Heartache (The Twenty-Sided Sorceress Book 5) (5 page)

“My client is willing to answer some questions,” Kate said, after looking at me to see if I was ready.

There were only three chairs in the room, so Balls was forced to stand awkwardly against the wall as Dick sat across from us, placing a brown folder on the table.

“Will she answer why she killed Steven Jones?”

“If this is your line, we’re done,” Kate said, starting to rise from her chair.

“She was kneeling over the body, with the murder weapon in her hands. We have a damned deputy as witness, not to mention whoever called nine-one-one.” Dick shook his head.

Someone had called nine-one-one? That explained how quickly the deputy had found me. But no one had been around.

“Male or female?” I asked.

“What?” Balls and Dick both squinted at me.

“The caller. Male or female?”

Dick pulled open the file folder and skimmed down what looked like a report sheet. I wondered again how long I’d been out. Long enough for crime scene photos and Kate to check with the coroner. I looked down at my hands again and then at the bloody rag.

“Um, did I just destroy evidence?”

Dick and Balls exchanged another look, this one more worried.

“Nobody examined you? Did they are least take pictures?”

“I was kind of unconscious,” I said.

“She was out cold. Besides, witness. I told you already.”

“Did you process her in at all?” Kate gave the detectives a flat look that said she was super unimpressed.

“She’s been charged with murder. The DA will make it official in front of the judge tomorrow. If he can get here with all the damned snow.” Dick tapped the folder. “It’s all here.”

“Did you look at the coroner’s report?” Kate spoke like she was dealing with children, each word carefully enunciated.

“Yes.” Nods from both men.

“How much did Mr. Jones weigh?”

“A couple hundred, I guess.”

“Two-hundred-thirty-seven pounds. How much does my client weigh?”

“I’ve always been taught you don’t ask a lady her age or her weight,” Dick shot back with an angry smile. The meanness was back in his eyes, but beads of sweat popped out on his forehead like dew.

“One-thirty,” I said. I saw where she was going with it, and relief snaked through me. I was about to be exonerated through science. The irony was not lost on me.

“So, this girl took down a man who outweighed her by over one hundred pounds, without defensive marks or bruising on either of them, then used a length of what appears to be guitar string to half sever the victim’s head, again without leaving a cut or bruise on herself. Not a mark on her hands. Nothing.”

I obediently held my hands up, palms out. Tried really hard not to hear her words and think about Steve’s throat gaping. About his dead eyes. I failed and had to turn aside, dry-heaving again. I put my head between my knees to fight the dizziness, but it was a mistake. My pants were coated with blood and all I could smell was sickness and death.

Kate gently patted my back and made me drink some of the water. I tried to tell her it would just end up on her expensive shoes, but she waved that off.

Both detectives were quiet for a good minute, chewing over what Kate had just pointed out. I probably had sexism on my side on this one, since it was pretty obvious from their expressions that they had no trouble doubting a skinny chick like me with my non-existent nerd muscles had taken out a big grown man like Steve.

“That’s for the DA to decide. She’s been arrested. Now, if she has an alternate story she wants to tell, we’re listening,” Dickson said finally.

“It’s okay,” I said, looking at Kate. “I’ll tell them exactly what happened.”

Except, of course, for the parts that would bring the men in lab coats.

So I couldn’t tell them the whole truth. I skimmed all the magic parts and waved off a question about the giant crack in the floor from Baldwin. But I gave them the gist. Killer psycho ex-lover out to hurt me, who came to my shop and attacked my friend.

“Describe this guy for us?” Dickson actually had a pen out. He glared at Baldwin when the younger detective snorted and shook his head.

“About six foot one. Black hair a little longer than Balls’ over there. Gold eyes, they look like contacts but they aren’t. Skin a shade or so lighter than mine, less brown, more just tanned looking. He was wearing a grey wool coat.”
And will probably kill you if you get too close or try to detain him
, I added silently. “He’s very dangerous,” I said instead. I hoped that Samir would at least be trying to fly below the human world’s radar. He’d never drawn huge attention to himself that I knew of, at any rate. Maybe a little law pressure would get him to back down, give me space to come up with a new plan.

