“I wouldn’t call it dating so much as sleeping together,” she said, with a dark glance at Jones.
“What?” Jones sounded genuinely startled. I thought my entire theory was going to go out the window until he said, “We broke it off months ago. What relevance does that have to this case?”
“Everything, possibly,” I said to him. To Brooklyn, I asked, “Why? Why did you break up?”
Her blue eyes narrowed. I thought that if she could have hurled a curse, she would have. Instead she said, “I think you know why.”
“Because you’re unnatural?”
She looked away, and I thought her body language answered my question quite clearly. Jones, meanwhile, was getting angrier. He stepped forward threateningly. “You need to tell me what the hell is going on here.”
Valentine lifted his gaze just enough that Jones noticed.
Jones hesitated and lowered his voice a bit. “Let’s go into my office. If you have some accusations to make, I’d like to hear them. Privately.”
I could think of no reason not to grant his wish. “Sure,” I said. “We could go to your office.”
“Let me just get someone to guard Brooklyn,” Jones said. Skipping lightly up the flat, wide step/seats of the amphitheater, Jones stuck his head outside the door to talk to whoever was standing right there. Stone? Some other guard?
Reaching over, I gave Valentine’s hand a little squeeze.
He nodded, as if he understood my trepidation. “I’ll be with you,” he said. Then, he added, with a little self-congratulation, “I told you sex would be part of the equation.”
I snorted a small, fond laugh.
Together we walked up to where Jones held the door for us, his face nearly contorted with uncontrolled rage. I didn’t like the look in his eyes, as we stepped out into the hallway.
“Can you take a fairy?” I whispered to Valentine after we were a few steps in front of Jones.
“Easily,” Valentine assured me.
TWENTY
Everyone in the precinct hushed when Valentine and I followed Jones into the main room to his office. By the time he closed his door, you could have heard the proverbial pin drop.
Jones had a large oak desk. On it was an old-fashioned blotter filled with doodles and scraps of information, a few thick paper case files in battered manila folders, and a sleek laptop. There were two classic steel file cabinets against one wall and a bookcase full of old, leather-bound volumes. Some of the books even had binding that looked hand-stitched and tooled. A framed pen-and-ink illustration showed a fully armored knight leading a horse with two maiden riders, both looking behind them at an old woman’s face peering out from the forest trees. There was some kind of inscription below, but I didn’t have a chance to inspect it more closely.
Jones put the desk between us. He put his hands on the back of his chair and gestured at the two seats, but no one sat down. Valentine found a darkened corner to settle into. Jones gave him a wary glance, and then focused his attention on me. “Explain yourself, Connor.”
“Okay,” I said, taking in a deep breath. “I don’t think you’re a bad guy necessarily.”
“Necessarily?”
His sharp glance made me want to back down, but instead, I said, “Yeah, not necessarily. At the very least you’ve been negligent. First, you walked away when you should have been the one to tell me about this.” I held up the snake-covered arm.
Jones flinched almost imperceptibly. I didn’t know if his reaction was due to guilt or the fact that I’d felt the snake wake up with an angry buzz when we stepped into the interrogation room.
He didn’t try to defend his actions, so I continued, “Second, it should have been routine police work to search the necromancer’s apartment, but I had to think of it. What’s his name, anyway? You do know, don’t you?”
“Steve,” Jones supplied. He sounded neither defeated nor chagrined. In fact, he seemed a bit irritated. “Everyone knows his name. It was on the police report.”
That took a tiny bit of wind from my righteous sails. Not only that, but I was having a lot of trouble reimagining the necromancer as some guy named Steve. It was such a commonplace name, so harmless sounding. With some effort, I got myself back on track. “Did you know he was related to Brooklyn?”
“Of course,” he said, again without any guilt.
“Um, okay,” I said, feeling myself starting to flail a bit. “Isn’t it a conflict of interest to be dating the sister of a known grave robber?”
