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“I’m sorry if it felt that way.”
She wasn’t at all sorry.
“I just find it curious, the talk of an ancient word I hadn’t heard in years accompanied by the purchase of the Hutton mansions by two outsiders to Stone Haven—”
“Fuck,” Torr muttered aloud.
“Your niece is dating one of those men, isn’t she?”
Annabel did not even attempt to mask her rabid curiosity, but Birdie was having none of it.
“I am done answering your questions,” she said in no uncertain terms. Silence followed her statement, stippled only by the sound of two rapid heartbeats plus Toni’s.
“I don’t believe you actually answered any of them,” Annabel said finally. “But again, I’m sorry for Zach’s behavior.”
They were well hidden, but Torr moved Toni back just a bit more as Annabel walked past them. The tingling of the bell signaled her departure, at which point Toni didn’t waste any time.
“What was all that—”
But he was already walking around the crowded shelves toward the register.
“Where in the devil did you come from?” Birdie asked as he emerged from behind a display of replica swords.
“We followed her in here,” Torr said. “For a moment I thought you’d call her out on lying.”
“But? How did you—”
Toni pointed to her ear and Birdie caught on. “Oh, right.”
“Unfortunately,” Toni said, “I don’t have vampire hearing, so I have no idea what the hell—sorry, Birdie—heck is going on.”
Torr quickly filled her in on the conversation, Birdie adding the occasional footnote. Then, addressing both of them, he said, “She knows.”
Birdie nodded emphatically. “Yes, I would say she is most definitely hiding something.”
“If only we could find that journal she sent Zach to find.” Toni looked around the shop as if it might suddenly jump out at them from one of the myriad of odds and ends. They’d looked and looked, to no avail.
It was his understanding Birdie and Jim bought some of their stock—the kitschy antiques—from estate sales, and they’d taken home boxes of knickknacks from the Walsh family sale. Not Annabel Walsh, but the sister with whom she’d had a falling-out. The woman had left her considerable wealth and estate to the town, not her family. Torr practically rolled his eyes at the thought of what a scandal that must have been.
But Birdie and Jim had gone through what remained of the Walsh things—three times, to be exact—and the closest they’d found to a journal was a small notebook chronicling her irritable bowel syndrome. Not something a person would feel the need to break into the shop to snatch.
If they had the journal, it was lost.
Something else struck Torr as odd. “My brother and Kenton have been here for four months. It’s been that long since you asked Annabel about the Cheld. Why would she come here now?”
“More importantly, does she know you exist?” Toni stared straight at him. You meaning vampires, he imagined.
“I think we should assume she suspects, if she truly does have knowledge of the Cheld,” he said, picking up the fabric swatches. “So the next question is, what does she plan to do with that knowledge?”
Toni and Birdie exchanged glances but didn’t speak.
He flipped through the fabrics and picked a deep hunter green. “I assume this is for the drapes?”
Toni peered down at his choice.
“Yes.”
“I like this one. And it’s also Lawrence’s favorite color.”
Unfortunately, if Annabel Walsh did know of the existence of vampires, his brother and Toni’s bar would be doomed before it even opened. One word to the wrong person, and they would all be forced to leave Stone Haven for good. Surprisingly, he wasn’t quite ready to leave.
