“What is it like?” Clay folded his thick arms across his wide chest. “From here, it looks like enough to bring you in.”
The color drained from Nolan’s cheeks, and he took a healthy step back before his gaze dropped to the thousands of dollars in camera equipment he would never see again if he bolted. He relaxed his stance and kept his hands where we could see them. He fought the twitch in his legs, proving he was a man used to facing his fears and knew better than to run from them.
“The girls told you I’m a wildlife photographer.” He addressed his defense to me. “Okay, well, they sent me a picture when you guys were moving Hollis Apothecary from your kitchen to the shop.” He wet his lips. “Hear me out. There was a moth. This huge white moth. I couldn’t tell if it was in the house, the glare was terrible. Either it was resting on the glass inside the living room, or it was right outside.”
A sour taste filled my mouth, and I could have kicked myself for not seeing it sooner.
Power increased as it reached back through generations. Nolan was Arden’s uncle, therefore he had more magic than her. Enough he could see through the wards to spot Colby in the window. Enough he had groped the ward without realizing what kept repelling him. Enough to cause me big problems.
Goddess bless, what a mess I had made.
On the heels of that revelation came another. The shock of awareness when I shook Nolan’s hand wasn’t a glitch in the bracelet. It was my instincts warning me I was in the presence of another witch. He wasn’t powerful enough to warrant that kind of buzz. So maybe the bracelet helped, a one-two punch I misinterpreted at the time.
“I thought you were here for Arden,” I said flatly, “for both the girls.”
But their abduction must have only been the tipping point in his decision to verify the photo’s authenticity.
“I am.” He pulled a hand through his greasy hair. “I thought—”
“—you would put in an appearance, raise their hopes, then ditch them to pursue your real goal.”
With my hectic schedule, he could have been creeping around the edges of my property for days before he pulled his prodigal-returns act with the girls. He must have hoped to finagle an invitation to the house under the guise of seeing where the girls had worked for so many years, using his charm to grease the wheels. Then the case lured me away, and he got an even better deal. Carte blanche on my property.
And, as a bonus, he could have asked the girls to call him with a heads-up when I started home for any number of flimsy reasons. Such as making an empty promise to honor our missed breakfast date in the future.
“I saw this moth in South America, a white witch moth, and it was huge. More than a foot across. They’re gray and white, with a zigzag pattern on their wings.” He sliced his hand through the air. “Never mind. Not important. The point is— There are no moths native to the US, let alone Alabama, that size. And it was snow white.”
“Can I see the picture?” Asa held out his hand. “I would like proof that what you say is true.”
“Sure. No problem.” He pulled out his phone and scrolled through his gallery. “There. See?”
Asa accepted the phone, waved Clay over, and they pretended to compare notes.
“The moth is outside the house.” Asa glanced over at Nolan. “It’s an optical illusion. It was closer to the camera than you might think. The glare makes it hard to tell, but the moth was maybe four feet from the lens. With the house behind the girls, who are standing closer, the moth is in the middle distance.”
“I thought that too,” Nolan gushed, “but I had a friend analyze the photo who—”
Unable to hold it in a moment longer, I blew my top. “You did what?”
“—says it’s definitely not in the foreground. It’s in the background, with the house.”
“You set up camp to stalk…a giant moth?” Clay’s laughter rumbled through the night. “Seriously? That’s what you want to go with?”
“Do you know,” Nolan asked, “what a discovery of this caliber could do for my career?”
“Yeah, make you a laughingstock.” Clay wiped tears from his eyes. “I thought you were a serious wildlife photographer, but you’re a cryptozoologist wannabe. You’re out here in the sticks, hunting Moth Man.”
“During your stay, have you seen any evidence of this moth?” Asa arched an eyebrow. “Even once?”
“No.” Nolan rubbed the back of his neck. “I haven’t seen it.” He turned to me. “Please, Rue, let me stay. I won’t get in your way. You won’t know I’m here. I’ll camp here a few more days, to be sure, then you never have to see me again.”
The insanity of this situation caused me to forget, but now I remembered. “Mrs. Gleason shot you.”
“I know how she operates. I’m wearing a Kevlar vest.”
“She shot you in the butt.”
“Yeah.” He twisted around and lifted his shirt. “I had a fix for that.” His butt was totally flat. A pancake. I gave him a once-over when we met, and I would have remembered if he suffered from pancake buns. “I shoved an insert down the back of my pants. I still had to pick buckshot out of my lower thighs, but it would have been worse without it.”