Devon Monk - [Ordinary Magic 02] - Devils and Details

  I didn’t dare look any lower. Ear. Ear should be safe.

  So I stared at his ear. “We need to talk. You need to talk. This isn’t talking.”

  He inhaled, held that breath. “Okay. We need to talk. Do you want to sit?”

  Since my heart wanted me to do more than sit: specifically run into the bedroom and strip off all my clothes, and my mind also wanted me to run, out the door and as far away from Ryder as I could get, I thought sitting in the living room was a nice compromise.

  I turned, blindly picked one of the chairs, sat there on the edge, hands gripping my thighs.

  I stared at my knees, at my hands that were white-knuckled. Because I couldn’t touch him. Because I shouldn’t touch him.

  Just breathe.

  I had a job to do. There was no time for my private life, not here, not with a murder suspect. And if he was innocent, then I needed to know how his blood ended up on Sven. I needed to know what he knew.

  If he hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger, he might know who had. I needed a clear head so I could watch his reactions to my questions and read if he was telling the truth or a lie. With my heart pounding loud as a freight train, I wouldn’t be able to hear his answers unless he shouted them.

  Pull it together, Delaney. Do the job.

  The clink of ice in a glass brought my head up. Ryder stood in front of the couch to one side of me, holding a glass of water. There was another glass in his hand. Looked like, smelled like whisky.

  “Thought we could both use a drink.”

  Great. He’d left the room long enough to pour drinks and I hadn’t even noticed. Losing my concentration in front of a possible murderer was every kind of stupid.

  He smiled softly. “If you’d rather, I have some rhubarb juice in the fridge.”

  Just like that, he was my friend again. Ryder Bailey. The man I’d never stopped loving.

  “Liar.” I took the water. Sipped. It was good, cold, and helped clear my head. “You hate rhubarb.”

  He settled down on the couch, one arm spread across the back, the other propping the tumbler on his thigh. “No, really, it was given to me after the festival. Haven’t opened it, but the expiration date is something like two years from now. The juice that never dies. Vampire juice.”

  I felt all the blood drain out of my face. “Why are you talking about vampires?” Even though my pulse was running too quickly, I was assessing his body language, and possible aggression levels.

  Ryder and I were friends. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t take him down, cuff him, hell, tase him, if he made the wrong move.

  “It was a joke? Apparently a bad joke. What do you have against vampires? Read too many teen books?”

  He was smiling, but there was something false about it. Something about his smile that wasn’t my friend. Ryder had been gone for eight years. It was moments like this when I remembered there were parts of him I did not know. “Or maybe you’ve seen someone suspiciously vampire-like lately?”

  He lifted his glass, swallowed the amber liquid, his gaze never leaving mine.

  It was that motion, the bend of his arm to bring the glass to his lips that caught my eye. His long shirt sleeve was tailored, a little tight on his muscular arms. It was buttoned at the cuff, but there was a bulkiness under the material, at the bend of his elbow.

  A bandage?

  “I need you to unbutton your sleeve for me,” I said.

  His head tipped to the side, as if he hadn’t quite heard me correctly. “What?”

  “I need you to unbutton your sleeve.”

  “You want me to get undressed?”

  “No. Just the sleeve. The left sleeve.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s been some trouble in town. I need to see your left arm.”

  He leaned forward and placed the glass on the coffee table in front of him. “What if I say no?”

  “Are you going to?”

  “I don’t know. I thought we were going to talk.”

  “This is talking. We’re talking.”

  “No.” He leaned back against the couch, but did not look relaxed. “Were you outside watching my house because of whatever’s happened in town?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. So this is police business, and even though I am a reserve officer, you’re not going to tell me what’s going on before you ask me to strip?”

  “I didn’t ask you to strip. It’s just an arm, Ryder.”

  “From the look on your face and your tone of voice, it’s a lot more than just an arm. What happened?”

  “Someone was killed.”

  “What?” He shot straight off the back of the couch, a look of complete surprise on his face. “Who? When? Here? In Ordinary? Have you caught the killer? No, of course you haven’t, you’re here. Wait. You think I’m the killer? Me?”

  The cascade of emotions and reactions he rolled through seemed genuine. If anyone else but my childhood friend were acting the way he was, I’d believe them.

  But there was something about the tightness at the edge of his eyes, something about the hard line of his mouth that belied his actions.

  Oh, Ryder. This is one time in your life you’re going to regret that you and I were such good friends.

  Cop instincts told me to play along, to act like I believed him. To act like he didn’t know anything about Sven’s death. Even though my heart was sinking, and a part of me wanted to find a small room, shut the door and just scream and scream, I instead took a drink of water.

  “I need to see your arm. You don’t show it to me, I’ll put you in cuffs, take you into the station and cut the shirt off of you.”

  He blinked a couple times as if my words confused him.

  “You’re angry.”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  He opened his mouth and inhaled, then let the breath out in a huff. “I can’t believe you think I’m lying.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  He unbuttoned his left cuff but lifted his hand and sort of waved his finger at me. “That face says otherwise.”

