“Grandma, calm down.”
“Five girls now.” She took spoons out and laid them in stacks on top of each other. “Five girls. There will be five more innocent little girls who haven’t even lived half as much as my life. That’s not right, Al. That’s wrong and unfair.”
“Grandma, come here.”
She shifted to laying forks in weird little piles. “Everywhere we go, the soil dies right under our feet. Our poor family is smaller and smaller. Our women are either sterile or dying from illness. What Snyder and Dayanara did was wrong, and now we all have to pay for it.”
I went to my grandma, stopped her fork-piling, turned her around, and wrapped my arms around her small frame. “Grandma, this isn’t your fault. This is no one’s fault. In fact, this isn’t the gods. This is some crazy person on our property, trying to hurt us.”
“If only that were true.”
“It is.”
“No. Five more will die. I already saw that tonight. It’s why I called in more support. They’ll be here to help me spread more well-wishes to the gods. We think we’ve found a spell that can lift the curse. I’ll need the hearts and other things.”
“I’m not comfortable with more people being on this property. I need fewer—”
“I won’t be ignored anymore. Besides, you’re busy. I can smell orange blossoms all over you.” She leaned back and looked into my eyes. “I knew something was odd when my oldest grandson bought a bunch of candles and lit them, when he’s never lit or enjoyed a candle in his life. You got those candles because of that new girl, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but let’s not get off topic—”
“You like her?”
“Yes. Maybe even more.”
“She’s the light in your darkness,” Grandma said.
“Yes. She is.”
“There’s a bad man coming for her. Do you know that?”
I tensed. There were times when I pretended to ignore my grandma’s visions and then there were moments when I listened wholeheartedly. In the end, I never disregarded what she said. I didn’t practice this weird religion of hers, but it could never be denied that when Grandma claimed something was going to happen, it tended to be a fifty-fifty chance that it would. “When you first saw her you said that a bad man was coming. Do you still see him?”
“Give me the hand you’ve touched her with tonight.” She extended hers.
I’d touched Elle everywhere and with almost every part of me, but I didn’t tell Grandma that. I offered my right hand to her. “Here.”
That white film spread over her eyes and concealed her brown pupils. Humming left her lips. A cold thickness seeped into me like tiny icicles digging into my skin. “Oh yes. Ellie, he’s screaming. Ellie. Ellie. Over and over again.”
“What does he look like?”
“He has black hair like yours but longer. He’s white and wild. He’s painting right now. I see her on the canvas.”
Painting? It has to be Michael.
“He’s coming for her. There’s a news clipping next to his paintbrushes. He keeps looking at it and then drinking more of this brown liquid. It must be whiskey. Wait.” She held my hand tighter. “Yes. He’s coming. The article is some announcement about Hex and his new collection. Why would he be reading that?”
She released my hand. The humming ended. Those brown pupils reappeared.
I raked my fingers through my hair. “I had Reece ask our publicist to mention Hex would be using Elle as a model for his new collection. It’s supposed to get us more investors.”
“So this Elle is popular?”
“Yes. Do you remember the artist Hex punched outside of the art gallery in Las Vegas?”
“No. You know I don’t follow Hex’s exploits, but the guy Hex punched is the bad man?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Why would he be coming for her?”
“They used to be together.”
“Did he know she was working with Hex? In my vision, it doesn’t seem like it.”
“I’ll have to ask her.” I turned around to leave.
Those hours at the beach with Elle cost me even more grief. I’ll have tons of things to do now.
“And when will you get Reece out of jail and bring Dayanara home?” Grandma called out to me.
“I’ll give the police this new information. They were called, right?”
“Yes, but they said they weren’t going to release either one of them.”
Good. I’m still not sure Reece didn’t figure out a way to kill the girls and put them in the office. It’s better to let them work on it.
“Are you listening to me?” Grandma tapped my back. “Reece and Dayanara didn’t do it.”
I turned around. “I’m still not sure Reece wasn’t involved in some way. There was evidence in her apartment.”
Grandma raised her hands in the air. “What evidence? No way. What are you talking about?”
“Traces of the two victims’ blood and hair were in her closet and—”
“She held the body parts for me in her apartment. I asked her to. If I kept them in my cottage you would have found them.”