“How about you get your guitar and play while I finish up here? I got this.” I winked. Hopefully playing would distract her from her stress. Music always did that for me. “Of course, if you’d rather stand here and supervise, I wouldn’t blame you.”
“Okay, yeah. I’ll go grab my guitar.” She disappeared from the room. While she was gone, I finished mixing in the rest of the ingredients and poured the mixture into the bundt pan. A few minutes later she returned with the guitar in her hands, the apron removed and most of the flour washed away.
She climbed up onto the counter and picked her way through her warm-up chords.
“What song were we working on?” I asked.
The fact that we hadn’t jumped directly to the inevitable seemed to calm her. “Midnight Kisses and Wool Mittens.”
“That’s right.” A cute, simple tune since Lydia had just started playing.
She played the melody. The tune twisted my heart. A part of me wished we could return to those days when I was nothing but a flirt and Lydia was that girl—someone to have fun with but not get serious about. Now things were far too serious.
The song ended. “I know why you’re here, Wickham.”
I slid the bundt cake into the oven and shut it, turning to face her. “Do you?”
“Yes, and I’ve been thinking.” She took a deep breath to calm her nerves. “I think we’d be great together, but if you don’t want to be married, then I’ll agree to the annulment if you let me help find the killer.”
I gave her a bit of an exasperated glance. “Why are you so adamant about this?”
“Because I care about you. I’m worried about you. Annulment or no annulment, that isn’t going to change.”
The pain in my chest twisted harder. This woman was going to make it very hard to follow through. After losing Georgiana and Darcy, basically my closest friends and family, things had felt quite lonely. I had the band and that helped, but it wasn’t the same. Lydia felt like family. She felt like home.
“I’ll share what I’ve discovered,” I said, “and if you can come up with a way to assist that is safe, then yes, your assistance is welcome. But afterward, we go straight to the courthouse and get an annulment.”
“Deal.”
Lydia set the guitar aside and leapt off of the counter. She walked over to where I was working and planted her elbows in the flour and gazed at me with eager eyes. “Okay, tell me everything.”
A small smile curled my lips at her determination. I told her about the trip to my sire and my visit to the kitchen group, and my last step of going to my old girlfriend. Last, I mentioned her suggestion that the culprit may not even be a vampire.
“If you aren’t sure what species the killer is, I might be able to help there.” She grinned excitedly. “I know of a spell that can reveal the species of someone if you’ve had recent interaction with them.”
“And if I haven’t?”
She shrugged. “Then it won’t work.” She straightened. “Come with me.”
I hesitated. “But the bundt cake?”
Lydia opened the kitchen door and stuck her head into the sitting room. “Kiiitty!” she shouted. “Can you come finish the bundt cakes for Ms. Bates’s order?”
Kitty’s voice came through into the kitchen. “Can I wear the charcoal sweater on my date with Riley tonight?”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “If you promise to do your hair stylishly and not put on that silly headband you always wear.”
“Sure.”
Lydia glanced back and motioned to me. “Come down to the basement and we’ll start brewing.”
She led me out of the kitchen and to the basement, which still showed signs of the recent fire that someone had started in an attempt to burn down Cupid’s Confections a couple of weeks ago. It smelled faintly of smoke and lavender, an oddly comforting mix despite the memories that the fire evoked. Charred wood beams crisscrossed the ceiling, solid but blackened at the edges. Here and there, soot stains crawled up the stone walls like shadows that never quite settled.
A large worktable, scorched around the corners, stood proudly in the center of the room. Mismatched jars covered its surface.
Lydia walked up to a locked cupboard. It must have extra magic protections on it because it was the only furniture in the room that looked unburnt. She gripped the padlock holding it shut and expertly twisted the dial. It popped open, and she smiled in triumph. “Mary is so predictable.”
She grabbed what appeared to be a journal from the cupboard and showed it to me. “Mary used it to help solve Isabella’s murder. It includes forbidden spells but also spells that require both witch and fae magic. My sister keeps it locked up, but guessing her code is always so easy.”
