10. Ten
TEN
They stopped for food as soon as they were clear of their parents. Ofelia felt bad lumping Oscar in with that group, and she thought about that as they waited for their order to be filled. Rather than take it home, they opted to eat it at a picnic table outside one of their favorite stops.
“Oh, this is amazing.” Sully bit into a fried shrimp and made a sound that bordered on sexual. “You know, other than you popping into my life, this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Ofelia’s eyebrows hopped as she looked over at him. “Is that a fact?”
“It is, love of my life. It’s a freaking fact.”
All Ofelia could do was shake her head. “The terms of endearment are not as cute as you think they are.”
“That shows what you know.” Sully dipped a shrimp in cocktail sauce and enthusiastically bit before going in for a kiss when the taste was still on his lips.
Ofelia laughed at his shenanigans, then caught herself.
“It’s okay,” he said when he saw that she’d fallen quiet. He scooped his hand over her hair. “You don’t have to feel guilty that you had a single moment of happiness when your friend is locked away in a room and potentially being infected with banshee cooties.”
The sentence was so convoluted that Ofelia had to think it through three times before it clicked. “Banshee cooties?”
He shrugged. “What else would you call it?” Before she could answer, he continued. “We made progress today. It might not be the progress you would have preferred, but we do know more than we did.”
“Oh, yeah? What do we know?”
“Eat your dinner,” he ordered. “I’ll tell you if you eat.”
Ofelia didn’t have much of an appetite — the other dinner and having to deal with her mother and future mother-in-law had sucked it right out of her — but she forced herself to focus on the shrimp and fries she’d ordered.
“Fine. I will eat.” And she did because she knew as well as Sully that she was going to need her strength for what was to come.
She didn’t care if she had to wrestle down every banshee in the city to kill them.
If that’s what it took to save Angelique, she was going to do it. “What do we know?”
Sully waited until she’d bit into a shrimp to answer. “We know a banshee was cured at least once. She even told you how she did it, and you texted Ben to make sure that Angelique knows to fight her condition.”
“I’m pretty sure Angelique would fight her condition regardless.”
“Yes, but we have hope, and that’s going to help Angelique, too.”
Since she didn’t disagree, Ofelia nodded as she reached for a fry to dip in ketchup. This wasn’t her preferred meal. Normally, she appreciated all the spicy gumbo and étouffée the Quarter had to offer. Once a week or so, however, she indulged in a fun meal like this. She’d really needed it tonight.
“We know that there were other incidents,” Sully continued. To Ofelia, he sounded as if he were giving a lecture at the police academy. He was very matter-of-fact. She enjoyed it, though.
“It might just be a theory now, but you’re cooking up something in that busy brain of yours regarding paranormals and whatever the banshees have planned,” he continued. “Ellen not being able to feel the banshees when she could before suggests to you that there’s another player involved.”
Ofelia’s mouth fell open. “I didn’t say that.”
“You’re thinking it.”
“How do you know what I’m thinking?”
He shrugged and grinned. “I’ve been with you long enough to know how your mind works. The second we walked into Cathy O’Neill’s house; you were interested in all of the voodoo stuff. Now, I don’t know why that piqued your interest so much. I do know that you’re rolling toward some sort of theory.”
“That doesn’t mean my theory will work,” Ofelia argued.
“Maybe not, but if I have to put my faith in one person’s theory, it’s going to be yours.”
And that was the best thing he could have said to her. She broke out in a grin and grabbed one of the pickles from the container they’d gotten to share. “I have kind of been thinking about something.”
He smiled to encourage her. “Go on. I want to hear it.”
“Well, Angelique is a paranormal. The two women who were scratched from our party, were they paranormals too?”
He cocked his head. “Two of them were shifters. One, the one who claimed she was just scratched by a chair, is human for sure. The other one I’m not certain about. She was a friend of your mother.”
“So, just two shifters for certain.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I can try to find out, although I’m leery to go to the paranormal unit right now, what with Biff being suspicious of us.”
“He is a righteous turd,” Ofelia agreed. “I’m going to give him a case of burning urine before we leave for our honeymoon.”
Sully pressed his lips together in an attempt to remain stoic. He couldn’t manage it. “If I wasn’t already head-over-heels in love with you, that would have tipped me over the edge.”
