by Lucy Auburn
A tube of red lipstick rolls towards me on the counter, as if hastily left there.
It's cheap off-brand stuff. The kind a girl like Georgia Johnson wouldn't ever touch.
Adrenaline fills me, and I know suddenly that the danger has just begun. But before I can escape the trap that's come for me, can get out of this terrible predicament, the help I called for comes.
It takes one look at the scene for the bailiff to shout for me to put my hands up. I do, lips sealed tight, mind working overtime to figure out who did this—and if the very same man who's sliding handcuffs around my wrist was involved.
I don't need to hear them read me my rights. I won't say anything incriminating. I won't say anything at all.
After everything, it turns out I'm still just the pawn in someone else's story.
I have the feeling I'll be needing that lawyer now.
Chapter 26
The picture they paint in the interrogation room is dramatic. It's the type of crime you'd see solved on late night TV: young girl falls for boy, boy kisses her but doesn't love her back. He returns to his ex-girlfriend. She falls into a jealous rage.
One day, it becomes too much, and she stabs the girlfriend to death.
The whole thing is ludicrous; it falls apart if you examine it from any angle. Georgia hasn't been with Tanner in months, and if I wanted to kill her, I had plenty of opportunities before now. But the detective in charge of the case isn't looking for other suspects. After all, he was suspicious of me once before, and he's even more certain I did something terrible now that I've been found standing over a dead body with blood on my hands.
What I don't get is how they knew I'd be in that bathroom with her. But maybe they didn't need that part of the crime scene to make sense. All they needed was for the DA and ADA to look the other way when the timeline didn't add up, and a detective hungry enough to go after the easy suspect, because she's the one he wanted from the start.
"This interrogation is over." Robert Pierce himself walks through the door after what feels like hours. "I need to speak to my client."
Detective Lyons narrows his eyes, but gets up from the table, heading towards the door. "You get fifteen minutes. I'll be back."
"With more than circumstantial evidence, I hope."
"Count on it."
The door closes, and I fold my hands together as the lawyer sits across from me, wincing at the feeling of dried blood on my hands.
I still can't believe it.
Girls like Georgia Johnson don't die.
Pure spite should keep them going if nothing else.
"How are you doing? Jesus." Robert Pierce pulls a slim rectangular package out of his briefcase, and it takes me until he tears it open to realize that it's a hand wipe. "They should've let you clean up. Use this."
Wiping my hands off, I watch as the wipe turns a bright color of pink. It seems impossible that so much blood wouldn't stain a dark red, but there it is anyway, like a neon highlighter.
Looking up at the lawyer, I ask him, "Can I trust you?"
"As much as anyone." Leaning forward, he adds in a low voice, "Lukas DuPont wrote the check for me himself. I'm told that should mean something to you."
My shoulders relax. It's hard to trust anyone now that this has happened, when I can barely put the pieces together, but at least I know one thing: Lukas would never work with the Syndicate, so there's no way the lawyer is one of them.
"I just don't understand. How could someone have killed Georgia inside the courthouse?" My mind keeps replaying what happened. "The bailiff was standing right there—until he wasn't. But I was just in the bathroom right next to her, and I didn't hear her scream."
Quietly, he says, "Let's not dwell on who the killer might be just yet. Instead I want to talk about your timeline, and figure out why you couldn't have done this. Let's go over things minute by minute."
I do. He gives me a bottle of water. I drink it. I ask him to call my mom, and he jots down her number. Then he asks, "Could that laptop you had me get so many months ago have anything to do with this?"
I pause, sudden stricken. "I left it in my dorm room. It was the first time I left it... but Holly was there. No one could have taken it." But somehow, I know. "It's probably gone now. I never even got to copy the evidence that was there. Maybe if I had... but why kill Georgia? I thought she was safe. It makes no sense."
"If there's anything exculpatory on that laptop, we need it. I'll have my people on it right away."
"Your people?"
"Yes—the assistant who picked it up in the first place was a Coleridge grad, so he knew the layout of the place. He's since moved on, but I'll get one of my interns on it as soon as I step out of this room. You have my word."
I swallow, shaking my head. "No, go get it yourself. No one can be trusted. Not with this."
He frowns, looking up into my eyes, a strange expression on his face. "A little paranoid, aren't we?"
I have reason to be.
Before we can talk further, and I can warn him what he's up against—if Lukas hasn't already—a cop in uniform walks into the room. Bored, he tells the lawyer, "She's being released from custody."
"Why? Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but Detective Lyons seemed to think this was a slam dunk."
"Someone else confessed."
I move in a stupor as they unlock the handcuffs. Rubbing my raw wrists, I wince as a little remaining dried blood flakes off my skin and onto the ground. If this was a way for the Syndicate to get me away from the laptop, it's far too complicated and risky to make sense. Especially when they could've just killed me.
In a daze, I follow the lawyer as he escorts me out of the interrogation room, then pause as the officer is about to walk away. "Wait! Who confessed?"
He turns, shrugging like he couldn't care less. "Some rich kid."
My heart slams in my throat. The lawyer is telling me that he'll call me a cab and make sure I get home safe, his tone curious, as if he can't quite believe my luck. But I'm barely listening, scanning the precinct for a familiar face, wondering if I'll even see...
There. Near the doors. Lukas has his back to me, but I know it's him. I can't see his hands, so they must be cuffed.
I don't understand. It doesn't make sense. Why would he...
