Dirty Little Misery (Miss Misery) (21 page)

Maybe or maybe not. I wished I’d been allowed to take notes. “Dezzi mentioned you might have enemies.”

“No. I used to have many, but not anymore. They’re all dead by now or far away.” She waved her hand carelessly.

I wasn’t sure how to bring up what Lucen had told me without sounding totally crass, so I turned toward him for help.

In response, he grimaced. “Dezzi suggested some people might not have appreciated her bringing you here.”

“Oh, yes. Naturally. You mean because of this.” Angelia touched her blindfold. “I’m sure that’s true, but no one’s said anything about it to me. It would be particularly stupid of them to openly challenge Dezzi’s decisions.”

“What if they weren’t up for openly challenging them?” I asked. “How hard is it to make F? Could someone be trying to set you up?”

Angelia traced a finger over her pink lips in thought. “It’s not especially hard, but there would be differences in the magical signatures between my F and someone else’s F. You could figure it out.”

“We could if we had enough of the killer F to run analyses on, but I’ll keep that in mind.” I stretched out in my chair, getting antsy. “Could any of your dealers be tampering with it?”

“No, not my ladies.” Angelia’s voice was firm. “But to be sure, I questioned them all when this first came to light. I’d know if they were lying. I can’t say it doesn’t happen farther down the line, after it leaves their hands. It could always be resold. I’ve told Dezzi that.”

“Your ladies? They’re all addicts?”

“Naturally.”

Naturally. Andre had told me they would be.

I took out my phone. Friday, after I’d met with Devon, it had occurred to me to ask whether anyone had gotten a photograph of the mark—or glyph—on the Wonderland victims’ legs.

Yesterday, Andre had sent me one, along with a note informing me that the real mark on the victim’s leg had vanished. It was both good and bad news. It bolstered my theory that the glyph was related to the murders since glyphs didn’t typically disappear so quickly. But as a result, this photo was now all we had as evidence of its existence.

I brought up the photo on my phone to show Angelia, then realized my colossal mistake. Embarrassed, I handed the phone to Lucen instead since he hadn’t seen it yet. “I’m sure Dezzi told you my theory about how there might be more to this than tainted F. Do you recognize this mark?”

Lucen inspected the photo. “That could be something to do with endurance or perseverance. But it’s heavily mixed with other glyphs.”

“Devon said endurance too. Confirmation is good.”

“Someone else’s magic is tampering with my F?” Angelia crossed her arms. She sounded indignant. “Show me the glyph.”

I hesitated, unsure what to say or do, but Lucen understood. Angelia held out her palm, and he drew the glyph on her with his finger. Clever, but it turned out not to be so helpful. Angelia was as perplexed as the rest of us.

I asked a few more questions, probing for theories on whether tampering with the F could work that way or who might have the skills and the means to do it, but I came up short on anything I could work with. Angelia’s information was enlightening and potentially useful in the long run, but it didn’t give me much to go on. If I could share it all with Andre, he might have ideas…but I couldn’t.

“Lucen?” Angelia twirled a curl around her finger. “Would you let me talk to Jess alone for a minute?”

Lucen raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I suppose I could. I’ll be upstairs.”

Watching him leave, I wondered what was on Angelia’s mind that she didn’t want to share it in front of him.

Angelia was silent until the door shut. “You like him a lot. I can sense it in you.”

I pulled my knees in, hoping she also sensed how uncomfortable it made me to have my emotions blasted to all and sundry. “Yeah, most of the time.”

“He cares a lot about you.”

What was all this satyr interest in my relationship with Lucen about? First Devon, which was weird but at least understandable since he was Lucen’s friend. Now Angelia who I’d met only ten minutes ago? “This can’t be what you wanted to talk to me about.”

“Actually it is.”

“Seriously?”

“When you mentioned this—” Angelia pointed to her blindfold, “—and brought up Dezzi taking me in, it made me think. You’re absolutely right that there are probably satyrs around here who don’t approve of what she did. But Dezzi is special and amazing, and she cares about me and was willing to risk the turmoil bringing me here might have caused.” Angelia’s voice was sweet and wistful. She talked like a woman in love.

