“What?”
“Just thinking about us on a boat.”
“We can rent a boat, but I’m not shaving,” she muttered.
“Me neither! We’d end up on some Big Foot sighting websites!”
She grinned.
I reached for my glass, then remembered it was empty. Stupid wine. There was never enough when I wanted it. And the kitchen seemedsofar. But no, I was here for Beth. If we were out of wine, I’d be the hero who brought us more!
Empty glasses in hand I popped up from my seat, or tried to, my knee locked up slightly and I had to bend it again to loosen it up and headed into the kitchen to refill our glasses and get us each another brownie.
Sure, Beth hadn’t asked for one, but her glass was empty just like mine and if I was getting another brownie then the polite thing was to bring her one as well. Plus, she was much more engrossed in the show than I was. I preferred those baking shows where everyone was super nice and helpful to one another. Their accents were adorable as well, so that didn’t hurt matters.
Something or someone tapped on our kitchen window as I poured more wine for Beth. I froze. What the hell was that?
Peering outside, I didn’t see anything. Just my old familiar tree. Still, I kept staring for a long minute, not feeling comfortable until I noticed leaves dancing along the grass in the glow from the backlight. Dancing. Sigh. In the wind, of course.
I blamed my nervous reaction on my tipsy state. It was probably just a branch being knocked against the window by the wind. I bit into one of the brownies before I filled up my glass with wine as well. One thing I’d learned about living alone for most of my life is that I couldn’t jump at every tiny sound, or I’d go insane.
I hadn’t thought things through though, and when I tried to carry the brownies and the two glasses of wine back, I nearly spilled. Losing the wine and the brownies would have been a tragedy.
As I moved to return to the living room, with the brownies precariously balanced on top of the wine glasses, someone tapped on the back door. I startled and my brownie fell into my glass, the missing bite making it more unstable than Beth’s. I cursed under my breath and turned back to the kitchen, setting everything down on the counter. Chocolate and red wine went together, right? Surely, I didn’t just ruin both.
Okay, now. Somebody had to be teasing me. Maybe Deva and Emma had finished investigating and were back to freak us out. They should know better, but I also remembered how mischievous they’d been when we were all younger. I yanked open the back door. “Gotcha!” I yelled.
But nobody was there.
With a sigh, I stuck my head outside and looked around. The trash cans were where I’d left them, the flowers were swaying in the night breeze, but there was no explanation for the tapping noise I’d heard.
Nobody.
“Weird,” I murmured to myself as a chill broke out over my skin.
I turned back inside, pulling the door closed with me, and shrieked when I found a man standing behind me, holding a knife up in the air. My knife if the pearlescent handle was anything to go by. Seemed like a silly thing to notice but I loved my knife set. A black hood covered his head, hanging down over his face shadowing it, but even so, I could tell that he was wearing something under it as well, some kind of mask that made him look animalistic. He roared at me and lunged, striking outward and making me scream once more. Fear clenched around my heart as my mind went blank of any spell I could use.
One of my cats jumped off the table that sat between the living room and the kitchen and onto his back, sinking her claws deep into his skin. The man screamed and dropped my kitchen knife as he lurched forward. I stepped to the side and grabbed my kitty around the waist, yanking her back toward me as the man bolted out the back door, swinging it open with such force that it bounced backward and smacked him in the face before he could actually get away.
Kitty’s claws came back with a bit of the guy’s back, so he screamed louder as he finally made it out of the house.
Beth came running in, also screaming, or maybe it was supposed to be a war cry with the way she was brandishing the TV remote. I wasn’t sure. This kind of thing demanded action though, so I put my kitty down and yanked open the kitchen drawer that held emergency hex bags for just such a time as this. “Come on!” I yelled.
We ran out the back door, going as fast as we could, around the house and up the street. We were a ways back, not a chance of being as fast as our attacker, but we saw him cross the road and disappear into the woods. I started to follow, but Beth jerked me back just in time to keep from getting hit by a car. It hadn’t been going that fast, but the tires squealed against the tarmac nonetheless as it ground to a halt in front of us.
I would’ve gone around it and kept running after him, but Emma popped out of the passenger seat of the car, which I now recognized as Deva’s. “What’s going on?” Emma demanded, looking ready to set the whole world alight if she needed to.
Dejected, I glared toward the spot where the man disappeared. “Trouble.”
11
Emma
“Well, now what?”Deva shook her head and settled deeper into the sofa. The thing was ridiculously comfortable, to the point that I wondered if my friends had somehow used their magic to make it that way. The paisley fabric screamed Carol’s tastes and I wasn’t surprised that half of it was covered in a blanket, and I’d bet money this was where Deva sat regularly. Unfortunately, that was the space that Beth was currently occupying, so Deva was sitting next to her, while Carol and I sat on… bean bags? I wasn’t sure where they had appeared from, but one of them was covered in cat hair. Not that I really minded, but it was clear that I was stealing a cat’s bed and I didn’t want any more cats to be angry with me.
“I think we all agree Roger was murdered,” Beth said in a wooden voice, her gaze fixed on a potted plant that sat on the coffee table between us. “But what I don’t understand is why they’d come after me. And why, after Roger’s death has been ruled natural, the man would come in, attack us with a knife and try to kill us in a decidedlyunnatural way?”
“Could it be something to do with the company itself?” I asked. I knew Rick would fight me tooth and nail to maintain control of the company if he wanted it in the divorce. It wasn’t like I was the one who’d built it from the ground up or anything, no, I was just the wife. Right.
