Chapter 6 #2
I flushed and scowled at him. That love potion couldn’t wear off soon enough. I tilted my head toward the ghost and turned to Jaxon. “Nice decorations.”
Jaxon rubbed his chin, which was covered with a few days of stubble, then gave me a guilty smile. “Graham hated them.”
“That sounds like him.” I swallowed past the tightness in my throat. “I know this is hard to talk about, but do you remember anything that stands out from yesterday? Anything unusual or anyone who came over?”
Jaxon’s brow furrowed. “Are you sure you should get involved in this, Kitty? If what the police are saying is true and someone killed Graham, this could be dangerous. You should leave it to them.”
“I’m worried about how it looks,” I admitted.
Jaxon scoffed. “If they think you’re involved, then they’re as idiotic as Graham was for”—he glanced at Riley, then frowned—“for not appreciating you.” I was pretty sure he’d been about to say something about Graham cheating. Jaxon was one of the few people I’d shared my theories with.
Not that it mattered. Riley, as observant as ever, stiffened next to me like a bloodhound scenting its prey, or in his case a story.
I hadn’t mentioned the possibility of cheating to Riley the first time I told him the story, but now there might not be any way around it.
Funny how yesterday I’d cared so much about finding out the truth and now it didn’t even matter.
Well… maybe it did matter. If there was another woman, could she have had something to do with Graham’s death? No, that was silly. Considering I didn’t even know if she existed, I couldn’t go blaming a murder on her.
“The police don’t know me like you do,” I said, “and I don’t want to give the town any more of a reason to gossip about my family than they already have.”
“Looking into Graham’s murder might make them gossip more.” He leaned against the wall with one shoulder.
“I know, but at least this way I’m working toward finding the truth.” I met his earnest gaze. “So, will you help me?”
“I’m not sure what I can do.” Jaxon crossed his arms. “But just tell me what you need.”
“If you can answer a few more questions, then we’ll take it from there,” Riley said, all business now. “Do you know if Graham came straight home from work yesterday?”
“I saw him briefly in the morning, and then we were both gone all day,” Jaxon said. “I think his shift ended at 5:00, but he didn’t come straight home.”
Riley and I exchanged a look. Graham didn’t come straight home, and that meant there was another place we needed to investigate.
“Do you know where he might’ve gone?” I asked.
“No, but I think he came home sometime between 6:00 and 6:30. At least that’s when I got the notification about the garage door opening on my phone. I was at a basketball game, so I didn’t see it until later.”
“Would you be okay if we looked around a bit?” Riley asked.
“The police taped off most of the area outside, and they warned me not to go back there,” Jaxon said. “I guess you could get some pretty hefty fines for trespassing.”
“How about his room?” I asked. “There might be something helpful there.”
“Sure. The police already went through that too, but you can still go in.” He waved us down the hall even though I already knew the way.
If the police had already been in, we wouldn’t have to worry about messing anything up.
“Thanks, Jaxon.” I gave him a small smile and headed down the hall, treading the worn carpet’s familiar path to Graham’s room.
Riley closed Graham’s bedroom door, trapping us in the space that suddenly felt tiny.
“If Jaxon didn’t even see Graham that day, there wouldn’t have been much opportunity for poison,” I pointed out before Riley could say anything, toeing aside a crumpled hoodie on the ground to check underneath.
“Since they were roommates, it wouldn’t have been hard to slip poison into something at their house, though.” Riley stepped closer to me. “Graham had to come home eventually.”
“I just don’t think it’s Jaxon.” I crossed my arms across my chest. “I’ve known him a long time, and I don't even know what motive he would have for hurting Graham.”
“Are you just saying that because he likes you?”
I laughed. “Trust me, Jaxon doesn’t like me like that. We’re just good friends.”
Riley stepped closer. “You’re pretty hard not to like.”
I rolled my eyes. “Jaxon has told me I’m like a little sister more times than I can count.”
“Ah, I see.” Riley blinked, then nodded. “So what was it that Jaxon not-so-cleverly avoided revealing earlier?”
I averted my gaze, glancing away from Graham’s unmade bed to the familiar items on Graham’s desk: his laptop, a messy pile of textbooks, and another gaming system.
“Kitty.” Riley’s voice was deeper. Nearer.
I turned and found him right behind me, watching as if waiting to see what I’d do next. I felt weighed and measured and I wasn’t sure if I liked it, but something in Riley’s expression told me that no matter how I measured up, I’d be enough for him.
My stomach fluttered at his serious look, and I chewed on my lip until the tang of my caramel lip balm reminded me to stop. “Not long before we broke up the last time, I began to suspect that Graham might have cheated on me.”
Riley’s expression turned hard. “He cheated on you?”
“He might have cheated,” I said. “I never confirmed it.”
