been so innocent? So easy? “And that’s it?” He nodded. “Then why is it a blank spot in my memory?”
Phoenix shrugged. “I have no idea.”
I pressed my lips together. He had to be lying. I hadn’t lost my memory any other feeding, except for my first time, but that was different. It had been a total gorging.
“I should go,” Phoenix said, voice soft and his feet unmoving. “The offer is still on the table. It always will be.”
“Why did you come?” I matched his tone, waiting for him to ask me to do whatever it was he needed that prompted him to renew his proposal.
His dark eyes met mine. “Business has been good?”
I nodded. He was so confusing. “What does tha—”
He evaporated into a puff of black smoke.
I’d finished off the baking for the day and was icing cupcakes by the time Emery arrived. She practically skipped through the alley door.
“Good morning, boss,” she said, as she tied on her own pink polka-dotted apron. “Where do you want me?” She took in every last inch of the countertop covered with treats, eyes widening slightly. “How long have you been here?”
“Too long,” I said with my own grin back. “Um, why don’t you load the cases? Everything is labeled. When you’re done with that, straighten up the café and run a towel over the tables. I’m going to finish up in here.”
Emery slipped on a pair of disposable gloves and set straight to work, humming a song I didn’t recognize as she went. By the time I made it out of the kitchen, the entire shop smelled like homemade bread and it was nearly opening time, but all my dishes were washed and put away and all of the displays were set up perfectly. For once, I was ahead of the game.
She stood on the customer side of the counter, inspecting the display case. “How does it look? Maybe we should put more of the Fairytale Ambrosia up here.” She pointed at the covered cake platter we used for free samples. “It’s new and people will probably want to try it.”
“Perfect,” I said. I knew hiring her would be a good decision.
Today was shaping up to be a great day. True to form, a steady flow of customers came through my doors. When the morning rush lessened to a more manageable stream, Emery took a coffee pot around, offering refills and chatting with the regulars who weren’t engrossed with something else.
The bells chimed over the door as Boone came in. My stomach didn’t exactly flutter at the sight of him, but it wasn’t completely still either. Seeing Boone was often the highlight of my day. We were friends and he was ruggedly handsome and, well, we all needed someone to fantasize about. I waved at him and he nodded toward the kitchen, raising his eyebrows. I finished serving the two people in line before I asked Emery to take over the front.
“How bad was it?” I asked, going through the door to the kitchen. Boone’s visions of the future ranged from trivialities like a person knocking over a glass of water to horrifically disturbing cases of murder and child kidnapping. Though he didn’t talk about it a lot, I could see his “gift” wasn’t easy on him and the bad premonitions haunted him.
He pushed a hand through his dark blond hair. “I think it’s the same person who took the kids. It was a woman with silver hair, dressed all in white, but other than that, she didn’t look the same at all. I know it was her though.”
“Tell me everything that happened. Was it another child?”
He shook his head. “No. A woman was taken this time. Maybe twenty-five?”
If the kidnapper was already grabbing a new person, that didn’t bode well for the missing kids. At least that was what I had gathered from years of television watching. “Do you think...I mean why is she taking someone else if she still has them?”
He took my hand in his rough calloused fingers. “They’re still alive. I know it.”
“How?” Feelings were great and all, but they weren’t proof. We needed more to go on.