Chapter 19 #2
I knew we didn’t actually look much alike, Violette and I.
Her hair was dark, mine that kind of dishwater blond that was really kind of a brownish-tan.
Her eyes were grey-green, mine so dark that most people probably thought of them as black, but you could see a faint distinction between iris and pupil if you looked close enough—grey, not black.
We were both fair-skinned, both fairly thin, although I never quite looked like I fit into my clothes, and Violette clearly had both the fashion sense and the muscle to fit into hers correctly.
She was a competitive archer, and lifted weights and jogged to keep fit.
The difference between her physique and mine—despite having a similar build—was a good reminder that I should probably do something to maintain a level of cardiovascular fitness that was more than just walking to and from work.
It wasn’t that far of a walk, so even though I did it regularly, it didn’t really count as exercise.
As we walked to the restaurant, Violette told me about the last few things she had to finish up for the semester—she was finishing a few classes late, with permission, because of our parents’ deaths—and how excited she was about the flight she had leaving next week for Kiev.
She was going to do a European tour, using some of the money our parents had left her, starting in Ukraine, and working her way back across several different countries, including Switzerland, Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, the Nordic countries, the UK, and then ending in Iceland before flying over to Kyoto, then traveling through Japan and finishing her tour in Thailand, then flying back through LA.
It would take her up to the start of the new semester, and she was nearly vibrating with excitement.
“Are you traveling with friends?” I asked her, holding the door of Kuba Kuba open so she could go in first.
“Nah,” came the reply. “I don’t have any.”
I felt my eyebrows go up. “You don’t have any friends?” Even I had friends.
She laughed. “Of course I have friends,” she replied. “Just none that I want to spend that much time with.” She cocked her head to the side. “Unless you want to come with me?”
Part of me did. The idea of just leaving behind the whole mess of my life here in Richmond—the case, what I’d done to Raj, the fact that I was going to have to reconcile those two things—and traveling the world with my sister sounded… romantic. Adventurous.
“I don’t think I can,” I replied softly. “Although it does sound incredible.”
“If it’s money—”
I smiled. “I don’t have that, either,” I replied. “But it’s more that I need to finish out this case, and I can’t exactly put that on hold while I disappear to Europe and Asia for three months.”
“Two and a half,” she corrected, following the host, who had gestured for us to go with her to the back of the restaurant into a private booth. “But I suppose murder waits for no one, huh?”
“Unfortunately, no,” I agreed, slipping into the booth and thanking the host.
“How is the case going?” Violette asked, picking up the complementary glass of water and sipping it. “Can you talk about it?”
There were things I knew I wasn’t supposed to share, but I figured I could tell her a little. The parts that were bothering me, rather than the parts that were central to the murder itself. “Some,” I answered her last question first. “General things, I suppose. No names. No details.”
She nodded. “It’s probably not anything like it is on TV, but they keep stuff to themselves. You know, like something the killer did or said that they won’t tell the press, so that they know if someone actually knows something for real. Right?”
I felt my lips twitch with something that might have been fondness or amusement.
Or maybe both. “I—I’m pretty sure it doesn’t quite work the same way it does on TV,” I replied.
“There are a lot of things I’m not supposed to talk about, not just one special detail.
” Although, to be fair, most of what I knew were extremely specific details about the inner thoughts of people who were willing to kill others and strip them of magic.
Those weren’t the things I was going to share with her, anyway.
Violette shrugged. “Nothing ever works the way it does on TV,” she remarked. “Don’t know why they bother pretending half the time.”
“Better storytelling?” I suggested.
She snorted, but before I could get into it, our server appeared to take our orders.
Violette asked for the shared appetizer plate, and then we each got a sandwich—a tomato jack melt for Violette, and a Bar ‘B’ Quban for me.
It would probably be more food than we needed, but I could take half my actual lunch for dinner, which would help to justify the expense.
“So what can you tell me?” she asked, when the server had delivered her Coco Rico and my limeade and disappeared again.
I sighed, slowly turning the limeade in my hands, the sides of the glass sweaty with condensation. “That I had to go back to Tranquil Brook,” I said softly.
“What?!” At least she hissed it instead of screaming, although her shock and horror were clear even without volume. “It’s still running?!”
I shook my head. “No, it isn’t. At least, not where it used to be. Raj and Hart determined that the people taking your parents’ money were scammers—maybe former employees of the original facility, maybe not. But I guess that’s fraud division, so it’s not their case.”
“But somebody’s looking into it?”
I nodded. Or so Hart had told me, anyway.
“But you had to go back anyway? Why?”
“There was… a connection,” I replied.
“Other than you, you mean?”
I nodded again. “Yeah. I—can’t get more specific, but we had to go there to look for evidence that would make… connections.”
“Why did you have to go?” she asked. “Isn’t looking for evidence the job of the police or FBI or whatever?”
“They were there,” I replied. “But they needed me to… check who things belonged to.”
Her green-grey eyes widened. “Psychically, you mean?”
I nodded once more.
“Whoa.” She seemed to think about this for a minute. “I bet that fucking sucked,” she said, then.
I couldn’t help the slightly startled laugh that slipped out. “Yes,” I agreed. “It definitely did.”
Violette had sent me off with half of her sandwich and platanos as well as my own, given how big our shared appetizer had been, telling me that she was going shopping and didn’t want to carry it—and, besides, it would just go bad before she got it to a fridge.
She’d hugged me tightly before she left, promising pictures and souvenirs from her trip and begging me to be careful finishing up the case.
I promised to do my best, but I’d reassured her again and again that I wasn’t in any danger—not any real danger, anyway, just the psychological kind—doing what I did for the FBI and Beyond the Veil.
Nobody knew who I was, and undoubtedly cared even less.
I wasn’t a threat, never had been, and never would be, as far as most people were concerned.
Besides, I can take care of myself.
I’m a death witch. I have the ability to kill with a touch—or without one.
I wondered what the law would say about that particular ability, if I ever had to use it again. Or, for that matter, if anyone ever found out that what had happened to my uncle hadn’t been an accident.
I knew there was no statute of limitations on murder.
Of course, the fact that I’d been six years old might make a difference. Maybe also the fact that I could argue self-defense.
I knew that’s how Ward justified it. He knew I’d killed my uncle, even if he thought it was mostly an accident. That I’d lashed out with my magic and that it had resulted in his death when he fell.
The only people who knew different were now dead.
I’d never forget the expression on my mother’s face. The shock, horror, fear—and disgust. She’d despised me for what I’d done. I’d always wondered if that was because I’d killed my uncle or, and this was what I thought more likely, because of the way I’d killed him. Witch magic.
The reason my parents had sent me to Tranquil Brook.
The place I thought I’d gotten away from.
And which I’d never, ever escape.