Prague Murder (2 page)

“Yes,” Emily coughed and then speared one of Ingrid’s dumplings.

Ingrid scowled at Emily and then enjoyed saying all the more, “They were on our flight. You’re not just jet-lagged. You’re old.”

“Hooker,” Emily said and then ate the dumpling. Her eyes narrowed further as she watched Ingrid eat the last dumpling and grin unrepentantly at her best friend. “Wench.”

“Cow-dove.”

“You are the cow, cow. You ate all the yummies.”

“It was all good,” Ingrid replied. “It’s not my fault, you were totally out of it. Eat that stew.”

“I want a fruit thing,” Emily said petulantly.

“We could get more, and laze here watching people go by, but you signed us up for a walking tour.” Ingrid looked down at her shoes sadly and said, “I hadn’t been thinking of walking on cobblestone streets when I bought these.”

Emily followed Ingrid’s gaze to the silver strappy sandal with a pointy toe and heel and said, “Probably you shouldn’t be so vain. You’ll break an ankle and deserve it for your vanity. Also I wanted those shoes.”

Ingrid’s eyes narrowed back at her friend, and then she examined her foot again. It
was
sexy.

She snapped a pic and sent it to Gabe just as Emily said, “I bet myself you’d do that within 12 hours of landing. And you have. That means, I get to pick our next meal, and I want dumpling thingys.”

“Whatever,” Ingrid moped, inwardly rubbing her hands together. They were having dumplings every single meal. Emily was probably going to hate dumplings by the time they left.

They had to leave to get to the tour on time, so Hazel wouldn’t hex them, but that didn’t mean Ingrid was leaving without another coffee. She was
so
tired she hurt, but you had to plow through the first day or two of jet-lag or otherwise what was the point of going overseas? Unless you were moving there.

She could suddenly see herself living here. Eating those dumpling things every day. Getting fatter and fatter because she would miss Gabe so much. This city was
perfect.
Every single thing about it answered her lifelong dream to travel. It was what she’d dreamed of, but
better
. In real life, she could taste the food and smell the smells and it wasn’t Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Oh man, Ingrid, she thought, pushing away the memory of her dead husband and told herself to shut it down.

And then she pictured herself here with Gabe instead of her dead husband, Harrison, and it was perfect.

Suddenly her bucket list had grown by one item.

See Prague, hand in hand, with her love, Gabe.

Chapter 2

“Quit thinking about him,” Emily said. She was starting to feel semi-human again. And that wench, Ingrid, had stolen all the good food. Of course, Emily
had eaten
every bite of the deep fried mozzarella, and she had zero regrets, but still…Ingrid needed to be slapped.

For good measure.

And because she was thinking about her lover while in Prague. Which was gorgeous. The red roofs made Emily want to reroof their building Even though they had a garden on the top of it. Or a patio. Whatever you called it. It now needed to be this pretty, pretty red.

“How did you know?”

“The look on your face makes my teeth hurt.”

“When you think of Dean,” Ingrid countered, while following Emily. She was leading the way with some GPS, foot-map, app on her iPhone. “You make me want to hand you a box of birth control pills as a double measure for whatever you are doing.”

“Shut up,” Emily said. The walk was winding her. Thankfully it was winding Ingrid too. It was better to be breathless together than the one holding everything up. “Did I tell you I set up a charity?”

“Wait, what?”

“To help orphans go to college.”

“Did I tell you I declared I would be doing no such thing?”

Their gazes met and they snorted in unison.

“Mary?” Ingrid stumbled on a cobblestone and grabbed Emily’s arm to keep from going down.

“Yup,” Emily said, grinning at Ingrid’s irritation. You weren’t best friends if you didn’t get to thoroughly irritate the other at regular intervals.

“I refuse to be part of anything that requires me to actually work. I worked for days on that stupid bookstore. And my apartment. I think I might have done other things. Oh yeah, I finally got rid of dickhead!” Ingrid grinned in triumph.

