“Right, like I could tear a warlock apart.”
“You could be in cahoots with someone else.”
“You slimy little ball of gremlin…”
Trey’s smile broadened. “Come to think of it, that creature you got turned into had to be pretty strong.”
“Enough,” Quillan interrupted. “Dulcie, I’m going to need to take your statement. Strictly for the record.”
I swallowed the humiliation that crept up my throat. “You’re serious?”
Quillan nodded. “Maybe you were the last person to see him alive.”
I shook my head against the injustice of the whole damned thing. “The killer was the last person to see him alive and besides, I wasn’t the only person in the store. That stranger was there, too.”
“That’s right,” Trey said, trying to subdue a laugh. “Our mysterious stranger. That’s one rock solid alibi, Dulce.”
I took a step toward him. “Do you have anything else to say?”
Quillan grabbed my arm. “I said…enough. Now Dulce…let’s go back to Headquarters. Trey can stay here until the crime scene team arrives.”
Without saying a word, I spun on my heels and stomped down the hall, Quillan behind me. Shaking my fist until a mound of dust emerged, I blew in the direction of the burning netting. It immediately went out, leaving the shop in total darkness.
“Thanks, O’Neil,” Trey said. “Real professional.”
“Fire hazard, Trey,” I answered.
“Quillan,” Trey called. “How am I supposed to—?”
“Figure it out,” Quillan snapped.
I pushed open the door, and the sunlight acted like a blowtorch to my retinas.
“Back to the office then, is it? Or do you trust me enough to drive there?”
I knew it was standard A.N.C protocol to take my statement, but I wanted to make it tough on Quillan since he hadn’t told Trey he was full of it for thinking I could do that to Fabian.
I threw open the door to the Wrangler and didn’t wait for Quillan to buckle himself in before peeling out of the parking spot.
“I don’t think you did it, you know that right?” Quillan finally asked.
“Yeah, thanks for saying as much to Trey.” I shook my head, irritation bleeding through me, and sighed. “Look, I know it’s standard procedure, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
He nodded. “How about I give you Monday off? You’ve spent plenty of your weekends in the office. Maybe you need a day off.”
I snickered. “Aren’t you afraid I’d ditch town and head for Mexico?”
“You’re not going to let go of this, are you?” he asked with a grin.
I shook my head. “The eight ball says no.”
We said nothing for the rest of the drive and even as we walked back into Headquarters. Quillan continued playing mute as he escorted me into the interrogation room.
The interrogation room, for Hades’s sake.
I threw my keys onto the table, unholstered my gun and set it beside my keys. Then I took my seat with as much disdain as I could muster.
Quillan didn’t sit but leaned his head out the door. “Lottie, I need Saturn please.”
Saturn was a logging system that took statements in real time and then logged them into whatever case file they belonged to. It was basically a glorified computer that had been bewitched by Sam, but it didn’t look like a computer—it looked like a scroll with a feather pen.
Lottie flew into the room, carrying Saturn with her as her little wings beat madly to keep airborne. She was small, maybe the size of my hand and Saturn was about double her size. Pixies have incredible strength though—think ants—so it wasn’t too much of a struggle for her to carry the scroll.
Lottie was dressed in a flowery yellow skirt with a matching blouse, her platinum hair pulled into a severe bun like she thought she was a librarian or something. She smirked at Quillan but regarded me with disinterest. Stupid pixie had never liked me—she’d always been jealous of my close relationship with Quillan. Well, I’m sure she was getting miles out of this one.
She unwound the scroll. As she unrolled it, the feather pen flew out like a dog ready to retrieve a stick. If the damn thing had a tail, it would’ve been wagging. Then the pen poised itself on the scroll, waiting for direction.
Lottie faced me with a frown. “Dulcie is being interrogated today, is she?”
I narrowed my eyes and turned to Quillan who just smiled. “Not interrogated, Lottie, we just need her statement. So, yes, you can enter Dulcie’s name into the system.”