I was grasping at desperate straws, I knew, but they were all I had.

“So this guy came in, killed Steven, and then just walked away? Why was the wire in your hands?” Dickson had his good cop face back on though it was even less convincing than before.

I waited a beat for Kate to say I didn’t have to answer that, but I guess she was too busy lawyering to watch the amount of crime shows I had. Instead she looked at me and raised a perfectly waxed eyebrow.

“I was pulling it out. Trying to help him. He died in my fucking arms and I couldn’t do anything.” I bit down on the inside of my cheek, tasting blood, trying to focus on anger instead of grief. Instead of my failure. “I couldn’t do anything,” I whispered, looking away from everyone, my eyes focused on a paint chip on the blank beige wall.

“I think that is enough for you to get started, detectives,” Kate said firmly. “My client is exhausted and I’m sure she would like to go home.”

“She can’t go home,” Balls said. “She’s under arrest.”

“Did you not hear a thing I’ve said?” Kate pursed her lips, her gaze turning to ice.

“That’s for the DA to decide, and the judge. Not us. We made the arrest, we can’t just let her walk. She’s got to appear tomorrow.” Dick ran a hand through his thinning hair, completely screwing up his comb-over.

“I can’t stay here,” I said to Kate. “He’s out there. Who knows what he’s doing to my friends.”

“It’s snowing so hard you can’t see your shoes. Nobody is gonna be killing anybody tonight, if this guy even exists.” Balls gave a disgusted snort.

There was more arguing back and forth, but my head started to pound again and I put it down on the table. The metal felt cold and soothing against my skin. It was clear that Kate had planted doubt in the detectives’ minds, but they wouldn’t budge on letting me go. It seemed like they’d hustled their asses down here for the sure collar, but now that things were messier than a girl covered in blood writing up a tidy confession, they wanted to pass that buck off to someone else.

Me? I just wanted to murder someone for real. Or sleep. I missed Alek. He’d rip right through these walls, stare down these assholes, and get me out. At least, my tired brain had that fantasy. I knew the reality would be different. Besides, part of me was glad he was gone. At least in NOLA he was safe from Samir.

Unless somehow Samir had tricked him into going there. I sat up, grasping at that thought, worried more than ever.

“I want my phone call,” I said.

“Cell tower is out. Landline is screwed, too. Won’t do you any good. Sorry,” Balls said in a way that made it clear he wasn’t sorry at all.

So that was it then. I was stuck in jail for the night while my friends were out there in a frakking blizzard, with my psycho ex stalking them. I tried to tell myself they were capable, smart people who knew the danger, but it was cold comfort.

Kate walked me back to the bathroom as the deputy on duty went hunting through the lockers to find me some sweats and a clean shirt. They made her stay in the room with me while I showered, not that I could have fit through the tiny window anyway. What was I going to do? Charge off naked into a blizzard?

I ignored that I had been about to do something very close to that before Kate showed up, and scrubbed my skin raw. Barely able to stay on my feet but glad for warm clothes and no more blood matting my hair, I stumbled back to my cell and sank down on the thin mattress.

“First thing tomorrow, I’m going to get you out of here. Even if I have to put Ray into a snowplow and drive him here, all right?” Kate smiled at me. I assumed Ray was the district attorney. Or maybe the Judge. I wasn’t exactly on a first name basis with either.

“No,” I said, trying not to sound ungrateful but feeling surly and exhausted—and scared. “It isn’t all right. But what choice do I have?”

“Get some sleep. It’s late. You’ll barely even notice the night going by. I’ll be back soon. Trust me, okay? I’m your lawyer.” Kate smiled, patted my shoulder gently, and then left.

