Fire Song (City of Dragons)
Page 6
I shuddered.
Flint stepped between us. “She wanted to come along. Sorry if it’s a shock.”
“I thought you were dead.” Alastair had yet to even acknowledge Flint.
“You knew I wasn’t dead,” I said. “I served you with divorce papers.”
“Mr. Cooper,” said Flint.
Alastair finally looked at him. “Who are you?”
“I understand you saw Sophia Ward on February twelfth?” said Flint.
Alastair just shook his head. He turned back to me. “Penny, let’s talk. All I want is to talk. Just you and me. Please, I know that I screwed up, but I’ve changed. You can’t imagine how horrible it’s been without you. I miss you so much, baby.” He reached his hand out, around Flint.
Flint chuckled. “See, that’s not going to happen.”
My body wanted him. My body was aching for his touch, for the feel of his mouth on me. I wanted to press myself against him, breathe in his scent, rip open his shirt and kiss my way down his stomach.
But that was all it was.
Whatever else that had been there, the love for him, the desire to do what he asked or to make him happy? All of that was gone.
“I need you to stop trying to get closer to Ms. Caspian,” said Flint.
“Her name is Cooper. She’s my wife.” Alastair looked at Flint, and I could see that he was starting to get angry.
“Sophia Ward,” said Flint. “You saw her that night?”
Alastair’s nostrils flared. He narrowed his eyes and focused in on Flint. “You want to to step out of the way,” he said softly, but there was an echo to his voice that caused horror to shoot through me.
How could I have been so stupid?
Compulsion. Alastair was going to compel Flint to do his bidding, and I was going to have no protection whatsoever against him. I thought that I could be strong, but I wasn’t sure. I might fall right over on my back with my legs open if Alastair pushed.
And I never wanted that man to put his hands on my body again, despite how the stupid mating bond might make me aroused in his presence.
Alastair had ruined me. It had taken every shred of strength to get away from him.
I would be damned if I let him touch me now.
“No,” said Flint, “I don’t.”
What? The compulsion wasn’t working on Flint? Why? Did he have a talisman somewhere that I didn’t know about? He was so clueless about magic that it seemed unlikely he would know to wear one for protection.
Alastair’s face twitched. “What are you?” he growled.
“I’m a police detective,” said Flint. “ And I want to know about Sophia Ward.”
“Yes, I saw her,” said Alastair.
“You, in fact, may be the last person to see her alive,” said Flint.
“I don’t know about that,” said Alastair. He turned back to me. “Penny, why are you here with this man?”
“I’m a consultant for the police department,” I said. “I’m the magical creatures expert.”
Alastair shook his head. “You protected him.”
I hadn’t, but let him think what he wanted.
“Mr. Cooper, I need you to focus. What was the nature of your interaction with Sophia Ward?”
Alastair was furious. I could see it in the way he was holding himself. He wanted to punch something. But he didn’t. He looked Flint up and down. “I was looking after her. She was my neighbor. Her family lives next door, and her older brother asked me to keep an eye on her. Why are you asking me this?”
“Well, she was murdered,” I said. “Maybe you heard about that?”
Alastair sneered. “You’re spreading lies about me again, aren’t you, Penny. Telling people that I beat you, making them think that I’m a bad guy. Well, I’m not. You’re a lying bitch, and I’m not answering any more of these questions.” He put a finger in Flint’s face. “Out of my house.”
Flint smiled. “All right, then, Mr. Cooper. I’ll be in touch If I have anything more.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Where is it?” I said to Flint as he pulled the car out of Alastair’s driveway.
“Where’s what?” he said. “You know I was expecting you to start ripping off your clothes or something. You were really very subdued. Or did you find that the unbridled lust had faded with time?”
“I told you, I have a talisman,” I said. “Where’s yours?”
“I don’t have a talisman.” He gave me a strange look.
“How did you resist the compulsion, then?”
“What’s compulsion?”
“It’s mind-control magic.”
“Dragons have mind-control magic? You didn’t think to tell me this before we went to this interview?”
“I…”
“Do I need to explain to you exactly what I might want from a magical creatures consultant?”
“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “It didn’t work on you, anyway. I don’t know why.”
He furrowed his brow. “Maybe your ex-husband isn’t at the top of his game. Maybe seeing you affected his magic. Is that possible?”
I considered. “Maybe.”
He put on his blinker and turned the car into the driveway of the house next door to Alastair’s.
“Hey,” I said. “What are you doing?”
“Going to talk to Sophia Ward’s brother. Alastair said that they were his neighbors.”
“But that doesn’t mean that her brother lives here. Maybe Sophia lived on her own.”
“Well, her parents live here anyway,” he said in a quiet voice. “I’ve been here already once before. I took her father to the station to identify Sophia’s body.”
I tried to imagine the horror of that, how every fiber of her father’s being must have wanted the body to belong to someone else, must have wanted that body not to be his daughter.
I shook myself. I didn’t want to imagine that.
“Her brother will probably be here,” Flint continued. “Families tend to stay close in the wake of a tragedy.”
