Fortunately for me, Taliyah actually was a detective, because I wasn’t sure who else in the entire town would have been able to pick out a coherent thought out of the mess I’d just said.

  Taliyah nodded, something in her face relaxing. “A break from ‘stuff’ is good.”

  I hesitated, but concern won out over common sense, and the question was tripping off my tongue before I could hold it back. “How are you holding up? With the ‘stuff’, I mean.”

  She was quiet for such a long, drawn-out moment, that I actually thought she might not answer. I was forcing myself not to squirm and searching for a safer topic to bring up, when Taliyah set her mug down gently on the Formica table between us.

  “I’m managing,” she said quietly. “There are a lot of things I need to think about, and a lot of things I wish were different, of course, but,” she took a breath, and chewed on her bottom lip. “I can’t imagine making different choices than the ones I’ve already made.”

  I nodded, mostly because I wasn’t sure how to respond otherwise.

  Taliyah drew in a deep breath and looked me in the eyes. “Fifi, I want to say thank you.”

  I blinked at her, so surprised I wasn’t sure that I could have gotten a word out, even if I had any clue what to say. “Thank you?”

  She nodded. “I don’t know if I’ve said it before and if I have said it, I just want to make sure you understand just how grateful I am that you told me the truth about Olwen, about all of that stuff,” Taliyah forged on. Her words kind of sounded like something she’d rehearsed. “Breaking the seal early, it allowed me to make my own choices and if that hadn’t been the case, I don’t know where I would have been or where my boys would have been. I have absolutely no desire to be bullied along, whether it’s by Fate, or Prince Reynard or just other people who have decided they get to choose what my life looks like, or what parts of it are worth anything.”

  My eyes stung, and I had to blink fast to keep any tears from escaping. I truly was the worst example of a Succubus. I was more like an emotional bus. “I was so worried. Worried that I’d hurt you, that I’d messed up your life so badly.”

  “No.” Taliyah’s voice was as firm as the hand she stretched across the table to take mine. “You did a really good thing for me, Fifi. I got to make informed decisions about my life and my family. And while things might be kind of crappy at times right now, I will never not be grateful for the chance you gave me. I just wanted you to know that—I’m not good with this emotional sort of stuff, but I hope you understand what I’m trying to say.”

  I took in a shaky breath and managed to smile. “I do understand and it’s a huge relief to me to hear you say that.” I’d been so full of doubts, especially with Bea acting like I’d done something unimaginably terrible. I hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone, or to kick up a political hornet’s nest when it came to the Faerie Courts, I’d just been trying to do what I thought was the right thing to do.

  So, to hear it straight from Taliyah that she was glad I’d done what I had? That healed a little bruised bit of my heart that I hadn’t even known was wounded until it stopped aching.

  Our order arrived at the table at that point, so we lapsed into a lighter kind of conversation that didn’t have anything to do with prophecies, royalty, or demon sex powers, and honestly, it was pretty nice. Even if Taliyah did tend towards short, choppy sentences, like she was being charged for every extra word she uttered. That was actually one of the things I liked about her. I didn’t know many women like Taliyah—women who were stronger than most men I knew. And so I felt extra lucky that I could call her my friend.

  I was just finishing off the last of my fries when Taliyah’s phone started buzzing. She picked it up off the table with a little frown, and her face snapped into the stark, blank lines that had nothing to do with Faerie glamor, and everything to do with being Police Chief Morgan.

  “I have to go,” she said shortly, throwing some money down onto the table. “I’m sorry I’ve got to leave so suddenly, but a dog walker called in about a body they just found, which means I need to be at the scene.”

  Since I drove, I threw down enough money to cover my lunch, plus a generous tip, and grabbed my bag. “I’ll drive you.”

  Taliyah hesitated, probably weighing what was worse: waiting for a patrol car to come and pick her up versus me going to the crime scene. After another second or so, she gave a short, sharp nod.

  We hurried out the door and away, our nice normal lunch hour forgotten in the newest calamity to befall Haven Hollow.

