Anyway, Daphne is watching me with hopeful eyes as if she thinks she can fix all our problems with a little girl-bonding. Some melted cheese might drown my guilt that I haven’t made more progress.
“Pizza’s fine,” I say. “I’m not picky about the toppings.”
Her widened smile makes me feel like I’ve broken a princess from a witch’s curse. As she taps away on her phone to place the order, my thoughts drift to the pictures I recently took on my own phone.
She reaches for the fridge. “I’vehad a craving for mango all day. That’ll make a good appetizer. You want some?”
Fruit is a much easier sell to my conscience. “Sure.”
To my surprise, she pulls out two intact mangos and sets them on a cutting board. A Devine is going to lower herself to preparing her own meal?
It’s just a snack, but still.
As she grabs one of the paring knives I didn’t steal, I keep my tone carefully casual. “Hey… Do you know anything about a place on Holland Avenue near Linwood Road—some… establishment, I guess, where lucents from the neighborhood go to hang out?”
Daphne’s hand freezes with the knife braced against the mango. She peers at me. “How did you— You don’t want anything to do with The Eclipse. You couldn’t anyway.Shecouldn’t have.”
I knit my brow as if I hadn’t already observed as much. “The Eclipse? What’s that? What’s the big deal?”
She relaxes slightly, but her grip on the knife handle stays tight. “Nothing to worry about. It’s a very exclusive lucent club—men only. Members aren’t even supposed to talk to anyone else about it. I only know because of your dad. All they do is drink and play cards and gossip. Why are you asking?”
I choose my next words even more carefully. “It just came up when I was looking into things.”
Daphne shakes her head with a rustle of her billowy hair. “I’m sure it can’t be connected to what happened to—to Ellie. She never even knew about it. Better not to bother them at all.”
Well, I know at least part of what she just said isn’t true. “Don’t you think we should try every possible?—”
She doesn’t even let me finish. “Why waste time where it won’t lead to results? No, if anything had come up to do with that—she’d have said something. You don’t need to worry about it.”
The finality of her dismissal only convinces me more.
Daphne isn’t willing to believe how very deep her niece might have gotten into the city’s darker corners. And the fact that she’s so adamant that I leave this exclusive club alone begs the question of what she thinks they might do if someone—like, say, her “Ellie”—didbother them.
I don’t need to convince her right now. I simply need to find the evidence to prove what happened.
How in the nine Norse realms am I going to do that?
Daphne slices the knife through the mango’s thick skin with perfect precision. I find myself staring—now not because she’sgoing to the trouble of cutting it up herself, but because she’s wielding that blade as if she’s carved plenty of other things up into little pieces in the past. When she moves from one swiftly diced fruit to start on the next, she spins the knife between her fingers with a graceful flick.
Suddenly I’m wondering how much my aunt knows about “bothering” people.
That’s ridiculous, right? Maybe she’s just very fond of certain types of fruit.
Well, if she wants to carve up whoever murdered her Elodie once we figure out who that is, I can’t say I’d stop her anyway.
As she scoops the neat chunks into two bowls and brings napkins and cups over to the dining table, I pull out my phone and flip through the photos I took this afternoon. It only takes a few for me to realize that there’s a general blurring effect around the club’s front steps and the sidewalk beyond, leaving everyone’s faces obscured.
What did I expect? These pricks clearly enjoy their privacy.
But not everyone has that option. I pause my skimming thumb when I get to a picture aimed down the alley.
My photo of the two employees who barged out captures their tense faces perfectly.
The memory of the one guy’s furious declarations reverberates through my mind. The corner of my mouth ticks upward.
I think I’m already holding the key.
Eighteen
