No. No, she wasn’t. She was a fucking human with a baby at home and who was trying to do…fucking everything at the same time. No. She needed sleep. “What?”
Dexx stood, unfurling his arms. “We need to talk.”
She sighed and followed him out the door. They stopped in the bullpen. Really? They couldn’t continue to the door? Hell, for that matter, they had a couch. Right there. She’d taken more than her fair share of naps on that couch. “What?’
Dexx raked his bottom lip with his teeth before saying, “You were beginning to shift.”
That took her mind off the nap. Though, sluggishly. “When?”
“Back in your office.”
Back in her…then it dawned on her. Her little melt-down. She’d felt the magick. She’d had a lot of energy.
She’d been searching for energy so she could keep going. After what Merry did, draining her, she had nothing left, but she had to keep going. Had she tapped into her animal spirit?
Maybe.
But shifting? “Cawli says I can’t.”
“Cawli lied. Because you were going through it.”
That couldn’t be. “I didn’t feel any of my bones shifting. I didn’t feel any different.”
“Did you feel an overwhelming sense of primal rage?”
She had felt that.
“It’s not really rage, but it is powerful and it can take you over.”
No. No. On top of everything else, she wasn’t a shifter, too. She wasn’t that powerful. She couldn’t be. “I don’t know what you saw—”
“You’re a tiger, Pea.”
“What?”
“Ask Michelle. She saw it. That’s why she called me. Your face was beginning to morph. You grew ears and striped fur and your eyes changed.”
She stared at him like he’d lost his damned mind. She hadn’t felt any of that.
He raised his eyebrows and nodded. “I’m not kidding, Pea. This happened.”
Paige meandered through the bullpen in a daze, needing to move.
She’d wondered. Why had she been allowed an animal spirit if she wasn’t allowed to shift? It hadn’t made sense.
But why would Cawli lie? Because a witch could choose her shape?
And how did they know that if witches weren’t allowed an animal spirit, if animal spirits never chose them? She had so many more questions.
“Look, until you and I figure that part out,” Dexx said, “you really need to concentrate on remaining cool. You can’t lose your shit, Pea. You can’t.”
Her kids. Were they safe? A newly turned shifter was volatile. They all knew that.
But she’d been “turned” months ago and nothing. What would change this all of a sudden?
Her….reaching into her death magick?
No. Probably not. Just because it had scared the crap out of her didn’t mean that it had anything to do with her shifter abilities. No.
Then, what?
Merry taking away all of her magickal energies?
“We’ll talk to Chuck.”
Paige nodded.
The door opened. They really needed to get a receptionist.
Oliver and another woman walked into the bullpen. Oliver smiled with relief. “Captain.”
“Oliver.” Did he know how much trouble he was in? Why would he just bring himself in? Was he daft? Or was he playing at something? Paige released a long sigh. Her nap would have to wait.
“This is Vivien. We thought it best to just come to you rather than make you bring us in.”
“How thoughtful,” Paige said slowly. “Vivien, is it?”
The short, dark-haired woman nodded with a nervous smile.
Nervous. She’d killed innocent people and she was…nervous? That just wasn’t like the stone-cold killers Paige was used to. “Step into my office.”
By ‘office’ Paige meant Interrogation Room 1. She gestured for Dexx to take Oliver into the other interrogation room before shutting the door. “Can I offer you anything? Coffee? Water?”
Vivien shook her head. “I just want to get this over with.”
“Um, okay.” Paige checked the camera in the corner. Margo and her brothers really had been amazing. They’d taken this building and really made it into a police station. The red light blinked. She hoped it was recording. “I’ll be right back and we’ll begin.”
Vivien nodded, playing with her fingers.
Quite the killer. With nerves so high, how had she managed to actually kill anyone? Paige slipped into the room that connected the two interrogation rooms.
Dexx was setting up both cameras to record.
Excellent.
He stood. “So, what do we have here?”
Paige shook her head. “I don’t know. But let’s let Oliver stew a little and we both tag team Vivien first.”
“Okay. I’m game. Am I good cop or bad cop?”
“Actually, I think bad cop or slightly mean cop could break her.”
He frowned. “Weird.”
“Yeah. So, how about we just play it by ear?”
He nodded, his chin jutted. “After you.”
Paige led the way, but paused outside the door. “This is weird. Right?”
Dexx shrugged. “They’ve lived under a tyrant for so long, Pea. Maybe it was just finally too much.”
Whatever. The Merry Paige had seen, the Merry that had been touched by the blood, was scary.
She opened the door and stepped into the room. “Vivien, this is my partner, Dexx Colt.”
Dexx smiled and took a seat.
Vivien looked up at Paige startled. “I’m not going to just talk to you?”
Paige’s hackles rose. Trap? Maybe she needed to put up some protections on the interrogation rooms? Something that made witches unable to cast, maybe, or keep paranormals from…paranormaling. Blessed Mother, she was tired. “No.” Just so Vivien understood the stakes… “He’s here for your protection as much as mine.”
Vivien looked at Dexx, her lips round with curiosity.
