“I had nothing to do with any of these murders and certainly not…” he cut off abruptly as soon as he saw the Guard.
When they walked into the living room she saw the two Detectives standing near the windows, Liz sitting on the couch clutching a tissue, Bleidd in front of the fireplace, and Jason sitting on the loveseat, his eyes red-rimmed. She knew then, and the moment she knew her reconstructed shields collapsed and she felt all the outside grief rushing through her. She felt her breath catch, her head dropped, and for an instant everything went gray; she thought she might pass out. And then nothing. Emotional flat line.
She looked back up to see Jess looking at her with real concern. He and Brynneth both broke ranks and came over to stand on either side of her; Jess pulled her in to his chest as if he were shielding her from a blow, but she felt numb. She stood stiffly in his arms, her mind blank. Brynneth reached out, his hand gentle against her neck, and she noted the healing energy in a detached way.
“Is she going to pass out?” Liz asked, sniffling.
“I’m sorry, Ms. McCarthy.” Detective Riordan sounded like he meant it. “I hate this part of the job. Officer Lyons–Syndra–was found dead this morning. It looks like our killer.”
She felt herself nodding. The Detective frowned, slightly “I know how upsetting this must be for you. All of you, of course, but you were close friends with her.”
Allie nodded again, her eyes focusing on the line of cars out the window. Walters spoke suddenly. “You should know they found her body in the parking lot of your store. I’m sorry. She was a good Officer”
Of course they did, the killer wanted to make sure I knew it was supposed to be me, and he only took her because he had to, Allie thought numbly.
Riordan shifted uncomfortably. “It looks like we need to rethink the direction we were going in with this. We have a witness that saw two people dumping the body, early this morning–Rick and I got the call and got there within 20 minutes. She hadn’t been dead for very long-less than 12 hours.”
Liz got up abruptly, and walked over to Jason, grabbing his hand and pulling him up with her. “We don’t need to hear this. And I don’t want to know. She shouldn’t hear it either. It’s bad enough we just lost our friend, we don’t need the gory details.”
“She’s been helping on the case,” Walters said, trying to sound reasonable, “I’m sure it’s hard to hear but if we’re going the wrong way with what we’ve been thinking we need to get on a new track really quick now. This guy’s killed 2 cops, counting that Elven Guard, not to mention 4 girls, and if we still need her help she’s going to have to tough it out.”
Liz looked furious, but when Allie didn’t move, she gave up and dragged Jason out of the room. Allie heard their footsteps going up the stairs and a door slamming. Is this still the dream? Maybe I’m still sleeping, she thought. Jess spoke into her hair, “Can you listen to this? Or do you need a moment to grieve your friend?”
His voice washed over her like water, and she did not respond. He looked sharply at Brynneth who was frowning. Walters spoke again “We don’t have time for grief right now.”
“You are being cruel Detective,” Jessilaen said.
“And you’re thinking with your…”
“Rick!” Riordan cut him off quickly, before turning back to the elves placatingly. “We’re all upset right now and emotions are running high. But we need to get this figured out before this gets any more out of control. If this is a group instead of an individual, that makes a big difference for this investigation.”
“You are certain her death was caused by the same killer?” Zarethyn asked. “The time is wrong and Officer Lyons doesn’t fit the victim profile.”
“Maybe you were all wrong–or she was–about the timing and the victims being not human. They all looked pretty damn human to us.” Walters said, regaining some of his normal belligerence.
“Same M.O.” Riordan said wincing slightly before anyone could respond to Walters. “She was raped and cut up, her throat slit, then…”
Allie realized she was going to throw up and moved with a speed that only those desperate to reach a bathroom can have, dodging out of Jess’s loose hold and away from Brynneth’s hand. She shot down the hall, ignoring the shouts behind her, and skidded into the dark bathroom, managing to slide across the tile on her knees and reach the toilet just as her stomach reversed itself. She knelt there, retching long after there was nothing left to throw up.
Jess came in and crouched behind her, holding her hair and rubbing her back, and in desperation she extended her shields out around him, letting his emotions fill her space. It helped, enough that she could stop throwing up and catch her breath as the toilet flushed.
Vaguely she heard raised voices arguing somewhere else, but she didn’t care. She felt broken and lost, and she could feel her grief like a physical thing, threatening to consume her. She clenched her jaw tightly, feeling a keening wail rising up in her throat and afraid if she started she’d never stop. Jess’s voice finally penetrated her overwhelming reaction, riding on the current of his love and worry.
“I am so sorry, my love, my heart, what can I do to help you? Tell me, talk to me…”
She turned, swallowing hard, “Water. Please.”
He did not move and she was surprised when a hand offered a small paper cup of water. She looked at it for a moment, not comprehending and then recognized the cup as one of the disposable ones that were kept stacked on the bathroom counter, and a moment later that the hand belonged to Brynneth. She took the cup with shaking hands and drank, ignoring the burning in her throat. As soon as she was finished she collapsed back against Jess again, feeling the keening in her chest.
Jessilaen looked helplessly at Brynneth, “I do not understand this.”
