by Cate Lawley
And Alex stopped.
He kept his sword out, but took a half step back.
“You know what the Society is going to do to you?” I asked Richard.
He tipped his head in my direction, and his fangs slid out.
A quiet hitch in Ben’s breathing made me say, “Don’t worry. Alex will gut him before he can twitch.”
I kept my gaze pinned to Richard’s fanged visage as I spoke.
His incisors retracted.
Time for me to cook up some drama, or Alex was going to do some real damage.
It would be Society-sanctioned, but I didn’t think Alex would be nearly as comfortable with his actions after he’d had a few minutes to calm down. Right now, he was acting in anger. At himself, for underestimating Richard. At Richard for endangering my life and Ben’s.
Drama. I could manage just the smallest amount. It wouldn’t take much at this point. Alex was pretty scary, and he was still looming only a few feet away with his very large sword.
I took two steps closer to Richard. “I’ll just have a look inside your head. A lot faster than Alex’s method, I think. It’s too bad I haven’t been practicing. Poking around in someone’s head really should be more scalpel than hatchet, but…” I shrugged.
Richard’s face pinched into an unpleasant mixture of fear and hatred.
What little sympathy I had, I wasn’t wasting on him. Lydia, for her lost child, possibly. Abby for her lost sort-of-love, maybe. But I didn’t have an ounce of sympathy for Richard.
A threat had no value when it was clearly a bluff.
So I wouldn’t bluff.
I got ready to trawl through the nasty pit of sludge that was likely inside this vamp’s head. Practice makes perfect, and Camille had been giving me grief about my inattention to this particular area of study.
I took a breath and let my gaze slide to meet his.
He cringed. “Stop.”
Since I hadn’t done anything, that was easy enough.
I crossed my arms and tried to assume a menacing expression. Clearly Richard believed the murmurings of the pain and permanent damage certain witches’ subjects suffered. Since the murmurings were spot-on, that was wise of him.
Alex shifted his weight, disappeared his sword into the invisible sheath on his back, and clicked a button on the tiny recorder in his back pocket. It was all one fluid motion, and he cleared his throat to cover the sound of the machine he’d switched on. “Why were you trying to destroy Chalmers’ body?”
I wanted to know how Alex had known to bring a recorder tonight.
Richard looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Are you serious?”
Alex gave him a hard-eyed stare, and I again shifted my gaze. I wasn’t even certain I could probe the slimeball’s mind with just a look. I’d probably have to touch him. I reached out—
“Stop.” Richard shrank back. “Okay, but… Look—I had to destroy the body because it’s being stored in a funeral home run by a witch.”
Ben coughed.
How I’d been elevated to running the place when I’d just been hired as an odds-and-ends gal was a mystery.
Richard gave Ben a derisive look, and the picture cleared up a bit: enhanced trumped nonmagical human every time in Richard’s limited worldview.
“You can do some kind of witch magic and figure out who made the cuts to the tats.” Richard looked at me expectantly. I stared back without comment, and he said, “Can’t you?”
Without even blinking, I lied. “Absolutely.”
Some witch somewhere probably could. And damned if I wasn’t going to do some studying and figure out how it was done.
At some point. Not today. And not with Richard Chalmers’ body.
Richard’s nostrils flared. “I did it. I didn’t want a child to take her away from me. Is that good enough? You’ll stay out of my head?”
“You were jealous of a child that didn’t even exist?” Ben asked.
When I turned to him—to tell him to shush—the words died on my lips. He was rumpled, paler than even a redhead ought to be, and he had fine lines around his mouth that I’d swear hadn’t been there the day before.
I’d broken him. He was a funeral director. A guy who spent his working hours comforting the bereaved. He dealt with more stress in a single day than most people did in a month.
And I’d broken him in two days.
There went my job and any chance I had of moving out of my mother’s house.
And that was assuming we could avoid Cornelius’s wrath and keep Ben’s memory intact.
This entire excursion into murder-solving insanity was turning into a lose-lose scenario.
Richard’s lip curled. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I get it,” Alex said. “You were the heir. You put your time in with Lydia—you basically ran her life for her—and you had a special connection.”
Richard narrowed his eyes. “I did.” He sounded suspicious.
I saw where Alex was headed and said, “She didn’t appreciate you like she should have.”
Richard relaxed somewhat. “She didn’t. She would have given it everything. The business, her…”
Love seemed too strong a word, so I went with a more believable option. “Her affection. I get it.”
Richard’s fangs descended, and he flashed me a nasty look. “You have no idea. You can’t understand. You’re just a grubby, potion-peddling witch.”
I rolled my eyes. I’d heard it before. Money-grubbing, untalented, pedestrian. They could say whatever they liked; witches had the best magic. “You have enough?”
Richard gave me a confused look, but Alex said, “Yeah,” and pulled the recorder out of his back pocket. He cocked an eyebrow at Richard and then clicked the stop button.
Alex was frequently more trouble than he was worth, but he came through in a crisis. If he’d been half so good on the normal days, we might not have broken up.
