I tried not to jump to conclusions.
“That’s exactly what you’re gonna read on the front page of the Sun, so don’t you dare scoop me,” Rita said.
I struggled to smile. “Wouldn’t know how.”
Jeremy caught my eye. Rita noticed, and her gaze traveled over him.
“Friend of yours?”
I nodded, but wasn’t about to introduce him to a human acquaintance if I could help it.
She kept looking at Jeremy, sizing him up. “Single?”
I was about to say something noncommittal when Jaime saw Rita looking, and shifted closer to Jeremy, her hand moving up behind him so she seemed to be resting her hand against the small of his back.
“Guess not,” Rita murmured.
Clay made a noise between a snort and a laugh. Rita’s photographer waved to her.
“Gotta run,” she said. “About that other lead, the missing man? I’ll follow up on that, and give you a call.”
When we got within ten feet of Jeremy and Jaime, I said, “Better wait here. They’re arguing about something.”
Jaime’s face was taut, her eyes flashing as she spoke. Jeremy leaned back with his arms crossed.
“Doesn’t seem like much of a fight,” Clay said.
I stared at him.
“Yeah,” he said. “For Jeremy, I guess that’s a fight.”
We tried not to eavesdrop, but that’s tough for werewolves.
“I can sense her,” Jaime was saying. “She hasn’t crossed over-”
“Which doesn’t mean you need to speak to her.”
“Doesn’t it? If I can get a firsthand account-”
“From a victim, firsthand accounts are often unreliable. That’s particularly true with the ghost of someone who’s just been murdered. You’ve told me that yourself. You’ve also told me how difficult it is to contact them, and how traumatic-”
Jaime crossed her arms as Jeremy uncrossed his. “I never said traumatic.”
People moved between us, and Jeremy stepped away to avoid being overheard. A few minutes later, Jaime wheeled on him and strode off. Jeremy hesitated, then walked over to us.
“That’s the problem dealing with nonwerewolves,” I said. “They lack that critical ‘you are Alpha, you are right’ gene.”
“Very inconvenient,” he said wryly.
He turned and watched Jaime pace along the far sidewalk and, for a second, I thought I saw something more than friendly concern flicker behind his eyes.
“You know, she’s right,” I said softly. “You can offer your opinion and advice, but it’s her choice.”
Jeremy nodded, but he didn’t make a move in her direction. I knew he was thinking the same thing I was-wondering whether Jaime thought it would help or she was just desperate to make the effort, to show us that she could be useful.
“If she’s going to do it anyway, at least we can be grateful,” I said.
Jeremy exhaled, brushed back his hair, then nodded.
“I’ll go tell her she’s allowed to do it,” he said.
As he turned to go, I touched his arm. “Jeremy?”
“Hmmm?”
“ ‘Allowed’ is probably not the best word choice. The whole ‘not a werewolf’ thing?”
A small smile, then he headed over to her. They spoke for a minute, then Jaime headed for the alley. When Jeremy started to follow, she hesitated, glancing back at him. He caught up and, without a word exchanged, they headed into the alley.
“She’s letting him help her set up?” Clay said.
“Looks like it.”
“Huh.”
About ten minutes later, Jaime popped her head out from the alley and motioned us over as Jeremy left, presumably to round up Antonio and Nick.
“We only get one shot at this, so the more brains we have, the better questions we can ask.” Jaime stopped halfway down the alley. “Her spirit’s still here, so what I need to do is coax her over-kind of like what I did at the portal site. Then I’ll be doing something a little different. I want you to hear her answers directly, so I’m going to channel her. That means she can speak through me, but can’t hear or see you guys, okay?”
“Got it.”
Jeremy approached. I looked behind him and saw that Antonio and Nick had taken up position at the end of the alley. Two couples sneaking into the dark depths of an alley wasn’t that unusual in this neighborhood, although hearing them talking might be a little odd. But with an active crime scene right across the road, we weren’t likely to attract much attention.
“I was just telling them how this’ll work,” she said to Jeremy. “I’m not going to introduce you guys-no need to make this more complicated. As far as she’ll know, it’s just me and her.”
“This…” I began, then faltered.
Jaime nodded for me to go on.
“Is she going to remember this?” I asked. “Any of it? If she’s seen the crime scene, seen what happened to her…”
“Wiped clean when she crosses over. Postdeath amnesia, which is why we need to get to her now. She’ll forget what happened, and this conversation.”
“So you’re like a…psychic? Like those people on TV?”
A small laugh. “Exactly like that.”
“Have you ever been on TV?”
Jaime hesitated, but at a nod from Jeremy, she told the young woman who she was, and the woman knew her TV spiritualists well enough to be impressed and, maybe, for a few minutes, to forget what had happened to her.
“Okay,” she said finally, taking a deep breath, like a child steeling herself to do her best. I wondered how old she was…then realized I probably didn’t want to know.
Jeremy started the interview, keeping it slow, easing her into it by asking what she’d done earlier that evening, who she’d spoken to, the sort of police-type questions that wouldn’t help us, but were more humane than jumping straight to “so, how’d you die?”
We did get to that question, although, of course, Jeremy didn’t word it quite that way.
“It was a guy,” Kara said, then gave a squeaky giggle. “Guess I don’t need to say that, huh?”
“He approached you on the street?” Jeremy asked.
Jaime relayed the question.
“Yeah, only I was kinda off near the alley. I had to, uh, go, you know, and the bit-old bat in the store on the corner won’t let us use her bathroom unless we buy something. I was coming out of the alley, and this guy stopped me, wanted a blow.”
“Did you get a look at him?” Jeremy said.
“Uh, kinda…but not really. It’s dark right there. I know he was a guy. Dark hair. Kinda skinny. Looked okay. That’s all I really noticed-that he wasn’t, you know, gross.” She paused, then hurried on. “If he’d wanted me to get into a car or something, I’d have made him get out into the light. I’m pretty careful, but it was only a blow, and he didn’t want to go anywhere, just the alley, so I figured it was safe…”
Her voice trailed off. Jeremy stopped the questioning for a few minutes, giving Jaime time to talk to Kara, make sure she was ready to continue. When she was, Jeremy skipped the “what happened next” part, which I’m sure would have fulfilled anyone’s definition of “traumatic,” and instead asked whether the man had said anything or done anything that might help us find him.
“Uh-uh. It happened pretty fast, I guess. He took me in there and I thought everything was okay. I heard someone else, down the alley, in the dark. A woman. I thought it was another girl, with a guy, but then she seemed to be talking to my guy. I was gonna tell him it’d cost him extra for that-doing it in front of his girlfriend or whatever. Then I smelled something. Something awful.”
Through Jaime, I asked her to describe the smell, if she could.
“It was like when this cat died at a place I was staying at and everyone thought it ran away and we were gone for a week and came back and-” She made a gagging noise. “It was real rude. Never smelled anything like that before…until tonight. Then I saw a shape move at the end of the alley and then-” She shook her head. “That’s it. He must have…done it then.”