Page 86 of Black Curtain

“Aren’t you the handsome one?” Seeming to notice the rest of the group again, as soon as her eyes were off Dalejem, she looked at Black next, then Nick, then Jax. “All of you boys are quite the lovely bunch. How utterly charming.”

I felt myself getting annoyed.

Brick really was an ass.

“Why were you running?” I asked, cold.

She looked at me, her expression abruptly flat.

“We got in a spot of trouble with some pirates and priests, love. The usual sorts one has tangles with. And a local man of means…” she added, her voice disinterested. Turning, she winked at her husband. “Oh. And then there was that other thing… we may have got in a bit of disagreement with local law enforcement around a few issues. Isn’t that so, my darling?”

Smiling, she leaned closer to tug on her husband’s dark brown hair.

He gave her a wicked smile.

“Then there’d be the witchcraft, love,” he reminded her. “There was a bit of a fuss about that, if you recall. The black rituals. The dead bodies. People can be so squeamish.”

“Oh, yes. Of course. The witchcraft.”

Her dark eyes rose back to mine, and the look in them grew empty, flat to the point of being entirely inhuman.

“Therewasthat, wasn’t there? They didn’t much like us spending time in the woods on those evenings. The gatherings we started. The chanting. They started to blame us for things… unnatural things. Things they claimed we caused.”

The woman trailed, smirking at me.

The rest of us, therealpeople in the room, all exchanged looks.

Then Black looked back at the auburn-haired apparition.

“Whatthings?” Black growled. “What things did they blame you for?”

“Children dying, mostly,” the woman said, her expression back to looking bored. She twisted part of her curled locks around her fingers, pouting her lips. “It was all quite tedious, wasn’t it, my love?”

She sighed, looking at her husband, then gazed up at Black.

“In any case, it all became too difficult. We could not stick around there. We had been sending money up here for a while, along with stashing wealth in a few places in the West Indies and elsewhere. A friend of ours bought this place, an heir to a sugar baron, but we simply fell in love with it. Once we decided to relocate here ourselves, we informed her we’d be taking this house to live in ourselves. She didn’t have much choice but to give it to us.”

I found myself wondering just how little choice the “friend” had.

The auburn-haired woman rubbed her stomach over the wedding-white dress.

Something about the way she did it made me grimace.

“We are having ababy,you see.” She smiled at her husband, her French accent growing more prominent. “Denis and I. It will be our first. So special. So perfect. My dreams tell me it will be a boy… that he will be a king among men.”

“A king among something, anyway,” Dex muttered.

I snorted, unable to help it.

There wasn’t much real humor in it.

“At any rate, staying inLa Nouvelle-Orleanswas simply impossible.” She shrugged. “We were forced to discontinue our current plans. To pause our previous livelihood, at least for now.”

She threw up a pale hand. I couldn’t help noticing she wore a number of expensive-looking rings, along with a bracelet that looked to be studded with emerald.

“We could not continue with this pirate thingnow.Not until the baby is had, and is somewhat grown. Perhaps we will find a new way to do it here. Or we will find some other way to keep our living. Denis is very clever in this. Until then, there is the money we bring with us. There is the house. There is the baby.”

She wrapped her arms around the man’s neck, smiling.

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