by B. T. Alive
Cade cut in. “Maybe so,” he said. This was a relief, because at least Tina must have filled him in on why I felt compelled to keep zapping a ninety-year-old woman until we both passed out. “But we can’t prevent them from moving her out.”
“Sure we can,” I said. “You heal her.”
Cade pulled back. Sitting on his heels, he crossed his arms. “Sorry,” he said. “Too many people around.”
“I’ll distract them,” I said. “She can’t leave yet; she might be the killer.”
“I can’t heal her,” he said. “Not in public.”
“What if she gets away with it?” I said. “You’re going to have the Murder at the Inn that’s never solved. What’ll that do to Grandma? To Wonder Springs?”
“She’s right,” Tina said.
Cade scowled. “Tina!”
“We can do this,” she said.
Their eyes met, and some unspoken understanding arced in the space between. I looked on from a mile away.
“Fine,” Cade said, and he leapt to his feet. He stepped around Tina, with a hand on her shoulder, careful to avoid touching me.
Well. At least he listened to Tina.
We hustled out into the hall, and we made for the front staircase by the desk. Cade was leading, until he stopped and hung back against the wall.
“Check it out,” he said, with a nod ahead. “Company.”
On either of the staircase, Tyler and Taylor Pritchett were standing and staring, arms crossed, as still as stone lions. Except that unlike statuary, they were glaring right at me.
“What did you tell them?” I asked Tina.
“We didn’t even see them,” she said. “But we did run into Kitty on the way down.”
“With me unconscious?” I hissed. “Great.”
“Maybe she’ll assume it was a coincidence,” Tina said.
“Sure,” I said. “And maybe those kids just want to ask us out for coffee.”
“I could go for some coffee,” Cade said.
“Totally,” Tina said. “I’m feeling it.”
I groaned. “That’s the one time you get to say that.”
Then I marched right up to the teenage gate.
As we approached, the glares intensified, an open cold rage that made Tina contract. She huddled closer to Cade. I walked alone, but I could almost feel the icy bite myself.
We hurried between them and up the stairs, and I thought we’d seen the last of the Pritchetts. But no, around the first curve, I nearly plowed into Bryce. He looked up from his phone, and his boyish face crinkled with disgust. He barely made room for me to squeeze past.
You wouldn’t think this would have affected me. I mean, Bryce? What a tool. But anyone can club you with true contempt.
At the top of the stairs clustered a final Pritchett threesome: the mustachioed Fitzgerald, the portly Lionel, and his apparently not-murderous wife, Deanna. When they saw me, they fell silent, and they stabbed me with stares. Clearly, none of them shared Priscilla’s psychic powers, or I’d probably have burst into flame.
But when I saw Kitty, I knew the worst was yet to come.
She stood at the open door to Priscilla’s bedroom, arguing with a woman I couldn’t see. The unseen voice was piercingly intelligent, with a faint Southern lilt that was flavored by another accent I couldn’t place. Both women sounded politely incensed.
“This should be a non-issue,” Kitty was saying. “My grandmother has a very intimate relationship with her physicians, and both they and we would be much more comfortable—”
“You’ll be much less comfortable if she’s dead,” the woman snapped. “So unless I get a direct order from someone with power of attorney…”
She stepped into view.
Wow.
Behind me, I could almost feel Cade tense. Seriously. His energized muscles must have charged the air even hotter.
“Didn’t think she’d be here,” he grumbled.
Great. I’d been wondering how a guy like him had stayed single for so long. Odds were looking high that he hadn’t. This local Wonder Springs doctor was drop-dead gorgeous. And I placed that extra accent: Jamaican.
When she saw Cade, she lit up with a gleaming, radiant smile. Then she cocked her head, questioning, and her tight, abundant black braids rippled like water.
Cade leaned toward me, and his heat touched my neck. “I can’t do this,” he whispered. “Not in front of Kenise.”
