I sighed. Seriously? This couldn’t be easy, could it?
“Nice going, though,” said Bertram. “Because that guy was on a self-sabotage mission, and he was about to take everyone with him, the company included. So, no, I’m not sorry he’s dead, and I know you aren’t either. But I didn’t kill him.”
* * *
“Just calling to check with you that you indeed had a benefit for sickle cell anemia at the Grand on May twenty-seventh?” I said into my phone.
“Why yes,” said Sina Cox, who had hosted the event at the Grand, at least according to my web search. “We most certainly did. If you’re interested in donating after the fact—”
“Oh, I’m afraid I can’t do anything like that,” I said. “I’m actually calling to check on an alibi.”
“An alibi? Are you with the police?”
I remembered what Lachlan had said about lying. “I’m investigating a murder,” I said, dodging the question.
Lachlan,who was driving, made a face at me. “Put it on speaker phone,” he said in a soft voice.
I took the phone away from my ear and hit a button.
“…was murdered during the benefit, I assure you. What does this have to do with me?”
“I just need confirmation that Bertram Kingsley was, in fact, in attendance that night.”
“Bertram Kingsley? But he wasn’t there,” she said.
“He wasn’t?”
“No, and I remember because he had RSVP’d and I was relying on him to bring along one of his partners who he said was looking for some charitable donations for tax purposes, and neither of them came, so I was a bit annoyed.”
“He didn’t stay late and close the bar?” I said.
“Absolutely not. He never arrived.”
“Well,” I said. “Thank you very much, Ms. Cox. I appreciate it.”
“You don’t think Bertram murdered someone?”
“Thank you for your time,” I said, dodging that question too. “We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.” I hung up the phone, my mind reeling. So, he’d lied about the alibi? He was still a suspect, then. Maybe this could be easy.
“He lied,” said Lachlan. “He wasn’t there after all.”
“He was so casual about it,” I said. “Didn’t seem the least bit ruffled.”
Lachlan nodded. “Almost as if it was a lie he’d practiced?”
“He did it,” I said, looking sidelong at him. “It was him, and we’ve got to prove it. How are we going to do that?”
“Well, it’s not going to be easy,” said Lachlan. “Assuming he’s actually guilty, and we’ve just found the murderer, then we likely won’t be able to link it to him with physical evidence, because we don’t have the arrow that killed Alastair.”
“We don’t have it, as in you and me, or the police don’t have it?” I said.
“The police have it,” he said. “But we don’t have access to the file or anything. I never even saw it, because they blocked me out of everything real early on.”
“Damn it,” I said.
“So, our best bet is going to be placing him at the scene,” said Lachlan. “And establishing motive, opportunity, and ability. So, I guess we need to determine if he knows how to shoot a bow and arrows.”
“Okay,” I muttered. “Well, that sounds like fun.”
“We can be sure he’s not going to tell us,” said Lachlan. “Is shooting arrows something that any dragons you know of ever engage in?”
“Not in particular,” I said, considering. “Some of my father’s friends liked to go hunting for deer, but they usually shifted into dragon form to do it.”
“Really?” said Lachlan, glancing over at me. “How did that work? Did they burn the deer to death?”
“No, they would catch them with their claws, I think,” I said. “Because we would eat them later, and the meat was not burnt to a crisp.”
Lachlan made a face.
“What?” I said. “Like you never ate deer in Texas? Isn’t your whole state all about hunting and guns and stuff?”
“Sure,” said Lachlan. “Sure, my father used to try to get me up at the ass crack of dawn to go freeze my ass off in a tree stand. I wasn’t interested, though. I started refusing by the time I was thirteen.”
This was interesting. Lachlan never talked about his parents or about being young. I had never heard anything about his past besides what had happened to his daughter.
“I just don’t see the point of killing things for fun,” said Lachlan. “Not that it really was much fun, anyway. It was mostly boring. And it was all macho bullshit. ‘Be a man, shoot a gun.’” He rolled his eyes.
“So, you ever talk to your father nowadays?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “Not often, though. We never did have much to say to each other. I always thought I was going to be a better dad than he was, but I was wrong. After all, he kept me alive.”
We were quiet.
“Lachlan, you shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened to your daughter,” I said finally. “It wasn’t your fault, and I think you know that.”
“Do I know that?” He shook his head. “Listen, I’m going to drop you at the hotel and then I’m going to go and talk to Bertram’s neighbors, see if anyone saw him that night, saw anything suspicious.”
“I can come with you for that,” I said.
“No, you get some rest,” he said. “And we’re already nearly back here, anyway. Maybe we can do dinner at my place tonight, if you want? I’ll come get you later.”
“Your place?” I said.
“I’ve, uh, acquired some furniture,” he said.
“Really?” I said. “I’m intrigued. But I’m going to meet with Ophelia tonight.”
“After that, then,” he said. “Late dinner. You can snack beforehand if you can’t make it that long.”
