a friend, temptation... It could have been an accident,” Griffin said.
“Yes. Except that none of the waitstaff saw him in the restaurant, much less down in the wine cellar. And, as I said, Monica—who claims she really knew her husband—is calling it murder.”
“Ah. Okay, are you coming up?” Griffin asked Jackson. Krewe headquarters was only about an hour and a half—two hours at most—from Baltimore, even counting Beltway traffic.
“Maybe, but Adam wants to move delicately with this. We’re not invited in yet—Franklin Verne’s death isn’t even considered to be a murder at the moment. But of course, the way the man died, there has to be an autopsy and an investigation. Get started for me, and then give me a call. Let me know what you think.”
“All right. When did this happen?”
“He was found about an hour ago. Adam got the call from Monica immediately after she was visited by the police and informed that her husband was dead. If you head in quickly, you’ll see the body in situ. Oh, and one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, it is Baltimore, and Poe is buried there, and, hell, the name of the restaurant isn’t Raven, but it is Black Bird...”
“What?”
“He was found gripping a little bird. Yes, a raven, of course. It’s the kind you can find just about anywhere they have Poe souvenirs. Cheap, plastic, black—on a little pedestal with its wings out, beak open...and the word nevermore written on the base.”
“Like you said, you can buy those souvenirs anywhere.”
“Yep. And, sorry. Just one more thing again.”
“What’s that?”
“He was surrounded by three dead blackbirds. Naturally, of course, no one can figure out how Franklin Verne—or the birds—got into the wine cellar.”
* * *
Vickie opened her eyes.
For a moment, she was disoriented.
She wasn’t at all sure where she was!
And then she realized that Griffin was there, looking down at her with concern. A half grin curled his lips, though that grin was far more rueful than amused.
Grim, even.
“A nightmare?” he asked her gently, a trace of worry crossing his bronzed face. There wasn’t a reason for her to be having nightmares—at the moment. The Krewe cases with which she’d been involved had come to their conclusions.
She was in the wonderful hotel in Baltimore’s Fell’s Point where she had enthusiastically suggested they stay on their trip from Boston to Arlington, Virginia—even though they hadn’t really needed to make it an overnight trip, much less a weekend one.
But she and Griffin had wanted time together. Fun time, sightseeing, before Griffin reported back to headquarters; Vickie was preparing to enter the FBI’s training academy at Quantico.
Eventually, they’d both be working out of the main special offices of the Krewe of Hunters unit. But for now, Griffin would be getting back to work, they’d both be settling in to living together—and Vickie would be starting up with the next class for twenty weeks of training that would lead to her graduation and an official position with the Krewe.
Vickie could have told Griffin about the dream. The Krewe were more than simply dedicated and well-trained agents. They had been gathered together carefully because they all had unique abilities, the center of those abilities being that they could communicate with the dead.
When the dead chose, of course.
She and Griffin had both known for years just what the other was capable of. While they had only rekindled their relationship recently, they had first met almost a decade ago—when a serial killer had nearly taken Vickie’s life. It had been a ghost, the older brother of the child she was babysitting, who had saved her by sending her running out of the house to safety, straight toward a young Officer Pryce. He’d been a cop before becoming an agent, though he had now been with the Krewe of Hunters for quite some time. He’d always known that he wanted to be in law enforcement.
It wasn’t that way for Vickie.
She loved history. She’d been a guide, leading youth-group tours as a historian, and she was an author of history books. She was proud to say that she was good at it—the most important reviews to her were the ones that said she had a way of making history fun for the reader.
It was only the cases with which she had recently become involved that had made her want to veer in a new direction. Not a change—an addition. There had been a case in which an incarcerated serial killer had managed to reach out to strike again, and then another where modern-day Satanists had tried to bring the devil back to Massachusetts.
She was now determined to do her best to become an agent herself, and it was a decision with which she was really pleased. It was odd to realize that she had once been embarrassed by her secret talent—the ability to speak with the dead. She hadn’t wanted to admit that it could be real. But she’d learned recently that her so-called curse allowed her to actually make a difference. She might have the ability to help in more bizarre cases—to save lives. And that mattered. To that end, she’d applied for and been accepted to the academy at Quantico. The Krewe might be a special unit, but even so, the agents were required to go through the academy. Vickie had passed the necessary tests on paper and made it through the grueling physical regimen necessary to become an agent.
Griffin already had an apartment in a wonderful old row house in Alexandria. For him, it wasn’t a move—just a return to his home of the past several years. He had only been back in Boston—where he and Vickie both were born and raised—on assignment.
Vickie had gone to college at NYU and then lived in New York for several years, but never farther south.
It was, she’d assured him, exciting to move.
But she was aware that Griffin believed it had to be a tug on her heartstrings as well—she was leaving a lot behind.
And she was. But she was also happy to be moving forward.
“A nightmare?” he repeated, and the note of worry seemed higher.
She smiled, staring into his dark eyes. Griffin was fine with her decision to become an agent; the Krewe was composed of both men and women, and he knew women were every bit as efficient and excellent as agents as men.
It was just her—but of course, he loved her. It wasn’t going to be easy for him to accept her walking into the same danger he did daily. He would, however, get used to it—and she loved him all the more for that fact.
“No, not a nightmare!” she told him. He far too quickly became concerned for her. All it had been was a bizarre dream. It might well have been due to the way they’d overindulged in some delicious blue crabs at dinner last night.
She would stay mum. For the moment. After all, she was in Baltimore. Edgar Allan Poe was buried here; he’d died here. Having dreams about him didn’t seem the least bit strange, actually.
But
