15. THE FALLOUT
THE FALLOUT
AFTER THE ARRIVAL OF LAZARUS WOODCROSS IN DUAL GUARDIAN/attorney mode, the questioning with Inspector Brown lasted more than an hour.
Almost all the questions were the same. And though Embry was a very good witch, she was still human, and therefore she couldn’t be sure all her answers were identical.
Where did you go after your confrontation with Oakley Riddle? Bed.
Can anyone confirm you went directly to your room? No.
Can anyone confirm you were in your room the whole night? No.
What was the nature of your confrontation with Oakley Riddle after the homecoming royalty ceremony?
Ughhhhhh.
That last one was hard to explain because Embry barely understood what happened herself.
It was a disagreement. It was a surprise—at least on her end.
It was a confrontation, maybe, but she wasn’t the one doing the confronting, which is how they made it seem, even though they saw Oakley approach her on the video.
The rest of the questions were as expected. Their history—how they met, the nature of their relationship, what Embry knew about Oakley.
She hoped they’d asked her friends the same thing.
Surely, Ames, Fairfax, Alistair, and Balthazar would paint a similar picture.
And then there was Rye—he could provide context, even if he wasn’t a student, right?
He was there. He’d talked with Embry afterward.
He knew she planned to go straight to her dorm room, because she’d told him that.
He’d watched her walk off in that direction.
This all had to add up to something. Embry just didn’t know what.
As a suspended student, she’d been sent home.
Given her current precarious position, Embry had made a point of not answering a single call or text on her phone.
For all she knew, anything she said or did on her device could and would be used against her.
So, she hadn’t made a peep when Ames’s messages began to roll in after several missed calls.
Hey, are you okay?
I heard you were in questioning with Martinelli? How’d that go?
The Table asked me a bunch about Oakley and you and last night.
Fairfax was brought in separately.
Lockdown. Even alums can’t come on campus. My brother left early.
They canceled homecoming tonight. Everyone’s pissed.
Fairfax and I asked for permission to go to the coven meeting tomorrow. Fingers crossed.
What’s going on?
Tell me.
Everything Embry had to say, she would say in person.
This was especially hard, given that Balthazar had texted her, too.
Off the group thread, on the one they’d created when she’d given him the coven coin.
She pictured his eyes flashing with equal parts anger and anguish on her behalf as she read the words, hearing them in his honeyed New Orleans lilt.
I’m sorry, Princess.
I heard Martinelli questioned you. You okay?
Suspending you is bullshit. Bet they don’t have proof, just vibes. Stupid.
Though they made her smile, Embry didn’t respond to those, either. Nor would she if she’d heard from Fairfax (but to be fair, Ames was probably texting for them both) or Alistair, whose olive branch after her court loss gave her hope that he’d worry, too, in spite of her rejection.
Maybe her silence was a little paranoid, but Embry was a lot paranoid, and Daddy was a lawyer, after all. She hadn’t consulted with him, but she didn’t need to. He would’ve told her not to leave a trail while the metaphorical hounds were out, sniffing around.
In fact, Daddy himself had barely been around to ask because he was out working the dogs himself. Embry didn’t see him from the time she arrived at the house until after dark, when he knocked on her door.
“Come in,” she called, her voice hoarse from her interviews.
When Lazarus opened the door and peeked his head in, he smiled broadly, which she was not expecting. “An extra-large Embry Woodcross special from Mystic Pizza is downstairs.”
Despite the pit in her stomach, Embry’s mouth watered as the spicy scent of oregano and grease wafted in after him.
Mystic Pizza was her favorite, even before Rye had made her watch the movie of the same name.
And Daddy knew her order as well as the people who worked there—zucchini, roasted garlic, goat cheese.
Manna straight from the Goddess to her taste buds.
When she didn’t say anything, Daddy continued, “Or, if you’d prefer, I could bring a slice to you. With all you’ve been through today, I’d understand if you want to be alone.”
Embry shook herself into action and peeled herself off her duvet. There was nowhere she wanted to be but with him. “No, I’ll come down. Thank you for thinking of me, Daddy.”
