Excerpt of Murder in Devil's Cove by Melissa Bourbon

Cassandra Lane Hawthorne stood on the main fishing pier in Devil’s Cove staring out at the harbor, grasping the pendant she wore around her neck. The breeze blew across the Sound, whipping her hair into her face. The same feeling of foreboding she’d had since the day she’d met her husband filled her. Her insides were a dry sponge slowly expanding with water. “You’re not going to take him,” she said. Her voice was carried away on the breath of wind. She spoke again, louder this time. “You won’t take him!” 

“Take who, Mama?” Cassie’s six-year-old daughter, Pippin, tugged at the fabric of Cassie’s dress. 

“Nobody.” She took Pippin’s hand and squeezed. “It’s cold. Come on, let’s go home.”

They walked along the wooden slats of the pier, Cassie’s white canvas sneakers silent next to the slap slap slap of Pippin’s sandals. The irony of her daughter’s name wasn’t lost on Cassie. Leo was a Tolkien fanatic. He and a group of friends had called themselves The Fellowship all through college. And when it came time to name their children, he’d longed for names from Tolkien’s classics. Their son, born 73 seconds before Pippin, they’d named Grey, after Gandalf the Grey. And their daughter had been named after Peregrin, one of Frodo Baggin’s best hobbit friends. Pippin for short.

Cassie had never read the books, but she loved her husband. 

She wanted no book to enter their home, but she’d made concessions for Leo. He kept his personal collection under lock and key in the office of the sea captain’s house they’d bought in Devil’s Cove when they’d first married. Cassie would have nothing to do with Leo’s books, now more than ever. Her fear about what they could tell her about the future was much greater than her temptation.

Her skirt whipped around her legs, billowing out behind her. This weather…the ocean…the outer banks of North Carolina. She loved every bit of it. Everything except waiting for Leo to come home to her. Waiting for the sea to give her husband back to her.

They walked together, Pippin’s feet moving in double-time to keep up with Cassie’s longer stride. “Library!” Pippin yanked on Cassie’s hand and pulled her toward the two story house that had years ago been converted. The word LIBRARY was spelled across the eaves over the small porch entry. A blue sign with a figure holding a book was secured in the ground at the sidewalk, denoting the building as the town’s library.

It was a place Cassie never stepped foot into. 

“Another day, lovee,” she said to Pippin, pulling her along. She placed one had on her pregnant belly. Through the fog, the town’s bookstore came into view. That was another building she refused to go into. 

All books had a history. 

All books told stories—those written on the pages, and those between the lines.

Cassie wanted nothing to do with any of them.

The library and the bookstore were on opposite sides of the street. If Cassie took the conventional path, she’d have to pass one or the other. Instead, she marked a diagonal to cross the street, leaving the sidewalk before they got to the library, planning to step up onto the opposite sidewalk a few yards past the bookstore. It was the only way to miss them both.

She muttered under her breath. Only her Aunt Rose thought of their family magic as a blessing. But Cassie only saw it as a curse. Her sister Lacy and their mother had both died in childbirth. Her great-grandfather, grandfather, and father had all been taken by the sea. Cassie had left the west coast and the only family she had only to fall in love with Leonardo Jay Hawthorne, a bookish fisherman from the Outer Banks. Her destiny to live by the sea was fulfilled. She couldn’t escape, that was the truth of the matter. 

Cassie grabbed hold of Pippin’s hand and hurried on, dipping her head against the cold wind. She touched her swollen belly again. She’d survived childbirth, but would she be able to tempt fate twice? And what about Leo. He’d joined the Lane’s through marriage, but had Cassie only transferred the curse to him? Would he be able to escape the fate of the men in her family? For that matter, how could she keep Grey off the water and safe? 

A elderly woman, her head lowered, emerged from the bookstore. A cobalt blue scarf covered her hair, its tail whipping behind her. She pulled her woolen coat tight around herself. Instead of staying on the sidewalk, the old woman stepped into the street. Just as Cassie was doing, she cut a diagonal. Cassie looked at the older woman as she and Pippin approached her, gasping when the woman suddenly looked up, her tiger eyes boring into her. A shiver slithered up Cassie’s spine. 

In an instant, the fog thickened, covering Devil’s Cove with a heavy blanket of mist. Something hit the ground as the old woman dropped her gaze again and passed them. Without thinking, Cassie bent to pick up the fallen object. The moment she did, her heart hammered in her chest. She looked at what she held. 

It was a tattered copy of Homer’s The Odyssey. 

Cassie cried out. Dropped the book. 

It landed on its spine. The pages fell open.

Before Cassie could stop her, Pippin scooped it up and held it out to her, holding it open. “She dropped it.”

Cassie looked over her shoulder. “Wait,” she called out, but the fog had swallowed the woman. 

A chill swept through Cassie as she looked down at the open pages of the book her daughter held. Her eyes scanned the words and her heart climbed to her throat. 

…So all that has been duly done. Listen now, I will tell you
all, but the very god himself will make you remember.
You will come first of all to the Sirens, who are enchanters
of all mankind and whoever comes their way; and that man
who unsuspecting approaches them, and listens to the Sirens
singing, has no prospect of coming home and delighting
his wife and little children as they stand about him in greeting,
but the Sirens by the melody of their singing enchant him.
they sit in their meadow, but the beach before it is piled with the boneheads
of men now rotted away, and the skins shrivel upon them.

“No. No, no, no.” Cassie fell to her knees, unable to hold in her sobs.