* * *
Ophelia was lighting candles which sat in clusters of fat, white wax drippings on tall stands throughout the room. The room was cozy enough, with an overstuffed couch swathed in blankets and tapestries and a thick rug in front of the fireplace. There was a fire going in there, even though it was still nearly ninety outside. She also had the air conditioner going full blast. There was a cauldron over the fire. A real, honest-to-goodness cauldron.
I went over to it and peered inside, half-expecting to see green goop bubbling up—bits of snails and frog legs and snake tongues.
But what was inside was white liquid. Steam was rising off of it.
“Milk?” I said.
“Yes,” she said, lighting the final candle. “It’s a good symbol for the mother.” She pointed. “Can you get the lights?”
I crossed the room and flicked the switch. The room was bathed in darkness, and the flickering lights of the candles were the only points of light. “Does it matter if it’s dark?” I whispered. I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to whisper, but it seemed appropriate.
“Maybe not,” said Ophelia, her voice also quiet. “But this sort of magic, it’s different. It’s discovery magic. It’s linked to intuition and the unconscious mind. When you went to your ancestors’ tomb to find the magic artifacts for the talismans for your friends, you sensed which were the right ones, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s discovery magic?”
“It’s similar,” she said. “You are a magical being. You do it simply by existing. But I must rely much more on ritual and ceremony to access that part of myself and merge it with magic.”
“That’s why some mages do spells or incantations,” I said.
“Yes, it’s kind of a shortcut to accessing the magic. You practice the way that you find it and you use the words to invoke that same action.”
“Huh,” I said. This would have been helpful to know when I was trying to teach Felicity magic, but she seemed to have figured it out on her own.
“Anyway, I will be doing a bit of that this evening,” said Ophelia. “And I will need things from you.” She picked up a pa
ir of scissors. “A lock of hair.”
“Okay,” I said.
She reached out and snipped some off. Then she tossed it into the cauldron. She stirred, whispering something over the steaming liquid. Then she turned back to me. “Fingernails.”
“Fingernails?” I said.
She handed me a pair of clippers. “Clip them all and collect them in your palm.”
I wrinkled up my nose. “Okay.” I started clipping my nails. When I was done, I had a palm full of half-moons. “Done,” I said.
She held out her hand to me.
I poured them into her hand.
She deposited them into the cauldron and stirred again, mumbling as she did so. She stood there, illuminated only by the light of the fire and the candles, stirring the cauldron, and she seemed… taller suddenly.
I felt as if the room grew hushed and Ophelia’s whispers grew louder. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but the sound seemed to echo against all the walls, multiplying as if the whispers were chasing each other into corners and out again, flitting everywhere, mixing with the smoke.
“My will be done, so mote it be,” Ophelia muttered, more clearly, more loudly. “My will be done, so mote it be.” Her voice was getting stronger, deeper, more commanding. “My will be done, so mote it be.”
She stood large and imposing in the corner, the hollows of her face emphasized in the firelight. She was frightening.
I swallowed.
Then she plunged her hands into the cauldron.
I flinched. Wasn’t that hot?
She didn’t seem bothered. She turned to me with dark, commanding eyes. “Lift your shirt and bare your stomach,” she ordered in her echoing voice.
I obeyed. I didn’t know what else to do.
She placed her dripping hands on my stomach. “Child of the dragon, reveal yourself,” she said.
And then all the candles in the room blew out at once, snuffed out, filling the room with smoke.
Ophelia shuddered, her eyes rolling back in her head. She cried out in pain. She fell back onto the floor, and she convulsed there.
I screamed. “Ophelia!”
She was seizing, like an epileptic.
I knelt next to her. “Ophelia, are you okay?” I tried to touch her.
Her eyes opened. She stopped seizing.
“Ophelia?” I whispered.
“Ouch,” she said.
I rocked back on my feet. “Are you okay?”
She pushed herself up into a sitting position. “It wouldn’t let me get close. That child has some kind of power, and it… zapped me. I felt it.”
I put my hands over my mouth. “Oh. Oh, God.”
Ophelia rubbed the back of her head gingerly.
“It shouldn’t be able to do that, should it?” I said. “There’s something wrong with this baby.”
“Well,” said Ophelia, “dragons aren’t born with magic, are they? Doesn’t it happen when you come of age? Then you can shift, and with the shifting comes the magic, correct?”
I nodded. “Yeah. That’s right.”
“So, it is odd that your child seems to have magic.”
“It’s aware,” I said. “That can’t be right.” I clutched my belly. “I’m so sorry, little one. Your horrible father did something to himself, and it must have gotten into you somehow—”
“Now, now,” said Ophelia. “I wouldn’t leap to conclusions. Maybe it wasn’t the child at all. Maybe it was your magic that leapt out at me. Maybe you have a subconscious maternal kneejerk reaction to magical probing.”
“You think so?” I said.
“It’s possible,” she said. “I can do more looking into it, if you’d like. But perhaps you should talk to your doctor about it. Aren’t most dragon doctors at least somewhat knowledgeable about magic?”
“My doctor did say that there was a magical protection around my uterus,” I said. “Maybe…” I chewed on my lip. “But Lachlan and I felt the baby. I felt it. It…” I rubbed my belly again.
