The pleased look faded from Jake's face as he got back to business. "Let's start your feedback reports. How are the residents reacting to the news about Wyatt?"
"Linc, Dawn, and Adrian like him from REM. He was nice to me during the exercise. So the reaction so far is okay, but has the Wizards Council made other demands on you?" I asked.
"Not yet, but if they decide the residents aren't safe here, they could shut us down. Bringing in Wyatt was a preemptive strike."
"At first I was uneasy at the change—Wyatt not just being here for REM meetings but taking on a full-time counseling roll at the ranch," I admitted.
Jake nodded. "I understand your reaction, but I have to be prepared for the worst. If I become a suspect in Cullen's death, I need backup leadership to make sure the residents are cared for."
I was alarmed at the thought of more changes. "What? You never had any problems with Cullen except that he whined when you disciplined him. That's no motive to create a magical weapon to kill him."
"My ex-wife lived with Cullen after she filed for divorce."
I stared at him, shocked. A messy breakup blotted my image of Jake as a dedicated, well-balanced counselor. "This is a bad fact. A colossally bad fact. I can't believe it. How many other people here know?"
"Vidoc and Kai. The police didn't ask me about it during the first round of questioning yesterday, so I assume Vidoc and Kai didn't reveal it. They're wonderfully loyal to me." Jake dropped onto the bench. He slumped, probably weighed down by memories of his ruined romance.
I wanted to comfort him. He'd worked hard to help me, and I knew what it was like to recall a failed love affair. When I first came to the ranch, I still brooded over a year-old breakup with a musician. Working on my magic and meeting Ira had finally cured me of lovelorn longings.
I joined him on the bench and lowered my voice to a murmur. "I'm sorry you have to relive that bad time. On top of everything else." I tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace. "I know you need time to work out your feelings, but you also should be ready with answers when the cops ask you about your ex. You know they're going to find out." Talk about a motive for murder.
He straightened. Although as a counselor he encouraged us to express our feelings, he didn't often share his experiences. "You're right. The police will never believe I no longer hated Cullen. I'd gone way beyond wanting to punch him. The only thing that would drive me to violence would be the need to protect my students. Like you."
As he spoke those last two words, he looked into my eyes. Once more, I sensed he was trying to convey some hidden meaning. Wow. I felt it before I understood. A buzz of energy, an electric charge of attraction, flowed between us. Not magic, but magical, as in a thrill. I lowered my gaze, breaking the connection. I'd experienced that tingling at the start of my romance with Ira. We still created chemistry, just not the original big buzz. I didn't know if Jake felt the same as me or if it was all on my side. Time to break the mood.
Jake shifted on the bench.
I should speak and establish a business-like atmosphere. It would be wrong to flirt with Jake. I was a one-man woman.
"Jake, be careful what you say. Don't ever even suggest that you might do something violent. Look at your situation from the worst possible point of view. That's a thing we lawyers like to do. You were at the crime scene. You certainly have the magical ability to create the thing that killed Cullen. You had a strong motive to hate him. Didn't it drive you crazy to be the counselor for the guy who used to sleep with your wife?"
"It was five years ago. I was so angry at one point I lost control and set our bed on fire. She wasn't in it. She was afraid of me after that. I passionately hated my ex-wife. She dumped Cullen after six months. At least I had her for four years. I almost felt sorry for him."
"So," I summarized, "counselors don't handle breakups any better than the rest of us?"
"Right. We go nuts because we can't believe it ever took place."
"What happened after the bed burning?"
"A year of counseling." He waved his hands as if to brush away the memory.
"Still, how could Cullen come here for treatment when you had that history together?"
"We worked it out with an outside therapist before he started." He smiled. "Being dumped by the same woman created a weird kind of bond."
"Jake," I pointed out, "I'm finding your answers a bit glib. I have faith in you, but I know you're capable of violence."
He blinked, looking back into our past. "You mean the wind demon and the giant spider?"
Jake and I had come upon these creatures during my first days at the ranch when I was trying to solve a murder case. I still felt queasy when I remembered the gooey mess of the smashed arachnid.