“I saw her…being tortured…”Allie forced the words out, swallowing hard, “she was trying…to reach me…I couldn’t…but I saw…in the dream…I saw it…”
Jess stroked her hair, “Breath Allie, just breath.”
“I feel like…I’m going…to start…screaming…and never stop,” she gasped.
Brynneth also reached out then, so that she was pressed between the two Guards, and she could feel his concern along with Jess’s. She latched onto the emotion as another source to help ground her, and was able to calm down slightly.
“That’s better. I feel a little less like I’m coming apart at the seams now.”
“You’re picking up on our emotions?” Jess guessed.
Allie nodded then admitted, “I can’t shield for crap. Whatever I did at the Outpost, when I dropped my shields and fried myself, I really screwed something up. I can’t keep my shields up and I keep getting all kinds of outside stuff filtering in.”
She swallowed hard, not sure if the water was going to stay down, “I knew on some level it was her, I think, but I didn’t want it to be. When we came in and I realized, and it was like in that moment, I lost all my shields again and then everyone else’s grief went right through me and everything went numb. And then Riordan was talking about what happened and I suddenly realized that was what I saw and I just snapped.” She swallowed hard again “And then I couldn’t get my shielding back up anywhere near enough to block things and it was all just a swirling mass of horrible feelings. You both being here, touching me, I can feel your emotions and it’s soothing. I feel much more grounded.”
“Jessilaen you said something similar to this happened before, after Aeyliss’s body was found.” Brynneth said.
“Yes,” Jess said, resting his cheek on the top of her head, “she was upset to the point of despair then, but nothing nearly as extreme as this.”
Brynneth contemplated the idea for a moment. “I do not know what you did to yourself by dropping all your shielding at the Outpost; it may be that you temporarily burnt out your own defenses or weakened your ability to protect yourself. Or you may have been blocking your own ability on an unconscious level until now and being forced to acknowledge it called
it to the fore.”
He spoke directly to Jessilaen. “It seems that she may be very open to outside emotional influences when she is sleeping and also when she is in an open emotional state. When she is conscious and in control she seems to keep her shields up at a higher level that blocks out both the good and the bad. The last time you said she reached out to you and afterwards she was able to block the emotions of the other Guard and separate herself from the despair that had seized her?”
“Yes,” Jess agreed.
“And Tharien said she can use emotional energy… interesting.” Brynneth nodded to himself. “It may be then that she uses the positive emotional energy to rebalance from or recharge from extreme emotional distress.”
“Great, except that it looks like negative emotional energy knocks me flat on my butt. That’s a pretty huge problem, isn’t it?” Allie asked looking at Brynneth.
“Only as long as you are fighting against the energy of those emotions, or allowing them to overwhelm you.” He said gently.
“You think I can change how I react to it?” Allie found it easier to focus on discussing her struggle with negative emotions than to remember why the negative emotions were there at all.
“I believe you find comfort in emotions that are more pleasant and you reject or fight against those that you consider frightening,” he said.
She nodded, “You may be right, but it’s not something I think about. It’s like a reflex.”
“Even reflexes can be changed, with effort.”
She took several deep breathes, focusing on grounding and centering. It was a children’s exercise, something her mother had drilled into her as far back as she could remember, but one of those things that it was easy to get lazy with. Eventually she felt more balanced and carefully brought her shields back up; they still felt different than they had been before she’d dropped them at the Outpost, but they did feel more solid. Even with both elves in physical contact with her she was able to block them out, and that was progress of a sort. “Okay, we need to get back out there, before Detective Walters decides we’re in here having a ménage à trois.”
Both elves looked blank at the unfamiliar term, which seemed ironic to her, and Allie rolled her eyes.
“Never mind, we just need to get back out there.”
“You should rest,” Jess said, as she struggled awkwardly to her feet. “There is nothing to accomplish if you push yourself to collapse.”
“Honestly I don’t even know how I can help with anything at this point. They don’t think what I’ve been saying so far is right and I burned the only evidence we had to support what I’m saying-“
“Why would they question your word?” Jess said, genuinely puzzled.
“Human law isn’t like Elven law. Human’s lie, outright, and the court system is… really complicated. Sometimes guilty people are freed because the evidence isn’t strong enough, or because the jury believes the lie instead of the truth.” She tried to explain.
“That is madness. How can any system function in such a way?” Brynneth scoffed.
“In Fairy no one lies, so the truth is a matter of finding the right people and asking the right questions. On Earth it’s about finding evidence that can’t be easily disputed. Magical evidence is a really difficult thing and some courts still don’t accept it. The cops don’t want to rely on me and have it go to court–if it’s a human–and see their whole case get thrown out. They want concrete evidence. The book would have been that.” She winced, “I imagine that they are pretty pissed with me for destroying it.”
“Then why go back in there?” Jess asked
“Because Syndra was my best friend,” she said, feeling tears burning behind her eyes, “and I am going to help catch this guy if I can.”
Both elves nodded, and to her surprise Brynneth rested a hand on her shoulder, squeezing briefly, “I believe that you will, and anything I can do to aid you I shall. Do not hesitate to ask. I will not allow my niece’s killer to escape.”
