Magic after midlife omni.., p.43
Magic After Midlife Omnibus, page 43
I nodded at her in thanks. “I don’t have magic capable of ripping out his heart.”
“Banim Shovavim can kill dybbuks though,” Ryann said. “So cool.”
Oliver gave her a sharp look and she shrugged unapologetically, taking a dainty bite of shortbread cookie, her white teeth flashing.
They were aware of that, too, huh? I waited for my fear to immobilize me, but instead a curious sense of calm descended. Lonestars had fucked with my life once before, but I wasn’t a kid now, and I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
Besides, Ryann wasn’t threatening me and she was keeping her colleague leashed.
“If you’re concerned that as a woman past her mature years, I’m too senile to know my own magic,” I said, “I’d be happy to get you drunk during the Danger Zone and have a reason to demonstrate my power.”
He frowned, then gave the tiniest double take, a hint of red flushing his cheeks. “Are you threatening me?”
“Nope. I’m offering proof. You know, that important thing you don’t have? Being in a car with someone isn’t a crime and if I was an Ohrist, you’d probably be treating me as a witness or a possible victim rather than a suspect.”
“The car you were driving—” Ryann began.
“Wasn’t mine,” I said.
“Yeah.” Oliver sat on the edge of the table. “We checked it out. However, it had already been detailed. Why hurry and get it professionally cleaned if you didn’t have something to hide? That doesn’t look too good for your claims of innocence.”
“That wasn’t me,” I said, hotly.
“That’s not what we heard,” he said.
Had Tatiana thrown me under the bus? Getting rid of the heart had been her idea, as had the detailing. Her claim that she didn’t want either of us tied to Raj made sense at the time, given we didn’t know about the doorbell footage placing me in the car. There was nothing illegal about driving someone—especially if that person was pulling a fast one on us with a stolen identity.
However, if her first reaction was to distance ourselves from this job, instead of calling in the Lonestars, was there more to this than I knew? Was Tatiana in on the murder? She’d sounded truly annoyed that Topher had been left waiting, but a good actor could fake that no problem.
Or was she protecting Laurent at all costs?
I fiddled with the zipper on my purse. If she was involved in this, or something illegal connected to this job, why agree to let me work with the Sharmas? I shook my head. I’d drive myself crazy with theories; I needed facts. Answers.
Ryann licked cookie crumbs off her finger. “What about Laurent Amar?”
“What about him? He didn’t kill Raj either,” I said. Laurent’s history with the Lonestars was only marginally better than mine. They clearly had no respect for the vital public service he provided, but would they go so far as to pin this murder on him? “What’s his motive?”
“That’s what we’re investigating since the execution aligns with his style of killing.” Oliver tapped his chest, the tip of his gold Lonestar tattoo peeking out of his sleeve. “The ripped-out heart.” The cops hadn’t released that detail which meant Lonestars had informants on the force. “How do we know he didn’t finally go feral? Murdering people over and over again has to fuck you up.”
The memory of the other night hit me hard and fast, goosebumps dotting my skin at the recollection. Laurent’s claws had sunk deep into the female vamp’s chest, his blown-out pupils fogged with the same bloodlust that made his nostrils flare as he teased out her heart. But he hadn’t spared a glance for the way her legs scuffed wildly against the industrial carpet at the employment agency. No, his gaze remained locked on mine, as if daring me to turn away from this performance.
I swallowed, grasping at the one thing I could, with all certainty, dispute. “He doesn’t murder people. He takes out the dybbuk-possessed.”
Oliver shook his head sadly. “There were no red streaks on Jalota’s corpse denoting possession, but if Amar can no longer tell the difference…?”
“And the possessed still look like their hosts.” Ryann gave me a sympathetic smile. “Did you team up with Laurent again? We know you were working with him recently.”
I almost preferred Bad Cop’s outright hostility, because Ryann’s smiles were beginning to grate.
“You’re proposing that Laurent supposedly went feral and took this guy out, and I helped him by getting into a car crash that could have been fatal, why?” I said.
