“Rude,” he said.
“Here’s what you’re going to tell me,” I said with a calm I thought even Myra would be impressed with. “Do you know what is setting off the cursed items?”
“I have a theory.”
“Tell me.”
“The butterfly.”
“Butterfly?”
“The sticker? Little butterfly sticker I very carefully replaced on the monkey toy?”
“The one you took forever to dig out of the box?”
“It took me what? A minute? Two tops. Don’t give me that face. Now that I think about it, everything that came out of her storage unit had a butterfly sticker on it. Weird.”
“Not weird,” Ryder said. “Hope. It means hope. The butterfly.”
“I think you’re right. Hope was the last thing in Pandora’s box,” I said. “It fits the myth. When people remove the butterfly—when they give up hope—the curse kicks in.”
Crow pointed a finger at me. “Smart.”
“Okay, we can work with this. Ryder, let everyone know the butterfly stickers will shut the curse down.”
“On it.” He texted, his fingers fast over the screen of his phone.
I liked the look on his face—well, honestly, I liked all the looks on his face. But this one, engaged, concentrating, serious, was just so sexy that I wanted to reach over and put my hands all over him.
“Watch the road,” he said without looking up.
“I am— Oh.”
Crow chuckled as I swerved away from the shoulder. “I was avoiding a puddle,” I said to my almost-uncle.
He just held up both hands, a grin on his face.
“I let them know we got the monkey,” Ryder said, finishing something on his phone. “Told them about the sticker.”
“Good, so we just need to—”
A blast of yellow light lanced into the stormy sky, looking like a lightning bolt striking upward, swallowed by the clouds.
“Crap,” I said. “The lake?”
“Yes, cut here.” Ryder pointed.
I threw on the Jeep’s lights, red and blue strobing, as I broke the speed limit to get to the lake.
“Check on Jean…”
“She’s not answering. But her location is three streets south.”
I swung the Jeep south and floored it.
“There.”
I followed Ryder’s finger to Jean’s parked truck, Myra’s cruiser right next to it. The little cottage-style house had weathered, cedar-shake siding and a detached garage. A garage that was smoking.
