Sleeping With The Fishes

Chapter 1

My first indication that something was wrong was when I leaned back, took a deep breath to relax, and smelled smoke. I wasn’t supposed to smell smoke. I was in the storeroom of my vet clinic, doing inventory for the week as I made sure I had adequate supplies of all the drugs I used on a regular basis.

Dropping the clipboard I was holding on the floor, I darted back out into the main lobby of the clinic. My first thought was of the kennels in the back. But no, there were no animals staying overnight at the clinic right now, thank goodness.

My cat, Bee, who spent some of her days at the vet clinic, had spent today at home with the kittens she had been fostering. Sophie, my best friend and veterinary technician, had gone home ten minutes earlier.

As soon as I made my way back into the lobby I gasped. The floor was on fire; shards of glass indicated someone had opened the front door and lobbed a Molotov cocktail into my vet clinic. Poop on a stick! This wasn’t the sort of thing that happened here. What was going on? Why had someone set my clinic on fire? Those were all questions I figured I could ask myself after the fire was put out.

I ran behind the desk where I knew there was a fire extinguisher. Being a witch, I knew I could just put out the fire magically, but that would be pretty hard to explain when the fire department got here. I’d only use my magic if I absolutely had to.

Pulling the pin on the fire extinguisher, I pressed down on the handle and felt the large canister jerk beneath me as white foam poured from the nozzle with a loud whooshing sound. The entire room suddenly began to look like a bubble bath gone very, very wrong, but the flames dissipated, and as the last spurts of the fire extinguishing goo left the canister, I caught my breath and saw the fire had been put out.

I was just getting ready to take my phone out and call 9-1-1 when I saw a flash of movement outside, a body making their way away from my shop.

My spidey senses were on high alert, and this was more than woman’s intuition. This was witches’ intuition, and it was never, ever wrong.

Ignoring the part of my brain that told me to hunker down inside Healthy Paws and call the police, I opened the front door and ran outside. I was sure I looked like a crazy person, and I had no idea what I’d do if I even managed to catch the person I was pretty sure was responsible for this, but I was going to find out! I looked out into the Main Street of Willow Bay. It was early October now, and while it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet, the sun had already set and it was getting to be pretty dark out. Most of the businesses had closed for the day, and while I saw the light coming from the Italian restaurant down the street, there was no one outside.

No one except one person, dressed in black, running away from the light to my left, away from my clinic.

“Hey! You! Stop!” I cried, giving chase. I was immediately reminded of the constant excuses I made in order to avoid doing anything remotely resembling exercise as I made it less than twenty feet before my lungs began to burn.

Still, a few seconds later the adrenaline of the chase coursed through my veins, and my body began to pick up the pace, the pain disappearing.

Take that, running. Who needs regular exercise when a combination of panic and hormones can do the same thing?

The man had a good fifty foot head start on me, but with the surge of adrenaline, I was sure that I could catch up to him and find out who he was.

Unfortunately for me, it turned out that even adrenaline can’t make up for almost thirty years of exercise avoidance, and it quickly became evident that the man was making up distance on me. If I couldn’t catch him over three hundred feet, I had absolutely no hope over an even longer distance.

I did, however, have one distinct advantage. I, Angela Wilson, veterinarian who could talk to animals, was a witch. And magic made everything easier, including running.

“Celeroa,” I panted, pointing at my legs. Immediately, without any effort on my part, my pace picked up. I felt like Usain Bolt as I ran through the streets, accelerating with every step. It was a good thing no one was out to see this; we witches weren’t allowed to use our magic in front of humans. I had to make sure to keep my speed below cheetah-pace, just in case.

The sprint now felt like a light jog, but I could tell I was catching up to the person who thought they would vandalize my clinic. I figured it was just some teenager playing a prank, but I needed to know for sure before I called the police. And I was definitely calling the police. What if I’d had animals in there? What if they were there alone? No, whoever did this couldn’t get away with it.

