Page 20 of Wretched Thorns

“Whatever you say, chère.”

He disappeared inside before she could respond. Tara stood there for a moment, fists clenched, heart pounding with an emotion she refused to name.

This was going to be a problem.

She made herself walk back into the kitchen.

Dex was at the table. Not sitting. Standing over the bones the way he had stood over her on the porch — looking at them like he was solving a problem he had no intention of voicing. Grandmère had taken her usual seat and was watching him.

His phone went off in his pocket.

He pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and answered without preamble. “Yeah.”

A pause.

“I’m with Toussaint and her… kin.”

Tara smirked. His nose was good, but not omniscient.

Another pause. Longer.

“Come again?”

Tara’s stomach went somewhere cold. The same somewhere it had gone earlier on the porch.

Dex’s eyes lifted and found Grandmère’s across the kitchen. Grandmère’s hand stopped moving on the table.

“We’ve done nothing to provoke —” Dex stopped. Listened. His jaw worked once. “All right.”

He ended the call.

For a beat, no one in the kitchen spoke.

Then Grandmère pushed her chair back from the table. Slow. The way a woman moves when she is not sure her legs are going to hold her but is not about to let anyone in the room see.

“Beaumont or Devereaux?” she asked.

“Beaumont.” Dex confirmed.

“This is going a bit far, even for them.”

Tara looked at her grandmother. Then at Dex. Whatever this was, Tara thought, she was the only one in the kitchen still in the dark. And she did not love that.

Chapter five

An Interrogation of Sorts

Bodie had called while they were still on the road.

An address. A turnoff north and east of Magnolia Creek. Jasper hadn't written any of it down. Neither had Eli. They never needed to. Eli remembered everything worth remembering.

The truck rattled over gravel while darkness pressed against the windshield. Jasper drove. Eli sat beside him with the leather case on the floor between his boots. He hadn't said a word about it. Jasper hadn't asked.

The silence rode with them all the way out of town.

The property appeared without warning. One moment there was pine forest, the next, the trees opened and the road spilled them into a clearing. A house sat in the middle of it. Or what used to be a house. The paint had long since given up pretending to be paint. The porch sagged. The roofline bowed. Beside it stood a barn. Newer. Not cared for. Not loved. Maintained. There was a difference. The kind of difference that made the hair on Jasper's arms stand up.

Someone had let the house rot. Someone had made sure the barn stayed standing.