Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Magic is real, and vampires can die
Declan
I was pretty sure Gideon was talking to me, but nope, my brain wasn’t listening. It was like my whole body—ears included—had gone numb. Shouldn’t I be screaming or something? My mom loved watching cute little small-town mysteries on TV, and someone always screamed when a body was discovered.
“Shit,” Gideon muttered.
Huh, so my ears were working.
Then he started mumbling, but I didn’t think he was mumbling to me, so I ignored him. I couldn’t look away from the—gulp—body. There was a body. Right there. And something wasn’t right about it. I just couldn’t—
Something touched me.
I screamed. My coffee—if you could call that coffee… yeah, Lily’s attempt at dark roast wasn’t my favorite—went flying as I flung out my arm.
“Declan!” Elwood was shaking me by my shoulders now.
“Why on earth did you scare me like that?” I shouted. I pointed at the body on the floor. “Can’t you see there’s a dead body? Don’t sneak up on people when there are dead bodies!” I shook my head.
Elwood glanced at Gideon. “I think he’ll be okay.”
“Wait.” I turned to Gideon. I stared at him as I adjusted my glasses.
“You called Elwood here because you thought I was freaking out? Before you called the police? Haven’t you people ever seen a mystery show?
The first call should always be to the police.
If you call someone else first, it makes people suspicious. ”
Gideon flattened his mouth before glancing at Elwood as if to say, deal with him. “I’ll call Grady.”
“Grady?” I asked, because honestly, if Gideon was calling some other random person before the police…
“Grady King. Our sheriff,” Elwood said.
“Good.” I took my glasses off and polished the lenses with the hem of my shirt–mostly because I needed something to do with my shaking hands.
As Gideon finally called the police, my eyes drifted back to the body again. At least my coffee hadn’t landed on it—er, him—when I’d thrown it. The dark liquid pooled around the upturned cup a few feet away, spreading out across the dusty floor.
“That’s it. That’s what’s wrong… there isn’t any blood.” I pointed at the spot where a quartz point was embedded in the body’s chest. There wasn’t a teeny, tiny little speck of blood. That made no sense. I inched closer to get a better look.
When I’d first glimpsed the body, I’d been sure it was Winston. The corpse was dressed in the same clothing Winston had been wearing last night, but now that I was staring at it, I wasn’t so sure. It was too… what was the word? Desiccated?
Elwood came to stand at my side and studied the body, too. “Well, what do you expect?” he said. “Winston was a vampire.”
I spun to look at him, ready to give him a piece of my mind for making a joke like that right now, but the minute I saw his face, I knew he wasn’t joking.
“A vampire?” I squeaked out. My mind reeled. A vampire. And yesterday, he’d called Tulip a mermaid. “Supernatural creatures don’t exist.”
“Of course they do, magic is very real.” Elwood narrowed his eyes as he studied me, almost as closely as I’d been studying Winston’s body a moment ago. “What on earth did you think? Honestly, you were more sensible as a child than you are as an adult.”
A man in a police uniform burst into the shop before I could formulate a response to that unflattering observation.
Despite the man’s frown, I relaxed as soon as I saw him.
He was a brawny man, who projected an aura of calm and authority.
It might have been the bit of gray in his black hair that made me think that, but whatever.
I was just happy to see someone official here.
“Sheriff King, you got here fast,” Gideon said to the newcomer.
“I was over at the Thistle grabbing a coffee,” Grady said. “The damned coffee machine at the station’s broken again.”
“The body’s over there,” Gideon said. I thought that was a little unnecessary. No one could miss it.
The sheriff glanced around the room, seeming to take in everything and everyone all at once. He narrowed his dark eyes at me. “Who are you?”
“Declan.” I cleared my throat. “Declan Hawthorne.”
“My grandson,” Elwood added.
“Uh… sorry about the coffee. That was me. I… uh… dropped it,” I stammered.
The sheriff nodded, then he went over to examine Winston.
“Son of…” Grady’s words trailed off as he rubbed his forehead. “Why did it have to be one of our kind?”
Gideon’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t say anything.
Me? I wanted to ask heaps more questions, starting with what he meant by one of our kind?
What kind was that? I managed to keep my mouth shut.
Barely. Now wasn’t the time. The sheriff crouched by the body and studied it.
Then he searched it quickly and efficiently.
Grady’s dark skin against the dead man’s made Winston’s look all the paler and grayer.
I wanted to shout at Grady to wait for the coroner or the medical examiner or something…
because I’d watched a lot of mystery shows with my mother, and that was always a thing they talked about.
