by Josh Lanyon
My lip curled at the memory of our first encounter, and at that exact moment, John happened to look up from sipping his champagne. He caught me mid-sneer.
I suppose it must have been the novelty of someone not fawning over him. The way people were gushing, you’d have thought he had promised to fix all their parking tickets en masse. Not that people drive in San Francisco. Well, I don’t.
John met my eyes, freed himself from the clutches of his admirers, and caught up to me as I was making my way over to speak to Ralph Grindlewood, a local historian and friend, as well as a very good customer of mine.
“I’ve been looking all over town for you, Cinderella,” John said. He was smiling. It changed his whole face. He looked younger. Handsome. Likable. Maybe more than likable.
“I…beg your pardon.”
I really thought I’d misheard him—he had clearly mistaken me for someone else.
“I like your top hat,” he said, and I automatically put my hand to my head to check if I was dreaming. But no, I was not dreaming. I was wearing a top hat because I like top hats—I want them to come back into fashion—and a lot of guys used to wear them to the Black and White Ball.
If all this sounds a little disjointed, it’s because my thoughts were disjointed. In fact, I was beyond confused. I was befuddled. Why was he looking at me that way? His face was slightly flushed, his eyes were almost golden with warmth and appreciation, and his smile was charming. He had dimples.
“I…”
“Are you enjoying my bed?” John grinned. He was flirting with me.
That settled one question. He did know who I was. He did remember where we’d met.
“That bed is too small for you,” I said. And I scowled, remembering the smackdown he’d delivered when I’d been the one trying a little innocent flirtation.
He gave another of those peculiar lighthearted chuckles. “That’s half the fun, right?”
“Uh…”
His expression changed, softened, grew serious. “Why don’t we get out of here?” he suggested.
I looked around the crowded big top tent and caught sight of us on one of the giant flat-panel video screens. Glittering rainbow-colored confetti drifted down from overhead as we gazed into each other’s eyes. People in the background were smiling at us, nodding and whispering.
It was very weird—and I say that as someone who is in the business of weird.
I asked feebly, “But what about the midnight surprise? It’s supposed to be really special this year.”
His smile made me dissolve inside. I’d never felt like that in my life. Warm and silly. Weak in the knees. My heart turned to pink melt-away marshmallow.
John bent his head and whispered, “I promise you the best midnight surprise ever.”
“Maybe it’s not the same guy,” Officer Young said.
We were sitting in their patrol car. We’d been parked near Mission Dolores Park for over ten minutes. It was clear that having arrested me, Officers Young and Takeo were afraid to take the next logical step.
I sympathized.
“It’s the same guy,” Officer Takeo said.
“I’m the same guy,” I said.
“Quiet,” Young threw back automatically.
“When dealing with the rich and powerful…” Takeo said.
Young and I waited for him to finish the thought, but apparently that was it.
“Let me just call my—the commissioner,” I urged.
I was desperate to talk to John. It was bewildering how in just two weeks he had somehow become as necessary to me as oxygen, but so it was. He was my waking thought each morning—well, early afternoon—and my last thought at night. He was sure as hell my first thought when I was in trouble, and it was hard to imagine I could ever be in more trouble than I was at that moment.
But also, I was thinking of my calling John as a way out for all three of us.
Judging by their instant alarm, Young and Takeo did not consider me part of the team. Instead, they called their sergeant.
Sergeant Banks said he would get back to them after he called Lieutenant Fernández.
Lieutenant Fernández said he would get back to them after he called Captain Diamond.
Captain Diamond said he would get back to them after he called Commander Zhang.
Commander Zhang said she would get back to them after she called Deputy Chief Danville.
Thirty seconds later Zhang radioed to say forget all that and bring me in immediately.
Which is how, four hours after I discovered the body of Seamus Reitherman, I came to be sitting in an incongruously cheery yellow interview room at the Mission Police Station, waiting for…I wasn’t sure what.
I had not been photographed or fingerprinted, and although Young and Takeo had handcuffed me and read me my rights, the handcuffs had been removed once we’d reached the station house.
At Mission they did examine my hands for cuts and my clothes for blood, and the fact that there was neither probably helped my situation. They took my phone but left me my jewelry: signet ring, earring, and small silver amulet. Though I’d never been arrested before, I was pretty sure this was not the way it usually worked. And I was pretty sure everyone else in the station was aware it was not the way it usually worked—and they were not happy about it.
I was afraid John would not be happy about it either. Maybe we hadn’t been together long, but it had been long enough to figure out he frowned on favoritism, nepotism, and a whole lot of other-isms. And I admired that John was a man of principle—even if some of those principles sometimes felt a little straitlaced. He’d have made a great Puritan. All manly rectitude and tiresome industriousness. He had been begging to be seduced, whether he knew it or not.
Not in bed, thank the Goddess. He was not remotely puritanical between the sheets. Granted, there were a few things I had yet to show him.
At least, I hoped so. Getting arrested on suspicion of murder was liable to throw a wrench in our honeymoon plans. Or worse, our wedding plans.