  ***

  When I finally realized just where we were going, my heart just about stopped.

  The graveyard wasn’t a large one, but it was one of the oldest in Haven Hollow, back before the suburbs had expanded out quite so far. Some of the headstones were crooked, or tipped over, and one stone angel, her shoulders rounded as she bent over her clasped hands, had been exposed to enough years of wind and rain to have blurred her features to little more than a snub of nose and divots where her eyes should have been.

  My problem wasn’t the graveyard, but the fact that it was almost literally in Poppy’s backyard. It was also backed on the other side by Wanda’s townhouse, when she wasn’t staying with her vampire boyfriend, Lorcan Rowe, or at the coven house closer to town. The fact that it was a stranger who had called the police about finding a body, rather than either of my friends, had me so scared as to who might have been hurt, that I tried to jump out of the car before even undoing my seatbelt.

  “Stay put,” Taliyah barked as she strode off between the tombstones.

  “God, what if it’s Poppy or Wanda or Libby?” Thank Goodness Astrid was away and had been for a while. And Finn should have been at school—it was noon on a weekday anyway.

  As Taliyah walked away, I replayed her words over and over again in my head. And I meant to listen to them. I really did. But the sickeningly greasy feeling twisting around in my stomach, the thought that someone I knew might have been hurt, might even be dead, well I couldn’t just sit there, marinating in the not knowing. So, I slipped out of my car and made my shaky way over to where the Haven Hollow police had set up a perimeter.

  My lips were numb as I stumbled over the uneven grass, and I had to catch myself against one of the sturdier headstones as I heard one of them mention the coroner who was apparently on his way.

  Please, don’t let it be anyone I know, I thought as I crept closer, and felt so selfish even as I thought the words. Whoever the victim was, someone would no doubt mourn them, but I still prayed that it wasn’t any of my friends. I figured I could be selfish this once.

  Maybe it wasn’t a newly dead body, was the almost hysterical thought that limped through my head. There had been that rash of grave robberies, even some from this exact cemetery. Maybe this was just another grave robbery and the body in question had been dead a long time.

  Of course, anyone buried in this particular graveyard probably wouldn’t count as a ‘body’ any longer—no, by now, they probably would be nothing more than bones. Or maybe it wasn’t a body (skeletal or otherwise) at all. Maybe it had just been the zombie, Libby, who’d been having a nap, and a mundane had stumbled across her and just thought she was dead. Of course, I was pretty sure Libby didn’t need to sleep. And she was pretty particular about the state of her clothes, having been a housewife in the fifties, so she probably wouldn’t lie down in the dirt in the middle of a graveyard.

  I snuck a little closer, all sorts of ridiculous thoughts and possibilities continuing to play out behind my eyes. Peering over the police tape, I craned my head to see past the headstones.

  I half got my wish.

  It wasn’t anyone I was familiar with. But I did recognize him.

  It was the weaselly looking guy from the open house at Mrs. Petryka’s. It took me a second to place him, since he was out of his badly fitted suit and now clothed in dark jeans and a grey Henley that looked way too cool for the still melting snow on the ground. But it was definitely him. I kind of felt guilty about never learning his name.

  “Fifi.”

  I jumped as Taliyah called my name and didn’t sound happy about it. She came stalking over to the edge of the police tape, her mouth pressed into a grim line.

  “One of the deputies can give me a lift back to the station,” she said, all trace of ‘Taliyah’ gone. She was fully Chief Morgan, and even as she was talking to me, her eyes were on the crime scene. “You can head out now.”

  It wasn’t a suggestion, I realized. But…

  “I know him.”

  Her eyes snapped to me.

  “I mean, I don’t know him, like, personally.” A flush grew in my cheeks, and oh boy, I hoped I didn’t sound as stupid as I felt. “What I mean is: I’ve seen him before.”

  “Where?”

  “He came to one of my client’s open houses the other night and three more before that.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  I shook my head. “I can check the registry and try to get his name.” Then I sighed. “If he even used a real one.”

