Winter Wolf (4 page)

The temptation to lash out and blow out all of the devices surged within me. I placed my palms on the smooth surface of the table, splayed my fingers, and drew ten deep breaths until the desire subsided.

A police station was the last place I wanted to stretch my wizardly legs and cause trouble. For all I knew, Inquisitors served as police. Sobered by the thought, I stared down at the tabletop, reined in my impulses, and waited.

~~*~~

Time was supposed to be a steady constant; the duration of a second simply did not change. My perception of time, however, was a fluid thing. For a while it flew by, whipped along by the frantic beat of my heart. Then, as if accepting the inevitability of a lengthy wait, it slowed. Seconds, minutes, or even hours didn't matter. It slogged along with the same lethargy of molasses in winter.

Worse, I was alone. Silent company would’ve helped me accept that I wasn’t the only one suffering from Scott’s death. It consumed me, gnawing away at my sanity with each passing moment. I couldn't escape the memory of his final moments or the sensation of his dried blood cracking on my skin. I didn't dare take off my sweater although I wore a tank top underneath.

They would question my scars. Maybe the Inquisition wouldn’t realize the cause of them, but I couldn’t afford the risk. If they asked about them, I would have to lie, and if I lied, they might learn the truth. Then Scott’s killer wouldn’t need to worry about me at all.

My eyes burned with unshed tears, but none fell. As if mocking me, my stomach gurgled, aching with primitive need. Food gave the body the strength to heal, to cope, and to survive, but the last thing I wanted was a reminder I lived. Why had the murderer chosen Scott? I had been so close to him. It wouldn’t have cost the killer any effort to target me instead.

Yet I had lived, and Scott had died.

But why Scott?

The lights flickered overhead, and I stared up at the ceiling. Out of habit, I focused on my burdensome power, but the lights continued to dim and brighten. It wasn’t me. I sucked in a breath, my eyes widening.

The lights in the bookstore had flickered from frequent power outages. Could Scott have been a wizard like me? Had his death been caused by the Inquisition?

I shuddered. The Inquisition was a lot of things, but from what I understood, they preferred a gun in an alley or a knife in a dark, not such a public murder. Everything I had read about the Inquisition implied they
avoided
attention, and that was why I still lived. Like them, I didn’t want to be found.

If Scott had been new to his powers and hadn’t known how to control himself, the Inquisition would’ve found him, of that I had no doubt. I had been lucky. I had known about the Inquisition before I had become a wizard, all because of my family’s tainted nature. The rest I had learned from a book.

Homesickness was a funny thing.
Home
wasn’t something I’d thought of in a long time. I had abandoned it. I didn’t have a right to feel the melancholy of wanting something that was on the other side of a bridge I had set torch to and watched burn. Home was a place where I had a mother, a father, and a twin sister. In our own way, we had been happy.

But knowledge had changed everything. While I didn’t exactly understand the relationship between the Fenerec and the Inquisition, I knew they would kill me if they found out I existed. That awareness had saved my life when I had lacked control. It had spurred me to learn to control myself before I was discovered, allowing me to hide in the open.

If Scott had been a wizard, he hadn’t been as lucky.

The door burst open and Officer Harding swept into the room. I squeaked, clapping my filthy hands to my mouth to mask the sounds of my fright. Another cop followed him, a young woman who looked fresh out of high school, let alone old enough to serve as a member of the police force.

Harding slapped down a thin manila folder, and sat down next to me. “This is Detective Faraday.”

Detective Faraday didn’t quite sigh although I suspected she wanted to. A wrinkle creased her brow, and there was nothing friendly about the way she glared at Harding before circling the table to take the chair opposite me. She made an effort to smile at me as she sat.

“Identify yourself,” Harding barked, pulling the folder to him. His hand hovered over the tab, poised to flip it open.

“My name is Nicole Thomas.”

“Occupation?”

“Actress.”

Harding flipped open the file. There were several pages within. On the top was a sheet of paper with four photographs clipped to it. He removed one and slid it in front of me. “Do you know these people?”

I obediently stared down at the picture in front of me.

Four boys sat around a table, papers, dice, and pencils strewn between them. There was one empty seat waiting for someone to return to it. Scott had been laughing when the photo had been taken, pointing at a little figurine of a robed man. The others with him were grinning. It was the perfect picture, capturing unrestrained joy.

I wondered if the person who had been behind the camera had been laughing, too.

After staring at Scott, hoping the happy moment would somehow erase his last ones, I inspected the other boys.

To my surprise, I recognized one other than Scott. “I know two people in this picture,” I replied.

“Two?” Harding leaned towards me, his gaze intent. I flinched away, watching him out of the corner of my eye.

“Two,” I confirmed, pointing at Scott. “His name was Scott. He… he was the one who died.”

A lump formed in my throat and I swallowed it back.

Silence answered me. Maybe they meant to give me a moment to collect myself, mistaking the crack in my voice for emotion instead of my chronic laryngitis. The photograph hurt, but their questions hadn’t hurt me—not yet.

That would come soon enough.

I took advantage of the quiet to study the woman seated across from me. Faraday’s eyebrows rose, but then her expression smoothed to a cool, impassive mask.

There were many types of women, and in my career, I had met most of them. Some moved along with the flow of others, shapeless in their personalities and appearances, fitting whatever role life happened to throw at them. Others forged their own paths, plowing through anyone who happened to get in their way.

Then there were those who were somewhere in between, wolves in sheep’s clothing, who didn’t quite know how to stop being prey and start becoming a predator. The detective’s eyes focused on me, and for a moment, all I could see was a suppressed wolf who wanted to break free of a dominant male.