“Oh, please,” I hissed, with sublime hypocrisy.
“Hey, it’s because she’s a doctor,” he whispered. “Not because of any ancient history—”
“Hello, Cade. Tina,” said Kenise the knockout doctor, with courteous nods. “I don’t think I’ve met your friend.”
She stretched out her hand.
There must be some subculture somewhere where the whole handshaking thing is outdated and quaint. Maybe some hipster borough in New York City, where introductions end in a mutual glare. I would love that.
For once, I was at a loss. And wouldn’t you know it, Kitty did me a solid. Sort of.
“You!” she snarled. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, hi Kitty,” I said, as the doctor retracted her hand in surprise. “We heard your grandmother was sick.”
I peeked around the doctor through the open door. Priscilla still lay in her chair in the wide empty room, unmoving and alone. They’d turned all the lights on, but it only made the room look like a funeral home.
“Did you?” Kitty snapped. “I heard you both happened to go unconscious at exactly the same time.”
“Really,” the doctor said, her sharp eyes giving me a thoughtful scan.
“Did we?” I said. “Huh.”
“I’m very curious what she’ll say when she wakes up,” Kitty said.
“If she wakes up,” the doctor said.
“Is it that serious?” I blurted.
The doctor frowned. “She’s a very old woman, and her health is poor. If she doesn’t wake soon, I’ll be gravely concerned.”
Behind her, in the too-bright room, Priscilla stirred.
At the same moment, a movement from Cade caught the corner of my eye.
I turned to see him rigid with concentration, his jaw clenched… and by his side, his left hand open and subtly aimed toward Priscilla.
My skin tingled with wonder.
And relief. Even if the woman turned out to be a murderer, I could never have lived with myself if I’d caused her death.
Then I saw Cade’s other hand.
He’d slipped it onto the small of Tina’s back… underneath her shirt.
Tina was concentrating too, eyes closed, deeply focused, with Cade’s fingers on her bare skin.
Let it go, Summer, I thought. Just look away.
But I just kept staring, burning in the bitter memory.
“Kitty!” Priscilla croaked. “Who’s that doctor?”
Kitty cried out with relief, and the doctor rushed back to her patient. Kitty turned to follow, then twisted back and jabbed a finger in my face.
“Whatever you did to her,” she said, “you’re going to pay.”
She slammed the door in my face.
Chapter 37
“Come on,” Tina said, nudging Cade and giving me a nod. She and Cade hustled down the hall, away from the Pritchetts who were rushing up to investigate Priscilla’s cry. I tagged after them, the rickety third wheel.
Around the corner, we stopped to catch our breath. Tina and Cade were positively glowing, both talking at once in excited whispers.
“You were amazing!” Tina gushed. “You tuned her across the room—”
“Only with a boost from you!” Cade gushed right back. “I was tapping into your chakra, I could feel it—”
They were so happy together. Two special people, with special magic that could share how you feel or save you from death.
Meanwhile, my magic consisted of nearly killing an old woman.
An old woman who, incidentally, might be downsta
irs reporting me for assault. True, no one else I’d touched had ever remembered… but no one else had ever passed out, either. (Well. Not for a very long time.)
“Hey,” I said, and the two lovebirds stopped chirping and turned toward me. “What do we do next? About Priscilla?”
“What do you mean?” Tina said. “I thought we were going to watch the camera.”
“You left the camera in there?” I said.
“Of course. That was the plan.”
“It was, and then I accidentally knocked out a ninety-year-old woman and Kitty managed to guess it was me!”
“How was I supposed to know Kitty would see us in the hall?” Tina snapped. “I can’t see the future!”
Cade cut in. “If the camera’s on, let’s just take a look. We’ll know exactly whatever Kitty finds out.”
He was so calm, and collected, and rational.
It might have helped that he wasn’t the one who’d been caught on camera zapping a ninety-year-old woman into oblivion.