They sat at the kitchen island they often used as a table when it was just the two of them and the massive antique dining table seemed ridiculous. Lazarus poured himself a glass of pinot noir and watched as Embry went through her usual motions of blotting grease from her slice.
“Have you eaten anything all day?”
Embry blinked at Daddy. She’d spent so long taking care of him and his imperfect blood sugar that she couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked after her.
“Um, actually, no.” Embry took a bite, just so that statement would no longer be true.
Her hunger from this morning had evaporated over the course of the questioning and her suspension.
Her head was pounding but she’d assumed that was from the stress of it all, though it might have gotten worse after noon came and went without her typical lunch latte.
Embry hadn’t bothered to run a spell or take some aspirin to fix the problem.
After everything today, the hurt was something she wanted to feel.
“I didn’t get a chance to eat before… before she was found. ”
He took his own bite of pizza—she wasn’t about to be the diet police in this moment—washed it down with wine, and planted his elbows on either side of his plate, hands folded.
“Here’s the deal,” Lazarus said without pretense. “In all the information I’ve been given—and I’m sure I haven’t been given all of it—the evidence against you is entirely circumstantial.”
“That’s good, right?” Embry asked, a frisson of hope sneaking in, even though his flat tone gave literally nothing away.
“Yes. Except they can still build a case with it. Especially if you’re the only one they’re looking at. And right now? If they’ve got another suspect, they’re keeping it close to the vest.”
Which meant for all intents and purposes, Embry was the suspect.
She swallowed, gulping down as much rising panic as possible.
“Martinelli said they were interviewing other people, that folks had come forward. But I have no idea what they’d say that could add to that pile of evidence.
That I’d befriended her? That I’d helped her change her schedule for the better, and promoted her for a part in the fall musical?
That I’d given her a makeover? I just don’t understand what can be used against me except my own stupid words… ”
Daddy squeezed her shoulders. He didn’t drop eye contact, voice calm, despite the twinge of anger in his jaw, beneath a salt-and-sand-grain five o’clock shadow.
“I’m still working on gaining the particulars, but they did interview several students. They talked to Oakley’s friends—therefore we can assume they talked to your friends. Ames, Fairfax, the diviner kid, and what’s this about a sorcerer?”
“Balthazar—he’s a transfer.” Just saying his name made her a little seasick. As much as Embry wanted to see him—to see everyone at tomorrow’s coven meeting—rock bottom was not somewhere a crush should ever see.
“Yes. Them. As your lawyer, I’ll get the transcripts if they bring formal charges, but until then, we can only get information off the record from the ones who’ll talk with us—Ames and Fairfax, surely. Though, don’t text them. No paper trail.”
Embry nodded, grateful she’d ignored her phone. “Did they talk to Rye?”
He was a terrible texter—his only true fault; a penchant for in-person everything—so she hadn’t expected a message from him.
But she was half expecting him to be in the kitchen as she’d descended the stairs with Daddy.
Embry was loath to admit it, but she was kind of bummed that for once Rye had picked his own house over hers.
“Yes, I made sure they interviewed him,” Daddy confirmed. He glanced down at his wine, swirling it in the glass. “But, because his version of the events ends in him watching you walk away while heading into the stadium to retrieve me, it’s not as strong a statement as it should be for your case.”
Well, shit. Embry began to methodically tear her pizza crust into a million little pieces. “Too bad that part isn’t on video.”
“When this is over, I’m strong-arming the board into accepting a donation from the Woodcross Coven Foundation for a CCTV installation.
Doesn’t help us now, but a couple of well-placed cameras would’ve made all the difference today if Raven’s Head weren’t so distrustful of integrating modern security with traditional magical protections.
” Sighing, Lazarus set down his glass. “I’ve got my people working the Table to get a preview of what other evidence they might have—they must have something more concrete for all the energy to be focused on you.
Nothing yet. I’m sure we’ll know by the end of the weekend. ”
Embry had to believe that if anyone could get the inside scoop, Daddy could.
“Isn’t there anything we can do to prove my innocence other than wait around for them to come at us with what they’ve got?”
