“It’s not that hard to make a cocktail, Vi.”
“There’s an art. Don’t make me kill you off in my next book. Maybe there will be werewolves or pirates. Either way—” She slowly drew her finger across her neck.
Denny laughed heartily at her threat. “Would it be bloody?”
“The grisliest scene I had ever written.” Vi’s solemn reply had him laughing again. “Knives, axes, fires, beetles.” When she reached beetles, she petered out and repeated, “Fires.”
“What about pirates and werewolves?” Denny asked seriously around another chocolate. “If I have to die, I should think it would be best to be murdered in a fight between them both. Nearly victorious, but not quite.”
Vi choked on a laugh first, but then an idea occurred to her and she leaned in, almost whispering, “Can you imagine Victor’s face when he read the draft? Our villain Denny on the deck of the werewolf pirate ship?”
Denny slowly sat up, his eagerness dampened only by the heat.
“Your twin would understand what you were doing immediately,” Denny warned Vi.
“That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t revel in it.” She crossed to the melting ice block on the drinks table and dipped her kerchief in the drip pan before wrapping it around her neck.
The story idea had excellent merit, especially because if she wasn’t mistaken, her twin was struggling with his own series of grey days, which had almost exclusively been her purview over their life. His very occasional bouts were worse for all of them because they were so rare.
“Reveling is the winning phase of a prank,” Denny said with a nod. “If you can get him to revel at our brilliance, then we’ve won.”
“We’ve?” Vi asked silkily. “And who said this was a prank?”
He ignored her question without meeting her gaze. “Anything with both werewolves and pirates needs a princess.”
“Oh! A pirate princess!”
“A pirate princess who falls in love with a werewolf,” Denny crowed.
Vi raised a hand in the air and said, “Anything this ridiculous calls for cocktails.”
She tried a woebegone face and Denny rose to mix them, groaning the whole way as though he were an old man who struggled with pain even walking across the floor.
Vi grabbed paper from the drawer and started making notes. The two of them shot ideas back and forth until Rita arrived. She threw herself onto one of the large chairs, grabbed an empty cocktail glass and begged, “Please sir, I want some more.”
Her large blue eyes were as wide as a puppy’s as she begged Denny to be the one to break ice off the block. She fluttered thick black lashes and then glanced at Vi out of the corner of her eye. She smirked when Denny complied with her pleading.
Rita was an arresting level of lovely. She could walk across the room and eyes would follow wherever she went. With golden hair bobbed and marcelled into waves, she was smooth and perfect. Her big blue eyes were vibrant and sparkling. They were so utterly feminine and she was so dryly witty, it was rare for many to realize just how clever her perfect gaze was. She was curvy, dressed in a light linen blue dress that emphasized her coloring, showing herself as the epitome of the bright young thing.
Violet might well have been jealous of Rita for her looks. Vi was pretty enough. With sharp features and dark hair and eyes, she was taller than average for a woman and quite slender. She was not, however, someone that would turn all heads. Vi didn’t care in the least. Jack loved her and that was all she needed.
Rita had joined Vi in more than a few of the investigations that so agitated their beloveds. Ham was no happier with it than Jack. “Do you think they agreed to lecture us?” Rita asked. “I mean, they talked about it over a glass of port?”
Vi imitated Ham. “‘You talk to Vi, be firm.’”
Vi’s impression of her husband made Rita laugh. Her pretty blue eyes flashed with humor until Denny joined in and then they flashed with irritation.
“Yes,” Denny answered Rita, ignoring her dark look. “Certainly they agreed.”
He gave Rita a cocktail made with gin, orange juice, and Victor’s blackberry cordial.
Rita sighed into her cup. “I can’t imagine Jack as easily.”
“It would have been well-intentioned,” Vi muttered. “‘We don’t have the Yard behind us now, Ham,’” she imitated. “‘If the girls get involved, they could get even more hurt than they have already been.’”
“Then they recapped all the times we’ve been hurt,” Rita said, seeming to see the scene herself. “Me, after I came home with Martha.”
“Vi and Kate,” Denny added helpfully, “that terrible Christmas visit to my home.”
“Not terrible. Not when we got Kate,” Vi countered.
“Poor sap,” Denny said, referring to Vi’s brother who had met and fallen in love with Kate during that visit. “Besotted in love. Takes us all eventually, I suppose.”
Violet rolled her eyes, shaking off the old injuries. Had she gotten into trouble a few times while delving into Jack’s cases? Perhaps, yes, it was possible.
“It’s not that the boys are right,” Vi began with a mischievous expression as she held her glass against her forehead. The chill provided such a beautiful respite that she sagged into her seat with a deep sigh.
“Although they are,” Denny said and then grabbed the chocolates and fled Vi’s parlor before Rita and Violet could throw something more than a pillow at him.
“It’s that they’re right,” Rita finished. She said it without restraint, given they no longer had an audience. “It does bother me though. Jack was hurt a few times. Ham has scars that he changes the story behind them time after time. We are all fragile.”
“How are things at home?”
Rita paused long enough that it was evident that something was bothering her friend.
Chapter 2
“Father came by.”
Vi waited. Rita’s pause had been too long and Vi’s gaze widened with mirth. She rose and refilled their drinks, slamming the ice pick down into the block until
