The Talisman

“You took a piece of my heart?”

“Isn’t it romantic?”

I frowned. Les Moelleux was clearing out as we drank, and apart from the few dancers that remained, undone in the laps of patrons in dark corners, we were alone.

“And your story about someone robbing your place? That was a lie?”

Madelaine smiled.

“Well… it was half true. The other half is that they wanted me dead, too.”

She sipped her drink and swirled the ice.

“I needed you to help me stop them,” she said, “but, when you couldn’t do that, I needed a talisman for protection instead.”

She fingered the chain around her neck and winked, but I was done with this game. My hands were shaking.

“Stop it,” I growled, a desperate note entering my voice. “Think of what you’ve done to me. I may be walking around, but my life is over. I belong in the ground, not here… not in this place. Why did it have to be me?”

Madelaine swiveled, letting her high heels slip softly to the floor, and rested her bare feet on my shoes.

“Because,” she said, almost shyly, “only the heart of the man I loved would do.”

(photo adapted from CoDiFi)

Another story for Andy Black’s Two for Tuesday prompt, and another entry in my Undead Detective series (this week’s prompt was Unintended Consequences, which I chose to use indirectly).

If you’ve been following the series, I’m eager to know what you think! Leave some lovin’ below, and catch up on the rest of the series here:

Dead Man Walking // X Marks the Spot // Postmortem // Basic Physiology // Les Moelleux // Her Body Begs for Death // The Talisman