“Does that disturb you?” Burnett asked.
“Yes, it disturbs me,” she said with sass. “Tabitha is my friend. I wouldn’t hurt her.”
“Were you two together today?”
“No,” Sienna said. “I was meeting my parents for dinner when I saw the commotion.”
“So, you didn’t cause the commotion?”
“Sienna wouldn’t do that,” Tabitha insisted.
Sienna frowned. “But he has to hear that from me, don’t you?”
Burnett didn’t pretend. “Yes.”
“No, I didn’t try to kill Tabitha. And I resent that you think I did.”
Miranda tried to read Burnett to see if he caught the girl lying, but Burnett’s expression didn’t give anything away. Then, remembering Kylie’s ability to turn vampire, she looked at her with the question in her eyes.
Kylie nodded, telling her that Sienna was telling the truth.
Sienna’s gaze shot to Miranda. “Why aren’t you asking her questions? Is it because she goes to your school, and you don’t want one of your precious students to be guilty?”
“I’m precious?” Miranda said, sending the girl a fake smile. “Thank you for that compliment.”
Burnett let out a low growl. “It’s true. My relationship with Miranda Kane prevents me from being suspicious of her. However, evidence guides me in the same direction.”
“What evidence?” Sienna asked.
Burnett didn’t appreciate being questioned, and his expression said so. “Why would she have saved Tabitha if she was the one attempting to kill her? Any more questions?” he asked in a clipped tone that demanded respect.
Sienna didn’t have a comeback.
Neither did Miranda. But probably for different reasons. It felt good—heart gooey, need-a-hug kind of good—knowing that Burnett believed in her. The temptation to jump up and embrace him hit hard. Embrace him like she would her dad. Her dad, whom she’d barely seen these last few months.
It hit her then. Hit her harder than it had earlier. She missed her dad. His work had always kept him on the road, but since she’d signed on full-time to Shadow Falls, it felt as if she barely saw him at all.
Kylie, with her chameleon shifting abilities, must have turned Fae, because she seemed to read Miranda’s mood and she leaned over and whispered, “It’s gonna be okay.” Her shoulder lightly pressed against Miranda’s and a sweet calm flowed from her touch. Yup, she was Fae, all right. Only a Fae’s touch could ease a heartache.
Burnett turned back to Shawn. “Play the last video.”
They all watched another video taken by a tourist who never knew his vacation images would be used in an investigation. This one, however, had a different angle, and showed something the others hadn’t.
The poop attack.
Miranda fell back into the leather cushions wishing she could disappear.
“What the hell was that?” Burnett said and replayed it again.
The camera caught the vamp being hit with four or five piles of excrement.
“I never saw that,” Shawn said. “I was too busy fighting.”
“Me neither,” Kylie added, and then she must have picked up on Miranda’s emotion because she looked at her.
Miranda nodded ever so slightly.
Burnett looked at Miranda. She wanted so badly to lie—admitting she goobered a spell in front of Shawn, not to mention Tabitha and Sienna, sucked—but her conscience wouldn’t let her.
“I saw Shawn had his hands full, and I wanted to help.”
“By slinging shit at the vampire?” Sienna asked.
“It worked,” Shawn added before Miranda started to explain her screwup. His blue eyes shifted from Sienna to Miranda, and he smiled. Tenderly. Sweetly. “Thank you.”
Oh, hell! As nuts as it sounded, it almost felt as if he knew she’d screwed up and was trying to save her from the embarrassment.
Burnett ran a hand through his hair as if worried. “Did you cancel the spell?”
“No, he was trying to kill us.”
Burnett chuckled. “Hell, I guess he deserves it.” He looked back down at the computer and projector. “Let’s go through all of this again and look for anything else unusual. Remember, chances are, the person who sent the fireball is somewhere on one of these cameras.”
Watching them all again brought on some flashes of memory for Miranda. When the show ended, she closed her eyes and let her own mental video play on the backs of her eyelids. And it brought on an insight. “You know who I saw there, and I haven’t seen in any of the video or photos?”
