Prince of Wolves - Tasha Black Page 0,41
out over the rose garden, which was dormant now. Soon the buds would appear, tipped in red.
Sara hummed the silly song she used to sing to those roses when she snuck up here as a child.
Blooms bursting into color
Leaves so green exploding from their stems
Footsteps told her the Martins were finished arguing. It was time to put the vase down and get to work.
Before she could, there was a surprising crack, like a gunshot.
She looked down at her hand. The vase had broken into several pieces.
Her mouth dropped open and she let go of the shards.
They hit the stone hearth and shattered into smaller fragments.
She instinctively knelt to retrieve the pieces. But as soon as she reached out for them, a sharp edge pierced her left index finger.
She hissed in a breath as she stood.
“What was that?” Amy asked on her way back through the dining room.
“Oh, I just knocked over a bud vase,” Sara managed. “Nothing to worry about.”
She straightened, clutching her hurt hand, but not before a single drop of blood fell to the hearth to join the broken pieces of pottery and dried petals.
“Need any help?” Al asked.
“No, thanks,” Sara replied. “I’ll be right with you.”
Amy nodded and headed out toward the conservatory and Al followed.
Sara made a mental note to mention the broken vase to the listing agent. Hopefully, it wasn’t valuable.
She was more puzzled over exactly how it had broken. She’d been holding it so gently.
Sara grabbed a tissue from her purse and pressed it to her finger. When she pulled it away it was clean. She didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore.
She stuck the tissue back in her purse and grabbed her phone to check the time. If she could spare a few minutes before their next showing, maybe she could look for a broom and dustpan here to clean up.
“What’s that?” Amy called from the conservatory.
Sara hurried in to find her client pointing to a massive, sheet-covered object.
“Oh, that’s the piano,” Sara said with a smile. She knew Amy was hoping for a house with room for a piano. “Hang on, I’ll show you.”
She put her phone on the window sill and lifted the edge of the sheet, revealing a glimpse of what it covered. The piano was made of a beautiful tiger striped wood, unlike any other Sara had ever seen.
She remembered gazing in the window at the piano from the garden as a child and seeing her own reflection staring back from the enormous floor to ceiling mirror in the gilded frame that graced the inside wall of the conservatory.
She pulled gently, but the sheet seemed to be caught on something, so she gave it a good tug.
It came loose suddenly, releasing a cloud of dust.
Amy immediately began sneezing and coughing.
“She’s having an allergy attack,” Al said. “We need to get her out of here.”
Amy covered her mouth with her hand and nodded.
“Go ahead,” Sara said. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Al ushered a red-faced Amy toward the front door as Sara hurriedly turned off the lights.
By the time she passed the grandfather clock in the front hall her clients were outside.
Sara stepped out onto the front porch and locked up, feeling the same strange sense of sadness she always did when she closed the keys back up in the lockbox.
This house was a landmark. Its gardens had been a playground for her as a child. It was sad to think that all of it might soon be gone.
By the time she joined Al and Amy back at her little Saab in the driveway, Amy’s face was looking normal again and the coughing and sneezing had stopped.
“Are you okay?” Sara asked her.
“Yeah, it was the weirdest thing,” Amy said. “As soon as I came outside, I felt better.”
“Black mold,” Al said, nodding to himself sagely. “It’s a sure sign.”
It wasn’t. But Sara wasn’t about to tell them that.
They all got in and she started the car, trying to remember which house they were seeing next.
Music drifted to her from somewhere - the exact song she had been humming, accompanied by bells and drums, as if it were coming from just outside the car.
She turned to look but there was nothing there - only the circular drive and the hulk of the house, looming over them.
“Oh, great song,” Al said, reaching between the front seats to turn up the radio.
The song coming from the car’s speakers was a sixties folk-rock classic. There were no bells or drums.
Sara shook her head, hoping she wasn’t