by Tessa Adams
“You’re the one I am counting on, Xandra.” And with that cheesy line, he makes his exit.
I want to watch him, to see if he actually walks away or if he disappears like Declan somehow manages to every time I see him. But Nate’s here and from the look on his face, he is out of patience. It’s definitely time for some damage control.
“You want the usual?” I ask him as I head toward the front counter.
He grabs my wrist, pulls me to a stop. “I’m pretty sure you know I’m not here for coffee.”
At the counter, Travis’s eyes widen and I can only imagine what he’s thinking. I turn to Nate. “This is my place of business. I’m working.”
“That didn’t stop you from taking time out to talk to Ryder Chumomisto.” There’s a hint of accusation in his voice that he doesn’t even try to hide.
I don’t owe him any explanations and at the moment I’m annoyed enough to want to not give him any. But that smacks of cutting off my nose to spite my face, so I finally tell him, “He’s an old family friend. He used to date my sister.”
Nate’s eyes narrow, like he’s recalculating some equation I don’t even know about. “And what about Declan Chumomisto? Did he used to date your sister too?”
My whole body recoils at the thought of that, a little voice deep inside me screaming, No! The knee-jerk reaction, and the possession that seems inherent in it, stresses me out, but now isn’t exactly the time to deal with it. Still, it takes every ounce of composure I have to grind out the word, “No.”
“So, how do you know him?”
This time it’s my eyes that narrow. “Is this an interrogation, Nate?”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“That sounds like it already is. Should I call a lawyer?”
I’m baiting him, I admit it, but the last thing I expect is for him to answer, “Do you think you need one?”
“What? No!” I turn to walk away, and that’s when I realize he’s still holding my wrist. I wrench it away, disregarding the pain the sudden movement sends shooting through my already abused body. “I don’t think I want to talk to you anymore right now.”
He sighs, runs a hand through his hair in that gesture of his I usually like so much because it means I’ve caught him off guard, and that he’s thinking about me. At the moment, though, it just pisses me off since I’m afraid what he’s thinking about is how to trap me into confessing to a murder I did not commit.
“Come on, Xandra. Let’s not do this the hard way. I have some questions—hopefully you have some answers.” He sighs. “I thought we were friends.”
“So did I, but I’m not in the habit of letting my friends manhandle me.”
“You didn’t seem to have a problem when Chumomisto did it last night.”
There’s a hard edge to his voice that was never there before, and I realize I’m dealing with more than just a suspicious cop. “I never said he was my friend.”
Silence, taut as a high wire, stretches between us. Nate breaks first. “I know you didn’t kill that girl, Xandra. So can I please take you to lunch and ask you some follow-up questions about last night?”
My anger drains out of me at the reasonable request, and all I’m left with is exhaustion. Between Ryder and Nate, they’ve pushed me right up against my personal wall and I can feel myself drooping. It’s not the best time to talk to a cop, but then I don’t have anything to hide. Except, of course, for the fact that I’m a witch. And Declan’s a warlock. And the killer probably is one too. And I’m covered in inexplicable wounds and bruises inflicted by magic. Oh, and Ryder can get inside people’s minds.
Scratch that, I have a lot to hide.
“Grab a table,” I tell Nate. “I’ll get us something from the back.”
“Can you stay an extra half an hour?” I ask Travis as I pass the counter. “I’ll pay overtime.”
“I’ll stay for regular pay, as long as I get the scoop.”
“There is no scoop.” I start making a triple espresso for myself and a coffee with steamed milk for Nate.
Travis snorts. “Xandra, honey, two of the hottest men I have ever seen just snarled over you like two dogs that want the same bone. There is definitely a scoop here.”
“You misunderstood.”
“Baby girl, there’s a lot of things I misunderstand. Two men getting territorial is not one of them.”
“Ryder’s like my brother. In fact, he was almost my brother-in-law.” I pop the drinks on a tray along with a couple of cookies, then head to the back where Meg and Jenn are filling orders.
“Can I take these?” I ask, gesturing to a couple of grilled veggie sandwiches they’ve just assembled.
Meg nods, wide-eyed, which means Travis has been keeping them apprised of all the action that’s gone on in the last half hour. Terrific. Nothing like working years to establish myself as a serious business owner only to have two alpha males tear the whole thing to pieces in less than an hour. I can only imagine what will happen if Declan ever shows up here.
Tray loaded with food, I storm out of the kitchen and back to Nate. Ryder may be out of my reach, but Nate’s still here and he has a very short time to clean up his act or I’m going to kick him to the curb too. Loudly and publicly.
“What do you want to know?” I ask as I slam the tray down onto the table.
“Thanks for the food,” Nate says, accepting the plate I hand him. “It looks great.”
“I only have a few minutes,” I tell him. “If you really want to spend that time complimenting a sandwich…”
“Okay, fine.” He takes a sip of his coffee before sitting back in his chair and just looking at me.
His stare freaks me out a little bit. I haven’t done anything wrong, but just sitting here, knowing he’s thinking I might have had something to do with that poor woman’s death, makes me nervous.
