37. HARD EVIDENCE #2
“I don’t think it was a coincidence that he planted those items while you were in the room,” Ames said. “I mean, you were there for like five minutes before he showed up?”
Embry nodded. “Yes.”
The second the word was out of her mouth, an idea struck Rye so forcefully that he grabbed her wrist. “Is it possible Balthazar had been assuming you were going to try to break in at some point and had the room under surveillance?”
Rye gently released her, rubbing the back of his neck as she chewed it over.
“It’s possible,” Embry agreed. “Though unless it was a surveillance spell, it wouldn’t make much sense timing-wise, since it appears he was all over New England, killing Oakley’s vulnerable family members.”
Wait.
Embry looked to Rye. “Remember when I was joking that you tracked me on my phone? What if he was doing that the whole time?”
Rye immediately held out his hand for her cell, which he’d returned after she’d exited the police department. “May I?”
The techiest of them all by a mile, it only took Rye a few swipes to confirm, that, yes, malware sorcery had been installed on Embry’s phone.
On the usage screen was a hidden app that Embry hadn’t installed.
“Best I can tell, he embedded this in a message that he sent you that required you to click on a link. After it was downloaded, he was able to find you without you knowing.” Ames cursed, Fairfax scoffed, and Embry’s teeth ground together.
“Then he texted you and not the group just to make sure your cell was still with you and went from there.”
Embry glared at the traitorous device, which, yeah, she’d carried with her, even if she wasn’t using it to communicate. “Can you remove it, or do I have to get a new phone?”
In answer, Rye went right to work, stripping the device of malware. Even though Embry was sure he was capable of scrubbing it clean, she still wanted to chuck it in the Raven’s Head lake because it would feel good.
“Dare I ask what links he was sending you off the group chat, Miss Woodcross?” Ames asked with a twist of her lips.
Embry’s face heated. “Nothing salacious! Just links to his stage performances of Into the Woods in New Orleans. That’s all.”
“Uh-huh,” Ames replied, rather incredulous.
“Uh-huh,” Embry insisted right back, even though she knew it made her sound like a little kid. She spun on Rye. “So, we’re going to inspect the backpack?”
“Correct,” Rye answered.
Embry and Ames hopped up, and they crowded around the bed as Rye laid out the bag.
The duvet was still the summer one Embry preferred—bright white and airy—which meant the stained rustic canvas and leather looked like a dead animal washed up on a white-sand beach.
Rye removed the protective spell and asked Embry for a pair of disposable gloves.
She gave them to everyone, just in case.
“Okay, wait—this isn’t going to hurt Embry, right?” Ames asked, waving her gloved hands over the backpack. “Like, the chain of custody is broken, and so, like they’re not going to accept this, no matter what they find, right?”
“I’m hoping what we find can point us toward something concrete that the Table can use,” Rye said.
“And if it doesn’t?” Embry cut in, catching Rye’s eye. “We’ll think of some way to get this backpack to them.” He nodded, Ames accepted the explanation, and Embry wiggled her gloved fingers. “I know just where we should start.”
Embry reached across the bed and rotated the bag. Then she undid the drawstring that kept the largest compartment closed—the thing was old enough that zippers hadn’t been used in its construction—and flipped back the canvas top to reveal exactly what she’d hoped was there: a sewn-in name tag.
Reading the faded penmanship, Embry frowned. “I was expecting it might say Crawford or Hannah C. Something like that. But that looks like it says G. Griffith.”
Rye’s phone was back out and before Embry had the chance to ask him, he said, “I’m going to guess that might be G for ‘Goldie.’ ”
He flipped the phone around, and there was a photo of a woman smiling over a revolver.
“Oakley claimed her parents named her after Annie Oakley, right?” Embry nodded.
“Annie Oakley, who was a sharpshooter in Buffalo Bill’s traveling show.