Like
any
woman in love, and in that moment she struck me as more human than not. I’d never heard a satyr—or any pred—speak in such a voice. Lucen told me he cared about me, and he always sounded sincere, but cared was the extent of it. I wasn’t sure he was capable of anything more. Until recently, I hadn’t been entirely convinced he was capable of that much.

“I’m telling you this…” Angelia leaned forward, her voice hushed, “…because I want you to accept that we can feel very deeply. I’m not sure you believe it because it’s a side of us you’d never usually see. But what Lucen feels for you—I can’t say I see it in his face or sense it in his emotions—but it’s in his actions. This relationship he has with you—it’s a risk. It’s like Dezzi taking me in. You’re different than most humans, but you’re not one of us. There are satyrs who I’m sure don’t approve, or wouldn’t if they knew. Dezzi allows it because she knows, because of me.”

Angelia’s speech left me bereft of words. Some of what she said, about Dezzi’s approval of our relationship mattering, I’d already suspected. But mostly, Angelia caught me off-guard.

I picked through my thoughts, searching for something to say, but it was useless. So I said nothing. Let Angelia discern the intricacies of my emotions. She was probably better at it. I spent too much time denying them.

Angelia smiled. “I stunned you. It’s okay. And I’m talking out of turn. It’s not my business. I just wanted to let you know we can form strong bonds. So just because you don’t understand Lucen, don’t assume he’s incapable of it.” She patted my hand, and this time I was so out of it I didn’t feel the fragrant lust.

“I appreciate the lecture,” I finally managed. “I think.”

“Good.” She got up perkily as if my comment had made her day. “I should go. Do let me know if I can help. I don’t want any more people to die.”

My head didn’t feel stuck on correctly as I stood too. “Thanks. That makes two of us.”

Angelia left, and through The Lair’s window I could see the shadowy figures of her bodyguards leaving with her. Slowly, I climbed the stairs to Lucen’s apartment. I’d been doing fine until Angelia decided to play relationship counselor. Now I felt like I knew less about everything than I had when I started the day.

Chapter Twenty-One

Monday afternoon our investigation team had another meeting with Brian. Entering the conference room, I gripped my coffee chest-high as though it were a shield. Although I was convinced of Angelia’s innocence, I didn’t need a magi’s clairvoyance to foresee that convincing anyone else was not going to go over well.

“So.” Brian bustled in the room and dropped a file on the table. “What’s new?”

Andre went first. He’d been busy without me, tracking down leads, searching for connections between the victims, trying to find out if the latest victims had ever been to Purgatory. When he got to the part about my theory on the glyph, I tightened my grip on my coffee cup.

Andre tucked his pen behind his ear, an especially dorky look on a guy who was built like a professional athlete. “I’ve asked around, but no one can identify the mark or say positively what combination of glyphs it might be. If it is glyphs, at all.”

I forced my fingers to relax before I crushed my cup. “I showed it to a couple magically skilled satyrs, and they both suggested endurance might be part of it, which fits with how the victims died.”

Brian frowned at me. “You showed it to satyrs? Why?”

“Well, it made sense to me that if someone was drawing glyphs on people that either killed them directly or worked in concert with F, they might know something useful. It might also mean someone is trying to set them up and make them—or the F maker—look like a murderer.”

“What did they say to that?” Andre asked.

“They liked the idea.”

Brian snorted. “Of course they did. Did you learn anything useful since you’re sharing things you really shouldn’t be sharing?”

I shouldn’t have been sharing? It would be nice if someone told me this crap. But I bit my tongue because arguing I’d been blackmailed into this job without being given sufficient training wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I needed their buy-in on my theory so I had to play nice. “I think there’s a good possibility that my theory is exactly what’s happening—someone is trying to frame the F maker. I don’t think she’s intentionally putting out tainted F.”

“She?” Two pairs of eyebrows shot upward, and my own rose with them. I hadn’t realized just how little they knew.

“You got a name?” Brian asked.

My jaw clenched beyond my control. “Yes.”

“And?”

“I can’t tell you. Dezzi allowed me to talk to her only after she put a compulsion on me.”

As expected, what Dezzi had decided I could share with the Gryphons was not much, and my rational arguments for greater leeway had been shot down. “Tell them your theory first and see what they say,” she’d told me. “We can release details as they need to know.”