  Taliyah’s eyes were so blue, they were like lasers locked onto my face. “What makes you think he’d give a fake name?”

  I shrugged, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut. “I don’t know. He was just being really sketchy at the open house.”

  “Sketchy how?”

  “Like looking at things a little too intently, trying to stay out of sight, but also very aware of anyone else being aware of him. I honestly thought he was there to try and steal something, but Mrs. Petryka said nothing was missing. Not even her pills. I had such a bad feeling about him that I asked her to check everything, literally everything.”

  Taliyah nodded, her eyes narrowing. “Alright. Thank you, Fifi. But you should head out. This is police business now.”

  She turned and walked away.

  I lingered at the line of tape for a second, but I knew that the next suggestion to leave probably wouldn’t be half as polite, so with one last glance, I turned to go.

  The name on the gravestone on which the body was sprawled across caught my eye, mostly because the carved scroll looked like it was being held in place by little stone claws.

  Antoine Novik, it read.

  The bright winter’s day seemed a little dimmer, like the sun had vanished behind the clouds, even though the sky was a clear gray-blue.

  I shivered and made my way back to my car.

  Chapter Three

  Succubi are kind of a competitive group.

  Think of every mean girl stereotype that’s ever been portrayed in movies, and that’s pretty much us. We’re not just in competition for male attention, we’re in competition for what equates to food. We literally feed on sexual energy and desire. It keeps us strong and healthy, and without it, we’re really no better than sickly humans. Worse off, actually. When I tried to wean myself off my Succubus nature, I was walking around like I was ninety and couldn’t stop shaking. It was awful. I think if I’d pushed it much further, I might have actually died.

  Suffice to say, I hadn’t had a lot of opportunity for female friendship growing up.

  So being able to slide into my chair at Poppy’s old farmhouse table, and have a smoking cocktail pushed into my hand as a session of the Black Cat Cocktail Club came to order, it was worth more than magic to me.

  I sipped at the drink that Poppy had made me and smiled as cinnamon and spice exploded across my tongue. Red Devil, she called it. Apparently, Astrid had invented the recipe, and it tasted just like the old cinnamon heart candies I’d grown up with, with a little bit of a kick from the rum.

  Even though I had my favorite drink in my hand and was surrounded by my friends, I was trying really, really hard not to be annoyed with Poppy. I didn’t want to be, and quite frankly, she was one of the nicest people I’d ever met. She always went out of her way to help anyone who needed it.

  The trouble was, she’d recently broken up with Marty, and he wasn’t taking it very well. And even though I was closer to Poppy, Marty and I were still friends. And, furthermore, he was a really nice guy and I just hated seeing him so sad. Not to mention the fact that Marty and Poppy, well, they’d been friends basically since the day she moved to the Hollow. All in all, I just didn’t understand why she’d ended things with him—ended things with a man who adored her and always would. To me, there was nothing better—a guy who loved you for you, with no magic or charm or destiny forcing it to happen. Didn’t she know what that was worth?

  And, okay, yes, a small part of me was a little jealous. On top of being really sweet, and pretty darn good looking, Marty was a Null. And that meant no magic worked on him, so even my Succubus pheromones at full strength would just roll right off him. For a long time, I’d thought he would have been the perfect boyfriend. He couldn’t be wooed by my Succubus powers, and there was no magical prophecy declaring us bound by fate.

  Unfortunately, and wasn’t it just my luck, Marty only ever saw me as a friend, so there wasn’t much point in thinking about what might have been or could have been because nothing was ever going to be between us. I’d accepted that now. And, I had to admit, my feelings for Roy were strong—were they love? I wasn’t sure, mainly because I’d done everything in my power to ensure my feelings didn’t get that far. I just... I couldn’t deal with another broken heart. And Roy would not only break my heart—he could bash it into a thousand pieces because he wasn’t just any random guy. Roy was one of my closest friends.

  But back to Marty and Poppy—I couldn’t say I could accept their breakup where Poppy was concerned. In my mind, they were just made for each other—two peas in a pod. And having a close friendship as the basis of a relationship? Well, I couldn’t think of anything better.