“That’s what we have yet to determine,” Oliver said. “You were the only one who knew Jalota was in the car prior to his murder, and we’re proposing that if you didn’t help Amar, then you murdered the man yourself.”
“I told you I don’t have that magic.”
“We’ll be verifying that, don’t worry,” Oliver said. He’d leaned into my personal space, so I “accidentally” jabbed him in the side when I took another sip of bitter cold tea.
“Whoops,” I said. “I’m all hormonal imbalance and pointy elbows today.”
Ryann nodded sadly. “It’s because of your blocked energy. You really should cleanse.”
Oh, I would. With a bottle of wine, as soon as this was over.
“What about the Sharmas?” I said. “This happened on their dime and the deceased resembled their son. What if they found out about Raj planning to hitch a ride on their plane, determined he was a threat, and decided to neutralize him?”
“It’s possible,” Ryann said. “But I was with the family when they first saw the footage and they were all genuinely shocked.”
“Then Raj was working with someone else who turned on him,” I said. “And they’re looking to scapegoat Laurent.”
Or me, because someone out there was convinced that I had the satchel.
Ryann reached for another cookie, then sighed, shook her head, and dropped her hand back into her lap. “You believe that Raj Jalota, who resembled your client Topher Sharma, teamed up with someone with the same magic ability as Laurent, and then was double-crossed? That’s far-fetched.”
“Since Raj wasn’t possessed,” I said, “whoever killed him didn’t need Laurent’s ability to scent dybbuks. They’d just have to be a wolf shifter. Or any Ohrist who could manipulate a body well enough to crack open the ribcage and pull out a heart. I bet I could throw a stone and find three of those.”
“That’s true.” Ryann pursed her lips. “But you’re the connecting factor. You knew Jalota was in the car and you’ve worked with Laurent before. If you’re hiding the fact that he’s gone feral, you need to tell us. You aren’t helping him if that’s the case.”
“Forget it.” Oliver slashed a hand through the air. “She’s a BS. She won’t help us.”
Under the table, I dug my nails into my thighs. “BS” was a slur for my kind and even though I wasn’t surprised to hear it from Oliver, I thought given all the camaraderie amongst the Lonestars that even he’d be above that.
“I will do everything I can to help ensure the actual murderer is caught,” I said evenly.
“More lies,” Oliver said in a bored voice.
He was worse than a dog with a bone. I pressed my lips together to stifle my snort. The situation was no laughing matter, but I couldn’t help the visual of this giant dick with his mini boner going on this witch hunt.
“The only thing I lied about was Raj being in the car,” I said, “and as I explained, I don’t have the ability to rip out his heart.”
“But had you reported the murder immediately,” Ryann said, “we could have located the corpse first. Even if you’re cleared of any involvement in the murder, we can bring you in for jeopardizing Ohrists’ ability to stay hidden.” She poured me more tea and gently slid my cup closer.
Had I screwed up? I was still feeling my way through rejoining the magic community, and I didn’t have the proper procedures memorized like the rest of them. Didn’t that buy me a grace period? Would it, if I was Ohrist?
I shot her an accusatory glare. “Let me guess, you didn’t intend that as a threat?”
“I’m honor bound to explain your situation to you.”
“Well, then let me explain something right back,” I said. “I suffered a concussion in that car accident. Tatiana had me treated by her personal healer and I wasn’t in any kind of mindset to be thinking clearly about procedure. Plus, for all I knew Raj had left me the heart in lieu of a tip and taken off. I’m under Tatiana’s protection so whatever you think of me as a Banim Shovavim, you better have hard proof if you’re going to charge me with violating your prime directive.”
“Right. The fixer.” Oliver snorted. “Well, Tatiana will finally learn the limits of her power if we do find proof.”
I pressed my thumb into a piece of shortbread, the cookie snapping into crumbs. My limbs felt like elastic bands stretched to the breaking point. “You Lonestars may have a lot of leeway, but you’re not a South American dictatorship. Even you can’t make people disappear when they have valid reasons for their actions.”
