Cyrus took her name and number in case he had follow-up questions, and thanked the woman profusely for her time. He turned to leave but then thought of a question. He knocked and she answered the door with a real smile this time.
“Forget something?” she asked.
“Just real quick,” Cyrus said, “what did you tell him when he asked what there was around here for kids to do?”
“Oh, the usual.” She lifted her hands. “Swim at the beach. We got a park, too. And the butterfly dome.”
“Butterfly dome?”
“Just a nature park, all butterflies. Schools visit it all the time.”
“Got it. Thank you. Have a nice day, ma’am.”
Cyrus tried a few more houses on the street. If anyone was home, they weren’t answering. He did catch a couple people walking back from the beach, but they were tourists and had nothing to add.
Nothing more he could do on that street. Cyrus got in his car and punched in the address for the house Ike had secretly rented for a two-month stay from Home Away From Home.
Grand Isle might have been grand, but it wasn’t very big. Cyrus arrived at the new address in only ten minutes. The neighborhood was almost identical to the one he’d left. Brightly painted houses on stilts, all in a row. These looked a little nicer, a little newer. And they were closer to the water and would have a good view of the sunset. Romantic as it got.
Cyrus had trouble finding the house Ike had rented. He walked up and down the block twice looking for the number. His phone’s GPS was no use. New development. A lot of places still weren’t precisely mapped, and there was nothing to do but gumshoe it until he found the place.
The street was called Atlantic Way and the house number was 15. He found 10, 12, 14, and 16, but no 15. Odd numbers had to be somewhere.
Cyrus reached the end of the block and kept going. Turned out the street curved like a U. The odd numbers were on a ridge a little higher up.
He found the house he was looking for at the very end of the street.
Number fifteen was just as quaint as the Home Away from Home pictures had painted it, but the photographs hadn’t done justice to how secluded it was. There were three undeveloped lots between it and the next house—three empty lots full of trees, trees that had survived a hundred years of hurricanes. The property was fenced in. A passcode was required to access the staircase leading to the house.
No need to jump the fence or anything. Not yet, at least. Cyrus walked the perimeter of the lot to get a feel for the place.
Good thing this beach house was so secluded, he thought. Somebody might have called the cops on him, the way he was nosing around it…
Wait. Why this beach house? The answer was staring him in the face. Number fifteen rented at a premium for a reason, and it wasn’t the view—every beach house had a view. All were spectacular. None were this isolated. The privacy number fifteen afforded renters seemed like overkill, if all they planned to do was go for morning walks on the beach and sit on the back porch and read. But it wasn’t overkill if your livelihood was on the line.
Location, location, location.
That’s what Nora had said when Cyrus had asked her how she and her Viking had never got caught fooling around.
Tiny parish in a small town. And with the priest shortage, Søren didn’t have to share the parish house with any other priests. Which is good. That place was tiny. But it was way back in the woods, trees everywhere, and to get to it, you had to drive in from a side street. Very secluded.
But if Father Ike was having an affair with somebody…who the hell was it?
Cyrus was going to have to meditate on that. But not until he got home and was feeling safe in his own place.
On the drive back, he tried instead to think about Paulina, her long legs around his shoulders, the taste of her, the sound of her coming.
But even that didn’t work.
All the way back to Nola, Cyrus could only think of one thing:
What the hell was Father Ike planning to do in that secluded beach house for two months?
Chapter Thirty-Three
The Good Witch, Mercedes’s occult shop, was located in the Irish Channel, on the corner of Tchoupitoulas and 7th. Even after three years, Nora was still struggling to pronounce the city’s street names like a local. Tchoupitoulas, though, she had in the bag: “Chop-a-Two-Liss.” Just as long as no one asked her to spell it.
Nora drove a block past the shop and parked on a side-street. On the off-chance dogs were allowed in The Good Witch, she leashed Gmork and took him with her. Otherwise, she’d have to leave him tied outside the store. Not a problem, really. Wasn’t like anyone was going to try to steal a huge black German Shepherd wearing a spiked dog collar.
The storefront of The Good Witch was painted lavender with a creamy white trim. The display window was brightly-colored with stained-glass hangings of harvest scenes, owls and ravens and deer, triple-phase moons, and the strange faces of men grinning through green foliage. On the door, a sign declared the shop Open. A brass plaque next to the door was engraved with the words Familiars Welcome.
“I guess that’s you, boy,” Nora said to Gmork.
She pushed open the door and heard a gentle tinkling of bells. A string of silver bells on a golden cord hung on the back of the doorknob. Nora spotted Mercedes behind a counter, on the opposite side of the store. A customer—a well-heeled white woman of about fifty—was chatting to her. Nora only caught a few words, something about arthritis inflammation. Mercedes was recommending spearmint tea in addition to whatever compound she was preparing for the woman.
Mercedes glanced Nora’s way, and nodded her head in recognition and greeting. She didn’t seem too surprised to see Nora. Maybe a little pleased? Or was Nora imagining that?
As she waited for Mercedes to wrap things up with her customer, Nora wandered the store, Gmork at her side on a very short leash. “You break it,” she whispered to Gmork, “you buy it.”
The shop was a good size, about twice Nora’s living room. A converted cottage, she decided. The main front room had been a living room at one point. The back room, hidden behind a curtain, had likely been a bedroom. A sign beside the curtain said it was now the Reading Room. That was where the private tarot and palm readings happened.
Nora found the store welcoming. Nothing strange or scary here. No eyes of newt or voodoo dolls. She found a wall of scented candles that had apparently been “charged” with magical properties. A green candle worked a money spell. A yellow candle stoked creativity. A pale blue candle promised to help with anxiety. A red candle promised love.
Another wall was replete with books of magic and spells. Journals, too, with embossed leather covers and thick with heavy cotton paper. From the ceiling of the shop hung Mardi Gras beads, mostly silver, and draped in elegant loops. The sunlight through the stained-glass panels in the shop window reflected off the beads and tossed rainbows throughout the entire store. And the whole place smelled of blooming flowers, potent but not over-powering. Nora felt better just inhaling the air in there.
While Mercedes rang up her customer’s purchase at another counter, Nora examined the decks of tarot cards. There were dozens of different decks, dozens of different sets of artwork. Some she recognized. Everyone had seen the Rider-Waite decks. Others were stranger, lovelier, sillier. She found tarot decks for cat-lovers, for witches, for medievalists. There were vampire decks, angel decks, African decks, and Italian Renaissance decks. Nora fell in love at first sight with the Aquarian deck and its eerie Art Deco illustrations.