Another woman who was in that show after Annie was one Goldie Griffith. ”
At first glance, those dots connected. Then Embry plucked the phone out of his hand and zoomed in.
The years didn’t line up, neither did Goldie’s bio—she’d had a son—but the son was old enough to have a daughter Oakley’s age, if she’d been born.
Not to mention, the likelihood that they were related was evidenced in the performer’s dark eyes.
“So, it’s possible Oakley was telling the truth when she’d said the backpack was her mother’s. Just not her vampire mother’s,” Embry concluded. “Let’s see what else we can find.”
Embry rooted around in the large main pocket, the sewn-in small pockets, the single outer pocket held shut with a wooden button.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. If anything had been in that bag, Balthazar had taken care of it before planting it in Embry’s dorm room.
Embry’s brows crashed together. “If it’s empty, why is it so heavy?”
“Oh, I know this one,” her BFF said, plucking the backpack off the bed. Then, with a spell Embry had never heard her use, Ames waved a hand over the disgusting outer shell of the backpack to reveal… a full plate of concealed magical armor.
It ran the whole length of the bag, down the straps, and even in a chest plate that appeared from thin air the second it was revealed, flaps extending from the front, where they would lay against Oakley’s body, covering all her vital organs like a bulletproof vest.
“That’s… why she always had it with her.” Embry’s eyes were wide. “She knew she was in danger away from home, and it was her way of staying protected.”
Oakley hadn’t been stubborn because she was antifashion. The vampire was stubborn because she worried that she was unsafe outside the family home.
“My brothers and I used to do the same thing in the boxing ring. We’d enchant our singlets and every time an opponent would go for a body shot, they’d be lucky if they didn’t break a hand.
” Ames shrugged as the other three gaped at her.
“It wasn’t cheating because enchantments weren’t outlined in the rules. ”
Fairfax scoffed. “Because you were competing against nonmagical people.”
Ames crossed her arms over her chest. “And tell me how that’s any different than what your crew team does to the current when racing against the normies, or the way Embry seems to never struggle with a headwind during track season?”
As Fairfax and Rye did a terrible job fighting back on Ames’s accusations of magical advantages, Embry’s heart dropped. She snatched her best friend’s shoulder, grabbing her attention and everyone else’s.
“That’s why he targeted her at homecoming court. Not because it was convenient to set me up with our fight… because we convinced Oakley to leave the backpack in her room! She showed up to the stadium completely unprotected in her pretty crimson dress.”
“Oh my Goddess,” Ames gasped. “We signed her death warrant in the name of fashion.”
Fairfax shook his head. “Girls, do not do this to yourselves. If she’d brought her backpack, you know Skye and I would’ve made her leave it before we paraded out to the stage. You didn’t leave her unprotected; the situation did.”
“Mirza’s right,” Rye agreed. His eyes met Embry’s. “The second Oakley was nominated for court, Balthazar knew he had his opportunity.”
Embry’s heart quivered. It was so hard to believe: That charming, handsome sorcerer had been this calculating on his own, collecting all the pieces to this very specific, very violent puzzle on a random, beautiful September day while dressed up as Cinderella’s Prince, in breeches and ruffles, but here they were.
“That very same day he swindled me out of the coven coin,” Embry said, her voice dropping as the truth of it washed over her in one nauseating wave, “he was laying the groundwork for drawing out Oakley’s family so he could kill them, too.”
“Hot damn,” Fairfax muttered as they all stood there, staring at the armored bag.
That pretty much summed it up.
Over the next hour, they’d decided that Ames and Fairfax would take the bag (made temporarily invisible by Embry’s spell) back to Raven’s Head with them and dump it in the lake.
That way, either it would be found if the Table dredged the water, looking for clues, or it would just sit there not hurting anyone.
It certainly couldn’t remain in Embry’s possession, and planting it back in Oakley’s already-searched room would be a mistake.
And at this point? With the coven under such scrutiny? They couldn’t afford to make any of those.