But everyone on board The Mary Celeste disappeared without a trace, and to this day, no one knew why. And hundreds of people danced for days, some of them dropping from exhaustion and even dying in Strasbourg during the Dancing Plague, and to this day, no one understood how that happened.
So I wasn’t closing my mind to anything.
This taking my thoughts, along with avoiding any cats at my feet, I was rounding the south landing of the stairs only to see Battle climbing the first grand sweep.
“Hey, take care of business?” I asked as he stopped to wait for me to get to him.
“A quick email I needed to read and respond to, and not on a phone keyboard.”
Yeah, those phone keyboards were no fun to type on.
“I hear you,” I said as I made it to him.
He turned and curled an arm around my shoulders, mine went around his waist, and we walked down the rest of the stairs.
We hit the plum parlor that had Tempie and Prue, both with drinks.
Battle deposited me in a chair and then locked eyes with me.
I understood his look.
“Amaretto sour,” I ordered.
He jutted his chin and went to the drinks cabinet.
Tempie opened her mouth to speak.
But Prue got there before her. “If you’re going to say something about Battie and Vivi and afternoon sex, I’m throwing a pillow at you.”
“I don’t need to, dear, you just did,” Tempie replied.
Prue shot her a pointy face.
It glanced off Tempie.
“Where’s Chassie?” Battle asked from the cabinet.
“On her way, I expect,” Tempie said.
“You can relax, Battie,” Prue told him. “I saw her come in from the gardens earlier.” She turned to me. “She didn’t look happy.”
Hmm.
I wasn’t sure hard to get was Christian’s best play.
“Didn’t look happy?” Tempie queried, the thread of worry in her voice going undisguised.
“Chassie has a thing for Christian,” Prue announced.
Tempie, for the first time since I met her, seemed thrown.
She blinked and asked, “She does?”
Prue took a sip of her old fashioned before she answered, “No one wears three-hundred-pound dresses to garden, Tempie.”
Tempie appeared stunned.
Miracles never cease.
