“The detectives need to ask a few questions,” Maude said.
Was this about Red Coat? “I’m sorry, Ms. Taggart, but—”
Her office door slammed shut. Which was fine, except that she was standing on the wrong side of it. Figured. A throat cleared. Obviously, masculine. Detective Wilcox evidently didn’t do patience well. His rigid jaw needed to acknowledge that it was perfectly legal to smile. But he didn’t smile. If anything, his frown tightened, and Wilcox hadn’t even realized a dead woman was draped across his chest—or at least she attempted to be. Her position was more like climbing up his body, really. All the while trying to respectably keep her skirt held down. Miss Prim’s energy voltage must have been set to low because Wilcox seemed oblivious. An irritated groan escaped me at the sight, and Miss Prim quirked an innocent eyebrow.
“I have a few questions regarding Logan Bradley.” Detective Wilcox’s voice cut into my thoughts.
It wasn’t at all the question I’d expected, and my mind scrambled. “Who?”
“Isn’t he dreamy?” Miss Prim had given up her gymnastics and plopped down on a reception chair.
“He’s a client of Ms. Taggart’s,” Detective Wilcox continued, looking less stressed than from moments before. “I would like a list of any social activities you have listed for him.”
I crossed my arms and bit back a yawn because those gestures rather ruined the no-nonsense professional look I went for. My focus on Detective Wilcox’s question became off, thanks to the distraction of a running commentary on wedding dresses from the region of one impassioned ghost. Detective Wilcox’s irritated glares seemed to hit the direction of the reception chair a time or two despite him being saved from the torment of listening to different ways of bustling a gown. Nor seeing anything amiss at all for that matter. Like the dead woman drooling over him from afar. Non-cursed people had it so easy.
“I’m sorry, Detective, but our cream colored—I mean, we have signed confidentiality agreements with our clients. Do you have a warrant?”
Miss Prim’s topic of choice changed to style. Why she was planning a wedding gown that being a dead ghost she couldn’t be seen wearing, I didn’t know. My attempts of surreptitious glares to shut her up went unheeded. With hands tucked underneath her chin, Miss Prim stared longingly at the sullen detective.
Detective Wilcox’s eyes narrowed, and it wasn’t in response to A-line dresses and tulle. “Another client of Ms. Taggart’s was murdered. Her body was found at the city dump yesterday afternoon.”
My stomach dropped. “Who?”
“Gina Welch.” His lips pressed into a thin line. “If Ms. Welch’s confidentiality agreement isn’t ironclad, any information you can provide will be helpful.”
The name Gina Welch wasn’t familiar. I dropped down to my desk chair, wondering how this newest request was connected to Mr. Bradley. Typing in Ms. Welch’s name showed zero results on my computer. I shook my head at Detective Wilcox. “I’m sorry, but she wasn’t a client.”
“I have it on good authority that she had a date, matched through this agency, with Logan Bradley on Sunday evening.”
“Impossible.” I clicked the mouse to pull up the schedule, silently cursing my computer for its sudden foray into the world of sluggishness. The schedule would prove him wrong because clients’ first few dates for a matched couple were usually scheduled by us—or more specifically, by me. After that, if the pair hit it off, they took over their own planning. Of course, every couple hit it off since they were matched by the almost famous psychic, Maude Taggart, and were fated for love. Eighty-five percent of Maude’s matches were married within a year. Seventy-two percent of those were divorced within another six months, according to my database. Not to boast, but since I came on board eight months ago, it appeared her divorce rate was already declining even though it was way too soon to get accurate numbers. But I knew the current matches were much better suited for long term relationships. I turned to Detective Wilcox as I waited for the schedule to load. “Gina Welch isn’t in the database. She wasn’t a client.”
He leaned a hip against the front of my desk and stared down at me. “One of the girls at Riverside and Knox is certain Ms. Welch was a client with this agency.”
“What do you mean, Riverside and…” That was a known area for hookers. My jaw dropped. “You’re not suggesting she’s a prostitute.”
“I am.”
I stood and braced both hands on the desk. “Maude doesn’t sign prostitutes. This isn’t that sort of place.”
