Olivia Kendrick has déjà vu. The star of Nightmare’s popular Wild West Stunt Show is found dead after a heated argument, and it looks like an animal attack. Olivia knows better, though. The scene is eerily similar to the first murder she ever investigated in Nightmare.

There’s a young new stunt rider eager to take over the starring role, but he’s not the only one with a motive for murder. As clues mount about money problems, old grudges, and unbridled ambition, the suspect list only gets longer.

To make things worse, someone from Olivia’s past unexpectedly shows up in Nightmare, and he’s one of the suspects. The newcomer throws Olivia’s boss, Damien Shackleford, into a psychic crisis. Can Olivia help him control his power before someone gets hurt?
CLAWING AT THE CORRAL, the fifth novel in the Nightmare, Arizona paranormal cozy mystery series by bestselling author Beth Dolgner. This lighthearted series is about starting over, found family, and solving murders in a quirky old mining town with a secret supernatural community.

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Gunnar’s fingers curled around my chin, his claws gently brushing my cheeks. He tilted my head slightly as he gazed at me, his eyes dark against his stone-gray skin. “Look up at me,” he said.

I complied, and Gunnar gave a nod of satisfaction. “I like this length on you, too. These split ends have got to go, though. I’m going to give you a trim, and I’ll add some layers so your hair has a bit more volume.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said as Gunnar picked up a comb and began to run it through my auburn hair. I had kept my hair short when I lived in Nashville, but here in Nightmare, the longer look seemed to suit me better. It was more relaxed, like I was these days.

The scissors looked tiny in Gunnar’s massive hands—or paws, or whatever that part of a gargoyle was supposed to be called—but I trusted him to do a good job. All three of the witches had raved about what a good hairstylist Gunnar was.

“How did you learn to do hair, anyway?” I asked as I watched bits of my own locks fall to the floor. The closest thing Gunnar had to hair was a green sheen all over his body that resembled a thin layer of moss. And it really was all over his body: Gunnar didn’t bother with clothes. He looked like a living statue, albeit one with massive wings.

“I used to live in an old castle in Germany,” Gunnar began. “It had been abandoned, and a few of us supernatural creatures wound up living there. They all had hair, and I hated how unkempt they looked. So, I learned to cut hair so I could keep my friends looking nice.”

I tried to picture Gunnar trimming away in some dark abandoned castle, but it was just too odd.

Which was saying a lot, since at that moment, I was sitting in the dining room of Nightmare Sanctuary Haunted House, a gargoyle was cutting my hair, and a fairy was walking toward our spot in the corner.

“Hey, you two,” Clara said in her childlike voice. Her violet eyes were bright with excitement. “We need to catch up since I’ve been off for a few days. Did you have a nice Thanksgiving, Olivia?”

I had been invited to join the Thanksgiving feast at the Sanctuary, but I had already made other plans. Mama and Benny Dalton, the owners of the motel where I lived, had practically insisted I join them for the holiday.

And, of course, they had also invited their nephew Damien Shackleford, because Mama took every possible chance to get me and my boss in the same room. She really wanted sparks to fly. Romantic sparks, that is. Not the magical kind I was pretty sure Damien would be able to produce if he unleashed his full supernatural potential.

“It was great,” I told Clara honestly. “Mama and Benny are fantastic hosts, and I got to spend a lot of time with Lucy.” Mama and Benny’s granddaughter was only ten, but she was still one of my favorite people in Nightmare. She was the kind of kid who made everyone around her smile, thanks to her enthusiasm and unending energy. “But,” I added, “Mama sent me home with so many leftovers that I’ll be eating turkey until Christmas.”

“That’s nothing,” Clara said. “I ate with my family before the feast here, so my mom insisted that I bring her homemade mugwort biscuits for everyone. And yes, they’re as gross as they sound.”

“I thought they were delicious,” Gunnar said. 

Clara made a gagging noise. Before she wandered off, she said, “The family meeting is in fifteen minutes.”

“Plenty of time,” Gunnar said confidently. In fact, he was finished with time to spare, and I had a chance to admire my trimmed hair in the bathroom mirror before I took my normal spot on one of the long benches in the dining room. I had thanked Gunnar profusely for offering to cut my hair, and even though he had refused to let me pay him, I made a mental note to get him some kind of thank-you gift. 

By the time Justine Abbott stepped up to the podium to start that evening’s family meeting, the rest of the Sanctuary staff had wandered in. We were missing a few people who had gone out of town for Thanksgiving, but it was a Sunday night, so we wouldn’t be too crowded with guests, anyway.

Justine ran down the night’s news and position assignments—I would be taking tickets at the front door, which was one of my usual posts—then her face lit up. “And, as most of you know, this is my favorite time of year! The Nightmare Christmas parade will be in three weeks, so I need all of you to be thinking about ideas for the theme of this year’s float! And no, Theo, Have a Bloody Good Christmas is not going to happen.”

Theo, who was sitting next to me, sighed dramatically. “She says no every year.” 

After the meeting, I was slowly making my way out of the dining room when I saw the three witches walking toward me. The oldest, Morgan, blinked up at me. Her white hair was so wispy it seemed to dance in the air around her wrinkled face. “We had a dream. About you.”

“About love,” added Madge, the beautiful witch who looked like she was in her late twenties or early thirties. She tossed her long blond curls over her shoulder and looked at me sympathetically.

“But you weren’t happy about it, oh, no.” Maida looked to be about the same age as Lucy, but she spoke like someone far older. Her pointed black boots and short black dress made her look more witchy than the others. 

“Be careful with your heart,” Morgan warned me.

