How to Rattle an Undead Couple - Hailey Edwards Page 0,21
worries enough I could award Lethe my full attention. “Here you go.”
Quick as a flash, she finished unrolling the object and dumped it straight into the bag. “Seal it.”
Fingers gone numb, I stood there, gazing into beady glass-blue eyes set in a porcelain face.
“Here.” Lethe took the bag from me. “Let me help.”
“Not this again.” I reached for Linus on impulse, and of course he was there, threading his cool fingers through mine, anchoring me before the fear swept me away. “It can’t be real.”
Real as in one of my childhood dolls returned to me. There had been so many at Lacroix’s estate. I still had nightmares about doll armies capturing Woolly from the inside, despite it being a doll-free zone.
“We’ll have to verify its authenticity.” Lethe sealed the bag tight and passed it to Linus. “It’s got Lacroix’s scent all over it. See its leg panty things? That’s the origin. The rest of the doll smells like mothballs.”
“The bloomers are linen,” Linus said, turning its body in his hands. “The fine weave of the fabric leads me to believe it’s of modern production. The pattern could have been cut from a shirt of Lacroix’s.”
Pretending would have come in handy right about now. Too bad I couldn’t afford to play make-believe.
It might have been a traditional gift intended for the female heir everyone would have hoped I carried, a dolly for her to play with when she got older, but I didn’t think so. This felt like a threat left on the steps of my home, within hours of the Grande Dame’s disappearance, and Woolly thought so too. As much as I wished I could sweep this under a mental rug until after LJ was born, I had learned a long time ago the only way to banish fears was to face them head-on.
“Woolly,” I checked with the house. “I assume it was hand delivered?”
The old girl flashed a series of images in my head: a black car, a man in a suit, a pair of wax fangs.
Communication with her was imperfect, but it gave us the broad strokes. It would have to be enough.
“A vampire dropped off the box. He was dressed in a suit and drove or was driven in a black car.”
Affluent vampires and necromancers alike employed car services and kept vampires on staff. This tidbit didn’t point a damning finger at either species, but it might prove important later.
“There’s no shipping label,” Lethe confirmed, turning to examine the empty box. “I’ll check with the pack, see who’s on patrol tonight.” She glanced toward the gate. “They would have called me if they noticed a suspicious person on the property. Either the vampire got lucky and missed the patrol, or he timed his entry to make certain he could get in and out before the gwyllgi circled back.”
Another fun thing about hormones? The plummet straight into depression. “There is no end to this.”
Linus touched my cheek. “We’ll find out who’s responsible.”
“There will always be another incident and another perpetrator.”
For that, he had no answer. There was none. We were targets, and we always would be.
“I’m going to check in with Neely and Cruz,” I told him. “See if they found anything.”
He let me go, and for once, Lethe didn’t follow. I was grateful on both counts for a moment alone.
“Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.”
Bobbing his head and kicking his feet as he walked his perch, the yellow parakeet with his bright red eyes made fart noises to his heart’s content when I joined him in the office.
“Hey, buddy.” I gave him a quick head scratch. “You’ve been watching The Lion King again, huh?”
“Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.”
“Keep up the good work.” I sat behind the desk and called Neely. “Well?”
“She’s not in any local hospitals, or God forbid, the morgues.”
Heady relief swept through me that I wouldn’t have to make those calls after all. “That is good news.”
“Cruz is digging into her financials to see if there’s anything out of the ordinary there.”
Based on the doll, I had a bad feeling we weren’t going to write this one off as work-related or simple blackmail. Good thing Cruz had married a stellar accountant. Between Cruz’s legal know-how and Neely’s head with numbers, they would find any inconsistencies if there were any to find.
“Keep me posted.”
“Will do.”
I ended the call and dialed Boaz.
No answer.
Expecting more of the same, I called Corbin.
“Hey.”
After it registered that he had actually answered, I snapped, “Don’t you hey me.”
“What did I do? You said the party for family