Dick and Balls must have left, too, because nobody disturbed me. I heard the deputy on duty out there listening to soft Jazz, but he left me alone. The lights were dim, only the one in the hallway on and its glow didn’t quite reach the bed. I pulled the blanket over myself and lay back, my thoughts charging in crazy circles around my brain. Finally I reached for my magic and wove a simple ward around the cell, anchoring it to the corners. It wouldn’t do much except warn me if someone tried to use magic on me or approached, but even that small bit of supernatural protection made me feel very slightly better.

“Tess,” I whispered, reaching into my mind for her memories.

She sat on her rock inside a circle of silver, ephemeral and untouched. Another person who was dead and gone. Only her ghost or whatever it was lived on inside me. Who knows? Maybe I was insane.

Samir was here. My nightmare had come into reality. I needed to think shit though, and now I had all night to do it. Sleep would have to wait.

“Time to play fact. What do we know or think we know?” Somehow talking to a ghost in my head made things clearer.

“Samir is still toying with you,” Tess said. “He could have killed you.”

“You could sound a little less pissy about that,” I muttered.

“I died so you could have more strength to defeat him.”

“Point taken. Tell me about time travel. How did I do that? You told me it wasn’t possible.” Thinking about what I’d done pulled up memories of Steve’s double death, but I focused on Tess, on her heart-shaped face and sad eyes. Grief had to wait.

“It is possible. With enough power, though until you did that, I didn’t think anyone had enough power except perhaps Samir. But it should never be done. It could damage you forever, and it changes the world. You are now living in a different future.”

“I don’t feel different,” I said. I took a deep breath and rubbed my fingers over my talisman. “But what? Thirty seconds of time travel backward made me feel like I’d been trampled by a Tarrasque. Not looking to repeat that.”
Repeat that, get it? Har har.

Tess wasn’t amused. She paced inside my head.

“I brought him here,” I said, thinking over everything Samir had said to me. “He knew where I was. I was right about my magic drawing him to me, just wrong about the details. I’ve been wrong about a lot.” It was like Three Feathers all over again. Had I learned nothing?

And now he was here. He didn’t want Clyde’s heart. Okay, he probably wanted it, but it was, as Tess had said before, a diversion. Something to taunt me about and give me hope that this all could end in anything other than my death and the death of everyone I cared about.

Max and Alek were both away. Vivian, the local vet and another of my friends was away as well, seeing her mother in Florida. Brie and Ciaran were in Ireland. So all of them were out of Samir’s immediate reach. I hoped.

If Harper had gotten my message, she, the twins, Junebug, and Rose, would be gathered at the Hen House, behind my wards. Which might not help them much, but they were all shifters. Not easy to kill. I wanted to send them away, too. Tell everyone to scatter and leave myself as the last target standing, but I knew they wouldn’t go.

“You might need them,” Tess said, her voice gentle but her memories carrying a hard edge that stung my mind.

I pushed away those thoughts. I wasn’t going to use them if I didn’t have to. There had to be a way to lure Samir out. This was Wylde. In winter. The town was small, everybody knew everybody. There weren’t a lot of places to hide. I supposed he could have just waltzed in and killed some poor family, taking their house. Damnit. More grim thoughts. Fear and doubt swirled around like a maelstrom and my headache increased. I needed to sleep. I would need strength tomorrow, whatever came.

I turned and put my back to the wall. Wolf materialized and lay next to the mattress, resting her head up on the thin pillow. I combed my fingers through her silky fur and closed my eyes, praying no dreams would come.

The dreams that came for me were more like memories. And in my memories, nightmares walked and pain ruled.

In my memory-slash-nightmare, I stand again in the library in the house on the lake that Samir and I have shared for the last year of my life.

He’s gone on a trip, the first time he’s left me alone. I’m giddy with the trust but I can’t help snooping around. It isn’t like Bluebeard, the library isn’t off-limits, but he’s said there are texts and things I’m not ready for, magic that could be dangerous to learn until I’m strong enough.