"Especially when you killed the giant spider. Fire practically came out of your eyes, Jake. It was spooky."
"It's my fire familiar becoming as visible as he ever does. And I acted in self-defense against the spider."
"Right," I agreed. "Of course I'm not going to volunteer stuff about you to the cops."
Jake breathed deeply and rolled his shoulders, actions he often recommended as stress releasers. "I think the best strategy is for me to tell the police about Cullen before someone else does. What do you think?"
I rubbed my temples, trying to get my brain activated. "I'm too close to this problem. You need your own lawyer."
"Is it so bad that I need a lawyer on standby?"
"Yes. Either of my partners, Maxy or Bear, would kick butt for you."
"How about Maxy? I'd like to see her take on Detective Jonson."
"Okay, I'll message her to call you. What else bad do you have to tell me?"
"That's it. My relationship with Cullen since he's been here is a matter of record. Nothing will come up."
Dawn burst out onto the patio and marched across the yard to us. "It went fine. The detective said I was helpful."
Wyatt appeared behind her. "As long as you're truthful, you have nothing to fear from the police."
CHAPTER TEN
Wyatt sent Dawn and me to the barn while the police grilled residents and staff. He had developed an exercise to help us process Cullen's death.
The barn's interior was a rectangle with cubicles lined up on each side of its longest walls. A painted cement floor and bricked walls protected the area from the fires and explosions that accompanied our dysfunctional magic making. White and gray paint brightened the room. Students occupied all the cubicles, mixing potions, levitating balls, making rag dolls walk. Jake and Kai walked up and down, helping out.
Wyatt sent Dawn and me to the loft, a balcony extending around the four sides of the barn. We clumped up the metal stairs to stools set in front of a workbench littered with paint tubes, brushes, pens, pencils, and spray cans.
Wyatt put a face mask before each of us. The flesh-colored masks had blank features and extended from the hairline to the chin. Velcro straps were provided to hold the masks in place.
"I want you to create detailed faces for these masks. You'll wear them tomorrow at the grief counseling session for Cullen." When Dawn reached for a brush, he added, "You can only create the masks by using magic to apply the paint or whatever decoration you want. I'll be keeping an eye on you." He pulled a round object from his pants pocket and placed it above our heads so that it floated in midair. It was a glass eye the size of a baseball. It blinked and clicked, focusing down on us. A spying device, it would send to his phone a constant stream of video without sound.
I raised my brows at Wyatt. "What do you need that for? Jake has surveillance cameras all over the place."
Wyatt scrutinized the balcony. "I've heard rumors that some parts of the loft aren't covered by the cameras."
I waited until he had gone down the stairs before I nudged Dawn. "I wonder if he's also heard rumors about the secret spot on the porch."
A small portion of the front porch extended around the side of the house. None of us had ever been able to see it on the TV screens in
Jake's office, so we theorized we could be unobserved there. We used it—some more than others—for times when we wanted privacy in a space the size of a closet.
Dawn let out a sigh, probably remembering the romantic meetings she'd had with Linc in the secret spot. She said, "Come," and pointed at a jar of coppery paint. It slid over to her. "I'm going for a Native American look, a warrior."
I wondered if I had heard her right. She was not my idea of the warrior type. Blaze peeled off of his imprint. He perched on my shoulder then darted off to circle Wyatt's spying eye. When he tried to peck at it, the eye beeped at him. Blaze flew away from the high-pitched sound and landed on the counter, where he snatched up a brush in his beak and tapped at a tube of white paint.
I was excited because now Blaze and I would have a chance to work together. He'd already chosen the color.
"Okay, I'll open the paint." I usually did spells by combining mental images of what I wanted with words and gestures. When I felt more confident in using magic, I hoped to work up to a wand or staff to increase my power and accuracy. I stared at the tube to memorize its details. Closing my eyes, I pictured the tube moving over to me and the lid coming off. "Come to me," I said and beckoned.
