“That’s alright,” I said. “You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to. Can you at least tell me what that was that you were saying?”
She pinched her eyes shut and another tear slid down her cheek. “Just a prayer.”
That was all she would say about the subject.
As I lay in bed an hour later, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of prayer involved death. It was only as my eyes began to droop and I started to nod off that the answer came to me.
Last Rites.
Chapter 12
I rubbed my eyes and stretched at my desk, staring at the gray skies outside my room. I hadn’t slept much last night after Leanne’s nightmare. The prayer she’d said had worried me that she’d die at any moment. She hadn’t—yet.
The only silver lining was that no incubus haunted my dreams. Maybe Andre had managed to sufficiently scare them off.
I finished typing up an email to my mother, sent it off, and closed my laptop.
Behind me I heard the sound of shuffling. I swiveled in my seat to face Leanne. She knelt on a blue velvet blanket she’d spread over our floor, laying out tarot cards in the shape of a Celtic cross.
“Still not going to tell me what happened last night?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Or why you’ve been furiously dealing out cards for the last three hours?”
“Nope.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Well, have you seen anything good?”
“Nope.”
I sighed, opening another packaged cookie—one of the many I’d swiped from Andre’s place—and ate it. I’d say I was still feeling faint, hence the need for a cookie, but mostly I was just eating them to indulge my sweet tooth.
The door to our room flew open and Oliver came storming in. “Ugh my cousin’s coming in a week!” he said, plopping down on his mattress melodramatically.
“Why is that so bad?” I asked. Having never had family of my own, I’d kill for even a cousin. Just someone who felt somewhat permanent in my life.
My stomach fluttered happily at the thought that Andre could be that somewhat permanent presence. And then cynical Gabrielle pointed out that he wasn’t family, wasn’t necessarily permanent, and that I didn’t need anyone to be content. I really disliked cynical Gabrielle.
“She’s a fairy. Need I say more?”
“Nope,” Leanne said, still thoroughly absorbed in her tarot cards. “Is she traveling by ley line?”
Oliver examined his nails, which he’d painted lilac. “I assume so.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about. She’s probably going to show up three years from now in Bulgaria.”
Oliver rolled his eyes. “Fairies don’t make those sorts of mistakes Leanne.”
“What’s a ley line?” I asked, opening up another package, this one a cupcake that looked like it could still be edible—or just as inedible—a hundred years from now.
Oliver heard the crinkle of plastic and his head snapped up. I pulled another sealed cookie out from my backpack and tossed it to him.
“It’s an energy road,” Leanne said. She started to say more, then bit off her words.
I glanced from her to Oliver, who was happily tearing open the cookie wrapper. “What’s an energy road?” I asked him since Leanne seemed hesitant to talk at all today.
“It’s a road that some supernatural creatures travel on,” he said around bites of cookie. “Fairies like to travel along them.”
“Huh.” I crinkled up my wrapper and tossed it into the nearby wastebasket. The explanation hadn’t really clarified anything for me, but I chalked up my confusion to knowing too little about this world. Just when I thought I hand a handle on things.
***
I wound my way down a spiral staircase that led from the castle’s student café, The Witch’s Brew, where I’d grabbed dinner—if you could call a croissant and coffee dinner—to the castle’s main floor.
In my pocket, my phone buzzed.
“Hello?” I answered, placing the phone up to my ear.
“Gabrielle.” Andre’s voice brought a smile to my face.
“Hey—”
“There’s been another murder.”
My mood instantly shifted. “Another one? Same killer?”
I pulled my coat tight around myself as I pushed through the castle’s front doors. Outside, the dark sky had dimmed to night.
“Yes and yes, though I haven’t been to the scene yet. I’m on my way to pick you up right now.”
“Where are you planning on taking us?” I asked.
“The crime scene.”
***
Andre’s car pulled off the road behind a series of police cars. There was nothing exceptional about this area; it was just a series of rolling hills, probably someone’s pasture. Why the third murder took place here was not clear to me.
“Andre, I really don’t think bringing me here with you was such a good idea,” I said, remembering how the Politia seemed to call me in only after the victims were interred at the morgue.
“You wanted to be partners in this investigation, right?” Andre said.