Page 12 of Of Magic and Murder

“Oh, calm down. You’re going to wake everyone in town.”

“You!”

“Yes, yes. Let’s get that part out of the way. It’s me. Obviously.”

“What are you doing here?”

She stares down at me with a look of pure disbelief mingled with a sneer that says she can’t believe I’d ask that. “Wake up, sleepyhead. Use your eyes. Use your brain. Notice anything different about me?”

My first instinct is to refuse. She looks exactly the same as she did the last time I saw her: the long, dark-haired braid, her dark eyes, and the hint of wrinkles surrounding them. Like me, she has a tendency toward wearing loose, flowing clothes, though she’s got on a sleeveless tank and a skirt that touches the back of her upper legs.

But then, as I blink myself into true consciousness, I realize exactly what she means: Olivia is only at about fifty percent opacity. Oh, and she’s also hovering about six inches off the floor. Her coloring is much more wan than it had been which makes sense because⁠—

“You’re dead!”

“Yup.”

“You’re a ghost!”

She sighs. “And you’re supposed to be a seer. The only one currently in Moonburrow, as far as I know. Trust me. If there was any other witch I could talk to about my murder, I would be waking them up. Unfortunately for us, you’re it, and that means you’re the lucky witch who gets to help me.”

Maybe it’s unfair of me to be suspicious. Not two months ago, Olivia Frost fooled her coven of witches and the Moonburrow Sheriff Department into believing she was dead. She drank a potion that stopped her heart, slowed every bodily function until even a wolf shifter couldn’t tell she was still alive, then arranged the evidence so that it looked like I murdered her.

It worked, too, until the potion wore off and she went after Morrigaine’s mirror before getting caught, then escaping.

However, I know better. It would be so much easier to believe that Olivia came back to Moonburrow to fuck with me. However, she’s right. I am a seer, and despite the obvious facts that she’s hovering and she’s only halfway here, there’s also a particular energy to a ghost that I’ve never been able to explain to witches who can’t see them like I can. It’s not quite magic, though there’s magic involved. It’s more like an echo left behind after someone dies, only strong enough to think and speak and annoy the ever-loving hell out of the unfortunate seer they decide to haunt until they resolve their unfinished business.

I can only imagine what Olivia’s will be…

It doesn’t help that I can feel her spectral energy while I’m sitting in bed. Throwing the comforter away from me, I move so that my bare feet are on the floor.

“You’re dead.”

She wrinkles her nose. “So kind of you to notice.”

“No. I mean…” I push my tangled red hair away from my face. “You’re actually dead.”

“Yes, Penelope. I am aware of that. And that’s why I’m here. You need to tell me who murdered me.”

“You don’t know?”

Olivia scowls at me. “Not quite. I know how I died. It was just after midnight. I was walking in the woods when one of them attacked me.”

“Attacked? What? One of who?”

“It was a wolf. I know that much.” A wry smile from the former witch healer. “I… I tripped. It was an accident. But I felt the claws rip me open before I could do more than get a glimpse of the big, black wolf that attacked me.”

My heart skips a beat.

A wolf. In the woods.

Attacking a witch.

“And you don’t know who it was? A… a shifter?” A feral? “Or, like, an ordinary wild wolf?”

“I’m pretty sure it was a supe. But I don’t know any more than that. Just that someone wanted me dead and now I am.” She waits a beat. “And you need to help me find out who did it.”

“Me? No⁠—”