by Amy Casey
And as the whispers started to grow, Steve got closer to the counter, and I knew this was it. This was the moment I had to hold myself together. This was the moment I had to act surprised. This was the moment I had to pretend.
“Stella, I—”
“Dead? Oh, God no.”
“What?”
“Wait. You said something about… dead. Didn’t you?”
Steve’s frown got even more pronounced. “I literally just said your name. Then ‘I’. What made you think I said ‘dead’?”
Shit. Idiot. Bloody idiot.
I looked down at the counter, cheeks on fire. “Oh, nothing. Just a long day, that’s all.”
“It’s half nine.”
“I know. Absolutely dragging by.”
“Right,” Steve said. “And the fact you’re tired. That’ll be nothing to do with last night, will it?”
I narrowed my eyes, attempted the best frown I could. “Last night? What about last night?”
“You were at Daryl’s place, weren’t you?”
I scratched the back of my head. Eyes were turned towards me. Mary’s in particular. I didn’t like where this was going. Think. Think. “No. I—”
“We’ll make your denial official then,” Steve said.
Then he put something on the counter right in front of me.
When he did, my stomach sank.
I looked at my wrist.
My bracelet was gone.
It was on the counter.
I looked back up at Steve, wishing I could run away and hide from here in the click of a finger.
“I think we should go have a chat down at the station, don’t you?”
Chapter 25
If there was any time to invoke a few spells, it was right now.
Sitting in a police interrogation room. DI Steve Burke sitting opposite me, frowning right at me.
And on the table between us, the bracelet Mum had left me before she’d died. The last gift she’d ever given to me, spell book aside.
And I’d been bloody stupid enough to let it just slip off my wrist when I was in Pedro’s house and fall right into the police’s clutches.
Outside, I could hear the wind, strongly battering the windows. One of those days where the streets would be quieter simply because people were afraid of a little bit of sky-puff. “I’m worried a tree might fall on me!” people said, ignoring the ridiculous odds of that actually happening. Lotteries. Fears of planes crashing. Fears of trees falling on top of them. Humanity had a strange penchant for showing faith in things with long odds.
Then again, I couldn’t say a lot. I was a witch. What were the odds of that even being a thing?
I looked around the morbid interrogation room that I was inside. Grey walls, unpainted. Some old recording equipment in the corner of the room, which looked like it hadn’t been used in years. And this table, sitting here, like the kind you’d find in a school canteen.
DI Steve Burke glaring at me, waiting for me to talk.
I took a deep breath of the damp air. I felt sick, right to the stomach. Because what could I say? I’d gone over there because I’d suspected Pedro of involvement in the murders? Probably the natural thing to say, except that’d only raise more questions on my part because Steve would want to know how I knew Krissy had been poisoned after all.
“Are you going to talk to me, Stella? Or are we going to keep on playing this weird staring game that usually only goes down on the television shows?”
My mouth went dry. I thought of all the options I had; all the things I could say. Or rather, the quick spells I could cast. I could attempt a memory wipe, but that was too long-winded and way too much of a risk in a place like this. And ruling that out meant I was ruling out a memory alteration, too, where I could manipulate Steve into letting me go. But again, these spells weren’t just things that could be cast willy-nilly. They were exhausting, mentally and physically, and required more than just concentration.
So as I sat here, in the spotlight, I figured the best option I had—the only real option I had—was to be honest with Steve.
Or at least semi-honest.
“I was round at Pedro’s house.”
Steve narrowed his eyes. Glared at me. “Pedro?”
“That’s… that’s something you should know about Daryl. He wasn’t actually called Daryl. He was called Pedro.”
Steve shook his head. “Wait. You’re confusing me now.”
“If this is confusing you, wait for the rest…”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just… Look. I could lie and say I wasn’t there. And I know how bad this looks.”
“I’m glad you know how bad this looks. First on the scene when Krissy’s body is found. Probably first on the scene when Pedro’s is found. You know, if I put two and two together, you know what that’d make?”
“Four.”
Steve glared at me blankly. “Well. Yeah. In a mathematical sense it would make four. But I’m talking in a metaphorical sense here.”
“I don’t speak in metaphor. You’re going to have to spell it out for me.”
Steve looked sidetracked by my words. Really, I was playing with him. Probably not the appropriate time to do so, especially when I knew damn well what he was accusing me of.
But this whole situation was absurd anyway. If I was going to go down, I’d be damned if I went down without some kind of fight.
“What I’m trying to say is—”
“I know what you’re trying to say, Steve. But really? Me? You think I’m capable of killing one person, let alone two?”
“I don’t really know what you’re capable of.”
“Oh, come off it.”
“I’m just saying,” he said, raising his hands. “I thought I knew this town. I thought I knew the people in it. And I’m not gonna lie. I had my suspicions about this Daryl… Pedro guy, whoever he is. Didn’t seem violent, sure. But he was an outsider, so right away outsiders are at a disadvantage, even if they’re the nicest damned people in the world. But Stella… You have to know how this looks. It looks bad. So unless you’re open and honest with me, I really can’t see a way out of this.”
