by Josh Lanyon
“Your mother and her friend will be there? That’s for sure?” Nola persisted.
“Yes,” I said. “Maman and Phelon will be there. That’s for sure.”
“Though she’s not here now.”
It was tempting to answer, If she was here, you’d know it, lady. But I did not. Nola was going to be my belle-mère (now there was a misnomer), and I was determined to give her my respect even if love wasn’t in the cards.
John said, “You know she’s not, Mamie.”
I said, “Unfortunately, she had another engagement.”
My primary parental unit had declined to attend the rehearsal, though she was going to grace us at dinner—along with her current companion, Phelon Penn. Regardless of what Nola thought, my mother not being at the rehearsal was good news for all of us. The Duchess has never been good at keeping her feelings to herself. Anyway, since John and I were not planning to do any kind of parental hand-off during the ceremony, there was no need for either of our mothers to be at the rehearsal. Though of course nothing could have kept Nola away—it gave her such an excellent opportunity for practicing her burned-alive-at-the-stake look for Sunday.
Nola was not a woman who gave up easily. “It’s only that at a hundred dollars per plate, I hate for John to throw his money away on someone who isn’t going to be there.”
John said quietly, “Mother.”
I smiled, though it wasn’t easy. “I understand. If you’ll excuse me for one moment?”
I heard John’s deep tones and Nola’s wounded protest as I moved across the grass to speak to Vaughn, Brianna, and Rex.
“Hey, you made it.” I put my arms around Brianna’s and Vaughn’s waists, and kissed Brianna’s cheek.
“Did we have a choice?” Vaughn asked. He was only sort of joking. V. was short, slim, and fair. Both his hair and beard were styled in sharp geometric lines. He wore an onyx stud in his ear and a tiny silver ring in his left brow. But though he cultivated the look and manner of a fashionable villain, he was a good-natured goof.
Brianna—who, to her disgust, looks like pretty much every dark-haired teen witch on television—stared at me with wide eyes. “Sacrebleu, Cos. So it’s true? Seamus Reitherman was murdered?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“They’re saying it was someone within the Craft.”
“Who says that?”
Bree shrugged. “Everyone. I don’t know where it started, but that’s what people are saying. Whispering.”
How would anyone know that? I was the only one who had seen those faint chalk marks—and I’d removed them. The only person I’d told had been my mother, and one thing the Duchess knows how to do is keep a secret.
Rex said, “You look like you’ve been brawling with the wedding planner.” Rex is older than the rest of us. Probably mid-thirties; they’re always vague about personal details. Tall, lanky, and brown, with a hawk-nose and shoulder-length Botticelli curls.
“What?” I remembered what, and automatically put a hand to my cut lip. “Oh. No. I, er, fainted.”
“Fainted!” Bree echoed.
V. said, “Did you suddenly realize who you were about to marry?”
“Oh, ha-ha.”
V. shrugged modestly.
Bree said, “How could the police possibly think you had anything to do with Seamus’s murder?”
“Well, for one thing I was there when they arrived.”
For the first time I wondered how the police had got there so fast. I hadn’t called them. I had seen no sign of any alarm system. Seamus’s phone had not been anywhere in sight. And all the businesses neighboring the Creaky Attic were closed tight for the night. I needed to ask John about that.
“But you’re marrying the police commissioner.”
“Are you marrying the police commissioner?” Rex asked, watching me.
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
Rex spread their hands peaceably.
“Why would you even go to his shop?” V. asked. “You guys were archenemies.”
What was with the archenemy thing? Kolchak had used the same idiotic term.
“We weren’t— I wasn’t— He asked me to come there after-hours. He said he had, um, something to show me.”
“And you fell for that?”
“What?” Rex asked. “What was he going to show you?”
“I…don’t know. He was dead when I arrived.”
Bree whispered, “I can’t believe it. Who would do such a thing? I mean, yes, Seamus could be a total warlock, but he wasn’t…he wasn’t someone you’d—I mean anyone—would kill.”
“Ciara,” V. said. “It’s always the wife.”
She frowned. “How would you know it’s always the wife?”
“I watch TV.”
Bree shook her head in disgust. She did not approve of television viewing. “Not that I would blame Ciara, because Seamus would tap anything breathing.”
“He used to bully you in school,” V. said to me.
This is the problem with friends who’ve known you since childhood. They remember all the stuff you want forgotten.
“Yeah, sort of, but that was a million years ago. It’s not like I was holding a grudge.”
“Did he bully you?” Rex asked.
V. answered. “Yep. Once he pushed Cos in the school swimming pool, even though he was three years ahead of us and knew Cos was afraid of water and couldn’t swim because his cousin Waite had tried to drown him when he was five.”
“You know what,” I said. “It’s going to be way better if none of you ever mention any of this again. Especially not in front of…” It occurred to me that Sergeant Bergamasco was not present. He was supposed to be one of John’s groomsmen.
But maybe he was too busy trying to wrap a noose around my neck to attend the wedding rehearsal.
“If you want to solve this, you have to look at it from every angle,” V. said.
