Winter Wolf (5 page)

For the first time since entering the room, Harding looked uncomfortable. I focused most of my attention on him, although I did keep an eye on the woman as well.

“I’m going to have to ask you some questions,” he began, not meeting my gaze. “Please answer them as thoroughly as you can.”

I waited. When he said nothing, I jerked my head in a nod.

My phone made a high-pitched chime, vibrated, and bounced its way across the table as it rang. A squeak escaped me as I recoiled from the unexpected noise. I wasn’t the only one to jump. Detective Faraday paled, but recovered faster than I did. With my heartbeat throbbing in my throat, I stared down at my cell as it vibrated its way across the metal surface.

As if somehow sensing we’d been talking about him, my agent had called. I stared at his name, uncertain of what to do. Dominic would, once he knew the circumstances, forgive me for not answering.

Harding cleared his throat.

With a shaking hand, I dismissed his call. “I’m sorry about that.” My whisper came out as a croak. The primitive rumbling of my hunger twisted to nausea. I swallowed, silenced my phone and turned off vibrate mode.

“You could’ve answered,” Faraday said in a low, soothing tone. “You did nothing wrong.”

To my surprise, Harding nodded in agreement with his partner. “That’s right, Miss Thomas. You were the closest person to this young man when he died. We need to know what happened. Tell us everything you remember.”

I wished I could forget. The sound replayed in my head, and I relived the sudden deluge of warm fluid. I opened my mouth, but couldn’t force a single word out. I pushed away from the table, angling my chair so I could stare at the wall beyond Faraday. It let me brace my elbows on my knees, prop my face in my palms, and draw deep breaths until I could control myself.

It didn’t work as well as I hoped. I was supposed to be an actress. Why couldn’t I force a mask as I had so many times before?

“What time did you arrive at the mall, Miss Thomas?” Harding leaned towards me, turning his chair to face me.

“Before ten,” I choked out.

“Did you notice anything unusual in the bookstore?”

I went to shake my head, but hesitated. “The power flickered.”

Both detectives quieted, but to my surprise, it was Faraday who leaned forward and took the initiative. “What do you mean by flickered?”

With a helpless shrug, I turned my palms upward. “Dimmed, came back, turned off, came back. Flickered. Then it went off for good.”

“What happened then?” Faraday asked, her tone as insistent as Harding’s had been.

What
had
happened to Scott? Who—or what—could do something so horrific to a person? The sound of his death lurked in my memory, and I couldn’t escape from it. I shuddered. I didn’t want to remember any of it.

I opened my mouth to choke out a reply, but threw up on Harding’s polished shoes instead.

Chapter Three

My crowning embarrassment wasn’t throwing up on Harding’s polished shoes, but rather his reaction to my utter loss of control. With nonchalant grace and dignity, he rose from his seat and took hold of my arm, hoisting me to my feet. Even the way he dragged me across the police station without a word was prideful. None of his fellow officers dared to stare at us for long.

That was a mercy. I gagged the entire way. By some miracle, I hadn’t gotten anything on myself, not that it mattered with the amount of blood staining my clothes. The only indicator Harding cared that I had used him as an impromptu trash can was the twitching of his cheek.

He led me to an office the size of a broom closet. It somehow managed to fit a desk and a pair of chairs. Harding gave me a push into one, poked his head out the door, and said something. My ears rang, and the drumming in my skull drowned out what he said.

He thrust a paper cup into my hand.

“Drink,” he ordered.

I obeyed. The water didn’t get the vile taste out of my mouth. It didn’t help settle my stomach either. When I finished, he refilled it. After the third cup, I shook my head.

At least I didn’t throw up again.

Time played tricks on me again, and it wasn’t until a paramedic flashed a light in my eyes that I managed to pull myself back together. The woman was older; gray hair framed a well-tanned, wrinkly face. There was nothing senile or unsteady about the brisk way she checked my pulse, looked over my eyes, and subjected to me a game of twenty questions.

I wasn’t sure what I said, but I must have satisfied her. With a pronouncement of mild shock, and after my refusal to go to any sort of hospital, she left me alone with Detective Harding.

“Do you think you can handle some questions?” he asked, surprising me with his hesitancy.

Maybe he didn’t want me making a mess over his neat and tidy desk piled with files. My stomach churned, but I swallowed back my unease and jerked my head in a nod. “I’m sorry.”

Detective Harding made an amused sound. “I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same. But you are our most important witness, Miss Thomas. We must know everything you know. Do you understand?” With that, he pulled out a recording device and turned it on.