Before I could ask what they were talking about, the witches turned in unison and began to walk away. Do they think I’m falling in love with Damien? It was the only explanation I could come up with. He and I had been spending a lot of time together lately, and some of my other friends at the Sanctuary had been joking that there was something going on between the two of us. 

That had to be it. I didn’t bother to run after the witches to assure them I was definitely not falling in love. I hadn’t even been divorced from Mark for a full year, so I wasn’t ready to dive into a new relationship just yet.

As I made my way to the double front doors of the old hospital building that housed Nightmare Sanctuary Haunted House, I wondered just how many people were jumping to conclusions about Damien and me. Yes, we had been spending a lot of time together during the past month, but it wasn’t at all romantic. We were both working on our magic. It had taken me a while to accept I was anything other than ordinary, but I was slowly making progress as a conjuror. 

We still weren’t sure what Damien was capable of. His mother, Lucille, had been an extraordinarily powerful psychic, but we still had no idea what kind of supernatural creature Damien’s father was. Just as soon as we found Baxter, who had been missing since earlier in the year, we would ask him.

Because I had to believe we would find Baxter. Giving up simply wasn’t an option.

There were always a few enthusiastic people lined up before the Sanctuary opened at eight o’clock in the evening. On this night, I propped open the double doors to see a group of what looked like college kids standing at the front of the line. I took their tickets and waved them on inside the entryway, where stanchions had been set up so visitors could wind back and forth between red velvet ropes before entering the haunt through a door at one side of the room.

Gunnar had run back upstairs, where many of the Sanctuary’s employees lived, to put away his hair-cutting tools, and he was just coming down the grand staircase as the college kids made their way toward the haunt entrance. One of the girls let out a yelp, and another said, “Ooh, amazing costume!”

I caught Gunnar’s eye, and we exchanged a smile. I had once said the same thing about him, before I knew supernatural creatures existed. 

October had been incredibly busy, since so many people wanted to visit a haunted house attraction during the Halloween season. November had been slower but still much more steady than the number of visitors we’d had in the late summer. There were a lot fewer tourists in Nightmare during that time of year, when it was just too hot to be hanging out in a desert town.

Saturday night had been busy, and I had recognized a few locals who said they had family in town for Thanksgiving, and going to a haunted attraction was a fun, quirky way to spend time together. Now that it was Sunday, and a lot of people were probably on their way back to their own towns, it was much quieter.

At least until a large group came through, looking like they were going to a rodeo rather than a haunted house. The six men were all wearing Western shirts with mother-of-pearl snaps down the front, and all but one of them was wearing cowboy boots. 

“Hello there,” one of the men, who was quite a bit older than the rest, said to me. I instinctively took half a step back because the man’s gaze was so intense. “You’re new here. We come every year on Thanksgiving weekend, and I’ve never seen you before.”

“She’s been in town a while,” one of the other men said. He had brilliant blue eyes and sandy-blond hair that curled around the nape of his neck. His smile was bright in his tanned face. “Norman, you need to get out more often.”

“Nah, I’m just fine hiding out at my ranch, thank you very much.”

The man at the back of the group let out a loud whoop. “Let’s go, boys. I want to get scared!”

The other five cheered, and as I tore their tickets and let them inside, they were loudly discussing which type of supernatural creature was the most frightening.

They were noisy, but at least they were having a good time.

I was tearing tickets for another group when a wave of cold washed over my shoulders. I turned to see the Sanctuary’s two resident ghosts, Butch Tanner and Connor McCrory, standing behind me. Their ghostly forms shimmered in the dim lighting of the entryway.

“Shouldn’t you be in your vignette, scaring guests?” I asked.

“Yes, we should,” McCrory said, reaching up to tip his black cowboy hat to me. The former sheriff of Nightmare was always polite. “But we overheard some folks who went past us saying they’d spotted Billy the Bull Roper in the parking lot. We came to see if it was true.”

“There he is,” Tanner said, pointing toward the front of the queue inside the entryway. A low whistle sounded from behind the red bandana Tanner wore over his mouth and nose. “I sure wish I could ride a horse as well as that guy.”

“Which one are you talking about? And how do you know he can ride a horse well?” I waved a couple through even as I was turning to look at the rowdy cowboys, who were about to disappear through the door into the haunt.

“The one with the nice hair and the blue plaid shirt,” McCrory specified.

Ah. The one who’s apparently seen me around town.

“As for his skills,” Tanner said, “Zach was once nice enough to take us to the Wild West Stunt Show out on the edge of Nightmare.”

“At Norman O’Reilly’s ranch,” McCrory added.

“Did other people in the audience wonder why two ghosts were there?” I asked.

“Nah.” Tanner waved dismissively. “We went to the matinee, and we’re pretty invisible in bright daylight. We gave a few folks cold chills, but that’s all.”

The ghosts drifted away, since the person they had come to see had entered the haunt, and I knew they would be looking forward to trying to scare Billy the Bull Roper when he and his friends entered the vignette where Tanner and McCrory were stationed.

After work, I tried to drop into Damien’s office to say hello, but the door was shut, and I could hear several voices inside. Since he was busy, I decided to head home. I had driven to work that night, rather than walking, since I had brought a plate of leftovers to snack on during my break, so I made my way toward the staff parking area.

I had to pass the visitor parking lot, which was really just a dirt field, to get to my car. The lot was nearly empty, but the six cowboys who had come through earlier in the night were standing in a group in front of several cars.

“I’d rather die than share the starring role with somebody!” I heard Billy shout.

The older man who had greeted me with such intensity leaned toward Billy. “We don’t have a choice!”

Billy crossed his arms and glared at the man. “Well, don’t blame me if he accidentally falls off his horse!”

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