Trying to look cool, I fumble my own coffee cup to my lips and nearly drop it in the process. Because nothing says cool like dropping two cups of coffee on yourself in under an hour.
Nate smiles at my nerves, but that’s about all he does to disabuse me of them. Instead, he sits there and watches me squirm. I know he’s waiting for me to break the silence, to blurt something out that he can run with, but I keep my mouth shut. I haven’t done anything wrong and he has no right to treat me as if I have.
I pick up my sandwich, take a bite. I already told him I have only a few minutes. If he wants to waste those minutes in a glorified staring contest, then that’s his problem, not mine.
I’ve eaten about a quarter of my sandwich when he finally breaks the silence. In my head, I make another tally mark in my column. Something tells me I’m going to need all the points I can get in this interview. “Tell me about Declan Chumomisto.”
I swallow the red pepper I’ve just popped in my mouth. “I don’t know if I’m the right person to tell you about him. I don’t know him very well.”
“When did you meet?”
“At my nineteenth birthday party. It was a big deal, kind of like a coming-out party. My parents invited hundreds of people and he was one of them.”
He pauses, like that isn’t the answer he was expecting. “You had a coming-out party?”
“It’s a big deal where I’m from.”
“And where is that?”
Damn. The last thing I want is him digging around my hometown. Still, flat-out lying to Nate seems like a very bad idea. “Ipswitch,” I tell him.
He writes it down. Double damn. “When was the next time you saw him?”
“Saw him? Last night, on stage. Talked to him? Afterward, at the police station.”
He frowns. “You’re telling me that you only met him once before last night?”
“Yes.”
“It didn’t feel like that. It felt like you two knew each other pretty well.”
“We did a lot of talking the night of my party. When it was over, he disappeared and I never heard from him again.”
“Even though you kne
w his brother.”
It’s not a question, but I answer anyway. “Even though.”
“When you were down at the lake last night, did you see anyone?”
“No.”
“Not Declan or Ryder or anyone else?”
“Declan would have still been on stage when I first got to the lake. And I called for help not long after I got there, so your police officers know everyone who was down there as well as I do. Besides, it was raining. It wasn’t exactly a popular place to be last night.”
“And yet you were down there.”
“Yes.” I know I sound wary now, but it’s not like he’s being subtle about the trap he’s laying.
“Why were you down there again?”
“I told you last night. I wasn’t feeling good, but I didn’t want to interrupt anyone else. The tickets for Declan’s show are expensive.”
“Declan didn’t give you those tickets?”
“No. I told you, I haven’t spoken to him in over eight years. Kyle and Brandon had the tickets and they invited us to go.”
“And you said yes.”
“More like my friend, Lily, roped me into going on a blind date with Kyle so she could go out with Brandon, but if that’s how you want to look at it, then yes. I agreed to go out with them.”
“And then you left in the middle of what I’ve heard was a one-in-a-million kind of show because you didn’t feel well?”
“I was nauseous, afraid I was going to throw up.”
“But you didn’t throw up.”
“No.”
“So, can you tell me how you ended up down at Town Lake when you live in the other direction? You could have been home in ten minutes after leaving the Paramount last night, yet you deliberately turned in the wrong direction.”
I cringe a little, but only inside where no one else can see. It’s the question—and the explanation—that I’d been dreading ever since I called the police last night. “I made a couple wrong turns. It was dark. I didn’t feel well. I got disoriented. I made a mistake.”
“That’s a two-mile mistake, in the pouring rain.”
“Yes.”
Nate doesn’t answer for a minute, just concentrates on eating half of his sandwich in three efficient bites. The quiet, after all those questions, is somehow worse than the interrogation.
And when he does speak again, the question he asks is so unexpected that I stumble over it from sheer shock. “Xandra, why are you wearing a turtleneck today? I don’t think in all the months I’ve been coming to Beanz that I have ever seen you in one.”
My hand goes instinctively to the collar in question. “It’s been hot. Only recently has it cooled down enough for me to pull it out and wear it.”
“That’s it? No other reason?”
“What other reason could there be?” A drop of sweat rolls down my back. Nate will flip if he sees the bruises.
He doesn’t answer immediately, just stares at me with eyes that burn with a verdant, unquenchable fire. Then he says, “I’ve seen it, Xandra. Numerous times.” He reaches out and taps my neck.
“My circlet of Isis? So what if you’ve seen it? I don’t exactly keep it a secret.” But I know what he’s getting at and I have no idea what I’m going to tell him.
“I’m not going to play this game with you. It’s an unusual tattoo, one I’ve never seen anywhere but on you. What do you think the odds are that you’re the one who just happens to find a body that has that same symbol carved into it?”
Pretty damn low, actually, which is one of the many reasons I didn’t sleep last night. But I don’t tell him that, I can’t. Not without explaining to him that there are a lot of forces at work here that neither one of us has any hope of understanding. Especially him.
At the same time, I’m not going to just roll over either. “I didn’t kill her, Nate.”
“I don’t think that you did. At the estimated time of death, you were at dinner with three other people, all of whom swore you were eating a vegetarian entrée and drinking a glass of Pinot Noir.”
“You checked my alibi.”
