Kitty

Paint it Black

A/N This part of the book occurs in the present.

Black was Anjulie's best color, so if she had to be in mourning, at least she could do it in style. Thank God pink or beige or yellow wasn't the expectation at funerals.

Oh, but poor little Silas. The child had been absolutely torn apart at his father's death, even though he'd been spared the freakish details, just been told his father had suffered something like heart failure. And that hadn't exactly been a lie; the organ had definitely failed after being pulled from its cavity.

Suffice it to say the police were absolutely at a loss. Such bizarre scenes were the stuff of horror films, not Midwestern suburbs. They'd brought in investigators and a particularly well-regarded forensic pathologist from Chicago, and once Emmett's remains had been removed from the premises and the Aubert sisters interviewed an inordinate amount of times, Anjulie and Marie had faded into the background, the unsolved mystery taken entirely out of their hands. They'd closed the Inn for a week in order to clean and refurbish the Friendship Room (even the bioremediation team they'd called had been disturbed by the specifics of the job), but rather than damage business, the enigmatic and violent death had pushed reservations six months out. It was true that the Aubert Inn had always appealed to a certain sort of clientele, and that sort thrived on the macabre. The potential of an actual haunting, spirits of a malevolent nature, had all the allure of a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and the horrifying event had made national headlines, boosting publicity.

The specifics of Emmett's death hadn't been reported, and yet grotesque details had a way of leaking. Online forums for that sort of thing ran wild with speculation. But while Marie was thrilled with the business if not happy with the way it'd come about, Anjulie couldn't bear the attention.

Seeing Emmett's body (or its wrapper, anyway) had convinced her of two things. First, she hadn't loved him that much, anyway. Oh, she'd cared for him in the sense that he strove to please her, thought she was the best thing in the world. He'd have done everything for her, would always be loyal—that's what she'd loved about him. Her mother had once given her the advice to make sure she married someone who loved her just a bit more than she loved him; that way, Anjulie would always have the upper hand. As a young woman, she'd thought her mother's words crude, but it'd taken Emmett's death to prove how much she'd internalized them. She wasn't going to miss more than his physical presence, as callous as that was to admit.

The second thing she realized—the far worse thing—was that she'd never quite woken from the nightmare of years ago.

When she'd found the pile of gore, her screams had roused the other guests. They'd come running, but Anjulie had at least had the sangfroid to back out of the room and shut the door before anyone else could see what was in there. What'd happened after that was a blur, and yet somehow the police had arrived, her sister had returned, and she'd been moved to one of the bedrooms to lie down. Then had passed a murky several hours of intense paranoia, culminating in a panic attack so terrible she'd been hospitalized and medically sedated. While Anjulie was in the hospital, the police had begun their interviews. Fortunately for her, she really had little to tell. Hal had offered her an airtight alibi, as did the nature of the death itself—anyone who'd gone to so much work to pull a man's insides out through his mouth and eyeholes would have to be festooned in his remains (not to mention incredibly skilled and strong), and no one in the Inn that night fit such a profile. In fact, no one at all fit such a profile.

Though after satisfying themselves of the Aubert sisters' innocence the investigators had moved on to seek a culprit or cause, Anjulie knew exactly what they'd find: nothing. No DNA, no prints, no murder weapon, no persons of interest, no motive, no evidence of foul play or forced entry or anything at all—just as they'd found with Emily.