by Tegan Maher
"Okay, so I say we talk to the brothers and to the bride's brother again."
Colin nodded.
"They're in room 544," Marissa said. "It's a penthouse suite."
"Then let's go talk to them," I replied, scraping my chair back and standing. "We aren't accomplishing anything sitting here."
Tempest popped in, out of breath. "I've been wandering around, seeing what could be seen, and overheard a blond faerie talking on his cell. He was assuring somebody that he'd taken care of it."
Marissa looked at her with a little hope in her eyes for the first time since I'd sprung her from her imprisonment.
Colin flipped around a picture of the guy who'd pushed Dain. "Is this the guy?"
Tempest jumped up onto my lap and took a closer look. "Sure is," she said, nodding."
He stood up and so did Marissa. Closing the file, he motioned for us to follow. "C'mon kids. We've got a suspect to investigate."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
IT TOOK LONGER THAN it would have to make it to the resort, considering we had to walk it. Marissa wasn't ready to let me apparate with her, so it wouldn't have done any good to take Colin and then wait for her. My feet were already tired from the day. I should have worked; at least then I would have had some cash to show for it.
At least neither one of them was afraid of elevators. Had they been, that would have been the final straw and I would have snapped. Even Tempest added to the load by curling up around my neck rather than walking.
The brothers opened the door as soon as we knocked. At first, I'd thought it was a bad idea for Marissa to go, but she'd insisted and I figured it would be good to see their knee-jerk reactions to her anyway.
Kalen opened the door, and after his initial shock, smiled and stepped back, motioning for us to enter. I studied him; it wasn't a fake smile. Evan and Cedric were both there too, so this would be easier—or harder—to talk to them. On one hand, it would be better to question them separately, but we'd decided on the walk up that if they were guilty, they'd had plenty of time to get their stories straight anyway.
"Dad said you'd probably be stopping by," Evan said, pulling up a chair at the conference-style table that sat in what was supposed to be the dining room. The guy they'd been surfing with came from one of the bedrooms and pulled up a chair, too.
"We're actually glad you did," Kalen said. "Something isn't right." He looked toward Marissa. "We're fairly certain you didn't kill him, and we don't understand why our father is being so insistent."
Cedric piped up, his eyes gleaming. "And I'd love to meet this Stephanie. Now she sounds like a woman who could handle me, and I can't imagine there'd ever be a dull moment with a woman like her.
I smiled. "No, dull isn't a word that'll ever be used to describe her," I said, "though she's gonna be a hard catch; she's been single for millennia."
"I love a challenge," he replied, grinning.
Just the thought was entertaining. I'd seen several men come onto her and she always turned them down flat. Mythology described them as maidens, and I had to wonder if that was meant in the biblical sense. Nah, not possible. Steph was so vibrant, I couldn't imagine that she'd never ... just, nope. Not possible. "She'd challenge you all right," I said to Cedric. "No doubt about that. Knock yourself out, but don't be surprised if she knocks you out."
Marissa cleared her throat. "As lovely as I think it would be for you to find a woman worthy of you, I'd love to clear my name so I can get on with my life, too."
"Of course," Kalen said. "I'm so sorry for the way my brother has gone on." He glared at Cedric.
"He's right," said Evan. Please, sit."
"I know everybody here except for you," I said, holding out my hand to the man I assumed was their cousin, the man who had been surfing with them.
"Liri," he said, smiling through teeth so white they nearly sparkled. Sometimes it sucked being a witch. We didn't get any of the cool physical traits other creatures did, except some of us did age slower than humans.
Once we all had a place at the oval table, we dug straight in.
"The morning I was working and talked to you guys for the first time, you didn't seem thrilled at the prospect of getting married," I said to Evan.
Evan sighed. "I'm not, particularly. I like Thallia well enough and she'll make a fine mother, and someday a great queen, but I'm not in love with her. I want to find that one woman."
Marissa looked confused. "So why are you marrying her, then?"
