I raked my hands down my face. “And I was almost knifed in the chest.”
“If I hadn’t been here, you would have been.”
The knife swung lazily back and forth, emitting a low creaking sound as the rope tightened and relaxed. I put my hand up and stopped its movement.
“Getting on my nerves,” I commented.
Roan rose. “I wonder if that’s the only trap in the house.”
I quirked a brow. “Do you think it was for us?”
“Hard to say. Is someone trying to get all of Zelda’s belongings for themselves?”
“Surely they know that this would be investigated,” I pointed out. “It’s not like any of this appears accidental—not Zelda, and not this knife that just happens to be swinging in the middle of the hallway.”
Roan stroked his chin in thought. “The other option is that it’s not for any of them at all. This was for us, to keep us from nosing around.”
“Then we have to tell Alice and Ruth to be mindful. I don’t want anything happening to them.”
“Me neither,” he said. “And it also means that we must stick together and watch the others. One of them is a murderer, and one death isn’t enough.”
I studied the knife that had been so perfectly concealed in the ceiling. “Should we tell everyone about this?”
He nodded. “Yes. Put the murderer on alert and their true colors will begin to bleed through. They only have to make it to seven a.m., same as us. But whoever the killer is, they might start to crack sooner.”
I smiled. Yes, I was morbid, but smiling made me feel better. It made me happy to know that the murderer might start to crack. It was one less thing to worry about.
“Good, then let’s tell them.”
We entered the séance room, which was filled with the low sound of Mannheim Steamroller’s psychedelic Christmas tunes. Ruth and Alice were standing in one corner, heatedly discussing something. Lemon lay curled on a couch. Traylor had loosened his tie and sat reading. Luis was clipping his toenails, and Tex lay like a lump of dough in a wingback chair, head tipped back and snoring.
I stepped into the center of the room and dropped the knife. It landed, tip down, straight into the floorboard.
Luis shrieked. “What in the world is that? A knife? What is it doing?”
“Someone,” Roan said sharply, “thought it would be a good idea to attach it to a rope and let it fall, booby-trap style, toward us.”
Luis’s gaze darted to Traylor. “You mean someone could have been hurt?”
“Killed.”
I kicked Tex’s foot. He sputtered awake. “What’s happening? Is it time to leave?”
“No. Someone has upped their game,” I replied.
Ruth and Alice came over. “Oh dear,” Alice said worriedly. “What do we do now?”
“One or more of you is a killer,” Roan explained. “We’re not sure who this knife was intended for, but whoever created this little trap will probably do something like it again.”
“You can’t be serious,” Lemon said, yawning. “Why on earth would anyone want to kill the two of you?”
I shrugged innocently. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because they’re jealous of my power? Maybe because that person lied to me about the helmet that amplifies a signal to the dead and told me that using it could kill me.”
Lemon’s eyes narrowed. “I did not lie about that.”
“Not according to your mother.”
She sat up. “What are you talking about?”