The leather backing on the chair bulged under his fingers. “I’m not the first person to make a poor choice in lovers, but, as far as I know, it’s not a crime to be stupid. Besides, I broke it off well before we had Steve in our sights as the possible perp of the grave robbing.”
I put my hands on my hips. Jones sounded so reasonable. Could I have been this wrong about everything?
I heard Valentine sniff the air.
Was Jones using his glamour? I tried to look into Jones’s eyes, to see if I could spot the telltale glow around his irises, but his head was tipped in a way that cast them in shadow.
“I know there’s a connection between the three of you,” I insisted. “You do, too. When the necromancer, uh, Steve, woke up, he said your name. I have that on tape. Plus, your name was mentioned again when the zombie from the diner said, ‘He hates Spenser.’ Or ‘she.’ I couldn’t understand him very well, so it could be either of them,” I admitted. “But it was your name.”
“So?”
“So jilted girlfriend makes for an excellent crime of passion,” I said.
“Or an overprotective brother,” said Valentine from the back of the room.
“Sure,” Jones agreed, though skeptically. He released his death grip on the back of his chair somewhat. “But a motive for what, exactly? You came in here ready to accuse me of something, but I don’t see what it could be. What crime do you think I’ve committed?”
I suddenly couldn’t think of one either, but I wasn’t ready to back down yet. “You tell me. If you knew about the connection between the necromancer and your ex-girlfriend, why didn’t you pursue it? When Nana Spider mentioned relatives, you never mentioned Brooklyn. Again, when I showed you the Twitter account for @Skull_lady, you never even suggested that Steve had a woman in his life who was close to him. Why not?”
Jones pressed his lips together. His glance flicked first to Valentine, and then back to me. “Have you ever had someone in your life that you know is bad, but—well, you don’t want to believe it?”
Did I? I managed not to sneak a look over my shoulder at Valentine. “Are you admitting that you didn’t pursue leads that pointed to Brooklyn?”
Jones broke my gaze to stare down at the chair in front of him for a long moment. “I guess I am.”
Well, there it was. The confession we came here to get. I let out a breath, and wondered why I didn’t feel more satisfied.
Jones’s shoulders were bowed. “I should have gone after all the clues with all my strength,” he said. “I just—didn’t want to believe she was involved, even when it was obvious. I’ll resign from the case. Perhaps I’ll have to put in for a transfer.”
The puzzle pieces I thought I had gotten together rearranged, and the picture fell apart again. I finally pulled out the chair Jones had offered, and dropped into it. I was disappointed by the simplicity of his motivations, and it left me completely baffled as to how Steve the necromancer had ended up dead.
Jones seemed lost in his own thoughts. He’d begun rearranging some files on his desk. He was muttering to himself about how he’d probably get reassigned somewhere dreadful like Minneapolis. “Bad weather and such a huge town to be lost in.”
How funny that for Jones the worst transfer would be to the bigger town. It was usually the opposite in the ordinary world.
That reminded me. “Do you know about the Tinker Bell Theorem?” I asked him.
“Of course,” he said, sounding surprised by the sudden shift in conve
rsation. “Do you?”
“Honestly, I just found out about it,” I said. “Because Brooklyn told me that her brother was trying to break the fourth wall.”
“What? Why?”
“Well, that part I don’t know,” I said, though my mind was churning. Something about the way Jones had reacted about the idea of a transfer made me consider, “What if this really is still all about you and destroying your hold on this town? I mean, I originally thought that the two of them were working at odds, that maybe the necromancer had confronted his sister about her relationship with you, and that had led to an argument where he wound up dead.” I used my toe to twirl the chair on its base, embarrassed by how my theories sounded out loud. “But what if the whole thing was a setup to expose you, while breaking down the fourth wall at the same time?”
“I’m not following,” Jones admitted.
Truth was, I was making all this up on the spot as well. All sorts of thoughts were hitting fast. “Did you read the police report?”
“Yes,” Jones said with a hint of his old irritation. “I’m not entirely incompetent, you know.”
