Page 17 of Raven in Midwinter

“Very good,” I praised her.

“I listen,” she told me.

“You do, and I appreciate that.”

Lorne was smiling, James was shaking his head, and all the others were staring at the two of us. Cass was nodding, pleased with my praise from her smile, and I was waiting for the barrage of questions I knew would be coming my way.

“One time,” Cass announced, startling the visitors, “I bought a teacup at an antique store, and before I used it—I mean, I washed both the cup and the saucer—Xan made me sage it and leave it overnight on my selenite plate.”

“Can’t be too careful,” I said, smiling at Thessaly as she stood up, came around the coffee table, and reached for my hand.

An hour later, instead of having dinner at the dining-room table, we were all in the living room. People who normally ate salad and nothing heavy for their evening meal—those words had apparently been spoken before Lorne and I arrived—had dug into the roast chicken James made, had devoured my mashed potatoes and Cass’s amazing honey balsamic roasted carrots, Brussel sprouts, and sweet potatoes with goat cheese mixed in. Was it my recipe? It was. Had she improved on it and made it even better? Yes, she had. There was also a lovely portobello mushroom for me. Funny how being terrified always made people hungry once the horror subsided.

It took Thessaly a good twenty minutes to be able to let go of my hand. Once James brought her a plate of food, she turned to me and said it felt as though a weight had been lifted.

“I’m sure it does,” I soothed her.

Brooke wanted to know more about being a witch, and Stafford, sitting on the other side of his wife, was busy on his laptop, looking up drownings in the Seine. Willa, across from me, was on her laptop as well, searching for paintings of the woman who’d appeared in our midst.

“Not to be a smart ass,” Lorne began, “but maybe the provenance Hamilton received from the store where he bought the cursed earrings might be a better starting point than you all researching a lot of random crap.”

“Oh shit,” Ham yelled, popping out of his seat and running upstairs.

Everyone was staring at my husband.

“You don’t get to be the chief of police if you can’t figure shit out.”

James nearly choked on his food, and Cass snorted between bites. It was true—the man was, on occasion, quite funny.

“How did you know something was wrong?” Thessaly asked me, her hand on my knee as she gazed into my eyes.

“I had some intrusive thoughts earlier that simply aren’t me, so I knew something strange was going on,” I replied, patting her hand. “With how quickly they entered my mind, I was fairly certain it was a spell, or more likely, a curse.”

“But how did you know it was me and not Brooke or Willa?”

“You were the one who asked me, when I came back from being outside, how I had managed to snag Lorne. Not how we had fallen in love, not how we’d first met, but basically how had someone as lacking as me gotten him.”

Her hand went to her chest, the pearl-clutching instant. “Oh, Xander, I would never…”

“Which I suspected you wouldn’t. That was the curse working through you.”

She shuddered. “I’ve been so tired and bitchy. I mean really, that’s how I’ve felt.”

I smiled at her. “The curse made wives insecure and afraid—that’s what she left, in blood, on all her jewels.”

“I’ve got the folder,” Ham said, returning to the room, sounding excited. “Her name was Eleanor Valois. Check out the picture of her.”

They all leaned forward to look. I got up to get some more carrots and Brussel sprouts from the kitchen. I was almost at my seat when Willa gasped.

“Oh no…” She sounded scared as she met my gaze. “Xander, I have a whole dinner service we brought in from the car and put in our room. I was concerned about the Limoges china breaking in the cold.”

“It’s all antique,” Brett clarified, and I saw how worried he appeared.

“Well, I can certainly go upstairs and check them, but the wards on this house are fairly robust. And a curse, like the one we just encountered, is quite rare.”

She took a breath, seeming relieved.

“There are wards on the house?” Stafford asked me.