But obviously, these magical people did things differently, and who was I to correct the police on their techniques?
I clamped my mouth shut, but then I remembered something…
“Wait. Could he still be alive? Aren’t wooden stakes used to kill uh… them? That isn’t wooden. If we remove the crystal…”
“It might have been possible for him to survive being stabbed, but not when it’s through the heart,” Elwood explained quietly.
“I’ll have to manage which of my deputies comes to the scene.” When Grady stood again, he heaved out a sigh, making his barrel of a chest rise and fall. “You sure you want this in the system, Gideon?”
What the–? Why on earth was the sheriff deferring to the pub owner? So much for my imagining Grady was the authority around here. And was he seriously asking if they should cover this up? Oh, or was this because of the magic thing? Was there a separate process for magical people?
“Winston’s been murdered. Since we don’t know if a human or a supe killed him, we’ll need your resources to solve this,” Gideon said with a sharp nod.
I blinked. I really needed to find a place to sit. Somewhere I could guzzle a dozen old-fashioneds and come to terms with finding out about magic and discovering a murder victim in the same morning. Finding Josh in bed with a sweaty naked stranger yesterday was nothing compared to this.
Because if the local police were talking about magic… that made it all the more real.
Another person charged into the shop next. What was it with all these people?
“What’s going on? Grady? Why are you here? Are you finally here to fine Winston like I’d asked?” Leon, the committee chair from last night, demanded. Then he saw the body. His eyes bulged. “Is that Winston Wilcox? But he was just fine at the meeting last night.”
“What meeting?” Grady asked.
“I didn’t think your kind died.” Leon ignored Grady’s question as he retreated a step and tugged his sweater vest down. The guy must have a full closet of those vests. He swallowed so hard it was audible. Last night hadn’t ended well between Winston and Leon. We all knew that.
“Don’t.” Gideon growled the word. I expected him to end with be an asshole, or something like that, but he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t need to when that single word already had Leon taking a step back.
After Leon was several feet away from Gideon, he lifted his chin and puffed out his chest. “You need to remember who you’re talking to.”
“You might be human, but you know supernaturals aren’t all the same. Besides, I think you’ll find most people will die when they’ve been stabbed through the heart.” Gideon reiterated what Elwood had just finished telling me in a deep and growly voice.
“An emergency festival meeting,” Elwood offered when Leon didn’t answer.
“So, we need to track his movements after the meeting,” the sheriff said. “I’ll need to get more people down here. And you all need to get out of my crime scene. But don’t go too far. I need to get statements from everyone.” He glanced down at the body and rubbed his forehead again.
“We all know who did it,” Leon announced as he wiped a sheen of sweat from his bald head.
We did?
Leon pointed at Elwood. “The murder weapon is a crystal from his shop. Ergo…”
Elwood held up his hands as if to ward off the accusation. “Hey now… I didn’t kill him.”
Sheriff King considered Elwood. “Where were you after the meeting?”
My heart pounded. Was Elwood going to tell the truth? If he lied and said he was home all night, I’d have to lie too. Say I was with him. Could I do it? I was a terrible liar. I rubbed my palms on my pants.
Elwood opened his mouth to answer, but Leon beat him to it.
“I saw him walk down the street about half an hour after the meeting ended,” Leon blurted.
“Is that true?” Sheriff King asked. “Where did you go?”
“It is true,” Elwood said. “I can’t say where I went. It’s a private matter.”
“That’s it,” Leon said. “Take him in for questioning. As the mayor, I insist. People need to feel safe in our town. The sooner there’s an arrest, the better. Mr. Wilcox was a pillar of the community. We need this resolved.”
Sheriff King frowned at the mayor. Then, with a sigh, he turned to Elwood. “Will you come in and answer some questions, Elwood?”
“Hey! You can’t railroad my grandfather,” I said.
“Grady’s just doing his job.” Elwood patted me on the shoulder, as if that would soothe away my anger. “It’ll be okay. I didn’t kill Winston. I’m not worried.”
Grady herded us all to the street when his four deputies arrived.
He barked out orders at them. I noticed how he steered a couple of them away from the body by telling them to canvas the business owners and residents along the street to see if anyone had noticed anything last night.
Those two must be the human officers. Then he put my grandfather in the backseat of his police car and drove away.
The weird popping, fizzling feeling in my chest grew stronger. Everything felt upside down and backwards. At this rate, if someone came up to me and said I was a witch too, I didn’t even think I’d be surprised.