Tina pulled up the feed on her phone. The screen showed only Priscilla, still slumped in her chair but looking only exhausted, not comatose (or dead). Even with the blocky, low-quality image, her face had enough detail to show her expression: annoyance.
“I don’t remember,” Priscilla was saying, irritated. The sound quality was also low, but even the tinny rendition resonated with her matriarchal thunder. I unclenched a bit with relief; she certainly sounded unharmed.
“But they were here?” Kitty said, off-screen. “In your room?”
“Yes. I think so. But I don’t remember why or what happened, so you may as well stop asking. Get my Scotch.”
Kenise the doctor interrupted, stepping into the frame. Since she was standing, the shot only showed her from below the shoulders down. “I’m afraid that’s a bad idea,” she said. “Not so soon after—”
“Kitty!” Priscilla barked. “This isn’t my doctor. Get her out.”
“I insist—” Kenise began, but Kitty came on-screen and actually grabbed her elbow. Polite but firm, Kitty escorted Kenise off-screen. The doctor’s protests faded into the distance, then died behind a door slam.
Silence.
My heart was pounding out of my chest. Now was the moment; Priscilla was alone. What would she actually do?
As we watched, Priscilla looked off-screen, toward the shut door. Then she took a deep breath, grit her teeth… and started to get out of the chair.
I was crushed. She was totally normal. How could I have been so delusional?
Priscilla struggled to rise, but she collapsed back into her chair, exhausted. She scowled, and flexed her fingers.
And a bottle of golden whiskey floated right into her hand.
It happened so fast, right there on the grainy phone screen, that it almost looked normal. But it was also terrifying. Even though I’d thought I’d been expecting to see this, the raw power of real magic still freaked me right out. The implications of what she’d done made my skin creep.
Tina and Cade weren’t any more chill.
“Oh my gosh,” Tina breathed.
“It’s only a bottle,” Cade said, trying to sound resolute, but with a faint tremor.
“It’s huge,” Tina said. “And I bet it was in the kitchen; that’s across the room—”
“Nana!” came Kitty’s voice, in sharp rebuke.
On the screen, Priscilla lowered the bottle she’d jammed to her lips. She was blinking hard, like her eyes were watering. “Mind your own business,” she said. She wasn’t slurring yet, but her voice had slightly slowed and turned nasty.
“Nana…” Kitty said, more gently, and she came on screen. She crouched by the chair to meet Priscilla’s eyes. “Are you hungry? Can I get you something?”
“Let me be.” Priscilla looked away and took another long sip. I imagined the Scotch setting her throat on fire.
“What about a movie?” Kitty persisted. “I can stream something for you, or there might even be something on TV.” She nodded toward the screen—and then frowned.
“Oh no,” I said.
Oh yes. Kitty rose, still frowning, and walked straight toward the camera. Then the image swung wildly as she plucked the camera from its perch, finally resting on an immense closeup as she scrutinized the lens.
“I’m dead,” I said.
The screen went black.
“Don’t panic!” Tina said, sounding panicked. “She can’t see the videos, remember? She doesn’t have the app. We had to set up that whole account—”
“The files are on the camera too,” I said. “All she has to do is plug it into her laptop!”
“Wait,” Cade said. “You actually recorded yourself disrupting her memory?”
“I was trying to get her to confess!”
“How was that supposed to help?”
“Clearly it didn’t!” I snapped. “Feel free to jump in anytime here with your brilliant ideas. Maybe you can heal the woman’s murderous heart.”
“I’m not a therapist,” he sniffed.
“Summer, listen,” Tina said. “Even if she sees the videos, what can she do? We just caught Priscilla on camera flying that whiskey.”
“We also caught me zapping her grandmother. And you admitting you’re an empath. What do you mean, what can she do?”
Tina gaped.
Then her phone buzzed with a text. Tina checked it, and her lips clamped tight.
“It’s her?” I said. “How’d she even get your number?”