“He’s a shifter.”
Vivien’s dark green eyes widened. “So, the stories are true. You have allied with them.”
Paige nodded. “How about you start by telling me which of the murders are yours and which are Merry’s.”
Her shoulders tight, Vivien stared at Paige for a long moment. “First, you need to understand something.”
It had better be damned good if it was justification for murdering innocent people.
“Merry is a horrible person.”
Paige already knew that.
“No.” Vivien shook her head. “I mean, like truly horrible. The things she would ask her people to do. Ask anyone who worked for her. She is beyond ugly.”
Paige had someone she could ask, but she didn’t know how much Margo was willing to tell.
“But…she was powerful and smart and I knew that that police captain was trying to find a way to stop her. He just couldn’t. And then, I heard you were going to be working with him and I saw my chance.”
“Your chance to what?”
“To put Merry behind bars, to free all of us.”
“And by ‘all of us,’ you know you’re not talking about you. You’re going to jail. For a very long time.”
“I—yes. Yes, I know. But if you can send her away, it will be worth it.”
“Okay,” Paige said, drawing out the word. “So, Sarah Evans was your kill.”
Vivien nodded. “She was Merry’s next target anyway. She had magick. She was probably a bastard child of some witch, a clean witch.”
“Clean witch?” Paige nearly bit those words off after they escaped. She didn’t enjoy looking like an idiot in the witch world. Especially when she was supposedly so very strong.
“Yes. Neither good nor bad. Just grey. Unclaimed and unshaped. Merry thought that would be enough to undo what happened after she killed Shelia and took her blood.”
“Were you a witness to Shelia’s murder?”
“No. But I felt her pass
and she is the reason we were able to act against Merry. Shelia sacrificed herself to save us all.”
Sacrificed herself? “So, Shelia being murdered was part of a plan?”
“Well, yes.” Vivien clamped her lips shut for a moment, thinking.
Dexx leaned forward. “You set her up to be the next blood to feed Merry’s spell?” At least he sounded as incredulous as Paige felt.
Vivien hesitated, but nodded. “It seemed like our only choice.”
“How was that going to work?” This…was rich, for sure.
“Well, Shelia was a school teacher. Her mother had told her not to teach in Portland, but she disobeyed and taught there anyway. She did that so she could be attached to children. She befriended as many as she could.”
Knowing that those kids would be sacrificed? Paige couldn’t quite wrap her head around that kind of desperation.
“And then, she put herself into a situation that Merry couldn’t resist. We all knew Merry would need another blood victim soon. She’d already used up her last one and was starting to show signs of aging. She never allowed herself to look over forty.”
Because forty was old?
“But when you came along, Oliver offered me another choice. Shelia was already gone. We were winning. Merry was getting weaker. Shelia’s magick was leaving her vulnerable. But it still wasn’t enough. Somehow, Merry was able to fight it. He showed me how.”
Merry had been able to pull the blood from other witches, unclaimed witches, in order to clear her blood spell. So, by the time Paige had stepped back into Oregon, she’d very nearly already won. “Witches with clean magick.”
“Yes. There are many here in Portland.”
Stood to reason. Witches couldn’t mate with only the three witch family lines.
“So, I…” Vivien swallowed, ducking her head. “I killed Sarah Evans before Merry could.”
That wasn’t shocking information. “How?”
Vivien shook her head. “I am a Blackman. I used my magick.”
“And the DNA under her nails?”
“I don’t know. Oliver did that. I don’t know how.”
Paige chewed on her nail. “You killed her with death magick. Why did you choose that location? Was it to get my attention?”
“I thought we could put her body anywhere in the city and you would find it. But I chose that location because that’s where Merry killed Shelia.”
Paige narrowed her eyes. “Why was Shelia so important to you?”
“She—” Vivien stopped herself. “She was my best friend. And she was willing to do this to save us all. I couldn’t—I couldn’t let her just die in vain. I had to make her death matter.”
Paige rubbed her nose. “So, Sarah Evans’ death did two things for you. It brought me onto the case and kept Merry from getting fresh blood.”
“Yes.” Vivien glanced at Dexx, but her eyes brightened when she looked at Paige. “You have no idea how much hope you bring just by being here. You being here could change everything. For all of us.”
“And that was worth killing an innocent woman for?”
Vivien nodded, though the action was small. “I didn’t want to, but she was as good as dead already. Merry had chosen her.”
“And the children. How do we free them?”
“You don’t,” Vivien whispered.
Paige couldn’t believe that.
But what if Merry had devoured the souls already? What if there really was nothing left?
“I will sign whatever statement you want me to.”
“We need details on Merry’s other murders. What do you know about them?”
“A lot.” Vivien clasped her fingers together until her knuckles turned white. “I will help you in whatever way I can.”
Yeah, yeah. Paige got it. She wanted to put Merry away. She stood. “Dexx, get as much information from her on the other murders. I’m going to go talk to Oliver.” Because, yes, she needed to get to the bottom of the murders, but she also needed to know just how much she’d been played. Vivien couldn’t tell her that. Paige doubted Vivien was much in control of any situation.