“Everyone knows where they are,” Oliver said.
I glanced at Ryann for clarification. Were these people in some kind of cold jail cell? She looked away, her lips pressed into a thin line. It was the same expression she’d had in the car—that tortured scream and the Lonestar’s admonishments about Deadman’s Island echoed in my ears, and I almost knocked over my tea, grabbing it at the last second with trembling hands.
Not a cell, but a much worse prison.
The room filled with an ominous brittle silence and a frozen fury lashed across my skin like a frigid winter wind over the lacy tide.
“Let’s all take a breath.” Ryann took a couple of calming inhales and exhales, waving her hands like a conductor in a symphony.
“I’ve told you everything I know,” I said. “If there’s something else you want from me, then spit it out or let me go.”
“What was in the satchel?” Ryann tilted her head. “From the footage, Jalota seemed insistent on keeping it, and yet it wasn’t found with the body. It could provide us with a motive.”
This satchel was this season’s hot-ticket item.
Had it been Ryann and me, I’d have told her everything, including about Celeste. I might even have asked her to help track down my mystery caller before our meeting. But I could totally see Oliver forcing Ryann to railroad us, burying any evidence that didn’t fit his theory of Laurent or me as the guilty party. He’d been such an asshole that I wasn’t about to help him out.
“Find the murderer and ask them,” I said.
Ryann pulled a card out of her pocket and slid it across the table. “How about you go away and think on it and if you feel differently, call us?”
“Because if you don’t,” Oliver said with a smile, “we’ll find out the truth anyway, and it’ll be that much worse for you, BS.”
I stood and gathered my things. Even if I handed them the killer on a silver platter, it wouldn’t matter. As much as Ryann was trying to get me to believe otherwise, there were still plenty of Lonestars who’d be happy to see me rot away because of who I was, not what I’d done.
But even so, they wanted the satchel badly enough to let me walk out of here in the hopes that I might find it for them. That bag was the key to this murder, thus I had to find it first.
“You people have your priorities seriously screwed up,” I said. “You’re spending all this energy on me and Laurent, when an actual murderer is out there and could strike again.” I gestured to the door. “I’m leaving.”
They didn’t try and stop me. Why bother? They knew where to find me.
14
I drove home with a tight jaw, obsessively pondering what would keep the Lonestars from imprisoning me on Deadman’s Island if I was charged with violating their prime directive. Throwing them in the Kefitzat Haderech would work. If that skeleton face showed up, I’d pitch them through its nostril. I wrenched the wheel hard on a left turn, the tires squealing around the corner, but my anger wasn’t for those two alone.
Had Laurent agreed to work together from the get-go, we might have had something more conclusive to present to the Lonestars, but noooo, he’d decided that he had to go it alone, and look how that had ended up.
Did he come back from the brink last night?
Had he been a dad?
I ground my teeth, driving three more blocks before my resolve broke, and, swearing, I pulled over to the curb to check my phone. The texts had yet to be read, unless Laurent had seen the notification pop up and not opened the app. I flung the cell down on the seat. He was probably fine and just annoyed that he’d had to put himself out on my behalf without being paid. He absolutely wasn’t running through the Park in wolf form, the last traces of his humanity banished.
Slamming the car back into drive, I pulled aggressively into traffic, throwing a middle finger at the driver behind me who hadn’t done the right thing and let me merge.
By the time I got home, I’d worked myself into a state of cold clarity with a solid to-do list. First, I would track down Celeste, second, I would decode the notebook, and third…
I glanced at my phone’s screen one last time before shoving it in my purse. There was no third. I was still totally committed to obtaining justice for Raj. More so, now that I knew he didn’t have any family.
Head high, I sailed into the house.
I called the Bear’s Den and asked the hostess who answered if Harry was around?
She answered yes and told me to hang on.
“Oi, Harry speaking,” he said, in his English accent.
“Hi, Harry, it’s Miri. Laurent’s friend?” I massaged my instep. I’d grabbed the first pair of shoes I’d found to go to Lonestar HQ and, discombobulated from Ryann’s attack, had forgotten the cute espadrilles pinched my feet.
