Page 4 of The Seven Rings
“He had his hand over hers. When we saw him just now. I don’t think he did it on purpose, but I think he was okay with it. Dobbs made a mistake showing us that, because I feel better about it. Believing he just lost his footing, but he was okay with it.”
“We’re going to beat her, Owen.”
“Oh, fucking-A right we are.” Now he grinned. “I’ve got plenty of songs in me.”
Clover, the sixth bride and Sonya’s grandmother, chimed in with Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music.”
“You got it, babe. And on that note, I want breakfast. I’ve got to get up in an hour anyway.” Owen glanced toward the open door. “What are the odds of talking Cleo into making some predawn omelets?”
“You tell me. You’re the one sleeping with her.”
“I give it fifty-fifty, and I bump that up if I have coffee waiting.”
Trey carried the broom and the dustpan of broken glass back to the kitchen. “Make the coffee,” he advised. “Everyone needs time to settle. This was different from knowing we’ve got a house full of ghosts. It was seeing them die, hearing it, feeling it.”
“Dobbs is quiet now. It had to cost her a lot of energy to pull that off.”
“She wanted to hurt them. Everyone in this house, alive or dead, wants her out. The only way we know of is to find the rings. Take them back. Break the curse, get her gone.”
“And Sonya’s seen all seven brides now. How they died.”
“Exactly. It’s going to get worse from here, Owen.” He sat at the kitchen island, shoved a hand through his tousled black hair. “We can’t be here twenty-four seven. But they both live here, work here.”
With the coffee going, Owen got out eggs, cheese, bacon. If he couldn’t talk Cleo into making breakfast, he’d toss some together.
“I get the worry. I’ve got it, too. But truth?” He looked at his lifelong friend across the counter. “I don’t know any two women—hell, people—who can handle it better than they can.”
“When the mirror shows up, it doesn’t give her a choice. Sonya has to go through.”
“And you can’t go with her.” Owen, Poole-green eyes steady, handed Trey a mug of coffee. “I can, if I’m here. But you and Cleo, you have to wait on this side. That’s a tough swallow for a guy whose nature, and skill set, has him helping people and fixing things.”
“It’s goddamn hard to take it on faith you’ll come back through again.”
“Here’s the thing.” Owen got his own coffee. “Considering it’s framed in predators, it looks like it could eat you alive, but you gotta figure it’s on our side, or why show Sonya what she needs to know to get that bitch out of here?”
“I tell myself that. Like I tell myself, from what we know or believe, Collin and Sonya’s father used it to communicate with each other. Maybe they never knew exactly how or why.”
“Sonya’s dad probably never did, but Collin had to figure it out after your dad did the genealogy. Once he knew he’d had a twin taken away, given up for adoption, he had to figure it out.”
“And by the time he did, and decided to contact Andrew MacTavish, MacTavish was dead.”
“So here we are,” Owen added. “Collin leaves the manor to his brother’s only child. You fall for her. She gets her pal to move in withher, and I fall for her. There’s a kind of symmetry going. I don’t know what the hell it means, but, man, it’s going.”
He heard the sound of dogs racing through the house.
“Let’s see if she’s fallen enough for me to make those omelets.”
Until she’d followed Sonya in the move from Boston to Maine, the only times Cleopatra Fabares recalled seeing the sun rise was after an all-nighter—work or play.
As for cooking breakfast—or anything else—that fell into the pretty-much-never area of her life.
But that was then, this was now.
She’d taken up Sonya’s offer of moving in, of making Collin Poole’s turret art studio her own without a second thought. But with the caveat she would also be in charge of the food shopping and cooking.
That posed a long, wide learning curve for the Louisiana-born artist and illustrator, but—surprise—she learned. And more, she enjoyed it.
And since the three a.m. wake-up call, and all that followed, stirred up her appetite, Owen didn’t have to work hard to persuade her to make omelets.
