“No.” She shook her head. “It’s a warning.”

“Stay here and talk to me.”

“No.” She snapped it, yanked her hands away. “I have to go home.”

“Marguerite, I’m not going to let you—”

“You can’t make me do anything, Tyler Winterman. Not marry you, not stay with you. Give me some room to make my own goddamned decisions.” She spun on her heel, left the house and tried to ignore the absurd twist of pain in her heart when he didn’t reach out, use that greater strength and arrogant male chauvinism of his to haul her back, make her stay. It didn’t make any sense to say one thing and want another so much.

When she got in her car and turned it to leave the driveway, he was on the porch, watching her. There was pain in his expression and anger, but something else, too.

Something she chose not to acknowledge. She hit the gas and fled.

It mesmerized her. She didn’t want it to, but it did.

All the way home the light of the sun caught the diamond, made it sparkle, distracting her so a motorist had to honk to get her moving at one of the intersections.

Damn him, why was he rushing her? Why couldn’t he just let it be for a while?

I will never stop loving you. She was at loose ends, uncertain of what to do or be and he’d picked up on it, given her the anchor. Forever. For better or worse.

Well, he’d seen some of her worst. Particularly a few minutes ago. She’d hurt him she knew, but he didn’t let go. And she hadn’t given back the ring. Her lips curved wryly and she almost laughed in the quiet solitude of her car. That had been the emotion in his eyes, damn him. Satisfaction. She’d ranted, stalled, lashed out. But she’d kept it. And she hadn’t said no.

Pulling into the alley by her house, she got out and locked the car. She was going to do something very unlike herself. She was going to go show the ring to Chloe and ask her what she thought of it, listen to her giggle and squeal. Gen was picking up a tea shipment in Miami, so when she got back she’d have another opportunity to go through it again. She liked the idea. They would talk about Tyler, Chloe making suggestive comments that would warm her insides because Marguerite knew the comments to be true and then some. The hold of the dream loosened further. She had the fleeting thought that maybe Tyler was right. If she’d just given herself some time the dream would have faded, and she could have enjoyed breakfast with them.

“Rich, handsome, great in bed and he loves me.” She said it out loud. Wasn’t that the fairy tale? Well, maybe they left out the “good in bed” part in the children’s version, but it was implied for adult ears to hear.

It was at the side door she remembered. Understood what had driven her from Tyler’s house. Understood why she had known when she fled that she was right and he was wrong.

She wasn’t allowed fairy tales or fantasies. She wasn’t allowed anything good, anything that attracted excessive amounts of happiness, because it attracted the attention of darkness.

She remembered because the pane of glass in the door had been broken out and the door was not fully closed.

Chloe. Chloe was in Tea Leaves. Knowing she should call the police, knowing all the things she was not supposed to do, she went in because Chloe was inside.

The kitchen had been destroyed. Every dish was on the floor broken. Cakes and cookies had been tossed on top of them and smashed with clear boot prints. She came quietly around the corner of her office, every part of her going still, watchful, pushing out everything that did not have to do with protecting Chloe. The instincts she’d kept honed for over twenty years, though time might have laid a veneer of false peace over them, came thrusting to the surface.

Her desk had been turned over. From the aroma, someone had urinated on it and perhaps done something more among her papers. Squatted, took his time and defecated on her life. Her stomach muscles were tight, her throat thick. She would not allow herself to think, hypothesize, speculate. There was only now, the moment of hell come to claim her and she had to do what was necessary. Her bat was not behind her door.

She bent and picked up two shards of a broken cup that had wicked points, closed one in each hand where they wouldn’t be readily seen and eased into the main dining area.

A similar scenario. Tables and chairs overturned. One had been used to smash her wall display. Crockery from her XiYing original lay in pieces. Her eyes rested on the doll, the ceramic set that had been stomped into tiny pieces next to it. The doll’s face had been gouged out with a bloody screwdriver that was still in it, the porcelain shattered, twisted and stained with that blood.

He’d spent extra time on it. Knowing. The cold sickness in her stomach increased.

Her gaze covered the area. Found Chloe, her body stretched out on her side, blood on her face and a wet fist-sized circle of it staining her cotton shirt, the one that had a gold and black depiction of Buddha against a field of pale green. Her arm and right leg were bent back in a way that suggested they’d both been broken.

