[Bayou Gavotte 03.0] Heart of Constantine by Barbara Monajem Read Free Book Online

it all?
    Meanwhile, Lavonia’s expression would make a cactus wither. She wouldn’t just let this go. She picked up her phone.
    “We’ll both look ridiculous if you call the cops,” Marguerite said. “There really is something else, but I’ll look even more ridiculous if I mention it to anyone except you.” She’dbeen meaning to anyway. Maybe. “But you have to promise not to tell anyone.”
    “That depends on what it is,” Lavonia said.
    “And you’re not allowed to put my dreams in your journal.”
    Lavonia’s eyes widened, her nostrils flared, and she put down the phone. “You’ve had another prophetic dream?” Such dreams were one of Lavonia’s favorite areas of study, and finding people with verifiable prophetic dreams wasn’t easy.
    Marguerite grimaced. Being bombarded by auras was plenty bad enough, and she sure didn’t want this dream to come true. “I didn’t think dreaming Pauline would kill herself was prophetic, because she had tried it before. Although I believed she was recovering, underneath I was afraid for her, so it came out in my dreams. But then she
did
die.”
    “And now you believe the dreams were genuinely prophetic?”
    “I hope they weren’t. I’m having new nightmares, but in these I’m the one who’s going to die.”
    Lavonia plumped herself down on the couch. Tears welled in her eyes. “I don’t want you to have
that
kind of prophetic dream!” Then, furiously: “Wasn’t tonight warning enough?”
    “In the dream, I don’t get stabbed on top of a mound.” Marguerite sat next to her. The cat jumped onto Marguerite’s lap, waving its tail in her face and purring. She caressed it while deciding what to say; no need to describe the terror her dream evoked. “I get run over by a van. But the cops won’t take me seriously if I tell them about it. Even
I
don’t take myself seriously. I’m sure it’s only a jumble of stuff my subconscious is churning through.”
    Lavonia put an arm around Marguerite. “Just because you dreamed it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. We always have the power to change our fate.” She glowered at Marguerite. “All right, I won’t go to the cops just yet. Let’s have breakfast, and then I have to run and meet Eaton. We’ll get together later and try to figure this thing out.”
    Marguerite drove first to the supermarket. Lawless, the little black-and-white sheepdog mix who had belonged to Pauline, would be all right a while longer because he had a doggy door, but she had run out of dog food—and people food, too. Pauline had been a difficult roommate, but she’d done most of the shopping and cooking. She hadn’t been such a great cook, but her aura had so plainly said she needed to control whatever she could that Marguerite had acquiesced.
    She swerved into the Chicken Bin drive-through for a breakfast sandwich—not for herself but for Lawless. He loved Chicken Bin, but people food for dogs had been against Pauline’s rules. She sent up a silent apology to Pauline’s spirit, hoping that maybe in the next life, whatever and wherever that was, there was no need for all those rules. Marguerite didn’t have an affinity for dogs, and she didn’t know much about how to take care of one, but she did know they liked company. Maybe a treat would make up for being gone all night.
    “Hey, Miss Marguerite.” The kid at the window, she remembered suddenly, was a friend of Zeb’s.
    “Hey, Jimmy. Is Zeb still working here?”
    Jimmy grinned. “Nope. Fired for cussing out the boss.”
    This was how Zeb lost almost every job. “Where does he work now?”
    “No idea,” Jimmy said so glibly that it had to be a lie. She paid for the sandwich and left, wishing it weren’t so obvious where Zeb must be working. Some of the clubs in town weren’t all that picky about checking the ID of underage workers, and although Zeb was only seventeen, he looked eighteen or older. If he didn’t want to be recognized, he would sign up to be one