Not that John would believe the charges against me—he surely knew me that well, even if it had only been two weeks. But with our wedding only three—no, now two days away—there was still so much to do. And awful as the thought of not marrying John on Sunday was, I had even bigger problems.
Where was the grimoire? Was it the grimoire? Was it possible the rediscovery of the grimoire had something to do with Seamus’s death? Was it possible it didn’t?
Worse, if someone within the Craft had murdered Seamus, well, that was almost too terrible to contemplate. Someone had to contact the Société du Sortilège.
I needed to speak to the Duchess.
Chapter Two
The minutes ticked by on the clock above the door.
Every click of the second hand seemed as loud as a gong. The rhythmic ticktock had been the only sound for what felt like hours. This interview room had to be soundproof because I felt as isolated as if I were sitting in a cell on another planet.
Why didn’t John come? Surely they’d contacted him?
Or maybe not. Maybe they hadn’t been able to find him. This was the night of John’s stag party—speaking of arcane traditions—and it was highly unlikely he was regularly checking his phone.
I put my face in my hands, practiced slow, calming breaths, resisted the temptation to use a summoning spell. No. Once you started down that road…well, that was not the way to treat your beloved consort, that’s all.
Maybe they had reached John and he had declined to ride to my rescue.
My heart shuddered to a stop at the thought.
He wouldn’t. He loved me every bit as much as I loved him. In fact, if he’d been anyone but John, I’d say he was downright besotted. But John was not only severely scrupulous, he was ambitious, and nothing said bad career move like your fiancé getting hauled in on suspicion of murder.
No, this was nonsense. Of course John would come.
There was a reason I was sitting by myself in an in
terview room and not in a jail cell. John was the reason. I was letting my fears get the better of me.
And I was probably letting my fears get the better of me about Seamus too. The athame could have been Seamus’s own, used against him by a perfectly ordinary homicidal burglar. I hadn’t had a good look at those scratchings. I could have imagined—
In the midst of my zigzagging thoughts, the door to the interview room flew open, John strode into the room, and I jumped from my chair and went to him.
In the split second before I threw myself in his arms, I could see he looked tired and ever-so-faintly disheveled. His collar was crooked, and he smelled of alcohol and cigarettes. I didn’t even know he smoked.
“John, I swear I had nothing to do with it. He was already dead when I got there.”
He took me by both arms, pushing me back and raking me over with a hard, intent gaze. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m fine.”
His expression looked compressed with anxiety. “You’re not hurt?”
“No. I—”
I broke off as he hauled me into his arms. “Thank God,” he muttered. “Thank God for that.”
I hugged him back with equal fervor. I knew, obviously, that he was pretty fond of me—and vice versa—but this seemed uncharacteristically emotional for John. But then he’d told me only the night before that he couldn’t believe the things he said to me sometimes. That it had never been like this with anyone else, that he’d never felt like this with anyone else. “I didn’t think I even had this in me,” he’d said.
Which made me happy, of course. Not least because I felt exactly the same.
I raised my head and met his eyes. “He asked me to come there after-hours. He’d found a book he thought I might be interested in. I walked in and found him…like that. There was no reason for me to kill him.”
“Of course not,” John said.
Again, I appreciated the sentiment, but it was a little surprising. John is…maybe not cynical, but certainly a born skeptic.
“I couldn’t have been there more than a couple of minutes. I was so shocked, I couldn’t think of what to do, and then the officers burst in.”
It was the absolute truth, but somehow it sounded false. I’m not sure why. Maybe because there was so much else I was holding back. John didn’t seem to hear anything off, but as I looked past him, I saw Sergeant Pete Bergamasco hovering in the hall.
Bergamasco is John’s aide-cum-one-man-protection-detail-cum-anything-else-John-needs. He’s about fifty, gruff, gray, and grizzled. In fact, he bears a marked resemblance to the dog breed of the same name. He did not like me. A lot. I wasn’t sure why because I wanted him to like me and had done my best to ingratiate myself—or maybe that was why.
Anyway, Bergamasco was eyeing me with a cold and unwavering stare. I looked away.
John, hands resting on my shoulders, said, “Tell me exactly what happened. Start at the beginning. How do you know Reitherman?”
You need to be careful. I said, “I’ve known him for years. We travel in the same…circles. Occasionally, we’ve been rivals.” I closed my mind to the memory of Great-great-great-uncle Arnold and the Louis XVI rococo hanging mirror. “Never anything I’d want to kill him over.”
“Go on.”
“He phoned this afternoon—no, I guess it would be yesterday afternoon now.”
“Focus.”
“Right.” I drew a sharp breath and let it out slowly. “Seamus said he had a book he thought I might be interested in. He asked me to come after business hours.”
“He asked you to come at midnight?” Bergamasco burst out as though he just couldn’t contain himself a moment longer.
“No, I was running late.” I threw John an apologetic look. He really disliked tardiness, and I’m always late.
“It’s all right,” John reassured, ignoring Bergamasco. “What was this book Reitherman needed you to see after-hours?”
I said vaguely, “It’s just an old book of, um, poems.”
