its bulbs and dripping crystals smashed to bits on the flagstone. Cooper and Jack stand motionless, equally paralyzed by the wreckage before them. Missy didn’t just “move” some furniture. She overturned every piece in the room, including the bar, which was filled with tumblers, snifters, and other glass vessels that likely lie broken beneath it, awaiting cleaning up.
“Dang,” Jack finally utters.
“Welcome to my world,” Cooper deadpans.
I run my fingers through my long hair, pulling it off my forehead. “This is insane. She can’t expect us to clean this up.”
Missy’s stilettos click behind us. “What are y’all waiting for? Get going.” She smacks her gum.
“Missy!” Beau bellows, his voice rough and gravelly. He clambers out of the library, heaving his body forward on unsteady legs and his overburdened cane. He’s just as wobbly as he was the night on the veranda, perhaps more so.
“Uh-oh,” Jack whispers under his breath.
Cooper shoves an elbow in his side. “Shh.”
Missy freezes. “Don’t trouble yourself, baby. Go on back to your business pages. Want me to get you another scotch? How about a cigar?” Her voice trembles.
Grunting, he ignores her as he plods toward us, his gelatinous body undulating with each step. He’s in such obvious distress, half of me wants to run and help him, but the other half fears he’ll trip and crush me.
Just before he reaches the solarium, Missy shuffles forward on her high heels and clutches his arm. “You need your rest, sugar. Come, let me take you back to the library.”
“Don’t touch me.” Nearly out of breath, he yanks from her grasp. His eyes are bloodshot and sunken in their sockets. The familiar scent of rotten bologna hovers, mixed with a healthy serving of scotch. “I work all day to keep this roof over your head and you can’t see fit to give me a moment’s peace.” With each syllable, he thrusts his gray tongue forward and maneuvers his mouth as if deliberately forming every word. His chest gurgles as he sucks for air through thin blue lips. Then his eyes meet mine. “Ah, Emma, it’s wonderful to see you, as always.” His tongue hangs slack as his gaze drops and he appears to take me in. Lurching forward, he heads toward me.
Missy scampers after him. “Sweetness, wait—”
But it’s too late, he’s at the door to the solarium. And he’s seen the carnage.
For a second, his skin flushes crimson before returning to its normal pale gray. “Now what have you done?”
Missy swallows hard. “It’s all for you, baby.” Her voice is high and reedy.
“For me?” Beau’s breath quickens. He’s breathing so hard, he’s likely to keel over. Or inflate like a puffer fish.
Cooper tugs Jack’s shirt and motions for him to back up into the hall. Then he slips his hand around mine and leans close to my ear as he guides me quietly away from Beau and Missy. “This is about to get ugly. We’re out of here.”
Amid their escalating argument, Cooper, Jack, and I pick up our pace down the hall, and then sprint through the foyer and out the front door.
“Where to?” Jack bounds down the front steps.
Cooper tightens his grip on my hand. “Anywhere but here.”
Chapter Eight
“Oh man.” Cooper stands at the doorway to his bedroom, his face drained of its color.
Last night Cooper slept over at the caretaker’s cottage, unable to force himself to face either his father or the destruction in the solarium. He texted both Beau and Missy to say he wouldn’t be coming home but got no response. We figured they were too busy arguing to care about where Cooper spent the night and decided it would be best to return this morning after the dust settled, retrieve the dagger, and bury it at tabby ruins. Evidently, we were wrong.
Jack and I stand beside Cooper in stunned silence, taking in the wreckage in his bedroom. The only sound comes from the second hand on his old-school alarm clock as it ticks around the dial. It must be nearby under the rubble.
Finally, Jack breaks the quiet. “Missy,” he growls, his fists clenched.
“But why?” She’s torn through the rooms on the first floor, but they’re the public areas where her guests hung out during the Fourth of July party. It sort of made sense to look for the Beaumont ruby downstairs. But Cooper’s room? She’s got no reason to believe the necklace was stashed in here. Yet his bed has been stripped and toppled to the floor, his desk and dresser upended, drawers dumped out, and his clothes and other belongings strewn around. Most importantly, the bookcase has been overturned, its contents tossed and scattered around the room.
“The knife!” Cooper snaps out of his stupor and rushes toward the mound of items that litters his floor. Jack and I join him, rummaging through the clothes, sheets, printer paper, and books. Finally he finds the calculus textbook, nestled beneath his bed frame, its cover closed.
My pulse throbs against my temple as I murmur a silent prayer that the dagger is still hidden inside, gloriously protected from Missy’s indiscriminate tossing. But as soon as he cracks it open, those hopes are dashed. The compartment is empty.
Looking around the room, Cooper mutters, “It’s got to be here.” His voice is gripped with panic and sounds as if he’s trying to convince himself it’s the truth. “Maybe it fell out of the book and she never saw it.” Frenzied, he digs through the piles.
Jack sinks against the flipped over mattress. “Dude, I don’t think so. She’s got it and God only knows what she’s done with it.” He chuckles but it’s a hollow, futile laugh that lacks a trace of happiness. “I guess it’s sort of fair. We did take her necklace. Now she’s got our knife.”
Cooper shakes his head. “No. She can’t have it. She doesn’t understand what it means, or what it could do to us.” He pushes his belongings around as if that will somehow make it magically appear.
Stretching toward him, I grasp his shoulder. “Cooper, stop. It’s no use.”
Defeated, he looks at me, his royal-blue eyes wounded. “Why did she do this? And why last night of all nights? I never should have left.”
My mouth opens but no words come. Because there is no answer, at least one that makes sense. So instead, I lamely rub his back, hoping it’ll do some good.
A moment later, the air-conditioning unit kicks on, humming as cool air blows from the ceiling vent. The alarm clock’s second hand keeps on ticking, the sound almost magnified in the leaden silence. Suddenly I’m aware of just how quiet it is. It’s not normal for the house to be so still. Especially lately.
My earlobes prick with heat.
“Where’s Missy?” I ask, remembering that we passed her car on our way up the driveway. She’s home. So why isn’t she lurking around, gloating about her conquest and plunder?
Cooper shakes his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t hear her when we came through the foyer. Maybe she’s in the breakfast room?”
Jack shoves his straight, black hair off his forehead. “Or maybe she’s sleeping off whatever made her go berserk in here.”
Warmth curls around my outer ear, then spreads across my scalp. Despite the blasting AC, the room feels like it’s eighty degrees and climbing.
I glance out the open door, toward the empty upstairs hallway and landing. Her bedroom door is closed shut. “But don’t you think she’d be waiting for us, ordering us to clean up the solarium and this mess?”
“Don’t forget shoving the knife in our faces,” Jack adds.
Cooper nods. “You’re right. She’d love to find dirt on me.” He rises to his feet, yanks the box spring out of his path, and sets it on the frame. “I bet she’d enjoy calling the sheriff to have me arrested.”
The searing sensation inches down my neck, then around to the front of my throat. Laying my palm against