  “What face?”

  “The I-think-you’re-lying face.”

  “And you’re not?”

  He shook his head and then rolled up the sleeve. “I don’t have anything to hide. Why would I lie?”

  His sleeve was rolled up to just below the bend in his elbow. “Happy?” He turned his arm so I could see it. It was a nice forearm. Muscled, tan from whatever spring sun we’d gotten months ago. There were a couple of scars that had healed white beneath the dusting of hair.

  But that wasn’t the part of his arm I needed to see.

  “The whole thing,” I said.

  “My sleeve doesn’t roll up any farther.”

  “Then take off your shirt.”

  He smiled and there was a hard edge to the grin. “So you are trying to get me naked.”

  “Just your arm.”

  “All right.” The word had a bit of a drawl to it. Ryder leaned forward and unbuttoned his shirt. My gaze flicked away from his face long enough to see he was wearing a T-shirt beneath the button down.

  He tugged at the rolled up sleeve, then pushed his shirt off both shoulders, letting it pool around his low back.

  His elbow was wrapped with a light gauze which was holding down a pad at the inside of his elbow.

  “So what happened to your arm?”

  “I gave blood.”

  “To whom?”

  “The Girls Scouts.” His eyebrows dipped down tight and he looked really confused. “Red Cross. Who else?”

  “Do you donate often?”

  “When I can.”

  “Here in town?”

  “No. I was in Seattle at a meeting. But there was a blood drive going on outside the restaurant next to the hotel.”

  “So you decided to stop in and do your civic duty. How very Boy Scout of you, Bailey.”

  “You’re not a fan of saving lives?”

  I held his gaze. I couldn’t accu
se him of giving blood to be used as a vampire murder weapon. But I could get my hands on the Red Cross record base. Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of vamps who worked for the agency, and I was sure Rossi knew a few who would be able to tell us if Ryder had actually donated.

  “I’m a police officer,” I said after another sip of water. “I’m all about saving lives.”

  “Then why are you staring at me like I’m keeping secrets?”

  “Because you’re keeping secrets.”

  His expression stayed closed off, flat. And then a little grin—a very Ryder grin—curved his mouth. “Why would you think that?”

  “I don’t think it, I know it.”

  He nodded. “So are you.”

  I lifted one eyebrow, so he continued. “Keeping secrets. What aren’t you telling me, Delaney? Is there something about the death that I should know about?”

  “Nothing I’m at liberty to share.”

  He pulled the remainder of his shirt tails out of his slacks and tossed the shirt casually over the arm of the couch. Then he leaned forward, arms resting across his thighs, hands clasped. He looked like a man who was about to make a deal.

  “I want to make a deal.”

  Called it.

  “No.”

  “You wouldn’t say no if you heard the deal.”

  “Still no.”

  “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  “Anything?”

  “Yes.”

  “And why would you do that?”

  “There are some rules.”

  “Rules.”

  “My deal. My rules.”He held out one finger even though they were still linked. “One: I can refuse three questions.”

  “Okay.” Despite myself, I was warming up to this game.

  “Two: you can only ask me ten questions.”

  “Okay.” No deal breakers yet.

  “Three: you have to agree to the same for me. Answer seven of the ten questions I ask you. Honestly.”

  “Honestly.”

  “You want me to tell the truth. I want the same in return.”

  “And how long does this deal last?”

  “Until the questions run out.”

  I didn’t see how this could go wrong. I could answer anything he asked honestly. He might not like the answers but I could give them to him.

  “All right. Deal.”

  He smiled and leaned back. “So ask.”

  “Did you really donate your blood to the Red Cross?”

  His eyebrows plunged. It was not the question he expected. “You sure you want to ask me that? I already gave you the answer.”

  “I want an honest answer.”

  “Yes, I donated my blood to the Red Cross. You’re not very good at this game, Delaney.”

  “You think it’s a game?”

  He lifted a palm in a shrug sort of gesture.

  I searched his eyes. The problem with our little truth or truth game was that we had to trust that neither of us would lie. He didn’t look like he was lying, but he might be. Vampire murderers weren’t the most reliable sort, one would suppose.

  “My turn,” he said.

  “That’s not how it works.”

  “It’s how it works. One question for one question.”

  “You didn’t say that in the rules.”

  “It’s in the small print.”

  “What small print?”

  “Right here on the tip of my tongue.” He stuck his tongue out at me and I couldn’t believe how stupid and sexy it made him look.

  I tried not to smile. From the bull-hockey totally sincere look on his face, he was trying not to smile too.

  “All right, slugger. Ask your question.”

  “Have you forgiven me for breaking up with you?”

  Man went right for the gut. Had I? He had given up on me. On us. And yet he was right here, in front of me, still a part of my life. Maybe a friend. Maybe more.

  Maybe a murderer.

  I put that possibility aside for the moment.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded slowly, and bit at his bottom lip then released it. “Thank you.”

