Have Yourself a Merry Little Witness - Dakota Cassidy Page 0,9

his dog, Stephen King.”

He patted my hand and nodded. “Well, he’s a dish, isn’t he? Or trade, as we’d call him in the drag business.”

Listen, I’ve watched a lot of RuPaul’s Drag Race in honor of my Uncle Darling so we could talk about it when we chatted on the phone, but I didn’t know what trade meant.

I squinted at him. “Er, trade? Do I want to know what that means?”

He gave me his coy-sly smile, one of his specialties, and said, “The meaning’s evolved some, but when I use it, it means I wouldn’t look the other way if he were interested in some hanky-panky. More or less, anyway.”

Giggling, I wagged a finger at him. “I don’t think I want to know what more or less means. Either way, he’s a nice guy and—”

“And he likes our Halliday. They’ve been together ever since they were chased down by a deranged killer with a gun last week.” Atti buzzed upward toward the top of the mini Christmas tree and seated himself on a branch.

“What?” Uncle Darling yelped, jumping up from the stool at the counter, a frown on his face. “If your mother were here, she’d positively hold my feet to the fire for allowing you to be in any danger!”

I put my hands on his shoulders and sat him back down. “I’m a grown woman, and I couldn’t help the danger. It’s a long story, Uncle Darling. Suffice it to say, we made a discovery together we didn’t want to make and that discovery had a big, bad gun.”

“And a vicious attack dog Halliday turned into a giraffe,” Atticus pointed out in his deep voice.

Now Darling sputtered. “Oh, Lamb Chop, no. A giraffe?” he squealed.

I frowned and hung my head, driving my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “Yeah. Unfortunately, Atti’s right. I used my magic to get us out of a sticky situation, but you know how fluky it can be when I’m anything but calm. Things got a little out of control.”

Glancing at his phone, Uncle Darling sighed. “You and your out-of-control magic. It was your mother’s biggest worry. Remind me to introduce you to some calming techniques when this is…over.” And then his eyes filled with more tears.

I wrapped an arm around his shoulder and rested my head on it, sniffing the scent of laundry detergent. “I love you, and it’s going to be all right, Uncle Darling. I feel it.”

I didn’t know if that was true—if I felt Uncle Monty was going to be all right—but I also didn’t know what else to say. The only thing I did know? I wish my mother were here. She’d know what to say. She always knew what to say.

Swiping at his eyes, he dropped an angry fist to the countertop. “I should have never let him talk me into stopping, Hal. He insisted on bringing you flowers—you know how much he loves you. But like everything with Monty, they had to be perfect. Except that blessed fool wouldn’t listen when I told him Feeney’s would have nothing but carnations, and absolutely nothing that lived up to his standards. He insisted I stop, and because I love him more than my own life, I did.” He inhaled then and let out a wail of distress. “Why didn’t I ignore him, Hal? Why? I was driving. I should have listened to my gut. I knew it was a bad idea. I knew it!”

The guilt I felt about those flowers was enough to make my chest tight and my heart throb erratically, and I’m guessing uncle Darling picked up on that because he instantly pulled me into a tight hug.

He wrapped his beefy arms around me and nuzzled my nose with his. “I’m sorry, Lovey,” he whispered against my hair, his body shuddering. “This has nothing to do with you. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

I knew that logically, but my heart ached anyway. “I know that rationally. I do, but it doesn’t change the fact that he was trying to do something nice for me. I love Uncle Monty. You know I do. He means the world to me,” I said, leaning back in his beefy arms.

Brushing my hair from my eyes, he gave me a watery smile. “I know that, Lamb. He loves you, too.”

Then I gathered myself. I had to know what my vision meant, and while I wasn’t ready to tell my uncle I’d had one involving Monty and the killer yet, I needed

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