“Who?” Burnett and Shawn asked at the same time.
“The twins, Candy and Sandy. I saw them in the mix of the crowd.”
Burnett turned to Shawn. “I thought you said they were at the hotel?”
“I spoke with Candy when we got back and she said they hadn’t left.”
Burnett looked back at Miranda. “Are you sure?”
Miranda saw the images again in her mind then she refocused on Burnett. “Yeah. I’m positive.”
“You’re accusing Sandy and Candy of doing this?” Tabitha asked, her tone jam-packed with sarcasm.
“I didn’t accuse them of anything. I said I saw them there.”
“Well, I didn’t see them.” Sienna dropped back on the love seat and crossed her arms over her chest. A tiny smile appeared in her eyes as if she got pleasure from disagreeing with Miranda.
“Did you see them?” Sienna asked Tabitha.
“No,” Tabitha said, but with a lot less animosity. Who knew Sienna was a bigger bitch than Tabitha?
“You?” Sienna pointed the question to Kylie. “Did you see the twins?”
“No, but I wasn’t looking for them.” Anger flashed in Kylie’s eyes. “But if Miranda says she saw them, she did.” There was something deep and protective in her friend’s voice. Sienna ignored it.
Tabitha looked at Shawn. “I suppose you were too busy admiring Miranda to have seen them.”
Shawn’s frown came on fast. “I was sent to watch out for her.”
“Like you don’t have a thing for her,” Tabitha said. “I saw how you stared at her at the competition, and how you fawned over her when she passed out. Even tonight, you’re looking at her like she’s a piece of candy and you’re a diabetic.”
“My feelings for Ms. Kane outside of this case are none of your business.” His tone demanded her respect.
“And I’m not candy,” Miranda spit out without thinking. Then she wanted to shrink into the sofa cushions. Were Shawn’s feelings for her that noticeable? As crazy as it sounded, it made her both uncomfortable and … happy. Then, in a twitch of a pinky, she realized she hadn’t thought about Perry in the last few hours. Did that mean anything? Had she come all the way to Paris to finally accept his decision—to give their relationship space? Oh, that sucked on so many levels.
And that insight brought on a couple of even more contradicting emotions: relief and guilt.
Relief that she was finally moving in the right direction—meaning emotionally moving away from Perry—and guilt because … because she was emotionally moving away from Perry. How could she shift away from him when she loved him? Was it because down deep she still held a thing for Shawn?
Burnett stood up and looked at Shawn and Kylie. “You two hold down the fort here. I think I’ll have a little chat with the twins.” He started out, but turned and looked back, his gaze shifting to Miranda and then to Sienna and Tabitha. “I hope I don’t have to remind you three that you can’t leave here. We escaped this incident without having to ship anyone’s body back to the U.S., let’s not give whoever is doing this another shot at it.”
“But you just said that Tabitha was the intended victim,” Sienna said.
“For that attempt,” Burnett said. “He’s already killed two of the girls who were high contenders to make this round of the contest. From where I stand, it appears you are all intended victims. And until I know differently, you will do as I
say. Like it or not!”
He left in a flash, a cloud of anxiety lingering in his wake.
A cloud that brought on silence. A silence shattered by the ringing of Miranda’s phone. She reached for the cell, hoping it would be her dad, but nope.
She looked at Kylie and whispered, “Oh, crap. It’s my mom. If I tell her what happened, she’s gonna freak.”
* * *
Her mom hadn’t freaked, probably because Miranda hadn’t told her. Well, she’d told her a little, but downplayed the whole thing to make it sound like nothing more than a little inconvenience. And a little attempted murder.
“Seriously, it was just a few misbehaving vampires.” Miranda stood, wanting to find a private place to chat. Before she got away, Kylie reached over and squeezed her hand, offering a touch of calm. Obviously, she could read Miranda’s emotions.
“Does Burnett know?” her mom asked as Miranda stepped into the small kitchen. The door swished closed behind her.
