The Crucible of Death

When I awoke, the golden morning was pouring through tall windows, glowing behind shifting gossamer curtains. Madelaine lay beside me, long and liquid and naked. She smiled.

“You talk in your sleep, Sean,” she said. I sat up. I was still fully dressed.

“Anything interesting?”

“Dreadfully boring. Dirty laundry and mysteries and murder.”

She rose from the bed and stepped to the window, where she was a cutout in the incredible light. The sun flashed through her legs. I reached for my gun.

“It’s gone, darling,” Madelaine said. “I couldn’t afford a repeat of last night, not with you sober. Besides, we’re on the same team, now.”

“We are?”

“I need you—“

“That’s been established…”

“—and you need me.”

“That’s where you lose me.”

Madelaine turned and took three delicate steps toward me. She laid a hand on her chest, where the thin glass vial hung like a blade between her breasts.

“This artifact of mine has a twin, Sean. This one the old voodoo priests called the ‘Crucible of Life.’ Philippe Bonté has the other one, and you can guess what it was called.”

“So?”

“So, his has the power to bring you back proper—fully alive.”

Another story for Andy Black’s Two for Tuesday prompt and another entry in my undead detective series, Queen of Hearts. Check it out from the beginning here:

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