Lottie tsked at me, and I wished I had a fly swatter.
She glanced at the scroll again. “Name: Dulcie O’Neil.” Her eyes sought Quillan. “What case is it?”
“Murder of Fabian Nesbeth, the dark arts warlock.”
She nodded and faced the scroll. The pen was already poised and raring to go.
“Murder case of Fabian Nesbeth, the warlock,” Lottie finished.
The pen scribbled on the scroll, the writing looked like calligraphy in gold paint. As soon as it entered my name, a red case number bled through the scroll in the upper right corner. I was case number 2,456. That might sound like we had a lot of cases, but Headquarters had had Saturn for over five years.
Lottie turned to us again. “Okay, Dulcie, you can start explaining how you killed Fabian now.”
“Don’t screw with me, mosquito, or I’ll smash you,” I spat.
“Thanks Lottie,” Quillan said. “I can take it from here.”
She flew from the room in a huff as I turned to the scroll which was apparently recording my little outburst.
Quillan shut the door with a weary sigh. “Watch yourself, Dulce. You know this recording will be sent back to the Netherworld so you’d better be on best behavior.”
I frowned. “Or else what?”
“Or else you could be going back to the Netherworld. Understand?”
“Crystal clear,” I snapped.
A small, sympathetic smile played on his lips. “Okay, Dulce. Tell me about everything that happened yesterday, starting when you woke up.”
THREE
“I woke up yesterday morning,” I started.
“What time?” Quillan interrupted.
I shifted in my chair and resisted the urge to sigh. I should’ve known better—I’d have to give minute details. Hades-be-damned, I so didn’t have the patience for this.
“In the late morning, maybe ten a.m.”
He nodded. “Go on.”
I glanced at Saturn. The quill pen was doing a good job of writing our every word. Time to trip the thing.
“Ten a.m.,” I started, my voice a whisper. The quill paused and cocked its feather, as if trying to make out what I was saying.
“Dulcie, don’t screw around,” Quillan interrupted with an impatient sigh.
I frowned and figured it was fun while it lasted. The pen tapped itself against the scroll. The thing had no sense of humor.
“Okay, okay,” I grumbled. “Anyway, I woke up at ten and ate some cereal. Before you ask, it was frosted flakes.”
Quillan just shook his head.
“Then I took a shower and tidied up the apartment. I’d planned a visit to Fabian’s dark arts store because word on the street was he’d be receiving a delivery soon.”
“How did you know it was arriving yesterday?” Quillan interrupted.
“Well, I didn’t know for sure it was going to come yesterday. Trey had been getting visions of a truck delivery to Fabian’s sometime last week, so I made sure I patrolled pretty frequently.”
“But, Trey didn’t get any inkling that Fabian would be murdered?” Quillan leaned back in his chair and crossed his long legs at the ankles. Holy Hades, he was one sexy bastard.
I shrugged. “If Trey did, he didn’t share that with me.” I took a breath. “So, when I went to talk to Fabian about his delivery, he looked nervous. He was helping a stranger who I’d never seen before, which threw me off. Othe
rwise, I would’ve been prepared for the Hemmen spell.”
“The stranger,” Quillan started. “Can you describe him?”
“Tall, maybe three inches taller than you.”
Quillan faced the airborne pen. “I stand five feet, eleven inches making this stranger six feet two inches.” He faced me again. “What else, Dulce?”
I frowned. Quillan was really five-ten, but if he wanted that little inch, he could have it. “He had dark hair and blue eyes.”
“How dark was his hair?”
“Black.”
“What type of creature was he?”
I shook my head. “That’s the kicker. I couldn’t tell.”
“Let the record note this stranger didn’t register with Headquarters,” Quillan added.
Every time he spoke, he faced Saturn as if he were addressing a crowd full of voters who might put him into office.
“Once he bespelled you, then what happened?” he asked.
