Jenna Ryan - Night of the Raven

He caught the raised hand before it could do any serious damage and, using his body weight, reversed their positions. “Knock it—” was all he got out before his instincts kicked in and he blocked the knee that was heading for his groin.

Jesus, enough!

Teeth gnashed and with pain shooting through his skull, he brought his eyes into focus on the stunning and furious face of the woman from his nightmare.

* * *

FEAR STREAKED THROUGH Amara’s mind, not for her own safety, but for that of her grandmother who’d lived in this house for close to seventy years.

Although she was currently pinned to the floor with her hands over her head and her wrists tightly cuffed, she attempted to knee him again. When that failed, she bucked her hips up into his. If she could loosen his iron grip, she might be able to sink her teeth into his forearm.

“I’ll kill you if you’ve hurt her,” she panted. “This is about me, not my family. You of all people should understand that.”

He offset another blow. “Lady, the only thing I understand is that you broke into a house that doesn’t belong to you.”

“Or you,” she fired back. “You have no right to be here. Where’s my grandmother?”

“I have every right to be here, and how the hell should I know?”

Her heart tripped. “Is she—dead?”

“What? No. Look, I live here, okay?”

Unable to move, Amara glared at him. “You’re lying. I spoke to Nana last night. There was no mention of a man either visiting or living in her home.”

He lowered his head just far enough for her to see the smile that grazed his lips. “Maybe your granny doesn’t tell you everything, angel.”

“That’s disgusting.” She refused to tremble. “Have you hurt her?”

“I haven’t done anything to her. I don’t eat elderly women, then take to their beds in order to get the jump on their beautiful granddaughters.”

“That’s not exactly reassuring.”

“Yeah, it really is, Red.”

When her eyes flashed, he sighed. “Red... Red Riding Hood. Now, why don’t you calm down, we’ll back up a few steps and try to sort this out? My name’s Ethan McVey and I—”

“Have no business being in my grandmother’s house.”

“You’re gonna have to get past that one, I’m afraid. Truth is I have all kinds of business here.” He shifted position when she almost liberated her other knee. “As far as I know, your grandmother’s somewhere in the Caribbean with two of her friends and one very old man who’s sliding down the slippery slope toward his hundred and second birthday.”

His words startled a disbelieving laugh out of her. “Nana took old Rooney Blume to the Caribbean?”

“That’s the story I got. No idea if it’s true. Her private life’s not my concern. You, on the other hand, are very much my concern, seeing as you’re lying on my kitchen floor behaving like a wildcat.”

“Nana’s kitchen floor.”

“Rent’s paid, floor’s mine. So’s the badge you probably failed to notice on the table above us.”

Doubt crept in. “Badge, as in cop?”

“Badge as in chief of police. Raven’s Cove,” he added before she could ask.

The red haze clouding Amara’s vision began to dissolve. “You said rent. If you’re a cop, why are you renting my grandmother’s house?”

“Because the first place she rented to me developed serious plumbing and electrical issues, both of which are in the process of being rectified.”

Why a laugh should tickle her throat was beyond her. “Would that first place be Black Rock Cottage, rebuilt from a ruin fifty years ago by my grandfather and renovated last year by Wrecking Ball Buck Blume?”

“That’d be it.”

“Then I’m sorry I scratched you.”

“Does that mean you’re done trying to turn me into a eunuch?”

“Maybe.”

“As reassurances go, I’m not feeling it, Red.”

“Put yourself in my position. My grandmother didn’t mention a Caribbean vacation when I spoke to her yesterday.”

“So, thinking she was here, you opted to break and enter your grandmother’s home rather than knock on the door.”

“I knocked. No one answered. Nana keeps an extra key taped to a flowerpot on her back stoop. And before you tell me how careless that is, mine’s bigger.”

To her relief, he let go of her wrists and pushed himself to his knees. He was still straddling her, but at least his far too appealing face wasn’t quite so close. “Your what?”

“Omission. Nana didn’t mention an extra key to you, and she didn’t mention you to me.” She squirmed a little, then immediately wished she hadn’t. “Uh, do you mind? Thanks,” she murmured when he got to his feet.

“I’d say no problem if the damn room would stop spinning.”

Still wary, Amara accepted the hand he held down to her. “Would you like me to look at your head?”

“Why?”

“Because you might have a concussion.”

“That’s a given, Red. I meant why you? Are you a doctor?”

“I’m a reconstructive surgeon.”

“Seriously?” Laughing, he started for the back door. “You do face and butt lifts for a living?”

What had come perilously close to going hot and squishy inside her hardened. Her lips quirked into a cool smile. “There you go. Whatever pays the bills.”

“If you say so.”

She maintained her pleasant expression. “Returning to the omission thing... Can you think of any reason why Nana would neglect to mention you were living here when we talked?”

“You had a bad connection?”

Or more likely insufficient time to relate many details, thanks to Lieutenant Michaels, who’d done everything in his power, short of tearing the phone from her hand and tossing her into the backseat of his car, to hasten their departure. Amara glanced up as a gust of wind whistled through the rafters. “My mother would call this an omen and say I shouldn’t have come.”

“Yeah?” The cop—he’d said McVey, hadn’t he?—picked up and tapped his iPhone as he wandered past the island. “She into the woo-woo stuff, too?”

“If by that you mean does she believe in some of the local legends? Absolutely.”

He glanced at her. “There’re more than two?”

“There are more than two hundred, but most of them are offshoots of the interconnected original pair. The Blumes are very big on their ancestor Hezekiah’s transformation into a raven.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“That transformation is largely blamed on the Bellam witches.”

“The Bellams being your ancestors.”

“My grandmother’s surname gave it away, huh?”

“Among other things. Setting the bulk of them aside and assuming you’re Amara, your gran sent me a very short, very cryptic text message last night.”

“You’re just opening a text from last night now?”

“Give me a break, Red. It’s my day off, this is my personal phone and the windstorm out there dislodged four shutters that I’ve spent the better part of the past twelve hours repairing and reattaching.” He turned his iPhone so she could see the screen. “According to Grandma Bellam, you’re in a whack of trouble from the crime lord you helped convict.”

Amara read the message, then returned her gaze to his unfathomable and strangely compelling eyes. “Whack being the operative word. Look, it’s late, and I’m intruding—apparently. I’m sure one of my aunts, uncles or cousins will put me up for the night.” Wanting some distance between them, she started for the door. “I left my rental car at the foot of the driveway. It’s pointed toward Raven’s Hollow. As luck would have it, that’s where my less antagonistic relatives live. So I’ll leave you to whatever you were doing before we met and go break into one of their houses.” She rummaged through her shoulder bag and produced the back door key. “I’ll put this back under the flowerpot. Nana locks herself out at least three times a year.”

Setting his phone on the island, McVey moved toward her. “Forget the key, Amara. Talk to me about this ‘whack of trouble.’”

“It’s a—sticky story.”

“I’m a cop. I’m used to sticky. I’m also fine with ‘sounds crazy,’ if that helps.”

It didn’t. Neither did the fact that he’d ventured far enough into the light that she could see her initial assessment of him had been dead-on. The man was...well, 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?”