Evan lifted one half of his mouth in a smile. "I have no choice. I'm the heir and I have to marry her. This union was arranged when we were both just children."
"They still do that?" I asked. That was absurd, just the thought of it.
"In our world, they do," Kalen answered.
"So is breaching the contract or commenting that Thallia was beneath his station what Dain was talking about that Thallia overheard and ran to Florian with?"
Evan snorted. "Of course not. Dain would never say something bad about her. Like the rest of us, Dain liked Thallia. He just didn't think I'm ready to be married yet, and that's all he said. Thallia tends to be a bit high-strung and took it the wrong way."
"And then Florian took it the wrong way," I said.
Kalen nodded, grim. "That's about the gist of it."
"So let me ask," Marissa said, leaning forward and looking them in the eye by turn. "Do you think he could have killed him?"
The table was silent for a few moments, and it bordered on uncomfortable. Of course, I guess it had to be difficult imagining anybody you know would go so far as murder.
"Honestly," Evan said, "I think it's a good possibility." The other brothers echoed his sentiments. "And that would also explain why father's been so strange about it. He'd rather see an innocent person convicted than breach a contract and lose money and face."
Wow—it was cold when even your kids think you'd throw an innocent under the bus just to save face.
I shook my head. "I don't know what kind of warped system you folks have, but I'm glad it's not the one I have to follow."
Cedric took a deep breath. "It's not like that, ordinarily. We're a peaceful people who respect each other and honor our words." He looked down at the table and brushed away imaginary dust, grief clouding his face. "It's just that we're like every other species. Some of us are worse than others."
What he didn't need to say was that his father was one of them.
"That doesn't explain the dagger, though," said Marissa.
The brothers turned to her. "What do you mean?" Kalen asked.
"I mean, the charm or whatever on the safe. Nobody who's not related to your father could open it."
They looked back and forth between each other. "We didn't know anything about that," Cedric said, his voice bitter, "but then again, father doesn't usually take the time to tell us about details that are irrelevant to us."
Evan snorted. "Half the time he doesn't give us details that are relevant."
"Still, it's a thing," Colin said. "How did he breach it?"
Kalen was the one to answer. "The Redcloves are known for their powerful magic and father, though powerful, tends to rely on others for security. It's possible that if he's the one who set the ward, he didn't add the layers necessary to make it fully functional."
"Even if he did," Liri continued, "the Redcloves are known for their magical prowess, like you said. It's possible he breached it."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
"SO WHERE'S FLORIAN now?" I asked.
Liri shook his head. "I haven't seen him. Maybe he left before the wards closed."
I shook my head. "No. He's still here. He's been seen." I closed my eyes and summoned the guest registry from the bar. Scrolling through the names, I found him. "Room 274. He was due to check out this morning, so it's just a matter of finding him. If he's as powerful as you say, I don't think it's a good idea for Colin or Marissa to confront him on their own. Plus, no offense, I don't entirely trust all of you yet because o
f the security ward on the safe. We haven't explained that to my satisfaction yet. I tilted my head to the side. But I do think if it was one of you, you acted alone. Let's separate into groups of three."
"Fair enough," Evan said, and his brothers nodded. Evan started handing out orders. "Cedric, you and Kalen go with Colin and check his room and the downstairs restaurants. Destiny, if you and Marissa want to come with me, we'll check the casino. He loves to gamble, but that's a huge place." I was okay with that because Colin was more than capable of taking care of himself.
That just left Liri. "I'll check the tiki," he said. "It's the only place left he's likely to go."
I nodded, willing to let that stand because regardless of what they said, I still wasn't convinced about the wards being weak. The magic I sensed in him was average at best, and he didn't what it took to overcome even the weakest of faerie-set wards.
"Okay, I said. “ Meet at the front of the building by the sphinx in twenty minutes if you don't find him and we'll decide what to do next.
