Free Night of the Raven by Jenna Ryan Page B

I’m not sure how much better the view will be, though. And unless he’s a complete fool, Willy Sparks won’t be hanging around. Why are we doing this?”
    “Because I saw a flash downstairs. Possibly light bouncing off glass or metal.”
    “Great. So Willy Sparks is a fool and he’s abandoned the subtle approach.”
    “Or he has backup.”
    “An even more cheerful thought.”
    “It’s also possible a raven picked up a piece of glass or metal and dropped it in a tree.”
    “Whatever the source, I can’t just hang around and wait for a hit man to do his job.”
    “We’ll have to believe that McVey will do his job first.” Her uncle spoke from the top rung of the ladder stairs. “Meanwhile, Amara, you have excellent medical skills.”
    She knew what was coming. However, a spider the size of a baby rat crawled out from behind an old chair and caused her muscles to seize. “You want me to help Dr. Whoever at— There’s a clinic in the Hollow, right?”
    “There’s a midwife,” he said.
    “And for anyone who’s not pregnant?”
    “There’s the Cove.”
    “Which has?”
    McVey hopped from the cupola. “Sorry to say, the best we can boast is a nearsighted former army medic who still hasn’t grasped the concept of painkillers. Fog’s rolling in. If someone’s out there, he won’t be able to see us.”
    Amara leaned over to check on the tarantula-size spider’s progress. “What aren’t you telling us, McVey?”
    “You can’t read my mind?”
    “Be a terrifying prospect if she could.” Her uncle glanced down, pulled a BlackBerry from his pocket and scowled at the screen. “I hate goat’s milk,” he declared.
    “Must be Seth,” Amara said while her uncle raised the phone to his ear. “What?” she asked when McVey grinned. Then she got it and blew out a breath. “His nephew, Seth Blume, has a farm in the middle of nowhere, two hundred miles north of the Cove. He raises chickens, pigs and goats, McVey. I don’t read minds.”
    He started toward her. “But you do other things.”
    “I’m told I bake a mean lasagna.”
    It occurred to her when she stopped scanning for spiders that she’d let him get too close. Before she could sidestep, he wrapped his fingers around the nape of her neck.
    “Look at me, Amara.”
    “It would be hard not to from here.”
    “What do you see?”
    A mouth she was tempted to kiss. But he didn’t mean that, so she shifted her gaze to where he wanted it—the cheek she’d scratched last night.
    “They weren’t gouges. Don’t give me more credit than I deserve.”
    “They’re gone.”
    “I still see marks.”
    “Yeah?” He lowered his head and, damn it, made her breath stutter. “What would Jake’s kid brother see?”
    “The same thing as anyone with a brain the size of a snow pea.” She refused to break eye contact. “I’m hoping yours is bigger than that.”
    McVey’s lips crooked into a smile. She thought for a moment he was going to kiss her, but her uncle cleared his throat and the moment vanished.
    “Seth can’t get hold of his mother.”
    Dragging her eyes from McVey’s, Amara searched her mind for a name. Hannah, she thought.
    “His mother’s your cousin, isn’t she, Uncle? People used to call her, uh, your cousin. Does Seth think something’s wrong?”
    “A squirrel bit her two weeks back. She phoned him last Sunday to say her leg had swelled up like a balloon. Seth’s been trying to contact her for three days. He wants me to make sure she’s all right, maybe take her some aspirin.”
    “Because a person with an infected leg must have a headache to go with it. Where does she live?”
    He aimed a look up Bellam Mountain. “She moved to the manor six months ago. She wanted solitude. The outer wings are only partly habitable since Molly and Sadie Bellam left. Road that takes you there’s bumpier than the stairway to hell.”
    “Heaven,” Amara corrected absently.
    McVey gave the yard below a final visual sweep. “I drove up