That was true, as far as it went. I remembered that all my aunts, uncles, and cousins had descended on my grandparents’ house when my parents died. True, that was only my mother’s two sisters and their husbands and children, but for a dragon clan, that was an enormous amount of people.
“Do you know Sophia’s brother?” said Flint.
“No, not really,” I said. “I may have met him at a party or a function once, but I don’t remember anything about him.”
Flint was right. Sophia’s brother was there. His name was Declan, and he was much older than Sophia. He was over a hundred, maybe closer to two hundred. It was tough to tell, honestly. Dragons didn’t really start to look old until we hit two hundred forty or so. Big age gaps of fifty or seventy-five years between siblings wasn’t unusual in families, however, owing to the difficulty we had with conceiving.
Declan stood out on the back porch with us, clutching a glass of scotch which he wasn’t drinking, and staring out at the bay. His nose was red. His eyes were bloodshot. “I never had any such conversation with Alastair Cooper,” he said in a low growl.
“No?” said Flint. “He seemed fairly certain that you wanted him to look out for Sophia.”
“I don’t know what she was doing with him,” said Declan. He looked around Flint at me. “Listen, I don’t know what went on between the two of you. I guess you did what you had to do. But owing to the fact that Alastair couldn’t even keep his own mate, a woman who was destined to be with him, I wouldn’t exactly trust him around my baby sister.”
“Fair enough,” said Flint.
“Is that how everyone feels?” I said. “I would have thought that maybe people would… blame me for leaving.”
Declan looked into his scotch. “Well, no one understands it, I have to admit that. I can promise you that my wife is not perfect, and that our relationship is hard work, but leaving her is unthinkable.”
I swallowed. “Right.” Why had I thoug
ht anything different?
“So, you don’t have any idea why Mr. Cooper would have said what he said?” Flint asked. “Maybe something could have given him the impression that he should look after Sophia?”
“No,” sad Declan. “Why are you asking me this, anyway?”
“Just doing a bit of investigation, that’s all. I really don’t need anything else, so I’ll just thank you for your time and be on my way.” Flint held out his hand to shake.
Declan grasped his hand. “If he’s lying about this, and he was with her, then does that mean…?”
“Doesn’t mean anything,” said Flint.
“You think he did it.” Declan’s nostrils flared. “That bastard, if I get my hands on him—”
“No.” Flint shook his head. He took Declan by the shoulders. It was a little odd, because Declan was a very tall man, and he had about four inches on Flint. But Flint radiated confidence even if he was the shorter man. His voice went low and gentle—the same lilting, intimate voice he’d used on me several times. “Listen to me, you do not want to do that.”
“But if he’s guilty—”
“That’s my job,” said Flint. “You are in no shape to tackle something like that. And you’re too close to it. Don’t get your hands dirty. Sophia wouldn’t like that.”
Declan’s chin trembled.
Flint let go of him but maintained eye contact.
Declan dumped the whole glass of scotch into his mouth. “She was so young,” he whispered. Tears were forming in his eyes. He turned back to the bay, setting down his glass and gripping the railing. He bowed his head.
“I’m very sorry for what you’re going through,” Flint whispered. “I really am.” He nodded at me.
We left.
*
When Flint dropped me off back at the hotel, I was halfway out of the car when he stopped me. “I noticed the other day that you were getting that window replaced.” He pointed at the window to the door in the lobby. “How’d that happen?”
“What? How’d it get broken?”
“Yeah.”
“It was an accident.” I got out of the car.
“If you got trouble, let me know. I might be able to help,” he said.
“I don’t have any trouble I can’t handle,” I said and hurried inside. I trooped upstairs to my apartment where Felicity was coming out of her bedroom in her cleaning outfit, an old pair of shorts and a t-shirt. She thought it was ridiculous to try to make the cleaning staff keep a uniform clean while scrubbing toilets, and I agreed.
“Hey there,” she said cheerily.
“Are you short someone today?” I asked. She didn’t usually do the actual cleaning unless she needed to step in for a member of her staff. “You need my help?”
She laughed. “Your help? You’d clean the rooms?”
“I wouldn’t screw up laundry at the very least,” I said.
“No, I don’t need you.” She grinned at me. “But you’re a sweetheart for asking. Where have you been all day, anyway?”
“Detective Flint came by, and we went to see Alastair.”
“What?” Felicity was taken aback. “You did what?”
I rubbed my face. “I just… I’m sick of running, you know? And now, it’s looking like he might be the person who killed those dragon girls, and if that’s the case, then I want to do whatever I can to put him away.”
“Whoa, slow down.” She took me by the arm and led me over to the couch in the living room. We sat down together. “You think Alastair is a murderer?”
“He was the last person to be seen with Sophia Ward,” I said. “And he lied about the reason.”
“That doesn’t sound good.” Felicity blew out a noisy breath. “Wow, how crazy.”
“Yeah.”
“But you saw him? Are you okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m fine. I was actually stronger than I thought I was going to be. I thought that if I ever saw him again, I’d lose it. I’d just fall all over him, you know?”