A loud "Awk" came from Blaze. I opened my eyes to see the tube hadn't moved but was opened, and a dab of white paint had squirted onto the counter. Blaze poked at the paint with his brush.
"I wonder if it's okay to have my familiar help."
Using a nod of her head and a whispered word, Dawn directed a brush to apply copper tint to her mask. "Wyatt'll tell us if we're doing something wrong."
It would be easier for Blaze if I moved the paint closer to where he was working. The mound of white paint did obey my spell this time, oozing over to my familiar. Blaze dabbed delicately at the mask, turning its flesh tone into bright white.
"Detective Jonson was okay with you?" I asked.
Dawn frowned, and her brush wobbled over the mask's nose. "It felt wrong, but I told them about Linc, Adrian, and Jake."
"Jake?" I forced myself to keep my voice low, not wanting anyone to overhear me. How could she have snitched on Jake? He supposedly planned to admit his past issue with Cullen, but it looked bad for a resident to rat on him.
Dawn must have picked up on my concern because she changed to a whispery croak. "After Cullen said that rude thing to me, Jake took away his Sunday visitation. Cullen threatened to make a formal complaint."
"That's hardly a motive for murder." I was relieved she hadn't meant his wife's affair with Cullen.
"You told me I should tell the cops everything," she said.
I'd have to be more careful.
Footsteps clattered up the stairs. Linc, his face distorted in a scowl, stomped over to the stool next to Dawn. He slapped a mask down. "It's going to be a large, angry animal. It'll show how I'm mad about Cullen's death and the way the police are handling it."
I'd never seen Linc this disturbed. "What went wrong?"
He spoke in a foreign language that I didn't recognize and shook his fist. A can of spray paint poised above his mask. "Do you think it would do any good to get a lawyer now?"
"I know some lawyers who are hungry for clients. The cops might back off if they know you have a lawyer jumping up and down for you." I nodded encouragingly at Blaze, and he swept white paint on more enthusiastically.
Dawn stroked Linc's arm. "Did they have the nerve to accuse you?"
He closed his fist and opened it then quickly murmured some words in a low tone. The can sprayed brown paint on the mask. "I don't want to talk about it." When he cupped his hand over his nose and mouth, the lower half of his mask lengthened to form a snout. "That detective wouldn't answer any of my questions, all legitimate in my opinion, or even consider my ideas."
Blaze had spread white all over my mask. Stark white was not a terribly natural complexion. I didn't want to disturb Blaze's artistic flow and wondered what he planned to have the mask express then realized I hadn't responded to Linc's remark. "Cops ask questions, not answer them."
Linc tapped the top of his head and said, "Reform." The brow of his mask lowered to an inch above the eyes, giving the face a Neanderthal or ape shape. "That detective pretended she didn't understand when I explained how they couldn't prove the demon came from someone inside the ranch."
Using the brush like a broom, Blaze swept the tube of white paint away from our mask. He pushed a tube of black paint toward me.
"Do you think," I asked, "it could be some kind of attack from the outside, either random or planned?"
The ears on Linc's mask moved to the top of the head and became erect. "I have developed six tenable but as yet unproven hypotheses."
Dawn contemplated her mask, which now had jagged dark lines for eyebrows. "Why would someone send in a creature to just attack the first person it came across?"
"It may have been someone with a grudge against wizards in general or the ranch in particular," I theorized. "Nut cases want to hurt someone. They don't care who."
Blaze poked the black paint tube with his beak, and I did the lid-off spell. He dabbed a new brush in the paint that oozed out and hopped over to the mask. Watching him create broad streaks for eyebrows and a suggestion of hair along the top and sides, I recognized the arched brows and wavy hair. "You're making it look like me. I'm not sure that's right. I was thinking it should be more expressive than representational. Like theirs."
Linc put the last touch, a shiny nose, on a bear's face. On her mask Dawn had used circles, triangles, squares, and thick lines to create an abstract visage similar to those found in Native American art in the Southwest. The red line for the mouth turned down.
"Dawn, what does your mask mean?"
"I'm a warrior who kills for her tribe."
