Chapter 2 #2
As Arthur turned left at the fork that led up toward the inn, he caught sight of the welcome sign just down the road.
Once again, it had been changed to say Trident Balls.
Quinn would, undoubtedly, be there in the next day or two to correct it in her endless war against their crass brand of humor.
She’d commented that each time the graffiti was harder to remove, but Arthur wondered if it had less to do with the durability of the paint and more to do with her own softening resolve.
Thinking of Brody made Arthur’s already churning stomach twist even more.
After Brody’s father’s arrest and the discovery of Brody’s own involvement in the cover-up, Arthur had promised to help him find his mother, who’d left Trident Falls when Brody was younger.
He wished he had something to show for his efforts.
His few leads hadn’t amounted to much, but things had been remarkably busy at the inn, and truth be told he hadn’t had much time to dedicate to the search outside online sleuthing and a few trips to the records room at city hall.
Perhaps he wasn’t really suited to being a VAMP PI (very astute married paranormal private investigator).
How was he supposed to track down someone who’d been gone for years if he couldn’t even find a cat?
He couldn’t let Sal down now. He had to at least live up to the M in the acronym and come through for his husband.
Eventually they turned down a driveway, and the Dead & Breakfast emerged through the trees.
A converted grange, it was charmingly rustic but very well preserved.
Arthur had done most of the remodeling himself, though the building had been an inn for nearly a century.
The previous owners had dubbed it the Iris Inn after the original proprietor, Iris, and, likely due to the name, had many irises planted around the grounds.
Arthur loved flowers, taking it upon himself to plant a great many more.
It did him proud to see the blooms there to welcome them home.
The modest parking lot, which had begun to empty early that morning as guests checked out, would be full once again by evening—and not only because parking in town was scarce due to the festival.
No, gone were the days of feeling a flicker of hope at an unscheduled arrival only to see them use their lot as a turnaround on their way to somewhere else.
The inn was booked solid through the summer season, and if anyone happened upon their B&B with designs of staying without booking in advance, well, Arthur would be hard-pressed to find them anything more substantial than a broom closet until well after the festival.
Arthur checked his watch and grimaced. “Not much time before check-ins,” he lamented, silently mourning the prospect of a long bath. He needed to enter host mode, but it was difficult to step into the serene and unbothered persona under the circumstances.
“Do you think the guests could be persuaded to join the search party?” Sal asked as they stowed their bike in the garage. “Surely most of them will be at the festival this evening. And what nobler purpose could anyone strive for than rescuing a lost little cat? She’s all alone out there, helpless—”
“She’s got claws. Sharp ones.” Arthur could still feel the phantom sting of them slicing through his suit jacket earlier. “And she’s quick on her feet. Smart, too. She’ll be all right.”
As if his husband had tuned him out entirely, Salvatore carried on. “She must be terrified! My sweet angel…” Sal snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! While you check in the guests, I’ll make Missing posters. That way they’ll know what she looks like.”
“That’s not a bad idea, actually.” Arthur took Salvatore’s hand as they entered the inn together.
“Perhaps ’tis I who wears the smarty pants in this relationship.” Sal went up on his tiptoes to kiss Arthur on the cheek. “Have fun checking in the guests!”
Salvatore flitted off to some unknown corner of the inn, undoubtedly searching for his copious craft supplies, while Arthur retired to their bedroom to change his suit.
An outsider might have thought Sal’s comment about Arthur having fun to be in jest, but it wasn’t.
Arthur loved greeting guests and showing them to their rooms. Watching as they discovered their new favorite getaway would, much like a vampire, never get old.
He liked to linger, listening to them coo over the chocolates on the pillows or the view from their window.
Just as their guests delighted in the quirks of the Dead & Breakfast, Arthur, too, loved observing the guests themselves.
He kept a small notebook at the check-in desk for jotting down their habits.
He’d begun the custom long ago, inspired by detectives in novels, but it had come in handy more than he’d ever expected when the mayor was found dead in their garden.
He’d kept up the practice with even more diligence ever since.
Arthur exchanged his suit for one that was not adorned with an avant-garde powdered sugar painting of the night sky and ran a comb through his hair, which had been pressed a little too flat by his cycling helmet.
He emptied the pockets of his suit, finding the soaps he’d purchased from Lore’s friend, Stephanie, as well as the potion and flyer from the Celestine Coven.
He stashed the soaps in the en suite he and Sal shared, but heard the front door open before he could sample one.
Shoving the flyer and potion back into his pocket, he hurried to greet whoever had arrived.
“Good afternoon,” he said as he descended the stairs.
A white woman in a slightly rumpled matching lavender shorts set waited in the lobby.
She certainly looked like a traveler, with her pink and yellow suitcases and mousy brown hair in a disheveled bun.
“Hailey North, I presume?” He’d memorized the names of the arriving guests, of course, and made an educated guess.
The woman smiled, revealing bleach-white teeth. “That’s me. Wow, this place is so cute!” She pointed her phone around the lobby, probably taking photos. “I can’t believe I managed to get a room here.”
She’d done so over a month ago, minutes after the Solstice Festival announcement “went live,” as Sal would say. Nora had booked the head of the Celestine Coven, which was apparently a huge draw. Arthur still had no idea why.
“We at the Dead & Breakfast welcome you,” Arthur said, giving Hailey her complementary bat-shaped scone. “It’s gluten-free.”
“Oh, thank you!” Hailey took it and set it on her suitcase. She proceeded to crouch to take a number of photos of the scone. “Gluten really dampens the natural flow of magic through my body. I’ll need to be at the top of my game if I’m going to level up in the coven this week.”
“Level up?” Arthur had thought the Celestine Coven was more of a business than an actual coven.
They had so much merchandise, after all.
He pulled the flyer from his pocket while Hailey continued to take photos, smiling and holding her phone at a distance for what Arthur approximated to be at least one hundred selfies both with and without the bat-shaped scone.
The flyer advertised the times that Ambrosia Celestine herself would be on the main stage at the festival—once a day in the afternoon, except on the solstice itself, when she’d be performing just before midnight—as well as opportunities for new witches to join the coven.
Power Through Unity, their motto, was on the bottom of the flyer.
Despite reading every word on the piece of paper, Arthur had no idea what the coven actually did for witches.
At last Hailey finished documenting her arrival and stepped up to the desk to check in.
As Arthur ran her credit card, he noticed that the crop top she wore sported a small Celestine Coven logo on the breast pocket, as did her matching shorts.
Even the luggage was coven-branded. Hailey turned to tuck her wallet back into her bag, and Arthur spotted Power Through Unity scrawled across the seat of her shorts.
He was immensely glad Sal wasn’t here to see her getup.
He would’ve either mocked the shorts relentlessly or insisted he get his own pair. It was a toss-up.