Izzy put her hands to her mouth. “It can’t be.”

I rose up to standing. “But is this really proof? It doesn’t necessarily mean that . . . ?”

Izzy’s shoulders slumped. “I’m afraid it does.”

I looked to Nora.

“It’s proof,” she said. “Constance Graves was murdered.”

Chapter 4

Witches have an uneasy relationship with sleep. On the rare occasion we sleep well, it’s deep and restorative, usually overdue, and can last through an entire languorous day and night. But most of the time, that isn’t the case. As they say, there is no rest for the wicked. Not that any of us buy into that wicked nonsense. In truth, most in the witching community simply believe we’re blessed to need less sleep than our nonmagical counterparts. After a night of tossing and turning, though, it certainly felt like more of a curse than a blessing to me.

Murdered. Constance Graves had been murdered. Under our care.

It was almost impossible to believe. Even though my aunts were certain, after we had cleaned up the sunroom and let Precious go, I pored over every book we had on the subject. While I read, Izzy fretted and baked. Those two things often went together for Izzy. And while Izzy baked, Nora paced and ranted, tossing out plans for spells no good witch would ever dream of casting to handle the situation. Gideon occasionally interjected observations from the vents, but, unfortunately, none of us got anywhere useful.

We had far more questions than answers.

Like how did the murderer get in and up to the second floor without our noticing? The assailant certainly couldn’t have gotten in through the front door or used the main staircase. We had a clear view of both from where we had been sitting in the parlor. It was possible the killer had come in earlier in the day and hidden somewhere, but that was highly unlikely. Faustus would have ferreted out an intruder. Very little got by that cat. All this meant the killer would have had to have come in either through the side or the back door of the B&B and used the hidden staircase to get up to the second floor. But the entrance to those stairs was concealed behind a door camouflaged in the panels of the wall near the kitchen. It would be almost impossible to find it without prior knowledge, and we didn’t often share that information with guests, as the stairs did not meet safety regulations. So how did the killer know to use them?

The whole situation was disconcerting, to say the least, and we felt foolish for having let our guards down. But in fairness, it was easy to see how. Evenfall was such a safe town and given who we were, it was hard to imagine a scenario in which we’d feel truly threatened. That being the case, we didn’t often lock the doors until we were ready to turn in for the night. We were used to the comings and goings of guests. It had all seemed so reasonable.