The detective stood straight and met my eye. “Obviously, she does if Ms. Welch was a client. I can assure you Gina Welch is well known in the Riverside district.”
Staring him down became a feeble attempt—and with the hint of arrogance in his voice that rubbed me raw—a displaced arrogance since he was wrong. But I got too caught up staring into those expressive dark eyes and had to turn away. Damn lack of sleep. The long-awaited schedule popped up on the computer screen, and I sat back in my chair to study it properly. The sitting down part had nothing to do with putting distance between the arrogant detective and me.
Really, it didn’t.
My grin to Detective Wilcox was tight. It held back the smugness of I told you so. “I’m sorry, Detective, but Mr. Bradley had a date with a Jocelyn Palmer on Sunday night.”
Miss Palmer, I remembered. I clicked on her name in my database and pulled up her information: heiress, daughter of a former Kentucky senator, Harvard graduate… nothing at all about prostitution. During her client interview, she’d been a combination of sweet and nerves while answering my questions. Not a single thing about her screamed street corner. With a smile still firmly intact, I turned the computer monitor where Detective Wilcox could view Miss Palmer’s picture.
The detective studied the image for a brief second and then reached into his inside suit pocket, pulling out a photo. His picture was obviously taken inside a morgue, and the woman in the picture was dead. She was also the same woman smiling at me on my computer screen.
“As I said…” Detective Wilcox tucked the photo away. “Mr. Bradley had a date with Ms. Welch on Sunday night.”
I bit my lip, and all twenty-four hours I’d been awake caught up. Weariness plowed over me like a freight train. I’d been duped. It was my job to research the clients. My responsibility to follow. To learn their habits and figure out what they ate and drank so that psychic Maude knew all. How the hell had I overlooked this? A woman working a street corner shouldn’t have been hard to miss. It was a good thing I was already fired because I damn well would’ve been after this. Maude didn’t do forgiveness.
“Now that’s settled.” Detective Wilcox looked too self-righteous for my liking. At least I’d tried hiding my smugness—all ten seconds of it—but Detective Wilcox was apparently less reserved. Now he decided to grin. And I refused to acknowledge that it was a nice, if arrogant, smile. Instead, I focused on the pointed look he gave as he said, “Logan Bradley hasn’t been seen since his dinner at the Grey Manor with Ms. Welch on Sunday night. We’re trying to find Mr. Bradley. If there is any place you know of that he might be, it would be very helpful to this investigation.”
Oh, that word again. Helpful. The inflection of Detective Wilcox’s voice whenever he said it made me realize he didn’t consider me very helpful at all. But there was no fight in me, and really, no reason left to fight. A woman was dead, and a suspect was missing. I gritted my teeth at my bruised ego over letting a prostitute through the front door, and I brought up Logan Bradley the database.
His picture froze me. I knew his image well because I’d studied it all night. Logan Bradley was the same man from Red Coat’s photo. The only difference was his cheek. Maude’s picture of him was missing the carved symbol.
Chapter Three
“You never called, but that’s okay.” Hadley, three textbooks, and one laptop slid into the chair across from me. “It gave me time to plan.”
Her auburn hair was pulled into a me
ssy bun that was held ensnared by an ink pen. The rims of her eyes were a solid red because she’d decided sleep wasn’t a prerequisite for her last two semesters of law school. She also just flat-out looked rumpled, yet every male in the small diner hadn’t stopped staring since she’d walked in. And it wasn’t the what the hell happened to her? look I received upon entering.
The spontaneous pre-class coffee shop meet-up may have fallen through thanks to one surly detective and a dead client, but I’d outwitted Hadley’s packed planner and scored a lunch.
“What?” I asked, and killed my oversized blueberry muffin with a fork. It was all I could eat since my stomach decided to hop on board the never-ending twisting and turning roller coaster of doom. What I wanted was a drink, preferably mind-numbing. But it was about thirty minutes too early if I wished to maintain respectability. So I looked at Hadley instead, and dissected my muffin. “You’ve lost me. Plan what?”
“What I was trying to tell you last night.” Hadley swiped my untouched coffee and downed it in a gulp. “I ran into your brother yesterday.”
