“I would read that book all day long,” I told her, truthfully.
“I need to flesh this out,” Allison said, rushing upstairs, her phone held up in front of her. “Siri, make a note. True crime podcast, set in San Francisco. Victorian era. No, right after the great fire when chaos overtook the city. A perfect setting for a predator.”
I nodded, approving of the idea. My guests this weekend were proving to be more entertaining than I had originally assumed. “Why do I feel like Taylor and Allison would make a great couple?” I asked Teddy, who was sprawled dramatically across the kitchen floor in a patch of afternoon sun.
He rolled onto his back in response, which I chose to interpret as agreement, and possibly a request for a belly rub, which I obliged.
What was setting out the Happy Hour hors d'oeuvres compared to quality time with my favorite skunk?
Reginald popped his head into the kitchen. “What’s this I hear about mint juleps? Taylor has brought out his own Bourbon batch. If you have the fixings I can play bartender. Always fancied myself a bit of a liquid architect as well.”
I would have sworn on Aunt Odette’s grave that Teddy rolled his eyes at the expression ‘liquid architect.’
“To the parlor, then,” I said, with a practiced smile.
Tomorrow night, there would be champagne flutes and the soft glow of candlelight beneath the magnolias at Belle Rêve Manor. One of the most powerful women in the Garden District would be toasted.
I would wear a dress that would make the blue “bread baking” dress I had on look like a casual rag—even though I normally wore jeans and T-shirts—and accept my legacy membership into the Society.
But tonight we were what sounded like the start of a joke. Four guests, an innkeeper, and a skunk walked into a parlor…
Vivienne took a picture of me the second I rounded the corner.
“Nice dress,” she said, lowering her camera.
After a friendly and uneventful evening, the next morning arrived with roughly four hundred percent more humidity than I had any interest in dealing with.
It was time to face facts—I had to ice my coffee.
Which had me in mourning for my hot java, but there was too much to do to grieve for long. Sucking on my iced coffee through a straw in a steel tumbler, I spent the better part of the day running the B&B equivalent of a military operation. Beignets, coffee, and orange juice out for breakfast, fresh towels, extra ice in the parlor cooler, and a covert dusting of the first floor, all while keeping half an ear tuned to the comings and goings of my guests.
Reginald spent most of the morning on the front porch with a folding easel and a sketchbook, apparently rendering the exterior of Midnight House in painstaking architectural detail, muttering to himself about window proportions. I peered over his shoulder at one point.
“Wow, that’s fantastic,” I said, enjoying the vision of Midnight House sketched out in charcoal. He was talented.
Reginald jumped. “Good Lord, Harper. You scared me half to death.”
I hadn’t exactly been quiet in my approach. I wondered if Reginald was a little bit hard of hearing. Either that or he had been so focused he hadn’t registered the floorboards creaking when I had walked. “My apologies. I just thought the sketch was lovely.”
He grunted, so I watered the ferns in the planters as Taylor arrived back at Midnight House, smelling faintly of bourbon and looking pleased with himself. I couldn’t even fathom drinking bourbon at noon but Taylor clearly loved the drink.
“Out testing your own or checking out the competition?” I asked.
“Both. It’s a calling,” he told me as he tottered up the porch steps. “Sort of like the priesthood.”
“Not quite the same,” Reginald said, not looking up from his sketch, his pencil moving rapidly.
Oh, so he heard that but not me? Interesting.
Taylor was undeterred. “It just whispers in your ear one day that you’re meant to distill spirits. Greatest day of my life.”
“I felt that way when I first picked up a camera at three years old,” Vivienne said, wandering onto the porch to take photos of my ferns and the rivulets of water running down the slanted floorboards.
Nothing in Midnight House was plumb.
Arguably, not even me.
“I bet you feel that way about this house,” Reginald commented.