I decided that I wouldn’t feel guilty over puking on Detective Harding’s shiny shoes. Maybe I did have the answers to Scott’s death, hidden in the little details I couldn’t forget. Maybe the police would be able to find something.

Or maybe my worst fears would become reality, and the Inquisition would listen my every word, scrutinize them, and find hints I wasn’t a normal human lurking in my statements. The thought sickened me.

“I understand.” Without taking my eyes from the recorder, I forced myself to face Scott’s death one more time. It wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t killed Scott. Saving him had been beyond my power.

It wasn’t my fault.

Unfortunately, I didn’t believe it.

“You said that the lights flickered in the bookstore. What time did this happen at?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t looking at the clock. It was near closing time.” The lights flickering was something I could focus on without feeling sick. “One of the store employees—the cashier—said that it had been happening for a week or so, and was usually out for only a few minutes.” I paused, focusing on the memory of what she had said. “She was surprised the generators hadn’t kicked on.”

“The store had generators?”

If I kept shrugging so much, my shoulders were going to fall off. “I don’t know how they power the store? Maybe it’s a mall thing?”

It was also a lie; I had a pretty good idea about how the mall was powered. With my abilities, it was impossible
not
to trace the sources of electricity. If there had been generators hooked into the bookstore’s electric system, they’d been disconnected or nullified before the power had gone out. To a wizard like me, generators were like huge batteries. If there had been one nearby, I wouldn’t have missed it.

A shudder ran through me. Speculating on the circumstances of Scott’s death wasn’t going to either one of us. Then again, with my sort of bad luck, if I didn’t help the police identify his murdered, he’d haunt me.

As if my worries about the Inquisition finding me weren’t bad enough. All I needed to add to my special cocktail of misery was a ghost watching me, waiting for a chance to strike back for my inability to stop death.

“Did anyone stand out at the store when you were there?”

Laura.

I straightened, my eyes widening. The woman had been calm, hardened to the sight of something that had made paramedics and police
faint.
I’d been in a daze, but she had been steady, calm, and calculating.

“There was a woman,” I replied after spending a few moments to gather my thoughts. “Laura. She said her name was Laura.”

Details weren’t something I usually forgot, but when I opened my mouth to describe her, my mind went blank. Her name was in my memory, as were the things she’d done, but I couldn’t remember what her face looked like.

“Miss Thomas?” There was an edge to Harding’s voice.

“I can’t remember what she looks like,” I whispered. I wasn’t an animal, nor was I a Fenerec; if fear had a scent, I didn’t know what it smelled like. But I didn’t need to be anything other than
human
to recognize the fear strangling my already hoarse voice.

Why couldn’t I remember what she looked like? Laura, along with her greedy little cell phone, had been there. Not only had she been there, she was
here
, being questioned. I was certain of it. When I went to check my cell phone, I realized it was gone.

Shit.

“What was unusual about this woman?” Harding leaned towards me, his eyes glinting with his need for knowledge.

I recognized the hunger of a predator in his posture and tone, and it took all of my will not to cringe away or run for the door. All the detective wanted to do was find out who killed Scott, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was prey to him.

“She was really calm. Nonchalant.” I waved my hands in a helpless gesture. “Hardened, I guess. Like she’d seen something like
that
before.”

“Can you remember anything about her at all?”

I stared at the papers strewn across the detective’s desk. Why couldn’t I remember anything about her? We had spoken twice. She had been kind, at least to me, but then she’d vanished. I scoured my memories. “I saw her here on the way in. In one of those questioning rooms.”

“And you’re certain her name is Laura?”

“That’s what she told me. Laura. She didn’t give me her last name.”

Harding met my eyes, both of his eyebrows raised. It was the expression of someone who had just encountered a psycho and wasn’t quite sure how to handle the situation. Maybe I was a wizard, but I wasn’t crazy—yet.

“What caught your attention about Laura?”

Maybe it was the way he took me seriously, or maybe I was just too tired to remain tense and stiff in my seat, but I slumped a little in my chair and jerked my shoulders in a shrug. “She recognized me in the store. Knew who I was. Wanted to talk, so we did a little.”

“About what?”

I don’t know why a laugh bubbled out of me, but it did, and it was a harsh sound. “My films.”

“So you have a fan.” Harding made a note of that. “What happened with Laura?”

“We talked. After, I went to find a copy of
Among Us.
Went to pay. That’s when—”

The lights flickered and went out, leaving us in the dark.

~~*~~

There were startled cries and a few curses in the darkness. To my credit, I didn’t scream. I wanted to. I waited for the sound I feared the most and trembled when my expectations were met with silence.