“Why did you suspect it?”
I shrugged. “My magic had started feeling off around him, which is silly I know, but it wasn’t normal.”
“It’s not silly. You should trust your magic.” Riley’s jaw tightened. “That’s why you gave him that potion.”
My cheeks burned. “It was silly, but I wanted to know if that’s why my magic had felt off or if there was something else.
” I rifled through Graham’s notebook, looking for his schedule.
Graham was a meticulous planner. It was one reason we’d gotten along so well.
He wasn’t a neat freak like I was, but he had too much going on between school, his job, his intramural sports teams, and his social life not to keep track of everything.
“Do you still care for Graham?”
“No.” I shook my head. I’d been letting go of him for months now, evicting him from my heart a little more each time we broke up until getting back together was more of a habit than anything.
“Who he might have cheated with doesn’t matter.
I was more curious about discovering what was going on with my magic than anything, but I still feel like I owe it to him to figure out who killed him. ”
“Maybe it does matter.” Riley’s serious eyes met mine. “Until we rule that other woman out as a suspect, there’s no saying she didn’t have something to do with Graham’s death.”
I sucked in a breath. “Crap… you think so too?”
“I like it when we’re on the same page.” He gave me a small smile. “Maybe it was your instincts telling you to figure out the truth.”
I snorted. “Not quite. Elaine mentioned the love potion as a way to get back with Graham, and I considered it for a bit. Sometimes it’s easier to listen to others than to make my own decisions.
But eventually I chose a veritas potion instead to find out the truth about what happened.
And look where that got me. I trusted my gut, and I messed everything up. ”
“There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes.
” His dark eyes were soft and serious, as if he wanted to make sure I not just heard but understood every word.
“But you should make them because it’s something you want to do, not because someone else talked you into it.
Don’t let other people write your story for you, Kitty. ”
Something in my chest pulled tight. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t deny that he was right.
I let others tell me what to do far too often because I was scared of making my own choices and being wrong.
Was I really so incapable of standing up for myself and making my own decisions that even Riley—someone I’d just met—could tell?
“That’s easier said than done,” I muttered as I checked the rest of the desk, trying to hide the way my heart leapt at his words. It was so much easier to trust others when they knew what they wanted and what they had to offer. But even still, it felt good to be seen by someone finally.
“Don’t underestimate yourself.” Riley walked closer and put a hand on my arm, as if his touch alone could anchor me to something other than my insecurities. “You are so much more than you give yourself credit for.”
His words were like a flicker of candlelight in the dark—warm, unexpected, and just the thing to pull me out of the shadows… if I could trust them.
But could I? How much of what he was saying was because he truly thought that and how much was the potion? I shook his hand off and moved away. “You’re just saying that because—” My fae power hummed inside me as I walked by a narrow bookshelf crammed between the desk and the wall.
“Kitty?”
I focused on the shelves, tapping into my power more. I held my hand in front of me and waited for… what? I didn’t even know. But something drew my magic here, and I might as well trust it even if I couldn’t always trust myself.
My gaze fell on a small book wedged between two textbooks, and I pulled it out. The book fell open, revealing Graham’s planner. “I found it.”
“Impressive.” Riley’s grin pulled at the corner of his mouth. “How did you know it was there?”
“My magic found it.” I stared at the book in wonder. “I didn’t know my balancing magic could do that. It always seemed so… useless before.”
“It sounds like you’ve been overlooking its real value,” he said, “but your magic was one of the first things I noticed about you.” He caught my gaze and held it, like it was a secret he didn’t want to part with.
I dropped my attention to the book and flipped it open, studying Graham’s schedule for yesterday to avoid his piercing gaze. Everything seemed normal until Graham had written “meet E” at 8:00, but he’d crossed it out and written “meet Eve” at half-past 5:00 instead.
Who was Eve?
I put the book down before meeting Riley’s gaze. “I don’t know where Graham went, but I think I know who he was with.”
He glanced between me and the book. “You do?”
“Someone named Eve.” I frowned and showed him the book. “Looks like he had plans to meet her at 8:00, but he moved it to 5:30 instead.”
“She could be our killer.”
“If she were, then it wouldn’t make sense for Graham to have made it home after.”
Riley pointed to the trash where a plastic cup with a lid and a fancy T&T logo. “Maybe, maybe not, but it wouldn’t hurt to check out where they might have met up yesterday.”
“The Tea and Tarot?” I wrinkled my nose, thinking of all the times I’d invited Graham to go with me and he’d turned me down.
I squatted and pulled out the small piece of paper stuck to the cup—a receipt for a quarter to 6:00.
“It looks like you were right. This had to have been the place Graham went after work before coming home.”
“So that girl from his schedule—Eve—could have been the last person who saw him alive.”