Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Where the hell is Declan?
Gideon
I watched Declan go and turned my attention back to Emily, a magpie shifter raising two younglings on her own.
“What’s wrong, Emily?”
“It’s Corbin.” She sighed. “There’s a booth at the festival selling jewelry—shiny, sparkly jewelry.
When we got home last night, I checked his pockets and found a bracelet, two rings, and a prism.
I’m returning them all today, of course, but I hoped you could talk to him.
He has to learn to control those impulses if we’re going to live among humans. ”
“He’s still young. He’ll figure it out.” I smiled. “But yes, I’ll talk to him.”
“Thank you. It’s hard enough to be a teen without fighting your instincts.”
“You know we have our weekly support group, but it’s all adults. I doubt Corbin wants to spend the evening listening to us talk, but Elwood has talked about starting a group for teens. Maybe it’s time for that.”
“That would be great.” She hugged me. “Thank you.”
In the kitchen, Perry and Sable were finishing the last of the dishes while Mellgren hung upside-down in bat form from the shelf over the sink, wings folded like a cloak. Normally, I’d have jumped in to help, but the clock on the wall caught my eye.
Declan had been gone longer than I liked.
I told myself not to be overbearing. He was a grown man, not a fragile wolf pup, but unease coiled in my gut all the same. He’d gone to meet Paula, and she’d planned to check the camera footage. If she’d found something dangerous—
“Gideon?” Sable waved a soapy hand in front of my face. “Did you hear me? Someone in the pub mentioned a shifter conference coming to town next month. Did you know about that? Don’t they have to check with you first because you’re the alpha here?”
I looked at the clock again. When I looked back at Sable, she was staring at me. “What did you ask me again?”
She grabbed a towel and tossed it my way. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Declan’s been gone a while. I should check on him.” I left without looking back.
Up the street, the festival was already in full swing. Vendors shouted over one another, hawking trinkets and sweet treats. The air was heavy with kettle corn and caramel apples, but beneath all that cheer, my wolf was pacing beneath my skin like he knew something was wrong.
The Witch’s Brew sat across the street, lights low behind the glass. A raven was screaming at the door, pecking at the handle. I jogged over and tugged the handle. Locked. That made no sense; Lily’s shop was always open by now.
Then I caught it—the sharp, acrid scent curling under the sweetness of chocolate and coffee. My chest tightened. I looked through the window and froze.
Declan sat at a table with Paula leaning against him, her skin gray and damp. In his hand was a steaming cup topped with green leaves and whipped cream, halfway to his lips.
My heart stopped.
I threw my shoulder into the door. Wood splintered, the bell overhead giving a pitiful jangle as it crashed open.
“Declan!”
He startled, but I was already there. I slapped the cup from his hand; porcelain shattered, dark liquid spreading like ink across the tile.
“Don’t drink that.” My growl shook the air. “It’s moonbane.”
Lily stood frozen behind the counter, eyes wide. The bitter-metal stench clawed at the back of my throat—blood on hot iron. No mistaking it.
“Moonbane’s a healer’s herb. Your grandfather grows it in his garden.
It makes an effective sleeping potion that people use for insomnia, but only in the tiniest of amounts,” I said, low and deadly, my gaze locking on Lily.
“But that amount?” I tipped my head towards the broken cup and liquid on the floor. “It’s poison.”
“Poison?” Declan’s voice cracked. “Lily? Did Paula drink this?”
Paula tried to lift her head, words slurring. “In the clouds… crystals in the clouds…”
Hallucinations. My stomach sank. That meant she was pretty far gone.
“Lily,” I said sharply, “answer him.”
She licked her lips. “I didn’t know it was poison. I was just trying a new coffee flavor.”
“Sit down.” My tone left no room for argument. I watched as she weighed her options, glancing at the back door, then at the front. I guess she wasn’t as dumb as she acted because her shoulders drooped, and she followed my command.
I pulled out my phone. “Elwood, we need you at The Witch’s Brew. Moonbane poisoning.”
Declan turned to her, face pale. “You didn’t call for help, did you?”
She blinked. “I—no. I thought—”
Declan’s eyes narrowed as he put it all together. “You weren’t helping her back there at all, were you? You were trying to hide the body. You were going to let her die.” He looked down at the mess on the floor again and then at Lily. “You tried to kill me. Why?”
“Why?” she screeched. “Because you won’t stop meddling! If you’d just stayed out of it, everyone would think Leon’s fancy knife was the murder weapon, and that’d be the end of it. But no, you had to ask questions!”
Her voice rose to a hysterical pitch. “This is your fault! And you—” she shrieked at Paula, “why didn’t you just die!”
At that, Lily jumped up and ran for the back of the shop. So much for her being smarter than I thought. I rolled my eyes and looked at Declan. “I’ll be right back.”