  “Did you kill Sven Rossi?”

  His shoulders jerked. “No.”

  I searched his eyes, his face, his body for the truth behind that single word.

  He held up a hand. “I’d like this to be outside the question game.”

  “All right.”

  “Holy, shit, Delaney. Sven’s dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “How? Since you’re asking me if I did it, I assume you don’t think it was an accident.”

  “He was shot.”

  Ryder rubbed his palm over his face, fingers lifting to tug his wind-mussed hair. “Jesus. Okay. And you think this has something to do with me?”

  “Are we back on the question game?” I asked.

  It was his turn to study my face. I could guess at what he saw. I had a good mask of indifference when I needed it. My eyes met his steadily. Waiting.

  “Sure. Do you think I have something to do with Sven’s death?”

  This might be my childhood friend in front of me, but there was something about those words, about how carefully he said them, as if he were using the question as a means to an end. Ryder wanted something from me, or expected me to be or do something.

  He was digging for information just as hard as I was. I knew my motivation. What was his?

  “Yes.”

  Slight tightening of his eyes was the only response I got from that. Now it was my turn.

  “Do you know who killed Sven?”

  “Pass.”

  “What? No.”

  “I said I won’t answer three questions. That’s one.”

  “If you don’t answer it, I’ll assume the answer is yes.”

  “Assumptions are not the truth.”

  I finished off the water and set the glass down. “I think we’re done here.”

  He watched me stand, watched me walk toward the door. Just as my hand wrapped around the handle, he asked. “Do you trust me, Delaney?”

  I swallowed hard. Wondered if I did trust him. Wondered if I was just trusting a man I’d known years ago, instead of the man I didn’t know now.

  “Pass.”

  I opened the door and walked out into the night.

  Chapter 5

  Someone was staring at me. Since I was sleeping, in my bed, in my house, the sudden knowledge that I was not alone was more than a little disconcerting.

  My gun rested on the wooden stepladder I used as a night stand. I could grab for it, but whoever was staring at me would see that move coming from a mile away.

  Unless they had already found the gun and were pointing it at me.

  That thought pushed me right over into instantly awake, eyes open, adrenalin pumping, sitting up.

  “Delaney, dear. It’s about time. I’ve been waiting.”

  I blinked at the voice, and also at the face of Bertie, our town’s one and only Valkyrie who was sitting in the corner of my room, in a chair, sipping something that smelled like tea.

  Bertie’s white hair was cut short and a little spiky, making her sharp green eyes too large in her heart-shaped face. She wore a pantsuit in a lovely red that might make other people think of roses, but made me think of blood, and a scarf with little red cherries printed on it tied at her neck.

  The tea was in a china cup that must have come from her kitchen because I didn’t own anything that delicate. Her fingernails were sharp and painted gold.

  I should really start locking my front door.

  “Why are you in my bedroom?” I glanced at the clock. “At six-thirty in the morning?”

  “Because I need to be at work by seven, of course.”

  “Of course.” I echoed like that made any sense. “Bertie? Seriously?”

  “I’m delivering your package.”

  “Package?”

  “The one your sister left with me yesterday.”

  I pressed at
my eyes with my fingertips and tried to get my brain working. “Crow. You brought Crow here.”

  “Exactly. Now, since you’re awake, I’ll get my day started. The fundraiser is taking quite a lot of time to coordinate. I’m always so short on volunteers. I’m going to have to reach out into the community more vigorously if people don’t start stepping forward.”

  Subtle, she was not. But then Bertie didn’t so much recruit volunteers as conscript people into service. “Coffee before blackmail,” I said.

  “If you want breakfast alone, you should really start locking your front door.”

  I shoved the heavy quilt off my legs and swung my feet down to the floor. I was wearing what I usually wore to bed: T-shirt and boy shorts. “Not a lot of people bother to climb the million steps to my house, and those who do aren’t usually criminals.”

  “Yes. Still. Most people don’t have to be murderers to have ulterior motives.”

  “Did you hear about Sven?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I wouldn’t have expected another answer. She was, after all, a creature who pulled fallen warriors off the battlefield and escorted them to the party pub in the sky. It made sense she would be in the know about the newly departed.

  “Do you know anything about his death that might help me find his killer?”

  She paused with the graceful curve of the cup poised right at her mouth. Her eyes went hawk-sharp at that question. “Are you accusing me of something, Delaney?”

  “No.” I rubbed at my forehead, stared at the floor a second, then back at her. “I’m not accusing you. I’ve just never dealt with something this...big before. Vampires don’t just show up murdered in this town. I’m not sure that it’s ever happened before.”

  “It hasn’t.”

  “The whole thing has me on edge. I’m new to this position.” I pointed at my chest, just over my heart. “Bridging power for the gods is one thing. Police chief is another. And this death is going to bring too much attention to our little town.”

  “No one has to know about it. He was a vampire, dear. He didn’t have family outside Ordinary.”

  “Apocalypse Pablo already knows about the body.”