  Yet, as I looked at Poppy now, I had to admit, she looked good. She looked happy and relaxed in a way that I hadn’t seen her for a while. So, maybe it really was for the best. And Poppy was still my friend, so that meant I could support her, even if I didn’t necessarily agree with the choices she’d made. She hadn’t been willing to talk about it much, but I had a feeling there was another man in her life, even if she was keeping the whole thing hush-hush.

  Darla, a flapper from the nineteen twenties, turned ghost, turned medium, flung herself into the chair next to me with a squeal and a giggle. She took a healthy swig of her gin fizz, playing with the straw. “Any word on who the stiff they found next door was? Gives me the jitters, it does—I mean, somebody offed him, right underneath our noses!”

  I blinked as I watched Wanda sit down at the table with a dark red drink in a wide necked glass that was spilling gray fog down the sides to roll across the table.

  “I haven’t heard anything. The police are keeping everything pretty under wraps.” Wanda stabbed her ice cubes with her little black straw. “Did you hear anything when it happened?” She asked Poppy.

  Poppy frowned, her usually sunny disposition currently hiding behind some clouds. “Finn was at school and I was at my store so we didn’t hear anything. We didn’t even know anything was wrong until I got home later that day and saw the police tape.”

  She shivered, staring blankly down into her own drink, something pale blue with golden sparkles swirling through it.

  Darla gave a more theatrical shiver. “It’s creepy. Someone just sneakin’ around out there between all those dead folks.”

  “Need we remind you that you used to be one of those dead folks?” Wanda asked her with a raised brow.

  Darla shook her head. “I ain’t needin’ no reminders. Thank you very much!”

  It was a little disturbing that the murder, because from what I’d seen, it had definitely been a murder, happened so close to both houses, and no one had seen or heard anything—sure Poppy and Finn had been gone and so had Wanda, but Libby had been home and apparently hadn’t heard a thing.

  Wanda was a Blood Witch, though, and I figured that had to mean she would have felt something—I mean, she was tied to death magic and what was a graveyard if not the site of death magic? Maybe if she’d been home, she would have felt something. Libby was a zombie, but other than being a little more durable and impossible to kill, she was still the same as she was when she was alive—which meant she felt no connection to the dead. Darla was pretty sensitive to ghosts, on account of being one for a century, but if the victim hadn’t left a shade behind, then she probably wouldn’t have noticed anything either. Not to mention the fact that she’d been living at Cain Morgan’s house so wasn’t around to notice anything anyway.

  Still, it was just a little too close to home. Literally.

  “So, Wanda,” Bailey, a medium for the Spook Society, cut in after a long moment. “How’s vampire life treating you?”

  It was a pretty obvious ploy to change the subject, and one I understood. Bailey’s job (and Darla’s now too) was all about talking to dead people, so she probably didn’t want to obsess over such things on her off hours, too. Plus, the mood of our cocktail and gossip fest had been taking a swing towards the morbid, so a change in conversation might be just what we needed.

  Wanda snorted, rolling her drink around in her glass. “Lorcan is deliriously happy, of course. And Maverick is surprisingly not a disaster at handling the daytime clients at the store. So, I’m doing passably, I suppose.”

  In an effort to convince people she wasn’t a Blood Witch any longer, since it was a state of being that neither the witch covens, or the vampires had been comfortable with, she and Lorcan had been pretending that he’d fully turned Wanda into a vampire. It meant her life could go on pretty much unchanged, other than shifting her hours in her store to more nocturnal ones. It seemed to be agreeing with her, so at least that was good.

  “What about your newest coven member?” I asked. “Imani, right? She owns the new salon in town?”

  Wanda took a sip of her drink, savoring it. “Imani, yes. But she hasn’t decided if she’s joining yet. I gave her a grace period, to see how she liked the Hollow. She’s strong, and surprisingly easy going for a witch, and I think she’d be a real asset to the coven. Plus, it would be good to get some new blood in.”