Dexx raised his eyebrow. “You sure?”
She nodded. “You got this?”
“Yeah.”
Paige left him to it.
Oliver sat calmly, his gaze blank. When she opened the door, his attention snapped. “You’ve spoken to Vivien, I take it?”
Paige closed the door. “She told us a very interesting story.”
Oliver tipped his head in acknowledgement. “And she doesn’t know all of it.”
Paige wanted to get under his skin, to see if she could break through his calm, to see if that mask he wore was real. “She claims you killed Sarah Evans. And when your mother asked, you killed others.”
Oliver went still as he dropped his gaze. “She didn’t tell you I killed Sarah. Vivien isn’t that kind of person, but you are correct. When my mother asked, I did kill others.”
Paige sat down.
“When people tell you that Mother is a horrible person, they use words that are small, that don’t hold the full magnitude of what she’s capable of.”
“Why don’t you explain it for me, then?”
“She uses the things and people you love against you. She holds them hostage to get you do her bidding. If she gets out, she will use Leah against you to do unspeakable things. She’ll have you kill. She’ll have you evict people out of their homes. She’ll have you take what others have built their lives to make. She’ll make you strip people of everything they hold dear. And in the end, she’ll take away what you hold dear as well.”
Paige watched for any kind of ticks that would say he was trying to play her.
Nothing.
“She held my best friend against me. He didn’t show up one day as we’d planned and she informed me that I’d never see him again if I didn’t curse our neighbor’s lands. She wanted the soil to be barren. She wanted the livestock to die.”
“Neighbor? I thought you lived on an island?”
“We have a home in Troutdale as well.” Oliver frowned. “I didn’t do as she bid. She sent me my friend’s fingers each day I didn’t meet her very simple demands.”
That sounded like a lovely woman.
“And, then, when I was done, she gave him back to me. He had part of his soul still. But he was broken and scarred. And every time he saw me, he would go crazy. I lost my friend forever because she wanted someone else’s land.”
Paige couldn’t relate. She’d never faced anyone like that before. She’d faced off with Sven, sure. He’d sent her disgusting love notes in the belly of his murdered victims. But never that.
“I was engaged once. Beautiful woman, but Mother didn’t approve. She told me to leave her, to never look back. She told me she’d arrange a good marriage for me, one that would produce strong heirs.”
Paige wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what happened next.
“Started out small, at first. We moved in together and things would just be off or weird. Then, one night, Beth started scratching her head and couldn’t stop. The next day, she scratched through her arm. Scratched. I had to hospitalize her. And when I did, we discovered she was pregnant. She miscarried shortly after that, and all that—the scratching. The clawing, the biting—was gone as if it had never been there.”
That woman had a sick mind. And not in a good way.
“It happened again the next time she was pregnant. It got to the point that Beth decided I wasn’t worth it. She had an abortion and divorced me. But…she can still never have a child because my mother cursed her womb.”
Jesus Christ.
“So, when we say we did what we had to in order to get her out of power, I need you to understand exactly what we meant. We lived in Hell. We weren’t allowed to love or cherish anything without her permission.”
Paige quirked her lips. “I need to know what you did to plant the evidence on Sarah Evans’ body.”
“I…didn’t. I grabbe
d Sarah from Mother after she’d already started the ritual. Sarah scratched her, trying to defend herself.”
“And you let Vivien kill her?”
“It was better than if I had. I am one of Mother’s work arounds. When she can’t kill, when she can’t obtain the new blood, she uses me as her vessel to do so.”
That was good information to have. “So…you have all the details on her kills.”
Oliver nodded solemnly. “I do. At least, most of them.”
“You do realize you could go to jail as well.”
He nodded. “There will be no one to lead the Eastwoods, though, and I would caution against that.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he met her gaze, “the coven leader keeps the blood lust under control, to some extent.”
Sounded convenient. “What do you propose?”
“You lead them.”
Not bloody likely.
“Or Leah.”
Over her dead body. She would find another solution.
Paige did get sleep after that. She let Dexx and her team do the jobs she’d hired them to do.
And slept. For hours.
When she got up, she was refreshed and thankful for the rest and for the fact that she had a whole tribe of people helping her with the kids. Not everyone had that.
Well, not everyone had her workload, either.
Going through Rainbow’s evidence and Lovejoy’s files, Paige felt a lot less guilty about what she was about to do.
The actual evidence was weak against Merry Eastwood. There was the possibility she could get Merry convicted for an extended sentence, but it could also go the other way. Paige didn’t know what this ‘court’ looked like. She didn’t know how it operated.
If things were going to go down in Merry’s favor…
She’d let everyone believe Merry Eastwood had killed Sarah Evans, the only murder that had actual evidence.
CSI and Ethel had combed over the crime scene at the restaurant. They didn’t know what had killed all those people. They still didn’t know how to collect magickal evidence. Paige didn’t know, either. What would you look for? She knew what magick looked like to her witch vision, but she hadn’t seen anything that day. There had been no poisons.
And Oliver claimed to know nothing.
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