“It was before all this,” she said. “We were chatting.” She shrugged, as if all normal people exchanged numbers to close every conversation.
She held up the screen. Kitty Carter had sent a single text.
We need to talk. Now.
Part V
Chapter 38
Tina, Cade and I peeked around the corner, back down the hall toward Priscilla’s room. Kitty had bustled out and was charging past her relatives at the top of the stairs.
“Where’s she going?” I said. “Her room?”
Tina checked her phone and nodded. “She says to meet her there. Come on, there’s another stairway.”
“You want me too?” Cade said, looking at Tina.
Don’t we all, I thought.
But before she could answer, I heard a phone vibrate, and Cade frowned and pulled his phone from his pocket. He glanced at the screen. “Shoot,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Is that Una?” Tina said.
He nodded, then gave me an apologetic smile. “My boss,” he said. “At the orchard. She tends to be… urgent.”
“We’ll be fine,” Tina said. “Besides, Kitty probably doesn’t want extra company.”
“You sure?”
“We’re big girls,” I snapped. “I’ve talked my way out of much bigger disasters.”
“I believe it,” he said, eyes twinkling.
“Hey—”
But he hustled off before I could get him back. Whatever. Right now, I had much worse problems.
Tina and I hurried through the halls, panting back and forth with attempts to make a plan. But by the time we reached Kitty’s room, all we’d figured out was that she could use that footage to wreck our lives.
As we ran up to her door, Kitty stood in the hall, arms crossed and glowering.
“I changed my mind,” she said, her voice cold. “All things considered, I don’t quite trust my room to be private.”
“Please, I assure you—” I said.
“Drop it,” Kitty said. “Let’s go.”
She shoved past me, nudging me with a monstrous purse that was even bigger than mine. Some sharp corner in there poked me; she had to have some serious junk in there. Then again, who was I to talk? I hiked up my own heavy purse, and I promised myself that if ever got this murder solved without landing in jail, I truly would clean all the trash out once and for all.
Kitty marched ahead of us, stone silent, until we reached the old elevator.
I tried not to cringe. A musty ol
d semi-dilapidated elevator was the least of my problems. Or so I tried to tell myself.
And then, at last, Kitty spoke.
“I imagine you’re worried about that footage,” she said, watching the old floor indicators blink above the closed doors as the elevator crawled down the shaft. “If I were smart, I’d use it against you. But the truth is…” She sighed. “I don’t want anyone to see it any more than you do.”
“Really?” I said. I was dumbfounded; the relief was blistering. Was this even possible? “Why not?”
Kitty glanced around, but the hall was entirely deserted. In a low voice, she said, “Did Nyle ever tell you how we got so wealthy?”
Something in her tone made my back prickle.
But Tina was way ahead of me. “The telekinesis!” she said, in a hushed whisper.
Kitty nodded. “Gambling.” She made a wry smile. “It’s amazing how the odds improve when you can tweak the dice.”
I stood there speechless. The sheer simplicity of it all was stunning. Priscilla Pritchett had had decades and decades to amass wealth by manipulating high-stakes games. Card games wouldn’t have worked for her, but anything with dice, a roulette wheel, even slot machines before they went digital… she must have been astounding.
“That’s the family fortune,” Kitty said. “That is, it was.” She flicked me a sharp glance. “But just so you know, there’s not much left to extort. The so-called ‘Manse’ is mortgaged to the highest spire. And about to be foreclosed.”
“Why?” I said. “What happened?”
“She got old,” she said, and her voice was small, like there was still a kid inside there who’d believed in a grandmother who would always be rich and strong. “Her skills declined, but not her lifestyle. When she started losing, she’d double down to make it up on the next round…” She shook her head. “I’d thought I was the only one who knew.”
“About her finances?” I said.
“Yes, but also the other thing. The… power. But now I’m thinking…”
“Maybe she told Nyle?” Tina said.
Kitty fixed her eyes on the closed crack of the elevator door and gave one short, sharp nod.