I’d argued that it wouldn’t work. Sometimes getting to say
I told you so
was not worth the gloating.

Brian swore, but Andre chuckled in some sort of amused annoyance. “Of course she did. Dezzi’s no fool.”

“Fine.” Brian raised his hands in defeat. “This person’s convinced you she’s innocent and someone might want to frame her. Why?”

I took a deep breath, not sure how much of my response would come out. “She might have enemies among the satyrs.”

To Brian’s increasing frustration and Andre’s decreasing humor, I couldn’t answer their questions about the reason for those enemies in much detail.

“Look.” I shoved my coffee cup aside. “Dezzi is willing to admit there might be satyr involvement here. This is big. She’s been trying to protect her F maker. If we follow up on this, we could have her cooperation. Doesn’t that mean something?”

“It means shit, Jess.” Brian stood up, apparently so he could glare down at me. “It’s a cute theory. Maybe Dezzi buys it, maybe she doesn’t. I can think of a lot of reasons she might be willing to go along with it, including to sacrifice a satyr who’s gotten on her nerves, someone she’d like to kick out anyway. Then she can do what Doms always prefer to do—handle the real problem themselves. She’ll cover it up and dole out her own so-called punishments, and the real culprit will never see justice for what they did.”

Beneath the table, I dug my nails into my palms. “There are legit reasons to think someone might have it in for…” I tripped over Angelia’s name, “…the F maker.”

“So you say.” Brian shook his head. “It’s not good enough. I need to know the motive if nothing else. We all need to know it so we can consider it. If you can’t share it with me, then all I’ve got is your word, or the word of some satyrs, and a symbol that may or may not be a glyph. There’s nothing we can act on. Unless you bring me back something to lend credence to this—frankly outlandish—theory, then it’s a nonstarter. Get me a motive or I can’t take it seriously.”

I dropped my head to the table. Well, that went about as well I’d warned Dezzi it would.

My day didn’t improve after the meeting broke up. I was back to work with Andre, helping him gather information about the Wonderland victims. It was dreary and dull, and made all the more so because I didn’t believe it was actually getting us any closer to solving the case.

For his part, Andre wasn’t unsympathetic to my theory. But, on a practical level, he agreed with Brian. Me vouching for the F maker’s innocence and suspicion about enemies was nothing they could use.

“Get us a motive,” he said, echoing Brian. “If we have a motive, we can find suspects. If we can find suspects, we can bring them in for questioning.”

Unfortunately, I had a motive, but it was vague and I couldn’t share it unless Dezzi gave me permission and lifted that part of the compulsion. I’d send her a message, but I wasn’t hopeful. Alas, this just meant if anyone was going to follow up and try to uncover who might have it in for Angelia, it would have to be me and it would have to be on my free time since I wasn’t permitted to chase “frankly outlandish” theories on the Gryphons’ dime.

Wednesday, things got weirder. I was packing up after another pointless day spent with the unpleasant task of talking to friends of the deceased, and a slightly less unpleasant task of learning about magical blood analyses from Anna, when Tom appeared at my cube.

“I don’t suppose you remember our conversation from the weekend?” he asked.

No, I didn’t, and I stuck my water bottle in my bag unconcerned about it. “Conversation?”

“At the pub.”

Oh, that. I hadn’t thought we’d talked long enough to consider it a conversation. “Yes, I remember. What’s up?”

“Just that I hear you’re pronouncing the satyrs innocent of the recent string of F-related deaths. True?”

My computer finished shutting down, so I swung my bag onto my shoulder. Tom wasn’t part of what I was getting paid to do. I felt no need to hang around late because he wanted to be creepy and invasive. “Not quite. I don’t think the F is tainted. That’s all.”

“But you’re willing to trust the satyrs.” He started toward the elevator with me.

“I’m trusting my own judgment. How do you know so much about this case anyway? Don’t you have furies to investigate?”

“With preds, more is connected than you might imagine. I thought perhaps you needed another reminder that it’s unwise to put your faith in the satyrs, regardless of your friendships.”