“Lucky you.”
“He’s getting married.”
My fork clattered onto the plate. “What? Who? How do I not know about this?”
“Lacey Briggs.”
Visions sprung of platinum blond hair, fake smiles, and a dagger in hand—awaiting a teenage back to meet its ill-fated demise. High school graduation had been the last sighting of Lacey Briggs. “Please let this be a joke.”
“No joke,” Hadley said. “Your brother’s marrying Lacey Briggs.”
Crap, she wasn’t kidding. If Hadley said the same thing twice, it was always the truth. “You know, it’s been eight years since graduation. Maybe she outgrew bitch?”
“Again, no. Still one hundred percent bitch. In her presence, graduation was but only yesterday.”
I pictured my brother, decked out in teenage pimples and braces standing next to the high school cheerleader who skipped a week of class senior year for a nose job. Nope. No visualization. They mixed like oil and water. “Sorry, but this has to be a joke. If Sean’s getting married, someone would have told me. The title sister should count for something. I had to live with the brat for twenty-four years of my life.” I grabbed my cell phone and scrolled through texts, scouting for missed messages from my mother. Not that she knew how to text, but I was trying to go with that glass half full thing. Hadley leaned across the table and swiped a chunk of my muffin. I slapped her hand. “Hey! I’m eating that.”
“No, you aren’t. You’re turning it into a crumbly mound of… crumbles.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“And,” Hadley continued as she broke off another chunk of muffin, “you moved out at eighteen, so that’s only sixteen years with Sean. But I’m certain they’re engaged because she had a ring. Now on to my plans for surviving the holidays with the sister-in-law from hell. You’ve already scored the boss.”
“Ex-boss,” I said, my mind still comprehending my brother’s betrayal. “I think.”
Hadley dropped the muffin. “What?”
“Uh, well… I sorta never brought her the coffee last night, and then I ignored about ten million of her texts.”
“Ten million?” Hadley asked. “A bit of an exaggeration, there—”
“Trust me, it’s not much of one.”
“Now define sorta.”
“Sorta as in, not at all? But here’s the weird part, she acted all fine this morning and didn’t mention it.” My cell phone chimed. “Speak of the devil. Since I’m out, she wants an egg salad sandwich and to remind me lunch is only thirty minutes.”
“Well, that answers your employment status.”
I buried my head in my arms and allowed a low moan to escape.
“Okay, what’s going on?” Hadley asked. “You dodge the subject whenever I mention you should quit, but now you’re upset you didn’t get fired?”
I looked up. “I killed a woman.”
“What?” Hadley’s mouth dropped.
“You know, I think that’s the first time ever you’ve been speechless.”
“So this is some lame joke to shock me?” Hadley asked. I shook my head no. She shoved my plate out of the way, and her eyes stopped blinking. “Start talking. From the beginning.”
Getting full Hadley attention was never easy, but now I had it, I gave her the Cliff Notes version of Miss Prim and Red Coat. Hadley was the only trusted friend who knew my secret. We met in kindergarten when Jessica Hines, a second grader shoved into a fifth grader’s body bullied Hadley off a swing at recess. My friend, Addie, and I rescued Hadley from Jessica because when you’re six, and a kid a half a foot taller than you stands glaring with clenched fists, you see your short life flashing before your eyes. For the rest of recess, Jessica’s butt landed in the dirt each time she tried sitting on that swing because that’s what happened when a kid named Addie who died in 1899 kept moving it whenever you sat. Jessica, along with her bruised butt, got called Klutzy Jess until the eighth grade—which I may or may not have had something to do with—and the incident stuck Addie, Hadley, and me together like glue. So after having had a childhood friend who’d decided to hang around despite having left the United States census count a century before, Hadley didn’t even raise a brow when I told her about Miss Prim’s stalking and Red Coat’s red coat. But she became quite difficult about the whole murder thing.
“See? It’s my fault Miss Prim chased her. It’s my leg she tripped over.”
“Stop being dramatic. It was an accident.”
“But she died.” I shut my eyes, but it didn’t block the visions. “Her eyes glazed over… vacant. Dead.”