“If I want to solve this? I’m not trying to solve it. I’m not a detective.”
“No, but you’re going to be a prison inmate if you leave it to the police.” V. added, “At least according to the news.”
Bree gasped.
Rex said, “It does sound like you’re the only suspect.”
Not according to John, but maybe John wasn’t telling me everything. Maybe John didn’t know everything. I glanced across the lawn to see him standing with his groomsmen. They formed a wall of brawny ex-military types in jeans and polos or shorts and Hawaiian shirts—accessorized by Ray Bans, huaraches, and too much machismo. John didn’t look particularly worried. In fact, they were all laughing and talking and elbowing each other like friendly elk before rutting season began.
“I’m not the only suspect.”
V. said, “It doesn’t matter. If this murder was done by someone within the Craft, the police will never catch her.”
“Her?” Bree said.
“Like I said, my money’s on Ciara. Those Celtic witches are very hot-tempered. If I were you—”
Rex said, “Sleuthing is not a job for amateurs.”
“Well, we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it,” I said with determined cheerfulness. I tried to change the subject. “So…no Andi?”
“Nope.”
My heart sank. I’d been too distracted to phone Andi back, and she probably didn’t realize the wedding was still on. It seemed a million years since I’d discovered she had used a love spell on John, and although I remained heartsick, my anger at her had faded. I mean, yes, Andi had her faults, but so far she hadn’t tried to drown me or drop a piano on me.
My efforts to move the conversation from hard feelings and homicide did not succeed. Rex returned once more to the scene of the crime. “Does John think you had something to do with Reitherman’s murder?”
“Of course not.”
Now that they mentioned it, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. I assumed John knew I was innocent. He seemed to take it for granted I was innocent. Was that chivalry or genuine c
onfidence?
“Will the Society get involved?’ Rex asked. Rex was not Abracadantès, and like many within the Craft but outside la Société, took a cynical view of their long-standing domination of Craft hierarchy.
I said, “It’s hard to see how they wouldn’t.”
“Is that going to be a problem for you?”
V. snorted. “His mother is next in line to the Crone. He’s going to be Witch King one day. I doubt it.”
“The hell,” I said, glaring at him.
At V.’s words, Brianna caught her breath and twisted her fingers in a swift avert spell. “Remember where you are,” she hissed at him.
Vaughn reddened, but said, “No one’s paying any attention to us. They think we’re Cosmo’s weird friends.”
“Exactly!”
He hissed back at her, “Anyway, the point is, if la Société is letting him marry a mortal, they’re not going to object to his knocking off a warlock like Reitherman!”
“Let me marry? Anyway, I’m not going to be— You know I’ve rejected all that. I’m out of practice and have been for years.”
Brianna said, “You’re still Craft, Cos.”
“And you’re still practicing,” Rex said. “Maybe not officially, but you’re practicing, all right. That’s a given. You could more easily stop breathing.” They hesitated. “Will the Society investigate?”
What was Rex’s fascination with this? What did they care what the Society did or didn’t do? Why couldn’t they drop it?
“I don’t know. I don’t know how it will work.”
“You would have to have more motive than some childhood grudge.”
“It’s because of the mirror,” Brianna explained. “Cosmo’s great-great-great uncle is imprisoned in an antique mirror Reitherman tried to steal.”
“You guys—” To my alarm, I spotted Nola trekking our way with her perennial look of determination. I said urgently, “Can we please, please, continue this later?”
“You may not have a later,” Rex said.
It didn’t really register because at the same moment, Bree looked past me and said, “Here’s Andi!”
Relieved, I turned to see Andi half jogging down the steep flagstone walk. She was wearing some kind of floaty, flowery gray and white dress, but despite the high heels, she was fast and agile as a mountain goat—until V. whistled to her.
Andi’s head jerked up, and to my horror, I saw her misstep. Her heel caught on one of the flagstones, and she pitched forward. Three of us put our hands out to stop her fall—and three of us froze, remembering we were among mortals.
Rescue came from an unexpected direction.
John’s best man, Trace, seemed to leap across the grass, landing at the bottom of the steps in time to catch her. There was a universal gasp of relief from the watching crowd as he swooped her up as though trying out for the lead role in a Hallmark movie.
Trace asked her something, and Andi blinked up at him, looking confused and flustered.
Trace set her on her feet. He was smiling down at her—and Andi, looking pinker and more and more like one of her own confections—seemed to be assuring him she was perfectly fine.
I glanced away and happened to catch Rex’s gaze. Rex was staring at me, and although their expression instantly rearranged itself into its normal bland friendliness, for a split-second I thought they looked horror-stricken.
Chapter Ten
Despite what you might expect—despite what I expected—the rehearsal went off with almost military precision.
Afterward, John and I went up to the house so I could change my clothes. I was hoping for a moment alone with him, but Nola and Jinx went with us, so there was no chance to tell him about my interview with Sergeants Kolchak and Iff before leaving for the rehearsal dinner at City Club.