The drumming of fingers on a desk let me focus on something other than my fear. Was Detective Harding’s expression one of pure displeasure? I suspected so.

“Well,” was all that the older man said, his single word punctuated by the tapping of his fingers.

I would’ve given almost anything for faint emergency lights or the thrum of a generator kicking in. “Indeed,” I replied, my tone dry and raspy.

All it would’ve taken me to light the entire place up was a thought. Then I wouldn’t have to endure the pitch black—or what the outage hid. I quelled the impulse. If I acted, it’d be a matter of time before the Inquisition found me.

If I didn’t, someone else might die as Scott had died.

“What a lovely time for the generator to fail,” Detective Harding groused. The tapping of fingers ceased, followed by the whisper-soft opening of a drawer. The beams of a flashlight cut through the darkness. “It’s been acting up lately.”

“Do you lose power often, then?” I asked, and was proud that my voice didn’t tremble—much.

“Often enough.” There was false cheer in the man’s voice. Maybe he was trying to put me at ease by sounding as if nothing was wrong. Maybe he believed if he did that, I wouldn’t have a reason to be afraid of the dark.

I wished I wasn’t such a coward. A police station was the last place a crazed psycho murderer would come after a witness like me, right?

My attempts at positive thinking didn’t turn the lights back on. It did, however, revitalize my sarcasm. What else could go wrong? Sarcasm and humor were good medicine, or so lots of people seemed to believe. For me, it was another mask to help get me through a bad situation. All I had to do was wait for my chance.

“I’ll send someone to go give the generator a kick,” Harding grumbled, rising from his seat. The flashlight didn’t offer enough illumination for me to see his expression.

I saw the opportunity to egg Detective Harding, so I took it. “Don’t you know what happens when someone goes alone to fix a generator?”

Harding froze, the flashlight pointed at my face. While the light hurt my eyes, it wasn’t enough to smother my slow-growing grin. My smile was my bait, and Harding went for the hook with a tentative nibble. “What do you mean by that?”

I couldn’t help it. Giving him my best smile, the one I usually reserved for Dominic or a producer, I prepared to lure him in. “They don’t waste much, you know. Maybe if you’re lucky, they’ll save an arm for the next poor sucker you send down there to get eaten.”

If he didn’t get the reference to one of my favorite films, his loss.

Someone outside of Harding’s office choked on a laugh.

“Can it, Emanuel!” Harding bellowed.

I kept my smile sweet as I listened to the chorus of chortling from the officers.

“It’d be best if you sent someone expendable,” I added when the laughter quieted. “Better yet, send two. That way, at least one will have a chance of getting through.”

Detective Harding scowled at me, but I thought there was some humor in the way his mouth twitched. “Miss Thomas, I sincerely doubt any officer will be threatened by a velociraptor while going into the basement to check on the generator.”

There’s a trick to letting the silence speak, and I helped it along with the faintest of shrugs. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

There were more snickers outside of Harding’s office.

“Emanuel, you’re coming with me,” the detective ordered, shuffling past me to leave his office.

“Aye, aye, Captain!”

The curses Harding muttered under his breath were vile enough I choked back my laughter, lest he direct his displeasure on me.

“Don’t move. Don’t go anywhere, and don’t leave my office.” Harding flashed the light in my eyes, and I obediently nodded.

I didn’t have anywhere to go, although I did want my phone and my things back. “I need my things.”

“Later.”

With my luck, later meant in a few hours, and I’d be left in the dark without any light whatsoever. I didn’t look forward to that. “Remember, velociraptors can open doors
and
they’re fast. Have a safe trip!”

Someone laughed and then muttered, “Clever girl.”

“One of these days, Emanuel…” Detective Harding growled, more like a dog than a dinosaur.

I had to give the man credit; he didn’t slam the door, although I could tell by his jerking stride and erratic hold on his flashlight that he really wanted to. An opened door wasn’t going to protect me from much of anything, let alone a random velociraptor attack, but I somehow felt more secure not being locked within the tiny office.

I wasn’t the only one to breathe a sigh of relief when Harding and his victim Emanuel left the area. There was something comforting about the murmurs of conversation among the police officers. Some turned on their flashlights, but most of them didn’t seem to mind the darkness.

With no other choice but to settle down to wait, I made myself as cozy as I could on the hard chair, and tried to think of something—anything—other than the mall and the aftermath of death.

~~*~~

Maybe I was even more rattled than I believed, because I was relieved when Faraday invaded Harding’s office. Not only did she have all of my belongings, they had been cleaned. Better yet, she came with a pair of flashlights. One she sat on the floor next to me, and the other she took with her to the other side of the desk.