“You find the strangest things attractive about me.”
“I find everything attractive about you.”
Rather than dwell on that — there was no time for romance despite their wedding being right around the corner — Ofelia forced herself to focus. “I need you to contact someone at the department to find out if those women are witches on top of being shifters.”
Sully’s forehead creased, and all thoughts of charming her with his lovey-dovey words flew out the window. “Why?”
“Because my theory involves the banshees organizing,” she replied. “They’re doing it on purpose. Or, well, that’s my theory.”
He nodded to get her to continue and kept plowing through his food.
“Someone helped Ellen break free from the banshees, and I think that frightened them,” Ofelia continued.
“That’s why they left town the way they did.
Ellen said they were gone for a long time, only a few slipping back in, including the one I took out.
I maintain that was a test case, and they backed off again when I did that. ”
“Okay.” Sully paused with a fry halfway to his mouth. “Do you believe that someone was targeted at our party?”
There was no hesitation when Ofelia answered. “Yes.”
“Do you believe it was Angelique?”
That was harder for her to answer. When she thought back to how things had gone that night, her mind kept coming up with a different option. “I think that I was the target.”
Sully choked on the shrimp he’d just eaten. “What?” he asked when he’d cleared his airway. “You think you were the target?”
“Does that make me a narcissist?”
“No, but I would like to hear why you think that. I’m not doubting you — I was actually worried about that a little bit myself, but managed to convince myself otherwise — but I want to know why you think it.”
“Because that first banshee was coming right at me, and she was determined,” Ofelia replied. “You killed her, though. You swooped in out of nowhere and ripped her throat out.”
“I’m not apologizing for that.”
Ofelia snorted. “I don’t expect you to apologize.
You surprised me, though. I was gearing up for battle.
When I think about her face, she was gearing up for battle, too.
There was another banshee right there with her.
The one that got Angelique. They were together, and the rest of them spread out when attacking. ”
Sully took a few moments to picture the scene that Ofelia was painting. “You’re right,” he said finally. “When I look back, I can see what you’re saying. We took off to hunt the others. We saw them. They were spread out.”
“To serve as a distraction,” Ofelia guessed. “And Angelique paid the price because they were looking for me.”
“Hey.” Sully reached over and grabbed her hand to give it a good squeeze. “You cannot blame yourself for this. It’s not your fault.”
Ofelia felt otherwise. She also knew that she wouldn’t win this particular argument. “The whys are important on this one. We need to be realistic, though, too. We’re not even sure the banshees are still in the area.”
“Oh, you don’t believe they’ve fled.” He gave her a severe look. “I know you. That’s not what you believe.”
“I was just playing devil’s advocate.”
Sully waited her out, and she sighed.
“I believe they’re still here,” she admitted. “I don’t think they’re done. What they’re doing is regrouping.”
“What will they do now? Do you have any idea? Will they go after other paranormals, hoping to boost their numbers before going after you again?”
“I’m not even sure they still want me,” Ofelia admitted. “That’s not me being self-deprecating either. Maybe they think, with the women who are in detention and Angelique, they got what they needed.”
Sully rolled his neck. “I can’t imagine them going after you and deciding after the fact that they don’t want you.”
“Probably not,” Ofelia admitted. “The way you took out that banshee, maybe they are coming up with a different plan, though.”
“Like attacking from within?”
Ofelia didn’t want to say that out loud, but she nodded. “They might think that Angelique will be able to get me.”
“Well, then we need to make sure that Angelique doesn’t turn.”
They finished their dinner quickly, then headed off. Sully parked in the garage, on the second floor, when they got back.
“I should probably stop in and check on Krewe,” Ofelia said as she eyed the door that led to the bar.
Sully shook his head. “You don’t need to do that. The bar runs smoothly whether you’re here or not.”
“That’s kind of a weird kick to my ego,” she admitted.
He smirked. “You know what I mean. You put together a solid team to run the bar for you because you wanted to branch out. That team will be taking care of the bar when we’re on our honeymoon. You can trust them.”
Because it was what she wanted to believe, she nodded. “Let’s check on Angelique.”
“That sounds like a good plan.”
He made it three feet before the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Something inside of him warned that they weren’t alone in the parking garage, and he shoved Ofelia without thinking it through. All he knew was that it wasn’t a human.