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For now, anyway.
As soon as the taillights of Raymond’s Silverado had disappeared down the long gravel lane that led back to the main road, however, Calvin sent me a very direct look. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
I didn’t answer at first, and instead reached to pick up some of the glasses left behind on the table. Delia had insisted on clearing the plates and bowls from our dinner, but we’d lingered for a while after that, sipping our water, and so the drinkware still remained. “Well, I’m not sure whether it matters if I’m ‘okay’ with it or not. It is what it is.”
His jaw tightened a little. Like me, he didn’t have much use for that phrase, but sometimes it could be a little too appropriate for a given situation. “Maybe there’s something we could do — ”
“Like what?” I countered. “I have no idea where the auras came from in the first place, so it’s not like I would even know where to begin when it comes to trying to get them back. About all I can do is hope that once the baby is here, they’ll decide to return.”
For a moment, he was silent, apparently considering my words. When he spoke, his tone was gentle. “You never really told me much about them.”
No, I hadn’t, because I’d taken the auras for granted, had thought they were as much a part of me as the color of my eyes or the annoying cowlick at my hairline that had convinced me I’d be much better off wearing bangs to conceal it. “What’s to say?” I said, my tone deliberately casual. “They started showing up when I was around thirteen. By then, I’d already started reading lots of books on witchcraft and psychics and the supernatural, so I knew what they were. They didn’t frighten me or anything.”
“No, I suppose they wouldn’t have,” Calvin replied, a faint smile touching those lips I loved so much. “You don’t seem fazed by a whole lot.”
I set the glasses I was carrying down on the counter next to the sink. “I don’t?” I asked, my tone deliberately arch.
“No,” he said, and came close so he could pull me into his arms and give me a much-needed kiss. He didn’t taste like anything in particular, since we’d all been drinking lemon water, but his mouth was warm and welcome, exactly what I needed right then. “And what you’re dealing with now…well, that’s just a minor bump in the road.”
“Exactly,” I said, snuggling against his shoulder. “All I can do now is hope we don’t have any murders I need to solve.”
A reluctant chuckle sounded in my ear. “Considering your track record, that might be a little much to ask for.”
True enough. Then again, we’d had an awfully long quiet span recently, all the way from the previous November to that unfortunate incident at the Stepping Stars tournament at the end of May. If we had another murder-free stretch like that, then the baby would be safely here before I was required to put on my Sherlock Holmes hat again.
Fingers crossed.
Even as I sent that hope winging out into the universe, I couldn’t quite quell the trickle of worry that went through me.
As I’d found all too often in the past, all the hopes and wishes in the world couldn’t move the heavy hand of fate.
The Standingbears had come over on Saturday night, and the Sunday that followed was a quiet one, with both Calvin and me puttering around the house and taking care of whatever chores that had stacked up during the previous week. On Monday morning, I was back at my shop, Once in a Blue Moon, promptly at nine-thirty, ready to get a new week started. These days, I was flying solo, because Archie had opened his dance studio in the former antique store next door, and that meant I’d lost him as my assistant. Yes, I was happy he was now running his own business — and happier still that it looked as though it was going to be a success, something which hadn’t been guaranteed in our small town of Globe — but the days felt a lot emptier now that I was back to working by myself.
True, sooner or later, I’d need to hire another assistant, someone I could train and have work with me for a few months before I had to go on a maternity leave whose length still hadn’t been determined yet, but I hadn’t quite taken the plunge and started formally advertising the position.
Oh, I’d asked around, made a few informal inquiries, but to my surprise, I had seen little interest so far. My friend Hazel had told me she’d pick up a shift or two if I needed to go to the doctor or run errands, but her career as an artist had been gaining momentum lately, so she didn’t have a lot of time to spare, and definitely wasn’t interested in being a full-time shop assistant.
And even though Globe didn’t exactly have what you could call a thriving business district, it appeared everyone in our town was pretty set in their current professions and didn’t see the need to make a change.
Which meant I’d probably have to put an ad on Craigslist or something and see if I could lure someone to my adopted hometown with the promise of a job that paid much better than minimum wage and also offered full benefits.
Luckily, I was able to do so, thanks to the money I’d inherited from Lucien Dumond, former head of the Greater Los Angeles Necromancers’ Guild. It wasn’t as though he and I had been close — far from it — but he’d decided he’d rather leave that money to me than to his murderous brother or any of his guild members. From time to time, I experienced a little guilt over having such a huge chunk of change dumped in my lap despite not doing anything to deserve it, although I did my best to assuage that guilt by being extremely generous with my charitable donations and doing whatever else I could to ensure I was spending the money on good deeds.
I’d just unlocked the front door and taken down the little “be back at” sign I hung in the window whenever the business was closed when Victoria Parrish, Archie’s fiancée, came in the back entrance, which I’d already unlocked. We were now building-mates, since I’d gifted her my unused apartment upstairs, and she’d remodeled it into her design studio and office. However, lately she’d been so busy with the design of a new development currently under construction on the east side of town — she was doing all the interiors for the model homes — that I hadn’t seen much of her for a couple of days.
“Just wanted to pop in and see when you can go in for your final fitting,” she told me. “Can you do Wednesday at five-thirty?”
“Sure,” I said, thinking it was thoughtful of her to have scheduled the appointment after I was finished at the shop for the day. Yes, I could always hang up my trusty “be back at” sign and slip out in the middle of the afternoon if I had to, but this was much better.
“Perfect,” she said. “Sorry I’ve been kind of scarce lately — the Mariposa Heights project is taking even more of my time than I thought it would.”
“It’s fine,” I assured her. “I know you have a lot on your plate right now.”
Which was probably the understatement of the year, since, besides overseeing the design of five different model homes, she was also in the final stages of planning her wedding with Archie. True, before she’d gotten her interior design certification, she’d been a highly successful wedding planner, and so she knew better than pretty much anyone else what needed to be done, but still, that was a lot of balls to keep up in the air.
However, being Victoria, she looked cool and composed in her elbow-sleeved ivory sheath dress, blonde hair pulled back into an impeccable ponytail, clear blue eyes accented by mascara and nothing else. I’d never seen her with a hair out of place, and certainly not when competing in ballroom dance tournaments with Archie, which they still were doing despite their extremely full schedules.
The wedding was set for October fourteenth, a little less than two weeks from now. It wasn’t going to be an overly lavish affair, just a small ceremony and reception held in the backyard of the house the couple had purchased about six months ago, but even a modest wedding had a lot of moving parts. Hazel and I would be Victoria’s only attendants, since her entire family lived out of state, and she’d been busy enough once her wedding-planning business took off that she’d lost touch with most of her college sorority sisters. I was thrilled to be asked, and I knew Hazel was, too. It meant that Victoria now looked on us as her closest friends, that she was determined to make Globe her adopted hometown as well.