Those were the words I was dreading. I can’t see a way out of this. What did that mean? That I was the suspect? That I was going to be held in here, charged with the murder?
And what if there was another murder while I was in here? A murder I would’ve otherwise been able to stop?
I couldn’t let that happen. Somehow, that seemed more important to me than anything—the safety of the rest of this community even over the safety of myself.
“I’m a witch,” I said.
I wasn’t sure where it came from. It certainly wasn’t the plan. I mean, I’d flirted with being honest, but there was “being honest,” and there was “being a flipping idiot,” and I got the feeling this fell more into category two than anywhere else.
But as I looked across the table at Steve’s bemused face, I found myself ready to confess—to confess to speaking to Krissy’s ghost, to confess to how I’d ended up in Pedro’s house and how I’d got out again, to confess to it all.
But something strange happened.
Steve just smiled.
“I mean I knew you had a thing for Pedro. But I… I guess if it was serious, you could’ve just told me.”
I frowned. “What?”
“You are a bit of a witch, Stella. I’m not gonna lie. I mean, you’re cold as anything sometimes, and other times… I guess it’s just hard to know where I stand with you. But Stella, I know you didn’t kill Pedro. I just wish you’d had the decency to tell me the truth about you two without it having to get to this stage.”
So that’s what this was about. Steve didn’t think I’d killed Pedro. He thought I was having a fling with Pedro. And for some reason that was relevant to him.
So why had he brought me in here at all? Just to get the answer from me, to hear it himself?
“You can go,” he said. “For what i
t’s worth, I believe you, really. But be aware we’ll be keeping a close eye on you. A very close eye.”
He stood up. Opened the interrogation room door.
I stood up too, mostly in disbelief at this turn of events.
As I went to step outside, Steve stopped me.
“Be careful, Stella. Watch yourself. Or this entire case will swallow you up whole.”
I walked down the corridor, out of the police station, and into the wind.
And for the first time in a long time, I felt guilty.
Guilty for letting Steve believe I’d been seeing someone else.
But I also felt a knotting up inside. Because I’d been so close to sharing my secret, and I’d had it thrown right back in my face.
I turned around. Looked down the police station corridor. Readied myself to go back in there, to tell the truth.
But it was too late.
The moment had passed.
Steve was already gone.
Chapter 26
Wait. So you’re telling me you actually saw his dead body?”
Truth be told, I wasn’t sure how Mary was going to respond to this whole Pedro being my prime suspect then Pedro being dead, thing. I could tell she had a thing for him, so I guess I’d just been expecting her to be more… well. I dunno. Emotional, I guess.
But then again, this was Mary. And if there was one defining characteristic about Mary, it was that she was pretty cold.
And she seemed more annoyed that I’d still being throwing myself head first into the investigation than anything else.
“I went into his house because Collette told me he’d bought a large batch of this Valerian concoction. I wanted to see if there was any dirt on him.”
“And instead of like, going to your boyfriend in the police, you made a meal of it yourself and went in all guns blazing?”
Rocky lifted his head from my lap. “Meal?”
“No, Rocky,” I said.
He sighed and lowered it again.
Beatrice the cat just sat on the window ledge beside the telly and stared, as per usual.
Mary leaned forward and sighed, half-empty box of Chinese noodles in hand. She’d spilled a few on my carpet, which I kind of hoped Rocky would clean up, but he had a strange aversion to noodles so it didn’t look like that’d be happening anytime soon.
“I mean, you fancy Steve like mad. Why don’t you just trust him?”
“I don’t fancy him, okay?”
“Sure. And you blush just like that for no reason, obviously.”
“I just… I feel like if I don’t continue my investigation, I’m doing this whole town a disservice.”
“Your investigation? Listen to yourself, Stella. You’re getting all caught up in it. All obsessed. Like you did that time Amanda Hayes’ earrings got stolen.”
“They were nice earrings, to be fair.”
“That’s beyond the point. I mean, I know this is exciting. I know it’s not the kind of thing we usually see here in Goosridge. But it’s reality. It isn’t some kind of game.”
“That’s what you think it is to me? That’s how you think I see it? A game?”
“Well, kind of.”
“Mary, people are dying and I have ways to speak to the dead. I have abilities that nobody else has. Not to mention the fact that the deaths have had supernatural characteristics. How am I supposed to just sit by? How am I supposed to just do nothing?”
“If you aren’t careful, you will be doing nothing at all. Because you’ll be dead.”
Her words were harsh and had bite to them. Rocky looked up at both of us, like he was concerned.
But they were words that probably needed to be spoken. Because there was truth to them. A harsh reality that I had to face up to and admit.
She leaned towards me. Grabbed my hands.