Finally, about five hundred feet from the clinic, I caught up to the person. I grabbed the hood of his hoodie and yanked it down, but I didn’t account for the extra speed. I knocked the man off balance and he fell into me, and we both tumbled to the ground, hitting a grey hybrid parked on the side of the road. This was Oregon, after all. We bounced off the car and hit the ground, hard.

I let out a cry of surprise as I hit the cement, but a split second later I was back up and glaring at the person that I was sure had just set my clinic on fire. I could feel a stinging sensation on my arm; I probably had a pretty bad case of road rash, but I ignored it. I could deal with superficial injuries later. For now, I had to take care of this. I sat up and glared straight into the eyes of Matt Smith.

“What on earth?” he shouted at me. “What is wrong with you?” His dark eyes flashed with anger.

“What’s wrong with me?” I replied. “What’s wrong with you? You just threw a Molotov cocktail into my vet clinic!”

“Gee, really? Do you have any proof?” he asked, getting up and not bothering to offer me a hand. Good. I wouldn’t have taken it anyway. I pushed myself back up as well and glared at him.

“You smell like gasoline,” I accused him, and it was true. The smell was quite faint, but it was definitely there.

“So? I just spent the whole afternoon working on my car. Yeah, I smell like gasoline. That’s what happens when you do an honest day’s work.”

I laughed out loud. “Oh, yeah, because you know soooo much about that,” I replied, rolling my eyes. Matt Smith was a Donald Trump wannabe. The kind that came into Willow Bay every few years with a business degree and the idea that they could completely change our town and turn it into a west coast Waikiki. Of course, what none of these people understood is that half the reason people came to Willow Bay in the first place was for the small town atmosphere and the quaint main street. He was the kind of guy who got mad if he spilt crumbs on his shirt, I had absolutely no doubt that he did not spend the afternoon working on his car.

“Well, I’d like to see you prove otherwise,” he said, smirking at me with that cocky look. I was pissed. About a month ago I had found a missing jewel worth millions of dollars, and as a reward the owner had paid me a substantial sum. It was enough to buy the plot of land and building my vet clinic was sitting on from the retiring owner, scooping up the property from under Matt’s nose. He had been incredibly angry when he’d found out what I’d done, and I wasn’t surprised that he was the one who had just tried to torch my vet clinic. This was taking things way too far though.

“Yeah, that’s right, I didn’t think you could prove it,” he smirked a minute later when I hadn’t said anything.

“Please. You were running from my clinic as the fire was set and you smell like gasoline.”

“I was running to get help when I saw the flames,” he replied, widening his eyes in fake innocence. “Anyone will believe that.”

The most annoying part was, I knew he was right. We both knew he had just tried to torch my vet clinic, and yet there was nothing I could do about it. I had no real proof that he had done anything. I watched enough CSI to know that all the evidence I had was circumstantial.

“You’re not going to get away with it,” I told him. “There could have been animals in there. You could have killed them.”

“I didn’t do anything. But theoretically, maybe killing them wasn’t what the arsonist had in mind.” His lips curled up into a gross smile as fear gripped my heart. Had he just essentially threatened me?

“Hey, what’s going on here?” a voice asked from behind us. I turned to see Taylor Shaw, Sophie’s boyfriend, standing next to us in uniform. He was tall and looked more like a surfer than a police officer, with shaggy blonde hair and friendly blue eyes. From what I’d heard there had been more than a few disappointed girls in town when they realized Sophie and Taylor were a pretty steady item.

“Officer, I’m so glad you’re here,” Matt told him, putting a pitiful look on his face. “This woman here, Angela, she attacked me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Please. I caught you sneaking away from my vet clinic after you threw a Molotov in the front door,” I replied.

“Woah, woah, hold up,” Taylor said, holding his hands up in front of him. “I think this is a bit above my pay grade. Let me call Chief Gary.”