Although the city provided John with a car and an official driver, he always drove himself to and from anything not work-related, so that evening he chauffeured the four of us. Nola spent the entire trip making dire predictions about the cost of the evening’s bar tab. She had wanted to hold the rehearsal dinner at the hall of St. Patrick’s, but thankfully, John had nixed that.
“The church doesn’t recognize our marriage, so we’re sure as hell not giving them our business, even if they wanted it, which I’m sure they don’t.”
Nola had protested, “You’re the police commissioner, John. They would gladly make an exception for you.”
“I don’t want to be an exception,” John said. “Or make an exception.”
But even Nola was not proof against the old-fashioned glamor of City Club’s polished black-and-green marble floors, black-and-white marble walls, and gold-leaf ceiling.
Elevators whisked us up to the tenth floor. The tall doors slid open, and we walked into a crowded room full of smiling people. The air was scented with roses and orange blossom. Candlelight flickered in crystal lanterns, casting gold shadows over the linen-covered tables.
In all honesty, most of the evening passed in a blur. I do remember that the food was great—though I couldn’t tell you what I ate—the service terrific, and mostly people seemed to be having a good time. John’s friends certainly had a good time—and Nola was quite right about the impressive bar bill.
Rex did not show up at dinner and did not answer my phone calls when I tried to find out if something had happened to them on the drive over. But that wasn’t a total surprise. Rex was not all that social; in fact, I’d been surprised as well as pleased when they’d agreed to act as one of my attendants.
V. and Bree did make it to dinner, but did not stay much after the meal. Despite the bright smiles and pat-on-the-back assurances that it was going to be a lovely wedding, their fond farewells sounded more like commiseration as they clutched their silver flasks—John’s gift to each member of the wedding party—and made their escape. They promised to meet me and Andi at the restaurant the following night for my enterrement de vie de garçon.
At least Andi stayed the whole evening, attended assiduously by John’s best man, Trace, who seemed downright smitten with her.
“He’s not married or anything, is he?” Andi asked uneasily when we ran into each other at the bar.
“No. Widowed.”
“Recently?”
“Not sure.”
Her hazel eyes met mine diffidently. “Are you— Is everything— It seems like John’s as crazy about you as ever?” I didn’t miss that tiny, cautious uptick of inquiry.
“Something’s different,” I said. “I can feel it. But he doesn’t seem to want out. Yet.”
She put her hand on mine. “I think he does really care, Cos. He watches you all the time.”
“He’s not sure if I committed murder or not.”
I hadn’t meant to say it aloud, and she looked shocked.
I said quickly, “I’m joking.”
I hoped so anyway.
She nodded doubtfully.
“Then you’re going ahead with it.”
“Well, yeah.” I indicated the lavishly appointed room, people talking animatedly at tables. “Clearly.”
She made a little moue. “And what about us? Are we…?”
I felt my mouth curve into a reluctant, wry smile. I mean, I knew why she’d done it. For the same reason in second grade I’d given Gideon Terwilliker a green polka-dot complexion after he’d declined to share her Hostess cupcake. It’s a funny thing, but it’s easier to forgive people hurting us than to forgive them hurting someone we love.
“It’s forgotten,” I said. “But from now on, stay out of it. Whatever happens between me and John is between me and John.”
“Witch’s honor.” Andi stuck her little finger out, and I curled my own around it. Mortals call that pinky swear. We call it… Well, actually we call it a pinky swear too.
A minute or so after I left her, I finally ran into John. We were spending most of the evening circulating and so had not really spent much time together.
“Where’s Sergeant Bergamasco?”
I asked. “I haven’t seen him tonight.”
John gave me what I was starting to think of as his bad-news smile. His mouth curved, but his expression stayed impassive. “Nothing to worry about. We’ll talk about it later.”
If we needed to talk later, obviously it was something to worry about, but I offered an equally untroubled smile. “Of course.” I glanced past him as the elevator doors slid open and a tall man in his mid-fifties with black hair and angular features exited.
I said, “My father’s arrived. Would you like to meet him?”
“I would.” I started to turn, but John stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. His brown-gold eyes studied my face. “Are you having a good time, Cosmo?”
“Comme ci, comme ça.” I wiggled my eyebrows. “It’s a lovely party, but I’m looking forward to going home with you.”
John’s smile was sudden and very white. “Me too.”
As I led the way through the tables, I heard him say ruefully, “Nothing brings home the age difference like realizing your parents are only a few years older than me.”
To which I really didn’t have an answer.
I managed to intercept my father before he could make his way over to where my mother was holding court with Uncle Lucien, Aunt Iolanthe, Great-aunt Coralie, my cousin Waite, and his fiancée, Jadis. Yes, Jadis. Her parents actually named her after the White Witch in the Chronicles of Narnia. And my family thinks I’m too much influenced by mortal culture.
“Ah, Cosmo,” my father greeted me in his usual, cool New England tones. “I didn’t know pets were allowed at this event.”
That piquant comment was not directed at me or John. It was aimed at Phelon Penn, my mother’s companion. Companion sounds better than boy toy. Same job description, but a higher paygrade.