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“Get away from it.” Noah shoves Gabe aside. George hits the lights. The chandelier flickers to life just as Eli whips the purple cloth off the table and uses it to smother the flames. Gabriel’s got his neck bent up, peering around the room with detached interest, but I grab him and yank him under the table, searching everywhere for our attacker. Yara and Madeline have taken cover under the day bed. Noah crouches behind the sofa, his gun poised at thin air.
Where’s the shooter? I cast my eyes around the room, but no one could have done it. We were all around the table. There’s no one else here.
Odette lays across the rug, her chest blooming with blood. Gabriel must have only just seen her, because he scrambles out from my grip and is at her side in an instant, trying to hold one of her purple scarves over the wound. I know it’s too late.
“Gabe.” I tug his arm. He doesn’t move. “Gabe, there’s no pulse. She’s gone.”
“Fuck.” His chest heaves. “Fuck.”
I wrap him in my arms. I know he’s slipping into a dark place, the place I’d been fighting to keep him out of all this time. This is another friend dead after a night partying with Gabriel Fallen. He’ll blame himself.
“There’s no one here,” Noah says. He’s right. There’s nowhere to hide in the sitting room. Cautiously, he creeps around the side of the couch, checking behind the curtains and in the cupboard of the antique liquor cabinet. No shooter.
I crawl out from beneath the table. My hand lands in the pool of Odette’s blood. I wipe it on my dress. “The door?”
“It’s locked.” Noah turns the handle to check. “From this side. And we didn’t hear it click. The shooter never left this room.”
My throat scratches and my eyes water as I try to squint through the haze of smoke. I taste the aftermath of this attack – singed carpet and fresh blood. Eli rushes to open a window, coughing as he leans out to gasp in fresh air.
I peer down at Odette. “Then who the fuck shot her?”
I glare at Noah.
He holds up his hands. “Don’t look at me.”
“You’re the only one in this room with a gun.” I don’t believe he did it, but I need to say something, do something. I need to think, but I can’t think because my veins are soaked with absinthe and adrenaline and someone was in my fucking house and they’ve vanished into thin air. “Otherwise, the only explanation is that someone just snuck into my house, shot at us badly, and disappeared.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Exactly. I thought you and Tiberius had this place locked down tighter than a medieval chastity belt.”
“We do.” Noah stares down at his gun like he doesn’t know how it got into his hands. “So how the fuck did they get in?”
“That’s what I need you to tell me.”
“This is going to sound insane,” George pipes up, “but could it have been a ghost? Like, a real ghost? Maybe the spirits of Malloy Manor didn’t want us being all up in their business—”
“You’re right, that is insane.”
“Sorry, I just know this right now feels like the part of a horror film where someone says ‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ and the next thing they’re decapitated at the foot of the stairs, and I’m a big fan of keeping my head attached to my shoulders.”
George lets out a little squeak – a laugh to cover up her terror. I want to go to her, but there’s no way I’m breaking my grip on Gabe. He feels impossibly light in my hands, as though he might trickle through my fingers like grains of sand and be blown away from me.
“We’ve got to call the police,” Gabriel cries.
“Fuck no.” I nod at George. “We’ve got our very own CSI: Emerald Beach right here. George, can you give us a time of death?”
Noah stares at me like I’ve gone nuts, but George gets it. She lets out another high-pitched laugh-squeak, but she bends down to inspect Odette’s body.
“Time of death is, ah, about four minutes ago. I recall three distinct shots, but only two went into Odette and the other is… look there.” George points to a bullet embedded in the wall. “This one missed all of us. Noah, hand me one of those envelopes on the table. Claws, I need your knife.”
I hand her the blade I still grip like a vise. George accepts one of the purple-lined envelopes Odette brought along for creating spells. She jiggles the bullet from the wall so it falls into the open envelope. “I’ll have a look at this under my microscope. I might be able to figure out the type of gun, but if it’s something generic it’s not going to help us much.”
Next, George creeps forward and leans over Odette, examining the wound and the position of the body. “It’s hard to be exact because it was so dark and I didn’t see what direction Odette was facing when she fell. But assuming she was looking into the center of the table, it looks like the shots came from over there.” She points a trembling finger at the bookshelf.
“But how did someone get over here…” Eli waves his arms to clear the smoke. He stops in his tracks. “Claudia, look at this.”
Eli drops to his knees and peers at the books on the lowest shelf.
