Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume 1 (28 page)

“Of course, Rai
Rai.”

Two pieces of toast
later and Aradia was beginning to feel almost halfway decent. Her
appetite was returning, at least. Two more pieces of toast, half a
grapefruit, and a glass of milk after that, and she was ready to
talk.

Aradia explained
everything her vision had showed her. She described the victim’s
reaction to seeing the killer, the brutal slaying, and the
murderer’s cold demeanor.

“I don’t know why I
couldn’t see the killer’s face,” she lamented. “It was the only
thing I truly needed to see.”

“Maybe that’s why you
couldn’t see it,” Liza suggested. “This is a bit outside my
specialty, but in cognitive psychology, sometimes the harder you
try to force a memory, the deeper you end up burying
it.”

“My power has just
never done this before,” she pouted.

“Hey, Aradia,” her
father mildly chided. “Your, ah… powers. They’re still new to all
of us really, and they’re constantly developing. You haven’t used
this one much in the past. The fact that it didn’t show you exactly
what you were looking for does not mean you failed.”

“If you use this power
again,” Liza began, then stopped herself. “When you use this power
again, relax and don’t force it. It could be that you pushing
yourself to remember details is what landed you in bed for two days
straight.”

She chewed on that for
a moment before nodding. “I still can’t believe it took so much out
of me. And we don't even know anything."

Her mother shook her
head and said, "Not so, Aradia. We know a great deal."

"But," Aradia
sputtered, "we still don't know who the killer is."

"True," her father
conceded, "but you’re mother is right. We know much more than we
did. We now know that the victim knew his killer. Stanley made some
effort to show him financial information regarding the store, which
reinforces the notion that it might have been a business associate.
We know that the murder was premeditated. We know what the murder
weapon was and how the victim’s body was drained of
blood.”

“And,” Liza added,
“based on what you saw, it seems as if the killer was also a
werewolf.”

“Are we any closer to
solving it, though?” Aradia asked both her parents.

“What do you think?”
Liza replied.

Aradia thought it over.
Excitedly she said, “I can tell Roy and Kaiser and everyone the
truth and they’ll all stop fighting!”

Ross shook his head and
said, “I don’t think it will be that simple, honey.”

Aradia asked, “Why
not?”

“Because Rai Rai,” said
Liza, “Roy might take your word for it, but Kaiser is hurting. Even
if he believes you, he’ll want revenge, and your father still has
no suspect.”

“It’s true,” Ross said.
“I’m not opposed to you telling Roy and Kaiser what you learned.
But don’t expect the violence to end just yet. This could still get
worse before it gets better.”

Aradia groaned, ran
back up to her room, and threw herself onto her bed. She was tired
and frustrated. It drove her nuts that her parents did not seem to
realize the magnitude of hatred between the hidden races and how
likely the situation was to explode into war.

Well, I won’t let
that happen
, Aradia vowed to herself as
she lay in her bed.
Dad has his leads
he’s following. I’ll follow mine.

“You think it was a
werewolf who perpetrated the Vampire Murders?” Roy asked
incredulously.

“I can’t be sure,”
Aradia said. “It sure looked like the killer was getting ready to
shift.”

Roy thought it over.
“He might have just been reacting to Stanley shifting. It’s kind of
like dominos with us, sometimes. Especially during conflict. How
did you get this vision, again?”

Aradia took a deep
breath.
You knew what you were getting
into when you came over to his house to talk about this. No going
back, Rai
. “I can get visions, when the
circumstances are right. See things that happened in the past.
Sometimes see things that haven’t happened yet. I don’t really
understand it.”

“Tell me exactly what
you saw,” Roy said. She left out some of the gory details. She
didn’t see any benefit in providing him more fodder for his fury.
But she mostly gave him an accurate description.

“When the killer came
up behind Stanley, you said it looked like he was trying to change,
but couldn’t?” Roy sought confirmation.

“I don’t really know,”
Aradia said. “I don’t have much experience with this sort of thing.
That was the impression I got.”

