Page 27 of Bewitched By the Pumpkin Queen

As we exit into the crisp autumn air, Delia falls into step beside me, close enough that I catch the scent of her shampoo, yet far enough away that we don’t brush sleeves. The frustration radiates from her in waves, and I can practically feel the heat of it against my skin.

"That can't be all they have to go on," she hisses through clenched teeth. "There has to be something they missed."

"There is," I agree, “but we aren’t going to find it here.”

The evidence is out there somewhere. We just need to find it before the killer finds their next victim.

***

The farmhouse study feels too warm after the chill outside. I shed my jacket and throw it over the back of the chair, then flip on the overhead light.

"I'll take the vendor applications," I say to Delia, pulling a stack toward me. "You handle the guest logs."

Delia nods, already flipping open her laptop to check ticket sales on the CRM and POS systems, drumming her fingers on the table in that way that says she’ll tear the whole system apart pixel by pixel if she has to.

Whiskers, ever the opportunist, leaps onto the edge of the table and noses into the pile of paperwork. “I’ll supervise,” he declares, settling on a stack of papers on the desk.

I sink into the recliner and sort the applications on the coffee table in front of me. Food vendors go in one pile, crafters in another, entertainers in a third. After creating neat stacks, I examine names, backgrounds, and contact information.

I tap my pen against the yellow post-it pad, jotting down names that catch my attention. The farmhand with the shifty eyes who handles the horse medications. That pre-med kid who flunked out last semester but still talks like he knows everything about anatomy. And there's Davis, who once threatened to "end" Vincent after a dispute over property lines at the farmers' market.

Hours pass.

Delia stands and stretches her arms over her head, bones cracking, then rubs her tired eyes with the heel of her palm. "Anything?" she asks.

"A few maybes." I read them out, and she grimaces at the same ones that trouble me. “What about you?”

“We had over eight hundred ticket sales that day.”

Whiskers interrupts, "That's enough suspects to fill a bingo card.”

Delia holds up a hand for silence. "Let me finish," she says, “This is what struck me interesting.” she points at a name on the computer screen.

Isabella Raveen.

My breath catches. Isabella was the first witch executed in the Salem trials. A name that should be confined to history books, not appearing on our ticket sales from last month. The cursor blinks beside it on the screen, as if challenging us to make sense of this impossible connection.

I move to her side, the subtle quickening of Delia's pulse registering in my enhanced werewolf senses despite my efforts to ignore it, "Can you check for additional details? Middle initial? Contact information?" I ask.

Her fingers fly across the keyboard, her brow furrowing as she digs deeper into the system. After a moment, she shakes her head. "Nothing useful. Generic email address, and they paid with a gift card. Completely untraceable."

"Well, this is going splendidly," Whiskers observes from his perch. “We’re running in circles and the only lead we have is a centuries-dead witch.”

Delia shoots him a look that would wither a lesser familiar. "Not helping."

The name can't be a coincidence. Someone's taunting us, playing a sick game while we fumble around in the dark.

I rub my face and skulk away, pacing the floor in front of the desk, “I think we should go to the library tomorrow and check the historical archives," I say, the plan formulating as I speak. "I want to know everything about Isabella Raveen—her death, her descendants, anyone who might have a vendetta connected to her name."