gorgeous worked as well as any other word.
Long dark hair swept away from a pair of riveting brown eyes, and what female alive wouldn’t kill for those cheekbones? Then there was the lean, rangy body. She wouldn’t mind having that on top of her again.... And, God help her, where had that thought come from? She seriously needed to get her hormones under control, because no way should the idea of—okay, admit it—sex with an überhot man send her thoughts careening off to fantasyland.
Jimmy Sparks, vicious head of a family chock full of homicidal relatives, wanted her dead. She couldn’t go back to New Orleans or her job, and she couldn’t reasonably expect Lieutenant Michaels to do any more than he’d already done to help her. Her grandmother wasn’t in Raven’s Hollow, and Amara figured she’d probably alienated the Cove cop who was to the point where he might actually consider turning her over to Jimmy’s kith and kin simply to be rid of her.
“I really am sorry about all of this.” She backed toward the mudroom. “I wasn’t expecting to find...”
“A wolf in Grandma’s cottage?” He continued to advance. “Still waiting for the story, Red. If the trouble part’s too big a leap, start with the ‘less antagonistic relatives’ reference.”
“First off, I’d rather you called me Amara. You can see for yourself, my hair’s more brown than red. Which, when you get right down to it, is the story of my relatives in an extremely simplified nutshell.”
“Gonna need a bit more than that, I’m afraid. So far all I’ve got is that you’re the descendant of a Bellam witch.”
“Yes, but the question is which witch? Most Bellams can trace the roots of their family tree back to Nola. There are only a handful of us who have her lesser-known sister Sarah’s blood.”
Finally, thankfully, he stopped moving. “If Nola and Sarah were sisters, what’s the difference blood-wise?”
“Nola Bellam was married to Hezekiah Blume. At least she was, until Hezekiah went on a killing spree. According to the Blume legend, he repented. However, all those deaths got him turned into a clairvoyant raven. There wasn’t a large window of opportunity for Nola to get pregnant. Unless you add in the unpleasant fact that Hezekiah’s brother Ezekiel raped her, accused her of being a witch, then hunted her down and tried to destroy her. Thus, Hezekiah’s killing spree.”
“Complicated stuff.”
“Isn’t it? It gets worse, too, because, as luck would have it, sister Sarah had a thing for Ezekiel.”
“And that ‘thing’ resulted in a child?”
“You catch on quick. Sarah had a daughter, who had a daughter and so on. So did Nola, of course, but not with Hezekiah. Even in legend, humans and ravens can’t mate. Long story short, and rape notwithstanding, Nola never gave birth to a Blume baby. Sarah did.” Amara shrugged. “I’m sure you know by now that Blumes and Bellams have been at odds for...well, ever. Raven’s Cove versus Raven’s Hollow in all things legendary and logical. So where does a Bellam with Blume blood in her background fit in? Does she cast spells or fall victim to them? And which town does she claim for her own? You can imagine the genetic dilemma.”
McVey cocked his head. “You’re not going to go all weird and spooky on me, are you?”
“Haven’t got time for that, unfortunately.”
“Knowing Jimmy Sparks, I tend to agree.”
Her fingers froze on the doorknob. “You know him?”
“We’ve met once or twice.” McVey sent her a casual smile. “Well, I say met, but it was really more a case of I shot at him.”
“You fired bullets at Jimmy King-of-Grudges Sparks and lived to tell about it?”
“Put the living-to-tell part down to pure, dumb luck. I was painfully green at the time, but I was also a better shot than my partner, who took it upon himself through me to try to blow Sparks’s tires out after we witnessed an illegal late-night exchange.”
“And?”
“I hit two tires before someone inside the vehicle fired back. The shooter winged my partner. He got me in the shoulder, then got off when our report of the incident mysteriously disappeared. Before the night was done, we’d been ordered to forget the whole thing.”
“Lucky Jimmy.”
“Is that censure I hear in your voice, Red?”
“On the off chance that you actually do have a concussion, let’s call it curiosity.”
“Let’s call it not your business, and move on to why one of this country’s least-favorite sons is giving you, the descendant of a Maine witch, grief.”
“I helped send him to prison. Seems my testimony pissed him off.”
“Thereby landing you in a whack of trouble and leaving me with one last burning question.” Without appearing to move, he closed the gap between them, wrapped his fingers and thumb lightly around her jaw and tipped her head back to stare down at her. “Why the hell has your witchy face been in my head for the past fifteen years?”
He didn’t expect an answer. He wasn’t even sure why he’d asked the question. True, she looked very much like the woman in his recurring dream, but the longer he stared at her—couldn’t help that part, unfortunately—the more the differences added up.
On closer inspection, Amara’s hair really was more brown than red. Her features were also significantly finer than...whomever. Her gray eyes verged on charcoal, her slim curves were much better toned and her legs were the longest he’d seen on any woman anywhere.
He might have lingered on the last thing if she hadn’t slapped a hand to his chest, narrowed those beautiful charcoal eyes to slits and seared him with a glare.
“What do you mean my face has been in your head for fifteen years? What the hell kind of question is that?”
A faint smile touched his lips. “Given my potentially concussed state, call it curiosity and forget I asked.”
The suspicion returned. “Are you sure my grandmother’s in the Caribbean and not locked in a closet upstairs?”
“This might not be the best time to be giving me ideas.” With his eyes still on hers, he pulled a beeping iPhone from his pocket and pressed the speaker button. “What is it, Jake?”
“Got a problem here, Chief.”
His deputy sounded stoked, which was never a good sign. But it was the background noises—the thumps, shouts and crashes—that told the story.
“Bar fight got out of hand, huh?”
“Wasn’t my fault.” Jake had to yell above the sound of shattering glass. “All I did was tell the witch people to mount their broomsticks and fly off home.”
“You know you’re in Raven’s Hollow, right? Raven’s
