Somehow, I managed to stop dithering long enough to refill the kettle and set it on the stove. Archie, who’d been curled up in the easy chair, opened an eye and shot me an annoyed look.
“Some of us are trying to sleep, you know.”
“Then go sleep in your bed in the office,” I said helpfully.
His lip curled, but he got up, arched his back, and then jumped down from the chair before stalking out of the room.
Probably just as well.
The buzzer sounded from downstairs a minute later, and I raced down the steps, not wanting to risk Violet losing her courage and deciding to go back from whence she came. To my relief, she was still on the back step, slim form shrouded in a black cloak with the hood pulled up to conceal her features.
As a means of disguising herself, I didn’t know how effective the getup was, considering cloaks were in pretty short supply in Globe. But I only said, “Come in, Violet,” then got out of the way so she could step inside. “My apartment is upstairs,” I added, speaking quickly so she wouldn’t get a chance to change her mind about being there. “Come on up.”
She followed me up the stairwell and then into the apartment. What she thought of it, I couldn’t really tell; she dropped the hood as she looked around, but her face was pale, her eyes wide and tragic.
The kettle chose that moment to begin whistling, and she startled, her slender form literally jumping an inch or two before she realized where the sound was coming from.
“Sorry about that,” I said quickly, then hurried into the kitchen to shut off the gas. “I thought you might like a cup of tea. It always helps to calm me down.”
“Peppermint?” she asked, sounding like a little girl inquiring if she could have another cookie.
“Absolutely,” I responded in my heartiest tones. I got out a box of Traditional Medicinals peppermint tea and made some for both of us. Frankly, my nerves needed a bit of settling, too.
A mug in either hand, I went back out to the living room and set them down on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Violet took a seat, then reached for one of the mugs and held it between her hands as if she needed it to warm her chilled fingers.
She looked cold, pale and waif-like. When I’d first spotted her at Lucien’s house months ago, she’d seemed almost arrogantly beautiful, like one of those absurdly young models who turned into a fierce Amazon as soon as she started marching down the catwalk. Now, though, she seemed horribly diminished, someone way out of her depth.
Well, she wasn’t the only one. I still didn’t know what the heck was going on, but I told myself I had ten years on her, and so I needed to act like the adult in this situation.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
A shake of her head. “No, I’m okay.” She paused, pale lips pressed together. “I mean, I’m not…but I guess I am.”
I picked apart that bundle of contradictions and determined that she meant she was physically okay. Psychologically, on the other hand….
I wished I could see her aura, but that particular gift seemed to have deserted me for the moment. Yes, I was used to it coming and going. Still, its timing seemed even crappier than usual.
“Can you tell me what happened?” I’d asked the same question of Lucien’s spirit earlier that day, but I hoped this time I might actually get an intelligible answer.
Her fingers clenched more tightly around the mug she held. She lifted it and took a very small sip, wincing a little at the heat. Voice flat, she replied, “I saw Lucien get murdered, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Dear Goddess. I rubbed my damp palms over the knees of my jeans. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s….” The word trailed off, as if she honestly hadn’t known what she intended to say. “I was going to say ‘it’s okay,’ but it’s really not.”
At a loss, I waited, telling myself that sometimes all you could do was hold off until a person came to the right psychological moment to speak. I’d dealt with this sort of thing in my practice before, although I’d never had a client who’d been traumatized by witnessing a murder. And she was traumatized. If she’d been any paler, she would have looked as though she was ready to pass out, and a tremor went through her as she stared down at her mug of tea.
Finally, she continued. “We performed the protection ritual at the Airbnb,” she said, speaking distinctly, her tone almost detached. I got the feeling that she was trying to describe Friday night’s events as though they’d happened to someone else, that doing so would make it a little easier for her to tell me what exactly had transpired. “But afterward, Lucien still seemed restless. I told him we should go out to the woods and make love in the moonlight.”
“That was your idea?” I asked, doing my best to rid my mind of that particular mental image.
Her lip curled, and she lifted the mug of tea and drank a slightly larger swallow. “Yeah. Does that freak you out or something?”
“No,” I said calmly. “You’re an adult, after all.”
Those words seemed to reassure her. She sipped some more tea, then continued. “So, we went out into the woods. It was cold, but we’d brought a couple of blankets with us from the Airbnb. And actually, it was beautiful, with the sound of the river in the background and a gibbous moon overhead.” A little hitch of a breath, and she blinked away the tears that came to her eyes as she recalled one of the final moments she’d shared with Lucien Dumond. “We got dressed and were folding up the blankets, getting ready to go back to the car.”
She stopped there, pausing so long, I wondered if she’d decided she wasn’t up to this after all and wasn’t going to complete her story. But after she pulled in a ragged little breath, she resumed the tale.
“All I heard was a rustling in the leaves underfoot. Someone — something — came out of the trees and went straight for Lucien.”
“Something?” I repeated. “You mean it wasn’t human?” Once again, I experienced a nasty little chill down my spine. Were my earlier suspicions about a nonhuman entity being the true murderer correct?
“I don’t know what it was,” she said. She leaned over and set the mug of peppermint tea on the coffee table, then crossed her arms and tucked her hands under them, as if trying desperately to get warm. “It was huge — much taller than Lucien. Tall and dark.”
“Like someone with dark hair and a dark complexion?”
Violet shook her head. “No…just dark. It was a shape. That’s all. I couldn’t see anything else.” Her teeth caught on her lower lip, small and white and perfect. “I mean, until I saw the knife. It flashed in the moonlight. I saw it go into Lucien’s chest, over and over.”
“That’s okay,” I said soothingly. “You don’t have to give me any more details. What happened after that?”
“Lucien sort of staggered over to the river and fell in it. He didn’t move. The — the whatever it was — turned toward me. I screamed and ran.” Tears began to slip from the corners of her eyes. She blinked, then reached up with one hand to wipe them away. “I know I should have stayed to check on Lucien, but I was so scared — ”
Should I reach over and pat her on the arm? Probably not; she was holding herself rigid, and I had a feeling she wasn’t in the mood to have anyone invade her personal space like that. “It’s fine,” I told her. “No one would have expected you to stay when you were being confronted by a dangerous stranger like that.”