2 Witch and Famous (9 page)

“Do you have another theory?” Fergie asked me. “I mean, if there’s anything better, fine.”

I shrugged. “What about if the coven set this up as a way to find an excuse for getting rid of Niall?”

Fergie considered it. “Could they fake the presence of an enchanter? Could they set this up? Why would they go to the trouble?”

“You said yourself that there are indications they’re building up to something.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything for this.”

“I also just saw Rebecca.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Fergie said.

“I’m the boss. I don’t have to tell you everything.” I took a deep breath and met his eyes. “Someone shot at me with a suppressed rifle today.”

“They did
what?
” Fergie might have been a werewolf, but that didn’t automatically make him some kind of tough guy. He was, at heart, still a lawyer. Lawyers didn’t live in a world where people they knew got shot at.

“While I was on the phone with Niall. Which is why I went to see Rebecca. I figured that if anyone was going to start shooting at me…”

Fergie swallowed. “You didn’t do anything to her, did you?”

I shook my head. “Don’t think I wasn’t tempted though. She thought Niall was the killer. She also started telling me that witches and warlocks had been disappearing. She thought it might be me.”

“Elle, this is not good. Not good at all.” Fergie tapped his pen on a legal pad, thinking, his brows knitting together.

“I know it’s not good. Too many things are happening, too fast. What I need is advice. Is there anyone it could be besides Niall?”

“You’ve already mentioned the coven,” Fergie said. “I guess the question is one of who else stands to gain. I know the insurance company doesn’t have to pay out if this is suicide.”

“You’re even going to suspect them now?” I asked.

“You wanted possibilities. I didn’t say they were good possibilities. Sorry.”

No, because whatever else had happened, I had felt an enchanter in Jessica’s home. I still needed to find out what that meant.

“Look into the people who have disappeared,” I said to Fergie. “Find out what you can about them. I don’t like Rebecca suddenly dropping something like that on me. I’ll concentrate on the main case for now.”

“You think that they’re linked?” Fergie asked.

“I don’t know.” I hoped not. Because the only way I could see that they might be linked was if Rebecca was right. If Niall was behind all of it. I couldn’t believe that. Not yet. Not until I saw some
proof
.

I didn’t so much as mention the case to Niall when I went to his place. I didn’t even mention the near-shooting, in case it sent him on some kind of hunt for the coven. For his part, Niall was quiet, too, not bringing up the business he’d been caught up in all day. He just played the piano for a while in the living room, old tunes that I didn’t really recognize. He was so intent on playing that I wasn’t sure that he even noticed the moment when I left to go back to my place. It made me a little sad. Under the weight of suspicion, we were losing…
us.

The next morning brought me back to the office through the press of street performers already out touting for their bigger shows later that day. Fergie was already at his desk when I arrived. That was only to be expected. The woman sitting across from him was more of a surprise.

“Victoria?”

She turned as I said it, looking every bit as perfect as she had on Jessica Hammersmith’s doorstep. She smiled up at me from one of the client chairs. “Elle, hi. I hope you don’t mind me coming here like this. It’s just…well, you’re looking into what happened, and I thought maybe you’d want to see these.”

She passed me a trio of business cards. They were for clubs.

“Places where Jessica sang?” I asked.

Victoria shook her head. “I don’t think so. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s just…they weren’t with any of the other business things. Jess was normally pretty good about that sort of thing. She had these sort of…hidden.”

Victoria was worried by that thought. I could feel that much.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s probably nothing,” Victoria said. “I’m probably just being foolish.”

“But?”

“But one of them kind of has a…reputation. As a singles’ bar, you know?” Victoria shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m even telling you this. It feels like I’m being disloyal even thinking it, but what if it had something to do with what happened and I didn’t say something?”

I knew that feeling. I knew how much it hurt, too. What did you do when the person you loved was keeping secrets? What did you do when you suspected that there were things about them that you had never known?

“I’ll look into it,” I promised, and not just because I wanted to make Victoria feel better. The slight flicker of a smile that crossed her features was just a bonus. A bonus that reminded me I hadn’t fed in a couple of days. And if I was noticing that around women, I was getting
really
hungry.

I forced myself to focus as Fergie showed Victoria to the door.

“So, you’re going to look at these places?” he asked.

“If Jessica was looking for another relationship, then that could explain how she met the enchanter I felt in her house,” I explained. “It could be that they stalked her there.”

“Stalked? This isn’t some 1950s’ horror movie.”

I shrugged. “Said the werewolf to the emotional vampire. If we’re lucky, someone at one of these places will remember Jessica. If we’re really lucky, they’ll remember
who
she met there.”

“It does sound like the perfect place for an enchanter to hunt,” Fergie admitted. He looked at me. “Are you going to be okay? Marie says you’ve been careful about feeding.”

