The Priest (The Original Sinners #9) - Tiffany Reisz Page 0,90

could do on that street. Cyrus got in his car and punched in the address for the house Ike had secretly rented for a two-month stay from Home Away From Home.

Grand Isle might have been grand, but it wasn’t very big. Cyrus arrived at the new address in only ten minutes. The neighborhood was almost identical to the one he’d left. Brightly painted houses on stilts, all in a row. These looked a little nicer, a little newer. And they were closer to the water and would have a good view of the sunset. Romantic as it got.

Cyrus had trouble finding the house Ike had rented. He walked up and down the block twice looking for the number. His phone’s GPS was no use. New development. A lot of places still weren’t precisely mapped, and there was nothing to do but gumshoe it until he found the place.

The street was called Atlantic Way and the house number was 15. He found 10, 12, 14, and 16, but no 15. Odd numbers had to be somewhere.

Cyrus reached the end of the block and kept going. Turned out the street curved like a U. The odd numbers were on a ridge a little higher up.

He found the house he was looking for at the very end of the street.

Number fifteen was just as quaint as the Home Away from Home pictures had painted it, but the photographs hadn’t done justice to how secluded it was. There were three undeveloped lots between it and the next house—three empty lots full of trees, trees that had survived a hundred years of hurricanes. The property was fenced in. A passcode was required to access the staircase leading to the house.

No need to jump the fence or anything. Not yet, at least. Cyrus walked the perimeter of the lot to get a feel for the place.

Good thing this beach house was so secluded, he thought. Somebody might have called the cops on him, the way he was nosing around it…

Wait. Why this beach house? The answer was staring him in the face. Number fifteen rented at a premium for a reason, and it wasn’t the view—every beach house had a view. All were spectacular. None were this isolated. The privacy number fifteen afforded renters seemed like overkill, if all they planned to do was go for morning walks on the beach and sit on the back porch and read. But it wasn’t overkill if your livelihood was on the line.

Location, location, location.

That’s what Nora had said when Cyrus had asked her how she and her Viking had never got caught fooling around.

Tiny parish in a small town. And with the priest shortage, S?ren didn’t have to share the parish house with any other priests. Which is good. That place was tiny. But it was way back in the woods, trees everywhere, and to get to it, you had to drive in from a side street. Very secluded.

But if Father Ike was having an affair with somebody…who the hell was it?

Cyrus was going to have to meditate on that. But not until he got home and was feeling safe in his own place.

On the drive back, he tried instead to think about Paulina, her long legs around his shoulders, the taste of her, the sound of her coming.

But even that didn’t work.

All the way back to Nola, Cyrus could only think of one thing:

What the hell was Father Ike planning to do in that secluded beach house for two months?

Chapter Thirty-Three

The Good Witch, Mercedes’s occult shop, was located in the Irish Channel, on the corner of Tchoupitoulas and 7th. Even after three years, Nora was still struggling to pronounce the city’s street names like a local. Tchoupitoulas, though, she had in the bag: “Chop-a-Two-Liss.” Just as long as no one asked her to spell it.

Nora drove a block past the shop and parked on a side-street. On the off-chance dogs were allowed in The Good Witch, she leashed Gmork and took him with her. Otherwise, she’d have to leave him tied outside the store. Not a problem, really. Wasn’t like anyone was going to try to steal a huge black German Shepherd wearing a spiked dog collar.

The storefront of The Good Witch was painted lavender with a creamy white trim. The display window was brightly-colored with stained-glass hangings of harvest scenes, owls and ravens and deer, triple-phase moons, and the strange faces of men grinning through green foliage. On the door, a sign declared the shop Open.