“At least I don’t think so.”
She glared at me. “That’s not encouraging.”
I shrugged. “It’s the best I can do.” I clapped my hands. “Okay. So we’ve got one missing Fannie.”
Alice giggled.
“What?”
She swiped a handkerchief over her eyes. “It’s just you said missing Fannie. It sounds like she’s missing her bottom. Or that someone’s bottom is missing.”
I almost knocked my forehead into the table with frustration. Please. Would it kill these women to take this seriously? At least for five minutes?
Thank goodness Roan took the lead. “Okay, no missing bottoms. But we have a missing woman with a highly volatile, dangerous spirit. We think she’s heading back to the Jarvis place for whatever reason. The reason, we don’t know. So, what do we do know?”
“That the Jarvises need to be evacuated,” Axel said. “The spirit is dangerous. There’s no telling what it’ll do when it finds itself free.”
“I agree,” Pepper said. “We’ve got to get that family out of there.”
“Think they’ll leave?” Roan directed the question to me.
I twisted a strand of violet hair around my finger. “I don’t know. They’ve just moved back into the house. Would they want to pack up and leave?”
“Brownie said they were going to sell the place as soon as they could,” Pepper said. “Maybe they wouldn’t mind leaving again.”
Silence crept into the room.
Roan tapped a finger on the table. “I don’t think it’s that simple. We can’t just walk up and say there’s a crazy woman who may or may not unleash a bad spirit back into your house. Would you like to leave so that none of you become a target of its anger?”
We all exchanged glances.
Roan hitched a shoulder. “Maybe it is that simple.” He rapped his knuckles on the table. “What do y’all say we clean up and head on over to the house for a stakeout?”
“Fannie could already be inside,” Axel said. “She might be waiting for the right time to do her work.”
I picked up my plate. “All the more reason to get over there ASAP.” I nodded to Ruth. “Do you still have Brownie’s phone number?”
Ruth pulled a notepad from her purse and thumbed through it. “Let me see. Let me see. Aha! Here it is.”
“I’ll take that.” I nodded at the impromptu team of paranormal investigators—one witch, one wizard, two elderly women, a demonologist in training and myself.
Something akin to pride swelled in my chest as I gazed at the crowd. How amazing and wonderful it was that we’d come together to help this family—and that we each had individually different talents.
Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to cry about it. Only appreciate it.
I glanced at the number. “I’ll call Brownie on the way so she knows we’re coming. That’ll hopefully give her time to inform Wallace about what’s going on.”
Axel rose and picked up his plate. “Sounds like a plan. Let’s get rolling.”
I rodewith Roan while Ruth and Alice rode with Axel and Pepper. I hadn’t had any real time alone with him since the whole demonologist thing had happened.
“So how are you?”
Roan took a left out of the inn’s driveway. “It’s weird. I feel like my brain is rewiring itself. Sort of like new synapses are being made that allow me to smell on a different level.”
I quirked a brow. “Smell better?”
His gaze slid over to me. “You know what I mean.”