Blaze pecked at my mask's eyes and flew to a tube of green paint.
"No," I ordered. "Let's not make it my eye color. We need a color that will make a statement at the counseling session. You know, a symbol that gets people emotional, like a flag."
"Ack," Blaze answered. He pushed a tube of blue paint over to the green one and hopped between the two.
"You want to mix them? I don't know that blue-green eyes would say anything. Except—" Cullen's turquoise eyes had been one of his most striking features. Sometimes he wanted to vary the look and used a beautify spell to change the color of his irises to blue or gray or green, though aqua was the default hue. If the mask had blue-green eyes, it might remind people of Cullen and comfort them. "Good idea. Go for it."
After I opened the tubes and had paint squirted out, Blaze mixed them one dab at a time until he achieved a turquoise like a tropical sea in the sun. Using a fine brush, he filled in the irises. I gestured at Linc and Dawn to look at it. They gave off mixed signals, furrowed brows and half smiles, which disappointed me since I'd hoped for approval.
"It's weird," commented Dawn. "You blended your face and Cullen's."
I jumped at a loud voice behind me. "You have no right to use Cullen's face!"
Adrian stood on the landing to the loft. Although a large woman, she'd sneaked up the stairs on light feet. She switched her glare from the mask to me.
I faced her, wishing I could deflect her anger. "It's not exactly Cullen. It's really me with a touch of Cullen. It's a memorial to him."
"You have no right to use his image." Adrian snapped her fingers. "Destroy!"
A fist-sized orange ball formed above her hand. Flames spiked off its surface. The ball streaked toward my mask. As it came close, I waved it away, sending it straight up into Wyatt's eye spy, which dissolved in a burst of sparks.
The ball—now red—continued up to the ceiling where it bounced off and shot down toward Adrian. She slashed out her hands, and the ball flew at Linc. He caught it but immediately flung it away with a yelp.
The ball ricocheted off the wall behind Adrian and aimed for her back. I grabbed a tube of paint and slapped down at the ball to keep it away from her. At my gesture it hit the flo
or and dissolved. I barely saw this because when I leaned over to hit the ball, I lost my balance and tipped forward down the stairs. Before I hit the metal steps, I stopped and hung suspended. Jake, standing on the first stair, pointed at me, and I felt myself lift up. He levitated me until my feet touched the loft floor, where I teetered.
"It's okay. I've got you." Jake had bounded up the stairs. He positioned me upright.
The dream of this morning—going over a cliff—returned in graphic images of destruction. Blaze fluttered around me excitedly before settling on my shoulder, holding on as I lurched and bumped into a counter, still convinced I was falling. I steadied myself and saw that Jake and Adrian were staring at Linc.
Dawn grabbed his wrist. "That thing burned him." She thrust his hand forward. His palm was bright red.
"Ice," I called out, extending my hand and imagining it turning cold. My spell worked because a chill crept all over me. I had a way to help Linc. I placed my cold hand over his, causing heat to transfer from him to me. His cramped features relaxed, so I thought I'd eased his burning. I benefitted by warming up from his heat.
"Better." His voice came out a croak. His palm faded from crimson to light pink.
Jake cupped his hand on Linc's shoulder. "I called Wyatt to bring ice. Fast work, Petra."
I sank onto a stool at the counter where the masks rested. Adrian studied me with pursed lips. Really, couldn't she apologize for starting something that hurt an innocent bystander?
Linc flexed his hands. "The burning has gone away."
Wyatt charged up the stairs carrying a baggie crammed with ice. Dawn pressed it on Linc's palm, although he protested, saying that he was fine.
Jake came over and lifted up the baggie then looked at me. "You've already cured him."
Adrian reached for my mask. "This is why I got mad. I didn't think she had a right to use Cullen's eye color."
I held on to the wooden seat of the stool. The sensation of falling had made me need support. "I encouraged Blaze to use that eye color. I thought it would be a nice reminder of Cullen." Blaze brushed my neck with his wing, which I took to be his way to show he agreed with me.
Murder Lifts the Spirits Page 5