Something in my gut was still telling me I was missing something, and it all hinged around that stupid ward.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, we'd combed the casino with no luck. I'd sent out a notice to security with a picture and told them to notify me if they sighted him. Still, no luck. We were almost to the front of the casino when security called. They'd found him on the path to the tiki and were on their way back to the hotel with him now.
Evan gave me a strange look. "If he was at the tiki, why didn't Liri notify us?" Concerned that something had happened to him, I rushed out the front doors. What I saw stopped me in my tracks. Margo had Liri by the seat of his pants, twenty feet off the ground. Despite what some people think, faeries can't fly, so he was holding still.
I rushed over to her. "Margo, what's going on?" She tried to talk and keep her bite on the fabric at the same time, but it wasn't working out too well. "Just wait—security's on its way. I also called Blake, as badly as I hated to. This needed resolved.
He actually made it there faster than security made it from the tiki with Florian in tow. As soon as Blake and a couple extra security guys got there, Margo let go of him with an unceremonious yawn. He dropped the eight feet or so to land with a thud.
"Now," she said, "I caught this one try to flee, with panic in his heart. He was the same faerie who came through with so much hatred the last time."
I crinkled my brow as security up the final steps, pushing Florian in front of him. "I thought you were talking about him." I said to her.
She shook her head. "No. He's the one who was just angry."
I summoned the fingerprinter I used to do background checks for pre-employment screenings and pressed both Liri's and Florian's fingers onto it. They uploaded, then Blake sent it to Lucy. It wasn't even five minutes later, she popped in with security of her own, carrying weird looking handcuffs. I imagined they were similar to the ones The Flash used to curb the magic of the meta-humans.
She frowned when she saw we had two men detained. "Which one's Liri?"
I pointed to him and Margo looked smug. I wanted answers, though. Just knowing his print was on there wasn't exactly enough, either. After all, so was Marissa's. The fingerprint ward still wasn't explained. Until he opened his mouth.
"Call my father," he said, spitting out the word with so much vitriol that I took a step back. "The king, that is," he continued.
"What are you talking about?" Evan asked.
"You!" Liri said. "It was supposed to be you dead. I'm the eldest; I'm the heir, but because I was born from a love match rather than the formal one arranged for him, our father refused to acknowledge me as anything other than a nephew, son of his dead brother. And you even took Thellia. She was supposed to be mine. She loves me, and I her."
The guy was spewing spit at that point and his face was beet red. I still wasn't quite sure what was going on, but I was satisfied we had the killer and that Marissa was free, so I was good with letting Blake take it from there. Let him deal with the crazy; it was my day off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
IT HAD BEEN TWO DAYS since Liri'd come unglued and confessed, and Blake was still trying to make it up to Margo. The problem was, how did you sooth a sphinx's feelings? She was coming around, but I had confidence Blake wouldn't be so quick to shrug off her advice next time, especially considering she'd already said she'd just do her job, chomp the bad guy—or girl—in half, and be done with it.
There was a reason I loved that old gal.
It was my regular day off, and I was spending it with Marissa since it was her last day there. We were planning to spend the morning at the pool, then head to The Gate in the afternoon for some shopping.
"So what do you think you're going to do?" I asked as we lay poolside, soaking up the rays.
"I think I've come up with something. Or at least part of something," she said. "I'd like to help women like me."
I propped up on my elbow and looked at her. "What do you mean, women like you?"
She mirrored the movement. "I mean, women like me. Women who've had major life changes and are struggling to readapt to everyday life. I'm sure I'm not the only one out there, right? For that matter, it doesn't even have to be a paranormal thing, maybe. All I know is I want to help people."
"So you don't want to work here anymore?" I asked, smiling.
She barked out a laugh. "Are you kiddin' me? This place is nuts. I don't know how you deal with it on a daily basis. Hell, I don't even know how long it's gonna take me to recover from vacationing here! No thanks. This place is all yours!"