“It kind of seems like a setup, doesn’t it? Steve is moaning and moaning and moaning right up to the moment the police break in. The cops break in to try to help him, but the instant they do, he’s dead as a doornail. A faked altar and fake poison to make everyone assume he’s dead, while the real magic is hidden.”
“Under the floorboards in the closet,” Jones noted, following along.
“Everyone thinks Steve is dead, but what if he was never supposed to be? You said you smelled something really specific on him, right, Jones? If I broke the rib cage, it would incapacitate me. Are you usually able to smell such specifics in spells?”
Jones frowned. “No, not really.”
“Right, so that was planted to keep me from performing the autopsy. They’re hoping either I’ll listen to you, or I’ll be like my predecessor and be lazy. Either way, no autopsy. After some time in the freezer, Steve wakes up and walks out.
“Except he doesn’t, because they didn’t know about you,” Jones said.
“I didn’t even know about me,” I said.
“It’s convoluted, but it has some possibilities.” Jones was frowning, but I could tell by the way he was chewing his fingernail he was considering as well. “Let’s go ask her,” he said, finally.
I followed him as he barreled back out the door toward the interrogation room. “What are you going to do about your reputation?”
“I’ll throw that troll off the bridge when I get to it.”
The necromancer’s sister gave us a hostile glare until Valentine stepped into the room. At that point, she looked terrified.
“I am certain,” she said shrilly, “that being interrogated by a dragon violates the Stonehenge Accord.”
Jones sighed. “Settle down, Brooklyn, you’re not a prisoner of war.”
“Bullshit,” she snapped. For emphasis, she lifted her vine-bound hands out of her lap.
“You’re under arrest for assault,” he said patiently. He pointed to me. “You attacked our coroner and put her in a coffin.”
“Battles!” she insisted. “In the ongoing war.”
Jones rubbed the spot between his eyes, and then looked at Valentine for help. “You know what? Why don’t you go ahead and take over?”
“As you wish,” he said quietly, his eyes locking on where Brooklyn squirmed. He moved forward, unhurried, but in a manner reminiscent of a predator stalking prey.
All the color drained from Brooklyn’s face as he settled himself on the stone step across from her. The koi darted to the other side in the pool and huddled together in a tight mass. She cowered, leaning away from him, looking like she wanted to join them.
He carefully folded his hands on his knee.
She stared at his interlocked fingers as if he’d just pressed a knife to her throat.
Jones and I stayed at the back of the room and watched. Jones cocked his head slightly and whispered, “I’m glad he’s on our side.”
I nodded, but I knew better. Valentine was on no one’s side but his own. He was doing this because it amused him to do so.
Valentine said nothing for what felt like an awfully long time. He sat, patiently, with his hands on his lap and stared at her. For her part, Brooklyn started to sweat. I could see the sheen of perspiration on her brow, even from this distance.
“I never meant to hurt your witch,” she finally blurted.
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Valentine agreed quietly.
“She brought it on herself.”
“Careful,” Valentine hissed.
Brooklyn shrunk back, and her whole body trembled. The remnants of an icy draft drifted up from the sunken pit.
“This is all Steve’s fault,” Brooklyn said suddenly, a quiver in her voice. “If I’d known about your witch, I would have worked much harder to convince Steve not to do it. I told him he had no guarantee that the new coroner wouldn’t do an autopsy. But did he listen to me? No. He was so sure that Spense’s sense of justice would protect him. He said over and over that the fairy would never let anyone be harmed if he caught a whiff of a spell. Honestly, he thought Spense wouldn’t even take his body to the morgue, but somewhere else to try to despell him first.”
Wow, he’d totally read Jones wrong. I was sort of offended to think that Jones didn’t take my safety more into consideration. I gave Jones a sidelong glance to discover he’d been looking at me as well. He looked away guiltily.
“Regardless,” Valentine pressed. “The whole plan was flawed. A hundred percent is a fool’s game.”
