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Hunter didn’t get home until almost four, and I was still tossing and turning when he crawled in beside me.
“How’d it go?” I asked, rolling over and propping my head on my elbow.
He sighed. “Not fabulous. Most everybody was inside, and nobody reports seeing anybody going around back. But then again, it was fairly busy. Marybeth does have a security camera back there, but it’s trained on the door and the dumpster. It caught Barbie coming out, but the murder was out of range.”
“So basically, you have nothing,” I said.
“That about sums it up,” he replied, his voice heavy. “Right now, Miranda’s all we have. You saw her today. She wasn’t just mad. That girl had murder in her eyes when she left Bobbie Sue’s, but I talked to her. It doesn’t feel right in my gut that she did it.”
I weighed telling him about the vision, but it didn’t seem like the right time. Instead, what Coralee had told me that day drifted through my mind, and I remembered that she’d left before everything had happened. Boy was I going to be in trouble for not calling that one in.
“I might have a lead for you to pick at,” I said. “Coralee told me Barbie was dippin’ from the till.”
He rolled over and propped himself up on his elbow to face me. “Are you serious? That changes everything. Or at least it could. That means that all of her clients are suspects.”
“Yeah,” I said, cringing, “but I think most of them live out of state, or at least somewhere besides Keyhole. I know the complex Miranda lives in is owned by some corporation. Kristen applied there before she moved in here, and they had this big credit and background process. She showed me the application. Lansing Investments, or Landsdown, maybe. Something like that. I think they were based out of Atlanta.”
“I don’t even know for sure how many properties she manages,” he said. “It was so late that I couldn’t reach anybody at her office.”
“Then get some sleep,” I said, tucking my news away for later. Right now, he needed sleep more than he needed something else on his mind. Tomorrow would be another day. “The night’s almost gone already, and there’s nothin’ else you can do now, anyway. Worryin’ won’t solve anything.”
“True,” he said, giving me a kiss before he rolled over. “Night.”
“Night,” I replied, and snuggled in next to him.
I was in that soft place between sleep and awake where dreams and reality merge. My mind drifted and I found myself in the woods between the back pasture and the lake. The unicorn strode beside me as the sun dappled through the leaves, making fluttering patterns on the ground and turning his long mane to gold where it touched it.
“Hey, boy,” I said, putting my hand on his muscular neck. “Here you are again, huh? You know unicorns aren’t real, right?”
“Of course they’re real,” a familiar voice said. I jumped and turned to find my father walking on the other side of me. “Or at least as real as I am.”
That irritated me because I hated riddles. “What does that even mean? I’m asleep and you weren’t magic. And you left us, so no offense, but I’d appreciate it if you stopped popping into my dreams. I don’t know why my subconscious is summoning you, but I wish it would stop.”
His lips curved up in a small smile. “I suppose I deserve that.”
“Damn straight, you do,” I said, the calm of the idyllic scene fleeing. Now I was just mad.
“Listen, Noelle,” he said, his voice taking on an urgent edge. “I don’t know how long I have here, so I need to say what I came here to say. You need to watch out for your sister and Raeann. Beth, too. The council didn’t get everybody and neither did Shelby and her crew at the Academy. They’re coming for you, and this time I don’t think I’ll be able to stop them. You’ll see them coming. At least I gave you that.”
“What do you mean? Who?” I snapped. The unicorn became antsy, dancing and snorting, and slammed into me with his shoulder. The semi-darkness that precedes a storm settled over us as the sun disappeared behind a bank of roiling clouds. Goosebumps popped up on my arms as the temperature dropped and lightning crashed across the sky. The wind whipped raindrops into my face so hard that they felt like shards of glass, and by the time I caught my balance and shoved my wet hair from my face, my father was gone.
“Noelle!” Hunter’s voice cut through the storm and woke me up.
“Yeah,” I said, breathless. “I’m okay.”
“It was just a dream,” he said, putting his arm around me and pulling me close. “You’re all right. I’m here.”
The residual anxiety left behind from the dream or vision or whatever it was dissipated, and after a few moments, I sank into him.
“Wanna talk about it?” he asked against my hair.
I shook my head. “Not really. It doesn’t make any sense anyway.” That much was true. I needed time to think and I needed to talk to Camille and Shelby, but that was gonna have to wait ’til morning, too. I was too exhausted to deal with dreams about unicorns and dead parents and witches who wanted to kill me. As much as I hated Gone With The Wind, I was going to take a page from Scarlett’s book. Tomorrow was another day.