Page 9 of Death and Divination
His eyebrows shot up. “Golf balls? As in golf ball golf balls?”
I nodded. “Golf ball golf balls.”
“Witches,” he muttered. I thought I caught a note of regret in the word, and it made me wonder if he was still harboring some feelings for my sister. “You’re all crazy,” he continued.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t regret after all.
“Probably, but I don’t know if golf balls are significant. I think I saw them because I was looking at the moon and imagining that with the craters and how it looked like a big golf ball in the sky, then suddenly there were golf balls, and goblins in plaid shorts on the fairway. Maybe that’s significant—a symbol of something important—or maybe just my weird brain intruding on the vision.”
“Or maybe the dead guy got hit in the head with a golf ball and bled on the oleander leaves while playing the back nine at night on a mountaintop course,” Marcus suggested.
That sounded pretty improbable to me, but maybe he was right. Sometimes a golf ball was just a golf ball.
“Where do I play into this vision?” Marcus asked, shifting uneasily in his chair as he clearly contemplated what horror I was about to reveal.
“I was looking down at where the corpse smell was coming from, at the blood on the oleander leaves, and…” I hesitated for dramatic impact. Yeah, I know it was mean, but Marcus deserved a little moment of anxiety for his constant cheating on my sister. “You were suddenly behind me. You told me that it was my fault. You were really annoyed at me about it. I got the impression that I’d done something and because of that, maybe someone was dead?”
Marcus leaned back in his chair, visibly relieved. “That’s it? I didn’t explode or burst into flames or anything?”
“Nope.”
“I wasn’t dead on the grass, bleeding out on the oleander leaves?”
“Nope.”
“I wasn’t getting stabbed in the back by a jealous husband while I was screwing his wife?”
Oh, I was so tempted to reply in the affirmative to that one, but honesty prevailed. “Nope.”
Marcus was silent a few moments, no doubt contemplating his enjoyment of life and wondering if this counted as one of his nine lives.
Panther shifters didn’t really have nine lives—at least as far as I knew.
“I don’t have any cases concerning dead bodies or an assault amid a bunch of oleander bushes,” he finally told me. “Sheriff Oakes briefs me weekly on open cases just so I know what might be coming my way, and he hasn’t said anything about an attack, or a murder or wrongful death investigation. Maybe my presence in the vision is symbolic, as the voice of the law? As a social accuser?”
“I thought about that but wanted to see if any of that rang a bell and if you could provide any insights that might help me interpret the vision.”
“Moon and mountaintop, plus a stinky corpse in a wooded area makes me think of the werewolf conflict,” he commented. “Although the pack has always been self-governing in the past, with Cassie taking her rightful role, we may be tasked with applying more and more of the laws of Accident to the pack.”
Cassie had pondered doing just that. It bothered her that in the past fights for dominance and territory, what had been unlawful murders had been covered up under the guise of challenges to the death. She wanted to outlaw those types of challenges as well as the death penalties that the pack considered part of their culture and have all legal matters within the werewolf pack be subject to the laws of Accident. Lucien had vowed to back her up on this, but she’d decided on a course of slow, purposeful changes instead.
“I talked to Cassie the other night, and although she’s making every attempt to come to a diplomatic solution to the werewolf problem, it might end up being war,” I admitted.
Marcus shrugged. “Then there’s your corpse in the woods, and your mountain, and your moon. My interpretation is to stay off the mountain or risk stumbling over a dead werewolf.”
It made absolute sense, but visions didn’t adhere to Occam’s Razor. The easiest interpretation was quite frequently the wrong one.
“So then what do you have to do with any of this? Or golf balls?”
“Maybe the universe is telling you to take up golf.” He sent a smoldering glance my way. “And to let me take you home and not leave my bed until morning.”
Again, I had an image of myself bent over his desk while he drove into me from behind. Two things were wrong with that very tempting idea, though. One, I wasn’t into a “just sex” encounter. Two, this man was my sister’s ex-boyfriend and thus completely off the menu as far as I was concerned.
“Maybe the universe is telling me to pick up a nine iron and drive some golf balls up your ass.” I smirked, because of all the people in Accident, I knew Marcus had enough ego to not take offense at my joking threat.
He wiggled his eyebrows. “Might be fun. Give me a call, Ophelia. I’ll bring both the nine ironandI’ll bring the balls.”
Remind me never to spar verbally with a panther shifter.