Emily’s ex had been haunting their bookstore since his murder. Emily hadn’t really wanted him dead. Others hadn’t felt the same. The two of them had been forced to prove that it wasn’t Emily who killed him.

Unfortunately, his murder had been followed by another of Ingrid’s semi-exes. Though Ingrid had barely dated the guy, even Emily would give her friend that much credit. And then they’d found the dead body of their little sidekick’s mom. It had been an eventful life, and this trip was well-deserved.

Which was why Emily was not thinking overly long about how lovely Dean’s abs were and how much she missed those abs. Or how she wanted to punch those abs for taking some sort of secret, I can’t text you or call you for a while job. The a-hole. And it was past time for Ingrid to get her head in the game.

Emily smacked the back of Ingrid's head to show her that Emily meant business and was smacked in return.

“I’ll hurt you hard, evil dove,” Ingrid said. “Somehow that smack made my boobs hurt. Leave my boobs alone.”

“You’ve been rubbing your boobs since the plane. It’s ridiculous.”

“Shut up,” Ingrid said and then her eyes narrowed.

Emily enjoyed watching her friend realize that she
had
been rubbing her boobs a lot. Ingrid covered them with both hands, realized that was just as bad, and dropped her hands to her side. They were restless and Emily laughed while Ingrid lost the ability to know what to do with her hands.

“Shut up,” Ingrid said again, taking Emily’s coffee from her to drink for it—she’d finished her’s way too long ago. “Maybe I’m sick.”

“Boob sick,” Emily scoffed, but they’d arrived outside of a church looking building and both of them snapped their mouths closed. Emily didn’t need to read Ingrid’s mind to know she was thinking it was too weird to talk about boobs in a church or even outside of it.

The stone was shades of grey with the now-standard red roof. Emily had no idea what it was made out of, but it was just ridiculously pretty. She snapped a pic with her phone and shook her head. This trip was ruining her home a little bit.

“Sage Island is kind of boring,” Emily said.

Ingrid nodded. Her eyes were fixed on the tall spire and then traveled along the long white, wall that bound the convent in. She shuddered.

Emily’s head cocked as she examined her friend and the wall and realized that Ingrid was imagining deciding to just…what did they call it? Cloister yourself away behind that wall. It was sort of horrible when you thought of it that way. There were so many other, pretty red roofs to visit and see what was under them. To choose just one—even if it was just most of the time—it was stifling.

The tour was gathering up and Emily looked around to see who would be coming with them. There were two women, who looked alike, in their mid-sixties each sporting a pair of solid tennis shoes. There was a little pixie of a woman with spiky golden hair. She moved so lightly—it seemed she was a bird. A black man who was tall with wide, lovely shoulders. Emily would have been interested if she weren’t sort of committed.

Kind of.

She hadn’t known Dean that long.

Gah!

Stupid man.

Either way, Dean or the lack thereof, didn’t mean she couldn’t see how very handsome the tall man was. Next to the tall man was a short squat woman with orthopedics and a tweed skirt. Her hair was back in a bun at the nape of her neck, her sweater and bearing declared she was at least 85, but she had the face of someone in her twenties.

To be perfectly clear, Emily wanted to slap the woman to Tuesday for being so old while she was so young and also cower away. The chick creeped Emily out in a way that she hadn’t felt in a long while.

“What’s the point of this tour,” Ingrid asked Emily again. Ingrid had a semi-drunk look on her face and clearly, the caffeine was not sufficient to counteract the jet lag.

One of the two women in front of them turned, “It’s a Haunted Prague tour. We wanted to do the chocolate tour, but it was sold out. But, this tour stops at all of the chocolate places too. I guess. I’m Cathy.”

“Oh hello,” Ingrid said. She looked the duo over and then asked, “Are you sisters?”

The two laughed. One nodded. The other held out her hand and said, “Carol.”