Marguerite quelled the immediate urge to run to her side, continuing her examination of the room. Above the entry door a message had been smeared in what appeared to be blood. Chloe’s blood.

Let’s finish it.

Not at any moment had she considered the invader was a disgruntled drug dealer she’d driven from her park or someone seeking drug money, though the neighborhood had enough of both elements. She’d always known if anyone came for her, it would be him.

But the message told her he wasn’t here. Spell broken, she lunged to Chloe’s side, knelt and felt for her pulse. Felt like weeping at the faint flutter and when Chloe’s eyes opened. Her lips parted and Marguerite saw more blood, two teeth broken, dislodged.

Took in all the bruises on her arms and at her throat.

“Oh, Chloe.” She stroked back the girl’s hair, pulling out her cell phone to hit 911.

“Why did you fight him? You should have run, damn it. Yes, 400 Carolton Avenue. I’ve got an employee who’s been attacked and needs emergency medical attention. Yes, yes.” She answered the few questions, clicked off as Chloe fumbled for her hand.

Thank God Gen had gone to Miami to get the shipment. Marguerite had no illusions that the two women here together would have made things better. Neither woman would have anticipated the insidious evil coming at them. They would have fought that much harder and likely both been dead. Chloe had lost so much blood, her mischievous face so pale, so strained as she tried to speak.

“Sshhh…Chloe. Please just rest. The ambulance is coming.” Chloe made a noise of protest, so insistent that Marguerite felt the dread creep up in her shoulder blades. She bent down as Chloe pulled, so the girl could force out a whisper.

“Tina…Natalie. Asked if Natalie could help me while she…ran an errand.” Ice gripped every part of Marguerite, rising up in her, taking over. It stopped all human functions, giving her only cold clarity. Focus.

“He has Natalie.”

She looked at the message over the door. Nodded. Looked back down at Chloe and molded the girl’s bloody fingers around the cell phone. “They’re on their way, love.

You just stay put.” She could already hear the sirens. She had to go.

But a thought crossed her mind, making a crack in the frigid wasteland of her soul.

It didn’t surprise her that the only thing that could get through at this moment was Tyler. He’d been able to break through the constraints of her past time and time again, where no one else had.

She bent back down. “Chloe, can you remember something for me? It’s important.” Chloe looked up at her through a haze of pain.

“Tell Tyler I loved him enough to live for him. Can you remember? It’s incredibly important.”

“Marguerite…don’t.”

She brushed a kiss over her friend’s forehead. Her friend. For the first time she realized that you didn’t have to believe someone was your friend for that person to be one. But she couldn’t look back and didn’t as she snatched up what she needed and sprinted for the car.

When she roared out of the neighborhood, she passed the ambulance. The red lights glinted briefly across her vision, washing crimson over the pale skin of her hands, tight on the wheel.

Let’s finish it.

Chapter Sixteen

The damn roses sensed his mood, knew to be defensive. That was the only reason Tyler could figure he had pricked his fingers three times in less than fifteen minutes. He never wore gloves, preferring to woo his thorny ladies with careful touches. He had his ear tuned to the phone, the portable and cell within easy reach. He was no better than her assessment of herself, acting like a lovestruck teenager.

She wouldn’t call tonight, he was fairly certain of it, for all that. He knew her well enough to know she needed to think. Needed space. But she had kept the ring.

Violet and Mac had left only an hour before, headed for home, Violet had been scheduled for a weekend work shift, so the sound of a motorcycle pulling up in the driveway surprised him. Mac was the only friend he knew who regularly used one. The ring of the cell phone jerked his attention away from that puzzle in a blink. Snatching up the phone, he recognized Violet’s cell number, squashed his disappointment.

“Tyler, where are you? Are you still in the city?”

“Yeah.” Mac, apparently having gotten his whereabouts from Sarah, came through the backyard, a grim set to his mouth. “Mac just got here. What’s going on?”

“Tyler, someone broke into Tea Leaves. They beat up Chloe pretty badly. She’s on the way to the hospital. Marguerite—”

Her next words came as quickly as the first, but for Tyler there was an abyss between her name and that moment, as if he was teetering on the edge, straining for that opposite side but knowing that eternal darkness yawned beneath him. He was cognizant of Mac at his shoulder, the look in his eyes. “—wasn’t there when it happened. She called it in, though. Mac picked it up on the dispatch radio at home.”

“All right, I’ll head right over there—”