Ophelia hugged me. “Penny, child, you’ve been through hell. I know it’s easy to start thinking that means everything will be hell from now on, but it’s not always the case. This might all work out. Have faith.”
I gave her a smile. But internally, I wasn’t sure it was possible for me to have any kind of faith. It seemed imperative to brace for the worst instead.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lachlan’s living room now contained a couch and a love seat—both of which were a hideous shade of green that resembled puke, in my opinion. They were comfortable, however. He had a coffee table too, and we ate our takeout dinner in there. His kitchen still only had the card table, but he had procured another metal folding chair. The living room was more comfortable than that, though, I thought.
He had a little TV too, and we watched some detective show, even though Lachlan kept interrupting to talk about how unrealistic it was. I understood. Whenever they tried to do anything about dragons on movies or TV, they always seemed to get it wrong.
After dinner, we watched more television, and we snuggled on the couch under a blanket.
It was nice.
Drama-free and easy and sweet. Just what I needed. I didn’t even want to bring up what had happened with Ophelia earlier, and I thought that we might get by without it even coming up, so I enjoyed the relative domestic calmness and kept my mouth shut.
As it started to get late, I felt myself drifting off to sleep. I kept trying to keep my eyes open, but then I would think to myself that I could still listen to the television and shut them. Then I’d start dreaming the show, and it would go wildly off script, until Lachlan nudged me.
“Hey,” he said in a rumbly voice next to my ear. We were spooning on the couch, and he was the big spoon. “You awake?”
“Yes,” I said, not opening my eyes.
“Liar,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.
I yawned, struggling to open my eyes.
He kissed the back of my head. “You can stay if you want.”
“Did you get another pillow?” I murmured
“I did,” he said. “Numerous pillows, including a big, full-body thing, which I thought you might want when you’re, um, further along.”
“You were going to say bigger,” I said, grinning at him. I scooted onto my back, so that I could see his face.
“I was most definitely not going to say that,” he said. “Do you want to stay? Because I can take you home if you’d rather.”
“I want to stay,” I said, burrowing close, and turning so that we faced each other.
“Good.” He kissed me.
It was wonderful. I was warm and close to him and secure and happy. I stroked his back idly. “Moving from this spot, however, is completely beyond my capacity.”
He chuckled. “Well, I guess we’re trapped here, then.”
“Mmm.” I shut my eyes again, snuggling up to him.
I thought I would just go right back to sleep, but the TV was still on in the background, and it was distracting. I wasn’t facing it. I started to turn, to try to look at it.
He shifted, trying to accommodate me.
I opened my eyes. “We have to get off the couch, don’t we? We don’t fit.”
“My arm is kind of asleep,” he said, gesturing. One of his arms was sort of pinned under my neck and dangling off the couch.
I sat up.
He did too.
I yawned again. “Did you find out anything from Bertram’s neighbors?”
“Nada,” he said. “None of them saw anything.”
I made a face.
“I think we should check out Fletcher Remington’s father, though, as a possible suspect as well.”
“Okay,” I said. “Doesn’t hurt to look into that.”
“Yeah, we can go tomorrow.”
“Oh, I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow,” I said.
“You do?” He scooted forward on the couch, putting his feet down on the ground. “If y
ou want, I could come along? Or is that…?”
“You should come,” I said, brightening. “That would be nice. Besides, maybe the doctor can give us some answers about what we felt.”
“You didn’t have any luck with Ophelia, then?”
I explained what had happened.
He listened with a sober look on his face. “Wow. That’s…”
“Scary,” I said. “Really scary.”
He rubbed my knee. “Hey, it’s going to be okay.”
“I don’t know, I’m totally freaked out about it right now,” I said, shaking my head.
“Well, that’s understandable,” he said. “And I’m sorry, because I think it’s my fault. I put this in your head.”
“No, it was strange what happened when you drank my blood. That would have worried me anyway.”
“Maybe,” he said, “but I made it worse, and I’m sorry.”
I twisted my hands together. “You know, if you aren’t okay with all of this, you don’t have to pretend that you are.”
“What?” He furrowed his brow. “I’m okay with it.”
I shot him a glance.
He put his arm around me, kissing my temple. “I’m completely okay with it.”
“It’s not going to be easy, you know,” I said. “I’m going to get moodier and get this big belly and waddle around, and my ass is going to get huge, and I’ll have heartburn and… and gas, and I’ll be the size of a small planet and—”
He laughed. “Don’t be silly, Penny. I’ve done this before. I can handle it. Besides, I have a feeling you’re going to look incredibly sexy with a big belly.”
I pulled away. “No one looks sexy with a big belly.”
He just grinned. “I don’t know. I’m picturing it and… yeah, it’s hot.”
I snorted, rolling my eyes and getting off the couch.
He followed me, grabbing me by the hand and tugging me close. “You’re amazing, you know,” he said in a low voice.
I peered up at him, and my heart started to thump the way that it did with him.
“You dazzle me, Penny. Always.”
I touched his face, running my fingers over his jaw. “Let’s go to bed,” I breathed.
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