Page 87 of Vengefully Matched

Priscilla ran out of there and back to the office so fast that she almost collided with Kevin, who was practically bouncing up the street, an impressive feat at six-foot-she-didn’t-care inches tall.

“Priscilla,” he said eagerly. “Any leads?”

She wasn’t sure what made her do it, but she thought of her mother, who’d told her when in doubt, to hold a thing close until she was willing to say it with her whole chest. It was a whisper, a lingering memory of her mother, that made her hold tight to her suspicion. Just in case saying it out loud would curse her in some awful way.

“No, but I’m getting frantic. I have to go get in the car, maybe just start driving around randomly to see if anything looks off.”

He nodded, a serious expression on his face. “Absolutely. Yeah.” A sympathetic smile crept all the way up to his eyes. “It’s tough when you want something and wanting it isn’t enough to make it so.”

Priscilla looked up, surprised. Kevin was the resident himbo. He was good at organizing, great at assisting, and terrible at common sense and human interactions. He didn’t give out helpful little aphorisms.

When she cocked her head, he furrowed his eyebrows slightly, and she wanted to ask him something; she just wasn’t sure what.

There would be time later.

For now, she had a fake-turned-real psychic to visit and a hearse to track down. Her habit of leaving the behemoth parked behind the tea shop was starting to come in handy, and before long, she was on the road, flying miles past the limit to make it to Madam Cleopatra’s in record time. The benefit of the hearse was that other cars gave it a wide berth, for obvious reasons. No one ever fought her for a merging lane or a turn signal when she drove Uncle Larry’s precious.

The door was open, and Connie stood there, waiting, face expectant. She looked at a watch with the sort of complicated dials that Prissy never understood.

“You’re late,” she said. “Come on in.”

Priscilla followed.

Connie beckoned for her to sit, and she did, adjusting her weight on the worn bench seat.

The woman waved at the crystal ball on her table.

“I’ve been scrying all morning, and around noon I sensed that you would come see me. I have been waiting since then. What on earth took you so long?”

“I just figured out that it’s a cabin. That Agatha is in a cabin.” Priscilla’s hands needed to do something; for the tenth time that day, she unspooled her braid and rebraided it nervously.

“Respectfully,” said Connie, and Priscilla braced herself for it to be anything but, “of course she’s in a fucking cabin. The question is which one. It’s in Stowe, and I can almost see it. A-frame, brown paint, big windows like a pair of eyes on the front. Trees on either side and a stream behind it.”

“So anywhere in a seventy-square-mile town. You don’t have anything more than that for me to go off of?” A town name was good, better than searching all of Vermont, but that was still a large enough span of land, enough cabins and homes that she might not get to Agatha in time.

Connie shrugged. “I know it’s an A-frame, and I can tell you all about the interior—crackling logs, stone hearth, very pretty—but that’s it.”

“Finding the right A-frame in a woodsy snow resort town with an abundance of cozy, cute cabins is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.” She yanked on her braid, lowering her hands to her lap and digging them into her pants.

“Ah well,” said Connie. “At least it’s not snowing!” She was already packing away the things and practically shoved Priscilla out the door.

Priscilla was not surprised at all, then, when the first few flakes fell as she made her way up the mountain, the hearse groaning at the incline. She snapped for good measure to reinforce the tires; devil damn her if those things had been replaced anytime in the past decade.

Azrael and Vickie had agreed to research vacation rentals in the area, cross-referencing together from the Hart Manor library, which Az had enchanted for optimal focus that day. He promised to text her a list of the most likely addresses as they went. And Vickie had a set of Agatha’s favorite pens that she’d left at the dining room table. Without even being asked, every hour, on the hour, she touched it, and every hour she texted and reassured Priscilla that there was no ghost to summon. Her death powers would have, if they could. That group text chime was beginning to calm something in her, and it was entirely possible that she’d never be able to hear the little chirp of a message alert again without a sensation of overwhelming relief.

Agatha was alive. And Priscilla intended for her to stay that way.

The first A-frame was the third in a row on a road down a steep mountain, the last bit of it dirt alone until it turned to gravel driveways for each property. It was set between trees, beautiful and bucolic. She parked the hearse and got out.

A little dog barked, and soon enough she saw him, pressing up against the front window, paws low enough that it was just a small, fluffy snout of tan and brown hair staring out at her. As she drew closer, she could see his nose against the glass and the furious wave of his curly-haired tail, an overly eager welcome flag moving at double time.

She knocked on the door, and a tall, broad man in a ski cap and a sweater with little cartoon mice on sleds embroidered onto it opened it. He had a mustache, threaded a little with silver, and, inexplicably because his hair was dark brown, strands of red, and a-few-days-old stubble. The man didn’t look like a kidnapper, but then again, who was she to say a kidnapper would look a certain way?

She was almost certain that this wasn’t the cabin; behind him there was a dark-haired woman typing at a table who looked up from her laptop quizzically. Two young children shrieked and giggled over some sort of word search activity they were doing on the coffee table. One of them had, apparently, discovered BUTT, and they both thought this was funny enough to dissolve into peals of incomprehensible laughter. Priscilla thought of Evelyn, and the bittersweetness of that loss. It was better now, healing over by the determination that she could fight for the things she wanted. For the person she wanted now.

“What can I do for you?” the man asked, a cup of coffee in one hand, a half glance to the kids, and then back to her.

“I’m looking for a friend, but I think I have the wrong cabin.” She was glad to see a slice of happiness in the world, but this wasn’t where she would find Agatha.