scary thing, and you need to take a breath.”
“I can’t reach Lucien.” I feel tears threaten. I need to hear his voice, know that he’s okay.
“Go try to call him again,” she suggests, and I follow her advice because I’m about to accuse Esme, a woman I trust implicitly, of being possessed by Horace and hanging a dead man in front of my café.
That sounds ridiculous even to my own ears.
Just as I’m walking through the door to my office, my phone rings. “Oh, goddess, you’re okay.”
“Of course, I’m okay. I’m at work. What’s wrong?”
I clench my eyes closed, relieved to hear his voice. I tell him about what I found when I arrived at the shop.
“He looks just like you.”
“He’s not me, darlin’. Is Cash there?”
“Yes, he and his guys are taking care of it. I’m sure we’ll have some questions to answer, and they’ll want to talk to Esme, who was here when I got in. It’s weird, Lucien. She’s not supposed to be here, and she says she didn’t see anything.”
“Do you honestly think he possessed her?”
I scrunch up my face. “I don’t think so. I mean, she’s acting normal, and we put one hell of a protection spell on this place. There’s no way he could come inside.”
“That’s your answer then.”
“Yeah.” I blow out a breath. “I could have gone my whole life without seeing that.”
“I’m on my way over. I just have a couple of things to wrap up here.”
“Stay there,” I insist. “I’m going to work, too. We have to live our lives, Lucien. But I need for you to work that spell again, the one you cast when we went to the old house in the bayou. I need a line directly to you. It made me crazy that I couldn’t reach you this morning.”
“We’ll do it later today,” he says. “And we’ll keep it open for as long as you like.”
“Okay.” I want to be in his arms so I can have a good cry. “How can I go from the happiest night of my life last night to the scariest one this morning?”
“Ah, baby. I’m so sorry. Let me come over there, just for a little while.”
I sniff and reach for a tissue. “You’re always welcome here, but I’m okay. Let’s get through today, and then we’ll figure out what to do. I think I’m going to start bringing Sanguine with me to work. She adds a level of protection.”
“Agreed. We’ll cast a boundary spell that keeps her in the reading room.”
I smirk. “She’ll love that. I’ll see you soon.”
“See you soon, darlin’.”
He hangs up, and I take a minute to pull myself together. I wipe my eyes and nose, brush my fingers through my hair, and then walk back out to where Gwyneth and Esme are already talking with the police.
The body is gone, thankfully.
“I need to ask a couple of questions,” Cash says. “First, are you okay?”
“I’m better now that I’ve talked to Lucien. I saw the glasses on that man, and—” I can’t finish the thought.
“I know. I had a bad minute myself. Tell me exactly what happened this morning.”
I run through it all from the minute I parked my car until Cash arrived on the scene.
“That’s all I know. Aren’t there street cameras or something you can check?”
“Yes, and my team has already put in a request for the footage. But we did the same when it was just a hand on the bench, and the footage was jumbled, so we couldn’t see who left it.”
“Of course, it was.” I laugh without humor and drag my hand down my face. “Because nothing can be easy with this.”
“I’m going to take the bloodstone straight over to Lucien. But there’s already a difference in this body compared to the others we’ve found.”
“What?”
“It still had blood in it. He didn’t drain the body. Not sure what that means. I have to think on it, but I thought I’d tell you. I shouldn’t, because this is an ongoing investigation, but hell, nothing about this is normal.”
“Thank you.” I impulsively hug my brother-in-law. “Thank you so much.”
“I haven’t caught him yet.”
“You will.” I kiss his cheek. “Blessed be, brother.”
His cheeks flush, and he squeezes my shoulder. “Call me for anything, any time.”
“I will.”
He and his men clear out, and I sit in a chair, just staring straight ahead.
“You know,” Gwyneth says, “if you wanted to just close for the day and take some time to rest and heal, no one would blame