Alex had a way of making things work out in the end. Not that he’d agree; the man thought he was cursed. But as glad as I was that Ben and I had someone like Alex for backup, I didn’t want to rely on the talents of others.
I wanted to be the talent that others relied on.
That was a new revelation.
And it meant taking my studies more seriously, tapping into my witchy well, and learning how to use the magical amperage that lurked in my suburban depths.
The decision clicked in my brain and gave me a chill—the good kind.
“Uh, guys?” Ben’s quiet but firm voice penetrated my haze of self-realization. “What now?”
Ben…
I sighed. There went my happy endorphin high.
One deranged psychopathic killer down, but that still left a seriously pissed-off Cornelius to deal with, and Ben’s recent memories to save.
18
My Hero, or Forms in Triplicate
Two of Cornelius’s emergency response guys, aka his enforcers, picked up Richard, but Alex insisted on delivering the taped evidence himself—with my help.
Ben came along without any great discussion.
After the events of the last day, it seemed natural enough that he’d complete our sleuthing threesome. That, and we all knew the confrontation with Cornelius had to come sooner or later.
The closer we got to Society headquarters, the closer to the speed limit Alex drove. We all knew what would happen at HQ: the removal of those pesky memories that painted a target on our community, the ones firmly trapped inside Ben’s head.
I was letting him down.
Alex parked, but none of us got out.
After a second, I said, “I win. It wasn’t the butler.”
Alex grunted. “PA, butler—same difference.”
Ben leaned forward between the two front seats. “But you have to consider the fact that the murder wasn’t related to his PA-butler duties.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Richard was acting as Lydia’s wannabe adoptive kid.”
Alex took t
he key out of the ignition, but otherwise remained in the same position. “Whatever his motivations, he’s still the guy with the butlerlike job. I win.”
“Hmm. I don’t think so.” I glanced at Ben. “And it’s two against one.”
“Right.” After a pause, Alex exhaled audibly and then closed his fingers around his keys. “I have a plan.”
“Thank God.” Ben fell back into his seat. “What do I have to do?”
“Funerals,” Alex said.
Ben’s gaze flipped between Alex and me. “Ah, yeah, that’s a part of the job description…as a funeral home director.”
“Exactly.” Alex opened the car door. “Stay here. I’ll retrieve you if you’re needed.”
I wasn’t about to miss this. Ben’s life as he knew it was in the balance, so I chased after Alex. I caught up with him as he opened the side door of the warehouse. “Any chance the Society could spruce this place up a bit? Just because you guys masquerade as a bunch of ghost chasers doesn’t mean you have to hide out in a shady building.”
He held the door for me as I slipped through ahead of him. “I’ll think about it.”
I’d forgotten Alex owned the warehouse that housed the Society’s offices. “You gonna share the plan? Or—”
“I’m going to have a conversation with Cornelius, and you’re going to smile and agree with everything I say.”
A grumble gurgled in my throat, but I swallowed it.
Alex gestured to the right. I vaguely remembered Cornelius’s office was in a back corner. And I couldn’t forget that I’d found him quietly terrifying.
“Come on. We left Ben in the car with no AC.”
I frowned at him. “He’s not a dog.” But I marched down the hall at a good clip. Mostly because I wasn’t going to let one old cranky guy intimidate me—even if he did practically run the Society. But also because it was hot outside.
When we got to Cornelius’s office, we found him behind a massive wood desk peering in annoyance at a bunch of papers spread across the mahogany surface.
He looked up with a distinctly displeased expression. “We’ve received custody of Richard. You’re here to deliver the recording?”
“In part.” Alex handed him the tiny cassette from the recorder. “I need a favor.”
Cornelius made a fist around the tape, gave Alex a hard look, then glanced at me. “I can’t imagine where this is coming from. What do you want?”
“Just listen to my pitch.”
“That’s all?”
Alex nodded. “If you listen, I think the pitch will sell itself.”
Cornelius gave the paperwork on his desk a disgusted look then clasped his hands. “All right.”
And then Alex laid out a very simple, very persuasive plan. No more shady body disposals. Ben would become the Society’s official provider of funeral home services, working in concert with his newly hired witch employee to ensure proper burial and disposal of enhanced beings in accordance with each enhanced type’s customs. Ben kept his memory, I kept my job, and the Society got to legitimize and normalize one of its illegal activities—all without risk of exposure, because I was going to be there to keep an eye on the human.
No pressure.
Cornelius asked a few questions, Alex had all the right answers, and that was it.
Turned out that Cornelius was just as much a bureaucrat as a scary enforcer guy. He and Alex had been working on pulling the Society into the new century for a while, and Alex’s plan for Ben fit neatly into their modernization scheme. Good thing for Ben.
“We’ll call him a friend of the Society.” Cornelius pursed his lips. “Have him come by tomorrow to sign the paperwork.”
I almost laughed, but I caught Alex’s look just in time and coughed. Cornelius was serious: there was actual paperwork. I nodded earnestly.
Alex grabbed my arm and hauled me out into the hall. Good thing he did, because I busted into a fit of giggles as soon as the door closed.