Maybe my sister’s tainted nature had infected me, considering people as beasts rather than humans. Then again, I was a wizard; ‘human’ wasn’t a label I could apply to myself. Part of me hoped the detective would break her chains and speak.

It didn’t surprise me when Faraday remained silent.

“And the other?” Harding prompted.

I pointed. The boy had more orange than red in his hair, and he had the pasty white skin of the Irish. His dark brown eyes were warm, as was his smile. “I don’t remember his name, but I’ve seen him at a studio before.”

Maybe Harding practiced his intense glares in a mirror. His expression was calculating, waiting for me to make a mistake. “Studio?”

“Movie studio. Place is called Silver Moon. They shoot genre flicks.” I wrinkled my nose. “B-rated stuff. He ran errands. I didn’t know him well, just enough to remember seeing him around.” I frowned, letting my brow furrow as I thought about it. “Maybe two or three years ago. Worked with the sound crew, if I recall correctly.”

I did; my memory wasn’t kind to me, and I had a tendency to remember far more than I should. That, however, they weren’t going to find out if I had any say in the matter. Dates, unfortunately, didn’t tend to stick as well as the other little details—like the blood splatters on the bookstore’s white walls.

Harding’s eyes narrowed. I imagined him preparing to pounce at me to get the answers he wanted. “Two or three years ago?”

“I don’t remember exactly,” I replied with an apologetic shrug. Time was a luxury on set, and extras were expected to show up, do their job, and leave. Dates of shoots weren’t all that relevant, so long as I showed up on time.  “I had been in a lot of films around then, in minor roles.”

“Minor roles?” Harding’s eyes narrowed. I shivered at the predatory nature of his stare.

What had I said to prompt such a reaction? It was common knowledge extras participated in many films. At least, I thought it was. I shrugged, and decided if I wanted to escape unscathed, I needed to play along.

They couldn’t catch me in a lie if I spoke nothing but the truth.

“With my voice, I don’t get many lead roles,” I admitted.

“You don’t have a cold?” Faraday asked, her tone surprised.

“No. Chronic laryngitis.” I paused, gauging their reaction. Both recoiled. Harding recovered first, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. Sympathy was something I wouldn’t expect from him, but Faraday at least faked a little bit of concern and sympathy. “It isn’t contagious.”

“How long have you been ill?” Harding asked.

Too long was the truth, but I couldn’t bring myself to say that. “Four or five years now, I guess? Maybe longer.”

Harding pounced on my hesitation. “You guess?”

“I thought it was allergies at first,” I admitted, biting my lip. “But it didn’t get better. I didn’t really think about it until I found out it wasn’t allergies after all.”

“I see.” Whipping a pen out of his pocket, Harding flipped through the pages and wrote a note. “So you worked with this boy for how long without knowing his name?”

Patience was a virtue, and a good actress didn’t let repeated questions faze her. I reminded myself of that several times. “Do you know the name of every janitor who works here?” I asked, cocking my head to the side as I met his eyes. I had nothing to hide—excluding my death-sentence crime of wizardry, of course.

But I, a failed actress and retired singer, wasn’t supposed to know anything of wizards, witches, Fenerec, or the Inquisition. If Harding or his partner were Inquisitors, I couldn’t risk revealing any knowledge at all about anything unusual.

Splotches of red appeared on Harding’s cheeks. “That isn’t relevant. Answer the question.”

Hiding wasn’t possible and acting like a cornered animal would bring me nothing but harassment from the detectives. In my current role, I had nothing to hide from them, and I couldn’t let myself be stepped on. It was like an audition; if I wanted to act, I needed to believe I was worthy of my part. I needed, as always, to pretend to be someone else—someone who wasn’t shaking, sickened, and the most likely suspect of a murder I hadn’t committed. It was hard not to duck my head.

“I was an extra, sir. I haven’t featured in a film produced at that studio. I don’t know the names of every single sound crew member. I don’t know how many days I had been at the studio. No more than a week. It was a minor role.”

Most of my roles were, but he didn’t need to know that. I didn’t have a police record, so it was unlikely that they knew much about my career, although they would have had plenty of time to research my appearances if they had really wanted.

Harding tapped the photograph, gesturing to Scott. “And him?”

“He’s an employee at the bookstore. He helped me find a book tonight.”

“Have you ever seen him prior to tonight?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Why were you at the mall?”

Patience, I reminded myself. “I was buying a book.”

“Which book?”

Instead of answering, I gestured to my bloodstained copy of
Among Us.
Harding glanced at it. “Why that book?”

“You’d have to ask my agent that, sir. He asked me to read it.”

“Your agent,” Harding stated in an unamused, dry tone. “For a sub-par actress with a focus on minor roles?”

There were times I really, really wanted to unleash every bit of my power and burn someone to ash. I had to rein in the impulse. It took me several deep breaths and a moment of imagining fluffy kittens playing with yarn to control my desire to fry the man.

I guessed they had taken the time to look up my credits as an actress while I waited.

Settling with the most direct, simplest answer I could think of, I replied, “Yes.”

Detective Faraday’s eyes widened. A smirk twisted Harding’s lips before he controlled himself. “Why?”

“You would have to ask him that, Detective Harding. I don’t know.”

“You didn’t ask him?”

“I had no reason to ask him. I assumed he had an audition in mind and would tell me when the time came.”

“Why?”

I didn’t have an answer for him, so I shrugged. “You would have to ask him, Detective Harding. I can give you his number, if you’d like.”

“Please.”

I reached across the table for my cell phone, unlocked it, and pulled up my contacts. I pushed the blood-splattered device to him. With a nod, Harding wrote down my agent’s details before nodding at me. “I’ll contact him, then.”