Chapter Thirty
“Stay here,I’llgo get her,” I instructed him and hopped out. Climbing the porch stairs quickly, I knocked on the weathered door and waited until I heard Miss Elva call for me to come in.
“Hey, Miss Elva,” I called, stepping into her house.
Okay, so maybe I’m downplaying that a little a bit. Stepping from Miss Elva’s porch into her house is like stepping from everyday life into an Alice in Wonderland room.
There is just so muchstuff.Everywhere. It’s like stimulation overload with no rhyme or reason to it. It’s not like it’s a hoarder’s paradise or anything like that; it’s just that every available space is filled with something. Next to a sofa straight out of a Restoration Hardware catalog was an old medicine cabinet hanging on the wall, its shelves crammed with bottles full of who-knows-what and animal skulls. Other shelves held prayer candles to every saint you could imagine. It didn’t matter where you looked, there would be something intriguing there to grab your interest.One of these days I was going to actually come hang out at Miss Elva’s and have her tell me the stories behind the goods that cluttered her room.
“I don’t have a good feeling about Luna,” Miss Elva announced, coming in from the kitchen, carrying a few pouches that she shoved into her cross-body leather satchel. Today she wore a long caftan in muted purple, looking positively demure by her standards.
“Where’s Rafe?” I asked.
“I sent him out to do some searching for me. He can get into places unseen that I can’t,” Miss Elva explained, smoothing back her hair, which today was unleashed in a riot of ringlets and held back with a jeweled headband.
“Smart,” I said, then stopped at the front door.
“Cash is in the car. My…boyfriend,” I said, pausing to think about what I wanted to say.
“And you don’t want me say anything too crazy to scare him off,” Miss Elva said, waving her hand in the air. “Child, I know.”
“Please don’t be offended, it’s not like that. You know I love you,” I protested, immediately feeling guilty. “I just want to kind of ease him into all this magickal stuff. He’s not used to this world.”
Miss Elva shot me a glance, her hands on her hips.
“And you’re gonna hide yourself from him? I don’t know if I hold with that, now.” She was right, but I didn’t want to get into it at the moment.
“No, I’m not hiding. We just haven’t been together long enough for him to learn it all at once. This is still pretty new to him,” I said.
“Well, he’ll learn soon enough. We’ll just have to seehow he weathers the storm,” Miss Elva said, breezing past me and onto the porch.
I wasn’t sure if I liked what that meant, but I was unwilling to leave Miss Elva alone with Cash for long, so I dashed after her and opened the front door of Cash’s Jeep for her.
“Cash, this is the esteemed Miss Elva, the best voodoo priestess in Florida,” I said, meeting her eyes to let her know I wasn’t trying to hide what she was from Cash.
Miss Elva harrumphed and then slid into the front seat, reaching out a hand to Cash.
“That’s inallthe States, honey, and don’t let Miss Marie in N’awlins tell you any different,” she said, settling in comfortably.
I saw Cash’s lips quirk and I blew out a breath.
“I’m sure you’re the best at what you do,” Cash said magnanimously, and pulled away from the curb.
“Where are we going first?” I asked.
“I’ve got to get Dylan. He’s been kicking his heels at the coffee shop waiting on me,” Cash said, and I immediately felt bad.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t even think about that,” I said, immediately chagrined and a little embarrassed. Now Dylan was going to get caught up in our little drama and I could only imagine what Cash’s mama was going to hear about me.
One thing at a time, I reminded myself. We needed to figure out where Luna was.
“When’s the last time you heard from Luna?” Miss Elva asked, turning to look at me.
“She texted to check on me earlier today, but sincethen it’s been silence. And her phone’s going to voicemail, which never happens because of Granny Lavelle up at Seashores.”
Miss Elva nodded, not saying anything.
The houses of Tequila Key flashed by my window, all cluttered together, clambering for space on this scrap of land in the Keys. I prayed that Luna wasn’t going to be the third dead body to end up at that beach.
