Chapter 15
She was upset, worried, and afraid. She touched her purse again, fingers slipping through the open clasp under her arm to check for the tenth or eleventh time that the envelope was still inside.
“Do you want me to touch everything in this?” I asked Hart, trying—and probably failing—to keep the concern from my voice.
He’d appeared without Raj, not that I found that at all surprising. I’d essentially resigned myself to the fact that I was unlikely to see Raj again unless it was absolutely necessary. And I couldn’t really think of a situation in which that would be the case.
“I—” Hart’s pointed ears turned bright pink.
“So ‘yes,’ then,” I answered for him.
“Just to see if everything in there is hers. If it’s not related, you can stop immediately.” He grimaced. “I am sorry,” he offered.
I just nodded. Agreeing would be rude, but the normal response—that it was fine, that I didn’t mind, something of that nature—would have obviously been a lie.
“May I dump it out?” I asked him. It would be easier to touch each thing individually if I didn’t have to rummage through the purse at the same time that I was trying to do it. In fact, I wasn’t sure that I’d even be able to do what he was asking if I had to leave everything inside the purse.
“Um,” was Hart’s response. He shifted in his chair. “How about if I hand you things, one at a time?” he asked.
I nodded again, relieved. “Yes, that will work.”
He took the purse back, wearing gloves. I obviously wasn’t, given the fact that I had to make contact with objects in order to read them, but Hart had assured me that my fingerprints would be eliminated from suspicion, since they’d taken them when I’d gone to the FBI for precisely that reason.
They had Hart’s, too, but apparently the fewer prints they had to sort through, the better.
He reached in and pulled out a small cylindrical object.
She put on the lipstick, steeling her spine. The dark red—darker than it should be, according to the campaign consultant Simon had hired—made her feel as though she were donning armor. She didn’t like the crowds at these rallies, but she would put on her lipstick and face them for Simon.
I handed it back to Hart, shaking my head. “Just lipstick,” I told him. “She last put it on before some sort of rally.”
He nodded, then passed over a small notebook with a tiny silver pen tucked in the side. I assumed they’d already looked at it, so I didn’t bother opening the pages.
The campaign consultant had told her the she would have to do interviews and commercials.
And she did not want to. She’d pointed out that plenty of people’s spouses didn’t campaign actively, and the consultant had gotten very annoyed with her, arguing that she had an obligation to stand up and speak for her people.
She’d flushed and told him it was none of anyone’s business who her people were or were not.
At first, she’d thought of the consultant when she’d gotten the first letter threatening to expose her, but that didn’t make sense. Because the consultant wanted her to speak out.
“I’m not sure if it’s relevant,” I said to Hart, coming out of the memory a little breathless. I told him about the memory and Yvonne Gates-Adams’s initial worry that her husband’s campaign consultant had sent the blackmail note—although she’d then dismissed it.
Hart made notes, using a stylus on his tablet because his fingers were covered in latex.
He’d explained once that you could swipe just fine with the gloves on, but they weren’t quite snug enough for him to be able to accurately type or write with his fingers, and he ended up with horrific typos and couldn’t figure out what he’d been trying to say when he went back to it.
It had made me think about just using latex gloves myself, instead of the thin fabric ones I carried with me, except that latex made my hands sweat horribly, and I hated how that felt.
Whether I hated it more than I hated other people’s thoughts depended on how often I’d accidentally end up in other people’s heads on a given day.
We kept going like that, Hart handing me one object after another—a plastic pen cap, a bottle of acetaminophen, a metal tin of mints, a plastic pack of toothpicks, a set of keys… All the usual sorts of things that one would expect to find in someone’s purse.
And all of them were equally banal.
Until Hart handed me an empty envelope.
Her heart pounded as she slipped the letter opener under the flap, pulling out the threat she knew would be inside.
$5,000 in unmarked bills under 100. In two weeks you will receive a text telling you when and where. Fail to pay and what you are will become very public in a very ugly way and your husband’s career will be over.
She didn’t want to pay. Every time, she entertained the fantasy of not paying. Of just letting them reveal that she’s a shifter. Of going public herself.