“It’s not,” she said, her sudden interest for this topic showing in the shift of her posture. “We’ve run the calculations. It was over half before we even began. I’ll bet we’re well into the sixties now.”
“Yes,” he said, encouragingly. “I’ve seen eighty and higher, but no one has cracked a hundred. You’ll never cause an event.”
“It’s happened. You…You’re Russian, yes?” When he gave the barest nod of acknowledgment, she said, “The Tunguska Event.”
Valentine let out a sniff of a laugh.
I looked at Jones, who put his hand to my ear. “It’s that big, mysterious explosion in 1908 that knocked down all those trees…?”
I nodded, shushing him. I’d seen a documentary on it, but it had been clearly determined to be some kind of meteorite collision.
“I suppose that means you believe you’re a more powerful witch than Matrioskha? That you and your brother could contain an event of that magnitude, when she and her familiar could not? There were three hundred and seventy-two people in that community. There’s more than fifteen thousand in this.”
She said nothing, just pressed her lips together stubbornly.
“Fool.” He shook his head. “A small and petty mind such as yours should never be allowed such power.”
She took the bait. “Petty? We’re trying to win the war, for us.” She used her bound hands to make a circle that included Valentine. “The so-called unnaturals.”
Beside me, I felt Jones stiffen and take in a sharp breath.
“Very grand, indeed,” Valentine consented. He turned his head to look up where Jones and I were standing. The bright sunlight behind him, his eyes were hooded and shadowed. “So you begin by removing this obstacle? This bastard princeling, who himself is no witch, but who keeps a vampire-werewolf on a leash like a surrogate familiar?”
She spat on the ground. “Yes!”
“Hey!” Jones said at the same time.
Valentine stood up, slowly, deliberately, and turned to face the challenge in Jones’s voice. “I believe motive has been established,” he said, and I heard the finality in his tone. He was done playing torturer for Jones. He came up the stairs and greeted me with a light kiss on the cheek. “You were right, it seems, on both accounts.”
Jones was fuming, but I couldn’t help but smile at Valentine. Bastard princeling? I mo
uthed.
Jones had begun to head down to where Brooklyn sat, but Valentine’s hand shot out and slapped hard on his shirt, just below his collarbone. “You,” Valentine said calmly, but succinctly, “owe me.”
Jones looked ready to argue, but, instead looked down to where Valentine’s flat palm rested inches over his heart. “Don’t threaten me.”
“No threat,” Valentine said without removing his hand. “But I am not your beast of burden; you will pay for services rendered, little fey.”
Jones’s face tightened, but he nodded. Tersely, between clenched teeth, he whispered, “Fine.”
Valentine let him go.
Stepping back into the precinct office, we nearly bowled over Jack. His ear had been pressed to the door. From his kneeling position he gave us a guilty wave. Standing up, he flicked imaginary dust from the thighs of his jeans. “So, uh, how’s it going in there?”
“Good,” I said, holding the door partway open. I’d come to believe that Jones’s guilt was little more than a desire to not get an ex into trouble, but I didn’t think he should be left alone with her, anyway. I wanted Stone around to keep an eye on him. “Where’s Stone?”
“Didn’t she come back with Jones?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to remember if I’d even seen her at the funeral home when Jones had burst in for a belated rescue. The last time I could be sure I’d seen her was when she was fighting the zombie. “We’ve got to find her.”
I must have sounded panicked, because Jack reached out to touch me. I saw his eyes stray to where Valentine stood behind me. He pulled his hand back quickly. “Uh, just relax. I’ll see what I can do,” Jack said. He caught the attention of a passing uniform. “Hey, can you get Dispatch to find the whereabouts on Hannah?”
The cop grabbed the microphone from her lapel and spoke into it. After identifying herself, she said, “I need the ten-twenty on Officer Stone.”
There was some back and forth with Dispatch, most of which was in number code. There was something about a 10-39 and questions about whether Stone was 10-10. Not understanding what they were referring to just made me more anxious. “What’s going on?” I asked Jack.
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