But then he turns, and sees me. I frown, gasping as I see that his hands aren't cuffed at all. He's standing near a few officers, but they move away a moment later, making it clear he's not in custody.
The lawyer guides me down the steps, towards the bullpen. I mouth a question towards Lukas, "What's going on?"
There's a stricken expression on his face as he watches me, and I freeze, trying to figure out why he's shaking his head, something like despair in his eyes.
Then someone shifts, and I see him, standing between a uniformed officer and Detective Lyons, carefree and cocky, looking for all the world like he's free despite the cuffs very tightly keeping his hands bound.
Cole Masterson confessed to a murder he didn't commit.
All to set me free.
27 It continues…
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Read Next: Phoenix Academy
If you like sassy heroines, paranormal romance, and a lot of humor, check out my Phoenix Academy First Years series!
I’m just a girl trying to survive. Dying? Unexpected. Coming back to life? Even more so. Now these four snarky demons are haunting me. Shirtless.
It turns out you can die and live again. At least I can.
When a night out goes murderously wrong, I chose leaping to my death over getting tortured. Except it turns out I don’t die like everyone else.
I’m a phoenix — or so they tell me. Apparently I need training at the Phoenix Academy.
What I really need is to get rid of
the four demons haunting me wherever I go, showing up when my heart is beating fast — whether I’m nervous, afraid, or well... other things.
But I also wouldn’t mind learning how to light things on fire with my mind or take out a man twice my size with my bare hands. All things the instructors at the academy want to teach me... if I can survive long enough.
Because there’s something deadly lurking in these halls, and it’s coming for me next.
Welcome to the first year at Phoenix Academy, a place where the paranormal lives — and dies — and lives again.
Excerpt:
It all started with a severed dick.
Not in the way you’re thinking; I’m no Lorena, poor thing. I wasn’t the one slicing and dicing. If I had, I would’ve picked a nice julienne, really gone to town on the thing until it was unrecognizable ribbons of flesh. Leaving it whole, swinging bits and all, just seems... cruel. Especially when the dude it was attached to was still (mostly) alive at the time to see his family jewels get taken and dangled in front of his face. What a last image to have seared into your retinas as you die.
Not that he didn’t deserve it. Richard was like the worst version of your shittiest ex-boyfriend. Imagine an actual pile of garbage given human form.
And his nickname was Dick, after all, so the demons were clearly going for something when they took his actual dick from him. It would’ve been funny if it hadn’t been so incredibly fucking disgusting. Demons do have a sense of humor, apparently.
I just wish they hadn’t killed me too.
Coming back to life was a real bitch.
Read Phoenix Academy: Awaken now!
Read Next: Blue Phoenix
Want more Phoenix Academy? Read the Blue Phoenix spinoff!
Life was hard as a witch on the run. Then my psychotic father killed me. I came back. Now my touch drives men mad… and I’ve got three shifter familiars. Whoops?
Special powers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Especially when you can’t control them.
The headmaster at the Phoenix Academy says she can help me with that—along with some teachers and students.
One of those teachers? A witch hunting mage.
Three of those students? Are now my familiars.
What I want more than anything is to get revenge on the Heretic—the powerful man who took everything from me. Also known as Dear Old Dad. First, I need to get control of what’s happening to me.
And try not to kill anyone.
Including my new, sexy familiar trio: Xavier, Reggie, and David. We’re stuck together, whether we like it or not. That is, if we can survive the semester.
There are secrets lurking beneath the ground of the academy, and thanks to my magic, they’re coming for us. We might not survive to graduation.
Welcome to another year at Phoenix Academy, a place where the paranormal lives—and dies—and lives again.
Read Next: Fae Like Me
If you like new adult romance, especially urban fantasy and paranormal romance with a kick, check out my Selena Pierce series!
I just learned I’m a part fae succubus. And I need to find the men to sate my sexual appetite...
Here I thought I was a normal college girl with a high libido. Turns out that’s wrong—I’m so much more. I have powers, and if I don’t learn how to control them, I’ll wind up killing someone.
Baton Rouge has never been so hot as it is when I meet Leon and Naomi. And Tae Min, Petyr, Elah, Vincent: all fae. Here to guide me into my new life.
A life that includes hunting down the demon summoner who framed my best friend for murder. Catching bad guys, meeting dark fae, making a harem—my new life is different.
Worst of all, now I know my parents lied to me. I was never theirs. And my real parents?
Well, they’ve got a hell of a surprise in store for me.
Life isn’t easy for a fae like me.
Read Fae Like Me now!
Also by Lucy Auburn
Phoenix Academy
The First Years
Phoenix Academy: Awaken
Phoenix Academy: Unbound
Phoenix Academy: Forged
Phoenix Academy: Reborn
Phoenix Academy: Freed
Blue Phoenix
Phoenix Academy: Madness
Phoenix Academy: Mayhem
Coleridge Academy Elites
The Snake in the Grass
The Pawn
The Knight
Selena Pierce
Fae Like Me
Hell Sucks
Godspring
Seven Trials
The Black God
Wild Heart Chronicles
Primal
Feral
Savage
or… get all of the above as the
Wild Heart Bundle (free!)
Standalones
Three for a Witch
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About the Author
Lucy Auburn is an urban fantasy/paranormal romance writer who lives in the Southwest. She loves writing interesting stories about strong women. Some of the writers who inspire her include Patricia Briggs and Sarah J. Maas.
She values her privacy and does her best to keep her online life and her real life separate.
Catch up with her…
www.LucyAuburn.com
[email protected]
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