“Fabian must’ve known I was paying attention to the stranger cause that’s when he put the Hemmen on me. I left the store immediately because I started to feel pretty sick. It took me a few minutes to realize it was the spell taking shape. I ran all the way to Sam’s house, and then the spell took over and turned me into that blob.”
Quillan faced the pen again. “For the record, ‘Sam’ is Samantha White, witch. Employee of Splendor, A.N.C. Headquarters.”
“34 B bust size,” I added.
Quillan just smiled. “How far does Sam live from Fabian’s?”
“Half a mile.”
“Were you able to see what Fabian had in the truck delivery?” He paused. “Could the stranger have been the delivery driver?”
I shook my head. “No, he wasn’t dressed in uniform. And, no, I didn’t get to see what Fabian had in the delivery. He bespelled me before I got the chance.”
Quillan nodded and clapped his hands together before leaning forward. “Okay, Dulce, that’s all I needed. You’re free to go.”
“That’s it?”
He threw me a smile. “I believe you’re innocent, Dulce. Just have to follow procedure.”
I stood up as he opened the door and poked his head out, calling for Lottie to take care of Saturn. When he returned his gaze to me, there was something in his eyes…concern maybe?
“I know I don’t need to tell you this,” he started with a pause. “Just be careful on this case, okay?”
I nodded and strode out the door, smiling to myself as I thought maybe my day wasn’t going to be screwed up after all.
###
Three hours later, I sat at my computer, typing out the last scene of my romance novel, Captain Slade’s Bounty. The book was about a pirate Captain, Slade Montgomery and a stowaway named Clementine. Over the course of two months at sea, Clementine and the Captain had sex nine times, and I was ending the book with their tenth.
But I was having trouble seeing the scene in my head—typical writer’s block. I tapped my fingers against the particleboard of my Ikea desk and watched the cursor blink, taunting me with its restlessness. I just couldn’t really get into writing about Slade’s engorged manhood as it penetrated Clementine in her naughtiest of places.
Instead, my mind refused to relinquish images of Fabian’s severed head. With a frustrated sigh, I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up an image of Quillan wearing only an eye patch. Even though it usually got my writing juices flowing, it did nothing for me now.
Well, when you can’t write, you can edit. I clicked on the search and replace option and began replacing Quillan’s name with Captain Slade’s. It was lots easier to imagine Quillan as my pirate hero if I wrote using his name. Go figure.
The phone rang and I bolted for it.
“Hi, Sam,” I said, after catching her name on the caller ID.
“Hi, Dulce. Quillan told me about Fabian. That’s crazy.”
I plunked down into my sofa and played with my dry cuticles. “Yeah, it was pretty awful. It looked like he’d been ripped apart, but there was no blood.”
Sam gasped. “So you think it was vampires?”
At the mention of vampires, I pulled at one dry cuticle too hard, and it began to bleed, the color of liquid gold. “Too soon to tell.”
“So, what are you doing now?”
I eyed the open document page on my computer screen and noted the cursor still blinking like it was pissed off that I was on the phone. Pretty soon the screen saver would kill it with a calming picture of fish in a tank.
“Well, I was trying to work on my book, but I have writer’s block.”
“Oh.” She paused. “You’ve been writing a lot. Don’t you think maybe you should get out and…”
“Sam, we’ve been through this,” I started, knowing where the conversation was headed. I hadn’t dated anyone in a year, not since my last boyfriend had dumped me after a five-year relationship.
“I’m just not ready.”
Sam sighed. “I know, Dulce, it’s just been a long time since you even went out on a date.”
“Sam…”
“I’m just saying I think you have trust issues.”
I knew I had trust issues but I really didn’t blame myself considering I’d trusted someone for five years only to find out he’d been banging some chick for the last three years of our relationship.
“Anyway,” Sam exhaled. “Want to catch a movie and dinner?”
“Can’t. I have to go talk to Bram and Dagan about Fabian and that stranger. I want to see if they might have some news about it. You can come along if you want.”
