I see you’ve got an unwanted visitor.” He walked to stand beside Doris just as she poked at the gator with the table leg and caused it to hiss and back up again. “Ma’am, would you please not poke the gator anymore? Hissing is his way of telling you he doesn’t much like that.

The lieutenant paused at the low, rhythmic hum sounding from inside the cabin, obviously loud enough for him to hear. Jena moved farther from the door. "What the hell is that?" he asked.Jena lowered her voice. "It's Ceelie Savoie, chanting or singing or something." She paused, but couldn't resist adding, "She has some new chicken bones."There was a long pause."Chicken bones. Golsalmighty." Warren sighed.

Bones gotta have a special place of respect," she'd told Ceelie more times than she could count. "You treat them right and they'll always speak true.""The bones never lie," Ceelie whispered, placing the last one - a tiny skull - into the box and closing the lid.

Ceelie preferred cats and small dogs, although they tended to be eaten by alligators around here, as she recalled. Munchability wasn't a desirable trait in a pet.

Morning, ma'am. I'm looking for Tommy Mason. Is he around?" Polite and professional, that was Senior Agent Broussard."Lord, what's that no-good sonofabitch done now? Wait, you ain't a cop; you're a game warden. "What'd he do, run over a fish?

There was something about a guy in a uniform most women found irresistible. Ceelie and Sonia had pondered this peculiar phenomenon over late-night glasses of moscato back in Nashville. They'd decided it had to be the belt and all the equipment that dangled from it when the guys walked, which not only was phallic but probably released extra sex pheromones into the air and turned women into nectar-seeking honeybees.

What a voice. Deep, throaty, but not in a sexy way. In a haunted way. A voice full of heartbreak and ghosts.I won't go back, I won't go home,'Cause in this place, the dead still roam,'Cause this time, Whiskey Bayou won't let me go.

We have unfinished personal business I do believe.” He smiled. “And I do love to make you blush.” “It clashes with my hair.

Everybody has scars; some are more visible than others, that’s all. But anyone without a scar is someone I don’t want to know because it’s someone who doesn’t feel things deeply. You have to understand loss to recognize a gift when you see it.” He leaned over and kissed her again. “You are my gift. I want to be yours, if you’ll let me.

Jena took a seat on the sofa, and Cole found himself with another dilemma. Should he sit next to her or take the other chair? Such a decision shouldn’t feel momentous, but it did. It felt as momentous as a choice between the past and the future. It felt like a choice between friendship and maybe more than friendship. He sat next to her on the sofa.