Stakes & Stilettos - Michelle Rowen [89]
“I’ll make sure we have many electric heaters available to us.”
I sucked up the emotion I thought might overwhelm me. Butch suggested Thierry kill me because I was a nightwalker. Instead, if the curse wasn’t broken, Thierry was going to take me to Alaska so we could be together in a place that didn’t have sunshine all the time.
He was going to buy electric heaters to raise my body temperature.
It was the most romantic thing I’d ever heard.
“This is, of course, a worst-case scenario,” he said. “But I have given it a great deal of thought over the last forty-eight hours.”
I bit my bottom lip. “If you’re not careful, I’m so totally going to kiss you.”
He gave me a small smile. “You say that as if it’s a threat.”
“More like a promise.”
He met my gaze. “Only a kiss?”
“That’s just the appetizer.”
He circled my waist with his hands and I felt the comparative warmth of his body against mine as he pulled me against him. I rested my head on his chest. “It will be fine, Sarah,” he said softly. “Trust me.”
“I do.” I said it quicker than I would have expected. But I did trust him. More than anyone I could remember. I felt safe with Thierry, even knowing that he had serious issues of his own to deal with. Now I knew for sure that he wanted to deal with his monsters while I dealt with mine. We were a pair, all right.
Claire cleared her throat and I looked over at her.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said. Her expression was grim. “But there’s something you need to see.”
She led us into the living room and through to a hallway beyond. Up a short flight of stairs and into an expansive, professionally decorated master bedroom with a king-sized canopy bed. Candles were lit and flickering throughout the room. Dozens of them. There was the scent of perfume in the air.
Stacy was lying on the silk sheets of her bed wearing black, lacy lingerie and high-heeled slippers. She was asleep with her long blond hair spread out on the black silk pillows like a macabre Sleeping Beauty.
I frowned. No, she wasn’t asleep. I sucked in a breath that I didn’t actually need anymore.
Her eyes were open and staring up at the ceiling, wide and glassy.
And very, very dead.
The silver hilt of a knife stuck out of her chest, and I touched my own chest, flashing back to my stake wound. But I’d recovered from my injury.
Stacy wouldn’t.
I heard somebody sob and realized it was me. Thierry gathered me into his arms and held on to me tightly.
“We’ll find another way,” he said softly.
“Somebody killed her,” I said out loud, and it didn’t even sound like my voice, too shaky, too broken. “Who would kill her?”
Considering her recent black magic activity, I’d say that was actually a long list. But looking at the romantic setup of the room, from the candles to the lingerie, I’d have put money on the murderer’s being her new boyfriend.
“I don’t sense the murderer is still here.” Claire had her eyes closed, her arms raised to her sides. “Whoever it was left only minutes before we arrived.”
I pulled away from Thierry and looked down at Stacy’s face, still as coldly beautiful as she had been last night in the park. I wanted to feel sorry for what had happened to her, because it was a hell of a way to go—killed by somebody you thought that you loved—but all I could feel was…
Nothing. There was a big, gaping hole inside me. A black hole that seemed to devour emotions. I wasn’t upset or scared or depressed. At the moment, at the revelation that Stacy had died, all I felt was nothing.
I remembered something she’d told me last night along with the three-day time limit for curse reversal.
“It’s over.” I swallowed hard. “She told me that if she dies, then the curse is permanent.”
“Don’t say that!” Claire said, and she began rooting through the bookcase at the side of the bed. “I’ve never heard of a completely permanent curse. Look, all of her magic books are here. I’m totally taking these back to Niagara Falls tonight. I’ll read through them. If there’s anything I can do to help you out I’ll be in touch