Allie felt her eyes getting wide, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize Aeyliss was your niece.”
“Indeed. My youngest sister’s daughter. I would do much to see her killer brought to justice.”
“I will do everything I can.” Allie said seriously.
The group reemerged into the living room to find the two human police and the two Elven Guard squared off, arguing over how to proceed. Bleidd was nowhere to be seen, and Allie assumed, like Liz and Jason, he’d had enough of the details and left.
“That’s not how investigations work,” Walters was saying, his face red.
“What he means,” Riordan added, clearly trying to play diplomat, “is that we can’t just go on intuition and guesses when we have evidence that points the other way. We have witnesses who described two people dumping the body, who look a lot like the two who attacked Ms. McCarthy-“
“How is that possible?” Allie blurted out, without thinking. Everyone turned and looked at her with expressions ranging from concern to disdain.
“I mean, I couldn’t give you a description of them, and I thought the video wasn’t clear, how could you know the suspects are the same?”
“Same general height, same cloaks–and that reminds me, if you could get us the video from your store for last night we can probably see them on the parking lot camera,” Riordan said.
Walters, with an effort to speak calmly, continued, “We need to accept that we were going in the wrong direction with this. This guy, or group, isn’t going to be caught with mumbo-jumbo magic. We’ll solve this case with old fashioned police work.”
Now that Allie was back, the elves were watching to see how this would play out and trusting her and synchronicity to carry the argument. Allie was shaking her head, certain to her core that they had been close to the killer already. “This isn’t right. It’s misdirection. Why kill Syn at all when he could have picked any victim?”
“Maybe your involvement is pissing the killer off,” Walters said coldly, “Maybe it was the two who beat you up in your store and they found out you burned the book they wanted and so they killed your best friend in retaliation.”
Allie felt like she’d been punched in the gut, and she struggled not to start crying, knowing that tears would be a sign of surrender. “Maybe you’re right about her dying because of me,” she forced each word out. “Maybe it’s my fault she’s dead, because it should have been me. But that just proves I’m right. I wouldn’t be a threat to the killer if I wasn’t.”
Walters gave her a look of grudging admiration, but he wouldn’t give in, “Or maybe it was a message to me and Jim to try to push us off the case or warn us. She was your friend, but this isn’t all about you, no matter what the elves think. Maybe killing a cop was a message to us.”
Allie decided to press her luck, “Did you have any success with the list she gave you?”
Riordan looked at Walters, who shook his head. “So far it’s a dead end. But we’ll keep working on it.”
Allie had a sudden inspiration. “What if I could find the crime scene? Would that give you something for a traditional investigation?”
“That’s impossible,” Walters dismissed the idea immediately.
All the elves looked at her intently. Riordan hesitated before asking “How?”
“I think I saw the place in a, kind of like a dream. I think, maybe, I have enough of a connection to it from that to find it,” she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. Actually she was hoping that she could use her connection to Syn and the experience of her friend’s death to follow the emotion back like Tharien had said. She just had to figure out how to do it now instead of years from now.
“Can you do this?” Zarethyn asked.
“I’m not positive I can. But I can try,” she answered honestly.
Walters was shaking his head, “We’re relying too much on you already. You shouldn’t even be part of this–you aren’t a cop and your expert advice hasn’t gotten us anywhere.”
/>
“Detective, Aliaine has been essential to our progress to this point.” Zarethyn said flatly.
“Oh I’m sure she’s been essential to you,” Walters sneered, giving Allie a pointed look. “But I don’t see you getting anything substantial done except hanging around here.”
“Don’t insult us Detective,” the Elven Captain said, his tone dangerous.
“I just don’t see her doing anything but being a complication and distraction. And making herself seem important when she shouldn’t be. Now she’s obviously doing a lot more for you than for us…”
“Rick, that’s enough” Riordan said, trying unsuccessfully to shut the other man up.
“…and maybe she’s a great lay, but you’re not focused.”
Walters tried to keep going but he’d pushed the elves too far. Not, Allie thought, by insulting her or even implying they were getting side benefits, but by implying they were derelict in their duty. Elves might be very sensual by nature and have different priorities than humans, but they took duty and obligation very seriously in their own way. Walters was yelling, all the elves had stepped towards him, also speaking; an intimidating site in their armor. Riordan was trying to stay between them, hands up. She couldn’t hear what he was saying but she was sure it was an attempt to calm things down. Finally he grabbed his partner’s arm and more or less pushed him out the door. Luckily for both of them the elves stood their ground.
She didn’t need empathy to feel the tension in the air, and she realized that the task force falling apart like this could only benefit the killer–and maybe that, ultimately was the point of killing Syndra in particular. She spoke into the wake left by the human police, “This is bad.”
The elves turned and looked at her, and she shook her head. Zarethyn was clearly still piqued, “We will not tolerate being spoken to that way. That detective oversteps himself.”
“That detective is a bigot,” Allie said, feeling tired, “but divisions now aren’t going to help us.”
“We do not need them.” Natarien said curtly before turning to his Captain. “I will go and observe the uniformed officers.”
Murder Between the Worlds: A Between the Worlds Novel Page 20