4. Quoth

"What are we going to do about this?" Heathcliff jabbed his finger at the note.

The three of us stood around the tattered remains of the chair covers. Cynthia had been called away on urgent tulle business, so with the door now firmly locked, I could transform into my human form.

I slumped onto one of Cynthia's designer sofas and piled handfuls of tattered fabric over my lower half. The words on that note burned inside my skull.

Someone wants to hurt Mina.

Morrie cracked his knuckles. "Simple. We find this note-writer and encourage them to take a long walk off an extremely short pier."

Heathcliff's black eyes blazed. "An excellent plan."

I swallowed. The two of them wouldn't hesitate to use violence if it meant protecting Mina. That was their way. They were, after all, two of literature's most notorious villains.

"Maybe we don't have to murder them?" I suggested lightly. "Maybe we simply convince them to stop trying to hurt Mina?"

"Right." Morrie made his fingers into little air quotes. "‘Convince' them."

"Convince them with a rusty pitchfork," Heathcliff growled, as if Morrie's meaning wasn't obvious.

"Convince them by scooping their brains out of their skulls and using the empty vessel as a punch bowl."

Heathcliff's eyes lit up. "We do need a punch bowl for the wedding reception…"

Panic rose in my chest. "Yes, yes, I want to throttle this person as much as the two of you?—"

"Good, then we're in agreement. Decapitation and brain scooping it is. I don't see why we're still standing around talking while there is a wedding saboteur out there with their head still attached to their body."

"—but maybe we could try a non-violent method of dissuading them first?" I suggested quietly. "Mina would not like knowing that we murdered someone before our wedding, even if that someone was trying to ruin it."

"Non-violent?" Morrie rubbed his chin. "Interesting."

Heathcliff picked up a handful of tattered chair covers and thrust it into my face. "Does it look like we're dealing with a nonviolent person?"

"Well, technically, all they've done is cut up some fabric and left a note. Maybe it was an accident."

The moment the words left my mouth, I knew they were wistful thinking. I just hated the idea that someone wanted to hurt Mina.

"This was no accident," Heathcliff growled. "Someone is trying to sabotage our wedding."

"And they're willing to use any means necessary." Morrie tapped his finger over the words.

I swallowed. This isn't fair. Mina deserves the perfect wedding, not to be threatened with badly-glued notes. "We should take this to the police."

"To Hayes and Wilson?" Heathcliff scoffed. "You think those fools are going to care about a few shredded chair covers and a note?"

"If we tell them, they'll advise us to cancel the wedding," Morrie said gravely. "I for one am not going to let this anonymous shit-stirrer keep me from making Mina Wilde my unlawfully wedded wife. I say we solve this ourselves."

"Non-violently?" I asked hopefully.

Heathcliff squeezed his fist. His dark eyes screwed shut as he struggled to gain control over his emotions. When he opened them again, his black eyes were hard as steel. "Fine. We try it your way. But only because you're right that Mina won't want to trip over a corpse on her way down the aisle. Which means that we don't tell her about this."

"We have to at least warn her of the danger," I said.

Heathcliff's eyes darted to the blood-red fabric of the ruined chair covers.

"I agree with Heathcliff," Morrie said. "I didn't get a chance to tell you, but she got an email from that editor Jen Whately this morning. Jen said that she wasn't interested in Mina's book because she didn't think a blind character was relatable. She thinks that Mina should rewrite the book without her heroine going blind."

No.

That's horrible.

Mina would be crushed.

Morrie closed his hand over my arm. "Don't fly off to her just yet, birdie."

"Mina must be so upset. You know how hard she's been trying to drum up press and literary interest in her book." That novel was Mina's soul laid bare. I knew how terrifying it was to put a piece of your soul on public display and have people not like it. "I have to be with her."

"Exactly. Mina's placed all her hopes on her novel doing well. And she's got our wedding, too. She shouldn't have to fear for her life on top of that."

"You really don't think we should tell her?"

Morrie and Heathcliff shook their heads.

"We'll find who's behind this and stop them, all nice and quiet and non-violent-like." Morrie cracked his knuckles. "I volunteer to take charge of this investigation. Think of it as my contribution to the wedding."

I didn't like keeping this a secret from Mina, but Morrie did have a point. I didn't want to do anything else to upset her. "Okay, where do we begin?"

"We start where we always begin," Morrie's eyes sparkle. "A list of enemies."