She hadn’t known until her father died, when a woman had come into the shop shrieking about a marble bust that had killed her husband and Quinn had come in, larger than life—and more demanding and imposing—and she had learned the hard way that she hadn’t been left the shop, she’d been left a life’s vocation.
Evil did exist. And it could invade the strangest things.
Like a painting…the painting that had led them to Geneva and the “year without a summer” when Mary Shelley had written her classic and darkness had prevailed. Like a musical instrument—magic? Or in the mind?
Waldorf was unhappy; he certainly seemed to believe that evil existed in things—and that something evil was in his house.
She held the still shivering cat and waited for Quinn to finish with his phone call. When he rang off, she turned to him.
“Well?”
Quinn shrugged and said, “Colby is first thankful that the cat is okay—and he suggested that we try the attic; the police swear that no one touched the place, but really, who knows what happened? Kathy screamed and ran out into the road and the car hit her. There was all kinds of activity going on. Anyway, he’s at a loss, but he did suggest that we try the attic. He left it in the attic—Kathy said that it was down in the hallway.”
“Ah! The attic,” Danni murmured. “Of course. Lead the way.” She hesitated. “You’ve got your gun, right?”
“Always,” he assured her. His voice was even and low. She actually smiled.
She loved him; really loved him. It was something she freely admitted now. They lived together, even if she changed the subject any time he mentioned marriage. The world was so strange—and their role in it even stranger. Sometimes he was called away on simple cases without her, and sometimes, she needed certain space to grapple with something herself.
Yet what would her life be without him? And would she have even survived some of the things that had happened if he hadn’t been with her, six-feet-four-inches of brawn and a mind set on saving the world—and her, of course. And he could be fun and his eyes could flash with such amusement, and sometimes, she realized, too, that he was impossibly masculine and that even thinking about him could be something exceptionally arousing.
The cat meowed loudly—protesting—and jolted her back to their situation.
She suddenly found herself wishing that Wolf was with them. The wolf-dog hybrid knew way before any human could if someone was there.
If something was wrong.
Not that she didn’t have faith in Quinn; he had been military, he had been a cop—and she did trust him with her life. In fact, he sometimes wanted to protect her when she needed to be involved, which didn’t make things easy. She still didn’t really understand their roles in the greater scheme of life and the world, but she did know that her father had helped others for years, that the shop had taken in and defused many weird things—and that the shop had been left to her. She loved to believe that she and Quinn—with the help of Wolf and their friends--did do good things for others around them.
And she had certainly had learned that evil did exist.
And, hell, by their very nature, attics could be very scary.
“Let’s head on up,” she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact.
But, she already felt unease. As if there was something there—a malevolent presence.
“As soon as I can get Waldorf down without having my arms ripped to shreds.” She set the cat down on the sofa, promising that she’d be back soon. The damned cat is probably smarter than the two of us!
Quinn quickly moved up the stairs to the second floor landing. He searched the ceiling there, looking for a pull-down stairway or ladder to the attic; Danni smiled and pointed to the end of the hallway. “Stairway is right there,” she told him, grinning.
“Too easy,” he said. But he grimaced sheepishly.
“This is an old Victorian,” Danni said. “Servants probably had their quarters up there at one time—not unlike our place on Royal Street.”
“You’re probably right,” he agreed, heading down the hall.
Danni searched the walls for a light switch. Quinn found a string to pull that connected to the antique fixture that hung from the high ceiling.
The stairway led to a closed door—a locked door, but a locked door with the key right in it. Quinn opened the door.
“Stay behind me,” he told her.
She smiled. He couldn’t help falling into protective mode; she knew that.
The attic was almost completely dark—almost. The corners were dark for certain, but a large paned glass window at what would be the front of the house allowed the moonlight to shine in.
Shadows cast long silhouettes due to that pearly yellow light and seemed to douse the space with a strange and eerie atmosphere.
“I can’t find a light switch,” Danni murmured.
“Or a pull string,” Quinn said. “You’d think we’d be bright enough by now to never travel without a flashlight.”
“At least you’re bright enough to never travel without a gun,” Danni told him. She realized she was whispering. The attic seemed to call for her to speak so.