I caught up with her before she reached the door and dragged her back to her seat just as Elwood was coming in the front door, his worn leather satchel on his hip.
His eyes flew first to Declan. “Did you drink any?”
“No, Gideon smelled it and kept me from drinking any.”
Elwood met my eyes and gave a single, calm nod before kneeling beside Paula. “Paula, can you hear me?”
She opened her eyes and let out a long breath, but that was all. She was very weak. I wasn’t sure how long it had been since she ingested the poison, but the fact that she was a wolf shifter was probably the only thing keeping her alive.
“I’ll need you to drink this antidote, love. Can you do that?” His voice carried that gentle vibration that always eased a room—the subtle hum of resonance magic. Even I felt my pulse slow. It was one of the things that made him such a great healer.
She tried to reach for the vial, too weak to hold it. “Shh,” Elwood murmured. “You’ll be fine. Let me.”
He tipped the potion to her lips, patient as always. “That’s it, good girl. Let your wolf fight it off.”
Color began to seep back into her cheeks.
Elwood rose and glanced at Lily, who slumped in the booth, trying to look small. He shook his head and then looked at me. “Have you called Grady?”
He glanced over at Lily, who was still trying hard to act like she was the victim here. “Have you called Grady?”
“No, I was worried about Paula. Besides, she isn’t going anywhere.”
I pulled out my phone and called Grady. Elwood was sitting next to Paula, talking to her as she slowly came back to herself. I took a seat next to Declan where I could keep an eye on Lily.
“I can’t believe she tried to poison me.
And what kind of witch am I? I’m supposed to have an affinity with food, but shouldn’t I have picked up her anger every time I drank one of her coffees?
You don’t jump from liking someone to wanting to murder them overnight.
” Declan shook his head sadly. “I didn’t even know when someone hated me enough to be planning to kill me with… wait for it… food.”
I brushed a kiss across his lips. “You are a wonderful, adorable, smart, new witch. You can’t know everything right away. Cut yourself a break.”
“You saved me, so I think you’re a pretty darn good one.” Paula still sounded weak, but at least she was talking now instead of mumbling about clouds, so the antidote must be working.
“That wasn’t witchcraft, but thank you.” He reached over and patted her on the forearm. “But why did you want me to meet you here?”
Paula looked up and glared at Lily. “I came over to confront Lily about what I found in the cloud.”
Uh oh, we were back in the clouds again. Looked like she needed a little more time for the antidote to work. “Maybe you should wait until Grady gets here. You don’t want to tell it all twice.”
“I don’t need to tell you. I’ll show you.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, but she fumbled it. Luckily, Elwood was pretty quick for his age, and he managed to catch it before it hit the floor. “Sorry, I’m still a little woozy.”
“You almost died,” Declan said. “I’m sure it will take you some time to fully recover.”
Elwood handed the phone back to her. “He’s right. It won’t take you as long as it would’ve taken a non-shifter, but you should expect to feel a little off for at least a couple of days.”
She nodded and typed in her phone’s password. “Here, I downloaded the video footage from the night Winston was killed.”
Declan brightened. “So you were right. He had saved the footage to the cloud.”
So that’s what Paula had been mumbling about, not actual clouds but the cloud. Thank goodness I didn’t say anything out loud about it. Elwood liked to give me a hard enough time about my resistance to tech without him knowing I’d thought she’d been hallucinating about floating in the clouds.
“Whatever she’s going to show is fake,” Lily cried out. “I know cause I saw it. Jim showed it to me, but that doesn’t matter. It’s all fake. It’s all fake.”
“We’ll let the experts determine that,” Grady said from the doorway. “But I think I would like to see what she has.”
I grinned at the big man. “Hey, Grady, I think Declan and Paula solved the case for you.”
Declan gasped. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You did, though,” Paula said. “If you hadn’t come over and talked to me, I would’ve taken Jim’s tools and left. I never would have even thought about the cameras, and then I wouldn’t have found this—”
She pressed play on the video, and we all watched as Winston stood in the middle of the old Kooky Nook. There was no sound, but he was talking to someone with that condescending look he often got when he thought he was talking to someone beneath him.
Lily stepped into the frame then, with a look of pleading on her face. Winston sneered at her, and we watched as the veneer of quirky coffee shop owner fell away and was replaced by pure rage.
Then the look changed from condescension to something that looked more like fear as Lily rushed him and shoved the crystal point right through his heart.
We all turned as one and stared at Lily, who was sitting there crying.
“I don’t know,” Grady said. “Looks real to me.”
“But why kill Jim?” Declan asked.
“I think I know the answer to that as well,” Paula said sadly. “I found emails on his computer that he sent to her.” Paula pointed at Lily.
“Your precious Jim was no saint,” Lily said, sneering. “He was blackmailing me, and he got what he deserved.”
Grady sighed and walked over to Lily. “Come on. Let’s get you to the station.”