Sam’s silence was telling. She’d had a fling with Bram for about a month. Only it turned out, he’d been going out with her to get closer to me. Or, so she said.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I offered, knowing it’s never fun to see an ex.
“I’m totally over Bram. I’ll go. We should make a night of it since I can’t remember the last time we went clubbing together.”
It had been a while. I wasn’t super crazy about clubbing, but since I’d be going to No Regrets anyway, might as well enjoy myself. And Bram was always good about offering us free drinks.
“Okay, why don’t I pick you up at ten?” I asked.
Now, if I could just get over my writer’s block.
###
It was nine-thirty. I eyed my reflection in the mirror and gave my black miniskirt and red halter top a satisfied smile. Thank God for push up bras—my 32Cs looked more like Ds. Nothing wrong with a little false bravado. I sprayed some Juicy Couture perfume on my neck and wrists and slipped into four-inch black heels. Grabbing my black leather jacket, purse and keys, I locked the door behind me and headed to the Wrangler.
I didn’t live in the best part of Splendor. My suburb, Ocacia, was eclectic—some wealthy people trying to turn it into yuppie central, like they’d done with neighboring towns. Then there were the lower income families, the elderly and the single, twenty-somethings like me. But, I was as safe as I would be anywhere else. Sam had put a protection spell on my entire apartment building which prohibited anyone who meant me any sort of harm from even stepping foot on our yard.
It even worked on Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Sam lives in the suburb just next to Ocacia—Cumquat. Her neighborhood is nicer than mine—the yuppies got to it first.
When I turned onto her street, I pulled out my cell phone and gave her a ring, not wanting to waste time parking and walking up to the door. Hey, it wasn’t like I was her date or something. The phone rang twice before she picked up.
“I’ll be there in two seconds,” I said.
She hung up, and I pulled in front of her white house. The garden’s the best part of Sam’s place. She’s an avid gardener and has every sort of flower blooming out front—azaleas, roses, snapdragons and honeysuckle just to name a few. I’ve had potted plants over the years, but I don’t have much of a green thumb. Kind of ironic considering I’m a fairy, a child of nature, but there you have it
. It’d be more apropos to call me a child of concrete and asphalt.
Sam came out wearing her black pants and a blue tube top. She locked her door and jogged down her long entryway, not an easy feat given her high heels. I never understood why tall women wore heels. When you’re five-one like me, you need all the help you can get.
I whistled. “Look at you.”
She threw open the door and climbed in, giving me the once over as I pulled into the street. “Look at yourself,” she said and turned my CD player on. The Chemical Brothers came pounding out in an array of techno beats as Sam settled into her seat.
“What’s this?” she asked, leaning down between her feet and grasping a brochure I hadn’t wanted her to see.
Heat shot to my face. “Oh, it’s…it’s nothing. Just some junk mail.”
“If you feel self conscious about your ears,” she read as I cringed. “Call Dr. Goodman for a free consultation to learn how ear augmentation can work for you.” She tapped the brochure against her hand. “Dulcie, tell me you aren’t thinking about getting your ears done? Come on, that’s so not you.”
There was no point in lying to her. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it for a while now.”
“But that’s what makes you a fairy, Dulce.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
Sam frowned. “Does this have anything to do with Jack?”
Jack was my ex boyfriend of five years—the jerk who’d cheated on me. He’d always made fun of my ears, calling me Tinker Bell.
“No, it has nothing to do with Jack.”
“Okay, but isn’t it enough that you have beautiful hair and gorgeous green eyes? And you have the best nose in three counties.”
I shook my head. “I was just thinking of going in for a consultation. It’s free and I don’t have to agree to anything.”
“Sometimes I just don’t get you. If you do go, will you take me with you?”
“Only if you’ll be open minded about it.”
She nodded. “I will be.” She was quiet for a minute. “So, are you going to talk to Bram about Fabian?”