“Hello, Lydia,” I said.
“Olive,” she breathed. “You must come with me.”
“Come with you?”
“Yes, please hurry!”
I glanced back at the princess. She gave me a small smile as she continued to crochet. Would she be okay if I left her alone?
“Please, Olive,” Mrs. Kaufman said. “It’s an emergency.”
“Why?” I asked. “What’s the matter?”
She shook her head. “Please, Olive.”
I heard the pleading in her voice. She hardly ever asked favors of anyone, and for her to seem so desperate now alarmed me.
“I’ll be back in a little bit,” I said to Esmelda. “Will you be all right?”
She nodded. “I will be fine.”
I reminded myself that I wasn’t her babysitter and that she was stronger than she gave herself credit for. In any case, it seemed as if Mrs. Kaufman needed me more.
The crowd had grown larger since this morning, and I dodged through groups of people as I followed Mrs. Kaufman away from my booth and toward the bratwurst pub. What had her so disturbed? Her garish, green-and-red plaid skirt swished back and forth as she hurried along the path, pushing people aside, moving quicker than I thought possible for a woman her size.
When we reached the pub, I was surprised to see the doors locked and the shutters closed. Mrs. Kaufman hurriedly unlocked the door and ushered me inside.
With only a few lit candles illuminating the space, it took my eyes a moment to adjust. Mrs. Kaufman locked the door behind us with a click. Her hands shook as she replaced the keys in her pocket, making them jangle.
“This way,” she said without further explanation, and she led me to the kitchen behind the counter. As we entered, I stopped, shocked at the sight I found.
Mr. Kaufman lay dead on the floor, his body wrapped in vines. Underneath the vines, the skin on his face and arms had turned gray and had begun to mottle. He’d probably been dead for a few hours. His eyes had been cut out, and two flowers—red with yellow centers—rested in the empty sockets.
It took me a moment to process the situation. I didn’t come out of my trance until Mrs. Kaufman cried out, sobbing and pressing her apron to her eyes.
“I didn’t know what to do. I’m so sorry to bring you into this, Olive, but I had to do something. You’re a doctor, and you know about magic things like this… I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I understand,” I said. “I know this must be incredibly hard for you, but we need to notify security.”
Mrs. Kaufman didn’t seem to hear me as she knelt beside her husband. She reached for his face, then drew back and turned to me. “Can’t you save him?”
My heart fell. “I’m sorry, Lydia, but he’s already passed. There isn’t anything I can do.”
“What? Why not? You haven’t even checked on him—his pulse or heartbeat… why can’t you save him?”
I swore, becoming a doctor was the worst decision I’d ever made. People expected miracles out of me, and as far as I knew, there’d only been one power in the history of the planet capable of raising the dead.
I knelt beside Mrs. Kaufman and placed my arm around her shoulder as she shook with sobs.
“He was fine this morning. Said he wanted to come in early to check on things. I shouldn’t have let him go, what with the rumors and all…”
“Rumors?”
“Yes. The beast haunting the grounds. Oh, but how did this happen? Simon, wake up. Wake up! I can’t do this without you.”
She sank lower to the ground as her crying grew louder. For the next several minutes, the sound of her sobs filled the silence. Finally, she spoke up. “I can’t understand who would do this… it’s so horrible… and to my husband. Why?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have any answers yet, but I intend to find out.”
A knock came at the front door. She looked up, her face startled. “I can’t let anyone in right now.”
“I’ll handle it,” I said and made my way to the front, trying to wrap my mind around the enormity of the situation.
I tried to think up a logical explanation for the deaths, but my mind came up blank. Was a beast from Faythander’s undiscovered land responsible? Was a human involved? I remembered Mr. Duncan arguing over the meat—Mr. Kaufman’s meat—and that couldn’t have been a coincidence. But what did the meat have to do with any of this?
The knocking grew more insistent as I reached the door. After unlocking it, I opened the door a crack. Officer Rakestraw stood on the other side.
Great. Just the person I needed to see right now.
“Miss Kennedy,” he said, then gave me a small nod. “I’ve had a few complaints come in about the quality of the meat here, and just now I noticed the shop isn’t open. Is everything okay in there?”
My instinct was to try and stall him before he discovered the body. I wasn’t in the mood for playing answer-the-two-billion-questions with him. I also knew that, once again, I had been found near a dead body and would now become even more of a suspect than I had been before.
I had two choices. I could lie and try to misdirect him, or I could tell the truth and possibly end up jailed.
This so wasn’t my day.
Chapter 10
Standing at the door of the Kaufman’s bratwurst pub, I faced Officer Rakestraw and decided to go with the truth. He would find out sooner or later, and if I stalled him, it would only make me look guiltier.
Despite his earlier attempts at civility, he wasn’t smiling now. In fact, he looked enraged.
“Miss Kennedy,” he said, “either you let me inside, or I enter forcefully.”
“Actually,” I said, “I was just about to call you. There’s something in here that you’ll probably want to see.”
I cracked the door open for him, and