That caught me by surprise. Both because of the idea of Niall’s personal assistant talking to Fergie about that, and because of the flash of affection that came with her name.

“You and Marie have a thing? Is there something I should know?” I asked.

Fergie shook his head. “Not so far. Maybe. And you’re changing the subject.”

“I’ll be fine,” I assured him. “Unless you’re volunteering to be my lunch?”

“Unless you’re planning on turning furry with the full moon and howling on all fours, we couldn’t do the open wound thing to get you fed. That leaves kissing, so, I don’t think it would be me who would have the issue with it, would it?”

He had a point. As good looking as Fergie was, I’d already written off that possibility, and I wasn’t going to kiss him just to feed. Let alone anything else.

“I think I’d better stick to less furry food.”

Fergie laughed. “I’ve never felt so safe.”

I went home early. Obviously, this was going to be a nighttime job, so there was no point in exhausting myself in the office while I waited. I tried to do research on vampires, on Jessica, on anything that would distract me, but mostly, I ended up thinking about Niall. Oh, and sleeping. Somehow, I ended up sleeping through most of the day. Maybe it was the lack of energy.

I was still running on an empty stomach, emotionally speaking, when I finally grabbed a few things and headed out to try to find answers. I was dressed in a black party dress, a leather jacket, and heels. The kind of outfit that would normally have gotten me attention, but seemed right for the places I was heading. The hunger wasn’t so bad once I got out into the street. In fact, it was part of why I walked. There were enough performers around that I could at least let the emotion of the watching crowds run through me. It didn’t do anything to solve the underlying problem, but it was something. The same taste, until…

Until what? The problem of needing to feed wasn’t going to go away. The problem of what I needed to
do
to feed wasn’t going to go away. Maybe I could rely on Niall’s staff for a little while longer, and maybe I would be able to persuade him to give me more energy, but that only postponed the issue. Besides, did I really want to think about where Niall might have gotten his energy from? Who he might have gotten it from? The things Rebecca had said were still in the background. Had Jessica Hammersmith had some minor magical talent? Was there any way to check? If she did, did it prove anything?

I shook my head. For now, I needed to focus on the clubs. The first one seemed to be a general venue, currently advertising a comedy revue and a one-woman show. There wasn’t a line outside, but that was typical. For every bestselling show at the Fringe, there were three more that only attracted maybe enough people to fill one table. I walked inside, paying the cover charge and then looking for the manager.

She turned out to be a woman maybe a decade older than me, heavily built, with the kind of harassed look that probably only came from trying to run a venue in the middle of the Fringe.

“I’m afraid we’re busy at the moment,” she said as I tried to talk to her.

I looked around pointedly at the nearly empty venue, and then held up a picture of Jessica taken from her website. “I’m here about this woman.”

“I don’t know her.”

I sighed. I’d been hoping to do this without using my talents, but now I sent a tendril of persuasive power into her. “Could you maybe look at the picture before you say that?”

She took the photo. “I’m sorry, I really don’t recognize her. I mean, with the crowds that come through the city…”

 I nodded. “But this is a club where a lot of single people come?”

She frowned slightly. “Not really. Although we did have a speed dating thing maybe a month ago.”

Speed dating. That was something, and it turned out with just a little more pushing that they’d kept the sign-up sheets. Which they obviously couldn’t show to anyone, but since it was me…Jessica’s name was there, about halfway through the pile. From the looks of it, she’d gotten a lot of responses. I wasn’t surprised. Niall’s name wasn’t there, but did that prove anything other than that he would be smart enough to use a false name?

I moved on to the next club. The moment I arrived, I knew that this one was different. I could feel it, even from the street. Need, desire, pleasure, it all poured out of the doors in a wave. A month ago, I would have locked down my shields and walked away at the feel of it, but now, I eagerly stepped inside. There was a line. The bouncers didn’t make me join it. They didn’t remember Jessica, either, when I asked.

Inside, the club was full, and not just with people there to enjoy the music. I could feel the straightforward wants of everyone in the room, pulsing out as clearly as the dubstep coming from the speakers. Although I wasn’t completely out of place, and there were plenty of “normally” dressed people there, there were also plenty of people wearing a lot more leather than me. Or a lot less, in a few cases.

I got at least three offers on the way to the bar, each of a kind that suggested there was more to the club than just a place to meet. I could even feel it if I tried. There were things going on somewhere up a broad staircase to the rear of the club that both made me want to walk away and made unseen parts of me groan in anticipation. I forced myself to ignore them as I pushed Jessica’s picture at a barman who seemed, like most of the bar staff, to have temporarily misplaced his shirt. Not that I was complaining, given his physique.

“Have you seen this woman?” I asked.

“Now, you know we’d go out of business if we went around telling people that their partners were here,” he said with a smile.

I shook my head and pushed him, just slightly, before asking my question again.