“Poems? By who?”
What the hell did he care by whom?
I contained my exasperation. “By various authors, I believe.”
“I see.” He was trying to, clearly. “So this book of poems is very old and very valuable? It’s a first edition or something?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Why wouldn’t he sell it himself? Did he think he could get a better price from you? Why would he think you’d be interested?”
“Because I collect…similar books.”
John looked surprised—and charmed. “I didn’t know that. I didn’t know you collected poetry first editions.”
Now standing in the room behind him, Bergamasco sighed. Heavily.
“Yes!” I lied brightly. “I just didn’t want to scare you off, sharing all my dark secrets too soon.”
John laughed.
Bergamasco shook his head.
“Okay,” John said. “You arrived at Reitherman’s shop at what time?”
“I’m not exactly sure. I was supposed to be there by eleven. I know I was late.”
“How did you get there?” Bergamasco interrupted. “You don’t drive.”
I gave him a murderous look. He took it without so much as a blink.
“I took a taxi.”
“Right,” John said, like this could never be in doubt. “What company did you call?”
Merde. This was just getting more and more complicated. “You know what, actually, I think it was Uber.”
John hesitated, then dismissed it. “Okay. We’ll come back to that. When you got to the shop…”
My turn to hesitate. “It was dark, and the CLOSED sign was hanging in the door. It was swinging as though Seamus had just locked the door.”
“But you told the officers the door was unlocked.”
I flushed. “Yes. I— It was.”
John considered me. He didn’t say anything for a moment, and I felt my face go warmer still. John said finally, “You went in through the door. What did you see? Did you touch anything? What exactly did you hear?”
At the memory, my stomach tightened with nerves and dread. “I don’t think I touched anything but the door handle. And I don’t remember hearing anything at all. I called out to him. Seamus. He didn’t answer. Like I said, the lights were all off except for the lamp in his office. I could see that was on, so I assumed he was probably in the store somewhere. I walked back to his office and saw him immediately.”
The scritch of my swallow was audible to all of us. “There was blood. A lot of blood. I knew he had to be dead. His eyes were open, staring…”
John gave me a little comforting squeeze. “What else?”
“There isn’t anything else.” Not that I could share with him.
A uniformed female officer knocked on the frame of the open doorway. “Commissioner? Commander Zhang says you should know the press is already waiting for a statement.”
We all looked at the clock above the doorway. Just past seven.
John swore quietly and turned back to me. “Don’t worry. You’re safe now. Newman will drive you home.”
“I-I’m not under arrest?”
“Of course not.”
“Really?” I didn’t dare look at Bergamasco. I said quickly, “I mean, I didn’t—okay. Thank you.”
He made a sound of amusement. Not so Bergamasco.
I said, “Never mind about the ride. Andi’s already on her way.”
John’s brows drew together—I didn’t have my cell and had not been granted a phone call—but then seemed to accept it. He did say in warning, “This could get messy. I have plenty of political enemies in this city, people who would like nothing better than to use some scandal like this to bring me down.”
I couldn’t help wincing at the “scandal like this.” “I know. I’m sorry.”
He brushed it off. “This isn’t your fault. The most important thing is you weren’t harmed. But it is possible—more than possible—that you may
have been deliberately set up.”
While I couldn’t afford for John to know the complete truth, I didn’t want him wasting time and energy and resources on following false trails.
“That seems… I don’t think that’s very likely.”
He smiled like I was an adorable imbecile. “Go home,” he ordered. “Stay there. Don’t talk to the press. Don’t talk to anyone until you hear from me.”
“Yes. Right. I will. Won’t.”
He nodded, turned, then seemed to recall himself, turning back to drop a quick, almost cursory kiss on my mouth. I returned that kiss a little desperately.
John drew back, but gently. He said softly, “I love you, Cos. Don’t worry about anything.”
I nodded. “I love you too.”
I followed him out of the room. He disappeared down the long bulletin-board-lined corridor, Sergeant Bergamasco on his heels. Bergamasco glanced back at me. His gaze was not friendly.
“This way,” the uniformed officer said from behind me. I’d forgotten all about her.
She led me to a small office, where I received my phone, wallet, and house keys in an unsealed manila envelope. I signed for the envelope, signed a couple of other forms, and was led to the emergency exit in the rear.
“You want to avoid the front,” the officer advised. “There are reporters and photographers and other lowlifes hanging out there.”
“Thank you.”
I waited until she had disappeared inside the building. Then I raised my hands, spoke the words, and stepped through the doorway that appeared.
* * * * *
Estelle Saville, Duchesse d’Abracadantès, is a French national and very high placed witch in direct line for accession to the seat of the Crone. She’s the favorite niece of the elderly and powerful Laure d’Estrées, the current Crone or, vulgarly, Queen of Witches.
Estelle is also my mother.
We have the same last name because she declined to marry my father. Had she married Torquil Tremaine, a lowly American and, worse, descendent of Cornish witches, I—and she—would have been pushed further back down the line of inheritance.
I only mention it because it gives you a little insight into Maman.