I jabbed the elevator button. “I don’t have faith in anything or anyone. But if I need a life coach, I’ll find you. I know what I’m doing.”

“I hope so.”

Smug, condescending, nosy, paranoid bastard. I hopped into the elevator without a word. When I got the chance, I should totally take a second peek around his office. Just on the principle that he pissed me off, and I wanted to be as nosy right back.

But not tonight. Having finally gotten to do my exchange with Rik, I had plans to meet with Bee and finish our deal. It had dragged on long enough, and I was sure I wasn’t the only person eager to complete the transaction.

I met her at the amphitheater again, after stopping at home to pick up my knife and my scarf. Traces of blue still streaked across the sky as I sat on a bench looking out into the Charles. Normally, I waited until full dark for this sort of business, but I’d been forced to wake up early the last couple days, and I needed to continue my questioning in Shadowtown later. I couldn’t keep nocturnal hours.

With my hair wrapped in a scarf and sunglasses on, I felt comfortable enough. Besides, all I had to do was tell Bee it was done, accept some money and be gone. It was my last deal, and I’d no longer have evidence on me of doing anything illegal.

I should have known something would go wrong.

I waved to Bee when I saw her, and she approached cautiously at first. I had to pat the bench to get her to sit. She was dressed much like last time—leggings, ballet flats, unflattering dress. It was so not my style, but nonetheless I felt very mannish next to her in my jeans and sneakers.

“Is it done?” she whispered.

I handed her the piece of tape with her name on it. “It’s done.”

“Oh, my God.” The tape trembled, stuck to her fingers.

Then she burst into tears.

Dragon shit on toast. I did not do well with crying. All I wanted was to get my money and get out of here, go to The Lair and continue my private investigation of Angelia’s potential enemies. Yet even I had the social graces not to ask a crying woman to discuss payment.

Not immediately anyway. So I sat there uncomfortably until she collected herself, trying not to fidget.

“You have no idea…” She gazed at the tape like it was a thing of magic, then tore it into pieces. “I haven’t been able to sleep or eat.”

Given how tiny she already was, that couldn’t be healthy. “Well, it’s over, and you’ll never do that again, so lesson learned.”

Bee moaned. “But it’s not over. I have to live with myself, knowing what I did. I’m an awful human being.”

Oh, brother. I was glad for the sunglasses because she couldn’t see me roll my eyes. “Look, you feel bad. Trust me when I say that puts you ahead of ninety percent of the people who have been in your situation. Awfulness is relative. You got jealous, you cursed a rival. It happens.”

“But she was innocent. She’s not even a rival. I don’t dislike her and I did this anyway.” Bee pulled out a tissue and sniffed into it.

“Wait, I thought you cursed another dancer who was your director’s undeserved favorite?”

She crumpled the tissue. “I did, but it wasn’t because I hate her. It was because I hate
him
. I wanted her to screw up her big performance and teach him a lesson. He knows she’s not as good, but he favors her because he wants her to sleep with him.”

I propped my elbows on my knees, contemplating. “So you cursed the dancer to take down the director instead of cursing him directly. Why not curse him directly?”

“Because I wanted to humiliate him, not hurt him. I thought it would serve him right to have to answer for her failure. I wanted to be there for it, to watch him squirm when the Board confronted him. I hoped they’d fire him.” The venom in her voice suggested her guilt didn’t extend as far as the director’s well-being.

“That’s actually kind of brilliant. No one would suspect you had something against the dancer because you get along, so if someone got suspicious about a curse, it wouldn’t be as likely to get traced back to you. They wouldn’t see who your real target was. They’d assume the curse was planted by a jealous rival and miss the real motive entirely.”

Bee’s eyes widened. “I never thought of that.”

I snapped my jaw shut, realizing I’d been rambling. “Probably not, but it gives me an idea. You’ve been very helpful.”

“I have?”

“Yup.” I bounded up, my urge to get back to Shadowtown twice as strong. “Let’s call that your fee. That, and no more cursing if you can’t live with the consequences because I’m officially no longer in the soul-swapping business.”

“Oh?” Bee gasped, her tissue clasped to her mouth.

I have no idea how long she gawked at me because I was off and running to the nearest T stop. I needed to have a conversation with Lucen stat.