“I’ve been thinking about what you told me.” He looks around the store and lowers his voice. “About those visions you’ve been having of Elora.” I have to lean in so I can hear. He smells like chicory coffee and cigarettes. “Her runnin’ from somebody.”
Our heads are almost touching. His hair brushes my cheek, and it scares me to be this close to him. I’m worried that he’ll be able to feel me. The fact that I’m hiding things. Or maybe just the way my fingers occasionally long for those dark curls on his forehead.
“It’s gotta be Case,” Hart says. His eyes have clouded over. There’s a bayou lightning storm building inside him. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. Him and that damn jealous temper of his.”
I try to fight it off, but that fear I felt in the shed comes slithering back like a cottonmouth. It prickles at the backs of my arms and climbs up my neck to wrap itself tight around my throat.
“He came to see me last night,” I admit. “Case. He told me he thought Elora was cheating on him. That she was in love with someone else.” Hart jerks his head up and frowns. His face has gone white. “And he wanted me to tell him who.”
“See what I’m sayin’， Greycie? Now that’s a buncha bullshit, right there.” Hart clenches his jaw tight and runs another hand through his hair. “But hell, if Case even thought it was true . . . if he got that idea into his head somehow . . . that’s more than enough motive for –”
“For murder,” I say, and he nods, but I still don’t want to believe it. “Can’t you feel anything from him? From Case?”
“Shit yeah,” Hart tells me. “That’s the damn problem. There’s too much there. Guilt. Anger. Hurt. Jealousy. Fear.” His muscles twitch in frustration. “Take your pick. The guy’s a fuckin’ mess. I can’t wade through it all.”
“None of that means he killed her,” I offer. “I feel all those things, too. Every single one of them.”
“Yeah.” Hart’s face softens. “I know you do, Greycie.”
I take a little step back.
And I remind myself that Hart only feels the emotions. He can’t know the cause.
“But none of that means he didn’t kill her, either.” Hart’s face hardens up again. “There are things Case is hidin’。 I feel that for sure.”
I have the urge to put even more space between us. Because there are things I’m hiding, too.
But having secrets doesn’t make you a murderer. Besides, whoever that was outside my window last night, it definitely wasn’t Case.
“What about a stranger? Someone we don’t even know. Maybe –”
“Nah.” Hart shakes his head. “It’s not like she disappeared from the parkin’ lot of a grocery store. What would a stranger be doin’ way down here? Way out at Li’l Pass? Late at night like that? It doesn’t make sense.”
“What about Dempsey Fontenot, then?” I ask. “What he did to Ember and Orli –”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with Dempsey Fontenot,” Hart says. “I wish you’d never brought him up. You’ve got yourself seein’ ghosts.”
“But what if –”
“For Christ’s sake. That’s ancient history.” He bring his hand down hard on the countertop, and all the little bottles rattle. “Let it go, Greycie.”
The bell jingles, and a young couple strolls into the store holding hands. I mumble, “Welcome to the Mystic Rose, gentle spirits,” and Hart moves over so he can pretend to look at the candles while I help Ian and Mandy from Lake Charles make their selections. Then I ring up their purchases – some incense, a book on wild herbs of southern Louisiana, and one of those ever-popular red carnelian sex rocks.
Awesome. I hope they get their money’s worth.
When they’re gone, Hart comes back to the counter and leans in close to me again. He reaches up to touch the little blue pearl on Elora’s chain. Rough fingertips graze the skin at the hollow of my neck, and my insides go all liquid.
“Can you get out of here?” he asks under his breath.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “Soon as Honey is done with her reading.”
He nods. “I’ll wait for you out front.”
I watch Hart disappear through the door, and I wonder what Elora would say if she were here to see the pathetic way I’m pining after her brother. Sometimes, when I was supposed to be working in the shop, we used to sneak away and hide in the tall grass out behind the storage shed. Elora and me. Bare legs entwined and fingers laced together. We’d eat peppermints stolen from Honey’s candy dish while she’d poke fun at my hopelessness when it came to boys. Occasionally I’d try to mimic the cadence of her voice, to see if I could wield that musical charm the way she did. But she’d always say I sounded like a dying goose. And then we’d both laugh until we cried.