Dead and Dusted by Lily Webb (reader novel .TXT) 📕

creature like that have gotten in here without one of us noticing? They would’ve been pretty hard to miss.”

Flora’s smiled dropped as something clicked in her brain. “Oreads mimic the looks of beautiful women they’ve seen to disguise themselves, and they often use those looks to flatter and fluster humans in order to protect themselves and their lands. They’re incredibly smart and cunning.”

“That must be what happened to Jorah!” I shouted. “It wasn’t Zadie who came to the restroom while Jorah was on duty, it was the oread posing as her! It must have known it had to get rid of the evidence after it killed Leland. But I still don’t understand why it wanted to kill Zadie. She didn’t do anything to them.”

“Zadie was easily the most beautiful woman here, no offense,” Mayor Nash spoke up. “The oread no doubt noticed that and was smart enough to know that it couldn’t have two Zadies running around.”

“Which means it’s probably still here in another form,” Flora said.

I backed away in shock until I crashed into the wall behind me. Everything Kade had told us was true. Mayor Nash had known about the existence of the oreads all along and intentionally kept it a secret — but Leland’s little “research excursion,” which turned out to be more of a kidnapping, had ruined everything — and now there was a vengeful oread on the loose killing those that’d wronged it just like Kade worried.

“Kade!” I choked, realizing we’d left him all alone at the oread’s latest crime scene, and that he was definitely their next target.

Chapter 12

Despite the dread writhing in my stomach, I dashed out of the office heading for the elevator with Mayor Nash and Flora just behind me — but stopped dead in my tracks when I found Evie standing and waiting for the lift.

“Oh, hi, Selena. I’m heading back to my room to freshen up. You going up too?” she asked over the elevator’s ding as it arrived.

Great. Just great. The last thing I needed was for someone like her to be around for whatever was about to happen upstairs, but I couldn’t afford to wait even another few minutes for the elevator to go up and come back, and the stairs would’ve taken even longer.

“Yeah, third floor, thanks,” I said and boarded the elevator with her, but to my surprise, Flora and Mayor Nash didn’t join us.

“We’ll catch up with you after the mayor finishes his breakfast,” Flora said with a wink, and though I didn’t know exactly what she meant by that, I had to trust that she knew what she was doing.

“Okay. Enjoy,” I said and swallowed hard as Evie closed the grate and pushed the button for the third floor. A moment later, the elevator dinged and began climbing upward. I kept my eyes locked on Flora and the mayor until they disappeared, all while trying to keep my heart from exploding out of my chest. The elevator had always moved slowly, but now it felt like we were moving upward through molasses.

“I don’t know how you avoid going into diabetic shock eating stuff like that for breakfast every day,” Evie said with a smile, at least giving me something to distract myself from my anxiety. I noticed a dab of Emile’s homemade blueberry topping dried in one corner of her mouth and my chest tightened. The poor thing was probably using the food as a distraction from her grief.

“Well, thankfully, Emile doesn’t make that kind of thing every day. Otherwise, yeah, I probably wouldn’t be standing here today,” I said, and immediately regretted the insensitive turn of phrase. The smile on Evie’s face vanished, and she stared at the floor.

“I take it that means you aren’t any closer to figuring out what happened to Mr. Marth?” she mumbled, and though I couldn’t see her face, it sounded like she’d started crying again.

“Not quite, but I think we’re getting close,” I said and reached out to rest my hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Evie. Agent Gemwood’s great, so hopefully we’ll know soon enough.”

“Yeah. Hopefully,” Evie said halfheartedly. The worst part was that I couldn’t blame her for being skeptical. Even with all the additional information we had about the oread and its vendetta against Leland, we still didn’t know exactly how it’d gotten the letter into Leland’s room. Then again, if the oread could fool Jorah into thinking it was Zadie, then it could just as easily have taken another disguise and slipped the letter under Leland’s door.

“Hey, I don’t mean to dredge this up again, but since you’re here… You didn’t see anyone or anything out of the ordinary when you took Mr. Marth’s briefcase to his room, did you?”

Evie hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“I dunno, just, anything strange. Maybe someone or something that looked like it didn’t belong up there?” I asked, and Evie’s shoulder twitched under my hand. “It’s just that none of the staff had a letter sent to his room, and no one else was up on that floor that we know of, so I was just wondering if maybe you saw someone else.”

Evie shrugged, knocking my hand off her shoulder, and when she finally looked up at me, tears twinkled in her beautiful blue eyes, making them look like two glaciers floating in an ocean — an observation that sent a horrifying shiver through my entire body. “No. There wasn’t anyone else,” Evie said, so quietly I barely heard her. With my mind racing, I backed slowly away from her toward the elevator’s door, trying my best not to show her the fear that was streaming out of every pore in my body as anxious sweat.

As the elevator dinged and stopped on the third floor, I braced myself to fling open the grate and make a run for it — because I knew, without a doubt, that I was trapped in the elevator with a murderous oread. In the impossibly long moment