“Of course I did. I had to rule you out.” He reaches across the table and grabs on to my hand. “Listen, I know you, Xandra. I know you and I know you didn’t do this. But I still had to make sure, because for people who don’t know you, you’re a pretty damn viable suspect.”
“But I didn’t do it.”
“No. But that doesn’t mean someone doesn’t want us to think you did it.”
“By someone, you mean the killer.”
“Yes. I think he might very well be setting you up to take the fall for all of this. I want to make damn sure that doesn’t happen.”
Twelve
Nate’s words make an awful kind of sense, especially if I factor in the weird compulsion from last night that I am desperately afraid was some kind of spell. All this time I’ve been wondering if this is happening because someone wants to kill me. But what if that’s not it at all? What if they want to frame me instead?
If they’re trying to use me to get to my family, it’s a good way to do it.
This time, I’m the one who is quiet—and the one who finally breaks the silence. “Who would do something like that?” I whisper. I’m asking myself as much as Nate. I’ve kept a low profile in the Heka community for years—at least as much of a low profile as a member of Ipswitch’s royal family can. If Nate’s right, my profile hasn’t been low enough. Or maybe it’s been too low and whoever this is figures I’m the weak link in my family chain.
Which is true, no doubt about it. But there’s no way I’m going to let anyone turn me into a weapon to be used against my parents. My mom may drive me nuts, but I love her and my father fiercely. If what Nate is surmising is true, I must find a way to protect them. To protect all of them.
“Finding out who’s doing this is going to hinge largely on what the motive is,” Nate says in answer to my question. “I have to figure out which part of the equation is the payoff for the killer. Either someone killed Lina because she was the intended victim and framing you is just an attempt to cover up his guilt or someone is after you specifically and killed Lina as a means to get to you.”
His thoughts are very close to mine from earlier, which reinforces both my logic and my guilt. Of course, they also scare the hell out of me. “How do we stop this from happening?”
“I have to figure out who’s really doing this. Right now, I’m looking for someone who has a connection to both you and the victim. And after preliminary runs, only two people fit that bill.”
“Declan and Ryder.”
“The Chumomistos, yes.” He uses their last name like he can’t bear the familiarity of the first names. Which I guess I understand if he actually thinks one of them is a killer.
“They wouldn’t do that. I know Ryder and Declan. They couldn’t do what was done to that poor girl. They don’t have that kind of violence in them.”
“You just got through telling me that you don’t know Declan very well. Or Ryder, really. Now you think you know whether or not they’re capable of murder?”
“I think everyone is capable of murder under the right circumstances, Nate, but that doesn’t mean these are those circumstances for either of the Chumomistos.”
“It doesn’t mean that these aren’t those circumstances either. You don’t know what’s in either of their minds. Are you aware that Declan was sleeping with Lina?”
He’s just thrown a sucker punch to my gut and he knows it, but I struggle not to let anything show. “They were over a long time ago.”
“Is that what he told you?” His phone rings and he stops, glances down at it, then silences the ring. “Look, I’m not saying I think they’re guilty. I shouldn’t be talking about the case with you anyway—I only did because I’m worried about your safety. I’m just saying that you need to be careful, because one way or another, I’m afraid someone has you in their crosshairs and I don’t think they’re going to let up until they have what they w
ant.”
“Which is?”
“You dead or in prison for a crime you didn’t commit.” He stands. “Look, thanks for lunch. I appreciate it. But I want you to promise me you’ll be careful. No more wandering the city on foot alone after dark. At least not until we have a better handle on what’s going on here.”
I nod, because really, what else am I going to do? I walk Nate to the door, watch him stroll away, as if he doesn’t have a care in the world, when I know he does. I wonder if the walk is part of the persona he cultivates as a homicide detective. And if it is, what else about him is simply part of that persona?
Still pondering that question, I head back to the counter. The lunch rush is starting to pick up and poor Travis has been handling it like a trouper. But he always works mornings—the lunch menu is somewhat of a mystery to him and it’s past time I send him on his way.
But when I slide behind the counter and murmur to Travis that he can go, he looks at me like I’m crazy. Then turns to take the next order, while I get the drinks and start delivering the food to the table. That frees up Meg to help with the assembling and plating of food, which in turn has orders coming out faster.
The whole lunch service runs like a well-oiled machine, though we’re hit with a steady crowd for nearly two hours. At least my professional life is going well, I tell myself, considering my private life has gone to hell in a handbasket in the last few days.
I can tell Travis knows something’s wrong from the concerned looks he keeps shooting my way. I attempt to look as carefree as possible while we work, but I know I’m not doing a very good job of it. How can I when it feels like my whole life is hanging in the balance? One wrong move and nothing will ever be the same again.
I think back on what Nate told me, about how he thinks someone is trying to frame me for murder. He came to that conclusion based on one body. On Lina. But what would he think if he knew about the woman back home? I know the state has a database where they can plug crimes in to see if anything similar pops up, but I don’t know if the Ipswitch PD actually enters their data in it. Somehow, I doubt it, especially when it comes to the murder of a witch or wizard. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does IPD, the ACW and my parents have a tendency to want to keep things as quiet as possible.