splat, our labored grunts filling the air.

  As I fought my way to a sitting position, the tune of sirens in my ears, my eyes flew open wide at the sight rising from the trailer.

  A dragon.

  Oh, Baba Yaga, I’d summoned a dragon.

  A full-on, blue-and-green, fire-breathing dragon in the trailer, scorching the area with flames, his roar shaking the ground beneath me.

  I winced, trying to figure out where I’d gone wrong. I could have sworn it was drag in, drag out…

  Mothertrucker. None of that mattered. I’d messed up the spell and if I didn’t fix it, the police were in for a surprise. Scrambling to my feet, I shouted into the wind and snow, “Leave us creature, you must go. Leave this world, fly as the crow!”

  Snapping my fingers, I sent up a small prayer to the universe and scrunched my eyes shut seconds before the roaring stopped.

  “Thank Goddess,” I whispered into the frigid night.

  When I popped my eyes open, I remembered Ruthie and gasped. Stumbling through the snow, I ran to her, pushing the chair upward. Her eyes were wide with fear, reminding me she’d gotten a bird’s-eye view of the dragon I’d summoned.

  Pulling the tape from her mouth as the police yelled and I heard Sheriff Ansel bark orders, I ran my hand down her face. “Forget this time, forget this place, take the memories, leave no trace.”

  I prayed that would erase everything that had happened to her up until now.

  She blinked then, her eyes focusing on me. “Hal?” she croaked. “Where am I? What happened?”

  “It’s okay, Ruthie,” I crooned as I pulled at the duct tape around her wrist with icy fingers. “It’s all going to be fine. I promise you.”

  As footsteps drew closer, I realized I had those ridiculous thigh-high boots on, and that would never fly. Using a tired hand, I flicked my fingers over my frozen feet and snapped my fingers, producing a pair of boots that looked close enough to mine.

  “Hal?” Sheriff Ansel called as he approached in his bulky police jacket and champagne hat covered in plastic, shining a flashlight in my eyes. “Is that you?”

  Falling back in the snow exhausted, as Ruthie clung to my hand, I nodded my soaking-wet head. “It’s me.”

  He looked around at the trailer, now on fire with smoke billowing from it, despite the heavy snow (I think dragon fire is hotter than average fire), and then at the general war zone my spell had turned the field into, and asked, “What in all of chaos happened here?”

  That made me sit up straight, my teeth starting to chatter as I frantically loo
ked around. “Where’s Tana West?” I asked, panicked.

  “She’s okay, Hal. Knocked out cold, but okay,” I heard Hobbs say in his deep, reassuring voice as he dropped down next to me and pulled me into his arms, soaking-wet clothes, soaked in gasoline and all.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked in disbelief, clinging to his warmth.

  “He hitched a ride with me,” Stiles said, clomping through the snow toward us, the look on his face full of concern.

  Hobbs held me close, resting his chin on the top of my head. “So, girlfriend, here’s a question for you—what are you doing here?”

  I laughed so hard, I almost cried. “Well, boyfriend, do I have a story to tell you…”

  EPILOGUE

  Later that night…

  I snuggled closer to Hobbs on the couch as we sat by the fire, enjoying a scalding-hot cup of coffee and a heated blanket. After I gave my statement to the police and took a hot shower, I’d told him everything that happened with Tana West.

  Atti had gotten my message sent via my magic, and thank goodness he had…but I had a lot of loose ends I needed to handle after this catastrophe, and Hobbs was one of them. Don’t think Atti didn’t remind me of that, either.

  That meant, the time had come, for better or for worse…

  Letting his chin rest on the top of my head as Barbra slept in my lap, and Stephen King and Phil curled up by the fire, Hobbs tightened his grip around my shoulders. “I’m only going to say this once, Detective Lacey, and you can take it however you’d like, but I’m gonna say it anyway.”

  “And what are you going to say, Detective Cagney?”

  “Don’t ever up and disappear on me like that again. Hear?” he said in one of the twangiest Southern demands he’d made so far. “You scared me half to death. It was like one minute we were getting on the ice, and the next you were gone. I looked all over that daggone rink for you. Everywhere. When Jolie told me you’d gone to talk to Tana and Ruthie, but she didn’t know why, I knew somethin’ wasn’t right. I just didn’t know what. The longer you were gone, the more worried I got.”