“But you didn’t?”
“Part of me wanted to.” I bit down on my bottom lip. “But I felt separated from it. I know the talisman helps, but it wasn’t just that. I felt as if I could tell that all of it was only physical, you know? That it wasn’t actually anything real.”
“The physical is real.”
“No, I know. I guess it’s got something to do with this conversation I was having with Detective Flint. I was trying to explain how the dragon mating bond works and he just started laughing, and said it was all about sex. Said that people thought the bond was so epic, and here it was just physical arousal.”
“Well, it’s more than that,” said Felicity. “You loved Alastair.”
“I did love him,” I said. “But that wasn’t something that was forced upon me by a magical dragon bond. Flint was right. All I experienced was a deeply intense sexual attraction. And I let myself fall in love with him because I thought that meant we were destined to be together. But the truth is, I’m not trapped by that stupid mating bond. I think I was convinced that Alastair was my one chance at love, but now I’m not so sure.”
Felicity grinned. “Is it more than coincidental that you’ve been decided you might have another chance at love after you’ve been spending so much time with this detective guy?”
“What?” I shook my head. “No, that’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? You said he was attractive, right?”
I got up off the couch. “Just because I might think that there’s a chance in the abstract that I could fall in love again doesn’t mean… I’m not even sure if I like Flint as a human being.”
Felicity didn’t say anything. She was still grinning.
I bent down and began straightening the knick knacks on our coffee table. “Sometimes he seems so caring and sweet, like a really decent guy. But then I feel like… I don’t know, maybe it’s all an act and underneath he’s just… cold.”
“Really? What makes you think that?” Felicity wasn’t smiling anymore.
“He’s really focused on his job, like he’s obsessed with it. Things he’s said, I don’t think he has anything besides the job. I don’t think he wants anything else. And sometimes he can be so glib.” I sat down on an easy chair opposite Felicity.
“You want to know what I think?”
“You’re going to tell me no matter what I say, right?”
She laughed again. “I think that you’re afraid to trust anyone after what happened with Alastair, and you’re just looking for faults in Flint.” She knitted her brow together. “Why are we calling him by his last name? What’s his first name?”
“Lachlan,” I said.
“Ooh,” she said, “that’s dreamy.”
“Shut up.” I threw a pillow at her.
“Speaking of dreamy,” she said, “you going to have dinner with Jensen and me?”
“Jensen is your new beau?” I said. “The one you seem to be spending every night with?”
“That’s him. I really want you to meet him.”
“I’m game. When are we doing this thing?”
She got up from the couch. “Maybe tonight? Maybe tomorrow night? I’ll get back with you, okay?”
“Sure thing,” I said.
“I’ve got beds to make, floors to vacuum.” She headed for the door. “You want to do lunch at the Flamingo today?”
“Yeah, I’ll see you there around one,” I said.
She waved, made a silly face, and was gone.
I sagged into the easy chair.
*
It turned out that Jensen was free for dinner that night, and so Felicity and I met him at Lombardo’s, a pizza and pasta joint on Atlantic Avenue. When we arrived at the restaurant, he was already at our table, and the waitress escorted us over.
That left a bad taste in my mouth. Why couldn’t the guy just wait out front for us? Why’d he have to go and get the table? It wasn’t as if the place was real busy. No place was real busy in March.
I was probably being hard on him. I sat down.
Jensen and Felicity sat down too.
The waitress scampered off, but not before I caught her giving Felicity a dirty look. “There goes her tip,” I muttered.
“What’s that?” said Jensen.
“That waitress obviously doesn’t approve of drakes,” I said. “That kind of bigotry makes me sick.”
“Me too,” said Jensen, reaching over to stroke Felicity’s cheek. “She’s a treasure, this one.”
Treasure? Seriously?
“Anyway,” Jensen continued, “that’s why I got this table before you guys showed up. I didn’t want to get shunted into some drafty corner somewhere because of prejudice.”
I pressed my lips together. Sure, sure, sure.
“You know I don’t care about that crap,” said Felicity. “People want to be dicks, that’s they’re thing. I swear, between the two of you both trying to protect me, it’s a little much.”
“I’m never going to stop trying to protect you,” I said.
“And neither am I,” Jensen said.
The waitress came back with a wine glass full of thick red liquid. She set it down in front of Jensen. “Your cow’s blood, sir.” She turned to me. “What can I get you to drink?”
I couldn’t speak. I was too stunned to even think. I just shook my head. Inside my skull, I could hear the sound of my own blood rushing at my temples, like an ocean of anger.
“We’ll have a bottle of wine,” said Felicity. “House red would be great.”
“Sure thing,” said the waitress, going off again.
I put both my hands on the table top to keep from reaching out and strangling Jensen. Or from using my magic to smash him against the floor really hard. “You’re a vampire?” I said in a barely-controlled voice.
He raised his eyebrows. “Felicity didn’t tell you?”
I got up and went over to Felicity, yanking aside her shirt collar.
She shoved me. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Looking for bite marks,” I said.