He grinned. “Yeah?”
And then his mouth was on mine, and I felt my knees grow weak. He pushed me against the door and pressed his lips to mine like a drowning man, desperate and greedy for air. I ran my hands over his chest and through his hair, finding that I couldn’t get enough of him. I wanted to touch him all over and pulled him against me harder.
Bram gasped and pulled back, clearing his throat and straightening his cravat. “I’m … I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. More than fine.”
Bram chuckled, his eyes flicking down to my lips again. “I know. But I’m a gentleman, and as such, should show at least a modicum of restraint.”
“Well, as long as it’s only a modicum,” I teased.
With a knowing smile, Bram opened the door again. “Shall we? If we have time, there’s a wonderful little café nearby.”
“I’ll clear my schedule.”
“Have fun, you two,” Sybille called out as we slipped outside.
Bram waved to her, and I sent him a curious look when he closed the door behind us.
“Does she know?” I asked.
“About you and me? I can’t keep much from Sybille.”
“But your father—”
“Doesn’t care who I see, so long as I’m happy.”
I absorbed that, thinking how much easier my life would be if my aunt had adopted that attitude. “Must be nice.”
“Well, it’s nice not to have to keep it a secret from my family, but the rest of society is a different beast entirely.”
We began walking up the street when Bram paused at the apothecary. “It looks like the crowd is finally gone.”
“What happened?” I asked, squinting into the darkened shop now that I didn’t have a mass of people obscuring my view. Shelves were knocked to the floor, bowls of herbs smashed to pieces and spilling their contents across the ground. It looked like it had been ransacked.
“I noticed it in that state this morning when I was out on an errand. I’m not sure.”
I saw the gendarme who had interviewed me a few weeks back standing inside, gazing down at something covered in a white sheet.
“Is that a body?” I asked, eyes wide.
Bram hesitated. “Let me see if they need my expertise. I’ll only be a moment.”
I nodded as Bram stepped through the doorway, careful not to disturb the door. I hesitated a second before following. I stared at the door as I slid past it. It seemed to have been broken in half before part of it had been wrenched away and discarded onto the sidewalk. I frowned, realizing how similar that was to a man’s hand being wrenched from his arm. Pure brute strength. But a bear couldn’t have just wandered into town and attacked this shop, leaving the others unmolested.
I stepped over a yellow powdery substance and carefully made my way to where Bram was conferring with the gendarme. I should have been worried that the gendarme might have new questions for me, but given our last encounter, I doubted he had any interest in me whatsoever. The room smelled of herbs and spices, but also something sickly permeating it all. My eyes wandered to the sheet at their feet, and I wondered if what I was smelling was blood.
Something shifted deeper in the room, a deck of tarot cards tumbling from an overturned case, spilling into the chaos. My eyes swept the walls of the shop, halting at a nearby shelf. I touched a book of medicinal cures, before my fingers wandered to one of lunar goddesses, dusted with plaster. I recalled the intimidating statues in the hedge maze. Interesting to find something on the goddesses here. Perhaps such a book would prove enlightening. Casually, I slipped the book into my pocket before looking up to find four deep claw marks gouged through the wall. Shuddering, I turned to find the gendarme reaching down to pull the sheet aside, revealing a woman’s corpse. She stared blankly up at the ceiling, her skin unnaturally pale. It made the freckles across her nose appear much darker. I swallowed hard as I took in her red hair, spilling out around her face, as if framing it with blood. Her throat was missing. The lower half of her body was gone as well, intestines spilling out onto the hardwood.
I turned away and stumbled back outside, holding a kerchief to my mouth. Bile rose in my throat, but I took several deep gulps of air to force it back down.
“Emile? Are you quite alright?”
I nodded, shaken, as I turned to find Bram behind me, the gendarme scowling over his shoulder.
“I’m fine. Thank you,” I said as Bram placed a hand on my shoulder. “I just wasn’t expecting …”Half her body to be missing.
“Let’s go,” Bram insisted. “There’s nothing I can do here.”