“Yes, he’s looking into it.” Her “you just lied” alarm didn’t completely go off. Downplaying something wasn’t completely lying. Besides, her mom was thousands of miles away and wasn’t going to be here for a couple days. No reason to get her all panicky.
There was a pause.
“Is Dad home?” Miranda asked, remembering how she’d suddenly missed him earlier.
“No, he was asked to work another week in England.”
“He seems to be working more and more lately.” Miranda tried to keep her frustration from her voice.
“Yeah. He’s a workaholic.” A slight note of discontent sounded in her mom’s voice. Her mom had never complained about her dad’s schedule, she’d accepted it. As a matter of fact, she’d heard her mom tell people that she wasn’t sure she could live with a man full-time.
Her parents had never had what you could call a normal relationship. But they seemed happy. For the first time, Miranda worried perhaps her mom was getting lonely. Not that her mom was the type to get lonely. She had the social calendar of a celebrity. If anything, before Miranda had left to go to school at Shadow Falls, she’d often felt she was interfering with her mom’s busy schedule.
“So, he’s not going to come to Paris?” Miranda’s question met silence. “It would only take a few hours to get here by train. Mom?”
“Uh, no. Your dad’s not into competitions. You know that, dear.”
“Yeah, but I’ve never been up for high priestess before.” Not that this was her dad’s dream. Her mom was the one pushing for Miranda to climb the Wicca ladder of success. “Or in France. I just thought he might … you know, make an exception.” Another pause. “Maybe you could call him and ask. We haven’t had any family time in months.”
“You’re right. We should go skiing in Colorado. Right after Christmas. I think it’s his year to work on Christmas day. But I’ll mention it when I speak with him.”
Her dad, along with a friend, owned several boutique hotels across the U.S. Her mom had never wanted to live out of a hotel room, and other than a couple of times a year, they never stayed at one of her dad’s properties.
“Maybe if I call and ask him to come to Paris, he’ll do it,” Miranda said, feeling secure in her relationship with her father. It was her mom that Miranda had always felt she disappointed.
“It will only make him feel bad if he has to tell you no. Let’s not make him feel bad, okay?”
Miranda had heard that line before. When she first realized that most fathers didn’t travel so much for their jobs, she complained that her dad wasn’t going to be around for a holiday. It’s just a day, her mother told her, we can celebrate Christmas or Easter any day. And they did. Always.
Her family life had never been traditional, but when she considered her friends with more traditional family lives, friends whose parents divorced, and even sued each other for custody of the kids, Miranda decided nontraditional wasn’t all that bad.
Sure, her parents argued. Her mom would turn her poor dad into a baboon or a rat, but she always changed him back, and after a few days of not speaking to each other, they always made up. More importantly, Miranda sensed they were happy.
“When is your plane landing in Paris?” Miranda asked in lieu of agreeing to not calling her dad. She missed him, darn it. What would it hurt to call him and ask him to come?
She had never really considered herself a daddy’s girl, but realizing someone might be trying to kill you had this girl wanting her first hero.
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to check my ticket.”
“Okay,” Miranda said, and looked back to make sure the door was closed. Now that she had her daddy issues resolved, she decided it was time to tackle a different issue altogether.
“Mom, can I ask you something?”
“Why … sure,” she replied, yet her tone sounded unsure. “But if this is about sex, let me sit down first. And if you’re going to tell me you’re pregnant I’m gonna need to fix a drink.” Silence spilled into the line while Miranda tried to wrap her head around her mom’s response. “Oh, gawd, do I need a drink?”
“No. It’s not about sex and I’m not pregnant.” Miranda recalled that Della’s parents were always accusing her of such things. Rolling her eyes, she sat down at the small kitchen table. “Why would you even think that?”
“Is it about that boy, Peter?”
“Perry, not Peter, and no, it is not about him.”
“Okay, then I should be able to handle it standing up and sober.”