“Sure, luv,” the gargoyle said. “I remember you. What’s up?”
“I heard you deliver messages and I was wondering if you’d get one to Celeste asking for a meeting as soon as possible?”
There was a long pause. “Bit dodgy, that. I heard you were persona non grata with the vamps.”
I pressed my thumb into a sore spot harder than I’d intended and flinched. Celeste was a vampire? Why did Topher want to meet her? Did he fancy a walk on the dark side or was she the link to Raj? If so, did Topher believe she’d killed Raj—or worse, had meant to kill him?
Conversely, if she wasn’t the murderer, being a vampire herself increased the chances that she’d sent our undead attackers last night and was my mystery caller. I shook my head. As every good mystery book and British crime drama had taught me: no jumping to conclusions.
“Technically, I was discouraged from ever returning to Blood Alley,” I said, massaging my other foot. “Mr. BatKian never said anything about not speaking to vampires. Thus, I’m suggesting a nice neutral territory. Of Celeste’s choosing.”
I’d either rule her out of the pool of suspects or dig deeper into her.
Through the phone came the sound of ice cubes in a cocktail shaker. “You’re positive about this?”
“I am.”
Harry said he’d see what he could do and signed off.
Home ten minutes and I’d already made good progress. I grabbed the notebook that we’d liberated from Egerts’s office, but while I was searching for a pen to start codebreaking, my phone rang.
I snatched it up. “Hello?”
“Howdy,” a man said. He complemented his good ol’ boy jovialness with a couple of shallow puffs and an exhale. It wasn’t the deep drag of a cigarette, probably a cigar. “Is this Miranda Edelman?”
My disappointment that it wasn’t Laurent turned into anticipation, because only one person had that fake name.
“It is. Is this Fred McMurtry?”
“Sure is,” he drawled.
“The Lonestar in charge of northern B.C. about thirty years ago?”
“You want my blood type, sweetheart?” Fred said, in an amused voice. “This is him.”
“Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. The reason I’m calling is that I’m hoping you knew my uncle Jake.” Jake Edelman had been my dad’s best friend and the man who’d hidden me after the murders. More importantly for this call, he’d been an Ohrist.
“Of course.” Puff. Puff. “Good man. I was sorry to hear of his passing a couple years ago. What can I do for you?” Having invoked small town rule #1—thou shalt connect thyself to a known entity—I was no longer a suspicious outsider.
“I inherited some of my uncle’s things, but they were in storage until recently, and while I was going through them, I found a bunch of photos in an envelope addressed to a Noah Blum.” I flipped open the green paisley book with all my notes, my pen poised. “The thing is, I tried to track him down online, but the only person who lived near Uncle Jake with that name died years ago in a fire, according to an old article from your local paper.”
I’d changed my surname from Blum to Feldman when I’d gone to live with my mom’s Sapien cousin Goldie Feldman after the tragedy.
“That’s right.” McMurtry clucked his tongue. “A real shame.”
My hand tightened on the phone. “I’m sure. The article mentioned that a child had survived. Since you’re a fixture of the Ohrist community, would you know who that was and how to contact them? They might like these photos of their parents.”
There was a long slow pull on the cigar. “Can’t help you,” he said. “The Blums weren’t Ohrist and I don’t know what became of the daughter.”
I tapped the pen against the notebook. He didn’t sound suspicious or annoyed, just matter-of-fact. A knot in my chest loosened, because McMurtry, at least, wasn’t keeping tabs on me. I jotted that fact down. “You mean they were Sapien?”
“Worse,” he said.
“What’s worse?”
“BS.”
“No. Uncle Jake would never be friends with a BS.” It was true, he and Dad hadn’t been friends, they’d been brothers in every way but blood. Mom always joked that she hadn’t realized she was marrying a twin.
“Believe it. Far be it for me to speak ill of the dead, but it was better for all concerned when that friendship”—I could feel his air quotes—“ended.”
