Then she saw the knife in Beau’s hand.
Chapter 5
The room seemed to spin. Time was doing strange things, as though when every clock in the house stopped, time itself had frozen.
“Beau?”
He stood. There was blood on his hands and staining the front of his white chauffeur’s shirt. On the floor beside him, half hidden behind the bed, a pale hand with broken manicured fingernails lay palm up toward the ceiling.
Anouk sank to the floor. She started to call out for help—?Luc! But his name died on her lips. Luc wasn’t here to answer.
“Beau . . . what did you do?”
“It wasn’t me.” His eyes were wide. “I found her like this a moment ago. I was carrying up her shopping bags from Galeries Lafayette.” He pointed the knife vaguely at some packages that had been dropped in a hurry, tissue-paper-wrapped treasures spilling out onto the floor. “I just came in and saw her like this . . . didn’t know what to do . . . tried to see if she was still alive . . .”
Anouk’s eyes went to the knife in his fist. As if just then realizing how bad it looked, Beau dropped it.
“She’s . . . she’s dead?”
And then she was crawling across the carpet toward that pale manicured hand, almost as though her body weren’t her own, as though the blood in her veins was moving her body for her. Closer. Around the corner of the bed. The hand was connected to an arm, long and pale, and a shoulder covered in a cream-colored blouse that bore telltale red stains, like poppies. Something wet and warm soaked into Anouk’s palms and she drew back.
Blood.
“I didn’t do it,” Beau insisted.
She twisted around to him. “Then who did?”
“I don’t know. I thought it was only you here.”
“It is only me.”
He paused. There—?for a second she saw it on his face. If it wasn’t him, and she was the only other one home, then . . .
Anouk scrambled to her feet.
“Someone else must be here,” Beau said quickly. “Hunter Black. Or Viggo.”
“Viggo wouldn’t kill his own mother!”
But there had been that embarrassed, nasty look on Viggo’s face during the blood harvest earlier that day. She shook her head—?Viggo was a spoiled crétin, but not a murderer. And Hunter Black was the shadow at Viggo’s side, the loyal hound at his master’s call; he wouldn’t draw a knife unless Viggo had commanded it. Besides, they had left hours ago.
“Well, I don’t know!” Beau said, pacing.
“We . . . we have to tell someone,” Anouk stuttered. But who? The police? No, of course not. That was who the Pretties called in detective novels, but this was a house of magic. She tried to think of what Luc would have done. “We could send a message to Castle Ides. To the Shadow Royals.”
“They’ll think it was us!”
“Then . . . we have to tell Viggo.”
Beau stopped in his tracks. His eyes were wide, sparking fear. “Are you mad? If Viggo sees me with a knife in my hand and his mother’s blood on my clothes, he’ll have Hunter Black slaughter me where I stand, and you too, probably, for good measure.” He started pacing again, this time kneading his forehead with one hand, unaware that he was getting blood all over his face. “Merde . . . we’ve got to get out of here before they come back . . . go as far away as we can.”
“Run? We can’t. I can’t leave the house.” But she realized as soon as she’d spoken how wrong she was.
“Yes, you can,” Beau said, as though realizing it at the same time. “You don’t have to obey her anymore. She’s gone. The pelts!” He spun toward the Mada’s closet. “I need a bag.”
“What are you doing?”
“Go downstairs. Pack whatever you can, quickly. Anything valuable we can pawn. And some clothes, plain clothes, no aprons, for the love of God. I’ll meet you by the car. Do you know where her oubliette is? We can’t leave it behind.”