Miranda inwardly sighed. Who knew her mom was such a drama queen? “What happened between you and Tabitha’s mom fourteen years ago?” Miranda heard her mom’s deep breath.
“What? Is Mary Esther there?”
Miranda figured Mary Esther was Tabitha’s mom. And it seemed odd that her mom would refer to her by her first name. “No.”
“So her little twit said something, huh? Ignore her.”
“Ignore what? Mom, what happened? Why do I feel as if everyone knows something that I don’t?”
All of a sudden, Miranda remembered what she had started to suspect. She and Tabitha shared the premonition gift. Shit! Did that mean…?
Miranda mentally pulled up a vision of Tabitha’s mom. The woman had similar features to her mom and was about the same height, and the same body shape. “Mom, are you and Mary Esther related?”
“Why would you ask that?” Her mom’s voice inched up to the panic stage.
“Because Tabitha and I share some talents that are mostly common in bloodlines. Tell me. Is Mary Esther like my aunt or something? Is Tabitha my cousin?”
“I can’t talk about this now,” her mom snapped, and hung up.
Chapter Ten
The kitchen door swung open behind Miranda. Still in a kind of shock, she looked back, half expecting it to be Tabitha. She was wrong.
“How bad was it?” Kylie asked.
It took Miranda a second to realize Kylie was referring to her telling her mom about the whole mess at the Eiffel Tower. “Not too bad. I sugarcoated it. But…” Miranda paused to consider how to put this. “But I think … I mean, it sounds crazy, but I think Tabitha and I are cousins. I think our moms are sisters.”
“Whoa, how did you find that out?”
“I asked. Not that she admitted it, but … remember Tabitha and I share the gift of premonition. That usually runs in families. And when I was young, we ended up going to the same day care. My mom and her mom had this big fight and Tabitha got pulled from the school. Mom told me all the fuss was about the cookies.”
“Cookies?” Kylie asked and grinned. “And you believed her.”
“Hey, I was three. Cookies were a big deal.” Miranda stood up. “I didn’t see Tabitha again until Mom started forcing me to go to competitions. And right off the bat, she hated me. I couldn’t figure it out. But just now I realized how her mom and my mom are similar. About the same height, same body shape, hair color. I mean, it would make sense, right?”
“I guess,??
? Kylie said. “Did your mom deny it?”
“No. But she got all panicky and said she couldn’t talk about it, then hung up.”
“Has she ever mentioned a sister?”
“No, she said she was an only child. And seeing that she’s so into herself, I never doubted it.” Miranda sighed.
“What about your grandparents?”
“They died when I was really young. I barely remember them.”
“Hey, do you think that’s what Tabitha meant when she said for you to stop acting as if you didn’t know?”
“Yeah, that’s what I think.”
“You know what?” Kylie said. “Now that I consider it, you and Tabitha sort of look alike. I mean, she has red hair and blue eyes, but if you just compare facial features, you two could be sisters.”
Miranda nodded and looked at the door. Maybe it was time for her and Tabitha to have a talk.
* * *
The talk didn’t happen. By the time she left the kitchen, Sienna and Tabitha had locked themselves into one of the three bedrooms. Miranda had knocked. Sienna had answered. When Miranda said she wanted to talk to Tabitha, Sienna informed her that Tabitha was resting and didn’t want to be disturbed.
Now, two hours later, past midnight, Miranda lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to Kylie sleep, and trying not to listen to her own heart break.
It broke over missing Perry. And over her confusion about what she felt for Shawn. It broke over missing her dad. It broke over feeling as if her mother was keeping secrets.
And in a little way it broke over knowing someone might be out to kill her.
Funny how being on someone’s hit list hurt less than the other issues. Maybe it was because Miranda really hadn’t wrapped her head around it yet.
Right then Miranda heard footsteps outside her door. Who could that be?
Throwing back the covers, Miranda tugged on her pink cotton nightshirt, reading the word princess written across the front. Giving it a glance, she decided it wasn’t indecent, and went and opened the door.