“And the killer held a
cloth to Stanley’s face?”

“Definitely. He’d
poured something into it just a moment before.”

Roy replied,
“Succs.”

“To say the least,”
Aradia answered.

“No,
it’s a
chemical. SUXAMETHONIUM chloride. It’s used in surgery on
werewolves, and sometimes on humans. With humans it’ll put you
under. For us, it keeps us from changing while we’re
unconscious.”

“That can happen?” Aradia asked.

“I guess. I don’t think it’s common, but
if a werewolf shifted while in surgery, it wouldn’t be pretty.”

Aradia shuddered at the thought. “So
that’s why Stanley didn’t shift to fight his attacker. Would that
knock him out?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Aradia?”

“Yes?”

“Who else have you told about this?”

“Nobody hidden, if that’s what you
mean.”

He paced the patio. “I think you
probably shouldn’t repeat any of this until you know more. Or can
prove it.”

“Roy, I can protect myself.”

“Aradia, this is bigger than that. If a
vampire found out a werewolf was trying to frame vampires for
murder, it would be very bad.”

“Oh,” Aradia said,
realizing what he meant.

Chapter
Twenty-Two

“I am frightened, Xan,”
Dax stated. He and his brother were in their somewhat ironic
‘living room.’ He was standing near a window while Xan lounged on
the couch reading a Maxim.

Xan glanced up at his
brother scornfully. “You could at least make an effort, you know.
At being a man. Even if that’s where you’re going, being afraid,
you don’t need to lead right out with it.”

Dax rolled his eyes and
said, “What I mean is I am afraid that my approach with Aradia is
not working out.”

Xan raised an
eyebrow.

“Why not?” he
asked.

“It just isn't, Xan. I
don't want to do this anymore.”

Xan slammed the
magazine down and stood up to face Dax.

“You are afraid to get
too close to her,” stated Xan.

Dax did not reply,
which was all the confirmation Xan needed. He raised an eyebrow,
but before he could say anything else, Dax had already gone from
the room.

For the most part,
Dax’s bedroom looked like any other guy's bedroom. His simply
boasted a few modifications. His room’s single window was covered
with thick boards of black wood. There were no mirrors at all. Oh,
and instead of a bed, there lay a large black coffin with red
velvet cushions.

Dax threw himself into
his coffin and rolled onto his back. He reached over and grabbed
his headphones from his bedside table. After jamming them on,
flicking on their noise cancellation, and pumping up the volume,
Dax folded his hands behind his head and closed his
eyes.

Aradia’s face haunted
him. He imagined her smiling at him, throwing her head back in
laughter, and flipping her long red hair behind her head when
someone called her name. He thought about her green eyes and how
they sparkled in any light, her thin rosy lips moving as quick as
lightning, and her pale skin shimmering in the sun. He could almost
hear her shrill voice cracking sometimes-clever jokes, inevitably
followed by either groans or roars of laughter. As much as he
didn't want it to, a happy grin crept onto his face as he pictured
her slender body, her quirky, Pollyanna-like personality, and the
small little smiles she threw so freely at her friends.

He pulled his right arm
from behind his head and grabbed a fistful of dirt that lay on the
bottom of his coffin. It was taken from the soil of his mortal
grave, as was the coffin itself. He held the precious dirt in his
fist and squeezed the contents.

As he listened to the
crunching sound of the dirt he reminisced onto the times he had
spent with Aradia. They had gone to their favorite coffee shop
where they’d sat and talked for hours. They had taken long strolls
on the beach together. Even though it was already October, the cold
didn’t bother him, and she never seemed to notice. They’d discussed
everything from Wall Street to their preferred shampoo.

Dax had to admit that
Aradia was not like any other woman he had ever met. She was so
honest, non-judgmental, caring, considerate, perceptive,
insightful, and sweet. Even with the secrets between them, they’d
formed a bond. The more time he spent with her the stronger his
feelings for her grew. He did not know if he was falling in love
with her. He didn’t think he’d ever truly fallen in love with
anyone. Whatever it was he was feeling for Aradia, he knew that if
he kept seeing her, the emotion was bound to get deeper.