Lazarus mulled this over, swiping over his five o’clock shadow with a rasping scrape. “Em, do you know why vampires are illegal to kill?”
Embry wasn’t expecting this conversational left turn. Especially into a question whose answer was pretty straightforward. “Because it’s illegal to kill anyone?”
Despite it all, Daddy managed a sad smile.
“Well, yes. But hunting and killing vampires comes with a secondary charge in addition to murder in Table law. Partly that’s because their numbers are so small, thanks to human vampire killers, but more than that, it’s because to someone with the right magical gifts, a newly dead vampire’s personal power is transferable. ”
“What… like… you can steal their magic?”
Daddy nodded. “In a sense, yes. It’s sort of like hunting elephants to poach ivory. The means justify the ends for the right poacher.”
Wow. No wonder vampires were so secretive.
Embry couldn’t believe this wasn’t common magical knowledge.
Or maybe it was, but like the fact that vampires didn’t combust in the sun and were actually carnivores, it’d been mired and muted by pop culture.
The point was, Embry had not found a single sentence about any of this when she researched vampires upon befriending Oakley, and Embry was typically stellar at culling pertinent information.
“They’re,” Embry started slowly, “thinking I wanted to steal Oakley’s magic?”
“That’s one possibility—witches are among the few magical people capable of doing so,” Daddy confirmed.
“I can imagine that there’s a means during autopsy to know if the magic has been poached.
Once that comes in, if her magic has been taken, we can make the case that you didn’t do it.
You don’t have a cache of illegal magic in your possession, do you?
Nope. We make them find the poached magic. Use it like a smoking gun.”
This wasn’t exactly the offensive counterbalance she’d hoped for. In fact, Embry wasn’t sure the go-ahead-and-check-I’m-not-in-possession-of-illegally-harvested-vampiric-magic defense was solid. It seemed just as rickety as the he-said-she-said defense they had already.
“So we wait for the autopsy.” Embry’s voice sounded as hollow as she felt.
Daddy nodded. “Let’s get some shut-eye. Tomorrow, we’ll use the Witches’ Sabbath to figure out what we can do as a coven to prove your innocence.”
Something inside Embry cracked at that.
It was hard enough to process that her friend was gone. It was nearly impossible to think that anyone could believe she had anything to do with it.
“Daddy, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
As soon as she said that out loud, the rest of all the thoughts she’d been ruminating on for the past several hours came out in a flood of regret.
“I mean, I said some stuff that came out all twisted because I was upset and that wasn’t right, and now it’s being used against me and it’s like everything I’ve ever done doesn’t matter.
Like the last three years don’t matter at all—the friends I’ve made, the people I’ve helped, my role as head prefect. How could they not?”
Embry’s voice rose higher and higher with each exclamation.
“How could anyone think I’d do that? To anyone?
Let alone my friend? Do they really think I’m that petty and cracked that I’d kill someone because they won a crown I wanted?
Or because my sense of entitlement might be, regrettably, a tad out of control?
Like, did they think if they unzipped my skin, they’d find some monster underneath? Daddy, I just… I just… Why?”
Lazarus was off his barstool in an instant, wrapping her against the warm sturdiness of his chest. Embry heaved, a sob finally escaping and racking her entire body. She shuddered against him, dragging his vise grip up and down with each gasping inhale and moaning exhale.
They stayed like that until Embry’s eyes had no more tears to shed, her tremoring body scaling from earthquake shakes to small aftershocks. Daddy held her the entire time. She was certain she’d cried so hard as to break a sweat.
Finally, he spoke—quietly, just in her ear, but Embry heard it in surround sound, through his lips and reverberated in his chest and swiftly beating heart.
“I don’t know why this is happening, but I know my girl, and you would never hurt anyone. You’re the most generous person I know, Embry Luciana, the very spitting image of your mother. I lost her and I’m not going to let them take you, too.”
A new sob ripped through her at the thought of Mom, her body in Raven’s End, her spirit watching this shit show from above.
Daddy patted her head. “We’re going to get through this. You and me.”