Hotter Than Helltown: An Urban Fantasy Mystery (Preternatural Affairs Book 3) by S.M. Reine Read Free Book Online Page B

for Matthew?”
    I tried to pull out my Steno pad, but Mary shoved the electrical tape into my hands.
    “Be a dear and see if you can do something about the power cable for the oven. We can’t afford to replace it.”
    I was ready for the all-too-mundane witchcraft of her grandmotherly command this time, but I still sidled behind the oven. It was dusty back there—dusty, and filled with mouse poop. I was wearing one of my good suits.
    “I’m not here to volunteer, ma’am,” I said.
    “God brought you to us for a reason. I’m hoping that it was to fix the oven.”
    “I don’t think He cares about your oven.”
    She flapped her hands at me. “You would be surprised. Go on. See what you can do.”
    At least it was an excuse to take my jacket off and roll up my sleeves. I crouched behind the oven to inspect the cord. It looked like a whole legion of mice had been stripping the thing.
    They were lucky the damn kitchen hadn’t burned down by now.
    I’d managed to salvage a couple of old eight track players in much worse condition, and I was stuck at the soup kitchen until Sister Catherine came back. Might as well get dirty.
    I unplugged it from the wall and pulled out my pocketknife. “Matt. What’s his full name? Matthew…?”
    “Not Matthew. Matteo,” Mary said. She was already moving around the kitchen, pulling out more food supplies that looked like they were intended for dinner. Cups of noodles and dried potatoes. “Matteo Lanham, if I recall what the police called him. I usually don’t know their names. Sometimes they don’t seem to know their names, either.”
    “Why was he desperate enough to attack Mr. Brandon?”
    “He wasn’t. He was disoriented. He’d been in rehab, but I believe that he relapsed. A volunteer attempted to restrain Matt and ended up on the receiving end of his violent attentions. I expect that was Mr. Brandon.”
    I cut through the oven’s power cable, severing the worst of the chew marks, and discarded about a foot of mangled plastic casing. “Do the—uh—parishioners know where volunteers live?”
    “We’re all family here,” Mary said. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
    “You know where I can find Matteo Lanham?” I stripped a few more inches of insulation from the remaining cable, leaving the wires inside exposed.
    “He didn’t kill anyone.”
    I hadn’t said that anyone was dead. I straightened, setting my pocketknife on the counter. “I thought you didn’t know anything about Jay Brandon.”
    “You referred to him in the past tense, and you’re an FBI agent,” Mary said. “It’s not a difficult puzzle to solve.”
    Guess not. Subtlety had never been my strong suit.
    I grabbed the electrical tape and hunkered back down with the mouse shit. “Does he still come around here?”
    “Unfortunately, Matt has been banned from the church. I haven’t seen him since the incident.”
    It only took a few seconds to wrap the wires together and reconnect the plug to the oven. Then I mummified it in electrical tape. It didn’t look fancy, but it was probably a little bit less of a fire hazard than what the mice had done.
    Mary left the room long enough to take soup out to the serving line. She returned in time to see me plug the oven in and turn the knob.
    The light actually came on. I was one miracle closer to being canonized.
    “God is good,” Mary said, beaming at my side.
    “I don’t know about God, but I’m not half bad.” I flipped my pocketknife shut.
    “He works in mysterious ways, Agent Hawke. Today, He worked through you. The church appreciates it.”
    If God was working through me, I sure as hell hoped that He would stick around long enough to help me find justice for Jay Brandon, too.

    Sister Catherine showed up when I was on my way out the back door, and I thought she had to be the least nun-like woman that I’d ever met.
    She was old and scrawny, like a clothes hanger had been unwound and stretched out to its maximum length. She was wrapped in a