The Florentine Cypher: Kate Benedict Paranormal Mystery #3 (The Kate Benedict Series) Read Online Free

alarm her. “Let me take a look.”
    Joyce followed me into the bedroom, where the windows were closed. In the bathroom, however, a window gaped open, a black rectangle in the white wall. It was small, but it would have been possible for someone to crawl through. I climbed into the bath and stood on tiptoe to peer outside. A short drop to a flower bed below meant it would be easy enough to land there without coming to harm.
    “That’s not like Ethan, to leave a window open,” Joyce said.
    I agreed. Recalling the unlatched front door to the building, the scratches around the lock on Ethan’s door, and the small but telling disorganization of the books, I was certain now that someone had visited the flat before me. Or maybe at the same time as me. I thought I would have felt the draft when I came into the flat, just as Joyce had. Did someone slip out of the back window when I was in the living room? That thought made me shiver more than the cold air coming through the opening.
    I slid the window closed and locked it. “There,” I said to Joyce. “All done. Let me take you back up to your flat and make sure you’re settled in.”
    Joyce’s lips trembled. “We can’t go upstairs until I find Mr. Bubbles.”
    She hurried back into the hall, calling for the cat, and I followed, my bag over my shoulder. A loud purring sound preceded the appearance of the overweight tabby, which wrapped himself around my legs. Joyce scooped him up and held him close to her chest. “Mr. Bubbles, you naughty boy, scaring Mummy like that. Now you come with me.”
    I walked Joyce upstairs and waited until I heard her locks click before heading back down. Careful to turn off all the lights and lock the street door behind me, I walked out into the chill of the night, where the streetlights flickered, wreathed in a lurid orange mist.

CHAPTER THREE
    Standing in a pool of light from a street lamp, I wondered what to do next. It seemed that I should tell the police about the possible intruder, but when I took my phone out of my pocket, I saw it was out of power. I’d been so distracted today at work that I’d forgotten to charge it. Still, I recalled seeing a police station on this road, less than half a mile away. I’d walk there and take the Tube the rest of the way home.
    The walk gave me time to think things through. Ethan wasn’t the most reliable friend in the world. He’d get caught up in something he was working on, or even just thinking about, and forget that the rest of us mere mortals still existed. But this was different. The odd texts, the strange book in his safe, his disappearance. The more I replayed it all in my head, the more convinced I was that I’d seen him getting into that taxi outside his office. And he had an aura. That wasn’t good. He needed help.
    When I reached the police station, I told the officer on duty that I needed to report a possible break-in and also a missing person. He took some basic details before telling me that I’d have to wait because they were short-staffed and he was run off his feet. As I seemed to be the only other person in the station, I found it hard to believe, but I took a seat as instructed. The waiting room was chilly and drab. The fluorescent lights made my head ache. And all the time, my thoughts ran in circles like mice in a wheel, making no sense of anything that had happened. Where the hell was Ethan? And what did his aura mean?
    I’d started seeing auras not long after my mother died unexpectedly two years ago. Three months after her death, I’d seen her while I was out walking on a country road close to my dad’s house in Italy. She’d spoken to me, trying to comfort me. Needless to say, I’d fallen apart with shock and grief for a while, and then the aura sightings had started. It had taken a while for me to realize that they signified imminent death. For want of a better word, I called them auras. But whatever name I came up with, I wished they weren’t there. I tried