She goggled at me. “Why would Mrs. Flannery be here? She up and deserted poor Mr. Flannery. She broke his heart.”
“She may have snuck in,” I said. “Someone said they saw her coming up this way.”
The maid’s eyes rounded. “She wouldn’t.”
“I’d hate for her to ruin Carson’s party,” I said with a concerned look. “Or worse.” I let her imagine what worse could be. It would probably be better than anything I could come up with.
When she still wavered, I went in for the kill. “You don’t think she’d hurt him, do you?”
That did it. She gasped and spun in the opposite direction. I followed as she flung open a room, ran through it and a bathroom and then out into another hallway. She jogged right and then left, and suddenly the owner’s suite was right in front of us.
It wasn’t as imposing as I’d have thought. In keeping with the French chateau look, the small vestibule outside contained a Louis XVI couch and two chairs painted white and upholstered in blue, two marble round marble topped tables with glass vases full of fresh white gladiolas.
The white doors leading into the sweet were paneled and at least ten feet tall.
“Should I get security?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. Let me just check to see if anything’s amiss. We wouldn’t want to embarrass Carson if nothing was wrong, or if the woman someone saw wasn’t Mrs. Flannery.”
She nodded and chewed her lower lip.
I went to check the door. I tapped on the door. “Carson? It’s me, Rebecca. Are you inside?”
If his room was soundproofed, he wouldn’t hear. I noticed a discrete button set in the wainscoting just to the left of the door. The maid clearly wasn’t aware of it. I shifted to block her view of it and now I knocked hard, raising my voice.
“Carson? Are you there? Are you okay?”
Once again he didn’t answer and I pretended to look chagrined. I needed to get in and I needed her to stay out of the way.
“I’m really sorry about this,” I said, and hit her with a spell Damon had been teaching me. It was meant to be defensive—a way to knock out an attacker and give you time to get away. Considering the fact that the attackers he feared were all witches and would be shielded against a knock-out spell, it was a pretty pointless lesson. I hadn’t argued, though, since it could be useful and it made him feel better. I’d even been able to get a handle on it pretty quickly, largely because it didn’t require complicated spell work that I still didn’t understand.
The maid crumpled to the rug-covered slate and I winced. The rug was made of piled wool, but she was still going to wake up with a headache and bruises.
Cue Jen’s and Lorraine’s arrival.
“What’s going on?” Jen asked as Lorraine bent to check the maid’s pulse.
“I knocked her out. With magic,” I added when Lorraine started looking for a lump. “She should be fine.”
“She’s got a good pulse and is breathing steady.” Lorraine pushed to her feet.
“Should we move her?” Jen asked, frowning at the girl’s prone body.
“We need to make sure Lydia’s okay, first.” Even as I said it, I went to the door and tried the knobs. Locked. Not a problem. With a jolt of magic, I softened the locking mechanism and pushed on the door. A little resistance and they parted, swinging silently open.
I went inside first, gaze sweeping the darkened interior. The drapes were shut and the lights off. It was difficult to make out more than the hunched shadows of furniture and decorations.
I heard the rumble of Flannery’s voice and a shriek followed by his laughter. I followed the sounds, careful not to make any noise of my own. Jen and Lorraine followed close on my heels.
We left the first room and passed through two others until we arrived at a massive bathroom like none I’d ever seen.
“Holy shit,” Lorraine whispered.
“Buy this house, Beck. We need it,” Jen added in quiet awe.
The bathroom—the name did not give it justice—was a large round room with a ceiling that went all the way up to the roof, where a skylight allowed in a fall of light. Along one wall was a massive counter with two waterfall sinks, the cabinets all made of polished teak. Dominating the space was a glassed in garden where a stone tub big enough for five people had been sunk in the floor. Rainfall showers interspersed the plants, along with benches and chairs. The floor was a mix of smooth stone and moss. A tree stretched its limbs up toward the skylight.
As pretty as it all was, we swiftly realized Flannery had turned it into a garden of horrors.