“It’s still an accident. You didn’t kill anyone.” Hadley reached for the last of my muffin, her dismissal of my guilt so callous. “So, how did she see the ghost?”
I shrugged. “Cursed?”
“Your Aunt Kate refers to you as gifted.”
“Aunt Kate’s a nut. It’s a curse, and ghosts are evil. And about Red Coat, I don’t know.” I plopped my head back down in my arms. “A ghost’s energy can be strong enough to touch things in this world, but humans can’t actually see them.”
“So maybe this woman wasn’t human.” Hadley leaned forward, her voice lowered to a whisper. “Maybe she’s an alien from outer space. Her special extra-terrestrial powers allowed her to see anything that touched Earth.”
“Seriously?” I snickered. “You’re going with alien?”
“I managed to watch half of an X-Files rerun last night. A whole half of an episode. It was bliss. Maybe in four months I can watch the other half?” Hadley shrugged. “But it got you to smile, didn’t it? Seriously, she didn’t say anything at all?”
“Cambion,” I recalled the softly uttered words. “I think that’s what she called me.”
Hadley stilled. “What did she say?”
“She said the word cambion.”
“You know what that is, don’t you?” Hadley asked. “A cambion is half demon and half human.”
I sat back. “And you know this how?”
“Books. RPG. Remember how I got into Dungeons and Dragons in eighth grade?” Hadley’s hands lifted in a what else? gesture. “It’s usually the father, an incubus, who mates with the human mother. But it could be a succubus and a human father.”
“An incubus? Really?” I snorted.
“Or a succubus. One parent has to be a demon.”
“Well, I’m not a cambion. My dad’s one hundred percent human. Boring ol’ human. Emphasis on the boring.”
“You know your mother’s a bit questionable, right?” Hadley grinned. “But there’s demon blood in you, Kiara.”
“Stop talking to Aunt Kate. I love her to death, but she’s crazy. Demons aren’t real.”
“Like ghosts aren’t real? You know, it’s the demon blood in you that allows you to pierce the veil.” She drummed her fingers against the table, and I knew she was lost in her own little Hadley world, t
rying to fit the puzzle pieces together. Too bad she hadn’t explained what a veil was before getting lost. Her amber eyes cleared into alertness. “I bet she was a cambion. She thought you were one, too.”
“Maybe she was just a normal demon?” I asked, wondering if normal and demon was a thing.
“If she’d been a full-blooded demon, a car couldn’t have killed her. Although, I’m surprised she was killed since as a cambion she was still stronger than a human.” Hadley shook her head. “So, she called you a cambion, and that’s it?”
“No, she gave me a charred envelope.”
“Charred? As in burnt?”
“Yeah. Wait a sec.” I pulled out the envelope tucked inside my purse. “Her envelope was exactly like this one, except without my name. This was on my doormat this morning.”
Hadley took the envelope from my hand and flipped it over. “Why haven’t you opened it?”
“Because I killed a woman.” I looked away, the guilt of Red Coat’s death stinging. “What if this is from someone who’s pissed-off because she’s dead?”
“So they wrote you a letter?” Hadley shoved the envelope back into my hands. “Stop beating yourself up over her death. I’m sure it was horrible to witness, but it was only an accident. If anyone’s to blame, it’s that crazy ghost. Now open it.”
I hesitated. Although the envelope no longer felt warm to my touch, the smell of smoke and sulfur still clung to it. The back flap was sealed with wax, and imprinted with a dragon. It pried easily apart, and a photograph along with a letter slid out into my hand. Logan Bradley stared up at me in the exact same picture Red Coat had given me—carved symbol and all. I stared in horror at the words written in the letter. This really had to be a joke.
“What?” Hadley asked. She snatched the letter. “Praedator: Your assignment. Three days. Healing-Tech Systems. Sebastian Balázs, clerk to Lucifer & Satan.” Hadley looked up with wide eyes. “Wait a minute, Satan as in the Satan? And Lucifer? I thought Lucifer was Satan?”
Reaping Havoc: Kiara Blake Book 1 Page 3