“So you’re just here for the chocolate?”

“Well,” Cathy said, “They also go by a lot of the history of the city. The tour guide suggested it when we weren’t able to get the ones we wanted. I wanted to go to the history sites. Carol wanted to do the chocolate tour. Even though she’s diabetic.”

Carol grinned unrepentantly.

“You sound like my kind of evil,” Emily told Carol. Her brown hair was highlighted with gold, she was tan, and fit and carried herself with energy.

“So they say this place is where a nun haunts the convent.”

“Of course,” Ingrid agreed though Emily knew Ingrid had no idea where they were and what the story was. “I suppose it could be a priest, but I prefer a nun.”

“Right. An evil nun who fell in love with a priest? A runaway rich girl who wanted to marry the groom?” Emily tossed out, playing the what if game.

“A poor knight,” Cathy answered, looking down at her pamphlet. “Who was also some kind of witch.”

Both Ingrid and Emily looked up, eyes narrowing. “They burned him at that stake and put her in the convent. She didn’t survive long after, but it was said that she too had taken up witchcraft.”

“Did they burn her too?” Ingrid’s hair was crackling a little bit, and Emily kicked Ingrid’s leg.

“There’s no record. But the story goes that she drowned...and by drowned, I mean they threw her in water to see if she could float.”

“Of course,” Emily said. “I would like to go back in time and see if any of the killers can survive the stake or the water.”

“Or a knife in the throat,” Ingrid added. Her hair had calmed down, but there was still a wild look in her eyes.

“It
is
a sad story,” Cathy said. “They just wanted to be in love and their family kept them apart. And then they died so tragically.”

Ingrid and Emily were, of course, witches themselves. If you could call them that. They were truly terrible at witchcraft. Ingrid could do a few vanity spells and make excellent coffee. Emily had been practicing levitation and had serious threats laid on her from her coven leader and aunt to keep up the practice
or else.

This nun, whoever she had been, might have been legitimately, good at magic. But it didn’t matter. Not when you were overpowered by others and bound and tossed into a body of water. Anyone would drown then. Well
some
witches might survive that. Hazel, their coven leader, for one. That cow Autumn who seemed to have slept with half the island. Sun and Saffron from their coven would probably make it too.

Ingrid and Emily though, as terrible as they were at magic, would certainly go down.

And die.

What a horrible way to go!

The crowd of attendees on the tour gathered around the tall black man. He put a cloak around his shoulders and flashed a pair of dramatic fangs.

“Do you think he’s a vampire?” Ingrid asked Emily.

Carol and Cathy gazes met and they laughed.

Even still, Emily answered, “They’re pretty rare.”

The tour guide led them into the convent and they gathered around a tree inside of the courtyard.

Cathy was still laughing about the vampire “joke” when the tour guide raised his arms for attention. Emily took that to mean that the two didn’t know that such things existed. They did have the feel of small-town America on them. Maybe Utah. Or Wyoming. Somewhere horrible. Armpit of the U.S.-esque.

“You still lusting after him?” Ingrid asked.

“Shut up,” Emily said in reply.

“Hooker,” Ingrid said without heat.

Cathy looked at the two of them and seemed to be calculating a history up for the two of them.

“So where are you from?”

“Washington State,” Emily replied as Ingrid yawned so loud her jaw cracked. She absently rubbed her forehead and then her boobs.

“Are you all right?” Carol asked.

“We didn’t sleep much after our plane landed,” Emily replied. “We’re used to stupid amounts of sleep. Plus Ingrid was productive in the last month, so she’s still recovering.”

“Shut up,” Ingrid yawned, rubbing her eyes and barely preventing herself from rubbing her boobs.

“Are you two all right?” Cathy said. She reached up and touched their foreheads.

“We’re just crazy,” Ingrid explained. Her gaze was in the inner courtyard, and you could see from her expression that she found the whole place horrifying.