I looked across the pool, where a party of mermaids were having a birthday party for their little girl. Unicorns were playing kickball on the beach, a centaur was bellied up to the bar, and Bob the Bigfoot with the massive handlebar mustache was serving him a beer. I guess from her perspective, it may have looked a little like a hot mess, but it was my hot mess, and I loved it.
I leaned back in my chair and put the rag back over my eyes, content.
The Enchanted Coast was my home, and there was no place else I'd rather be.
<<<<>>>>
Thank You!
I know my style isn’t for everybody. Know that I appreciate your time and kind words via email and reviews. Thanks for giving me a few hours of your time and I hope you enjoyed meeting Destiny and spending time on the Enchanted Coast. If you’d please take a minute to leave a review so others can decide whether this series is for them, I would be grateful.
Hopefully, we’ll meet up again in Book 2, The Surfboard Slaying. ’Til then, happy reading!
If you’d like to read the first chapter of Sweet Murder, book 1 in my Witches of Keyhole Lake series, keep reading. ☺
Sneak Peek of Sweet Murder
Chapter 1
USING THE HEM OF MY apron, I pulled the last batch of blueberry turnovers out of the oven and slid them onto the counter to cool. They were an even, golden brown, and a quick poke with a fork assured me the crust was light and flaky.
Perfect. The customers at Brew4U, my best friend and cousin Raeann's coffee shop, were going to eat them up. And that was good, because right now every few bucks mattered.
Speaking of money—I glanced at the clock on the microwave, and that cold, I’m-gonna-be-late feeling swept over me. As always, time had gotten away from me while I was baking; I only had about fifteen minutes to get to work. Panicked, I turned the oven off with a wave of my hand, then bolted into the laundry room and pulled my server's apron and work shirt out of the dryer. I changed into the tank top on my way through the living room, grabbed my purse, and bolted out the front door.
And nearly face-planted when I tripped over our miniature donkey, Max, who was napping at the bottom of the steps.
"Watch it, you big clod,” he snapped. “Maybe I shall kick you in the head the next time you’re napping." He yawned widely, taking most of the intimidation factor out of the threat.
"If I
were sleeping at the bottom of the steps, I'd expect to get kicked in the head," I said over my shoulder as I recovered and headed toward Bessie, my faded blue, shabby-chic 1984 F-150. Yes, shabby-chic is code for "POS." Don't judge me; it's paid for.
And yes, the donkey talks, but we'll get to that a little later. Trust me—after you meet him, you'll be glad for the delay.
I slid into the truck, yelping and lifting my hips when the backs of my thighs hit the searing-hot cracked leather seat. I pushed my apron under my legs and settled back gingerly, then, with an encouraging pat to the dashboard, I cranked the key. Bessie coughed and wheezed a little, but surprised me yet again when she caught and roared to life. Another check in the win column for the day. I backed out of the yard and headed down the driveway to the main road, admiring the late-morning view.
Even with my window down, the temperature inside the truck was just this side of hellfire, so I reached across the seat and cranked the passenger window down, too. Midsummer in southern Georgia was brutal. The AC in the truck had gone out a few months back and, unfortunately, fixing it didn't even make the top twenty on the laundry list of priorities that demanded a chunk of my check.
Still, as I rumbled out of the yard and drove past the horses grazing in the pasture, I figured I didn’t have a whole lot to complain about in the scheme of things. No matter how many times I traveled our mile-long driveway, I never got tired of it. Ancient oak trees draped with Spanish moss lined both sides, forming a canopy of leaves and limbs, and small patches of sunlight dappled the shaded road.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I entered the tunnel of shade and the interior of the truck finally dropped below the melting point of flesh.
Just as I turned onto the main road, I spotted a couple of deer out of the corner of my eye. When I tapped the brakes in case they decided to run out in front of me, the pedal felt spongy. Since my house sat on an overlook outside of town, much of my drive was a steady, winding descent; brakes weren't exactly optional, so I tested them again.