Moreover
, he thought to
himself,
it is bound to make things
difficult
.

“This Dereck character seems
suspicious,” Aradia insisted, trying to get her dad to talk to her.
Ever since the crime scene, he’d been extra reluctant to talk about
the case with her.

“Sure. He is,” her father finally
replied. “He was an early person of interest. The police didn’t
find anything on him, though, and neither did the DA’s office.”

“What about money?” she asked. “That’s
got to be like, one of the top five reasons people have ever been
killed.”

He nodded agreement. “It’s a good hunch,
Rai. But there’s not a shred of evidence to back it up.” He briefly
considered his options. “Ah, to hell with it. Come here.”

She jumped onto the couch next to him.
He popped open his laptop as he explained, “I could probably lose
my job for showing you this, so please keep it between us?”

“Cross my heart,” she replied.

“Hmph,” he said. He pulled up an Excel
spreadsheet. “Look, here, and here,” he said, jabbing his finger at
the screen.

“Uhh,” Aradia replied, boggled by the
columns of densely laid information. “I’m not really sure what
you’re showing me. Maybe you shouldn’t risk your job for this after
all.”

“This is a document we found on Herr
Hitzig’s office computer.”

“Ooh!” she exclaimed. “Did you subpoena
it?”

He shook his head. “Nah, didn’t have to.
So look here. It basically outlines several aspects of Dereck’s
business relationship to the deceased, Mr. Stanley. Does anything
jump out at you?”

She stared. She could probably figure it
out if she had some time, but she didn’t feel like sifting through
the details to find what her father was talking about. “Not really
my strong suit, dad. I view the past, you decipher
spreadsheets.”

“Fair enough. Dereck had an incredibly
favorable agreement with Stanley. Either he is a brilliant
negotiator, or Stanley was very desperate. Or both. Either way,
here’s how it worked. If the store did well, Dereck got a pretty
sizable share of the profits. If it went under, Dereck would take
the lion’s share of the sale price.”

“Sale price?” Aradia asked. “If the
store’s not profitable, how much would it really go for?”

“The store’s irrelevant,” her father
explained. “The land is what’s valuable. My guess is Dereck got
involved as an investor simply to make off like a bandit when the
shop ultimately failed.”

“And bandits go to jail,” Aradia
prodded.

“Only like a bandit, not just like one,”
Ross countered. “But look. The store didn’t fail. At least, not at
the point that Mr. Stanley was killed. Stanley’s next of kin, the
Baltimore cousins I mentioned, inherited it. The agreement Dereck
had with Stanley is iffy on what happens now.”

“So maybe he’s trying to take the whole
thing? You know, fight the cousins for control, since he was a
business partner and they’re estranged distant relatives.”

“I trust your instincts,” Ross said.
“Tomorrow in the office I’ll take another look over everything we
have on Dereck. But there’s nothing here in the financials. He’s
not challenging the cousins at all. They made him an offer, a
reasonable and fair one, to buy out his stake in the store, and
he’s already accepted it.”

Aradia’s shoulders sank in defeat. She
was stubborn, but she had to admit the case against Dereck was a
weak one.

Ross concluded, “Basically, yeah, Dereck
Caradoc’s a shady dude, and not one I’d ever get involved with, but
there’s nothing financial pointing at him as the murderer.”

Aradia’s next step in
identifying the killer was interviewing Kaiser. That was a harder
task than she’d thought at first. His number was unlisted, he
wasn’t enrolled at Salem High, and even Roy had proven thoroughly
unhelpful when she’d asked him for help finding Kaiser.

“There are a lot of
werewolves, Aradia,” he’d replied a bit antagonistically. “Just
because we distantly share some genetics doesn’t mean we all hang
out together on weekends.”