“Shut it,” Alex said. “He’ll hear you.” When I quieted, he picked up the pace and said, “Let’s go tell Ben the news.”
I just hoped my poor, frazzled boss would think it was good news.
Epilogue
Best. Boss. Ever.
Ben didn’t fire me.
“How did that happen?” a reasonable person might ask.
It might have had something to do with his new contract with the Society being dependent on my continued employment.
And also to do with his intact memory being dependent on his new contract with the Society.
And it didn’t hurt that Alex had covered the entire repair bill for Ben’s renovation of the prep area. Destruction caused by my magical witch grenade. Alex felt responsible, because he’d underestimated Richard, and failed to psychically predict that the man would show up at Kowalski’s that night. Whatever. He had the cash, Ben didn’t, I definitely didn’t, and it made Alex feel better—so, okay.
But Ben said he wouldn’t have fired me even if there was no Society contract. Even if he’d had to take out a loan to cover the repairs.
He claimed he didn’t blame me for the mess of magic and murder that had landed on his doorstep.
And I believed him.
Why?
Because I’d seen into his heart.
He was peppermint hot chocolate.
A quilt on a snowy Christmas day.
He was comfort and warmth.
Ben was a genuinely nice, truly honest man.
And that was why Ben Kowalski was the best boss ever.
Also, he wasn’t half bad in the kissing department…
* * *
Read Star of the Party to see how Ben and Star’s second official date is interrupted by a murder mystery of the magical kind.
Excerpt: Star of the Party
Chapter 1: Corpus Interruptus
Austin, Texas 1999
Maybe a Halloween party hosted by a bunch of witches hadn’t been the best idea for a second date—at least not a second date with a human.
Maybe sneaking away to a remote part of the house for a kiss—or two—also hadn’t been the best idea.
Then again, how could I have predicted a murder?
As I eyed the dead flapper Ben and I had just discovered in the master bath, I lost some of my enthusiasm for my own beaded 1920s costume.
And, of course, I knew the dead woman; I knew all the witches at the party. Isabella Treece, a powerhouse witch from a neighboring city. She’d come to celebrate with her dear friend Margery, the owner of the house and one of the party’s hosts.
Margery was going to flip.
I swallowed a groan and leaned closer to inspect the body. She was draped over the edge of the large tub, her vacant stare aimed just above my left shoulder.
“What…how? Wait, Star, don’t.” Ben held out his arm, just like a mom who’d slammed on the brakes. It was protective in a way that would be kind of cute—but for the corpse.
Wet strands of blonde hair clung to Isabella’s face and neck. Her mascara had run and her lipstick was smudged. And she was utterly still, a stillness only the dead can achieve. And I was expert, since I’d started working in a funeral home a few weeks ago.
I grasped Ben’s hand, gently squeezed his fingers, then moved his arm. Not that I planned to touch Isabella—not with the cloud of dark magic surrounding her. Ducking my head close to his, I whispered, “She’s a witch. Someone’s drowned her.”
Drowning with a dollop of dark magic: it was an excellent way to kill a witch.
Something about being immersed in water prevented self-healing. I was trying to remember the mechanics—it really was something I should know—when an ear-piercing shriek interrupted my train of thought. I swallowed a sigh. No way Ben and I were keeping this quiet now.
I turned to find Camille, my mentor and also one of the hosts of the party, intercepting a human guest at the bathroom door.
Camille moved to block the doorway. “Best not to touch anything.”
As she spoke, several more quests gathered behind her and Camille, as well as Margery, the owner of the house.
At the mention of police, Margery snapped her fingers. With an electric pop, magic filled the air. Since this was her home, I’d guess she had some sort of security system in place that she’d just activated.
She slipped by both the doctor and Camille and did her best to block the view of the partygoers. For just a moment—a very brief moment—I could see her grief. Nothing like tears. I couldn’t even imagine Margery crying. Just a terrible sadness.
Then it was wiped away as if it had never been, and she turned to me with a hard look.
Her inspection lasted several very long seconds, then she turned to Ben. Probably something to do with the person finding the body becoming an immediate suspect. But of any of the witches at the party, I was the least likely to commit violence against Isabella. Not only did I know her the least, it was widely known that I was a strong proponent of tightening up our little witch community’s justice system.
Her silent appraisal was interrupted by one of the guests calling out, “My mobile phone doesn’t have a signal.” A human, because only a human would be surprised.
Who had thought it was a good idea to invite humans to this bash?
Ben shifted, reminding me that I’d brought my own human guest.
“Anyone have a signal?” The same human, a young woman from the sound of her voice.
A few quietly murmured “no” replies followed, so Margery’s house was either in a mobile phone black hole or she’d shut down the signal. That particular skill wasn’t in my repertoire, but I’d bet it wasn’t difficult with a little prep.
Margery didn’t seem to be in any hurry to manage the witnesses, so I glanced hopefully at Ben.
He squeezed my shoulder, then turned to the group. “Why don’t we all step back? I’m sure the…ah, the police will want the scene preserved.”
