A Touch of Poison (Crystal Café Cozy Mystery Book 4) by Jessica Lancaster

Author:Jessica Lancaster [Lancaster, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gemini House Publishing
Published: 2020-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

Libra (24th September – 23rd October)

The end of anything can be difficult, but endings happen thousands of times every single day. You end a thought, you end a drink, a meal. Normalise the end, and don’t continue something that should have ended already.

I raced forward to the back of the café. My line of sight traced the blood dripping across my palm and down my wrist.

“Gwen, Gwen,” Oscar shouted in his race after me.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said, pulling the handle and glancing behind to see the small spots of blood mark the tiled flooring.

“You’re bleeding? What happened?”

I shook my head. “I’m fine, happens all the time.”

“I’m a d—”

I was pulled into the back room on the hinge of the door.

Clutching my hand by the wrist, I waved it at the other women.

“What happened?” Allegra said, stumbling over her feet to me.

“Last night, last night,” I said. “Last night, someone shattered the window, and I thought it was a glamour; sound and light, something to scare Wendy.” I had already mentioned the window, but the bleeding was proof of something physical.

“Someone knows what they’re doing,” Eva said.

“What about the wards?” my mother chimed in. “Haven’t they been working?”

They have been, which was the odd thing. They had been working, and yet magic continued to battle across the barrier. The tinge of pain stung at my palm once again. “Can someone find the healing salve?”

“Give it here,” my mother said, taking my hand in hers with a yank. “How did you do it?”

“Glass from the window.”

She traced the line of the cut with her finger, healing it completely.

“What are you doing?” Eva asked, glancing in Tana’s direction. “I told you not to—”

“They’re evil,” Tana mumbled, her eyes glancing over the note paper. “Whoever—whatever did this, they’re evil.” In Tana’s other hand, she clutched a crystal, keeping herself and her energy stores peaked with power.

My eyes turned to Wendy, her body on the ground in exhaustion.

“Has everyone else had a chance to read the notes?” I asked. “We should all put out feelers.”

“Feelers?” my mother rolled her eyes. “Let’s skip it, spell the papers and find out where they came from.”

“That’s the next step,” Allegra said.

I nodded. “Perhaps I missed something when I was going through them last night.”

After twenty minutes of spreading the notes out around the group and reading through every word and analysing every symbol, we pooled together everything on the table.

“Order of the Six,” Eva said.

“The Order is back,” Allegra said, taking a deep gulp of air.

Tana shook her head. “It says it is—but—but—how can it be?”

Celine scoffed. “I think you’re all stressing out about nothing. Someone has read a little about the Order, and they’re playing at all this stuff, attacking someone they didn’t think anyone would notice.” She shrugged. “So, are we going to spell the notes or are we going to continue waiting in fear?”

It certainly wasn’t fear keeping us from it, just caution. “Let’s set it up then.”

On the table, all the notes were fanned around a large blue and white amazonite stone.

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