But every time, she’d remember that Simon’s career success depended on her remaining hidden from the public eye just a bit longer. Just until he got the new bill through.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed deeper.
He carefully ran a sponge over the edge of the envelope—he wasn’t stupid enough to lick it and leave DNA behind. He smiled to himself. He might not need the money, but he didn’t mind having it. It made things easier, when he could pay people off.
She’d had the necklace long enough now that he could end the whole thing.
She’d get a room at the hotel—he always had her use hotels, nice ones that could be misunderstood as somewhere she might have an affair—and would leave the bag with the cash and go out the back.
She’d leave the extra key in a prearranged place that he’d text her, and he’d go in and take the money before check-out.
Except this time, he’d come find her before she had a chance to leave.
This time, he’d get the cash, the necklace, her power, and her life.
The bitch deserved what was coming.
He tucked the envelope into his armpit and headed out to deliver it, whistling as he pulled on his gloves.
As far as I could tell, he hadn’t left any more impressions on the envelope, presumably because he’d worn gloves.
I looked up at Hart’s expectant features, then swallowed and told him what I knew.
I was exhausted when I left work, not simply because of what Hard had put me through that morning, but the combination of terrible sleep, bad choices, and an inability to cope with guilt. Even if I went straight home, though, I knew I wouldn’t sleep.
Guilt, to borrow a phrase that Hart used a lot, is a bitch.
So although I was staggeringly tired, I was headed to Melissa’s apartment.
We were ordering pizza and doing one of those mystery puzzles where the picture was supposed to give you clues about some sort of story.
Sam had found one, and since they were machine-cut, I could actually touch the pieces without issue.
I’d stopped and picked up brownies from the grocery store closest to Melissa’s apartment, making sure to wear my gloves so that I didn’t inadvertently get flashes of disgruntled bakery workers picking their noses before filling the little plastic packages with desserts.
That… may have happened once. I’d stopped going to that particular grocery store after that.
I’d also picked up ice cream, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce, because brownie sundaes were something that would always improve a day—even one as shitty as mine had been.
I texted when I got to the building, and was waiting for Melissa to come down to let me in when I heard shuffling running feet coming up behind me. I turned, knowing it would be Sam.
He was grinning ear-to-ear. “Rayn!”
I couldn’t help smiling back, although I knew my version of the expression wasn’t nearly as wide or enthusiastic.
Even on a good day it wouldn’t have been—Sam is one of the happiest people I know.
I envied him that. As a ghoul, people were often afraid of him or disgusted by him, but he didn’t ever let it bother him.
I remembered one of our shared dinners when Melissa had finally asked him how he managed to stay so happy when people were so awful.
He’d shrugged. “I’m free,” he’d explained. “My family loves me. I get to cook every day. What’s not to be happy about?”
“But people are so awful,” she’d replied.
Sam had nodded. “Yeah, they are, but nobody who matters.”
I thought about that sometimes. The fact that some people’s opinions matter to you and some people’s don’t. For Sam, his family mattered. We mattered. If anybody else didn’t like him, well, that was their problem, not his.
I supposed that it was a way to keep your sanity in a world that otherwise treated you as a third-class citizen, somewhere behind Arc-humans and witches.
It was also, I thought—although I knew enough not to ever say so out loud to Sam or even Melissa—a way to end up dead.
Because if you didn’t let the people who belittled you or oppressed you change your actions, then they were more likely to escalate.
To become violent. To act out against you for simply trying to exist in the world.
I could keep my magic to myself. So could Melissa, most of the time. We could pass as ordinary humans.
Sam couldn’t.
I worried about that, sometimes. When my news feed popped up a story about a Magic-Free Movement protest or an anti-Arcanid hate crime. When someone said something rude at work about Mason.
I worried about Melissa, too, but she worried about herself far more than Sam ever worried—or seemed to—about himself. I knew she’d be careful. Maybe more careful then she needed to be, but at least I knew she was trying to stay safe.
“Hi, Sam,” I said to the grinning ghoul.
“How’s things?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Busy. I’ve been helping with a case.”
“Really?” He sounded excited by this. “What kind of case?”