The Night Villa Read Online Free

in front of Luby’s Cafeteria. I found him inside nursing a piece of corn bread for the free iced-tea refills, so I brought him back to my house and we ate a whole pecan pie that I had made for M’Lou before he worked up the courage to kiss me. I never made it to Pflugerville that weekend. I can still taste the caramelized sweetness of his mouth and recall the smell of butter and flour on our skin. The smell of butter and pecans has been known to make me weak at the knees, which is exactly what’s happening right now. The door behind me has opened and let in a gust of honeyed air, like some enchanted elixir wafting off fabled isles. I swivel in my chair to see Odette with a tray of pecan sticky buns. She winks at me as she sets them on the coffee cart. This is her way of getting Elgin, who has a notorious sweet tooth, to hurry up the meeting. I check my watch and am surprised to see it’s nearly ten o’clock. I’ve lost nearly a whole hour thinking of Ely.
    “Hm, perhaps we should take a break—” Elgin says, sniffing the air. “There’s only Miss Hancock left to present,” Barry points out. Poor Barry, who’s on a perpetual diet, is eyeing the sticky buns as if they were bombs about to explode. I glance at Agnes, who has laid out her neatly printed 3x5 note cards on the table in front of her like a tarot reading, and think it would be cruel to let her suffer any longer.
    “Yes,” I say, “and I’m sure the dean would like his conference room back.”
    Odette rewards me by refilling my coffee while pointedly ignoring Elgin’s attempts to attract her attention to his empty cup. Agnes clears her throat and launches full speed into her case for secrets of the ancient mystery rites lying in one of the villa’s charred papyrus scrolls. Although her delivery is rushed, her passion for the material shines through. Elgin runs her through the requisite drill of questions but the look he exchanges with Barry Biddle clearly indicates his intention to choose Agnes for the internship. The other candidates slump dejectedly during her cross-examination and one even gets up and helps himself to a sticky bun. When Agnes, breathless and damp, answers her last question, Elgin rises and leans over Barry to pat her on the shoulder.
    “Excellent work, Miss Hancock, a model for the rest of you.”
    Agnes starts to smile, but then her gaze drifts over Elgin’s shoulder and her big blue eyes widen. I assume she’s reacting to one of the other candidates, most of whom have abandoned the conference table en masse to drown their disappointment in sugar and butter, but then I hear something loud explode in the room and Elgin trips over Barry.
    My first thought is that one of the urns must have gotten pushed to the floor and that Odette’s going to be furious, but when I swivel in my chair I see that Odette isn’t paying any attention to the coffee urns. All her attention is taken up by the slim, dark-haired boy striding purposefully into the room and toward Elgin Lawrence, his right arm stiffly extended as if he’d come expressly to shake Elgin’s hand. For half a second I think of Ely because the boy looks a little like him—he’s even wearing the same Converse High-Tops Ely always wore—but then I realize Ely hasn’t looked like this boy for years. This isn’t Ely; it’s Agnes’s ex-boyfriend, Dale, and he’s not trying to shake Elgin’s hand, he’s holding a revolver pointed directly at Elgin’s head.
    I want to tell this to Odette because I somehow think it will change things. That the information will stop her from stepping in front of Elgin, a step that pulls her into the blast from the next shot as though she had stepped into the red wave that explodes across her chest and then knocks her back into the coffee cart, splattering sticky buns and terrified students in the wake of her shattered body.
    I try to stand, but my legs crumple and my chair slides out from under me. On my way down I have time to notice Barry