“I know it’s frustrating. And I know you care about other people, as we all do. But right now you need to step back and start letting the professionals do their work. You’ve already been taken in for questioning once. You’ll be lucky if you don’t get taken in again. But now’s a chance to turn things around. Now’s a chance to change the course of this… this ship, or whatever it is.”
“I prefer ‘boat’.”
‘Well, boat then. You get my point.”
I looked into Mary’s eyes and I knew she was right. I was putting myself in danger. And by putting myself in danger, I was risking everything.
I should step back. Stop with all this madness.
But then…
“If there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s that curiosity is my strong point.”
I stood up. Cleared my throat.
Mary narrowed her eyes. “Stella?”
“I hear you, Mary. Really, I do. But there’s no way I can give up. Not now.”
I walked over towards the front door.
“Stella? Where are you going?”
“Keep an eye on the pets for me tonight. Help yourself to food and wine. There’s some stunningly good cupcakes in the cupboard.”
“But where are you going?”
I looked back at her. Took a deep breath. “I can’t stop investigating this case. I’m just going to have to start being more careful.”
Then I turned to the door, opened it and stepped outside into the wind and the rain.
Chapter 27
Call me mad, but it wasn’t long after that I found myself standing in Pedro’s house again.
The body had been moved, but the crime scene was still intact. There was tape outside, a few people walking by and taking photographs, no doubt in disbelief that such drama had actually reached the small town of Goosridge after all.
But now, as I stood inside Pedro’s bedroom—or former bedroom—I couldn’t shake the feeling that, unlike last time, I felt truly alone. Like it was just me in here, and an opportunity to get to the bottom of all of this, once and for all.
Because there had to be clues. There had to be some kind of signs; some kind of evidence that helped me figure out not only why Pedro had died, but why he’d been the one to buy a massive amount of the Valerian concoction from Collette just days ago; the stuff coursing through a dead Krissy Palmer’s bloodstream.
I felt like I had all the right pieces of this puzzle, but I just couldn’t quite slot them into place.
“Well,” I muttered. “Only way to find out what’s going on is to search the place.”
I walked over to the side of his bed, first. Wasn’t sure why, really. Just I figured the vast majority of people kept sentimental stuff in their bedside drawers, so it gave me a chance to learn something more about Pedro.
I opened the bedside drawer.
It was totally empty.
I frowned, closed it, checked the next one.
That was empty too.
The more I moved around the room, the weirder I began to find just how empty this place was. It was like Pedro had been living in a shell of a home. And although he hadn’t exactly been here for ages, it seemed strange that his home was so lacking of… well, life.
But then I put it down to him just being minimalist. That seemed to be his way of life. So who was I to judge him for it?
Some people liked tidy spaces. Others liked… well. Talking dogs and judgemental, clinically depressed cats. To each their own.
But my search of Pedro’s room got even stranger when I reached his wardrobes. I hadn’t expected many clothes, especially based on the fact that the rest of this place seemed very limited.
What I wasn’t expecting to find were no clothes at all.
I stood there, unable to believe what I was looking at, unable to understand. The more time I spent here, the more I started to feel like there really was something off about Pedro after all; that I’d been right to suspect him in the first place, and there was more to him than first seemed.
I turned around, prepared to go into another room, when I saw a little evidence tag under the bed.
I crouched down beside the b
ed, leaned over and squinted at whatever the tag was pointing out.
When I saw it, I felt my entire body go cold.
I didn’t want to touch it. I didn’t even want to acknowledge it.
But now I’d seen it, I couldn’t deny it.
I reached under the bed and pulled it out to take a closer look.
It was a photograph of Krissy. It looked like it had been taken from a distance.
She was wearing the same clothes she’d died in.
I felt nauseous, vomit creeping up my throat. I swallowed it back down as well as I could, but keeping it down was a battle.
Because what did this mean?
Pedro had been watching Krissy. For some reason, he’d taken a photograph of her.
And then she’d died.
My head pulsated. What did any of this mean? If Pedro didn’t kill Krissy, then why had he taken photos of her? Why was he so weird? Or perhaps what’d happened was he’d killed Krissy for some reason then taken his own life. That was a possibility, wasn’t it?
I went to put the photograph back down when I noticed something else.
There was a scrawl on the back of the photograph. A thick, black scrawl, like a dark hole.
It looked like some kind of vortex, scribbled with biro.
I felt my mouth turn dry as I stared into this vortex. There were three points on it. One on the top, two smaller ones at the bottom at either side.
And underneath it, the words: NO ENTRY.
I swallowed a lump in my throat. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Why was there a photo of Krissy? Why was there a drawing on the back of it? What did any of this mean?
A sudden sense of dread filled my body. And I could hear Mary’s words circling my mind. You’re going to get yourself killed. Leave it to the professionals.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe everything she’d said was right.
I turned around. Went to walk out of Pedro’s room. I needed some breathing space. I needed some time; some time to think.
But as I turned around, I couldn’t deny what I saw.